WW-P Board Meeting 03-24-26

001Hello everybody. Good evening. We called our meeting to order earlier in our closed executive session. So, we're happy to be getting going with our agenda. Thank you all for joining us this evening. And I'm sure um really excited to see a room full of people and I'm sure you're also excited about spring break coming up. Uh so without further ado, uh I think uh Dr. Adhole has a big presentation coming up. So first I'd like to invite uh your athletics directors uh Kate Dobinson and Jeff Riley. Not sure. Looks like Jeff's going to be coming up first. So go ahead and take the podium. Good evening and thank you to the board of education for providing us the opportunity to have us all here tonight to recognize our student athletes. We truly appreciate your continued

002support of our programs and for taking the time to celebrate the accomplishments of our students. As you know at West Windsor Plains North, it is always a great day to be a night and it's wonderful to be here tonight. I'd first like to call up the members of our wrestling team. So Sam Ray and Anderson Reyes, our Northern Knights wrestling program had a couple of individuals here with us tonight that we would like to recognize this evening under the leadership of coach Bill Furlong and coach Dylan Richkoff. Siam Ray finished the season with an overall record of 22-9, taking second in the district 19 tournament and made an appearance in the NJSA regional uh five tournament. Congratulations Anderson Reyes finished the season with an overall individual record of 30 and five. Anderson was a CBC

003championship at the 144 pound class. He went on to take fourth place in the NJSA District 19 tournament and overall congratulations to our members of the wrestling team and thank you for outstanding efforts and commitment. Congratulations. I'd now like to call up the members of our fencing he team that were here tonight. Under the guidance of coach William Quac and coach Omar Ibraham, our fencing program continues to demonstrate excellence at the highest level. This evening, we are proud to recognize two outstanding north fencers for their achievements at the NJSIA individual championships. Morgan Lee earned a fifth place finish in EPE and was selected to the second team all state New Jersey. Congratulations Harsha Vancotition captured a third place finish in EPE and was named first team all state as a 10th grader highlighting her exceptional

004performance among the state's best. Congratulations to our members of the North Fencing team and thank you for outstanding efforts. Thank you. I'd now like to call up the members of our West Windsor Plains North winter track team and their coaches. Our winter track team had a wonderful season led by coaches Brian Gould, Diana Altvader, Dan Ma, Alex Pacheo, and Brandon Deckard. We would like to recognize the following team and individual highlights for the past winter season. As you can tell, they're very accustomed to coming to this and where to stand and whatnot. Carson Quac and Chris Sheth, Paul Wittenberg, and a Grim Jaw boys distance medley relay qualified for the national championships. Congratulations. Rohan Varma and Susant Kari qualified for the 4x 100 apologize 4 by mile relay at the national championships along with a

005grim and Paul Wittenberg. Fatima Urasu, Vivian Ma, Sarah Sakura, and Evelyn Yang competed in the 4x800 meter relay at the NJSA meet of champions. They finished in 17th place for the entire state. Sarah Sakura, Nina Dix, El Evelyn Yang, and Allison Lee were all am members of the distance medley relay team that ran 1213.65, a school record, fastest time in the CBC, and the sixth fastest time in the state and fourth among public schools in the state of New Jersey, finished 12th at nationals overall. Paul Wittenberg finished fifth in the 3200 meters at the group three state championships earning him a spot at the meet of championship champions. There he finished 12th in the same event. A grimja CBC champion in the 1600 meters and 3200 meter runs. He went on to win the Central

006Jersey Group three sectional champion in the 1600 meters, fourth place at the group three state championships and meet of champions in the 1600 meters. Finished with a season best of 416.62, making Grim the fastest sophomore in New Jersey and the sixth fastest sophomore in the United States. Jada Sans. This winter, Jada was the Colonial Valley Conference Champion, the triple jump, earning her all Mercer County honors. Her winning jump came on her last jump of the com competition, moving her from fourth to first place. The jump of 33 feet 1 in ranks her second in school history and makes Jada HSN's first ever CBC champion in the event. Anamika Certil, CBC champion and sectional champion, second place in group three and qualified for the meet of champions with a personal best of 5'2 in in the

007high jump, tying the HSN school record. And last but not least, Allison Lee. This winter, Allison rewrote the HSN record books. She was the 1600 meter CBC and sectional champion, 3200 meter CBC sectional group three and New Jersey state champion. After states, Ally was the 5,000 meter national runner up taking silver at the New Balance Nationals. Her time was the second fastest time in New Jersey state history and the third 13th fastest time in US history. Allison's season and personal best of 4 minutes and 48 seconds for the 1600 meters and 10 minutes and 7 seconds for the 3200 meters are both HSN and Colonial Valley Conference records. Thank you to the board of education for recognizing our West Windsor Plains North athletes and coaches for all your hard work and outstanding achievements. Thank you.

008And now, Kate Dobinson. Good evening. I would like to reiterate uh Mr. Riley's comments on just the thank you and gratitude of support from the board of education, from the high school south administration, um and our community members. Our athletic programs would not be able to do what we we do on a daily basis without all of your support. Um, I'm always proud to be a member of the pirates crew. Um, and I am glad to present some of our crew members here today um, as their winter accomplishments. I'd like to first start off with Jake Man. Jake recently Jake recently represented the United States of the Pan-American Cadet and Junior Championships in Bogota, Colombia as a member of the junior men's EPA team. Competing on the international stage, Jake and his team captured first

009a first place finish, an outstanding achievement, and he will continue his fencing career this fall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I would also like to invite up members of the WWP High School South boy swim team. This year, the high school South swim team finished first at the Colonial Valley Conference Championships. The team totaled 288 points and delivered a strong overhaul performance, including four first place finishes, three second place finishes, multiple top six placements. Team members include um Alan Saray, Vicmpel, Dash Guyadev, Julian Fang, Eric Yang, Arv Goladi, Derek um Daniel Shei, Dennis G, Alex Reel, Lucas Hong, Nazar Pulpichek, and Logan Hong. The team is led by coaches Jessica Bidwell, Katie Riley, and Stephanie Piggeis. In addition to being named CBC champs, they were also named CBC Team of the

010Year by NJ.com. Thank you, gentlemen. If I could call up Jessica Bidwell. Coach Bidwell was named CBC Girls Swim Coach of the Year by NJ.com. Under her leadership, the girls finished seven and three and ranked third in the division, advanced to a sectional final for the first time since 2017. Coach Bedwell credits the program to the collaboration of her assistant coaches, Katie Riley and Stephanie Piggeis. And as somebody who has had a chance to watch these three individuals coach our students on a daily basis, they do a phenomenal job. and don't focus necessarily on just what happens in the pool, but what happens to them outside of the pool and the sportsmanship and the whole student. Congratulations. Thank you. If I could invite up members of the boys and girls South basketball teams who are

011here tonight. Several of our South student athletes were recognized with all CBC honors this year. Julian Adri Adriel Dominguez earned honorable mention after finishing the season with 243 points along with 45 rebounds and 33 assists. Ninth grader Rei Pala made history as the first ninth grader since 2013 to earn all CBC recognition, finishing with 270 points, ranking among the top freshman in the conference. Senior Sophia Latif Esfon was named second team all CBC, concluding her season with 308 points, 273 rebounds, and 22 assists. She also surpassed the 500point milestone, finishing her career with a total of 663 points, 742 rebounds, and 108 steals. >> Annabella Ruiz received the Christian Soma Courage Award, recognizing her resilience after overcoming two ACL injuries that sidelined her last season. Bella returned to the court this year, contributing 56 points,

01262 rebounds, and 39 assists while continuing to support her team last year through her recovery. She was also honored as WWP South unsung hero and is actively involved in the women and sports club and student council. Much deserved. Thank you. At this time, I'd like to call up Zack Kumer. CoachKummer was named CBC girl uh conference, the CV Colonial Valley Conference girls basketball coach of the year, an honor voted on by fellow coaches. Under his leadership, the Pirates finished 14 and 13 and advanced to both the CBC tournament and within the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group Four Tournament. Coach Kumer is recognized for his emphasis on teamwork, perseverance, and personal growth. Congratulations. At this time, I'd now like to invite up Yousef Shid. Yousef had an outstanding season um for wrestling this year, placing second at

013the CBC tournament and first at the district tournament, where he was also named most outstanding wrestler. He advanced to the NJSIA Region 5 tournament, reaching the third place consolation round, and finished the season with a total of 15 pins and 22 wins in points. Congratulations Lastly, I'd like to recognize an athlete who unfortunately was not able to join us tonight. Um, but his accomplishments I felt needed to be expressed to the board and the overall community. Uh, Julius Kinsler delivered an exceptional winter track season. He placed fourth at sectionals, sixth at the meet of champs, second at Eastern State Championships, and third at the Adidas Nationals. He also broke the school record that was set in 20 uh 2006 um with the 400 meter. The original record was 48.6. The new record as of um

014this weekend is 48.34. um watching this student athlete work all season, it was really amazing watching his journey just through the times of his accomplishments and just he had such perseverance and just kept going and going and going. Um Julius is now a three-time high school all-American. So I wanted to honor him tonight as well. So once again, as as Mr. Riley expressed, you know, as athletic directors, we can't do anything without the board support, but we also can't do anything without our coaches and our student athletes. So, on behalf of both of us from North and South, um, thank you to the coaches who are here tonight. Thank you to the student athletes. You really do make 3M and on the best part of our days because we really do love watching you all

015play. Thank you. Wow, this is an exceptional group of athletes we have here. We are really proud of you and uh and obviously um by looking around this room, you have a room full of family members who are really proud of you as our student athletes and our our coaches who are recognized today and uh at CBC. So, thank you so much for coming. Uh so happy for for you and proud of your achievements. Um, we are about to transition to a uh tentative budget presentation, which you know is could be really exciting. Um, if you chose to stay, but we totally understand if you'd like to get back home. You probably have some studying to do, maybe a nap, not sure, but uh, feel free to to get up um, if you so desire

016or stay, you know. >> So, we'll we'll take a minute to to let the crowd leave. Congratulations. Okay, I think we're we're close about ready to begin. So, I will uh turn the floor over to Dr. Adterhold uh for the tentative budget presentation which we have on the screen above you. >> Wonderful. Thank you uh Miss Mchuan and members of the board of education. There should be a copy so you don't have to keep turning around in front of you. Um, tonight is my 13th uh presentation of the tenative budget in my tenure as superintendent and uh by by far the hardest budget we've had yet to date. Um, and it's uh unfortunate that we only have a few folks in the room to actually hear this and hopefully uh individuals that are are viewing

017uh or will view it um we'll able be able to tune in and learn a little bit about some of the challenges that the board and school districts across uh New Jersey um are facing. Um so we always start to ground ourselves with our mission statement and really it it we have three major tenants in our mission statement that we're seeking to empower all learners through thoughtfully contribute to diverse and changing world with confidence, strength of character and a love of learning. And those that strategic uh or that mission statement is grounded in four strategic goals. And we review them at each budget meeting uh throughout. And if you follow along to our other budget presentations, these are some of the same discussions we have regarding what a school budget is. And they stay they

018stay u consistent. A budget's a planning tool. It is something that has to consider contingencies. There are factors that impact the budget in the interim or during the school year like a mid-year renewal on health insurance that we have to project. Um, we have to manage risk and we're a large organization over a $200 million organization over 1500 employees over 100 over a billion dollars of depreciable assets. A lot of folks just think of school from the perspective of their individual child, the individual classroom, the individual school. We have to look at it from the p the macro, the number of square feet, the amount of cleaning, the number of educators that we need to employ, the benefit packages that go around that and all the other factors like insurance and transportation and special education

019and athletics, all the wonderful athletes and their um uh the incredible accomplishments. Uh some of their two-mile times, my half mile time. I mean, it's just it's just incredible the accomplishments that that our students um are are rising to. All that comes with costs. Transportation, entrance fees, officials, stipens, um building use, weekend custodial rates, all those kind of things factor into the total program that we have to be thinking about. So, it's not just the coach or the uniforms. There's all these other factors behind everything we do. And a lot of times we look at the surface and don't realize the totality of costs behind the programs. It is a reflection of our values. So we talk about the importance of funding our values and ensuring that um so if we're we believe it's important

020to support students that are struggling in their learning journey then we need to make sure that we have supports academic supports in addition to so whether that's reading interventionists or mathematics interventionists or OTP speech services or whatever the need is for a particular child we need to make sure that some of it's legal and some of it's valuedriven that we're providing support and that also means we need to support our educators in their growth journey. We can't just implement a program and not train them. Right? So as we have shifts and if we can't just implement a standard without training, we can't implement new standards without writing curriculum and ensuring our resources align. every single component has costs. If we believe that that's important because some districts just buy a program and put it in

021front of teachers and don't train and their test scores reflect that years later. And we also have to assure that we're managing safe and safeguards and buffers. And by saying that is like it's we're one we're one boiler away from having a major problem, right? One boiler goes down, it can be hundreds of thousands. These are not household boilers, right? When we replace the boiler at Dutch Neck, they had to literally cut the boiler out of the room because it was designed in a period of time that they put the boiler in before the final wall went in, right? We're talking about boilers that are $600,000. It's not your household boiler. Um, and so as we think about, you know, and and you know, I go back because I can to two hurricanes ago, um,

022before Sandy, it was >> Irene, thank you. and we flooded out the the north became north Milstone River and town and um and community became an island and was literally cut off from the rest of the community that section and part of the roof at north peeled back and actually peeled like a can. We had to use maintenance reserve in order to fix that over the week we were closed and bring in and it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. We got some of it back through FEMA money, but we but we had to shell out hundreds of thousand in order to get students back in and staff back in the following week safely. You have to have safeguards. You have to have buffers. And this stuff does happen. And when you look around long

023enough, you see things with districts to districts that face things flooding, fires, asbestous, and other. There's two real simple rules. There's theory and reality. In theory, it's about our priorities for our kids, for our students. But in practice, it's very real about money. You can't provide the program if you don't have the dollars. And the simple two rules are this. That tax revenue must be within cap or cap plus allowance. And I'll explain what cap plus allowance means. And that revenues always have to equal expenses. So, we can't You hear often in the news right now that they're talking about a structural deficit. Like the state has a structural deficit. The state has more expenses than it has revenue. We can't school districts cannot offer a structural deficit budget. We can't say our expenses are

024220 million, but we're only bringing in 200 million. We'll float that 20 million and and we'll figure it out. We have to bring in essentially a balanced budget. Revenues and expenses must equal. And we're held to that standard with the the reason for tonight's meeting is somewhat to ensure that we're within allowances. Um codebased categories can only certain budget part of the budget can only go up in certain percentages. So tonight is the tenative budget and what that means is the board adopts the budget for uh submission to the county superintendent for the county superintendent and the county business official to review. They then ask for feedback from uh Mr. Me and Dr. Russo and myself and then give recommendations if there are any that if they have any concerns, we work with them and

025then we bring forward to the board the adoption of the final budget and that is at the budget hearing on April 28th and that is the the special hearing for the board and that's the board's vote. As long as the budget brought forward is blessed and approved by the county superintendent and then it has to be publicly advertised in advance of that meeting, then the board at that board votes because it's within allowance. You're not asking for more than that is allowed and it as long as the board adopts it, the budget becomes um our operating budget starting July 1. The budget timeline is laid out. We are in a little bit of a delayed budget this year. uh delayed address I should say. Um uh historically it's the fourth Tuesday is the governor's budget

026and then two days later on the Thursday the fourth Thursday of the of the month of February we would traditionally get our state aid. Whenever there's a transition of governor as a courtesy to the new incoming governor the legislature Democratic or Republican does not matter. They've extended this courtesy. They push it back. They pushed it back to March 12th and we received the state aid numbers on the 14th. Um, and then originally we would have had to have the budget submitted by the 19th. They extended that window to the 27th which allowed us to be here tonight within the timeline. So, we are here. We didn't have to change our calendar. We are here um in what's now the allowed timeline. Um, and again, I just talked about the April 28th. want to pause and

027just recognize that there's some tremendous work that's been done by our finance department, our finance committee, the board of education, our administrators and budget managers over the last 17 years. Um, in the last 17 years, we've applied for and received the certificate of excellence by the the National Association of School Business Officials. And for the last nine years, and it's we've only applied for nine straight years, um, we've received the meritorious budget award for excellence in preparation in issuance of budget. Um, and that's just unheard of to have that kind of standard of excellence in our budgetary practices. So again, just a credit to all those involved. And folks always want to know like where's the money come from and where's the money go? So just high high level money comes from a bunch of

028different buckets, but you have the local, the federal, the state, the tuition, the grants, budgeted surpluses, reserve withdrawals. So there's all these different avenues where money comes in. what's been questionable and un we've been unsure about well several of these categories quite honestly in the last couple years the federal there's still a lot of uncertainty in the federal dollars um although this year the money that we took in last year's budget to protect oursel is 100% now budgeted into into the operating budget so we lose that we lose that uh mechanism state aid's been questionable especially when you have a transitioning uh governor and you also have structural deficit and you have uncertainty of how the formula is being run and some of the formulary categories in the F formula shift uh yeartoyear and you

029don't necessarily know all the assessed values and the net valuable taxable value of a community changes and you know what's the look back window of enrollment. It's all these things. There's all these nuances, but at the end of the day, there's these six big buckets. And so, we have to know where the big buckets are, where they're coming, and then we have to track all of them to see how we're doing up or down. And where does it go? It goes a lot of places. You know, where does it go? It goes, a lot of it goes to salary and benefits. But tonight, I am going to spend some time talking about healthcare because a disproportionate amount of money continues to go to health care and it's causing tremendous strain on local school district budgets

030and on municipal and state budgets. Um, and if we were sitting at a township committee or township council meeting, I'm assuming that we would be hearing about the 36% healthc care increase that the municipal officials are receiving on the municipal rate and the state health benefit plan over 30% increase, right? Not the district, but the state health benefit plan. Districts pretty bad though, and I'll talk about it. Then you have things like utilities. While we've done a ton of work around energy, and we've actually decreasing our energy line in this budget because the amount of work we've done with solar, you have repair and maintenance. When you have a billion dollars of depreciable assets, you know, you have to make sure that you're doing flooring and painting and locker repair and and you know, electrical

031outlets go and small there's there's all different kind of different types of boilers and there's sometimes there's smaller units into certain sections of lockers or locker rooms or bathrooms. You have bathroom repairs and you get the idea. there's tons of work, wear and tear, when you have just under 9,000 students using them uh daily. Things will break. And when you and you have, think about your parking lots and potholes and all that requires dollars. And then there's the larger projects, things like seating in an auditorium that might be 30 years old or flooring that might be 30 or 40 years old or roof projects. And so there's those kind of larger maintenance projects. Some of them come through capital outlay which is in this standard operational budget and some of them come through capital reserve

032which is a budgetary dollar separate and apart that you can carry yeartoear on your long-term facilities plan projects. So you have sort of two buckets of money when it talks about maintenance or repairs or replacement. And then you have all those like professional services. Those are things like um contractual services. Um organizations that we might um contract to do uh things like um building of grounds and maintenance or lawn care and things like that. Tech and transportation. Tech has been a greater part of the budget in the last 10 years. You have one to one. You start looking around the room. You have these the hotspots. You have switches and blades and network closets. You have all the wiring all over the place. You have all this kind of infrastructure that everything there has a

033replacement cycle. And then you have transportation. And transportation, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but saved us this year because it hasn't in years gone by, but our number one route provider came in at a 0% increase for the majority of our routes. We were able to decrease our transportation lines that was originally presented by Dr. Rock, Dr. Rocker, Dr. Russo back in February, not the Hamilton superintendent, the BA for the district, Dr. Russo. Um, and then out of district tuition costs, these are students whose um IEP and educational service needs can't be met in district, so they go to outside uh school districts. Um, a lot of times these tuition rates are increasing at greater than 10%. And you get the idea, right? We spend a very small very small percentage of

034the budget actually on supplies, textbooks and materials. And then other things we have to look at, right? There's all these other factors, enrollment growth and student demographics, um healthc care increases. We're in contract negotiations and we have some charter uh students. Not a lot, but we have them. And then space limits and age of buildings and facility needs and outside contractor costs and inflationary costs and all these other drivers that impact us. And while we can have increased costs throughout the year, we can't go out and ask for more money. So, if we have a mid-year increase, we can't necessarily we can't well, we can't not necessarily we can't ask for more money. It's not like in January I can be like, you know what, we need to go to the taxpayer and increase everyone's

035tax bill midyear because our expenses went up. No, we would have to then look at services. We'd have to cut programs. We'd have to cut staff. We'd have to eliminate expenses. We'd have to slow down PD. whatever the way mechanism it was to meet a mid-year deficit, we would have to do that. And you've seen this happen in live time this year in New Jersey with Montlair. Montlair public schools went out and let go charity 60 or so staff members in December or they gave the notice in October and they they were notified and they were gone at the end of December and they had to reallocate class rosters and everything right there in the midyear and they had a referendum that they were going to float in December to try to carry them and

036get a bridge loan from the township and the referendum question was thrown out by the courts because a member of the public challenged the wording of the question and So right, it can happen. It does happen. It's happening more and more in New Jersey. So by I talked about this 2% and allowances. So this gets into our restrictions. We are allowed to raise 2% on the general fund portion of the budget of the local fair of the local share. Not on the totality of the entire budget, but on the general fund section of the local share. That's about $3.7 million in increase. Now, if we wanted, we can go above that in really two categories. There's four, but really two really apply. One is a 10% or greater enrollment year-to-year. That has not happened. We

037would need to go up around 900 students in any one given year in the in from October 15th to October 15th. And even with all the housing coming on, the chances of getting 900 plus students in addition to those who withdraw withdraw, those that come off the roles in as seniors and those coming in in K, you would need a tremendous swing of new registrants. The likelihood of that's uh nil. But the SGLA or spending growth limitation adjustment for healthcare is with us. And it used to be that we would generate a spending growth limitation adjustment and we wouldn't have to use the totality of it and we could hold some tax authority for a subsequent year. And that was called bank cap. Well, bank cap is really gone because healthcare is increasing at such

038a clip that if you don't use the SGLA, you can't cover your costs. And our healthcare is going up $6 million year-over-year. So we have additional taxing authority, but it's the board who gets to authorize the utilization of that. So the board has the authority for the public, the board has the authority to go 2% on the general fund plus the allowances, the spending growth limitation adjustment for healthcare. If we needed funds beyond that, we would have to go to a public question. And there's four, I believe it's four, it might be five windows, four I believe, windows of time in the year in which you can offer a public question. So it's it's not like we can just have it at any time, but it's a regulated process. So our state aid is down

039$469,842 and that represents 3% of our state aid notice. Now, why why is that important? Um, prior to the governor's speech on March 12th, we were unsure if we would go down up to 2.4 million and change. Why is that important? Prior to the 2526 budget, which we were given notice in December of 24, um, then by Commissioner Damer, there was no such thing as a 3% 6% rule. The 3% 6% was announced by Commissioner Damer a year ago December and it was to put some guard rails around loss and gain because prior to that there was massive swings and as some of the formulary changes happened and we can't necessarily predict what how the formula will get run and which factors might get impacted year-to-year we we believed we could potentially lose as much

040as 2.4 4 million in state aid. And we have been notified in our state aid notice that we are on a glide path to continue to lose the additional 2.1. Some of that's because we've been dropping in enrollment year-over-year because our exiting seniors are higher than our incoming K. And that's been a trend for the last 5 years. And so when that happens year-over-year, you start seeing enrollment decreases through the elementarymentaries that will eventually hing it's hitting our middle schools now in sixth grade and next year sixth and seventh. And so we are seeing our numbers drop. Now, interestingly, our high school numbers have held and have held a little bit higher. I have theories on that, but I can't prove the theories. And the the theory is it makes sense if you've been here

041long enough, and I've been here 17 years in central office. And the theory is based on this idea that we're not a starter home committee uh community. Not a surprise, right? But if you look at the housing stock that's come on, even the housing, even the town homes are going in for 700 to 900,000. There's not a lot of baby strollers being pushed around at our elementary schools. Folks are moving in with older children. So middle school, high school, upper elementary, we're seeing when families register, they're coming in primarily more with older, which is why our high school numbers, I believe, are holding, but it's going to be tested over time as our elementary and middle now middle school population is decreasing. Now, I say that all as we're in a moving target with all

042this housing coming on, right? So, we do see developments popping up and starting to be occupied at a relatively good clip. And we just learned at the last meeting that West Windsor just passed seven ordinances for 1,800 more units. Right? So in addition to the almost 4,000 units that are in some stage of being built, around over 2,000 are in motion and in addition to those additional 2,000 that are going to be built, you have 1,800 more that are sitting out there in the 25 to 35 range. Not an immediate impact, but you do see where this is going. We will have more units which theoretically will translate into more students but time will tell because we're not there today. Some factor greater factors have changed with some of our international enrollment in the last

043you know three presidential terms and whatnot COVID and everything. So within within the budgetary considerations there's certain cost drivers. The big ones are again salary and health care. And we did change from self- insurance to a shift and that's the state health insurance fund. So shift stands for state health insurance fund. And this is a fund of um over 70 districts that pull together experience ratings and and negotiate for cost increases as a conglomerative. And because we went in mid year, we had a mid-year increase and then we have a secondary increase. And the net on that is like compounded, it's over 27%. So year-to-year increase of 27%. Better than 36 that the municipals are getting, but bad, not sustainable, and definitely not within the budget. And then you have the potential staff increases for

044special ed because we do have programmatic needs. We do have, in fact, just yes, just just this morning, I received an email that said, you know, I hate to tell you this. I know the budget meeting's tonight, but I'm watching the numbers in this specific program and there's this many students that are potentially in the pipeline to be evaluated. There's a transfer in and there's two more students that might switch from here. I might need another teacher. That was a today and I said, "Let me see how tonight goes and then we'll talk." Right? But that is the kind of thing that's just happening in lifetime because our kids move, our families transition, students have different needs. So this is just the cost. It's like the cost of business. Our business is educating children. So

045we need to make sure we're meeting their needs. And quite frankly, because IEPs are driven by um a contract, we're going to meet their needs, but that might be at the offset of class sizes somewhere else. So that they'll most likely get that teacher. it's just where is it coming from? And then we have things like uh instructional resources. So we have new standards in language arts and new standards in mathematics and math has been ahead of language arts. Um but you know with the K5 adoption of resources and material for every single elementary classroom the projection on those resources are around a million dollars. And we can pay for that and this is where we have to get really creative in three buckets. Some will be in some funds from this year. Some will

046be in grant funds and some will be in funds for next year. So you don't you can spread the hit out in multiple budgetary categories, but you have to be constantly projecting because I can't afford to do that for LA and science and social studies at the same time. So we have to make sure that we're on some kind of cycle for our curricular resources and for our our um our integration of our standards and for the professional development and for the purchasing of resources. If you try to do it all at one time, you're in trouble. Right? I gave this example in a different meeting, but um I think it might have been in in our budget retreat. Music, we have $1.2 million worth of instruments. So years ago when Mr. Santoro first came

047on board, he asked where his budget was. And at the time, there was not a music supervisor before him, right? But there was 50 music teachers with no supervisor. It was at the mercy of each building. and no and then he also has the art department. So there was all these staff that had no direct supervision and no curricular vision. Uh but we had they got evaluated through some principles but it was 10 different principles and vice principles doing different things and they had the budget. So we asked them to do an inventory and they came up with one $1 million worth of inventory based on industry based on industry and the industry standard believe it or not is a 20-year replacement cycle. So instead of budgeting $1 million every 15 or 20 years, we

048budget 50,000 a year replacement cycles. We try to think strategically around so we don't have any bubble any one year. And then if a baby grand piano needs to be purchased out of that 50,000, so be it. If a Barry Sachs needs to be and then we can replace the inventory as needed. But when you look at the appropriations of the cost drivers, when you look at all these categories, we are going up budget to budget 12.8 million and change in expenses. And that $12.8 million increase, you can just look and say there are four major categories driving the m majority of that, right? You have you have six million in healthcare. You have 3.7 in salary and wages, 1.2 million in special education and another 800 plus in principle and interest around EIP 1

049and two. Now the EIP is the energy savings improvement program and this is also because we are ahead when you start an EIP you have energy savings but you have all this startup cost and you have costs before the energy savings comes in. So you still have to pay the b you have to pay the note you have to pay the bill for the energy before you get the savings back that pays it in the future. So we need to budget the cost of it in as we're doing the work and the savings will follow. Um so this won't necessarily be the same line year after year but it's the line today. But that 6 million in healthcare is sort of the story. And and I I think we also have to point and everyone

050deserves a raise and but salary and wages have increased over 2%. And I'll have a slide in a little bit about what in what's 2%. Um and the answer is nothing. Nothing we're doing cost 2%. Everything's more. So separate and apart we have this capital reserve. It's budgetary dollars that are separate and apart from the general fund that get saved. um in alignment with the long-range facilities plan that's supported and submitted by the architect in the administration to the state on file and then you can use capital reserve dollars to apply to projects that are on the long-term list and meet needs. Some of these are very small in cost and some of these have larger but they all exceed um something you would do in a annual budget. So you have the roof replacement

051at Town Center. This is something that has shown itself three years in a row. We have an outstanding rod grant that we have applied for at the state level. We are waiting for that to come through. We qualified for round one of that grant. We're not granted it because of a error out of the architect's office that they you know I'm not I've talked about that publicly before. Um and we have appealed to the state. We are still on weight. We will not do this project without funds coming in for the rod grant, but we can't do the project without the allocation of the money. So each year when we allocate it and we don't do it, the money then goes right back into capital reserve and then we're reallocating it the following year. So

052that's a big project because it's over four million. Um but we would then get a million back in rod grant. So that's why we don't we're not going to give up a million dollars. Um but we still have to have it budgeted in order to do it. And the other projects um you know you have some flooring projects, some electrical projects. The some of these are in motion in live time like the tennis courts are already um approved but we have to carry the money um in order to finish them in the uh early late late summer early fall. Um so these are in motion with being bid. Some of these are being awarded um but others are um projects we know we need to do just for uh like alarms and closet temperature readings

053and alarms on freezers. And every time you have a power outage and we have a lot of them in West Windsor and Plansboro. Every time you have a power outage, these all need to be checked for the purpose of like the freezer goes down there certain health requirements we have to maintain, certain freezer temperatures we have to maintain or this food has to be actually disposed and the health department has to be notified. So there there are all these like everything has layers behind it and and that's usually lost and no one needs to really know it but there's we we need to know it and so these are important things for us to monitor and to make sure that we're upholding the proper um safety standards and then transportation it's convoluted how this gets

054done but CPI is the consumer price index uh the route renewals are set by the state with the CPI rate that is a a formula that's generated in a 24-month uh window with a it's really an 18-month window with a six-month look back. Um, and then it's calculated on the transportation formula between New York and Philly uh in the transportation industry. And then the state sets the rate. By the way, you can't actually look up anything I just said because you can't find the CPI of transportation in New York versus Philly and calculated yourself. That's something that the state maintains and the state calculates and the state puts out. The only thing you can find in formula is the 24-month part. Okay. So, I'm going to show I think it's nine slides. Six of them

055have lots and lots of numbers, but the three charts is where I'll spend more of the time. But these are scenarios that I want to put forward with respect to health care and what we're seeing from the industry. Um so to frame this precoid precoid we would see health care historically between six and 7% increase. So when you get 27% increase, that's a problem. And in the last three years, we've increased around 15 million on our healthcare lines, you know, so we're going up to 41 million budgeted in healthcare. That is um going to break the system. And I'm not talking about WWP. I'm talking state and municipal and local. I'm not just talking about WWP local. I'm I'm the president-elect for superintendent association. I spend a lot of time in legislative advocacy. I talk

056to superintendent every day whether it's commiserate commiserating or mentoring. Um and and I teach doctoral finance for the last nine years at Ryder. So pick the lens I look at this from. But we have a problem. We have a math formula problem. And so when it comes to healthare in 2526 we budgeted 35 million and we're going up 6 million. Like that our 2% is 3.7. So, our 2% that we're allowed to raise on the local is 3.7 million. Our healthc care is going up 6 million. We have a four we have a $2.3 million gap on one budget category. So, for everyone that says to us, how could you possibly raise the budget above 2%? People are hurting. Right there, our expenses are going up 12.8 and we can raise 3.7. We'd have to

057cut 9.1 million if we don't go above 2%. 9.1 million is what makes WWP special. It's all those kids that we just had here at the meeting. It's what Robbinsville is facing tonight, right? It's the reason you see districts going out for special questions to raise to raise the revenue. This is astron these are astronomical numbers when we're talking about um 6 million in healthcare. So what this shows is we're trying to project like no one everyone's talking about health care today. No one's talking about health care with a compounding in 10 years if we don't change the glide path. So we played a little game like what would happen if we just get a 7% renewal year after year like the good old days precoid and that was still a problem but the percentage

058of it to the percentage of the total tax levy was much less. What we're seeing is a math formula playing out in how compounding works, right? You're seeing how inflationary drivers in compounding work and it's playing itself out in live time for municipal officials as well as for local districts and at the state. Remember, the state pays all the public health workers, all the public workers, as well as the retirey benefit costs for all the public folks. And this room should be packed in outrage, not just for what's happening here, but what will happen years gone by. in years in the future because the potential impact to the tax levy is incredible. So just take a look at 7%. So what this column means and it's going to look different. It's going to be the

059same chart but it's going to feel different at 15 and 25%. The assumes a 2% increase column means assumes a 2% increase on the local tax levy for the district. So those would be the funds available to us. If we just increased the local tax levy by 2%. So we talked about it being 3.7 or 3.8 this year. It would be 4.1 next year and so on. You build 2% on the SGLA 2%. What that means is anything north of 2% of uh healthare, the first 2% the district's responsible for in the general budget, the SGLA, the spending growth limitation adjustment is the difference between raising it 7% and the 2% you owe. So you can basically raise the net 5%. That's the SGLA above two. But this is I think where the number start

060to tell the story. This is the 7% as a percentage of tax levy. And just watch how the numbers play. So right now it's just under 20% of our local tax levy is contributed to healthcare. We're on a glide path. If we were at 7%, but we're not. We're at 25 27%. On a glide path to 27% of the local tax levy. That's a big deal just there if it was things as old days, the good old days before CO BC. But now let's start playing out the 15%. And this is sort of where we've been. If you average the last 3 to four years, look at the increase costs to healthcare in the out years. I don't know how we would ever carry $10 million in to make it to make the budget just

061on healthcare alone, right? Our 2% is much lower than that. And then look at what it does to the tax levy increase. 4.6 is is a good year. And this assumes a 2% on everything else. Remember, we got a zero on 70% of transportation. So with a good transportation year and an uncertainty in negotiations because we're in negotiation with the service association and uncertainty about the midyear healthcare increase and uncertainty on the midyear prescription increase, 2% is cons that 2% is concerning. But look at the tax levy. But we were at 27 before at 15%. And that's the last four-year average. It's now goes up to 45% of the local fair share, the local share. It was at 27 at 7%. So if you think that's bad, we're at 27% this year. Look at what

062happens if that continues. By the way, that left column, that's just the health care cost. We our budget's 205 on the local fund. >> The local we're over we're like 230 something when you add everything in but it's 205 is our local. Look at healthare in seven years you're paying more for healthare than you do for our current in local budget. What changes currently in in the way in which healthcare is calculated? The prescription costs are astronomical. Folks love to blame the weight loss drugs, but it's bigger than the weight loss drugs. That's a p that's an issue, but it's it's it's but it's it's a major issue, but it's there. And the renewals postcoid, and I have another chart I'll show after this about those costs have only skyrocketed. So, and now we have

063the one big beautiful bill. And the one big beautiful bill signed in July goes into effect for Medicaid October of next year, which means the 2728 budget that we're going to be building next year will be impacted greatly by the pulloff of a hundred billion a year for the next 10 years. Remember, the federal government passed basically a shifting of the balance sheet of a trillion dollars from the federal to the states and a 10-year glide path starting next year of a hundred billion dollars per year. A lots of services will go away for a lot of folks that rely on the social safety net of Medicaid. But a big portion of that is hospital, direct aid to hospitals. So if direct aid to hospital starts going away, what will hospitals do? They're going to

064have to cover their costs. They're going to pass them off to consumers. So what stops the 15 to 25% renewals that we've seen now four or five years in a row? And the answer is nothing. And when I posed this at a national conference at the legislative committee and I asked the head of legislation for the National Association this very question, her response was the scariest response I've heard. And the response was regret. That was the one-word answer, regret. And I said, "That can't be the answer." And she said, 'Well, the legislature, the legislative body has to change this law and reverse it back to the feds or it's going to be regret. Regret for our tax, our locals, regret for our municipalities, regret. So, if I'm painting a really ugly picture, I need to

065paint that ugly picture because we should be rallying around this. Po people should be asking your legislature, legislative members to have conversations about this. We should be posing bills to look at how do we change the plan designs. That's not popular opinion, by the way. That's just reality of what needs to happen, including for retirees, and I hope to be amongst them sooner than later. But but the reality is it's going to have to look fiscally find the plan's going to have to look different or we're not going to be able to afford it. And if we stay on this glide path, look at the lefth hand column. It's 555 million million dollars in 10 years if we continue at a 25% rate. And we're then asking the taxpayers just for the local budget, just

066for the local share of the school district portion upwards of 14% increases. They're not happy with me when it's a 5% or a 3% or 2%. They always want me to cut it. I keep pointing back because there's some township folks in the room. But but the reality is if I came in at a zero, they say, "Can't you go negative one?" Right? Because they have costs too. And I get that. But this is horrible what we're facing, right? So, and it's not just us. Watch board meeting after board meeting after board meeting, and they're all having a similar conversation, except they're talking about it in the current year. We're talking about it over the next 10 because we're looking forward constantly about how we're going to do this to maintain programs and services and

067the expectations of our community for our students. And then that impacts of course our staff and our our parents and everyone our tax our community value and everything. But you hit if you hit 555 you're talking about one and a half times your current property tax just for the school. So if you got a 20% a $20,000 share, you're talking about 50 grand in property taxes in 10 years at 25% a year in healthcare. That breaks the system. Nothing. That breaks the system in three years, let alone 10. Where's the public conversation around this? Where are our public officials talking about this? And the answer is they're not. They're not. Now, in fairness, our new governor just came on and in her first speech within four weeks on the job talked about the rising the

068healthcare problem. So, in fairness to the governor, the new governor, she absolutely addressed it right off the bat. It'd be disingenuous to say anything but. But, it needs members of the legislature, that's our local reps, and at the Senate and the Assembly level to start calling for a conversation. At the very least, let's talk about it because this is going to break municipal budgets and local school district budgets. And at the end of the day, there's a lot of services for kids that start going away. You start looking at things I don't even want to talk about going away. But local communities, all you have to do, all you have to do is look around us. Look at Bordon Town. Look at East Brunswick. Look at South Brunswick. Look at Robinsville. We're surrounded by districts

069that have cut major programs. Greyhold Regional for seven years in a row. Class sizes for the regional high school over 30 and six high schools. It's a six high school district. Class sizes over 30. The only time they've had movement is when the public outcry came and they were going to eliminate busing and parents because of the regional district came out and said, "We can't. Your kids wouldn't be able to go to the schools they're going to if you don't have that transportation." and the municipal officials um passed some kind of like last minute measure to get them some extra money happened in South Brunswick last last year. Scott Federer, you know, they they went out and they they they raised a stink and they got the ability to raise their taxes over 10%. The

070ability to raise their taxes over 10% was the solution. Just want to make sure it's clear. That means the local taxpayers still ate it. By the way, we're only talking about the school tax. We're not talking about the municipal rate, the county rate, or what's coming out of paychecks for the state taxes or the federal taxes. It's probably cheaper to be a socialist country, but just saying that would require us to give healthcare to everyone. So, we're not going to do that. But look at look at this as a percentage of healthare to the t the tax base over 60%. So, you go back to 7%, we're in the mid20s. you go to uh 15%, we're in the upper 40s. You stay at 25, you're in the mid60s. You do a combination of those, you're

071probably in the mid50s, low 50s. I don't think we're going to see 25 10 years in a row. So, let me be clear about that. But I think we're going to see it float between 15 to 25 for the next five. What changes it? Nothing. The answer is nothing. We're too busy bombing other countries, taking on dictatorships and all that. We're not fixing healthare, right? So, you know, th this is a major problem for municipalities, local, state. So, let's talk about a budgetary story of big categories. And the important thing here is the 2019 2020 school budget, the budgeted dollars is the precoid budget. And just let's play down the health care category. Look at that. 27, 28, 29, 28. Well, what happened there? We went to self- insurance. We were self-insured during those windows

072and people were home and elective surgeries were canceled and right, there's all these and the federal government was supplementing things like the shot and things like that, right? So there's a reason why it sort of floated naturally in the window. We weren't getting huge increases there. So look between 28 and 43. And if you say Dave, you just said it was 41. Why does it say 43? It is 43 budgeted. And the reason it's 43 and it's and on my charts it says 41. Um is 41 right there on the 26 27 is because we subtracted out dental. It's it's really important to note that because uh dental has all these what's called collar and cuffs. All these limitations and rules. A root canal costs this, a cleaning cost this, x-rays cost this, and they're

073called collars and cuffs. So they're like buffers or barriers to say how much a dentist can charge, how much a practice can charge. Healthcare doesn't have that. And the medical doesn't have that. So 43, it's 43, but it's take out dental, it's 41. But 43, this is the all-in healthcare benefit cost. So we went from 28 to 43 in four years. That's a $15 million increase on healthcare line in three school years. I can't operate this. We're making miracle happen to have great things happen for kids, but it's nonsustainable. And so the public needs to hear the cry for help that it's bigger than the district. We have industry level drivers that are out there. I don't control and I refuse to say who should or should not qualify certain medicines. That's not my job.

074That's not my doctorate. Right? There are certain things that require industry level conversations. We can have arguments about insurance. We can have arguments about prescription. We can have arguments about how much should a an industry make on a prescription drug. I'm I'm happy to have all those conversations and get educated along with everyone else on that, but at the end of the day from a consumer that oversees an organization from 28 to 43 is not sustainable. The every year you can see some slight changes like look at transportation between in the first column between 25 26 and budgeted 26 27. If Rick Bust didn't come in with a zero, which carries about 70% of our routes, we were projecting upwards of another 800,000 on that line. When they came in at zero, you would have

075seen three grown men dancing, literally like holding hands and jumping with each other because we were so excited to get to 12.8 instead of a 13.6 million increase. special education goes up year-toear because all the outside contracted vendors go up 10%. They just do. And here's the other thing. They get to look back two years and hit you for the other increases that they had, including their health care costs. So when we send kids out of district, they do an accounting of their costs about what they charged you versus what their actual was, and they can bill you backwards for two years. And then all of a sudden you get a tuition bill for like 2014, 2024, 2025 that's like 300 grand and you go say what where did this come from? And and that's

076your notification after it's been certified through the county and the f in the state. So there's that kind of stuff too that happens which we pull our hair out which explains Derek, Chris and my hair. And then you have you know the contracted costs. Now the contracted costs are negotiated which means this board agreed to them too or a board the board of education in mutual agreement signed them 3.95 is our current that's not 2%. Right? So everything's above 2% on the aggregate and then you have things like insurance. Now, we've held flat on insurance. Um, and tech, we went up just a little bit. But in the big categories, if you look like where were we in 2019 and where are we today, you know, where where are we with transportation at 10 million

077and six school year, seven school years later, 17 million, 17.4, four, you know, 27 million in healthcare to 43, 15 million to 19 million, 6 million out of district tuition to 12 million. 6 to 12 and we're down 20 students in out of district placements. We have six students alone that their tuition alone is over 250,000. Now, these are placements that the students deserve every program and service they're getting based on their medical needs and they're and we're responsible for it, but it's 250,000 plus transportation and sometimes plus an aid plus sometimes medical um sometimes we have to put a nurse on a bus. You know, we have some students when you add the all-in costs can be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And again, that's our legal obligation to provide. And I

078don't have anything to say they deserve their program, but I'm just talking about the cost, right? And so these out of district costs have just continued to escalate. So, you know, we again have a formulary math problem. So when we look at the major budget restrictions and challenges, we have these things that we talked about on the left with healthcare and pension and enrollment and bank cap and there. So there's the 2% plus. Then we have this always thing looming over our head the last two years now about will we still have title one will we not have title one will the Dems and the Republicans at the federal level come to agreement and have a bud budget remember budgeting flat is ne going backwards they went up a couple I know that's like 30

079or 40 million but that's on the federal budget so it's it's essentially a flat budget across 50 states we have this unpredictability of the formula in state aid and we have planning for the unknowns transportation renewals and tuition bills and um new programmatic needs and staffing needs and um our ESL or our MLL students. We've had a huge surge in our MLL students in the last five years. A number of we've added staff because we can't administer the services for our English language learners or it's ELLL or ESL or MLL or multilingual learners. The the terminology has changed. it's now MLL and in some areas of the code it's ELLL in some and some people say ESL and then you do have students that still have um learning needs that need to be addressed and

080mitigated for different reasons. Sometimes it's transition into our community and sometimes it's it's their learning journey at certain age levels. Sometimes it's early reading intervention and sometimes it's algebraic um needs, right? And if you're coming into WWP are and you're coming into WP in 8th grade or high school and you're coming from another community, our mathematics track in particular is so far advanced that you could come here and be in pre-alggebra and 90% of our kids are in algebra or plus, you know, we have math 8 and we have algebra. 95% actually are in al in algebra in high in middle school in eighth grade. So you immediately have students that are coming behind doesn't necessarily mean deficient but behind. So trying to mitigate their their sort of learning gaps compared to our program gaps

081or program advancement. And then you have these future unknown costs on one side and then you have these ongoing challenges uncertainty on the other and I've talked about all of them. So where does it land us? Um we had again the potential loss of federal and last year we budgeted 2.288 5758 to protect the district against the potential loss of federal funds. That has all been moved from reserve into fixed costs for the development of this budget. So to close the gap and where's the money go? And this is just a snapshot. It will be up on the website tomorrow. This is just three different districts. And this is a presentation from November that three business officials did um for this New Jersey Mercer County School Boards. For the most part, the categories are pretty

082con similar. You will notice some trends. Some districts have greater um charter impacts. Hamilton has a lot of charter schools, so you see that charter and tuition line much higher. And then you have things like um Hamilton, and I'm a Hamilton resident, right? Hamilton has all in-house building and grounds. So, they're in the salary line, but we have outside outsourced contracted services. So, that's in a facility maintenance operations um potential line or an administrative line. So sometimes you'll see lines that are slightly different. You go hm there's probably a story to the H. And then when you look at just the county where people landing the overall tax levy increase on the right hand side is as of just the other day where all the different school districts are holding their county meetings or their

083these tenative meetings right now. We fall right in line with everybody else. Now, what's interesting is, and again, as a taxpayer, I wonder Hamilton just got $8 million increase in state in state aid, but they're still going up 5.4%. Think about that. We're going down. They went up 8 million. Their healthcare increase was 8 million. So, they went up, their state aid went up to equal their healthcare, and they're still going up 5.4. Everyone depressed. Okay, I can hear it. So, revenue increases and I guess we doubled it for effect. Thank you. Uh, beautify my slide uh with the with the Google um total revenue increase of 8.3 and again total expenditure increase of 12.8. So, we have a gap, right? We can raise 8.3 if we take the full healthare and we're going up

08412.8. So we have a 4.4 million gap. And that's going up 4.68%. So going up 4.68% we still have a $4.4 million gap. That was a business official choking in the background. So, how do we close that? I did say that we did budget the additional taxing authority from last year to protect ourselves from the federal. I'm still worried about the federal. I don't think the feds are done with messing with the states when it comes to education. There are still too many conversations happening about changing the department of ed and the movement of divisions around that and there's too much uncertainty about where the title grants and IDA could land that I am still significantly worried about that. But that being said, we have to budget it or we have to close it a

085different way. We did shift um tuition into IDEIDA. Um IDA dollars have historically in WWP not been utilized in the budget process. It's been we receive it but we receive it in a time period where we don't always have the knowledge of what the n number is and so we don't budget we budget it into uh general fund for tuitions. This year we can't do that. We're budgeting a portion into IDA with an assumption that we're going to continue to receive our IDA aotment. So there's the 342 and then non-programmatic expenditure cuts. So we stayed away from um any recommendations to the board for people and services to k direct services to kids. But I have to caution that cutting these areas is cutting these areas now and in future potential cuts. You're talking about

086class size impact ser direct services to students. What could that be? I don't even like saying these words. Counseling, security, safety, class size, right? All those kind of thing. clubs and activities, sports, the things that make the district are the kind of conversations happening in other communities. When you start going above the 4.4, that's where you're starting to cut. You're starting to cut into you're not cutting into fat, you're cutting into meat. And then then some districts are cutting into bone, right? So, we're not at the bone level and we're not necessarily in the muscle level yet, but we're cutting off the skin, right? If we're fleing someone, we're flaying the district slowly. There's my metaphor. That's probably not a great metaphor, but that's essentially what we're doing. We're slowly peeling off layers. And um

087when you start talking about 15 to 25%, the amount we're going to have to carry by cuts is pretty significant. So that last line of admin expenditures, rent. Well, right now we have a resolution tonight to purchase 72 Grover. I'm sorry. 72 Grover's Mill. Sorry, I'm mixing up which property we're buying. Um, and then this the only other one, right? And then energy. And this is thank you to uh the fact that we have decreased our energy footprint with five of our schools energy neutral and adding more energy savings. We're able to decrease some money out of our energy line. And then some of our outside services contracted efficiencies. We did budget um we did we did budget well when we did the the Pritchard renewal for building and grounds. So we are in year

088one of that. We estimated a higher renewal cost. So we were able to find some efficiencies in what we we budgeted because again we have to estimate risk. We estimated a higher amount than the contracts came in for. So we had some some breakage there that we can reduce and still be above and still be above the budgeted need for next year. But the following year we're going to have to increase. So it's, you know, we're spiting ourselves a little bit, right? We're decreasing a line, but we have to increase it in two in a year from now. So, you know, it's one of those mechanisms that, you know, we're trying to stay away from the classroom uh classrooms. So, when you add all that up and and I should say uh the uh line,

089it's uh the facility project upgrade funds. Um, every year we have been able to make an undesated deposit in the budget to um to capital reserve to help continue to fund maintenance long-term maintenance project. If you go back about four years ago, that used to be 3.25. And every year um we have slowly eroded that number and last year it was and now we've had to take that too. So these lines that we've had that have historically spent money have been slowly fading away. FA fading better than flaying, right? Fading away to the point now where we had to use 4.4 at one time. If we didn't take the extra tax authority last year for the federal, I'd be arguing to you today to take the bank cap that we would have had expiring and

090take that in addition to the 468. So I would be coming to you with a five something budget just to make so we don't have to cut another 22. It's actually probably would have been closer to six. It would have been over six over six. So and I would have gladly done it to preserve programs for students preserve you know whether you voted for it or not it's a whole different conversation but I would have been my responsibility to bring forth a program to meet the you know what our students programs and expectations are. So last slide, you know, overall we're down in state aid. The cap reserve allocations for those projects that's in a separate fund. That's capital reserve dollars. The healthc care generation of 5.2 with that general fund tax increase of 39

091gets you to that that 84. Then you have that gap of the 4.4 and that brings us to a budget recommendation of 4.68. So we're asking essentially for the tax authority to raise 8.4 million which is the 4.68. I think it's really important to understand that 2% of this budget is everything but healthcare. No, that's not 100%. It's everything including the first 2% of healthare. The SGLA is the difference between our 2% responsibility and the like it's basically 25%. Healthcare increase. That's the 5.2. We're asking for the additional 5.2. I said healthcare went up six. We owe the we own the first eight in the 2%. So in our 2% we're covering transportation increases, special ed increases, salary increases. And you're like Dave, that's you said 3.8. Yeah, but we also had to cut 4.4.

092So the the the 3.8 and the 4.4 loss is all the stuff that we went up and then the healthc care is the other 28. So 2% and the cuts covers covers our programs. 2.6 covers the healthcare increase of SGLA. If you've ever seen the movie Back to School, there's a great line where he says, uh, I've one question in 27 parts. And when he finishes, he says, I feel like I just gave birth to an accountant. >> That's the end of the presentation. So, I'm happy to attempt to answer questions from the board. >> Okay. Thank you, Dr. Adhold. Uh, who is who's up first? uh you and then Dana. >> Thank you, Dr. Dol. This is uh this was very thorough and and very helpful and thank you for to you and your

093team for putting all these numbers together. Um, I think you t you touched on this early on or when we were talking about the healthcare numbers, but just for the members of the public to understand the interplay of all the numbers and all the um the various costs, could you kind of just talk about what the the district's total operating budget is like as a whole? So the local is 205 uh million and the all-in budget Derek I'm going to look to you 230 and change. So the part that makes up the difference is you get some grants, you get some federal dollars, uh you get some tuition dollars. You know it's those parts that where's the money coming from? uh on one of the earlier slide like slide eight or so. >> All right.

094Okay. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Thank you again. Um so I you know we're hearing all this like we need to do some advocacy >> 100%. >> So what are the ways that districts, community members, what could they do to help reduce or look at ways to um address the health care costs? Yeah, I I would say um on the macro, right, the the health care costs are bigger than any one um any one homeowner, right? So, it's or any one employer um especially. So, we we really need advocacy uh to our local public officials um and through local associations. So whether it's the legal municipal uh legal municipalities or whether it's through um a political party affiliation because this impacts everybody or whether it's through New Jersey school boards association or whether it's through

095the associations that I represent and work with for superintendent associations and and um Garn state coalition of schools or whether it's you know but direct advocacy to members of the legislature to say like a dialogue around the health care costs and the and it's different in different parts of the industry. So, you know, and how the mechanisms work for um public public health when it comes to um school health employees programs versus um maybe municipal workers and retirees all are a little bit different and nuanced, but they all are part of the same larger conversation around plan design and around un unchecked costs. the the costs that are being passed on through the renewals are a fact a culmination of things like um utilization of the services like what's your experience rating as a school

096community or as a municipal community but they're also driven by drug prices. They're also driven by industry costs. They're also driven by um larger federal or state funding towards um uninsured um and so like all those factors come in and play a role in renewal costs. Um and there is a major thing looming over everyone's head on the state side which is the death spiral of uh public employees healthcare. And what's happened is there's a state health benefits plan that exists out there that a lot of districts and uh what we're involved in, but as the fund became unchecked or unchecked with some cost increased, districts that could afford through experience rating to shop their policies and get out did. Which means the folks that were left behind had high experience ratings. and what's been

097their term, not mine, but it's a good term, the death spiral of the they're sort of trapped and those those rates continue to escalate and it's driving industry costs as well. So when I talk about plan design, it's not it's just it's not only you know that that that fund risks collapse and a lot of things are tied to that. So we really need a lot of advocacy on a lot of different levels. Uh and there needs to be a lot of voices at the table because it impacts insurance legal um members of of of our political legislative body as well as municipal officials, school officials, accountants and business officials, you know, um you know, municipal business officials. I mean, there really needs to be a lot of folks uh at the table because it's

098driving if school tax is a percentage of the local property tax rate. It's impacting our locals, it's impacting our counties, right? It's impacting everyone as it interplays except it's always nuanced and in buckets and no one's talking necessarily across. But when the municipal healthcare rates going up 36% and state health benefits is going up 32% 31 or 32% like we're we have a we're in an inflection point. It doesn't the math doesn't work. It just doesn't work. And yet we're all limping forward. And that's the thing. We go through these budget cycles. We limp into them. We cut services and we then go into the next year and people get angry and then you know in the moment then we deliver the program whatever that program looks like. You almost like reset and the next

099year you cut more stuff. Well, it's it's getting to the point especially for districts that were impacted by the change in funding formula through S2 legislation. They're bleeding out and some of them don't have any more blood to bleed. You know, they're they're at they're that's why you're seeing districts running in deficits now, which they're technically not able to do. And they're questioning or requesting bailouts and they're requesting sales of buildings. Like one district last year refused to pass a budget and the state's solution was to come in and tell them to sell a school. Uh Bradley, thank you Dr. Adhold for the presentation. I know you said it was your teenth one. This is my fifth one sitting through and every year it just gets a harder and harder. So I appreciate the uh

100the slides especially with the um the seven the 15 and the 25 forward thinking because that just makes me even more depressed. But it is something we need to look at and um I mean as a public we should be aware of and and and and um to your point all the things that you mentioned that we could do. I I don't know if this is a question or more of a comment but uh I'm kind of the guard rails that the governor set in place with the 3% so we were down 500 that could have been 2.4 four I think million if that wasn't in place with the uh transport transportation being flat >> that's also a plus like these are pluses that are that we're looking at and we're like oh great but

101that's just for right now right >> right well I mean to your point if the guardrail wasn't in place and we went down another 21 >> what would we >> and we then had um the rick bus didn't come in at zero they were at where we were projecting at 800 that's 2.9 more that we would have had to cut Yeah, >> because our tax authority capped out at 4.68. >> Yeah. >> So, we would have been talking about programs and services. We would have been talking about massive class size impacts. And we would have been talking about the elimination of services, whether that's mental health services or or police officers or school security or you name it. We would have been talking about we would work to stay away from the classroom as long,

102but it all impacts the classroom. So I don't want anyone to believe that I'm saying that mental health or safety doesn't impact the classroom >> because it it all factors in. So it's like it's probably a little bit of a mechanism combination of a lot of things until you slowly don't have anywhere else to cut. Well, I appreciate your metaphor at the end there about the cutting of skin and because I was looking at it originally and I had a question down about okay looking at that 12 point the 12 million plus that we kind of have to fill this the third part about like is there any more that we could cut from a particular line. And I was looking at facilities and and it sounds like the district has looked at all of

103that and this is really where um I guess cutting things without impacting what's in the classroom. That's as far as you guys have looked. Is there anything more than that? >> Yes. You we look what I've learned over time is there's always more to cut. >> There's always more to cut. >> Yeah. >> On the on the financial side. The question is what's the instructional and educational impact to students? What's the service impact? You know, so some communities are talking about cutting class or increasing class size. Some communities are talking about elimination of athletics, clubs, and activities, >> right? So, some are talking about some have implemented and we we haven't done this and I don't think we should and we've we've held off on um participation fees. Well, there's some communities that have have

104significant participation fees by season. My argument is our community pays a lot in taxes and they have a lot of costs. As a parent, I know what it costs to outfit my stu my children season to season in a sport that's technically provided by a school, right? But you're still spending on equipment, you're still spending on sports, you're still spending every time there's an away game at Wawwa or wherever we're going, right? You're still spending hundreds of dollars per season and then you're paying booster club and you're doing this and you're doing that. So there is a backdoor use fee. So, we're not going to charge a participation fee on top of that. We've held off on doing things like that. Other communities, they'll raise hundreds of thousands of dollars by doing it for all

105three seasons. I just And then it it disproportionately impacts families and what I mean, we just have avoided that kind of uh thinking in terms of the way in which we've tried to solve budget. But, um there's always look the places you start cutting are services and class size. Well, I was thinking I know we've had this conversation if we tried to get that that 4.68 any lower. What could you give examples of what that would look like in Sure. in WWP specifically? >> So, so if you wanted to decrease um say a million dollars, right? And a million dollars might drop you ballpark 42 or just under, right? >> Percent, sorry. Like four, thank you. Like a 4.2 instead of a 4.68. 68 if you pulled a million dollars of and Derek check me

106if I have the my percentage wrong. Um, but you would, you know, it's how do you solve a million dollars? And just from a math perspective, a teacher, step zero teacher, a firstear teacher is about 65,000, right? I see Charity nodding her head. Uh, assistant super HR for the audience. Um, so 65,000. So then it's, you know, how many how many teachers for 65,000 instructional aids, which are driven by IEPs. So that's really not a place you can go. But let's just pretend they're, you know, right around 30 plus. So how many how many instructional aids uh secretary, which we're relatively thin on our our secretarial staff around? We used to have a lot more back in 200910 when we had the 7.7 million in state aid cut. We eliminated several secretarial positions and we've

107never really increased from that. Now the world has changed with tech and how you know back back then Dr. Dr. DS was having the secretary write all his evaluation or type his evaluations because he was handwriting everything. Well, our administrators are typing everything, right? We have our computers in the room. Lots changed since 2009 10. Um, but that being said, you know, we've had we haven't increased those lines. So, it's not like we're going to save a lot of money for how many 40 $45,000 secretaries are you going to have to eliminate in order to make up a million? The answer's over 20. But the the you know, so you're talking like 15 teachers. So now you start saying where what what grades, what class size, you know, and and very quickly you start seeing

108class size jump from uh you would want to avoid certain levels like I would avoid K1 because that's early literacy. I'd try to avoid K12. So now where you're starting third, fourth, fifth. Well, Town Center doesn't have third. So Town Center's safe. Um and Wyoff only has four sections of third. So if you eliminate one, your class size jumps from 20 to 27, right? So WOF would be disproportionately impacted because it only has certain number of classes, right? So you have to start looking. It's not as simple as saying, oh, eliminate one per building per grade. Every building has different nuances and then I would really want to protect all of our existing staff. And we've over time prided oursel in trying to maintain our existing staff. So then you have to look at okay

109maybe where's retirement. Let's look at where the retirees are and then do we have to refill and backfill those positions because I would want to preserve the staff that we've hired and trained and invested in and they've invested in us right and I think that's some of the special sauce in WWP is that we've really through it all even when we had riffs in the 200910 uh sorry it wasn't 910 it was the 10-11 budget for the 1112 um we lost overnight in March budget a budget address 7.7 and we had to turn around the budget in five basically five work days. Um and we going into it had a cat we had plans what would happen if we lose a million. What would happen if what would be a catastrophe budget and they took

11070% of state aid 70% state aid was reduced. We're talking about four four2,000 7.7 overnight. I can't never have never been able to snap overnight. So that that we had over 30 staff positions reduced in that budget. A lot of it was in retirement and we did some crazy stuff like we had an ESL teacher that was nurse certified and they became a nurse like but at the end of the day every single staff member that wasn't retiring had a job for the next school year. So even in a catastrophe budget, we looked at everyone's certifications and found a way to rehire everywhere we could. That's something that we've prided oursel on for the last 17 years that I've been here that we've worked really hard and I pray we never get to a point

111where we're just cutting positions outright and we're just half-hazardly saying reduce this many and not have a plan. Um, and the challenge, Ly, is that like that's that's where the budget's starting to drive us outside of planning. You know, you can't you can't I mean, until the budget was announced, we didn't know the guardrails were going to be there. There was no forewarning just because the commissioner named it last year. Well, the commissioner was gone. You know, he was gone. So, there was no advanced notice. And I spoke, it's not like we didn't speak to folks at the DOE. They would say the same thing. you know, we don't know what the governor's going to do. Talked to members of the legislature until that budget address, they didn't know what was going to happen. So,

112we had to be planning forward towards bar bigger cuts and every plan was ugly. >> 67 next year. Sorry, I said 65. Thank you. This year 65, next year 67. So, we didn't save anyone. Actually, we still have 15 or maybe 15 14 teachers in an IIA, you know, I mean like that that we're just we're just throwing stupid numbers. I mean, that's that's what it becomes. It becomes a math formula of what's the number of positions. And remember, if you're not taking retirees and not filling the retiree positions, you have to go to the non-tenured. And non-tenured is folks that have been hired in at 0 to three and 0 to four. And there's no seniority within non-tenured. So theoretically, it's anyone that's been hired in the last four years, but um usually it's

113last in first out is the is the concept and those many of them are folks we've invested in through our student teaching program. And we've purposely budgeted that way to bring in step zeros because what's happening in other districts is they they're not offering these kind of programs and incentives to try to bring folks in and they're hiring people higher up the guide. And long-term that has major budgetary consequences. So strategically hiring keeping folks lower on the guide has a longer fiscal benefit when it comes to breakage and when it comes to long-term fiscal health. So you really don't want to eliminate all your step zeros. You really want to look at the retirement side of the house and look for ways that you could try to find reductions there because that's where you might

114find some efficiencies and savings. And if someone's leaving at 95 or potentially even cracking six figure, but I mean the reality is they've just that means they've spent 30 something years in the profession and they've received all the different um longevity guide payments along the way. So that means they've dedicated a ton of time to WWP um and the students that that f those folks that are right at that level, the breakage is only like 30 grand to a $67,000 uh new teacher. Thanks uh go ahead Liz. >> Thank you Dave for the presentation and all the work that's been done in advance for this. Um you know this is a very difficult budget for us to be discussing and to have to take a vote on. But so much of this seems to be

115you know out of our control. Um there seems to be longerterm impacts for the residents of the township in terms of migration like folks wanting to leave like what not just from our community but throughout the state because if it's not um attractive it's going to be what what's the point in staying 10 years down the road. So these are it's like very uh concerning in that way too. >> Um last year so much of the focus was on the federal impacts and measures that we had taken. uh from the slides you've indicated that you know none of those concerns have really gone away still exists. Um I'm just wondering what our plans are if suddenly we do get that type of notification that we're going to lose the funding. Do we have the ability

116with our existing this budget this proposed budget to address that if we were to lose it for those important programs like the IDAS Taiwan all that? Um, so you're speaking to a conspiracy theorist who just got easy pass because I don't like the track to be tracked. So I I I answered that way. Um, so I do believe that we should be concerned about the federal government and any funding levels. So like I I I try to think like obviously I think very cautiously about long-term planning on money, right? So we're talking 10 years, other districts are talking about this year. Um, but we're talking in reality of like gaps and inability to raise money in six. So, we're talking in reality, but we're also trying to project out. You know, Liz, the answer is

117if federal IDA was to shift, we would have a legal obligation to fulfill every IEP. So, would we make sure every IEP was filled? Absolutely. What would be the impact? We would have to make programmatic or staffing cuts in the existing year. And that may mean that we have to um shift class size in lifetime like what Monontlair did mid year. It may mean that we have to consider not offering something for clubs and activities or pull back or not potentially consider a sport. It may mean we might have to take a calculated risk on projections on reserves or end of the year funds. It may mean that um we have to look at mid-year retirements to see if we can fulfill or maybe shift students into other classes. You have a third grade this,

118you know, um you have a third grade teacher going on maternity leave and you have nine sections of third grade in a school or eight sections of third grade. Instead of getting a leave replacement, you take those 22 students and you break them across the nine grades and you push every class to 27 or 28, right? you do something like that to try to save half a year of salary, you know, you you try to figure out how you're going to close the gap. The title grants are meant title one is meant specifically to address and target at risk students. If you don't have those dollars, you don't have to run those programs. So, the title grants you just don't run. Right. The title three though >> would go to um supplies, materials, trainings, and

119some staff salary. Actually, no. We've removed all staff salary out of the title grants. So, that's one way we've mitigated risk. We don't want any staff members tied to title dollars, right? So, we have removed staff out of title grants because I don't want anyone driven salary driven to to that something could be eliminated mid year. So maybe it's the PD money, PD that's not contractual PD, but something that the district's driving has to stop, which means you no longer are funding your values or no longer funding your the curricular programs or you're not buying resources, right? Or you're slowing. So there's there's things we could slow down or stop to get through, but now you have to budget the following year with a greater gap. So we might be able to limp into a

120year or through a year, but then you have to address it in the following budget. Sounds like a very it's fun vicious circle, >> right? It's a it's a it is a it's the best way to say it's a cycle and it's a vicious cycle at best when we're talking about cutting. >> And remember like every dollar in a budget has an advocate, right? I think it's really important to say that like every dollar has an advocate. And if we've been here long enough and Dana's been with me at the table for a long time, we had diving parents show up one year because we were talking about elimination of diving. At the time it was four students and we had four parents, right? every dollar when we when we moved to um outsource building

121and grounds in 200910 for the 201011 year and we went to Aramark and then ABM and now Pritchard 15 years later we had over 130 speakers come line up one at a time at a podium like this at community middle school and I remember being the assistant superintendent sat right there and every single person came up with a picture and said like this is Jimmy and when you take away Jimmy's job you take away his hopes and dreams You take away his ability to pay his healthcare. You take away his children's future. You take away his ability to live. You take away and they we went to 1:00 a.m. The board saved 3 million and they closed that was they closed some of the gap, but it was a hell of a decision and it

122had long-term impacts. Now, did our schools still open the next year? Yeah. Did we lose a lot of great people? Absolutely. Were a lot of them community members? Yes. Did it have long-term impact on our facilities that led us to have to make major changes and put tons of money in referendums to to projects and things that should not have maybe um uh had some you long-term use issues with respect to HVAC especially. Yeah, we put a lot of money into HVAC that are maybe things we would have had a little bit longer shelf life on if we actually had people that understood how to use the equipment that we're managing because we outsourced all maintenance when we did that change. By the way, I was a first year assistant superintendent when that happened. So,

123I think I get a pass on that because I was actually anti that decision. But once you make it, and that's the problem. Once the board made that decision to reverse it, nearly impossible because once you allocate a certain savings to a reduction to get it back in a budget, this is so hard because it either requires an infusion of cash into the tax base. And that's what you're also seeing in some of these other communities that have have major programmatic changes. They're now going out there to try to adjust the tax base to get back what they lost. And now they're doing that at a time when healthcare has gone like this. They're not asking for enough. They're not going to be able to outpace what's happening with healthcare. And in two or three

124years, they're going to be back to cutting the very same things that they've just brought back. Just why? I The math the math works against them. >> And they're not even seeing it. They don't even know what's coming at them. >> Thank you. >> Uh go ahead or somebody else on this side before I go. Go ahead. I was just thinking because I I wrote a note here in terms of I know you on one of the slides it had showed that enrollment was down a bit and then you mentioned that new homes are coming >> um are coming online and also like um >> approved to be built. Does that help us in terms like can you maybe talk to uh to that? >> So the slide we don't have and that thank you

125because this is something I didn't speak to is then how the tax bases impact how the tax base for the two municipalities gets calculated. So, we ask for a certain amount of money and then there's two major drivers there. And Derek, again, I'm going to rely on you if I say this wrong. The net taxable value of the community and that comes through the appraisals and the enrollment factors. We know the enrollment. We know that it's favorable for Plansboro. All right. We know that PL it's about 0.5 difference year-over-year in the in the split of the percentage with West Windsor going up 0.5 and Planesboro decreasing in enrollment by 0.5 right so we know that enrollment split that's determined by the October 15th number um and it it basically is set you know as per

126the formula every year what we don't know is the appraisals should probably stay about the same unless they've had unless they've had uh any challenges to uh to um valuations for the like tax appra tax appeals and we haven't heard that yet so I'm hoping that they'll stay about the same but in West Windsor there are units that have now opened and it just is a question of when did it hit the tax roles that I don't have yet but if there's 1500 to 2,000 units that are being constructed in lifetime you know in in some level of permitting and we know there's hundred or so that have opened and potentially upwards of 200. The question is, what's their appraised value? Not what did they sell for, but were they taxed at? What's their appraised

127value? >> Assessed. Assessed. Thank you. I said appraised. I mean, my A's. Um, >> right. We're taxed on >> assessed value, right? >> Yeah. >> Assessed value. So, thank you, Derek. And um and so let's just say they're all there's 200 units at 200,000. So, it's 40 million. So 40 million increase in the net taxable value of the community should help offset the increase. But I don't know that until we can't even calculate that until we get the the assessed the assessed values from the municipal officials. And that historically comes midappril to late April. Only one time in the 17 years I've done this did we get it after the budget hearing. So we should get it. And that was because of appeals and that was because the county hung them up. It wasn't because

128the townships, right? It was it was it was at the county level. I believe it was the county, not the state. I believe it was the county. So, it's the township's just, you know, they'll get it to us as soon as they can, but we can't even talk about it until we get that. But yes, theoretically, West Windsor's.5 increase in enrollment could get offset or could further offset the impact based on the assess the the assessed values. Thank you. >> All good, Lou. And then just two random questions. Um the out of district placements. Yes. >> That don't have a a a limit. I mean is there anything that >> what's the programmatic need of the student that will drive your cost? >> Yeah. Look, we we have students that um have significant medical. Look,

129when you have 9,000 and ch, you know, 8,800 8,700 students, you will get a student that has a major medical need or several. You know, it's it's it's it's a fraction of a percent. But if you have a student that needs to um I'm not just talking toileting, I'm talking like feeding tubes and you know potenti and we have students every year we have students with um like medical needs that would would put any parent into tears. >> Yeah. >> And so there's not enough money that we can't throw at the program in the world to meet the needs of the student. Right. So, so when you start talking about students that have that level of need, you could be talking about instructional aids, sometimes two full-time nursing services, that's an outside contract vendor, a

130specialized bus at a facility with medical doctors. But in a public school system, you have to meet the needs of every single student regardless of their their you know sort of their make sure that their their educational need is met in an appropriate placement. So free and appropriate. The question becomes what's appropriate? Well, I don't have a doctor on site. I don't have a stock doctor with certain cognitive like neurological knowledge potentially or certain medical knowledge. Like sometimes you have specialized care at some of these private facilities and we have a couple students that are at those kind of facilities. So what's the cost? It's whatever the calculated cost is. >> Yeah. >> And that's the the cost is what it costs. >> Now on average like Mercy County, you know, send a student over

131to Mercy County Special Services, we're paying close to, you know, close to 60. you know some of these specialized programs like Douglas developmental or you know others you might be paying 120 130 you know that's not including transportation that's not including extended school year that's not including you know so so it just depends it really just depends on what's the programmatic need of the students >> thank you and then one last question on healthcare um I know we talked about like things we could do sorry like legislatively um is there anything at all that we could talk about um either with at at the WWP level like to kind of >> address that number and negotiate. I mean, I'm just trying to think out loud. >> That's where some laws have come in. There's chapter

13244 and chapter 78. And chapter 44 um changed its sunsets in January 1st, 2028, >> right? January 1st, 2028. And and what that does is it shifted away from a percentage employees contributions from a percentage of premium to a percentage of salary and that technically goes away in 2028. I would venture to guess there will be legislation prior to it expiring to attempt to extend that or um it's or it could be part of the larger conversation. No matter what, there will be an advocate. There will be advocates against doing that because if you're a if you're a teacher making 67 at step zero and you're paying a percentage of salary versus a percentage of the premium, those are two different numbers, right? So there's there's just like you know there's advocates for advocate for

133every dollar there's advocates for every every position too and there's organizations that sponsor it. If I'm the NJA officials, I would be against moving to a percentage of premium, right? So there will be major opposition in certain associations and that's their responsibilities to their membership. That being said, they can completely conceptually understand that there's impacts to the larger macro budget, but they still have a responsibility of their members, right? So like like I try to be objective here like and say like yes they can understand the math but at the same time they understand the math to their members and that's their job as an association right so like like you know it's like that's just part of the part of the larger game and I don't mean to call it a game because it's

134people's livelihoods and stuff but you know what I mean it's part of the whole structure of the system. >> Thank you. Anybody else >> please? No. Oh, sorry. >> Yeah, that was out loud. >> Sorry. >> But um thank you for that deep dive uh to >> It's my pleasure. Thank you. >> Dire financial predicament and uh thank you for board members with pose really great questions. Appreciate that um that dialogue. So that takes us to our first opportunity for public comments. The board invites thoughts and reactions on agenda items and items of concern from members of our community who are present. Each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making a statement which will be limited to three minutes in accordance with board policy 0167. All statements shall

135be directed to the to the presiding officer. This public comment period shall be limited to 60 minutes. Uh any takers? Seeing none, I will close this public comment period and move to the uh board of education committee report. So, I'd like to ask Liz uh for the minutes from administration and facilities. >> Thank you, Grayen. The administration and facilities committee met on March 17th at central office. Um uh two policies were uh reviewed with recommended updates. This is policy for grading system and policy for homework. The purpose of the updates was to have our policies reflect updated language and to identify what our current expectations and practices are. These regulations uh I'm sorry, these policies are recommended for our first reading tonight. We also reviewed uh again the second reading regulations R2624 for the grading

136system and R2 2330 for homework. Uh these per the purpose of these updates also is to reflect uh updated language and to identify what our current expectations and practices are. These are related to the policies that are here for first reading. These regulations are also recommended for uh review and approval at tonight's meeting. Miss Sata also provided an overview of of athletics at the high school and middle school levels. The overview pro included highlights from the winter seasons of winter track, wrestling, basketball, fencing, and swimming. some of which that we had heard this evening as well. Uh the committee also discussed a policy with regard to foreign exchange students and were presented with an application that meets the criteria forth on the policy. The committee is recommending the district proceed forward with accepting the particular

137student through the international student exchange program. The committee also discussed the typical sending paths for students as well as any sending path that would be atypical and how we can accommodate and correct this type of path. This is related to some uh comments that we had received from members of the public and families. The discussion was centered around creating sending paths that are consistent across the district. The committee was supportive of continued work in this area. The committee also reviewed and supported the corrective action plan that was presented for Wyoff Moraurice Hawk Town Center and Dutch Neck Elementary Schools. The committee finally reviewed job descriptions for the student assistant counselor and recommended approval at tonight's BOE meeting. The next meeting of the committee will be held on April 21st, 7 p.m. here at central office.

138>> Thanks, Liz. Um, any questions for the ANF committee? Okay. Then I'd like to invite uh Schwatha to give us a report on curriculum committee. >> Thank you, Grayen. Uh the curriculum committee met on March 17th. During the meeting, Dr. Pearson, director of assessment, data, and accountability, as well as Miss Haynes, uh, supervisor of K through5 language arts, presented an overview of the purpose and results of the MAP growth and MAP fluency assessments in reading and mathematics for students in grades K through 8th, highlighting student progress from fall to winter. Um, in addition, during the meeting, Dr. Gold provided an overview of the K through2 multilingual learner summer camp which serves multilingual learners across the district including its instructional programming, key highlights and intending goals. Um the curriculum committee recommends for approval of overnight field

139trip um high school North Science Bowl team to the national conference in Washington DC from April 30th to May 4th. The cost of the trip is covered by the Department of Energy. Uh the curriculum committee is scheduled for the next meeting date on Tuesday, April 21st at 7 p.m. Thanks, Sha. Uh any questions for curriculum and instruction. Okay. Then I'd like to invite Dana to give us a report on the finance committee. Good evening. Um the finance committee also met on March 17th. Um, we reviewed the committee reviewed the monthly financial reports. The administration affirmed that no major accounts are overexpended and that sufficient funds are available to complete the year. The committee reviewed the following motions on the agenda for approval. Approve the tenative budget for submission to the county office of education for

140review. Approve the maximum travel expenditures for the next budget year and regular business travel. Approve cooperative purchases over the bid limit. Approve an annual licensing agreement for the Zoom video conferencing. Accept donations for field trips and assemblies. Approve the disposal of obsolete equipment. Approve transportation quotes for a school to work shuttle and to and from home transportation for displaced and homeless students. Approved board member travel for potential for professional development. The final calendar for this uh budget season 20 the 2026 2027 season was shared with the committee members. We have received our state aid figures and prepared a tenative budget for submission to the county office. The district has, as we just been discussing for the last couple of hours, um the district has experienced a reduction in state aid for the second consecutive year

141due to declining enrollments and a lower number of special education students than the funding formula formula assumes, which is 14% of the total student population. The governor's budget propos proposes using the actual number of special education student and includes guard rails that limit reduction in state aid to no more than 3% per district. This results in a loss of $469,843 for the current upcoming budget year. Additionally, with this change to the funding formula, the district is projected to lose an additional 2.15 million in the coming years. The budget will be submitted to the county office for approval. Once approved, the public hearing on the budget will take place on April 28th. So um EUB 2 which is the um energy savings improvement plan. The district has been receiving a pay for perform been receiving pay

142for performance incentives from its first ESIP. The most recent incentives are based on the program's verified performance. These funds are typically received several years after project completion once proof of performance has been submitted to the New Jersey Department of Clean Energy. The district was originally projected to receive 1.8 million in incentives. However, to date, it had received 2.3 million due to EIP's demon demonstrated energy saving success. Um, and we moved on to cafeteria. The number of serving days in February 2026 was three fewer than in February 252. Therefore, a direct comparison for the month is not meaningful. Year-to-date totals through February 2026 show increases in both breakfast and lunch participation. Breakfasts increased by 5,968 and lunches increased by 14,995. The average number of lunches served per day to students qualifying for free reduced and New

143Jersey income eligible status increased by 8% compared to February of the prior year. Average daily lunch participation increased by 7% year-over-year. Southwest Food Excellence, which is our um provider, our food service provider, terminated one employee in March and is currently interviewing candidates for replacement. A total of 255 meals were donated in February to share my meals. Um we also um discuss transportation under the item the agenda items. We will also meet on April 21st and that's her next meeting. Thanks. >> Thanks, Dana. Um, do we have any questions for the finance committee? Uh, okay. So, then that takes us to the voting portion of our meeting. So, for administration items, can I get a motion for administration items numbers 1 through 7? uh plus a verbal addendum to affirm the administration's determination of an HIV

144case. Um we are getting the HIP number right now. So I'm I'm stalling a little bit. Just a little bit just momentarily. >> No pressure. >> Can we um move one more time? >> Yes. Do you mind if we move to um curriculum and then to finance and then we could circle back to ANF >> for the votes? >> Do a motion for that? >> Oh, I don't know. Do we have the motion to table the motion? >> Just for one to seven. >> Oh, never mind. You can be do student ID number and HIV number. >> Okay. system. The number is 302682 GMS 2 02 026. Okay, thank you. So again, that was a motion for administration items numbers 1 through 7 plus this verbal addendum. Uh Liz and Puja. Uh any questions or

145comments? Go ahead, Liz. >> I just want to just make a general comment about the extended day program and just to note how beneficial and important a program it is for the district families, especially working families or families who need a break and have these experiences for their kids. And I'm glad to see that's continuing at affordable rates. >> Thank you, Liz. Any other questions, comments? Nope. Okay. So, ready for a roll call vote? Okay. Miss George Tinara? >> Yes. >> Miss Bonsel? >> Yes. >> Miss Shaw? >> Yes. >> Miss D. Sebastian? >> Yes. >> Miss Krug? >> Yes. >> Miss Maliga? >> Yes. >> Mr. O'Brien? >> Yes. >> Miss Shetty? >> Yes. >> And Miss McKuan? >> Yes. Can I get a motion for curriculum and instruction item number one? Uh, Schwatha

146and Sharon. Any questions or comments? >> Ready. Okay. Miss Shetty, >> yes. >> Miss D. Sebastian, >> yes. >> Miss Maliga, >> yes. >> Miss George, >> yes. But I abstain from item number 22A. >> Oh, this is curriculum and instruction. Sorry. >> Yes. Um, Miss Krug, >> yes. >> Mr. O'Brien, >> yes. >> Miss Shaw, >> yes. >> Miss Bonsel, >> yes. >> And Miss Mchuan, >> yes. Uh, and now, can I get a motion for finance items numbers 1 through 22, uh, with a verbal correction on number 22A under travel, change that from one board of education member to two board of education members. And we also have the blue addendum. Uh Dana and Paul, any questions or comments or any further questions or comments? >> Okay. Okay. >> Uh Miss Krug. >>

147Yes. Um except I abstain from 22B. >> Mr. O'Brien. >> I'm a yes to all with the exception of number one. I'm a no. I'd like to qualify that uh as a new board member uh and someone who takes this responsibility very seriously. I'm also painfully deliberate. Uh I just felt that uh the late release of the state aid numbers when we received the full-on presentation did not leave enough time for me to feel confident in the decision. So I'm a no for one, yes for the rest. >> Thank you. Uh, Miss D. Sebastian, >> yes. >> Miss George Tinera, >> yes. But I abstain from item number 22A. >> Miss Maliga, >> yes. >> Miss Shaw, >> yes. >> Miss Shetty, >> yes. >> Miss Bonsel, >> yes. But I abstain from item 22A

148as well. >> And Miss Mchuan, >> yes. Now, can I get a motion for personnel items numbers one and two plus the green addendum? Uh, Ajonta and Ly. Any questions or comments? >> Okay. Ready for a roll call? >> Okay. Um, Miss Sha, >> yes. >> Miss Maliga, >> yes. >> Miss D. Sebastian, >> yes. >> Miss George Danera, >> yes. >> Miss Krug, >> yes. >> Mr. O'Brien. >> Yes. >> Miss Shetty, >> yes. >> Miss Bonsel, >> yes. >> And Miss McCuin, >> yes. And I'd like to turn it over to Dr. Adhold for a moment for a few words. >> There's there's um a resignation on tonight's agenda that I want to uh draw um just acknowledgement to. Um and one retirement I just want to comment on. Um so for the

149purpose of the resignation um we have the resignation of our Grover Middle School uh principal Dr. John Dober. Uh John was appointed last night as the new principal of Heightstown High School um where he'll be going starting July 1. I want to congratulate John on uh the move to Heightstown High. Uh John has been with us for the last 11 years both as the North principal as well as Grover for the past three years. I've known John for over God, we went to grad school together, so over over 25 years. Um, and just an incredible uh human being and person and leader and uh we wish John uh nothing but the best in in his next move and his next starting um over at Heightstown. Um also just uh in the audience and we'll have

150an opportunity to recognize uh her at the retirement celebration. Uh, but I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize Debbie Bear, uh, retiring after 32 years of service in WWP. Uh, Debbie went to kindergarten at Hawk with Dr. DS and, uh, graduated from South before it was South. Sorry, Debbie. Um, and and then, uh, uh, spent 32 years of service in this community. Family was long-standing. Uh, uh, father was in mayor and council in West Windsor. Just tremendous service to this community. um had the pleasure to work with her the last 17 years uh 13 years as WWPA president. Um and when we talked about the special sauce and the relationship um you know Debbie is part of that foundation and really working in partnership for what's right for students there was never a conversation well

151there's conversations we didn't agree but there's never a conversation where we didn't end up pointing to what's right for students. Um that's always been the the hallmark of the of the relationship between our association and our our administration. Um and that's carried forward with Bruce Melli and Shandria Stevens and Debbie really you know really was instrumental in laying that base and in continuing that. Um so you know we've seen her and we maybe we'll see her in the future with negotiations. Um, but she's been a negotiations chair for many contracts and uh just uh given service to CMS and Town Center and Hawk, but as a as a teacher, but really her impact is is district-wide. So, Debbie, thank you for everything. Um, and uh we'll look forward to celebrating you in the future. >>

152Thank you, Dr. Adhold. And if I'm not mistaken, Debbie's mother was also on the school board at some point. Um, so um, thank you Debbie. Uh, again retiring after 32 years now as a teacher resource specialist for instruction and intervention at Maurice Hawk and among many other roles as Dr. Aderhold mentioned. Um, we also have a couple of other retirements that I'd like to acknowledge that we just approved. We also have Nadra Galazin, a social studies teacher at High School South, retiring after 31 years of service to WWP. And we have Jill Marie Okonnell, our health and physical education teacher at High School South, retiring also at 32 years um of service for to the district. So, we wish you all well. Um, thank you so much for your dedication and um, for being part

153of the fabric that makes up um, uh, what makes this district so special. And good luck in your retirement. Enjoy. And that takes us to um, uh, a motion to approve the board of education minutes from February 24th and March 10th. Uh, Liz and Paul. Um, all in favor say I. >> I. >> Sounds like no abstensions. Um, and any board less on reports? >> And I'll turn the floor over to Dana. Okay. I'm not trying to make the meeting extra long, but um, and just thank you. I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to share about a Mercer County Schoolboard Association event which I had the pleasure of leading at High School South um, last Thursday. than March 19th. This event is called the Mercer County Schoolboard Association's Unsung heroes, which

154celebrates a grad graduating student from each high school in Mercer County. These student honores were nominated by their school administrators and teachers for their outstanding contribution to their school and community, not with fanfare, but with quiet strength, resilience, and an unwavering sense of purpose, which often goes unnoticed. As a president of the Mercer County Schoolboard Association, I had the honor along with my the executive committee to preside over the event and 20 students from every high school in Mercer County were celebrated um at South and the students stories were um inspiring and quite touching. I want to thank the um WWP staff including Val Rodriguez, principal at High School South and her administration, Jessica Sincada um who's here with us every board meeting um and the WWP South's um pirates Nanette for their Naet for

155their um musical performance and um also thank you to the NJSBA for supporting our county students. Thanks. >> Thank you, Dana. Uh any other board lays on reports? >> Go ahead. This >> I just wanted to acknowledge from uh Ly and I like the work that continues to happen between the PTSAs and most recently was the village school science fair that board members were invited to. So thank you for that. And also just to recognize that the recent efforts being done between Senh Hucker Packing and the school district in support of the local businesses uh that are been impacted by the the bridge issue. So it was really nice to see the collaboration amongst all these different entities to support each other as a community. >> Thanks Liz and Lauren. Um any other board leazison

156reports? Okay. Uh any new business? Uh that takes us to our second opportunity for public comments. The board invites comments from members of our community who are still present. Um each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making a statement which will be limited to three minutes in accordance with board policy 0167. All statements shall be directed to the presiding officer. This public comment period shall be limited to 15 minutes. Uh any takers? We have one uh Debbie Bear teacher in the district till June. Um um and I'm taking Shandria's place at at the meeting. So I'll be at a couple more meetings because we are sharing with her. She has three little boys at home. So um I just want didn't want all those very nice comments to

157go without a thank you. So it has been my pleasure to be a part of the district since I'll say 1969 as a student um when I started at four years old in kindergarten at Moresy Hawk. and it is sort of a full circle moment to be back there um and retiring from there. So, thank you Dave. I have appreciated immensely your passion for the district and I think that's something we share and I think we are just good at working at it together. So, I appreciate your comments. It really made me a lot meant a lot to me and my mother was on the school board and my father was the mayor and you guys are also doing an excellent job maintaining what they had hoped for. They have both been gone for a

158long time but they would be very very proud of how the district is growing and changing and still keeping that very high standard. My mother was on the board the year we opened the high school and that was her goal. We want to be the best high school in the state. That was like no question. And you have all really maintained all of that and I appreciate it. It means a lot to me personally. Thank you. Thank you, Debbie. That means a lot to us, too. Uh any other public comments? Nope. Okay. Seeing none, I'll close this public comment period. And can I get a motion to adjourn? Uh Sharon and Ly. Uh all those in favor say I. >> I. Thank you so much. Good night.