001[Music] Hello, good evening everybody and welcome to tonight's board of education meeting. Thank you for your patience. We just came from a dinner presentation with our township officials from West Windsor and Plainsboro. Um so I believe some of them are still here to hear all again. And now I can officially call this meeting to order. In accordance with the state sunshine law, adequate notice of this meeting was provided by sending a notice of the time, date, location, and to the extent known the agenda of this meeting on January 10th, 2025 and April 25th, 2025 to the Home News Tribune and the Times posted on the district website, placed in the board office and in each of the district schools, and sent to Plansboro and West Windsor public libraries and Plansboro and West Windsor Township clerks.
002So now without further ado, I'd like to call on Dr. Adderhold for our public hearing on the 2025 2026 budget. Do roll call. Yeah. Okay, everyone. I want to do a quick roll call. Okay, we'll start with Miss Bonsel. Miss Chennera. Yes. Miss Hoe, here. Miss Krug, present. Miss Maliga here. Miss Shetty, here. Miss Zovich, present. Miss Mchuan, here. Oh, Miss Shaw, sorry about that. My uh my sheet was uh not updated. I apologize. We're good. Well, good evening everyone. Good evening everyone. Um this evening we uh come forward this evening with our annual hearing on uh the district's budget for the 2526 school year. U my name is Dave Adel, the superintendent. Um and it's my uh pleasure and opportunity to present this year's uh budget from a process perspective. The budget um build
003starts as early as May of last year as we work through um a series of meetings and discussions with our budget managers. Um looking at our instructional programs, looking at our fixed costs, uh the cyclical uh costs around topics such as insurance, contractual costs, um custodial services, our negotiated contracts, our healthcare insurance, essentially a lot of costs that are get factored outside of the instructional program and opportunities for students. Uh we are uh a people business. the vast majority of our budget sits in salaries and benefits. Um, so we have to be mindful of that. So, as I start this year's presentation, I just want to send my thanks and appreciation to our budget managers, to our business office under the leadership of Dr. Russo, to our finance committee, and to our members of our
004board of education, members of central office for all the work that they've done. Uh, when I say central office, I'm not just talking about the administrative team, but the whole back end of the organization. Uh people forget that we're a quarter of a billion dollar organization. Um and that we have a payroll department, an accounts payable department, a healthcare and benefits team, individuals that work each and every day to make sure that the operations in the schools uh operate in a way in which they should. We have a uh building and grounds department, transportation department. So a lot of a lot of individuals that make this district operate that are sort of behind the scenes that aren't aren't noted that are budget managers that help make this operation run. We always start each year with
005our uh mission statement and our district mission is to make sure that we're empowering all learners to thoughtfully contribute to diverse and changing world with confidence of strength, strength of character and a love of learning. And our mission statement um and our mission and our vision and our values and our strategic goals should be seen in our budget. And if you haven't seen the the March 18th meeting um where we talked about that um you know I would encourage folks to look back and and really look at some of the topics that we talked about in the state of the state of the world right now. Um and how that we're bringing these strategic goals to life. Um and how we've taken a a stand as a community supporting the work with our statement on
006diversity, equity, inclusivity and the work that's occurring in in our district in each of our buildings. Now, it's important just for those that are watching for the first time and for members of the audience that are here, I'm just going to sort of go through some high some highlevel talking points with respect to what's a school budget and talk through some of just the the things that we have to be mindful of and thinking about as we build our budget. A budget is a planning tool. Um so things may shift in a year, enrollment may shift, but it's a planning tool to get us into the next school year. We must consider contingencies. So, um we don't have a line of credit. We do not have a credit card. We have to make everything work
007within the fiscal budget that gets adopted this evening. So, we also have to manage risk and think about uh our programs that way. We have to be fiscally responsible to members of our community. Um and we need to make sure that our budget is a reflection of our values. And if we really believe in empowering our students to be lifelong learners with confidence and strength of character and love of learning, then we need to make sure that we're building things into the budget that reflect our values. And of course, we have to look at buffers and safeguards. And there's some pretty good examples out there right now about like what's happening when a district uh does not have enough money to get to the end of a fiscal year, right? in the request to the
008state to try to borrow or the request or to cancellation of services um or considering like elimination of all this or all of that or looking at class sizes. Um and this is things that my colleagues and and boards of education around the state of New Jersey are contemplating in live time right now um as the fiscal challenges for the state and individual districts is at its all-time height right now um in in the state of New Jersey. So our school budget um at the end of the day is a theory about priorities for our students and we what we want for our students, our goals for them and for their future. So as we think about building the budget, we have to frame it through the lens of what do we want for our
009students. And the reality though is that as much as we want that for our kids, we have to be mindful of the the the dollar, the dollar that we have available to us and the decisions have to be made in a way that we're contemplating the finances. Um, and we have several rules in place that are set forward by the state of New Jersey about how how monies can increase year-to-year on the general fund tax levy. And so our board has to follow really two major rules. One is that our revenues must be within cap or cap plus allowances. And there's a couple allowances that let us go above 2% and I'll talk about that. And that our revenues must equal our expenses. Um so with that um we should be really proud of our
010district. Our finance office over the last 16 years with the leadership of the finance committee and members of the board of education have been received the certificate of excellence by Asbo International over the last 16 consecutive years and the meritori's budget for the last eight years and I often say that the only reason it's eight consecutive years is because we started applying eight years ago um or it would be longer right so and then where does the money come from the money comes through various revenue streams the main source in West Windsor Plainsboro is the local taxes from our our community members. Um they often they off they they pay state taxes as well. So really the state aid is coming back to the community and we send out more than we get back as
011a community. That's true for federal aid as well. Um, federal aid is something that I'm going to speak to because there's some real concerns about the cash flow around what's going to happen with federal dollars with the state of the state of uh public education and the way in which the current administration is talking about funding public education. There are federal grants as well and we're seeing concerns about will the federal grants be funded as well. The district does get some interest on some of our accounts. Um like like um any individual that has a bank account that might get a very small interest rate. Well, we do too. Um and so we have in some very small interest that comes in. Uh we do have very small amount of tuition that we can bring
012in. Sometimes we we have specialty programs that we might get a student for a program or not when other districts try to contract with us to send a student in. Uh that happens infrequently, but it occasionally happens. We don't take tuition students that parents can pay, but occasionally like in special education, if you have a program for uh students with multiple disabilities, um you may have a district that needs to find a placement and they're supposed to go to local districts as one of the options. And so we may get a tuition student that way. and then uh budgeted surplus and reserve withdrawals. It's just the ins and outs of what happens with cash flow when there's a surplus. When we come to important points on revenue, um it's really important to remember that while
013our costs can change in a year, the amount of money that we're bringing in often doesn't. Um there's some anomaly years like er money during COVID, right? So there's there's some nuance to this, but that usually requires an injection of funding due to a crisis. Maybe the federal government has come forward with ARA money about a decade, 12 years ago, 15 years ago, and then er money um two, three, four years ago now. Um but we can't ask for more money to the taxpayers. If our expenses go up, we can't go back to the c township committees and councils and say, "Hey, guess what? You know, our cost just went up an extra 2 million." So go back to the taxpayers, what gets adopted this evening is is the is the budget and then all
014of 2526 is in based on the monies that come in right now. So if all of a sudden our December 25 healthcare increase for January 26 all of a sudden goes up by $3 million starting in January. We have to figure out how to make the rest of the year budget with that increase based on what we have today. or what we have after you vote. The law in New Jersey talks about a local tax increase of 2% on the general fund. The 2% on the general fund is on the on the local district share of the budget, not the totality of the budget. So for us, that's about on about 95%. In addition to that, there's something called an SGLA. It's a spending growth limitation adjustment. The spending growth limitation adjustment is based on
015the concept that for for certain budget categories and there's four but really only two apply to schools right now. One is enrollment. Enrollment would have to go up more than 10% in one year. So we would have to gain about 900 students for ne from last year to this year in one shot on the October 15th enrollment. So that's not going to happen. And the second category is on health care and that's where most districts are generating a growth limitation adjustment because unfortunately in the kind category of healthcare we've seen exorbitant cost increases over the last de uh five years 7 years from precoid through our current healthc care increase for next year is $4.7 million our 2% is 3.6 six. So healthcare alone is 1.1 million more than our ability to raise the general
016fund. So we don't use the health care SGLA. We would then actually have to cut services for students by a million dollars before we look at any other salary increase, special education tuition increase, transportation increase, um insurance increase, energy increase, anything else. So you get the sense that healthc care alone is is severely hurting uh Westwinds Plainsboro, but it's hurting every district across New Jersey. And there's been questions like have have districts made changes to try to cap costs. I'll speak about that in a subsequent slide because this will be our third change to health care over six school years in order to to cap and change and control costs. Now, the district does have some additional tax authority to collect debt service and that's around the construction. So, we have passed referendums in the
017past and when you collect debt, you're allowed to collect when the when the community has voted to approve a referendum, you can then collect that debt above and beyond the 2% and above and beyond the SGLA. In WWP, our debt is paid for the for the referendum out of general fund and out of capital reserve. So we don't collect the debt for the referendum. It's already collected essentially within the budget and within reserve accounts that are monies that the community has already paid that then gets put in reserve that get spent to help control this cost. we have the legal authority to collect about another $12 million in addition to in addition to what we're asking. Um, and obviously that would be devastating to the community and it go it goes against what we talked
018about during the referendum and all that kind of work. So, we're not making that recommendation. Where's the money go? It goes to a lot of places. The big drivers, salary and benefits, healthcare, utility, repair, maintenance, professional services. Um we have services like bu building and grounds, our food service programs, our transportation vendors, a lot of vendors that we work with, professional services for architectural service, engineering services, um whatnot, special education costs and support services. We have tuition. We have vendors that we work with for services like occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech, BCBA, board certified behavior analyst. Then we get to spend a little bit of money on supplies, textbooks, and materials. Um, and capital projects. The money that's remaining, the 1 to 2% is things that go direct services for students. It might be athletic
019programs like the increased cricket program that North just kicked off against Monroe today, right? It's things like that where that we actually have direct services and opportunities for students. are clubs and activities, things that actually are the heartbeat of the district. So, within budget considerations, there's not a lot here. I mean, in each of these three positions that we're asking to build within this budget are all offsets of other costs and are actually all cost savings. We're asking for an increase in a board certified behavior analyst. Right now, the district contracts for these services. We already have five on staff, um, four in special services, one in general education. Uh, so building this one in, we're currently paying upwards of $1,000 a day for BCBA support services. Obviously, bringing a staff member in-house is cheaper.
020Speech therapist services. We don't have enough speech therapists to to service all the needs that students have within their IEP. And when that happens, whether someone goes out on leave or whether the services have increased, we have a responsibility to provide those services. So, we contract out for those services. And then we have a growth teacher, one growth teacher, and that's over at our postgrad program. That's our 18 to 21 year olds over at 72 Grovers Mill. That's the Monasuri property to the left of High School North across from Milstone River. At that particular property, we'll have um 12 to 14 additional students graduating from North or exiting from North to go over there. We're still required to keep a class- size ratio, so we'll have more students going over than we'll have teachers. um
021availability and each student would be over 70,000 out of district for services. So 700,000 plus to one teacher salary. It's a good deal. So we'll be each one of these is a cost savings um at the end of the day a cost savings over what we would be paying for outside services. Um special education tuition. This is just a point of contention within public education for public school districts to outside companies that that have outside tuition. They're increasing often 10 plus% yeartoyear versus what we um we can't control that. They're not capped. We are on the curriculum instruction side. It's just some of the instructional programming that we're maintaining. These aren't growth programs. It's tech platforms. Um it's our Gillingham training. It's our dual language immersion training. It's our multi-tered systems of support and our
022intervention model. It's our strategic goals and supporting that work. And it's work like responsive classroom, ensuring that we're training our our classroom teachers. On the healthc care side, we talked about um some of the complications in healthcare. January 1st, we moved from being self-insured to being in a shift, a school health insurance fund. That was January 1st of 2025. We stayed within Etna. Uh, no. Yes, we stayed. Sorry. Sorry, I switched health plans to my wife, so I'm getting confused for a second. So, we stayed within Etna. Um, but but we switched on the ben the prescription side. Um but within that those moves have to be made because some of these long-term inflationary costs that we're seeing in our self um our self-funding that we had been in. We were doing really well and
023staying below the state averages. But this past year we had two catastrophic claims. Those catastrophic claims were over a million dollars each. One was a heart heart transplant. one was over 50 days approximately in in the hospital before the individual um unfortunately passed. Um those claims themselves had tremendous amount of treatment to them, 1.5 and 1.2 million. As a result of that, we were told our increase would have been 30 plus%. Um so we were looking at like three times the 4.7. Um so by going out working with our our carrier for our broker for health insurance and putting our essentially portfolio of of uh belly buttons is the actual term in the industry because how many belly buttons you you provide health insurance to um and putting that on on sort of bid to
024these vendors. We were able to get a 10.6% increase by going to the shift. Um, but it's scary times in health insurance. In transportation route renewals, we're at 3.57. This is down from the year before at 5.61 in the year before at over six. Um, but we've seen um some stabilization in transportation costs, but for several years in a row, these were um growing at an astronomical rate. On the capital project side, there are a litany of projects. There are the two big ones are the roof replacement at Town Center is over 3.5 and the purchase of the prop pathways property next to High School North called the High School North annex. That's over 3.5. Those two properties or those two um drive about $7 million of cost. The Town Center roof project will not
025be done unless we get a ROD grant. A ROD grant is called a regular operating district grant. We had submitted for it. We're in conversation with the state. This could take time, but if you don't have it budgeted, you can't build it when the money comes through. So, we This is the third year in a row that we're allocating this money. The money is not spent. It goes back into capital reserves to be spent in a subsequent year. The High School North annex, same thing. The board has the opportunity to purchase that property in year four of the lease or year five of the lease. This coming up year 2526 is year four. so we can make a decision to purchase that property, but if we don't have it budgeted, then you have to take
026additional actions down the road. So, we budgeted those $2 in. Everything else then is like some work around the district that needs upgrades or additional projects. Um the roof uh the HVAC upgrade at Dutchneck alone is 900,000. It's one unit, one rooftop unit, 900,000. It's the original wing of Dutch Neck. That unit has been failing for over off and on for 15 years. I was here when the it went that project went in 15 years ago as a first year assistant soup. Um so the reality is is you know those things all have lifespans 15 to 30 years that particular that vendor went out of business and we were in litigation with them at one point. Um so we've struggled with that unit all the way through. Budget parameters these are just some of the
027big drivers in the year the year budget. Um the three big ones you can see are healthcare and that reflects the 47 salary. We have a lot of people. We have just around 1500 people when you add all substitutes in. We have about 1150 to,200 um staff members that that are working all the time in our district whether as teachers or uh bus drivers, instructional aids or administrators or um cafeteria aids or whatnot. um working in multiple associations or non-affffiliate. They're also our tech department and there's there's just a lot of folks that make this district run. So, they're all entitled to increases in salary. Um and that's 2.7 million based on the snapshot of a fixed period in time to a fixed period of time. Right? So you look at um usually dece approximately
028December 15th snapshot and you have to run the budget based on a snapshot and build the budget based on that with all the scatteragramgrams and salary guides and then that's your fixed that's your salary costs. Um and then administration is actually not administrators, it's administration. Custodial services, PERS is pension. FICA is a state insurance. Insurance is more like the money that we pay to ensure the district with respect to like um workers comp and uh other claims that you might get like um liability insurance. Thank you, Chris. Um other things that maybe cyber insurance, things like that. the unknowns. Every year prescription and healthcare is on the line because every year we renew on the midyear on the on the on the end of the calendar year, but we operate on a um July 1
029to June year. So our renewals are based on two moments in in the annual year. So we won't know the January 1st 26 through June 30th 26 increase until like November, right? So, we have to then when we talk about budgeting for contingencies, that's the kind of thing that we're talking about. We don't know the increase. Um, we're currently out to bid for a building and grounds. We're going through interviews right now. We had to build in our projected budget before we got the bids. So, you have to build contingencies into your budget to try to say like what would happen if the bid comes in a million more than you budgeted, right? We can't come back to you even right now and change this. So we have to make it work with within. And
030then the big the big unknown is the uncertainty about what's happening at the federal level with the US DOE and and uh the in Congress and the and the um the executive branch with respect to federal aid for public schools. And there is a lot of question about what this means for us. And there are um pretty good examples of states and districts that are being threatened in lifetime with the loss of federal dollars um for a variety of um compliance-based issues based on the current federal government's interpretation of title six, title 9, their executive orders, their dear colleague letters, and other things. For a little bit more context to that, the last the March 18th board meeting has more context, but just this past Friday, the attorney general for New Jersey, Matt Platten, uh
031engaged in a lawsuit against the um current administration with 18 other states around the threat to school districts around the nation around withholding federal aid. So built within this budget, there is some contingency to protect the district for potential loss of title grants. Um that's title one 1234 uh with it with protecting the district and ultimately protecting the students for the maintaining of services for the individuals with disability education act the idea we have already been told a 90% cut in Medicaid all school districts were cut 90% and this is for services like occupational therapy physical therapy and speech and NSLP is the national school lunch program and as I said in that March 18th meeting if you don't think they'll take food from students. All you have to do is look at the reduction
032in grants for farmers and the reduction in direct aid for food programs for our most vulnerable uh populations around the nation, including direct food and supplies to food banks that impact even WWP because uh send hunger packing, which provides over 100 weekend bridge meals for students and families in need in our community, will be impacted by some of the local food banks that they work with, getting reductions in federal support. When we talk about federal money, what we're talking about is just under $3 million. Title grants in there's four buckets of them, but at the end of the day, it's money for kids that are having struggles in their learning journey and PD for staff to help support those students in those struggles with their learning journey. Right? So, PD being professional development. IDA is
033tuition and support for students with disabilities. students that have IEPs with designated needs. And this pays for helps pay for tuition and for staffing. And again, National School Lunch Program is literally the we participate in a regulated national food program that helps control costs, but that makes sure that students that receive free and reduced lunch services that qualify based on family income eligibility um receive receive food. Um, if the National School Lunch Program was to go away or to stop being funded, we could exit that program to cover those dollars, but that would then have an increased cost to every family to make sure that we were covering our cost for food, but then also supporting the students that um would have qualified for free and reduced lunch. So, this is not a today thing.
034This is uh you know what would happen if question that that we have to think about as we move forward around those dollars. And then of course I mentioned Medicaid is is above and beyond the 3 million or 2.9 and that's the 90% reduction that we were told and that translates to about 135,000 reduction in projected income. We're at 147 right now. We were told to expect 12,000. Um our budget story is is one of inflation but our our story is no different than other districts. Um and so these all all these categories match up to budget lines in prior budgets. So um we took a year snapshot from precoid in 1819 um and then went to our co year and then you can sort of see the exponential increase in something like transportation that's
035gone from 10 million 10.7 to now 17 million um over six school years right we start seeing our healthcare go from 25 million to 37 in change um we see um more control around special education instructional costs, but that's because we're building more programs in house. That's keeping students in. When I arrived in district in 2009 2010, um I oversaw special services and we were sending over 130 students out per year. Because we've built programs methodically over time, we're now sending out approximately 80 students per year to out of district placements. And those are those if a student's going out, we do not have a program built for them or we don't have a room available. We have worked diligently to build spaces and to hire staff to control our out of district cost as
036best as we could to try to maintain programs in house. And you can see there's a whole bunch of years which we had a lot of sort of relatively flat growth in the middle there from 21 to 25. um some of the increase in the 2526 is because we're hedging um with budgeting some additional dollars to protect oursel if we lose IDA. And then of course you can see just the state of contracted um percentage is just that especially in a postcoid world um there were some shifts in the way in which employees were compensated. Um and then um insurance increases there's been insurance you know you're you're in a pool. So, it's important just to remember that, you know, if there's a flood in North Carolina or there's a hurricane that hits Florida or
037Texas, the pool could still be hit. Forest fires in California can hit the pool. No different than flooding on the Jersey coast or up one of our riverways can impact can impact other states. So, insurance can be localized with respect to like a cyber insurance. Um but you can get into these pools where you know we're we have unemployment insurance, we have liability insuranceances um and then we have you know catastrophic insuranceances um for certain claims. So, and then now technology is just it's not it's not like in a in a pre1:1 device day and age, you know, you have fixed cost replacement cost for devices, but all the hardware from the switches to the blades to, you know, all the different hotspots that you see. Each hotspot's about $1,000 that you see. You know,
038that projector's $25,000. All of it has a cost. So, and they all have replacement cycles. Like that's going soon, right? You can see the bulb light is dim. It's hard to see in the NWS, right? It's not we're g you're gonna have replacement costs on all this all this stuff. This just shows a snapshot of our budget and some of the fund balances over time and how how this works. But you can see that we're recommending a total tax levy increase of 5.223, which is sizably different than prior years. 3.998 is included within that is just to go budget to budget year to year. 1.225 is the additional dollars that we've built in um to to protect the district around whatever could happen with the federal government. Um so as other districts have to reduce
039services, decrease, increase class sizes, we can maintain programs should a catastrophic federal uh change come at us or should we have a cash flow issue. It might be that we prevail in court or a state prevails in court, but we could have months of a cash flow hold where we need to provide programs for students. So, we're we're hedging um and we're protecting the district, protecting our student programs. And again, I go back to what's the money for? struggling learners, teacher salaries, um, and then ultimately tuition costs for students that have legally binding contracts between parents and IEP teams and ultimately the district to provide those services that have to be provided no matter what happens with federal cash flow. So what ends up happening is we would have to shift funds to support all
040that and it would have a residual impact on reductions of teachers and class sizes in other areas. No one wants any of that. So we're we've recommended building in 1.225 of the 5.223 to be essentially a fund to protect the district should we lose federal aid. If federal aid may is maintained and the district isn't, the board will be able to make a determination about that money in a subsequent budget and then ultimately any breakage that's used that's not used out of those lines would go back to the taxpayers in unspent funds. So the board would have to make decisions about those dollars in a one-time capacity and in a future budget. There is some tax our our tax uh split is based on enrollment. So there's some slight enrollment shifts and you know half
041percent actually does shift the budget you know the impacts the townships um in a tune of about $100. So when you start seeing shifts in population, um, and while West Windsor has all the growth coming with respect to like you drive around the community and see everything being built, the kids actually have we've had a about 113 student decrease in West Windsor year-over-year. Um, as the new residences have are just starting to open as in like during this school year, I think the new town's property down the road by the mosque has 15 um, permits that just were granted. So, as these as these families are just starting to move in, the enrollment will follow. Um, and so in a future year, we would expect that we'll start seeing some enrollment switches going forward, but
042it's going to depend on how the housing opens up over time. Now, this particular slide can be misleading. Um, it comes from the taxpayers's guide to education spending, and this is a DOE, it's on the DOE website. The last year that comes out is the 22 23 year. So that's the last uh year that's been released. And it's really important to note that there's three huge budget categories that are not inside this. One is special education, two is transportation, three is pension. And I say that because in order to go comparable district to district, you have to then look at like budget categories. And there's districts out there like Nutley as an example that if Nutley was going to be compared against Montlair um just to take it out of Mercer County. Nutley has no
043district busing. Everyone's a walker. So you can't compare those numbers. So they just take those big categories out and then that's sort of the remaining. So this isn't an all-in cost. This is in the big like budget category cost. And New Jersey uh we're below New Jersey. we're below our our local peers. So, um you know, in years gone by, they would have said we have an above average product for a below average price. And that used to land when there was a different board president that's now a mayor that's here, although he doesn't like to hear it as much as now. Uh allocation of revenues, he in the audience, he's not. All right. So when we when we have revenues uh we've talked about our 2% we talked about the bank cap categories um
044bank cap works like this you have the year of so for us we have the 2526 that's what we can generate based on the dumpster fire that is the cost of healthcare in the state of New Jersey and then you have two subsequent years that you can quote unquote bank so if you don't spend your SGLA your spending growth limitation adjustment you have two future budget years to spend. And this year, we need to take all three budget categories, all three of the SGLA's to raise 9.7 million minus the decrease in state aid that we're receiving. So, we did not increase, we decreased in state aid by 3% of just under half a million. Then we had the Medicaid reimbursement reduction of 90%. So our total revenue increase of 9.1 and change how that's applied
045across those categories again and we doing this purposely breaking out because after the last two meetings ago there was some confusion that it was 5.223 plus 2%. No, it's the 2% is within the 5.223. So we wanted to make it really clear that it's 2% plus the 1.998 which is the SGLA that's generated from 2526 which is at 3734. Right? So there's the number 3734 and then adding in the two other the 1.8 sorry 1.4 and the 800 is 2.2 and change right and that is the funds that we're building in at 1.225 225 to sort of protect our programs again, our most vulnerable student populations and the services for those student populations to ensure that whatever mess happens at the federal level. And and for those of that are not paying attention to what's
046happening, you have to just look at what happens it's happening in Maine right now. They've been told they risk all federal funds and there's litigation going on between the state of Maine and the federal government. Our attorney general and 18 others just sued on Friday about threatening districts on loss of federal funding. If we don't do this and it happens in two months, we can't go back to the taxpayers, right? We don't remember, we can't go back. We can ask for approve and then not spend and then give back through tax relief in the subsequent year or move it into reserve funds or it becomes the in part of the increase for next year is buried within the 228. But this may be a multi-year issue with the federal government. So it might just be
047the allotment to protect federal funding for several years until this gets fixed. This is going to go through the courts most likely. and and as I've shared in other settings and and I'm I don't believe I'm a conspiracy theorist on this um it's important to recognize that New Jersey is one of two states with a governor's election. So in coming into the next election year, so if you really want to look at where can this play out in the national conversation, New Jersey, a historically blue state that shifted to be a purple state in the last election that public education is a dear uh sacred cow of that has an attorney general and a governor suing the president with a very much contested governor election. So if if it plays out anywhere, New Jersey is
048one of the states where I think it's not inappropriate to say it's possible that this federal conversation starts playing out right here in New Jersey. And if if I'm if I'm correct in that, it's fiscally responsible and prudent to protect our students by taking this additional tax authority because at the end of the day, it's protecting the programs that we offer for students with disabilities that receive services that are legally binding and students that that receive services through tutoring support programs and grants. And then the staffing that's associated with all those programs. This is a lot and I'll just point out one or two things here. Top left there's tax levy, SGLA, healthcare, bank cap, and then total tax levy. That's the local funds. So it's important to go across that total tax levy line.
049You see the 188 million, then the 1908, and then it goes to 5.22. The 5.22. And if we go one more number, 5.223 223 is the impact on the local tax levy. Then you can see across the state aid, that's the reduction I spoke about on a prior slide, the 484, that's the 3%, the guardrails that the governor and the commissioner of education built in, no le no more than a 3% reduction, no more than a 6% increase. Semi I talked about being a 90% reduction. Then the ins and outs of capital reserve dollars that I referenced when I talked about capital projects. Then you have all those local funds and sources around grants and entitlements. And again, because we're we have to budget less. You can see federal sources. We were told to budget
050at 65% of our federal budget over last year. Usually it's 85%. This year we were told to budget at 65%. Just like they're budgeting semi at 90 a loss of 90%. They're only budgeting semi at 10%. Um and then let's go to the ins and outs of transfers uh with respect to ins for capital reserve out to debt servers back to budgeted fund balance. So there's ins and outs of money there and it gets confusing but at the end of the day what matters to the taxpayer is the 5.223% on the total tax levy at the top. That's what hits the taxpayer. So, I've talked about all of this and this is just sort of like a summary slide of the recommendation and then we have so how's it look in the county? Well, it's
051it's it's just as daunting elsewhere. This is live time from BAS about uh budgets that are being presented last night, tonight, last week. I think I believe everything has to be adopted by tomorrow, submitted right by tomorrow, by the 30th. So this is this is the numbers that districts around us are. Robinsville is going right now. Um 5.47 in Euing, 4.56 in Hamilton, 4.1 in Hopewell, 7.27 in Princeton. They are collecting on their debt. So above their SGLA, they're also collecting debt for the referendum. Robbinsville at 5.45 and WWP at 5.223. A big driver for all of us is healthcare. We're all getting hit in the health care area and so is the state and so is the state health plan. Right? So this is this this story of health care is one that's driving
052cost and remember every district because healthc care is so out of control is generating the SGLA and healthare. So then there the boards are all you choosing to apply that in order to make their budgets and that's why you're seeing these numbers go up above 2%. So for the average assessed home, the tax impact is 1.84 uh per $100 of assessed. That's a 12.2 cents increase. So for the year that's $538 increase year-over-year for the average assessed home at $456. So the school taxes are estimated at $8,332. So, we are seeing uh tax impact in Planesboro 538. Now, this what I'm about to say is true for both Plainsboro and West Winds are slightly different for each town, but both towns have lost tax appeals recently. Plansboro reported to us it was over 100 million
053in loss of tax appeals. There's about 74 million or so from their uh audited budget the year before to the number that we were provided uh last week. Um but that that's driving aboutund um $130 of that increase. Um and so that's in Plainsboro. West Windsor also had tax appeal losses around 54 million um year-over-year in the total valuations of the net taxable value of the community. So that's driving about 80 something dollars $84 I believe of of cost in the increase for the average assessed home of $385 per year for uh an increase total estimated tax increase on the average assessed home of 525 at 9,531 and again that 385 is on the year. If we were to subtract out the the net taxable values, it would have been around 406 and 301. But
054the reality is the assessed values are the assessed values and that's how the tax implications get determined. Now that's based on what we were told. When those get audited and finalized, those numbers can be up or down. If those values go up because new things come on the books before they close that out, that could decrease the impact. If those numbers get worse and the net taxable value of the community drops, that increase could be slightly higher. So the net taxable value has a significant impact on on the on the ultimate average uh assessment uh tax assessment for the year. And that's the last slide. So I'm happy to take questions from the board of education and then we'll close the public portion. Thank you, Dr. Adhold. Uh questions from data. Um I want to
055say thank you. Thank you to um Dr. Russo's team. Thank you to Dr. Advald and all the staff that puts all this together and for all the presentations and working that the board has done. I appreciate everything. It's a long um process and we all have a lot of input in it. So um I just wanted I you mentioned this but I just wanted to clarify because um I'm not sure that uh everyone understands this. Um so when you said that there if the federal funds are not eliminated like entirely or partly where will the budgeted money to cover the this possible shortfall go? So I know you said it's tax relief but can you explain that a little bit more because um I'm not sure people really understand. Yeah. So, so as we build
056the 2.2 million in and change into the budget, and that's a lot of change, right? 2.2 million. Um, it's it's being held in certain lines that budget managers won't have access to so we can protect it from being spent. Um and and again it's in the essentially in the category is if the federal dollars either slow down and we have a cash flow issue and covering costs or if they get in we get into federal litigation and that litigation could happen towards the district ourselves or it could happen at the state most likely at the state level. that's the most likely path would be to target. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to target an individual district on one, you know, on on $3 million of federal aid when you go out after a
057state. Um, and so like for Maine, the state of Maine, it's over trans uh youth athlete uh participation and and it being perceived to be a violation of the current administration's interpretation of title six. Um, or is it title nine? Title nine. Title nine. Thank you from the audience. right for title nine right so so it's so in that case the loss the litigation is towards the the state of Maine the department of ed state of Maine's principles association which also oversees the athletic association and there they're taking action where they're saying they're going to pause all federal funding for the state of Maine well New Jersey has that exact same role and we have since Governor Christie so if if the feds wanted to make an issue out of that they could just pick
058that one issue Right. So, so let's go back to then your question of like what happens to that money if that money is not necessary because we don't have any kind of action against New Jersey or action against WWP. The money would sit there when the budget is concluded. the board would have the opportunity to look at budgeting it towards um tax relief for the subsequent year, meaning like asking or it could go to fixed costs in next year's budget and eliminate those lines and it could go so if we needed 4% let's say next year and we generate an SGLA. It could be the 2% plus the 1.25 that's built in and then a smaller percentage. So the budget might be at 2.7 next year and and 2.75 instead of um four because we
059could just take that money from lines that are held and could incorporate it into fixed costs. So those are budget decisions the board and then that money that 2.2 to that would be on the balance sheet. The question is, do you do a one-time reduction um to help give back some tax relief or do you put it into reserve accounts that could then be used to offset the ability to collect money on debt? And that is is a is a way of tax relief because it's using collected monies um for monies you won't ask for additional tax authority on. So, it offsets what you might ask for. So, um, at the end of the day, there'll be some decisions, but this could be a multi-year issue where that 2.2 just has to stay on a
060budgeted line in multiple years and gets the tax relief every year. And let's pray we don't have to spend it. I hope we don't have to spend it. If we have to spend it, it means bad things are happening in the state and we're still standing, but other districts are scrambling and services aren't being provided for students throughout the state of New Jersey. But we can still take care of the de students in WWP which at the end of the day is my responsibility and your responsibility. So like you know like I I I feel for my colleagues that can't make these moves. We've been a little bit ahead of this. We are the only district that's passed a statement on diversity, equity, inclusivity in the state of New Jersey. One of our other colleagues
061in Asbury Park. Our colleagues in Asbury Park have passed something slightly similar but specific to immigration. You know, we've taken a pretty bold stand in protecting our programs, but we've talked about bal budgeting our our vision, budgeting our mission, and budgeting our goals, and that this budget does reflect that as we're making sure that we stand for everything we say we're standing and ensuring that the services we say we're going to provide continue. Right. Thank you for the question and the answer. Um, any other questions? Ly, thank you Dr. Adhold for the presentation. I think along the same lines, if I'm looking at the slide with the um our neighbors and their increase across um the county, do do you are you aware if they include any sort of provision to um that's kind of
062equivalent to our 1.225 um for any I'm unaware of any district taking a proactive stance to protect programs or having the authority to do so with respect to having bank cap to be able to do that. So, we're we're in one way very fortunate in the way we've been financially positioned to be able to put some dollars into protect program, protect staff, and and protect services for students. Um, none of our colleagues here or across the state, I'm aware, have done that. So, the 3.99 for us to move from year to year in terms of just keeping everything as is. Right. So, our um 5.223 overall that you see on there is incorporated. It would have been if we didn't take the 1.225, 225 it would have been 3.998 to your point um and we
063would have been the lowest in the county yet you know higher number than in years past the additional 1.225 225 is the money built into the authority the through the SGLA's to protect services for students. And then um just another question about I know you mentioned that the one to 2% left over after all the uh the major players that really kind of go to what students and parents know about the district programs, sports, arts programs, things like that. Um, I don't know if there's ever enough, but is there are those things able to continue as is or improve because I know, you know, so there's there's no additional like stipens built in. There's no like all the contractual fixed costs for advisors and whatnot have continued. We're not reducing any of those programs. We're
064continuing all of our athletic programs, you know, and you look around the state and say like when you can't meet the fixed costs, what's happening out there? What's the story? In Freehold Regional, they're talking about almost a 13% increase. I didn't put that on the slide because they're not in our county. In middle Middle Middletown, they're talking about a 10% plus increase. In Lacy, they're talking about elimination of all all sports, all seasons, all sports. In in Flemington, Raren, um you know, our neighbors over there just front page this weekend. 65 teaching positions. Our friends in Bordontown, 56 positions. 50 56 positions in Bordontown. So you start seeing like what happens when you have these gaps and you don't take f like you don't take these fiscal actions, you obliterate your staffing because that's where
065the majority of your money is tied up in people people and benefits. So you know if every firstear teacher is approximately 65,000 and you know a blended health care rate you know for an average family plan now it's over $45,000 you know. though when you talk about a single plan to a married married spouse to a to a family you're talking let's just say 30,000 35,000 on average when you add in prescription dental healthcare so each teacher is 100 grand for step zero right on average to budget in so if you're eliminating 100 positions as what Middletown's talking about doing with the 10% increase you know you're talking over 100 teachers and IAS and support services and secretaries and yeah, the handful of administrators. And so that's what's happening out there like in the field
066in real time. And it doesn't take long on NJ.com to just search through article after article to see the bloodshed that's happening in school districts all over New Jersey. On that note, any other any other questions, please? Thank you again for this presentation and um it's still very important and very um difficult to follow everything that's happening at the federal level and it does require I guess the um the administration the district to follow everything so closely. So um from the last presentation to this one I guess the new pieces of information are regarding the assessed values between the two townships if that's correct. Yeah, that we did not have the assessed values until the last two weeks and we wait for that from the townships. Um we got West Windsors yesterday afternoon. So, you
067know, we can't even calculate the impacts um until yesterday. Thank you. And so those assessed values could still potentially change. It's not set in stone yet. if that's yeah I don't have off the top of my head when they get finalized and when they for their audit period for what that hits the community Chris do you happen to know is there a finite time yeah I mean we don't expect it to shift much but but if you look back to what was in our budget projection last year versus what was audited there's slight There's slight differences. The total was relatively similar, but there are slight differences between what we provide because what we share even in this slide here is based on what the townships provide us as like in an email in advance of
068the presentations. Right. Right. So, and then based on that estimation of where they believe it's going to be when it gets finalized and audited with with, you know, there's still things that they're waiting for at the county level or potentially at a state appeal level. As that all gets finalized, they could also have some assessed values hit the tax roles still as things are opening in certain certificate. It doesn't hit the tax roles when it's being built, but when the certificate of occupancy and the closing happens, right? So that that also there could be some finalization in those numbers as well. They could shift it slightly. So if it shifts it the values up, it helps. If it shifts it lower, it doesn't help. It hurts the taxpayer because it spreads the costs of all
069services, not just school taxes, but municipal in increases or municipal costs as well as county costs across the pool. Okay. And then um that for example on this slide uh school tech the very last line school taxes are estimated to be that value of the 8,000. So is that um increased or I'm just trying to understand. Yeah that's increased by $538. Okay. So if that's the average assessed home within the township or property, right? Home, town home, condo home in the in the prop in the township of Plansboro. So if someone's home is double that, their tax impact is double that because they're they're above well above the average home. So are estimated to be 8K increase or an increase of 8K, right? On on the percentage on the percentage that is the school tax,
070the school tax total is 833. the increase over year-over-year is 538 on the average home of $456,000. So if a if a home is uh a million that's going to be an increase of $1,76 and the tax would be twice that would be 16,06. Thank you for that clarification. And I think folks are, you know, kind of uh trying to understand how this all translates to their actual what they're actually going to face. So understood. Thanks for the question. Puja, go ahead. Thank you again for the present. Thank you again for the presentation. Um just going back on what you were saying in terms of um new properties and uh coming up and potentially changing the assessed value. So you I know you mentioned West Windsor specifically in terms of properties coming upcoming properties in
071several locations. Do you know if there's upcoming properties in Plansboro that would also change the assessed value? Um no I think I think we have a little bit of a tale of two towns right now with respect to this. Um Plansboro has properties that could potentially be built but nothing that's under construction, right? Whereas West Windsor has active construction of over 1500 units, whether you go out by the transit village or whether you go by the low center or you go right down by the mosque with the town's home, the town's property. Um so, you know, there's properties actively con being constructed in West Windsor that are looking to come on. We're also in um in 2025. This is the year of affordable housing settlements next round. So there's active discussions about the next responsibility
072for affordable housing and I think the one to watch there is really in in West Windsor with some appeals and challenges that are going on with respect to the number but that potentially could be a hundreds to low 1,1200. So it all depends on what happens in their appeal process. I have a lot of faith in our municipal folks will work to try to bring that number down. But that being said um it still could be hundreds of units. So, you know, we're we're in a position where West Windsor is adding residential units. We have gotten ahead of the growth with respect to the referendum. So, as the numbers come, the question is, will we have the dollars to add the staff, right? So, so staffing still within our that's outside of the referendum, right?
073We have to still find ways to budget increase staff as the population comes on. Now, one thing that I've said in prior presentations over years now is tell me which homes are going to get which age kids at which school impact and you're a better predictor than I am. Um, what I know is what we're seeing in the trends and that is it's harder to buy your starter home in WWP, right? So, we're not seeing a lot of folks when town homes down the road are going for $900,000 plus. That's not a lot of folks moving in there with no children. They're coming in. They're not coming in and say, you know, I want to have a baby in five years, so let me move in here. They're moving in with maybe one kid in
074school and maybe one kid that's going into school. Or they might move in with kids in middle school and they just want to get into the district and maybe they're in a different place in their life financially where they can move from one home to one community to another. So, we're starting to see the average age of our enrollment starting to go in upper upper elementary into middle school. like sixth grade this year we've gained over 100 kids from from the beginning of the year to now just in sixth grade um between nor CMS and G and GMS um that is not true in kindergarten right so our kindergarten numbers are still holding relatively low whereas in years gone by we would have always seen remember now we have full day we used to have
075half day we would have seen a 22% increase in first grade we're not seeing those same increases in the last four years now. Some of that's in in the COVID through postcoid environment. Some of it's in our immigration policies and the makeup of our community. Some of it's in the ability to work virtually and not need to be near a train line. There's a lot of factors involved, but I do believe a lot of it is also the starting point for our homes is is a difficult price point to start out with as a young family. Chris, please. You know, going back to the net taxable value discussion a second ago. I guess a cleaner way to saying that is um we get numbers from the townships. Plansburg gets theirs to us right away. West
076Windsor's always gets it to us at the last second. There's always because there's always challenges. I don't know what all the challenges are at the county level. And it's also Mercer County. Yeah. It's part of the problem. So what happens is and what we did today was we took the abstract ratables. What happens is each year an abstract ratables is printed. That number is can be slightly different which it was in this case in both communities than the number that we were given this time last year for the values of the communities. So that's where there can be a small variation in the actual value of the community which I believe by June 1 is in stone for July tax bill etc. Um, so that is that variance that may or may not occur, but
077so it's from an when when Dr. Adhold says an audited number, that's the abstract ratables that's handed out uh in like December for the year completed. So appreciate that. Uh Lori, you have another question. Sorry, just one more question. I just remembered. Um I know that um the budget presented in front of us that the the healthcare SGLA from the past uh two years and this year are all being used. So for next year is that going to hurt us a bit for like having a bit of um of the bank cap just to kind of build in for Yeah. Like as things stand today, yeah, we would have the 2% available to us and allowances being zero allowances. That being said, in every fiscal year you can generate an SGLA based on healthcare. So
078some years it's a smaller build or smaller allocation than others. So everything's dependent upon the differential between u state health insurance um in the state's plan and the costs versus some of your fixed costs and there's a whole formula and the 2% right and so there's a whole formula in that about what you can generate that is when the formulas open up and we plug everything in we find out what we're our tax are available SGLA is we will have to make a decision on the money that we have baked in for protecting the district and look we're going to know a lot more around what's happening with the state of public education, federal funding over the course of the 25 calendar year and let alone into 20 the beginning of 26 with some of
079the challenges and some of the way this is going to play out relatively quickly. If we're seeing it to be favorable for school districts across the nation and things settle out and and things sort of the heat comes down, we could look at that 1.225 225 and put it into fixed costs and then play the SGLA dollars. And we've looked at SGLA's in multi-year. But we also sort of look at federal funding on fire right now in the real threat to public education today and wanting to be able to maintain programs and protect our students best interests today. So you can also look at it as sort of taking a a calculated risk of collecting a little more upfront that could go into fixed costs in a year from now. So you know we're we're
080sort of looking ahead saying and remember as we're putting this budget together this is February into March and some of the things that we said could happen in February and March are happening in live time right now. So, we haven't been radically wrong in the in what's happening at the federal level with the litigation and the threats and where we're at. We've actually been right on point with what's happened. So, you know, as I don't want to be right about, you know, what's happening in potentially in a governor's election, but you can see it play itself out just watching what's happening in the conversations that's that's happening. and we're pretty tuned in in our in some of our advocacy roles in associations outside of WWP. Appreciate it. Dana, you have a question. One more followup.
081Getting back to the um assessed the assessed values going um lower. Um do we know why they are lower? I think we heard that in the previous um Yeah. So, so what can happen in in um in you you a property owner can can appeal to the tax assessor um if they feel that they're paying more in taxes than their property is worth. The tax assessor then makes the determination to either uphold the taxes or to make an adjustment. If they uphold and you want a challenge, you go to court. And in this particular situation, in several major cases, for some of the larger complexes that are in our communities that have large footprints but maybe are sitting with lower rental right now than maybe 5 years ago, they prevailed in getting tax savings and
082tax adjustments um in the tune of over 74 million in in Plansboro and about 45 million to 54 million in West Windsor. So, we were given numbers of 45 and 100. So, if the uh but if you look at the the the the abstract values, it's actually like 74 and 54. So, but either way, it all has to do with like and I'm not I we weren't told which properties, but you can look over there and say like which buildings are sitting 70% empty, right? Because they put their workers virtual, right? And they don't need the office spaces anymore. So now they're they're sit these owners are sitting with properties that have names of companies on them but no company in there, right? Those kind of properties are questioning. They didn't lose 74 million in
083valuation because the local homeowner challenged, you know, you know, it would take a lot of homeowners to win that. We're talking about major property owners and major rental properties that are sitting vacant. Thank you. Uh go ahead, Liz. Um just a quick question too. We've been talking about the 1.225 as possibly. Could you mind? The one uh the 1.225 is possibly if we don't spend it. What if do we have that option with the 1.998 or that has to be? No, just to clarif budget to budget to maintain your programs. The additional 1.225 225 is the is is a is a step to make sure that we're protecting the district around all the work that we're doing um on federal grants. And remember, if you go back to that 8 March 18th meeting and the
084statement on diversity, equity, inclusivity, I mean, what's at risk is everything we value. The whole line of it's not what we do, it's who we are. It's all of our programs that support our students across a multitude of topics around diversity, equity, inclusivity, around, you know, our uh uh gender neutral bathrooms, around um the the stance that we've taken and the state has taken for our trans youth athletes and protecting uh student privacy and you know, in in our hiring practices and our instructional programs and the diversification of text and you know you name it. There's there's literally hundreds of things that we could point to because the state the federal government has not defined what they mean by indoctrination of DEI practices. All right. Thank you. Any any other questions? Well, thank you very
085much for the very uh comprehensive presentation and um lots to lots of them all over and think about. Thank you very much. Okay, now that takes us to our opportunity for public comments on the budget. The board invites thoughts and reactions on the 2025 2026 budget 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 be directed to the presiding officer. This public comment period shall be limited to 60 minutes. Any comments on the budget? Yes. uh Debbie Bear uh teacher in the district and a 1982 graduate of the district and I'm really here to say it makes me so proud to hear that
086we are still striving for excellence in all the areas and our budget reflects that. Um it it just so happens that my mother was on the school board when the high school opened and one of the things they talked about during that time period of what kind of high school are we going to build and what does this mean for our community? It was all the things you're talking about now. It was the topical things of the day. Of course, um actually there was some discussion about homosexuality in the high school. Quite a few of my friends were gay. And it was something just that was part of our school. And we know for I'm here at enough of these meetings to know that the things that matter most to the kids when they make
087their reports are all the extracurricular. We never hear how great LA 2 was, but we do hear what's happening at the dance and what club is doing this and how the swim team did and who's dancing and all of that. So, I think preserving all of those things is a priority here. It has been from the beginning. And I want you to know that you are carrying on the long tradition of when the district became a K12. That was what they were talking about then, too. It's why we have a very interesting looking high school south because they were innovative and they wanted to try new things and they thought kids all working together on projects is a great way to learn. And so they laid out a high school that looked like that and
088took a lot of grief for it because people were like when are you building them all? Um but they went ahead. They got advice and they wanted to be the best in the in the state and we still are. Someone texted me this morning congratulations. I was like on what? Uh, our two high schools are the top in the top 10 for SAT scores in the state. So, we've grown tremendously. I think there were four schools when I started. There are 10. They are full and bigger and we're still doing a great job. So, I really, really commend. It was a long presentation on the budget, but it was thorough and it really does show the values and they were the values when we started and I so appreciate my mother's been gone a long
089time, but you are carrying on what was valuable then too. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that perspective. Any other comments? Okay, seeing none, I'll close this public comment period and we can move to uh vote on approving the 2025 2026 budget. Can I get a motion to approve items number items one to three of the budget? Uh Louisa and Robin. Um any other questions? I think we're good with questions. Okay, we'll start with Miss Hoe. Yes, Miss Shaw. Yes, Miss Zovich. Yes, Miss Chenierra. Yes, Miss Krug. Yes, Miss Maliga. Yes, Miss Shetty. Yes, Miss Bonsel. Yes, Miss Mcuan. Yes. So, this adjourns our public hearing on the 2025 2026 budget. And that means um we can move on to our regularly scheduled program. Um I I just wanted to quickly mention that
090uh this past Sunday a few of us uh board members were fortunate enough to um uh accept and thank um the Plainsboro Democratic Organization at the Plainsboro Mayor's Branch for the um the Peter A. Cantu scholarship fund for um a student starting next year um a resident of Plansboro from either one of the high schools who has an interest or is interested in pursuing public service. Um uh as I said on Sunday um it is more than uh financial support. It is a message to our students that their dreams, their hard work and um their desire to give back to their community uh matters. And uh do you have any other comments? I'll pass. I think that's a good idea for now. Uh so that takes us to our first opportunity for public comments. The
091board invites thoughts and reactions on agenda items and items of concern from members of our committee 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 be directed to the presiding officer. This public comment period shall be limited to 60 minutes. Any public comments? Go for it. Good evening. Uh Daniel Weiss, uh 15 Cano Brook Drive in West Windsor. Councilman here in West Windsor and Lison to the school board. Um, welcome back from spring break. Right. It feels it's only been a week, but it feels like a long time ago. Um, I usually I haven't gone on a spring break event in a while, but this year I attended
092um for my spring break, I attended the the first international robotics competition in Houston, Texas. FIRST, which is an acronym which stands for inspiration and recognition of science and technology, is a global nonprofit that empowers young people through hands-on STEM experiences. Was founded in 1989 by the inventor Dean Cayman. Uh first provides robotics programs for students from kindergarten through high school. Um fostering innovation, teamwork, and problem solving skills and with a mission to prepare students for the future. First competitions challenge teams to design, build, and program robots while promoting values like gracious professionalism, collaboration, and community participation. And by engaging with mentors and industry professionals and peers, the participants gain real world skills that inspire careers in STEM and beyond. And the reason that I'm talking about this is that West Windsor didn't have one
093but actually two teams representing our community. Uh Westminster Plainsburgh, I should say, two teams representing us in two different leagues. Uh the team don't blink is a community uh FTC team supported by the Princeton STEM Academy and the Midnight Inventors is a WWP uh school district supported FRC team. And to give you an idea of the enormity of achieving a spot to compete in the World Championships, there are 9,000 FTC teams worldwide and only 2% are invited to the FTC World Championships. Um so congratulations to all the students uh who participated and a special congratulations to the don't blink team who earned the prestigious inspire award which is a top judge judged award given to the team that best embodies the first tech challenge. Um but came back from that and immediately jumped into a
094meeting with high school south spectrum group which is the GSA affinity group here. Uh we spoke about the various protections in New Jersey that has that New Jersey has in place for the LGBTQ plus community. Um and they along with um with all the spectrum teams across the district have been been invited to participate in the Robinsville Pride event. Robinsville has been holding Pride events every um every five years for five years now. And this year they're trying to do uh their theme is five towns in five years. So they're including all their neighboring towns. So that's West Windsor, uh, East Windsor, Allentown, and Hamilton. Um, and so trying to collaborate with all these teams to to, uh, to work with us. Can I have one more minute? Oh, sorry, Dan. We'll have to come
095back for this second opportunity. All right, I'll do that. All right, cool. Thank you. Any other comments? Okay, with that, seeing none, I will close this public uh opportunity uh for comments. And uh at this point, I'd like to ask for a motion to move an agenda item out of order, specifically personnel. Uh Dana and Ly. Uh all those in favor say I. I. I. Okay. So for a comment when you're ready. Okay. Um do you want me to first or do you want to go first? Okay. All right. So for personnel item number one plus the green addendum. Can I get a motion uh to approve it? Uh Schweta and Liz. Um any questions, comments? Nope. Is it all? Oh, yeah. Uh roll call, please. Sure. Okay. We'll we'll we'll start with Miss uh
096Shetty. Yes. Miss Jenner. Yes. Miss Hoe. Yes. Miss Krug. Yes. Miss Maliga. Yes. Miss Sha. Yes, Miss Zovich. Yes, Miss Bonsel. Yes, Miss Mcuan. Yes. All right. So, uh I just want to draw attention for the public to two uh individuals that here in the audience with us that were just appointed uh by the board of education this evening. Um this evening we have uh a position of assistant superintendent of pupil services and planning. I'm pleased uh with the recommendation and now the appointment of uh Miss Jessica Sinata our as our next assistant superintendent for pupil services and planning. Uh Miss Sinata is the current principal of High School South uh where she spent the last four years and was the point person on the construction and postcoid and tremendous work over there at South.
097Uh prior to that, Jessica was the high school north assistant principal um for four years. Prior to that, Jessica was assistant principal in Lawrence and uh she's also served as an administrator in multiple settings over the past 17 years. And before that, she was a music teacher in Illinois, Paraguay, and Bolivia. So, we're thrilled to have Jessica join our central office team. And we welcome her in July um as she finishes out her school year at High School South so she can end this year with her students and then join us up here uh for all the joys of central office as you witness tonight. you're doing you're doing next year's presentation. Um and then um I'm also pleased this evening to introduce our new assistant principal at High School North uh joining us in
098the audience with uh Mr. Thomas and uh now Dr. Singh. I'm happy to be her dissertation adviser and presside over that in the last month. Um uh pleased to introduce uh Rosalyn Bartholomew as a new assistant principal to join Lamont and Sonia at High School North. Rosalyn comes to us from Hillside High School where she served as the assistant principal for the past two years. Uh but prior to that, she was a 24-year social studies teacher also at Hillside High School. And we're thrilled to have her join us here in WWP uh in the upcoming uh in the upcoming months and we're hoping in July. Um so congratulations to both of you. We look forward to you both joining the team and joining in new capacities and we look forward to your uh service. So
099thank you. [Applause] Congratulations and welcome. And before we move on, we do also want to acknowledge a few retirements uh at our district. Uh the first is Laura Agnella. She's our teacher resource specialist for technology across town center, Wyoff, Milstone River, uh Milstone River Village, Maurice Hawk, and Dutchneck. uh she is retiring after 26 years of service to WWP. Then we have Mora Gene Healey who is our Wyoff school nurse who's retiring after 29 years in service to the district. And last but not least, we have Nancy Masari, our Maurice Hawk health and physical education teacher who is retiring after 40 and a half years uh at WWP. So, we wish you all well. Uh, lots of health, good luck, new adventures, and we thank you very much for all your years of dedication and
100service to the district. Now, we can go back to um our board of education committee reports. Uh, so I'll ask Dana for our first report on administration and facilities. Okay. Good evening. Um the um ANF committee met on Tuesday, April 22nd and we reviewed um several policies and we recommend them for a second reading and approval at tonight's meeting. They are policy 5512 harassment, intimidation, and bullying, policy 9163, which is spectator code of conduct for interclastic events, and policy 5111 eligibility of resident non-resident students. We were also given an up an athletics update. Spring sports are in full swing and our student athletes are are doing well. At High School North, the girls lacrosse team had a thrilling victory over Robinsville. The boys tennis uh tennis team has been nearly unstoppable um only losing one
101match thus far. And the boys golf team is off to a um incredible 6-1 start. over at uh High School South. The tennis team is currently undefeated and gearing up to play in the CVC tournament. I don't know if that already happened, but um a job well done also to our junior softball player Diana who for achieving her 100th career hit and to Alex uh Seagull who Alex Seagull who and earned his 200th career point um in in boys lacrosse. And a huge congratulations to um is it Shai say it shily Shily Holden who has been selected to receive the NJsia scholar athlete award and is also the proud recipient of the George O'Gorman Memorial Scholarship which is awarded by the CVC um basketball coaches. So, congrats to all of our um sports teams and
102the individuals who have um achieved these special recognitions. All right. Thanks, Dana. Any um questions for administration facilities? Nope. Okay. So, I'll ask Ly for um curriculum and instruction. Thank you, Grayen. Uh the curriculum and instruction committee met on um April 22nd. We began with a discussion on middle school electives. Supervisors Jeff Santoro and Russell Ray provided the committee with a detailed update to the challenge to the changes and elective and cycle offerings at the middle schools. Um next uh on the agenda are items to be voted on tonight. First, remote instruction plan. Um the curriculum committee recommends approval of submission of the 202526 uh WWPRSD remote learning plan. Uh second, professional development. The committee recommends approval of um two professional development. The first is two teachers to participate in a oneweek science summer institute
103um on July 21st through the 25th of this year this year uh at Raritan Valley Community College at a total cost not to exceed $800 plus travel. And the next professional development, 10 district teachers to attend virtually a three-day responsive classroom elementary advance course um June 16th through the 18th at a total cost of uh 8,700 and that would be paid through title 4 uh grant funds. Next is field trips. the uh we recommend approval for the middle school and high school future problem solvers to the future problem solvers international conference in uh at the University of Indiana from June 4th through June 8th. The cost of the trip is approximately 1,700 uh dollars per student. Uh next for travel approval committee recommends approval for two adviserss to accompany the middle school and high school
104students to the future problem solvers uh international competition that I just mentioned. Um and the cost of that trip is not to exceed 1,700 per teacher including travel. And then the other uh travel approval is for 10 multilingual learner teachers to attend the NJ uh TOES and NJBE spring conference uh New Brunswick on May 20th through the 22nd. The total cost of the trip not to exceed 4,400 and that will be paid through uh contractual funds uh and title three grant funds. The committee will next meet on May 20th. Thanks Ly. Any questions for curriculum? No. Okay. So, I'll ask Louisa for a finance committee. Great. The finance committee also met on April 22nd. The committee reviewed agenda items, including the monthly financial reports. The administration affirmed that no major accounts are overextended and that
105sufficient funds are available to complete the year. The committee reviewed the following motions on the agenda for approval. Approve the submitt of a grant application to the NJSI group. approved the assistant superintendent for finance to issue an RFP using a competitive contracting process for staff professional development in the Ordin Gillingham approach to reading and spelling instruction. To approve the renewal of current copier leases districtwide, to approve cooperative purchases over the bid limit for technology infrastructure, to approve several technology agreements for software licenses. Approve the disposal of obsolete equipment. approved transportation jointer agreements with other educational entities, approval of education drills and quoted routes and approved staff professional development, travel and expenses. Next, the committee discussed the budget. The budget was approved by the county office of education on April 8th, 2025. A public hearing on
106the budget is scheduled for April 29th. The committee reviewed and discussed the most current budget information. Next, the committee discussed EIP 2. The first construction meeting for the power purchase agreement was held last Wednesday. Due to the extended delay in contract negotiations, several logistical concerns have arisen regarding construction staging. As work must now be completed during the school year, large portions of the parking lots will need to be sectioned off to facilitate construction activities such as installing the car ports with solar panels in the parking lots. Regarding the custodial RFP, five responses were received for the recently issued custodial services request for proposals. The administration evaluated the submissions using the rubric outlined in the RFP. Based on the scoring, three companies have been invited to participate in an inperson interview with their leadership teams. Staff
107reported on cafeteria operations. Meal service trends have remained consistent throughout the year. Compared to the same month last year, the number of breakfast served has increased while the number of lunches has decreased. The paid lunch equity tool will be used will need to be used shortly to calculate the required lunch pricing for the 2526 school year. Other service metrics have remained steady, including a 39% increase in meals served to students qualifying for free, reduced, and NJ income eligible programs. Additionally, 81% of all breakfast served were provided to qualifying students. In March, Southwest Food Service Excellence successfully hired three new staff members. However, four vacancies remain. For transportation, the committee discussed the cancellation of a previously quoted route and the acceptance of quotes for newly quoted to and from home routes as well as several activity
108routes. The committee also reviewed the bus evacuation drills conducted during the month of April. The committee will next meet on Tuesday, May 20th. Thanks, Louisa. Any questions for finance? Go ahead, Louis. Chris, I was just wondering for the construction um of the carports for which particular schools and is that going to impact like parking at events during the school year because I'm just reading that says during the school year that it'll be impacted. I don't know if you know the answer or not, but just curious. I thought you were going to ask me about the price uh equity tool is what I thought you were going to ask me about if you know if it's the same thing Flo uses. But um uh the school's um high school north parking lot in front of the
109stadium, community middle school on the side uh facing it on the left, a high school south, the main parking lot. Uh they're the schools that um I'm thinking around if I'm missing anything. There's Oh, and then Milstone River in the back. Uh there's two parking lots in the back between the schools. So, each of those lots will be uh impacted. I'll be putting together, matter of fact, I have a meeting tomorrow with the PPA company and and Schneider Electric and uh Cop Electric, who's the subcontractor for um Green Skies, PPA Company. Uh and then I'll be reaching out to the principles and reaching out to Dr. out a hold and try to put meetings together or we can uh kind of schedule what can happen where. Yep. Cool. Thanks. Any other questions? Uh okay. Next
110is our voting portion of our meeting. Um can I get a motion for administration items numbers 1 through 4? Uh Dana and Liz. Any questions? Okay, we'll start with Miss Krug. Yes, Jenny Hera. Yes, Miss Ho. Yes, Miss Maliga. Yes, Miss Shaw. Yes, Miss Shetty. Yes, Miss Zovich. Yes, Miss Bonsel. Yes, Miss Mchuan. Yes. And can I get a motion for curriculum and instruction items numbers one through three? Uh, Ly and Puja, any questions? Okay. Okay. Okay. We'll start. We'll start with Miss Maliga. Yes. Miss Bonsel. Yes. Miss Shetty. Yes. Miss Chennier. Yes, Miss O. Yes, Miss Krug. Yes, Miss Shaw. Yes, Miss Zovich. Yes, Miss Mcuan. Yes. And can I get a motion for finance items numbers 1 through 18 plus blue addendum? Uh, Louisa and Robin. Any questions? Okay, we'll start with Miss
111Hoe. Yes. Miss Zovich, yes. Miss Shaw, yes. Miss Chenier, yes. Miss Krue, yes. Miss Maliga, yes. Miss Shetty, yes. Miss Bonsel, yes. Miss Mchuan. Yes. Can I get a motion to approve the board of education m minutes from March 18th and April 8th? Uh, Ajanta and Loy. All those in favor say I. I. I. Any abstensions? None. Do we have any board leaison reports? Go ahead, Puja. Uh last Wednesday, April 23rd, uh I had the pleasure of attending DLI Spanish night, the first DLI Spanish night, and hopefully this will be an annual tradition. Um I had the pleasure of watching uh the DI students from kindergarten through 6th grade dance, sing, act. There were MC's, there were back flips, there were splits. It was amazing. Uh, I know all uh the DI families in attendance
112really enjoyed it. It was a very memorable experience. Thank you to Ashley Warren and to all the DI teachers for all of their time and energy in putting together these performances. It was really a wonderful night. That's really nice to hear. Um, do you have any other mison reports? Go ahead, Liz. Just wanted to um sorry just wanted to mention that uh the SASA organization, studentr run organization of high school south had their annual event and I know North also had a similar SAS event uh very recently and both programs were very well attended and the performances were amazing and there was a lot of contributions and participation both by faculty staff members as well as the school community the students and all. So, it's a engaging and exciting event for both schools. That's really
113nice. Thanks, Liz. Anybody else? All right, since we're adding stuff, I'm going to do one more. Um, Monday, I guess that was yesterday. Um, there was a webinar um hosted by uh Jessica Smmedley um for nurturing healthy minds uh webinar. Um I believe the recording will be on the district website. So, I really encourage everyone to uh to go and view it. Um really um really powerful um good messages out there um that I think will be very helpful to everybody uh especially in times like these. So, any other reports? Nope. Okay. So, any new business? Nope. Okay. This takes us to our second opportunity for public comments. The board invites comments from members of our community who are present. Each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making
114a 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 and I know Dan was waiting to add one more minute from the first comment. So thank you for indulging me. Uh Dan Weiss 15 newbrook drive West Windsor. So um I just want to sort of finish and sort of tie everything together that what why I came to speak today. Um and interestingly someone was talking about all the wonderful um extracurricular activities that we like to talk about and the students like to promote. Um but today I did something a little different. Um today I met with a group of students at High School South who are taking a social science elective
115focused on housing, transportation and community design. uh they are working in groups on a capstone project on issues such as the crisis of waste. So how do we get to zero waste in West Windsor and Plansboro and or the crisis of isolation and aging? How do we foster community and the social supports that come with it? Uh the crisis of education, what kind of school and campus do we want to build for the future? and the crisis of commerce uh which was about how do we re-energize local entrepreneurship with face-to-face interactions. And so I uh spoke to the class about affordable housing here in West Windsor, which is kind of a hot topic today. Um and we quickly dove into a broad Q&A about all the projects that they're working on. It's really incredibly impressive
116the depth of understanding that these students have about real world issues. um and their passion to sort of roll up their sleeves and to problem solve. And uh I've committed to follow up with with each of their teams on their individual projects. So um kudos to their teacher, Brian Levenson, for providing a space for these students to engage with our community. And quite frankly, as a councilman, I wish we would see this kind of engagement from our adult members of our community. Um, but it does give me hope that um our students are are are right there with us and are are paying attention to what's going on um in our world and our and our community here. Um and so tying that all together, um you know that this school district is incredibly special
117and it gets awards. Uh but sometimes you don't get enough um credit for the work that you do and the commitments that you make and the hard decisions that you have to make. Uh this budget process was was quite um challenging, right? quite different for you compared to previous years. So kudos to you for for all you do to allow the students to to grow and build um build their community here. It really means a lot um to me and to our whole community. So thank you so much. Thank you. Any other comments before we close out? Okay, I'm going to close this public comment period and we'll need to recess into closed executive session. So let me read. Uh whereas the open public meetings act authorizes boards of education to meet in executive session
118under certain circumstances. Whereas the open public meetings act requires the board to adopt a resolution at a public meeting to go into private session. Now therefore be it further resol be it resolved that by the West Windsor Plains Regional School District Board of Education that it is necessary to meet an executive session to discuss certain items involving a student matter as well as the superintendent evaluation process and the timelines. Be it further resolved that any discussion held by the board which need not remain confidential will be made public as soon as feasible. The minutes of the executive session will not be disclosed until the need for confidentiality no longer exists. Be it further resolved that the board will not return to open session to conduct business at the conclusion of the executive session. Now can
119I get a motion to adjourn to close session? Uh Louisa and Robin. All those in favor say I. I. All right. Thank you everyone and good night. [Music]