001Very good. Call the meeting to order. Please rise for the flag salute. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America to the republic for it stands nationy and justice for all. The New Jersey Open Public Meetings Law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of public bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon. In accordance with the provisions of this act, the Cedar Grove Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be advertised by having the date, time, and place thereof posted on bulletin boards in the district, published, and transmitted to the Verona Cedar Grove Times and Starled Ledger newspapers. tap into online news filed with the township clerk and posted on the
002district website. Could I have a roll call, please? Board member Grande here. Board member Marzulo here. Board member Pallik here. Board member Keegan here. Board President Dara here. Thank you. Good evening everybody. Okay. Uh at this point I would open the meeting to public comment. Seems that there is nobody here today. I move to close that portion of the meeting and we'll move on to some committee reports. Not too much today. Uh I hope everyone had a very nice spring break, everybody at home. Um from what I hear, the transition back into school this week was a little bit tough on Monday, but I think everybody got back in and we're back into this uh swing of things. We have our student representative today. So maybe you could talk a little bit about how that
003transition was. Good evening everyone. My name is Ava Datano and I'm the president of Cedar Grove High School all school council. Leading up to the Thursday before spring break, the all school council hosted a spirit week where students dressed in pajamas, tie-dye, and matching sets. And on April 17th, the halls of CJHS were filled with panther pride and spirit. Throughout the day, students played a game of ro shambo where each student was given a beaded necklace upon arrival to school and throughout the day would burst other students in a game of rock paper scissors. Whoever won would receive the losers beads and the final game took place at the pep rally. The final game was actually between two teachers children because on this day CGHS hosted bring your child to work day where members of
004the tomorrow's teacher class, peer leaders, and all school council helped facilitate events for the staff students. The pep rally celebrated spring sports and a game of flag football was played between each grade and the seniors won. And overall it was a great day that showcased CJS school spirit and helped us lead into our nice spring break. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Um as far as committee reports, um we really didn't have any committee meetings. We we did meet on personnel, but um everything that was discussed at that meeting is on the agenda tonight. We'll be moving some U resolutions based upon um the results of that meeting. Um I do want to take this time just to thank Dr. Termanmanian for um spearheading our new newsletter that went out. That was really impressive.
005It was really nice to see um and have it delivered to the house. So I hope the community had an opportunity to read through that. So that was a really uh a nice addition. So thank you for doing that. Thank you. Um, does anyone else have anything that they wanted to share regarding any committee me reports or any updates at this point? We're good. We're good. Okay. All right. We have a board presentation tonight. I'll turn it over to you, Dr. T. Okay. Madame President, thank you very much and good evening, Cedar Grove school community. Um, this evening is the presentation of our final budget. At our March meeting, we presented a preliminary budget that was then sent to the county for approval, and I'm pleased to report that we did receive that approval. Um,
006if I may, Mr. Burnside, with a clicker. Thank you. That's fine. You're fine. Okay. Um, so I'm going to start off here on the first slide. This presentation is going to look very familiar to anyone who witnessed or viewed the presentation in March. Uh, we started off again with an overview of our enrollment across grade levels. Uh, and a couple things I want to highlight for the community here. One, we're monitoring our kindergarten registration for next school year very very closely. Uh, if we are to keep three sections at both the end schools, we're pretty much at capacity right now. Um, if those numbers begin to tick up, we may need to consider opening up a fourth section of kindergarten and the only opportunity to do that is at South End. Um, so I will
007keep the community updated uh throughout the next two months and any decisions that we determine we need to make regarding K kindergarten enrollment for the 2526 school year will be made as quickly as possible and all families will be informed. And then the second piece I'd like to just highlight for everyone uh regarding our overall enrollment is the projection rate uh based on birth rates in the community over the next several years to the point that by the 2028 2029 school year our enrollment is projected to increase by 100 students. Um that leads to a lot of planning that we're engaging with regarding a referendum initiative. And you'll also see when I speak about our district goals, how that uh is a priority for us so that we can get ahead of and plan for
008what's coming um for our community. So those are the enrollment numbers. Um as I did last time, I always want to start a budget presentation by talking about our district goals. any budget that we create for our community needs to be um driven by our goals. And the first district goal is student growth and achievement. Uh the first two drivers there, I'm pleased to say, are very much on track. Uh they very much relate to the theme of math. Uh they're driven by our analysis of our NJSLA scores over the last several years. Uh where generally speaking, there's opportunities for improvement. Um we've made a big investment. uh and credit to this board and administration throughout last summer working uh with school leaders to bring in brand new math curricular resources from kindergarten all the
009way up to pre p pre all the way up to algebra and next year we're also adding geometry as well and then along with that we also brought in new professional development for our teachers that happens in their classrooms throughout the school year and we'll continue to plan to prioritize that for next year as well. Uh the next slide here continues on goal number one. A couple things I wanted to highlight. Just speaking to the column there or the row that is red. Uh I spoke about this at the last meeting. We made a determination mid year to not prioritize bringing in brand new ELA curricular resources next year. Um we understand that the new math program is a significant lift and so we want to continue to investigate opportunities so that a year from
010now we may be making a commitment to do that. uh but we did revise our expectation around that goal. Um and then lastly um the area uh related to the healthc care pathway I announced at the last meeting that that is all set and has been announced to the community to start and be initiated with the 2526 school year. The next slide slide speaks to goal number two communications and public relations. Um I'm very pleased to share that many of these uh these drivers have been achieved. Uh the website has been launched. Um Madame President mentioned already the newsletter, our first newsletter is out and we expect to do one more newsletter this school year and then when we start the next school year 2526, the expectation will be to do the newsletters quarterly. Um
011so I want to just thank and acknowledge all of the members of our staff who help participate um in the creation of that first newsletter. And just know that each newsletter going forward will have various different themes and focuses uh that we will highlight about the many amazing activities that are happening in our classrooms and in our community. And then our alumni strategy, we had the alumni spotlight on our new website. We're going to plan to update that every six months and then look to do more to make sure that we're connecting with our alumni and honoring all of their many accomplishments. Uh the next slide will speak to district goal number three. Uh the theme of this goal is facilities, finance, and security. Uh a couple things that I would highlight here and I'm
012pleased on that first driver. Um actually we were able to make some investments over spring break so that we had about 10 high school 10 of our classrooms here at the high school teachers came back to brand new Prometheian boards, interactive boards, and then they received professional development uh this week as well about you the use of those boards. And it's our expectation and intent to make more and more investments like that uh both throughout the high school and into um our end schools as well. Our middle school is in pretty good shape with their interactive technology. Uh and then the other driver second from the bottom there speaks to um adopting a strategic budget for next year and I believe tonight uh the board's action will achieve that driver. Uh the next slide I
013just want to highlight how we got here and building the budget. You know, essentially when we think about our budget on annual basis, the first thing we want to do is we want to make sure we're right sizing certain initiatives so that each year the budget's strategic. Um that means that the ratios for staff to certain percentages of students uh where our services are needed, they can change from year to year. And so we do need to be flexible. Uh so you can see the two right sizing initiatives I've highlighted there. Um the reduction of one uh speech position creates some savings and then we are doing a restructuring of the central office leadership team which is memorialized on the agenda this evening as well. And then in doing that we're still making some exciting
014new investments. I already mentioned the healthcare pathway um new elementary literacy resources we're looking to purchase before the end of this school year um for our K1 and two classrooms. We'll continue the math professional development and we're excited to bring in a new partner to support uh greater co-eing models at both the middle school and the high school for next school year as well. So just want to highlight those items and with that I will turn it over to Mr. Burnside to walk through some of the details of the budget. So this is the budget uh timeline. Um, the only thing that's really happened since the last time we were here is the, uh, second one from the bottom, the April 1st, uh, 2025. That was when our preliminary budget was approved by the executive
015county superintendent. And today is the final budget hearing. These are our operating revenues. Um, the the ones I want to really highlight are going to be our 2% uh, cap increase as well as the allowable healthcare adjustment. That's 2.4% or $763,368. I'm sorry, $763,685 as well as the banked cap. That's $96,522. Um, this is going to help help us with our health care costs increasing approximately 14% for the 2526 school year. Also at the bottom you'll notice um we don't have any revenue for semi for our uh Medicaid students. Um we there's a threshold of 40 eligible students and uh we're not projected to meet that threshold for next year. This is a snapshot of our debt service revenue as well. Um the the district is going to receive $400,492 in debt service aid. These
016are our past referendums. And you'll also notice um it's going to be a little bit less than last year. And that is going to be because we were able to offset future debt service payments by closing out some older construction projects which is passed on to the taxpayers as savings. This is a pie chart of our revenue source distribution. As you can see, about 78% is our local tax levy and 7% of the district's budget comes from state aid. These are our budget allocations. Um, a couple of highlights here. Um, our instructional programs are projected to increase um, from last year by about $282,321. uh our our employee benefits. This is one of our most significant most significant increases from the prior year and this is going to be approximately $1.1 million. And also our
017support services. There was a decrease there in about $520,000 and this was uh mainly due to efficiencies made in our uh general administration and operations and maintenance is pretty much flat. And this is a pie chart showing all the different categories. You can see the uh instructional program is 27%, employee benefits is 23% and special services is 21%. And this is showing that we do indeed have a balanced budget and our revenues do equal our expenditures. Some of our budget challenges, as you can imagine, were for payroll and benefits. Um, that increase combined was approximately $1.57 million. Um, transportation, we're allowed to renew at the CPI index every year. So, that's kind of the basis we use for our projection when we look at our transportation costs. Um, our out of district placements are projected
018to slightly increase. Uh, that's about $148,000 increase. And there's always inflation and contractual obligations that are going to continue to increase on top of salary and benefits. This is our payroll and benefits slide and it's going to show that approximately 79% of our budget is obligated to salary and benefits. This is our 10-year history for our tax levy increase. Um there was not an increase every year. In fact, uh three out of the last five years were uh 2%. So we were not over the uh cap at all. And this is our estimated tax impact. Um you're going to notice that the tax impact is not the operating budget of 4.7%. It's actually the um 4.37% because I as I was explaining earlier, our debt service was able to be lowered from uh older referendums
019that or older construction projects that we were able to close out that were finished and there was money left over on those lines. And this is going to be our total increase after it's all said and done of 4.7% uh 2% for the tax levy, 2.4% for the healthcare adjustment, and 37.3% for bank cap. And this is just a snapshot of all of our debt service. And these are one, two, three past revenue uh referendums that were passed uh 2012, 2016, and 2019. And this is what it looks like for the estimated tax increase for Cedar Grove residents. It's projected to be $260.30 for the year or $2169 monthly. And this is based on a home with an assessed value of $478,700. And that's the presentation. Are there any questions? And thank you. All right.
020We appreciate all the time and effort that the uh the admin team and specifically uh Mr. Burnside and Dr. T have put into the balancing that budget. I know that is not a an easy task. So, thank you for that. Thank you. Um, okay. Do you have any updates, Dr. T, that you I could say make say a few words. Thank you. Okay. So, just in terms of a few community updates. Um, let me also just add the uh appreciation to both Mr. Burnside and our entire business office u for their diligence and hard work throughout the school year. building a budget for the next school year really begins in late November, early December and they've been hard at work at that and we very much appreciate them. Uh, a couple updates just I won't
021say updates, I'll say highlights for the community about tonight's agenda. On tonight's agenda, we are updating our calendar for this school year to bring back or give back two snow days. So, just so the community knows, we'll get communication out. Um, I already sent one communication out a few weeks back, but it's official tonight that the two givebacks will be the Thursday before Memorial Day and the Tuesday after Memorial Day. So, there'll be a nice nice real long break there. Um, and then if I could also piggyback on that uh comment by sharing uh for the community that with that long break coming after Memorial Day, there leading up to Memorial Day happens to be our NJSLA testing. And so we'd be very much very appreciative of family support and partnership uh uh in messaging
022to our our students both at home as we will in school the importance of taking these assessments seriously. They very much inform our planning as a district and we want our students to shine. And so uh for those listening at home uh I hope you'll consider saying a few words of encouragement uh during those weeks of testing in May and remind them they have a nice long break coming up uh as the testing concludes. So, and then the last thing I'll just highlight on tonight's policy, we also have up for a second read, so it's going to be adopted, is our AI policy. So, as a district, as a community, we are taking very seriously and being thoughtful about how we will be implementing AI in our schools and what that will look like. The
023planning for that will begin over the next couple of months, and we'll have much more to say as we start the 2526 school year. And with that, I conclude my my update. Thank you. I I just want to add that we have a teacher appreciation week coming up. So yes, um I'm sorry. Just a message to our community. Let's um ask that you take some time to just think about our our our children's teachers and the amount of effort and and that they put into each day. So uh teacher appreciation I believe is the week of the sixth week the day. It's the week of that. Yes. Yes. Yes. Fifth or the sixth? Next week. Tuesday is the day. Yes. So, um, thank you to all our teachers, our, uh, staff, faculty, staff, um, in
024advance for everything you do on a daily basis. Um, okay. So, at this point, let's move some business under the business administrator's report. Can I have a motion for G1 through G313, please? Move. Second. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Board member Grande, yes. Board member Marzulo, yes. Board member Palak, yes. Board member Keegan, yes. Board President Dar, yes. Motion passed. Under the superintendent's report, general administration, can I please have a motion for H1 through H6? So moved. Second. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Board member Grande, yes. Board member Marzulo, yes. Board member Pallet, yes. Board member Keegan, yes. Board President Dara, yes. Motion passes. Under human resources, a motion for I1 through I13. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Board member Grande, yes. Board member Marzulo, yes. Board member Pal, yes. Board member
025Keegan, yes. Board President Dara, yes. Motion passes. Under curriculum and instruction, J1. Motion for J1 and J2, please. So move second. Any discussion there? Roll call, please. Board member Grande, yes. Board member Marzulo, yes. Board member Pal, yes. Board member Keegan, yes. Board President Dara, yes. Motion passes. Under special services, motion for K1 only, please. Second. Second. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Board member Grande, yes. Board member Marzulo, yes. Board member Pal, yes. Board member Keegan, yes. Board President Dara, yes. Motion passes. This time we move to public comment on any related items. Seems there's nobody here tonight. I move to close that portion of the meeting. Announcement of future meetings. Um let's see. Our next meeting is May 13th. So it's in um two weeks. 7:30 um here at the high school and then
026June 17th following that same time 7:30 here at the uh high school auditorium. Um motion to adjurnn. All in favor? All right. meeting adjourned. Thank you everyone.