001e e e going to go ahead and get started with our meeting uh so in accordance with uh open public meeting njsa 10 4-6 adequate notification of this meeting has been provided by advertising in The Courier News and posting notice in the Board of Education administration building and district schools and filing notice with the burrow clerk I hereby call to order the regular public meeting Tuesday May 7th 2024 in the Lincoln Middle School cafetorium 400 dellan Avenue at 7 06 p.m. this meeting is broadcast live uh for details check www.dan schools.org moving on to item number two executive session uh the dellan Board of Education will now adjourn into executive session to discuss items that fall within specific exceptions to the open public meetings act uh njsa 10 4-12 B the confidential matters discussed by
002the board during this executive session include items related to collective bargaining agreements pending or anticipated litigation and Personnel any minutes of the executive session will not be disclosed until the need for confidentiality no longer exists all individuals who may be discussed in executive session may be adequately um have been adequately notified action will take place after the conclusion of the executive session may have a motion to move into the executive session please move to go to exe second all those in favor opposed okay we're uh an executive we'll see in about uh around 7:30 e e e all right let's go okay we are back hello hello hello uh so uh before we get started here um may I have a motion please to uh come back into uh public move to go to public
003second all those in favor I opposed okay moving on to item number three the Pledge of Allegiance in moment of silence please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance flag is that way I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all will you all please remain standing for a moment of reflection and respect for our troops serving throughout the world our troops who have served and our troops who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of our United States of America thank you Mr Pepe can you please call the role Mr Anderson present Mrs Condit present Mr dougen here Dr gendrano present Mrs Howard present Mr satoi present Miss Shimp Mrs Shep present
004Mr Walker here and Mr sopia eight eight board members present thank you Mr Pepe glad we have Quorum moving on to item five in the agenda and if you needed a copy of the agenda I leave they're all over on the table they're gone oh they're gone okay okay well moving on to item five approval of the minutes looking for a motion to approve the minutes uh from the last board meeting uh on April 16th 2024 approve 5A second okay uh we are now open for questions comments last call okay Mr Pepe can you please call the rooll Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Mr dougen yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr satoi yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes motion passes fantastic moving on to item number six uh student recognition uh
005turning the floor over to Mr Ross thank you Dr Jano good evening parents good evening students good evening some of our wonderful staff members that are here as well to support um we are very excited to recognize our May students of the month the students of the month tradition started last school year and we have been very very blessed to have parents and students recognized at each of our board meetings since the beginning of last school year so congratulations parents and students in advance um we're going to bring the principles down one at a time uh students you're going to come down and you're going to stand in front um until everyone from your school is called and recognized then once everybody has been brought down we're going to take a pause and parents you
006can get up and we will provide time for everyone to get a good photo up so don't feel like the kids are about to sit down and you're going to miss it we'll give you a good chance to get a nice photo all right so without further Ado we'll start at Faber Elementary School and we'll bring up Mr tenant [Applause] it's like a maze to get up here um uh thank you all for coming uh community members uh we're going to start with our prek winner Bria [Applause] Dawson come on up come on up oh it's okay gooda yep Bria always comes into school with a big smile on her face she's always checking on her friends and helping whenever she can bri is a great friend and truly cares about everyone around her Bri
007is always one of the very hardest workers following directions and a great role model to appears give it up for Bria [Applause] Dawson kindergartner James cogin come on up [Applause] James James hold this stand right there turn around there you go don't you hold it like that there you go perfect James has consistently demonstrated an incredible eagerness to learn a compassionate heart and a positive attitude that brightens the classroom every day he comes each and every day with a smile on his face ready to learn congratulations [Applause] James up first grade Skyler Laden [Applause] Skyler congratulations Skyler you stand right next to James Skyler is an outstanding first grade student she's always kind positive respectful thoughtful and helpful to both her classmates and teachers Skyler is a focused student with a big heart she gives
008nothing but the best efforts in all that she does she's always willing to help giveing helping hand whoever needs it and a friend to all Skyler is a wonderful role model to her peers an absolute ray of sunshine listen to that amazing po it up for Skyler second grade we have Felix aparicio parar come on up Felix congratulations hold it right there turn around perfect he's a kind to everyone and always willing to share he's a good student and a great friend always willing to go to the class and be happy that he's learning in school give it up for [Applause] Felix third grade we have two winners we have first up Andreas Vasquez Estrada [Applause] Andreas congratulations Andreas is a hardworking student who has always looked up to his classmates he is always looking
009for challenges as a learner and enjoys helping his peers improve their skills at recess you can always find him cheering his friends on and teaching others how to play the game in any situation he can always trust Andre to make the right choice for himself and those around him clab up [Applause] rondre our second winner is Jason Romero Serrano Jason congratulations Jason he is always kind to his classmates and helps him out when being asked he is flight to all and the teachers that he gets in contact with even if he doesn't know them that's awesome that's good stuff he is always happy and has a smile on his face he's a great kid to have in class give it up for Jason fourth grade we have Isaac procash come on up Isaac [Applause] congratulations
010ISAC Isaac is a wonderful student who is a role model to his peers Isaac is always willing to lend a helping hand to both his teachers and classmates he is a great love for Learning and shows each and every day through his participation class discussions and independent assignments clap it up for Isaac fifth grade we have Sophia Vargas Estrada [Applause] Sophia conratulations Sophia Sophia sets a strong example of being respectful responsible peer she always goes out of her way to support and help others Sophia has maintained a positive attitude and actively participates in class each day please give it up for Sophia and last but not least special there he is Shon [Applause] cesarin shaon is a student is kind and caring to everyone shaon always participates in class and is a positive student in
011class he's a hard worker steady readers and tries to become successful at any challenge he faces he is a l light to have in class clap it up for Jackson and those are your favorite students of the month clap it up one more [Applause] time e all right thank you Mr tenant next up Lincoln Middle School and Mr Mr altme [Applause] thank you again for coming tonight we'd like to celebrate our three students of the month from Lincoln Middle School I always like to share that these students have been selected by a committee which makes it even more special than just one person selecting uh an individual from each grade level students as your name is called please come forward sixth grade representative for student of the month is Charlotte wall [Applause] Charlotte is cooperative
012and respectful to teachers and peers she is very conscientious about staying on top of her work Charlotte maintains High honoral status she is a well-rounded individual and balances her schoolwork with sports and extracurricular activities charlot is friendly and personable both in and out of the classroom congratulations on being recognized and keep the outstanding performance our seventh grade representative Jonas [Applause] Bradshaw the seventh grade teachers congratulate Jonas Bradshaw for being recognized as our student of the month from day one of this school year he showed up with a friendly smile and a great work ethic even with the school year winding down Jonas continues to work hard and complete all of his assignments he is cooperative in the classroom and works well with his classmates the teachers appreciate Jonas's respect and kindness to the staff and
013his peers daily congratulations [Applause] Jonas and our eighth grade student of the month sha AI [Applause] the eighth grade team of teachers is proud to announce Shaun AI as student of the month Shawn works very hard every class period every day he is respectful of his teachers pays attention and always tries his best Shan values his education and takes full advantage of all educational opportunities that are offered to him this is especially commendable since Shawn recently started a more difficult course load furthermore Shawn is a well-rounded member of the LMS Community who is an active member of both student council and the track team congratulations Shan and keep up the great work once again congratulations again to our three students of the month and we appreciate them for making LMS an outstanding place to learn
014and develop congratulations parents if you want to get a photo all right and last but certainly not least Mr Tobin and dellan high school students of the [Applause] month good evening everyone glad to see you all here tonight to recognize our four students of the month at dellan high school for the month of May starting with our ninth grade student of the month uh Sarah Gonzalez ardia come on up Sarah [Applause] in her first year at dellan high school Sarah has achieved honor role and high honor role meaning all A's and B's or all A's in all three marking periods uh it's been noted that she is a pleasure to have in class with an excellent attitude she also has been very involved in extracurricular activities at the high school uh she is a member
015of the chess club The Art Club Math League uh drama Productions and as well as the environmental Club um excellent attitude in the school and a great addition to denell and high school so congratulations Sarah our 10th grade student of the month is Devon d Silva I don't think Devon is here today but let me just say a few things about why Devon is our sophomore student of the month at dellan High School uh Devon stepped out and tried football for the first time this year in the fall he is currently doing Spring Track and Field uh he's also involved in the chess club he's been on the honor roll the first and second marking period just missing it the last marking period but has shown improvement over these past few weeks to be back
016on track for Honor rooll in the third marking period uh so he's continuing to be very successful he participates with his peers in classes with group work um and his teachers have noted how hard he is working currently in his classes so congratulations to Devon d Silva our 11th grade student of the month is William man come on up [Applause] William uh William has done a a tremendous job this year he's just missed the honoral last Market period but is on track uh to get all A's and B's this marking period which is a tremendous accomplishment uh he's shown Improvement in his classes as his teacher has noted uh he is also a member of the leadership class which is a class taught by myself the Principal Paul Lynch and our athletic director Dave denapoli
017uh he's done a tremendous job in that class um and it's enjoyable for myself and Mr Lynch to get to know the students and to be able to see Williams Growth from the time he's been in Middle School to now in high high school and all the contributions he's made in class and the leadership class has been great uh Williams been uh improving throughout the year and is a a wonderful Junior student and this is why he is our student of the month congratulations Williams our final student of the month is the senior uh Maria Sero who I do not believe is here tonight but a few things about Maria and why she is our student of the month she's been involved in the drama Productions she was involved in Cross Country this fall uh
018she's a member of the chess uh Club the math League National Honor Society and she's been in the high honor roll or honor rooll all three marking periods is a top student uh wonderful young adult and a great member of our 12th grade student body uh so she is our 12th grade recipients for May student of the month congratulations to her all right one last round of applause for our students of the month thank you and congratulations so parents we uh we thank you for your attendance tonight we have a lot of business ahead of us but uh recognizing that everybody's got school tomorrow we're going to take about a f minute recess um so that if you'd like to head out you're certainly welcome to stay but we certainly understand if you uh if
019you have a long night ahead of you so thank you again congrat [Applause] culations e e e uh quite a number of business items for tonight but before we get to the items on the um the business agenda we are required by law to have a final budget hearing this is the presentation for the final B budget hearing we had a tentative budget presentation in March March yes um that is available on the denell public schools website it gave a general overview it gave a very specific overview I should say of the budget for uh the fiscal year 25 which is next school year at that time that was uh presented very shortly after we learned of our state aid numbers and so in that presentation there were not many specifics about the ways in
020which we would be using the funding it was more of a general overview of what our financial status was and the types of things that we would be considering so the final budget presentation uh is is here today and this represents basically the work that's been done um starting in December and really throughout the spring to give a sense of some of the specific items that will be focusing on and prioritizing this year's budget and then just give a couple of other uh useful pieces of information so the objectives for this presentation are to review the budget process and the timeline so we'll walk through uh what that looked like the key priorities which I'll discuss we're going to talk about revenue and appropriation uh information generally what I what we've done in this presentation
021is we've Consolidated the beginning of it so there's a very lengthy appendix if you want to look at the very detailed information it's really the in same information from the tentative budget presentation that's been placed in an appendix because we don't necessarily need to go through all of that again indicate the tax impact and then we will be completed you'll notice in the agenda that a public budget hearing does require uh an opportunity for public comment so at the end of this uh presentation we will sit back uh down and if you a member of the public if you have any comments or questions um we are certainly uh happy to take them so the budget presentation is really built on the district goals and those of you that have been following our work over
022the last year and a half know that we've basically had the same three District goals since they were implemented at the beginning of last school year goal one is academic success goal two is uh student wellness and uh School climate goal three is construction project and fiscal Health these have shifted just moderately uh based on last year from last year to this year we've had a lot of progress in terms of our um our construction projects so goal three has changed a little bit we've also shifted the focus in goal two from Intervention and referral to really focusing on school climate and trying to build a positive School climate academic s success in data use is very much the same goal as it was before and that was supported really tremendously by uh the addition
023of new staff new assessment uh protocols and other things that we've brought into the district this year so uh our enrollment by grade band um and if you've looked uh at past board uh information and if you were uh present at the last board meeting we did complete a full demographers report which is available on the district website it indicates that over the next 5 years uh enrollment in denell and Public Schools is projected to go up to about 14450 um and that's not including the increased number of preschool students so that's 1,450 students um based on 36 preschool students and the rest really K12 uh you during that report uh the demographer also shared information about the significant facilities issues that we will have with housing all of those students right now the current
024status of our buildings is um uh sort of busting at the seams and we're really doing the best that we can but we anticipate more students as you look at enrollment Trends over the last couple of years sort of taking out the co year or the co years uh as a marker we had a really significant increase of students from 2223 to uh the 23 24 school year and we anticipate another moderate increase for next year so we're planning for that in terms of Staffing sectioning class sizes Etc the budget process and timeline is listed here basically this is a process that begins in November um it is a very inclusive process all the administrators are involved there's a lot of feedback from staff members that are provided about wish list items and other types
025of things that might be of interest um and then we meet with each of the budget manager managers uh Mr Pepe our business administrator and I uh work on the reviewing the budget with the board's operations committee board members are very involved in the conversations as we move forward about what we should be thinking about what we would like to add Etc we approved the tentative Budget on March 12th and here we are May 7th at the public hearing and adoption so key budget priorities and this is really listed by goal item um to give you a sense of kind of how we think about things so in terms of academics we have new standards that uh the state is requiring us put into place and with that comes new curricular materials so we have
026new curricular materials uh pretty much K12 for math and language arts we're also work working on really rearticulating most of our curricular areas um which kind of needed a reboost uh a reboot I should say so we have new standards that are being put into practice and new materials for those we have significant increase in special education uh uh the focus on special education instruction and so looking at core programming in special education courses having aligned materials for each of the courses that we offer for students and a progression of courses as students mature through the system we have uh looked at instructional coaching and we will continue to focus on instructional coaching as we move forward uh next year to try to get some Universal principles for what good instruction looks like we have
027uh continued to fund our Arts programs and we are continuing to add significant funding for uh the replacement uh and and uh fixing of instruments um We are continuing obviously the summer arts program which is very exciting and uh we know that students love that we're continuing our partnership with teen arts and J which has been really great for our students and we will continue to fund those programs fully so that our students can have that experience other curricular enhancements that we're looking at uh including things like uh stem increases stem uh facilities looking at uh the high school specifically and also um the middle the media center at Faber um as well as other items assessment and data collection is a big piece of understanding academic progress and so we have been uh we
028implemented this year a program called linkit which is an assessment and data warehouse program linkit has done well in certain uh aspects of the work but has left us sort of feeling a need for a different type of approach in other areas so uh you'll notice on this agenda we have an approval for a a program called Au uh they are a partner of ours that will be working on data analytics with us to try to get really good data in the use in in the hands of teachers uh and principles um this is is really going to start at the district level and at the building level probably not a lot at the teacher level to begin um but the goal is to get very good actionable data as quickly as possible to be
029able to intervene in students learning in a positive way Universal screening and aligned academic interventions is very much part of the same uh goal process plc's and staff collaboration is a is a an important piece of this in terms of building staff capacity one thing that uh is actually not in this budget presentation and board members this this is actually new information uh late this afternoon we learned that we are receiving $125,000 Grant from the doe um and it's the teacher climate and culture Grant and so we're going to talk about what that looks like yes thank you thank you so this is a competitive grant that we put together um and uh it is really geared towards trying to make the lives of our staff members a little bit easier by streamlining processes and
030the practices that we have um and so you know there's there's more on that that will be really something that we that we put together very collaboratively with the DEA leadership and at the building level and and things like that and then of course the last piece is multilingual learner supports so we have had a significant increase in the number of multilingual Learners right now we're about 18% of our school population um is a multilingual learner we're about 60% Hispanic as an overall School population and so we've we've significantly increased the number of teachers the way that we've taught uh multilingual Learners has changed as well to try to make their program to be more inclusive so we've kept them in their general home rooms with push and support as much as possible and we
031will continue that moving forward for next year school climate uh we have security enhancements that we're talking about which includes the addition of um new security officers uh that will be uh working with the district it also includes uh another look at different types of camera equipment that we have where we have cameras placed and the types of uh data processing and data warehousing that we have for cameras in case of um of adverse actions uh collaboration with Community groups and related providers so right now we've been working with a group called Urban assembly um we're looking at potentially uh re-upping our contract with them uh based on um type ofal coaching that they've provided this is not necessarily something that we are guaranteeing but we are going to look for for providers that can
032provide support in those areas seal programming for students is something we've also explored this would be uh direct instruction onal practices for students at uh each grade level uh we have an in-house support framework which is new this upcoming year the district for the last couple of years has been using a program called Thrive which is a third-party uh mental health um support program we have Thrive clinicians in the district we have two and um the funding for that has been primarily has been entirely paid for through the federal Esser grants so given the nature of their work and the cost of the program we determined that it would be a better uh move for us to provide this support framework through in-house staff so we we're looking at adding two staff members who will
033be called school-based Wellness Specialists to provide tier tier three support for our students who are in uh significant need of uh mental health supports uh or counseling or group counseling and then obviously data collection which is uh a part of that tiered system of supports for facilities we're looking at our referendum projects um and just trying to close those out we still have many open items on the projects that were 2019 and 20 uh 2020 awarded we also have preschool expansion which we're looking at we have our current preschool Wing um which was completed through the use of capital reserve funds and which also still needs some um additional uh TLC in order to be fully operating uh we have other internal needs and concerns I do want to thank uh Mr Pepe and uh
034Ronnie Haynes who's our director of facilities he's really done an incredible job um responding to the needs of staff and ensuring that our systems are in the best shape possible so Safety and Security new signage infrastructure upgrades in terms of Technology um new devices iPads um iMacs uh Chromebooks obviously um and other computers for staff members we're looking at eate reimbursement eate is a program through the FCC that provides reimbursement for certain types of communication um technology and then a really big significant aspect of our work is to try to maintain healthy Reserve accounts so at the beginning of the presentation I showed the enrollment update and we are going to need to expand our buildings in some sort of way so in order to do that we do need to continue to support our
035Reserve accounts and that means contributing to them and uh and making sure that're they're at an adequate level for us to to begin moving towards that work in terms of those projects those capital projects we are in the process of updating our long range facility plan we've met with a a an architect firm called Lan um they've done very good work for us in terms of the lrf lrfp um and we will be developing a multi-year plan to spread the costs of those projects across time for those of you that don't don't know the lrfp is basically a list of all of the construction projects and internal projects that have to be done within a district um throughout you know uh I'm not sure how long the period is it 5e period 5e period um
036and so we are working with them we sort of walk through the buildings and say this will need to be fixed this needs to be fixed Etc we obviously can't support all of the fixes at once so the goal is to get a good spending plan for that we have uh priorities for internal facilities projects we are renovating the uh multi-purpose room at Faber um we're going to be adding uh small offices but we're also going to be taking out the old carpet we're going to be looking at all of the shelving uh redoing the lights those of you that have been in that space know it is a very very highly used space um it's a very old space um it needs it needs an update it needs some love and so we're going
037to give it some love um we are renovating we're looking at renovating some of the bathrooms at Faber U many of which are uh 30 or 40 years old um and then updating the uh I'm sorry that was the media center the allpurpose room is is uh where students eat lunch so we're looking at uh possibly removing the stage and finding other ways that um we can facilitate an increased number of students in the cafeteria for lunch or just make that a better space um because those of you that might for example lead concerts in that space know that the lighting is awful the sound is awful the space is awful uh for those particular things and so again looking for ways to to enhance that for students so in terms of Staffing uh are
038looking at adding a lot of Staff members we added a pretty large number of Staff members last year as well many of these staff members are are funded through um through attrition of other positions um so for example we're looking at two security uh Personnel uh we had until uh very recently an SRO uh who was fully funded by the district who was a member of the denalan police department that was a budgeted position and we're able to get two positions out of that we also have Preschool teachers um and preschool positions which are uh largely paid paid for through the preschool expansion Aid um and then we also have title funds which are being used to pay for some of the intervention services so at the middle school and high school we're looking at
039adding uh an assistant principal at the middle school um currently the middle school does not have an assistant principal there's one administrator um uh previously I think the middle school was at about 280 290 students right now the middle school is projected to be about 350 students um and we know that that is a a need um that uh that will help in you know many dimensions at the school uh we are adding another ESL teacher at the middle school high school and also another ESL teacher at Faber to try to meet the needs of students our school-based Wellness Specialists one at lmss and one at Faber uh are the two that I mentioned that replace Thrive and then we're adding a special education teacher um at the high school and two in-class support teachers
040at Faber plus a special education teacher at preschool the goal of the five four teachers is to improve the number of uh inclusion classes that are provided so that there is more pushin support available for students with special needs um and try to move students out of resource room classes if they are capable uh and be moved into the least restrictive environment in addition to that we have some District positions we're looking at adding a community parent involvement specialist this is someone who would be a District staff member who works with the principles and our counselors to try to connect our families who are in need with um Community Resources so this is a a bilingual uh staff member who can really interface with our our families and try to get them the the um
041the connections that they need to ensure that they and their students are are well supported outside of the schools we're looking at adding a behaviorist which would be primarily for support in our special class programs uh at Faber District security coordinator and a class 3 sleo with which is um a retired police officer Technology support uh which would be a halftime position which allows us to have a full-time technology teacher at the middle school um an instructional coach and then uh we added a bilingual secretary uh already in the 23 24 school year but this is really the first year it's budgeted as the the positions currently Grant funded so quite a number of Staff members added um but as you can see the focus is really on support um support of students with special
042needs support of multi Learners support of um of those who need uh additional counseling or mental health supports um and then we have a focus on instruction and a focus on um on really improving sort of systematically uh you know the the work that we're doing so this is the priority slide um happy to take questions um at the end of the the presentation on anything on here so generally uh our revenues and and if you notice there's details uh that point you to the appendic slides our general fund revenues um are shown there we had an increase of about $4.6 million in overall general fund um we had about $1.1 million increase in special Revenue fund um our carryover funds are are gone now um and we had a a very very small increase
043in debt service fund and this is uh aid for Aid that's related to bonds um related to uh District debt um on referendum projects from the general fund Appropriations um you can see everything listed here so these are Appropriations these are the the spending side so the revenue side is the you know the the inflow and this is the outflow these are the projected Appropriations for next year um and you can see increases across the board in general education special education facilities employee benefits which is a really significant driver um and then a decrease in overall administrative costs and a decrease in um sort of miscellaneous other items this is the uh the the Mr Pepe slide so we we call this the uh this is the balance slide um it is uh entirely useless
044in some cases but maybe it's also the most useful slide um it basically shows you that the revenues are equal to the expenditures um and you can see that in the adjusted budget from last year and our project or from this year and the projected budget for next year um we are we're all squared away tax impact for the average household um there was a significant increase in the average home assessment in the 2024 25 school year uh the average tax levy uh the tax levy I should say the net tax levy is 1.94% that's being proposed by this budget um and that's an estimated School tax of $23 per $100,000 of your assess value the change is uh $466 so just for multiplicative purposes if you had a $500,000 assessed value on your home
045then your tax increase would be five times $466 and that would be the uh increase in the tax that you would be responsible responsible for as a a taxpayer in dellan so closing information uh really just speaks to kind of what I've spoken uh about the budget represents a strong increase in Services uh Direct Services to students supporting staff members and uh really providing uh opportunities for continue improved practices a commitment to parent and Community engagement funding for uh facilities related needs and plans in that respect this has been a very inclusive and collaborative project we've talked a lot about the budget at the board table um and internally and uh with the public as well we believe that it balances short-term and long-term needs within the district and it does uh maintain all existing
046programs and staff while also providing additional enhancements in the highest areas of need so just for sake of just showing you this uh there is an appendix here with uh lots of revenues information and Appropriations information so um this presentation is Mr Petzinger available on the website or yes this this will be shortly available on the website you can look at it it's very mobile friendly and um happy to take questions so Mr Pepe should we go back to the de you think okay thank you so at this time we're moving so this uh with the budget presentation uh moving on to uh item 7B which is the public comments on the budget hearing only piece so the board invites at this time public comment on this particular agenda item uh from members of our
047community in accordance with board policy 0167 public comment sections are intended to provide an opportunity for members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest budget of course is very much falling in line with that uh the board Administration will be taking notes during public comment but will not provide substantive responses to questions questions or concerns raised by individual speakers if necessary the superintendent May provide a brief response after the entire public comment period is completed the board appreciates and welcomes feedback from the community but is not at Liberty to engage in a back and forth dialogue with members of the public during this portion of the meeting prior to making public comment please state your name in municipality please note that all statements must be directed to the presiding officer
048please come forward to the microphone at this time if you'd like to make comments on the budget hearing item uh only uh microphone's right there hi Janine McNair um resident of dellan I just have a question is it ever considered about merging dellan with another school district our budget presentations you guys work very hard on but it just seems as public knowledge is this ever going to be taken into consideration I know in the past different state councilmen senators wanted to talk about merging school districts to really give taxpayer relief and it kind of has fizzled out so just curious thank you great thank you very much any other comments okay last call okay moving on to uh oh sorry sorry sorry sure you presented your hello Alicia Bose um what other information did you
049need um um municipality where where are you located in dellan oh um I'm on New Market Road okay so you presented your um your expected numbers for I'm sorry can you please move closer to the microphone just you know we also have folks that are online so we want to make sure that they can hear your questions as well can you hear me now yes thank you okay Alicia Bose you got that yes okay so I was paying attention I took notes on the numbers the expected projected enrollment for next school year so your expected projected your expected projection is 12 additional students however this year was 51 additional students so in my opinion seeing the other um the other development that's going around town you have one that's set to open that's not yet
050open to people living there there's another one if I go east down 28 right and there's I'm sure more units that are still open where people can still move into the nil so if you're looking at this year 51 additional students was the realistic number that was how many students did dellan grew and next year you're looking at 12 students I think that's that's an unrealistic number so I'm looking at your budget presentation and I'm seeing that you're that you're adding the security personnel and there's some other new positions especially for the the seal learning which is nice to see so I'm curious to know projected classroom size for next year how that fits into the budget and the hiring process for new Personnel to know based on those 12 students 12 students may not
051make an additional classroom but if you have 50 more students that could easily be another classroom if not two right if you're maxing out at 20 or or 30 students that's going to be at least two more classrooms so my question would just be would that offset the district abilities to to staff those additional students and with that need create more positions and then if so when would those people be hired in and I don't know when you know when families are moving in and how that at what point during the you know the school year they would be having to register students and when you guys would have that you know that updated number for the upcoming school year so all right thank you thank you very much appreciate that questions please come forward
052yes hi what information do I need U uh your name and um your municipality okay yes um I'm Alexander Lawson from dellen um I am in the Nell um which is the new complex apartment complex in tow houses um and many of us are now just looking at the preschool stage and we would just love to have more transparency as to um how we um enroll and register I know it's a lottery system um it was just there was a lot of confusion about how to get on the list um and just any information about um kind of aside from the hours which were posted about more about um the curriculum about if any food was provided there was just a lot of questions I had um and I'm at the point of registering now
053which is fantastic um but more transparency on kind of the whole program in general would be really great especially because with this unit with the Nell and the town of homes um they're over 400 units um and so that's really a lot more families that are in the area and a lot of young families so we would just love to have more information on that ahead of time um so that we know how to um how to apply for those spots um and just to tack on to that um are there any plans moving forward to expand um the preschool program as well as um the elementary school capacity um and what would that look like thank you okay thank you very much appreciate appreciate your comments uh before you jump in just just to
054um note here so there are a number of sections within our agenda where we speak about the different parts of uh what what's what's in the agenda so there's we have at the very end a part for basically anything any to talk about we have a section to talk about agenda items coming up and this particular section we're talking specifically about the um the budget hearing but we certainly welcome the we want the feedback we want to hear about that but just for the sake of being able to move move through the agenda um expeditiously you know but please bring the comments when when we can thank thank you very much appreciate it I'll wait on my question you sure okay all right then appreciate it thank you so any other comments that are related
055to uh the budget hearing presentation okay last call okay um moving on to well oh sorry I'm sorry go ahead yeah Mr Ross no thank you thank you to those of you who spoke and um I'll just I'll address um Miss McNair Miss McNair say um merging school districts is a a politically fraught uh topic of conversation it's not one that uh that we've had serious conversation about um as a a resident of Highland Park um I don't really think that Highland Park should have its own School District um but that's definitely not in the conversation at all at this point um there have been I have been privy to some um some discussions about k eight districts that have looked at consolidating with 912 districts or K12 districts um but not two K12 districts
056um that's not really been a large part across the state but it is certainly something that would Pro provide relief undoubtedly um as well as creating other challenges but it is certainly an interesting idea and I appreciate your comment um Miss Bose you mentioned enrollment um and I think enrollment is Ser it's a very serious consideration um we had I don't think that we had any sense of what the increase in our student population was going to be last school year I mean it was a really Monumental increase something like 70 students or something like that from the time that we we began the enrollment report for this year uh is actually listed here and in August on August 29th we had 1290 students enrolled and currently we have 1378 students enrolled so it's it's
057an 88 student increase um the numbers for next year were taken from the demographers report which did take into account um the construction that's happening throughout Town it is definitely a variable um I will say that uh significant you know the the changes in sectioning I think people largely think about elementary sectioning um although Middle School sectioning in certain cases has gotten very large um because of the number of sections that are available Etc with Elementary sectioning for next year we have um a pretty good um Gap built in for each of the grade levels um in order to keep class sizes let's say Upper Elementary I'm sort of making this up but somewhere around 24 um so we're starting lower than that um and K12 is lower than that still so we do believe
058that we have the right number of sections set up for uh for K5 if we had a significant increase if we had you know uh 15 third grade students um that we had to you know fit into a class we would probably have to hire another teacher um but usually the increase in student population throughout a course of the year is so diffused by individual grade level you might have two or three kids in each of a bunch of grades which doesn't necessarily necessitate the addition of a section um but it is a significant factor that we're that we're aware of so I appreciate you bringing that up um Miss Lawson I'll I'll leave your comments until the next um the the next time we we we speak about these items I actually am going
059to provide a preschool update um during the superintendent report but I I thank you for your comments as well and if I may just add I believe the demographer report if you're interested is on the website so if you're interested in we keep referring to this demographers report it is available at dellan schools.org you can download it it's a great 48 pages of reading it's fantastic if you I I love numbers so it's a it's wonderful but it goes actually into really great detail so um okay moving on to um I item 7 c um looking for um uh a motion to approve 7c which is the approval of or adopting the 2024 2025 budget um that was presented and approving uh the general fund tax levy uh that was noted and The Debt Service
060um uh fund tax levy as well and to support uh the 2024 2025 budget so looking for a motion uh to approve that approv 7 C second open for questions and comments just a quick one of the extra that's built in not built in in the budget um do we have a number yet how much is going to go into the reserve accounts and is it an increase over last year in the budget there's about 1.8 million budgeted to go into capital reserve cap Reserve how about maintenance but um we don't have a maintenance Reserve you don't keep a maintenance Reserve however that number varies based on you know our ending year so in June we'll have a a motion we'll ask the board to approve a motion to deposit some number like $10 million
061and then when the audit is complete we whatever we have available will move into so it may be more than that I'm going to just uh just explain this conversation a little bit just for for for those of you that are't sure so um at the end of the uh at the end of June um the board makes a motion to disperse the remaining funds that are left over um and so the board will make a motion as Mr pepy said to put you know any any amount up to $10 million or some some very large number into capital reserve there are a bunch of different ways that uh leftover funds at the end of the year can be dispersed um one of them is to go into Reserve accounts another is that they can
062be shifted forward 2 years um as excess Surplus which is very complicated um but essentially when we fund our capital reserve often we do it this way so the the uh the audit for the 2324 school year actually takes about six months to complete and so in December or January of 2025 um the auditor does a presentation you can see this year's audit presentation but the audit will come and say you had this much and you had that much here and this is you know what's left over this is the amount that you can actually put into the reserve account and as long as the board the board motion is above that amount then you can put that entire amount into the reserve account the reserve account is what's used as it's like a savings
063account for specific Capital Improvements and other types of things um and so that's the that's the overview of the conversation that just occurred and I was just going to add to you know to put it into um practice that's how we're building doing the the uh improvements in favor okay so thank you for the question Mr Walker any other questions comments we have a motion to approve on the floor okay last call okay Mr Pepe can you please call the rooll Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Mr Dugen yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr satoi yes Miss schimp yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes we have a budget fantastic okay moving on to um item eight president remarks okay so um good evening everyone again welcome you know to the board meeting
064again um um this is the part in the agenda where I get to say a few words um and uh like to recognize first of all the um take a moment again to congratulate congratulate all the students who are recognized this evening you know we are very proud of the of their accomplishments and uh we we we uh hope they keep up the great work um on uh April on April 18th sorry thank you on April 18th I had the pleasure of attending the middle sex County unsung heroes dinner celebration at the Oldbridge high school with Mr Ross and Mr Lynch um and along with other students in middlex County uh we were able to celebrate two of our students Luke Patterson in the 11th grade and annaya Malika Henry who was in the 12th
065grade they were chosen uh as our denill and unsung heroes so for selection School administrators answered the question who makes your school a better place simply because they are part of it and who may often be overlooked under more traditional recognition criteria so we got a chance to to meet with their families to celebrate with our students as well as all the students uh in Middle sex County who were who were recognized and I would like to to say congratulations again to Luke Peterson and anniah Henry for receiving that award it's a big honor um I had the pleasure to attend uh both the Faber band and Faber Choir concerts on May 2nd and 6th respectively and I wanted to congratulate the students as well as uh the teachers The Faculty the staff that worked
066hard to give fantastic concerts thank you very much well done um I did also want to note uh this past Saturday on May 4th uh there was a Tricky Tray I understand and um and I understand it was another successful event I won't ruin your surprise I actually I don't know so you you you you share that when you're ready um but I wanted to congratulate the PTO and all those who helped to make it's such a great success because your success also helps the kids succeed so thank you very much um if we weren't already aware uh this week is Teacher Appreciation Week and wanted to just take a moment to thank all of our teachers for the great work uh that they do because without without them well we we wouldn't our children
067wouldn't be as learning as well as they do so thank you teachers not exactly a school thing per se but I just wanted to mention that Mother's Day is this weekend on May 12th so like to say thank you to all the mothers for shaping the world uh behind all of our own stories uh is our mother's story and because it is in her story where ours begins so I just wanted to take a moment to recognize uh all the moms and say thank you to all the moms [Applause] all right so couple other things to mention here so I I keep bringing this up because I think it's important um as as an epidemiologist I think it's important not to miss these things so it's staying healthy right our weather is changing I think
068now this week it's hot right I think last week it was cold this week it's hot maybe it'll be cold again who knows um definitely yo-yoing temperatures but it's important to understand and to underscore excuse me underscore that healthy kids mean healthy schools and that means a healthy Community you know uh previously I've been noting rates of of respiratory infections and indeed rates are still somewhat High uh both within the county as well as the state um and in fact I I had the flu just a few weeks ago so yeah it's real it's it's it's definitely around but if you were not aware the CDC released on March 1st an updated respiratory guidance virus guidance that signal the evolution on how we're dealing with these viruses and infections and uh under the CDC uh
069the CDC indicated some core strategies to follow um suggesting immun or recommending immunizations hygiene steps for cleaner air treatment as well as staying home to prevent spread if you are sick uh the CDC also indicated additional prevention strategies including use of masks as appropriate distancing testing and again staying home and away from others until symptoms are are gone and you're you're feeling better right so the bottom line here is that we're and why I mentioned this is we we encourage you to continue to to take the common sense precautions like the ones that the CDC has recommended to minimize the spread of infectious diseases that can really impact our school year um moving on to uh another section that I do in a regular monthly celebrations there's a lot of stuff going on in May
070so this isn't everything but um just some of the notable ones in May Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month I'd be rud Miss not to to mention that being Filipino American woo um it's it's Al uh it's also um Jewish American heritage month it's also mental health awareness month it's also National Children's Mental Mental Health Awareness Day on May 9th International Day um against homophobia transphobia and biphobia Day on May 17th and of course Memorial Day which we we just have to mention but um I mention all these things to underscore the importance of diversity equity and inclusion in the fabric of our daily lives and the impact that that has on our community open honest and Equitable communication that is respectful positive supportive fair and most of all kind goes a long way in
071strength in strengthening the community lastly I just want to say that we are a little over five weeks away from wrapping up another great year and as we participate in the many events this month and next please take a moment to appreciate all the little moments from this year that added up to something truly significant well done uh thank you everyone for your time listening and I'll uh I'll give up the mic here and move on to uh Mr report um Mr Ross with your superintendent's report you may call me Mr report Mr report um so uh Sophia is not here tonight she came back late from a softball game and she's got an AP exam in the morning she did send me some information for her student report which I will read so softball
072had their senior night and they beat new bronic 19 to1 um the baseball team which is doing very well um is actually silver division champs this year so congratulations to the baseball [Applause] team uh boys tennis is doing very well they won their last uh Match 5 nothing against Perth Amboy on May 1st um Project Graduation had a fundraiser at the movie theater they showcased cars they also have another fundraiser with Crispy Cream which is ongoing uh the magical uh performed and opened for the cane University choir recently which is very cool senior picnic is on May 17th which is also the same day as the annual denelli Awards um the band concert is May 21st the prom is May 23rd and the theme of the prom is Enchanted Gala the choir concert is May
07328th uh the DHS Awards night is May 30th and magical are going to Dorney Park um to compete and have a good time on June 7th um we have a number of students that were recognized as part of the Central Jersey Marquee Awards which is the uh theater awards that is that involves middle sex County schools and others so we had uh three students were um were brought up uh as honorable mention in the particular categories uh bless you Dal hopper for lead actor Maria Stein for lead actress and Jennica re for Ensemble member so congratulations to those three [Applause] students and then we also had uh Mato Morales was uh was nominated for best lighting designer which is very very cool um and then the show also garnered two recognitions for best scenery and
074best hair and makeup so congratulations to everybody that was involved in Greece it was an amazing show really wonderful all right so AP testing has begun uh it started this week on Monday um we also have a senior practicum which is starting in a couple of weeks right after the AP exams um Sophia can talk more when she's here at next meeting about seniors and where they've opted to go to college or uh post High School Pathways um we had NHS and the national Arts Honor Society went on a field trip to the met recently and the black student union went on a field trip yesterday to Washington DC to the African-American History Museum so lots going on with our students it is a very very packed end of the school year as it is
075everywhere um but that is the student report so uh onto my report um I want to start obviously this is teacher appreciation week which is a very special week we've had some great Community Partners who have done wonderful things for our staff so staff members um obviously I just want to say thank you for all the work that you do and if you're watching at home um we wouldn't be where we are without your hard work and we're very very pleased with the the type of growth and uh compassion that you've shown this year so very excited for next year um we have a lot of great stuff going and um with part of uh teacher appreciation week uh on Friday we also announced our teachers of the Year educators of the year I should
076say and so these folks will be uh recognized at our next board meeting um with a much more formal recognition but um they've already been announced to the the community publicly but I'll just um identify them here at the high school our teacher of the year was Tatiana Jordan who is an ESL teacher who's in our SE her seventh year um at Lincoln Middle School Allison Egan was uh the educator of the year she's a special education math teacher who's in her 10th year in the district at Faber it was uh Christina scolaro who is a kindergarten teacher she's in her eighth year uh and many of you if you're involved in after care uh before care you know that she's um part of the wonderful team that runs that program at Faber and our
077Educational Service is professional for the district is Janet Casio who is a par professional at Faber who is in her 25th year in the district so congratulations to those those four staff members the enrollment report uh is listed in the board agenda uh it shows currently that uh enrollment is 1378 students we have 640 students at Faber 334 students at Lincoln Middle School and 404 students at the high school um absolutely yeah 640 students at Faber 334 at the middle school and 404 at the high school yep so we will have a couple more enrollment reports until the end of the school year and then we'll sort of measure the growth overall so um budget just you know not to talk more about the budget but I just want to thank the board um for
078your support um members of the community for the questions comments that you that you provided as well uh I want to thank our admin team um who's not here with us but certainly Mr Pepe uh for his excellent work on the budget in terms of presentation just Gathering the numbers and putting the budget together so congratulations to you Mr py um and so you know there's a there's a there's a lot going on but we are certainly looking at uh expansion projects at Faber we've been looking at Lan uh we've been working with Lan uh Architects at um uh possible expansion projects at Faber that could add as many as 20 to 24 classrooms at Faber in various configurations um we have a lot of space that we need to to figure out how to
079provide um but these projects are uh very very expensive and uh are very challenging to put together so there's going to be a lot of conversation about this but we're already thinking about this now the earliest that any of these projects would even come to fruition would be summer 26 uh or summer 27 and so you know in terms of timelines that's really what we're looking at is 2 three four years out uh we also have to look at the debt that the district currently has um and uh when debt rolls off from older projects it allows new debt to be brought on um at you know a a net neutral tax impact otherwise all of the debt continues to be carried um which creates a much higher tax burden for tax and so we
080want to be cognizant of all of those things um but we also recognize that the the school district does have needs uh for expansion so we'll be looking for um you know a lot of community feedback and public conversation about that over the next couple of years I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the Middle School assistant principal position so this is a principal uh this is a position that uh was posted Tuesday April 23rd um I do want to apologize to the board for sort of a process uh error I know that we had we've generally talked about um job descriptions being the things that drive a lot of the ways that we advertise with the Middle School assistant principal position we should have had the uh the change to
081the or chart on the agenda before the position was posted um it is on tonight's agenda and the position doesn't start until um you know the 2425 school year but had we put that on the agenda at that time we could have had a robust public conversation about it prior to the position being posted so uh I recognized that that that step was missed but I certainly took all the comments and feedback that we had um and I understand the the board's General support for the addition of the position um I will say that uh at last check we had 116 completed applications for the position um which is probably about twice as many as I thought we were going to have so we have a a huge pool um the hard part is going
082to be trying to figure out how to interview some number of people and who to interview um because most of the people who have applied uh do not have uh prior administrative experience most people are going into this position looking for their first administrative job and so the backgrounds are really sort of based on um recommendations or you know uh uh the way someone has progressed through their uh their career or you know the types of things they write about so it's a it'll be an interesting process that I'll I'll work through with uh Mr almeer and Mr trapkin so uh in order to help support that process though we also did put out a survey to LMS students parents and staff on Monday April 29th we had 91 responses to that survey um which
083were split pretty evenly between staff members parents and students um so we had about 33 34 students who responded um the survey was a list of skill sets and work experience items that might be uh that that I asked sort of people to prioritize so on a scale of 1 to five how important do you believe it is that this person should let's say have prior administrative experience or be bilingual or those types of things so the from the responses the most important skill set that was identified was the ability to manage student behavior um the second was creating a positive School culture the third was communication the fourth was collaborating and supporting collaborating with and supporting Steph and the fifth was uh understanding social emotional learning so as you can see right the feedback
084about the middle school is really geared towards very focused on culture right it's very much a discussion about ensuring that students have a positive learning environment that they feel supported that the right supports are in place um other items that were on the list include interacting with parents improving instruction and assessment working with students with special needs being active in theel in community demonstrating fluency in Spanish and writing and and developing curriculum to to uh to an item these are all important items right um but I wanted to just highlight kind of the top six or seven or so in terms of where the the mind of of uh feedback was in terms of work experience the number one by far uh item that was listed was Prior experience working with a diverse group of
085students so I think there's a real recognition that the middle school is a very diverse place to work in um and someone who has a lot of empathy and has the ability to understand students that come from different backgrounds is really a significant factor the second one was Prior experience as a middle school teacher um that was right around four um so someone who understands what it's like to be in a middle school um is something that was that was generally a positive thing um prior experience teaching in a core area so math English language arts science and social studies was third and then the fourth was Prior experience as an administrator so I think there's you know again the recognition that what is important is not necessarily that you've done the job before it's
086that you can come in and you can learn and you can be open to the environment that you're working in so I think this is really valuable feedback it will help us drive many of the questions that we ask um to the candidates when we get to that point in the process um and also in terms of the samples and work product that we ask them to do and bring um you know as they as we move forward so very exciting time in terms of adding the position uh board members I know I as I as I said uh by email and as I have said uh earlier just now um apologies in terms of the process um these are learning uh learning aspects for me and so I appreciate the you know the the
087conversations that we've had about the position I'm sorry Dan where did you say this was in tonight's agenda for approval the orc chart yeah what number is it it's in Personnel item g 14g 14 G so uh moving on uh DEA make a difference Monday um which is uh a very exciting thing that the DEA started to do in I think it was January is that right thereabouts uh so sort of a weekly shout out to a staff member so April 22nd the shout out was to uh Miss melanowski Miss Khalifa Miss Rah and miss canella these are favor staff members three ESL teachers and one Elementary classroom teacher who hosted a title 3 family engagement event at the dellan public library um and this was with with miss drapkin and miss gribbon this is
088title three funded um we had over 40 attendees um it was very cool uh mayor sento was there there were a number of burough council members who were also there um Miss Lopez from the library was there um and the kids had a great time they had pizza um the adults had some instruction and some conversation about sort of community events and those types of things so um very worthy shout out to them uh on the 29th it was uh Miss bexa from the um special education department at the middle school um and uh I will continue to report out on the DEA make a difference Mondays as they move forward all right next topic is preschool so uh understanding that there that preschool has been a topic of a public conversation I just want
089to talk about kind of process and things like that um there was a a a public comment made regard to information that's shared there is information on the website about curriculum and some of things there's always room for us to grow in terms of the information that we share uh but I do want to just sort of outline this so this all started with um our application for preschool expansion aid for the 2425 school year preschool expansion Aid is something that was offered by the state of New Jersey it allows districts to apply for direct State funding to increase the number of preschool seats um currently in the district sorry not currently prior to January the district was uh was uh providing preschool um and there was a fee that was associated with it there
090was also a weight list that was associated with it as well um and we had preschool at only the three we had integrated preschool at the three classrooms uh at Faber which have have been uh newly redesigned so preschool expansion Aid is basically a process that over five years a district is expected to provide seats for 90% of its preschool universe and so the preschool universe is is determined by taking the number of first graders and second graders uh and adding them together so kindergarten is not a full a full accounting of uh of enrollment by first and second grade you have a good sense of what the number of students are um in each of the grade levels that number is your preschool Universe because that's the same number estimated as the number of
091three-year-olds and fouryear olds that you would have in your town right so if every three-year-old and four-year-old uh currently went to school full day by first grade they would all be in first grade or by second grade they would all be in second grade so you take that number and you add them up and it's about 200 or thereabouts um in denel and a little bit higher so by five years from this year we have to uh have seats for 90% of our preschool universe so the way that districts do that is either by providing space internally if they have capacity uh through class rooms the classrooms have to meet very specific requirements they have to be 950 sare ft uh which is very large for a classroom especially in an old building uh you
092can apply for waivers for certain things but still the classrooms have to be big uh or if you don't have space internally you can apply uh you can find a private provider to work with the private provider basically come becomes a site of your local preschool so the district uh did Outreach to four 45 uh private providers within about a 4 M 5 m radius um every every preschool that exists basically uh within you know a couple of Miles received a phone call or an email or a Google form or something uh we heard back from two uh that were reasonable Partners uh we made the decision that there were two I should say that were reasonable Partners meaning that they had space that was uh adequate that was we thought appropriate um and that
093they understood the parameters of preschool funding how that would work etc so for private providers the the district gets direct state aid uh which is a per pupil amount ours is about 16,500 or thereabouts we are we serve as a pass through to the private provider so we pay the private provider some smaller amount 14,000 or 14,500 or something like that per student that is the revenue that they receive for giving their classroom to dellan for its preschool expansion and so we have two private providers right now uh that are scheduled for you know for the 2425 school year one of the quirks of this process is that this funding is actually part of the state's budget process and so we had to make a determination by November uh November of this past year uh
094calendar year of this this school year uh with uh we have to make a determination by November who the private providers were for 2425 and how many classrooms they were going to give us so just think about how crazy that is right we could be spending four five six more months trying to find more providers but we had to know by November we had to estimate in November that we were going to have two private providers that each would give us two classrooms we have to be very conservative about that because we don't have space at fa if let's say you know God forbid the private provider closes right we're still responsible for providing all of those seats so districts right not just us but districts all across the state have to be very careful
095about the expansion how it works what you promise because if it doesn't work out 10 months later you've got a sort of you know you're left holding the bag as they say so we were able to work with two private providers who have become uh very willing Partners in this process one of them is in uh South planfield um sort of by like out towards Hadley um and the other one is A+ Academy which is um finishing its construction on the corner of Jackson Avenue um and so each of those providers are giving us two classrooms they've begun the process of hiring teachers the teachers that they hire have to be hired at approximately what our starting salaries are for our Preschool teachers um so it doesn't have to be exact on the guide but
096it has to be very close and um with each of the classrooms there has to be space that is provided for students with special needs as well so the maximum classroom size is 15 but we can't offer 15 seats in each classroom because there has to be space uh for students with special needs who potentially uh would be put in the class and so I think that we're at 14 students per classroom given the fact that we still have space in our own uh our own classrooms for students with special needs so private providers so all of that is to say that uh we opened up registration for uh preschool uh and it closed on April 26 we extended the deadline because we had um we knew that there was more interest than people who
097had responded at the time we have 92 slots that are available for next year so of those 92 86 of them are new slots meaning students who have not yet been enrolled six of those are current three-year-olds who are at Faber who are becoming four so those students did not have to reapply because they're in Faber already so there are 86 new slots A+ Academy has 28 and great start Early Learning Center has 28 and Faber has um has 36 total slots which is 30 new slots so our registration process there were 110 eligible students who entered the lottery for 86 slots we gave students we gave parents a choice between first second and third uh as their pre as to their preference not surprisingly 105 of the 110 selected Faber as their first choice
098four selected A+ Academy and one selected great start Early Learning Center one of the things that we also looked at was well can we provide uh prioritization for students who have siblings at Faber because obviously we want this to be as positive as possible uh we had um of three-year-olds we had 47 three-year-olds 22 of them had siblings at Faber right so remember there's only 30 30 slots at Faber 25 of them did not have siblings at Faber of the four-year-olds 25 children had siblings at favor so there were 47 uh students with siblings at Fab for slots uh 32 did not have siblings of Faber and six were already enrolled in the program starting in January we made offers to uh the first group of people we did a lottery uh using like an
099online system it's recorded you know um Etc uh of the four-year-olds there were 48 accepted nine of the families have declined uh and of the three-year-olds 37 accepted nine declined and as of when I typed this up there were seven that we were waiting for a response for what that meant is because of the the people who declined we were able to offer free full day preschool to every single parent who initially put in right we heard various things for you know families that said you know we're not doing this because we moved we're not doing this because um we actually think that maybe a half day program is better and or I like my provider or this is is the time I'm not going to get back with my child which we heard from
100a couple of families all of which is perfectly fine um but as of uh yesterday we were actually able to offer a seat to any of the families that put in um there were some conversations about the way that we did the lottery um which I appreciated the feedback on some folks said really you should collect all of the economic information from Families First and prioritize those families um we did not do that in in this process we just took all of the families that were eligible um and you know put them through the lottery we had um a sense of exactly what the economic ratio of economic disadvantage to non-economic disadvantage was in denell and basically the state provides no parameters as to how you do your own program as a district our goal
101was to try to make it that at least 50% of our uh preschool uh enroles were from families that were economically disadvantaged which again is only possible based on looking at who has actually applied uh and who's interested we did Outreach in the community with Flyers our uh preschool instructional coach and Community parent involvement specialist went to various locations and put flyers up worked with the library um and other types of events and you know this is the first year we're doing this we can certainly do it better next year um but I think that we did reasonably well um given you know the the short timeline and the opportunities that we had so the last sort of big sticking point for families has been uh the availability of before care and after care so
102I recognize so we've already stated that our two private providers those of those of the families that are enrolled in those programs uh have already been told that before care and after care are available they're available for a fee uh but they are available uh preschool expansion the free PR School experience of a full day is 6 hours of preschool um it doesn't say what those hours are it's 6 hours of instruction or 6 hours of the experience so if you want to drop off early and that's available you can do that if you want to stay late that's available as well that's up to the private providers how they do that we do have after care available at Faber uh but one thing that we have not yet figured out how to do is
103offer before care um those of you that have been to Faber you know that drop off of students in the morning is an is not a pleasant experience um and the addition of new students coming at the same time would be very challenging in terms of the logistics space is an issue and Staffing is an issue right now we've decided to offer uh that sort of uh early Bridge care I'm not sure exactly what it's called from about 8:30 to 9:00 um at Faber and we have a we had a staff plan which sounded great but when people are absent people get pulled to cover General classrooms and our supervisor for early childhood education has actually had to cover um the before CARE program on multiple occasions which again it's all fine because we're working
104through this right and she's here anyway and she's great she's a good sport um but we can't have a program that's built like that um generally so our budget does provide opportunities to support additional staff members a relief teacher additional par professionals Etc we've looked at that we've looked at space we want our Preschool teachers are three preschool integrated teachers we want them to have access to their classroom in the morning to plan right and set their rooms up so we can't use those classrooms as space for before care we do have additional hallway space that we can use um but again you know what would happen if all of the kids that were enrolled in those classes wanted before care right we have to plan essentially for you know 42 students um and where
105do we put them right there are already students in the allpurpose room there are already students in the media center do we want students in the hallway you know these are the questions so I will say that you know I understand parents concerns um if parents are interested in guaranteeing that they are in a spot where there is before care offered we are happy to have a conversation about them taking one of the spots at one of our two private providers and offering one of those folks a spot at Faber um right now we're not able to guarantee that we will have before care we are certainly looking at it for Faber um but there are a number of logistical challenges so I wanted to just say that we've received some emails the board has
106received some emails you should all know as board members of course that we're looking at this very carefully trying to do what's right by the community uh but we do have some challenges that we're trying to overcome so that's the preschool update I'll just stop for a second and just you know board members if you have any questions on that I'll give me a chance to drink some water also uh dad you actually uh touched on a lot of things I was going to bring up later on uh one of the things I have on there is that people have been coming to to me saying that communication About Preschool and quote is confusing and convoluted so maybe going forward we could just make it clearer for the families they just seem confused about dates
107and processes and things like that I'm happy to take the feedback if people have specific instances of what's confusing but you did say I'm sorry to interrupt you did say that um you were looking to make improvements on it next year already you said that y yeah thank you yep um okay so I'll just try to run through a couple other items because it's already 20 after 9 uh so my student voice groups I met with the middle school and high school folks um which was wonderful I'll just say the students were great students have been great um I did not get to meet with the Faber crew this time around but middle school and high school kids also submitted uh survey uh about three things they would change in their building um number one
108pretty much across the board anyone want to Guess Elementary principal every single person yeah yeah it was it was food so yeah the food food services is a concern um but they they do love the um they they love the the the workers in the cafeteria um just sometimes not the food we had a very specific conversation about well what what food is it and so they said well we love the fried chicken but the grilled chicken was like blue or something you know so anyway uh but they also had some other interesting ideas so uh I appreciate their their feedback um security Personnel uh we're still in the process of again sorry so the student voices is for folks that may be joining us that's you meeting students yes get you meeting with the
109students directly to be able to get feedback directly from them that's right so these are groups of 15 students at each of the uh the schools uh that I've met with uh on a very a number of topics so uh it's been great to hear from students directly not mediated by the um by the administrators or the teachers or the adults um just hearing the kids uh you know as as one would if they were in a classroom for example uh so uh security Personnel we are going to talk about the new position in Old business um I would like to try to approve that job description at the end of May if we could so uh we can start to advertise for that hiring we have a ton of positions open um we have
110some uh positions that were open from resignations and also the new positions that we brought on I'm very happy to uh announce and I've shared this already with the board but we will be hiring a new math teacher and a new physics teacher at the high school um which is remarkable um we have gone six months without a math teacher or so um at the high school that followed six months last year without a math teacher um and our physics teacher this year Mr McGovern is retiring um I did ask him to stay on numerous occasions but he's very very happy to be on his way out and retiring um but we did hire a wonderful candidate who I'm very excited about um for next year or we will we will be hiring that person
111uh today uh I want to bring to everyone's attention uh Danielle Sherman who was a first year English teacher at the middle school um she was uh selected as Applebee's above and beyond uh competition uh teacher of the year so this was based on a student Soma Lance who is um chol Iris Lance's daughter wrote a beautiful letter on her behalf uh and Applebees will be sending a check to the middle school for $500 to be used for supplies for her classroom um for the upcoming school year and also will be hosting a party for Soma's class so very cool and congratulations to miss Sherman uh two other recognitions um folks in central office this I've really been working with them to try to um expand their knowledge base and and improve their credentialing and
112things like that uh so uh I want to congratulate publicly Annie shiek and Kathy simino uh Annie is my secretary Kathy is uh coordinator of um payroll and health benefits they both became uh society for human resources management SHRM certified professionals they went through a long class and then had to take a grueling exam as HRM is basically industry standard um Human Resources uh and so they they they both uh passed on their first uh attempt taking the test so very very proud of them um we also have our ESL parent class um going and we've had maybe three or four weeks of instruction we have about 15 community members who are involved in that um and so that's been going very well um that's actually also being taught by Annie which is wonderful that's
113that's at the library right that's being taught uh it's actually being taught at the at Faber oh at fa okay yeah um bring your child to workday was on the 25th um so thank you to all the parents who who uh who you know uh the staff members rather who brought their their kids in um very fun and exciting day uh for bringing a child to workday um and we have a lot of testing happening the njsa is happening AP exams uh as I mentioned started yesterday we're doing other internal testing so may is really big test month and then lastly I mentioned this during the budget presentation but we heard this afternoon that our Grant application for the New Jersey climate and culture Innovation uh Grant was accepted which will bring $125,000 in funding
114um to find innovative ways to reduce unnecessary burden of certain work that teachers are required to do so that's exciting stuff and that's it okay thank you Mr Ross thank you thank you so uh moving on to agenda item number 10 uh public comments on agenda items only so we we talked about the preschool so that's on the agenda um so the board invites uh public comment on agenda items only from members of our community in accordance with board policy 0167 public comment sections are intended to provide an opportunity for members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest the board and administration will be taking notes during public comment but will not provide substantive responses to questions or concerns raised by individual speakers if necessary as you saw earlier the
115superintendent May provide a brief response after the entire public comment period is completed the board appreciates and welcomes feedback from the community but is not at Liberty to engage in a back and forth dialogue with members of the public during this portion of the meeting prior to making your public comment please state your name and municipality please note that all statements must be directed to the presiding officer please come forward uh please come to the microphone at this time if you'd like to make comments on agenda items only oh please go ahead hello Janine McNair uh 219 Gert terce dellan um and my biggest concern is about the preschool before CARE program I am fortunate enough to have my daughter in that program and has been taken care of the before care since the change
116has started in January I have never needed before care from my daughter fortunately but once you changed the start time this became a huge inconvenience for my family many other families too I know as you many of you have kid children here you understand the concerns you understand the stress that we have raising our children I need your help I need your help to put before care back please don't do this whatever you have brain storms continue to brainstorm please talk to the director of before care they have wonderful ideas of how to help do not let the line of communication stop between the Administration staff and what's going on with the people in your school that's running it open line of communication is extremely important and it really does seem as if there is
117not happening from what we hear in the grape vine of the rumors of the school what's happening there's a big drop of communication we're raising young students we need your help and we need you to honestly think of the impact this is going to have on us taking this away and it is not acceptable to be moving my daughter who's already used to Faber to a different location I understand you guys are working with a whole new Grant and it is very difficult to navigate through and I sympathize with that but please sympathize with me I'm the parent in the community and in your organization chart right up top you says students parents and the community you need to Des serve us don't take away our program please don't take away our program I know
118the staff can make this happen I've seen the staff do wonderful things please talk to them please make our before care stay please reconsider this it is very important those families that didn't want to be in favor it's because of before care it's because of after care we are working family we're a blue collar town we need this there's economic challenges as you are all aware of this I am more than happy to pay for before care I am not asking this to be free please brainstorm and come up with this let this Revenue be a source of revenue for this community for the schools to keep going you guys have a lot on your table but please consider keeping our community together at favor with before care I don't want my children be separated
119my son's in kindergarten will be moving into first grade I need them together I need that together for my family sanity my other question is with my children are enrolled in after care why is it sometimes it takes a very long time for the checks to clear that's my other side question um there is a third thing but it's slipping in my mind so I'll step out of line and I'll get back in when that comes to mind thank you thank you m McNair and just to mention too if if you um don't remember the question you're also welcome to email us and we'll happily respond so but but but if you do remember please do let us know no tears please come forward great thank you guys for the transparency a microphone please sorry
120thank you can pull you can pull it out if you'd like or move it up and down if You' like let me see if I can all right thank you guys um for the transparency transparency on the prek program um my name is Bena theel I live on Station Road um so I have a few questions can you clarify if you said you were looking to open 2 to 25 new Faber classrooms or if that's in total of the existing plus any new classrooms you would open up and does that mean starting you know um hopefully in 20126 that would increase the number of prek classes as well um the second question I have is given the growth in Den Allen 400 units are now um you know have been built in the past year
121at the Nell and The Crossings um there was mention of the the way the prek universe was decided which is taking his historical data first grade um population plus uh the second grade population and adding it together right um does that make sense given you know the additions that we have in the community just you know um I think someone else mentioned it in terms of the demographic report doesn't really make sense given all the growth we've had and the growth we will continue to have in the community um the third question I have is since thank you superintendent for letting us know that you know all family um that applied to the prek program were accepted is there any room if there are available seats still to um push the cut off elig eligibility
122date from October 1st to maybe December 1st similar to how they do it in New York so if let's say in a few months if there's still open seats then every seat could potentially be filled I know for example my son is born in November so he's just missing it by a month thank thank you thank you very much oh please come forward hi I'm Rebecca Davenport I live on Walnut Street um I'm really here discussing the preschool so I appreciate you giving a lot of the information you answered some of my questions um I'm super excited about it it sounds like a great opportunity um but there's definitely some things that need to get improved upon um and I hope it gets taken into consideration for the future the information regarding the satellite locations
123only included their name and location whenever we first received the um information it was never mentioned that one of the locations is not even open yet and it's still under construction um also it's never been mentioned are the teachers considered dellan School District employees is the D on School District hiring these people also we were given four days to make a decision to either accept or decline the preschool offer um that's quite a tight deadline to know what's happening for September um information about before and after care was not provided in this letter we were also not told if our child would have a spot for the following year I mean who wants to pull their children out of daycare for only one year if you don't know you have a secure spot for the
124following year I mean most daycares have a weit list um I'm not sure how families were expected to make these decisions to accept or decline when you didn't know what drop off or pickup times were being offered if you'd have a spot for the following year now I did email um and I got information back very quickly which I appreciated um but it would just be helpful to have all those facts to begin with to kind of avoid that back and forth with all of the emails um while speaking about before and after care um I hope there's going to be consistency between locations I know you have mentioned you know the um obstacles at Faber but this should be a consistent opportunity for everyone that's enrolled um the same start times the same end
125times the same cost from what I'm hearing through the rumor mill that is not the case um I'm hoping it'll be an equal opportunity for everyone at all locations you know I'm very happy about the preschool program um I I'm I love that this is happening it's it's I think a great opportunity for um my family for many families and for the town I just really hope going forward there's some better communication and much needed consistency between all three locations thank you very much jinnie mnir I remembered my thought I I just want to mention that not only take this into consideration for this school year and this calendar year this needs to be in place moving forward for preschoolers in before care after care this isn't something that we need to be juggling with
126our children every single year I'm not just worried about my child's school year I'm worrying about every child in dellan moving forward this needs to be in state just the same way it is every other school year with every other grade level that preschool is included and it is very important to have this set in stone moving forward that way every school year you guys aren't bombarded with a bunch of preschool parents coming in here complaining about this I think this is very important to have it consistent for every family across the board in denalan we cannot be having it at one location you're having it here at another location you're not having it the consistency is extremely important we teach our children to be very consistent and do the same routines I expect the
127same out of the board and the schools that are educating our CH our children please I know I sound like a broken record but I'm going to say it again please help us with aare for our preschoolers thank you thank you any other other uh comments okay uh last call uh before moving on to the next uh item would you like to I would thank you thank you all for your comments appreciate the perspectives Miss Davenport if you could um email me the list of items I think that would be helpful um so as I mentioned right this is the first year that we're doing this we are uh we've moved from offering 36 preschool seats at a cost to every single person who's been interested to offering 92 seats for free uh for six
128hours of preschool I think it's important to note that at the onset this is a massive expansion of the services that are being provided to all dellan residents there will be challenges and in terms of consistency I know that was brought up a number of times this won't be consistent from provider to provider there will be different costs there will be different hours because that's the way the grant is written and it will be up to the provider to determine what the costs will be how late they want to be open how early they want to be what students and families are guaranteed is 6 hours of free preschool and if they don't want to take six hours ofe free preschool families have all the options in the world if they have the economic means
129to do that the purpose of preschool expansion Aid in the first place is to provide that type of universality and that is number one our goal I do recognize the concern as I said before about the lack of preschool uh about the lack of before care being offered at fa I did say that we were working on it we will continue to work on it I still cannot guarantee that that is something that we will solve uh but we recognize that that is an important factor for families um there was a question about um checks clearing for um after school program we'll certainly check on that as well um there were some discussions about the uh additional classroom so the expansion that we were talking about with the architectural plan it would be classrooms it
130wouldn't necessarily all be preschool classrooms um if the work was to start in the summer of 26 it certainly would not be done for the 26 27 school year we're looking at probably not until at least the 28 29 school year for classrooms to be inhabitable um would be my guess um and what those classes would be used for would be a question a sort of open question that we would have to figure out over time um the recalculation of the universe is done every year and so um our universe this year is based on our current first grade numbers um and actually I was thinking about it I think that what they do is they take the number of first graders and multiply by two it's not first plus second it's essentially the same
131but I think that's the calculation so if we do have an increase in first graders our universe gets recalculated we then have to provide a higher number or a lower number of seats based on that 90% threshold um the eligibility date is determined by board policy uh for all students so we couldn't change that without going through a board policy change that would open up all grades uh potentially to December enrollment December 1st right now um and for many years I imagine uh October 1st has been the deadline that's been used in this District so that's a certainly a conversation to have uh miss dport you had a number of uh important points um staff members of private providers are not employees of the district the district does not hire those staff members um we
132certainly uh provide our guidance in terms of what those staff members uh are required in terms of their their background they are not employees of the district though um I agree that the conversation about having a secure spot from year to year is essential um and that's that's why I want you to just kind of if you wouldn't mind just putting those items in an email just so that I could kind of keep track of them um again consistency is something that we cannot provide um and we will not be able to provide in terms of the before the before care and after care um and uh Miss McNair the conversation about U every other year I certainly agree um I think if we're able to solve this once then we'll be able to solve
133it forever um and so that's you know a conversation I I do want to say I really thank you all for your comments I mean as I mentioned right this is the first year that we're doing this we uh the state provides very sharp timelines for us um and the paperwork is just Monumental in terms of what we have to support uh so it may seem that things are rushed but they are uh they're fast because the timelines are fast so um I appreciate this this feedback for the first year uh where we are right now we have you know 92 students who um have the potential to have free preschool uh for the first time ever in this community I'm very proud of that um if we have to work around the margins to
134get some other things right I'm very you know I'm I'm content that that's kind of where we're at um your feedback and board members your feedback is certainly the stuff that will make us better in the future um and so uh you know I'm excited to kind of move forward with this more private providers that we have uh the more seats we'll be able to offer um and you know hopefully we'll get to a point where any three or four year-old who lives in dellan has the opportunity to have free preschool uh for 6 hours during the day which would be incredible for this community so thank you all okay thank you Mr Ross moving on to item uh 11 uh education so I believe we did not have an education committee meeting since last
135time so there is no report so Mr dougen you are off the hook um but we do have in item 12 uh educa education action items that we need to address so at this time looking for a motion to approve um 12 a through d as a block motion to approve 12 a through d as a block second second open for questions and comments thank you guys any other questions comments last call okay Mr Pepe call the rooll Please Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Mr dougen yes Dr jjo yes Mrs Howard yes Mr saoi yes Miss Shimp yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes motion passes fantastic moving on to item 13 Personnel discussion items uh there is no uh personal committee report as again we did not meet since our last time so
136moving on to item 14 personnel and action items and Personnel um looking for a motion to approve 14 a through L as a block I move to approve 14 a through L as a block second open for questions and comments um I will note here as we as noted earlier uh 14g is the organizational chart that we were talking about earlier um just a question please go ahead just a question for clarification we're approving the job description for the position of instructional coach is um The Next Step going to be to post for that position yes okay yes okay thank you I just want to point out that this agenda uh is um it's May 7th so we are uh meeting the May 15th statutory deadline for the renewal of non-tenured Staff members so the
137enclosure in item a is our regular staff approval lists of new positions or extracurricular activities the enclosure in Item B is the renewal of all of our non-tenured staff members uh DEA eligible our non-tenured daa administrators non-tenured non-aligned certificated positions um and also our uh folks who are in positions that are not eligible to earn tenure uh custodians um you know other technology positions uh facilities positions Etc I also want to point out item C which is the renewal of Mr Pepe um Mr Pepe's contract was approved by the executive County Superintendent of Schools um and that appears um as is required um by the May 15th deadline on this agenda as a resolution and just one more thing item I is the job description for the PRI for the the preschool social worker Community
138parent involvement Specialists those will be posted as well that will be posted and that that position we actually have someone in that position currently um where we hired them under the social worker um job description but I felt that it was important to more clearly articulate the sort of dual roles of the position which is that more new role the the just to make clear that there's a social work aspect of the role and also a uh Community parent involvement specialist aspect of the role thank you thank you okay any other questions comments yes uh we're on 14 now yes yes uh so for 14a lines one and two um these teachers uh that are for the math and science position uh can you tell me about how many years of teaching they have um
139off the top of my head I can't give an exact number um I can know that I can share that uh from a salary requirement perspective um you know the offers that were made were comparable to um one of the one of the teachers is in a uh full-time tenure eligible position um the offer is uh comparable to that teachers and the other one I think is very competitive within the market and um that brings me to uh 14g the reorg uh uh I guess this is the best place for my comment here um when I first came on as a Bo OE member um I always uh strive to do what I thought was best for the people in the schools of dellan um and over the last couple weeks I've been asking myself
140is that what I'm doing and I know that I might be in the minority here I know it doesn't always me and agreeing with the people that are around me or it doesn't mean always looking for issues uh but there's been something that's been like a pebble in my shoe for the last couple of weeks and I am speaking about that middle school vice principal position first I don't like the way that it it came up I know we had spoken about it before I thought there would have been a time that we spoke about it in Open Session before it got posted I also know that middle schools are an issue um Across America but uh with small town Vibes in mind I'm not so sure another administrator position and denalan is what we
141need then this is my personal feeling I know we we have added two administrator positions recently uh but in the Lincoln Middle School and dellan High School connected schools we have six administrators in that uh area already um I think it may be good to take a look at the ones we already have and uh how they can be used here instead of adding another um according to the population study we had from the last board meeting the high school and Elementary School are our biggest areas of concern for population growth uh I think we should look at um instead of adding another administrator maybe we look to add more teachers and staff in those schools thank you thank you Mr Anderson other comments questions I mean I I'll just respond I mean I think
142Mr Anderson appreciate your comments um we have spoken about this before and I I am aware of how you feel about this um I think you know this was a long deliberative process uh to make this recommendation um you mentioned the two administrative positions one of those positions is uh fully Grant funded and uh is paid for through preschool expansion as a requirement of that Grant the other position um I think we would all agree was a very important addition for the revamping of our our programming it also took a significant amount of uh burden off of the principles in terms of Hib testing uh affirmative action and other items which you know were sort of scattered AC across the administrative team on the business administrator Etc so uh I I'm certainly interested in in
143speaking with you more about um how we could use the the six physically uh um located administrators to support the um theal needs of the the Middle School um and the instructional needs of the middle school I'm happy to have that conversation I do think that um middle schools uh as you mentioned really everywhere are struggling uh you know this better than anyone as a middle school teacher um we have a significant increase in our student population we've added counseling support um but we have a single administrator who is really spending most of uh his time doing uh doing behavior um remediation um and speaking with parents about Behavior remediation and doing more Behavior remediation and uh we have the opportunity I think to add some instructional leadership and some leadership within the building um
144and and just provide a little bit of relief for kind of what seems to be from you know my understanding a real a real grind and a real challenge with those teachers um I think that this is going to be a a a really significant addition for the school um and I think that adding someone who has really good instructional chops and also really good uh sense of how to build School climate um will be very welcomed um in the middle school I know that we will have Middle School folks who are involved in the process um I know the Middle School staff is very strong and has been really kind of taking the lead on a lot of things um and I think welcoming some of those new ideas and new initiatives is going
145to be part of that um I would say that the way that you began your comments um is it's unnecessary right I think it's it's great that we have an open forum and I appreciate uh any kind of uh dissenting opinion or difference of opinion I think it's important that we have that here um and I appreciate you bringing this to the table um and I would say if you're you know any board member if you're the loan the loan person on an item right feel free to to raise the concern and we can have that conversation in public I want everyone to feel comfortable uh with being able to do that um and you know a vote might not go one way or another but I think it's important that we all recognize right
146you're all volunteers right you spend all of your time doing this um you're not getting paid for it um if you feel like there's an opinion that you need to share you should share it um and you know I should accept that Mr Pepe should accept that and we can we can move on collegially so I want to you know I thank you for for your perspective um and thank you for sharing any other questions comments before we com sorry go ahead um and Mr Anderson thank you very much for sharing um I think at every level in education now people are being inundated with behaviors and you end up because of the volume of the behaviors you end up addressing them more quickly and more quickly and more quickly and that undermines that connection
147to the school and community and it kind of undermines people feeling heard and listened to and so having additional staff in those positions where um that load could be shared that families could be given more support and time and having an extra administrator available to do that I I think could be a huge help um you know teachers are struggling with the behaviors in the classroom um they spend a lot of time addressing it themselves but it's nice if we could have additional support in that area so that we could help better edicate some of the parents and some of the students about their choices but there's a Tipping Point where you just get so busy with behaviors it's like I called back Mrs so and so I answered this one I did that one
148I did this one and the problem comes back again tomorrow if it's not really given um the time it deserves you know so I've always enjoyed speaking with you and and of course um you know we both have different experiences um but for me I having seen admin added in in different situations and roles I think it's a benefit any other questions comments thank you Mr dou so I'll just add here um to put my spin on on some of this too not so much about the administrator I think that's I think we are going the right direction um you know when when um um one of the things that I really like about our our group of nine that we have here is that um I I feel that I can have a conversation
149with each and every one of you and I don't feel that we have to always agree on things and I think that's I think that's great if we all agreed on everything this would be very boring we wouldn't really have the color or the the depth that we do have and I'm I'm actually very happy seeing the folks around this table because we all have very um how shall we say very very uh pronounced opinions on various things and I appreciate that and I appreciate the discussions that we have at this table outside this room in our executive sessions because you know when when when I remember when when when new board members were coming on one of the first things they asked me go what do I need to do and what I would
150say to them you know is is you don't have to agree with everything but you have to have an opinion and you have to be able to share and you have to be able to have civil discourse because that's how we move the needle forward to be able to to to do what we do we represent the community and you guys know that and it we bring all of these things here to be able to share that and to be able to have a good discussion um whether when we wind up voting on things whether it's 5 to four 6 to3 you know 7 to2 whatever the number is we've had a discussion about this and for some of you Rec recognize that we didn't have that before and I'm very happy that we have
151that now and would like us to continue doing that I just wanted to say that because I think you know perspective where we were two three years ago is a lot different than where we are right now and I'm very happy that we are able to have discussions like this and we should continue to do so I'll just leave it there so oh sorry I just have one comment on that as being a new board member and not understanding too much of the system review of the job description for the added administrative role made sense my concern is with all the budget constraints and with the increase in taxes for our residents how do we measure the benefit of adding that resource in to justify that the existence of the role and if we don't
152see that benefit what is our our out or way to make the the community whole with with that type of investment that was my concern and so seeing the job description out there before that comment was made was you know um I was surprised that's my comment on that thank you Mr Soni any other comments guys quotes uh quotes questions okay and just to remind everybody we have a motion on the floor work we're voting on um it's 14 a through 14 a through L is a Blog so I'm going to say one more time any last call for comments or questions open discussion okay Mr Pepe can you please call the rooll Mr Anderson yes um I'm upstanding from A1 and two and uh no to 14g sorry running out of space to write
153notes uh thank you Mrs Condit yes that was yes Mr Dugen yes yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr satoi uh yes with the exception to item G are you abstaining on G or voting no no I'm voting no for G thank you Miss Shimp yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes all right motion passes okay thank you all right moving on to item number 15 uh operations um right make sure uh we did not have an operations committee uh report so actually wait was there right uh we did not have an operations uh committee meeting so there's no report Mr Walker you are off the hook um but we do have action items to to um vote on and to approve so at this time looking for a motion uh to approve 16
154a through n as a block I move to approve 16 a through M as a block second yeah n is and Nancy yes so we had a first and a second we are now open for comments questions uh open discussion yeah I do have a comment on item J um this is something that should be highlighted because the Boy Scouts of America have opened their doors to being including girls into the program having an eagle scout is going to be something that's special due to the fact that girls having attained Eagle Scout rank is a very small group group also having one of the girls out of Troop One the very first girls troop in the Boy Scouts of America BSA is also something special I think we should be able to highlight something like
155that is as she goes through her project to support her highlight it to the community as well as if she obtains the uh the rank of Eagle Scout that would be a great uh added I would agree with that yes also say that I think it was today boy Scots of America changed name to scouting America so you you both took my comments sorry good job let the girls and we uh Misty bro was here uh earlier in the meeting with her mom uh we told her that it was going to be very late um so that you know she shouldn't be worried about us approving this item or the board approving this item but I'll certainly reach out tomorrow morning and let her know uh that there's full throated support for this this is
156actually also a very um it's timely because this we've been talking about these beds at Faber uh for quite some time so it's actually an excellent project as well um I just want to take a moment to uh thank uh obviously the uh the PTO for the donation of the CG machine I'm sure it will get lots and lots and lots and lots of use uh so thank you I also want to thank masio uh this is from the this donation is part of the the senior uh event that they had um prior to Greece um so they they collected uh some donations and funding from that and then donated the proceeds back to the school so thank you to masio for their service to the district questions comments guys discussion I have a question
157regarding each which one I'm sorry H okay the use of white glove Community Care Inc what was the service we had before does anyone know yeah so this is actually an additional nursing service um we have contracted nurse and we have a we have now two full-time nurses um we have uh if you notice item K in Personnel we had a resignation of the nurse that we hired last month um and so we just want to make sure that if needed we have additional nursing support uh for our students just for the the short time have we done our homework on this company only because I know a little bit about the company so this this is uh I do think we have multiple nursing uh um contracted services so I think this just adds
158one other option so if there's color that you can share offline I think that would be very helpful we'll do yeah thank you and if there's any tea to be spilled I'd like to hear that as well questions comments guys we're uh we're open here okay last call questions and comments okay Mr peepy can you please call the rooll Mr Anderson yes Mrs condet yes Mr Dugen yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr satoi yes Miss Shimp yes with a no to H Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes motion pass pass es awesome awesome okay moving on to item uh 17 uh old business um Mr R should I turn this over to you sure so I I realized I did not print copies of the the job description I just realized that as
159we were going through the agenda uh of the draft job description I did share it with board members on Friday I believe 3 um and so um you know I wanted to just kind of so I'll outline for those of you that don't have a copy of it my apologies uh this is a uh draft job description for a position that we've tentatively called District security coordinator this is one of two positions that would replace the SRO the SRO was a position that was a shared service agreement between the burough and the school district it was paid 100% by the um School District um at a a very very high total cost um District security staff member would be a uh retired um law enforcement officer of some sort who would not receive benefits um
160presumably because they are retired from a law enforcement service um they would be paid on a PDM basis or an hourly basis uh per DM hourly no salary is it salary um and um as a result the the cost is significantly less because obviously a full-time uh police officer who has been in the department for a long time who also receives benefits and pension contributions and other uh benefits is a is a very uh there's a large pot of money the second position which we've talked about which I mentioned in the uh budget presentation was an sleo which is I forgot what the S is but it's law enforcement officer special special law enforcement officer which is a class of uh law enforcement officers who are again retired individuals with some number of service uh
161in a in a police department um and those folks as well do not receive benefits because they're in the state pension system so those two positions uh would replace the one individual that we had up until recently and the total sum of the cost for those two two positions is still significantly less than the one position that we had um so the district security coordinator job description and scope I'll read the nature and scope of job it's responsible for securing District property and supporting the administration in providing a safe and orderly learning environment for students staff and visitors of dellan public schools um this is an armed security official hired directly by the dellan board of education is required to comply with all applicable statutes laws codes codes policies regulations uh the job description does
162say this is an hourly position that may include summer hours and will require travel between all district locations so this is why we're we're talking about this as a a draft item qualifications are some education requirements um character and um uh sort of positive role model uh requirements flexible hours um psychological and physical examinations there's uh section that is firearm requirements um which is about maintaining active identification card um the issued by the superintendent of the State Police um NJ SORA certification um and then maintaining certain aspects of a personal handgun um and certain holster requirements um and then job responsibilities basically safe and secure Lear learning environment monitoring responding to emergency situations and then other duties so this this job description was gathered by basically reaching out to all the superintendents in the county
163having them send their job descriptions for a similar position and then I took bits and pieces uh Mr Pepe and I met with uh Mr Tobin who is our school safety specialist um and basically after we have this conversation this will go back out to Bob Sensei who works for the state um you know with training these positions and kind of all of that so so for members of the public that's the nature of the conversation board members uh happy to have any um points of of uh comment that you have at this time um that we can onboard if you don't have anything or if you haven't had a chance to look at it feel free to shoot me an email about it but love to hear what you have to say I have
164a question um and I guess a clarification first and foremost when we initially talked about the district coordinator versus the sleo the sleo is definitely a retired law enforcement officer but we're now also looking for the district security coordinator to also be a retired law enforcement officer so no and I I did say that so I think I misspoke okay so that's correct so the job requirements uh listed currently in the job description as prior experience in law enforcement or as a security officer okay yes that brings me to number one under our firearm requirements y because we have it saying that it has the retired officer will carry a handgun okay good yes thank you thank you michette other comments or issues yeah just a quick question in regards to um creating the policies
165when do you think that would happen do we have like a template with other school districts to utilize and also do we specify or control the level uh holster that they'll be utilizing or is that mandated by the state like the level two or level three so the current draft job description States level three um I don't know the difference so I mean this is this is here because this was very similar to this was a section that was essentially borrowed from another school district so my my sense of this is there are items in here that need to be clarified for my understanding um obviously you know some of you may have that understanding as well but uh the folks from the state and our contact at another District um would certainly be able
166to to talk to speak to those right so the level two is just a single like strap it's not just it's friction plus a strap uh or some other locking device and a level three as two layers of other than friction two more layers of protection so in general level three is used if you know you're going to come in physical contact and confrontation with someone um matters the opinion of the the director or the the safety officer what they prefer um on that because I I don't see really a lot of physical uh contact and that you would you would have that in in really crowd altercations or you know a riot situation would be level three where that would be appropriate the only reason that school districts say level three is so that
167a a um a student wouldn't have a physical um physical confrontation with a safety officer and try to pull that weapon out that's just extra level of protection okay yeah thank you I appreciate that Dan so the firearm requirements came from another District you said as forli the whole thing or in pieces Mo mostly As is yeah all right Spotswood are there districts that um have a similar position that don't carry a firearm yes yeah Oldbridge has um officers that are District staff members that do not carry a firearm they have many many officers in each building that do carry firearms though and I think that's the that's the difference I think basically in all of the feedback that we had and the conversations we've had um one of the one of the points of
168guidance to us was it's important that you know if you have a security officer that that person have a firearm otherwise they sort of quote unquote serve no purpose in the event of you know uh some sort of uh incident with a with a gun so look you know again there's no rush on this so um we'll take this back we'll send this over to our folks um and get some feedback and clarification on any points that that we might need we can bring it back for discussion or for to be moved on the 28th we'll have committee meetings on the 22nd so we can discuss it then and then we'll see kind of what the Comfort level is if we push it to June that's certainly fine all right is everyone comfortable with that
169yeah okay right thank you very much and this is the one where we have an officer on each campus which is what we we're wanting to have yes exactly okay so uh any other old business anyone wants to bring back up okay moving on to item 18 new business any one with new business I do have one thing to just mention real quick on the new business um so it is that time of year again where we are starting to see advertisements um and for New Jersey school boards Workshop that's starting to come uh that is going to be in October October 21st through 24th and again this is at in Atlantic City um for those that I think we have had a number of folks that attended last year so what four five of
170us oh that's right we did have like I think it was five of us that did go in addition to Mr Ross um and it was it was a great learning experience and I would encourage if if um all all nine of us if we were able to go um to to try to um participate in in part all if we can or or in part in someday even even a day uh to go and I'm mentioning this now um because we have the uh deadline for early registration the early bird registration is coming up I believe it's the 21st of June or something like that that was my deadline it's June 30th but that's what I needed okay to be able to process it so so it's June 1st now that's the deadline so
171but um but but in all seriousness it's a it's actually a wonderful event I think I've been to the been there the last two three times and each time I I walk away with something new that I've learned um meet new folks um and it's something that is really great you know in terms of um developing as a board member and and also seeing you know other perspectives Beyond um our our wall our you know our our district uh I would highly encourage it um if we could all go I think that would be uh uh fantastic um understand schedules uh can be challenging I've already blocked out that time uh so I'm I'm planning to go I don't know if I'll be able to go all days but I've certainly blocked out uh time
172to go through to most of it uh this year so um just kind of putting it out there if there's any questions we could talk about now but there there's time to discuss um as well if you have questions if you want to talk about it offline but um i' invite if folks that have already been if you want to add anything there add anything to this uh it was you know a really uh a really really great time okay so um Mr Pepe will send a note right to everyone with the information more details yeah I will send you link to the website and a list of things that I need to know if you'd like to go and um for right now by mid June I need to know who's intending on going
173some of the other details we can work out over the summer but if I if we get enough people who are interested in going then we can sign up for the early bird registration which is a group registration and gives you access to up to like 25 people so but if there's only going to be like three people going then it doesn't make sense to go for the group rate cuz the individual rate would be cheaper right and oh go ahead so that would be um so we would all that's the registration aspect there's also the lodging aspects as well as the travel reimbursement if we we driving I believe right right I have details ready to send in an email the next couple of days yes okay and um and if you're if you're
174interested like you know there are you know previous um uh not just Flyers but presentations that we could also share too so and just remember if you do all go that you can't meet down there and have conversation about school business without noticing the public okay okay yes thank you thank you for the reminder just doing my job we'll just uh yeah okay um any other new business for folks uh you want to bring up um yes well maybe um okay Dan you made me think of something that we use in planfield I had completely forgotten about it I don't know if it's an option for us according for um as far as seal at the middle school level something that's uh been very helpful um is the school-based youth youth services school-based Youth Services
175Grant um and in our schools it comes with social workers it comes with monies for um activities and and trips and programs I think there's two social workers at at my middle school I don't know what it would entail I would have to speak more to um those who are hired under that Grant at my school system but at school-based Youth Services um foral and Middle School great thank you Mr Anderson any other comments new business anything any wants to chat about okay all right so let's close up that section moving on to item 19 president's remarks I think I said enough earlier let's just move on to item number 20 public comments on any issue any topic so the board invites public comment on any issue any topic from members of the community in
176accordance with board policy 01 um 67 public comment sections are intended to provide an opportunity uh for members of the public to express themselves on School matters of community interest the board and administration will be asking will be taking notes uh during public comment but will not provide substantive responses to questions or concerns raised by individual speakers if necessary superintendent as we've seen before May provide a brief response after the entire public comment period is completed the board appreciates and welcomes feedback from the community but is not at Liberty to engage in back and forth dialogue with members of the public during this portion of the meeting prior to making your public comment please state your name and municipality please note that all statements must be directed to the presiding officer please come to the
177microphone at this time if you'd like to make a comment on any issue on any topic okay uh last call public comments okay moving on to item 21 uh executive session so uh the dellan Board of Education will now adjourn into executive session to discuss items that fall within specific exceptions to the open public meetings act um njsa 10 4-12 B uh the confidential matters uh discussed by the board during this executive session include items related to Collective bargain agreements pending or anticipated litigation and Personnel um any discussion that does not need to remain confidential will be made public as soon as it is practical minutes of the executive session will not be disclosed until the need for confidentiality no longer exists all individuals who may be discussed in executive session have been adequately notified
178action will not take place after the conclusion of the executive session so at this time I'm looking for a motion uh to move into executive session I move to go into executive session second all those in favor I I opposed okay so we will meet again um on May I think it's 28th 28th um and uh we will adjourn uh from here tonight after we finish our executive session so thank you everyone we'll see you uh hopefully in a couple of weeks all right Law and Order