001[Music] [Applause] [Music] Uh, good evening everybody. I want to open the regular business meeting of the board of education Franklin Township Schools Board administration campus allpurpose room. Today is Tuesday, March 18, 2025. It is approximately 6:40 I would say. Uh Brian, let's have a roll call. Mr. Deglio here. Mr. Greo, yes. Miss Inosencio here. Mr. Jackson. Miss Lort here. Miss Maris here. Mr. Parker. Miss Singh. Dr. Mr. Hopkins here. You have a quum. All right. Open public meeting act statement. In accordance with the open public meeting act 1975 231 sunshine law. Copies of the public meeting notice was were sent to the Courier News, the home news tribute, the Star Ledger, the Franklin reporter, tap into Franklin Township, Franklin Township Clerk Manager, district schools offices and association PTO presidents and posted on the district website.
002Motion to adjourn to a confidential session for the purpose of discussing confidential matters including personal matters. Minutes of the confidential session will be made public when the reason for confidentiality no longer exists. Motion second. So moved by Nancy, seconded by Lori. So moved. All right, folks. We are back from uh the confidential session and minutes of the confidential session will be made um public when the reason for confidentiality no longer exists. Uh Jimmy, can you uh lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the stand one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And at the other end of the table, Nick, can you uh give us the mission statement? Franklin Township Public Schools embraces its diversity, fosters excellent educational innovation, and empowers
003all students to achieve their highest potential. motion action to adopt the agenda. Second. So move by uh Nancy and seconded by Lori Brian. Can I have a roll call? Mr. Deglio. Yes. Mr. Greo. Yes. Missio. Yes. Mr. Jackson. Oops. Sorry. Not here. Miss Lort. Yes, Miss Marris. Yes, Mr. Parker. Yes, Dr. Hopkins. Yes. All right. Now, we are on to the student representative report. Ladies, hello. My name is Haiti and I'm one of the new student government BOE liaison. I'm currently a junior in high school and I'm hoping to study something chemistry related when I get to college. My name is Darthy Sashri and I'm also one of the new student government BOE leaison and I'm also a junior in high school and when I get to college I want to study something health related.
004Here are some of the things going on at FHS. The student government is continuing its fundraising efforts for AA's Voice and NJC state charity supporting children with Usher Syndrome through a smart snack sale. Senior event tickets are available for purchase in the senior suite. The project graduation permission slip is now available. Please visit the class of 2025 Google classroom for a brief survey to help choose the event theme. If you're considering a career as a teacher guidance counselor, school social worker, or even want to open a daycare center, our new CTE education program would be the perfect fit for you. We're hosting an information session for current 9th graders on Friday, March 21st. Please email Miss Muro for more details. Senior athletes can access the form for post high school athletics through the respective Google
005classrooms. The FHS Aviation Club invites all students and staff to the media center on Wednesday, March 19th from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. to hear Miss New Jersey USA 2024. Jabeli Kandulla share her inspiring journey as a private pilot, aviation journalist, and a pageant winner. The second annual Ramadan gratitude event will be held on Wednesday, March 19th from 6 PM to 8:30 p.m. It will include a meal packing for the Franklin Food Bank followed by dinner. This free event is open to all FHS students and staff. Mrs. Basher will also be collecting donations. Learn more about the RVCC advanced manufacturing program on Thursday, March 20th at 8:30 a.m. Please email Miss Mura for more information. The Racket Club is collecting new or gently used books to donate to the Franklin Township Public Library from March 17th
006to March 28th. And that is all. Wonderful job, ladies. Thank you for your time and thank you for that report. All All right. Now, we're going to go with um the presentation with Dr. Rali and um Mr. Frey on the FY26 budget. Thank you, sir. I'm just going to move you over here. I'm gonna take this out because I move around a little bit. it'll make uh things a little bit easier. So, tackling the challenges of the 2526 school year budget. So, this is the preliminary budget presentation. It's not the budget hearing. So, for those that are in the audience, what's going to happen is we're going to present the preliminary budget. I would ask you to take notes. If you have questions, hold on to them. It's not a budget hearing, so you have
007to wait till the public comment portion, which by the way happens immediately after this, to be able to ask questions. But we Dr. Hopkins I will turn to you ask if there are any clarifying questions from the board on any of what is presented and then of course we'll come back in April do this again and that will be in the form of a budget hearing which means the questions and answers will happen immediately following the presentation. So again very challenging budget for FY26 or the 2526 school year. I wanted to just take an opportunity to remind everybody of our board members and I also wanted to highlight members of our finance committee which you'll see there with the asterisk. Uh those folks were highly involved with the development process. Uh leaned in on our
008folks quite a bit. Again, a little bit more of a challenging year than what is typical. Mr. Jackson is the um is the board of education finance chairperson for the finance committee and then Miss Lort and Miss Maris are also members of the finance committee and then of course all of the board members lended their expertise in the areas that they are familiar with. Here are budget managers and you can see there are quite a few of them. This represents about 40 different people within the school district that help to manage the school district budget um including the principles and the district academic content supervisors and then all those other individual areas director of food services information technology supervisor buildings and grounds so forth. So you can see there are lots of folks involved with
009the development of our budget. Uh it's not something that is top down, but it comes from the bottom up. Goals for tonight's meeting. We're going to review the budget calendar. We're going to review the challenges too and the strategies for developing the 2526 budget. We're going to review the previously approved budget goals. We're going to receive some board input. And then of course during the public comment section, you'll have an opportunity to come up to the mic. Uh and then Stephen, our school business administrator, uh Mr. Frerieded will review the estimated revenues and then we'll review next steps. The calendar, you can see this process starts at the very beginning of the school year. So, we're already thinking about next year on September 26th of the current year. That's when the board approves the budget
010goals to help guide the process of developing the budget. and they also approved the calendar. And then you can see a lot of work getting done throughout the fall leading up to February 25th, which is an important date for all of us. That's when the governor gives his annual address. And that's when he speaks to the revenue that might be available to support the appropriation side of the budget. And 48 hours afterward is when we get a lot of those figures. And that's when we put the finishing touches on the preliminary budget. And um then we bring it here. Once the preliminary budget's approved for submission, it'll go to the county superintendent. The county superintendent reviews line items uh to make sure everything is where it belongs. And then we advertise the budget once we
011have the county's approval. And then we host a budget hearing which is on April 24th. Assuming that all goes well and the budget gets adopted in April, then that becomes the budget for the new school year. The fiscal year for us begins July 1. So July 1, 2025 will begin the 2526 school year and that is the budget we're talking about. Okay. challenging times, fiscal challenges and adjustments. So what this is depicting for you is the fact that we had some challenges with revenue factors contributing to reduced income or revenue in our case. We had increased expenses which we're going to talk a little bit more about and that is going to cause some program and staff adjustments and they're necessary changes because that's the only way to balance a school budget. So what specifically
012are we talking about? Loss revenue as compared to the previous year budget. We have reduced state aid. Those exact numbers are going to come from Mr. Freed when he comes up here and you're going to see it's going to be close to around 800,000, but he'll give you those exact numbers in his slide. You're going to see that all these other things contributed to that reduce in state revenue. state facility tuition increases, semiaid, which is based on Medicare. We have reduced projections there. We've got a fund balance that's not state connected, but that's our own. Budgets have gotten tighter and tighter and tighter over the last several years because of our 2% spending growth limit. So that means we can't roll any fund balance into the next year. So therefore as you go tighter and
013tighter you lose that revenue as well. And of course due to inflation we have our own interest revenue reductions uh because our money that sits in the bank and different reserves doesn't make the kind of money that it was making as in previous years. On top of that on the expenditure side or appropriation side you're looking at five to seven plus in some cases increases on fixed expenses. What's a fixed expense? It's a salary. It's a health benefit. Um, transportation, utilities, pets contributions, that's really a contribution made to the public employer retirement system. Um, for those that are not in the certified TPA system, the teachers and whatnot, these are folks that are outside of that. The district has a contribution towards that and that's been going up every year. insuranceances, social security insurance, out
014of district placement tuitions, all of these things going up as inflation is going up, outpacing inflation and certainly outpacing our spending growth limits. So now you have lost revenue as compared to the previous year. you have inflation affected fixed expenses increasing by a decent amount and that's causing program and staff adjustments to the tune of about $6 million and that's what you see here. So, if you go back to that slide, with decreased revenue and increased expenses, the only way to get there is to make program and staff adjustments. And we had to make 3.3 million in program adjustments, which we're going to define. And we had to make roughly 2.7 million in staff adjustments, which is how you get to the balanced budget. So what's the first strategy employed in the program area? We
015go back to the budget managers. You saw 10 principles and we say to those 10 principles, we got to reduce those school budgets. So we reduce those school budgets by an additional 15%. They already started with a 10% adjustment. And what does that look like? That looks like less paper and less general supplies. Thankfully, some of them have been able to stock some of that. So, I don't know that it'll have a huge impact, but it'll be a challenge, right? Less paper clips, less pencils, and less general supplies. The curriculum and instruction supervisors, how to reduce their budgets, and how do they do that? Consumable materials. If they've had any additionals, they're going to use those first before ordering new. Professional development contracts. those folks that come in from the outside to do work with
016us, consulting contracts, and of course reduced hourly work, things like curriculum writing or any other kind of hourly work that maybe can happen at a later date. But not only the principles reducing budgets, not only the curriculum and instruction supervisors reducing budgets, we also have athletic department that needs to reduce budgets. And that's the same reduction there. That really meant finding transportation efficiencies using our people instead of vendors whenever we can. Could be things like putting, you know, the tennis team on one bus instead of sending JV one place and varsity another. So finding efficiencies where efficiencies can be found and getting that budget down by 25% as well. Separate from that, we also had to work on our RTS program a bit. So that has grown over time and that really has morphed into
017a six-hour program. Some of that time we spend at the youth center doing some career exploration kind of work and most of that time the 4-hour piece of time we spend after hours at the Hamilton Street campus doing academic work and mandatory elections. Right now we're going to have to shove the career exploration part, the youth center part. There's transportation involved with that. There's additional monies involved with that and bring the program back to what it was originally intended to do. Offer an alternative, a much smaller environment for the academic and necessary electives so that students can still meet their graduation requirements and continue to grow within our program. um just unfortunately some of the additional programming that we've added over time we're going to have to shelf. Cutting that down by an equal percentage
018also helps and actually a little bit more helps us to save the necessary money. So that when you look at all of those things, you get a program savings of about $1.3 million, a little more here. Still working within the program world. We've got a lot of mentoring programs and we're looking to eliminate them for now, get them out of our operating budget while we seek grant opportunities and outside funding so that we can maybe perhaps run some of those programs andor volunteerism so that we can continue with some of those programs that we've found to be successful while not hitting our operating budget. We're looking at reducing or approaching behavioral health referrals and behavioral health services a little differently. We use a lot of outside services right now. We're looking to explore the use
019of tele medicine which would be uh much more economical obviously and maybe do more work inhouse. And then the other thing we're going to look to do is have a little less reliance on vendor supplied behavioral technicians. get back to using our par professionals and have those powers work with behavioral technicians to support the needs of our students. So, we're going to drastically reduce our reliance on vendor supplied behavioral technicians, which means we will be able to with those strategies save another $1.8 8 million, which gets us to that 3.3ish in program adjustments. We've had a lot of conversations about this even though it's a small number of dollars. uh eliminating the Saturday detention program which is you know an after hours kind of hourly program that costs money to run and then eliminating after
020school busing after the prior year reduction. So we've already reduced after school busing. We've already reduced after school busing and shortened it by the number of months we offer it. We're looking at this point at taking it one step further. Now, board members were concerned about that. I know uh Mr. Deglio brought it up that based on his experiences in the past that was challenging and other board members did the same. And you know, there may be opportunities since it's not a big item for us to explore ways to resurrect that. We just haven't gotten there yet. The good news is we don't really rely on that. we only rely on at the secondary level and we don't rely on that until later in the fall. So, we'll have time, you know, we'll have time
021to explore ways that we might be able to uh offer some service and we would love to do that because we know it does really handcuff our parents and our kids and does have some effect on programming especially at the secondary level. But as of right now, we haven't gotten there. And then this is staffing changes. So, so far you've gotten your roughly 3.3 million in program changes, another 2.6 in staffing changes, which is the challenge. So, we're looking to reduce certificated staff positions by about 3%. And in these areas, fewer academic instructional coaches, fewer academic interventionists, and fewer administrative support personnel, and we're defining administrative support personnel as our deans at the secondary level, and in school suspension teachers at the second level, secondary level. We think we can do some of that work
022um you know, replacing it with technology, replacing it with duty periods. Um, we think in the academic interventions world, I think we can, you know, we're going to work, we're going to have to work to get a little uh better at preparing our folks to be able to handle what we call tier one and tier 2 interventions, which are whole class interventions within the classroom. Differentiating instruction is another way to say that, and maybe spread our tier three kids out a little further. Um, and then fewer instructional coaches maybe in some of our smaller buildings, uh, teams and folks together. Um, do we necessarily always want to do that? No. But these are efficiencies that we're looking to have to take this year. Again, that's a small reduction in that area. I say fewer because
023I don't know exactly how many we have. And we won't know that because a lot of this we're going to try and do through attrition, meaning folks retire, folks leave, folks go to a different district for a different job. We're going to try and plug those holes by moving people around. So, we have fewer people in those positions, but we don't know how many until we know how many actual retirements we have and how many actual resignations we have because it's all about the actual dollar figure. The idea is to hold on to as many folks as we can, right? And again, that's really just a small portion of what we're looking at. We'll have that number more exact, by the way, for the Where's my water? We'll have that number more exact for the
024April hearing. Reduced administrative supervisory personnel. Again, same theory there. Redistribution of duties. We've got some movement through retirement and attrition. We hope to be able to have a savings there as well. And then reduce non-certificated staff positions and that does mean fewer safety personnel, fewer custodial positions. We don't think it's a lot overall. again less than 5% and a lot of that will definitely come from uh attrition retirement that kind of thing. So we do see and we are aiming for about a $2.6 million savings there which means we get to where we need to get to a balanced budget while maintaining a lot of things as well. no program cuts. And we're going to go through that real quick. The board sets goals in September each year and says, "Hey, we have a strategic
025plan and we would like to make sure we are targeting some of the monies within our budget toward these goals." So, I'm going to start with those. goal one. And you can see if you're that interested when this gets uploaded after my presentation to the website, you'll be able to click on district goal number one. And it's right there at the top. I'm not going to read it, but really focuses on wellness and safety. And you can see the kinds of things that are going to be maintained or added through the FY26 budget. We will have behavioral health supports via tele medicine and zoofall health and we will still maintain some clinical folks within our buildings. Maybe not as many as we have today but hopefully that's where the tele medicine will help us. We're
026going to continue to use the threat assessment software hipster software and other software packages that help us to maintain the safety within our buildings. We're going to keep our surveillance equipment up to date. We're going to add cameras where we need to. We're going to have our visitor management system well-maintained and we're going to continue to use that, continue to grow with that. That's a new system as of last year. We're going to purchase supplies and equipment to support our district safety plan. I.e., you'll see when Mr. Freed gets up here, he's going to talk about buying the classroom lockdown shades for all the all of the facilities, all the doors in our facility. A concern that we've heard about over the years. We're going to open the district's school-based medical center for students and
027their families in July 1st. Uh that's near completion. We're going to keep our class 3 officers and we're going to make sure that we have a school resource officer uh at the secondary schools with regard to and these are just examples and highlights. So, you're not going to see much of a change in the area safety. One of the things the board added this year to its goals was to make sure that the strategic plan, which you can see on the bottom, you can see on the bottom, although this thing doesn't seem to want to work. Um, you can see in green it says strategic plan. You can highlight and see the entire plan, but these are some of the things that we're doing that are mentioned specifically in the strategic plan. We created an
028afterchool enrichment dinner program at PGM as a pilot. We're going to continue that program and maybe even look to expand it. We got the Warrior Health Center which provides health care options for our staff. We're going to continue that. That's been wellreceived. No intention on changing anything there. We have partnerships with local organizations that help to facilitate information and materials to support student nutrition and dental health. You've seen the dental health van visit our schools. We're going to continue to do some of that. We're going to continue to use the New Jersey SEI platform in order to analyze our culture and climate data because we are going to continue with our SEAL initiatives and we're going to continue with um our PEIS initiatives. So, none of that changes. We're going to continue to look and
029seek to find teachers to fill our bilingual vacancies and fill our world language staff vacancies through the use of the J1 visa program. We're one of the few school districts in the state that has such a robust program and have been able to find folks to fill what I would say are near impossible positions to fill. We're the envy of a lot of folks when it comes to that. Um, and attendance and hosting of various job fairs and recruit recruitment efforts because we're going to continue to seek folks to fill our classrooms where there may be vacancies. Goal three speaks to specialized programs. You heard the young ladies speak a little bit earlier in their presentation about our what's become wildly popular aviation program. No intention on doing anything there other than continuing it and
030looking to grow it where possible. Uh we got a nice grant. We're going to support that with the addition of a cyber security curriculum and that I believe is getting ready to roll out or is rolled out. Um we have really worked hard to grow our CTE, career technical education program. We've got a CTE approved in dance, television, business marketing, and I know we've been working on a future educators program and I'm getting the thumbs up. Looks like we're going to be there for next year. So, we'll have a future educators program that we're supporting uh in the career technical education field. We're going to maintain our gifted and talented program initiatives. No real change there. We're going to continue with our RVCC, advanced manufacturing program. You know, there's an expense associated with that. Putting
031our kids on a bus, they go get a great experience where they get NIM certification at RVCC for the work they're doing in the manufacturing world. We're going to maintain all of our fine visual performing arts programs. No cuts to any of those programs. Um, we're going to maintain all our extracurricular activities, including all of our athletic programs with no real effect there. We're supporting everything that we've supported in the past. We're going to continue world languages instruction at the current levels in all schools. And we are actually expanding our bilingual education program. um adding more sections to service more kids as more kids um as our program continues to grow as that population continues to grow. So those are some of the things again the highlights of what is supporting budget goal number three.
032Budget goal number four, it's in the area of professional development and in those specific areas mentioned and these are the PD things we will continue with or at least we are asking for support to continue with and that's our culturally and linguistically responsive pedigogy and restorative practices work that we've been doing the last couple years. Um, we're going to continue our PD efforts in the area of academic in intervention and the differentiation of instruction. More important than ever, right? More important than ever, trying to uh make sure that all of our kids get the necessary support they need. Professional development on deescalation techniques. Uh we use handle with care here. That's what our deescalation technique is and that's something that the department requires and we're going to continue to do that. Actually looking to grow
033the number of trainers we have in the district. Um special education PD for using augmentative communication devices, something that the special education department will be working on. And of course, the prek department is going to continue to work on providing professional development for integrated prek classrooms, a model we've moved to and that we're going to continue to support. Um, and again, if you're interested in looking more at the district goal three, you can click on the green link on the bottom when you get this. And if you're looking at strategic plan, this is goal area 2C and three. and you'll see the direct connection between the two. This is in the communications area. These are all things that again are supported within the budget. The website will continue, the mobile app platform and all the
034other communication platforms we're utilizing will continue. Uh we do a we have a pretty robust effort in translation services. um paying folks who are within the district who are capable of doing that. Plus, we do have a service that provides that as well comes at an expense, but again, we feel it to be very important. We want our families to be able to participate with their with their children in their program. Franklin Times Township Newsletter, we contribute to that uh both economically and with articles. inventions competition. We're going to continue with that thanks to the Sanani Foundation. That's been a really wildly popular uh activity that has grown out of our G&T program. We have uh and and we'll continue to provide performances to our seniors. Um we'll continue partnerships and I wanted to make
035mention of these partnerships because they're ever growing and they're awesome. And that's the YMCA partnership we have. They do all of our aftercare programming. Now, we have a summer program partnership with them where they do use our Elizabeth Avenue campus on days when they can't be out uh in the fields on hot summer days. And we're looking to do more. In the past, we've done a swimming program with them. So, uh we've had a lot of opportunities since they've been in our district. Uh we're working with Alpha Kappa Alpha uh aka Sorarity and the Franklin Food Bank as well. We've got all kinds of initiatives going on to reduce food food insecurity not only within the school but within our school community. We have um community- based facilities out there, private providers that are hosting
036our kids for preschool. And of course, we have the Zoo Fall Health Partnership. And we're excited about opening that facility which will allow us to better meet the health needs of our students um from and families from from from all places, dental health, general practice, behavioral health. Um and that facility is slated to open this summer. And then in the area of energy consumption, um you know, we're continuing our local government energy audit. There's no cost associated with that. The cost will come as the projects are identified for us to embark on. But the idea is that the energy savings will help to pay for whatever work is necessary and then ongoing you'll benefit from the energy savings or we will benefit from the energy savings. Sustainable Jersey for schools. It's really something that the
037board encouraged us to get very involved with and our schools have really gotten involved. There's a small cost associated with the uh organization of that throughout the buildings, but the benefits are huge. In fact, just today, just today, our high school team went and got a $10,000 award to develop an outdoor classroom at the high school in the courtyard. Very excited about it. It's going to totally renovate that area and uh make it more useful for outdoor learning activities. So, uh we're going to do some more of that and we're going to continue to seek higher level certifications in that program which will make us eligible for even more grant awards, solar panel revenue. Uh, you know, for those that aren't familiar with this, we did embark a couple of years back in purchasing our
038own solar panels for Claremont Elementary School. And that has turned into a small revenue source. Um, I think it's about $80,000 because we sell our solar stocks every so often and it's helping to pay that system off. Once that system's paid off, then that becomes a revenue stream on top of and we're about halfway paid off if I'm not mistaken going off the top of my head. Um, which means in a few years we'll be paid off and then when we're selling those solar stocks, uh, that becomes revenue that we can then use in other ways rather than paying for the panels. And of course, there's also electrical savings. That's probably in that same ballpark, 70 $80,000 of electrical savings, which helps us to contain some of the utility bills, but obviously, you know, with
039utility becoming so expensive, it's it's a small portion of what we're able to save. So that really is um our efforts in the area of decreasing energy consumption and promoting the health of our school environment and the kinds of things that we continue to support within the budget. And then for the most exciting part of the budget and then we'll get to questions afterwards from the board. It's the revenue and appropriation side that my friend Mr. Frerieded is going to handle. Good evening, folks. So, I'm going to go through budget goals seven and eight. It's primarily about the district's revenues. So, starting with the levy goal number seven, uh this is um 85% of our general fund budget. So, uh we're in a district that's primarily funded with uh uh tax levy money. So that
040first number there 165,357285 that is our revenues in you know in the current year increased by our 2% spending limit. So that's the max we're all allowed to raise. That's the 2% increase. The adjustment below the 3585205 is one of the allowable uh levy adjustments that we qualify for here. Um it's uh put in place because the state knows that uh probably the biggest expense not related to salaries in every school district is health benefits. And so they give you an adjustment to the levy to help you uh pay for those health benefits. And that brings our total levy to 168492490. And again 85% of all of our revenues right there. The next three slides I'm going to talk about are reserves a little bit and what we're going to do with them. Uh this
041is some items uh from Capital Reserve. Um hot water heaters 125,000 uh FMS maintenance vehicles for our maintenance department around 300,000. Classroom doors and lockown shades at all of our schools. 1081 196 uh boiler replacements at FMS 400,000 um an enclosed walkway replacement at Elizabeth Avenue School 200,000 freight elevator replacement at SGS 250,000 HVAC rooftop unit replacements at SGS 89304 alarms at Elizabeth Avenue School and furniture at our B&G building and all other miscellaneous upgrades 275 um bringing our total coming out of capital reserve to 1.5 million maintenance reserve. We're going to take a million this year. the same amount that we took last year to support the various required maintenance projects around the district. Fire inspection, sprinkler repairs, waste removal and dumpster fees, HVAC repairs and replacements, building management system repairs and updates, Ahira
042and IPM services. Um, aira stands for asbestous hazard emergency response act and that's to pay for inspections inspections and management plans for existing asbestous containing materials and IPM is integrated pest management which is pest assessment monitoring and prevention with non-chemical tactics also maintenance supplies and maintenance vehicles service and [Applause] prepare. So, this is the number rundown of the general fund budget. Uh, again, the tax levy there is the largest line item. Um, it's going up 4.21% which is the 2% cap plus our health benefit waiver. Next line item there is excess surplus. We used 1.502825 in this year's budget, but we did not have any available to use in this year. So, that went down 100%. And what that means is that when we got our fiscal year 24 audit completed, they calculated that we
043didn't have any excess appropriations that we didn't spend um in excess of our 2% cap or 2% limit. So there's unassigned surplus, which every district is allowed to have, which is 2% of their operating budget. And so that's kind of like the unassigned savings you're allowed to have. Any amount that you generate of unspent appropriations is considered excess surplus. And you can use that as a revenue in your in your in your in your budget or you can push them into your various reserve accounts, maintenance reserve, capital reserve. And so it's a constant cycling of withdrawing capital and maintenance reserve monies to use and spending and you kind of plan to do that. But at the end of fiscal year 24 we um had to use unassigned surplus of 1 million and did not generate
044any excess. So that is a 100% loss there. And you can see that affects our total revenues that we had available to fund this year's budget. Tuition special ed we're figuring that to be flat. That's incoming students that are not residents of Franklin. Capital reserve, we're using 1.5 million, uh, about a mill less than we're using in the current year. Uh, maintenance reserve, we're going to use the same uh, 1 mil. And unassigned surplus, which is our 2% that we're allowed to carry, 2% of the budget, we're going to use 1.7 of that. So, you know, it's an increase of 700 grand. And the last item is miscellaneous and other income, which is all other miscellaneous things all categorized into one bucket, but it's primarily interest income. And uh just drove down that projection a
045little bit by 200,000 because I don't want to underestimate uh overestimate revenues. So you can see that our general fund local revenues there is going up 2.84%. So very few things go up only 2.84% in our budget. You know, raises, insuranceances, all kinds of vendors, uh especially in inflation in an inflationary environment. So that kind of could circle back to what Dr. Rali was describing on how to get this to balance. So that's our available increase in revenues 2.84. So when you're building the budget and you have this amount of revenues and your appropriations are up here, you know, due to inflation, you have to have reductions to to get into balances, which is what we did here. Some more categories here. Um, state aid, uh, we had, um, a reduction in our state aid
046of 87,717 to 3.79% decrease. It was a flat 3% on all our categoricals, but there was, if you guys recall, um, a little influx of extra aid they gave us last year, and we we had a remember an additional public hearing where they gave us a little more money, which we did not get again. So that's why it's not around 3% a flat three it's 3.79 and that represents categorical transportation special ed equalization and security aid. Extraordinary aid is a number that we develop it it's aid for our added district tuitions and uh we are estimating that to be about the same. We won't know for sure with the state funds until they give us the letter. Usually it's around 50% of what we apply for on those tuitions. Semi aid that went down 88%
047from 510 grand to 60 grand. And that stands for special education Medicaid initiative aid. And around the same time we get our state aid awards, we get a letter from the state telling us how much we should budget in revenue. So that's not developed by us. that's given to us and it's uh reimbursement for health rellated services provided to Medicaid eligible students. So something happened at the state that I'm not privy to that caused a lot of districts to get significant reductions and that includes us. They took away 88%. So our total state aid reduction is a 1.258460 reduction. So it's a 5.13% reduction. So again see the challenges to you know you know meeting our appropriations with losses and so our total general fund revenue um is an increase of 3566220 a percentage increase
048of 1.84%. Next categories there is our special revenue fund and debt service fund. This is our basically our grant fund. The special revenue fund is where our title grants are idea non-public and our pea grant. Um that increase there 4% is primarily driven by our pea grant increase and the debt service that's a fixed amount based on an amortization schedule for our principal and interest on our bond uh our bond payments. So in total in entirety of general fund is going up 1.91%. So, the next steps are uh board approval of the preliminary budget by you guys tonight and uh probably tomorrow or the day after I'll submit the uh package that goes to the county office with all of the different documents. Uh it's due Thursday. So, you know, tomorrow or Thursday, I'll have
049that package out. And then in about a month from now, we'll do the uh final version um in the public hearing on uh April 24th. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you, sir. Dr. Hopkins, any questions by board members? All right, let's go down the list. Um Nick, you have any question on the um presentation? Okay, just a couple. Um classroom doors. I thought those were done last year. Yeah, there's specific doors. So the high school cafeteria doors would be a good example. They have they have what's called a um a god I forget the name of it but if you can envision it and I apologize for not knowing the technical name but if you hit the panic bar there's actually a rod and those rods if you yank hard enough on the door
050the rod will bend and the door will open. That was in the design of the building. We've replaced some of those out and we need to replace a couple more and there's a couple but I think actually those doors are being attended to at Hillrest now if I'm not mistaken but there's a couple of other doors like that I'll call them panic bar with rods for a lack of better term that we're addressing. And then the shades are uh classroom doors in a school have to have what's called a vision panel. So they're for the vision panel doors. So they were actually just ones that weren't done before. Correct. Okay. And ones that were able to address now, the more immediate needs. The other question I had was the um tuition we're from um prek.
051Are we still having or did that go to the YMCA? Give me a little more on that question because I'm not following your question. I apologize. Is there a tuition for prek? A tuition for No. Uh I mean for somebody to come and attend our prek? No. No. All of our See, actually we lost I'm glad you brought that up because I did want to speak to the prek grant. I mean, we have carried over money cuz we haven't been able to successfully seat all of our kids because there's only so much room in our schools and so much room in our private providers. So, we have what's called carryover. And unfortunately, the state after all of this, the state, and I don't know if that's in your numbers, Steve, it's baked into the number.
052the state came back and they took so we had carried over money from the previous year a few million dollars and they came back and took 25% of that. So they took that from all districts that had carryover and weren't able to seat all their kids. So we got a little less carryover than what we had. Okay, I'm good. Thank you. Good job with the uh presentation. Walter, uh no questions. did a great job with the presentation. Thank you, Erica. I have no ch uh no questions. Start off. Thank you, Jimmy. I do. Um just one with the with the first of all, great job. Outstanding job by you guys. With the removal of the peer and positive memory program, uh we did say that we were going to look at other uh ways say
053it. I'm sorry, I can't hear you. That's okay. with the with the uh removal of the peer and positive mentoring program. Yes. From the high school, we said that we were going to look into other avenues for that. Yes. Um are we looking for avenues that are noncost? We love non-cost avenues. That's our favorite road. Okay. And so we won't have any we won't have any monies to be able to to supplement at all for for any use or anything. Not for those programs listed. No. Okay. Okay. Got it. But we we are meeting with those folks. They're and their vendors in all the cases of the mentoring. One of our mentoring programs I think it it and again we go out to bid every year for that. So we'd go out to bid again.
054It's called Aspire High, right? And uh that one is grantf funded. So we're looking for more opportunities like that to support like programs that are mentoring based. Aspire High happens to be supported by a grant. Got it. No further questions. Middle Earth. I'm sorry. Oh, we have that one, too. Thanks, Nick. We have Middle Earth as well. We do um have Middle Earth. It is not, you know, a big mentoring program, but we do have that. That will continue. That's a partnership that we have through Empower Somerset. They they partner with Middleear partners with Empower. They come out to our schools. They do have a smaller type of mentoring program. Uh we're looking to also expand to see what they can do. So we do have that at least um to serve as a mentoring
055program. Thank you. U Lori, I don't have I don't have any questions. Thank you. But thank you for the thoughtful presentation. We appreciate it. I gripple you up. Sound sounds like Mickey Man when you're in a jam, right? Uh Steve, what are the possibilities of expanding the solar panel program? We have uh Claremont, that's a successful model. We've got 10 different schools with many roofs. and how could we um get a little more entrepreneurial on this? Well, I'm going to go first and then we're going to let Steve go. That's perfect segue because we have the opportunity the county program is coming to an end soon and you know most of our buildings have solar panels. I don't know if you're aware of that or you might be. You probably remember. Um but most of
056the buildings where there's an opportunity to have an advantageous place to put panels many years ago um before my time which is now many years ago um they put panels there through what's called a county PPA. We get the energy savings but we don't get the benefit of selling the solar stock like we do on our project at Claremont when that program expires. And I'll let Steve speak to that if he can remember when it expires. There will be an opportunity there to continue with that equipment even with no cost of additional equipment other than maintenance and updating and upgrading maybe. And then we can maybe even take some of that over or we can take the opportunity to refresh the equipment at the time. But that comes at an expense of course. But uh
057there is opportunity in the future and um there's good opportunity to generate revenue. I think we're learning that. We're learning that in a small way with the Claremont project, right? Where we're generating through the Sailor Stellar stocks and then just about an equal amount in savings. we probably are generating, you know, $150, $160,000 every time we sell those stocks, plus add the savings in. So, um, yeah, interesting opportunity for sure. Plus, John, there's also besides rooftop, we have in all of our schools, there are vacant parcels of land like at the high school down by where the reservoir is, a little ditch in the back. Uh there are past parcels of land that students don't go near except for the deer um that could be used for solar panels. You see them, you know, at
058different corporate buildings also. Yeah. So I think I think I'm wondering if a study could be made on the whole district. It looks like, you know, if we could capture the sun, we could bring in some dollars here. For sure. That's not something I can answer. shooting from the hip right now definitely has to be looked at and uh evaluated. There's all kinds of different solar options out there. You know, that's that's not something I can really answer right now, but uh Ryan does a presentation in each one of our facility committees talking about the you know, the the the the money that's generated from our solar panels and and when those power purchase agreements expire. you know, a lot of times these things are dovetailed with the replacement of roofs, which is part of
059the math as well. Um, so it's something that we're continuing to talk about. Um, and uh, you know, we will continue to talk about it when it's feasible, when it makes sense to Yeah. And I just want to put it on your radar. Something that I think uh, maybe when we do our our goals in July, we could start looking at stuff like this. Which leads me to my next question. Um, if you go the 2% limit that we have is actually a blessing in disguise because if you go back several years ago in Franklin Township before they changed the election laws, tonight was a very miserable night for Franklin Township because the public would come to hear this presentation and then they would go out and beat the war drums. We would then have
060to try to pass a budget and those people, the FTEA, would sit there with their heart in their throat or however my grandmother used to say it, worried about how deep the cut was going to be and dependent on the board members. Um, it was a fiasco for years. It was terrible. So given that we have a situation in Washington DC which is becoming similar to those hatchet people that we had here years ago and I'm wondering if you're we have a budget now that's not cutting too deep. We have some some staff that's being lost or through attrition that is thank god. Um, have you begun to look at, this is really a John question. Um, what would be the next step? Now, I know that I'm thinking ahead here, but if it gets
061worse, we don't know what's happening with the Department of Ed, how deep these cuts are going to be, but are we beginning to look at the next step, John, that tonight's kind of an easy step relative? Yeah, I mean we're always trying to look steps ahead, but if you're asking me for the answer, I can't give that cuz, you know, it's very difficult. You don't have a magic ball. You don't know from one year to the next. And I think that's what happens. At least that's what I've learned over my 23 years doing what I do in a role like this that every year is different because you know for a lack of better terms I hate to say it but we've become school boards have been affected by what more and more what's happened
062we're happening down in Washington more and more what's happening here locally in Trenton and that does have an impact on us. Now, I I I can't give you that answer. You know, we have to see what happens next year. I can tell you this, it's difficult when you're raising revenue by a much smaller amount than your appropriations are growing. It's a really difficult balancing act and the only way to solve that is through efficiencies, which is what we're seeking, right? So, uh, Bill, I if you know, if we all had the answer to that, we'd probably be going to a lot of different board meetings and helping a lot of folks out. But, you know, we're our job year by year is to draw a circle around that classroom and do the best we can
063to keep it from affecting kids. Right. Right. And that's exactly what you saw tonight, or at least was our attempt and the finance committee's attempt to protect the sanctity of the classroom and the class sizes and all of those things. and try and stay as far out of the classroom as possible, but yet still give our kids a really good well-rounded experiences, which is why none of our other programs, you know, you're seeing cuts there as well. But yes, we are trimming in areas where we can trim. Um, so yeah, I I don't have the answer for you other than we'll see what happens next year. We're going to have a governatorial change. We're going to have, you know, for sure, right? Governor Murphy can't run again. So, you're gonna have a different governor. You're
064gonna have a different set of rules. And we'll have to see what those new set of rules are, especially when it's related to finance. Yeah. I just want to, you know, be a little futuristic about this and and be prepared. That's that solar idea is where I think we're all mindset on that because one of the things if you have a spending growth limit on tax levy which represents 85% of your budget, you have to continue to seek ways to find other streams of revenue, right? You have to find efficiencies on the appropriation side and you've got to seek other streams of revenue on the revenue side. If you're not going to be able to get it because you're limited on what you can get and you're doing everything you can on the appropriation side,
065then the only other way to balance a budget is alternative revenue stream. And I think that's a good one and we're going to have that opportunity coming up sooner rather than later. I I and I'm be shooting from the hip, but it's only a couple years down the road and that PPA is out of here and then we can take some of that stuff over and start to generate some more revenue and you know that's the kind of thing we want to do and more partnerships you know again Zouf fall great partnership right do things as we've done this board has worked very closely with the township um you know and and and those kinds of partnerships save both the township money, the board money, and ultimately the taxpayer money, and allows us to to
066do the kinds of things that we're doing. We got to continue to do those things, continue to work together, and we've got to find those continue to capitalize on those alternative revenue streams. Uh, if the rules don't change, and if the rules change and we benefit, then we'll take that opportunity as well. Thank you. Um Nancy, I don't have any questions. I just actually have a couple comments. The um solar, we're actually ahead of paying that off. So, we're in a very good position. True. We've just like Ryan Ellis, who's our solar ZAR, um has just been doing a fabulous job at doing that. So, thank you. Um, with the, um, going forward with solar on some of our properties, we've talked about that for a while at at our meetings. So, we're kind of
067getting, you know, that's something that that we're is on the radar. So, that was a good thing. But other than that, um really good budget and it's good that um we're able to provide what we can and it's good that we're able to have the partnerships that we have that a lot of other school districts actually don't have the partnership with their municipal government like it's very contentious but not here. So that you know enables us like you said to have a lot of cost savings. So thank you. All right. And I guess I'm last. Um, great presentation. Um, thank you for um, sharing with the public that the main goal is not to affect the students. That's the main thing. Um, yes, you know, listening to the presentation, we may have, you know, some
068minor um, staff reduction, but as long as students um, well-being and education is not affected. I have a couple of questions though and I know that um this is just a preliminary and you know you guys did go way into the weeds with this but um I know that earlier on in your slide John that um with the Saturday detention program that's going to go away uh how is that going to be baked into the um I guess the disciplinary um um procedure. Yeah, it's it's one less strategy, right? So, you'll have regular detention, you'll have suspension, you'll have more emphasis on restorative practices, uh which, you know, thankfully we've moved more toward emphasizing restorative practices, teaching kids not to repeat behaviors that are negative. Um, but it's it's one it's for lack of better
069terms, it'll be one less tool in the tool bag. There's no real replacing it. You know, that's always been an ad when you can add it. And you know, some places have it, some places don't. We've had it. We haven't had it. We've had it more recently than not. Uh we don't run it every Saturday. We run it on periodic Saturdays, but uh we're and this Saturday school will continue. The title funded Saturday schools, the academic piece will continue. It's the disciplinary piece. a couple classrooms where we had kids coming back to school on a Saturday to, you know, lack of better terms, um, pay a consequence for a behavior. That option just won't be there. Have to be another one of the other options that we have. U question too with the uh behavior
070um telea medicine I believe uh say it again the behavior um I guess the behavior was one of your earlier slides your behavior managers uh oh gotcha yeah yeah so um we have in school clinicians folks that we pay to come to us to provide clinical services to students. We are going to supplement that, have fewer folks in the building and have more reliance on a teleaalth model. Is that going to be um particular hours of the day or is it is too much in the weeds right now? Well, you can be in the weeds and by the way, we were very in the weeds with the budget. those 40 people or roughly 40 people were really in the weeds to make this all work. Um but yes, um no, that's not an unreasonable question.
071And how that works, how we envision it working, how it's worked in other schools is um we won't be trailblazing, by the way. This has worked in other places. Uh how it's worked in other places is it's a referral process that's coordinated through the schools and coordinated by the vendor of the people who manage that which is really a health service. And then um there's the followup in the very same way through that care coordinator who um will now work with the parents to make sure that those appointments are happening and that those visits are happening. The difference between being in school and doing that through tellahalth is it can it is more flexible because it can happen just like you go to the doctor via teleaalth. It's more flexible but sometimes the followup can
072be a little more challenging. That's why we're going to really have to work with a coordinator to make sure that that's there. So the flexibility will be greater except the um when you've got somebody in the building to go knock on a classroom door and take a kid to the guidance office to provide the counseling is very different than you know relying on that to happen at 5 or 6 o'clock at night. But that's where the care coordinator should be coming in. So and I guess my last question is with um Zoo Paul. Yep. um how's the numbers with um utilization and how much um the district is um saving and all that. Yeah, I want to I I well we don't save with Zufall but Zufall doesn't charge. So what we provide is more
073care, right? There's no savings because this is about a child getting a vaccination. This is about a child which we wouldn't be doing that anyway. we'd be sending that parent to a pediatrician or but if they don't go then they're not allowed to attend school and well let me rephrase my question then um with the uh based on their health benefits then um the when the the staff I'm going use the words is the staff itself utilizing Zoom fall no the staff uses the wellness center right so the staff utilizes the Franklin Township Warrior Health Center. Okay. Right. Zufall provides a service for our students. Two very different places, two very different worlds. All similar services, although Zufall doesn't offer as much as our health center offers. Um but you know they are going to
074be offering a service to our families and our kids that will keep our kids in school that will better meet the health care needs of our children. Um that's where Zufall comes in. So if that was your question that's Zufall's primary purpose. Okay. I'm good. So with that said, um a motion to uh accept the presentation preliminary budget FY26 so it could be moved forward. Um I believe it's A1, Mr. Banano. Um it's A1. So seconded second. Okay. So moved by Nancy, seconded by Jimmy U. Brian Cav roll call. Mr. Deglio, yes. Mr. Greo, yes. Miss Inosencio, yes. Mr. Jackson, yes. Miss Lort, yes. Miss Maris, yes. Mr. Parker, yes. Dr. Hopkins, yes. Motion carries. All right. Now, now we going to move to our superintendent report. Yes. I'm elected not to do, but I
075do want to take an opportunity to thank all the budget managers listed on that slide. [Laughter] I I'm not going to give a formal report because of the length of the presentation, but I did want to thank first off Stephen for his hard work. Um, and of course Brian also part of that business office. And there were a lot of folks, a lot of positions listed on that slide, almost 40 individuals plus the finance committee. We were all, everybody rolled up their sleeves on this one. The challenges were real and we had a lot of discussion. We did a lot of work and a lot of those folks had a lot of input as well and I want to thank them for their work as well as all the senior leadership. Uh it really was
076quite a venture this goound and uh um a lot of people to thank. So that's that's it for my report and Mary, great job on the presentation. You worked with us. [Applause] All right, we're going to move to the board president report. I'm going to keep it brief. In the board president sing absence, I'm just going to say a few words this evening. First, on the behalf of the board, I would like to thank Dr. Rali and Mr. Free for their budget presentation. I know that the presentation for this presentation took a lot of work and we appreciate the time that Dr. Vali and Mr. Free and their team took in putting it together for the FHS staff news. We were recently notified that FHS school counselor Heather uh Danberry has been selected as the
077Somerset County School Counselor of the Year. Miss Danberry will be receiving an award this month from the New Jersey School Counselor Association. Congratulation to Miss Danberry. Upcoming events The FHS spring musical Cinderella will be presented during the weekends of March 28th and April 4th. Please check the website for ticket information and show times. On April 3rd, 2025, the district will host a future educators boot camp from 5 through 700 p.m. at the Hamilton Street campus of Franklin Middle School. This is a great opportunity for those studying to be an educator or interested in teaching to network and learn interview strategies. More information on this event is also available in the headline section of the website. And that's it for the president report. Uh motion to open up the floor for comments from the public. Five
078minutes um per speaker agenda items only. So moved. Second. Moved by Bill, seconded by Lori. It's open. Seeing no one coming forward, Mr. President, I move to close the public section. Second. All right. So moved and sec moved by Bill and seconded by Nancy. um committee report. assist the length of time with the budget which was um necessary to for the public to hear. I would uh encourage all um to go on the website uh and the reports will be um posted and read the reports and we will um we'll continue reading the reports um uh next year. But I'm um make a motion uh u motion to approve the reports though. All right. Moved by Bill, seconded by Nancy. Um Bryant. Um can I have a roll call on this? Mr. Deglio? Yes. Mr.
079Grio? Yes. Miss Inosencio? Yes. Mr. Jackson? Yes. Miss Lorty, yes. Miss Maris, yes. Mr. Parker, yes. Dr. Hopkins, yes. Thorn, yes. All right. New business. Make a motion to move R1, monthly reports, M1 minutes of board meetings. A2 travel and related expense reimbursement. Oh, wait. computer. Sorry, no words. A3, Affirm Harassment, Intimidation, and Bullying Decisions. A4, National Alcohol Awareness Month. A5, Women's History Month. A6, donations. A7, uh, revised policy, second reading and adoption. Um policy 7441 and policy 850 revised policies first reading policy 5521 facilities use which is A9 A10 2526 pea uh budget B1 warrants and payrolls B2 financial reports B3 contracts approval um A through H B4 change orders B5 um purchasing manual B6 receipt of bids cafeteria supplies B7 award award of bids cafeteria supplies which were all were rejected. B8 um
080award of EU RFP for health insurance broker. B9 receipt of bids student transportation services um award of bid for student transportation services for 2627. C1 out of district students 2025 2024 25 school year. C2 uh field trip destination. C3 field trip applications. C1 contractual sidebar agreement. C or P2 personnel report. And that is it. All right. It's a motion on the floor to accept R1 M1 A2 through A10, B1 through B10, C1 through C3, P1 and P3. I'll move. Second. All right. Moved by Bill, seconded by Erica. Uh Brian can have a roll call. Mr. Deglio. Okay. So yes, except for B5, B6, um [Music] B10 and P2 are abstensions. So yes to all except B5, B6, B10, and P2. Abstain on those. M Mr. Grio, yes. Miss Inosencio, yes. Mr. Jackson, yes. Miss Lort,
081yes. Miss Maris, yes. Mr. Parker, yes. Dr. Hopkins, yes. Motion carries. All right. All right. Now we are at the part of the program for um make a um motion to comments from the public. Five minutes per speaker. Any topics? It's all moved. Second. All right. Moved by Bill, seconded by Nancy. Seeing no one from the public, Mr. President, I move to close the public session. Second. So moved by Bill, seconded by Nancy. Uh, can we have a roll call on this? Mr. Deglio, yes. Mr. Grio, yes. Miss Inosencio, yes. Mr. Jackson, yes. Miss Lort, yes. Miss Maris, yes. Mr. Parker, yes. Dr. Hopkins, yes. All right, good up the order. Which end at the table should we start with? Erica, we going to start on that and go up the order. Uh, good evening.
082Um, I uh want to first uh thank um all who worked on that budget report. Um it looks like it was um it I can imagine um what a challenge it was. Um I'm just glad that um you know the focus was on not only maintaining um as as many of our staff as possible. Um but also um you know making sure that there was the least amount minimal amount of impact on the classroom and our students. So that was what was most important um to me and I'm sure to to all of us. So I'm happy about that. Um I also want to um uh did we mention Shrek? Did we get to mention Shrek on the at the last meeting? It happened in between, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was excellent. Um
083and I I guess that's pretty much all I have to say this evening. All right, Jimmy. Um only one thing um in uh in respect of uh women's history month we have uh one of our women um at Franklin High School that made history, Ardan Gray. She is the uh she came in second and stayed in the triple jump. However, she is uh in the top 25 in the country and uh she's being recruited heavily and she is expected to make her decision I think May the 3rd. Is it May the 2nd? May the second or third when they when the schools make when she makes her uh her decision. So outstanding job by by uh by Ardan Gray and outstanding job by our our track coaches to help get her there. So, [Applause] uh,
084Lori, I just want to echo, um, Erica's comments and thank the team, the administrative team in general because I know it was a team lift to make this budget a reality. So thank you very much and thank you so much for the clarity of the presentation which really helped to bring home not only the goals that we set but how we try to make that um part of our every everyday work. So thank you very much Bill. So since I'm the board liaison for Pineroveve Mana School, I want to congratulate on behalf of the board Kelly Guerrero who will be the interim for said number of months as Miss Hennessy moves up. So congratulations on on the board. Uh, coupled with that, I had the pleasure of reading during ReadAcross America week and every school
085except Connelly. Not Not the middle school, the high school. I don't Did a board member read at Connelly? Who's the rep for Connelly? Hello. Who's the board rep for Connley Road School? Did you read at Connelly? No. No, because I was What' you say? You did not read it, Connelly. Okay. So, Dan, I just want to congratulate I would have read there. I didn't get an invite. But the thing is, um, every coach, principal, teacher, they were like on point with this read across America. I mean, I always kind of favor McAfee Road School because they're the kickoff school, but it's so great to see the emphasis on reading and and the excitement of the kids. So, if you could uh extend on behalf of the board, uh our congratulations for that effort. That's a
086very important week because as we prepare for the summer, we remind kids how important it is to read every day. So, thank the staff. All right, Nick, you have a comeback from that one. Okay, so I feel like I'm the um events coordinator here just with So, the high school has um booster club, uh March Madness, their tricky tray coming up, I believe, on Saturday. Um food truck festival through project graduation May 17th. Uh, bingo night at SGS as part of the PTSO and project graduation at the high school will be on May 9th. I want to congratulate um Miss Danberry for her award. She had both of my um kids at the high school and that budget boy. Uh what a great presentation and thank you Dr. Valley for the time before the meeting
087during our committee meetings for explaining that and all the work that went into that. Thank you. Uh Walter, short and sweet tonight. Um be encouraged, stay encouraged. Thank you, Nancy. I actually don't have anything left to say. So, but thank you for all the work on the on the presentation and the budget. All right. Before I give my um girl up the order, um Miss Guerrero Kelly, I guess you've been in this building for seem like every meeting for something. Can you um step up to the mic and share with us um because we all excited for you this moment for you and Let me All right. Good evening, board members, central office, staff members, and community members. I'm trying to save papers. I'm reading off my phone. I am honored and excited to become
088the interim principal at Pine Grove Manor Elementary School. It has been incredibly rewarding to serve as both the vice principal and interim principal at Franklin High School. I've always said that while I don't have children of my own, I have 2100 plus students whom I care for deeply. The class of 2025 will always have a special place in my heart and I'm committed to supporting them throughout the remaining months as seniors. I'm also grateful for the support and collaboration of the entire staff and community. Thank you, Dr. Solomon, for always guiding me since the first day I started at Franklin High School. These experiences have deepened my passion for education and have prepared me for well have prepared me well for this new role. As I transition to Pinerove Manor, I look forward to working
089closely with the dedicated staff, students, and families to continue fostering a positive and engaging learning environment. I'm committed to supporting the school's vision and ensuring a smooth transition during this interim period. Together, we will build on the strong foundation that already exists and work toward providing the best possible education for our students. Thank you for your ongoing support. I am excited to embark on this new chapter with the team at Pine Group and look forward to contributing to success of the school. Thank you. And I guess um with you coming to the facility so often that shows that you are a rising star. So um we are uh definitely excited. expect you to hold down the hymn while the for the for the rest of the year and then we'll see where it goes for
090um the goal of the order for me is that um uh uh number one uh with the students be careful the weather is going up and down in the sense of temperature wise so make sure everybody's dressed appropriately um but um spring is on the way so Um, I'm excited about that and um that's all I have for today. Um, I'm a motion to adjourn. Second. All right. Um, so um moved by Nancy, seconded u by Lori Lori. Um, we are ajourned. [Music]