001They call your name. [music] Yes. Oh. Oh, hello. Okay. Yeah, we are. Okay, good evening everyone. We're going to get going. You guys ready down here? Crystal Sandra? So by ready you mean Mhm. Yeah. Okay. Um in accordance with the requirements of the Open Public Meetings Act Chapter 231 PL 1975 announcement, I wish to announce that the New Jersey Open Public Meetings Law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon. In accordance with the provisions of this act, the School District of the Chathams Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date, time, and place thereof posted in the Board of Administrative
002Offices, sent to the clerks of Chatham Borough and Chatham Township, the library of the Chathams, the Chatham Courier, the Daily Record, and TAP online news. Mr. Jaquillard? Ms. [music] Ms. Ross? Ms. Allen? Here. Mr. Delsandro? Ms. Peck? Here. Mr. Ryan? Here. Mr. Smith? Ms. Weber? Here. Dr. Zang and Ms. Ciccarelli? Here. Eight of eight accounted for, ready to roll. Okay, perfect. Um please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance if you are able to stand and the flag is to my left. 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 Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. I don't have any additional comments at this time. Looks like Dr. Sorrentino has a [clears throat] Okay. Up. I hear
003a little bit of a kickback. Thank you, Nick. So, I'd like to congratulate Chatham High School students who participated in a field trip to collaborate with NYU's robotics department. It was a great day for all of them. I want to thank the CMS Pro Leaders who held a volley-thon event in December, which raised $718 in total for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Congratulations to Liam Keller, who was chosen to conduct the Region 1 Intermediate Orchestra for this year, which is a huge honor. So, congratulations, Mr. Keller. Thank you to the CEF for bringing the New Jersey Symphony Symphony Orchestra. They sent coaches to work with our Lafayette, CMS, and CHS band and orchestra students. I would also like to thank the CEF for approving phase one of the elementary literacy grant in the amount
004of $64,000 for the upcoming school year. We're very excited to get started with that initiative. Congratulations to boys and girls swimming team state champions. I'd like to thank Sally Simon-Fay, who was featured in an article about how she supports underserved communities throughout New Jersey, in particular the Newark community. So, thank you very much, Ms. Simon-Fay. CMS did a wonderful job with Something Rotten Jr. The teachers, cast, and crew spent a lot of time preparing for that show, and I had an opportunity to see it. They did a phenomenal job. Thank you to Mr. Hurdina and the CMS families who collected soup cans for the Super Bowl for the pantry in Chatham. So, thank you very much. Thank you once again to our custodial staff and maintenance team for the insane amount of snow that they
005took care of during the last storm. It's been a really busy winter, and once again, our schools were able to safely open and function because of their hard work. So, thank you. Congratulations to Matthew Bedoya, who was chosen as the representative from CHS for the 2026 Morris County Unsung Hero Awards ceremony that was held at Hanover Park High School. Congratulations, Matthew. And CMS Junior Model UN did a great job at their recent trip. So, congratulations to them. Um there are some points on the agenda that I'd like to, you know, review, which is that we will have a change in the school calendar to give back the two snow days and to add additional days for state testing. So, the board will vote on that later. And I also just want to take a minute
006to acknowledge Kate DeSantis, our supervisor of health and well-being, who is on tonight's agenda it as a resignation. She has done a tremendous job for the students, the staff, and the families of Chatham. She's a tremendous asset to the district. She has consistently gone above and beyond. She is a truly phenomenal human being, and she will be greatly missed by all of us. So, Kate, thank you for everything you've done, and you will be missed. Um and without further ado, I have quite a large budget presentation that I'm going to jump into. So, if the board would like to take a seat, and I'm going to go back to the podium. Tonight, I'll go through the preliminary budget presentation for the 2026-2027 school year for the School District of the Chathams. I'll walk through district
007highlights, the budget process, the various options that the Finance Committee and Board explored, and then I'll finally review the proposed budget for the upcoming school year. So, the School District at a glance, we have six schools throughout the district. We serve approximately 3,600 students. We have around 420 certificated staff. That's not counting the many maintainers, secretaries, custodians, etc. that help service our schools. Um there are 43 districts in Morris County, and there are about 10 that are 10 others that are similar in size to the School District. We offer an education for students ages 3 to 21. Our 18 to 21 program is known as Cougar Academy. That's our specialized work-based learning program where students have an opportunity to explore their local community. They look to job placements, post-secondary educational experiences, etc. The high school
008offers 30 AP courses, uh and then we have support services throughout the district, a Tier 3 mental health program, and a gifted and talented program as well to meet the varied needs of our students. Last year's AP data reflects that there were 13 1,367 total course enrollments in the AP courses at Chatham High School. You'll note that there are around 1,100 high school students. So, many of these students took more than one AP course. Of that number, 1,157 sat for the AP exam associated with that course. 85% overall took the exam, and of that 85%, 97% of those students scored a three or higher. A success rate is considered a score of three or of a or above. So, 97% of students achieved that goal. In 2025, The class of 2025 had very impressive post-secondary
009plans. 99% of our students went to a four-year college. 3% went to a two-year college, and 3% other, which includes work, military, gap year, etc. The most attended schools for the class of 2025 are nine students at Syracuse University, eight at Rutgers, eight at NJIT, and seven eight at Boston College, seven at Seton Hall, and seven at Penn State, and 10 at Penn State and seven at the University of Providence, and What we really makes us stand out from our neighboring districts is our presence both at the high school and our middle schools. This is how we nurture the interests of our students so that they know what they want to explore in our post-secondary lives. So, we believe we need that active engagement early on. of our students because we understand that they are
010talented and have knowledge of the curriculum and they are able to pursue their dreams. Over 200 students are in the body of the school and that is extremely significant in our practice today. These students are very talented as well as very talented in the arts. The middle school has many as well. Throughout the school year, the district budget is discussed at the education meetings. We are looking for ways to improve the education of our students. We are looking for ways to improve the education of our students. For example, earlier this year we shared that the CMI project was a $1.3 million project. This was a surprise for our district. We also discussed how we could increase the transparency of our district. Department of Education meetings occur throughout the year. District administrators from our district who
011attend meetings and the superintendent attend meetings throughout the county the entire year. All of the financial information is discussed on an ongoing basis in our administrative meetings and then in our finance committee meetings that also take place throughout the year. The budget has been discussed at our finance committee meetings. Those finance committee meetings are also discussed at our board meetings to to encourage public participation. As I shared earlier in the community, our major budget increases for this year include the loss of approximately $1 million which was a result of the state mandate. We also hired five new kindergarten teachers and this is not included in the 2019-2020 budget. In fact, the state mandate required us to hire three kindergarten teachers by the 2019-2020 school year. So we reconfigured the district to implement the state mandate
012in this school year. Additionally, our health benefits increased dramatically. We have a 17.66% increase in health benefits from last year up until this year which is approximately $28 million increase in our budget. I will say that many other local districts throughout the state are experiencing similar budget increases especially in the area of health care and that while 17.66% is an absolutely astronomical number, there are many other districts that are facing 6.99% increases and 12% premium increases. So while it's a lot of money, we actually have a lot of money. As a reminder, the 2% tax cap is a permanent part of the New Jersey state law. That is the maximum that is allowed for tax increases this year. Within that tax cap, we also have the option when there are health benefits costs that exceed
013the state cap as well as those that exceed 12% they allow for additional tax increases without going out to the school community. So specifically for our district, our enrollment increased with the additional health benefits in the town of Verona and all positive additional state aid there were additional added resources for our schools. Because of that, we allowed an increase of $1.4 million which is the number in the top right. Our health benefits adjusted with the allowed which was 2.5 million dollars. This then allowed for a considerable total limited increases of 2% to the maximum amount that we placed on the 2.5% amount allowed. For more information on our district, Chatham continues to be teaching comparatively in per pupil spending. While planning for next year, we started looking at the deficit of $1 million and how
014we would address that deficit in a responsible and constructive way. And so the biggest way we did that was by cutting staff reductions. So we've implemented staff reductions across the district to balance our budget. This impacted a variety of staff members throughout the district and in the schools and these reductions included a mix of retirements, resignations as well as positions of eliminations. In the future, if the economic climate continues the way it does and health insurance premiums continue to increase, um while we're only able to direct cuts to academics, clubs, and activities that are above the state minimum this year, I can only say that in the future we will reduce our spending and cut reductions to athletics, clubs, activities, cuts to visual and performing arts programs, potentially increasing class sizes, limiting class sizes for
015grades 1-12. Right now, all of these are elective classes and the number of electives we run we would need to look at them more responsibly going forward. We would need to limit the number of elective classes and potentially reduce state and local tax dollars. And some people might ask if that is possible. That would eliminate the buying of school space. We believe that this will not happen in our district area and that registered clear and that would be your child playing in the actual school and so we would say that it is possible at another level at the school like for example Washington School. So our major expense categories are health benefits and salaries and transportation. Those are our three primary drivers. You'll see an increase of $12.6 million in health benefits from last year's
016budget which is 16% of the operating budget for the upcoming school year which is a considerable increase. This is the breakdown of the overall expense categories. This will be posted on our website and I also sent this to the families via email. We collect $300,000 in tuition revenue. This is New York special education grant. We collect $140,000 in revenue as well as our special education preschool and school age general education students. Our overall revenues are as follows. You'll see the tax levy accounts for the majority of our revenues. We get approximately $55 million in state aid which is 66% from last year's maximum amount allowed. As I mentioned earlier, the board has considered with the finance committee has considered anywhere from 3.88% all the way up to 7.61% tax increases. These options have the varying
017details to choose the amount of cuts that we made overall. The staff reductions proceeded with the cuts as well as the tax increases for Verona and the town of Chatham. You'll notice that with the 5.99% option, it's the maximum amount allowed and that there was a $1 million hike which we didn't get a balance that didn't help our budget. So no matter what the staff did, we were still $1 million above the budget. The board currently prefers 5.99% or 6.99% tax increases the $3.2 million in $3.2 million cuts would directly impact programming, class sizes, and many other aspects of academics and specialized academics. That is also what the board is saying about the 5.99% annual tax cap and that is where Verona will be impacted $70 and the town of Chatham will be impacted $51.
018The average home assessed in Verona is $570,000 and the average home assessed in the town of Chatham is $850,000. So both of these were done on the $1 million budget. For the upcoming school year, we're looking at a variety of initiatives. As I mentioned earlier, the LL program continues to expand and the town council program at L V Middle School is a software program that we will implement for the upcoming school year that will allow parents, families, and staff to access quickly and efficiently the curriculum as well as the guides. We'll continue to look to implement new courses such as our AI course at the high school. Continuing to professionalize elementary to ensure that there are resources meeting the needs of our students and then continuing with curriculum revisions. Our capital projects will include the
019MMA project which again was a surprise for our architects who originally thought that it would be a smaller project. It then was expanded by the Board of Education to address the brick that was not secure in the basement. This is a safety issue at MMA of $1.3 million. The Washington School roof needs work at $450,000. The Middle School roof which is pictured right there will cost $1.5 million dollars. [laughter] Mr. Smith would like to say something. Are we good? Hello? You're good. Good? Well, thank you for putting that presentation together. It was very well done and we spent a significant amount of time going through Um sorry, can you hear me better? We spent a significant amount of time going through over the course of a few weeks all the different options. We've talked ad
020nauseam about the different levers that we can pull including personnel. Unfortunately, we're kind of at the point where there's not enough a lot of fat left and we had have some really hard conversations and the reality is is that you know the state of New Jersey as we've discussed is not set up for people to have 30 AP courses and salary increases in line with what we want to pay teachers and the sports programming we have and all the extracurricular activities we have. Um but we felt that we got to a place where with about a 5% reduction in staff uh we were able to push through a mid-level tax increase. It still hurts. We didn't want any tax increase. But we got to a point at least for this year where we didn't affect
021programming uh negatively. Unfortunately, going forward we're going to have to have those conversations. But um thank you for putting that together and uh does anyone have any questions? Can you hear me? Can you just announce the tax increase again? I think that a lot of the presentation was garbled unfortunately for those listening. Um so The tax increase is 5.99%. When Emily was speaking there was an echo on the YouTube channel. Great. It was a 5.99% increase with a potential for referendum in the fall to pay for the turf fields and other necessary capital projects. So 5.99% increase. If you go through the four different scenarios cuz I think there was they weren't able to hear those as well. Pull it up. That was what $53 per million dollar house in the In the township $51.
022I'm just pulling up the presentation. My understanding I'm hearing is that there were some sound issues during Oh sorry, 53 and 71 correct. So there were four options for taxes tax increases 3.88% 5.99% 6.99% and 7.61. The finance committee landed with a 5.99% tax increase which involved 1.5 million dollars in cuts related to staff reductions. So there were 20 staff reductions and an average tax increase in the bureau of $71 per month and the township at $51 per month. 71 and 51. So I have a question. Obviously we don't have a crystal ball but I'm wondering if you've heard anything from the New Jersey Department of Education regarding their priorities with finding health care alternatives or negotiation. Is it coming from the governor's office? I mean obviously next year we're going to be right back
023in the same place again unless health care and transportation and special services are somehow accommodated. Especially health care. They surveyed informally surveyed Morris County districts and there were only three districts that had lower increases than ours for health insurance premiums. The average the informal average was 22.7% increase and some districts were as high as 29% 33 and 30%. So comparatively we're pretty lucky with a 17.6% premium increase which is highly concerning because it is not sustainable financially. Uh I can tell you that health insurance is something that we talk about extensively in all of the superintendent meetings but there unfortunately is not just a quick and easy solution to this issue. And so you know my understanding is that the commissioner and Governor Sherrill are definitely looking extensively at this issue but I would be
024surprised if there is a quick fix by next year. All right, I just thank you Dr. Sartino. The presentation was great. Um [snorts] if we look like a bunch of sad sacks that's because nobody's happy with this budget. I mean nobody's happy about cutting 1.5 million dollars. And you know Bradley just said you know there's no fat to be had. Well like this is this is core. This is we were just trying to minimize the disruption and the impact. That's why Dr. Sartino said you know it's across the board. We didn't just focus on a school or a grade. It it I mean it was a deep dive and an analysis but it it was painful. Um and then we had to let go of some of those other projects that the turfs the bathrooms
025um and several residents few are here few are not would say you know you got to let the voters decide if they want think that's important or not. So that's where we're at on those referendums. You have to tell us you know. And unfortunately we saw what happened in a neighboring district. They're they're actually closing a whole building down and they still haven't been able to balance their budgets. Right several. You mean reading the paper all the time they're closing buildings. So we're not read you hear it on the news. They were picketing in you know Yeah and and we've said before in previous years right like the state has set up for schools to be really on a level playing field and we there are things we have to do. We have to give
026history classes and English classes. We don't have to give 30 AP courses and dozens of sports and all this stuff. So that's kind of where we're at. There's no more fat to be had and we're going into another budget next year which is it's it's a really it's really difficult. Yeah and as mentioned some are either doing away with sports or you know pay to play fully you know fully push the cost off to the parents. That's right. Um which is not ideal in a public school. Right that doesn't level playing field. works in a neighboring school district where they're they're 8.9%. I can't hear Chris. The taxes are up Taxes are going up 8.9%. But I mean the math doesn't work Bradley as you've said a hundred times. Like how can the state expect
027any district any district to make this work if your health insurance is going up anywhere between 17% and 30 something percent and you're allowed you know 2% and then 3 you know 3% of waivers. Every How much can you cut? At some point, you know, I think we just go to the state and say, "No mas. Give us a loan like you do every other district that defaults on their on their bills." I mean, I know it's an extreme, but it's frustrating. You go through a referendum like we went through a couple towns away from here where it was like a big hit. Right. Tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars. A real a real hit. So, I feel, you know, the finance committee we we got to a point where it's not
028great. We have to raise taxes. We don't want to raise taxes ever, but we're we're at a point now where we, you know, live to fight another day without a hit in programming, without a hit in sports, and, you know, we'll see what next year brings. And it was a I'll say lively finance meeting. I'm going to stay away from contentious, but it was it was it was lively. It was a lot of I mean, I think we ended up with a a good final product, but it was hours and hours of discussion, and, you know, what's we kept going saying, "What's the right thing to do? What's the right thing to do? What's the right thing to do?" And this is, you know, the worst of you know, everything was a bad choice, but
029this was the best. Yeah, really. But we're all still friends. But it's it's just not Nobody's thrilled with this. And, you know, we we talk about next year. We're we are fortunate that the health health insurance increase was only 17% this year, right? Next [clears throat] year it could be worse, right? So, we're already starting out next year at 5%. If we have the same health care situation. Hopefully it's better. We're basically hoping for a miracle next year. And and a smaller capital reserve. For for the unknown that could come up similar to the middle school wall or whatever. And then, let's say Bradley, we get hit with some unknown that's, you know, way beyond our capacity to pay. Is the process that you would then go to the county and ask to tap into
030their emergency funds and just justify the need? Okay. For capital reserve emergency. Or you run another referendum, but that takes time. There's But yeah, you have to go to the county. And the big issue with all the districts is no one wants to get to the point where they don't balance the budget because the county then comes in and just says, "You know what? Football axed. Baseball axed. AP classes axed. We balance the budget for you." Plays gone. We we've decided to balance the budget for you. So, you don't ever want to get to that point. Any other questions? Well, I guess it's just more of concern on the So, in the capital budget needs, you know, obviously maintenance we had a we had a lot of unexpected maintenance issues this year with things like
031the brickwork. The turf fields, I guess have been on our radar for a couple years, but what is the expected percent of or dollar amount that we typically spend? Like did we have a a 10% increase in unexpected capital expenditures on building maintenance this year or what? What's our typical? Typically excluding these the middle school brick project that with the 1.3 million in next year's budget and what we spent this year on the first two sections that were in dire need of repair. Typically the maintenance is somewhat consistent going year to year, maybe with a 5% increase excluding major catastrophes like that happened at the middle school. So, we try to try to manage the, you know, the repairs, but then again, when you have a few schools that are or most of your schools
032that have the majority of the building over 60 years old, some of the original infrastructure just wears out and needs constant repairs. We've been trying to be methodical in replacing key elements so that we don't have ongoing repairs, but, you know, we need need more replacements than we have funding. You know, so it's a pick and choose as to what needs to get done first. And that's part of part of the of the projects that we've identified where we're going to that we think might be coming up. We're going to identify for the referendum process if that's the direction we go and see, you know, truly go to the taxpayers and say this is a menu of everything we need and allow them to vote on it. Any other questions? You're good to move on?
033Yeah? Okay. All right, moving on to the business administrator's report. For me it's fairly concise report. Now that the capital projects that are in the budget have all been finalized, I've been working with the architect and the supervisor of buildings and grounds to make sure everything is in place so all the construction can start once school's over. The we'll be working with the head of technology and the high school principal on selecting the best intercom system for the high school replacement. That's it. All right, perfect. Thank you. And student liaison report, Avery. Hi everyone. Going to keep this short, but we just closed out our winter sports season, so now we're moving into the spring sports. Our fashion show went well. So many people came. I think every single seat in that gym was filled.
034The seniors killed it. They had so much energy. So much fun to watch. We also had two high school seniors win awards at the Art Administrators of New Jersey hosted at Kean University. So, Cindy and Nina won the Emerging Artist Exhibition. So, huge congrats to them. And then we had eight students recognized for their writing and they received so many awards at the 2026 Scholastic Writing Awards competition. This awards competition has recognized some of America's most celebrated artists when they were teenagers like Stephen King. So, huge congrats to our writers. We also have some new short films directed by CHS students which premiered in movie theaters last month. They're going to be uploaded to the CHS Pulse on YouTube. So, definitely check those out. We had our last day of NJGPA testing today. We had
035reading, writing, and math throughout last week and then today was math. And then lastly, we have our spring musical coming up the 16th through the 18th. The performances are here. You can see our stage in works behind us. The tickets are on sale now, so make sure to get them before they sell out. But yeah, that's all I have. Okay, perfect. Thanks, Avery. Okay, moving on to our committee reports for personnel, Ms. Weber. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Anne. I appreciate it. So, it's been a busy world in HR. As you notice on the agenda, there's several retirements, several resignations. There's also some transfers within the the district. And because our teachers are rock stars, when there's a leave replacement, instead of, you know, hiring from the outside, a lot of our teachers, you know,
036agree or they agree to take on an extra class. So, instead of five sections, they have six sections. So, there's a lot you'll see a quite a bit of that where our teachers again once again stepped up to to cover an extra class. There's just some job description updates. And I also wanted to just thank our HR department. They've been doing Sarah and her team have been doing a review, you know, fresh eyes. It's always get get, you know, we do things the same way over and over and we think, "Oh, we're doing a great job." So, it's nice to have a fresh set of eyes on the books just to say, "You know what? We can improve." So, thank you for your team for catching some errors, some efficiencies. So, it's it's been it's
037very much appreciated and thank you. I'm sure you're going to save us some money there and we we thank you very much. And I'll just yell at Beth Grant who who left it that way. [laughter] I'm teasing. I talk to Beth Grant all the time. She's a friend of mine. Okay, perfect. When are we meeting again? I don't know. Okay. Don't worry about it. The 8th of April. April 8th. Okay. Perfect. For curriculum, Ms. Ross. Curriculum met on March 4th. We covered many topics including the scheduling at CMS. Parents of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders have made their class selections and there the number of periods and the schedule remains that, you know, pretty much unchanged for grades six through eight. The administrative team is looking to continue to examine the fifth grade schedule to
038see if any adjustments can be made there. We discussed AI which always continues to be top of mind. As we mentioned at the high school, two teachers developed an AI course for the fall. It's called AI Literacy and Society. And currently there are enough students enrolled that there will be two sections running next year. At the middle school, there is a collaboration with a company called AI for education that worked on the PD day with teachers and they are developing lessons for grades 6 through 8 that will be embedded in both the library curriculum and core classes. They're going to talk about things like what is AI, how does it work, how does it impact students' brain development and the ethics around AI in general. I know we had some questions emailed in about potentially
039considering a change in start time for the middle school. And we had some discussions with the transportation coordinator and it's really not feasible at this time. The reason a multitude, but the middle school has shared routes with the high school in Southern Boulevard which creates a lot of schedule dependencies for the buses. So alternate alternate altering, excuse me, those routes would require a significant and cost prohibited changes that will not be undertaken at this time. As Avery mentioned today was the last day of the NJGPA test for high school proficiency graduation proficiency assessment. And as you may have read the rollout of the new testing system little challenging across the state. So we had some even later start times today for the delayed opening and we really appreciate everybody's patience as we administered the Verizon
040assessment for the first time. ELA curriculum work. Katie Harms and her team are engaged in extensive curriculum work which will continue throughout the summer. There's a focus on strengthening foundational literacy particularly for grades K to 2 by incorporating decodable texts and revising reading and writing units. The team has submitted a grant application to CEF to help fund the decodable readers for all K to 2 classrooms which are fairly expensive. So that would be an amazing plus. Um lastly screen time. We continue to discuss screen time particularly among the elementary students. Gathering data about usage and a goal of creating some norms to guide the overall use of devices during classroom instruction. So that's it for me. If there's any questions, but like personnel, our next meeting for curriculum will be on April 8th. Thanks. Okay,
041moving on to finance and facilities, Mr. Smith. Um finance and facilities met over the course of February and early March. Two times. To discuss the 2026-2027 budget. As we said, we settled on a tax increase of 5.99%. Um and uh I don't know when we're meeting again, Mr. Dequille. April 15th. April 15th, we are meeting again. Okay. Perfect. And policy and planning, Mr. Ryan. Policy [clears throat] and planning has not met. We are waiting for updates from Strauss Esmay on some of the policy documents that we have for editing. We are meeting again on April 15th. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Any liaison reports for anybody? I have a quick one for CEF. Um they are really looking for trustees and volunteers to join. There are opportunities across in multiple committees. So if anyone is interested,
042you can just take a look on the CEF homepage and reach out to them directly there. Okay. Perfect. Um I'd like to make a motion to move the minutes from the February 2nd public and executive session. Only Ms. Peck and Mr. Ryan need to abstain. Okay, Chris seconded it. Oh. Thank you. Uh February 2nd regular and executive minutes, Ms. Ross. Yes. Ms. Allen. Yes. Mr. D'Alessandro. Yes. Ms. Peck, Mr. Ryan. Yes. Ms. Smith Mr. Smith. Yes. Yes. Uh Ms. Cigerelli. Yes. Passed 602. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Um Okay, this is going to be our first opportunity for public commentary. Hearing of the citizens during the public commentary section of the agenda is an opportunity for any member of the public like to be heard about issues which are or are not topics scheduled for the
043current meeting. To help facilitate an orderly meeting and to permit all to be heard, speakers will be asked to limit their comments to a reasonable length of time. And if you could please just sign in and state your name and where you are from, that would be great. Hello. Hi, Ed Barmakian, Chatham Township. Uh I didn't in your presentation, I didn't see anything about state aid and I was wondering if it increased with the enrollment increase. And the other question I have is on the referendum, how would that work or do you have a plan in mind? Like are you going to prioritize or put them all together or whatever? Yeah, we'll do we'll answer questions at the end, but we'll take note. [laughter] Oh, no. Hi, Jennifer Fury, special education teacher at Southern Boulevard.
044And I'm here to represent Southern Boulevard staff and the CEA and just give a couple of um notable items that we celebrated recently. So So far this year the CEA has given $24,000 back to the community through NJEA grant money through programs like the senior citizen dinner that takes place prior to attending the Chatham High School play and a Chinese New Year event. Recently at Southern we celebrated worldwide social emotional learning day where we focused on a growth mindset through hands-on activities and collaborative groupings with students. Students learned a lot about making mistakes by exploring various inventors and inventions and often their long paths to success. In honor of Read Across America, students participated in a tournament of books and selected an overall winner from 16 different options. Our students and staff overwhelmingly selected the
045book of no pictures by B.J. Novak and our PTA generously offered to purchase a book for each of our classrooms in honor of the event. And lastly we would like to thank our PTO that was also instrumental in setting up our beautiful new mural that was painted at the beginning of March. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you so much. Good evening to all. Bill Heap, Hillside Avenue. I don't know where to begin. Um Uh I will say this, it seems like we're living in the land of never enough. Um and I'm wondering if anybody else in this room besides me thinks that a hundred million dollars, and I'm rounding up a few bucks, but I think we can officially say we've crossed the hundred million dollar mark. Does anybody besides me think that that's an astounding
046a breathtaking amount of money to spend on our school district? Um If you do the math, I'm I'm 3,600 kids divided into a hundred million is I can't really do it in my head, but I'm thinking somewhere around $28,000 a student. I didn't the the comparison chart wasn't up there long enough for me to see where Chatham stood. I saw Mountain Lakes at the top with about $31,000 a student. So we're really not far behind them. Um I will also say that you've had over the past five or six years um the good fortune of having very favorable budget cycles. What could be better than having a decreasing student enrollment at the same time budgets are going up? Something that you didn't really have to justify to anybody and that only occurs in places like
047Chatham. I'm sure if any one of you in your day jobs in the real world told your bosses that your head count was down 10-12% but you needed more money you might have a little explaining to do. Um We provide a very generous education budget to families in this town. You get 2/3 of the pie. I don't know how much you want. Uh but I don't know, for instance, Irvington spends 15% of their pie. Not that I want to live there. Uh but it's just an extraordinary amount of money. And what's happening I think is that uh we are providing that subsidy, but there are plenty of people who aren't sticking around this town long enough to help pay down their fair share of that subsidy. And so increasingly the hot potato is being passed
048along to those of us who choose to stay. And um you had the opportunity to charge for a couple of more years of kindergarten. We're on perfect legal ground. I know the law kicks in in 2930. I know it's not going to solve all of your budget problems, but money is money and I don't know why you decided Oh. I'm sorry, Chris. Got a minute. Okay. Um I don't know why you decided to not accept that money and and and it's tough when you when you leave it on the table and then start crying poverty. Uh I understand that the budget is going to go up 6% with the bonus, the added bonus of a referendum. So, it's going to go up quite a bit more than that and it just seems to me that
049uh every once in a while, maybe enough is enough uh because you're you're really sucking all the oxygen out of the town's budget. Um I'm sure that the the borough and the township have not weighed in yet, but their increases in health care probably along the same lines as yours. So, uh we're going to be facing uh some pretty stiff increases and as far as uh the affordability goes that I heard everybody every politician screaming about, well, uh it's going to be pretty difficult to achieve that affordability. Got it, Chris. Thanks. Hi, everyone. Jackie Peranadi, a new resident to Chatham. Thank you, Anne. Um but long time spouse of an educator in the district. I wanted to offer a potential suggestion. I recognize it's maybe not going to have a benefit in the short term,
050but maybe for the longer term. Um we're coming from a town where full day paid preschool was a newer development. Um the enrollment um increased very quickly. So, it started out where we were offering a half day program, extended it into a full day program. Um the priority um student was of course those that were were from Wayne. So, um Wayne residents, but then they also offered it to the surrounding towns. And I can say having three kids, one of them nine [laughter] and the other six, but then a baby that will be entering preschool in the future, waitlists for surrounding schools like Kirby are extensive. I've heard 18 to 24 months um and they are currently um having Morristown's preschool happen, you know, directly through their building. So, I think it could be a
051potential income source for the district in the future. I know that there are some challenges in terms of understanding what potential enrollment could look like, that staffing in terms of making sure you have enough principals in order to accommodate something like that um would represent different considerations, but would be very happy to talk about my experience having been um PTO president and working very closely with the principal who founded that um program in Wayne. So, thank you for everything all of you do. Very happy to be in town and looking forward to attending more of these. Anybody else? Okay. I'm going to close this portion of the um public commentary section. There will be another one later in the meeting and we'll go ahead and answer some of those questions that um came up. So,
052starting with Mr. Barmakian's questions, Emily. Yep. Okay. So, our state aid last year was $5.46 million. For the upcoming school year, we received the increase of 6%, which is the maximum amount allowed allowed in state aid increases. Governor Sherrill has capped uh that you can go up six or down six so that districts can plan more appropriately because as you saw coming into the school year, districts lost a ton of money and were not able to function and so she had communicated that the most it could swing either way would be 6%. So, we received the increase of 6% at $5.8 million. Just to put that in perspective, uh Dover is another district in Morris County with a similar enrollment to Chatham. While a completely different socioeconomic status is present in that community, the state
053provided Dover with $60 million in state aid. We received 5.8. So, to Mr. Heap's point, you're right, Mr. Heap, the local taxpayers are very much carrying the burden of significant taxes to support the schools. Um I you someone else had uh had asked about the referendum projects. Um the finance committee has just started talking about the referendum and that really will, you know, evolve as the months come come about. Um but I would imagine that the projects would be lumped together, the turf fields as well as the capital projects that need to occur within the building. Um Mrs. Peranadi, welcome. Uh you had asked about full day preschool. We did 2 years ago I began looking at that in my former role and Dr. Rosenthal had attended uh the preschool grant program to learn more
054about it as well. Um if we were to expand preschool to accommodate approximately 260 students, which is the current kindergarten enrollment, we would need at least $1.5 million in staffing and we would then have to charge so much in tuition that it probably would not be super feasible. So, we most definitely looked at it and looked at it as a potential revenue raiser, but with the staffing, classrooms, playgrounds, um etc. that would be associated with the implementation of full day preschool, it really was not a viable revenue source for the district. It really would cost more than it it would make. Um and Mr. Heap, you had talked about a decrease in enrollment and an increase in costs. The only thing I can share to that is that in my prior role um in special
055services, there are state and federal laws that guide the education of all students and while our enrollment might be going down, there still are students with some significant needs that require a very costly education either in district or out of district to meet the least restrictive environments um and a free and appropriate education standard. And so, I understand that from an outsider's perspective, it might look like enrollment is decreasing, but it very much is a at this point increasing, which is why we got the enrollment waiver, but also the needs continue to increase and they are quite costly. And there are state and federal laws that govern that. It's not just that we want to do the right thing, which we absolutely do, but there are also um significant costs associated, you know, financially, legally,
056etc. for not implementing the appropriate education for these students. And just to further that, that that is another one of those items that we have to provide. Correct. Similar to a history class, an English class. The the cuts that would have had to happen to not show a 5.9% increase would have significantly impacted programming in the district and had a massive reduction in staff. And at this point, we were we didn't want to reduce any staff, but we kind of met it at a point where we've we we got the budget down to only a 5.9% tax increase by reducing 20 members. Big number. In spite of extraordinary expenses. In spite of extraordinary expenses. Yep. And uh Bill, I just wanted to talk about the full day kindergarten. Well, on the on the calendar, we
057have two more years. It was a tremendous effort to move, reconfigure to make that happen. There's no way that we could have just said, you know what, keep collecting tuition and it's still not done. We're still not done with the physical logistics of the reconstruction to to make that happen, but in order to have full day kindergarten, we had to then move the third graders out. We had then had to move the fifth graders down to the middle school. We had to reconfigure things, but so we couldn't have flipped a switch. So, and you you've been here for the last 15 years with me. We've also been saying for the last five or so, you know what, it's a public school. We we we we're charging tuition and it's a phenomenal income source, but not
058everybody can pay seven grand, 14 grand. And we were going to get there anyway and you've heard us say it over and over and over again because I know you sit there every meeting that we've been it's no surprise and it's not like, oh my gosh, we just thought, we don't need a million and a half. Of course we need a million and a half. We also need to provide the best education we can afford. So, cutting 20 head counts that I I I take exception to the fact that we don't have to justify it to anybody. Well, you're kidding me, right? We have to justify it to ourselves, to our administrators, to every resident, everybody we see on the street and you're saying, oh, we're hold left holding the bag. Well, take a look
059at the board. None of our kids are still in school, but we still have to offer a quality education that we can afford. It's going to get tight. You just heard Bradley. We're going to start we're going to have to start cutting into some of those programs, but again, we're going to keep trying to do the right thing and make sure we keep the the quality of education as high as we possibly can and that that we can afford. And we did. We did I mean I know Mr. Ryan's going to remember this. As enrollment went down, we did manage to enroll, you know, we did manage the um staffing. We started cutting people. I don't know if you recall, we were crucified for letting go of a um a either a reading specialist or
060a media specialist. I mean, crucified. You you don't support teaching. How dare you? Blah blah blah. You hate books? You hate books? I mean, I like I got crucified for it. But, you know what? That was the right thing to do because the the the staffing person was not optimally scheduled. You can't have a a a staff member with only two sections. So, it's not fair to say, "Oh, enrollment went down and you and you and you just keep, you know, going out to the bank and asking for more money." 33% increase, 2% income. I mean, you know, it's expenses, you know, you run your own business. If expenses go up, yeah, at work, if my expenses go up 30% I'm going to need more money to cover my payroll. So, I mean, you've been
061here long enough, you know that. So, I know some of it what you're saying is a little bit um you know the math, Bill. So, to say, you know, we don't have to justify it to anybody and gosh, enough is enough. You know, it's a little unfair, but, you know, I hear what you're saying, but our expenses are through the roof and we're doing the best we can and none of us are happy about it. And we're holding the bag, too. But, thanks And we're still keeping the per pupil cost way down compared to most districts. Yeah, it was at the bottom of the chart if you of the We were at like what? 21? How many? Mr. Heaps getting the 28,000. I think we we had 21. 20. 20. 20,700. a rough back of
062the envelope million divided by children divided by children. That's a very rough estimate. It's it's because you don't count everything, Bill. It's I mean, like we could tell you the formula, but like transportation I believe is not counted, right? Um there's a few other things that that escape me. And it's not fair to pick on Mountain Lakes, by the way, because they have a the Lake Drive. They have the Lake Drive school, which is included. So, I always feel bad when they're like, "Oh my god, Mountain Lakes is charging 31." It it They have a they have a school for the deaf that gets included into their budget, so it's really not apples to apples. So, you kind of we try to take the second one down and go from there. I do think it's
063important to also note that the in the past 4 years, we've reduced administrators, a dean of students at CHS, the Lafayette assistant principal, one supervisor of health and well-being, and the world language supervisor as the numbers have continued to go down, which is tremendous. That's a lot of money. more than half a million dollars in and director of educational technology. Way more. I mean, each year half a million dollars we've been cutting. Mhm. One thing that seems like a big standout for us is that that you had up on the slide was that we have 30 we had 30 AP classes this year. Mhm. Now, I know from having students having gone through the district very recently and one still in school that in this highly competitive getting to college nature, having choice in APs
064is really important. Um but I also want to know, how does cutting APs actually even save us money because aren't we don't we schedule these classes to be at capa- at the same capacity as regular Correct. now we're scheduling at capacity, whereas potentially you could reduce the number of teachers that even are offering AP sections. So, instead of offering 30, you might offer 20 and reduce the number of staff in its entirety. And push those into other electives. So, you would get your third choice or fourth choice or Mhm. not a choice on your list. Right. Is there such a thing I know you I know that there are districts that are doing pay to play in sports, but are there any districts that are doing pay for course programming or does that have to
065be provided by the by the board? My understanding is it would have to be it would have to be provided a core academic experience. Do you have to offer 30 AP courses? No. Um we do that to offer our high school students the most opportunities possible in their post-secondary choices. Yeah. I'd rather see them pay for extracurriculars. Which is probably far down the road. Any other questions? Okay. Now, we'll move on to our regular agenda. Uh for personnel, Ms. Weber. Yes, thank you, Anne. I'd like to move items A1 through A33 on the regular agenda. And there's a some corrections on the addendum in for item number 16. And you need a second? I'll second it. Great. And second it. Um I just want to point out that on item number one, we have a
066few retirements. I want to know if all the executive secretaries got together one night and said, "You know what? We're going to resign now." [laughter] So, it's going to be I mean, Rena at the high school, Cindy at the high school, and uh Maria at Washington Avenue. They're pretty much establishment staples here, so that's going to be a big gap, but, you know, I'm I'm happy for them. I'm glad they get to enjoy their retirement, but uh it's comical that they're all leaving at the same time. I echo your sentiments. They are the first face you see when you walk in. They welcome everyone. They know the families, the students. They are the best. So, we are very sad to lose all of them, but I'm also Yeah. for all of them. They have very
067fun plans. Agenda items A1 through 33 and the addendum item was A16. Ms. Ross. Yes. Ms. Allen. Yes. Mr. Delsandro. Yes. Ms. Peck. Yes. Mr. Ryan. Yes. Mr. Smith. Yes. Ms. Weber. Yes. And Ms. Chiccarelli. Yes. Agenda items pass 8-0. Okay, great. Thank you. For finance and facilities, Mr. Smith. Yes. [snorts] I would like to move uh agenda items B1 to B26 plus the addendum B27 to a vote. Uh we have a many donations here that I want to highlight. Starting with donation from Mr. and Mrs. Robert Weber, Joe Weber next to me, uh to be uh used for students that are experiencing food insecurity. We have a donation from an anonymous donor uh to offset the cost of CMS field trip. We have a donation on behalf of Christopher Leonard uh to be used
068at the principal's discretion. Um we have a number of Chinese New Year donations including Evie's Spa Springfield, Peter Hair Studio in East Hanover. Um we have a donation uh as a result of Juliana Vaglio finishing second in the 55-meter dash at the 50th anniversary Colgate Women's Games for second and third grade. Um Colgate-Palmolive is making a donation used for the library and media center class at Lafayette Avenue School. Um we have a SAGE local recreational improvement grant for Lafayette Avenue School playground. Uh a donation from the Borough of Chatham, uh the Chatham Township Volunteer Fire Department and the Green Village Fire Department uh to be used for the after the fire assembly. Um we have a donation from Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth David to be used for Chatham High School TV production. Uh a donation
069from the Chatham Booster Club for a basketball shooting machine and also the Chatham Basketball Club for the same basketball shooting machine. And um a donation from the Southern Boulevard PTO for uh a library reading corner. So, thank you. Oh, and one more on the addendum, a donation from Southern Boulevard uh to offset the cost of renovating restrooms. Thank you for all those. Oh. That's from the Lafayette PTO. I'm sorry, I have to correct number 27. That is the Lafayette PTO. Lafayette PTO. It was a semi typo. The resol- The body is correct, the heading is wrong. Sorry. That's my fault. Oh, SBS PTO is correct? Lafayette PTO for Got it. Okay. Sorry. Second all that. Chris seconds it. I'm doing my part. Agenda items B1 through 26, addendum B27 corrected to be the donation from
070the Lafayette PTO. Ms. Ross. Yes. Ms. Allen. Yes. Mr. Delsandro. Yes. Ms. Peck. Yes. Mr. Ryan. Yes. Mr. Smith. Yes. Ms. Weber. Yes. And Ms. Chiccarelli. Yes. Agenda items pass 8-0. Okay, great. Um moving on to curriculum, Ms. Ross. Yes, I'd like to move action items C1 to C4 on the regular agenda. Um do we want to talk about the uh quickly on C4, the school calendar changes? Um So, May 4th, delayed opening at the high school um for NJ SLA testing. May 13th, early dismissal at a few of the schools. May 22nd, schools will be closed for an unused school snow day, excuse me, and Tuesday, May 26th, also a district closure for the unused snow day. Okay. Thank you. Um question on the HIBs. Oh, yeah, go ahead. Have we seen an improvement
071since it didn't look like it in reading the report since we did some extra things at CMS? No. We continue to see some significant issues uh throughout the district related to um race and hate-based language. Um but we continue to see the most at CMS. And graffiti. Yes. It's not a HIB, but it's not a HIB, but it's it's an issue. It's yes. Yes, very much so. So, the administration continues to look at various ways to work with students there [clears throat] to educate and provide remediation when there are incidents. So, the counselors administrative team are working on a plan. Okay. It's bad. I just want to point out that this is one of the first years on Typically when we have um left over snow days, we do the Thursday and Friday before Memorial
072Day. And some of us that are used to it will probably just say, "Oh, great. Thursday, Friday." But it's the Friday, Monday this year. Friday, Tuesday. It's the Friday, Tuesday. So, still come to school on Thursday before um But this is I think this will be a nice change. Change it up a little bit for the Tuesday. Totally. I just need somebody to second. I'll second it. Agenda items C1 through C4, Ms. Ross. Yes. Ms. Allen. Yes. Mr. Delsandro. Yep. Ms. Peck. Yes. Mr. Ryan. Yes. Mr. Smith. Yes. Ms. Weber. Yes. And Ms. Chiccarelli. Yes. Agenda items passed 8-0. Okay, great. Thank you. Um nothing for policy. Moving on to board business and there's an update for the uh 2025-26 calendar for kindergarten screening and student visits. Who has that? Mary, do you want to
073talk about the kindergarten screenings for May 13th? [laughter] I got cut off. Um yes, so on May 13th, if you'll recall the past 2 years, we have indeed done a um kindergarten screening at each of our schools. And in order to make that possible, we need all staff um on deck. So, we do dismiss the students in those schools early. Um if you follow through when we go to place students um coming out of kindergarten going into first grade, going into second grade, we have a snapshot as to what their behavior is and what their personalities are like. So, students that are coming into kindergarten but have not gone through our preschool, if if we don't have any eyes on them, you really are taking a great um risk not having um any oversight of
074the class list. So, even though it's just a small snapshot, we are able to gather some important information about the students so that we can create um balanced class lists because once the list is set, we need to live with it for the remainder of the year. So, um it's a lot of work for the teachers. Um and it extends far beyond just our kindergarten staff. But the feedback from the teachers as well as from the principals is that it is a good exercise and it has led us to have good results as we develop the class lists. Also, on that day, our students from fourth grade will be going down to CMS. And the feedback that we received last year was that it was much less overwhelming for them to be able to navigate
075around the building without the rest of the students there. So, um while it is somewhat of a disruption having a delayed opening or rather an early dismissal for those schools, we do think on both sides um it's a benefit for everyone. Got it. Okay, perfect. Um And we're now on to our second opportunity for public comment. Again, if you do have something to say, if you could please just sign in and introduce yourself, that would be great. [snorts] Bill Heaphy again, Hillside Avenue. Uh I'm going to uh respectfully push back on two items. Uh yes, Jill, I've been here a long time and I've always urged you to charge tuition for full-day kindergarten, a lot of tuition. The demographer pointed out at the last meeting in February that this is a wealthy town. Now, I
076understand that in with within the small subset of people that kindergarten tuition uh affects, there will be some people who won't be able to pay. I understand that. They get subsidized. But uh the the taxpayers get get crushed by the thorough and efficient standard. It is open-ended, completely open-ended, and lopsided. And we have no defense against that. This is one of the very few areas where taxpayers had some leverage over the system, and it's probably never going to happen again. So, you might as well have taken advantage of it while you can or you could. Uh the second thing is the um uh comparison numbers, uh spending per pupil. Uh if you're going to tell me that we're spending $20,000 per student, that comes out to I think, if I do the math right, 72
077million in budget. I'd take that budget. Uh I think it at the very least it's it's a little bit disingenuous. If the state allows you to back out some numbers for comparison, okay, they do. But that doesn't mean the money isn't being spent. And at the very least on these charts, there probably should be a uh a number in parenthesis, the true spending number. I'm a simple guy. I do simple math. I take 100 million and divide it by 3,600 students, and I'm coming out with something like $28,000. Uh if it's anything less than that, I'd be happy to hear it. But I think that's it. And uh a side-by-side comparison, at the very least, uh would give a true picture of what the uh spending per pupil is. Thanks. Okay. And do we have
078an executive? Okay. So, that concludes our meeting for the evening. Thank you for coming for all of you that came out. And uh everybody get home safe.