001and we're live good evening everybody and welcome to our april 27 2021 public board meeting and we are going to call the meeting to order and it is 704 if everybody will please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all the reading of the meeting notice this meeting is being conducted in compliance with the open meeting session that the verona board of education passed a resolution at its annual reorganization meeting held on january 5th 2021. the meeting set forth the schedule of its regular meetings which resolution was within seven days of passage the schedule was sent to the verona cedar grove times the star ledger the
002township of verona and the vea postings of this meeting setting forth the time location and agenda were posted at the verona board of education office and on the verona public schools district website the verona board of education operates under a consent agenda format any board member has the right to have an item pulled to be voted upon or discussed separately copies of tonight's agenda and resolutions have been made available to the public and the press mr turner do you want to do the roll call please mr owen here here mr j here mrs christopher pierre and mrs here we have a call thank you very much and tonight we do have a presentation we have the 2021-2022 annual budget presentation i'm going to turn that over to dr zane museum thank you mrs fresky good
003evening everyone just give me one moment i'm going to go into presentation mode here where uh mr turner uh and i will do the annual budget presentation this will build upon the presentation that we did at the last public meeting on april 13th so i would encourage people if you have not seen that presentation already and it's of interest that presentation is posted up on the district website and i encourage people to go there and preview it okay so so good evening again um the first several slides that we have uh the first seven or eight slides is um repetition from the april 13th meeting so we'll just give a general overview of each of those slides as i mentioned earlier uh anyone who would like to watch that presentation in more depth we encourage
004you to go to the district website to watch the video of that presentation and the slide deck is up there as well the first slide that we have here is just a timeline of the course of the year and what it generally looks and how we go about getting to this point a lot of work goes into the development of an annual budget with all of the constraints that are imposed upon school districts in an effort to make sure that we're being efficient and resourceful with taxpayer funds there are a number of constraints not the least that two percent cap on budget growth on tax levy uh which keeps the tax uh increases uh limited to the two percent um obviously in the past we've discussed the impact to the the cumulative loss in state
005aid in uh excess of six million dollars and the fact that verona taxpayers fund 95 um of the funding for our schools does come from the local taxpayer and that varies by municipality based on socioeconomics dfg and how much state aid comes into those communities we've spent a lot of time coming up with creative ways to make sure that we're being as efficient as possible with taxpayer dollars in order to maximize how those dollars can be utilized here in district and there are a lot of levers to that leasing financing for technology purchases maintaining and reducing out of district placements when when appropriate and when possible and bolstering utilizing that funding to bolster our special education programming here at home for our students the impact of retirements and resignations each year how much state aid
006we end up receiving um and then just taking a good long hard look at how we're spending money and in each in any given year are there more efficient ways to be able to do that so that way we can repurpose funding into different areas based on our needs and then benefiting from when we do have lower health care premium increases now i know that that sounds like a funny statement there lower healthcare premium increases healthcare premiums go up every year we just hope that they're lower this year than they were last year so it's less of an impact to the school budget just a few points of uh being very pleased with where we are this year uh points of pride uh we were able to maintain all of our current staffing positions that
007we have any staff member who's on board right now we're able to maintain them for next year so that's a huge win for us especially in the with the volatility that we had this year in an effort to continue to impact and influence and support mental health and social emotional learning we're able to increase our current part-time social worker from 70 to 100 percent we are able to reinstate our verona high school assistant band director that we had to uh reduce last year based on the budget process we had a resignation in that position the change in the schedule we wanted to make sure that we had that built in this year um so we're we're going to be actively recruiting candidates for that position and that's something that's very important for our arts department
008and we're reinstated the go back there we reinstated the director of facilities role we currently have mr higgins operating in that interim role um and we will be filling that as a permanent position moving forward the district's benefited from um savings of about 450 000 over the past several years but it's it's an opportunity for us to be able to build in that permanent role with the needs that we have in the district and that the budget can now support we eliminated the hiv specialist that was due to a resignation several months ago we've repurposed the responsibilities back to our school counselors and child study team members at the elementary schools that was in existence um up to two years ago uh when we did create this position um and for budget purposes uh we
009decided not to fill that position at the time being um to be able to make sure that we did not have to go and reduce our our staffing in other areas we're maintaining all of our school and curriculum instruction and assessment accounts we're able to maintain all of our district and school stipend positions we've allocated more money into substitute pay there's been a dramatic increase in the cost for substitutes and the volume of substitutes that we've needed and we've also increased the pay for our lunch aids over the past several years we've been trying to make a commitment to increase that hourly rate we've done so again this year in order to be able to not only pay people accordingly what we feel is is more appropriate and fair but also to be able to
010recruit more people to help support our work and a huge help has been the recent allocation and of the esser funds this is the essentially the cares act that is due to coronavirus coming from the federal government finding its way to the state and then being allocated to each of the school districts so this is a huge help for us because it allows us to offset a lot of the costs going into next year around dealing with uh the pandemic and allows us as well to help absorb some of the costs this year now i'm going to turn it over to mr turner for the next several slides starting with the budget facts based on the tax levy increase okay good evening everyone all right the budget facts the general fund tax levy increase is
011two percent compared to the prior year uh that two percent is the maximum amount that the district can go up without the availability of any um extensions for health care costs or enrollment costs which verona was not eligible for this year and in addition uh there was no bank cap available for use this year as well too so the maximum that the district could go up on the tax levy was was the two percent and that is what is being presented this evening the tax increase is approximately 293 dollars per average household in the in the town and uh that dollars now takes into account all the debt service that's involved with the new debt that the district has incurred due to the referendum and then also a separate proposal that was passed a couple
012years ago so now this this increase now takes into account that all of that debt that new debt is online and is now um involved with the increase in the tax levy the 2020 average assessed home is four hundred and thirty thousand seven hundred dollars all right so whatever your assessed home is you can do sort of a comparison as to what your individual tax increase might be using this as a guideline and the average school tax paid by residents last year was seven thousand two hundred thirteen dollars which is somewhat reasonable compared to districts who that have similar uh demographics as well too and the tax rates per hundred dollars of assessed valuation is is one dollar and 67 cents for the school portion of your tax library because remember on your real estate
013taxes there you have your municipality you have your county you have all the number of different assessments that make up your total tax bill one portion is the school portion and this is the school portion of your your tax bill okay the 2021-2022 revenue budget is 38 million 148 540 of that the local tax taxes make up 93.4 of the total revenues for the district state aid makes up 6.02 of the total revenues for the district and then miscellaneous revenue makes up 0.58 of your revenue budget for next year and then here's a little historical background chart here showing the state aid that verona has received now going back to 2009 and you can see it varies quite a bit and as uh those of you who remember back then uh we were in the
014in the midst of coming up with a new state aid funding formula for all school districts within the state of new jersey and the state supreme court actually wound up instituting what's known as the school finance and reform act and even though that that that law was passed a number of years ago before it was implemented they maintained state aid basically at the same amount for a number of years and it's only been within the past few years now that the the full funding formula is being phased in and it will continue to be phased in over the next few years until it's fully implemented so what that means for verona is is that we actually received an increase in state aid and it was calculated on the special ed portion of it but now
015with the enrollment that that that we have and uh and that the conditions of the students that are in the district will actually start to receive uh more and more the funding that is in accordance with the school financing reform they call it cifra for sure so you will continue to see that in in the next few years until it's fully implemented so i think that that actually bodes well for verona as it seems as though it's trending with additional state aid for the district which is uh certainly welcome the next slide is a revenue comparison so the 2021-2022 budget being presented tonight is compared to last year's adopted budget so you can see the tax levy is increased by two percent that equates to a dollar amount of 698 709 state aid the anticipated
016state aid actually is going up 8.81 tuition revenue is basically staying about the same and that is that is revenue for students that are attending in-district programs all right miscellaneous revenue again that's just an estimate and is approximately the same going forward budgeted fund balance there was a decrease in the in the budgeted uh available fund balance as some of the prior years excess surplus was used to fund the capital and maintenance reserves so it reduced the amount of the excess surplus because we felt that that would be appropriate for the 21 22 year and then you can see that in the withdrawal from capital reserve and maintenance reserve this year it's it's zero for both of those all right where in the prior year it was uh for capital reserve it was 456 381
017and in maintenance it was 150 000 we felt as though we didn't need to take any further withdrawals from reserves you know as we continue to come to the conclusion of the referendum as well too and we feel that there was adequate money to complete the referendum the next slide is a pie chart of the expenses or the uh expenditures that we're anticipating for next year and you can see the the vast majority of his is salaries and benefits and that's typical for public school districts and how they're what their operating expenses the majority of their operating expense expenses tend to be then you have special education you have non-discretionary and discretionary spending all right and on a future slide it'll it'll detail exactly what the discretionary non-discretionary uh are comprised of all right the
018next slide is a five-year summary showing um showing how how the changes have uh have occurred within the district and you can see that in salaries all right that we're actually looking at a decrease in 2122 compared to 2021 and the the the reason for that is because of retirements and resignations and replacements that came in at lower salaries than those people who had left before them all right because as dr deniso had mentioned there's no reduction in staff staffing and so as a result this reduction in salaries is is because of people either retiring or leaving and new hires coming in at a lower salary the benefits again we're looking at an increase of just about three percent and that is uh that is actually very favorable i'm sure you remember the years when
019it was eight nine ten percent so uh this is this is very favorable for the district uh special education costs are up about six point one nine percent and then non-discretionary is down 0.03 percent and discretionary is up 7.64 okay benefit costs as you can see the cost of a health benefit plan includes health dental and vision the family cost is thirty three thousand four sixty eight husband and wife twenty eight thousand two hundred ninety two parent and child nineteen thousand four seventy three single coverage is 12 0801 179 staff benefit cost 4 million 627 176 less employee contribution in 950 000 so as you remember there's the employee health benefit contribution that all employees must participate in and that that subsidizes the cost of the health benefit premiums that the district uh incurs 94
020staff members opt out and the cost to them for the waivers is 470 social security pension and unemployment costs are approximately 945 000. workers compensation insurance costs approximately 233 075 and board liability and property insurance costs approximately 265 000. okay and then the next slide is the detail of the what makes up the discretionary and the non-discretionary spending okay that concludes my portion so on the shared services part we do a lot um to try to keep costs down and to benefit from pooling the purchases so one of the things that we do uh we're fortunate to have a wonderful partnership with the township in regards to the public works and taking care of snow removal for our parking lots and helping us tremendously with landscaping in turn we also then have an issue here
021just give me one second i don't know what happened there do this again i apologize so we have um the relationship with our township where the the town takes care of uh snow removal at our schools and assists our maintenance staff uh tremendously trash removal and recycling we with other school districts we pool health dental workman's comp and liability insurance with a number of other districts and being able to do that with them keeps those costs low as well as well as the purchases of supplies custodial supplies in our partnership and then looking at the needs with other school districts to make sure from a special education standpoint that we can end up being able to share costs and share services as needed the next several slides will just provide a level of detail around
022elementary middle school and high school around some of the initiatives that the school budget continues to fund some of these are sustained major projects tied to our strategic plan while others are new that have been incorporated and we're very proud of this work because as i mentioned it stems from the strategic plan which was collaboratively developed with a community of stakeholders and it's really the result of the tremendous work that's going on with our teachers and our administrators and all of our support staff in partnership with our parents which all benefit our students so you see that we continue to sustain the reading and writing workshop at the elementary schools continuing to revise the english language arts curricula working with dr joe goble in regards to professional development with our world language teachers we've been
023doing that for several years our math series dimensions we've been working on that staff development with mr bill jackson for several years around providing that necessary professional development building that up at the younger ages as then we prepare to be able to move this effort and initiative and this type of teaching for art that benefits our students at the middle school level the inquiry-based science program has been several years implemented now across our uh elementary and middle school up through grade eight being able to provide that inquiry-based foundation so continuing to sustain that uh with the stc curriculum um constant revision of our report cards the support of our academic literacy coaches that are shared amongst our elementary schools and then new this year is utilizing the map growth assessments for formative assessment to be
024able to get real-time information so that way we can then process that analyze it and then be able to utilize that information in order to best benefit our children at hbw um continuing with the reading and writing workshop focused on balanced literacy uh professional development there with uh ms clark um continuing to support the classroom libraries cross-curricular initiatives and then once again the continuation of dr gobel um at hbw around professional development uh in building community with our world language teachers um dimensions in grade five you know bringing that dimensions work from the elementary math curriculum up into the middle school continuing with the stc inquiry-based science program and and most recently our initiative and focus on making sure that we're infusing lgbtq plus curriculum into the social studies units and making sure that we're
025supporting those students and supporting all of our students and building education and awareness for everyone as we continue to build our cohesive community and then last but not least also implementing the map growth assessments uh for map and ela that formative assessment piece that will end up supporting our professional learning communities in verona high school doing the close reading professional development uh through our humanities department um this year as well was the we implemented in english for a new course called race culture and identity we're incorporating more works from texts with black and african-american writers both fiction and non-fiction within our senior level english class the district has plans to continue to expand upon that work year over year and being able to bring in diverse course offerings for our students and hats off to
026our high school administration our curriculum office and to our english teachers for implementing those texts and that work and for the work that they will continue to do on that important endeavor cross-curricular work across english language arts and social studies inquiry-based science work um dr joe gobel of course working across our whole district with our language teachers um mr jackson working with um our our stem supervisors uh and with our stem teachers taking a look at making sure that we're continuing to infuse work in our music ap music theory courses and then every year we implement we revise curricula and we add new courses so this is just a constant evolution and part of what our team does as we continue to examine what's necessary moving forward on the special education special services plan that
027you see before you we have three columns we have our program continuity that you could see i won't read through all of it self-explanatory programs that we're continuing to maintain then you see the column in the middle about our additional services that are provided as levels of support in order to be able to provide that that level i will draw everyone's attention to about halfway down the middle column you know that that critically important piece of implementation around the ace counselor and that's all around that social emotional learning piece to provide that support for our students and i know the board remembers it wasn't that long ago we didn't have elementary counseling at all in this district and that's something that our teachers our parents and our principals have been asking for for a long
028time and we made a commitment to that um once we did the second question we were able to repurpose our funding and then we've continued to build upon that as well so that's something that we're very proud of and our students will benefit from that you see also our partnership with effective school solutions that's that mental health social emotional learning component in grades 5 through 12 around that second proposal from 2018. and then in the last column on the right you see there where we've expanded the social worker at the elementary schools our continued focus on mental health mr moriello is working with the team on a wellness series um in a community-based mental health speaker series that will be available for our community so those plans will be developed and they'll be communicated out
029when those sessions will be in order to be able to provide additional support around that social emotional learning component so this uh this slide here is an important one and just piggybacks off of what mr turner was mentioning earlier around the cost several slides ago he referenced the dollar 67 on the school side and approximately 7 on the school tax side and what it costs per household this is a really wonderful chart that we include every single year because you know we we break it down into these four columns and the first three are really around what the dollars are uh compared to and we're comparing ourselves to our comp group and our comp group our through k-12 school districts uh that are less than 3 000 students you know it's between 1800 and 3500
030students uh more or less and this is defined by the state and in the northern region because costs in the northern region morris union essex bergen county are similar we really shouldn't be comparing ourselves to like cumberland county and cape may county very different uh parts of the state but it gives you a benchmark here as to how we're doing on the financial side and then you can see all of the work from a curriculum instruction an assessment standpoint and the services and the opportunities we provide our students as a community and you get to see that you know our costs are being maintained low comparably speaking to our comp group uh and and why these three columns have been used in verona for years that these are the costs that actually impact kids directly
031right it's that what's the per pupil cost what is classroom supplies that gets into the kids into the teacher's hands and what are the extracurricular costs and um you know i would argue that we want to keep and we do if you look back in prior years we do keep putting more money into these areas but relatively speaking we are always staying fiscally responsible um and then you get to see that the average property taxes um in verona are relatively low as well for for what we provide as a community so um this is a a just a good benchmark because we know that taxes inevitably they always go up they never go down uh but it's also important to understand what the value is that everyone is getting um and and that it's being
032managed financially um prudently and then a really great thing is normally we end on a high note um i think this whole presentation is a high note we end on a high note with the college acceptances and in prior years we've been putting it all on one slide and um unfortunately unfortunately we couldn't fit it on one slide so now we have it on two slides that's how many schools our students are applying to they're getting accepted to they have a lot of wonderful choices um and we wanted to reflect that here so that way the the board and the community could see it so that concludes the budget presentation um for for this year i will turn it over to the board if you have any questions or comments for either mr turner myself
033or mr moriello or dr miller thank you dr dean thank you mr turner i know the amount of work that goes into creating the budget and putting it together and the committee work and the up and down and input from the administrators and the principals and each of the buildings so i appreciate the work that goes into it and that we're you know right at the two percent cap is nice very nice i don't have any questions does anybody have any questions i i have a question first i just want to thank mr turner and dr danisio for your work on this especially during this year doing some of it if not a lot of it virtually um i can't imagine how difficult this was um but thank you for the budget it looks great
034and again like you said just to echo is you know fiscally responsible so thank you for that um the one question i just want to make sure that i understand mr turner that average increase um per household i just want to make sure i understand this right so that 293 includes the second question increases okay i okay yep perfect thank you and if um and this is generally for everybody but if you take what your assessed valuation is of your particular home in verona divide it by 100 and multiply it times 1.67 that's what your school tax is going to be it's as simple as that all right the example that we used and that that 293 was that 430 000 house that may or may not even exist in verona but that was what
035was used as an example thank you mr turner i also want to thank you in particular for the way that you explained all of this before during the presentation every time that that i sit with you on finance committee or at any time you're explaining things to me i feel like i have a very very good understanding coming out of it and you never judge me for asking silly questions so thank you thank you very much i appreciate it no silly questions on finance that's for sure the only silly question is the one that's unasked does anybody else have any uh comments any questions on the phone mrs freshly i'd just like to also add um to mr turner as well i do think being in the assessor's office as what my day job is
036um that was very informative as well because um it is it's you know 50 what 3 53 of our tax dollars goes to the school um so to see it broken down like that and then to see us in the comp in our comp districts as well on the lower end because we are always hearing well i'm always hearing you know from owners that our taxes are are high and then you know we are essex county we are in a high area we are in new jersey but um to see that it's nice to see that we are on the low end so thank you for putting that together and if anyone has questions about their taxes they could always call my office yeah i real quick too i know you know that this year
037started off uh you know in the covered world we were worried about you know budgets dollars ppe all these things we hadn't really thought about before and you know i we were concerned about where we were going to be at the end of the year and um i'm happy to see that we're actually you know between some of the funding and we got from the state and fiscal responsibility and things we've been we've done we're able to actually add some uh staff and increase with the facilities or social worker or things like that so um and you know end of the day you know i think you know you've done a wonderful job along with the administration to to get us where we are to be able to say that uh you know we'll you
038know any increase is is still an increase but you know we've been able to control it and be you know versus our comparable districts we're doing very well so again i want to thank you for that and uh again i'm glad to see that we uh beginning here we weren't sure we're going to be and and now we know we're in a pretty good place at this point but it would be better but uh you know end of the day we're doing well so thank you for that okay thank you i'd just like to thank mr turner and he's worked around the clock on this budget um every year last year it's been um it's it takes a lot it takes a lot of time a lot of collaboration but your your wealth of experience
039and um your bedside manner your approach with everyone and the questions that you ask and being able to take their feedback and then coming to me with potential solutions and for us to be able to work collaboratively together to be able to put this forward it took a lot of time and just want to thank you for your efforts does not go unnoticed thank you very much and if i could just mention that you know i just consider myself one member of a part of a bigger team and i want to thank the rest of the team you know because without that teamwork and everybody coming together it would be impossible to put together a school budget under under these circumstances so you know i was just happy to be a member of a really
040good team thank you very much um now we're going to go into the superintendent reports i'm going to give this back to you dr dean great thank you very much um i know we have a few committee reports tonight so the only item that i have this evening is just in reference to a resolution which is resolution number six that the board approved the attached revised 2020-21 district school calendar the only revision on that and it will be posted on the website is just noting that at the bottom of the calendar there are only two emergency snow days not three so as a result we um are just approving the calendar there's there are no dates that are changing on the calendar um and there are no give backs on snow days this year because
041we've used two snow days and that's all that was built into the calendar so that's all i have on the superintendent report at this time number six number six doctor dean echo can i just ask a question um not on the agenda on the original yet on the calendar real quick yes i noticed on june 24th hbw's having their move up so is they're going to be on a different day because normally because of call what we had pueblo university they would be in the morning on the and then high school would be on the friday so they're still working out those details but yes that's something that they're looking at and doing it the day before okay um you know in in prior years obviously for the past i don't know 10 years or
042so we've been at coral university which has kind of normalized like being able to allow everybody in for promotion and graduation and not worrying about the weather and being able to have av technology um in prior years you'd be able to do it on on the field and then if it rained you kind of could bring some people inside but with kovid this year that's not going to be possible so managing two programs in one day a graduation and a promotion seems like a lot you we cannot graduate any day earlier because students have to complete 180 school days but a promotion ceremony is exactly that it's it's symbolic it's a ceremony so we could do that a day earlier and that's what the the thought is on being able to just more effectively manage
043it so more details will be coming out once we finalize all of those details you're welcome as far as committee reports finance committee did meet mr to do something with finance thank you mrs fresky we did meet um we talked about the budget presentation um we um discussed the um the school board administrator position and the process surrounding that and we also talked about legal fees and reviewed them quite in depth um and you know between covet and referendum um our legal fees this year were um quite high significantly higher than the year prior um and um you know outside of that another thing that we discussed with our legal fees was our grievance and labor relation matters and really over the past three years what we found is that those legal fees are upwards
044of 55 000 so you know that is something that i think we need to look at more closely and really try to kind of reign in going forward you know but i see you know overall we also talked about you know going forward in terms of legal fee costs um referendums winding down and you know god willing covid is also winding down so that will hopefully change as well so and that's it you mrs trapp yeah it was a pretty um benign uh conversation and it did focus mostly around the budget presentation so thank you for reporting out on that does any of the board members have any questions on finance if not we will go into uh community resources we met as well mr day do you want to take that i will just
045making sure i'm i am muted so yes i want to talk briefly about our meeting school reopening good news the schools are open which they've been open but now we have kids in the schools and students in the schools so uh so the school reopening plan at the elementary level is uh one cohort every day until lunch and then remote learning in the afternoon i think we're at i think 95 percent of the students are participating um on you know in school learning which is great so with hpw we've moved from three cohorts down to two cohorts so the students are in the building until lunch and then they have remote learning in the afternoon and then with vhs we're continuing with two cohorts all day with open campus for lunch and that began on
046april 22nd marcus that started marking period four so great news i know uh the parents that i've talked to very happy to have these kids back in school students back in school and uh getting closer to normal for additional alignments we talked about the diversity equity and inclusion committee some additional meetings are being scheduled for may and june and staff development is scheduled for the summer of 2021. in regards to the board of ed and vea mediation for the past few months we had we had a couple sessions that were very positive prior and then we had tried to reschedule like i said for the past couple months and uh we've not been able to get a date every time we put dates out there um the vea is not available so i believe tonight
047they might have had some uh a break where we might have a a date where we could actually meet so um so again that will be a work in progress but again we as the board of ed would love to sit down and have that open communication with the vea members and you know whether it's one member or all the members um our goal is to have that that open communication and pipeline um to be able to sort out and address any questions or you know any items that that are out there that we need to discuss and address so um that's about all we have for the meeting anything else lisa to add yeah the only other thing that i'm going to add is we spoke about the verona public school magazine publication and
048that had started a couple of years ago and it was really well received the students have a lot of input as far as writing articles and the graphics uh art teacher and the graphics design students do the covers and the work so it really is a great experiential hands-on uh project for the school and that got halted last year with uh kovid so we are back up and running so that magazine will come out this year so that's really good news and the other thing um we had put a board retreat for us back back last february or march and just as we were going um to our date was coming up it got closed down for covid so that is something that we are trying to work on um just to step away from
049our roles here a little bit and have an outside totally neutral fun thing to do for all of us and um so i'm working on getting a date so we're looking uh somewhere towards the end of may or early june to get a board retreat on the calendar other than that i think we covered it all does anybody have any questions for community resources nope so if not at this point we're going to open to public comments on agenda action items only this especially before we start i just have some athletics we didn't have we didn't have a meeting but i do have some things to report out if i can report out before we go to absolutely that if you don't mind yeah sorry um so our volleyball team won north uh north 2
050group 1 sectional championships first linhurst last week um this is the fourth championship they've had in five past seasons so congratulations to those girls fantastic job it was great to watch our wrestling team johnny pavia direct bernardino jaden chupac and dean palmer qualified for the regionals and jayden took sixth place sixth place overall dean also won his had his hundredth win which i think we reported at our last meeting um spring sports are up and running opening day was fantastic up here it was a sight it was great there was people everywhere masks everyone was doing what they were supposed to do but um baseball softball golf and boys and girls lacrosse all won on opening day and baseball game there was over 24 major league baseball scouts here for piers coppola very unbelievable to
051say just really cool um so congratulations to all those athletes and also on the boys lacrosse team jack lonsinger scored his 100th goal so congratulations to him and thank you to mr merkler for giving us always great updates and keeping us informed thank you for that mrs prisco that was my goal yeah good news good news excellent congratulations to all our athletes um we are going to go to public comments and that's on agenda action items only and to remind the public to please state your name and your address and to limit your comments to five minutes and i'm gonna ask mr roberts to please do the answering of those hand raises hey good uh good evening ron mueller 21 linden avenue um just wanted to say um as a university of alabama alumni to
052all those going to alabama roll tide go bama um very happy to see that they were on the list but it's not necessarily my question my question is uh in regards to the uh the budget um one question i just had real quick just so i understand um you showed that there was a um increase in state aid from 2021 2022 but it didn't look like it accounted for the additional aid that was given during the pandemic times right i just wanted to fully understand that um because i know there was like an additional 400 or 600 000 that was given there so could you just explain that to me just so i fully understand where that's coming from or if that's included in that statement thank you very much mr turner's gonna unmute and
053take that question okay there we go okay um that was a very good question basically uh the state aid is reported in the budget presentation is the regular state aid the categorical aids that the district receives the other grant money um that the district received the sr monies and the coronavirus relief fund uh those funds are are federal monies that are accounted for in a special revenue uh budget and has no effect whatsoever on the uh on the district's tax levy so that's accounted for in a whole separate fund and was not part of the state revenue that that was reported on the presentation that we just gave mr can i just so can you maybe just briefly also explain what the state aid can be used for in terms of our budget and what
054the sr funding can be used for and how those are different yeah this am i still unmuted yes you're unmuted yeah the regular state aid is is revenue that's that's uh generally used for the purposes of supporting the school district budget the general operating budget all right the the grant monies the sr monies the chronovirus elite fund monies those grants are accounted for in the special revenue fund and have a very narrow uh we have a very narrow ability to use those funds usually a very specific purpose that we can use them for and those additional monies were basically associated with the with the coronavirus pandemic and that could not be used to support the the general operating budget of this of the school district and i will just add to that as well in
055the budget presentation this evening and in the last budget presentation i believe it may be slide seven actually lists not all but there are about 15 different categories the esser funds can be utilized it's on the state website also on the federal website uh the us department of education site um so we listed a smattering of them that the public would connect to and relate to so if anybody wanted to see what that funding could be used for it's specifically earmarked for those and with purposes i show uh no further public comment on acronyms okay then we will continue with our agenda and are there any uh older new business or discussion items that the board we want to bring up at this time i just wanted to thank the teachers for their continued flexibility
056as we changed schedules again this marking period and in particular thank the elementary teachers for a very very smooth transition back into five days i can speak from personal experience my kids um transitioned back in very smoothly so thank you to their teachers in particular mrs keepers and this diaz and from what i can hear from a lot of people that i know of elementary students that it has really really been a wonderful transition and the kids are doing very very well so thank you mr strappy so if there's no more discussion we are going to do our roll call on resolutions i need a motion to approve resolutions number one through 13. so moved moved by mr day second and second by mrs prisco is there any uh questions or discussion on any of
057the resolutions no so i will ask mr turner to please call the role to vote on us mr hallward yes mrs graham yes okay mr day yes mrs frisco yes yes the motions pass thank you very much and we do have um addendum resolutions at this point mrs freske i have um uh part of a superintendent update just a piggyback can i before we do addenda resolutions can i just give an update to the public and to the board absolutely let me go back so this was mentioned earlier um by mrs drappy talking about our business administrator search we've been searching for a business administrator for quite some time and we've done an exhaustive search we had um the deadline the position was posted back in the fall we had a deadline that was the
058end of december the district had 26 applicants for the position we screened all of the applicants we interviewed what we believed the profiles that fit our district needs we interviewed the top nine candidates and then we narrowed that down to a second round of interviews where we had eight candidates we then had subsequent interviews with three subcommittees with administrators and staff from our buildings um including administrators and administrative assistants and uh our our central office administrative assistant staff and then we had subsequent interviews as well and then there was even narrowed down ultimately to the two top finalists and then there was an interview from a board secretary capacity of these candidates with the full board then there were follow-up interviews with myself before recommendation could be made reference checks on the candidates and then
059ultimately leading us up to the point where we are this evening and i am pleased that um today we were able to finalize the details with the successful finalists um and i'm pleased to announce that on resolution addenda resolution number one this evening um the appointment the recommendation for appointment of our new school business administrator mr jorge cruz will be joining our team in july on july 1st is our goal mr cruz comes to us with over 13 years of experience in school finance and operations he prides himself on being a strategic forward thinker and collaborative team member mr cruz demonstrated successful development of systems to support schools on how to best utilize budgeting to maximize the instructional program his experience includes oversight of school budgets to support more than fifteen hundred schools uh currently
060in the new york city department of education in his current role mr cruz manages community school district number six which is located in washington heights new york city that network of schools consists of 39 schools pre-k through grade 12. almost 15 000 students and a total operating budget of over 230 million dollars by comparison's sake our budget is approximately 35 million dollars mr cruz comes to us also with knowledge and application on the on supporting curriculum initiatives specifically his knowledge in working to support stem programming where he most recently leveraged private grants and public funds to expand district-wide implementation prior his service in the new york city department of education mr cruz worked as an auditor for ernst young with a focus in the education and the public sector mr cruz earned his bachelor's of
061business administration degree in finance and investments at baruch college he also then followed up and completed his executive masters of public administration at peru college as well mr cruz currently resides in teaneck new jersey with his wife elizabeth and his two daughters isabella and annabelle nine and six years old respectively outside of work mr cruz can be seen coaching his daughter's soccer team and cycling with his family he is very active in his local school community and volunteers as the treasurer for the pto just in case he didn't have enough of the business world during the school day um and mr cruz also facilitates financial literacy workshops to empower immigrant communities with their personal finances mr cruz is excited and optimistic about beginning his career with verona public schools as i know we all are
062as well he's looking forward to meeting our staff and school administrators and in the coming weeks we will be setting up transition so that way before school gets out we can have meet and greet and get to all of the buildings with mr cruz um and we're really excited to have him join us as the new school business administrator so that's addenda resolution number one uh that's on this evening that we were finally able to um get everything completed and wrapped up so that way we could begin the transition that's all i have thank you dr dean ecl yeah that's really exciting that we're gonna have a permanent person filling the seat and be able to move forward with that so we need a motion to accept um to approve addendum resolutions number one through
063six it's removed moved by mr j second second by mrs prisco is there any discussion on any of the agenda resolution i just have one another comment um regarding the resignation of mrs fowler the guidance counselor at the high school um i'd like to wish her well um part of me kind of feels like maybe my son andrew might have pushed her out because i think every guidance counselor my son andrew has since he started high school he has left verona but on another note now i really do um she was wonderful to work with because i did have to work closely with her especially um in the beginning of the year um but i wish her well wherever she is going but thank you um that's great so if i if i could just
064piggyback off of mrs prisco we do wish mr stober well um she's been fantastic here in her short time um we're sorry to see her leave but we are excited for her um this year with the pandemic kind of created an opportunity for her to apply for a very exciting program in scotland she was accepted into a doctoral program at the university of edinburgh so she's going to be pursuing her doctoral degree over the next four years so big life change and something she's very excited about um so we wish her we wish her well so it's exciting for her that's awesome yeah fun can i ask a quick question so um addendum number one [Music] the the on agenda the resolution number 13 and on the addendum resolution number five i see that they
065are different change orders for the same amount right so it's change order three zero zero one for additional roof work at all schools and it's 102 515 and then change order number 002 for all the schools it's what's going on it references the original contract amount which is the six million two hundred and then it says previous change order which is referendum um number 13. okay and then it has the new change order which is the double zero two so there's two okay so there's two changes to this scope of work can you can someone briefly explain what that's um i think we have mr o'brien is on the call so he could speak to so from the finance side of things mr turner can speak to it but mr o'brien um can you please
066just provide an update uh i know we've talked about this but just for clarity's sake because the resolution is on for this change order for an increase and what that's for so could you provide some context for the board on that yes um the change orders in regards to the original um referendum work with the roof work at both hbw and elementary schools at the time of those contracts being awarded the hvac was there was plans to have the htc going at the time this past summer so that work got completed with the hvsc on on hold so we actually pulled those that work back from those contractors at the time and got credits back and now with the new hvac project going uh starting up we now had to go back out and get
067that work done that's in regards to the the new hvac so that's what that change order was we we at the time of the contract with the hvac contractor um he's the hvac contractor so we were did not put the roofing work in his scope until we can review it and make sure that uh all the documents and the pricing was uh was correct so then we decided that to give them the change order based on the work the same roofer um who was in the district uh last year they'll be using so we can carry over the warranties and have no issue excellent thank you thank you mr o'brien mr turner all right i just want to say that in relation to this with the change orders and all too um a lot of
068work was done with mr o'brien to make sure that any and all financial changes of this type that that come along stay within the confines and the and the spirit of the original referendum all right so you might be seeing a change order increasing the contract but there are other factors involved to make sure that everything balances out so as not to overspend the referendum and quite a bit of time was put into into place for mr o'brien to ensure that that was the case with uh with these change orders as well are there any other questions before we i just i just had a comment i i was happy to see that uh larry doc siegel's coming back for another summer yeah that's a stem teacher so he's uh one of the legendary teachers
069of verona that is uh continues to come back and uh you know add value to uh our program in the summer so uh glad to see uh doc segal coming back so excellent uh if there's no other comments or questions i am going to turn it over to mr turner to call the role to vote on these resolutions mr wrong yes mrs yes mr jay yes mrs frisco yes yes emotions excellent thank you everybody and at this point we can open up to public comment on any topics so i'm going to ask the public as usual to please state your name your address and comments are limited to five minutes if you could do your questions up front and then they will be answered in that order and i'm going to ask mr roberts to
070please moderate that thank you there's no hands at this time there are no hands up for public comment so we are going to adjourn the meeting um before we call to adjourn i am just going to say that our next public meeting is tuesday may 11th and it's going to begin with confidential session at 5 30 and public session at 7 pm and with school being back in and everybody being back in we are going to shift our format from zoom to back to in-person board meetings so the may 11th board meeting will be in the auditorium of verona high school and it gives plenty of space for people to be socially distanced and we can fit quite a bit of people in there so we look forward to being in person again and seeing
071people so with that i am going to ask for a motion to adjourn the meeting moved by mrs prisca second by mrs droppy and all in favor aye aye and that is it we are adjourned at 808. thank you everybody and have an excellent night