May 6, 2021: Board of Education Meeting

001good evening sorry for the delay we had an extended executive session the executive session of the wayne board of education public works session meeting of may 6 2021 was convened virtually and hosted in the media center of anthony wayne middle school 201 garside avenue wayne new jersey the statement of compliance setting forth time date and location was read in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act and the roll call was taken the meeting was recessed and is now being reconvened can i get a mover mr duffy mr giordano okay if we could rise for a flag salute 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 okay thank you let's get

002started with uh dr tobag okay so we're going to combine from the meeting teacher appreciation okay so we're gonna um combine the front end of the meeting and do teacher appreciation week nurse appreciation week superintendents report nhlba report all in one okay so um good evening good evening everyone the sport of education meeting is being held at anthony wayne middle school again other than for a handful of district employees the meeting is largely a virtual meeting as has been the case throughout the pandemic the meeting is open for public view public participation using zoom in broadcasting channel 77 last week governor murphy made a major announcement during his daily chronovirus updates which lifted restrictions and increased the number of people who can gather indoors and outdoors while socially distanced this included guidance for proms graduations

003and other end of school events details are still being worked out at the building levels for each of the schools we'll make sure to communicate any updates for students and wing families but a number of events that we were concerned about are going to go ahead while covet is still being reported in the district we're thrilled to report that numbers have been declining steadily each week unfortunately the change with our covet outlook did not lead to some of the changes we had hoped for at the high school level there's big discrepancies between attendance rates at each of the high schools however we have seen a major influx of students at the middle school and elementary level at the elementary level in some cases classes are running at 100 so there is progress and we're happy

004to see that so many parents have determined to have their children returned to our school system well there is some time we'd like to start with bringing additional students back for high school starting with the senior class we'll be sending another format to parents with the goal of returning our seniors on june 2nd and doing a survey to determine the number of students interested in returning for instruction as well we'll continue to evaluate attendance at the other grade levels and report back at the next meeting keep in mind that for schools in new jersey social distancing requirements remain and that while this students are eating we're required to maintain six feet of social distancing we do have something that many schools do not have for secondary students which is a full day of instruction with

005lunch a quick playground update all of our playground inspections have been completed and we're happy to report that school playgrounds will be open for after school use beginning tomorrow may 7th there will be daily sanitizing and students will be permitted to use the playgrounds under the supervision of their parents or guardians we will start with reopening our playgrounds after school and consider opening them fully if future guidance makes that a feasible option so at this point i'd like to turn things over to mrs reichman to talk about teacher appreciation week good evening this week teacher appreciation week and another well deserved opportunity to thank the teachers here in wayne and everywhere and share our gratitude this year more than ever we owe them our thanks for their unwavering dedication and commitment to our students and

006wayne families there's so many ways that our teachers went above and beyond the school year and i'd like to highlight just a few flexibility our teachers had to make a quick shift to remote learning a little over a year ago we quickly introduced new digital platforms and they learned on the fly as always stepped up and exceeded our expectations this challenge became even more difficult this year while teaching our in-person students and virtual students at the same time thank you for your ongoing flexibility creativity our teachers identified and learned the best new resources to keep students engaged and connected to the classroom and learning kindness our teachers have always demonstrated their kindness towards our students but this past year they took it to the next level whether gathering supplies to send home reaching out to

007check in with students and offer an extra level of support or helping their colleagues through a very difficult time the wayne teachers showed their kindness and care for their students and each other in a way that has been touching and special it's with great pleasure and pride that i recognize and congratulate all of our teachers for their dedication and contributions this past year you showed us how strong you are and your unwavering commitment is unmatched nurses this week is also nurses national nurse appreciation week and i wanted to recognize all of our school nurses our wayne school nurses work alongside teachers administrators and counselors to support our community in many ways both obvious and unseen since the outbreak of coven 19 our school nurses have been collaborating around the clock on ways to support our

008students and families through this challenging time their efforts to monitor our daily health screener completion facilitate contact racing and provide daily care for our students or just to the few of the ways they go above and beyond to keep our students healthy and school safe during these challenging times their ongoing commitment to our wayne families is greatly appreciated and we're so grateful for your dedication and care at this time we have a very special message for our teachers and nurses from our students dr barchard can you please share that message what do you love about preschool michael what do you love about preschool you love playing puzzles awesome and can you tell me what your names are are you victor and michael d'agostino [Music] awesome can you give each other a high five for the

009ecc and our awesome teachers all right can you say thank you thank you thank you happy teacher patient day i hope i um appreciate everything that teachers do i hope you have a good day and um thank you for all the teachers of wayne school bye thank you i mean thank you to all of our teachers for making learning so fun happy teaching appreciation week apt vlogs thank you nurse silva for doing everything for the school and taking care of everyone making sure everyone's safe thank you nurse silva for everything that you do for me in this school thank you for always taking care of everybody hi my name is addison barkley and i am in third grade at james brown all the students at james fallon want to say a special thank you to

010all our teachers thank you for all you do may and i am actually in first grade at james fallon school thank you to all the teachers for teaching all the amazing hi my name is eddie rossen and i am in first grade at james fallon school and i want to say a special thing thank you nurse sharon for taking such good care of us every day thank you i like how all the teachers are really open to answer any questions and they're really nice and they're good at explaining things and they don't overload any homework too happy teacher appreciation week so they like help people to like understand reading and foundations and stuff and art and music and librarians they give everybody like a general thank you because the teacher works very hard they did

011a very great work on everything to help students and happy teacher what i like about miss tangwell is that she's really caring and she's kind and that she's like really nice whenever someone is injured or a little hurt she's just very caring happiness day what makes jfk teachers so special is they always they're always nice to us they make assignments fun and they're very sweet and we have so much fun doing all these things that they do everyone has someone that they look up to and it's likely that that person has taught you something you don't need to have a teaching degree to be able to edify and enlighten and you don't need to be a student to learn new things and our teachers are the superheroes of jfk they bring out the best in

012every student and they inspire us and open up new doors for us every day they prune our wayward branches and are the first to point out the fresh new shoots pointing to new directions to quote alexandra transfer the best teachers are those who show you where to look but don't tell you what to see and in jfk we've got so many awesome teachers and i feel so much better knowing that our generation can be fortified with the gift of knowledge our school nurse so special she's sweet she's caring she's loving and she's nice and she also tells us to wear a mask and be safe happy teacher appreciation day we students want to thank all the teachers that help us with learning thank you for making learning fun for kids everywhere all the time learning

013will not be what it is without your teachers you are very appreciated and loved by all pack neck students in the school thank you school nurses are vital to all schools without them i don't think schools would run the same way they do now mrs astigas has been doing an amazing job being my school's new nurse she is very kind and calm when scary situations happen thank you for being such a great school nurse mrs asigas i'm thankful for all my amazing teachers you have been an inspiration to me for these last six years every year i look forward to the memories we will make together this year i would like to thank all our wonderful teachers at pines lake for helping us learn and grow you have been you have been with us through

014the good and bad times and i'm grateful for your kindness encouragement thank you is not enough to show our gratitude for everything you do and mean to us miss naplachano you're an amazing nurse you take care of all of us and show kindness and empathy your lessons teach us to live a healthy lifestyle and shape our future whenever i walk into your office your smile and kindness make me feel all better hi teachers i just want to say thank you for teaching us and all that you do in randall carter and we love you hi nurses i just want to say that you guys are in our hearts and you will always be in randall carter's hearts we love you so much thank you for being our nurses hi i'm victoria filarama and i'm a

015libris zombie we want to thank you for teaching online and in class because we know it's a struggle for all the teachers and we are very thankful for the time you put into the students and the school also over this past year has been very rough thank you so much for all you have done have a great rest of the years and teachers hi my name is i just want to give a big thank you to our nurse and for putting all of her years on this school and helping others when they're hurt thank you the school is great i love all the teachers and the teachers are the best here my name is lisa gatterson and i'm going to tell you a few reasons why i like my teacher miss russ one reason i

016like miss russ is because she's always willing to help her students and she always helps us learn at our own pace and she helps us learn individually number two is because she always knows how to make her students feel better of having a bad day and she always does it by either cracking a couple of jokes or like talking to you just making you feel better in general you're the best nurse in the whole wide world here is a few reasons why i like miss kelly one reason is because she's always wanting to help her students and she always helps us feel better and she does everything possible make us feel better number two is that she's very she's very kind-hearted does her best at everything she does anthony wein teachers are amazing we love

017them so much they make learning online the nurse at anthony wayne middle school is so kind and keeps everyone healthy and safe our gw teachers are the best we know online learning was pretty hard but you made it fun and interactive the personal attention you gave us showed how much you care about each and every one of your students each time you check and to see how we're doing meant so much to us you inspired us to do our best and make us want to do better for ourselves and the world we won't forget the in-class discussions and the time you spent with us there are no greater teachers than the ones that we have here thank you for all you do hey gw we know this year has been tough but we are so

018grateful for our nurses here you take so much time each day with our daily health screenings and always put in the extra effort to keep us healthy you are prepared for any situation and we know we can count on you to help us out your door is always open for us and we cannot thank you enough for all you do for our school thank you so much for everything you've done for us we appreciate you we've learned a lot and felt supported we have so much appreciation for our nurse mrs tavigliano who is there for us every day and helps us when we're her or whenever we need help hello my name is jason hook and i'm a freshman here at wayne hills high school and i would just like to shout out my history

019teacher mr levy he inspires me a lot to learn more about the history around the world so thank you hello i'm sam i'm a junior from wayne hills high school and i'm here to tell you about the wayne hills automotive program during the pandemic it's been a little tough not being able to work on cars here and there but mr hopper's made it a pretty good experience but then overall even during all this virtual learning stuff he's stayed persistent with programs such as dual enrollment to make sure that once things do get back to normal we can have different career paths and opportunities available to us right out of high school hi i'm joe i'm a junior here at wayne hills and i'm part of the wayne automotive program and overall the program's just a

020really great program taught by mr hopper he's a great teacher he always keeps the class like light-hearted and he always knows how to make the information easy to understand recently we took our ase exams and we were able to actually do really good on those because mr hopper just does a great job as a teacher hi my name is mike furnicole i'm a sophomore at wayne hills and i'm here to talk about mr hook straight because this year he really helped me out and all the fun projects that we did in the class and he really helped me learn how to edit really well i'm only a tv1 student hi my name is carolina and i'm a senior at wayne hills high school i would like to thank mrs king for always being a great

021role model to me during my four years she has always given me guidance and kindness and that is something that i will miss when i go off to college a teacher is like spring who nurtures new green sprouts encourages and leads them whenever they have doubts a teacher is like summer whose sunny temperament makes studying a pleasure preventing discontent a teacher is like fall with methods crisp and clear lessons of bright colors and a happy atmosphere a teacher is like winter while it's snowing hard outside keeping students comfortable as a warm and helpful guide teacher you do all these things with a pleasant attitude you're a teacher for all seasons and you have my on gratitude stopping a bloody nose holding onto ice packs giving educated clothes tirelessly healing all day long just to make

022sure that nothing goes wrong our children are safer because of you thank you school nurse for all that you do that was a wonderful tribute thank you mrs freischmann [Music] so i'd also like to join our students in saying thank you to all of our teachers and nurses to further celebrate this video will be posted on our website and social media channels tomorrow and also be distributed to all of our teachers and our nurses excuse me okay so tonight we're very proud to announce our valedictorians and salutatorians from both of our high schools so in the coming weeks of the coming board meetings we'll be spending more time talking about our graduating class let's get started with wayne hill's valedictorian minute singh congratulations to singh he's a student with phenomenal grades impressive test scores and

023achievements that jump off the page due to his academic success he's been able to achieve he's had the opportunity to engage in many wonderful academic experiences such as the governor's school and the columbia science honors program in regard to athletics manute is featured on the news 12 new jersey scholar athlete of the week program this past fall for his skills and abilities in the classroom as well as on the soccer field in addition to being an exceptional student an athlete manu is also a genuine and kind person the degree of humanity that minute has displayed throughout his high school years is truly admirable this fall minute will be studying the physician scientist program at rensselaer polytechnic institute wayne hill salutatorian jessie liu congratulations to jessie liu she's a person with a hard-working and persistent character

024who regularly has a smile on her face she's an outstanding student having completed 16 honors or ap classes during her first three years of high school and she's currently enrolled in seven more such classes as a senior she's a past passion for science and researchers with a chemistry professor at the new jersey institute of technology from a career perspective jesse's dream opportunity would be to couple her love of the sciences with her love of helping others she was also a varsity player on the wayne hills girls tennis team as co-president of the model united nations organization outside of the academic environment jesse is actively involved in the community serving as a member of the medical center junior fundraising board and volunteering as a stem and english tutor for local and international elementary school students jessie

025will be pursuing her diverse interests and aptitudes at the university of virginia this fall wayne valley congratulations to wayne valley high school valedictorian james june james will be attending princeton university this fall studying molecular biology theology due diligence and good habits we found success in the classroom excelling in science classes like ap chemistry biology and psychology while also enjoying others like ap language and music theory apart from studying james was a passionate athlete and played for the football team all four years at valley earning varsity letters as a sophomore and a starting spot as a junior and team captain and honors as a senior james love for the game and pride in the school showed on and off the field most important to james is his faith which influenced many of his core values and

026fueled much of his community service james served on his church worship team from sixth grade to senior year eventually becoming the worship leader the music director of the youth group as a sophomore he also volunteered at numerous children's ministry events and organized annual summer camps in mexico for children of impoverished impoverished villages now onto the wayne valley salutatorian someone we know well gina fermi congratulations to gina she will be attending williams college in the fall where she hopes to study international relations and anthropology gina was selected for a national security language initiative scholarship from the us department of state where she studied the russian language in moscow in summer of 2019 she's also been involved with the stanford program on international and cross-cultural education studying in the highly competitive sijan korean scholars program and china

027scholars program as well as contributing to their project what does it mean to be an american for the past two years gina has served as a student liaison to the board of education in 2019 for a presentation to the board of ed entitled student exchange programs and the globalization of education she won an international education week award from the russian american foundation inspired by her time at board of ed meetings gene applied for and was selected to the harvard graduate school of education making caring common projects youth advisory board genie is also editor-in-chief of the school newspaper president of the student dance association and historian of the national honor society she is a go-to leader for positive change in her school community and was voted most likely to succeed the most likely to be president

028by her classmates she's a national merit committed student ap scholar with distinction as for her personal interests she enjoys watching east asian films writing comedy bits reading philosophy texts attempting the new yorker caption contest so um in a little bit we're going to talk more about our budget um what i'd like to do is before we get to that talk about an update on our diversity equity and inclusion goal so next week we'll be running a thought exchange to gather feedback from the wayne valley school community about the school mascot wayne valley students parents and alumni will be invited to participate in coming freshman students and parents will also have the opportunity to join the exchange and share their thoughts this process is the last part of our district goal work for this year and

029a full report detailing each area of operation that was evaluated as part of the school will be shared out in the presentation at our june board of education meeting finally the hiv report i'm reporting the following data related to harassment intimidation bullying incident wayne county public school district there were two incidents investigated since my last report and neither of those cases were deemed to be actual cases of hiv it's a lengthy report it's a very good report for the district a lot going on a lot going on um mr geppert uh you have a statement to read from the board to tag on to the superintendent's report the wayne board of education has been served with a complaint filed by dennis carroll secretary of the wayne education association alleging that he was defamed by the

030board of education and robert blanchard based on comments made by mr blanchard our interim director of facilities at a board meeting on september 10 2020 both robert blanchard and the board have acted professionally and appropriately at all times with respect to the subject matter of the lawsuit the board looks forward to the opportunity to present the board's evidence in a court of law thank you mr gepper now we'll move on to the final hearing on our 2021 22 school budget mr moffatt thank you mr kazan uh mr dr burchard could you cue up the presentation please hello and welcome to the public hearing on a 2021-2022 school budget this public hearing is requirement to adopt and approve the district tax levy for 21 22 school year and can be found on this evening's agenda under

031emergent section in its v emergent school resource so v2 would be the corresponding resolution the subject budget was submitted to the new jersey department of education county office it was approved by the county office as presented with no changes that allowed us to advertise ahead of this meeting i'd also like to provide a short overview of the overall budget and definitely the process of creating this budget for tonight as some have seen in prior presentations related to the budget the board of education has a three-year plan that administration has been following to phase in a full-day kindergarten that three-year plan included renovations to preakness school for the early childhood center it also included staffing as it relates to administration for the new building and early childhood center as well as in the third year which

032is this year meaning this budget year was to fully implement kindergarten and provide for teachers again it was scaling up from a part-time program to a full-time program which is basically doubling the size so that was done as part of the third year is this budget so we're very proud to present the budget to include the kindergarten on behalf of the board's planning over the past three years another big component of the budget was to plan for three units to negotiate contracts so that was a big part of covering salary costs and the all encompassing covid19 a pandemic which you have to also view in a three-year phase if you can look at it it started the pandemic started in the 2019-2020 fiscal year it's continued this year which is the 2021 school year and

033really affects the 20 1 22 budget year which again is tonight's budget so it really the pandemic spans actually three budget years when you think about it which presented a pretty big challenge for my staff and others at the administrative levels because you have to worry about the base of your budget because 1920 you potentially have spent a little less maybe in certain categories a little bit more then you had to project into 21 meaning 2021 and then you have to worry about having the correct base again in the 21 22 fiscal year so that was a that was a pretty uh big challenge for us on top of the base worries that we had we also didn't know and we still don't know as of today what our opening in september will look like

034we don't know how our school settings will look like meaning our classrooms will look like nor do we know what conditions we'll be opening under as far as any type of restrictions in social distancing and or additional supplies or material so those are the unknowns and that was a big part of how we created the budget for tonight's consideration on this slide you'll see our 2021-2022 budgeted revenues the first line you can see is tax levy on the far right is the change from here to here and again it's this is in regard to the 2021-2022 against the adjusted 2021 budget as you can see the tax levy is at 4.2 million dollars it represents roughly 2.68 percent increase and this is the tax levy which is directly tied to your property taxes the next

035line down is state aid as you may have read in the newspapers in the past the state of new jersey has committed itself to continuing to get back to a formula that was court approved we've benefited over the last few years from that effort by the state of new jersey this year represents roughly 22.3 percent increase or 1 million 3 in total increase in state 8. extraordinary aid which is also an aid classification from the state of new jersey which offsets special ed costs directly we had a little drop off this year and it really relates to how we budget for extraordinary aid unfortunately extraordinary aid figures are not released by the state of new jersey until the end of june early july so we really don't know those amounts from year to year until

036really the end of the year but we anticipate a minor reduction of that as far as about three hundred thousand dollars which is a decrease of ten percent medicated semi again a little drop off there about thirteen thousand dollars uh would state which would be other revenue is relatively flat we anticipate the same level of miscellaneous revenue to be coming in as in the past to continue with revenues budget revenues for 21.22 you can see here a row for fund balance the use of fund balance we'll be using uh 1 million seven hundred fifty thousand dollars as a form of tax relief so these are funds available uh from the 2021 budget that are uh left and available at the end of the school year or i should say fiscal year and we utilize that

037for this year's budget which is uh again at 2122. so as i said it's a form of tax relief and it's available from the funds at the end of the year capital reserve is also a form of tax relief the district has built a capital reserve over time and it's an account where you can add and withdrawal i should say deposit in withdrawal in this year's budget we're going to utilize 1.2 million dollars as a withdrawal for our budget so this will help offset the cost related to capital projects as you can see down that column for 2122 the total budget against operating budget is about 174 million dollars which is an increase of about five million dollars or three percent on this slide you'll see revenues as a form of a pie chart again

038this is all the 21 22 school budget that may be a little hard to read but you'll see in the orange space is really the largest portion which is almost 92 percent which is the tax levy so 92 of our total revenue for the operating budget comes from the tax levy the second largest category of revenue would be state aid which comes in about 4.2 percent we have about one percent coming in from the fund balance again that was a form of tax relief miscellaneous revenue is about million six again that's at red areas so the state aid was the light blue fun balance is a little bit of the purple red is the miscellaneous revenue 1.6 again federal aid is less than a percent and you have capital reserve at a little under one

039percent as well um again that's the capital reserve that's from an account really outside the budget that we use as withdraw we withdraw funds to offset capital projects in our current budget which would be the 21 22 school year and then there's a little sliver of tuition and rents again that's under one percent this slide reflects expenditures for 21-22 against the 2021 school year which is the current year i do want to point out that covet 19 the pandemic has caused the base to have to be reviewed quite extensively with a lot of things going on uh this year that were very difficult to kind of plan so we took some extra effort to go through to make sure we accounted for everything in our what we consider to be our our base which is

040the 2021 school year that base so there are a lot of things that happened or didn't happen in 2021 due to covid that we had to adjust for so the first line you can see is instruction and special education is the second one that's as you can see the largest portion of this slide but it includes the salary of all the teaching staff as well as a certain support staff special education area as well and supplies and professional services so instruction as you can see on the right hand side is the change from year to year again our adjusted budget to our final budget that we anticipate for next year is up about 1.2 percent which is normally uh some of the things that are under foot it has to do with staff turnover and

041the change in retirements and how they're being filled special education is up by 3.3 which is pretty flat as i can say special education is one of these areas that has a continued trend over the years we we try to control costs but again these are special education services that are provided uh by uh iep so these aren't needed educational services the sec i should say the third line uh at really flat from year to year uh and these are just professional development activities for the district other programs again relatively flat these are similar programs like summer programs and that's like seven percent but really it's only twenty two thousand dollars a year to a year general administration um again um some turnover some um some adjustments but relatively flat from year to year school

042administration these will be covered by the school level budgets so there is a slight decline there is some turnover at work from year to year central administration what i would consider to be relatively flat and then technology seems to be dropping although it has mainly to do with a lease purchase agreement payment dropping off uh meaning that payment for uh technology that was acquired through a lease purchase agreement uh one year ended so uh there's a little bit of a drop off there this slide is a continuation of the comparison and expenditures or appropriations from year to year what i would like to point out on this slide is that as you see the first two are our student activities and clubs and student athletics these are two areas that were disrupted due to the

043covet 19 pandemic so we took some extra time to make sure we had the base an appropriate base to utilize into future projections so when we looked back at 2021 we we did have something that was a one-time expense within that number and that did cause most of the decrease from year to year and that had to do with the decision by the board to refund parents related to dc trips not taken so uh which affected the 2021 school year so you have about an estimated 60 000 covering on a budgetary basis all those reimbursements which was the artificial bump for 2021 so that ninety seven thousand dollars the decision was not to move forward that would probably be around thirty seven thousand dollars decrease which is uh somewhat normal um uh student athletics is

044in a similar situation in the sense that it was a major disruption um and not only is a disruption we had to make sure we had enough funds available for referees and and cover some increases but mainly we went back to make sure that we covered everything based on the 1920s so we built that up to make sure by about 260 thousand dollars to cover everything as related with the idea that the 2021 school year was was disrupted we did we do feel that amount is more than enough to accommodate that um as well as so majority like i'm saying about 260 000 of that 380 was due to making sure the base was accurate and it also covers an increase in some professional services that we're going to acquire as well as an increase

045in student and athlete insurance moving on to uh the next section which is attendance nursing media guidance that's a normal increase about 3.5 percent again probably mainly just an increase of salaries facilities again that's relatively flat my my book but it should cover all the increasing energy costs that we anticipate but that's the biggest concern we have in facilities at this point but i would think that's just a minor increase of 2.7 transportation it's also an area that we had to look at there were some issues that related to athletic trips that we had to accommodate so we feel that 509 for this coming year would be enough to cover that and increases in fuel and those type of things and then that leaves employee benefits overall as employee benefits includes various payouts but specifically

046dental and health care coverage the biggest issue in 2021 to 21 and in the base has to do with the removal of the difference card the decision to move forward with a new carrier without the difference card really had a negative in impact meaning it offset to increase so we used about twelve thousand i should say twelve percent increase for our insurance meaning health insurance um because we lost the difference card we decided not to move forward that that was actual a negative adjustment so it offset that 12 increase so the net impact across all lines that were in the employee benefit category it only increased by the 1.2 percent or basically you know 3.4 percent so that was a major change from year to year which was how we covered health insurance for our

047employees and again it was without the difference card moving forward this slide is a continuation of expenditures and appropriations from year to year we have three lines here in front of you you see food services that was adjusted up by a hundred and fifty thousand dollars which uh has to do with a potential loss again for next year we anticipate using 150 to cover any type of loss at the beginning of the year in our food service and that's consistent to what we currently see unfolding not only in 2021 but also what we project charter schools and this number is provided by the department of education we do have a couple students attending a charter school and we're required to budget for that that expense or appropriation so it's basically the amount of money that

048wayne township public schools transfers to that individual charter school for those students capital outlay which is pretty interesting it kind of dropped down you see it go from 569 down to the 1.3 or 1.4 million which is really from year to year capital a does change and it usually is related to one-time expenditures but we had had more in capital outlay in 2021 but as some may remember the department of education over this the summer last summer after we approved the budget uh reduced our state aid amount by about uh 625 thousand so we had to reduce that to offset the reduction in state aid so that's kind of kind of doesn't really reflect the true amount that we started off with in 2021 so that would drop that 800 000 significantly but really again

049like i said it's it's mainly projects that we have funded again capital outlay a majority of these projects just like they were last year you have a million two of that million three which is covered by what they consider a withdrawal from capital reserve again and i'll probably speak about it a couple times during this presentation capital reserve are funds that we have in a reserve that is available for use for capital projects so we pull that in during the budget period so we don't have to offset this was an increase in the general fund tax levy so it's kind of the tax relief and that is in play when you talk about capital outlay from year to year and that does support the 1.2 million of the 1.4 million in capital outlay so that

050brings us to a total general fund expenditure appropriation for next year of 174 million dollars which is roughly 5 million increase which represents a growth of 3 percent remember this all includes the kindergarten expansion as well as our normal increases in salary this slide is basically a pie chart regarding all the appropriations as we covered in the prior three slides so just groups them into general categories so you see academic programs being 50 employee benefits at 22. so those are the largest two components of the appropriations and then as you see you have student transportation for four percent facilities administration 5 and student support 4. as a budget summary the general fund or operating budget of the 2021-2022 school year is roughly 174 million dollars which has an increase of 5 million which represents a

051three percent growth from year to year school tax levy of 159 million little over 159 million which utilizes a bank cap of a million and 56 six dollars brings the total tax levy up uh from year to year to about four million dollars which represents about a two point six eight percent growth uh and that growth is uh about 124 a year i would also like to note that this year's budget the 2021-2022 budget uses a million 750 000 budgeted fund balance which is used as a form of tax relief the cost of the full-day kindergarten program moving from a half-time basis to full-time program is estimated to be 1.7 million dollars that is inclusive of 15 full-time teachers which include salaries and benefits 15 classroom instructional aids lunch monitors additional furniture for all program

052needs instruction materials again for all program needs professional development also for incoming teachers so they're ready to go on september 1 again total estimated budget of 1.7 million initiatives included in our general fund budget will include the continuation of envision math school-wide literacy national geographic and amplify science programs and the all-important related digital subscriptions funds will be available for online learning assessment digital subscriptions we'll continue with linkedin data warehousing and assessment system and associated professional development we'll be acquiring two new textbook series the first is an art history at the high school level the second is ap history we'll also have funds available for the continuation of the diversity and equity and inclusion goal and the related professional development training program and of course the phase three of the full day kindergarten program initiatives included

053in the budget by way of a lease purchase arrangement through pcia and an estimated amount of 1.5 million dollars would include a telephone system phase 2 upgrade at 250 000 estimated the continuation of the district's one-to-one computer program in the amount of 738 thousand dollars which would cover the following four grades the first grade again that's district-wide fifth sixth and ninth grades also included in the lease purchase would be two special needs school vans which would be equipped with wheelchair lifts at eighty-eight thousand dollars each that comes in about a hundred and seventy six thousand dollars three new 24 passenger vans at 234 thousand dollars and one new and two used facility vehicles most likely two used vans and one new pickup truck a withdrawal from capital reserve in the amount of 1.2 million dollars

054will allow the district to implement backup generator program which is a multi-year program addressing some critical needs that we have the three areas that we'll start with is pines lake elementary school that project as part of the overall program is estimated at 530 000 and that will allow us to maintain in the event of a power outage a fire alarm system lighting refrigeration and i.t function so we'll keep them up and running as well as keeping the heating and ventilation system operational second area has to do with our transportation department we have a location at the north cove that project is estimated to be 270 thousand dollars that again critical infrastructure is communication and pumps again these are water pumps at the site and obviously communications are for vehicles and dispatch and it'll be portable

055and flexible enough for district-wide use the second location in transportation is our bus garage which is estimated to be a project of 360 thousand dollars and an infrastructure there we're concerned about is maintaining communications with our vehicles again uh communications from driver to main office i want to make sure the alarms are maintained and again we also want to maintain rit functions and communication software part of that bus garage plan is also to address mechanical repair equipment to make sure it's operational in a power outage this slide reflects the use of bank cap this budget being presented tonight includes a use of bank cap of over a million dollars as you can see uh on the left side under 1819 we've used used the bank cap in the past and in the amount of 323

056thousand dollars in 1919 we generated cap as they say in 1920 and we generated that cap which is unutilized tax authority of over a million dollars due to increase in health costs in that fiscal year and that is able to be carried forward a number of years we decided to utilize it in a 2122 budget to offset not only increased and anticipated health insurance costs for employees but also a loss of revenue related to the implementation of chapter 44. as you may have seen in the prior slides that we've used at a board meeting i reported out that we anticipated about a loss of 350 due to the implementation of chapter 44 in the 2021 school year and we projected out a little over double that amount for the school year or should say fiscal

057year 21 22 of about 750 000 at this point in time without knowing the impact of the further implementation of chapter 44 specifically the introduction to a new plan which is the garden state plan we don't know how that's going to impact our estimates at this point and we don't know the impact of an open enrollment that we have set for july 1st 2021. these are all areas that will have an impact on are some of our projections and it could uh indicate that the 750 000 that we anticipated might actually be greater than what we expected so again this is a bank cap that we're utilizing in the budget that's being presented today this slide reflects the budget being considered tonight at least operating budget in salary and non-salary portions so it's very important

058to understand it because from time to time the administration hears how potentially easy it is to reduce the budget but it really does deal with a lot of salaries and people rather than areas that the district really truly has control over which are non-salary items but if you look at it you're looking at 58 for salaries and 22 benefits so right there you're at 80 percent so all you have left is the little slivers the purple and the green to come up with the difference so when you start to think that it's easy it really isn't because you would really be looking at maybe the 14 and at least a portion of that because normally special education is stuff that services that would be required by the iep so you probably wouldn't find a lot

059there but the 14 is really maybe in play but even then you could probably argue that energy and facility costs can't be that easily reduced so it's just a different way to look at it again it's it's comparing salaries against non-salary groupings two big federal programs are e-s-s-a and i-d-e-a the first one is e-s-s-a which is every student succeeds act again this is federal funds that the district receives for various program program and professional development activities so the resources here have been estimated at about 663 000 uh individuals with disabilities education act which is again an entitlement grant that's focused on needs of special education students we have about 1.2 million dollars in funds for that and majority of those funds go to student tuitions for in this case out of district special education students

060again these are the two largest federal aid categories and programs that we have in our budget the final section of our district budget is debt service area which includes a principal and interest payment for debt incurred from a project at anthony wayne middle school this project was approved through a referendum and respective tax levy amount was approved that obligation runs out that financial obligation runs out to 23-24 fiscal year again it's a p i payment debt service total for 21.22 is 2.9 million dollars and again that tax levy has been previously approved by the voters and flows to our district budget the district continues to improve their financial position as you can see on this chart over the past several years we've maintained a healthy surplus position at about 2.0 percent of our total expenses

061capital reserve has been built over the same time period to about 6.8 million dollars what's so important about the capital reserve is we can utilize those funds to pay for maintenance and or capital projects without having to build them into our operating budget year after year so this is a form of tax relief so we don't have to raise those taxes moving forward we have this reserve to help us with those expenditures some of the assistance that reserve has helped the district is by helping renovate the early childhood center at the preakness schools as well as allowing the district to re-turf two of their fields at the high schools again that was money raised through the capital reserve so we had that money therefore we didn't have to add that to our normal operating budget

062another form of tax relief you have capital reserve on one hand on the other hand you have more of a direct correlation to the future budget has to do with the budgeted fund balance we've had a pretty large position in the past and as you can see in 2016 we're at about 3 million we're slowly trying to reduce it over time we're down to about 1 million 750 000 dollars again this is tax relief it goes directly to the future budget and we do not have to raise that amount in that year so next year we have to raise a tax levy of less than this million 750. if we did not have money available at the end of the school year we would then have to collect those taxes at one point seven hundred

063and fifty thousand in this year's budget again these are all positive conditions that help us better manage the district this is the calculation the tax levy is more detailed breakout of how we come about an estimate as you can see on the bottom we have a yellow highlight which identifies the average assessed value again that average assessed value is provided by the the town the municipality so that average assessed is 229 309 assessed which would indicate an annual increase uh from this budget of 124 and that just shows you along that yellow line the current 2021 as opposed to the proposed amount which should be in 2022 and you see the increase of 124. what i would like to point out is that this is really based on net valuations as you can see the

064orange area in the middle staying relatively stable what would have an impact on the tax rate would be any type of increase or decrease an increase in the value and i should say net evaluations would have a would kind of reduce the amount and the lower amount would increase it but right now uh the evaluations are relatively stable and the calculation of this budget reflects 124. we'll move on to the next slide to give you more detail as it relates to an annual increase broken out over months and days as you see here you have the again the assessed value at 229 309 is average assessed annual amount is 124. if you break that out over a monthly basis it's 10.37 and the daily rate is uh 34 cents a day please note that this

065is just strictly the increase due to the school district budget does not include the municipal or county levies at all which is strictly on this budget the school district's budget what's next in the budget process if adopted tonight the budget will be finalized with the new jersey department of education county office information will be sent to the township of wayne specifically this tax levy will be certified that in conjunction with the municipality and the county tax levies will be used for the calculation of real estate taxes for the coming year by mid-may the budget will be open for district use users will be able to enter requisitions purchase orders will be processed and orders will be placed with the idea that we receive structural material when we open in september there's a small little note

066i'd like to place on this tonight the budget is subject to change in the event the state of new jersey does change the state eight figures although i do not anticipate it at this time thank you mr moffatt open to the board now questions questions anyone okay this is albanies thank you thank you uh first of all thank you mr moffatt and to your team i know this is a tremendous amount of work a difficult process and i want to thank you for all of the hard work um i do have some questions based on obviously a lot of conversation and a lot of um information discussion that the board has had um just some some general information for for maybe my edification um it appears that we've received to 2.3 million dollars in aid

067between state and federal authorities for covet expenses we're looking at an additional payment coming from the 1.9 trillion dollar covert relief package i realize at this point we don't know what that number might be we do know that new jersey's received 2.7 billion dollars for school assistance alone so it would appear that our portion reasonably appears to be in the millions of dollars there's a pretty significant list that the aid can be used to offset such as personal protective equipment sanitizer spraying shields tents remedial education or additional assistance for students who might need it due to virtual learning as well as a host of mental health and wellness concerns so while the money is in general operating funds if the money can be used for those additional items then it wouldn't need to come from

068our general operating fund um based on based on that information as well as some um additional good information that we have based on budgeted numbers compared to actual i am continuing to be concerned with the use of bank cap in additional taxing authority to um stakeholders taxpayers during a time of a pandemic where people have been hurt financially emotionally perhaps even with loss and and i'm i'm concerned that we're continuing to include bank cap in the budget and to say to our two percent will continue to move us forward on our full-day kindergarten track based on the last three years of information we've been given for budgeting purposes so i still continue to have a concern about taxing tax putting additional tax burden on taxpayers for over an additional one million dollars over the two

069percent cap so i just want to you know kind of put some numbers out there tell you my concerns and that the bank cap continues to concern me for the budget thank you but again i want to thank you for all the hard work because i know there's a lot of time that goes into putting all this together so thank you for that um mr moffatt do you happen to know what our pcti tuition cost would be for next year i don't have them off the top of my head i could get them to you but i could tell you they did go up that's safe to say and we have four bargaining units under this year correct for salaries we could have salary increases correct okay um that's it for arena um but i

070am president if i could i don't know if you can hear me i can't hear you i'm sorry i was on mute talking as usual but you go right ahead all right um my question is for uh mr moffatt here um i'm not really sure um i thought i was writing down as fast as i could we're talking about a savings of a hundred and twenty four dollars per household if we do not use bank cap now to answer your your question the the represents the increase uh for this year so the net increase is 124 um if the discussion was to reduce it by the amount estimated uh the same number as bank cap it's about without that it's about 103 dollars so the difference from the two numbers about 21 would be generated

071by that change so there's a 21 savings if we do don't use our bank cap correct if the tax levy decreased by that amount yes that's an estimate okay so we're talking about five trips to starbucks or a steak dinner for our family if we don't use bank cap on top of that if we don't use it we're talking about possibly eliminating the quad the equity and inclusion program that we've heard so much about could be eliminated and i'm sorry but i would rather spend 120 dollars and have our school system be at the top of the state as they are rather than not i'm sorry but i i can't agree with uh not passing this budget forward i agree we move this budget forward mr pavlak all right the bottom line is you could

072cut a million dollars out of this budget and not one program or anything else will be affected bottom line all right so we need to you know we keep saying all day kindergarten all day kindergarten is paid for in this budget you cut a million dollars out of this budget all day kindergarten's there it's not going to affect one student in this budget all right so and yeah it's only twenty dollars it's twenty dollars this year it was twenty dollars a year before and twenty dollars the year before all right you got one point three million dollars more in state aid okay so you went up over and above the 1.3 the 1.3 itself pretty much paid for all day kindergarten right there in state aid secondly let's look at the amount of breakage that

073you have on tonight's agenda with the amount of people that are retiring there's one person retiring at 120 000 that person's being replaced at 53 000 you have another person on the agenda who's retiring at 120 000 being replaced by somebody for 80 000 there is substantial money okay so to say a million dollars is going to take programs away i think that's that's very i i i don't even know what to say about that but it's not going to happen folks it's not going to happen there's a lot i have a lot of philosophical issues with this budget all right there we the amount of federal aid we've gotten so far the amount of federal aid we're going to get i get it it's one-time expenses but there's a lot there we just had

074a contract that came in tonight substantially under what we anticipated all right so to keep saying oh you know if you take this away this is going to happen no it's not no it's not and so if you want to sit down with me i'll show you right how and why it's not honestly with the amount of information we receive tonight there is no way i have enough information to support this budget right now this budget should be put off to next week have a special meeting deal with the budget and the budget alone there's still a ton of questions out there it doesn't have to be passed tonight it needs to be passed by next friday and if anybody doesn't believe that contact new jersey school boards they'll be happy to tell you but

075i i have philosophical concerns over this and i can tell you this will be the first if it's voted on tonight this will be the first budget in 16 years that i'm not supporting okay anyone else all right well i'll be the wrap up on this oh do you have your hand up mrs pettit yes i do okay um please someone correct me if i'm wrong um i know we talk about the monies that would be coming in from the federal government um but as far as i understood those monies are encumbered i mean if it's for ppe and um dividers between desks or items like that that's where the money has to be spent it's not like we can say oh they're giving us an extra one and a half million dollars why don't

076we use it for all-day kindergarten because we can't um the other concern i have is yes we got some good number information tonight but we still went from chapter 75 to chapter which has had an impa impact on our budget in a negative way um i understand mr pavlak's point um [Music] i think mr moffat and his team have done a terrific job of doing their due diligence on our budget uh but the bottom line is you could say oh there's a million dollars in there that we could spend and it would not affect all-day kindergarten well this town deserves all-day kindergarten their children deserve all-day kindergarten especially in light of the last year and a half they need to get that leg up with their education just as our students that are already in

077school will need remediation and at this point i don't think we're quite sure how much that's going to cost we may have to add extra staff for that there are all sorts of things we can't really project due diligence on the budget is really making educated guesses in some areas so i don't think that we serve our public by backing off on voting for this budget with the bank cap thank you mr bubba sorry okay um one of the things i'm really getting tired of hearing about is kindergarten three years ago we sat down a plan was given to us that if we went to two percent for the next three years kindergarten will be covered how is today that change we did that we went to the two percent each year we have the

078money for kindergarten we're not we are not going to not have kindergarten just like we're not going to have other programs for a million dollars in this budget that honestly i don't believe it's necessary and at this point we got numbers tonight on something we're supposed to vote for it doesn't really the timeline doesn't really work but besides that kindergarten has to stop and the argument has to stop about kindergarten because we did what we were supposed to do the money's been budgeted we also budgeted for those negotiating that we that we have to do because that was already included in the budget as we learned today this point honestly i think the 1.2 million dollars is not necessary but i think it's a money grab at this point we don't need it it's not

079going to affect anything and i realized that it may only be one state dinner at home or it may only be five trips to starbucks but maybe a taxpayer in this town would rather do that than pay their them pay it towards their taxes because maybe they want to use the money for themselves or for the taxpayer who is hurting that may be an issue i i just i'm having a hard time with it so tonight i will not support this budget i'm sorry if i could i have a hard time believing that any taxpayer in this city in this town that has a child would rather have the money for starbucks or a steak dinner than put it to their child's education period the end and that's what we're here for period the end

080mr duffy i'm sorry i couldn't disagree okay okay i'm not calling on anybody oh what i i got you were done you jumped in he jumped in the talk now it's my turn i'm sorry that you feel that nobody's going to stop chairing this meeting i'm sorry i didn't recognize him and now i'm not recognizing you you were finished you didn't he was out of order he was out of order i didn't unmute fast enough now if you kindly let me run the meeting i'd appreciate it mrs kumar you had your hand hi um thank you so my as we've been looking at the budget um the one big thing that i've been reading about and really looking towards is the chapter 78 versus chapter 44 and that's my biggest budgetary concern um so keeping

081that in mind and beyond that looking at yeah we have our bargaining units that are coming up and we also already put the money out for the ppe right now we have to pay those bills now we can't necessarily wait for the federal aid so those are the things that i think about it as far as we're looking at this budget and um correct me if i'm wrong we have not gone above our cap in the past few years um mr moffatt that one slide on the bank cap is is an indication that we you we had a taxing authority in 1920 we we did not utilize it that's all eligible to be used as per legislation had changed and moved the november i mean the april election to the november election the understanding was

082if the board decided to do that you would be eligible to use the two percent plus all adjustments so you would get an adjustment for potential increase in healthcare costs in in that year as well as enrollment growth those are the two main adjustments if you did not use those in those years you could generate it and that would be part of your within the acceptable cap requirements year to year so yes to answer your question bank cap is a residual amount of money that was not utilized in the past okay anyone else mr giordano i'll try to make this uh short and sweet we are asking for an extra million dollars of cushion i think listening to the i'm the last person to speak other than miss uh ms kazan i think we know

083why this vote is going to land but i want to be the person who comes up publicly and says our job as board members is first and foremost to protect our students to protect our children that's one with a bullet number two is to protect the taxpayers of this town we are not professional politicians who take tax money and run with it mr mother put together an excellent uh presentation it was cautious it was smart and he worked with the data that he had at the time quite frankly the data has changed and the cushion does not need to be there and i can't support at this point the way the budget's sitting right now i think we should reconvene sometime in the very near future before the date's due and really have a sit-down

084about this i'm seeing too many people here who are using fear tactics about oh my god something's going to go oh my god somebody's going to lose oh my god they should be affected if i thought for a second that any of these children were denied a penny of what they deserve in this town i would vote for this budget but it's not just that simple thank you mrs cher so i'm just listening to all this and there i'm confused about a few things um everyone keeps saying that we have a million dollars in cushion and we could cut that and it wouldn't affect the budget at all i'm not seeing it and i would have loved to discuss it with you over the past month or two when the budget was presented to us

085everyone's sitting here saying mr moffatt you're wonderful you do a great job but you are i agree with that but i don't understand how we could sit here and say how wonderful he is and what a great job he did on the budget yet in the same sentence we're saying but there's a cushion of a million dollars that should go and will not affect our schools in any way shape or form well if the man's greatest job which we all know he is then he figured that million in there for a reason and that's why it's there and we're trusting him as our ba that it's being done properly um so again i don't see where we could cut the million and i don't think that we have time to discuss it because nobody from

086the board has asked any questions about the budget since this is started and if you have you did it privately even though we were given a document for this to be shared throughout the entire board and i looked at that there's no questions on it so as far as i was concerned nobody was concerned and i'm assuming mr moffatt felt the same way along with our superintendent um and i just wanted to point out to mr pavla i am you could tell me later but i'm confused because i'm looking at the agenda i've looked it over this is probably my fifth time now this week i see we're we're losing a school nurse unfortunately who makes a hundred and seven thousand we're hiring someone for 85 000. um we're moving a psychology teacher from we're

087going from 64 to 68 so i'm and if you count the number of retirees we have in this month alone i'm not seeing where we're making up a million dollars in salary especially since the teachers contract is up and quite frankly we might not have budgeted for the amount of the percentage that they're going to ask for which i won't discuss because i'm conflicted but i just i just don't it aggravates me to no avail that we are having this conversation right now and that so many board members after this wonderful man did a wonderful job and worked so hard we're now going to reject his budget where's been all the discussion it's not fair that's not fair that's that's where i and by the way mr bubba the timeline that you're talking about if

088you go back to last year i believe that it was about may maybe seventh or something long same days where we approved a budget and then i believe it was the next board meeting about two weeks later may 14th 21st whatever it was where we were given the numbers for healthcare you've been on the board longer than i have so you know that's how the timeline works always this let's not pretend like this is new and mr moffett's doing a budget within numbers that we don't have because we've never had them when we've approved a budget so i'm just putting that out there mr moffatt again you did a wonderful job i will gladly support your budget thank you for working so hard and as a taxpayer i will pay what the schools need to

089be where they should be [Music] okay we're going to wrap this up i'll make my comments and let mr moffatt have his say uh i'm looking at the total increase 4.1 million so 1.7 for fdk uh that leaves 2.4 and out of that we are receiving 1.4 million increase to benefits so that brings us down to half a million or 1 million out of that 1 million we have four bargaining units that are up for raises that's 800 teachers what are we suggesting xero uh we are receiving new buses for our special needs students curriculum supplies one-to-one computers for the elementary grades uh we also have unknowns we have unknowns in every budget we had tremendous losses this current budget um that was not included in the three-year kindergarten phase in not to harp on

090kindergarten because that's not what this is about this budget is one large budget that encompasses many things that are necessary to run an excellent school district people are scooping up houses in this town right now and having bidding wars not only do they want to move here because of our excellent school district they're moving here because we're implementing that program i think this is a fiscally sound budget i think mr moffatt and his department work very hard on it i think our superintendent who supports it and himself a former ba has gone over it with a fine-tooth comb and supports it it puts us on a fiscally healthy path we do need to make up for those losses because once you reduce your general fund and you don't make up for it there's a ripple

091effect year over year we were not anticipating chapter 44 we were not anticipating not running the krap program for a year because that was part of the revenue that was going to go to full day kindergarten and pay for furnishings etc um there's a lot more to the story so at the end of the day 4.1 million increase and all of what we're getting is wonderful and well done and i will be happily supporting it and mr moffatt i yield to you [Music] yeah i just feel obligated at this point just a back and forth discussion is is a concept of potentially delaying the vote um i i need i feel obvious to address that right now we need to address this issue tonight you don't have an opportunity to push it off into the

092future i've checked code statute i've reviewed the election calendar which is all have been provided you really have to address it tonight the county office if you fail to the county office will inherit the budget and it will be deemed and i'll use their quote tabling the hearing is effectively refusing to meet the statutory obligation you you're you have tonight um although you have some statutory timelines that uh does not really address tonight's vote uh it has to do with any type of a published advertised budget to the general public at the hearing any type of changes needed to be discussed tonight there's no really opportunity to push it off so i just want to just caution the board that they're going to have to really make a decision tonight to either accept or or

093not to adopt tonight's budget so that we can move forward i am definitely can ask answer some questions if there's some follow-up on the legality of it and i'm sure mr uh gapper can weigh in as well okay i think all the questions and have been asked and the statements have been made am i incorrect okay mr gepper at this time if you could read the revisions into the of revisions on tonight's agenda this gazette would give me mr moffat agenda what did you want to say dr toback i'm sorry did you want to weigh in no no it's just simply that that's mr geppert to read the revisions and trigger did i say mr geppert instead of mr moffatt and that's what i was saying i would just i'm sure you met mr moffatt

094i did mr geppert please don't read the revisions mr moffat kindly read the revisions thank you yes uh we have a few tonight uh the first one um we'll be filling in some missing information on the pws item o section which is the school resource finance and that is under o 10 which is health insurance so that's pws item roll into next next meeting and that amount will be awarded that meaning i'll actually just read the resolution um it says resolve that the board the board approved the superintendents and business administrators recommendation as negotiated by brown and brown benefit advisors approved the award of an extraordinary unspecific service contract for rfp number 1-2022 to aetna for health and prescription benefits for the 2022 school year at a composite renewal rate reflecting an increase of 4.69

0950 11 is also a revision we'll be adding information to that as well it says resolve the board of education approve the superintendent of business administrators recommendation as negotiated by brown and brown benefit advisors approved the award to detox for dental benefits for the 21 22 school year moving on we have under emergent under t emergent human resources item number two should be revised under number eight uh which is to approve of approval of chaperones for gw uh we will be re removing numbers 10 14 16 40 and 42. on number 20 approval of chaperones for wayne hills we'll remove number 16. again those are on the attachments uh appointment um of district staff revised number one is just sepa tendero i'll spell that t n excuse me t a n d u r e

096l l a groundskeeper revised salary from step number four which is forty nine thousand five hundred and fifty to step number five which is fifty one thousand three hundred and eighty five um we also are adding number t to that section uh under tbt 12 approval of sabbatical and that reads as follows resolve that the board of education upon the recommendation of the superintendent approves for the 21 22 school year a full year sabbatical for evan saperstein social studies teacher at wayne hills high school for completion of post-doctoral fellowship in didactics history and education at the university of montreal effective september 1 2021 through june 2022 at half pay with benefits as per wa contract and that concludes the revisions to tonight's agenda thank you mr moffatt all right do we have any committee reports

097this evening mrs kumar tonight the education committee met due to the worldwide pandemic the education committee of the wayne township board of education took place in person and during a google meet it started at approximately five o'clock on may 6 2021 the meeting adhered to the agenda and began with an overview of minutes from the april 8th meeting in attendance were myself eileen albanese and matt giordano along with our administrator donna reichman we discussed the a book review on dr seuss along with possibilities of exchange students and a middle school calendar change that concludes my report mr bubba technology met tonight with dr burchard mr duffy and myself um it was a brief meeting where we went over the department is reviewing their subscription services so they're trying to review and make sure that they're

098utilizing all the subscriptions that we have when it comes to learning and making sure that we're actually not not using services that were or paying for services that we're really not using dr richard met with the wayne hills admin team as they're reviewing a proposal for a unified esports lab and they wanted to see how the technology department can help support the program which i think is a great thing the summer projects we talked about a continuation of the iphone or not the iphone the phone projects where we're upgrading two more schools this summer um there are new interactive boards going in some classrooms and two labs that will be updated at the high schools this summer and then we also talked about the are demoing a learning management system that they did a small

099scale demo and they are looking to do a larger scale demo and they are also looking for new content filtering for the web and that is my report thank you mr bubba anyone else it's getting toward the end of the year not all the committees met uh i made a mistake i should have gone to public before committee reports but we'll get there now uh this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on agenda items only residents are to state their names addresses and subject matter comments may be limited to five minutes per person members of the public are just discouraged from speaking negatively about an employee or a student the board bears no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding employees or students cannot be legally responded to by

100the board other comments may be responded to tonight or at subsequent meetings under old business can i get a mover hello mr giordano mr i'm sorry mrs kumar i'm sorry mr duffy um okay [Music] i don't see any hands raised up we have one [Music] hello go ahead hi my name is stephanie conklin from 272 mohawk trail um i'm calling as a parent and a paraprofessional at our preakness eec center sorry i'm very nervous um i just had a question uh on the playgrounds i'm not sure if i understood that they're going to be opened but only for after school use and my concern is our preschoolers really need our playground um i'm i believe the cdc guidelines on contact transmission of kovid have eliminated that as a concern and i don't think we our

101children well i believe our children need our playgrounds uh we're in the ecc the bin is very small it's hot we need the fresh air our we're looking out the window at a brand new playground that we can't use and it's breaking our hearts to not be able to use it um and it's fenced in it's safe so using the fields is dangerous for our little ones worrying about them running into the parking lot to me not opening the playgrounds is so detrimental to our our children and i would really like to see if you could reconsider that the playgrounds to school children rather than after school use thank you okay thank you all right can i oh come to another one hi this is jenny franklin 21 canada drive um i would did not

102intend to call in tonight but i listening to you all discuss the budget i would just like to say as a parent whose last child is leaving the district in a few weeks please vote for the budget um the kids have had a really bad year and anything that could be done to make next year better the best year they've ever had and if money can be thrown at that problem for twenty four dollars a household i think that's the right thing thank you thank you madam presidency no more hands raised i moved close this is cher second mrs put up okay back to the agenda can i get a mover for the next item i'll move mr duffy are we moving individual items or are we moving the agenda i'm making motion to move

103the agenda okay mr duffy second mrs cher discussion anyone guess we've had enough of that uh roll call mr moffat mr duffy in this town yes mr giordano uh seems to have been right on here with regards to emergency number three name number five the answer is no we are voting on the budget also correct that's correct the answer is no yes to the rest mrs kumar yes as a parent and a former teacher yes to all items mr pavlak um no to the budget and as i stand behind my comments that i made the cut the budget would have would affect nothing every student would continue to get everything they get and under emergent hr number three name number five no everything else yes mrs put up i am voting yes to everything mr

104shearer yes to everything mrs albany under emergent t on the administrative list number three i'm voting notes in name number five and on emergency which is the budget i'm going to vote no and yes to everything else mr bubba an emergent t number three name five no and emergent v number two no yes to the rest mr kazan yes to everything motion carries very good okay this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on any topic residents to state their names addresses and subject matter comments may be limited to five minutes per person members of the public are discouraged from speaking negatively about an employee or a student the board bears no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding employees or students cannot be legally responded to by the board

105other comments may be responded to tonight or subsequent meetings under old business can i get a mover over mrs share mr giordano anybody madam presidency know when i move to close second pavlack seconded by mr giordano okay well here we are at the end old business mr dr toback you'd like to answer the question a lot of times when i might do my administrative reports i don't necessarily include every detail but the ecc will definitely have the playgrounds open during the day because part of the program there is play therapy and we've been just as excited about the employees who work there so mrs hammond was going to be making an announcement tomorrow also mrs fodie will also be an announcement for ryerson those playgrounds will also be open because again those programs are part

106of play therapy program okay and if i could just um make a quick comment okay so board members i know there was some debate about the budget this evening and some strong feelings emerged but there's a reason to be proud regardless of where you stand on the budget after many many years of debate wayne will have full day kindergarten this is a historic day for the community and something that will have a positive influence every year moving forward um that i would also like to consider as we move ahead with the budget the implementation of budget there are many ways to provide taxpayer relief so if there is a scenario where there happens to be access in the budget there are ways to spurt to budget excess surplus there's ways to budget taxpayer relief in

107the form of moving ahead with facility projects without asking for additional taxpayer funds so there are many opportunities for the board to address perhaps some of the issues that were expressed tonight are you finished thank you dr toback okay new business board member comments mrs share um i just want to take a moment to thank all of the teachers it is teacher appreciation week and i know most teachers are getting like food and goodies and unfortunately that can't be done this year um but i want to let you know that you are very much appreciated you are almost done with a very difficult year of teaching and let's all just keep our fingers crossed for a great year next year and plenty of treats for teachers appreciation anyone else mr pavlak just just a thank

108you to our teachers um you know when kovitz shut us down a year ago in the classroom uh our teachers as usual rose to the challenge and to continue to teach and support our students on a week's notice if not even that you had to scramble and out of your classroom into your house and come up and reimagine everything that you were going to do in the classroom which is tough um and i thank each and every one of you for that and to our nurses thank you you've been through the middle of this as well in the buildings most of the time when you know people have been remote working remotely just to face the challenges and to help the parents help the kids and everyone and thank you for being so stellar and

109we do really appreciate each and every one of you thank you mrs i would like to add my thanks to those my fellow board members uh to the nurses to the teachers but teaching doesn't end with the teachers we know that it's the paras um it's the parents who care there's an old saying it takes a village well it really has the last year and a half so thank you very much thank you jenny franklin for calling in and supporting our budget have a good evening mrs kumar i just want to say a quick thank you to the teachers and to the nurses the nurses and the teachers both did their own things to go above and beyond this year whether it was the nurses volunteering to help with covet testing or vaccines and the

110teachers doing other work outside of what they had to do those teachers who did decide to go beyond anyone else mr duffy uh yes and reiterate all my fellow colleagues want to thank all the teachers a special shout out to all my teachers through my years in school that held my hand and got me through especially those nurses that uh actually believed when i had a tummy ache to go home i appreciate them as well so thank you all dude they believed you sean mr cheer daddy thank you very much um with regards to teacher appreciation i could stand here and rattle off mrs seabright miss rocas miss waddell miss goodman mrs osinski mr new miss newton mr stanton i could rattle off my miss pelman mr ayamonti and roll through names of the top

111my heads of all the teachers i had many many years ago i am in my 50s now and i can still remember them and i think every person in this room remembers one or more teachers that really molded their lives and to tell all you teachers right there you may not realize it even though you're on on a camera and you're staring at a blank picture or somebody racing across the screen holding their cat or all the crazy things that happened to you this year understand that you make a difference every single morning you get up and go into that classroom whether it's virtual hybrid or it's full no matter where you are in the state here thank you very much for your services you are all true heroes thank you very much anyone else

112okay time for my wrap up i want to start by congratulating the valedictorian and salutatorians and especially our student representative gina i can't say that i'm surprised uh just just the presentation you gave last year that blew us all away on your trip to russia told me there were good things coming for you the teachers as mr giordano said and everyone else who doesn't remember their teachers the ones that really molded them none of us have gotten anywhere in life without teachers we appreciate you we thank you we value you and we look forward to a great upcoming year with this new budget thank you to everyone who approved it and i can't say enough about this monumental occasion wayne school district is finally going to lose the distinction of being the last one in

113passaic county to offer full day kindergarten this is a long time coming highly necessary for so many reasons we don't even follow the core standards which require full day kindergarten before first grade where we're starting our kids off um at a disadvantage with half day uh obviously the krap was wonderful unfortunately we couldn't run it last year but we're gonna more than make up for that in september and i'm i'm looking forward to the opening of that program i will be there with bells on uh so thank you to everyone and have a good night move to close i'll move thank you everyone great mr duffy mrs put up