001Good evening. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Um, first we'll take a moment of silence. Ice to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible and all in accordance with the provisions of the open public meeting open public meetings act. A public notice of this meeting has been sent to board members, all district schools, the Herald News, the suburban trends, the record messenger, West Milford town hall, the county superintendent's office, the board attorney, cable division of Warwick, and West TV77, and posted in the administration building. Copies of the board meeting calendar resolution were provided to all local media, town hall, township, library, and all district schools. Roll call. Miss Francisco, Mr. Sid, Mr. Ly. here. >> Mrs. Rakana >> here,
002>> Mrs. Dwire. >> Here, Mrs. Lwood. >> Here, >> Mrs. Van Dyk, Mrs. O'Brien, >> Mr. Reno, Mrs. Romeo here. >> Um, first we'll start with the superintendence recording. Yeah. Heat. [Applause] board members, members of the public, members of the public. Tonight we have still we have this evening This is one of the uh first steps of a fairly long process. We worked on this project since the fall. We're as a team also with the board and committees. We discussed that two board meetings here. We have a preliminary budget to vote on tonight. uh two weeks. >> Alex, can you use the mic, please? >> So, we'll begin the C the West County week at which the point we have about a month and a half to make further adjustments if so desire. We have
003a committee meeting next week and then we have another committee meeting in April right before the public hearing which will be at the end of April. Thank you all of our board members including the members of the operational finance committee but it's been a lot of work for everybody so far your budget folks a few weeks ago it's not a small document so thank you for taking the time to get through it all. Uh this is a fairly fiscally responsive budget and responsive means if you look at the longer history of our school district budget which we'll get to in a few slides you know there's been some ups and downs over the course of the last I'll say 7 years um which I'll get to a little bit this particular budget preliminary budget uh
004is increased by 2.5% um which is fairly reasonable inflationary pressures which were significantly higher than that. But this is the sixth year of a 7-year phase in of S2A budget cuts. Um the cumulative state reduction this year went over 9 million. We expected in the last year to be about 10 million before you may be a large community geographically. We're not a large school district or a midsize school district. Um, our budget's been about $75 million for probably about eight or nine years. I really hadn't that long. So, so high. Thank you. Should we go through some of the things we have highlighted today? Uh we are um you know continuing our work with our high school home course offerings. That's something that we've been um talking about working on for the last uh the
005last two or three years. Um we've been able to um add courses in each of those last uh last two years. Uh as far as next year, we're not adding any additional courses, but we're hoping that we're able to maintain and populate um with more students. some of the courses that we are um already offering. Uh we've talked a lot about um the most the three um new offers that we have there. The aviation course, the EMT class, um APU geography, there's also the new SAT prep course that we're going to be adding to our to our high school program. Um luckily um you know a number of those structures have not had an impact significant impact on school budget. Um I know um Mr. Ling and staff who've been in the process of creating
006new radiation EMT courses have done it in a very uh cost efficient manner. So we don't look at significant costes costs for added adding to courses. Um we are continuing with our compromat training. That's a K12 initiative. Um right now we have a range of uh grade levels that are in either year 1 or year two of this contra math training which again a reminder is best practices in implementing the New Jersey student learning standards for mathematics. Um next year the only group that has not yet entered this process is our first grade uh first grade teachers. The first grade teachers were weight listed for this year and they will be uh getting that training next year. So the only only missing piece in the last last two years. Uh our third and fourth grade
007teachers are completing the process this year and they will be um you know they'll be in that maintenance sort of program after uh after they complete their their second year. Uh as we know with restructuring we have a number of staff members who are going to be changing grade levels. uh for next year. So we are going to include them in year one training of the grade level standards for for their new uh their new work. Uh and that's a recommendation from the trainer. It is a completely different set of standards and different activities if you're going from first grade classroom to the third grade classroom. So they the training uh the training is important. um our algebra 1 geometry teachers at the middle school and high school. They're in year one uh this year
008and they'll they'll complete their process next year. So that uh that has cost there has been uh minimal costs in the district because we've been able to leverage ESS funds um from the uh uh funds that were earmarked for the coaching and professional development. We've been able to leverage that uh technology upgrades. Uh we talked about the continued support of uh robotics. We had that uh robotics presentation not too long ago. Uh also looking at our additional um technology education courses. There's you know always the need for upgrade and replacement and you know we're we're you know keeping track of things we have and trying to do the best uh efficiency that we can. Big project that we just started that is going to continue into next year. Um so this is spanning over two
009slides. Uh so all my students last year was real time which is our uh student information system. Um we are taking the initiative for including all of our students who are um in the intervention and referral services process to be um connected to our student information system. At this point in time, we have a uh it's basically just your I'll say paper based. It's not necessarily all paper. It's Google forms. It's folders. It's there's a number of different processes in place from building to building the uh efforts that we're going to do with real time. We're going to uniform the process. We're going to um train all the staff members who are going to be involved in you know the the which is creating the plans uh uploading existing plans and that sort of thing.
010And then we're also going to be training uh further for all of our staff in um what's called responsction training. So uh it's a it's a uh it's a big goal. It's taking the um process that everyone in our district know IRS and taking it to the next level for what do uh classroom modifications look like at the uh general education level and what are the um strategy modifications that we can put into place to make sure that we're exhausting you know all efforts for for every student before taking steps into tier two or tier three which which would be like a basic skills intervention for um for the process for for an IP. Uh so we we began that training uh this past week and that's going to carry us um through to next
011year. uh we are uh anticipating that the crossover from a in-house paperbased system that's individual to each building to a uniform system that's going to be uh in our real-time student information system which we're anticipating that's going to start when we return from spring break this year. So we uh we had an initial training for uh people who are going to maintain those plants and we're going to finish up those training before spring break and then we'll have a a go live. we had uh in the budget for um next year and when we we had posted it was an unfilled position. Um due to our uh increase enrollment in um uh ELLL English language learners uh we have posted a.5 position that's currently posted. If you know, please send send a resume, but we
012haven't had uh we have had um applicants who have a certain certification required for we have had people who apply for the position, but they've been, you know, typically from a subsequent list and and don't meet the criteria for uh for that role. Um our uh students in need of uh ELLL has grown exponentially over the last three years. Um, you know, there was a time where we have maybe uh 15 students districtwide and now we're um we're more like in the um mid4s and possibly by the end of the week we can be in the we can be in the low 50s with a couple of um incoming that we that we know of. Uh so the the need for this uh to grow is is uh definitely tested. Uh we are also looking
013at which is again um not funded by the the um local local tax levy or or local funds. We are able to use uh stabilization grant money for our new map program. We reviewed um five new programs and we're at the point of um you know having those in-depth discussions about which program that uh we think meets the needs of our students. We've got a a committee probably about 25 staff members representing all grade levels all most schools um and we need to to have those discussions. uh English language arts uh an important one um you know similar to the discussion about the restructuring and teachers moving grade levels next year we've also had a number of new staff members over the last few years with um you know with the pandemic process long-term stuff
014and that that type of thing. um phonics versus our phonics program in grades K1 and two. Uh it's extremely important that we train or retrain in how we use that program. So we have student staff members who are new to those grade levels, but we have staff members who maybe have partial training before the pandemic. It's very important that we get everyone um on board with that. We're also investigating the process of bringing uh part of the fine first program into uh third grade. We have a we have a great committee in place in the in the district called the council literacy support team. One of the things that we've been working on is is taking a look at the um you know the growing growing body of research with um you know science of
015reading and how that translates to our our current program. Uh phonics first is going to be coming in and talking to that group as well as training our training our new staff members. Uh memory science is a program that has been implemented over the last three years. This was our final year in that three-year process for bringing in all of our units and all of our all of our curricular materials for our K5 staff. Next year, we begin our first year in the uh what we call replenishment cycle where it's just um you know replacing what they call common items. um whether it's parts from the solar car, whether it's the possible sticks for the uh for the activity that students are using. We're in the process of maintenance rather than implementing and buying big
016chunks of materials. All right. Thank you. So some budget basics, your budget books, your budget presentations could be split two halves, revenues and expenses. They have to balance at the end of the day. The budget that we sent to the county has to be a balanced budget. Our revenues have to equal our expenses. Our expenses cannot exceed our expected revenue. So most of our revenues, we know what they are. Some of them are going to be a little bit fundamentally our issues are our revenues are declining and particular state we have a lot of revenues are going down our expenses are going everything we do now cost more than last year salaries health benefits utilities transportation just saw the previous slide we're adding aL for next year um everything we do this year and it
017cost more than it did last year. So our revenues really have a couple of major areas. It's local taxes which are local property taxes as cap by the state at 2% a year plus your allowable adjustments. Um we have a large amount of state aid that we reduced this year about 1.2 million and we have something called a budgeted $20 that has also been climbing very dramatically. We've used this to support some of general fund expenses the past few years and now we're just kind of going out. Right. So state aid cumulative state aid reductions over the last six years. As you can see on the table there is one more year left but we're north of $9 million now. That's a lot better than this with the 10% of our budget as a percentage
018of our budget. State aid not so long ago was over 25% one out of every $4 state aid. Now it's one out of $20 and that's projected to go down some more in the future. So it's about 7 12% now. Next year we'll be about 5%. and beyond that just I don't see it going back up. Hopefully it flattens out but you know again that's a problem for this time. Another thing that we discussed the last uh few weeks in committee as well as internally is our health insurance plan. This has been a dramatic change over the past few years. There's a new chapter uh for health benefits that went into effect about two years ago. all new hires for the new uh health benefits plans. The net change, the net result is our health
019benefits is going up. Our health benefit costs go up from 12 1.5 to about 16 1.5 million, but the amount we're collecting from staff in terms of employee contributions is roughly flat. So, we had a huge increase last year in our state health and our health benefits. This year is much more marginal, but we still are seeing this trend. our costs are rising, our revenues are flat. So you see these two numbers are pretty close together here and how wide they are here. But we think this will continue to grow as all new hires go to the new educator health plan and health benefits and we don't pay a lot of employment contributions out of that. On top of the state cut, on top of inflation, on top of contracting transportation costs, we are now
020absorbing a larger percentage of our health insurance cost district. So local tax, the cap is on the taxes, not the overall budget. Um, so this cap was implemented about 13 years ago when inflation was 1.5%. So 2% at that time seemed fairly reasonable. Now we know inflation is greater than 2%. How much greater I guess depend on which which newspaper you read but it's definitely more than 2%. So in our district about 80% of our revenues are from taxes. So we increase taxes by 2%. We're not increasing the budget by 2% increasing the budget by 1.6%. which is about 1.1 million which is about half of what our state about what our state was cut this year. So in 2324 we are eligible for a health insurance adjustment due to the almost 19% increase received
021just current and in this tenative budget or preliminary budget the tax levy that we're voting on tonight is 4.48%. This is the 12 year average. Our taxes about 1.8 over that last 12 year average. It's a little higher this year, a little bit lower in the past. And this is where we're trying to improve some of that uh taxes that were were held flat for a few years in a row. So the 2324 preliminary budget, as you can see, the taxes increased 4.48% with the budget. The general fund went up by only 2.58% due to the fact we already discussed in terms of the loss of the massive loss of speed. Mr. Francis, so you want to explain this a little bit to this meeting this year. >> Right. Um some of the pressures that
022we had after the 2223 budget was developed was in our contracted transportation cost and that's when we got the large increase in uh health benefit costs. Um we're also seeing um our energy costs uh go up significantly and even though we had an EIP that um at the solar panels which reduces the amount of money that we pay for our kilowatt hours uh the energy usage is still significant and um we're struggling our oil cost in it in itself was uh doubled from last year. We do have two buildings, UGL and Ashawa, and um they're still using oil and we're hoping that we get a um SDA grant to do the window replacement at UGL because the oil usage in UGL is twice what it is at Ashure because of the the um windows because
023they're single pane and they're in disrepair. So, we're doing everything that we can to try to um to mitigate the problems that we're faced with, but it's it's a you know, one step at a time. Um some of the pressures that we did see come to vogue at the 2223 budget with these entries increase costs, we use nonreoccurring revenue. We got um the governor was generous enough to support extraordinary aid at a higher percentage than he normally does and he also put in the stabilization aid this year in the budget. Again, uh first year he did that was a $40 million infusion into the state budgets that people could buy for because it's competitive grant and this year he um put in $30 million and we were fortunate enough to get part of what we
024had requested, but those are one-time revenues. So, basically that's just balancing the budget. But one thing that we have been supporting the budget with is um fund balance. And when your costs are almost what um your revenues are, there's not a lot of fund balance left at the end of the day. So the millions of dollars that we've been using to support the budget um is are not going to be there anymore. Um, through the years, you've heard me say that when we put fund balance into the budget, we like to do one-time projects because this way if the money's not there next year, um, it doesn't really matter because you finished the project, it's it's one and done. But when you're supporting your general fund, which are reoccurring expenses, your salaries, your benefits, your
025supplies, um it becomes problematic when that money is not available to to support your everyday expenses. So, um I think it's important that um you were aware of this because I don't think it's something that most people think about. Um and um unfortunately as Dr. showed in the previous slide. those years of um zero um tax levy increase are now coming back and it's causing um even more pressure than just the reduction of state aid because had we gotten a 2% increase in those years then you would have had some additional funding to to help support the um the reductions in state aid which are not there anymore. All right. So, this is a breakdown of our revenues uh into reductions in red phase one obviously stage. Um we do have additional fund balance here
026that we would not anticipate moving forward. So, we can probably look at a cut of that in one of those lines next year. Um in the future expenses, this is where the money's going. This is where we're spending it. a new line this year tuition which is something we haven't typally had to budget for and now we do. So it's $67,000 in this projected budget for charter school tuition for next year. You see some other expenses that where some staffing reductions have been realized or recommended. That's why we have a reduced cost. So tax impact the median home in town just increased to $242,700. That's the median. That's the minimum half of the community. The highest number half the lower. So your tax property tax increase on the median house will be $234 $235 a
027year or just under 20 a month. If your house is assessed at more than that your tax increase will be greater. If your house is assessed at lower than that amount your tax increase will be lower. We do have some capital in this in this budget. um focus on these three schools back and the high school mostly necessary product. Uh the windows are very original. We have door replacements in both buildings. We have septic field the generator and then we have a pretty large project going back cafeteria. We believe that's mostly original tile original to modernizing that building staff reductions. This is where you see our spend slow going down and you saw areas just this is not financial but the projected reduction or proposed reduction now for next year and a little bit at
028any level elementary middle high school different departments um the cuts are sort of spread out as evenly as possible throughout the district we added I don't think we had this last time we discussed this That's a lane bus at um the high school. We have two lane buses. One is a 330 and one's a 445. The 445 the store crews perhaps traffic gets finished later. It seems to be a very it's not a highly subscribed bus route. So we recommend cutting that second bus route out of school. Most of our kids are getting rides from teammates, parents. Um it's just easier for them. The bus doesn't necessarily drop you off in your house. It may be at the end of your neighborhood or they also have snow. So um the field cuts out without a
029whole lot of setup. Um so next steps we're going to look for ways to timeline more. We have a couple committee meetings. uh we have a budget meeting a board meeting later this month where we discuss the budget as a city as a whole and then uh at the end of April we have our final budget and this budget here will be the one that's advertised this paper just want to make one comment um some of most of the capital projects that um are listed are being funded by our capital reserve account so they're not being generated uh by tax levy. Um initially I thought that we would be able to do the abatement on the cafeteria floor replacement using cafeteria money. The state department of agriculture said that we cannot use that money for
030any capital expenditure. So an upgrade to the floor was they consider capital. we could only use a verb. So, um, but that we had a way of offsetting that, but we're going to use capital reserve instead, which is basically our bank account for capital projects. >> M. Francisco, will that draw the capital reserve down to zero? >> No, we still have some money left. Thank you. Dr. Will we be able to discuss some of these cuts um in I I think some I see one that I consider a very serious cut and um I would like to have the input for the rest of the board to discuss. So we committ stress that it's want to be a little bit faster. So we have committees next week and then board meeting committees again in April
031two board so we can discuss the cuts in committee um our house to get the numbers by one day to the county. So tonight I think we pass you know whatever we're doing with the budget and then it depends of you know any discussion question. This portion of the meeting is open to members of the public for the purpose of addressing resolutions on this agenda only. Members of the public who have requested to speak prior to the meeting will be recognized by the chair first. Each speaker will be given 5 minutes for a period of 30 minutes and then time permitted as a public comment limited to 5 minutes per speaker will be allowed until the 30 minute time period transpires. All members of the public speaking during the public comment period are asked to
032address topics listed in the agenda. All speakers are asked to sign the register provided and to give their full name, spell their last name, group affiliation if appropriate, and provide their address. Issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board. All comments will be considered and the response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate. The board asks that members of the public be courteous and respectful of the rights of other individuals when speaking. Specifically, comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged, and the board and the administration will not respond to them. Students and employees have specific legal rights according to them by the laws of New Jersey. The board is not responsible and is not liable for any comments made by members of the
033public. Members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments. Members of the public are reminded that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments. Miss Francisco, is there anyone signed up to speak? >> Do we have anyone in the public that would like to speak on agenda items? >> Can we ask a question about >> Yes. >> Sorry. Thank you. Captain Connor, 37 High Drive. The question I have is proposed reductions. I'm looking here at the following quality meetings since we have talked about repurposing special program. I implore that we have two elementary schools, four grade school teachers, three on the court and there are skills aid secretary counselor aid and media specialist. I understand that cuts must be done but
034my question is I'm also looking at a field technician custodians special education teachers uh math and go building math and ELA and those are tested subject areas where the NJSLA is going to be cutting them how many of them are actually retiring versus how many are retired do we have those figures because I've been trying to figure it out and trying to pull the gender while I'm sitting there to see like how when there's such a teacher shortage, how many teachers are we actually cutting folks? How many are retiring? Like it's so hard to fill these positions. So that's a big concern at the base. I understand we have to do that, but I can't believe the area of special education we're having. So that's, you know, something. Thank you. >> Any other public comments?
035>> Seeing none, I move to close public comment. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. Any just one agenda correction. We're going to pull into place operations in finance number one with operations and finance number one on the green sheet that should be on your uh your numbers changed since this was printed on Friday. But the one on here finance is pulled and replaced with I move to adopt the agenda. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Um before we move on, Peter, just FYI, I am going to ask any personel to go ahead. All right. To education, Mr. Sire. Okay. Um, I'd like to move items 1 through three for approval and four after executive session. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> Question time. Roll call. Mrs. Francis, Mrs. W.
036Yes, >> Mr. Sles. >> Yes, >> Mrs. Dwer. >> Yes, >> Mr. L. >> Yes, >> Mrs. Rico. >> Yes, >> Mrs. Romeo. >> Yes, >> Mr. Le, could you please second >> discussion? Ro. >> Mrs. Brier. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Ricardo. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Laughlin. >> Yes. >> Mr. Limpy. >> Yes. >> Mr. Silus. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Romeo. Abstain on 10 and 11. Yes. On everything else. Mr. Sidowitz, operations and finance like move hand carry item number one under operations and finance >> discussion. Uh in regards to budget, just uh to make clear that this is not the finalized budget number that we are voting on and sending out for general tax levy that we do have other sessions ahead where we get to discuss this further and as hard as it
037is, I think we can make it through and push through to another year and be stronger at the end of the road. Thank you. Anyone else? >> Mrs. Ricardo. >> Yes. >> Mr. Sus. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Dwer. Yes. Mrs. Laughlin. >> Yes. >> Mr. Libby. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Romeo. Yes. This portion of the meeting is open to members of the public having a legitimate interest in the actions of the board for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to andor directly related to the operation of the West Public School District. Members of the public who requested to speak prior to the meeting will be recognized by the chair first. Each speaker will be given 5 minutes for a period of 30 minutes and then time permitting other public comments limited to 5
038minutes per speaker will be allowed until the 30 minute time period transpires. All speakers are asked to sign the register providing if their full name spell their last name group affiliation if appropriate and provide their address. Issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board. All comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate. The board asks that members of the public be courteous and respectful of the rights of other individuals when speaking. Specifically, comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged and the board and the administration will not respond to them. Students and employees have specific legal rights afforded to them by the laws of New Jersey. The board is not responsible and is not liable for any comments
039made by members of the public. Members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments. Members of the public are reminded that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments. Is there anyone that would like to speak? >> Seeing none, move to close public comments. All in favor? >> Any opposed? >> Um, we're going to go into executive session. I think we need at least 40,000 35 minutes and action will be taken when we return. I'll be okay. at 7:40. Um, I make a motion to go into executive session for the purpose purpose of discussing personnel appointments, resignation, um, special education matters, negotiations, pins, and that's it. The executive session minutes will not be released. Right. The executive session minutes will not
040be released until such time as the privilege of confidentiality is no longer applicable. The board will be in executive session for approximately 35 minutes. An action will be taken a week from action will be taken. All in favor? >> Second. I I [Music] approve. Yeah, >> I'd like to call the meeting back to order. Um, roll call. >> Mrs. >> here. >> Mr. Slider >> here. >> Mrs. Dwire here. Mr. Libby >> here. >> Mrs. Rico >> here. >> Mrs. Romeo >> here. >> Mrs. Der as Okay. Um, I move to approve the recommendation of the superintendent for the following PIS. 2023 M6 is substantiated. M7 as substantiated. 2023 M8 substantiated. And 2023 E4 substantiated. >> Second. >> Any discussion? See as not roll. >> Yes. >> Mr. Sidwoods. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Dwire. >>
041Yes. >> Mr. Libby. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Ricardo. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Romeo. >> Yes. >> Move to 848. >> Second. That's good. All in favor? I >> favor. I Any oppose?