Board of Education Meeting 3/17/2015

001You've had your Christmas. I did. Oh, thank you. Plenty of them this time. Really? I That's why I'm the only person over here. All right. We're reconvening our meeting. We're out of executive session and we're on to education item number two. Mrs. Keep, would you mind moving that, please? Yes. I'd like to make a motion to approve the following agenda item. Um, it's incident number- Sorry, I'm tired. I need a second. Second call, please. Mr. Drew, yes. Mr. Yes, Mrs. Schultz. Yes. A motion to adjourn. I'd like to make a motion to adjourn the meeting at 10:25 p.m. Second. All in favor? Any opposed? Meeting is officially adjourned. 10:25 p.m. Thank you very much for coming everybody. Thank you. ation workshop special action preliminary budget hearing meeting. I'd like to call the meeting to order

002at 7:36. Please silence or turn off your cell phones and note the locations of the emergency exits. like to take a moment of silence for our men and women in the military. We could stand for the flag to the flag of the United States of America to the standy for all. In accordance with the provisions of the open public meetings act, a public notice of this meeting has been sent to board members, all district schools, the Herald news, the trends, the record, AI West Milford, the messenger, West Milford town hall, the county superintendent's office, the board attorney, and cable vision of Warwick and posted in the administrative Copies of the board meeting calendar resolution will provided to all local media, town hall, township library, and all district schools. Roll call, please. Mr. Rabbit. Yes. Here.

003Mr. Bailey. Mr. De. Mr. Drew. Present. Mr. Foody. Mr. M. O'Brien. Here. Mr. Robins. Mr. Schulz. Here. Executive session resolution resolve that the board go into executive session at 9:00 p.m. for approximately 60 minutes for the purpose of discussing negotiations, student matters, personnel, HIVs, the superintendent search, matters of attorney client privilege. The executive session meeting minutes will not be released until such time as the privilege or confidentiality is no longer applicable. I'd like to make a motion to approve the following resolutions. Second. Second. Thank you. All in favor? Any opposed? We will be taking action. Thank you. Superintendence report. Well, first, happy St. Patty's Day to everyone and we have an upcoming St. Joseph's Day on Thursday. So, it's a festive week and it was just Pi Day two days ago. So, uh it's a

004very exciting week, but wanted to report on. Uh again, the park assessments are rolling along. Uh we've had about two irregularities based on the fact that uh after testing, we found that uh two students actually had cell phones on their person. However, they did not use them for anything. So, forunately, it's not a situation like there was um where a student actually did a Twitter report based off question that specifically a little too little too scary for the folks over at Pearson and for the state and so forth. But fortunately um we're not seeing anything like that. Students who are testing are doing the best they possibly can. Uh any little glitches that have uh come about and most of them coming from the information coming into us uh is being taken care of. Kate

005Brennan our director of testing has been doing a wonderful job of that. who also have been on top of any um glitches that come about. So I report that that's where we are at this point. Uh also at this time I'd like to notify you once again that u unfortunately our high school did not participate in the uh parade in New York City today but they will be participating with our neighboring town of Ringwood on Saturday afternoon. They'll be marching down Skyline Drive. So we look forward to that. So, as of right now, since there wasn't really much time from last week to now, that's where we are. That's my report. Thank you, Mr. Presentation. Yes. Uh, Mr. Seagull, Eric Seagull, the supervisor of science. Uh, here to share some very important information with us

006this morning. Uh, I guess you need to move, right? Yeah. I apologize. It'll just take a minute with regards to the new questions. question to that area. My name is Eric Seagull. I'm the science supervisor. I'm just going to talk briefly about a new set of uh state standards called the next generation science standards. Have about seven or eight slides and I'll entertain any questions you may have. So I'll start off with what what are these standards? It's a complete set of national standards from kindergarten to 12th grade. And it's a it's a frame shift. And so it's not what you know, it's what you can do with that knowledge. Um the other emphasis is we want students to model what scientists do every day. That's gather information, analyze data, present that data, argue, and

007argue from a point of evidence. It's a blend of skills and content. So, it's not enough to, let's say, know the phases of the moon, but to understand what's happening in the solar system that causes those shadows to appear. And there's a new emphasis that's new to our state standards, and it's engineering. So in two sentences these new standards is science asking questions and it's engineering which is designing solutions. Okay. I also want to tell you what these standards are not. It's not a federal mandate. There are 26 lead states that wrote these standards over many many decades and we were one of them. It's not common core and it's not part. There are no standardized tests yet that would assess these new standards. And it's not a prescription on how to teach. Teachers still

008be able to develop and to execute their craft in the classroom without being dictated to by a set of state standards. And the next generation science standards make a point to say they are agnostic as to how these standards are to be delivered in the classroom. And it's not all at once and it's not an exhaustive list. When they wrote what a science students should know by the end of each grade from K to 12. There are they took note to say districts have a lot of discretion to add information. This is the minimum. It's not the maximum. And finally, it's not all content. It's also very much interwoven skill sets. Just a bit of a timeline. Last uh July, the state board of education adopted at the end of the five-year cycle new state

009standards and put in a timeline for implementation. They delayed and staggered the timeline in deference to Common Core in part by the start of the 2016 2017 school year. All our curricula from grades 6 to 12 will need to be rewritten at the start of the 2017 2018 school year K to 5. You'll see later on the agenda district science composed of sampling of K8 science teachers which are going to be instrumental in helping decide which resources are best and how to proceed with these standards. So far 13 states have adopted with 11 more in the process. In terms of a conceptual shift, if you roll the clock back, it used to be a teacher would write a lesson plan. We say the teacher will do and then it morphed over time to the students

010will know to where we are now to meet proficiency in the new science standards. The sentence is students who can demonstrate understanding can do, they can build, they can design, they can create, they can model. It's not enough to know a list of facts. You have to show and be able to do something this with those facts. How do we get here? This was not put together by pie in the sky professors in a laboratory in isolation. The genesis of this have to roll back almost 30 years to some very important cognitive studies. How students learn. What science. What should a student know who's proficient in science? And the National Research Council put together a major report out of which begat at the end these new national standards. But the writers were not one subset

011of people. There were a variety of classes. But twothirds were public school science teachers. The people who actually will do these or execute these standards in the classroom are the ones who had the greatest hand in writing them. In addition to engineers and scientists and three Nobel laureates and the organizations that sponsored and directed this development was not the federal government, it was the national science teachers association. Companies like Boeing, GEON, Cisco, Carnegie Institute. There were no federal dollars associated with the creation of these standards. And what do they look like? Here's an example. If I just can direct you to the bottom of the screen that says HS PS1-4 that means high school physical science first standard and in a high school physical science class like a physics or chemistry class or geoscience class

012or STEM class by the end of 12th grade or excuse me by the end of fourth grade by the end of 12th grade apologies the fourth grade students should be be able to develop a model to illustrate that the release of absorption of energy from a chemical reaction depends upon on the changes in total bond energy. Let me break that down very simply. They have to be able to take the knowledge and develop a model to explain what's happening in the real world. It's not enough to know that if A goes to B, C happens. You have to be able to demonstrate in an experiment, in a graphic, in an illustration. Why? And finally, I'll leave you with this if nothing else. At the top is a list of directions you might see in a

013math list. And the old way or the poor way of teaching science would be to say memorize this list of instructions. But now with the next generation science standards, it's here's a map, design an alternate route. Because you don't know what obstacles you're going to encounter down the road. And if you're just going by a list of directions stepwise and have no concept of how to use a map to go around a roadblock, you're stuck. 287 is blocked. So if anything I think this last slide is most important that for science education to be effective so for us to meet these standards they have to design they have to use models they have to create any questions that there's 13 states that have adopted this 11 in the process of Does this have anything to

014do with us doing our science? Sure. The major impetus for my request for the lab is we need to have more hands-on activities and more lab space for those classes to occur. Right now, a lot of teachers have to bump out of classrooms. Let's say a chemistry teacher if he has to leave his classroom to go somewhere else he can't set up the lab wear and the experiments would ordinarily if you were you know had a designated lab 2003 2004 we had roughly 200 more students and we were making use with what we had. Is there a state push that's making us have more, you know, chemistry classes, more physics or is this something that district alone are doing? No. Um, a lot of schools are adding STEM classrooms. There's great emphasis to build science

015rooms dedicated to activities. And one of the reasons I mentioned ing piece is brand new. So, we need spaces where where the rooms are mobile. We can move around the tables. There's outlets and sockets. It's not a rug floor. It's tile and and a lot of lab space where students can build and design, you know, um experiments and test their ideas. How to build a better rocket ship, how to make this pin wheel, you know, turn faster. And without that lab space and capacity, we're limited. More limited. But this is a New Jersey board and state going back probably five or six years ago. The state of New Jersey actually got involved in looking at new standards for science. after we start looking at common they felt that the science goals and objectives should be

016updated the needs of today's environment. Uh so there was a gentleman from state department who worked and he did uh put together committees at the time county was actually one of the first counties to put together a science and I was on that initially and it all started I should say it all stemmed from there. It all started from that point. Uh and they were definitely looking for to increase again to increase the rigor of science, make science more of a hands-on type of way of doing things with better understanding. So that's not just memorizing formulas, but actually taking that information. This is the outcome that started and I'm happy when you were on that guess five years ago or somewhere around there. That's when they were starting I guess also to think about the

017park assessments a little bit but this wasn't really driven by the park assessments you know is exactly right there was no uh no big push by federal government or even local government for us to get involved in this was really more created by science people and seeing what the needs are I saw that by the list of corporations and there And I can understand why they would want that. They want the talent and they're looking out out of country for talent. There's much more physical science physics and engineering labs are physical. I was just curious more towards a push part language and mathematics not really any science why it's not eventually I think So I think we'll start kind of related to being somebody from New York City and I think eventually that's the end

018of course testing that there will be part of it. So I think that cutting edge I just also want to say New Jersey has done to bring me up to speed on what STEM is. So you can always take a class that learns question in the United Anyway, engineering capital incomes in New Jersey are high. This the world engineering. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. Seagull. Thank you. If you don't mind, Mrs. Francisco gets um her budget presentation ready. I'm just going to note that um special reports and correspondence. We're going to be doing the preliminary budget and the following minutes are being presented for anticipated action at the regular meeting of March 24th and they're listed there on your agenda. Legal report. Petitions and requests. Petitioners who have requested to speak prior to the

019meeting will be first with five minutes for each petitioner for a period of 30 minutes and then time permitting other petitions and requests limited to five minutes per petitioner will be allowed until the 30 minute period transpires. Petitioners speaking during petitions and requests are asked to address topics listed for special action in the agenda. All speakers are asked to give their full name, spell their last name, and provide their address. Speakers may not use the names of students during petitions and requests, but I'm thinking since we do not we haven't had the budget presentation yet, that's a little premature of me to even open that up unless there is somebody at this time that would like to talk about something else on the agenda. Ada Eric E R I K Councilwoman West Mford but I'm

020not here for that. I am here as the chair of the cable TV committee. Welcome to channel 77. This is your kickoff. Um in in preparing this channel which is still up and learning. The board event meetings are proposed to run at 11:00 a.m. and 11 pm so far every day. Because you have more meetings than the council does, yours will be changed weekly. Ours run two weeks and get changed because we have half as many as you. So, um, anything that the school is doing, any activity such as the band being in the parade and stuff that you want to submit, right now our CBB or uh, it's our community bulletin board is up and running and you could just send that to us at wm77tvurt.org and it'll be put up on the community

021bulletin board. and anything else when the wrestling happens, basketball games, let us know and we'll let the community know. If you have anyone who wants to submit as soon as our policy and procedures are in place, which is tomorrow night, and uh anything that's able to be aired on channel 13, we will be able to air on 77. It'll go through a review. We have 21page document that's going to be looked at tomorrow night and we're hoping that the kids will get involved because this is something that you know we'll send them out on shoots but that's it. Okay. So, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Question is you just mentioned something that sparked some interest. Um students being involved. If we have students TV production class uh and we wanted to give them

022extra credit assignments or something like that, we can reach out to you to see what kind of taping they can do. They can also come. We meet on the fourth Wednesday of the month at town hall and um it's 7:30. It's the cable TV. Everybody is welcome. We have it specifically in policy and procedures. Anyone who wants to work will be welcomed on the committee. So if they want to want to learn to shoot, they want to, you know, we will be purchasing a camera that that camera is cable visions camera. So that's an archaic camera. Okay. So, one thing we will be asking from your um the techno geeks here is what you know connections we need so that when we get the new camera it fits here also. Okay. And my two cameramen

023here. These are just two of our cameramen. They'll find a place where it's comfortable to to get it. Get the camera off me. I like to be behind you, not in front of you. Okay. Good. So, that's that's very interesting. I'm thinking of we have students that do take it upon themselves to do some work like that. Uh we we did a little tour again yesterday, Mr. Drew, myself and M. Francisco and Mr. Hler, uh around the high school. And one of the places we stopped with the TV studio. So, my thinking is that uh with the equipment we have, we can probably do our own editing here based on what we record and then send you the finished product and that that I think the One thing that we have a rule that cannot

024be edited is this meeting, right? And council meetings. Okay. Everything else you can do basically what you want. Okay. The last question I have is um you said about using the community bulletin board. Yes. Uh so right now we're we have a a drive to drive but we're trying to recruit kindergarten students and it's slow. It's gotten much better. So we wanted to put something on that community voting board for people to see at home. realize that this is the deadline to you know have your student that's great. Thank you for being here. Thank you very much. We'll leave it open and then we'll come back to it. And as far as the president's report, I have nothing to report at this time. Are we ready to presentation? Okay. So, those of you who don't

025know me, I'm Mr. Rashika, the influence superintendent uh for West Milford schools. We are going to take a look at the preliminary budget um and it encompasses academic programs, facilities, and many the other aspects of what we need to do when we build the budget for the school system. As you know, this is a large school system. We have approximately 3,400 students here. Um, eight schools, nine schools counting the Highlander Academy. And, uh, so there is quite a bit of work that needs to happen. But I'm going to focus my first few slides on the academic programs and kind of pick up a little bit more from where Eric was before too. Uh first of all looking at that the district goals are kind of what drives what our budget's going to be based on

026the direction we want to go on. Now the other piece of this too is always student needs. We have to take a good look at student performance. What's going on in the classroom? what's going on in the school in the district as a whole. So if we look at the the goals that were put together back probably in September. Uh we have physical and safe emotionally secure environment. We want students and staff to feel very comfortable coming in as well as the public when somebody visits. We want them to have a good feeling about being inside one of the schools. Student achievement for every district is top priority and to increase the uh positive attitude in the area of math. Math is becoming a little bit more challenging based on common core and the way

027they have to do problems. So it takes a lot more work concentration and also heightened student engagement and learning through increased attendance. And we saw a little bit of this in a high school presentation. So there are many policies that drive where we're going. So we take a look here. The first thing I would like to make everybody aware of is the new course offerings that have happened this year and going into next year. Uh as you can see if we look down the left column history 7th grade liberty equality and power that basically is and I'm just going to give you a little background on that. a new course which offers students the opportunity to do some research and also to get involved in writing and also public speaking. It's a piece that we

028feel that they're going to need uh when we get into looking at the new way of doing business in schools. Presentations are a big part of what's happening in math. We've included in grades 11 through 12 intro to statistics and probability. If we look at the science courses we were talking about before, statistics are strongly attached to that. In science, we again talk about STEMbased programs. We are looking at a robotics program that will take place at the high school and uh we will be using Lego type materials for those and then build upon that. But robotics, again, every place we look, if you look at a plant that's building new cars, it's all robotics. you go to a store, many of the things that you're doing there also based on robotics. So, uh, eighth

029grade, we look at world languages and we see that we have AP Italian in the high school, I should say. That's world language is advanced placement class at the high school level. And then in eighth grade, we're starting to offer for next year fully year courses in German, Italian, Spanish, and French. This is not a watered down program. There are programs that are online. There's a program called Muzzi, which certain uh a lot of schools use within the state. We are doing this with a classroom teacher who will actually be teaching course for a full year with the student. So, it's an excellent opportunity for them to have a uh an extra year of world language uh experience before they even reach high school. the American Sign Language for college credit. That's going to be

030an after school program. We have many students that are involved in learning uh how to sign. They will pay the money for uh a professor that will come from County Community College. If they pass the class, which I'm sure they will if you're that invested, they will actually see college uh credit for that. Now, you also have to keep in mind that we already have some courses with the high school where students are able to go to Dickson University offampus on campus. We also have a program that's aligned with Satan Hall University. So, as you can see, the more time that goes on, the more we're trying to invent the college experience at the high school level to really get them prepared. English literacy and science for science and fiction fantasy. That's another course in

031English. Memoir, biography, the fragmented broken story, postmodern literature, composition for college public speaking, doppelgangers, dreams and madness is sort of a gothic type of English, some of those dark stories. But again, these are classes specifically those are specifically for seniors who are looking to have some more experience in staying involved in the English program. Elementary ongoing support programs to increase learning and academic achievement. We have seen over and over again number of elementary principles coming to us presenting all these different programs that they do for students in addition to the actual classroom. We want to increase those types of programs and also bring in new strategies and methods to to the classroom. None of it is free. You know that trying to build us in the right way to make this happen. Special education multiple

032programs that support children from preschool to high school level. I'll get into that a little bit later on. But again, we have to look at the entire student population. It's not all about high school. It's about preschool through 12th grade. So that's a pretty good picture of where where we're heading. We take a look at advanced placements. Many high schools throughout the state, throughout the country are not only based or their scores are not only based on what's happening in the school and the scores that the students get. They also want to know how many advanced placement courses are available to students. Uh we have added a few more. So if you look there, we have them in English, mathematics, science, history, social science, art, world language, and eventually I like to see there's at

033least one or two AP music classes that I would like to see uh added to the board. But we are very proud to have a total of 21 AP courses. Uh that's outstanding. So yes. Do you know what they are? What are the English courses? Uh there's English composition and something literacy. I don't have my booklet with me but uh in math uh it's computer science statistics and calculus AC right science environmental science you should know that AP bio physics AP chemistry environmental science okay history it's American history so on they have some other electives there in art it's studio art there's two in studio art and I believe art history and in world languages. Each one of the languages is has an AP uh course attached to it. the physics, chemistry, biology, those ABC

034and I we could actually information that so the focus uh for the future looking ahead now remember the goal right now is we're we have a preliminary budget that is going to make it possible to keep these programs in place uh we all of us I think really don't want to see anything academically disappear from what we've been offering it took a long time to get to this uh level I've only been here a few months but looking back at the history I can see that there's been a tremendous amount of growth in the course offerings and the way that West Milford is doing business in the schools. That's positive. So, sustainability of current programs at all levels including instructional programs, school culture, we talk about character education and student support. Going back to those

035elementary programs, I am a strong supporter of school and student support. You have to give students especially today's environment uh with all the challenges that they have coming from home just going through daily life very fast-paced world you have to give them every opportunity and every piece of support that you can possibly give them can't give up in district for special education students we're looking to include a preschool autistic program uh that will begin there Dr. Barutin and uh Dr. grade have looked at that to increase the number of students that would be able to stay in district. So the hope is that once we start with these students at the preschool level then they will move into the elementary schools and work their way up to the high school and of course the Highlander

036Academy looking at that. We want to build upon that program. And when I say build upon that program, I don't mean necessarily send more students there from our own school, but I'm looking at the types of programs that are available for these students. Uh there are some things where they can get out and we talked a little bit about SLE, which is where students go out and look at types of jobs and careers that they can have. Look at that a little bit. And I think Dr. and myself looking in the future. Would like to look at uh the possibility of bringing in more students from other other districts as tuition paying stu students. Is there a cost involved in these things? Yes. But we're also going to see a turnaround of that because you

037implement these programs. You hire a few teachers to run the program, especially for the autistic program, but you're keeping students back in the district. So, if we're spending $60,000 each for two students to go back out to another school because we don't have the program and we bring them back in, there's $120,000 savings again. Eventually, once we know that we're secure in running this program, we can reach out to other districts to have them then join us as tuition students. So, we're looking for that to happen. And last but not least, there the augmented character education program from the building level. We all know, we're very happy we have two schools that have uh recognized the schools of character for the state of New Jersey. But the goal here too is we want to look

038at this go out to the community. We want to be a district known for character education. Sometimes we say we have lots of characters, but we want to have positive characters. That's what we're looking for. Bring them out to the community. Have them be involved in other programs through the community. whether it's working with our people here with channel 77, whether it's working with senior citizens, young children, whatever the case may be. So, we're looking at special needs, we're looking at sustainability, looking at character education, and just overall building a better support environment for all of our students. I'm gonna hold off on my question, Tony, till the end. Yeah, that's fine. Science, technology, engineering, mathematics. That's what STEM is. to focus on that those areas. Uh my intention and I think Eric will back

039me up on this. We're going to work together uh to look at building relationships with local colleges. I have gathered some information already. Uh there are some weekend programs for high school students that I'd like to see take place. Kane University offers some programs. I've been in touch with Ramapo College to run some programs as well. So the reason why we want to see STEM build is some of the the topics we spoke about before. It's important for students to have this opportunity to have a true understanding of science and where and how you can use it. Uh if you look at this, it almost seems like we're forgetting about the student who wants to be uh wants to go and become a plumber, become an electrician, work in some other area. Well, the truth

040of the matter is the best plumbers, bless best electricians, all have some kind of a background in science, so they know what they're doing. Uh, you have to look at if you're going to be heating a pipe, there's a certain temperature that you can heat that to until the pipe holds up. You know, you want to make sure that happens. Working with electricity, engineering is a big piece of this. You have to know what's going to put that all together. So, this truly, you know, it sounds elitist, but it's not. It's a good experience for all the students to have. develop uh various programs to support this area after school and on weekends. Again, we can go out to universities and we can have colleges come here. And it's not only about robotics. We spoke

041about robot robotics a little bit before, but this is just the whole big piece. The whole big piece with science, technology, bringing engineers, bringing in design teams to help you design different things and what the process will be in developing what you're trying to do. Uh again as I said before it's not just about memorizing formulas uh in school programs for elementary schools we want to see this happen. So how do you do that? Well first of all there are some programs that can come into the elementary school and do assembly programs and work with students even on the weekends. My intent and hope is that eventually at West Milford schools our students at the high school level could take those programs down to the elementary level and share their experience with them there. So

042I think that would be very very helpful. So you know these are the things we're looking at. It's a budget that's developed to again sustain what we have and to move forward. It's a very very uh challenging world out there. We have students you know in college who are preparing for jobs. You read this many time preparing for jobs that exist today but may may not be here tomorrow because that's how far we've gone with technology. So the the technology is a big aspect of this and Barbara will talk some more about that piece. But so STEM is a big piece of what we're looking to do. Questions on this or everything because I have a bunch of questions from behind. So I just figured I'd wait till the end. All right. Because what I

043I just wanted to add too is when we look at the the labs that we're talking about for the chemistry programs and helping along with this um they're I think they're the original labs from 197 something when the school was built here. So if we look, Mr. Drew was with us yesterday as I said before. We took a look in there. Some of the cabinets are just they're just not safe. A lot of the equipment is antiquated. Uh we have emergency showers. God, god forbid somebody gets covered in chemicals that have no drain on the floor whatsoever. So you would have to run a shower that's running on top of the lenolium pentile floor, whatever's on there. water would just be dispersed all over the classroom. So they're they're rinsing a student off now creating

044another hazard because now you're going to have a class of 25 students slipping all over a wet floor. Maybe Mr. can answer this think of something. Um are they hazardous materials that you know if they need a shower? Well sometimes yes in chemistry and then the next question is what are we doing putting those down a drain? Does it go to tank the disposal of because you got hazmat disposal disposal of those type types of chemicals. First of all, we have to store them the right way. There's a separate closet that we use for storage and when you are going to um remove those, there are companies that come in and take them out the right way. Nothing understood. But if if child gets something on him and he's shower himself and it's going to

045go down through a floor drain, you're putting hazardous materials. We don't that dangerous. It's it's um just like the acid but god forbid it has happened to my co the concentrated stuff is kept away from the student. Okay. just raised a I worked in a in a lab shortly after I got done in college a research facility and it was that was one of the things I had to deal with was hazardous waste and it's very strict guidelines. So that's when you said we're off something that's you know hazardous just you know alarms went off but you know the fact of we won't have to worry about it right now because there aren't any just kind of lays on the floor but there's you know seriously there are a number of things that do need

046to be upgraded in those areas even when you're working with chemicals to have a safe environment to work so it's not it goes beyond just wearing goggles There is no eyewash somewhat. There is no Okay. Um, a little bit more about what Mr. Rash was talking about. Every year when we start developing the budget in November, we talk about parameters, some of the things that we'd like to see addressed in the next budget cycle. So what we would always like to do and and as Mr. Rasha said, we want to maintain really good programs that we've started to put into place. Um some of the things that we started um this is the second year. We have a preschool intervention inclusion program for our our our students and we have two sites. We have one

047at UGL school and one at Maple Road School. And um for September um I found portion has already been filled and we have a wait list for students that want to come into that program and that's for three and four year olds. Is that correct? So we have established that program. It's been successful and we want to be able to continue it and that's that's how we we prepare the budget. We want to support things that are successful. A few years ago we implemented the full day kindergarten program and that's been successful. Um we have shared social workers in each of our elementary school. We started with a half teachers um that uh we shared among uh two schools and then we went to a full-time teacher that's shared among two schools and that uh

048social worker has been so successful every year we get requests to have a full-time social worker in each of those buildings. Um right now we've been keeping that at bay. There may be a come time where we're going to have to actually consider it but um the proposed budget maintains the three social workers. Now these individuals also help with the HIV investigations. So they become an essential part of of the school climate. Um we have we a few years ago we added um six fizzed teacher for the elementary schools. So we had um shared uh fizz um five teachers for six buildings and um we decided that we were going to um enhance the project adventure program in the character ed programs at the elementary school in order to try to work through the hip

049issues that we were experiencing. So um we added a six physical education teacher and I think that that's done a lot to assist in minimizing the number of hip incidents that you are now getting have to review at each board meeting. Um we also added a full-time media specialist at Mac school had a shared media specialist and with um the importance of of the media um specialist and the teachings and the programs that they bring to the students. It's essential that MacBook of all places, which is kind of like the sandwich in the middle, they really needed to have someone that was going to be able to support the things that began in the elementary school in preparation for the high school. And that's been very successful. The person that was born into Mac School

050has been able to um Iris, would you like to some of the things that she's been able to do at Mac. Um I think one of the biggest benefits is for our specialists across the district is that they have become the technology literacy experts. So they can capitalize on helping teachers to know how to use technology and have students learn how to use technology to improve learning overall and having people in the building facilitate that to bring classes in. We now have portfolio assessments that are being developed at grade 7 through 12. So students can electronically their school work to be able to share that with your teachers to carry over to college or career after school. So all of that feedback is back to the students and teachers. Um a few years ago was

051very supportive in equalizing the level libraries in the elementary schools. Um some schools were more successful in getting donations of libraries at other schools. So we were able to equalize everything and then last year um language arts and science got together and they started nonfiction books into the elementary schools. So, we'd like to continue to be able to bring those to the classroom so the students have that information available to them right there at their hands off. Um, as Mr. Rasha said, we have a significant number of AP classes and we'd like to continue building on that inventory. And so, one of the things we're looking to do is support the the teachers that are going to be teaching the AP programs because they need to have special training in order for the AP. So

052those are some of the initiatives that we've established and we would like to continue. Um readers writing workshop Iris would you like to talk about that really successful for um those of you who have been around for a while heard that training people in many high school districts and we've been using it for this year. Um we did a leveled approach to be able to bring it in way that allow children to grow into the process and have our teachers and now we have completely covered all the training that we need and now we have a wonderful model of having our teachers our supervisor Mrs. West as part of the balanced literacy team uh they meet on occasion to uh think to work together about how to best reach students in reading writing workshop model

053and they're also taking on responsibility to do some training for new teachers to to get up to speed. We're able to complete that all in house. Now, we do have teachers who request to go university teachers college and I think some of you will remember that we provide a bus to take our teachers to that event on Saturday. I think we had two buses last year and two buses that teachers sustaining model always heard a lot about the TCA program that we've been the last couple years and requirements of teacher evaluation and Iris can speak to that too because we're going to work on continuities. Um that is that was a charge from NJ teachers specialist would be not class teachers specialist nurses members etc. At this point, all of our administrators have been trained

054and all of our teachers have been trained whether you've been around for a while. And the way that we can maintain this without having to district is that now we have systems in place so that we can selfreulate our efficacy and use of the program as well as find reliability and interpreting all the systems that we're using. houses from teachers to obtain the information that we can see what areas were in need and when we did that first year we found that there were a few areas that report that people have made to making this system that works well and that is able to practice in a positive way So one thing that we learned is that we never say gee we put that in place and now we don't have to worry about it

055anymore because we need to continually assess the programs that we put in and the things that we do. We're in the process of assessing our technology needs. Um everybody is still asking about the onetoone bring your own um environment that that they're hoping that eventually we're going to get to. And so um we have in the last two years uh implemented a number brought a number of iPads and Chromebooks into the classroom. We have Chromebook parts for every building and we'd like to build on that inventory. Um we also uh what we're doing is looking at all of our textbooks and we've done we've made remarkable progress in in uh buying new textbooks that have an online component. They have online licensing go with it. So, uh, we're in the process of still looking at

056those textbooks and we have some textbook requests, um, in order to align those books that we need standards. And we're also continuing to address a lot of the capital projects. Uh, we've done some um some big projects in the last couple of years. We've um started monitoring for the remediation at the transportation depot. We've replace the roof at Marshall Hill School, replace the boiler at the high school and now have a an independent um water heater so that we don't have to run the boilers in the summertime. Um we um have done some some paving and a lot of concrete sidewalks at some of our schools in order to make them safer areas for the um the students and staff. So we in this budget to address a lot of our capital project needs because

057there are a lot of facility needs that we have. Um we do have um and on that page you're talking but I know that if you get one it cost less and two you can now check it out on PC. at any of your schools. You don't have to have a copy in every single school. What I'm not being critical on this we do have the online appointment but we're finding that a lot of students still prefer to have the Oh, there many times where and what we've done is we bought classroom sets that the students can use in the buildings but they have the licensing that they can use at home. So that's what we've done in a lot of situations, but um a lot of the students, especially older students, are still looking

058for that physical book. Um yes, we have had decreasing enrollment. Um as you can see, um just at the high school, it's what about 300 students less than there was 10 years ago. But I think you also need to recognize that the way we deliver education is a lot different than it was 10 years ago and we have a lot more specialized um classrooms and the class sizes are a lot smaller in order to enhance the environment. So this is what our projected enrollment is for next year. Just a touch under 3600. Um so we'll see where it goes. Everybody's always interested. State has been flat for probably the last three years. And I read an article not too long ago that said that when the governor says that he's more money into you know

059education than any government before him but we actually are behind the eight because he has increased um state aid even to meet the inflation so our state aid once again it's flat extraordinary aid is a a budget every year and it helps support our special education program um the application is in the winter. Um, most likely March, April. I think they changed they changed the um the application process last year. So, we'll we'll be doing the um application probably in March or April. March, April, and then um we won't know if we get awarded the money until June. So, we budget the money now. We do the application in eight months and then we find out at the end of the school year whether or not we got the money that we already spent. That's

060the way the state works. But we've been successful um over the last couple of years um we we basically get maybe a little bit more about 30 or $40,000 more than what we we budget. So we've been fortunate. When I first came here a few years ago it was actually 40,000 in the extraordinary revenue areas. And um we if we did that now and spend out our budget about $2,000 under behind the um fund balance uh the fund balance number that is up there is um a budgeted surplus number. If you look at current school year 1415 the 2,383,3 was money that was in excess in a prior year's audit. The current year, the 20134 audit that was presented in December actually had a um a surplus of 2 million 6,200. You can see up

061there that I'm anticipating we're going to have excess surplus and I'm putting 2,5002,500,000 which is actually more than what we had in excess. So I'm adding another $493,800 in order to support the 1516 budget. Where did that come from? 2 million 600,000 the extra 400,000 is anticipated surplus out of this budget currently right and if that doesn't materialize it'll come from the 2% that we have 2% that the state allows us to so is the 2.5 is that the amount in the excess surplus at the beginning of the year or the end of the year 2.5 2 2,600,000 200 2,600,200 2,6,200 2 million 20006200 was our audited excess surplus on June 30th of 2014. You're saying 2.5 on June 30th of 2015. Well, we already have the 2 million. So, it's just a difference of

06249800. So, I'm anticipating that we will have 493,800 additional surplus out of this year's budget at the start of the year. As of June 30th. The budget we're doing is for the 1516. Yes. What do we think is going to be in excess surplus on June 30, 2016? We don't know. At this point, I'm anticipating that we will have at least 493,000. So, at the end of this year, at the end of this year, but we're budgeting for which will supplement next year's budget. Are you going to transfer that into next year's budget because the money the $2,6200 was from last year's budget goes that jumps a year. But when when they do the audit calculation, it be the $2,6000 is actually a reserved amount of money. So it's just still sitting in our surplus.

063And when they do the it's going to drop out because it's basically reserved for next year's budget budget. So when they calculate all the excess surplus, this additional $400,000 is going to be part of that calculation and it's just going to go into support. It's in the management report. If you look at the calculations that go in the management report, the audit, it'll show you how they calculate laid out an excit. So it'll say um reserve from 134 school year 26,200 additional surplus and then I'll have 49,000. So that'll all come off of the surplus that's remaining as June 30th, right? Okay. Um, Medicaid reimbursement, that's a number that we get from the state of New Jersey that a number we have to achieve. Um, we apply um on a monthly basis for services that

064we rendered in order to get reimbured and that helps. We're anticipating 225,500 in that homeless it could be bring some students into our programs. So that's anticipating our miscellaneous revenues increased in a little bit. Um it's rentals because our our facilities get rented. Um and it's other things that come along that you know we managed to get money for That's where the go. No, but it's miscellaneous. We have some agreements with um other districts to provide transportation um so we have the tuition that would not include the program Mr. recommending we bring back some tuition. No, this is that we get the the money Mr. Dr. Buden has recommended the autistic program. Yeah. And for the tuitions that we're paying out, that money will be reallocated to pay for the staff members that we need

065to run the program. I really thought we were going to wind up ahead. Well, this tuition is actually for students that are from other school districts that come to our school and we pay they pay us. That's what that tuition is. There are students that come here that we educate because we have these special programs and Mr. receal a little bit about Highlander Academy and that we're hoping that it be able to expand it to a tuition where we can bring tuition students in that that tuition would also be included there. This is a revenue. It's not an expenditure. Um we have a withdrawal from capital reserve. We have a capital reserve account and um that $862,642 represents our cost for the boiler replacements that are in the 156 budget for Paradise Middle School and

066West School. So that's our portion which is 60% of the total cost. The other 40% of the cost is being funded by the state of New Jersey. Well, from what I understand, they're all in all. These are the last three that need to be replaced. We've been having some issues with that, but um I believe it's just um some kind of a heat exchange that needs to be done. I'm not a couple of bring. So we're running at a deficit there and that's what we have. So that's from what I understand exch those replacements using broadband money. Um, a few years ago we established a maintenance reserve account and we're tapping into that for $150,000 to support this year's budget and that supports our required maintenance effort. We have a maintenance effort that we're required

067to do every year. We have to spend so much money um 10% of the building the building cost we have to spend it's required um and that come up again in October but um so and then our tax um the require maintenance items you You have general maintenance. You have requirements. And that fiveyear plan is the general maintenance. We have to submit. No, that's the long range facility plan. That would be like capital capital improvements. The comprehensive maintenance plan that we do every fall supports maint. So um in the current school year we had a 5342,837 This budget is proposing a 2% increase in the tax which will bring it to 54,13,64 and that basically shows you what this is how it's divied up and supporting all of our programs. education, special ed, bilingual, student

068support, which includes costs and transportation costs, operations, maintenance, administration. So that's basically how that $73 million is split up. Can I go back a few pages on new course offers? We have under that elementary ongoing support programs to increase learning and academic achievement. And I look at student support here and I see it's cut by a million dollars. So I wouldn't is cut. You have to remember that we put a lot of staff. What would you call it? I mean, to me, I look at that, it looks like it's been cut. I'm trying to explain it. Y you realize 80% of your budget just about is salary benefits. Yes. We've had a significant number of retirements in the last year. So, if you have a significant number of highaiders, you have breakage. That breakage translates

069into a lower dollar. doesn't mean that you've cut personnel. It means that the personnel are costing you less money. You're reallocating that money someplace else that you need. So, we haven't made any cuts in student services. It's just that money through the budget looking at our healthcare costs. I see that you're expecting those to increase pretty significant next year, a little over 10%. Um, which equates to a million dollars that we've got. Um, and then looking at what we spent this year on healthare cost, we spent so far today next week's bill, we spend 7.2 million on health. And if you look at the numbers, that's going to equate to we're going to spend another 3.6. So we'll be up to 10.8 million. We got 10.3 in that line item. So there's we're going to

070have to come up with somewhere out of the budget a half million to cover those expenses. Um remember that um we'll be entering phase four of contribution next year. Correct. Next year. Yes. So that's why that money that account is offset by the amount of contributions. So you'll see that there's actually if we were if we didn't receive those employee benefit contributions probably I think there's about 16 or 18 1.8 1.6 or 1.8 So you're anticipating anticipating a surplus this year 10.3 that we have in that it's a possibility. It's a possibility. It depends. Um we've been experiencing more people taking but you never know what kind of life people have because somebody might so every month it changes from the first budget that you supplied us back in February to what you us see

071there's significant cuts to add it all up. How come it hasn't come up? What you received initially? Yes. the requests that we receive from the principles and the supervisors and um basically they have they just say this is what I need this is what I want and then once we all put it together in your first draft budget document we have to go back once we know how much money we're working with and we have to say okay prioritize tell me really want tell me what's I usually tell them two priority one is absolutely what you need to have two so that you received yesterday that we have here now realize you just said that we were going to have a million dollar increase and that's what you project right and that pretty muchakes 2%

072tax because your tax cap is a million60,000. Um you also have other general costs that continue to go up. Gasoline goes up and down that adjusts as the prices adjust but taxes on state tax. I don't know that we're exempt from that because that's federal. I think well there's federal and state tax. I know probably not exempt from federal I don't know I don't I think they're exempt from sales tax the state sales tax. Yeah, but that's not I don't think that's what's the sales tax. That's what I thought. Right. I don't think that's I mean you have increment costs that you know going into teachers negotiations so there's a lot of things that go into a budget which are going to be and fuel was one of the things that I I wanted to

073pass because you're still not in there 350 for diesel 3 and a quart for gasoline um And you've increased that from last year. That that line item is increased from last year. We're definitely going to have a a surplus in this year's because our costs. It basically almost got cut in half from the high of of the beginning of the year. Gas was like 350 a gallon to what? Three months for for Yeah. From It went down three months. Yep. It went down significantly in three months, but we're we've increased that line item um for next year's budget. For next year's budget, I don't know what's going to happen between now and June of 2016. That's the problem. That's the problem. Look how much it's gone up in the last three weeks. And it's starting

074to go back down again. Well, it went down two cents. You buy my local gas. It went down two cents, but A year ago or six months ago, it was $4 a gallon. I was paying over $4 a gallon. Now it's $260. But I don't know where it's going to be in June of 2016 because what happens if you finally get smart and decides he's got to raise money for the transportation fund and the only place he can get it is from gasoline. New Jersey is the cheapest in gasoline costs because of the lack of taxes. So I don't know what's going to happen in June of 2016 and where we're going to be proposing and and that's what always becomes so problematic because you're trying to project out for 18 months and when the

075things that you're projecting don't materialize, you end up with a fun balance. end up with surplus. And you also have to recognize the fact that we have revenues and if we don't get the revenues that we're anticipating, we spend that all our budget, we're in a deficit and that's so it's a very delicate balance trying to figure out how much money you're going to really need and how much you're going to really spend. And that's another reason why I get to a point in the school budget year and I say, "Okay, if you haven't bought it, you don't need it." And now you can't money because I don't want to be in a situation where May comes and I realize guess what the governor didn't put extraordinary aid into the budget and now I'm going

076to be short $750,000 in my now what am I going to do because he could do that every year he determines we find out right Dr. in June whether or not that money is going to be there to fund the year that we just passed. So if we got beat for $750,000, we'd be in big trouble. That's a lot of money. That's a really del 476 for this year, 488 for what they're considering next year. Um, we spent 309 last year. Um, I haven't seen a board secretaries report, so I don't know what we spent so far. I guess we'll see that next month, but next week. But if I if if I look at the trend here, um looks like we've got a considerable amount of money in both of those lines. And I'm

077going to guess that we're going to have somewhere around 125,000 as a surplus because again, natural gas rates come down as well. And we do that with ACUS. We do that with What happens when they have to go out to bid again? Aren't they going out to bid? Electric is going out right about now. Doesn't gas follow like two months later. No, the contract is different. I believe that gas contract. So, so last year's prices would be good in this year's. So, then we're definitely going to have maybe maybe in in 2016 when it goes out to be, but I I see going through the board secretaries report line item after line item we have surplus and we transfer money out and I just for the life of me I can't support a 2% increase

078in the budget when I I look at our legal costs we're going into Can I get through the rest of the presentation? Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. We're getting close to 9:00, Madam President. So I would like to make a motion to go into executive session at 9:20 9:30. All right. 9:30 p.m. Second all in favor some of the new initiatives Mr. program and as I said earlier that is money that reallocated if that comes to tuition monies that we have set aside for tuition for these students will be reallocated to pay for the teachers and the other staff members that need also um Dr. staff member currently we have a professional service that comes in on basis for certain students so we're going to implement our own artistic program it's recommended by Dr. Dr. that

079we have behaviors. Again, the monies that we have set aside for tuition will be reallocated so that we can support personnel cost. Um, another program that Dr. would like to see implemented is based instruction. Dr. Would you like to talk a little bit about that? I'm an interim director, so I seven different districts the last few years. And when I came here, um I noticed that we have a fairly large high school, fairly large population and zero students in what you might call work study and I we have students um who are not college, who are not you know tech students who still we have responsibility to provide transition experience after high school. So one of the things we want to do is restructure some of the things that going on in the high school

080now so that we can provide an opportunity for students to have more CBI instruction but you think of it as a work. So they go to school in the morning they have meaningful jobs in the afternoon. We want to reassign some of our specialized teachers um to to be community based transition coordinators and some of our teacher assistants to be job coaches. It's relatively a consider increase. We have to basically take one of our parttime teachers positioned resource to uh to make this happen. So that's one of the things that and actually coincidentally you know Mr. and I work together in Northern Valley and my my big experience with this little 30 to 40 students out instruction they have a million buses they didn't have we had our own bus we had a transition coordinator

081job that's where I learned how to doing that so it's really going to be Win also spoke about some of the new courses that teachers. Do you want to talk about that? So many function not just rolling out a lot of those right now [Music] certific the December one. Yes. Saturdays. We're going to have we're inviting three teachers next week to come to the meeting and show you what does it just talked about phinge We did some work on the one room that kind of programmed it up a little bit and now we're ready to fill it up with furniture and program. And I think it's timely too because the county is working on putting a whole STEM building down at County Tech. And I think in order for us to continue to make Westford

082schools attractive, we have to be able to provide them with opportunities that they don't have to go down to. And also the tech talked a little bit about upgrades. Um we are putting in an application or we put in the application to get funded by the rate uh schools and library which is federal funding. Um there is a a hand carry resolution to approve these wireless upgrades. Um and wireless upgrades uh the contract that we we have to sign the contract in order to get the funing in school year, but we won't know if the funding is approved until the summer. So, the contract that we're hopefully going to approve this evening is contingent upon our receiving the funding in uh the summertime. and our technology budget um does not include uh the wireless upgrades,

083but if in fact that does materialize in the summer, um we'll be reallocating money from our technology budget in order to do that. The total cost is about $441,000 and that would be um to run two cable runs uh where where we're lacking and all new access points uh and the Mari access points which give you a fiveyear license. You buy one year and they'll give you five years on the licensing for the wireless and it will be in the controller. So um Our cost would be about 60% of that. So we're talking about $265,000 out of the $441,000 investment. So we would be remiss if we did not apply for the refunding and unfortunately we have to follow their rules which say that they need a signed contract by March 24th. Um, but we

084do have the caveat in the contract that says if we do not eventually receive the EA funding, then that wireless upgrade won't take place. So that's for the board to consider um this capital projects quickly. Some of the projects that we haveated in the uh in this in this budget are the Westbrook school and Paradise Middle School replacement. That's using grant money which we receiving 40% back to the state of New Jersey. Um it would be under 12. Um uh the PK boiler is 793,046. We're getting back 317,218 from the state and Westbrook is 53623 and we're getting back 214,49 from the state, you know, based upon 40%. So it depend depends on the cost you know because we have to but that's what they've um the science room upgrades um for the the new

085labs roof replacement school building that we're in here um in there front staff replacement at West High School and various You have to really be careful when you're coming up into West School because you lose your car in one of those craters. And the weather is finally getting nice that at least we can fill in some science. Nothing. Science room is all capital out. Um when the rod grants went into effect um we had a 30-day window in order to apply for the um grants and that was two years ago. So that's why we did the boiler replacement because they have levels of funding and so we did um life safety issues. We know that the boilers are safety and they wouldn't be able to tell us now. Um the current tax 53 million4287 um

086equates to an average that's also including debt service. Now the debt service was a bond that was already approved and regardless of anything that service has to be paid with the proposed budget 54,103694 the um school tax including debt service would increase $986 per year. One thing I want you to understand about the proposed budget that we have here tonight and that you have to vote on, it's a preliminary budget required by law has to go down to the county office. You have between tonight and April 28th to um talk about it, question it, it um So until we have a public hearing, it's not. So um I encourage you to ask questions. I encourage you to um be comfortable and as I said to the budget and finance committee we can talk about it

087at the next meetings until we budget that school. The budget that we sent down to the county this week is the budget that gets advertised to the public. Yeah. One of the uh just one of the things I don't like to talk about because it sounds like you're complaining, but you have to remember that every year we get hit with some type of a mandate that's unfunded. If we look back over the last three years, the the unfunded mandates were for the whole new teacher observation piece which was quite expensive. Uh and it's not just a oneshot pay for the package learn program and do it. It requires teachers and staff members to come together over the summer for more training. We look at the technology aspect of uh what has happened with the park

088assessments. A tremendous amount of money was spent on technology and we have to continue to spend that money just to stay in the games obviously. Um so again the state always comes to us there's all these plans that we really don't we don't have input truly uh but we do have to follow what's required and there's there's no check attached to that you know coming from them saying and here's this pot of money that you can have to make this work. Uh so it's not again we talk about sustainability. So once you start these programs in order to sustain them you're still spending a lot of money. U we try to as Iris pointed out before we try to take some of the training and do it turn key in district uh using our own

089people who are competent and feel comfortable enough to work with staff members but lo and behold it's a large expense. Uh there are professional de development programs again that are mandated that every teacher every staff member in the building have to go through. It can be from suicide prevention. It's hit policy training. None of this is cheap. Uh we looked at uh just a few months ago uh a company called Hipster which will actually document your hip reports and and really keep data based on the types of things that are going on which again when we report to the state of New Jersey. We have to know what we're reporting. We can't just write down that you know so and so called so and so a name and that was the end of that. They

090want more specifics. So it's requiring us to collect data in a formal way. So again we're spending more money. None of that's even reflected. So it's, you know, just keep that in mind as well. Uh, also I I have to tell you that, you know, I came into the district um couple of days in November and started full swing on December 1st and walking in the door. One of the first things that we spent working from conference in bar conference room was uh looking at the budget and again talking to the principles and the supervisors and really listening to their concerns. I can tell you that this budget is based off of student needs and what the goals of the district are. That's basically not trying to incorporate anything here that's fluff. Um looking at

091the buildings, these are old buildings for the most part. I have had no work or upkeep in a long time. Uh when I came to visit this building for the first time, I spoke to the principal and I said, "Show me where your leaks are." Figuring that she saw me two or three leaks. She gave me a schematic of the building with all red dots. Sure enough, I walked around the building with her and indeed there are links in all those locations. So, we have some big problems that we have to address and uh it's time to do it. As you can see, some of the money uh some reimbursements from grants will be in effect. Fortunately, those are still around uh and we look at some other pieces talking about technologies so on. So,

092it's just that's where we are. We want to give the students the best that we possibly can. And my last my last slide Patty's help public schools leprecha fill our bucket of gold. Now when I say our bucket of gold, we're just looking for money to sustain what we don't want to run into deficit. We want to make sure we have what we need. I have one more pastor. I'm sorry. This the first time I've seen the um overall budget has gone up 1% tax 2% benefits go up 3.5% they do that actually I guess hopefully does the increased cost of benefits reflect the Cadillac tax for Cadillac benefits plan and the other question one element that goes up quite a is administration which goes up 220,000 which is 5% the highest of all. Does

093that include additional administration staff or why so much administration testing? They have no mandates tax and so it doesn't we don't know Any other questions? I can say to reinforce the fact that it's a work in progress. They have to send One more question. services 2013 164 2014 178 this year we got negotiations and I'm sure those negotiations which will carry over June 30th. And that again, is that number accurate? And and I was reading something under the statute that says we historically don't fund a line item correctly. As I remember in these previous years, we had we had always transferred money in. and I just want to make sure that they're putting enough money in that line item. I I think that uh looking back um and and looking at some of the line

094items for future judgments against the district that are pending um I don't know if these these numbers are are are accurate whatsoever. Well, there's a separate line item for future judgments against correct. Correct. And we do have that as far as funding, you know, line items incorrectly every year. We go through a midyear budget review. That's not been a problem here. Um and um we we've tried to maintain um minimize them as much as possible. Yes, we are negotiations, but So again, I would prefer to put money in other areas and then moving money into the legal services that we do that. But we also have to pull from other accounts because you can't just transfer money into accounts. No, I I and I was reading that as well that there's limits as far as

095you know percentages transfers and all that. I'm aware of um when I when I look at historically what we've done and we're constantly transferring money in to those line items and what I'll do is I'll email you what I read so that you know what I'm talking about. But um I'm referring to in the statutes. But when when I when I hear that uh we we watch our legal bills, I I I I almost kind of got to laugh at that. Um you know, when when there's research done to see if you can uh charge with me with impersonating a board uh member for comments made before I was appointed and for what you did to Mr. Drew, what does this have to do with the budget? No, it's we're talking about saving money. You

096had an opportunity to bring that up in budget and finance. So, what's that? Let's keep it directed. Marilyn, you stop. You stop that calling names and bring I'm not calling names. I'm not calling. We all got copies of the minutes. We all know what happened. So, unless there's further questions for you with the budget, let's open it up to other board members. Other board members might have questions if they can have anybody else regarding the budget as it stands right now. Thank you. We're getting close to 9:30. Can we extend it 9:40? 94. 9:45. All right. I'm dealing with Joe here. Joe 94. All in favor? Thank you. All right. Then we're going to move on to um back to petitions and requests. Uh we closed it before and since Mrs. Francisco gave us the

097preliminary uh budget presentation along with Mr. Rashida, I'm going to stayed open. So, is there anybody from the public that would like to speak regarding anything on the agenda at this point? Seeing that, I'd like to move to close petition. Second. All in favor? Any opposed? Um, I need a motion to adopt. I'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented. Second, including the hand carry. Including the hand carry of item number two. budget and finance. I will second that again. agenda. All in favor? Yes. Mr. Drew, would you like to move um the items under budget and finance for special action, please? I'd like to second. Any questions regarding item number one? First, I'd like to say thank you. It's a very complex. It's a very complex. I don't think it's

098easy at all. Not very many people considerable. Thank you. Lucky to have somebody beyond that. Sorry. Usually my you have radio. I'll I'll try. Um, since I've been here, I've looked at a number of things about West Milford, and there are see things that are maybe obvious, maybe they're not. In 25 years, we have had virtually no growth at all in population in West. In 1990, there were 25,480 people. 25 years ago. Now there are 25,900 something. Um there are many reasons why we've had no growth, but the reality is we've had no growth. If you go look on the internet, it's very simple. Just Google uh property tax rates by county. What you come up with are several hits. is a Forbes article that lists property tax rates by county and there are a

099few others but at the end of the day there are many ways to measure this. Westchester County has highest property taxes in the country. Westchester County, New York, they pay the most property taxes. Uh Camden County, New Jersey pays the highest rate. Pay County pays the highest percentage of income. We take an average person in P County, average home, their property taxes, and we pay 9% income in property taxes and it is the highest in the entire United States. um which I think is you know and and and people feel that um we seem to continue to increase school taxes uh at a higher rate than any of the other taxes in West Milford. And just for example, in 2001 we increased school taxes the school portion of property tax 5.87% % 2002 7%. 2003

1006.7% 2004 3.8%. 2005 6.8% 2006 4.9% 2007 4.9% 2008 4.2% 2009 2% 2010 3.9% 2011 2.8% 2012 1.8 of course then the government limited that and now we're increasing taxes by 2% which still seems like a lot but at least it's not higher than that. That is troubling for many reasons. One, no population growth, no growth in the number of raidables in West Milford. decline in enrollment a lot, 25%. And the school property taxes just keep going up. It seems to me that the reason that they're going up 2% this year is because that's the most we could raise. I have to wonder if the law said 3%, would we raise it by 3%. If it said 1%, would we raise it by 1%. Now, it's a tough situation. None of us wanted to create

101this. And I compare it, if you will, to New York City when, as New York was growing, they set aside the land in Central Park and said, "That's going to be the park for everybody." It was a real good idea. And West Melford is kind of the park for New Jersey. They set this aside, said you can't grow. And the difference is they told us we have to pay for all the upkeep in New Jerseys park. So it' be if like if they'd left 10 homes in Central Park and said you can still live there, but you got to pay for everything. So we got kind of a raw deal. I think there was supposed to be money in the high tax compensate for our lack of growth in the law, but there's no money

102there. We don't get it. So, we got to bear the burden of this. Um, in talking to people, taxpayers around town, some of these are sad stories. One of my neighbors is in his mid 80s. He's lived in West Milford for, I believe, 25 years, retired from IBM, and he lives in a house that's 900t. He thought when he retired that, you know, he was going to be comfortable. He that out and now he's at the point because of his property tax increase he's got to move in his mid80s he's got to move it's just a sad situation. Um I know another family in town who lived here all of their lives and they'd like to give their home to their kids and their kids have said we can't take it because we can't afford

103the property tax. I don't know what they're going to do with it, but I do know that taxpayers in West Mil are weary of the constant tax. I think we've got to look at ways that we can help with that. And there's no question we've got to do a better job to meet the challenges of the next century, science, math, education, engineering training. Um, And we got to do a better job with with our kids. Education is the key to their future. Their ability to make more money depends on how well we educate them. That's a real conundrum. In the current case, one of the things that strikes me is that we've got quite a few capital costs and we're putting the capital cost operating budget as a homeowner. Um, now I know there are

104people in Ridgewood or wherever in New Jersey that when they need a new car, they just plop down cash and buy a new car. I'm not one of those people. If I need to spend money on an asset that I'm going to use over some period of time, I got to take a loan. When I had to repair a roof, put in two new heaters in a home, I had to take a loan. Can't pay for that with cash. Well, I'm recommended and I would like to make an amendment to the motion um that I would like to look at taking all of the capital items that we can removing them from the operating budget operating expenses and putting them in capital. Now, I kind of looked at this um remember I've asked about this

105several times. We've got a payment in 2015 of on the bond 2016 525 2017 398. We already know that we have to ask for money to repair the roofs in two of our schools. This is unacceptable. There's just no other way to put it. We can't send our kids to schools that the weather coming in on them and raining on them. So, we're going to have to ask for that money either way. So, we need a motion. I'm trying to make this motion. I would I'm amending the motion. He's making a motion to amend. I want to remove from this budget um the capital items that we can and add them to a capital budget for which we're going to look for bonds. And my recommendation way to look at this is that we pay

106off the existing bonds early. We bond over I believe we can do and I looked at MACS and various accounting methods. We can do this over 15 years or 20 years. What we can wind up doing by doing this is in fact it's it's effectively a refinance just like a homeowner would do a ref. All right, we extend the period on on what we've already got to include the additional items and I believe that our capital expense will be about the same or go down and we will remove the capital items from the budget so that we don't have to tax. Okay. One thing I think that you need to recognize is that the budget we've adjusted the budget by 2% tax but legally we're allowed to go higher than that. Last year we left

107$659,372 on the table. We could have increased our by that amount of money last year. That's statuto adjustments that were allowed. This year we have $718,239 in our bank cap that we can increase our budget. We're not asking for that. I think that we're being the administration is being cognizant of the concerns that you have. We're concerned about the taxpayers and we're doing what we can to maintain quality programs as a minimum cost and impact of the taxpayer regarding your request to remove the capital item from the budget. Unfortunately, and I explained this to you this afternoon, we don't have the same latitude that the municipality has. We just can't go out the mall. The only time that we can go, we have four times a year, five times a year that we can go

108out. That's it. We have to go by public referendum. So if we remove all the capital items and roll it into one referendum, we're not going to get anything done for at least another year, maybe two. There's still 2.5 in the excess capital reserve account. So you can get them started, but that you can't start. We already have that money slated for those accounts. Are you talking about the debt service? What we have that money set aside to do those capital projects that are in there? Didn't you just say that you wanted that removed? The capital spending should be removed from the operating budget become capital spending that we use the excess capital reserve to initiate. We go past the voters. I can tell you if we if we now ask them for 2% increase

109or or just don't ask them slap it on them and then go ask them for the money to fix these roofs. You can't I can remove the capital items from the budget, but then you can't do anything with those things until after you have a successful bond referendum. The first time we can do that is November, September, September. There's there's five times a year that you can do it. September, right? September is the first time. I'm not sure if the bond council get everything up in time by September. We have to start working on April in order to have a vote on April September 29th. Yeah. It would probably not be till December, the next day of the election campaign. My my concern with that too is the fact that um Okay. So, we stay

110flat and then you put the referendum out there and it doesn't pass. And the $2 million that's excess surplus has to go to support the budget. And if you're not using it for capital, you're using it for program. And then if you don't have $2 million next year to support program, you have to cut $2 million out of your program. So this budget spends the entire 2.5 million excess surplus. I don't think it does. Yes, it does. It's a revenue. It's supporting the it's supporting the information that's in that budget document. So that $2.5 million is a revenue source to support all of the items that are included in that budget, including all of your capital expenditures. It's easier. So if we do that at the end of this, you're saying we're going to have

111zero excess surplus. I have to put 2 million $6,000 that was audited excess surplus in here. It has to go in the budget. And if we do that to support program as opposed to capital expenditures, then what we're going to do is next year if I don't have $2 million to support the program, I'm going to have to cut either raise taxes because then I'll have over $2 million in bank or I'm going to have to cut$2 million program. So, you're saying that the 53 million without the increase will not support the operating budget without the capital improvements. The 53 million will, but you're going to be removing all of your capital expenditures and then that $2 million is going to support program. If you take out all your capital costs, You're going to be

112supporting programs. You have to spend. We have to spend. It has to support the budget. It's required. It's a reserve that has to support the budget. How do we get it back then? 2 million back every year. So, we're we're saying zero at the end of this. We have surplus at the end of the school year by not spending out the budget. by appropriating money for gas and electric and then if you have a mild winter, you don't spend it or you you budget money for gasoline and diesel fuel and then the prices go down and you're going to have excess money and all that excess money drops out during the audit on June 30th and that's what you have that reserve to go forward into the next budget cycle. Well, yeah, we're getting you

113and I can discuss this off off outside of this meeting. What I'm trying to say is that I believe we can have all of the operating spending that we want everything in here, all the programs. We think we're going to have to go bond for the roofs anyhow. Let's take what what we can't include out of the operating budget without a tax increase and add it into the bond issue and also call the existing bond so that the effective bond payment over the next 15 to 20 years will not increase at all. I believe we can have it all doing it that way without increasing tax. You're you're saying you're betting on a bond passing voted on too. You're also got a 5050 chance of a bond failing. So you got to deal think about

114those consequences too. I think you got a 100% chance if you increase their taxes by 2%. M we're going to have leaky roof. We're fast approaching 9:45. Madam President, I'd like to make a motion to go into executive session at 10 p.m. All in favor? I any go into executive session at 10 o'clock. Mr. Mr. President, I request that we call the question and vote on this amendment, please. And let's move this train down the track if you please. Yeah. Right now pending is a motion to amend the budget resolution to remove the capital items from the operating budget and then place them into reserve. So the only question I have if that passes Barbara would you have the time to do that before the required timeline is submitted? I have to do it this

115week. Okay. Well, that's the pending motion. So this is not to approve the budget. It's just to approve the amendment of the resolution. Would it be better? I'm sorry. Would it be better to to go with this with the 2% and then in our meeting sit down and trim this down? We have April 28. Okay. This is a vote on the amendment to remove the capital items from Mr. Bab. No. Mr. Bailey, no. Mr. Drew, yes. Mr. Yes. Mrs. No. Mr. O'Brien. No. Mrs. No. Okay. So, there is a pending motion still to pass resolution number one. Correct. You need a second on that? No, it's already pending. Mr. Bailey, Mr. President, I asked that question, please, and have a vote on it. All right. We just voted on the amended. We know that. Okay.

116So, now vote on the original vote. Correct. Joe was just explaining that it's on the floor. We have a first and a second. And now we're going to do Mr. Ros. Thank you, Joe. Now, I respectfully request the call of the question, please. Mrs. Yes. Mr. Bailey. Yes. Mr. Drew. No. Mr. No. Mr. Yes. Mob O'Brien. Yes. Mr. Schulz. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Drew. Mr. Belly, would you like to take up on budget and finance? Oh, thank you, Steve. I'd like to move item number two under budget and finance. Please second. Any discussion? Mr. is there any reason why we I think the company was Johnson communications that we used since they know our system so well and built it. Why would we want to go this with this other you know when we submitted

117the 470 for the funding we got propos we had to accept proposals from the companies that were interested Johnston communication was companies but it was also a lot more so did his due diligence he interviewed and walked buildings with a number of organizations and um and everything was vetted. Um the company that we have here BTS was going to do the most for um money and the fact that we are looking to go with access points um which is a subsidiary of Cisco um and they're giving the special deal of you buy one year license and you get five years for the same price um was Any other questions? Discussion. Mrs. Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Drew. Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. B. Yes. Mine. Yes. Mr. Schwz. Mrs. Would you mind moving action please? Yes. Under

118education item number one. Second. Any discussion? Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Yes. M. Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Schulz. Yes. Mr. Yes. And item number two will be put on after executive session. Thank you, Mrs. O'Brien. Personnel. Yes. I have one item this evening I would like to move and present to you this evening. Second. Any discussion? Yes, Mr. Yes, Mr. Yes, Missy. Yes, Mr. Yes. Mr. Bailey. Yes. Mr. Yes. Thank you. Mrs. Would you mind going over education next week's agenda? Um, yes. Under education, there are four items to consider for next week's meeting. Does anybody have any questions at this time regarding those items under education? How about um budget and finance? Well, as spread before my colleagues, you can see at the next board of education meeting next Tuesday, March 24th, there'll be a

119full docket of budget and finance items for our consideration and approval as we continue to work hard to move the West Mford Township School District forward. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions with regards to the items listed under budget and finance at this time? Seeing none, let's move to Mrs. O'Brien and personnel student affairs, please. Thank you, Mrs. Schultz. The following items, the following 13 items will be presented for anticipated approval at the regular meeting of March 24th, 2015. Anybody have any discussion or questions regarding none policy? Next week policy will be presenting one item for approval. Any questions with regards to that? Okay, moving on to old business. Not a decision, but we would like to look at that. We're done with the budget. We still have some on anybody else. Seeing none,

120like to close old business. Need a second. Second. All in favor? I Any opposed? Okay, let's move on to new business. Mr. Booty, I would like our executive session um down in the back room where it used to be. We're gonna do that. Okay. All right. I just wanted to make sure we got people in the audience instead of sending them out the hallway with no chairs. Thank you. Anybody else in business? Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Petitions and requests. Petitioners who have requested to speak prior to the meeting will be first with five minutes for each petitioner for a period of 30 minutes and then time permitting. Other petitions and requests limited to five minutes per petitioner will be allowed until the 30 minute period transpires. All speakers are asked to give

121their full name, spell their last name, and provide their address. Speakers may not use names of students during petitions and requests. Anybody like to come up and speak at this time? Seeing none, move to close petition and request. Second. All in favor? Any opposed? Somebody like to read the executive session statement? Sure. It at 9:52 p.m. I'd like to make a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing negotiation. Student matters personnel hips. The student the superintendent search matters of attorney. We will be coming back for taking action. Um but all in favor? Any opposed? Thank you very much.