001board member Nubia dwell Wilson here board member Regina eert here board member bill gford here board member Abal capaa board I think I'm here yep I'm here okay there you go board member will Meyer here and board member Shaina saki Gable here okay please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance the United States of America the Republic for IT stand okay Mr Bing would you like to announce the next section sorry I have to do the notice first please take notice that adequate notice of this meeting has been provided in the following manner that written notice was sent from the office of Secretary of the board at 2:30 p.m. on January 3rd 2025 that said notice was sent via email to Maplewood and South orang Township clerks and the editors of the news records Star Ledger
002tap into Soma and Village Green okay Mr Bing now you're up evening everyone uh we always like to shout out our wonderful students uh we've got two great ones tonight uh both dilia balen students um oops I want to call up William and Eliza [Music] William really loves his creativity his artwork oh cool wow H MH somethingis and she extremely [Music] so their work was chosen to be displayed at uh NJ PAC New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark uh a heck of an honor so if we can give them one solid round the car thank you both for coming tonight all right ready playing children of San no she said it's all you then as you can see and we'll give you a little more detail once they're set up we have the Columbia
003High School chamber one Ensemble uh preparing for a performance [Music] want me [Music] anything so everyone they are going to be playing a piece entitled record which was written by African-American Jazz tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson when he was around 14 or 15 years old Henderson broke onto the Jazz scene in the 1960s and played with notable historical Jazz Legends Legends such as Forest silver and Herby Hancock you want one more yeah one more thing about so um thank you for having us this actually um we did a little switch up it's not the chamber WIS this is um I'm G call it Jackson humor and his combo The Children of Sanchez which if you know anything about jazz dublan Han that whole meaning so um we just had our our our Jazz Su concert last
004Thursday actually week from tonight at soac um and this is all Jackson pelo is playing tener M playing keyboards uh Zoe Hansen playing Basse and Alex Harlock on percussion and so on tret this it was all Jackson doing he did all Arrangement uh they did a five chart set during the uh during the concert this is their was their open record um and uh I'm going to shut up and take it take it away Jackson right for for that's is I thank you everyone one more round of applause the hardest thing today was Alex trying to figure out but I told me you can't bring the entire drum kit he spent the entire day trying to figure out how to make this all work so thank you all for having us we appreciate you so
005much [Music] thank you again for that great performance yeah so now I'd like to make a motion to enter into executive session at 6:50 p.m. to discuss a attorney client matters Personnel negotiations and hibs the length of the executive session is estimated to be 75 minutes after which the public meeting of the board shall reconvene and proceed with business where formal action will be taken may I have a second okay thank you board member eert all in favor great e e e for joining us tonight um I'd like to make a motion to approve the prior board meeting minutes on December 18th 2024 the Rutter's implementation meeting on January 2nd oh no excuse me that was the ruer implementation meeting and then January 2nd 2025 reorg meeting and the January 30th 2025 exec session and
006regular meeting do I have a second thank you second Gable all in favor please raise your hand great minutes have been approved and now we will have student update from Oliver thank you first we want to recognize some people uh want to say congratulations to CHS senior Katie Mark and Junior svi roosi who have been chosen among several working artists to have their work displayed at the Piero Gallery in their black art unveiled exhibition along with art teacher Mr Grayson great work uh many talented students enter the Young Writers USA national competition this fall crafting short spooky stories just in time for Halloween uh we're happy that 92 students were selected for publication a record for our district and we want to say congratulations to our students and staff on this accomplishment um congratulations to
007miss Karissa Handler on being selected as the Essex County school counselor of the Year miss Handler has been a dedicated advocate for students securing achieve Foundation grants to fund college visits for eof eligible students organizing the perseverance breakfast to honor seniors and advocating for mental health and multilingual student support she plays a key role in senior recognition night and co- advises the CHS yearbook increasing their book sales by nearly 50% congratulations to miss Handler and finally congratulations to the guild script Columbia High School student literary and art magazine for receiving a realm first class distinction from the National Council of teachers of English placing it among 125 top rated student Publications out of over 400 entries from schools in 46 States and five countries this award recognizes Guild scripts excellence in showcasing student poetry Pros
008art and more and celebrates the creative expression and dedication of Columbia's young authors and artists um and then uh I hope everyone's doing well this evening there have been several successes at the high school level recently but also challenges that we're still working through um the AP fair and other scheduling events have been a great help for students planning their courses for next year and I would like to thank the counseling department for organizing these as well as the AP teachers who took their time to create video previews for students interested in taking AP classes uh these are important steps toward providing classes which are open to all and which allow students to perform at their best however many students have expressed frustration at the removal of courses from the catalog for next year and
009hope to receive uh more detailed explanation for the choices made by administrators on another note there's still room for improvement in ensuring that the schools and environment where all students feel safe and Ace and I have spoken to principal Sanchez and director of school and Community safety Mr valz on resolving security issues inside of the school while maintaining the privacy of students security protocols have been enforced with the new ID scanners put into place at the entrances to Colombia and we will continue to monitor how this enforcement evolves over the remainder of the year uh AC and I are also working on formulating a comprehensive midor survey for all Columbia students that should release next week and I'm also excited to have more conversations with the younger students of the district as uh we'll see
010the great things that they're capable of doing to improve our schools with their inovative designs those are all my remarks for tonight thank you yeah I have wait can you uh ol can you give us a little bit more details about the survey what you're asking students and then we can go to D's question um yeah so uh it's it's going to be a survey which um gets opinions both on a quantitative level and qualitative and on a variety of topics both academic and more um social levels uh just so that we can uh see we'll we'll really see how we can use this data but just to give us some more goals for the future and see how we can best help our students thank you that's great thank you look forward to the
011results of that and then board member Brown yeah hi thank you I was just curious if you had um for the safety concerns if there were any specific concerns but about I guess is it about entry if you're not a student or yeah I mean um yeah so yeah the entry but then also um within the school I know we've talked to uh the the director of safety and also some board members about uh maintaining you know safety inside of the bathrooms and other you know areas uh where we feel students are a little more vulnerable and making sure um that you know violence and any uh inappropriate activities are kept to a minimum okay thank you and next we'll have superintendent update thank you [Music] thank you sir we just want to take a
012couple minutes to go over our goal progress now that it's February um and this will be posted on our our website uh next week I do want to review all the goals very quickly as a reminder so we all know where we're moving this year uh number one which is our power goal will prepare our students for College and Career through the design of learning experiences that will prepare them to become the leaders designers and problem solvers and innovators goal number two we will nurture responsible fulfilled and successful Global Citizens through developing an awareness of their interconnectedness with the world and learning skills that can help them contribute to change our goal number three we will align all operations Strategic Staffing accountability and datadriven decision-making resources differentiated and governance policies and pro procedures with a
013focus on climate culture to effectively meet the needs of Staff schools and community and goal number four we will authentically engage families and community in supporting schools and students through Community immersion co-creation of solutions recognition of different groups Community Based and Beyond appreciation of historical knowledge and recognition of community efforts uh as you will note if when you pull it up online you will see a coding system that coding system is a colored coding system with red being work not started yet orange being planning stages yellow being pilot or early implementation of initiative uh green being full implementation and then your last would be full implementation and success metrics attained each one of our goals has metrics attached to it uh that is a conversation we had with our board to make sure we had
014uh goals that could be met and could be measured simple uh example of that would be 50% of the sixth grade curriculum will be planned for curriculum writing in spring and summer another example may be by two by 2025 75% of all schools will have a comprehensive multi-tiered system of support that equitably supports all students including those at risk academically students needing a language acquisition and enrichment based upon serving a community of diverse cultural and social economic needs so we put a numerical value for every goal uh and we've been updating the board on that regularly we have an open Google sheet uh for all board members uh that Google sheet will now be posted PDF form on our website uh moving forward thank you Keith uh very quickly as well we want to just
015talk briefly about our freshman Academy proposal uh at CHS as you all know um currently we have a Freshman Academy um we are we've been planning for about six months now to actually make it a best practice uh Freshman Academy based upon other models around the area um this includes really focusing on students social emotional Wellness uh making it a smaller learning community and by smaller Learning Community I mean separate entrance uh their own teachers uh and really lessening uh the for those of you who have been in the high school it is a large experience uh so we're trying to create small learning communities moving moving forward and that Freshman Academy will be our first so we're also looking to the Future when we're talking about uh the high school we're looking at various
016um visions currently one of those as I noted uh is the small Learning Community Vision meaning we have a Freshman Academy we may have an Arts Academy we may have a STEM academy uh that really helps kids individualize their goals and and what they want from their future uh for us I think tied into that is bringing back Career and Technical education into the district uh which for those you don't know that could be work-based learning where kids are getting real life experience their senior year uh it could be um apprenticeships it could be acquiring industry certifications um it could be acquiring a state CTE certification it could be acquiring a bilingual seal creating different Pathways for different students because as our population diversifies um not only culturally ethnically uh neurod divergently um physically diversity
017is probably our biggest challenge moving forward as Educators we want to make sure we're meeting every student where they are and for us that's creating a multitude of Pathways uh that students can really relate to uh and that are relevant to them uh so by the time they get to their Junior and Senior year they're good consumers meaning they're choosing what they want to do and by the time they graduate we're going to be moving forward with a diploma plus initiative uh we we strongly believe that just getting a diploma uh is a low bar for Columbia High School right so we want to hire that bar for our students we provide different opportunities that whether that that's uh as I noted a CT certification whether that's industry certification whether that's graduating with 15 college
018credits whether that's graduating with 30 college credits an associates degree uh work-based learning uh a seal from the state uh or an AP coursework but we want to make sure that kids uh are going down differentiate paths uh because we always talk about relevance of educ of Education right and relevance of education is we're not talking about the amount of content someone's get someone gets right so I can get that content with one finger on Google I can get any content I want it's really meeting kids where they are trying to understand as Oliver just noted what their needs what their expectations are what their interests are trying to amplify those voices and then work that into our curriculum uh so we're really making the learning relevant uh we've been working with Mr Sanchez on
019this for quite some time when you walk into the high school you will see on the left and the right uh the portrait of graduate work that was done in this District about two years ago um very quickly on that uh portrait of graduate work is really bringing a community together to figure out what qualities do you want your seniors leaving your high school with so about two year two and a half years ago you you all landed on the following uh social justice and inclusion perseverance empathy collab collaboration adaptability problem solving and global citizenship uh so we're really going to start moving those indicators into the Forefront of our work uh to really guide these Pathways we're creating and to really work closely with our Columbia High School teachers in regards to what that
020high school should look like and right now we're looking at Bell schedules uh we're forming a committee and we're looking at 262 7 uh what should the bell schedule look like so all teachers are comfortable teaching uh their content uh area uh one of the biggest things I heard speaking with teachers since I've been in here is the bell schedule so we're forming a committee and that they're going to look at different Bell schedules and we'll look to make some changes in 26 uh 27 um you know I think many districts have to go beyond uh the standards and as I noted really Embrace Career and Technical education and work-based learning um uh as I noted Embrace AP Embrace dual credit um what I have found when I speak to our teachers is that they're
021really hungrier than ever to go above and beyond standardized tests right standardized test is one one method um I don't believe they're sufficient to measure a child um I I think providing students the opportunity to solve complex problems to work collaboratively to solve real life problems that affect this community uh are ways to really see how a student is growing um which I believe that's the direction the state is moving in which is a portfolio based uh movement they'll still take their state assessments however they'll also look at personal portfolios for students moving forward um I think right now the two themes I'm hearing when we walk across uh Columbia High School is rigor and relevance right our Focus really needs to be around rigor and relevance so for us that's going to drive our
022work moving forward we're going to ensure that that work is collaborative um and and really work to make that high school one of the best uh in Essex County uh smaller things that we're doing right now as noted uh the committee for bell schedule we're running some action research projects in the school plan study doe act uh and we're really focusing on collecting ideas for what small learning communities may look like uh at Columbia High School so we're we're excited [Music] hey Keith can you uh play uh the fashion show video uh for those you who did not have the opportunity to attend that was [Music] on Fridays two two Fridays ago two Fridays ago uh the wonderful Marsha Hicks coordinated all through the Mac um it was quite amazing uh and she does it
023every year and this is just one of the things that she does on a regular basis uh with her students this was in collaboration with Macy's uh so it was a wonderful experience talking to the students they loved it we talked about real world application and applying knowledge this is a perf example of [Music] that hello CHS I'm aror and I'm GI and this is Columbia K news each week during February we're bringing you a segment in honor of Black History Month this week we offer up some highlights of last week's futurism Fashion Show is a blend of office and Future 2000 from sparkling suits to Unique dresses next up is business futurism [Music] everything [Music] everything next up is afro [Music] futurism you in the renissance to save you myself time for me to
024be a man you said I don't need to be safe oh more can I provide with speaking Dan you don't need me grasping on the air hold off life take another step another fight [Music] everything [Music] sound [Music] everything everything [Music] Friday of course is Valentine's Day so to get loving mood we're yeah big shout out to Marsha Hicks and and the students just wonderful job uh real quick before we go into a quick budget up update with Amani uh I did want to note that today uh we receed news from the New Jersey Department of Education that our state aid uh would be around 69 ,000 for the 25 uh 26 school year um increase increase Sor no not total I'm sorry increase not total uh though not a large number we are fortunate
025not to have our Aid reduced uh like many districts have um we currently sit at an estimated $4 million shortfall um I do want to read quickly uh my testimony at New Jersey Department of about two or three months ago 85 districts went down to talk about the state aid formula and the issues impacting their District uh good afternoon my name is Jason Bing and I serve as the proud superintendent of schools for South Orange map wood supporting 6,500 school students in Essex County uh first uh we must address an issue of segregation in our schools New Jersey is one of the most segregated States for education and obviously that is unacceptable we need to incentivize districts to div to to uh diversify fostering integrated classrooms that promote Equity academic success and social growth for
026all students this is not just a legal obligation is also a moral imperative about 10 of the districts including ourselves were making the suggestion of Grants offered by the state for those districts that are looking to diversify as we have uh and really offering uh to support that and put their money where their mouths are in regards to making sure our dist our states are non are desegregated um it was us it was Newark it was Patterson you had about uh 15 districts from down south all giving the same message we're doing this work uh we're pushing our own money into it we really should be incentivized by the state uh and support it uh second uh funding instability is one of the greatest challenges for our schools year-to-year volatility makes planning nearly impossible uh
027that's why we're advocating for the establishment of ceilings and floors for funding ensuring districts receive at least 2% increase annually to stabilize resources and Safeguard student successes uh that was a common theme amongst all 85 districts and for those you who did see the latest corresponds the state did take part of that recommendation um to heart and they created a floor telling districts uh last Friday that they would not be reduced more than 3% um if you're familiar with creating School budgets it is an EB and flow you have no idea what state aid you're going to get every year making it extremely difficult uh to do a budget uh and that was one of the big requests from every school district down there uh also to meet Rising costs we must also consider raising
028the property tax caps from 2 to 4% this change would allow districts to generate critical Revenue without requiring public votes that often lead to delays or Cuts in essential Services the big message there being it should match really cost a living increase uh state aid has not matched inflation in over 15 years in the State uh which just causes turmoil uh around budget time additionally we need to improve the way we calculate the local fair share instead of relying on a single-ear snapshot of property values we should use a rolling average to ensure stability and fairness we must also exclude the top 1% of incomes and shift to using medium income rather than aggregate income creating a system that reflects the economic reality of most residents schools also need more time to develop their budgets
029after the governor's annual address Rush timelines lead to inefficiencies and extending this period will ensure thoughtful planning that aligns with updated funding levels and finally we must work towards fully funding extraordinary Aid which supports students with the greatest need the increase in neurode Divergent Learners is a wonderful opportunity for school districts to develop the innovators of Tomorrow it should not be the overwhelming challenge it is today due to the lack of state of funding right now it's only funded a little over 70% of the formula leaving to many children behind we must also set more realistic ad adequacy spending targets that reflect the true cost of providing the high quality education our students deserve uh we all know that education is a great equalizer by addressing these issues diversity funding stability and fair calculations we
030can create a system that gives every student a chance to succeed we need to fight for a better future for our children our schools and our state I know this actually is probably a good segue into Mr Moody's update here however I did just want to slow down a little bit because I think we moved very quickly through a lot of that stuff and so for district goals um as you know our committee notes and part of I mean really the main role of the committee is also to oversee District goal progress and updates and so the committee notes on the website should have sufficient information on where um you know the district is progressing and all the work that's going into it um I don't know exactly what everybody's readouts will be tonight but
031my assumption is that they will also touch on some more um detailed um detailed information um I think in terms of all of the you know kind of like the CHS Division I think that was really helpful I know that as a board we've all talked about that I think maybe once we get past budget season we can have a more robust um presentation around that because it it's it's a lot to it's exciting to really to hear but it's also a lot to digest and really understanding kind of one the the the thought process the data all the planning that is going into it over the next you know two to five years would be really helpful thank you thank you board member eert um uh actually Keith if you could throw back up
032uh the two slides for superintendent Bing to cover slide seven I think you can start okay okay we want to give a quick update on the budget uh and our work so far as I previously we just received increase of about $619,000 uh for our budget uh which was a great relief um as I noted we all received the letter uh last Friday noting that there's a good possibility that you're be losing up to 3% uh of your state aid um in our current budget we did only budget for about 70% of our title funds as directed by the state um we also did the same in regards to Ida funding for our special education services again uh directed by the state to do so uh which obviously is about a 30% reduction um additionally
033and you'll see how as you move forward go ahead Keith our budget calendar that is on our website currently obviously you've all know the headlines uh Newsweek time whatever you read um you're looking at various cuts across school districts and in some people's opinion the dismantling of public education um so it's been a challenging last few months uh that has really brought out the collaboration between the board uh Administration schools uh our community uh looking for not only solutions for the now problems but solutions for a year from now two years from now three years from now our goal is try to to create some Financial stability moving forward over the next three to five years as noted that was the uh our testimony that I just read go ahead Kei go ahead ke so
034let's take a look at the 2024 25 budget which obviously is developed in in 2023 24 um in order to balance the 24 and 25 budget that were currently in the district implemented 28 reductions in forces and made 35% cuts across all budget lines except for special services the same process was utilized for the 2023 and 24 uh development uh cutting 25% cuts across all budget lines except for special services uh the capital res was also tapped to fund specific projects in 2425 about 4.2 billion million dollar sorry million dollars in total capital reserve is a District's accumulate savings which is also kept by the state you just can't run up that number it is Capp by the state so you have a limited amount uh to take from also the maintenance Reserve was also
035tapped to fund specific projects in 2024 25 about 1.5 million of that uh was taken this is straight out of the budget presentation uh from last year uh prior to Mr Moody prior to myself um a working budget shortfall due to unexpected increases in health benefits of 1.25 million special education of 2.25 million over budget and out of District transportation uh of over $500,000 above budget uh with the implementation of thoughtful measures such as a halt on discretionary spending um we are confident that we can cover the four to five million needed for the rest of the year uh it will be necessary to utilize 1 million for the next year's unassigned fund balance so that was from last year's budget presentation good Lu you uh looking forward to the 25 26 budget presentation some
036challenges that we are currently uh facing uh Rising costs uh we were told from the we to expect a 177% increase in health benefits and a 27% rise in energy costs um we're also obviously everybody in this room is aware of the impact of inflation uh it also hits school districts uh special education funding Gap extraordinary Aid state aid covers only about 70% of costs the state needs to fund that up to 100% currently our local dollars are picking up that 30 plus per. uh trans Transportation deficit State funding falls short by about 30% in regards to funding that complete formula so again they're funding around 69 to 70% of that formula leaving local districts to pick up about 30% of that cost uh we're going into a new teacher contract also a new administrator
037contract over the next year or so uh facility improvements we've talked about it we're at the point now where we have to have essential maintenance and essential upgrades to ensure that our schools are safe for students uh state aid as noted we got about a $600,000 increase from for 2526 title funds uh and Ida as noted we are only told to budget up to 70% that is a 30% reduction on both uh we also decided to uh make the move to freeze all discretionary funding that happened in January we also did a hiring free starting in January uh as well um as noted in the previous slide um looking at our reserves about 4.2 million was was removed from Capital uh for use in 2425 and 1.5 million removed from maintenance Reserve to be used
038in 2425 I'll pass it on to Mr Moody he could really talk about the process that we've been part of uh and really working uh extremely hard at over over the last month or so thank you than you superintendent Bing um and I I definitely want to take the opportunity to thank both yourself and the full board uh and broadly the district leadership uh this is my second month uh in the role but I tell you uh uh you spoke about challenges and challenges being the greatest opportunity I'm a firm believer in that uh and you know as we started our process uh and that being myself as business administrator and my assistant business ad administrator uh you know we came into a situation where uh we had a a great deal of challenge ahead
039of us because uh the district had come through a pretty difficult time in the prior year and what we were finding and what we found was that there wasn't a tremendous amount of clarity left into the methodology going into the budget construction um in the 23 for the 2425 year that said uh again uh with great challenge comes great opportunity we actually joined at a time where we were in the throws of the the audit of the prior fiscal year so we were able to get shoulder-to-shoulder with our Auditors who we value uh tremendously and uh really develop some deep in insights into the line by line circumstances associated with the prior Year's budget um and as such you know we need to do that to because essentially the the process ahead of us was
040to rebuild the 2425 budget within the 2425 fiscal year and when I say rebuild that means uh really discover all of the individual drivers and what was planned and what was thought out uh in making in decisionmaking around setting up the uh the 2425 budget uh so that was a pretty daunting Prospect to go into it was a became a parallel process where we're doing it for the purpose of making certain that we're properly administering the budget for the 2425 year but also to gain Discovery in terms of how we're planning for the 25 26 year so we had to engage in that uh very deep action there um and in joining the district uh I was very vocal about uh being certain to have the necessary support the necessary resources across the business office
041for the purpose of of uh really approaching this very daunting Challenge in a very um streamlined way and in a short time frame you know uh typically a District's budget the board uh is setting priorities throughout July and August and into September by October uh a really granular detailed look is taking place uh at the the Staffing and payroll and and all of those matters and then uh in November and December it's really the process of uh building out the first cut at the budget but uh we were called upon to uh in a very short an time frame to do a tremendous amount of discovery about the 2425 budget and the drivers there and uh you know with the interest and then verification of all account line use across our chart of accounts uh
042and so essentially it was a rebuild of the budget to gain Clarity on how to project forward and what were needs that and and how to establish priorities around needs so um with us being new uh we did engage in a ground Round Up budget build uh and started a really broadspectrum process of having conversations with principls department heads uh the superintendent uh you know and as well as you know District leadership so in December and January uh we we we very intentionally engage in that process school by School uh Department by department and understanding what their needs were understanding what their projected uh you know uh curriculums were what their projected enrollments were what their building needs were uh and and then teeing that up with departments and optimizing the uh the resource allocation
043it's it's an ongoing process but it's one that has been very intentionally approached from a dialogue standpoint and a feedback loop standpoint uh to gain additional Clarity on on needs and we had to establish a projection rationale and substantiate that rationale for each line and that's what what we've been doing and aligning that with District priorities that we're we're called upon to go to the board to present to us and to verify and validate each of uh our our our sets of rationale for projections and decision making on the basis of are they meeting the district's goals and priorities and that's what has taken place over December and January here we are in February uh in February we knew from uh feedback from the prior year that this particular budget process required a tremendous amount
044of back and forth communication uh revisiting of goals and priorities and engaging around all the constituencies in the district uh within the district from a teaching staff standpoint a as well as within the community so uh our superintendent led us to very thoughtfully plan out a a budget advisory committee so we're in the throws of that process now where we're educating folks around the the community as to what all goes into the sets of decisions that are before us here uh sometimes folks can think of it as a a zero sum game for every winner there's a loser the reality is we much like our our board has this disposition uh and District leadership we also have the disposition of thinking about this process through a multi-year lens we have to widen our lens as
045fiscal stewards of the resources for for this District we're called upon to think back several years 3 to five years and think think forward 3 to 5 years we need to be about the business through our fund balances and our maintenance reserves and our Capital reserves of making certain that the district is in a sustainable place and so that's a large part of our our decision-making and you know when things as we evaluate the priorities it's a revisiting of priority uh versus a cut it's a a timing decision or a funding source decision so we're engaged in that process now and we're getting getting feedback from the budget advisory committee and uh with small group meetings with the board as we proceed along each new set of information we have we're checking in with our
046board members to determine uh whether our decision- making is consistent with the priorities that they've set set for the district and and all the things that they're hearing from the various interactions they have with Comm with the community and then also provide them with the district's rationale for decision making to uh facilitate their conversations we're also meeting with external vendors and and and evaluating contracts and attempting to optimize our resource allocation we're thinking about where can we get get savings where can we make strategic thoughtful decisions based on the Discovery uh that we've just undergone in through the budget I me through the budget and audit process and optimize circumstances so um next slide so essentially having gone through that process up to today we're still in the throws of the process of uh evaluating
047looking at priorities looking at strategic opportunities for savings looking at uh opportunities to perhaps go out for other kinds of Grants or funding sources right and so we're looking at a $4 million gap at the moment but we we have a conviction of across all of the constituencies here to have this budget process be a success and to get to a place where we're providing a balanced budget and avoiding to you know um reductions of force and things of that nature by by really being strategic about how we're deploying resources so we know that based on the macro environment the federal state of affairs and the conditions across the state that we're we'll be looking at lean budgets in fiscal year6 in fiscal year 27 so we're called upon to to really be strategic and
048think about being stewards of the resources of the district for the Long Haul uh and as such you know when I came to the to the district as I mentioned before my interest was in making certain that we had a a well-positioned team to to really do this process in a very rapid manner uh and as I mentioned typically the budget process process begins in July August and begins in Earnest in October however our new team uh H arrived in November and December and as such uh I I made it clear to District leadership and superintendent that to the extent that we could Avail ourselves with any other um you know consulting services with luminary uh experienced uh with multi- Decades of experience um you know a business administrator or financial consult resources we should
049and as such we made a decision to do so by retaining the services of a consultant who's you know a foral former Special Assistant to the commissioner uh is a a well highly regarded ba across the state and we've been able to really dive deep into the details and accelerate our process of uh Discovery and gaining insights from the the information that we pulled together and so that's how we're able to actually be at this part this at this stage of the budget process uh where we are today where we can you know we're we've gathered our state aid numbers and now we're beginning the process of of balancing the budget in Earnest uh beyond that what we also discovered you know upon my arrival is that the district in Prior Administration Empire administration had
050not been using the full capacity of its financial accounting system and as such there were modules that uh have not had not been leveraged and there the it's called systems 3000 is our financial accounting system and also the uh ability to get directly into that system hadn't been widely given around the district to act in an inclusive way throughout the budget process and throughout the the budget decision-making process and we we took that challenge on immediately and uh in 2526 we're going to be using even more of the system 3000 um module but we immediately distributed it out and uh engaged in education across uh the principls and secretaries and department heads around the district to be certain that folks knew that that this was the way in which we would capture their perspectives and
051make adjustments to those perspectives so as such we're leveraging what we have today expanding its use and really empowering our access to Greater detail for the purpose of making more informed decisions more more informed prioritization decisions and the like so that's that's pretty much it as terms of where we are and the uh the budget process continues so you know I do want to emphasize some things that ammani just said and I'll really uh put extra emphasis on the idea that we have an opportunity here where the majority of our senior leadership team is three years or less we have a new assistant business administrator three months or less yeah exactly three months or left for our three months or less for our new business administrator we have a new assistant superintendent of special services
052again four months or left uh or less and a new superintendent going on about seven months so uh when we talk about opportunity you have new eyes that are looking literally at every line item in the budget and bringing things that they've done in the past that have been best practices and effective to make sure we can we can budget uh balance this budget I think some of the really essential things that am man said and I you know I uh appreciate his humility um but I think he understated the fact uh that we had to come in in regards to the 24 and 25 budget and Implement a discovery stage uh where things are what things were uh because as he noted systems 3000 was not noted was not used so you had money
053set aside we had no idea if they were incumbered if they were spent if they were not spent uh we couldn't find POS we did know what monies were spent on uh so that whole Discovery phase was eye openening for us um we then had to really rebuild the 2425 budget while in it and uh as you all know building the plane while flying it isn't the best method um along that rebuild we had to verify every line item every line item in this budget we had to verify uh because it was not in as amanii said our system 3,000 uh we then had to train folks um we want to empower our principles we want to empower our administrative assistance so for the first time ever our principles are doing their own budgets uh
054in the past 10 years an amount was given here this is what you got uh best practice is that building principles develop their own budget because they know what's best for their unique building uh so that took a lot of training with our principles uh while doing all that we had to build the 25 and 26 budget in a very teress time receiving executive orders on a regular basis receiving correspondence from our state and federal government in regards to do not do not expect to get all your title funding do not expect to get all your uh special services funding uh and just go for it take take your budget and go for it uh it has been a collaborative process um it has been a difficult process we have had very strong support by
055every individual up on this dis we have had strong support uh from our schools strong support from our teachers um in regards to hey here's the challenge let's work together uh and make sure that we're not only developing a sound budget for 2526 but this will lead to sound budgets over the next four to five years um we can't continue on a hamster wheel and be in the same place every day every year where we're in $4 million red $9 million in the red we have to look at four or five years out as we're developing the 25 uh 26 budget um we're trying to do this with as much transparency as possible whether that's Community conversations town halls I know many of you are overs surveyed I get it but as noted we are
056new and we're using this information and I do want thank you because our average on these surveys are around 800 responses to 1,200 so we're getting great data uh from our communities and many of our board members who have attended our community conversations of town halls can also attest to the conversations that have been going on there and what we've been bringing back uh to the table in regards uh to our work uh in regards to our next steps um we're really going to start expanding that model that ammani noted which is the uh budget advisory count committee and Council uh where we're working with community members on that BAC currently there's about 35 community members along with our associations along with a couple of our administrators really just looking at our budget we want
057to do the same in regards to other departments uh in in in the district whether that's special services whether that's career uh curriculum and instruction whether that's facilities uh you're going to see a survey coming out very soon around facilities because we have a long range facility plan uh that we're developing and will really guide us over the next 5 years so the more input we can get from everybody the better uh I can tell you we have been directed by this board in regards to closing that $4 million gap uh to look outside the classroom first uh and then look in the classroom and currently we're going line by line by line we just had a town hall around in-class resource support k to five um which I'm happy to say with the news
058we got from the state we will be keeping our model in place for the next school year uh we will be forming a committee as noted a working committee around that to really project out to 26 27 28 29 uh so we can make some really good decisions in supporting our students uh while still being being strong fiscal stewards so I am was extremely happy with the news that uh we did not get reduced so we could uh sustain uh that program and and we're working very hard uh to sustain other very fruitful programming throughout the district and as Mr Moody just noted we are trying to uh keep ourselves from any reductions uh in force so uh our next uh job over the next two weeks is rolling up our sleeves and bringing that
059$4 million gap down uh and uh I'm very confident we could do so absolutely thank you thank you that was great and um normally I would ask the board if they had any questions but I know that we've had a lot of meetings this week on the budget and I also want to be mindful of time because we have some students here and I'd like to make a motion to move up public speak so that our students can come and speak before it's their bedtime so do I have a second thank you board member Callahan um so I know we have Maplewood Middle School students here and are you bringing over the okay all just just students yeah yeah just students the adults can wait okay so uh I don't can see oh uh Teddy
060yeah Teddy Cummings is that the first one yes is he here pull up your presentation thank you um hi board members my name is Theodore Cummings and I'm from I'm a student from Maplewood Middle School and I'm part of the steam tank team a competition where we find Solutions in our community and solve them using elements of science technology engineering and Mathematics uh can you go to the next slide so as I said we are part of the steam tank and and what we do is we observe issues going on in our school and community and we solve them throughout using all different elements uh next slide so when we were when we are walking to school we've noticed chaotic traffic conditions that put the lives of students teachers and drivers at risk um and
061specifically focusing on Maple and Salter Avenue uh there's a lot of different moving pieces going around that creates many hazardous conditions uh next slide one of the big problems that we Face also is a bus that parks in front of the sidewalk and blocks entrance to the school um next slide so recently we conducted a survey of over 300 students and we found that 57.8% of students don't always feel safe on the walk to school or waiting outside the building before entering um with 61% of those students who enter the building on map on the Maple Avenue side which is the seventh grade entrance do not always feel safe um this is a big issue at our school and we have devised many possible solutions to solve this issue uh next slide so that's an
062overhead shot of the maple Maplewood Avenue intersection so the crosswalk that is coming from the school and then onto the Sal onto Salter place right there that's every single day I walk there on the walk to school and there's always something blocking it and it's just dangerous to get there uh next slide so in the front entrance of the school we there's currently a one-way blockade that makes it easier for students to drop off for parents to drop off and get into the school but still it's not although it's only in the front it's also not on the sides which makes it a big issue for SE sixth and seventh grade students next slide so one solution that we have is to add another crossing guard at Maple Avenue and the Salter Place intersection to
063increase the presence of safety officers in the area and make a safer system to direct traffic and direct students on the walk to school this will probably not solve the problem entirely but it makes it safer for everyone uh next slide another solution we have which we're really Weighing on is to create a driving drop off Route across the whole school by creating a one-way barricade around denell Road Bernett and Maple Avenue during the drop off times of 8:00 to 8:10 which is what we survey to be the most the highest time where students feel endangered uh next slide so our idea is to put barriers in the highlighted areas and there is already a barrier currently on Bernett street but if we put it in the other areas it'd be safer for sixth and
064seventh grade drop off uh next slide thank you for viewing our presentation so um when I come to districts I bring a lot of baggage I warned the board about that uh one of those baggages is New Jersey school boards Association steam tank which I've been lucky enough to participate in for over a decade um we brought that into the district we were running late literally asked teachers at the middle school level was anybody interested we had four teachers step up and say yeah this is cool let me do it with my kids two of those teams out of the four made it to the next round um with about two to three weeks worth am I correct preparation yeah two to three weeks of preparation doing it on weekends um it it needed funding
065picked up the phone called achieve they funded it I mean listen this is Project based learning at its best uh the object of the steam take is present a problem in your community and try to solve it uh and getting 50% of your teams to a second round in in steamtank where you have hundreds of schools competing from across the state in this time period and with the support from acheve and the teachers and the principles of those buildings was amazing so we can give a a round of applause for that so is Leila Harrison here yes come on yeah that's it thank you okay so I'm here on behalf of the MMS student body and student council I'm the student council president and I just had like a few things that I wanted to
066say so board members thank you so much for this opportunity to speak I'm here to talk about certain student safety concerns first I would like to thank you all for all the effort you have made for our school the gender neutral bathroom on the second floor the AC units in the auditorium and for the continuation of our creative and Computing design program all these have contributed to the experience and comparability of students at MMS we thank you for that that being said there are a few issues that students have expressed that I felt needed to bring to your attention miss granau our principal let us know that the board will be coming to do inspections there are a few items in the building that we as a studio student body beli should be looked at
067first being the radiators in many of the classrooms this is different from the modern system that we just got installed but the ones that are old in the building consistently rattle which can be distracting towards students when they have to focus in classes there have also been cases of students getting hurt from the high temperatures that the radiators are set at the bathrooms are another issue that people believe are in bad condition and need updating and additional mirrors in the boys bathrooms as well there's also a case of the second floor girls bathroom which according to students who we surveyed has a ceiling that consistently caves in also the locker sizes in condition a quality of the lockers especially the Locking mechanisms are not functioning especially those in the gender neutral lock Lo rooms where
068either the doors aren't present or the locks do not work plus the size of the Lockers in the main hallways Plus in the gender neutral rocker room both of them have sizes that are kind of unmanageable for students who are trying to get their stuff out in a timely manner the water fountains are also um in need of quality control that is another thing that students have talked about there's also the point of sealing tiles that have fallen out sometimes they have fallen out directly in the middle of classes there is a case in the orchestra room when we were having a lesson period a tile fell out of the ceiling so we conducted a survey by the student council for the student body and we found that 20 over 20% of students believe that
069their school is in a condition that affects their learning in a negative way and is need in Improvement many students Express how the issues highlighted earlier negatively affect their school experience in some cases people have been fearful so I was just asking to please consider these queries and please be on the look out for these items when conducting inspections because we want to all come together and make sure that MMS is a comfortable environment for all students thank you so uh so you know um our next step in the long range facility plan is our uh architect will be interviewing students um high school and middle school starting with the student councils okay so you'll be meeting a gentleman named who will be sitting down with you guys and asking for the exact same things
070you just mentioned okay so so we can make it part of our long range facility plan over the next five years thank you so much well done well done okay I have two more students so the next one if he's here James James searo great hello my name is James I am a seventh grade representative for M middle school thank you for letting me come here tonight and speak I'm here tonight to bring your attentions with issues about our faculties first mice there is poop throughout the build the throughout the school uh and teachers and students can see this regularly besides this being a health issue it's just plain gross that's normal second water leaking there's an area in the school where water is dripping from the ceiling this must be from a pipe it
071needs our attention it won't be long before we could have a flood in school if this pipe burst third the paint on the ceiling is falling off um if we could get someone on a ladder to fix this and uh like maybe paint it would be great um this here it seem we have unplanned fire drills this is a problem because if this is a malfunction who knows who said who can say when this will work when we really need it to I appreciate your attention um to these matters thank you so everybody knows we are and the board's aware of it we are doing uh walkthroughs of uh Columbia High School at as well as Maplewood Middle School and South Orange Middle School we have all of our board members signed up so they
072could see some of the things that both of these wonderful students uh are mentioning thank you well done okay um last student is uh roxan roxan are you here okay great thank you at the hello my name is Rock s fotakis and I'm also a seventh grade representative I'm also here to talk about the MMS faculties um thank you for everything you've already done um during the survey that we took um of what kids in our school believe we can do to like improve their learning and the building itself only 3% of kids thought our school is at its like Peak condition um which means there's still a lot to improve um we've already talked about the Mi there's like patches of the school where the ceiling is just like missing um so when it
073rains there is a lot of leaks going on which we we put recycling cans and trash cans underneath it but that won't like hold up for very long um there like are parts of the wall where the wall is like coming detached from like the rest of the building um and in my first period there is there have been they've put in requests for repairs for um various parts of their classroom but none of their requests have been ansed um and lots of teachers have said that this has happened to them where they've requested for parts of their classroom or things they have in their classroom to be repaired and they've just not gotten any response um one in specific um Room 286 has a spot on the floor where it's very soggy and people
074will step on it and it's because of like water in a leak I believe where it's like making the floor cave in and become soggy and like a soft spot on the floor um the boiler in our school goes off and it like clanks and makes noises and also starts fire drills and like has been the cause of many drills that we've been having and it's just not always like reliable like James said like we never know which ones are real or which ones are like just the boiler going off um thank you so I don't want to say this because I'm afraid someone's going to come back and say you told us this um but our our our facilities uh individual thinks they have solved the boiler issue that it was a sensor in
075the new uh HVAC system and they rerouted that so we are hoping that those false alarms will not be an issue anymore um they are at the building during the last one which I think was around uh you guys weren't in the building it was around 11:30 at night um and they did some re-rooting uh of um the HVAC vents so we are hoping and they took out one of the sensors so we're hoping uh that that was the reason why you're were having these false alarms so we think that issue is solved okay thanks for all the public speaks from the students and now we'll have the auditor's presentation yes Mr Moody anything you want to say to yeah I just wanted to um uh please come on come on up John and Rob
076please uh is there another chair for you here you got one there you go so uh I just want to welcome both of you and uh also I want to say it was a pleasure to hear directly from the Middle School Community just before we go into audit uh because uh a lot of what they spoke on is on our agenda to to and I I will touch on that later but welcome John and Rob we've just been through a uh a uh a deep dive audit process and I just again want to articulate uh you know our gratitude for helping us to really put a a a lens on uh what's going on in the district and and draw some insights from that as we move forward first of all thank you for having
077us tonight board members we appreciate it and happy to be here we're going to keep it um fairly brief but we're certainly here to answer any questions that you have again I'm Rob provos I'm the partner on engagement along with me John finina he's the director in engagement uh he's going to briefly touch on the um audit overview and go over some financial highlights and I'm going to go over the auditor management report um just a quick housekeeping with uh timing you know that the state last year started a two-year pilot program with the timelines it was always December 5th before that was November 5th um with the new gasby delays Etc they extended it until January 15th which is a date you guys filed and what finalized on so we're happy to report you
078guys were compliant with issuing with the state guidelines uh and you met the deadline and even on the deadline date there's still I think 33% of school districts that didn't file so we got to think that's probably least that date going forward um with that I'm going to turn over to John and he's going to go over some more information good evening uh good evening everyone thanks for having us um as Rob said we're just going to keep it brief tonight we met with the finance committee a couple of weeks ago kind of took a deep dive into the audit and the numbers so we're kind of just going to give you an overview of what the audit process is and and and how we go about our work um what you get is a
079about a 200 Page report at the end of the audit um what goes into that is hundreds of hours of work on an hour end uh looking at documentation reports requesting information from the district um and again that's on our end and that we don't just get that work it requires a lot of commitment from uh The District staff um so we're very very appreciative of of the the uh the commitment we get from from our clients and especially this year it was a little bit difficult with uh people coming and going so it was uh it was a little bit challenging but uh we we got through it and everything was issued on time just to give you a focus of uh or brief idea of what we do we focus on internal controls
080um which we verify that there's safeguards in place uh proper approvals for transactions proper recording of transactions um and again that's a lot of documentation that the district provides for us um also what we have to do is a what part of our procedures is What's called the single audit that's required as uh due to the level of federal and state spending that the district has which requires us to look at specific grants um and funding sources uh from the federal and state government and do prescribed procedures to make sure that the district is in in compliance with the requirements of those grants this year we tested uh for the federal level we tested the acers program which provides extraordinary Services uh to to certain population and um the national school lunch program and on
081the state side we tested the district's tpaf Social Security reimbursements and The Debt Service Aid um you know overall feel like the district had this again this this is as of June 30th 24 the uh overall fund balance or the uh unrestricted fund balance was was 44.8 Million uh which was the 2% maximum that the the state allows uh the overall fund balance was $35 million in the general fund um some of that has been utilized already as the superintendent said during this fiscal year um the the fund balance did decreased by about $5.8 million during the year end of June 30th 24 and that was uh we noted last year was kind of a break even year for the June 30th 23 year that is it was kind of a break even year but
082there were two pieces that we noted last year that of uh one-time revenues that came in that made made the district break even and that was for the sale of school buses as well as FEMA money that came in that was unanticipated totaling about $5 million [Music] um I think that that's it really all I have as a high level overview and then Rob is going to go through some of our uh some of our recommendations that we came up with during the audit nice thank you John and just a touch base to on and a fund Balan budgetary number the 35 million does sound like a very huge number but keep in mind you know the health benefits alone were $16.1 million this year you know so that the numbers if you go through
083the expanses are pretty stag in so you know we we think every bit of that is going to be necessary going forward um so and I do want to give Mr Moody a special thanks um and his entire Finance team too because I mean I don't know if this would have met the uh the deadline without your help going you know an inous help going forward really towards the end we really got this at a Finish Line so again really appreciate you and your team and you really jumped in pretty much mid audit and and you really helped us along so I'm going to go over the auditor's management report we did have three findings that require corrective action but keep in mind these are more compliance driven findings we do not feel these were
084material to the financial statements in any way therefore we issued an unmodified opinion which is the best opinion a school district can get we not only issued an unmodified opinion on the financial statements but also in single audit as John mentioned all those grants and every single year we're always rotating the grants and you guys really have good sound internal controls we feel in general and on the grant process so you guys really should be proud of that uh going forward so the findings we did come up with first one we had was on Student Activities which Statewide is sort of a a common finding and this one was just we couldn't really give an opinion if it was right or wrong because the only thing we got from a particular school was bank statements
085so we couldn't really drill down to you know the timely deposits Etc on that school which I think Mr Moody has already addressed that and some of these other findings we're going to mention going forward the next finding we had was on the semi Aid which is a it's a federal requirement um to meet a certain uh participation rate and forever reason this year the district fell short I mean it wasn't material numbers I think the budget number was 168 uh that was anticipated and you guys came in at 67,000 so again it wasn't a material number but it did relate to um a federal compliance requirement so that's the only reason really that that's in the AMR report at all the next finding was was something that's we don't really see too often honestly
086it was related to an Arbitrage rebate yield restriction liability which that in itself sounds pretty confusing but you know it's one of those things that the school district has yet something else to overcome you know yet you have a lot of bonds that you got for the necessary requirements Capital Improvements Etc and you borrowed at a really advantageous rate which is awesome you know then uh you know may year before last all a sudden the interest rates went up and invested you know the money that wasn't spent to try to get more money for school district but then IRS comes in and says we can't really earn so much interest if we're giving you like a tax break on on the bonds so that difference is pretty much the Arbitrage yield restriction liability which was
087a fairly significant number and and Mr Moody jumped ahead too and we also set up an acral going forward to next year so should be covered going forward those were the findings we had like I said overall we we do a lot of testing so these three findings um you know overall I think the district still really did a really nice job we did also have three other suggestions to management now these do not require corrective action and quite frankly the first one is a requirement from the uh Department of Agriculture where they're in your food service fund and by the way this uh comment I think I've seen in every single school districts most of ours right John it's just very common mainly with the covid fund so covid-19 uh gave a lot of
088agricultural grants out and you know set gave excess cash but then they never adjusted the federal requirement that says you you know you can't maintain more than 3 months of operating expenditures and cash so the partment of Agriculture said you know you got to make that a finding we kind of fought back and said we're not going to make it a formal finding we'll make it another suggestion and that's kind of where we we landed on that so that's just a carryover from from their prior year as well as the next one just a capital asset records you know every five years or so it's always a good idea to go out get an appraisal company understanding that that's another cost to the district um it's just a good idea just to make sure everything's
089tagged and and inventory correctly and recorded properly obviously the next one we had um related to Shorty Bond coverage now again that's just something that's it's a it's a formula by the state and it's driven on on your budget so as the budget increases it's just a good idea to kind of revisit the shity bond coverage it was barely under I think it was 615,000 was the requirement once we went through all the calculations and I believe the bond was 600,000 which again I think Mr Moody has already addressed we already addressed that and raising the bond value to 615 absolutely and and we try to forecast two going forward just so you guys are always kind of prepared for the next year going forward so which I think was around the same number if
090I'm not mistaken very close the last comment we had which which again has uh been addressed um by the board I believe was the latki Enterprise fund which seemed to cease operation in the the last fiscal year it seemed due to uh the why taken over if I'm not mistaken and then it was probably in the best interest uh to eventually move those funds over to the general fund by resolution which I'm not mistaken is is in the works absolutely that'll be teed up for next uh board meeting so with that that that's all we had like I said I think the district does a phenomenal job and and Mr Moody certainly fit right in and and really did a great job helping us finish this audit much appreciated it and if you have any
091questions please uh let us know thanks a lot guys um I just want to underline one point I thank you for bringing additional Clarity to our fund balance figure because sometimes folks can think that that is an enormous dollar amount but in fact it is not relatively and we're called upon again as fiscal stewards for this District to be certain to maintain the right levels moving forward so thank you sir on that topic is there a general recommendation for how much should be in that fund for the general funds I mean I think the answer is it it depends you know on many different factors um we see things all over place from a couple million to 70 million you guys are certainly in the middle um you know I think it's always prudent to
092have that cushion there going forward because now as John mentioned last year you had a sale of buses that was 2 million 50 Grand you had Fimo funds that are extremely unpredictable and quite frankly probably drying up a little bit $3 million last year came in for one of those super storms that's where five million right there that's not going to be there going forward the art funds covid-19 funds right that's pretty much expired now um and thank God congratulations on the state a too we found that today too went up 6% so we're we're happy definitely to see that for you guys but you know there's all those unforeseen um you know expenses and revenue shortfalls so you know I think that's great position to be in at least for now thank you so
093much for coming in um more of a comment and I think possibly followup in fft um and I apologize one with the fft minutes coming um I just hadn't had time to review yesterday and you know as you mentioned it's a 215 page document so um I noticed that on page 31 under factors bearing on the district's future the first bullet was it was it is anticipated that in 2025 the district will continue to experience increased Transportation costs resulting from the continuing impact of having recognized school zones and student placement with fifth grade Transportation remaining impacted by increased costs um I'm a little confused about some of that those details um so I think maybe in the next meeting we can just get a little bit of clarity because I know that you know Mr
094Bing as we talked about all of the small budget meetings one of the first things that we really want to understand is breakdown of Transportation cost so just trying to connect those two points there thank you understood thank you state aid increase uh it was a decrease for us in transportation Aid uh an increase a slight increase for special services which we really can't figure out why um so you know we're doing some investigation around that um but yeah it's transportation is a nut we really have to start peeling back agreed okay there's no more questions thank you so much we appreciate all your hard work thank you very much thank you great night Mr Moody was there anything else you needed to share or are you good I do I do believe well actually
095you know what given in light of uh the public speaks period where we heard from our Middle School Community uh and in a very uh articulate and direct way I want to applaud them again I just want to do a a brief overview you know and I'm not going to go through everything pertaining to our construction update but I'll just say that for Seth Boyen school we have final change orders that have been submitted and reviewed and uh that's coming to completion tuskin School final change or orders have been submitted and reviewed for Marshall School final Punch Out punch list and closeout documents are going to be completed in the next couple weeks and the design and repair of the sprinkler system is underway montro school we also have final punch list close out documents
096they'll be completed in the next few weeks and the middle schools um Maplewood Middle were working on the punch list and troubleshooting the heating issues the final area of the roof will be completed next week when the weather is warmer and we're repairing the steam leaks around the building South Orange Middle School Electric Service uh work will be completed in the next couple weeks uh working on a switch over to the new service and the new contractor that's for electric but specifically for South Orange Middle School where we had uh uh voices appear today during public speaks um building permits were issued we're starting demolition for two new bathrooms and new doors are on site and installation will begin in the next week for Colombia High School a-wing science rooms are underway media centers completed
097and turned over to us Commons area complet and in use in the school roofs Coatings underwear in the bwing areas and renovation of existing guidance area is ongoing so I just wanted to just do that briefly uh given what we heard from our students yeah I would Echo well one thank you for the all of the budget uh conversation tonight and thank you to the team who I know has been working incredibly hard um I also wanted to to just loop back to what the students had shared I know last year in fft we were having conversations around just a mechanism for how um we might track or just get like a high level overview of what is the process for how teachers repair get like repair requests across and what's the average time between
098requests are made and when something's completed um just so that we have some insight because I feel like this is a common theme I don't know that we need to necessarily comb through the requests ourselves but rather get like a high level understanding of how many there are and what is that response time um because while some of them certainly are captured in broader bigger construction work I think that dayto day is important just to get a high level understanding so we're also using an extremely Antiquated system for those uh requests we are upgrading that uh Tom just met with a new vendor uh two weeks ago um So currently we use a system that's been around for over 20 plus years has H has not has been upgraded since um so that was one
099of the deficits Tom recognized right off the bat and he's going to start working with a different vendor yep yes go ahead I just wanted to Echo something that board me board member eert said about Transportation hope we can get like a look at like what we're spending in that and even including like what we spend like for bus route you know tiered and untiered you know two years ago former um business administrator Burnside um gave a figure of like $65,000 for a tiered bus rout and it'll be interesting to know what it is right now uh similar requests at all are a small budget meeting so we're working on that currently all the data that was requested we're hoping to have by Monday it's a little complicated cuz back in the day we owned
100our own buses so we had to recalculate what that difference is but we've got about five people working on it so we I think we should have it by Monday or Tuesday yeah I Echo that sentiment we bringing in the data thank you okay so moving along um I'll do my board president update and uh although it's a little long we have a shorter list today of public speaks so I'm not going to cut it so I'd like to share uh high level recap of the board's efforts in February we reviewed changes to the elective options in the CHS course catalog and ensured the board followed policy protocols with curriculum oversight as such we are voting on combined and new courses for the 2526 school year which will take place tonight and ongoing through the
101summer as curriculums are finalized the 13 new or revised courses we are voting on tonight include revised honors physics full year dual enrollment honors environmental science expanding the one semester organic medical chemistry into a into a full year honors course and fibers 2 which Builds on fibers one expanding skills in the Fiber Arts the 2025 26 school year calendar is being voted on tonight and it has the first day of school starting after Labor Day on Tuesday September 2nd 20125 our Rutger's implementation committee with board member okay um with board member Brown as chair was a great start at is now a committee of four members I want to thank the senior leadership team for their efforts thus far as we enter the 2 and a half year mark of our three-year extension to provide
102oversight of the recommendations from Dr Fergus and thank you brown for your leadership on that uh Mr being and the district have made great efforts at hosting multiple in-person virtual and virtual community town halls and meetups since January especially the most recent budget advisory committee in special service forums at least two to three board members have attended each of these ongoing meetings and I personally want to thank the board for attending them as it is additional time away from our fames and further exemplifies uh your dedication to board service so thank you we also appreciate the community's active participation as it enables the board to stay on the pulse of the needs and concerns of caregivers students and teachers on a more frequent Cadence outside of our regular board meetings we appreciate the additional local
103leaders who attended our Municipal Partnerships committee meeting this month including the Community Coalition on Race members Nancy G and Jocelyn Ryan assemblywoman Garnet Hall and Faith leader Rabbi Cohen was a productive call to review the latest executive orders and updates on this issue will be forthcoming to the community as mentioned in the budget update tonight board members have been meeting with our ba assistant ba and Mr Bing in small groups to review budget updates and ask questions as we enter another tricky budget season uh as we manage a deficit we appreciate that the district is having ongoing conversations with us to review priorities while evaluating the district's long-term stability year-over-year and lastly a big happy birthday to Bill uh board member Bill and celebrated a birthday this month we hope you've enjoyed your birthday month
104um and now I will read the board president's statement while this Bromance happens over here to my left okay so the school board meeting is a business meeting in public and not a meeting with the public oftentimes oftentimes it might appear to members of the audience that the Board of Education takes action with very little comment and in many cases a unanimous vote before a matter is placed on the agenda at a public meeting it has thoroughly been reviewed by the administration the superintendent of schools and the Board of Education after which it is placed on the agenda for board discussion and action at a public meeting uh now I will do hearing of the individuals thank you for coming in person and joining us online this evening the sou orange Maplewood Board of Education
105values public involvement and respects you've taken the time to address the board at tonight's meeting at this as this is the board's business meeting if family reminded please be respectful as we take into consideration your valuable input which will inform future deliberations and work by the Board of Education and its committies the board does have tie limits by policy and it will be enforcing those to enable as many people to speak as possible this evening each individual will be given 3 minutes to speak the first public comment period is usually limited to 1 hour with priority often given to items related to the meeting agenda and the second public comment may be limited to 30 minutes okay so we've got Jamie ramsburg thank you hello okay I did write this before tonight's meeting so I've
106been trying to make changes during the meeting okay hello my name is Jamie ramsburg I'm a mom of two CHS students and a former district elementary teacher I recently wrote an email to the administration and board detailing the many reasons I am against the proposed changes to special services I know it was long but I hope you all take time to read it because this is one of the biggest decisions you'll make in this position I'm thrilled to hear Mr Bing's statement tonight that due to State funding he will be keeping the current model for the 2025 26 school year but I want to make sure that indeed means that we will keep the inclusion model exactly the way it is for the 2025 to 26 school year while the district reports to be transparent
107there have been many inconsistencies and falsehoods in the claims regarding this change I don't have time to discuss them all tonight but I do hope you as a board will do your research listen to teachers administrators and parents and not take everything you are told at face value the district says there will be no reduction in services with this change that all students needs will be met even when the special ed teacher isn't in the room I know we have the best teachers in our schools yes they will work tirelessly to make the modifications and accommodations the students with APS deserve and legally require but even the best teachers are human it's unrealistic to believe that one gened teacher will be able to meet the needs of their gened students while also complying with all
108IEP requirements make no mistakes students will lose support this change would also have a negative impact on all teachers having special ed teachers push into multiple grades means that they'll have to learn multiple curriculums and plan with multiple classroom teachers but their prep periods wouldn't align with the other teachers eliminating their time to plan together only being in the classroom for Math and Ela would also greatly limit the amount of time special ed teachers would have to connect with their students with limited time each day they would feel an obligation to get right to work rather than taking a little time to check in emotionally and socially with their students which is a lot of what makes Elementary support work please hold the administration accountable to keep the inclusion model in place and find another
109way to trim the budget rather than cutting support for the students who need it most that is not who we are in Som we look out for our community and that's not who you are you ran for the board to help the children in our district this is your chance to do just that thank you thank you uh next is Daniel Kaplan thank you likewise the danger these days of printing out your speech is that half of it is obsolete by the time you get to speak it uh good evening my name is Daniel Kaplan uh from Maplewood um I'm here tonight to advocate for my children along with the other families in this community who uh had been anxious about what was going to happen with special services based off the town halls this
110past week uh I have two children at Marshall Elementary uh my son has an IEP and this is his first year in the district he has been doing exceptionally well at the transition almost certainly due to the fact that he is in an inclusion classroom with a dedicated special education teacher for the entire day to provide the support he and the other specialed students in his class need my daughter on the other hand has a 504 and is a gened student in an inclusion class for the second year in a row if I were to ask her she wouldn't be able to tell me who was a specialed student in the class because the class runs so smoothly with her co- teers Mr Bing first I'd like to give my appreciation for all the increased
111methods of communication you've utilized since the beginning of the school year it is a significant improvement from previous years uh during the town hall that I was on Friday um you had made mention in one of your slides that uh you know moving us to this icrs system that 85% of districts in New Jersey use um I did some looking at some data over the past few days and I know that there's about 540 districts in the state and about 220 of them are Pre-K to2 like ours but when you look at the diversity that our district has both racially and socioeconomically there's really only about 15 or so districts not even 3% that come close to ours we are a unique District that needs unique Solutions and pushing us into something that works for
112a lot of dissimilar districts without giving us the data behind the claims that this is a working model is not the answer for us and so uh appreciate obviously hearing the news about the state aid that led to your email today that we will not having changes for next year but uh obviously you know in future years I strongly encourage to keep what we have that works well there's already a significant achievement gap between students with disabilities and students without and transitioning to A system that would end up providing less support is is not going to be the answer for us um as for the budget uh again Mr Moody thank you very much uh and Mr Bing I uh strongly appreciate the detailed presentations tonight that have been sorely missing over the past couple
113years uh yeah uh so I certainly understand the situation that you are placed in uh that you've inherited is not ideal to say the least uh I know you're also aware of the significant lack of trust that is built up between the community and the district as a result of past Financial mismanagement multiple times this year you've talked about increasing transparency around the district's goals which again great presentation tonight and glad to see it on the website uh as well as transparency around the budget I hope this is not forgotten as it comes to finalizing next year's budget seems to be that way uh the community needs to be able to trust that the significant amount of our property tax dollars that are allocated to the district are being spent properly we know that more
114cuts are going to need to be made but we need the data to support the reasons behind those cuts in order for the community to be assured that all areas of the budget are truly being explored before impacting our most vulnerable students disproportionately uh I would like to thank all the board for their advocacy on behalf of the community to help our district be able to put the best plan in place to ensure that all of our students needs are met so that they can Thrive thank you yep thank you and that ends public speaks okay so next is committee reports um I think we went that way last time so why don't we start from this side and just go all the way down thank you oh wait let me read the little thing
115hold on okay much of the work our board does happens in committees and the results are brought to the board meeting for Action detailed minutes of each committee meeting are posted on our website and we encourage you to review them okay thank you all right so I'm going to start with um I attended the Essex County School Board Association meeting on February 6 I'm going to give a brief update on what was discussed there uh Mr Moody was in attendance as was Bill um and most of the most of the meeting was a presentation about sustainable Jersey it is a program where districts can take certain actions they have 103 to choose from to become certified and why would a district want to be certified um it can help your District become have a more
116focus on being sustainable saving money and teaching students about environmental issues it can also Empower children who are feeling climate anxiety there are access to $10,000 and $2,000 grants to implement actions or other sustainable initiatives and 50% of the grants that they give out are to certified schools it also allows the district to tap into extensive support and training so for example sustainable Jersey certifies members to um or if you're certified member you can take advantage of the energy efficient technical assistance program that they offer and under this program The District can provide utility bills and other information and then they will do the analysis to determine which types of incentives and financing are best for your district and then they will make recommendations you're under no obligation to implement those recommendations but if you
117would like to they will help you move forward with implementing them so this seems like a good program that our district might want to um look into in the future and um and also I think I'm guessing because we do have a lot of sustainable actions across our schools that we might already be doing a number of these things our president's Council very interested in the program I'm very interested yeah right um and then the other part of the presentation discussed various clean energy or Energy savings incentives programs available to districts and the one that I want to highlight is the IRS direct elect pay tax credit where districts can get tax credit for qualifying clean energy product projects and one of those is a qualified commercial clean vehicles so we can get up to
118$7,500 per vehicle and $4,000 for larger vehicles um so this might be you know something for our district to investigate if we get to a point where we are able to purchase some Vehicles so then the next uh meeting for this for the Essex County uh School Board Association is in May so that's that one any questions on that not a question but because you had mentioned president's Council um so I know that many elementary schools run composing programs I actually just started at tuskin a Pilot anyway um so maybe like the elementary president Council you could bring that up and figure out ways I think we've also a few of us across different schools have also talked about um how we can also have some potential cost savings by like partnering together on that
119so I think a lot can it was actually on their agenda our last meeting Sustainable New Jersey so getting that information and presenting it to them would be wonderful yeah I'll uh I can get the contact from you and I'll share my notes um okay and so then the Ruckers implementation committee met for the first time on February 12th and among issues addressed um in the committee were that the district will has an internal team who is in the initial stages of examining the triple ey in consultation with the ales group per best practices for regularly monitoring policies for Effectiveness the evaluation will include data analysis examining our demographic shifts and transportation costs um including and also impact on students including the disproportionate impact on black students black students are being busted the longest under
120the current design or algorithm according to the Alves report the district will present updates on the evaluation to this committee as it conducts it conducts it work it conducts its work and the evaluation will take into account five Recs report recommendations and if you look at the written committee notes the they list those five recommendations the district is also exploring whether it makes sense to have middle school students included in the triple algorithm and for clarity preschool or prek students are not included in the triple I algorithm Dr Fergus visited the district in January he met with the district senior leadership team and conducted a session with principles where he discussed color blindness he will be visiting the district through the spring the district is planning to meet with judge Wallace in March to update
121him on our recommendation status but a date has not been set or it had not been set out of as of the committee meeting the triple I survey was discussed the response rate has been low so the district is conducting more Outreach the committee plans to discuss improving that survey for next year and that will be a topic on our agenda for our meeting in April the middle school math initiative was discussed um as it was discussed in cni all middle school math Pathways will remain the same so there will be no class offering changes for the 25 26 school years goals of the initiative are to encourage more black student enrollment in accelerated math and to improve student outcomes once enrolled the district will still permit uh student Family Choice but will provide fifth
122grade families with information that will include test scores and grade scores to help inform that choice in a document termed the math academic snapshot the math academic snapshot will include a recommendation of placement from the district but again it will be up to each family to decide this initiative relates to six record report recommendations which they are listed in the committee notes uh for information and and there's a lot more details on this initiative in the committee notes so I encourage anyone who's interested to go look at those um and the district will be hosting information sessions for parents uh on the Middle School M math initiative in March and that those will also be videotaped thank you any questions so I'm going to put it on all yeah so there are some online speaks
123and since we have time since we didn't fill the full hour for the first one we're going to call them up now um and interrupt our committee reports so Francesca Kars is she Franchesca available that Community member is not is online Nadira oh you did okay I'm adir hello can you hear me yes we can hear you thank you okay wonderful thank you um my name is mad and I'm a mother of two kids in the district uh one of my kids has uh special needs and has an IEP and uh he has been in inclusion class since first grade uh similarly to the other parents who shared their concerns uh tonight tonight and also throughout the whole week uh about the proposed new model I strongly urge the district to keep the correct model
124um I have sent a letter to the superintendent and the Boe stressing my concerns um and thank you Mr and miss kalahan and Mr Gable for getting back to me today I really appreciate that um first of all I really want to thank the superintendent and the be members for the series of town hall meetings that were held to engage with the Community or for the proposed model um it is great news uh to learn that the St contribution has not been reduced so that's wonderful uh and also um thank you Mr Bing for advocating for our students in Trenton um uh it's also wonderful to hear today um it was really encouraging at least like for me and heartwarming to receive the communication from the superintendent today that the district is working on keeping
125the current coet inclusion model for 2025 2026 um it really shows that the theer is listening to the parents um and and is really trying to uh keep uh this model so I appreciate that uh however I really hope that this will continue um the community the engagement and the discussion with the with the community uh on this topic so we can ensure appropriate education for our most vulnerable population Beyond 2025 2026 uh so it's it's uh it's a long uh it's an issue that it will go beyond next year and I'm hopeful that we can continue the dialogue on that one um I really urge the district to prioritize uh the needs in our community um it is imperative that the district differentiate between what's needed versus what's nice to have um I do
126understand the fiscal challenges the district faces uh however this should not be at expense of the district's vulnerable population um our students with special needs they already struggle to to keep up with it their peers in our district uh not even to mention the non-compliance issues that uh we parents of special needs students we face um and we have been facing uh for at least for me for the last three years um I understand that the district is also taking much needed upgrades um to our old schools buildings um as some of them they they really POS some serious hazards to our students this was evident by the earlier testimony testimonies that we heard from our middle school students um however I urge you Mr B and the rest of the be to really keep
127special education needs as a priority in our budgeting um finally I really implore you um you the be uh Mr Bing and the rest of the district administrators to really engage with the two towns May ERS and see where they can really Drive efficiencies at the town's levels uh the fiscal challenge is real and it just will continue to grow as we know uh for the special education for the teacher salaries for the teachers health benefits the buildings maintenance and so on um plus the two the two towns they really need to to look into this and see where we can increase the contribution from the tax levy to the uh the the school system so that we can continue to provide just want to let you know your your time is up thank you
128for okay thank you I mean nadir excuse me Jessica is the next person will knows that I'm terrible with names okay so thank you nadir and next is Jessica Sharma Jessica sh hi can you hear me yes we can hear you thank than you okay perfect um it's great that we've been able to find the funding for keeping the inclusion classes for the coming year but I did want to make sure that I showed up and used my voice to advocate for this as it's considered in the future um during superintendent being's presentation he called neurod Divergent students the innovators of tomorrow uh but removing inclusion classes would set many of our Divergence students up to struggle rather than Thrive um I want to acknowledge all of the work that this board has done to
129really carefully examine all of the budget line items and to make really difficult decisions I spent 15 years in Corporate America as a consultant focused on holistic margin Improvement so I really understand the realities of tough tradeoffs um but with every client we always went back to values to make sure that financial decisions were really aligned with core priorities so I want to recognize it's great the funding has come through for the coming year um but I also want to make sure that concerns about eliminating the inclusion model and the critical role it plays is captured as this policy is evaluated in the future um I'm the parent of two neurod dierent children and also the founder of the neurod dierent parent Collective and I've seen firsthand how critical the right support is um my
130daughter who we now know has ADHD um giftedness and anxiety attended Marshall for kindergarten in first grade she's a super passionate creative twice exceptional learner but she also needs uh the ability to move in order to focus and listen and she needs a quiet place uh when she gets over stimulated over the two years in a general classroom she went from really eager to learn and excited for school to coming home with panic attacks and telling me that she felt like she didn't belong long um when we had conferences we were told she just needed to sit and listen more and despite testing three levels ahead in reading it still took three months for the general um classroom to have differentiated reading groups by level and so um I'm not putting this on the teacher
131the teachers we had were really passionate and committed but it's a really hard and unrealistic expectation for one teacher to support 30 students with vastly needs um and right now inclusion classes provide this really essential support helping teachers be students where they are because my daughter didn't have somebody who had the time to really lean in and and kind of meet her where she was at her mental health suffered and as a result we moved her out of District space she needs um so yep sorry I was just going to close it okay 10 seconds no thank you Jess thank you that's it I was just G to say you know like uh potential loans not enough they they need the support too thank you so much um next we have Jessica Miller evening um
132thank you for all of your hard work especially in this budget season and I love hearing from so many of our awesome students I wanted to take a moment to speak to some troubling comments I heard at the last meeting about the use of Underhill as a CL a Clinton parent for many years I am troubled that the Clinton Community was left out of this conversation Clinton's proximity to Underhill and its use of the field for PE means that the Clinton Community has a stake in the security of Underhill it is my opinion that it's disingenuous it's disingenuous to speak only about police calls in 2024 when in 2021 Clinton had to declare a code yellow because a man with a gun showed up to exercise on Underhill it was the Clinton custodian that questioned
133him and noticed that he was armed and my experience in fundraising and philanthropy the money given is a gift it does not buy ownership or entitlement of use but if we want to tally dollars we might look at the fact that the district has spent over a million dollars in maintenance for Underhill in the past 10 years and another 2.5 million rebuilding it in 23 these figures do not include the additional annual security costs one gentleman who spoke said that the students should be inside learning learning and not having recess all day on Underhill I would like to note that actually what he sees are multiple classes and periods of PE a part of the curriculum he went on to refer to Clinton's students as non- taxpayers as an attempt to I don't know make
134the argument that he's more entitled to the use of the facility than the students I find it upsetting that someone would make such a statement at a Boe meeting and it gives me pause that this is the mindset of someone who wants to share the use of this facility with the students I'm happy to see that our community has such active senior citizens and I'm certainly not opposed to the community having use of the field but I don't think this should happen when the field is being used by our students for PE classes we do not allow public access to our schools while school is in session we do not allow public access to the play structures and recess area while they're in use by our students Underhill should be no different I think we
135need to be very careful to protect our public education facilities and not accept the assertation that money gives anyone more entitlement to those facilities than our students the education and safety of students is the top priority of the district for those that find Underhill public usage hours too restrictive Som 2 towns for all ages has great resources for active senior citizens both Town Rec departments do as well South Orange is bared is brand new and open to the public we have beautiful parks with paved paths there certainly are more options than quote taking to the streets thank you thank you so much next we have Beth centino hello I'm Beth centino and I'm in Maplewood I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the special education parent advisory committee in the South Orange Maplewood School District CPAC
136Soma um our executive board we are a parent Le State mandated group and um just want to speak a little bit tonight about the letter uh and thank you Mr Bing for your email earlier today to announce that the district will m maintain the code teaching icrs model for K through fifth grade next year the CPAC Soma board was very pleased with this outcome as we have expressed our concerns and shared numerous questions around the proposed change the priority for us is that every student has the support and services they require to not only be side by side with their non-disabled peers but to thrive alongside them this is what inclusion in our district looks like additionally Al we we wanted to recognize um that our district is working on implementing a multi-tiered system of
137supports and jtss across every school and classroom it is our hope that the prevention model with an evidence-based curriculum targeted interventions and a thorough progress monitoring will provide overall better student outcomes for the njss framework one of the Three core components is family and Community engagement and we urge you to keep working to engage families and the communities on all levels in The District in the schools and in the classroom as always the CPAC Soma board will continue to provide feedback and recommendations to you based on input from parents of students with disabilities in the district uh thank you for your time thank you so much Beth um Danielle Thorne hi can everyone hear me hello we can hear you okay great um so first thank you um thank you superintendent Bing uh I really
138appreciated your communication and how responsive it was to the concerns of the parents um who spoke to you at the Town Hall two two days ago so I really want to thank you for revisiting your approach to the inclusion classes and changing course in response um to the community feedback that you heard that tells me that you're listening I really appreciate that um I really plan to come to speak only to that but in looking at tonight's board agenda I realized that you all are about to be on second read of Po policy 4217 and to the board members who are here tonight and are about to vote on the second read of that policy that would make it an official policy I need you to realize um I think you need to go back
139and you need to revisit the way that that policy fails entirely to speak to policy 5561 which is the district policy that addresses restraint and seclusion of students with disabilities um the policy that you are about to pass tonight is a revision of the corporal punishment policy but it fails at all to mention educators um legal obligations to comply with the restraint and seclusion policy and to really set our Educators up for Success we can't have policies in one area that really should talk to other policies and fail to even so much as cross reference them if there is a dispute involving a child with a disability who has a meltdown for example or is having issues with emotional regulation and a teacher intervenes and fails to follow the procedures outlined in policy 5561 because
140all they're familiar with is the corporal punishment policy that places the district at risk of liability and it places our students with disabilities at a extraordinary risk of harm as a parent of a child with a disability who has been restrained I feel really strongly about this issue and I would urge you rather than voting yes on that policy to go back and make sure that those two policies are talking to each other so that the Educators in our district are set up for success in supporting our most vulnerable students um I don't think it was an intentional oversight I think you probably all are doing your best to update the many many policies that we are charged um with having but I think probably not having had the experience yourself you maybe don't fully
141appreciate just how crucial policy 5561 is to keeping our students with disabilities and our staff safe so I really would urge you to please vote no on that policy so you can go back and make some critical revisions to ensure that they cross reference each other thank you so much for your time tonight thank you so much final public speaks Robin [Music] Herman that Community member is not online okay we will continue now with committee readouts thank you board member eard the Personnel committee met on Monday February 24th at 6:30 p.m. in attendance were board members kadia Gord and S sacki Gable myself the committee chair along with Dr Gilbert and Mr adad Doan um much of I say this a lot much of what is was discussed is confidential however you can read the
142public facing minutes on the district website among the topics discussed in committee uh we talked about the we had a brief discussion on current executive orders and how this may impact our five-year Workforce diversity plan we reviewed progress on some of the Personnel related goals um so goal 3.1 we discussed the staff engagement survey uh which was actually sent out this morning and will remain open through March 13th hope is to be able to discuss the survey results at the following Personnel committee meeting even at a high level to begin with and in further detail in subsequent meetings uh the remaining year one goals are in progress with the exception of launching an AI an affinity group program uh how these are structured will depend on survey results so the goal is to get them
143started in the fall likely after September once the school year is underway we touched on goal 3.2 um and in the presentation that will be posted on the website the district has expanded their partnership with Montclair State University and has been engaging in conversations with Morehouse and ruter next we touched on staff evaluations um unfortunately the report wasn't ready due to a number of reasons but that will be shared with the committee as soon as possible um the committee did reinforce the importance of ensuring oversight over this process and holding staff members accountable for completing each stage of the evaluation process to hit the specified deadlines and lastly in terms of 2526 school year budget updates um HR is working closely with the business office I think their B their budget is still in progress
144and the committee also had very um had a brief very preliminary discussion around positional needs as the budget work continues um over the next couple weeks these will be fleshed out more and shared with the community once the budget is final next committee meeting is Monday February 24th 6:30 p.m. any questions comments yes oh okay no sorry I'm going to lose power so I wanted to get mine out um uh the fft committee met on February 26th with board members Meyer Callahan and Bennett and myself in attendance um our ba Mr Moody presented the summary analysis of the board secretary report informing us of the 9.5 million remaining unencumbered general fund currently down to uh 4.5 million that's fine um and the spending freeze that was implemented in January as a result we also uh
145you know received the the um audit results but there's no need to go into that we we already did uh we were presented with the budget process highlighting actions taken thus far to prepare the budget initial uh rounds of budget adjustments and timeline for the remaining budget season uh we did start a discussion about evaluating cost drivers of prek and Middle School busing and potential impact on the 2526 budget so more to come there we actually did request an analysis uh from the ba on on uh Transportation cost so we're going to have deeper understanding um following that topic superintendent Bing and the ba met with the Essex County uh Regional Education Services Commission uh executive director to discuss District transportation needs and explore potential service consolidation with better cost parameters for District transportation uh
146building and grounds director Tom jigloo who's going to have a long list of things to look at at the next fft meeting um he updated us on conditions for the CHS photo lab and the and uh determining the lab's future use by addressing concerns about chemical storage ventilation and potential abatement no final decision has been made due to potentially high costs uh we received an update on the MMS steam leaks a significant steam leak at MMS was highlighted requiring extensive repairs due to the complexity of the embedded piping system um and lastly we did receive receive a proposal from spel Architects to conduct a solar panel feasibility study that would cost $100,000 however given our current budgetary constraints we are pragmatically exploring whether the study could be incorporated into an energy savings Improvement plan and
147esip bond issuance project to save the uh to save us on those costs um these are my highlights but we definitely discussed more so for more details please go to the district website for a full recap of the meeting in the board committee section and the next meeting will be relatively soon on March 5th so looking forward to that um does anybody have questions um so in board m brown I confirm that we don't use the Michael Alves triple I algorithm for assigning kids to prek but we don't assign kids to prek based on pure geography do either like there is some kind of like attempt at like you know making like more diverse pre case like isn't there Le Hest it was a lot so we spoke to Leroy and and Dr Gilbert it's
148just a lottery there is no formula applied so are you saying that kids are assigned each prek totally at random that's my understanding talking to the talking to Leroy Johnson isn't that going to produce a very inefficient distribution of students for busing well yeah I think that's why we're looking at prek buser yeah okay all right so I bring this up because I I don't think it's ever been clarified how kids are assigned to each individual prek and there was a document on the board of education website the FAQs for the prek where it said the distribution of kids was quote aligned with the triple I he didn't say we literally use the triple I but it said it was aligned with it and like you know I do think that we have to look
149at this because like we are in for several years of bad budgets yeah I think we made the Assumption last meeting we talked about it that they are under the formula and after he spoke to Mr Johnson and and Kevin we were told they weren't and it was a lottery I'm familiar with Lottery because we use that in in Jersey City and Lottery we used was rather random I don't know if they align that Lottery to Triple I that's a question I'll ask Leroy uh tomorrow actually um is there a chance that we could actually use a more Transportation sensitive distribution for the next year's um assignments of pre carers which I assume is going out kind of soon yeah yeah yeah no I think everything is on the table as we look at the
150transportation nut we have to crack yet okay yeah and and we'll update the website for okay thanks all good okay thank you sorry go ahead sorry your thunder you you want a b what you don't want the no no I'm good I don't need it all right thanks very much I I have two readouts here first of all uh to the shorter one first I attended a meeting of the Essex Regional Education Services Commission uh having being the liaison for that on our board I am uh sit on their Board of Education which involves uh board members from across Essex County uh was very enthusiastic team they keep their meetings to a crisp one hour it's very very impressive a lot to learn um they're very happy to be working with our district on transportation
151and uh to look at what other things they could be doing with us for example possible pair professionals uh they also mentioned they're starting a new purchasing Co-op that could be useful to us down the road as well uh so uh it's a a great meeting and they are as happy to be working with us as we are to be working with them they say transportation is uh helps their revenue significantly so great uh also uh we had a policy committee meeting on February the 5th uh at the meeting uh was myself board members Brown Bennett and Duval Wilson uh we discussed a number of items most of which of course are in the minutes on the website we do have a number of policies up tonight we have one policy up for second read
152uh policy 4217 on corporal punishment uh I was going to have a brief read on this but I do want to be responsive to the concerned public speaks and just give the context for this so first of all we are adopting this language uh to conf formed to the language that is already in 3217 which is corporal punishment for uh teachers this is the policy for staff members usually our Personnel policies we adopt a three series and a four series to do to the teachers and support staff uh the version of the corporal punishment statute that we policy that we have right now is outdated and it has uh language that uh as was discussed in Prior meetings is impacting the ability of the district to uh have certain typ a discipline on staff members
153for conduct that with this language would make more straightforward uh the language in this corporal punishment statute comes more or less copied and pasted directly out of the statute so it is just the barebones what the New Jersey state law is in this regard uh and again it synchronizes the two policies there is policy 5561 which regards uh restraint for students with disabilities and that's something that is not on our our agenda tonight certainly and was not on our meeting agenda but we had looked at it in policy meetings a a few months prior uh out of concern in looking at whether there should be additional language in the corporal punishment policy at that point on uh times when staff may be allowed to intervene physically because 5561 is more permissive with regard to when
154uh staff are able to physically intervene with students and the determination at the end of the day was that that could create an environment we were encouraging staff to have more physical interactions with students than would be appropriate so at that point we kept them separate but as part of that conversation it became very clear that there is constant training taking place on both of those two policies uh and that staff were according to the information at the time very aware of 5561 uh that isn't to say that the policy committee could not have this taken up at the next meeting to see if there uh could be language referencing the other policy in the corporal punishment one to uh just make sure folks are clear on both but uh that's that's the best I
155can say on that uh right now with regard to firstread policies we have uh a few up we have policy 24 31.1 uh which is regarding our athletic coaches policy 9181 which is for our volunteer athletic coaches and policy 9180 which is for for our school volunteers generally uh we're updating all three of these policies this has been on our docket for a few months now uh at the prompting of a number of present and former board members and this is updating the training requirements for uh those coaches volunteer coaches and long-term School volunteers these aren't uh requirements that would be in place for people who came in for one day of of reading in a class but for longer term volunteers uh and uh those would Square our uh policies with current requirements elsewhere
156in the law for uh trainings in Hib and uh and other conduct and finally we have 32161 and 421 16.1 uh these are new policies put in place to articulate our requirement that all staff uh have badges uh ID badges at all time which is uh very much in line with the policy already in place for our Secondary School students and middle and high school uh also at our meeting we discussed our ongoing regulation catchup project we reviewed a number of special education regulations that come out of uh SLT recently uh we completed our review uh of an updated regulation for uh evaluation of the uh business administrator um we think it's going to be great and uh we also looked at our public speaks policy we had discussed if changes to that needed to
157be made uh we decided to leave that be we really think that um prioritizing student speaks as we did tonight and focusing uh welcoming the public to our community conversations events uh really are addressing that need where we have an opportunity to have that dialogue uh back and forth with the public which we've seen the coners the conversation earlier this week versus tonight it really is great to have that opportunity uh and then finally we discussed developing a response to our community regarding the possible impact TA from recent Federal directives and we've directed The District to develop uh uh family engagement Communications to articulate the protections and rights for all of our different students that are still in place and affirming programs that exist in full force in the New Jersey curriculum any [Music] questions
158thanks Mr Mayor um I wanted to bring up the conversation that the Community member brought up about how those two policies speak to each other because I know I think it was last spring in Special Services we had a pretty robust discussion over a couple of months about just that um and I was just wondering if we think a best practice approach would be to table the conversation around passing that regulation tonight and or does it make sense to align and develop a regulation that explicitly cross references both policies so that they do in fact speak to each other because really what we're trying to address is the idea that these two are articulated in ways that both empower staff to maintain the safety of kids without obviously ensuring that overreach doesn't happen and folks
159are the kids are protected and so striking that balance and just wondering if we think that a regulation would be an appropriate way to make sure those two policies speak to one another in a way that could be downloaded to staff with Clarity um or if we think tabling that policy is a better move in this instance you know I think I I when we have I think especially when the the resolution comes up we could have that conversation further I think my personal impulse uh would be squaring this language tonight on second read so that the language is uh equally in place for staff and teachers in a way that is not abating any uh policy in place for the physical restraint and seclusion of kids with disabilities which by the way is not
160at all in the older policy either I think that would be a prudent Choice and then we should take this up in the next policy committee meeting and discuss whether a policy or regulation would make sense for it yeah I think we could construct a reg that we could throw by committee at the next committee meeting yeah great thank you anything else okay thank you right I don't have my glasses on let me make this bigger all right so the special services I am now looking at our ad hoc committee because I just pulled up notes from last year okay we met on February 13th uh board members eert Meyer and gford along with superintendent Bing Miss Jessa Maria and Dr Gilbert we began with our CPAC check-in with CPAC president miss centino which reinforces
161our commitment to goal 4.2 focusing on increasing collaboration by engaging CAC in board committee meetings there were three key concerns that we discussed this month including executive functioning support at the middle school level where a gap was identified um superintendent beinging shared that the district is in discussions with Abid learning as a potential resource to address those needs we discussed reading disparities and dyslexia support CPAC emphasized an uptick and requests that they've noticed regarding tutoring and support and reading which indicates the potential and systemic gaps as well as concerns around General dyslexia support um and with these concerns that gaps could deepen existing inequities we also had a robust discussion about the co- teing model and CST communication where they noted that some families were receiving some mixed messaging um which led to some uncertainty
162about the future of the co- teaching model and we discussed those potential adjustments with CPAC at that time following this discussion we reviewed a committee goal that was aligned with District goal 4.2 on community engagement this goal focused on developing an experience survey for families to establish a baseline measure of experience with the CST process inclusion academic and social emotional learning and behavioral support So committee members provided feedback on the survey with the district uh moving forward to consider those inputs next we talked about professional development which aligns with Goal 1.6 the district provided an update on the training they received on collaborative problem solving developed by Ross Green was provided for building leaders and our mtss teams on February 5th we had a snow day so it required a rescheduled session on the 6th
163to the 18th of February the initial session received really positive feedback for its practical approach a turnkey session will occur in March to further support integration followed by coaching interest survey for the following school year the funding for this is already included in our 2526 budget with potential additional support from achieve um following that we had uh our K through five model update so for the past several months the committee has been focused on the proposed changes to the K through 5 inclusion model engaging in a critical evaluation of how those changes were being developed how they would be implemented during this meeting board members did raise questions about aspects of the program and its roll out and how that might work we discussed the additional data still needed in order to make an informed
164judgment about the proposal and discussed opportunities that would exist for additional stakehold stakeholder involvement before moving forward a key request from the committee was for town halls which have since taken place to engage with the broader Community the concerns that were raised in these forums were closely aligned with that those that were raised in our committee particularly regarding data execution coaching and support scheduling and student centered impact and rationale for change finally we did policy review and it was a light month no policies or regulations were up for committee review uh a win was identified by Miss Jess Maria who shared that uh this month we were successfully bringing back students to SMSD from outof District placements which reinforces our commitment to ensuring that we can support students in our district um and before closing
165I did want to just a know um much has changed since this committee met earlier this month um and as superintendent Bing stated earlier tonight and has been shared with the community and via public speaks tonight no changes will be made this school year and our efforts on this committee will be focused on sustaining the current model for the 25 26 school year and Beyond um as chair of this committee my goal moving forward is to remain committed to ensuring that students and teachers are at the heart of these discussions while supporting the district in intentional well structured planning that does reflect the evolving educational landscape that we've talked about tonight um we're also looking forward to the launch of the special service advisory committee to further engage with the community our next meeting is
166scheduled for March 18th and floor is now open if any colleagues have questions I just want to Echo uh your your comments I think I'm also glad that we've found a way to maintain status quo on this piece for the moment and take the time that we need to look at at uh the proposal and underlying concerns that have led to this conversation you know as you mentioned we uh learned about started talking about this in the November meeting uh special services here uh and we've been discussing in committee since then uh the process and what data would be needed to actually understand and I think this postponement gives us the time to look at how we are uh considering this as far as working with uh the community and all stakeholders to um understand
167what actually students need and where our process is important and where it could change we know that we see uh approaches evolving all the time in all aspects of Education including in special education and um we need to listen to changes in uh service models when they're proposed but with an eye toward making sure that all of our students are being correctly uh supported and so I'm glad that we'll have this time to uh bring people in and uh and move things forward so you thank you for that I I agree um I'm glad that we're able to keep the supports for next year absolutely I wanted to just um make sure that when we're thinking about the budget for special services I know Mr Bing you talked about how last year we were I
168think over by 2.5 million the year before that we were also over and so I just want to make sure that we are act accurately budgeting and understanding the assumptions that we're making for special services so that we can fully support these students next year and in years to come and so if we can you know as we move forward as a board get that information I think that would help so yeah just also real quick so we're not maintaining the status quo part of this work is also filling the gaps that we made a promise to our parents at the start of the this year we have four gaps in the district uh so right now we definitely can fill one or two of those gaps and we're looking to fill the other two
169uh moving forward and then you'll have a couple others when the grades enter next year but currently we're sitting on four gaps I believe right now at this point we can fill two of those and then we'll continue to do our work and see if we can get all four by next year and just to build a little bit on that like within committee we have um month over month been reviewing data P professional budget lines in particular is that was one that stood us out to us last year um and looking at that intentionally not just the budget but also um the district presenting some intentional decision-making about how P professionals are assigned how they're data is tracked um and really being intentional about the supports that are provided with that um and I
170think that has been a net positive not just in terms of like the budget but also really looking at holistically like this is more than a budget line This is support for kids and so how are we being intentional in assigning it and maintaining that service over time and then fostering Independence um and so I think that holistic approach to looking at special services as yes it's a budget line but this is direct kid- facing support has been an effective way for us to really take a holistic View and and monitor progress and budget within the committee um that that I think um didn't exist before but has been helpful to us in in that understanding this year you regarding the budget for special education something that surprised me in last year's budget cycle you
171know for the current school year is that uh the business administrator estimated that our out of District tuition would actually be decreasing by $1.2 million which is a very unusual thing and like is that really right and you know $1.2 million is a big reduction in out of District tuition was that not did that turn out to not be accurate and are we actually spending like more than we spent you know last year my assumption o my assumption is they were looking at graduates that caused that number I can double check to see how many actually came to fruition uh in regards to kids just exiting through graduation yeah because just like it was kind of an unusual thing in the budget predictions for this current school year okay so first I'll share um my
172notes from the achieve meeting as achieve as the achieve liaison so um just briefly achieve continues to support our District's teachers and students in many ways um they're currently reviewing applications for the Ricky fellowship and um they just closed so they're in review right now and hopefully we'll be able to award Educators from our district with some wonderful Grant opport OPP unities um lots of tutoring going on through achieve um including the they call them the Big Max from the high school going down to the elementary and middle schools they're doing some uh Black History Month programming and um working through a potential summer program a week-long summer program for Rising freshmen and sat at the high school sat study groups continue um there's been Outreach to Juniors to get more participation in the program
173and um the besides sat tutoring the general academic tutoring continues as well they're building those Partnerships um and through achieve the poic Arts initiative continues to financially support um musical lessons and instruments for students maker Madness planning is vigorously underway and of course they're having the night to achieve spring fundraiser next Friday which they'd love for all of us and all of the community to attend um just helps to continue their efforts so if there's ever anything that you would like for me to ask or bring to achieve just please let me know all right and for the cni committee readout the cni committee on February 10th at 6:30 with all members present we discuss progress and updates related to District goals including the following highlights goal one uh with College and Career Readiness we
174received an updated preview of the middle school math presentation which we also had at the recers committee meeting um and they shared with us some tweaks they're making based on feedback from the middle school principls and Dr Fergus for uh regarding gold for family and Community engagement we discussed the communication plan for that middle for the middle school math changes or um not not changes but for the middle school math plan and uh presentation Miss kimine is going to be sharing the presentation multiple times with families mid-march to just get out there and ensure that as many people as possible hear the message and understand um the available Pathways so we did not review any new policies for adoption this month but there are curricula up for board approval both new and revised we'll also
175get um there will be ongoing curricular approvals as it's developed in the summer so as we go into next school year prepare to see lots more come our way uh we are voting on The District's plan to address chronic absenteeism at montros and Marshall schools at this time and we discussed the CHS program of studies as planned last month we had an opportunity to hear the rationale SLT used to make changes to the course offerings for next year Mr Sanchez joined us as well for a robust and very thorough review of the changes um the district team has worked diligently to make sure all the pieces are in place for students to select their courses for next year which is already underway um and lastly we heard about the plans um Mr Bing mentioned earlier
176for Freshman Academy and um Mr Sanchez I believe shared that with the CHS Community or the um 8th grade in Middle School Community last week so our next meeting will be on Monday March 10th at 6:30 pm. and of course a more detailed recap is available on the website any questions comments thank you for that um just wanted to touch on more about the process for the program of studies um I think you know something maybe to consider for the following year starting the process a little bit earlier I was thinking about Oliver your comment that students um were disappointed and and I'm I I can certainly understand that but it's also there was like an an information Gap as to why some of these perhaps courses were either combined or eliminated um and so
177while I don't know exactly um you know each step of the process nor should we be involved in it perhaps starting it a little bit earlier would allow students to get um one either more involved in the survey and feedback process but also just a better understanding of why these changes are being made um based on minimal research that I have done on it I I think you know some of the best practice is to start um come fall you know once the school year has started but I I will say I do appreciate that this is a best practice that hasn't been done in years past and so I know it was um surprising to all and I think we can agree that it's it's certainly a process that's necessary but I think improving
178on the timeline and Communications of all the stakeholders could only improve that process moving for thank you yeah I'll emphasize year one of something that hasn't been done in quite some time and then the idea that we had a bit of chaos at the start of the year which prevented us from starting a little earlier where where we should have started so I think we've learned a lot from year one and so I think year two will be a lot better I can tell you the the uh scheduling definitely will be a lot better come September this question may be a little bit in the weeds but if if either of you are able to answer I was looking at uh among the attendance uh corrective action plans there was one uh where one of
179the notations I think it was for Marshall was that uh for students who are experiencing extreme extreme School refusal related to anxiety or other mental health challenges that we're having trouble uh providing consistent Social Work support at the start of the school day uh or you know in home support for families when students refuse to come to school what um what are we doing to try to build that capacity to address students in that situation uh for us it's building our capacity for one social workers uh as you know we do not have enough currently uh many districts around the state are running with a hybrid model right now which we're going to we're going to run for the first time next year which is uh face tof face social work and also offering kids
180who refuse to come to school virtual social worker Outreach as well that has shown a lot of success in in other districts so we'll be piloting that uh next year at a pretty minimal cost uh to see if that has an impact uh on our students to just have school refusal um I think we're also a big part of that is working on on our end uh the relationship side of the house and we've been talking about this for a while really forming relationship with students uh deep relationships understanding who students are understanding their background um I I think that work uh will be tied into that rigor and relevance work that we discussed uh so I think the board will hear more about that over the next few years I know Carrie is also
181doing a lot of work uh around closing that relationship gap between the adults uh and the children in our district great thank you yeah thank you and I wanted to um reiterate how excited I am about the middle school math initiative I think it's really positive um and I'm I I think it's going to make a difference so I'm hopeful uh I had some comments about Freshman Academy that I wanted to share and I want to start that I don't have any fully formed thoughts on it yet and I that is because I don't have all the information around it um so I'm raising this because I don't want this to become a situation where we're moving forward with something that's not fully flushed out and then we have to walk it back and so
182I am concerned that we're moving forward with Freshman Academy without fully understanding key aspects of it like the budgetary commitments to put Freshman Academy in place and the Staffing implications for upper classmen so um I think that's especially important given our budget situation and the shortage of Math teachers that we have for example I know right now in math you you can have classes that are freshman and sophomores and so if we're moving to a model that are freshman only classes then you also are going to need teachers to teach sophomores so it's I'm unclear to me how we can do this with our current staff resources without taking away from upper classmen um I also think it would be prudent to talk about why we think this is the best solution for meeting our
183students needs as opposed to potential other options and really getting input from parents students and teachers and when I say we're moving forward what I'm really referring to is in the schedule for freshmen this year previous years freshman had about 18 elective choices to choose from drawing design Ceramics C computer Graphics iBot but now we've limited the number of electives severely to five and many of which are electives that they get in middle school so I don't necessarily again have an opinion whether Freshman Academy is a good or bad idea I just feel like I can't have an opinion until we have more information so I just want to ensure that we are fully have the information before we move forward and I think this is especially important because we've already tried various versions of
184Freshman Academy the past two years and improper planning led to failure and I don't I don't want that to happen again thank [Music] you okay thanks everyone um so no one else has any more questions no he's good he's good yeah thank okay we're gonna um go to the action portion of the meeting now um are there any SS no okay Mr Moody can you please read the resolutions into record sure thank you president um D well Wilson um we the board has been presented with resolutions 47 22 through 4734 for vote and uh I will take a full roll call vote before we do roll call discuss does anyone have anything to share additional open to discussion okay great oh just oh that's right yeah I'll just a quick highlight uh of some of
185the items in our our consent agenda which is uh we have got a lot of resolutions in here um in uh resolution 4 722 in Personnel uh we'll give her proper uh honor toward the end of the school year but uh I note we have a uh kindergarten teacher uh Miss uh kaplas retiring after 30 years in the district which is uh remarkable that's a big big achievement um in 4725 in our financials uh we have received a donation uh from Caroline Rubio mcwright uh which covers Transportation costs associated with a Young Women's Conference and stem program uh at uh South Orange Middle School we received a grant from the achieve Foundation to CHS chemistry teacher Emily Peterson for new whiteboards uh and have a donation of some $4,500 worth of Art and music school
186supplies and equipment from the Music Arts and education project so we're grateful U for all of those uh and finally as noted uh resolution 4727 will approve uh the new advised courses uh to effectuate this year's uh CHS uh course offerings thank you so much thank you board member Meyer okay we'll do roll call all right thank you president to Wilson uh sorry someone's in the restroom she's coming she's on the move and I expect by the time I get to her she'll be prepared to vote um so full roll call vote for Resolutions 47 722 through 4734 board member Bennett yes yes board member Brown yes board member Callahan yes board member dval Wilson yes board member eert yes board member gford yes board member Kapaa dang yes board member Meyer yes and board
187member sakic Gable yes great um do we have any more public speaks I'll check online do you know if there's any there wasn't any okay great okay Keith I don't have it open right now I'm trying to open it up no think he said no he said no yeah okay great okay so then moving to the new business portion of the meeting any new business anyone anyone no okay great um oh yes this might have been better to include in the budget conversation but um when we look at state aid we should all remember that it's not K12 operating Aid that matters like or also known as formula Aid like Boards of education and school administrations talk about that the most but also like there are many other streams of Aid so we might notice
188that prek aid for our district is increasing by actually more than our K12 a we're getting about $629,000 more um we also should note that the state is flat funding extraordinary Aid at $420 million Statewide again and like I'm not like faulting like the governor for that decision but it does mean that like you know our 71% funded ratio for this year Statewide be a little bit lower for the coming school year and uh you know it's a financial strain on districts and um that's about all I have to say so like you know when we talk about state aid it's just like formula 8 but like really like formula 8 is like just barely over half of like New Jersey's education spending Statewide so we should like look at other things too thank you
189okay so I'm going to announce future meetings and then we can adjourn um the Board of Education will meet again in public session on Thursday March 13th 2025 at 6:30 p.m. for our preliminary budget adoption meeting action will be taken then the board will meet again on Thursday March 27 2025 at 6:30 p.m. where action will be taken for our Reg board meeting um Mr Moody I would now like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting on Thursday February 27 at 10:44 pm. may I have a second thank you board member Callahan all in favor you don't realize we had another meeting two meetings in March sorry Mr Bang You're Gonna See us two times a lot a lot in March okay great meeting a Jour have a great night everyone e