001[Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] calling the meeting to order please stands salute our flag repeat after flag of me united states of america this meeting is in compliance with the open public meeting law and has been duly advertised in the newspapers as an official meeting roll call president this is cass present miss dr osmond here mr palmeri president mr sergeant here this is rivera president mr walsh president i need a motion to approve the agenda with addendums second any discussion seeing no discussion roll call mrs barakas yes this is cass yes dr mr palmieri yes mr sergeant yes yes mr walsh yes we have a board of education recognition and i'll go up to the podium for
002that there we go a few minutes ago prior to the meeting we showed a video celebrating the elms elementary school for all the ways they are promoting sustainability and environmental responsibility the video was part of a green out celebration for the school being nominated as a green ribbon schools award tonight we are proud to announce that the state wide nomination has gone much further and that elms elementary school has been designated as a 2022 u.s department of education green ribbon school the school is one of 27 districts nationwide the only school in new jersey to receive this recognition the school earned this distinction for its innovative efforts to reduce the environmental impact utility costs improve health and wellness and ensure the effective sustainability education their efforts are a perfect fit with our district-wide energy program
003and commitment to creating a culture that values sustainability and environmental education among the many features that earned elms the honor of the on-site aqueous system which engages students in learning about sustainable farming practices and balance ecosystem lessons and sustainability and environmental challenges focus on water conservation plastic accumulations in the oceans polluter declines beach erosion renewable transportation alternatives invasive species impact on wildlife global access to clean water students participated in the trout in the classroom raising eggs really releasing the fingerlings in the school courtyard rain barrel irrigating the sensory garden and refill the 500 gallon aquaponic system students also participated in a recycling program such as creola color cycle tracks plastic recycling on-site composting and contribute to the food share table and local food pantry to reduce waste while it is certainly a school-wide effort tonight
004we honor and recognize the elms green team for their accomplishments and their leadership the students and staff of elms have done a tremendous job of leading by example their energy commitment their enthusiasm for sustainable and environmental responsibility can be felt throughout the school and is truly a model of excellence it is our pleasure to congratulate elm's teachers shayna brenner [Applause] cheryl kronapak jesse for for i messed that one up for sata assistant principal okay sean levinson and principal mike [Applause] thank burgess so thank you congratulations to the green team and the entire elms community for their efforts to sustain our environment and inspire those around you we're done i will now turn over the meeting to the superintendent for her report thank you mr walsh before you head out folks elms national green ribbon wow
005wow wow i'm so impressed it's amazing i am so proud of the entire staff and students there at elms i was fortunate enough right to join you ms brenner in your class during the walk the learning walk at elms and i got to participate and learn more about all the initiatives your students were fabulous i got to tell you some pesto water i never thought to put pesto in water it was delicious some fresh blueberries i just want to congratulate you on such an incredible acknowledgement way to represent the district and thank you for all of your hard work so as tradition has it we will call our student board reps up first this evening to give the reports of their high schools dakota memorial how about you begin this uh evening evening mrs portmilly
006board members and central administration staff i'm happy to report the jacks memorial high school has seen great success in the past month even into spring break and is on track to continue these accomplishments before i get to events exclusively relating to memorial i'd like to comment on the success of the memorial liberty lacrosse game held on april 22nd which was sponsored by ocean of love ocean of love is a non-profit organization devoted to providing monetary relief to childhood cancer patients and their families and it's been active in our community for a while the game was won by memorial but the day transcended any sort of high school affiliation exemplifying the event's motto of two teams one town one goal in recognition of this event and the great cause i'd highly recommend either donating or volunteering
007for ocean of love they do great work for a great cause this month has been defined by both notable triumphs and thoughtful preparations for the future the junior formal held at jumping brook was a great success and a welcome one for the junior class which has been particularly affected by the past pandemic measures we've only heard good things about it and from the way it's been discussed there's no question that the class is looking forward to their problem next year today we hosted the campus cleanup a large event that saw groups of people turn out to clean up around the school it will host arbor day tree planting on april 29th ap exams are coming up and early may will see students more stressed than perhaps at any other time this school year accordingly the
008school is joining in on the recognition of may as mental health awareness month a variety of activities have been planned in order to aid students in stress management raise awareness of mental hygiene and help the general cause of mental health awareness also in may we will be celebrating teacher appreciation week from the second through the sixth as students we're all grateful for the education we receive and the guidance of our teachers is definitely irreplaceable this value of their work is only accentuated by the coming decision day which we'll be celebrating on the 29th our teachers have been the driving force behind the great accomplishments of our graduating class pushing students to sharpen their minds through diligent work and a strong desire for achievement on a little bit of a lighter notes but still related we
009will also be holding the student faculty basketball game on the 29th we will encourage people to come out and see who comes on top in a true heavyweight matchup the boys track team has seen great results breaking the school four by one record with the team as andre thompson steve bato jamar de berry sean stalker and also breaking the sprint uh medley right sorry relay record with the team of thompson beto deberry and josh rand both the boys and girls teams will be running tomorrow at penn relays where they hope to shatter even more records the baseball team has also gotten off to a scorching start earlier they beat central regional 4-3 behind starting pitchers zach crotrell's 13 strikeouts on the mound and a towering home run at the plate crotcheveltz an auburn commit was
010recently ranked as one of the top players in the state and is considered a possible pick in the upcoming mlb draft i was just told about the recent results of a game that we just had against southern we lost by a run in extra earnings but i'm told it's extremely hard fought and it's a very good sign of things to come big match up right there the girls lacrosse team has also shown great promise recently delivering a strong ten to eight victory over freehold township being great games from sophia duvaney and nicole pappalardo the jmhs deca chapter returned from international competition atlanta this morning and after a long flight i'm thrilled to say it was a great experience bring along a record number of participants the chapter managed to develop the individual abilities of each
011competitor while also focusing on team building exercises that promoted critical thinking and leadership skills most notably chapter president noel powers took home second in the world in the personal financial literacy competition noel has put in a tremendous amount of hard work to get there and in my opinion he couldn't have had a more deserving person get that award i look forward to another productive month and i look forward to addressing this body again thank you for having me mrs paul million board members and have a good evening [Applause] thank you dakota for the very informative and very up-to-date report right off the field information uh brooklyn from liberty thank you superintendent premier board of ed members and guests april has been a very successful month for us in liberty our spring sports are in full
012speed right now our boys volleyball team is having a great season so far with a record of 9-2 they are undefeated in the conference with a divisional record of 7-0 after their win against pinelands the b south shore conference title looks to be theirs the baseball team is also having a successful season with a record of six and four track is excited to have athletes attending the penn relays today we know they will represent the lions well we're very proud of our spring sports and are looking forward to see seeing how their seasons wrap up sports haven't been the only action going on in liberty the atlas players will be performing the wives of henry viii on friday may 6th at 7 30 in the auditorium the tickets are on sale for 10 dollars and
013can be bought either online at liberty.booktix.com or at the door we hope to see you there another exciting show coming up is the jtv annual feronies they will be on friday may 27th also in the auditorium come out for a night of singing dancing awards and other performances before both of these events liberty will be holding a battle of the bands this friday at 6 30 pm this will include performances from high school students who have their own bands tickets will be eight dollars at the door our students and staff have also been very active in the community the national honor society made care bags for the chemo patients in lakewood they also made and donated mother's day flowers to the sunrise senior citizen center in jackson to brighten up the people's days our liberty
014band is holding a clothing drive fundraiser on saturday april 30th from 9 00 a.m to 4 p.m at the high school they are asking for women men and children's clothing shoes purses stuffed animals and bed and bath linens they will also take bicycles and strollers if you would like to donate it would be greatly appreciated in other exciting news row kappa honor society members were just inducted last night so we want to offer a big congratulations to them this is the social studies honor society and we are very proud of how hard our students have been working and this shows that hard work pays off lastly this friday will be our college decision decision day seniors will come into school wearing their future college apparel we are very excited to see where all of the
015students decide to go i'm looking forward to updating you on the final two months of school next time thank you so much have a great month thank you brooklyn lots and lots of wonderful things happening in our high schools it's very exciting and in fact my very next comment had to do with heading into the last two months of school hard to believe we're at the last two months already there's a lot of activities that are happening we have concerts award ceremonies and of course our moving up and our promotion and our graduation ceremonies and we're so excited to be back to normal for those things the middle school promotion and the high school graduation dates and times are on the agenda this evening for approval so we're ready to roll right into the next
016two months and graduations it's very exciting also on the agenda this evening is a revised 2022-2023 calendar that includes three additional half days for students for so that in order for our staff in the afternoon to have professional development uh and collaboration so that's a revised calendar just including three additional half days as an update for our non-public transportation timeline and our bid opening we are still on track for our original timeline also to note today is administrative assistance day in case you didn't know to all of our administrative assistants in the district thank you for all you do each and every day to support our staff and our students it takes collaboration and dedication to meet with success and we have some of the finest assistance here in jackson mrs jeannie barber happens to
017be one of them thank you for all you do to assist me and support this district this evening we have three presentations we're starting this evening with a health standards presentation and then we will move on to a performance report and our budget hearing i'm going to start this evening with the health standards presentation to review the new jersey department of education health standards there's been a lot of information i'm sure everyone's aware in the news recently about these standards and you may remember seeing right before break that the district put a communication out in regards to releasing information that we wanted to articulate to our community about how jackson would be handling those standards we paused that because the governor had made that very same day we were ready to release the information he
018had made a comment about he wanted those standards to go under review again and to pause them so we held and we paused sending our communication out since then over break districts in new jersey received a memo from the commissioner of education basically stating that the standards were mis interpreted and that the districts have the discretion to select and adopt curricular and resources that are aligned to those new jersey health standards therefore tonight we are prepared to share with the board and the community the approach the district will be taking on these standards mrs teresa lacitra our director of curriculum is here this evening and will be presenting that information so ms lasitra yes thank you so much thank you mrs camille and welcome again to the board and to my colleagues and to our
019community in the audience and our community watching here at home so the purpose of tonight as mr milly said is to present to you the pe in health standards what changes were required by the new jersey student learning standards for 2020 and how the district will be addressing those standards as stated by governor murphy the implement of this curriculum is done at the district level so again our purpose tonight is to clearly designate what the jackson school district will be presenting in school and what a parent may present at home the jackson school district has not and will not adopt the resources that the department of education has shared we are not utilizing at them at this time our curriculum for pe and health across all the grades pre-k through grade 12 is written in-house
020it's written by our teachers our administrators and we utilize our own resources our current textbooks are from 2007 and they contain the basics that we need to address in physical education and health with that there are some very sensitive topics that have been presented and there has been a lot of media attention regarding those topics so we want to go and explain to you grade by grade band by band what those additions are and how the jackson school district is addressing those so our curriculum for the new jersey student learning standards 2020 was adopted two years ago we have been implementing the curriculum there are certain standards that have changed and been added to what we was prior before 2020 with the target date for that implementation september 2022 which is this september coming up
021so the grades the standards go by bands so what they do is they tell you like by the end of grade two by the end of grade five by the end of grade eight and by the end of grade 12 so what we have done is we're going to be showing you what those standards are and how we're addressing them in schools so in kindergarten in first grade none of the curriculum has changed we have been teaching on pe and health and talking to students about awareness and respect and how they can take care of themselves both physically emotionally and academically two of the standards in grade two that have brought a lot of attention have not changed and will not change in september in our curriculum but i wanted to focus on what those
022standards are and how we will be addressing them so there is one standard 2.12 and it talks about having students celebrate their differences so we do that by asking students to talk about things that they like things that they like to do maybe things that they like to do when they socialize like i like to play soccer i like to bake with my grandmother i like to sing that's what we do in school we celebrate students and we make them be respectful of people that might like things different than them or people that like things that are the same as them the other part of the standard about different stereotypes that might limit behavior we feel that parents can have those conversations at their own discretion at home there is another standard that is on
023the next slide and that standard talks about naming body parts so in school we name body parts that can be seen when fully clothed for example head shoulders knees and toes toes depending on the season sometimes you see them and sometimes you don't the standard also requires that you can discuss medically or scientifically accurate names for body parts we feel that parents can have those discussions at their own discretion at home so nothing in second grade has changed we are fully aligned to the nj sls 2020 standards there are some ways we approach them in school and some suggestions that we have for parents that they can further engage their learners at home so again for grade k and one nothing has changed for grade two this is how we address those two very sensitive
024topics the next grade level band is grade five so in grade five so in grade two there there is really no opt out because nothing has changed in grade 5 grade 8 and grade 11 parents always have the opportunity to opt out of a lesson and what we will be implementing next year in september what we've done this year in september parents get a lot of materials the first day of school which they sign off on the health curriculum is one of them the teachers explain that on back to school night currently we ask a parent that by october 1st they can tell us if they want their child excluded from any of the health lessons that deal with family life or parenting we send a letter out in grade 5 and we notify the
025students in grade 8 and 11 next year will be very specific i'm notifying parents as to the date of those lessons and a parent can opt out at any time either by sending in a letter or directly content contacting the principal so in grade five when we go uh to the topics that are by the physical education bands these are things that discuss changes that happen to adolescents we talk about different body changes that happen due to hormones and we discuss those changes with the students there is one sensitive topic that is new to the standard and that is standard 2.1.5 so if you look at the next slide this is how we are going to be addressing that standard we're not using the examples that are presented by the state again the state provides
026a basic framework of what we should be teaching our students and it's up to the district of how they implement that so some of the examples that they give up there that families can talk about at home would be at the discretion of the parents those topics are not talked about during the grade 5 health lesson we do provide parents with a very brief link to a video the video is about 15 minutes long we've been doing that for the past five years it's the same video that a parent can preview before the actual lesson in grade five the lesson is one day so it's one health period during the school year and that has not changed but again that one standard that's a very sensitive topic that a lot of you may be reading
027about that is how we'll be addressing that the next group of standard bands is by the end of grade eight so in eighth grade again students get health lessons in grade eight they they require three instructional periods so it's over the course of three days the sensitive topics that have been brought up in grade eight are talking about differences and accepting everyone regardless of how they think of themselves it's really having the the child respect themselves and being able to take ownership of how they feel about a multitude of things we also strongly encourage students to talk to adults about any topic that they feel that they're uncomfortable with or about a topic that they feel they'd like to pursue even even more we talk to them about stranger danger we also talk to them
028about different ways they can keep themselves healthy both physically mentally and socially we talked to them about diet we talked to them about staying physically active we talked about how they can expand their um academic achievement and their brain power and then we also talk to them about different body changes that happen and what happens as a result of those changes the very sensitive topic that would be on the next slide is here they talk about stds and the difference in the new standard as opposed to the old standard is before it said to discuss different ways now it says to define different ways that stds can be transmitted so what we do say to students is that you can catch a cold you can catch an infection you can catch an std by different
029openings in your body the yellowed part about defining them we feel that if a parent wants to go into more detail at home that would be at the discretion of the parent the next grade level ban is 11th grade there there are no new standards that are introduced in 11th in 11th grade again a parent can opt out their child from any of these lessons at any time so what the slides do the next few slides here talk about is what they're learning when they're in 11th grade they learn about the advantages and disadvantages of some of the choices they make they learn about parenting they learn about fiscal responsibility they talk about the cost of raising the child education how much a college education costs they talk about different things that they can do
030to keep themselves healthy in a myriad of different ways the lessons in grade 11 can take anywhere from a minimum of five teaching periods to seven teaching periods so the topics that are listed here on these next few slides are still topics that we have been addressing for many many years and again the nj sls 2020 standards do not have anything additional as the grade um two five and eight standards did that um creates any sensitivity or concern so the the last slide that i'm going to go to is talk about things that the jackson school district does not do so we do do the curriculum we are fully aligned to the 2020 standards there are different ways that we implement that curriculum that's for physical education and health just to clarify the jackson school
031district nor does the state of new jersey adopt critical race theory that is not something that the state has adopted and is not something that the jackson school district utilizes in any of its curriculum as i said again for pe in health all of our curriculum is written in-house by our teachers we use our own resources and again our textbooks are available and the same textbooks that we have been using for years the current social media i don't know if many of you have seen it the easiest way i can explain it is it comes in the form of a dropbox so if you open up a link it it shows a dropbox of different health lessons the jacks and it's called the three r's the jackson school district does not utilize these health lessons
032what this three r company is they're based in california and they're a company and they're trying to sell their product so they have adapted their product for many states and in one of their websites it says these are adapted for the state of new jersey state of new jersey does not adopt any kind of curriculum textbooks that are mandated that's up to each individual district so the state does not utilize that and the jackson school district does not utilize that and the last thing again goes back to what i said at the very beginning the department of education released resources that you can utilize for p e and health we do not utilize those resources some of you may have heard about the pink blue and purple handouts that another school district in new jersey
033had given out as a sample that comes from that resource link so we just wanted to assure you that's not something that we utilize and we don't utilize those resources so again the curriculum goes by great bands with the very sensitive topics geared for the end of that grade band which again would be 2 5 8 and 11 and at any time any parent can opt out of those lessons the last thing on there is my name my contact number and my email i'm very approachable if you have any questions about anything that either was presented tonight or anything that's presented in the future please feel free to email me contact me directly i'd be more than happy to address any of your concerns thank you any questions from the board before go on i
034have i have one sure are the parents going to be given a timeline yes so right now it says it says on our website october 1st but a lot of this material is new to a lot of people so a parent can opt out at any time but some lessons are completed already so if you had pe in semester one in the high school you had your pe in health already and if you are in middle school a lot of those lessons were had already in fifth grade it's usually done um more towards the very end of may the beginning of june so next school year they'll have that opt-out from day one yes it'll be on day one and we will have a link on the website we have a specific link for the
035fifth grade piece because there's a video but we're going to make it very accessible to parents to be able to find thank you thank you mr sutra i just want to clarify when you say some lessons have happened already they are the existing lessons we've always done there's existing lessons we've always done everything that was highlighted in yellow was what the or proposed for the standards for september 2022 so nothing that was taught this year addresses any of that and in grade two the content remains the same for next year also yes that is very that that's correct miss premieli any other questions okay thank you so much thank you mrs lacitra we really appreciate it we really felt it was important to clarify things and like i said we were prepared to do that
036before break so as always our presentations after the board meeting are posted on our district website so that presentation will be posted and shortly after that we also have a q a document that we will be posting on the same topic so that we keep our community and parents informed so moving on every year the department of education releases information pertaining to a number of areas about school districts these reports are called performance reports there's lots of information in all of those reports and it's based on many different pieces of data mr ratante our assistant superintendent of curriculum tonight will be highlighting a few of those areas for our board in our community mr vitante okay good evening everyone thank you mr milly thank you board of ed and community for the opportunity to present
037our school performance report information uh this does come out every year right around this time and typically reports on data that is from not it's usually about a year and a half um old because it's the data from the the previous full school year so it's the 1920 school year as well as some information from the 2021 school year so the school performance report itself um really releases a multitude of data points that parents can see community can see and our district is allowed to is able to see that information as well and use the data points that are there to make decisions on our staffing our inrs programs and any extra programs that we need to know to use this data really provides us a lot of information that we can use to make
038sure you know we keep the school district moving in the right direction what you'll notice in this report as well this year because of the pandemic from the last two years a lot of assessment data that simply just did not happen over the past two school years some information about sats and psats certain topics like that you'll see are very limited in the reporting simply because they did not happen um over these past two school years the one thing that this report does not show is the effort of our students our staff our community our parents our administration that needed to go above and beyond in almost every single category because of the situation that we've been in for the past two years how our teachers were able to engage kids connect kids teach remotely
039all of those things like that are not reflected in this report but are a huge testament to the positive things that have happened in this district over the past two years and this report is all available through the website in spanish as well as english some of the specific data points that the school performance report includes deal with are demographic information student growth academic achievement college and career readiness staff information accountability and every school has a narrative page that gives a lot of information as far as activities clubs involvement community things things such as the green ribbon that you saw with the elm school those are all included in the narratives that are available for each school every single school has their own individual report and then there's also a district summary report that puts
040all of the district information together in one place i'm going to just highlight a couple slides that the school performance report shows just to give you a snapshot of some of the information that's there and i would welcome and invite anyone to dive deeper into your own school or the district or the you know the schools your children attend and i would be more than happy to answer any questions if anybody has them after reviewing some of the data on the website so the first piece of data obviously is an important one it just shows our three-year enrollment this is taken on a snapshot date of october 15th every school year so what you see here for the 2021 school year was what our exact enrollment was on october 15 2020. obviously we're now a
041full school year and a half beyond that date our current enrollment is over 7 700 which is a higher number than than what you see there but that's the number that's reported in the in the school performance report to get a true picture of what our enrollment trends are on this report if you look at the the senior class of 2021 you'll see there were 670 seniors that year those would have been the juniors the year before where there were 637 and the sophomores the year before that where there were 650 so that particular class actually had a growth of 20 students between sophomore and senior year another one to highlight would be our fifth grade from 2021 that had 549 it had 551 as fourth graders the year before that and 548 third graders
042the year prior to that so really no change in the amount of students in that grade level as they moved up from year to year and you can do that for for any grade level the next important piece of information i want to share is our graduation rates you can see here what our graduation rates are and they do it in two ways they report it as four-year graduation trends and also five-year graduation trends so we do have a number of students specifically that are some of our special needs students that remain with us in our programs and very specific special needs programs after their senior year and will remain for even one or two more years possibly additional after after senior year so you can see from the four-year graduation trends um you know
043liberty at 91.8 percent uh jackson memorial at 95.9 and then the state graduation trend of 90.6 uh what you see on the bottom the continuing students those would be students that remained with our school district the following year and non-continuing students would be students that did did end their high school career without receiving their high school diploma and then you can see that same trend that goes on for uh with the five year graduation trends these numbers are high however our goal has always been and will always continue to be that we want these numbers to be 100 and we'll continue to work with all of our students every year to try and get these numbers to be 100 graduation every year the post-secondary enrollment gives information as far as so this is the class
044of 2020 so for the 16 months after the graduation of the class of 2020 how many of those students went on and enrolled in some sort of post-secondary education whether it be a two-year program or a four-year program you can see there are total population of of all of our students that were in the class of 2020 74.6 percent of our students did go on to tour a four-year school we promote and we encourage our students to get on that track through programs like naviance our sat courses that we provide here at school our guidance counselors work with our students to that are interested in going in that in that track and help them out uh throughout that process what's not shown here is the amount of our students that go into military that get
045into the workplace immediately after graduation those students are not part of the 74.6 but many of those students are in very very successful paths and trends doing wonderful things for themselves and for the jackson community at this point college and career readiness is really focused on course enrollment and sat and psat data uh you can see the percent of our students that do take the psat and in either 10th or 11th grade 80.8 percent and the percent of our seniors that took sat while in high school keep in mind this these particular students were faced with many many sat sessions that were cancelled postponed limited enrollment over the course of of their junior senior year because of everything that had gone on so these numbers are significantly lower than have traditionally been for our school
046district uh 45.7 we're typically in the 80 to 90 range if you look at previous school performance reports so i i do see that number as an anomaly um based on the situation that we were in and i fully anticipate that number will increase as we move forward with this school year and beyond the number of our students that take an ap course we have over almost a third of our students in high school are taking some sort of ap which is an advanced placement college level course that are taught at both of our high schools we offer over 20 different ap courses to our students and about a third of our students take advantage of that with many of our students taking multiple ap courses not not only one and that last category cte
047that stands for career and technical education these are programs such as computer science woodworking family consumer science engineering programs that are very specific for either a career or technical trade and we have almost again almost a third of our students are involved in some sort of cte course while they're at either liberty or memorial high school and this next slide just shows our early childhood education this is another slide where you will see a significant change as we move forward into next year and beyond you can see a significant low number of our students enrolled in preschool in 2021 that was due to many students many parents working from home at that point that is that was a pay program that parents needed to pay uh to enroll their stu their children in that program
048and many people experience financial hardships and and were not able to do so now as we move into the 21-22 school year we are our district is so fortunate to have the preschool grant we now are able to offer free preschool to all of our preschool students we currently have over 286 kids in the program now and we'll be expanding that program to over 400 students for the the following for next school year so you'll see a significant change in those numbers as we move forward into future years again as i mentioned and mrs premier mentioned this this presentation will be posted on the website you can see different um resources there the actual link to get to the school performance reports for all jackson schools is listed there there's also a new jersey department
049of ed survey this information does not come to our district we don't see it but it's a survey that parents can fill out uh if you have suggestions if there's specific data points you would like to see in future performance reports if there's data points that you feel aren't relevant to information that you might be interested in those are questions that are in that survey that every parent is encouraged and welcome to complete for our for our district but also just for the school performance reports in general and the department of ed website also has a lot more information and i'm available if anybody has any questions or would like to discuss anything further from our school performance reports open up to any questions at this point okay thank you thank you mr ratante very
050informative [Applause] so our final presentation this evening is our proposed budget last month's board meeting i shared the tentative budget tonight i'll share the proposed budget just as a reminder all of the budget presentations and the information is also posted on our district website also as a reminder our budget process the slides behind me indicate exactly the places of opportunity to share information to learn more about our budget process learn about our department budgets our proposed budget unfortunately our cuts and also hear about our tentative and our final budget tonight april 27 meeting as an overview as i said at the tentative budget hearing as well this budget maintains our programs that is always our priority staffing programs instruction for our students so this does make an investment in our curriculum most of our technology
051and our extracurricular programs it maintains class size it does not allow our district to make much needed capital improvements and does not allow us to expand the program as a reminder i know you've all heard this before we are facing s2 cuts and as i had said earlier last month we anticipated a 4.1 million dollar cut in state aid and unfortunately instead without notice received a 4.6 million dollar cut with no explanation of why and we are on target right now to lose almost 19.5 million dollars over all of the years of our s2 cuts a little bit later i'll talk more about how we're advocating and as a reminder as well um in the media you could see over the last few months jackson was obviously highlighted not for reasons i would like to
052see it highlighted but as being a very top loser in state aid so we are one of the 10 top we are number five of losing the most state aid in the school districts in new jersey as you are all aware the board and our public that the jackson school district every year faces challenges for budgeting not just our normal budget types of challenges that most districts face contractual obligations rising costs we all know we're dealing with tremendous inflation right now and gas product inflation service inflation tuition that's outside of our control transportation costs and having to you know really look further to expand salaries to be able to be attractive to to drivers and then other things that were passed such as chapter 44 which provides less contribution for a staff member to their
053health benefits which affects our budget as well particularly here in jackson we have some special circumstances we all know of the increase of the need for non-public transportation that affects our budget and we also have an increased population that's needing special programs and special staffing it again as i have said in the past [Music] i i can't understand why our department of ed in our state department can't differentiate a formula that allows for those special circumstances and we continue to advocate and that factor there should be a different approach for districts that have special circumstances yes we received esther money yes we've received arp money those things come to an end so those are not monies that we can use to continually reduce class size because that's not sustainable but we can use it to
054help us with learning loss programs you see we have additional programs for that it we can use it for things that supplies that we need to help address certain things we can use it for professional development to help our teachers to help close gaps for students and it's again very helpful to the district without it we would have been seeing significant significant cuts across the district so what's the impact of our budget this year a loss of four positions through attrition retirements reduction in force again every our class size will remain consistent of what they are i wanted to make a point that although only four positions and we have been very very much on top of every time we receive a retirement of making sure that we could bring back a position we thought
055that we might have to cut we are very much aware of making sure we can maintain staff so that our class sizes do not increase further but i did want to point out we have been very frugal we have been very good and very much on top of being able to move things around but over all of the s2 cuts that we've had over the years we have eliminated 147 positions you're going to feel that in a district we feel that and so that's just at this point and again appeal to our department of ed and our governor that that's significant you know we see class sizes increased workload increase for people burnout for people it's a lot so again we also have our loss of our capital projects from year to year we maintain
056the ones that we know we must be able to do for safety reasons but there are a lot of other ones that need to be done as well we've also reduced our school-based budgets again for supplies and we've done some reductions in technology fortunately again this district has been very good at finding grants and we will be able to purchase a lot of technology through the grants that we have as i said earlier our priority is always to maintain program curriculum and instruction here are the items that are being maintained we are maintaining the curriculum in this budget we are adopting our new math curriculum and resources and our science our technology we're keeping our co-curriculars we know how important they are we've worked hard in this budget to maintain those things with that i'll
057turn it over to the numbers portion of the budget presentation to ms richardson thank you mr manley i'm going to talk about some of the numbers that you have on the form that you picked up in the front big number on there of course is the tax levy this is the amount that is to be raised by taxation it's the general fund tax levy and also the debt service tax levy the debt service tax levy is of course for debt that we've had over the years we have our debt scheduled out to the year 2026. this year's proposed budget contains a general tax fund levy increase of 2 percent on this next slide i'll show you the the different numbers that are on that form that you picked up up there the general fund tax
058levy is increasing 1.7 million dollars which is as i said 2 increase state 8 is going down 10 million dollars that's a 22 percent decrease the general fund which is just the the first part of the budget is a decrease of 4.4 million dollars 3 percent the federal and state programs are going down by 3.7 million dollars just 16 percent and our total debt is going down and that's like i said it's scheduled out for each year it's just happened to be going down this next year of five thousand dollars 0.07 percent discrete decrease the total budget is decreasing by 8.2 million dollars which is 4.69 now what does this mean for the taxpayers in jackson with the proposed budget going down 4.69 percent the increase in the school tax rate and this is an
059estimate because i'm not the tax assessor for the township i i just have done it for so many years i know how to calculate it it's .0079 increase to the tax rate so the 20 2022 because they work on a calendar year proposed school tax rate is 1.419 per 100 of assessed home value and the normal house the average home in jackson is calculated at 329 862. we get that from the township we ask them for that number that's a 26 dollar increase per year calendar year for the average home homeowner i'll turn that back over to mrs pamela thank you mr sen so as i mentioned uh earlier in the presentation we continue to advocate at all levels that the s2 cuts stop pause go away in general just recently i submitted formal testimony
060to the new jersey senate budget hearing last week that outlined the significant impact that these cuts are having on this district i also just recently as of today sent it to our commissioner of education and our state board of education i really have been advocating for the fact that at least pause this we've we are have experienced two years of difficult times for our students and our staff and i i just don't understand why i can't at least be paused to get us through being able to help our students further we continue to advocate with our legislators ms richardson and i have been on phone conversations with some of our legislators about helping to support us including applying for our stabilization aid again we're hopeful that perhaps that can help us again for this upcoming
061budget but our legislators are helping to work with us to provide some bills hopefully that will help us and provide additional funding or at least some support and aid for those special circumstances that i spoke about before there are ways that you can help us as well we will have the letter that was sent and the public and the hearing letter that was sent to to everyone up on our district website so that you can use that portions of it we'll have sample letters and we ask that you help us advocate the more they hear from us the more attention this district will get and hopefully get some differentiated approach to funding so that concludes our proposed budget i am pleased to say we've maintained program and instruction but it has been very difficult and
062it would be wonderful to not have to but be able to expand on things so with that i closed the public hearing on the proposed budget and the superintendent's report mr walsh thank you mr fernell need a motion to open public forum motion easy easy okay on the 2022-2023 budget only we will hold another public forum during the meeting for all other questions the public forum will be only for questions about the budget motion okay uh please sign in and okay all in favor say aye bye bye please sign in state your name whether or not you are a jackson resident each person is allowed a maximum of five minutes to speak no person may speak more than once on a topic until all others have been hurt can i ask a question you'll get
063your chance seeing no one approach jazz budget yes okay seeing no one approach requests okay 18 brian drive jackson one statement i know you won't do this but do not let cutbacks in budget be the excuse to overload classrooms don't do it anyone else about budget seeing no one come forward make a motion we close ocean second now the board members have questions thanks just a quick question so i see that this um the sample letters are going to go out on the website on the 28th and it's super important that people write these letters and make calls where where will we find that on the website yeah miss irwin our website guru can you explain that a little bit we're going to anchor them on the board of education budget and financial page but
064we're going to put it front and center on the front pages of all the site websites and actually email it to all of our parents directly so it'll be budget page but it'll be splashed about quite a bit thank you ms erwin so you said you we're going to email it out to all the parents you any other questions from board members okay standing committee reports state and county school board rep um may 24th we'll be having our next county meeting it will be at 6 30 at the clarion hotel and it's going to be a hybrid model parent group liaison the next meeting will be may 11 2022 to discuss what's going on for the closing of the school year special education the special ed committee does not have a date on the calendar
065yet but our main meeting is to be announced soon hopefully scholarship they are at that point of the year when the sponsors are selecting the scholars to receive their scholarships and tomorrow the committee the jackson township committee will meet to select scholarships from that committee building and grounds as far as building and grounds are concerned everyone who plays tennis on memorial may 1st okay they're going to start reconstructing the tennis courts so it's going to be closed for a little while and just to give you a heads up as far as that's concerned but those people who play tennis over there will be happy to get them fixed okay the district's had its lead testing completed with a few hiccups here and there but they've all been corrected switlik has cited another modular number seven
066okay and the parking lots and liberty have been fixed so um not the parking lots the lights i should say have been fixed parking lots are fine okay uh with many other things being repaired as they come along such as the generator need fixing at mcauliffe and so on and so forth but they are progressing as we talk budget and finance you've seen it it's up on the board transportation uh we'll be having our transportation meeting at the end of next month thank you curriculum we met on monday afternoon and everything that mrs lacitra put in her wonderful presentation that was basically our whole discussion and the report that mr otonte gave so both of those things were up on the screen earlier today policy committee will be meeting on may 10 and i'll have
067an update next board meeting the enrollment committee has not met probably next year we'll start getting that together i'm sorry next year is that what you said yeah probably at the beginning of next year like 2023 no no september school year school year okay september 2022. we need a motion for approval of the minutes closed session meeting march 23rd 2022 the official board meeting march 23 2022 committee of the whole and business meeting motion second discussion seeing no discussion roll call mrs barakas yes mrs cass yes dr osmond yes mr primary yes mr sergeant yes this is rivera yes mr walsh yes i need a motion for approval of the bills list motion second discussion seeing no discussion roll call mrs barakas yes this is cass yes dr osmond mr palmeri yes mr sergeant yes
068this is rivera yes mr walsh yes need a motion for the approval the treasurer's report and the board secretary's report motion second discussion seeing no discussion roll call this is baracus yes mrs cass yes dr osmond yes mr palmieri yes mr sergeant yes mrs rivera yes mr walsh yes i need a motion to open a public forum for any topic pertaining to the board of education motion second all in favor aye aye please sign in state your name whether or not you are a jackson resident each person is allowed a maximum of five minutes no person may speak more than once on a topic until all others have been heard this is open this the open forum for anything hi my name is joyce jollof um i live in jackson do you need the address
069as well jackson fine um so my child lives in the elms we go to elms and it's kind of a town and sport of ed question recently the adventure crossing power plant has been approved um which will we had learned at the zoning board last week we'll be giving off 100 tons of noxious oxide a year with that pollution and elms being less than a mile away from the project how will the board of ed be dealing with this as this is obviously a grave environmental concern especially the fact that elms is a health and wellness and safety school you know that's very important in addition [Music] with the warehouses also coming online within a year by next year the 400 proposed trucks in the one million square foot warehouses will be flooding anderson and
070patterson area causing problems for our buses and such since it is a 24 hour seven day operating facility and i wanted to know how the board of ed has come to address not only the environmental impacts of this but also the busing pro the problem with these massive semi trucks so we the board of education has not had a conversation about the power plant at this point but i appreciate you bringing it to our attention and certainly something we will look into and discuss um and the as far as the warehouse and the traffic we do have transportation board committee and those are the the things that we would be discussing some that would be one topic we would discuss at a board transportation committee meeting and we do review our roads and look at
071safe ways of making sure that we keep our students as safe as possible but you're right it's also a township question as well but certainly we will be looking into those things and we appreciate you bringing them to our attention okay thank you hi my name is uh jim quigley i am a resident of jackson uh thank you mrs lesitra for a wonderful presentation that answered a lot of my questions i do have a follow-up question with respect to that though what assurance do we as the parents have that a teacher might make perhaps a more progressive teacher might teach beyond the curriculum and teach something without the consent of the parents so we have hi sorry i didn't see you pop up there go ahead miss lisa you go first thank you so much
072i think i spoke with you earlier this week correct yes not this week but yes yes um so our teachers are trained so at the elementary level it's the classroom teacher except for the fifth grade lesson that's the pe teacher and when the pe teacher does the lesson in fifth grade and again that's an opt-out lesson there is another adult in the room and the boys and girls are separated for those lessons it's something we have been implementing for years there's training that goes along with it this summer we are going to be again having some more training working with the administrators who are in charge with those levels and the pe teachers that give those lessons they give the health lesson because it's p e health in the upper grades they too have been
073trained and we have discussions and all of the things that i presented today we have already talked about over the course of the last two years so a student could ask a question that might be different than some of the topics we're talking about and we encourage them at that time to talk go home and talk to an adult if it's not part of what our discussion should be in class is that okay did i answer you okay uh i i think so because i think it's just so essentially it's just the training of the teachers to say don't go beyond the bounds of i think you said in fifth grade it's one day so okay so i guess like just for clarification yes there won't be a math problem word problem that says bobby's
074going to buy a dress yes and things of that nature okay no um again our our math curriculum which we're adopting for september is the envision math curriculum and we use the um hmh that's the parent company hooton mifflin uh that that uses those materials and i'm sure you see the worksheets coming home so that's what we use for that and and that's manufactured for that that and again um we have training conversations and everyone is very much aware of the since sensitivity of some of these topics and we feel that we've addressed it in the best way by aligning to the standards and also getting the community involved okay thank you very much you're welcome anytime mr quigley 18 brian drive jackson going back decades uh it is probably it has been always been
075proper for board members to follow the law to do what's right according to the law but we've already always promoted a jackson model if our model is better because it's more professional and we can back it up it's better to do the to the jackson way and be able to defend it which is what we do okay i have a couple of issues um a former superintendent at elms was a big fan of frog ponds you we have two frog ponds in one in each high school when you're going out to park you hear these loud frogs that are so annoying he loved them but i suggest and i suggested then but he left that we create some access of some boardwalk so that they can be used for research you can test the water
076for mosquitoes for quality of water of poisons in the water leads and it can be two free classrooms out there there you'll see them there they're visible from the cars now i have two issues that are aspirational and pragmatic well right now in october the new the um geraldine dodge rockefeller foundation is going to have a poetry festival which it has had for the last 36 years last couple years they've been virtual so i didn't attend i attended the first one i've never missed one since i suggest since from the day first day we had a high school here we had great writers not only did we have great writers but our journal our poetry book won the the uh the honor of being the number one literary journal in all of ocean county better
077than point pleasant borough but i would also take this opportunity to apologize to uh scott because last time i gave a shot to his what i thought was his high school point beach because they're sure they're small and they're supposed to be number one 300 kids come on give me a break that's enough all right i hope i gave uh genie an address and a phone number for it to end up with our people so they can call and find out about this festival this is the largest poetry festival in the entire united states maybe the world they have a high school component where they uh bus loads of kids go there and they get to meet poets the poor lawyer of the united states they work hand in hand with professors and they get
078to meet poets who happen to be professors at princeton etc i suggest that you consider it i will not put out my glasses so i could read one i sloppily wrote down where is it located it's it's going to be in uh at the uh performance performing arts center in newark okay it's it used to be in uh in just barely on the other side of new jersey in new york but now it's been for the last few years in newark and it's a great facility um all right okay i'm big on the environment i notice from the beginning that the solar panels are a great addition to our district however they are taking up real estate so as soon as some other version of the solar panels are are created whether to be elevated
079on posts smaller more portable mobile replace those solar panels so we can re use that land for practice fields for gym for for coaching for varsity sports okay that's a big piece of land when i first came here or our board office was used to store xerox paper and i said this building to store a zero items box after box of xerox paper that's not the proper use of uh real estate also i noticed that there was a differential between blacks african-americans latinos in scores or going to college by 10 to 14 okay that's i'm not gonna say it's unacceptable it's just a reality but it's a concern i will tell you we should keep an eye on that because 10 to 14 become 20 to 30 if you expect this school district to be
080a success don't applaud yourself because you're a green school or a blue blue ribbon school if an entire group of people are left behind do not allow yourselves to think that you can live with such figures okay so do something about it mr acevedo your time is out i knew it would be thank you for your comments mr acevedo and yes i would agree in regards to graduation rates always working on it okay this is the last forum okay it's for anything so if anybody has anything to say to the board please come up now seeing no one approach the mic okay have a motion to close the forum motion second okay by acclimation closed forum all in favor aye aye okay resolution for action motion motion to move finance motion second discussion number six
081i have a question about that leasing the adoption that we're getting into would that be buses or all vehicles it's only for buses it's only for buses okay so where it's not purchase or is it least purchased it's lease purchase okay all right uh also i just have a statement to make about number 12. we'll have the vocational group coming in here to help us install the new fixtures that we got in a grant for plumbing okay that is a great utilization of uh what talent the county has because it's actually county votec okay roll call this is maraucus yes this is cass yes dr osmond yes mr palmeri yes mr sergeant yes mrs rivera yes mr walsh yes motion to move facilities motion second discussion seeing no discussion roll call mrs barakas yes this
082is cass yes dr osmond yes mr primary yes mr sergeant yes this is rivera yes mr walsh yes motion to move programs motion second discussion just have a statement as a retired science teacher i love to see that we're starting all these programs that deal with science down at the elementary level and all the way up including summer programs for science okay we got problems on this earth and those kids are the ones who are going to have to really solve them roll call mrs barakas yes this is cass yes doctor osmond yes mr primary yes mr sargent yes this is rivera yes mr walsh yes motion move students motion second discussion seeing the discussion roll call mrs barakas yes mrs cass yes dr osmond yes mr primary yes mr sergeant yes mrs rivera yes
083mr walsh yes motion to move personnel motion second discussion seeing no discussion roll call this is baracus yes this is cass yes dr osmond yes mr palmeri yes mr sergeant abstain from 1b yes to everything else mrs rivera yes mr walsh yes board comments start with mrs i just wanted to congratulate elms on being a green ribbon school because i think that's a really great i know we had one last year as well we had blue and green last year right so um right right so um just another great accomplishment in jackson um my son was on the deca trip so i just want to give a shout out to noelle because she placed internationally and i think it's just a great program and i love it and those kids had a great time in
084atlanta our sports teams are doing great and the tennis courts getting redone is really exciting i also want to acknowledge because it's administrative assistant day and i know genie like you do all of our packets all the time and they're always so nice and neat and it's a lot of paperwork and so i do appreciate that and everyone else too um so and i just encourage everybody to send those letters to the state for rs2 cuts because we really need that money and it's it's just not fair really is the bottom line it's not fair other than that um everybody have a good safe night mr palmeri i would just like to uh congratulate elms once again on their uh national green ribbon i would like to as well thank uh all the administrative assistants
085here today uh you make our lives a lot easier and more organized so thank you and i just like to thank everybody for their comments tonight get home safely have a good evening mr sergeant i'd just like to thank superintendent for all her hard work on this budget i think that everyone often thanks everyone but the superintendent and i she's a workaholic and i just want to take a moment to say thank you for that thank you all for coming out and have a good night dr osmond just wanted to thank everybody for coming out it's important that people keep coming out and then of course i am encouraging everybody to write to the state and call the state what they're doing the budgets especially for school our size is really crazy and they have
086to hear our voices miss barakas so as i mentioned in last month's meeting i did get to attend the moana show at um forgets and as i expected um the children were amazing so um if you you know next year when you start to see some of the shows you really have to come out and and support these kids they do an amazing job on all ends also friday night we had a really great event for our lacrosse teams both memorial and liberty and that event really brought the town together we had over 100 people attend and it was not only just about two teams being together and and and uh supporting each other but really also about raising funds for ocean of love and again those are the type of events that we want
087to see from all of our all of our activities so again it was great seeing everyone on friday night i also want to thank miss lacitra for presenting this evening i think curriculum right now obviously for everyone has been a hot button and you did a great job and you know thank you for that and thank you for everyone who came out tonight and for those of you that are watching at home you're up um i want to thank everyone for coming out this evening your input in your comments um congratulations on the elms awards happy administrative assistance day we appreciate all you do everyone have a safe and great night everybody hit most of the points but i do want to say great job to the accounting department and putting that budget together michelle
088your people did a great job have a good night okay adjourned by acclimation uh [Music] you