001dinner. Adequate notice for this meeting has been mailed to Asbury Park Press, followed with the missile clerk of Kingsburg, posted on the district website, and posted inside the office of Board of Education, 100 Palmer Place, East, New Jersey on January 11th. Roal, Mrs. Clayton here, Mrs. Friselle here, Mr. Kelly here, Mr. Mcowsky here, Mr. Kitchen here, Mr. Cook here. Mr. Hoff here. Miss Ferrar here. Miss Ryan here. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. Aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, again, we're waiting for some uh VIPs. We are going to skip around a little bit, so please bear with us. We're going to do the student reports. We're going
002to start with the middle school board school. Uh we have Mrs. Lupy Folk and Jada Jester back for our long spring break. Everyone was anxious to start the last two months of the school year. Students want to finish the year strong. For the week of May 5th, the Bulger students are getting ready for the NJSLA state chest tournament. Well, here's baseball and softball teams are now in full swing with this year's season. With so many rainy days, many of our games had to be rescheduled and most of them will be held in month in May. The e- gaming club continues to be an enthusiastic group of students who are making this new club a big success. The sixth grade gifted and talented students had a class trip to the Ber Space Challenger Center where there
003were many hands-on space activities where they worked in groups and and learned about space science and technology. On April 1st, our Bulger Middle School wished Miss Pedroy a very happy retirement as she ended her 37 years in the Kingsburg school district. We will all miss it. Bring your child's work day on April 11th was a huge success. All the teachers children had such a fun day um with a variety of activities that the teachers and counselors had prepared for. They took part in games, interviews, contests, and of course gathered for pizza at lunchtime. The students in the eighth grade are looking forward to the two annual class trips. The first one will be on Tuesday, May 20th to Medieval Times. They are so excited and cannot wait to go to the castle. Thank you. Thank
004you. I have a report from high school, Mr. J. Kingsburg High School continues to be extremely busy. The National Honor Society is hosting a clothing drive from now until May 14th. All donations are going to support the Lupus Foundation and can be dropped off at the high school. Spring sports are in full swing. The softball team is working hard and improving with every game. Tennis got their first win of the season right before spring break against RBC. Baseball is having an incredible season with a 5-1 record right now and is currently sitting in first place in the Coastal Division. Flag football is also doing well and beat SJV 19 to 14, also right before we went on break. The Kingsburg High School yearbook is raffling off a $1,000 gift card. It is $10 per ticket.
005Feel free to contact Miss Lopez with any questions. The Kingsburg High School gift uh key club had a very big month and received the honor of winning first place in the single service award at the international key club convention for our rock on walk in honor of our beloved teacher Miss D who lost her battle to cancer. As the president of this club, I cannot be prouder of this accomplishment, especially as it was earned while remembering the teacher that personally inspired me. We will be walking again on May 23rd. All donations for participating in the walk go to the Miss D Rockon walk scholarship which goes to two deserving Titan each year. In our opinion, this is exactly how Miss D would like to have been honored by giving back to the students that she
006tirelessly devoted her life to. This coming Saturday, the Key Club is also hosting their major service project for this year. In partnership with New Jersey Blood Service, we will be hosting our first ever blood drive from 9 to 1:30 a.m. uh 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the high school cafeteria. Appointments are still available, but walk-ins are welcome. Please contact Miss Lee with any questions. Come join us and give the gift of life. All who donate will also receive a box of Girl Scout cookies and a donor card for their blood type. Looking ahead, May is going to continue to be jam-packed. Between preparations for the NJSLA starting on May 5th, the third mark period honor roll and perfect attendance breakfast, as well as the zero conduct points lunch on May 7th, and the junior
007senior prom on May 22nd. The year is sure to fly by. Thank you. Any committee reports? Uh thank you, Mr. President. Just one committee to report. The uh financial meeting was held earlier this evening. U I just want to obviously say that tonight's uh presentation is on the yearly budget for the 2526 school year. Uh Miss Lindseay Case, our business administrator, will be handling the majority of the uh presentation. And uh for anybody who has questions uh please direct it to her. Thank you. All right. So we turn it over now for some awards to Mrs. Lee. Someone gonna take pictures. Thank you. Not I got a face. Hi, my name is Ella Burkel. I'm Lieutenant Governor of Division 9 for the 2024, 2025 and run again for 2026. Um, I would like to thank
008you guys so much for having me here. Um, it's truly an honor to be a part of a gathering with such a passionate and self-driven and inspiring individuals. Uh, Key Club represents everything that makes our community stronger with compassion with compassion, leadership, service, and commitment to making a difference. Your club exemplifies these qualities and goes above and beyond to make it known. And I'm so incredibly proud to be with you guys. The Distinguished Officer Award recognizes achievement and service by an individual officer. It acknowledges the hard work and dedication that these officers do as they exemplify the four pillars of key club leadership, character building, caring, and inclusiveness. I'm happy to announce there are two people who have showed extensive commitment throughout their service here. Please join me in congratulating President Jadenz and Treasurer Gabriella
009Fans Bond. Gabby got flag. Um, so the single the silver single service award recognizes clubs with 36 to 60 members. To earn this award, this club must be truly worthy of recognition with their service projects. It recognizes the club's effort in planning, organizing, and producing a service project that meets a specific need in the community. You guys openly embrace this and you were able to do something completely unique for your community by raising money for scholarship in memory of a district teacher who lost her life to cancer. Thank you all for the hard work and I'm ecstatic to present the silver service this silver single service award to Kingsburg. All right, Key Club, you want to come up and get a group over there? That way you don't have to stop anymore. [Music] I'm making
010Yeah. Woo. Is this Thank you, Ella. I have worked in this district for over 20 years, and I have to say that I've never been prouder of a group of hardworking, dedicated students that I am uh that happened to be in this club. When the position of advisor was being offered and I excitedly accepted it, I never thought that we would get the response that we did in regards to membership. Being such a small high school, I would have been happy with 10 or 15 students, but here we are with 40 members, which makes us the largest club in Kingsburg history. One of one of the main concepts of Key Club is that it is a student-led organization. Jaden, Gabby, Gavin, and Rachel have truly led by example and have taken a large population of
011new freshman members under their wing, showing them what giving back to their community is all about. We have truly become the go-to club for all happenings in the district. I must receive 10 or more emails or texts a month from the school's administration, staff members, and community leaders asking me if my students would volunteer at their event. And within minutes of me posting the request on our club spreadsheet, all of the spots will be filled by the members of this amazing group of students. There is hardly a single event in this town that the students have not volunteered at. Not because they are forced, but because they have a sense of pride in their town and what they are doing as representatives of the Kowanas organization. When Jaden came to me last year and said
012that he wanted to find a way to honor our fallen teacher, we realized that there was no better way to show our respect for Miss D than to form a scholarship in her name because these kids are were her entire life. But it wasn't enough for the kids to stop at just our school. They wanted to ensure that Buler was involved as well. In partnership with the amazing staff and student council at the middle school, our club got 100% participation from both schools and raised over $1,500. If last year's service project wasn't enough, now these kids have taken on the responsibility of a community blood drive this coming weekend. I cannot say enough to all of the staff, administration, board members, and parents that are here tonight. How incredibly proud I am of these young
013adults, and they are truly why I became a teacher all those years ago. With that, we want to honor each member for their contribution to this incredible service project, because they have truly earned the respect of this entire community. I think I marked off everyone that's here. If I missed someone, I apologize. Divine hair. Keegan Flynn picture. Yeah. Stop right here. We'll take it. Gavin Lamb's bomb. Destiny Humbley, Kayla Rivera. Anthony Rodriguez, Arian Usman, Magdaloriano, Danieliki, [Applause] We have a lot of flag football. Amaya Burke, Jay Lee Serrange, Juliana Alonzo, Haley Guyer, Leo Berlin, and last but not least, Alexis Aoyo. And let's not forget Danny Slover. Work straight that way. Now everybody did a silly one after everyone out. Good missing. Yes, we're good. Before we move on to the budget presentation, there was
014one more um just recognition that we wanted to do, we just wanted to congratulate our vice principal from Kingsburg High School. Along with everything he does for our high school as administrator, he also coaches sports for us and fills in anywhere and everywhere that we ever ask him to. So, Mr. Bird very quietly became Dr. bird over the last month. So, we just want to congratulate him [Applause] and take a lap. I'll get you. Okay. So, um, this is Lind Case, our business administrator, is going to go over to 2526 budget. I'm going to relocate my seat to it back so I'm not in anybody's way. Questions be taken after the report. Thank you. Right. Good evening. My name is Case and this is study. We're going to go over the 2526 of this presentation.
015So the first thing that we do, we have to develop a timeline. The timeline pretty much is a yearly event. So in October, we start prepping for our budget review and information to administration. In November, we start prepping so that we can meet with the Department of Education to go over our mid-year review to look kind of give them a snapshot of where we are currently and where we need to go. In February, the state then goes ahead and they have their governor's address on the budget, typically the third week, the third Tuesday of the month in February. And then about 48 hours after that, we receive our budget allocation numbers from them. Uh with that, at that time, we normally receive our preschool budget workbook. Uh it is kind of a little bit of
016a challenge because we have less than 20 days to complete a preschool workbook that then gets either provided to the state within one to two weeks time. While we're trying to finalize everything, then the preschool is coming back and letting us know what they like, what they don't like. Those changes then change for us to help finalize our operations budget. In March, we always have to have our tenative budget so that we can submit it to the state. The state then gets a 30-day turnaround time to provide it back to us. We're then we're here tonight so that we can work on uh going over a public hearing and then finalize our final preparation and then we open up the budget in July. So, we'll always start with the tax impact because that's what everybody
017wants to know the first thing. Um, so from last year to this year, the average home value goes up. It's because Mammoth County decided to participate in 2013 in a pilot program. So that means that instead of every 10 years assessing property value, Mammoth County goes ahead and they assess property value every single year. Our ratables come from the New Jersey Division of Community Affairs. And so that number at the bottom where you see that 1 billion, that's telling us what the average assessment is for the whole town of Kingsburg. And so those ratables are there for the whole entire Mammoth County for every single town. But if you go back to prior budgets, you would see that that number was reduced in every year. It's increasing. And so with that, they tell us what
018the average home value is for Kingsburg. So, they're saying it increased from last year to this year on $50,000 for the average home value. What does that mean for school tax rates? Well, when you're looking at your budget, we know that when we're looking at our tax bill, it should be around 2% because the state determined that that is what we're held to a 2% budget cap. And for us, of that 2% what school receives is the 8662. So, we increase 0061% from last year's tax rates, meaning that we're going to go up about $37.50 a month for the 2526 school year. And we'll dive a little deeper into that into the next slide. So, why is that important? Because the slide on the left where it is a pie chart, red is what are
019school share of your property taxes, orange is what goes back to the county, and then blue is what municipal has. So in most other districts across New Jersey, that red part of the pie is over 60%. So of your tax bill that the school receives, we're a little over 33%. So for us, for Kingsburg in the middle chart, that's telling you when you're looking at your 2% for your for your tax bill, how is that broken down? So for Kingsburg, that's broken down where municipal is receiving about 1.2. The school last year received 735 where that other slide before was the 86 and then municipal is receiving the 02 on average for Mammoth County for schools it's8 and for New Jersey straight across it's almost 1%. So for an average home value, moving across to
020the right side of the chart, it means that they're saying an average home in Kingsburg, the school is receiving about $2,300. And then for Mammoth County, it's about 6,600 and for overall for the state average, it's about 5,300. So just giving kind of a comparison. So, how do we create the budget and what factors come into play? Some of the factors that come into play are enrollment. Our enrollment has been pretty steady. So, you might have heard about other districts and what they're experiencing and they've lost enrollment. So, that's where they've lost money through state aid. State aid is a weighted average. That weighted average comes from a calculation where we get the least amount for kindergarteners and the most amount for high schoolers. And then there's categories within that that we get added on
021to become a very convoluted formula that no matter if many many districts sue the state or not, we still haven't received. So with that, the other components that come in is special education requirements. And how do we look at that? We do a snapshot every year on October 15th to let us know where our district stands, right? How many enrollment we have, where those enrollment figures are, and then we need to can take those when we're creating the budget and kind of project where we see ourselves, but the state is providing us funding based off of our October 15th snapshot. We're also going to we also go ahead and put it into instructional supplies and materials, professional development, technology, facilities, athletics. The biggest piece of the pie is always going to be contract requirements for
022salary and benefits. and then professional services like our attorney, our auditor, and our architect. So, the biggest change from when we approved our tenative budget on March 19th to then having to reapprove our budget on March or April 15th was that when we provided our initial tenative budget to the state, it was a sound budget. We had it. But then on March 31st, we got news that federal funding pulled our ARP esser for a little close to 3.3 million. And so the state came back to us and said, "Okay, now you don't have a balanced budget. So when you do, you need to get back to us and still follow all the election budgetary calendar requirements." So we needed to come up with a solution that didn't bust the bank on taxes, but also helped
023us. So, we always go after as many grants as we possibly can. One of those grants was the SDA capital emergent project. This would be the third year that we're receiving it and we were we did receive the sum of a million dollars. We were originally going to use that for a kissandgo for the preschool. Uh however, we needed to reallocate it to the loss in federal funding because we have the high school HVAC project going on. Part of what happened with the HVAC funding formula is that there were supply chain issues. So we actually need to have a switch gear and that switch gear controls all the electrical components of the HVAC that we spent all this time putting in brand new Arendelle units into the classrooms and we do not have we finally
024received the switch gear. They told us it was going to be a 50we lead time. It wound up being 82 weeks. In order for us to install that switch gear, we actually have to take power down for the school and we also have to work out those components with JCPNL. JCPNL does not prioritize schools over other places. So, we needed to know that we had at least 13 to 15 working mandates where we wouldn't have power. That could not be done over spring break. If we ran into any problems or any issues or JCPNL felt like they couldn't get back to us to turn power on, we wouldn't have been able to open school. So, that part of the project has to get done during this summer. But for federal funding, we were approved for
025late liquidation as of June 28th of 2024. They told us we had until December of 26 to finish the project. We were slated to finish this project by mid July. Once they pulled the funding, then we had to go back and look at what else could we do to supplement our costs. So, we have to remove preschool courtesy busing. We went back through and really prioritize what supplies were needed versus wants. We are reducing to staff members. We had to reduce our summer school options. We are still having summer school. It's just not to the extent that we were originally going to have it. We also went back through and about two years ago we opened reserve accounts. Reserve accounts are very important. They're like savings accounts. So at the end of the year when
026there's excess surplus, we would put them into capital reserve which can be used for capital projects or maintenance reserve that can be used for regular wear and tear on certain parts of the building. And so what we're doing is we're taking money out of the capital reserve withdrawal so that there's no tax impact. The other thing we needed to do was had additional tax increase of 1.47% or $3 on the average household. So originally we talked about 3750 a month. It was going to be about $34 a month. So where does our money come from? Our money comes from local taxes of about 20% tuition in. We do have special ed programs and we do have children from other districts that want to attend and so those districts will pay us to receive the students
027in. Miscellaneous comes from things like facility rentals. Reserve interest is if we know that we're receiving money and we haven't maybe paid payroll out or paid supplies, we are ensuring that we're putting it into a high interestbearing account to receive as much interest as we possibly can until we need to use it for our operating costs. So that is a very conservative. We do typically receive more, but obviously we don't ever want to have to make up for a revenue source. We'll get into why some of those things are a problem later on. So, state aid, we were about uh 56% last year. We did receive a loss in funding. Um so, we're 54 and a half. Extraordinary aid, we're at a little about 42%. And what does that mean? So, extraordinary aid is for
028our our most costly, highest need learners. And so we have to either spend 40 or 55,000 out of pocket before the state reimburses us. We're eligible to apply for that in May. And so next month we'll be going ahead and we'll be applying to the state. The state only has provided us money for about 58% of the amount that they're supposed to provide back to the schools. Uh they told us about two three years ago that they were going to put $50 million in that bucket of money until they received it to 100%. Uh the first year they put 25 million extra. They have yet to add any more. So what winds up happening is 600 districts are going after the same pot of money with increased costs. So we do have students that go
029to out of district placement. And so what winds up happening is that they'll give us money back for that for the tuition part, but they're not going to pay us back for any of the transportation costs with that. And they're not ensuring that they're increasing that fund. So we're starting to receive letters from those out of district placements that are saying um you know, please expect a rebuild of over 10%. Because they're not held to a 2% in cap like we are as a public school. And so that's really important because when they go through their audit process, then they have two to three years from the time that the state approves their audit to come back and rebill us. Even if those students have graduated, we're still required to pay that bill. We will
030ensure that as we're going through the extraordinary process, if that student is still here, that we add it to the application to receive on money for rebuilds. But there is the possibility that the student has graduated. who were paying for that cost and there's no eligibility for reimbursement on those dollars. For preschool aid, we did um they did reduce us by 15 students. So, while we did receive an increase in funding, we reduced an in we reduced money for our enrollment for Medicaid reimbursement. This is a federal requirement that schools participate in. It's a it's a statute. The reason why it's so important for us is that, and this kind of stems back to when we have revenue sources, they're telling us last year we had to put in $190,000 into our budget. Yet midy
031year this year, they're only paying us about $3.50 back for any time services are rendered to our students for that cost. And so, we're not even going to come close to the 190 that was required. So, we had to go through our budget and really figure out what could we do without so that we don't utilize money that we're never going to receive for revenue. And so for next year, they told us that our money for that dollar amount has to be $23,000. So before we even started the budget, we already had a decrease in revenues of $167,000. With that too, we talked about the reserve withdrawal. We're utilizing that money for capital reserve to finish the HVAC project. And we also took out a little bit of money for maintenance reserve withdrawal for our
032overall expenses to try to really keep what we're asking the taxpayer for back to the district at at a minimum that we can. Fund balance is a requirement. So fund balance at a minimum has to be 2% or the state will not approve our budget. So right now we are healthy and we will continue to try to as we go through and use things because budget is a projection tool. Budget is an assessment. If we're not utilizing those at the end of the year, making sure that our fund balance is healthy for future budgets as well as putting that back into reserve accounts. So where will our money be spent as expenditures? Last year for classroom instruction, our It was under 52. So we've actually increased CR classroom instruction to 53%. Administrative cost is 10.
033Operating and maintenance is 17. Equipment is under one. Support services about 16. Legal costs have been reduced and extraordinary costs stayed about the same for extracurriculars. So when we look at our efficiency standards, where are we comparable to other like districts that are a K to2 with enrollment that is between 0 to,800 students for our actual per pupil cost we spent last year 19,000. The state average was 20. So we're m making sure to be fiscally sound with our classroom instruction. It's 11,000. State average is 116. So when we talk about student administrative ratio, we are at 11.5 and the state average is 11.7. So we're ensuring our money goes to the classroom. And these are things that when we talked about going to the midyear budget review with the county and with the state,
034we have to go over our projections on where we stand and where we're going. And they were happy to see this. It's always a hot topic for administrative costs. So, in order for the state to approve our budget, we have to be under the regional maximum that's permitted, which is just shy of 2,700 per pupil. Our administrative costs are 1,900. And the state average for other like districts is about 21. And so, where are we in comparative for student administrative ratio? we're at 117 where other average lake sizes throughout the state for enrollment for K to 12 are about 145. So we are low on the spectrum for administrative costs. So for facilities, we kind of just put some pictures together because when you look to how we've been able to do a lot of
035facility upgrades and what's going on, we apply for every possible grant imaginable. We've become very good at writing grants. Um so actually over spring break, if you look to the left, these are two windows that are in the high school. Those were brand new and those those were paid for through the capital emergent grant that we talked about earlier. As you see for the the sign for the scoreboard, we received a grant for 77,000 from the local recreation. So, we were able to go ahead and install that. Over spring break, we actually restriped all of Bulier. So, nice little parking spots, making sure safety is key. In some of the other buildings for the past, we've made sure to redo our boiler rooms, keeping them where they need to be. We'll kind of discuss utilities
036and how costs are really rising and that why making sure having a clean boiler room, more efficient requirements will help us really streamline and keep our reoccurring utility costs lower. And then last but not least, we had applied for many, many years for uh stabilization grants. And one of the years we've received a little over $2 million for furniture. So the seats were sitting in as we're walking around the school, we're seeing a lot of new furniture throughout the classrooms because we received that grant for over $2 million. So those are just a few things for facilities. So the state talks a lot about adequacy and where we are. So during S2, one of the major things that they were talking about adequacy is are we paying they will tell us how much money do
037you have to spend for a budget. So, the state determined that our district should be sending $36 million to have an adequate budget. Right now, our adequate budget is about 30. So, they're telling us we're about 5 million shy from where we should be. And and how does that happen? They're looking at local fair share. So, local fair share when they look at it, it used to be a two-year look back for one year on the state funding formula. This year was the first year where they changed it where they're doing a three-year average. So that even created more of a a disparity from where we were. And they also looked at um special ed categorical. It used to be where our snapshot was over 10 years. This time it's where our snapshot is as
038of this year. And so that really helped us see an increase in our state aid funding formula. So then where does that put us? How are we trending? How are we forecasting for our future? We did strategic planning, right? We want to know where we've been, where we are, where we're going. We're always looking for alternate funding sources. And like we said, all those other pictures that you saw for facilities were all grant driven. They're not they were not part of the operational budget. And then we continue all the time to speak with our legislators. We've been talking to them more recently than not to try to recover some of that 3.3 million. And then we also ensure that we participate in as many shared services as possible. And we do things like um for
039insurance. Tonight you'll see there's u for New Jersey school insurance group we received a safety grant. So we're making sure to to apply for that. They're they are providing it to us and then we will utilize that back for our Kingsburg Police Department with our SEO. We uh utilize transportation jointures. What does that mean? It means if someone else is going to an out of district placement and they're sending their students there and we're sending our students there, can we get a contract together to really drive those costs down and only pay for the portion that of our students that are going to that school? So, we're just trying to do anything we can to save operationally so that we can continue to put those monies back into the classroom. But, we do have challenges.
040You know, the the funding formula over the seven years did not cap how much we could lose or gain. Um, now with this change, we can only receive a 3% increase or decrease. Uh, still now we've had over a decade of a 2% budget cap and it's been quite a challenge. If you look at the state's budget, they were about $34 billion 10 years ago, and this year, if all goes through, it'll be about 64 billion. So, not held to the same requirements that they're asking us to do. And so, we continue to get unfunded mandates all the time. We have all of our budget obligations, right? We talked about those contractually, our salaries, our benefits, our programs. We want to make sure that we're keeping uh state healthc care has already let us know
041that while this year we had a 15% increase, they project January of 2026 to have a 16% increase. And so that's that's really impacting us. Uh when they when they made a change to health care, employees used to pay based off of salary and what the benefit costs were. Now, the changes from 2018, a lot of it are based off of just salary. And so, a lot of times now the district is paying a 100% of the increased cost versus it being shared. And so, it's playing an impact in the operational budget itself. And so, we'll see if there's anything that comes across for chapter 44. We continue to provide all the information that the state asked for. If we were saving money, it would be a requirement that we would have to give that
042back to the taxpayer. However, since 2018, they have not seen where that's been a savings for utilities. So, utilities every year, typically in July, there's an auction. That auction for kilowatt last year was just shy of $29. when they actually did the utility auction, it went from $29 to $270. So, we will see whether it's the school budget, home budget, business budget, it doesn't matter in July, we will see an increase of anywhere depending on where you are in the state between 22 and 26%. So, we had to ensure if you look at our budget, it is up over that. We need to still ensure that we are heating and cooling all of our buildings. With that, we also had gas that went through the same and that was an increase of 17% that we
043had to budget for. So many things in double digits when we're still held to a 2% cap. And so things that we've been trying to do is uh you'll see we've been participating in grants for LED lighting throughout the district and ensuring that we're switching out ballasts and working with electricians so that we can try to reduce our overall cost and bring our consumption down while still providing the same quality that we had. And then obviously we still always need to meet the scope of our student needs. So we're always meeting together to go over you know what those are. Obviously, there's the budgetary component and then there's the actual component. So, things could change. People move in, people move out. We have to make sure that we can accommodate all of our students. And
044then tomorrow, if you want any of this information will all be available on our website. I'm sure there are questions. What can I help with? Sure. is 24% more than us. Is that common in most towns? No. Uh how how big how much of a difference is it generally in most towns? Uh it would normally be switched by we would normally in most towns the schools would be about 20% tax 60. Yes. Because I see it's pretty close to 60% the burrow, 30% us and 10% the county. Yeah. It would be flipped. So it usually be flipped at most. Correct. And so we're below average then per for per people. Sorry, I was trying to write down our I saw we're at 19,216 per pupil and it was a little over 20k per pupil for
045the state average. That's fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. It's great getting it all broken down pretty simply very much. Uh yeah, I just have two questions. Uh first, with this budget being presented, um there's no loss in academic, there's no loss in any type of extracurricular, none of that. No, no, absolutely no reduction. No, that's great to hear. Um, and the other one is if you could explain uh the three-year plan. You mentioned that there's been some savings and this has been going on for some time. If you could just explain so everybody understands kind of the scope of how much work you guys have been putting into this. Okay. So again, when you end your budget, if you have $100 and your budget is $100 and you have $40 left, we've
046been taking that $40 and really been exercising opening up accounts like the capital reserve account so that when we know projects need to come down the pike, that would be able to reduce that without a tax impact. And then what we would do too is maintenance is for all your like your cleaning, your um repairs. And what happens is we're eligible to take money out of that at no tax impact as long as it doesn't go towards salaries. So they want to make sure it's not anything operational and that it's more one-time use. About two or three years ago, we didn't have those. So we ensured as we were getting COVID funding and working through strategically on where we needed to really forecast and set the district up, how were we in essence, right, going
047to have a savings plan that we can kind of lean on and and for things like, you know, what happened a month or two ago at Garusa? We had a flood, right? So we needed to ensure that we took care of the flood, we cleaned up the flood, but that we had a mechanism in order to do that without it taking away operationally from the district. Thank you very much and thank you for the presentation. Thank you. I have a question, Lindsay. when we talked about opportunities and maintaining ongoing conversation with legislators, could you elaborate a little bit more and tell us who we've talked to and what feedback we're getting or lack of feedback that we're getting? And then the end to that is where is Washington involved with this? You know, any receive
048any feedback from No, we at the state level we have gotten a lot of responses called back. They've all talked to us, but pretty much like listening to Yeah, go. Yeah, they're pretty much listening to us, but they're not doing anything. But is anyone gonna come here? They have to see for themselves. They have to see our community. The only place of Mammoth County, it's an election year. We have to reach out to people. We know when we had our tentative meeting, we were talking about, you know, we we had a holiday break, right? Everybody had spring break or whatever. I know that we reached out to some people They were going on family vacations which is okay but where are we now coming forward? So now that we're coming back they're in but so
049Vin Gopal is the chair of the education committee so they've really started the budget process. So they're there we're um going to try to catch their ear. I think it's May 21st again at the Garden State Coalition meeting where they're kind of discussing um you know the future and where the budget's going. We will continue to reach out to them personally to see, you know, when they can come and visit. We continue to talk to the county to make sure that they understand where we are. And we've also been talking to the other 19 districts to try to have, you know, kind of help with numbers together because we're not the only state that this impacted this impacted all 50. So, kind of how can we all come together to explain that like this was
050for us a supply chain issue. We followed all the rules and the requirements that they had along the way. We also, you know, a lot of our work gets done over summer. So, we had already been having talks with the grants office asking them, can you please devise a mechanism so that we can draw down on this money? For federal grants, typically what happens is we complete a reconciliation for the month. We go into their system, we tell them what we've paid for, and then they reimburse us within that month. So it's a very fluid system with these particular grants and getting the late liquidation. It was not fluid. We were lucky to be approved for the Carissa 2. So the SR2 money because that was also wrapped into the Hback project and they really
051wanted a certificate of completion. We were eligible because we had it also utilizing the ESRE 3 money. So the aresser funds where they gave us back the money that we had put out for the Carissa 2, but they refused to give us a mechanism to draw down even though we had spent over $2 million last summer out of the 3 million. And so they they've been well aware of all along the way like how can we get help? You need to assist us. Like we need a way to draw down this money. This is not how federal grants typically operate. How can you assist? So, if we got the letter from Linda McMahon and you go look at her website in Washington DC, it says that she's looking at everything case by case, whatever that
052means in her real world. Okay. But also, it said if you want to request an appointment or whatever, there's a fiveweek lead time. That's another tool I think we should just fill it out because that means that we have that trail right right there on her website saying either they're going to her herself or one of her team members will reach out to us. So we'll put in a second request by the end of the week. No response. No, not yet. Another question. So I know Senator Bill asking a lot about him, but he represents I know he's the head to chair of the education committee. He's a great friend of Ginsburg, but he represents legislative district 11. We happen to live in legislative district 13. Has Senator Declinos scambling? He did answer. He has
053answered. He did answer. Is he advocating for us or he's so sorry for our situation? That's good to hear because I I know we we hear a lot about Senator Gopal, but I don't want people to be confused and think he has to advocate for towns within his own legislative district. We need our state senator, Senator Oalan to advocate for us. So we we've also been working with gopal because they have the funding formula working with red and they have been reviewing it monthly. So we wanted to ensure that go to he's been a friend to all of us and the education Jerry certainly still be great but I just wanted to make sure our representative and we've also been talking to them about timelines right like timelines used to be we would receive our
054state aid members at the end of January now we're receiving them pretty much close to the beginning of March yet we're required to provide a tenative budget to the county pretty much no later than the 20th and that's including weekends right So, it's very challenging that we're continually making multiple budgets without really getting to have we're having nitty-gritty conversations, right, but not really being able to get down to the meat and potatoes of it until, you know, 10 days before it's due. We haven't had a year when we've had positive results from state aid formulas that we get a curveball every year. So, every year we have at least four budgets. We have the worst case scenario. We have this stocks. we have this is a little bit better and we have we can function
055and those are the only four budgets that we've created every year. Every year we've wound up with we can function. We're still fine. Like we're good. But every year I say this, this is the last possible year that we can lose anything else and still function as we are. And I'm not kidding this time when I say it truly is we have nothing else to to and we're good with the whole the 1.447% increase we did under the 2%. But this is it. like this is the last year when we're not going to be severely impacted. So you're saying we can't afford another curve ball? No, we cannot. No, we don't have we don't have it operationally and you know again we don't know where the op auction's going to be for utilities but then
056they've already told us that benefits are going to be double digits. It doesn't sound like right and so I would assume utilities for the next 3 to 5 years are going to increase. I mean there is a utility board in the state. Are we in contact with that? We are. We are. We also actually also had um when we're meeting countywide as business administrators, we're bringing out representation that are also going on our behalf to speak at those auctions. A part of the issue in New Jersey is they thought that solar would pick up faster and also have a greater return. So they closed down two of the power plants that were sourcing New Jersey. And um now they have to reopen plant. It's very easy to close a plant. It is not easy to
057the utility board. But I mean what did have they made it public and that's not that not many people even know you have a utility report but have they made a public stance about they did last July their increase but the problem is right I'm talking about the new increases that talking about this year not just last July you know well you don't what happens is right it happened last July but you don't see it until 12 months down the road so I think that the issue is not everybody has been impacted by yet to understand the gravity of the situation I'm assuming utility boards against these huge increases. They don't want to do it, but they feel like they have no other option that it's an auction and that that's what those came back
058after them to run. Mr. Question last two weeks ago, we talked about u the Q&A. Can you speak up, sir? We we can't hear you. Yes, sir. Two weeks ago, there was a meeting. You talked about the reference of $7 million that the uh Treton wants to take from the taxpayers instead of getting it from Treton, get it from the taxpayers. Can you elaborate on that? Sure. So, one of the new programs that the state decided to do this year was called the tax incentive plan. Um 300 out of 600 districts qualified for the tax incentive plan. And the two things that you had to be ordered to qualify is under adequacy and under your local fair share which for us two they deem us to be appropriate. The issue is in order for us
059to participate it was for every million dollar the state would give us an additional 50,000 or in taxes that we raised high. So yeah, so five cents on every dollar in taxes we raised. And in order for us to even go ahead and utilize, and you saw it in the chart, that $5.8 million, we would have had to also exhaust all of our bank cap, all of our healthcare waiver, all and um well, those are the two that we have. So, what happens every year when you're creating your budget, you can go up to 2% and use allowable uses. There are four allowable uses for the state of New Jersey. One is enrollment. We don't qualify ours is staying steady. Uh the second one is healthcare which we know we're hitting double digits so we
060do qualify and that's where a lot of our bank cap bank cap is when you have that money and it's put into a pot but you haven't had to utilize it and you're able for the state to utilize that over the next three years. We had built up as of last year a banked cap of about $1.8 million. And then the other two are which were a K to2 so there isn't um a send 2 relationship that's typically for a high school or a K to8. And then the last one is a shift too. So there was pension reform about 10 years ago and there are some districts that have not paid the state back for their portion. We are not one of them. So again not eligible for that. But in order for us
061to use this tax incentive plan we would have had to exhaust all 1.8 8 million in bank cap plus an additional 489,000 that we had accumulated this year due to healthcare cost rises and we would have been way higher in double digits for taxpayers just to receive 5 cents for every dollar we increase taxes. We know we provided a sound budget so we didn't feel that that was a risk worth taking. Thank you. No problem. I've got a question. Um, concerns about curve balls ahead and things like that. Our capacity, our our attendance is is about the same. We've stayed, you said, pretty steady up. So, we're about 60% capacity throughout the building. So, we still have space to grow, right? We do. And then part of our state is actually based upon attendance. So,
062if we had more students, we would get the amount each year for each one of those students. I know it's weighted. So, we have more for high school students than we do for elementary school. So say on average six 16,000. So if we had say 10 more students we we would basically be getting another $160,000. Correct. I want to put a full salary but teacher teach teacher plus benefits is probably somewhere in so we have capacity if at the numbers that we're at not that I want the schools to be flooded but we have a lot of construction and other projects that come on site uh going on in town. If we have more students come from those buildings, come from that construction, come from those events, one, we have the capacity to serve those
063students. Two, we'd have more money to actually have teachers to service the students in the buildings. And then I assume our overhead things like the heating bills that we're talking about, the lighting doesn't get more expensive because more students are in the building. Teeth doesn't get more expensive because students are in the building. So, we basically keep those flat costs there and we'd have more state aid. It would reduce that 19,000 to start banking for students down a bit, right? Correct. Anything else? I think you saw that the cost for people is 20,000 something, right? 19. That's the state average is 19. 19 about that. So if you get 16, it's all weighted. So what we're saying is average, but say for a kindergartener, you might receive I'm making all these up. Yeah. So average
064is like 19, which is why you see do we really cover the cost of 19? I do agree with what you said. The question came to me a second cost weighted cost 19. We don't really get much extra, right? So if you think about it this way, it'll actually help us because we have our operational reoccurring cost. So the more students we're servicing our our operational costs are going up but then they would go down because we receiving state aid. So that would help our revenue source increase. I understand. Thank you. No problem. Thank you. Cool. All right. Any comments or questions? Agenda items only. Please come up. State your name and address. See no comments or questions. We'll close that motion. There's no executive session. I need approval of the minutes for March 18th
065at the March 12th meeting. Second call. Mrs. Clayton. Mrs. Friselle. Yes. M. Callahan Moran. Yes. Mr. Manowski. Yes. Mr. Kitchen. Yes. Mr. Cook. Yes, Mr. Hoff. Yes. On the 12th and I on the 18th. Thank you, Miss Roar. Miss Ryan, superintendent of schools recommends positive action on following items under personnel. Number one, resignation. Two, 30-day notice of termination. Three, professional employment. Four, reemployment of profess of personnel that's professional and power professionals. Five, no staff increase for 2526 because of days worked. Six, transfer of professional and non-professional staff. Seven, supervisor athletics high school. Eight, leave of absence medical. Nine, volunteer position. 10, preK evening registration staff. And that's a motion, please. I'll make any questions. Mrs. Clayton, yes. Mrs. Friselle, yes. Mrs. Kelly, yes. Mr. Mowski, yes. However, on four, I abstain on page six to
066the 13th. 13. Thank you, Mr. Kish. Yes, Mr. Cook. Yes, Mr. Hoff. Yes, Mr. Ferraro. Yes, but I've stayed on page five. Second name down and number seven. [Music] Miss Ryan, yes. Superintendent of schools recommends positive action on the following items under general. Number 11, district HIV report. 12, disposal of unusable, outdated, broken furniture and equipment. 13 acceptance of donations. 14 inclass state trips. I'm sorry, instead instated fast trips. Can I get a motion? I got a second. Any questions? I have one number 13. Can we please make sure Thank you. Roll call. Mrs. Clayton. Yes. Mrs. Friselle. Miss Keller Moran. Yes. Mr. Manowsky. Yes. Mr. Kitchen. Yes. Mr. Cook. Yes, Mr. Hoff. Yes, Miss Ferrara. Yes, Miss Ryan. Yes, school business administrator board secretary report. Board secretar's monthly certification certifies that no item line
067item has been overextended and that sufficient funds are available to meet the district's finan financial obligations for the remainder of the fiscal year. Payroll certifications for March 14th and March 28th. The superintendent of schools recommends positive action on the following items. One, receipt and acceptance of March board secretaries report. Two, approve appropriation transfers. Three, approve bills list. Four, approve uh and adopt the budget. Five, approve acceptance of 4year 2025 local recreation improvement grant. Six, approve cancellation of stale data checks. Seven, award contract for professional services for site assessment. Eight, approve the 2526 New Jersey schools insurance group safety grant. Nine, renewal of the food service management company. I have a motion, please. I'll make a motion. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? I have a question for number five. The burrow is building a pickle ball
068court. What? What's the This is a grant. This is for the school that's used for gym class. You know, the old parking lot is in the rear court. Yeah. Where the tax courts were that became a parking lot. Yes. So, there's We received a grant to make it a functioning board. Okay. I knew the burrow had one going on and I saw this in years. Okay. I also had a question. Could you just explain it? So, we were uh when we were looking into the parking lot uh the changing parking lot, we needed a site assessment for that to see if there's any wetlands or any restrictions building on that property. So, in the event that um we spill the go through the fair, which we hope to, we're going to have that site set
069for that reason. So, that's where the old preschool was trail. And the reason we need their help with that is we might also have to include the department of environmental protection and that's a very time consuming process. So, we need to make sure that our architect is part of it so that we have all the fundamentals downward. I was going to just ask that if there was a timeline involved with these. Okay, we won't know until we know the scope of the work and if there's any chance we're going to get that money back, too. Okay, any other questions? Actually, yes. I have a Did we put out We didn't put out for food service management, did we? Or did we just every year last year? So that means we're getting an additional two one
070here. We have to look at insurance things. I I think that just going to be more capital. I like Okay. Any other questions, please? Might. Yes. Mrs. Fiselle? Yes. Mr. Kelly? Yes. Mr. Masky. Yes. Mr. Kish, yes. Mr. Cook, yes. Mr. Hoff, yes. Miss Ferrara, yes. Miss Ryan, yes. Business administrator, support secretary at Denim, the superintendent of schools, recommends positive action on the following item. Um, approves the employment negotiation agreement for 2425. negotiated. I'm sorry for 2425. I got a motion, please. A second. Any questions? No questions. Roll call, please. Mrs. Clayton, yes. Mrs. Friselle Hammer, yes. Mr. Manowski, yes. Mr. Kitchen, no. Mr. Yes. Mr. Hawk, yes. Miss Ferrar, yes. Mr. Ryan, yes. All right. We'll now open the meeting for public comments and questions related to um any concerns or questions. Please come
071up, state your [Music] name. Um Parkside, please. I just wanna first I just want to say that um I truly believe that Kingsburg district has really great teachers and sometimes it may come off differently at least for me. Many teachers have great have been great role models to my kids encouraging them um kind and caring um and if I can name them all personally right now I would. However, they do know who they are um and how thankful I am for them. I have a couple questions and a couple things to say. Um, we talked about numbers, which is great, and everything that everybody's doing as far as like academics. Um, quite a few people have been trying to find like academic stuff. So, I know a couple times people have come um to the
072board like using Zillow or things like that and then us being told that's not accurate. We went on the website and it brings you to 2017 2018 when you try to get um I mean you can move on right now when you go on from your phone. I have it screen recorded to show you if you you know you have to Are you talking about the real estate companies like finish please? Thank you. So yes that is one of the things I'm talking about but I was told that's not an accurate you know. Yeah I want to know where your state like on the website. So you can go on right now, you go on the website or you type in like um the Department of Education and you hit Kingsburg, it brings us to
073our website. Um then it's like a dead dead page and then when you copy that and you put it in, it brings you to 2017. That's our old website. Did you try going like through our like go to kingsburg.2.nj? Okay, I'll look because a lot of times if you use Google search it takes you to our old stuff and if the DOE has the incorrect I'll look into that too because we updated our website. So a lot of times like we Google searched something the other day and it took us and I was like what is this? This doesn't even make sense. It was our old website. So I'll look though and see if we can just like all the stuff that we were looking for. Um, all the websites were kind of consistent with
074with numbers and stuff, but if we can't accurately go by groups, you know, like if we come to you and we say that's not accurate and we can't find it on the school, we just need um like graduation rates and like on one thing it says the science rate is at 6%. And if you look at something else like math, you're at 11%. and we're 350 school 354 out of 406 schools. So like when you do your own research and you're looking up different websites like public schools review.com um niche um those types of things they all pass the same stuff across the board. So if those aren't accurate then can you just provide us with I'm not saying that what you're seeing is accurate. I don't know the numbers off the top of my
075head, but the example of science, that's the state average also, you know. So, science is a bad example, but 100% math, we are below state average. 100% we are. And that's why that's we're we're putting funding into that area to focus on that. And it does say like um our students are way below grade level like everything that we research. So, if I don't come here and say this is what it is, this is what we're finding on the internet. I want you to the other place you can look every October we do the state of schools address and that's on the website and in there it gives like all the averages and things like that but our concern is like it is and our kids aren't on grade level and all the stuff that
076you guys say when we're when you're there is is great it all sounds great but when you look at the numbers and where our kids are it's not great it's really the other thing that we'd like to do and I mean that's all I'm saying schools is that we do our own separate that is um students who have been here for 5 years or more and it's drastically different. So our population is so transient. We get a kid on Tuesday and we're giving them a state test on Thursday. We did not teach that kid. That kid might have been at 10 other schools before they came here. So that's a huge issue for us is the trans. Obviously, it's not an issue that we could ever change and it's not something that we're angry about,
077but it is a huge issue for us. When we run reports that show students that we have had for at least five consecutive years, the difference in their scores is exponentially better. We have so much transiency that it's very difficult for us to take ownership of a lot of these students. Like I walk into high school, I've been here 25 years. I walk into high school, I don't know 50% of the kids at best. Is there any way that you are able to give a sample of Yes, we can definitely or like you know what I'm saying? Just so we can get a little bit more accurate. Yes, absolutely. The numbers that we're getting are bad. Like bad. The like I said, the numbers budget wise sound perfect, but the the grades and stuff that
078our kids are getting are not where they're supposed to be. And you can see that in the research that you can do yourself. Um, so again, I I like lead with my emotion. I will be the first to say that I am very passionate about kids, my own kids, that I'll do whatever I have to do for my kids. I don't care if they're 30 or 15. I'm I'm going to do what I have to do for my kids. And like I said, I do appreciate many kids. Carrie's 30 years old to Aiden who's 15. So there are people who have done great by my kids. And I will never take that away from the district or even some of the parent people administrating who are sitting here right now. Um I also have to
079say though that we do in fact have teachers that have questionable agendas. And I'm just going to give you a few examples. And I would be more than happy to sit down and go through this stuff that I'm telling you right now. Um I I don't come with if it's a fact. If I'm coming to you with it, and I think you know me by now, it's fact. Um so we have teachers talking about other students um to other students. It causes animosity and divide between the kids and it's just unprofessional. like you should not being a teacher talk about students about other students then those students get together and compare notes shouldn't be happening. Um teachers openly talking about specific students in their classroom that that is going like openly um with the kids
080not in there. They're openly talking to the classroom about students. should be happening. Um 504 plans and IEPs are not being followed as they should be. Um openly in front of the class, a teacher calling on a student suffering from mental health issues, also with a 504 IEP who needed a little extra support was questioned why they were making extra work for the teachers. in front said it to the student in a full classroom in front of everybody. Again, I wear my heart. I would calm I really am like I take a different look at things like situations happen in my life and I I take it different way of you know I I don't run to the school. I'm not it's just it just shouldn't be happening. So that's Don't tell a kid who
081is mentally unstable that you're causing to do more work. And when the student replies, "That's what you're getting paid for." The teacher replies back, "Um, no, we don't." Um, student support resources, grades, and confidentiality. openly talking about things that was set in confidence by students to other staff members. So you have students who are going to talk to their support system. It's supposed to be confident confidentiality that's supposed to be happening and it's not. It's being broken. Kids can't safely go talk to the people who they're supposed to. It's not right. and teachers are provoking conflict with the students over and over. So, for instance, I'm going to tell you um two friends, two really good friends um who are having conversation and there's a teacher that the student has conflict with. The teacher went
082over to both the students and said, "You know, if you go like this to him, he's going to flinch." Why? Um there's any more things that I could say, but I think you get the point of where I'm going with this. Do you mind if I Yes, that's completely fine. Um, and since the last board week meeting, um, members have spoken out in public about how sorry they are for voting no and all that stuff. And I get it, but you vote it and then you're in public saying, "I'm sorry. I didn't I didn't want to. I didn't don't." If you don't want to, don't. And if you vote by what you you're standing, stand by it. Don't go in public and say I'm sorry or I shouldn't have or because you're sending a mixed
083signal. Either you vote yes or you vote no and you stick to it and you don't go to the public and contradict what you vote. Um All right. Um, did I take what from the special meeting? Did I take it things personally? 100%. Do I think things were done a little bit vindictively? Yes. Um, the events that took place. So, after the meeting, there was a separate meeting um at a restaurant, a public restaurant. People can go eat wherever they want, do whatever they want, enjoy themselves. That's completely fine. But when you leave a board meeting and you go to a public restaurant and you are talking about board things at a restaurant and then when you get caught, you go to the restaurant and you try to have one of the your own Titan
084alumni fired because you were in a public place talking about board meetings, board things that we're not supposed to know about because the whole ethic thing allowed to know about it. But as we talked about in the restaurant about people, about staff, about fellow board members, and a person sitting at the table has nothing to do with the board. She shouldn't know anything that's going on, never mind sitting there listening to what's going on. And I this for me is I just want to end with my sincere heartfelt thankfulness to one of the district's administr administrators who ultimately stopped deemed suicide from happening. And I will never be able to describe with words how thankful I am. But just know that one of your administrators identified someone who had a plan for suicide and stopped
085it. And that has to go. It can't go unnoticed because it would have ended in a bad way. And I do appreciate that. And I just want you to know that. Do you mind sharing your name? I I don't That's your first. The administrator who identified the problem, Mr. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Please come up, state your name. Seeing no other questions, we'll close that portion. Um, councilman reports, old reports start there. We'll start investigation. We'll start this time. Just want to thank everybody for coming, asking questions, you know, seeing how the budget works. It's great to see. Please, you know, it'll be posted the the budget itself, the presentation. This is right after everything's recorded. Please share it so people have an understanding. I've seen comments that say we spend over
086$30,000 per student. We just learned tonight it's 100 to 20,000 state average. Um, every year like we spoke about, we get a curveball. Um, we we're doing the best we can. I think our team does a great job. I think the board does a great job trying to keep everything together. Our business, our superintendent, I think I think uh, you know, this one wasn't really lasting. It's her fault. I think we just all did a great job. I think public for coming out. We're seeing more and more people at every meeting. Please continue to do so. Mr. Congratulations, Mrs. Ryan. Um, I want to send out congratulations to the Key Club as well. I think it's fantastic that these uh young people are actually going out of their way to get involved without being pushed
087to do it. Um, again, I'm learning new things every day with the budget and all of that. Um, I have to thank everybody over there for explaining little things to me. Um, and I I'm still working on all of that. I'd like to congratulate Mr. Bird, um, Dr. Bird. Um, that's about it. Mr. Charles, I just wanted to congratulate Dr. heard and so the club is running this blood drive. I've never given blood although not I haven't pregnant a lot of times but this time will be my first I'm in a nervous wreck but I will say you know it's very good because I love what they're doing. Um congratulations Dr. B and what we heard about Mr. just shows that we have um Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to touch on a couple
088quick little pieces. First of all, uh congratulations to the Key Club, Martin. I know you have your part into that. So, uh definitely shows. So, congratulations to all of you guys. It's a lot of work, I'm sure. Uh Dr. Bird, congratulations. Um another part I want to mention about budget. Um, the New Jersey School Board Association sends all of us emails regularly on different updates in legislation and uh, one just came up uh, that I want to just touch on that the uh, NJ DOE commissioner uh, had had a meeting back on April 21st and I'm sure everybody here in the public could also go find this, but there was an analysis done by the Office of the Legislative Services on the New Jersey Department of Education budget. And if anybody has any questions, not
089just just go on to our bud budget presentation, but also look at the state as well, just so that way you can get a full scope of all knowledge. Um the other thing I wanted to mention that um someone from the public office obviously mentioned before was uh and Mr. So Har also mentioned was the um state of the schools in October and that I think gives a realistic viewpoint of what our schools has been doing and I know our director Kirkland Christine Perik has also been uh really diligent and uplifting with a lot of their new curriculum. I know if I remember now you could correct me it was a 25% increase in the algebra this year or something along those lines. Yes. Okay. So, I'm glad to see that there's an uplift in
090that as well. But I think that state of the school really does address our here in our district, not just in the state generalization or what's on the website. Um, and with that, uh, that is all. Thank you. Thank you, sir. I just want to say congratulations to Dr. Bird. Um, thank you for dedication to our team and we really appreciate you. Martin, being an alumni of Kingsburg, we're very proud of you and thank you for what you do for the community. And I want to our administrative team and Lindsay, Mr. Si, everybody for the budget. You know, it's hard to balance your budget at home. To do something like this takes a lot of work and a lot of research. Um, thanks to our superintendent, you know, they're on it. You know, people see
091that, you know what, we watch our pennies. We really do. We deserve more, but we work with what we have. And I think we're pretty good to our kids. All we need is for our kids to come to school and don't be late and it'll be a wonderful place. So, thank you. Thank you. Happy Mayday, which will be soon. And I want to know, does this doctor cost us any money? Unfortunately, you do not work. Congratulations. I got this rash. I'm all about the money. Pleasure being here. Just want to thank the uh the administration and the whole business administration's office for all their work on the on the budget. It's quite a bit. Just echo Mr. Kitchen. You know, it is I mentioned this in the last meeting. It's frustrating for us the the
092misinformation that comes up. This information is up here today. You saw the salaries of every single teacher. So when people say where does the money go and you see a pie chart that says that the money goes to the salary in your classrooms it you can see it dollar for dollar which every single teacher gets paid. It's unfortunate part of being a government employee is that your numbers are all out there. We have low administrative costs. We have you know all these teachers that are there. So again information is there all of our meetings are are posted all of our minutes and everything that's available on the site. Um I do want to thank the key club for all their hard work. Um, I mean, tremendous to see, especially one of the largest clubs that's
093here is all volunteer. Again, I can say that at other events that have nothing to do with the key club. They're the ones helping to set up those events over at the elementary school and some of the other events. It's great to see them around the community. And I know St. Patrick's Day parade was a little while ago, but along that same line, we for the last several years, I haven't seen a lot of participation from the schools. This year, not only the Key Club coming out and being a large section of that, but that made me think about it. multicultural club was there. The early learning center is always there. Um but we just had more participation in the New York club was there and others. But to see the schools and students involved
094in their pride of being, you know, tight. So thank you. Well, I'll piggyback on that. Um if the key club, if Martin didn't invite you, we invite the key club and everybody else who participated in the St. Patrick's Day parade. The Kingsburg parade committee will have a memorial day parade at 51825. The details will be on the web page. Again, key clubs. See Mr. Mark Suzac over there. We'll give you his autograph, too. Um Um what I understand the town show is amazing. Unfortunately, I'm in class and I missed it, but my class is over officially today. So, it was incredible. Our kids are very gifted and talented. I wish I could have been there. Doctor, congratulations. Um, again, I got the trash here. Can you help me with my golf swing or was it
095different? Okay, we'll come back. Um, spring sports. Uh, again, you're right. I was able I was at opening day for baseball in Ezra Park. The wind coming off the water was um, yes, you could ski jack. So, again, we'll finish out the year in our sports and everything. Thank you for the budget team. Again, it's not easy raising people's taxes and for um getting thrown in a curveball, but again, we do it. And again, I'm very proud of being a part of this team. I am participating in the drug the blood drive this Saturday. Yes. The 3rd from 9 to 1. Is M still here? I don't know my time. 9 1:30, right? Yes. No, I don't know my time. I signed up my trans. I'll find it. Hopefully, I'll get a reminder. Um, but
096with that said, again, thank you everyone for coming out. Again, I like to have more meetings where we give out awards to doctors and our key clubs members. So, every meeting started and I'm not sure. Can I respond to one of the members in the audience? Can you respond to audience? I I think that I think if you keep it general, I think it got too specific. Once the superintendent said that they were going to be in communication, that kind of it. But if you want to do it in general, don't get into any of the specifics. Okay. If you want to apply, okay, otherwise we should I got a little too specific. Okay. With that, any anything else? I entertain a motion if you just want to celebrate. I'm sorry. Oh, I'll celebrate him.
097I'll take that motion. Here we go. Exact. All in favor? We'll see you back