001to members of the public to be physically present. Members of the public that attend will be asked to follow the same procedures as all other me visitors to our schools. Those procedures can be found on the agenda page of our website. Additionally, the board meeting will be livereamed for viewing purposes only. Anyone wishing to view the meeting may do so via Zoom. The webinar ID is 853-943151544 and the required password 560. I call this meeting to order. Roll call please. Mr. Lamb, Mr. Copel here. Miniro here. Mr. Dilva here. Mr. Denise here. Mr. Gallow here. Mr. Hughes here. Mr. Gizmar here. Miss Jansen here. Dr. Morphy here. and our student representative, Miss Kaspberry. Thank you. Adequate notice of agenda of this meeting has been provided to the Ridgewood News and the record specifying that the
002MA Board of Education will meet on April 30th, 2025 in the administrative offices, 60 Ridge Road, Ma, New Jersey. A copy was filed with the township clerk. Salute to the flag. Uh Mr. Denise, if you would please. Pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, we are going to need a brief executive session at the beginning, but we're going to move things around a little bit. We're going to skip first to agenda questions because we have a presentation. So, we won't keep everyone waiting, but we'll do it. We'll going to skip to agenda questions. We'll come back to recess to exactly. Okay. Um, so agenda questions. Please limit your questions at this
003time to resolutions under new business on this agenda. It's a matter of fairness. You're asked to limit your questions to no more than one and your remarks to no longer than three minutes. If you are here representing a group, please give us the name of yourself and the group and your position in the group. If you are here as an individual, please give us your name and address. This section of public participation will be limited to 15 minutes. Please specify the resolution you are referring to in your question. All right. So, I need a motion to open the meeting to the public. Um, Mr. Kamarski, second by Mr. Hughes. Okay. We are officially open to the public. All right, seeing no one coming forth at this time, motion to close the meeting to the public,
004Mr. uh Gallow and second by Mr. Hughes. All right, we're going to move on to our MAWA student representative report this evening. Thank you. Um I'd like to start by saying that the drama club recently hosted Shakespeare last Friday where all English classes attended and it was the drama club who performed skits from Shakespeare's play. Art Club has put on their call for an art for art for the annual design exhibition which will take place on May 30th and 31st. Gems in the environmental club attended science day at Betsy Ross and Lape last Friday. Tomorrow the SGA will be hosting a 50 days until graduation and college decision day to celebrate for for the seniors. Ma was the main champion for the winter guard. They earned first place gold medal in the regional scholastic class
005in Maine Winter Guard Winter Guard Champions. The indoor percussion won bronze medal third place in the US band's indoor percussion. Congrats to Coach Remo for his 13th um win as a Thunderbird baseball coach. Congrats to Elizabeth Frames for her 16th career save. Alexa Shervin also received 100 points while Abby Clark got her 100th goal. And congla congrats to all the spring spring track team and their performances. Orchestra earned a gold rating for the North Jersey Regional One Orchestra. And lastly, the community service fair took place last week. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Now, we're going to go to Dr. Jurro's partial report. Are you going to do it for? No, just just a piece of Okay, we're dot halfway. All right, Dr. Durro. Uh, first of all,
006good evening everyone. These are my my favorite types of meetings because we get a chance to to see all the great things. We talk about meeting after meeting, but we get a chance to see it in action. So, we just want to welcome the team group from Rampo Ridge. There's very exciting things that are coming and we asked them to come up to present um to the board in the community. For all those who are wondering what what does team mean? Well, it's team T E M which is uh the empathy equality entrepreneurship mission and it partners schools with underserved communities worldwide. We have a cohort of our students from Rapu Ridge who are going to be spotlighting some of their work for us this evening. Uh the students that we have is Jonathan Weinberg,
007Gabriel Gabriel Fernandez, Hannah Goldmith, Leah Moffetta, uh Maui um I'm sorry Rouali, I apologize. Alan Huffman, Nate um Msa, and Barat Singh. So if you guys would like to come up and share your presentation, Can I hold it? What is team? Team is a nonprofit organization that strives to create a kinder world through empathy, equality, and entrepreneurship. Teams help team helps schools like Maro Ridge be connected to a country in need and helps us host fundraisers for them without asking for a dime. This experience helps students realize how lucky we are to be able to go to school in a safe environment with access to food, water, and freedom. Team gives students the opportunity to be part of a bigger thing than just hosting fundraisers and raising money for a country. Team lets us be
008a part of a bigger organization to one day hopefully change the world with the opportunities and leadership skills that this experience brings. So when we first learned about this great organization and it pairs almost wholly with teachers and it brings authentic learning into the classroom. We knew that it was something that we wanted to be a part of. So Chrissy Morgan and I got together at the end of the summer and we said, "How can we bring this into our classroom so that every sixth grade student in our building would have an opportunity to partake in it and how can we align this with our curriculum and with the help of Nikki we were able to do this." So our curriculum is ancient civilizations. Each um civilization we talk about initially it's all about the
009geography. Why did they settle there? What are the resources? Um, and we always talk about the modern day. What happens if those resources start to deplete? If the river is drying up, what happens? So, every year students would be like, "Oh, how can we help? How can we help?" And we talk about these modern instances. And this was a perfect pairing. Um, we use Burkina Faso because it's all about the um water crisis. So, with each of our units, we talk about the how important water is. So, we thought it was a perfect fit to kind of slip in there since we talk about it every year. team also gives us the opportunity to work on a lot of the skills and make the connections uh that we've been interested in working on with our
010strategic plan. So things like SEAL skills and authentic learning as Barat said it gives the kids an opportunity to really see what other people's lives are like around the world and build empathy for those individuals as well as figure out what kind of solutions we can create by learning about entrepreneurship um and the solutions that these charities put together as well. We're able to make lots of great community connections when we put together these fundraisers. places like Moe's and the Lafayette Theater. Um the international connections we create with the other charities. We were able to speak to George Biel from Bkina Faso. Um and even other schools in this area that are working with team learning uh from their students how they've integrated team and then for us to build community with the other teachers
011from those schools. It's just been very enriching for us as teachers and for the kids as students. Where is Bkina Faso? Bina Fasio is a small landlock land in western Africa. It's about the size of Colorado. Also, as you can see in the picture um so the girl got water from a well and now she's just so happy because she finally have clean water. And um what project will we help Makita Foso, you would help the royal villagers gain access to clean water by helping build freshwater wells because we want to get these wells because there's a shortage of water and the water could have diseases which can make people very sick. We learned about Bkina Foso and creating empathy among students by doing multiple activities throughout the year. During one of our class periods,
012we stimulated the experience of fetching water back and forth. In picture one, you can see two students about to take their damaged cup to the river or our water source. Once they filled up their cups, they had to bring them back to the village. We continued to go back and forth until the home supply was full. Then we had to choose how to use our water like using it for drinking, watering cops, and more. Students also had the chance to have a Zoom call with Georgie Badiel during our lecture. Georgie is in the middle box of picture three. In picture two, you can also see how many students came to talk to her. During this time, we talked with her and asked her questions about her struggles during her childhood, like how she was not
013able to attend school. Georgie told us about how she became a model to raise enough money to get an education. This taught us to feel empathy and feel grateful for our education and that Georgie took the time to talk with us. Going to sixth grade, I feel like I did not know much about struggles people were going through in other parts of the world. After learning about Bkina Faso's water crisis, I feel more great aware and grateful for what we have and others could agree. Most girls cannot go to school because they have to walk four miles to get water in the day. Only 31.9% of girls complete school, which are most from wealthy families. This is unfair for girls because to them this is a game of life and only a small percent of
014girls can and are able to get a good and valuable education that can help them in the future. The other 69.1% of girls have to carry up to 5 gallons of water which is equivalent to 40 pounds each day which is very different from what we have in America. Most people have to most people have a water bottle in a very reasonable distance from them. Most buildings have water with mountains and clean and fresh water. The camp of Baso doesn't have the source of water. The families rely on the women and girls to fetch water every day, sometimes even press them, which is very dangerous if not well hydrated because of the hot freezing temperatures. Women and girls don't have the proper footwear and that can cause injuries. Some women even have to walk while
015they are pregnant and or in pain. All the problems wouldn't be the fossil well built and if the wells built the women and girls can rest and get a valuable education while not worrying if they have enough water to survive to them. Clearly water is life especially when it comes to the woman in her campus social entrepreneurship. One of team's unique educational offerings is the social entrepreneurship program where students apply for grants to financially back their own community events and fundraisers. Not only do 100% of the proceeds go to the projects for the site, but team matches up to $10,000 per pod. Team helps us fund raise because students were taught to write grants to give to teams. The grant writing process consisted of students researching teams and what they wanted to write in their
016grants. Then students would word their research into an offer for teams to build a wellknos. If teams approved the grants, they agreed to host and rent um out everything we need to fund raise. Because of teams, we'll be able to fulfill our goals in the future and help raise money for Briina Foso. Last January, we had a brainstorm session in the library and we thought about different ideas to fundra. So in the left picture you see all all the feedback of our winning choice of the movie night which ended up happening later in the year and our mo and donate ended up happening soon. All right. So, what we ultimately came up with in terms of our success in the fundraisers as a result of our initial Moe's fundraiser, we uh were able to put
017together $625. Uh, and then our bigger event, the movie night, which was over at the Lafayette Theater, was really, really awesome night. We were able to fund raise $3,398 for a total of over $4,000 on the year. A well costs upwards of $12,000. So, we're a third of the way there. In three years hopefully we'll see our names on the side of the well over in Africa which is pretty cool because they actually Waldwick has done it already. So when we went to the symposium the well in Bkina Faso actually said Waldwick High School on it which the kids were just so thrilled to see. Really cool. In March our school was invited to the team's video workshop. We were the youngest ones there and it was a great experience. Three of my peers and
018I experienced a great opportunity to brainstorm ideas for upcoming fundraisers and gave suggestions to people from other schools. We talked about putting the events on social media to make them more known to other people as well. At this media workshop, we realized that it was not only who needed help, but there are also many other pods who are facing difficulties just like this. Coming up on May 21st, we have the taste of teams which an event which is an event where all schools meet and share information about their own events. It offers a chance for students to learn about other pods and for parents to see what their kids have been doing and accomplishing with teams. Looking at the future, what do we still want to accomplish? Well, this year we like the first year.
019We're like the guinea pigs. This is our first year ever doing this. So, now we know what's what works, what doesn't work, what could be better, continue to do. So overall, we just want to continue to fund raise. We also want to continue to raise awareness, have more people know about team every year and have more fundraisers every year for the next grade. But overall, our main goal is to get um the completion of a well and people to know about team to donate and we also just want more people to have entrepreneurship and invest in these wells. We would like to thank all of you for your support. Good job, guys. [Applause] Oh, no. I got it. Can Can one of you Wellspoken students tell us how we can donate to this? Aside, is
020there just the QR code or is there another place that we could donate? You want to? Whoops. So, there is the QR code. I was trying to get them before they walked away. This is back to the mic. Come back. Do you guys remember how we donate because that's the most important thing so that we can get the uh word out for you guys, right? And you want more than 12,000. That's just one well, right? You want multiple wells. There's multiple places on the website where you can find a donation list. Great. So it's on our on the Ramipo Ridge website. So it was on our like with that QR code and it's also on our movie night website. Okay. Or if anyone would like let's say would rather write a check, the check would
021get made out to team with three E and then we give that to team who then turns around and puts it towards MAWA. We had a very generous parent um donate $1,000 for our thing. So they wrote out a check to team and then that came in our lump that went to Ramapo Ridge Middle School. Excellent. Yeah. Great job guys. Thank you so much for coming. Very quickly tell you something. Sure. I don't know what. Lastly, we just want to say a big thank you to all of our amazing teachers. Miss Conrad, I mean Miss Shannon, Miss Conrad. and Miss Ray for making all these amazing fundraisers happen and helping Martina Fos build a well for fresh drinking water. We are also so grateful for everything they have done to help and support this important
022cause. So, let's give a big round of applause. [Applause] Well, well, first of all, I just want to say congratulations because what you just presented was absolutely spectacular. And the reason why I say that is because while you guys were up here and talking about your experience and I'm so glad very strategically putting strategic plan in there the first thing I thought of is we got a chance and for the kids I I think it's important for you to know this over the past couple months we've been talking to the community. We've been talking to so many different people about what do we what does everyone feel is the ideal learning experience here in Mawa and what they talked about was taking the learning outside of the four walls that we're learning in and really
023understanding how does this learning impact outside and you guys were perfect better than I'm going to be able to explain of how this learning not only you were able to learn about this area but you were able to understand the power and impact that you can have as individuals. So the words like empathy and appreciation and understanding the struggle of others, the this all aligns with what we talk about when we try to give a well-rounded education. And I cannot you guys stole my my my thunder. I was going to thank your teachers. Um but you guys did it so much better than than I could. Um but it really warms my heart to see the high level of learning that's taking place, but more importantly how committed you are to it. Um just to
024talk to the board. Um all of the teachers, Miss Shannon, Miss Con Miss Conrad, and Miss Rididgeway, um and Miss Vaness, um met with us sometime in the fall, and the energy that they had and how much passion they had for this project was was really, you know, it it was contagious and we wanted to really see this through. They did a tremendous amount of work with the students and this is a major point of pride for not just Round Po, but for Mawa. So I can't thank you enough for all that you all the hard work you did and the work that you'll continue to do. This is something that's new to Rampage and as as everyone can see it's a massive success. We have Mr. Corey here as well. So this is a
025collective effort from the Ramp Rampage team and I just wanted to say thank you. Congratulations. You made us all proud. Thank you very much. Um, and on behalf of the board, thank you um to the full Ramipo Ridge team, uh, Mr. Corey and and all the teachers involved. But I'm also going to thank you parents because, um, I people are working on public speaking. And I think public speaking is one of the most important skills that you can learn in life. And you all spoke extremely well, very clearly. It was it was well written. So I I'm just so impressed with our Ramipo rich students. I know I'm sure the full board is um and we again congratulate you because again it's one thing to have an idea and it's another to put it into
026place and the steps involved and I know all the parents have contributed a lot of time and effort too. So we thank all of you and you should be really really proud because we're very proud of your students today. Excellent job. Thanks, Nikita. Sorry. All right, I think we're gonna now go back to earlier in the agenda. Thank you guys for coming. You're welcome to stay, but I'm sure we won't see you when we come back out. Um, all right. I need a motion to recess to executive pastors. Second by All right. will be about 15 minutes 20 minutes. All right. Apologies uh because we took a bit longer in executive session exactly than anticipated. So I need a motion to uh reconvene to public action meeting. Mr. Kizmarski, second by Mr. Hughes. All right,
027let's quickly get back into this. Um, did you have any other report? All right, we are back to superintendence report part two. Um, what I'll do is I know I tried to tag the things that the high school representative already said, but it's it's worth showing a picture. This is Coach Remo, his 300th win. Um, as we all know, he's a graduate of Ma High School, class of 1980. collectively with baseball, softball, and football. Not only is it 300 wins in baseball, it's 500 total wins. More than 500 total wins across all three sports. Good job. This is something she did not share. Uh JK students uh present Oliver Twist. Um most of your children went through JK. This is a long-standing tradition. This is one of Dr. Far's best performances in Mawa. Uh this
028past Friday, JK students presented Oliver Twist during this year's annual theater week. Um big thank you to JK HSO for organizing the successful event. If you haven't seen it, it's a great um opportunity for all the kids to come together and perform. They literally get the act in the week and they on a Monday and then by Friday they're performing for the parents. It's a special event. Uh I know uh Dr. Morphe has this in her report, so I won't step on her toes, but I just wanted to thank um all of the participants who came together to help build our strategic plan for 25 to 2025 to 2030. As you all know, we're closing out our current strategic plan at the next meeting. We'll be sharing um the new strategic plan in our September
029meeting. Uh Matt Lee on a number of occasions um was extremely impressed by how many community members participated in our strategic plan experiences. Over th the course of the the three meetings we had over 200 participants. We had over 1,700 survey responses as well. So when the community asks to be heard, I can say that we have successfully um done our very best to gather all all the stakeholders and all the voices to make sure that the 25 through 30 strategic plan is going to represent the voice of a whole. Um next one is um I know you think it's a repeat but but we actually got it again. Um, I TEA A recognition. Um, MA High School teachers Dan Kazone and Andrew Co attended the I'm going to say it conference held in St.
030Louis, Missouri. In April as a school was recognized yet again with the STEM school of excellence banner. Um, this is the second time Iowa High School has been recognized. In 2023, the school was lauded for its broad offering in STEAM, which includes art along with science, technology, engineering, and math. Um this organization um is specific for technology innovation, design and engineering educators. Its mission is to advance techn technological and engineering uh capabilities for all um those involved. This was shared, but here's a picture. Um the on Friday, April 25th, um a big point of pride for us, our winter guard and our winter percussion hosted uh special friends and family performance. The winter guard performed uh when darkness comes. Indoor percussion performed uh bringer of night. Our winner percussion earned bronze uh third place in
031US band's indoor percussion championship. And our winner guard earned first place with a score of 86.82 82 in the main winter guard show at Brick Memorial High School. So, congratulations to all of our performers. They put in a ton of work and they really made ma proud. Just one correction. It wasn't at brick. It was all the way at Lehigh University. Well, so it's at the university. They still got first place and their score was 86.82. They're still stealth string orchestra. Our string orchestra participated in the all north region one or um orchestra festival hope hosted at Ma High School by performing music from the Barber of Seville. Uh Carmenu number two and music from La La Land. Ma High School earned a gold rating for its performance at the all nor all North Jersey
032region one orchestra festival. So congratulations to them as well. Now great. Thank you Dr. Durro. Dr. Fair, do you have report for us this evening? I sure do. Oh, and I'm so sorry. Mr. Lamb, I apologize. I skipped right by you. Whichever order you prefer. We'll go to you, Mr. Lamb. I'm sorry, Dr. Fair. Uh, do you have report for us this evening? Yes, Dr. We have the public budget here. I'm lost today. We have public budget hearing for the 2526 school budget. So, uh, we'll begin. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dr. Wel. So this is the fourth presentation we've had in the last four meetings uh on the 2526 budget. So it's the it's the final presentation and summary uh and it's the official public budget hearing because tonight is the final vote on
033the 2526 budget. So we'll begin uh starting with our revenue. As we mentioned in the past uh we have an adjustment to the uh tax levy uh cap. We're using a healthc care waiver to go above the 2% uh by a little bit over a million dollars uh for a 3.49% tax increase. Uh and the health waiver is used to allow uh the district to raise taxes uh higher than 2% in order to cover health care benefits that are also increasing by a greater than a 2% rate. explain more of that later. There's no band cap available uh for use in uh next uh several years, but the health waiverss do allow us to uh adjust that cap. Uh and having that extra revenue will allow the district to u maintain all of its programs
034while also decreasing some of the other revenues which we'll explain in next few slides. Thank you. Uh good news regarding state aid. Our state aid is increasing by about 5.64%. Some districts throughout the state saw decreases, others saw increases. So, we're certainly happy to be on the positive side. We get a very small amount of revenue uh for SEMI, which is special education Medicaid initiative. Uh we're we're getting less than 50,000 even best case scenario, we're getting less than $50,000 uh dollars of an 80 plus million dollar budget. So it's a very small amount of revenue uh for that. We do get several hundred,000 in grants uh from the federal government uh being the bulk of it which is for special education. Most of it goes for out of district tuition and some of that
035uh ESA which is titles one two three and four various programs for students at risk. uh health benefits. Again, the health benefits waiver of over a million dollars does plug a hole in uh you know does help us balance the budget uh with needed revenue to uh match the needed uh the increase in health benefit costs. We have transfers from reserve accounts uh for various reasons like $800,000 from capital reserve to fund capital projects which we'll explain later. The capital project's budget is outside of the operating budget. Uh whereas emergency reserve which can be only used for uh a couple of reasons. Either a true emergency such as if a school went on fire uh or security upgrades or health benefit increases. Those are the only three uh uses for emergency reserve. So we're withdrawing
036200,000 from emergency reserve to also help with our health benefit increases. And then we're withdrawing 300,000 from maintenance reserve uh for maintenance uh costs. Unlike capital reserve, maintenance reserve does go into the operating budget because maintenance expenses uh a lot of it for benefit maintenance is part of the operating budget. Our interest income we are budgeting a higher amount uh next year. We're basic we're really just being a little bit less conservative with it. Interest rates have been high for a while and we are shopping around for options where we think we have an opportunity to increase our interest revenue. Uh and good news for taxpayers is for the second year in a row uh the taxpayers will be uh paying no debt service. The district did pay off uh its bonds from past construction
037projects. So two years in a row with no debt service. uh if you look at our revenue in summary in a table what I want to point out is that well why do we have a 3.49 uh tax increase if the total uh general fund is increasing by less than a percent the operating budget increasing by 1.7%. If you look at the numbers in red, we do have revenue streams that are decreasing. Even the semi it's a very small amount, but uh it's decreasing. Uh the budgeted fund balance is leftover money from last year's budget. This statement order is called excess surplus surplus money from last year that we can put into next year's budget as a revenue. Uh $3.3 million of budgeted fund balance in the current year's budget. that's really not sustainable long
038term. So it's in our best interest to wean that revenue number down. Uh you know so getting it down to 2.8 million gives us it it lowers our risk. Um and then hopefully the following year we can lower that into the low twos and continue to wean that number down. We had a uh revenue in the current year's budget unemploy transfer from unemployment trust uh for a lot of districts that number ballooned up during the uh COVID pandemic. Districts were funding it uh really for worst case scenario and then ended up the balance got high so the auditors recommended withdrawing money for it. So that $400,000 revenue that was transferred in, it's really not sustainable on an annual basis. So we're decreasing that amount. So those decreases in revenues have to be offset by increases
039in revenues in other places. And uh so that's part of the reason for the tax increase and certainly the state aid helps uh the tax impact. This is the uh probably the newest information that's in this presentation that was not shared in the past three presentations. The net valuation uh in the township did go up. Uh that's always helpful to the tax rate. Uh and the tax the biggest thing that homeowners want to know what's the tax impact on my home. So for the average home in Mawa of about $481,000, it comes out to be about $13 a month for the calendar year 2025. Uh $157 a year, but per month, $13 a month increase uh on your taxes for your school taxes. That does not count township taxes or county taxes. Uh the impact,
040if you wanted to compare different values, for every $100,000 of valuation that you have, it would be $2.60 a month. And then you could multiply that by whatever multiple to get whatever valuation your home is at uh to estimate your tax increase. Uh again, the revenues uh for special revenue fund 20 in our budget uh is grants from the federal and the state government and it's mainly ESDA which is for atrisisk students. It could be regular ed or special ed. And then IDA, which is for special education students. We do have a very small amount, a couple thousand dollars for nonpublic schools in town that uh the federal government provides. It's really a purchase to pass through uh making sure the money gets spent properly. And then there are local grants, the generosity of the
041MAWA schools foundation and the HSAs. And then a lot of local businesses and other nonprofits do provide grants as well. uh special education costs. Out of district special education uh costs uh are are certainly part of that. And then there's in district special education costs. We do have 449 in district students with IEPs. Uh and special education overall represent if you include transportation for those students uh about 31% almost a third of our operating budget. Uh so we are meeting the needs of those students. Part of the special education costs are for out of district students but not all of the out ofd costs are for special education students. Some of those out of district students are uh general education students. Uh so of the 110 students that currently attend an out of district school
042about 68 are special education students and about 42 are regular education students. Uh it's in special ed. Uh some of them go to private schools, some of them go to other public schools. Uh Burke County Special Services probably being the most common one uh which is considered a public school district. Um and then regular education students. We have uh just under 40 students attending the Burton County Votech or themies. We have two students who are shared time with VAWA where they spend a half day in our district and half days in the technical schools. And we have two students who attend the charter school. Charter schools are considered public. We as the home district where their residents are required to pay tuition and provide transportation for those students. And that's the law. You don't have
043a choice. Uh so uh our out of district uh cost for uh tuition uh is just it's over $6 million or about 7.6 of the operating budget. And it's or on average it's about a 5.7% increase from the current year's budget. Again, uh tax levy going up 3.49%. This part of the budget is going up by a greater amount than that. So, we have to find other efficiencies in our budget in order to balance. And the IDA grants do pay for about $600,000 of that out of district cost. Employee benefits are one of the uh on an annual basis one of the drivers of our budget increases. Uh it includes health benefits, prescription and down but also includes other non-medical related such as workers compensation, social security, uh pension payments, tuition reimbursement, uh and sick
044time sickly sick payouts for retirees. Uh as per contract, the total employee benefits budget is almost $13 million. Uh over 15% of our operating budget and driven largely by health benefits, uh 9.68% increase from the current year's budget. uh the medical benefits, the biggest part of the employee benefits. Uh the current year's budget, we saw a savings of $900,000 uh when we switched from a uh state health plan with Horizon to a private plan. Even though we saved $900,000, our our health cost still went up in January. So it's not like our our health dropped by $900,000. They were $900,000 lower than they would have been. So it's just it slowed down the increase. It didn't actually resulted in in a decrease. um the health. So in spite of our uh savings or savings relative
045to the alter to the alternative, we're projecting our health benefits are going to increase by 12% again in January 2026. So although our now that's still lower than the 14% increase that if you're if we were in a state plan and not the private plan we would have had those rates are already higher. So, we're doing our best to manage the health benefits, but it continues to be a driver of our costs. Uh, again, the different types of health plans we have, uh, the different types of prescription prescription plan is a private plan by having a private plan that we negotiate instead of going through the state. We do save money that way. And then the dental uh claim uh through Delta Dental is a small portion of the medical cost, but it's still part
046of it. Our total cost of medical benefits are over $10 million. It's about 11% of the operating budget. It should be noted that our employees do pay about 21% of the cost of their of their medical benefits. So, they are contributing to it. Uh our appropriations were spending our money by category. uh instructional support. So, uh this is outside of the classroom, but certainly you really couldn't run a classroom without it. Instructional support, curriculum, guidance, multimedia, library, uh professional development, and our health nurses offices, about $4.5 million in total districtwide. It's about 5.5% of our budget. our school operations, which includes our school administrative offices, our central office, uh about $2.7 million, about 3.4% of the budget. Uh our district technology, infrastructure, and support about $3.5 million. Uh we have uh Wi-Fi, internet, districtwide, laptops,
047and Chromebooks throughout the district. Our midmaintenance custodial grounds and security over $7 million about 8.7% of the budget and our extracurriculars and athletics about 1.7 million uh just over 2% of the budget. Uh our enrollment uh the state uses our enrollment count as of October 15th every year. Uh and that's what they base our state aid on. and our enrollment did see a decrease from octo in October 2024 relative to October 2023. Uh and our out of district students were for the most part steady. Um and uh it should be noted us our district receiving an increase in state aid in spite of the enrollment going down. That's because there's a formula of where we get the money and if we have a high number of atrisisk students or special education students then we're more
048likely to get an increase and so that's probably what drove the increase even though the enrollment overall didn't go down during that time period. Uh our staffing uh we uh for next year we have a net decrease of nine full-time equivalents with no very important with no negative impact class size or student programming. We're going to offer the same courses, the same opportunities, the same clubs and activities. Nothing is being cut out of the programs. Uh and the staffing is a consist it is consistent with the enrollment changes. Uh and our staffing contracts are based on the collective marketing associations and then the independent contracts for the rest of the staff. Our transportation budget is almost $7 million about 8.4% of the operating budget. Uh it includes the salaries and it also includes contracts for
049the outside bus companies includes uh indistrict busing, special education busing, extracurricular and athletic busing. Uh the busing vendors were renewed at the CPI rate for transportation which was 3.57%. And if we had gone out to bid it probably would have been higher. So it was safe to take that number. Our total transportation budget increased by only 1.41%. And the main reason for that is after the current year's budget had been set, Miss Spindler and the transportation department and our administrative team found savings by reducing four routes of the current year's budget. So, there was a little bit extra money sitting in the current year's budget that allowed that money to be carried over to next year to have a smaller increase uh while still balancing the transportation budget. Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. Didn't mean
050to trick you. Uh so our again our district transport a high majority of our students over 2,000 students are being transported uh and the state does calculate a transportation efficiency rating one is the average in the state and the county and the higher the better and ma does have 1.257 257 transportation efficiency rating, which means we're spending our money wisely on transportation. The summary of explaining that uh capital outlay, although it is outside of the operating budget, it's still an important part of the budget. The two biggest capital projects that we'll be doing in next year's budget uh are replacing a walk-in freezer at the MA High School cafeteria kitchen, a cost of about $213,000, and then replacing the roof over the MA High School cafeteria. The total cost is about $1.1 million, but we're
051getting over $400,000, 40% of the funding uh being reimbursed by the state from a Rod grant. So the total cost of the district would be about $660,000. There are other ride grant projects that we have the potential to do. They're not in the budget, but the board uh at the appropriate time uh we could take action to move those forward. So we do have some flexibility in doing projects as we go even though they're not part of the budget that you're approving today. uh other uh summer projects that are in the operating budget because they're considered maintenance. Uh well, the first and the third are considered maintenance. The second one is actually still a capital, but it's it's already approved in uh the current year's budget. So, uh paving projects, it's considered maintenance. Uh and
052we usually try to do a paving project or a number of them every year. We do a shared service with the township of Mawa. They put out a bid every year and we piggyback off that to get a volume pricing discount. It's worked very well for the last few years. Give a credit to our township and Greg Romero for uh arranging that. And the uh Lenipe Meadows Loop uh and Ridge Road will have paving done this summer. And then again the second point uh rooftop unit HBAC unit J Joyce Gilmore High School that is a capital project but it was already approved in the current year's budget but the work is going to be done next summer. Uh and again that is also a 40% reimbursement uh from the DOE for a Rod grant total
053cost of over 400,000 but uh the district would only be paying two about 265,000. We're going to be doing various uh upgrades from uh the cafeteria fund. Again, cafeteria fund is outside of the operating budget. Uh it's paid for from the proceeds from the food sales. So, we're going to upgrade some of our cafeteria kitchens, some fridges, some warmers, uh serving stations, and then some of the schools will be receiving uh new cafeteria tables. Uh and again uh just a summary of the calendar. This was the fourth meeting and fourth and final meeting for the budget presentations. And thank you if anyone has any questions. All right. Any questions for Mr. Lamb? Okay. I I just want to say I think it's it's very worthwhile to highlight the fact that um the district is able
054to um withstand the the the onslaught of higher costs for utilities, healthcare, etc. um while still living within essentially two plus one and a half percent budget tax increase. So, it's really due to the diligence and leadership of the entire administrative team, Tom's office, obviously, but the fact that at the end of the day, um, we're able to provide our students with a a top-notch program um, well-rounded, comprehensive education uh, program um, for basically $1310 a month more than we did last year is a remarkable achievement and the whole team deserves credit. Who would have thought we'd be looking at health insurance going? Thank god it's only 12%, you know, 2%. Yes, I did want to say uh yeah, thank you Mr. Lamb and uh to the business office team and to the administrative team
055also because everyone works together and putting and I just want to add thank you to our board especially the finance committee our administrative team Dr. Tur Turo, Dr. fair, Miss Rizzo, uh, Miss Bavino Romeo, our business office staff, uh, all the principles and supervisors. It really is a team effort. It's my first year doing a budget here, but it's been a pleasure. So, thank you. Thank you. Very comprehensive and as Mike said, um, we we try to be efficient and, uh, it's it's pretty impressive where where we are. But again, uh there's um anyway, uh now Dr. Fair, we'll go back. I sorry, we should have continued with you then went to No, it was just a short intermission. All right, Dr. Fair and audio visual. We got a lot of audio visual today. Yes.
056So, uh there a lot of great things have been happening this month. So good. Uh the MA High School robotics team, the Robo T-Irds team 1672, uh they competed in the first robotics competition and they were recognized earlier this month by the New Jersey State Senate and General Assembly. Um by uh resolution. So the resolution highlighted the success of the team this year and the students dedication to learning beyond the classroom. The team also won the rising all-star award, innovation and control award at their competitions. further highlighting the success the Robo T-Birds enjoy this year. So, congrats to them and many years of success to come. Last week at Lenipe Meadows, uh the students participated in one of their favorite days of the year, signing day. The students had the opportunity to participate in various
057activities including a visit to the planetarium. They made slime and they learned about robotics from the MA High School robotics team. Uh, so they also explored the world of bugs and bees and the kids had a really great time that day. What's the bubble in the right hand? The planetarium like a portable planetarium. Yes, indeed. For the record, something only right now fit in. That's great. We don't need at GW school. Uh our second grade students uh recently enjoyed a special book tasting hosted by Mrs. Phillips, Miss Dahan, and Mrs. Gy uh with music, menus, and checkered tablecloths. Students explore different genres of books and had a blast sampling new reads. The classroom was a buzz, and it was great to to observe the students ongoing joy of reading. We had an author visit at
058Ross School. If anyone is familiar with the Bad Kitty series, uh by the acclaimed author Nick Rule, uh our students were captivated as they learned firsthand from the creative mind behind the beloved series. So, Bad Kitty is about this, yes, a kitty who is naughty and like causes mischief and students find find the stories to be uh super hilarious. So, a huge thank you to the Mawa Schools Foundation for making this exciting event possible. Uh the Betsy Ross HSO also provide pizza for students lunch with the author which we have a picture here to to showcase um that opportunity which made the day even more special for our kids. You'll see at your places uh we have a flyer for the gifted and talented student art show uh that is uh coming up on May
0595th, this upcoming Monday from 4:30 p.m. to 600 p.m. at Mawa Town Hall's main lobby. Uh all are invited to check out the beautiful artwork from the ridges and Joyce Kilmer's gifted and talented student art showcase. The student artwork will be on display through January through June 3rd. So visitors are welcome through throughout the upcoming months. a high school junior Arouche Borer was uh selected by the Governor's School of Engineering and Technology um which is one of the two programs of the Governor's School of New Jersey. Uh since its inception, the program has been held at Ruckers University and aims to educate scholars in the fields of engineering and technology. Uh the governor's school program is a four-week residential summer program which is uh academically intense and demanding. It typically runs from the end of
060June to the end of July. Students participate in two elective courses along with the core courses of physics and robotics. Uh their schedule also includes keynote speakers, tours, enrichment activities and a research project. And on the final day, a symposium is held to showcase the research projects and creations by all the scholars who are attending. So of the nominees uh who are considered the best and the brightest students of the respective schools, fewer than 25% uh generally receive offers of admission. So congratulations to Arouche. Um it's going to be a great opportunity. I actually went to Governor School in high school and it was awesome. So, um you'll also see at your at your tables another flyer uh for another great event that occurred on April 4th, which was our alternative to college fair. You
061can see um if you scan the QR code on the flyer at your places, you'll see there's some additional information, but interested students were given the opportunity to participate and attend an in-house um opportunity to learn about alternative options beyond the four-year college experience. At this fair were representatives from air arc welding academy, an aviation institute, the Bergen County Sheriff's Office and Superior Court, a Dental Studies Institute, Eastwick College School Trade, Lincoln Tech, Real Estate Schools, Boat Building and Design School Representation, and the United States Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy. So, a special thank you to Mrs. Mandel, one of our uh school counselors at the high school, who led in organizing this very important event for our kids. Uh, last but certainly not least, we had two retirement announcements you'll see on
062the agenda this evening. Agenda items 19B and 19C. Um, we announced the retirement of Sheila Sharp from Joyce Kilmer School. After years of unwavering dedication, we bid a fond farewell to Mrs. Sharp, who has truly made a lasting impact on our students. Known for being a tireless advocate, a source of positive energy and a passionate force for good, Miss Sharp has brought not just excellence to her work, but heart and soul as well. Always caring, always checking in, Miss Sharp makes everyone feel seen and supported. The calm she creates in the classroom sets an atmosphere where kindness and collaboration can thrive. Her easygoing nature and infectious spirit will be deeply missed. But we are excited for this next chapter of welldeserved rest, joy, and new adventures as she looks to travel more and spend time
063with her children who are actually literally all over the world. So congratulations to Sheila on her retirement. Um certainly well earned uh and her energy and contributions to our special ed program uh will be sorely missed. Mary Beth Kalooi, it says George Gale. I apologize. So, sorry, Mary Beth. Um, so after 21 years of devoted service to MA High School, uh, an adviser to our future medical professionals club, we bid a warm and heartfelt farewell to our incredible school nurse, Mary Beth. A compassionate professional and steadfast presence in our school community, Mary Beth has been a source of comfort, care, and calm for students, staff, and parents alike. In her remarkable two decades of service, she has taken only five sick days, a testament to her dedication, and unwavering commitment to the district. Known for
064her diligence, attention to detail, and strong moral compass, she embodies what it means to lead with both both heart and responsibility. If you know Mary Beth that you know her to be a true rule follower with a gentle spirit uh and as someone who brings genu genuine warmth to the uh health office at Ma High School. As she retires, Mary Beth looks forward to a new chapter filled with travel alongside her husband Jack and spending time with her 10 grandchildren. Uh though we will deeply miss her presence in our health office, we celebrate the legacy she leaves behind uh and wish her joy, peace, and endless adventure in the years ahead. Thanks. And lastly, well, we we have an appointment this evening for someone's voice. Yes. Oh, okay. We're recommending Jo Jody Craft, if you
065can stand, you can just do a wave. Thank you, Jody. Uh we are recommending um Miss Jodie Craft to the director of curriculum and instruction to join our uh central office leadership team. So after review of 110 applications, our panel met with 24 candidates via Zoom and six applicants in person. Ultimately, our committee is recommending Miss Jodie Craft to the position of director of curriculum instruction for the district. Mrs. Craft comes to us with 25 years in education. Before entering administration, Mrs. Craft served as an elementary teacher and a literacy instructional coach. She served as a vice principal for Tennifi public schools and for the last seven years has been the principal of Bird Elementary School in Glenrock um which has been her proudest work to date. Her current superintendent speaks highly of Mrs. Craft
066sharing that she is diligent, has vision, and has really turned her school around. Uh we look forward to having Joey join our district leadership team upon your approval. And now I'm aologiz It was great. It was great. That's a different requirement. Thank you, Dr. Fair. All right. Thank you, Dr. Fair. And uh we we still do have to vote, but uh welcome and congratulations, Miss Craft. I we'll we'll vote and then I'll Okay, let's uh try to get through this. All right. President's report. Um I I I had a few things. I'll try to keep it brief. All right. Number one um was our strategic plan. Um, again, we completed our third meeting in April. I just wanted to review this is all up on the website. So, again, there's a nice big tab that
067says strategic plan. So, you can go see. I just wanted to give the summary of the four goal areas that came out of all those meetings. Soaring scholars uh regarding intellectual curiosity and lifelong learning. Number two is wings of wellness, social, emotional and personal growth. Number three, launching leaders college career and future ready skills. And number four, future ready flight uh worldclass learning environments. We have very creative titles this year. We came up with um it the administration will be working on writing up action plans uh for these objectives developed under each statement and specific tasks needed to accomplish this these objectives. Um and what resources may be needed and a timeline. Um, and again, this is a five-year period. So, again, thank you to everyone who participated in the strategic plan. Uh, thank you
068for spearheading it, the administrative team, and we look forward to our new mama blueprint. All right. Um, we have our top soaring Thunderbirds. Let's quickly go to February. Top soaring Thunderbirds were, um, the student was Tracy Palanel. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly, grade 12 for being determined. Um I I just a quick blip. The staff member said she is um her journey through MA High School has been defined by her unwavering passion for performing arts, budding interest in healthc care field, and a deep commitment to community service. So I mean really tremendous um students and staff. Um the teacher was Mr. Matthew Donville who is biology and special ed. again determined and the student quote which is what all our students want to feel. He acknowledges people's hard work, encourages others, inspires growth within
069every student and boosts the confidence of every student he interacts with. I mean that's those are really tremendous comments. March uh our two the teacher was Mr. Andrew Nem, visual arts teacher, and the student wrote, "I chose him because he inspires me to be a better student and he tries to make every student feel included." Um, and the student was senior Sophia Simone for being inspiring and spirited and and the comments were, "She inspires and lifts people up around her and brings radiant and bright energy." Um, so again, congratulations to them. Um, a housekeeping matter and committee updates. Um, we do have a slight change. Mr. Copelan, uh, Brett Copan will be taking over community relations for us as our chairperson. Uh, so thank you, Brett, and good luck to you. All right. Now, I
070have something in honor of, you know, Mr. G, one of Mr. Galla's favorite just today's a special day for Mr. Galla. So, Mr. Gallows day today. But anyway, special favorite of his and I'm surprised nobody else mentioned it is the art and design exhibition at Mawa High School because I know this is a personal favorite of Mr. Galla. So, I had to talk about that. That will be May 30th, 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. and noon to 2:00 p.m. uh on May 31st. And Mr. Galla will speak very highly of this because he thinks it's one of the best events we put on at the high school. Um all right and then lastly uh we have um we are entering our superintendent evaluation period. We do this annually as a board. Um the first step is
071Dr. Duro has completed his portion um his own self evaluation. Then the board does an evaluation uh which um board members I'd like to have back hopefully by May 15th 14th I think. 14th or 15th. Thank you. If you can get right on that when you go home tonight and uh we will then have a portion of reviewing, finalizing, etc. And it'll be signed by June 30th. So again, those are that is my report for this evening. Thank you. All right. Board committee reports. We got I just have a quick remark or report. A report. Report. Okay. Go ahead. Mr. Gallow. Very quick. So this morning finance facilities met and in addition to the budget presentation was reviewed. But I just want to highlight during the break um our supervisor of grounds and his team
072did a whole bunch of work throughout the district um which is sort of the unsung uh labor of love that they do to keep our facilities in great shape. A whole bunch of projects were completed and thank you Greg and his team for getting that done and we look forward to hearing about the GW electrical transformer switchover. a project we've anticipated for at least two years. Thank you, Mr. Excellent. Anyone else? Committee reports. Mr. Denise. Um the policy committee has 14 policies on tonight's agenda for first reading. These are all just part of our um continuing review of our policy inventory. So, they all just had minor language changes or spelling, grammar, or formatted corrections. Great. Thank you, Mr. Mr. Denise, anybody else? Mr. Kizarski, the town council level, um the council at last the
073last past meeting um brought in the winter guard to recognize them for their great success and offer a nice resolution. Great to have them there. Um also glad to see the paving project off and and will be completed, but also saving more money to taxpayers and looking forward to see if there's anything else we can do together. That's all. Great. Thank you, Mr. Kismarski. Uh any other committee reports? Okay. Then uh any board member remarks this evening? Mr. Dilva, if we hadn't gone so long, I would suggest that we sing to Mr. Gallow, but so we can save that for later. We'll just wish him happy birthday. Happy birthday. Dedicated. I think he was feeling I was not going to loudly say it. He was kind of sherking his birthday today. So I I got
074him this morning. All right. And what dedication to be here on your birthday like he had anywhere else? Oh, Mr. Coughlin, no new episodes or program. Netflix is late. All right, Mr. Coughlin, you had to do this. Real quick, um, today is the deadline for most seniors to commit to a college. May 1st is typically the day. I want to congratulate everyone. Uh if you've got an Instagram every year a teacher in this high school, there's about 138 mentions on this Instagram page. Check it out. The list of colleges, universities, and plans that some of these kids are doing are absolutely incredible. We should all be very proud. Very proud of, you know, I'm seeing JMU. I'm seeing South Carolina. I'm seeing Mars University. For us, that's that's big. But also, I want to point
075out two other ones. We have um at least one student go to West Point. and we have one student that'll be enrolling in the Marines. So, thank you to both of them for for continuing that and going to the military service. I don't want to take away from Dr. Fair because I know he does something towards the end of the year with this list. Uh so, I don't want to take away too much, but I want to congratulate everyone who have made a commitment and for those that haven't, there's still time and I'm sure they'll find their way. So, congratulations to all the seniors. Thank you, Mr. Coughlin. Any other remarks this evening? All right, so let's go to old business 17, the minutes from the April 9th meeting. I need a motion on the
076floor. Uh, Mr. Kasmarski. Second by Mr. Gallow. Uh, roll call, please. Mr. Lamb. Mr. Copley. Yes. Mr. Dilva. Yes. Mr. Denise. Yes. Mr. Gallow. Yes. Mr. Use. Yes. Mr. Marski. Yes. M. Fancy. Yes. Dr. Mort. Yes. All right. New business. Um, did you want to take the budget separately, Mr. Lamb, or just You don't have to. Okay. So, um we're now going to go to 18 new business. A is the school budget that was just presented. Uh but we've got A through DD. Um so, I need a motion on the floor. 18 A through DD. Mr. Hughes, second by Mr. Coplin. And roll call, please. Mr. Lamb. Roll call. Mr. CP. Yes. And thank you, Mr. Lamb, and the entire business office for putting the budget together. Mero. Yes. Mr. Dilva. Yes. Mr. Denise, yes.
077Mr. Gallow, yes. Except on 18M, I am abstaining on check numbers 119254, 119 382, 119451, 119506. I hope that Mr. Mr. Kismars. Uh, yes, but I'm abstaining on ATM check number 11398. I thank the district for paying its water bill. [Laughter] No one in your family's working for your Yes. Thank you, Dr. Yes. All right. Now, we're going to take a new business personnel. Um, now we have a few. We have a increment with we have an A. We have a two retirements. we take those separately. So um first on 19A um in executive session it was discussed that we would uh table uh this particular resolution until uh a future meeting. So I do need a motion on the floor to table 19a. Mr. Kmarski second by um Mr. Gallow. So we are voting
078to table 19A. All right. Roll call please. Mr. Lamb. Mr. Coplin. Yes. Miniro. Yes. Mr. Dilva. Yes. Mr. Denise. Yes. Mr. Gallow. Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Marley. Yes. Miss Jans. Yes. Dr. Yes. All right. And now uh as we normally do, we will take our uh retirement separately. This is 19B and C. Uh many years of dedicated service to this district. Thank you very much and enjoy your retirement. Um need a motion on the floor. Um Mr. Hughes, second by Miss Ting Jansen. Roll call, please. Mr. 19 BNC retirements. Mr. Copan, yes. Miss Aanero, yes. Mr. Dilva, yes. Mr. Denise, yes. Mr. Gallow, yes. Mr. Yu, yes. Mr. Gizmari, yes. Miss Jans, yes. Dr. Yes. All right. Now, uh, let's take 19 D to LL we have tonight. So, several things going on. Um, all
079right. I need a motion on the floor. Mr. Coplin, second by uh Mr. Hughes. All right, roll call, please. Mr. Lamb. Mr. Cop. Yes. I want to wish uh Miss Kurt nothing but the best in the future. She holds a very special place in my family's heart. So, good luck. Manero? Yes. Mr. Dilva? Yes. Mr. Denise? Yes. Mr. Gallow? Yes. Mr. Hughes? Yes. Mr. Kismarski? Yes. Jansen? Yes. Dr. Yes. And now I think we can officially welcome and congratulate Jody Craft as our director of curriculum [Applause] uh beginning this summer July 1st. Uh so welcome welcome to the MAWA and thank you for sitting through our meeting very patiently. So anyway, thank you very much. Um all right, let's quickly now go to public. I'm getting there. Getting there. Getting there. We have L L.
080That might be public questions or comment. Public participation at board meetings is in accordance with bylaw 0167. At this time, members of the public may ask questions or make a comment on educational issues or school matters of community interest. As a matter of fairness, you're asked to limit your questions to no more than one and your remarks to no longer than three minutes. If you're here representing a group, please identify yourself, the group, and your position in the group. If you're here as an individual, please give us your name and address. I need a motion uh on the floor to open the meeting to the public. Uh Mr. Gallo, and second by Mr. Dilva. We are officially open to the public. Seeing no one come forth at this time, motion to close the meeting to
081the public, Mr. Kismarski, second by Miss Ting Jansen. All right, we do need uh another executive session at the end. So motion to uh recess to executive session Mr. Gallow second by Mr. Coplan and we will adjourn from there this evening directly. Thank you everyone. Sure. down.