001Statement is hereby made that adequate notice of this meeting was given by the prominent posting of said notice in all district schools and other public places. The mail and gander hand delivery have said notice to the designated newspapers, the Asbury Park Press, and the Manalepin Patch. Filing with the clerk of Manalepin Township and the clerk of English Shambarro, Jess please call the roll. Mrs. Campo? Here. Mr. Kepprick? Here. Mr. Fulver is absent. Mrs. Her? Here. Mr. Kane? Here. Mrs. Lucas? Here. Mrs. Parisi? Here. Mr. Singer? Here. Mr. Tosetti is absent right now. We have a quorum. Please rise for the flag salute. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Okay we're gonna move right into the budget presentation and the public hearing on the 2026-2027 school year budget. Ronnie we need the initial motion. I'm gonna
002call for a motion and a second please to open the public hearing. Can I have a motion? Janae? Second? Kelly Lucas? Okay and we are now in the public hearing. Any all in favor? I'm sorry. All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay now we're in the public hearing. Okay here we go. So this is our budget presentation. As many of you know we did a lot of budget talking in March when our numbers came out and our preliminary budget was due and we went over a lot of areas. So this is just our final budget presentation kind of some summarizing everything. State formula eight has declined for our district from $19,837,100 in 2017-2018 to $8,649,916 for this year. It's a reduction of about 11.2 million dollars annually and over 73 million dollars cumulatively and as
003I said during the last presentation when we talked about the budget sometimes the narrative being told isn't always as accurate as it seems. So if you saw maybe in the newspaper it said Menalpan got four hundred and something thousand dollars more than previous years. That is true but it's 11 million dollars less than what we were getting nine years ago for a cumulative loss of 73 million dollars. So although we are grateful for $489,619 and it's meaningful it does not come close to cut closing the budget gap, restoring our prior funding levels or keeping pace with the rising cost and health care cost is something that we will be talking about in executive session, not executive, in new and old. The district addresses the funding formula through a comprehensive budget strategy. We focus on deficit
004planning, expenditure efficiency, revenue sources and then we really look at the alignment of our enrollment, our staffing and our programmatic needs. In the past what have we done to kind of minimize the impact of that 73 million dollars? We implemented significant cost saving measures. Did I turn this too? No. I turned mine. Okay there we go. Including reducing administrative roles, clerical roles, teaching roles and support staff. We shifted some of our full-time employees to part-time. We modified our hiring practices. Example would be how we hired substitutes. We lowered the employment benefit cost through insurance plan changes and a reduced waiver incentives. We also reduced accounts for supplies, utilities are beyond the school day programming and other discretionary accounts. For instance we brought security to in-house versus outsourcing and then we deferred or eliminated non-essential expenditures
005including technology, facility upgrades. We discontinued selective programs such as the Milford-Brook subsidized before care program and I think what's most important to note is that we strategically used the ARP funds that we got during the COVID years and we also strategically use other grant opportunities. So we make sure that when we get grant opportunities we take advantage of them and we use them to the best of our ability. So current revenue sources include our Chromebook fees, our facilities and field rentals, summer enrichment program, our YMCA, building usage charges, ice cream concessions, interest earnings on cash balances and most recently us taking advantage of gov deals where we are selling products that we wouldn't normally have thrown out that we may not need anymore. Because of the prior tax levy increases there has not been a
006significant reduction for the school year. So I do want to take a minute and really thank the community. Over the last two years we have done some tax levy increases and they've really had an amazing positive effect on our district. It was one of the first years where we were not looking to eliminate essential items. So we're very thankful for that. We also recently reduced our health care costs by moving from the state health care plan to a GIF. It generated a significant cost avoidance and I think it's important to mention here and Miss Wolf always reminds me to mention this that we're not saving money we're avoiding the cost of what have been associated with the state plan. So we're still seeing a significant increase in insurance costs but not as much as it
007would have been had we stayed with the state plan. And of course the community supported the referendum. The community support of the referendum was amazing. Our facilities are so much better than they were. You can see it when you enter the school buildings you can see it just by all the positives and the upgrades, the HVAC upgrades, the roofing. I'm not getting the phone calls that I used to get over my roof is leaking like I used to. Our paving. These projects have made a tremendous difference on our district. So here's just some budget highlights and we're very proud of these highlights. Class sizes will remain stable. Our comprehensive student services like RTI, counseling, mental health, behavioral supports will all be maintained. The suspension of student activity and graduation fees will remain in effect. Instructional
008programs and educational technologies will continue to be updated and expanded and for next year we will also be adding a child study team member which is amazing to be able to add that. I see some principals out there with smiling faces and supervisors because it really is so much needed. So that is where we are at as far as that. I'm now going to turn the money side over to Ms. Wolf. This slide represents a concept that we deal with when we're budgeting and has an impact on our state aid calculation of the district's adequacy status and our status of our local fair share. The state takes a fictitional school district and they break it down into different grade level bands so that you have like a K to 8 configuration, a K to 12
009configuration, but they look at like an average school district with what it would cost to run with one administrator, so many teachers per student, overhead facilities, things like that. That's our adequacy budget. So our adequacy spending right now is just under 91 million dollars and oddly enough it does also equal our tax levy. Our budget adequacy based on the DOE calculations of what it would cost us in this fictitious school district, but that doesn't include everything. There's things that aren't in that number that we have in our school district like computer technicians, full day kindergarten, busing for all, you know we've got courtesy busing. So those things aren't factored into the adequacy budget as the state calculates, but we have it here which is part of the reason why we are over adequacy. So there's
010definitely a reason for that. So currently in this budget we're spending about 3.9 million dollars above adequacy for all those reasons that I just spoke about. When you look at our local fair share based on what the state says that our community should be able to support through a tax levy, again it starts with our tax levy and looks at what our local fair share calculation is and that is a combination of property values through assessed values and equalized values at the county tax board and it also looks at relative income levels based on New Jersey tax return reporting information. So the wealth of the community in both fiscal wealth as opposed to you know as income and then property wealth as opposed to property values. So as you can see here we're under our
011local fair share so the state based on the calculation says that we should be able to support through the community through the tax levy another almost 15.5 million dollars of tax levy which we're not we're not anywhere near that, but that's kind of the where we have to look to have a balance and it's partly why also we're not seeing increases in state aid any more than what we received from the state this year the $113,000 which we'll look at in a little bit later came from our enrollment numbers that the state had on file. So we're about 12.7 million dollars below local fair share while we're 3.9 million dollars above adequacy and that does factor into our state aid calculations. For 26-27 and since every year since 2007 we have been at what is
012called statutory cap. So we are at our 2% increase in our tax levy from the prior year plus all eligible adjustments that are that are offered to us. That is what's considered cap so we are at or below statutory cap. While we had had minimal increases in state formula aid for several years prior to the introduction of S2 which was 2017-18 we are approximately 12.8 million dollars below the amount we received in the 9-10 school year. The 9-10 school year we're using as sort of a benchmark because that's the the last time we had a major financial similar crisis in New Jersey where state funding was slashed and they came looking back to us to give fund balance back and there were things that the state did at that point so that's where we use
013a benchmark of our high of 21 million dollars. 2010 is really known around school districts as the 2010 budget cuts because that's where everything kind of pivoted for education. A lot of districts were just a you know dismantling their their art their music programs sports you name it just to make ends meet. We are utilizing about a hundred thirteen thousand dollars of available tax levy adjustment for enrollment. We are also using approximately three points eight million dollars worth of tax levy adjustments for our increase in our health care costs. Now if I were to look into the budget software the number that we have eligible to us based on last year's information and the increase that the state health benefits program saw is almost double that. It's five point seven million dollars. The reason we're
014not qualifying for the higher amount I believe is because we under the new school joint insurance fund that we're in we were offered an 18-month premium starting in January so January to June and then all of next year is a flat known premium. We're not seeing an increase in the January to June portion of the school year in the future as we always have in the past so that was always something that I had to take a guess at where's the state going to be with their increases. So it makes sense that we're at about half because we have that flat stable tax health benefit premium. So Ronnie just so I'm hearing correctly the the GIF not only saved our general budget money but it also saved taxpayers money. Yes. As well it does. Yes.
015I would have that would have been a higher number if we had had not gone to the GIF that would I would have said about five point seven million. For 26-27 the general fund tax levy increased by six point five four percent over the previous year resulting in tax rate increases for both Menalop and Englishtown and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a couple slides but there is a tax increase in both communities. Taxpayer guide to education spending is something that the state does every year once everyone's budgets and audits have been submitted and everything's finalized they kind of do comparisons over 21 cost ratio indicators that kind of rank us amongst similar school districts. So here we're comparing ourselves to K to 8 districts with 751 or more students that's the
016category that we fall into there are smaller K to 8 so we are the largest category of K to 8 you also have K 6 K 3 and then K 12 there's different different matrices for each of those but as far as our budgetary cost per pupil we are spending in the last budget that last 2005 rates that were announced just recently in March 18 thousand seven hundred twenty dollars per student as our budget total budgetary cost per pupil compare that to K to 8 average for the state of twenty thousand five thirty nine and then all other K all of the types of school districts in the state at twenty one thousand one hundred nineteen dollars so you can see that there is a disparity we are below what other districts are spending which
017is has this ranked at out of 73 school districts we are number 18 on the lower end of the scale total administrative cost per pupil very similar situation we're less than the K to 8 average also less than the all all average we rank 24th out of 73 and I'm not going to go through every one of them but you can see that they rank administration salaries and benefits to for pupils student to administrator ratios median administrator salaries and you can see there were more towards the middle of the pack so while we're have lower ranking total overall cost art art staff salaries are pretty much on the average and even then we still have difficulty sometimes you know securing teachers for different positions that are difficult to fill our student to teacher ratio is
018is good our median teacher salary is also good so this is the next slide it's just a synopsis of this basically showing that we are on the overall cost per student we're almost eighteen hundred and twenty dollars less per pupil than the other state average of all K to 8 and twenty five hundred almost less than state average on the administrative costs were twenty dollars per pupil less than K to 8 751 or more and 232 less than the state average kind of boring but if you ever want to look at those numbers you can take a look there's a lot of information there the next slide is a requirement of the county executive business official she in reviewing our budget had one slight modification that she wanted us to make and asked that we
019make it at public hearing so this is what we have to do in order to announce to the public that our numbers are slightly different than what we did at our tentative adoption back in March this really has no impact on the overall budget other than increasing revenues and increasing expenditures it's a weird kind of offset but that's it really doesn't impact tax levies or any of the bottom lines she just felt that our maintenance reserve could earn more than the twenty five hundred dollars a year now so we increase it and it's just on both sides of the equation so again no no net impact is zero the next slide is the clean line pop through the next slide is just a state aid comparison the top of the of the table shows our
020formula aid categories which in the past were equalization aid transportation aid special education aid and security aid we no longer qualify for equalization aid because we are over adequacy and below local fair share if those conditions had been less or different flipped around we would have we might have qualified for equalization aid but that's not the case so that's this the numbers that we previously reported at the eight point seven million dollars of aid then we have other categories of aid our extraordinary aid is changes from year to year the state allocates a certain amount for the entire state as a pool and then we put in applications documenting extraordinary costs for special education students either educated within the district or in and out of district placement setting there's different thresholds for each of that
021but mrs. Patilla will go through she's in the process of completing that now we'll find out closer to the end of the school year what our allocation is and we'll have to book a receivable because usually they give us the number after the end of the school year so I'm anticipating we always try to go a little conservative on that just so we can case we get caught short never knowing what the pool of money the state's gonna have available is and as the costs rise the allocation share we get in districts is smaller we are doing seventy five hundred dollars for the menstrual products again while we may not spend it it's an in on the revenue side and an out on the appropriation side so that they're gonna be matching they really have
022no net impact on the budget overall so that's giving a total of the nine point four five seven four sixteen as our total state eight of all categories formula and other base budget history is all funds across the district so it includes our general operating fund which is basically funds all of the school operation salaries benefits physical plant utilities transportation all of that then there's our grant fund which is all of our federal and state entitlements some other local stuff like the DCA recreation improvement grant would be than that and then we also have our debt service fund so our total budget is a hundred twenty one million six hundred and seventy seven thousand eight hundred eighty nine dollars which is a large increase fifteen million almost fifteen point three million dollars very large portion
023of that is related to the referendum debt our debt service went from about three point six million dollars to over seven over ten million dollars sorry not seven over ten million dollars and that was anticipated we know we have those couple of years where in our town hall meeting when we had a referendum presentations we discussed that there's going to be three or so over overlapping years of debt before the old debt is paid off while the new debt is still being paid starting to be paid it'll even out as that falls off that's about a fourteen point three seven percent increase the tax rates are shown there for both Manilap and in English town our enrollment had a slight decrease about one percent projected that's not terrible it's about we've been pretty consistent with
024almost flat enrollment past few years tax levy analysis starting out with our pre-budget year from last year including the hundred thirteen thousand dollars of enrollment adjustment you multiply that by the two percent to give our two percent cap then we add in our automatic adjustment for health care increases bringing us to our set our cap of tax levy of ninety million nine hundred and ninety four thousand two hundred forty eight dollars which is our cap and also which is where our our levy is there is no available cap bank based on that if we if the top number had been higher and we had a tax levy where it is now we might have had banked cap but we're not really in a position to not take advantage of that as we're coming off of
025yes two years where we're still trying to make up ground general fund revenues the general ten tax levy as I said just over ninety million dollars almost ninety one million dollars that's about eighty three percent of our revenue stream revenues from all other state sources is about eight point six percent of our revenue stream and the other big number there is our surplus about five point three percent of our overall revenue supporting this budget that is high we have been trying to move off of surplus dependency because it becomes more and more difficult to generate that kind of revenue that's left over at the end of the year we had a good year last year where we took advantage of some of the tax levy increases and with anticipated costs that didn't come to fruition
026and we were able to put that away and use that towards funding this budget which is what the requirement is I'd rather do that than spend frivolously you know we always want to make sure that we put it to good use general fund appropriations there's a different categories which we've gone over in the previous projections the categories are essentially the same regular instruction comprises about twenty four percent of our overall costs salaries and not benefits but salaries and supplies and things like that services our instructional for special education is about eleven point nine percent support services account for about ten point two percent and that's areas like child study team guidance library improvement of instruction that type of stuff then we've got general administration school administration central and technical services that's where my department HR
027and IT fall into that category plant and operations also include security at about ten point six percent of our budget student transportation is about six percent employee benefits that's a big number and that's net of employee contributions so I have to take the premiums that we're going to pay and subtract out from that number what we expect to withhold from employees during the year from their paycheck so this is a net number it's already reduced for employee withholdings and that's about twenty five and a half percent of our budget so as you can see while we did make the change to the joint insurance fund and it's beneficial to us this number could have been higher if we hadn't made that that change transfer to charter school is a requirement we do have a few
028students I believe we just received another student so at some point during the year I'm gonna be transferring some money small amount of money into that line item to cover that additional student capital outlay is minor at one point six million we do have some projects small projects that we're proposing out of that nothing really major because of all the other work going on with the referendum these are the tax rate increases that we're estimating for 26 for the tax bills now again I can only do an estimate based on the information that I have available to me at the time comes from the county board of taxation they do give us estimated preliminary assessed values and such to use in these calculations but we are saying that for two thousand twenty six tax bills
029Manalapan is going to see a three point eight cent tax three point eight cent increase in the tax rate while English China is going to see a four point eight cent increase in the tax rate a couple things go into that there's an apportionment ratio between the two communities that changes from year to year it's based on the number of students attending from each community and the relative wealth of each community based on those other factors property value and income wealth they give me an apportionment fraction that I have to use in the software and that's how it's allocated between the two what I wanted to point out while we are seeing an increase I wanted to understand and it's important to understand that a large portion of these increases is due to the referendum
030debt so I took the opportunity to break out the increase and split it between what our current expense and the old debt would have been and then what the impact of the new debt is so as you can see from now up in 71 percent of that increase is related to the new debt which the voters in the community approved and was projected I mean these numbers are basically right in line with what we told them during the present to the referendum presentations and all of the handouts and stuff that went out in English town it's a little higher it's eighty three percent of the increase and now up in an English town raise their taxes on a different basis now then splits their tax levy between two years so their 2006 tax bills reflect
031half of the year we're in now the last half of the year we're in now plus the first half of the year we're going into so you're not going to see all that impact of the debt service aid increase in this it'll see partial part of that will be in 27 whereas English town raises it on the same basis as our fiscal year so they're seeing all of that impact in one one budget but when the bill cycle one tax levy cycle now then will be split into two so that's important to understand that and then I just took some estimated tax impacts on some assessed value ratios for different values of Menalpan residents so you can see for a home assessed at four hundred thousand dollars what the tax levy would have been under
03225 and 26 we're projecting an increase of a hundred and fifty two dollars or twelve dollars and sixty seven cents a month 706 706 thousand four hundred is the average for a home in Menalpan based on the number of units and the overall assessed value for residential property so that's going to see approximately $268 increase $22 and 37 cents a month for Menalpan and again the large portion of that is going to be related to the debt service English town same scenario $300,000 home it's going to see an increase of a hundred forty four dollars or twelve dollars a month the average assessed value in the English town is 492 thousand four hundred and that's going to see two hundred and thirty six dollars and thirty five cents or nineteen dollars and seventy cents a
033month increase in taxes based on what I'm calculating again it might be slightly different it's usually pretty accurate but again I can only use the information that I have available to me at the time and then that's it for us unless we have any questions can I just add one thing on Ronnie correct me if I'm wrong there has been a huge number of developments yes being built in Menalpan and there's sometimes a misconception that as that new developments come in the district will get more money the district has that two percent cap and it's two percent off their budget it's not two percent off of every tax so those new houses do not give revenue to the district but it can help to decrease it dilutes it'll dilute the overall impact of the our
034budget increases is spread along a larger tax base as every house that comes on during the school year and they get their assessments or they get their billings it's going to do prorate across all the new homes as well as the existing home so again that's why I say it's only based on what I have at the moment it may wind up being slightly different after that I can't say until the tax rates are finalized with the in the bills by the tax board but that is important any questions or can I just ask a curiosity question you mentioned that there's the formula between an elephant in English town and that you are given the output from it who runs the formula the state gives it to me it's an apportionment it's a calculation and
035again it takes into at one point I gave I think I think I did a presentation in English town to explain it I could go back and find that presentation but it's it's a blending and it's a little more complicated here because we are sharing it with the regional as well so it's it's the total number of students in our school district now up in an English town and then they prorate the property value and the wealth between us and the regional it except in a regular community that didn't have wasn't a regional and be a little more straightforward but because we have the regional and us and we're and it's any not a Senate received but like another school district that's also shared in the community but it comes right from the state actually
036I think the tax board probably puts it together and sent it to the state and they verify it okay that makes sense thank you anybody else have questions feedback thank you if we're good and we will then take a motion and a second to go out of the public hearing and then we can move on with the agenda Jamie and a second Eric all in favor anyone opposed noted we're good thank you okay we're back do we have any further changes and additions to the agenda we don't we do well I believe it it is item g2 Jesse g2 yes we have a read and we have a read in under agenda item personnel item k2 item F amber Hesse teacher music instrumental vocal resignation effective 5 6 20 26 that's the only that's the
037only other information reading that we have at this point all the changes were sent earlier the HIV appeal oh we're unlocked yet the HIV appeal I'm sorry we unlock the HIV appeal after affirming affirming the decision in the matter of HIV matter involving student number four zero three four zero one do for the board's information okay okay moving on to F for the board's information we have the wellness assessment annual district summary progress report does anybody have any questions about that one okay we'll move to G administration can we have a motion and a second on g1 and g2 please Christine and Jamie her no questions okay mrs. Campo abstain g2 yes she won mr. Capric yes mrs. her yes mr. Kane yes mrs. Lucas yes mrs. Parisi yes mr. singer yes mr. to study
038yes on g1 no on g2 motion passes okay can we have a motion and a second on each final adoption of the 20 26 27 school year budget please any questions anybody no mr. Capric yes yes mr. Kane yes mrs. Lucas yes mrs. yes mr. singer no mr. to study yes and mrs. Campo yes motion passes can we have an motion and a second on I I won through I nine under business please motion Eric and Kelly anybody have any questions good questions okay mrs. hurt yes mr. Kane yes mrs. Lucas yes mrs. Parisi yes mr. singer yes mr. to study mrs. Campo yes and mr. Capric yes motion passes can we have a motion a second on J under curriculum please J one questions okay mr. Kane yes mrs. Lucas yes mrs. Parisi yes
039mr. singer yes mr. to study mrs. Campo yes mr. Capric yes and mr. sir yes motion passes we have a motion and a second on k2 through k21 motion questions okay 20 minutes yes for the information so it's we're moving items k1 through k20 k2 I'm sorry k2 through k20 k21 is for your information because the board has already voted on those contracts independently I'm sorry yes no that was on me sorry any other questions no okay mrs. Lucas yes mrs. Parisi yes mr. singer yes mr. to study mrs. Campo yes mr. Capric yes mrs. her yes and mr. Kane yes motion passes final one can we have a motion a second on l1 under student matters please yeah the rugby school that's the one in Neptune City I mean there's seven different ones that's
040why I'm asking not 100% rugby school but there's there's there's several rugby so not not Neptune City because they didn't show up before there's a Neptune City location and there's a wall location so I don't know what which one I don't know you need to know that's a vote kind of be important when we look at transportation and cost Neptune no it's okay I will any other questions no okay mr. singer yes mr. to study yes and no no I can't there's two here there's not identifiable numbers or letters it's in a block how am I gonna vote yes and no if I vote yes for both or no for both okay I'll just vote no both how about that because they're the minutes aren't correct we can split out student number three nine five
041one seven will be marked as a and student four three three one three we marked as B we'll revise the agenda to reflect that so you would like to vote no on item L1 B correct hey mrs. Campbell yes mr. Kebrick yes mrs. her yes mr. Kane yes mrs. Lucas yes and mrs. Parisi yes motion passes okay that's the agenda so we are on to the presentations our first one is the state of the schools by Pomptonian agenda okay so we're here today to just give updates on your school food service program I'm going to start by speaking mostly to updates happening outside oh they're just turning on the presentation it's yeah it's kind of snoozed so the first slide is a welcome slide and I can talk as we start the presentation I'm going
042to give updates on what's happening not only within what's kind of happening outside of us that impacts a school meals you just started off school meals are one of the most highly regulated food service programs in the country so every item that we put on lunch tray has a because we're following a specific meal pattern so I'm an elephant is in the national school lunch program and therefore every item that we serve has to follow this meal pattern and that's how the district receives reinforcement whether it's for the actual meal or the foods that were served is all kind of funded through the USDA and then so being a part of the national school lunch program one aspect of the funding received is through foods that the government provides the district to keep the program
043financially sustainable and that food comes in multiple forms one is through processed commodities another is to produce and also at times we get food through a warehouse process commodities I think can be a type of either misunderstood or it's just worth talking about and understanding so a little bit of detail the government actually gives the district chicken or beef and we take those items and they get diverted to a manufacturer so this is not necessarily a choice it's just how the program is built but at Comptonian what we do is we look at all of our resources and find the best ways to run the food service program so the chicken serve is all white meat chicken in your chicken tenders and the beef is a hundred percent ground beef so we're always looking to
044find the foods that needs the least amount of fillers and are the most wholesome and then also looking at the scope of the program we include different scratch prepared items and semi scratch prepared items when Heather can go into some of those details later and then kind of going above and beyond from those types of items Comptonian also incorporates a farm to we call it TREB a farm to school program where we're utilizing local produce throughout the school year and then here you'll see on the next slide New Jersey has just released funding for local foods this is kind of hot off the press and we jumped right on that and we were able to bring in ground beef from Lima farms that's grass-fed ground beef and through Buffalo farms we were able to bring
045in chicken chicken breast and chicken thighs as well as I hope I pronounced this right Cone Valley farms eggs and milk that milk is milk that was incorporated into cooking just as an FYI not the milk that the students are selecting on the line so we're always looking at balancing all these different resources that that are available to us to just have the best possible foods out for the students okay so now the recent updates happening not just within our state but really outside of our state is the new food pyramid was just released so the national school lunch program is based off of the dietary guidelines for Americans and we have this recent shift where we went from my plate to this upside-down pyramid and with this upside down pyramid we are anticipating that
046we might see some changes in the meal pattern because that's what the meal pattern is based off of what I like to emphasize here is we don't know at this time exactly what those changes are we're just diligently waiting so we can make any changes necessary once we get those updates but what I can tell you is kind of what we're hearing might be some changes there is definitely a strong emphasis on more protein and we are also hearing even more of an emphasis on eggs there's also an emphasis on less added sugar although we are already looking at added sugar guidelines with cereal and yogurts as well as smart snacks which I'll talk about later but the new emphasis is even a less amount of added sugar in children 10 years and younger they
047are continuing to also focus on processed foods and also processed grains but in terms of the processed grains we're already serving 80% full grain enriched foods so with that being said we're not sure how much more strict they will be what I can say as an update what we're hearing is that these new guidelines may first be released for public comment towards the end of the summer early I'm sorry end of the spring early summer we'll have a chance to make comments and then they may give us that final release when they do give us that final release they typically give us time to face any changes and of course at that time we'll be happy to give updates to the board and additionally our menus will be updated to reflect these changes and just
048to take this opportunity to let you know that Fontanian is always on the forefront of being in the know of what's going on with any changes going on with school meals I go to Washington to lobby and speak with legislators about how this impacts their schools as well as a candy and mark the owners of Fontanian so we're always trying to be involved to make sure any concerns are heard at the people making the decisions another topic that has come up recently is oil so what are the oils being used in our school meals we're predominantly using olive oil we do use sesame oil at times I would say specifically more in the middle school and when necessary we do use a blended oil that is canola and olive oil combined and mostly this is
049just decided based on what type of cooking we're doing some cooking does require what's called a higher smoke point so you need to be able to bring it to a higher heat but this is something that can be tailored to the district's needs it is important to note that olive oil is two times the cost also we have smart snacks so just like our lunch program is regulated through specific a specific framework or a meal pattern that we need to follow our snacks are also following strict guidelines so I find this interesting that while the snacks you're looking at in front of you look like they're marketed like a snack you may see in the grocery store they're actually completely different and formulated differently for example that rice krispie treat is whole grain and lower
050in sugar than the rice krispie treat you would most likely see in the supermarket so to sell a snack in the school the product or food needs either be a whole grain or the first ingredient needs to be a fruit available yeah go ahead so you had mentioned that the government gives you the beef and the chicken did you say that and you mentioned that the beef was grass-fed so the USDA gives us the primary foods that we're using to run the program and then recently as a state we're very lucky that our state just gave us funding for schools to be able to purchase local beef and chicken so it's a separate set of funding okay so at any point do we use or plan to use in the future any lab-grown meat okay
051is there so there's grass-fed and this free range do we participate in any free range or just the grass-fed and you may not know this off the top you had I was just curious locally because we're using the local I was just curious because I know grass-fed and then they say free range is better so I was just curious as to you know what we have options for okay thank you I just have two two comments really I would like to just you know thank you so much for informing us of this very informative so I really do appreciate it I hope that we can move away from processed foods as much as we can I know we have the guidelines that we have to adhere to I'm sure you'd agree if we can move
052away from the processed foods my only concern is the type of oils that we're using I'm well aware of allergies from family members and friends and and sesame is one of the top of the top nine allergens so so my only concern really is just a common is we should probably try and move away from using sesame oil and stick to the the olive oil I understand the high heat and then what you stated I'm well aware of that but my only concern is just for allergy purposes sesame is on that list and I think we should try our best to try and eliminate that it's very difficult not only in a school setting but also going out to local restaurants where you constantly have to ask what type of oil you use so I'm
053keenly aware of that but just if you could just keep that in the back of your mind if we could work towards eliminating something that's part of that allergy pyramid for lack of a better word I'd appreciate that thank you okay for further discussion I just wanted to mention that thank you piggy backing off that I mean my preference obviously and I know it would come as a call so be something that we would have to you know discuss is would be to eliminate as much seed oils as humanly possible in our menu I mean I have gone through our ingredient list on our offerings and pretty much every oil is a blended oil like we rarely have an item that is primarily olive oil and when we're going through you you mentioned the smart
054snacks are not necessarily the same way that the same compilation as you would find in the grocery store which I think that that's great what about added colors do we have any thing that we have to follow as far as that juice pretty frequently as a coloring we got we heard from Pepsi that they have like a face our approach to eliminate it in the school snacks so at this time I don't want to say that we're 100% away from it but what I can say is that we're getting farther and farther away from including that and also extremely far in the school lunches okay great and then you know we we also another thing that I think what we should think about as a board the whole grain is great but at the end
055of the day it's still not organic so it's still getting sprayed with pesticides which will ultimately seep its way into the food so again that the more do and organic options we don't really do we have a ton of organic options right now I would love to be able to get a comparison you know even if it's not you know I won't hold you to it but just you know like a price point comparison I think would be helpful for us I think we did some research when you first brought this up Janae and pomptonian quite to my surprise you know I really didn't know but when you start looking at even like doing a Google search on school district serving organic lunches and menus or having organic lunch menus pomptonian comes up like as
056one of the leading providers of that type of a program they have had it in other districts and several districts the price point was around seven dollars a meal as opposed to like the three dollar three fifty four dollar meal price point we have now so it's significantly higher I mean that would be a separate menu it would be a pre-order but you know like for the staples right like every kid loves chicken nuggets like there's no reason why our chicken nuggets can't be organic chicken nuggets they'd have but they have they'd have to be higher price point if we make an organic meal plan we have the program itself has to be self-sustaining by statute so and we can't vary the price of the meals there's also like this PLE that detect takes what
057we can charge for meals based on what a free meal we we can't use the cost of the full price meal to subsidize the cost of or we can't use the price of the cost of the low the free meals subsidizing other meals it's there's a lot of guidelines a lot of regulations so really what it comes down to was when you're gonna implement something like an organic meal plan it has to be basically on a separate menu it would probably be pre-order where the parent would have to go in and either order you know for the week or so many days in advance but it would be a higher price point it is possible they can basically do anything we ask them to it's how it fits into the the meals price structure and
058how it fits into the healthy hunger for kids act and and those other guidelines that we have to follow and also being able to source the products yeah I feel like a lot of parents probably don't participate in school lunch because of some of these things I'm not saying it's a large majority of our parents but you know I I know of a few parents who are like no you know I prefer my kids to eat organic so just something I keep in mind thank you before you pass them I just have one quick question I'm so sorry but something that you said I just wanted to ask a clarification you did say that there was a sesame oil free menu and I know that typically kids with food allergies know what they can and
059cannot eat but do the kids like would the kids know that like this might be the sesame free but is it like do would they know that this other stuff like how obvious it is to them when they want to go get their chicken nuggets do they know like what a kid know that they have to go on you know what I'm saying I'm not articulating myself it's late I'm sorry it's past my bedtime and just so I can dignify myself from my inability to form words what I was I know that we label what is sesame free but do we clearly say that this is not I guess was really my my question but you've already answered it I just wanted to redeem myself so I'm sorry thank you popular new items new items
060that we're offering that include the fresh chicken are the sweet and spicy bone and chicken wings the burrito bar on Fridays which is similar to like a chipotle with the the grass-fed beef beef the book oh my god that's on with beef chicken strips chicken parm with fresh chicken cutlets these are all at the middle school where we have the ability to do more things because we have more kitchen equipment and then at the elementary schools we have a chicken wing sampler using all white meat chicken we have chicken vegetable dumplings on the menu now and we're offering the yogurt parfaits like you have over there with the breakfast items do we still have the panini press at the middle school was that so we have them they weren't currently running they weren't currently running
061this year we had to get the electrician to upgrade where we needed to put them ever since they redid the cafeteria so they will be up in harming in September I just like to commend them on the work that they do here I know we went through the item review before that we had procurement review a year or so the statement comes in and they look at a lot if they look at every three and reduced lunch application they looked at all their production records they looked at the nutritional content of the meals it's not something that like just like a checklist it's a very involved we have to submit a lot of documents uploading even with a procurement audit they come in and look at micro purchases they use local federal purchasing guidelines which
062aren't always as easily understood by us because we're more diverse than the state purchasing laws but we have to always remember that we're doing stuff in the cafeteria because additional rules apply to them another thing too is that I'm talking in our food service management company they don't dictate the program they don't they don't really profit from the program other than the management data that we approved a few weeks ago on the board of agenda it really is the district's program there were years where we had people that on the board that didn't want them selling cookies so we stopped selling cookies even though they were nutritionally different from the churros you could go to the mall and buy I think that the process was well if a kid could go to the mall and
063buy them they might be healthier in the schools but they could go to the mall and buy them there too so we kind of made some decisions and but knowing that it does even to profit and that's one of the things we have to make sure we understand that the food service by law has to be profitable we can't subsidize it with general fund monies just not something that the state agrees with and they would penalize us for that they could take CDA from us for doing something like that so I just want to be clear that while they run the program and they do an amazing job at it it's still our program the funds and the financial return come back to us thank you thank you thank you thank you for the delicious
064snacks sampling of hot food at this please all right done okay so we are moving into the final presentation the state of the schools end-of-year goals update slash accountability report by Dr. Santora okay well we can there's a copy on the agenda would you like me just to okay which is going to be interesting because I have notes not the PowerPoint display so we're going to play the school okay no I have it there too okay so but we'll start so every year around March and then we pushed it back to May we go over the district goals for many years our goals have been pretty consistent I do want you to know that we do always reflect on our goals and you'll see during this presentation that we started to notice that goals two
065and three were very similar so what we decided to do was Jesse are you okay you're okay we wouldn't let that happen and there goes my thoughts okay so back to what I was saying we do look at our goals every year and I always feel like I start the same sentence over and over again okay so every year we look at our goals in case you didn't pick that up the last ten times so every year we look at our goals and we do reassess them and see you know is this a goal we want to continue is this a goal we want to change is the goal we want to modify or add to so we are for next year updating our goals a little bit and combining some goals that we think
066we have made good progress on so that's just a heads up going in so a summary of this presentation was sent home to all parents already in the newsletter so I'm not going to send home this one too I think it's redundant it's on the agenda I think I actually have on the other presentation a link to it so it's already been sent home but goal one which is the district will continue to implement comprehensive strategies and resources to foster a community of culture of respect and empathy where every student feels valued supported and empowered to reach their full potential I'm not going to go over everything that we do for the goal but I am going to mention some highlights and you know some of these highlights is interesting because they kind of coincide
067with the budget when we talked about the tax levy increases and what we were able to add so some of this was feasible based on last year's budget so one we created a mental health coach the mental health coach goes around to all of our schools and supports our staff and make sure that we have consistency in our approaches throughout the schools and everybody's getting the same amount of support we also added an additional guidance counselor and MEMS we also always are leveraging our partnerships and grant opportunities so some of the ones highlighted in here was MEMS has a partnership with Rutgers WEMROC has a partnership with the NJDOA Taylor just got a grant from the foundation of MERS and each one of those was about school wide PBIS inclusive practices and trauma infused regulation
068so it was really all about inclusivity we also increased our effort to combat hate a few things that we did this year was the cattle car exhibit working with 3GNY and 2GNJ we had teachers that attended the Amistad Summer Institute so that was a great additive to what we've already done year after year and we also expanded our nurtured heart to include another expert on our staff Goal 2. Goal 2 is the district will continue to utilize various forms of standard based data resources and strategies and will continue to implement and enhance targeted support programs including responses to intervention special education gifted and talented beyond the school day programming to address student strengths and leverage learning needs to foster individual academic effective and behavioral growth so basically this goal is all about academics and making
069sure that we reach every child regardless of their level and their ability so one was our curricular updates we update curriculum all the time we had curricular updates last year as well we were also piloting some new programs as we've been aware we've talked about a lot we were piloting new ELA programs and we were also piloting new programs for math intervention we also leveraged a grant with the foundation for some enrichment activities for the students that participate in enrichment we implemented the devil's literacy screener in K5 we provided extended PD and support for our special education teachers and our BCBAs which are our behaviorist created training videos on student behaviors so that's just some of the many updates that you will see in this presentation we now go to goal 3. Goal 3 is
070the one that we are definitely modifying for last year there was different areas such as the new Danielson framework where we really had to focus on training our staff but since then we've seen how 2 and 3 kind of go hand in hand right? 3 is all about professional development and making sure that teachers have the resources that they need and they understand the effect of instructional strategies and that all lends itself to goal 2 which is providing enriching academics for all of our students so that is a goal that we are looking to combine for next year so for goal 3 the only thing I really want to highlight here is we continued professional development on high effect instructional strategies and professional development on AI and the new NJSLA and various other topics before
071I get into the data is there any questions that you guys have on this part of the presentation? I like being the last presenter okay so the data so just a review of how this data is formulated the New Jersey Department of Education every year releases the NJSLA reports the reports list all the school districts and schools in New Jersey their assessment data including their mean scale scores the reports are so when you download it is a ginormous excel file and you can sort it by different things you can sort it by ethnicity you can sort it by special ed you can sort it by ESL you can sort it by male female the list of ways you can sort the data is exorbitant what I tend to do is just I look at the
072mean average for all students and then I do remove charter schools from the comparison data so this is just these are my calculations based on doing that so on the left side of the table you will see where MERS ranked in comparison to the districts in New Jersey and then I put the percentage just because it's nice to see a percentage on the right side it shows where MERS ranks out of the districts in Monmouth County so when you look at this and I'm going to choose a really good one obviously fourth grade ELA ranked 53 out of 485 districts so in the top 11% now you may say well that's weird isn't there the same amount of districts why do you say some say 491 why do some say 450 it depends on how
073many students that they have and valid test scores they have so not every school district will have valid test scores in every grade and as you get to higher grades there's districts that are K5 so then they don't have a district for eighth grade because they go into a regional or combined so that's why you'll see some of that but if you look at our ELA scores we are consistently in the top 11 to 22% which is absolutely amazing and what I always say because this is pretty consistent for us so I always like to talk about a few things here one is that what you'll notice is that in a lot of districts as students get older and you see this especially in math you'll start to see a decline in their performance in
074our district you don't see that sometimes we see an increase this year we really kind of saw a flat performance across all grade levels and I really do think that equates to our individual individualized instruction that we provide through our programs like RTI our specialized program right we're not losing children as years go on they're not getting further and further apart from what they should know which tends to happen so I'm very proud of that consistency across the grade levels you will also see that when we look at the state average and I did a lot on this I think the year before two years ago this is compared to every school district in New Jersey and every socioeconomic status one year I really broke it down and looked at where our school district is
075socioeconomically and where we compare to and we are not comparing at the same level as our other socioeconomic peers we're comparing much higher so we're a GH district we tend to compare more with I districts which is also very impressive and we also rarely compare with districts of our size a lot of the districts that we're looking at have much fewer students than we do so the fact that we can make so many children be so successful academically in our socioeconomic status and outperform districts that have smaller groups of students that have a higher socioeconomic status is really impressive so that's ELA and now we can go to math so as you see for math we are in the top what five to twenty five percent of across districts in New Jersey again it's very
076very impressive now you'll see that in seventh and eighth grade it kind of takes a dip from three through six please note what happens in seventh and eighth grade is that the students taking algebra and geometry are no longer taking that assessment they're taking the algebra and geometry assessment so they are pulled out of that data ELA what seventh grade has a dip like if you look for ELA for seventh grade oh wait I put on the wrong one okay yeah so if you go to ELA for seventh grade well listen twenty two percent is still an amazing percentage so like I just want to put that out there to everyone who's might watch this video but compared to the you know eleven to sixteen percent it's still six percent lower so I'm wondering if
077there's something about seventh grade like that you know I do want to say and I'm just gonna give me one second to pull it up because if you look compared to Monmouth County the seventh grade similar it's it's on par with where we are with everything else you know it's I mean it's a little bit higher but it's not it's not as drastic I don't think just for comparison last year seventh grade was in the top twelve percent so it's more of an off year that consisted data so this is up here now last year third grade was in twenty two fourth grade was in twenty one fifth grade was in twelve six was in sixteen seventh was in twelve and eighth was in fifteen so most the other grades are comparison yes seventh grade
078was at twelve percent so and again that's compared to the other districts but um yes that's why I wasn't concerned about seventh grade because I looked at last year the seventh grade the seventh graders from last year's test so they're the current eighth graders yes okay yes okay so back to math we talked about them being pulled out let me just compare from last year pull that up so math again just to read off last year for the comparison third grade was at thirteen fourth grade was at fourteen fifth grade was at thirteen sixth grade was at sixteen seventh grade was at sixteen eighth grade was at seventeen so again there was seventh and eighth grade is a little lower than in the past but again you have up years you have down years it's
079not a consistent downward and again it's still the top I have to get up the right one it's still the top twenty five percent of all districts in New Jersey um lost my place okay science we are in the top thirty and twenty nine percent for fifth grade and eighth grade um what I always like to note is please note that for science in seventh and eighth grade we do teach half year sciences where most districts do teach full year and we can still perform in the top thirty percent which is impressive and then if you want to look through the spreadsheet I also break it down by um each school to answer the question that's consistent for ELA for the cohort okay just so those students who go up together that's their that's consistent
080data for them thank you then here is math by grade level by school and then here is science by school so in some in summary every year we come up with a slogan as you know the slogan goes on our t-shirts we we wear it with pride on our district vision days this year our slogan was learners today leaders tomorrow learning today leading tomorrow and I think what you can get out of this presentation is they're learners today we have targeted academic support we have curriculum enhancements we support the whole child and we ensure that our staff are appropriately get the appropriate professional development to meet our students needs as far as leading tomorrow we are absolutely in an academic leadership throughout the state we're a regional influencer people come from all districts to see
081what we're doing especially with our art programs we are preparing our students for future ready worlds and we're empowering potential which is our number one mission so at the heart of our mission Nicole can I ask you another question and I don't need an answer now but on the when you showed how the schools ranked is there a way to see like maybe in the last year or two how the schools have done from year to year we do that yeah like can we see something like that it doesn't have to be tonight what okay I'm just curious because I you know I always obviously look at Taylor Mills because that's where my kids go and I feel like their scores looks pretty decent this year so I'm curious to see how they were compared
082to last year's last year they were I believe good as well well I think we noticed that last year too so yeah I like to see the trends and say are definitely on an upward trend you know how the schools are doing in general from year to year that would be nice so yeah we can put that together great work everybody yet with the state performance reports which actually they haven't released yet for twenty four twenty five right because it goes backwards they give a summative rating and our principals are on it to say where they are right they'll tell you my score was this number last year my score is this year I mean we have schools that consistently are on the top point two percent of the entire state so that hasn't come
083out yet questions for me I don't know if it's much for a question as much as a thought but maybe I'll eventually land on a question I know goal two and goal three are focused more on kind of the academic outcomes and so we have the test scores that demonstrate the things that activities that we're doing result in these academic outcomes goal one is more behavioral nature right right so those are what you show to us is more active or activities based is there anything that we look at in terms of like indicators and I know we've had some presentations in a few of the last meetings around absenteeism and such where there are indicators that we look at the say these activities that we're doing are improving this we we do look at that
084internally but we can share that more yeah any other questions anybody I have a question Nicole how are these numbers affected by students that opt out of testing that we don't know we do have students that opt out it's um miss did you know about how many well I want to clarify there's no such thing as an opt out parents refuse and it's coded as a refusal so if a parent refuses the state is told the child has refused testing there's no opt out it's important for that to be clarified because there's a misconception that we can opt out so that language is they're refusing to test and that's how it's coded to the state the districts are required required for each school to have a 95 percent participation rate that is calculated in the
085school performance report which we're waiting to come out we have that data before it gets released it's embargoed so we can look at that we also track yet sometimes there's a good number not that I think it has a huge impact on the entire school because we can track the cohorts and typically anywhere from I think we calculated about nine to ten kids could be one percentage point we tend to be consistent so I don't think overall there's a giant impact if suddenly the entire grade were to refuse that would be problematic and we could be put on a corrective action plan from the state so it's required state testing is required it's not something parents really can opt out of because it's federal statute so if we have less than 95 percent we could
086put on a cap we technically could be yes really yep I track that and we have come close at the middle school the refusals are not prevalent at the elementary the middle school age parents are told that they if there's a question concerning testing they have to contact their administrator in advance okay certain children can have an IEP though in which they don't have to test no testing is required for everybody if there is a child who is classified who has an alternative program they might be eligible for a different assessment but that is less than one percent of the population anything over one percent requires a waiver from the state or to the state small population and nobody should be telling somebody to refuse do any of our students participate in the portfolio option
087if they can test they have the DLM and that's they have to fit a certain criteria portfolios for high school yes graduation do we have any or you don't know if it's high school not portfolio like DLM yes less it's approximately one percent I know that because we were close to needing a waiver but we're still under so it's around one percent okay in the spring we report on the DLM scores as well when we report on the NJLSA scores there's a separate report for DLM a lot of that sometimes the numbers under ten so it has nothing yeah that's usually August and then you'll get the access scores for ESL which is completely separate usually July August as well dynamic learning maps they are hand I do have and I I do really already
088have made for you a list of all the different it's for significantly impaired students that's often why if the number is less than ten we can't tell you the results by statute because then we're potentially identifying who the children are thank you he's not feeling well but I think this will work well for me so when we look at the seventh grade performance both an ELA and math I think you had mentioned that that cohort has performed similarly to the NJSLA similarly in past years is that what I heard so you have not had the wonderful pleasure of sitting through my one-hour presentation in October you will have the luxury of seeing that this upcoming October we go through the cohorts and Nicole does a different evaluation of the data where she's looking at it
089so so miss pep chintzy goes through the actual score and how many children meet proficiency and that is very much where we compare cohort to cohort so this is us comparing against the rest of the state so the dip could be just some schools perform better this year or what have you or less scores or you know that can you just happy to reshare it it should be on the website also from back then but I'll reshare if that'll give you a lot and that'll also give you the data that you're looking for as well I'll reshare tomorrow with an email it breaks it down by group by again statute because that's I'm the compliance person we have to make sure that we report by school by grade level and by subgroup so you'll get
090to see all of grade four all of grade five all of grade six by ELA math and science then you'll see it by school then you'll see it by race you'll see it by program so if they're in special ed 504 gifted and talented free and reduced lunch and then you will see it by anything I'm missing a category what category my race that's program there's possibly one of the way I have it up and you get to see the comparisons and we also give a five-year analysis we look at race a free reduced lunch 504 ELL special ed and gen ed and then you'll be able to see the five-year right and it's graphed so you can see literally just the ups and downs we're pretty consistent often we're within five percentage points anything
091really outside that five percentage points we will then say what happened here and primarily we'll look at the cohort so we'll look how seventh grade into eighth grade did and were they consistent did they go up did they go down but within five percentage points really is consistent because it can be a difference of seven eight nine kids going up or down depending upon the number of students in the grade level or at the school and and our principles do monitor that very frequently miss dr. series laughing because we've had talks like it's two percent and I'm like that's one child it's okay I don't know it's not ever okay but it's not the whole grade level don't get so hard on yourself because at a school if it's a hundred kids Nicole's right it
092could be one child right and his fish could have died that morning and then he didn't do well on the test so until you know if the fish died or not you don't really know what happened thank you any other questions okay well thank you very much for the presentation any additional input Jodi it's wonderful we will swing into new and old now we're gonna go slightly out of order and start with Jesse because he has something in particular to raise and Jesse can you just explain since we have three new members what the delegate assembly is yeah so each each board has a legislative delegate that goes and meets semi-annually with New Jersey School Board Association I I am that representative for Monop in English town regional schools for the last two years this
093Saturday next Saturday the 16th is the semi-annual meeting Melissa has already registered me however comma I have an obligation with my employer that I can't go it is a way for us to have our vote in the lawmakers they talk about resolutions that boards send up that they want to support it indoors to give to the legislative members I'm in fact not just our rep I'm the district 12 alternate legislative assembly rep for the state of New Jersey on the school board but we need to have a person go that Saturday I can email Melissa if a person volunteers to take my place that way she can switch it over I'm not gonna hold Mercer to his blanket volunteerism but Mercer did say he would go without me even telling him what I needed him
094to do it's from eight to twelve eight in the morning till twelve and they feed you breakfast so I mean I can always call and cancel but then we wouldn't have any representation but it was it's very nice we didn't have representation for a few years you get to meet other school board members across the state and everything like that it's in a nice auditorium over in gosh huh no it's that it's at the community college out there off of in where Mercer community college yeah I know it's gonna come to me as you said it 16th Saturday the 16th so if anyone wants to nominate someone else this is your opportunity here no does there a deadline by which we have to substitute somebody out by there's a week from Thursday so if anyone
095can look at their calendar and if you are free and interested please email I guess Jesse and Melissa perfect okay anybody have any questions about that no Janay new and old anything I don't have anything thank you okay Jamie I actually do so first I would like to start by well so Jesse just so you know I will look at my calendar my girls 16th birthday is on Sunday and I still don't know what they're doing for their birthday yet so if if I am not stuck doing their birthday stuff I will consider going what I did want to say is I'd like to show my gratitude and appreciation for all of the teachers this week teacher appreciation week I also would like to show my gratitude to all of the principals and vice principals
096I believe your day was on Friday and for the nurses because that's also this week so thank you to everyone for all you do for the children we appreciate it and it clearly shows in all of our test scores and everything else that we do here as a district so I hope everybody has an amazing week I would also like to say that tomorrow is the CPAC spring forum at memes at 7 p.m. and I encourage as many people to come out that can we will be meeting the new director of special services or people personnel as as we call it she will be there there will also be Dr. Hallen from pre whole regional high school districts going to be there and a bunch of other people speaking about programs for the summer and
097different things and transportation and just a whole host of things but I think being able to meet the new director of people personnel would be you know just be worth to come out and see what she has to say so I'm hoping we have a good turnout tomorrow and again have a great week everybody Eric thank you piggybacking Jamie's comments you know for the teachers who have an awesome responsibility you know thank you and obviously the administrators principals nurses and so on and and lumping that the assistant superintendent the superintendent who were in the classroom at one point of their career you know thank you for what you do as well I just want to bring up a couple things I brought it up at one of the last meetings and it wasn't recorded and
098I think it's important for people to know reference to the policy and regulations that our website has the policies listed on that website on our website and starting in July I assume we're going to have our regulations on the website as well I don't know but it didn't dawn on me for people even think there were policies and regulations but now we'll have both of those on the website so I'm appreciative that's being done for people to see it's not that they couldn't get that information from our district but I think putting it readily available for them is a positive and I just wanted to have that in this this type of form mentioned even though I mentioned in a previous meeting two other things I think that that I just want to put on
099the radar for potential next meetings if we could put on the agenda is is discussing within our middle school having educators administrators in the lunchroom to avoid the issues that go on during lunchtime I know we have lunch ladies there or lunch employees there but I just want to talk about how however we need to discuss that I think that needs to be discussed whether that's in a public forum or whether that's in closed session I just if we could add that to some type of agenda agenda and as well as the the policy that I brought up back in January reference to you know allowing parents who have who are requesting an evaluation of the child to be able to email or use electronic format to to make that so those two items I
100like to see on there and just to just to minimize any confusion as to why I vote against the budget you know sitting up here on the board it kind of feels like we're in a vacuum and and not having a finance committee not having a budget committee I think hurts us and I think that's something else that we need to really really address again I'm not it's not this is not directed at anybody in particular I know everybody here works hard I know that the the staff to my left works very hard putting the budget together as well as a superintendent but but I feel like we're in a vacuum up here and and yeah we have time to review certain things but I think having a finance committee a budget committee is something
101that's very important and and I think that gives us greater understanding of the process and allows us to really you know get more involved in that whole budget process and just my opinion and obviously everybody has opinions but those are just a couple of things I want to say and you know thank you to everybody who gave their presentations from the superintendent to to pompton I really appreciate those presentations and I think the public does as well I just wish that that more people would attend these meetings but that's something I think we need to put as one of our goals to is how to increase participation from the public especially when we're discussing you know the budget and where their where their tax dollars are going the fact that nobody showed up well maybe
102two people in the audience but that nobody shows up I think is something we also need to really address and try and come up with with a better mechanism to get the word out of what's going on and try and come up with some creative ways to increase or encourage people to attend our meetings and I don't know what the answer is but I just think it's something has to be done to do that so that's all I have to say thank you just you know we just respond to one thing on the lunch and please shoot Christine raised the same question so we'll bring it back to Dave and then obviously he'll speak to Nicole and then they'll figure yeah I don't think we can talk about the assignment of school personnel I think
103that may be an overreach I'd have to talk to Danielle and I did create the report I shared with you on how we're planning on addressing some of those concerns and getting more staff on so if it has to be done in closed session what have you but I if maybe we could sit down and discuss it further because I just need some clarification on it okay thank you yeah the other thing that I had was in between our last meeting in this one while we thank the teachers and administrators September September April 28th was school bus driver appreciation day and they probably play the most key safety role in our children and are probably some of the most undervalued in the safety role so I'd be remiss if I didn't speak to appreciating the
104transportation department and I guess I will get with Dave and Dave because I'd like to do a resolution or something recognizing them because we didn't get a chance to do that this time formally you know we do the little hey muffin Mondays and nacho bar Tuesdays and dress down this days for teachers and stuff but the bus drivers they really don't get nothing so like to really make something special for them I don't know how I follow up those two I'll make this very quick echo the sentiments in terms of teacher appreciation thanks to all the educators and everything they do day in and day out including those that were on the dais here with us and also good luck to the students with NJS SLAs kicking off today you guys got this clearly from
105the test scores where we're seeing I have nothing but confidence in continued success and that's it for me thank you Kelly I too would like to express my gratitude to all of the teachers this week I can share as the PTO liaison also that all of the PTOs and PTAs typically celebrate this week as staff appreciation week so thank you to the teachers but everyone from custodians to security to a lot of this special teachers they you know a lot of times families are always thanking their general ed teachers but there are so many more than that special education just the actual special classes itself so thank you to all of our staff not just teachers I'd like to thank the teachers as well for teacher appreciation administrators nurses I believe is tomorrow Jesse mentioned
106we missed transportation and also powers during the spring break time we didn't well I personally didn't recognize the powers at that time but you'll see at the end of the school year we do show appreciation as a district for all of our staff and we do have an awards night correct me if I'm wrong it's coming up soon where we get to really acknowledge all of the individual department but again it's teacher appreciation week so let's celebrate our teachers this week and Christine that is called the evening of appreciation okay earlier dr. Santor I think forwarded to everyone right the email from Tim Tien who is our NJSBA representative which sent some draft resolutions essentially asking the state government to take a closer look at the rising cost of health care for schools and ask
107him obviously to take some action on it I think as an aside we're labeled wrong because we're district 12 but district 11 is the one that lists our representatives just I think that's bins I think we're 12 yeah yeah we're 12 they they wrongly put us in 11 in this just just so you know but yeah it's no problem just letting you know when you're looking at this so anyway I guess the question is no one it's not really a time to look at it but this would be proposed to be on the next agenda correct so if anyone has any feedback you're welcome to share it here otherwise it will be on the next board agenda in two weeks two weeks can I just comment on that of course I think it's an important
108topic because I you know when when you look at the price that items are increasing you were looking at 30% increase in health care it there's nothing else in the world that has a 30% increase like that and when you look at everything else that we have to do no one ever addresses that it's just every year it gets higher and higher we started it was like when I first started super 10 it was like maybe 16 17 percent and now we're up to 30 and we don't see it going down it really does have to be addressed yeah wish my bank account went up that amount that'd be fantastic somebody says not mine you're next oh I would like to first thank all the board members who recognized our staff we do have an
109amazing staff I do not send out for each group because then they're always going to miss the group so this week I send out for all of our staff but we truly have an amazing staff and Jesse thanks for bringing attention to our bus drivers I've always said I think our drivers have one of the hardest jobs in this district and without them we wouldn't have children in schools right they get our children to school safely and that's very important so thank you for recognizing them and then I would also like to thank Jamie for bringing up see peg see pegs tomorrow night I'm excited I think it's going to be a good night we got a lot of things happening one is the the new director is going to be there Christine Vistano is
110going to be there talking about my ride I think we have a few other presenters and if you get a chance and you're trying and piloting my ride just let me know how it's going and if you like it and what what you think of it that would be helpful and then that's all I have I believe also best of luck to our children taking the NJS LA and for our staff it's it's kind of tedious to give state assessments and long it makes a long day so thank you yes I don't want our APs to be forgotten our assistant principals are the test coordinators at each school working hard running around to make sure everybody has what they have to test properly so thank you and I just want to remind everybody that the
111NJS LA is different this year it is an adaptive assessment so just be wary that when a test is changed things could look a little different I always want that but our children are working hard we're very proud of them our staff is working hard but just remember it's a little bit different this year and I think that needs to be in the forefront of our thoughts when we look at data okay Dave can I also just add one thing that I forgot sure we forgot if we're going to add appreciation weeks that we forgot I do not know that we thanks or at least I did not our administrative professionals in April and speaking of Melissa we all know that I personally would be nowhere without her assistance on all of the compliance things
112I need to do so to all of the administrative professionals we all know you all run the schools so we appreciate you does anybody have anything else okay everyone's going to check their schedules diligently and get back to us all right I think that wraps us up we just need a motion to adjourn right Ronnie still gently writing all right thanks everybody