001And welcome to our annual permanent art collection presentation. We also will have a budget workshop later on. Statement 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 mailing and or hand delivery of said notice to the designated newspapers, the Asbury Park Press and the Monalepin Patch, filing with the clerk of Monalepin Township and the clerk of English Town Borough. Jess, please call the roll. Mrs. Campo. Here. Mr. Capric. He's absent. Mr. Ferber. Here. Mrs. Hurt. Mrs. Hurt is absent. Oh, sorry. I didn't realize. Mr. Cain. Here. Mrs. Lucas. Mrs. Lucas is absent at the moment. Mrs. Parisi. Here. Mr. Singer. Here. Mr. Cuddy. Here. We have a quorum. Please rise for the flag salute. I pledge allegiance
002to 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. Thank you everyone who came for the art collection. That was absolutely fantastic. We'll give everyone another minute to wrap up so we can jump into the rest of our Board of Education meeting. Everyone always clears out before we get to congratulate them all, but I think I speak for myself and the board that I just want to take a moment to recognize our amazing student artists who have shared their work with us tonight. Their creativity and talent were really impressive, and it's great to see how much pride they take in their work. Their artwork not only speaks to their talent, but also to our wonderful staff who
003put in their time and their talent to help guide our students, so I just wanted to once again congratulate all those that were here tonight with their artwork. The other thing I'd like to do is introduce Rachel Goff. Rachel Goff is on the agenda tonight for the appointment for the position of Director of Pupil Personnel Services. She comes to us with a wealth of experience, serving most recently as a supervisor of special services in the Freehold Regional High School District, and prior to that as a pre-K-5 supervisor of special services in Brick Township. Ms. Goff was the top candidate selected from a team of administrators, teachers, CST members and parents, so welcome. Thank you. Changes and revisions, anything to add? Okay, we are going to jump into our public comment portion of the meeting. If
004there's anyone in the audience that would like to speak on anything you would like, you can come up to the podium, the microphone, and you have three minutes to speak. If you do, please come up and just state your name and street you live on. All right. It does not appear we have any speakers tonight, so we are going to go ahead and close public comment. With the board's information, do we have any questions on any of the items from the board? That will take us into our action items, starting with the administration. Can I have a motion and a second on items F1 through F2, please? Is there a conversation on that or no? On the administrative items? It was Janay and, I'm sorry, Janay. Janay was our first, and thank you. Janay, Kelly,
005anything? If you have something you'd like to bring up, you can, Eric, yes. Good. Anybody else? Okay. Mrs. Campo? Yes. Mr. Ferber? Yes. Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mrs. Parisi? Yes. Mr. Singer? Yes. Mr. Tosetti? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Can I have a motion and a second on business items G1 through G7, please? David, Christine, thank you. Any questions? No questions. Mr. Ferber? Yes. Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mrs. Parisi? Yes. Mr. Singer? Yes. Mr. Tosetti? Mrs. Campo? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Can I have a motion and a second on curriculum items H1 through H2, please? Eric and Kelly. Any questions? Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mrs. Parisi? Yes. Mr. Singer? Yes. Mr. Tosetti? Mrs. Campo? Yes. And Mr. Ferber? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Can I have a motion
006and a second on personnel items I1 through 11, please? Eric, Christine, any questions? Anyone? No questions. Mrs. Lucas? Mrs. Parisi? Yes. Mr. Singer? Yes. Mr. Tosetti? Mrs. Campo? Yes. Mr. Ferber? Yes, and I'd like to thank Mr. Blaze for her 14 years of service to our district. Thank you very much, and also, again, congratulations to Ms. Goff on your appointment. And Mr. Cain. Motion passes. Thank you. Can I have a motion and a second on student matters items J1, please? Jessie? Janette? Mrs. Parisi? Question? Any questions? Sorry. This is just for the end of the school year? No, we wrote an I. It says it's yes. It's for the 25-26 school year. 25-26 school year, and then there would be a new contract. New contract for, OK. Got it. Any other questions? No? OK. Mrs.
007Parisi? Yes. Mr. Singer? Yes. Mr. Tessetti? Yes. Mrs. Campo? Yes. Mr. Ferber? I'm sorry. Yes. Mr. Cain? Yes. And Mrs. Lucas? Motion passes. All right. Ronnie, we're going to jump into our budget workshop now. That's fine. I had told the power at 8 o'clock, thinking we were going to run later. So we can do that. That's about like 30 minutes. OK. Well, I have some things I can hand out. I updated the summary essential. Do you want to start, Nicole, or do you want me to start? I just want to remind everyone that these numbers are representative of that we have flat funding from the state. We were able to balance the budget at a flat funding. If something changes within our state funding, we may have to go back to the budget and make
008other changes. Right now, we should not know what our numbers are going to be until March 12. And then we have to have it approved by March 27. And then, Ronnie, I'll let you talk, and then I'll jump in. OK. That's OK. So much like the last time, not a lot really changed from the first budget projection. We were about $1.2 million short at that point. Nicole and I, and with the help of Jody and Shannon and other administrators, sat and looked at expenditures and where we could trim some funds. So that was addressed. Some positions were eliminated with position-wise, not necessarily people, but positions. And then because of the fact that we're in the new health insurance, the joint insurance fund for health benefits, things that were not allowed to be considered health insurance
009premiums are now permitted to be called health insurance premiums. So by moving some of those things into the health insurance area, it allowed me to increase the tax levy adjustment for health costs, increase in health costs, which helped make up the difference that we were looking to fund. Again, as Nicole said, this is all based on state aid remaining flat, which you'll see the numbers that are there, transportation, special ed, security aid. Extraordinary aid is based on submissions, which will be coming up probably in the next month or so. We have to do filing for that, an application for extraordinary aid, which Mrs. Petillo's department will handle, and we'll review and assist whenever we can. And then the reimbursement for menstrual products, which we discussed at the last meeting. So that basically makes up, in
010addition to SEMI, makes up the federal revenue that we receive, which is, again, a number that we're provided by the state that we have to use. We can't change that without permission by the county superintendent of schools. And we don't qualify to modify that number. We have more than the minimum number of students. And even to ask for a revenue adjustment would not be supported with our numbers. So we move on. As I stated last time, this budget does have a significant amount of surplus in it. $5.7, almost $5.8 million worth of excess surplus from the 2004, 2005 school year. That's from the audit. And then based on the way the numbers fall out, in the program, the DOE software is telling me that we need to use another $82,000 worth of surplus, which I
011have plugged in there. We are pulling just over $1 million out of the capital reserve to fund several projects. And we are pulling $1.25 million out of the maintenance reserve, which is standard. We generally pull that out every year. At the end of the year, we evaluate our balances, and we try to replenish that. We always have, at June 30, two years of withdrawal that we kind of keep there as a way of ensuring that we maintain our buildings across the district. The state does require that we fund required maintenance, which is in the physical plant department to a certain degree. It's based on a dollar amount per square footage of building space that we have. So we far exceed the minimum amount that we are required to use. But on a campus our size,
012given the age of the buildings and the age of some of the systems, we really do need to use that level of funding to try to just keep ourselves in a situation where we're not chasing broken things constantly. The referendum will help with that going forward. The second page basically just talks about the assumptions that are made. Nothing's really changed from the last time. Everything is based on total year to date, prior year expenditures, and current year to date expenditures in this current fiscal year. And then we try to project out for the following year based on information that we have, either regarding increases in utility rates, tuition increases from the private schools for the disabled, that comes from the state, that information, things like that, known salary increases, proposed and projected salary increases for
013unsettled units. That's all factored in. We also try to use all of our bank cap, which we have none this year. We actually used what little we had left last year. It was about $70,000 we used last year. In order to take the health benefit adjustment to the tax levy, we have to use any bank cap if we had it. But again, we've used that in the past. Salary, I mean, not salary, supply counts remain pretty much stable. There aren't any real large one-time costs associated with this budget. Jodi, if you have anything, you could speak to that if you'd like to. Yeah, curriculum has a few. Yeah, so first and foremost, thank you for approving Great Minds and Savas on tonight's agenda. We will be placing that order tomorrow. While that is technically for
014this current school year, those materials, we move fast. Thank you. We will be placing the order for K1 and 6 through 8 materials, which will be officially implemented in those grade levels for September. Based on Ronnie's budget that is proposed for next year, we will be then rolling up Great Minds, which is Arts and Letters, to grades 2 and 3. And then we will be rolling it up the year after. So you'll see it yet again for grades 4 and 5. And any first-time initial purchase of a new curricular resource tends to be costly because we have to purchase classroom library materials. We have to pay for professional development. And we also need to ensure that we're buying the teacher resources, which are typically one-time costs. The consumable items for K and 1 will be
015recurring, but we were able to break down the costs for that by no longer moving forward with the program that I will not name right now because we haven't yet told them that we are doing that. But we will be using something else to come up with a Lexile level for our students, which was just in their better interest for what our district needs are. The math program needs to also be updated for K through 5 because they have updated the teacher resources. And we no longer can utilize student additions for a resource that has been updated with teacher additions. That is costly as well. We are breaking that down moving forward. So it's not always going to be as many grades, but we will be breaking it down. I believe it's K2 and then
0163.5 for future purchases. But any type of updated resource can cost a couple of $100,000. So we appreciate your support in recognizing that. We're here for student instruction, so those materials are necessary. And what I love most about everything, particularly with Great Minds, which is Arts and Letters, and Savvis, my perspectives, is that it gets an item in their hand. So while there is technology associated with it, there is a book where children be writing and annotating, which is really important to reading comprehension and calculating math. So thank you. If you have questions, please let me know. I just want to talk a little about the staffing and how we do the budget. I did send this to the board members, but just a reminder. And some of you guys have heard me do the
017speech year after year. There's three methods that I know of that school districts use to do budgets. One is the zero start. So they start with nothing in the budget, and then they slowly add one item at a time. The other method is status quo. They start with the exact same budget they had in the past, see how much money they have, and then figure out what to add. We do what I refer to as a wish list budget. So when I say wish list, I'm not talking about frivolous things. They're things that our administrators feel will make our district better, both educationally, as well as our buildings and our grounds. So what they do is they input into Genesis our software system everything that they think would be great for our district. And then
018I cut it off. No, then I go through and we look at, now how much are we over what we think we're going to have, and where can we maybe pare back? And I think, especially this year, because we're sort of in a good place that we're balanced already, which has been the first time since I've been in this position that we can say that. Again, though, in past years, we knew how much money was getting cut from us before this, because we had had a schedule for seven years. So we may not be in a better situation. We just don't know it yet, before we knew we weren't in a good situation. But what's nice about doing it this way is let's say we get more state funding than expected, right? We already have
019that list of things that could possibly make this district even better than it is. And now we can go to it and say, OK, well, now that we have this money, what can we add? So that's one of the reasons why I like to do this budget this way. And so when we talk about things that we took out of the budget, it doesn't necessarily mean that it was something that we've had that we've removed. It could be something that somebody had wanted. But at this point, we can't afford. And we do look for ways in the year sometimes to be able to do that, depending on how the budget's working out. One of the other areas of this budget that looks very different than years in the past is that we have continually cut
020positions. The growth in this town over the last year with all the new communities, that was absolutely not possible. We are going to be rearranging positions. So right now, there's an extra community at Pinebrook due to the enrollment this year that is not necessary due to the enrollment next year. So with that community, those positions are not being lost. They're being redistributed to other areas that we need. We are trying to keep our class sizes where we normally have. We're K2. We try to cap at 22 and 35 at 24. We're looking right now that there's some classes that may have one extra student. But again, we have not finished actually completing our enrollment. And which students are we going to which schools and their programmatic needs. So that may balance out on its own.
021So overall, staffing, it's just a different look than in the past. In the past, we also went through and we cut positions that we weren't sure of. We didn't have to do that. We're looking at starting next year with the staffing that we need. And it's just a different mindset. And that's, again, that's if we have flat funding. And maybe revisit it. One of the other areas was beyond the school day. We had originally budgeted between 20,000 to 25,000 in years in the past per school. When we got the HIT grant, it was phenomenal for us. And we were able to use the HIT grant on top of what we did for beyond the school day. We were told this year there wouldn't be the HIT grant. So we upped all those accounts by $10,000.
022Right now, I am being told that the HIT grant is probably going to come back for next year. They asked for people to write letters advocating how great it was for their district. I wrote a letter. This year, just on a side note, we did not apply for the HIT grant. We did not apply. We weren't eligible. We were not eligible for the HIT grant because our children did so well. They deemed us not eligible. So in my letter, I explained that as an S2 district how imperative the HIT grant was for us. And then maybe our children did so well and partial because we had the HIT grant. So to take it away is kind of undoes what it did. So we did take the $10,000 that we had added this year back out
023for next year in hopes that that HIT grant comes back. So we still have budgeted $25,000 for each school. And then basically, there was some curricular supplies where we may not be able to do everything for this year. It may be a little less. And we also looked, as I explained to you, at a district tuition. We always budget for extra students. But we went through and looked at some different things and pared that back a bit. So after going through, we were able to take out almost a million dollars. Is there any questions? Yeah. Just start by saying everything seems great, so excellent work. You said it's possible that the state funding could come in less than expected, right? So are we, it seems like there'd be very limited time between when we get
024that notice and when we'd have to approve. So are you guys talking about? It's about a week left. Well, anytime there's a new governor, they generally grant them a two week reprieve. So they push the governor's budget address back by two weeks. It was supposed to be the fourth Tuesday in February. It is now March 10th, second Tuesday in March. 48 hours later is when we get our state aid numbers. Unfortunately, even though they do that, the final adoption date doesn't change. That's statutory. So if they were to push us back by two weeks, then it compresses the timeframe that our county office has to do actually their very intensive detailed review of our budgets before they approve them, that we can advertise them and then do our public hearings. So to mitigate some of
025that crunch, they give us an extra week. So we do have a few weeks. We don't have to adopt until March, what did I say, March 27th. So we have a little bit more time. We were going to adopt on the 17th, and then we're gonna adopt on the 24th. We have some idea of where we're gonna go in some areas. If you had to cut, you're saying? We have a few, small. It depends on how big the cut is. I mean, we can handle a little bit, but anything significant is going to be a problem. We'll have to really dig in and take a look at, unfortunately. This budget does have, as I said, a lot of surplus in it. That was another thing that made this balancing a bit easier. I can't guarantee
026that it'll be there next year, but that will come in time. Good news, we had our snowstorm and we had a FEMA meeting yesterday morning. We will be applying for FEMA aid, so hopefully we'll recoup 75% of the costs we didn't expect to spend on snow removal from the federal government through FEMA. So that's a good bit of news for us. So through things like that, the snowstorm is a perfect example of what we don't or can't always anticipate happening. Multiple snowstorms in a year, multiple additional severely handicapped children moving in. We have to build some flexibility in the budget for that. And often what we cut is that bit of flexibility. So when things happen, we kind of have to really take a hard stop and look, what can we not spend for the
027rest of the year? But we're already started, so it's difficult. But we'll get there, we always do. And the capital reserve account is restricted, right? Yes, it is. Capital reserve and maintenance reserve can only be used for those particular things. So if we were to say to remove items that were related to that withdrawal, I would have to remove the revenue. So again, it's a money in and money out, revenue and appropriation, they have to remain balanced. Otherwise, one comes out, the other one has to come out. And that's why we're affording to do some of these upgrades that we're looking to do that are end of life. Just a couple of questions. You had mentioned that positions were eliminated, not personnel. Can you just elaborate on that? One was a retirement, so we have
028things like that. We're not, it's due to attrition. Okay, that's an online clarification. As far as the 5.7 million in surplus that we're utilizing, where does that leave us surplus-wise? The state only allows us to maintain 2% surplus. That's what I just wanted to confirm. 2% of prior year expenditure. So it's at 1.8, 1.9 million in surplus, in eligible surplus that we have remaining. We can dip into that if there's an extreme emergency, but that would require commissioner or approval through the county office. Okay, and then just as far as we talk about additional items if we have money for to add into the budget, capital projects and such, does the district have a five-year capital project plan or something of that nature? We have a long-range facility plan. But right now with everything going
029on with the referendum, we're limiting what we want to do in other areas because of all the work going on in the referendum. We're talking about possibly doing a year three with leftover funding from the referendum in those general areas that were approved, say roofing, paving, some more HVAC, maybe windows, but they have to be, the work has to be done, so say like Clark Mills. Whatever we applied for Clark Mills, we can't go beyond that in scope. So if we didn't have paving, we couldn't add paving. It has to be in the areas that were applied for and previously approved in the referendum. So I was actually concerned, which I brought to Ronnie and Jeff about doing any capital maintenance right now with the referendum because of all the work. But Jeff's plan is
030to start in the spring and our two items are big items that he can't really wait anymore. It's the lockers at Pinebrook. Which are becoming dangerous. Which are in pretty poor shape. And the others are the bleachers at MEMS. So there are two areas that definitely need to be fixed. And Jeff's vision is to wait to the second half of the year so most of the referendum work will be done by then. And the other capital project is on the IT scope where we're replacing the access points, wireless access points in the buildings across the district. And that is also eligible for what's called e-rate funding. So just as a way of being cautious, I budgeted the whole appropriation out of the capital reserve, knowing we're probably going to get some money from e-rate. But
031we got burned in the past once before where we thought we were good and e-rate said no. So I have to always make sure that I have money to complete the project once we authorize it. Any money that would come back would be a refund to that budget line. And then that amount would go back into the capital reserve at the end of the year. Any money that comes out of capital reserve or maintenance reserve that is unspent at June 30th has to go back into those reserves. It's obligated. Okay, thank you. So I guess I just wanna, we have a plan, we have a five-year capital improvement plan or we don't or we just have ideas of, and the reason why I asked this is just because at the last meeting we talked about,
032I don't know if the superintendent or Mr. Cain spoke about the Pinebrook lockers. Like I just feel like there should be a five-year plan that we have these things. And that just to my last point is the list of items that we took out that administration felt could wait or we didn't need it this time. Like I'd like to see, I think that's where that five-year capital plan comes into play. So if we can't do it now, possibly it's added for next year, the following year and such. And I say that with sincerity because we got into the situation of this referendum because we had to put off too many things to support the staff and the students. So we had to do that. And now we're at the point where we have this referendum
033which is wonderful and it passed and we're able to make all these capital improvements that we needed. But I think we need to really have a five-year plan, a 10-year plan, whatever the case may be so that we moving forward, we can actually say, this is our plan. Pinebrook's gonna get their lockers done this year. Next year MEMS is gonna have their, I think we need a plan in place. If there isn't one, I would suggest it may not be something to discuss right now but something that we look at moving forward that we actually have a plan. I would start that after the referendum's done so we can see what in year three we're able to do and then move forward from there. The other issue is we have had items in the budget
034for those kinds of things that we didn't always have capital reserve to the degree that we do now. We've been building it up over the last year or so, two years, because it had gotten so low and we had the referendum happening. We didn't have to worry about a boiler going or stuff that we were placing as part of the referendum or part of the possible ESIP that we're doing as part of, like in conjunction with the referendum. We do have a plan. Unfortunately, when we were looking at cuts of three million, four million dollars a year, it was either the project went or you cut a community at MEMS. No, I understand. That's why I mentioned, I know that we prioritize the staff and the students here and some things had to wait, but
035that obviously cost us to have to push the referendum and make all these repairs. Enough parents had their student coming home saying, there's water in my classroom that now all the roofs have to be. So I totally understand that and I respect that. I just think we have to have a plan in place. I know we have ideas, but I'd like to see pen to paper as far as what that five-year plan is. Right now too, and I just wanna say this because it's not that we neglected it that brought us to that level. We don't have the funding anymore. There's no districts right now that are making those large repairs without going in for a referendum because we don't have the money to do that. No one has a few million dollars to do
036roofing anymore. Those years are way in our past with how the state changed the funding formulas and the taxes and everything. So it's not that, some of the stuff, yes, we didn't prioritize, but some of the stuff we wouldn't have been able to afford. I'm not faulting the administration. I'm not faulting the district. I think we did the right thing. I'm just clarifying why this came up. Understood, but just so I'm clear, I'm not faulting for where we're at. I just feel we need a plan and the ideas are great, whether it be whatever it may be. I think if we put pen to paper and have something, I think that would be good and we'll talk about it, but I just want to put that out there. Yeah, I think that's a great idea.
037I think after the referendum, to go and look at what was done and then what needs to be maintained because a lot of our areas have different warranty levels and such, so all that would have to be looked at. And I think what people don't recognize is the amount of work our building and grounds department is doing, the amount of work our director of a physical plan is doing, the maintenance supervisor. People see that we have contractors coming in. Our hands are in every single one of those projects. He's making decisions every day. He's going, he's checking work. He's finding errors in the work. He's going back and asking them to fix it. And yes, we have project managers that do that as well, but there's also, I don't want to say it, but I'm
038going to say it, the Monalphan standard and the Monalphan way. And we've always held ourselves to a different level and just because another way is a good way to do it, doesn't mean it's the level that we want it, because one of the things that people have to recognize is contractors are going to come in and our architects are great. Our construction managers are great. Every contractor we've worked with has been great, but they're going to leave. And all that work they're doing has to be repaired, fixed and maintained by our people. So our people are right now very much feet on the ground, going around, checking, making sure it's done to a part where they can continue moving forward and making sure that nothing comes where in two years, they're trying to fix something
039that wasn't done correctly to begin with. I know that I have a ton of principals here that can speak to the amount of times they're in their building, they're asking them for different things. We're talking about color samples sometimes, we're talking about the different materials. So I sometimes feel that people don't recognize everything going on behind the scenes. Ronnie, myself, Dave Carpenter, the maintenance supervisor, Jeff Lasco, the director of physical plant, we're going to be up to five or six meetings a week with contractors going over their progress, what's going on and what have you. So I agree with you, but it would have to start when the referendum ends. Understood, I appreciate it. I think sometimes people are like, oh, and they'll just do that too. And we just physically can't. I just want
040to add a couple of things real quick. I'm not going to ask about administration products, even though that number's different this week than it was the last. No, it was 5,000, now it's 7,500. We only got like a thousand. Okay, I could be wrong, but I know that we've never gotten that much in reimbursement, but I'm not going to even go there right now, right? I'm going to take this moment to point out and talk about what Nicole just said about districts without having money to do that, right? We get these numbers from the state, and I say this every year around this time, and after the numbers come out, Nicole, I don't want to correct you, but Newark and their $1.3 billion in aid has enough money to maintain buildings. Monalapan does not, Middletown
041does not, Brick does not, Lakewood does not. Like there's always a common theme right there that the formula doesn't work, that we have to do what we can, and guess what? We had to do what we did, and the citizens in this community stepped up and approved us to have the referendum to make all the necessary requirements that we had to make. Yeah, it sucks, but when Trenton is sending numbers to us that we can't function on, and they brag how they gave $365 million in new aid, increased aid this year from the year before for 25, 26 school year from 24, 25, and $125 million went to Newark, and $27 million went to Camden. That is half of the money they bragged about spending across over 600 districts in the state, and it went
042to two school districts. And if you look at the performance numbers, our district smokes both those districts, it's not even close. They're towards the bottom, we're towards the top. So we have to take all of these things into consideration and understand that we're doing what we can. I applaud Ronnie, I applaud Nicole, because I can remember the first year that me and Dave Ferber sat here in these seats, and we had to make like $6 million worth of cuts, and we knew we were getting $6 million worth of aid, because we had to recall that over the time when they took this funding from us, it was compounded to something like $57 million over a four year period. Seven years. So I don't know about you, but I'm not a building fairy, I'm not a
043money fairy, and I can't get things fixed if I'm losing $57 million. There's districts in this state that get less than $57 million. There's districts in this state that have to provide, and 90% of their money from the state goes to a charter school or outside placement. So we have to take all of these things. Yeah, I agree, hey, it'd be nice to do this and come up with a capital plan. But when you're trying not to drown and cut teachers and cut the resources that we're used to, then we have to identify that. So like I said, I'm gonna skip over the administration to just point out and give simple basic math lectures that when you get a district that reads at an average of third grade when they're graduating high school and they're
044getting over $1.3 billion in aid, hey, I guess, I'll tell you what, there's probably kids at Dr. Seary, Ms. Orlando's, Ms. Caputo's school that read better than kids that are graduating from the Newark School District. And we're not like our neighbors down the shore that have to close schools. Another thing too in the past. I forgot, I got a, sorry, I got on a tangent. I heard the lockers project. I didn't hear what the MEMS, I thought you said blue chairs, but I didn't think that was right. I'm getting everyone blue chairs like these. Okay, I was. It's gonna be a lot of money. All right, thanks. I started to say back around the time that the state kind of hit us with a financial hit back in the nine, 10 school year when they
045took money, they took $1.5 million of surplus away from us. They just said after the year started, by the way, we're taking $1.5 million. You don't have a choice. You can either reduce your surplus and have none for next year, or you can just somehow trim $1.5 million out of your budget. So that was the first start of the financial crisis. Also, slightly before that time in 2003, when we had our last referendum, our board said a 10 year moratorium on referendums. We will not put anything to the taxpayers for a minimum of 10 years. Well, we went 20 because we tried to do some air conditioning in between. We tried to do some projects, but they failed. So again, sometimes it's decisions made at a board level as to what they wanna burden the
046community with in a way. And beyond our control, they took almost a million dollars out of the maintenance budget. When we had that first hit, $750,000 went and never got put back. So think about that in 2003, that was a lot of money. And to not ever gain that back and to have it gone year after year after year, that's how we wound up in the position we're in. Not because of planning, not because of not having forethought or insight as to what needed to be done. Vince would come to the board meeting and he'd have his five year plan. I wanna do this, I wanna do this. Here's what my plan is to go out. And then the budget numbers would come in and be like, just sorry, it's impossible to do. There's just
047no money for it. So unfortunately, that's what we were faced with. And I think all in all, I think we've done a great job. I think we're in a fairly healthy position compared to some of our counterpoints as Jesse was just saying. Because we have raised taxes to the cap, because we have taken advantage of tax levy adjustments when other districts didn't. I think we're slowly kind of rebuilding that base of money that we lost in the state aid. And that's the only way this district is gonna survive as far as I see it. So if we can keep doing that, we should be at least a little bit ahead of the curve. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Just gonna say, will you guys email the board when you find out the state numbers next week? Oh
048yeah. It'll probably come late in the day and it takes us a couple minutes to analyze it, but yeah. Thank you. Yeah, they're like 3.30. I know, four o'clock. Usually it's like four o'clock. Thank you. They always shut the software down like right at the worst time. As soon as the budget's down, you know it's coming. So like, all right, there's two hours, there's three hours and you're constantly refreshing. And when the budget comes back up, you're like, okay, there's the numbers and you can jump in and the email comes with your printout. But we'll definitely let you know. The board's gonna have a watch party. We're gonna have to make public notice of that. Refresh, refresh. You can come to my office because I'm the one that keeps refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. Yeah, well, I
049just wanted to comment. Thank you. Great job on getting this done. Seeing that zero number at the bottom is really like a refreshing feeling that a lot of districts are not fortunate enough to be able to look at that and see the same thing. So thank you for that. Eric, I like where your head is at and I definitely agree. And I think that is a great, you know, strategy just to have, like I said, have that visual, have something on paper to be able to look at and hopefully start checking them off and checking them off and checking them off as time goes on. But obviously, as Dr. Santora pointed out, let's get to the right time on that later in the year. If you didn't have a chance to look at the notes
050from our last referendum meeting that were on the agenda tonight, it pointed out, which Ronnie spoke to before, that we're looking at having some excess funds that we're looking at having to do additional projects and help fund more work going into next year. So that's, again, very encouraging to see, either because bids came in under budget on the projects we're doing now, plus we had allocated for... Contingency. Contingency that we didn't have to use. So that could allow us to really get some things done. I don't think we'd be able to tap into that for things like the bleachers or, right, unfortunately. It wasn't part of the questions. But I just received earlier today a closeout change order on... It's our first closeout change order. I'm sure there'll be others. But on the... I think
051it's Clark and Taylor roofing, USAC. It's on the next agenda, but we have a closeout change order because we didn't spend about $58,000 of the allowances that were provided for in the bid specification. So that money will be coming back to us to repurpose. It'll add to that balance. Great. Any questions? Anyone else on the budget? Well, the other thing, too. We do have, in a way, back when we started the referendum and started thinking about it and planning it, one of the very first steps in that process was to have our architect do a very in-depth review of all of our buildings. Remember the book with all the pictures and the by system, by building by system. That is probably where we'll start because we'll take that framework and say, all right, what have
052we done with the referendum? This is done, that's done, this is done. And that leaves us kind of what, three years later or four years later, what's left to do. So that will be a good starting point. Okay. All right, I think that will wrap up our budget workshop. I did give a little cheat sheet, too. Anybody? I get handed out separately. Eric was asking about what comprised some of the accounts, like what comprised the superintendent's area, the 230. So I created a little cheat sheet that kind of tells you, if you look on that homeroom view, you'll see the account codes. It kind of gives you a breakdown of what is in each of those areas. So just to kind of have an idea. It ties back to the homeroom view report that we
053gave out. I'm done, anybody? You want to move on? We have, what's up next? All right. Do you want to just go to new and old? I think so, we'll jump in and then we may be adjourned. Then we can adjourn. After. If they don't come, yeah. Yeah, all right. All right, we're gonna jump into new and old and then followed by executive session. So I will start with you, Janai. Just want to say congratulations to all the students. Great job, and to the teachers and faculty also. Wonderful, so impressed with the artwork tonight. Really beautiful job. I think it's great that we let our kids have a night like this where they can be recognized. And I just want to thank everybody who participates and makes it happen. And thank you, Ronnie, for all
054your work on this budget because I know it's not easy. So, appreciate it. As well as the pest monster from the county office. Yeah. We'll be together throughout, so thank you. Jess. I don't really have nothing except for a great job. Every year I get more and more impressed by some of those things that they're coming out and presenting to us. The girl, I can't think of her name off the top of my head, from Pinebrook. That's a two-year winner, that's very impressive. The deer head, I don't know if I could dream a painting like those nicely. Let alone draw and paint them myself. They're phenomenal, the art teachers are phenomenal. This ties in again to, we talked about funding and it's things like those that we had to put leaky ceilings on the side
055because these kids are, they're outperforming their peers, they're outperforming everything. All you have to do is look around and you see it. So, other than that, thanks Ronnie, thanks Nicole. Appreciate it. Thanks Jesse. Eric. So I echo those same sentiments as Ms. Campo and Mr. Tosetti. It's really, to appreciate art and to appreciate the dedication that the staff has and to recognize the students is really, that's what makes being up here the best part of this job. So I really appreciate that, so thank you. Congratulations to the new hireees. Looking forward to a wonderful path with these new hireees. So thank you, I'll leave it at that. That's all I have. Great, thank you. Kelly. No, I don't think it works. Double time. I'm jealous that I missed the art installation I raced here from
056across town. But it sounds like it was wonderful and I appreciate all the kids that participated. Ronnie, great job on the budget and to your team, I know that it's a lot of work but excellent job. That's all I have. Thank you. I'd like to also congratulate our students for the art installation. I'd like to thank our art teachers for helping them imagine and create their ideas. Year after year, it's just amazing to see how well they understand the actual concepts of art because I'm clueless when it comes to that. But they truly understand. You can see they're learning what their teachers are telling them and it's still instilled in them. And it's just a pleasure to see because you know there's that relationship between our art teachers and the students and it's just wonderful
057to see. Ronnie and your team, thank you so much for the budget. I love seeing that number zero every year. It's wonderful. I know there've been times where we've had a deficit of five million and I know the department, the admin work very, very hard to get us where we need to be. And I've been on the board 13 years and I don't think there's been a year since I've been here where you haven't gotten us where we needed to be. So I appreciate that and I applaud you and your team. And I'd also like to thank our new Director of Pupil Personnel Services. Is it Rachel? I don't know if it's Goff or I don't, Goff, okay, I apologize. Welcome aboard, looking forward to working with you. And looking, congratulate everyone. Thank you. Okay,
058I agree. All the artwork was incredible. Congratulate all of the winners and I certainly thank all the staff for helping to make that happen. I just wanna note for the board that the committee on committees met twice virtually over the last week or so. We met last Tuesday and then last night about an hour the first time, half an hour the second time. The minutes of the first meeting were on the agenda earlier. Merced made them. He rivals Ryan with his ability to make very detailed minutes. So it's incredible. So we've gone through some research. We talked about some of the advantages and disadvantages. We're looking at what the other districts are doing and we're gonna compile a written report with a recommendation for one of our upcoming meetings. So that'll be our next step.
059I just wanna note that our resolution said it would be prepared for our meeting on the 17th but that has been kicked to the 24th. So I assume we all agree. We'll kick it off for a week. So that's that, unless anybody has any questions. Thank you. Yeah, to echo everyone's sentiments, the artwork was just phenomenal, which seems to always be. Thank you to our department, our teachers. Just great work, fantastic leadership and again, great work by the students. And I wanna again thank Ronnie and Nicole and others involved from administration in working on our budget and getting us to where we are and hopefully we get the aid that we're hoping for. So we're looking forward to hearing that news. Thank you to the committee that's working on future committees and figuring out what
060direction we're going. So thank you guys for putting in the time and working on that. I wanna thank Dr. Ciri and Ms. Luciano for having me today at Wembroke Brook. I was able to go there and read to Ms. Luciano's third grade class who taught my son. So it was really cool getting to be there in the classroom and hanging out with the students for a little while. It's always a lot of fun. So thank you for that. And I think that is it. We, I'm all wrapped up. Nicole, do you have anything? I do have one item, which I sent you guys an email about a while ago, but it's just sort of a follow up. So the transportation department is going to be looking to pilot this year My Ride, which is part
061of, I believe the Tyler Technologies that we use. My Ride app allows us to provide up to the minute transportation information. So it'll tell parents when their bus is three minutes out, when it's two minutes out, if it's gonna be delayed. It does all that automatically, which is really cool. That being said, we are going to pilot it in about a month or so with a small group of people in this district to see how it goes. And then we're gonna implement it in the summer for ESY for hopefully a full district rollout in September. So we're gonna try to get an assortment of children from different schools and different buildings. So this way, even when we roll it out, we'll have some parents in each district that know how to use it. So we're
062pretty excited about that. And then that's it. Thank you. One last thing, just, I'm gonna throw it out there. Mr. Singer had brought this up and I thought it was a great idea and something that we don't need to get into a big discussion on right now, but just for the future, when we have presentations like we did tonight, such as the artwork that a student is invited, maybe the principal can facilitate that from that school to come and lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance and find a way to get the students a little more actively involved and participate at our meetings, a great way for them just to gain some new skills and get in front of crowds a little bit. So I thought that was a great idea, Mr. Singer brought up
063and something we could try to implement going forward. Rebecca's gonna still come, right? It's the only time I get to see her is twice a month at the meeting. It's in her contract. She has mandatory attendance at everything. All right, thank you. All right, I think we're gonna jump into executive. We're gonna go into closed session for the purpose, we have three items this evening and I believe the parents did show up. Yes, we have two items. Well, there's three. Oh, three items. Yes, you're right. Two items. The first is the HIV appeal for student number 39314, HIV appeal, and then there's personnel matters involving employee number 4071 and employee number 4537 on the agenda. Mr. Orlando, where did we wind up for executive? In the gym? Okay. Yes, action after. Can I have a
064motion to second, Jesse and Janay? All in favor? I'm sorry, we're going in at 8.14 p.m.