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 mailing and your hand delivery of said notice to the designated newspapers the Asbury Park Press and the Monalphan Patch filing with the clerk of Monalphan Township and the clerk of English Elmboro. Jess please call the roll. Mrs. Campo? Here. Mr. Capric? Here. Mr. Ferber? Here. Mrs. Her? Here. Mr. Cain? Here. Mrs. Lucas? Absent for right now. Mrs. Parisi? Here. Mr. Singer? Here. Mr. Tosetti? Absent for right now. We have a quorum. Please rise for the flag salute. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
002Good evening everyone. We are going to well we don't need to jump into executive right all right so then we will jump ahead any changes and revisions nothing else to add right okay and we're gonna jump ahead to public comment this is the public comment portion of the meeting if anyone would like to come to the microphone you have three minutes at the podium speak on anything you'd like does not appear we have anyone for public comment tonight what a shock so we are going to go ahead and close public comments for the board's information do we have any questions from anyone all right and we're gonna jump into the action portion of our meeting starting with our administrative items can I have a motion and a second on items f1 through f6 please mr.
003singer mr. Capric any questions on anything sorry mrs. Campo yes mr. Capric yes mr. Ferber yes this is her yes mr. Kane yes mrs. Parisi so I did have a question I'm sorry on number six the resolution is to discuss the ad hoc's because I thought we were going to discuss have a discussion the resolution is to form the committee the committee right yeah to create the committee we will continue having discussion but it'll form the committee and allow that committee to start for the discussion I just wanted to clarify yeah yeah exactly yes mr. singer yes motion passes thank you I have a motion and a second on business items g1 through 14 please motion mrs. Parisi and mrs. Campo anything mr. Capric yes mr. Ferber yes mrs. her yes mr. Kane yes mrs.
004Parisi yes mr. singer yes mrs. Campo yes motion passes thank you and I have a motion and a second on curriculum items h1 through h2 please mr. Kane and mrs. her any questions mr. Ferber yes mrs. her yes mr. Kane yes mrs. Parisi yes mr. singer yes mrs. Campo yes mr. Capric yes motion passes thank you I have a motion and a second on personnel items I won through 19 please mrs. Parisi and mrs. Campo anything no questions mrs. her yes mr. Kane yes mrs. Parisi yes mr. singer yes mrs. Campo yes mr. Capric yes mr. Ferber yes motion passes thank you and I have a motion and a second on student matters item j1 please mr. Capric mr. Kane any questions mr. Kane yes mrs. Parisi yes mr. singer yes mrs. Campo yes mr.
005Capric yes mr. Ferber yes mrs. her yes motion passes thank you all right that might have broken a record we are going to jump into our presentations of the evening we have mr. teen here from and JSBA to speak to us on a few items starting with roles and responsibilities of board members and then we're going to discuss our board goals as well as the committee structure welcome thank you can you hear me good all right so we're gonna start off with roles and responsibilities I didn't know we were doing committee structure tonight but I can we can ad-lib that one how's that and so roles and responsibilities as always and this is stated over and over and over the purpose of everything we do in a school district the purpose of why all of
006you are here is for the students not all anything else but the students so students have to always come first in terms of the role of the board members your your perspective is also the balcony perspective and this is a picture from Ireland Dunqueen and it's it's a pathway that kind of loops all the way down to the water and in in times they've always shuttled sheep up it and down it to the water so your job as a board member is not to go down that pathway it's a stay at the top and this way you can see all the sites that are there you can see what's going on in the water you can see what's going on in the land across the water and the little islands that are out there your
007job is not to though get in a boat and go out to those islands or to go down into the water and go under the water to see what's there that's the role of the superintendent so always keep that in mind that you are that higher perspective and in bringing you back to preschool days we're gonna play with some letter blocks here and your role is the board in simple terms is what and the role of the superintendent is how so anytime you're presented with something as a board member you should be asking yourself that question you should say what is it is this a what or is this a how if it's a what then you're that balcony perspective it's what would you like to see achieved so an example of that might be
008we would like more stem courses in our schools that's broad and you're telling the superintendent what you would like to achieve the superintendent's job is then to look at those STEM courses and decide which one she wants to create which grade level she wants to create in which teachers are going to create it so those those are the how she's going to put in place to get to your what so that's how this all works and so like I said I brought you back to preschool another way of looking at it is you as the board or like the architects you're drawing up the plans of what you would like to see is what you envision and it's a superintendent's job to be like the builder and go in there and figure out read your
009plans and say okay this is what the homeowner really wants and now I'm going to build it and she figures out what is the right measurements what are the right cuts what are the right holes so she has to put in you know where is the sheetrock going to be how she's going to lay it so she gets into all the nitty-gritty details to create the house that you want and so it's that relationship between the two of you that really creates and achieves what you set out as a district to do when we talk about ethics we talk about there's three roles for a board and that's policy planning and appraisal but technically there's a fourth one too which is communication so policy is probably the most important thing that you do as a
010board because you're creating policies which are the what and the superintendent and every other administrator every teacher every student every parent can look at the policies and they'll know what is supposed to be happening in the school district when it's a time of crisis that is an optimal time for your superintendent to jump into the policies because she can look exactly how she's supposed to operate it also adds consistency for your district because if a parent comes with a concern or a complaint well if you go to policy you're going to do the same actions whether they like it or not you're going to follow those same actions every single time so that is a main part of what you do planning is another part you talked about district goals board goals we're going to
011be talking about that when you talk about strategic plans when you talk about your budget all of that is part of planning when you're talking about curriculum instruction that's planning so all these things are part of what you're involved in an appraisal you as a board only evaluate one person in the district and that's a superintendent you may have opinions about staff members that is not your role as a board member your role is is to evaluate the superintendent give the superintendent a contract if you decide not to give the superintendent contract or she decides to leave then your job is to then post an interview for a new superintendent you only hire one person in district it's a superintendent's job to evaluate all the staff members in the district now that doesn't mean that
012she's going into every staff member's classroom or whatever their job is that means that her and her team and then she meets with her team and she decide makes recommendations for who who she's gonna bring back who she's not if somebody is lacking in a certain area what professional development or support do they need so that's her role within that area of appraisal and that's what you're evaluating around communication whoa that got too loud close there communication is for you as a board your job is to both be the cheerleaders for your community about the wonderful things that are happening in the school district but it's also to hear and be that ground ear for your district to hear all the things that are being said or wanted within your community so that you can
013bring that back to the superintendent and share it with there so your job is that when you talk about messaging that if a board wants to get messaging out you have a spokesperson for your board and that's your board president the board president speaks on behalf of the board the superintendent speaks on behalf of the district and so when the board president goes out there and put something out there whatever the messaging might be it's not his personal opinions it's what the majority of the board but they're standing behind so it's that's why they're the spokesperson they're speaking on behalf of the board so this is a nice visual for board members and your role and responsibilities and your role is to set district policy and strategic goals you're when you look at that also
014you're to ensure legal and state compliance so whether you like the laws and the rules and the regulations but you like them or not is irrelevant you still have to Now there's a difference between compliance and quality I'll be the first one to say that compliance is CUSAC it's making sure that all your T's are across and your I's are dotted it's making sure you're doing all the right things however a district can be compliant but not have a high quality so your job is to look at what is our compliance but also are we producing what we're hoping to produce so weighing those two sides and and I always say and this is not from New Jersey school boards or the DOA I always say if you have to choose between the two take
015quality every day you can always work on being compliant but if you go through CUSAC you will have some findings and you'll have to work on that as a result but that's that's what falls under that and then you have provide financial oversight none of you have to be a financial expert you shouldn't be and even if you are in your real real job okay you have a financial expert here in your business administration and business administrator office you have the superintendent who works collaboratively with them they are your financial experts okay your job though is to be as knowledgeable as you possibly can be ask the questions make sure you understand what are the struggles of the district where are our funds coming from where are they going to your job is not to
016go through the budget line by line okay that's beyond the scope you're looking at it from more once again that global perspective you're looking at what is it that we're trying to achieve how are we achieving it what where our funds going to what is prioritized because as we all know the fiscal picture for school districts gets tighter and tighter every year and having been in school districts as a superintendent we all talked about every district looking at the other districts and saying who's gonna fall off the fiscal fiscal cliff first because you didn't want to be the one because you want everyone else looking at that one going off and then you say it's not us the picture's on them we are seeing in the news district after district that is falling yep specifically
017as you mentioned budget and how deep as a board member we dig into it you know I kind of struggle I think balancing that because we vote to approve things like that specifically when it comes to money right absolutely that's a big expectation from the community that you know expects that obviously the district is handling it and being fiscally responsible but which we believe they do a great job at but as a board and us signing off on giving our our stamp of approval then also puts us on the line that and the expectation and the belief is that we've understood it we've you know analyzed it right yep and gave it our stamp of approval as well so you know so where does that line get drawn that we're supposed to approve of it
018but maybe not really know everything about it so you are actually doing that every board meeting when you have your bills lists and your Treasury report and secretary's reports those are really diving deep into your data in terms of your finances so that's one aspect of it the other aspect of it is when you're actually what's that it's after the fact and then so we back up a little bit and then you go to the actual budget when you're creating the budget and the process that you go through that's where you're learning a lot of that information so you're learning about what are the revenue streams for the district state aid federal aid all the other areas grants whatever is coming into the district miscellaneous revenues but you're also understanding the appropriations where is our
019money going out what are our expenditures in the district and then understanding how let's take negotiations for example since we were talking about negotiations before if your district settles at a certain percentage where is that money coming from how is that going to impact the rest of the budget because everything that you spend within the district is interconnected you have a finite dollar amount that you can budget okay so you have to figure out you have to figure out and prioritize where you're going to allocate your funds and so when you're looking at that budget you're developing it that's where you say well what are our goals in this district you know if our goals are say mental health and we want a school psychologist in every building okay are we actually funding that and
020if you're not then you have to say well that is our top priority so where where can do we feel is less important and then that's where those conversations come in the same thing is in when you're talking about building in grounds that's a big area especially in sports okay athletics is a big one you have board members that will be passionate about sports and they will want new fields for everything well they all come with a price tag and not that you can't do it but you since you have a finite dollar amount that you can spend where are you getting it from so it's those preliminary conversations that take place when you're building the budget and then when you're given the budget by your BA when it's presented to you when you have
021that public hearing you would have already have a good understanding of the entire package beforehand now I don't know how you roll it out to everyone but I know the way we did it we because we worked in a committee structure so our finance committee building in building in finance we had is one committee so we would meet and we would talk about capital projects we would talk about you know revenues we talked about expenditure so we did all that within that that committee and then that got shared at our board meetings with the full board when they did their committee reports and so on and so forth that information then when we were talking about looking at the strengths and challenges that were we're facing we would talk about what were our priorities so
022in my district one year I had to cut almost a million dollars and I was actually five hundred thousand the first year that I became superintendent so that was a wonderful gift all before that they were they were doing great they had all this money in my first year in I had to cut like five hundred thousand so I had a look at what was I going to cut because I had to come up with five hundred thousand so I shared with the board my priority list I said this is where I'm cutting this will be first second third fourth I had to do the same thing a couple years later when we were a million dollars short and once again I had to prioritize that I also had to explain because we had high
023school high school students coming from another district in a send-receive that when I do a cut at the high school it's not a hundred percent so if I cut a thousand dollars from the high school it's actually only equal to six hundred dollars because we get 60% return on it because they they were sick at that time they were 60% we were 40% so I did not realize a full return on any cut there so my 1 million dollar cut actually ended up being like 1.2 million and so I had explained that to the board that this is why it happened and so that's where those conversations take place as a board and the superintendent and the BA and that's where you should if you're not sure about something ask the question and if it's
024too deep then your administration will tell you that well that's a little too deep that's a little too much in the weeds that's something we handle on our end and you should accept that as an answer because there's going to be certain things that they're not going to be able to share with you because it is too much in the weeds and I'm sure you can come up with a hundred different things that would fall under that but that that in a nutshell is that that piece of the finance so when you're seeing those bills come up that's when you're looking at and saying oh yeah I remember this we said we were going to prioritize a new math program and really in increasing our create improving our curriculum within math we knew we were
025going to get new resources and guess what here's a bills list item that had to do with those resources so I understand why we're doing this expenditure and it makes sense and so that that is that that view of the check and balance to make sure that you're spending the money on the things that you had actually allocated it for yep reject to part of the authority that you grant to me as the purchasing agent through a board agenda is the power to purchase up to the bid threshold so generally anything below the fifty five fifty three thousand dollar bid threshold that we have now in place I'm been authorized to just authorize those purchase orders to prove them as I review them for educational content the superintendent looks at them I look at it
026from a standpoint of make sure they're compliant with all the laws and regulations that we don't need quotes that you know if it's being purchased through a co-op or it's got prevailing wage requirements all that that's that's well and good before I approve it so you've granted me that authority the bills list basically is the result of that authority so it's hard to say I can't pay a bill because we've already received the goods or the services and anything over the bid threshold I'm always going to come to you and ask for a permission on a board agenda tonight there specifically is Chromebook purchase anytime over the bid threshold I will come and put an agenda item on the on the board agenda for you to approve individually because that's exceeds the authority you've already
027granted me and I could tell you from the superintendent's perspective I would get bills from or purchase orders from my staff and I would look at those and say okay how is this supporting what our goal was and I'm sure your superintendent has the same thing where somebody will put in a purchase order and it was never budgeted for and it was not on the list and you say no sorry that wasn't budgeted for however you can budget for that next year and they don't like to hear that but that is the reality because you're working under a budget that's been created and so therefore since it's so tight you really do have to do the expenditures based upon what you thought now there are times where something comes up that is something that let's
028say it's the latest and greatest but it is really something that you your staff is saying they would really like and it would really benefit the kids in a certain way you look at that and as a superintendent and you look at this as a BA and you say yeah you know we can do that we can move money from this account to this account because this is a better purchase than what we had previously thought and as a result we're actually getting a better bang for our buck they can explain that to you if you especially if you have questions on it change orders that's all part of the normal process and budgeting when you budget you're actually budgeting funds for a line item that you're projecting basically a year in advance and as
029we know prices don't aren't what we think they are today they won't be tomorrow and so therefore they may put a slight cushion in there for and it's not really a cushion it's to make sure that there's enough money in that line item to address it now if they shift what they're purchasing or the prices drop we know that doesn't happen often but sometimes it does and when it does they may find themselves having a little extra money into a certain line item that they may then move to somewhere else or they may say you know what we're gonna let this roll over into the next budget I know you want to say something I could tell I'm dying to so I think a good example of those areas for us is usually like electricity
030natural natural gas regular gasoline we have a mild winter we budget for certain level of snow removal if we don't spend it on snow removal the buildings the grounds director will say you know what I can really use we'll do this project instead and I'm able to shift the money around to make that that happen or we say you know what we're gonna put it let it go to surplus and we'll use it as in the following years budget as we build it and then just so that you all know during new and old tonight Ronnie and I finalized today our first draft of the agenda of the budget so we'll be sharing that as well and going over some of the things that you just talked about and that's where it's really important that
031you pay attention to those presentations or that information and don't wait until the board meeting to look at information that's provided to you look at it ahead of time ask your questions ahead of time especially if you're brand new to the board and you haven't been through this process before ask the questions because your superintendent VA want you to know the information so that you can make an educated vote on any agenda item that's before you you had your hand up so related to mr. Ferber's question and I think you were about to head in this direction before we started fielding questions grounding this in the number of news like cycles you see around school districts and budget deficits and we don't need to get into any specific ones of course but when you see
032those and then you start looking at well where did the responsibility fall in terms of how and when those deficits happen in an example of a school of a large school deficit what was the responsibility of the board there versus the administration and so that's my question in terms of grounding it in something practical for maybe us to understand where does our responsibility align something like that so one of the mistakes that some districts make is that they use one-time revenues for recurring costs and they use recurring revenue for recurring costs the recurring revenue for recurring costs spot-on one-time revenue should be for one-time costs if you're having funds coming in and you're relying on those for your normal operating expenses that you have there's going to come a time when that money is no
033longer coming in and as a result what do you do you start to hear about districts that are having deficits you have districts that have taken money from other areas like Capital Reserve and they've used it in ways that it was not intended to be used and therefore as a result they come up short and they find these huge gaping holes within their budget like you're hearing $15 million here $2 million here for a small district two million dollars is huge so every district is a little different of why that happened but that's where I say as a board you don't have to be an expert but you should understand it and you should be asking those questions because if you're hearing about this one-time revenue that came in let's say you rented you know
034some fields that year and you have a one-time revenue coming in and you're not going to get that every year understanding where that's being spent or what is being spent on and understanding that it's being spent on a one-time revenue makes sense a lot of districts with their COVID funds took those COVID funds and they used it for recurring expenses and then they got to a point where they were like ooh okay we as a district and many districts did this they looked at that those funds and they did create programs and staffing that would be recurring however they prefaced it with we're creating this and we know it's only going to be funded as long as these COVID funds are here so that when that lapses those funds laps then those positions lapsed as
035well and those programs laps as well but we also know that the community say but we loved it we won it again and that's great and that's where you get back into that prioritization I'm saying okay this is so important to our community and we were seeing a benefit to it maybe this is something we want to look at as a team to put in our budget and fund moving forward you may even remember last year when we did the additional tax levy increase and we gave you a list of what we were purchasing very few were staffing and we did that intentionally because we recognized that that increase in the tax levy we would need once the health care went up again so we we try to do one-time purchases big purchases but nothing
036that would affect us in the future as you're saying because the other part which I think people but what hurts us every year is that the across the health care I mean the health care cost is astronomical and every year we're planning on okay this there's going to be a deficit due to health care how do we make sure that we're prepared for that and that's one of the ways that we did it with last year I mean and there's just so you know there's a lot of districts that are looking at 38 percent 40 percent increases from the state health plan so I mean still a significant increase it could have been more but mm-hmm and I know a lot of districts talk about well it must be our brokers fault so let's go
037to a different broker it's not your broker's fault okay I don't know who your broker is but his chances are it's not their fault it's just because when health benefits and the the costs that are associated with that the increases are based upon the usage of it that's one of the biggest ones and so if you have staff that are used high users then you're gonna see a spike in it because they have this roving 12 month window that they look at they don't tell you who those staff members are they will say oh you know this person you know was over they spent a hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of benefits that we had you know the insurance company had to pick up it was for like extensive like cancer treatment or whatever
038you as administration you may know probably who that was and sometimes that's where on their end they're sharing with the brokers hey listen we have an idea who that person is and guess what they're retiring this year so you won't see that next year that your broker then sometimes uses that information with your your health benefits person and try to negotiate a slightly lower rate as a result of that not always easy to do and you're not always successful doing it but these are strategies that district use so understanding that there's a lot of this going on behind the scenes that you guys are not part of and shouldn't be part of understand that that's how you know that your your administrative team is working in the best interest of the district and then they
039can share that with you they can say well guess what we did have this 38% and we were able to get it down to 30 and this is the thing these are the things that we did as a result of it then you know the the ins and outs of it then you're in tune and making sure that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing okay instead of just saying yeah 38 no problem we'll figure it out we'll cut here we'll cut there and that's where you also have to understand when you with your financial picture you're you're limited to a 2% tax cap unless you have bank cap and all of that which a lot of districts have blown through that over the last few years so they don't have bank cap yeah
040so but when your expenses are going up higher than that when you're settling contracts at you know anything above 2% let's say you're settling at 3.75 if your health insurance is going up 38% those two right there staffing which is your personnel which are your your salaries and your benefits probably make up about 85% of your budget so there's not a lot of wiggle room in a budget to do anything after that so you have to understand that when districts start talking about cuts that's one of the reasons why it ends up being staffing because that's most of your pie and so that's the understanding as a board that you need to have so that when you're making those tough decisions you're asking the right questions you understand it so that when you have to
041make those announcements to your community then they come out you can stand behind it because you know due diligence was done and you were aware of the reasons why and it's not that anyone did anything wrong it's just the reality of what's going on in some districts are they doing some things wrong possibly possibly but that's why you also get an independent auditor to come in because that independent auditor will also look for certain things and if there's no flags then that means that your business administrator and your superintendent were really good at hiding this stuff because it should be on should be found through that but people are very creative so that's where that you have to have faith in your your professionals that you hired and they have to be you know sharing
042with you as much as they can about the details without like spending every minute because I could tell you I used to sit down with my BA and he used to explain everything and I would go back to him and say okay I know you explained to me can you explain to me this again because I didn't quite understand that so it's okay to do that because that was one of the things we did when a new board member came on board the business administrator and superintendent used to meet with them and one of the things we would go over was the same thing we would go over with all the board which was how the budget is formed you have revenue coming in you have appropriations expenditures you know what does that mean and
043it kind of explained it all so at least they had a grasp on it so as they move forward they understand before you actually get to the budget season is budget seasons like crazy season I have a question yeah really for probably our administration honestly um when we go over the budget is there gonna be any comparative provided like you know it I always find it helpful to look at okay what was the prior budget what are we forecasting your end to look like versus this year's budget I think that would be helpful to sort of sanity check for the board today is the first time it's our first go at it well her and I it doesn't even actually represent our go at it it's more how we do our budgeting process which we'll
044explain then we in March you do a preliminary you approve a preliminary budget and then the May presentation includes all that but last year's numbers were what this year's numbers were would we see that beforehand that way yes the budget is the user-friendly budget is available to everybody it's on our boards it has to be on the board website so there's you can find it there that's if you want to have back to last year there's multiple years that are there okay so right so that'll have previous years it just wouldn't have necessarily a forecasted where we're projected now this year we still don't know our state funding we don't know our state funding till after March 10th and then the budget will either be due March 17th or March 31st so right now we're
045preparing for a flat fee flat in state funding but they could we've been there where we thought it was flat and they cut us a few million dollars and then we have well I will explain how Ronnie and I may be a little different than other districts in certain districts they for the preliminary budget just mash something together and have the board approve it and then they have from March to May to really iron it out when we give it to you in March it's done there may be small changes but it's pretty much done we we don't work like that so when I say that we only have like two weeks to really get it down we don't but we do if that especially if there's surprises yeah yeah fingers crossed that we're holding
046flat an increase would be lovely too but it would be I mean we did see a slight increase in our tax levy cap because we did have some small hundred thirteen thousand dollar enrollment adjustment which was nice I mean it maybe covers a teacher staff and benefits you know a teacher salary and benefits that's about it maybe not even quite but given the rate of health benefit increases it's they're quite expensive you'd be surprised and that's where like I said you're projecting out a year in advance I don't think anyone projected last year that health benefit costs would be in the 30 percent range I don't think anyone did and so you know every district is now looking at that and looking at their their proposed budget and what they're constructing and they're saying wow
047okay now we really have to rethink some of this because you know we're now faced with this and so that's that prioritizing that comes in where you know you're prioritizing what you need to cut but the same thing is if you're prioritizing to what you'd like to add in if the numbers come in higher than you thought because what everyone always has wants you know the wishes the wish list of things and I can tell you from my perspective with my administrative teams with the buildings they used to create when we gave them their budget numbers they would create their budget and then they had another sheet that they would create which were the extras the things that if there was extra money I would like to have it and in some buildings like I
048had one building he was really good at budgeting and he would actually come underneath the cap that we gave him so for those other two buildings where they had something on their want list we might be able to shift something over and cover it without changing our budget at all so that's where the team works together that you as a board wouldn't necessarily be involved in that because that's all behind the scenes and that's where your your teaching staff is coming up with their wants and needs your administration is coming up at their wants and needs all this gets rolled together and shared with the superintendent and BA who then create that initial budget so that when you guys look at that you say okay this is this is what we have and this is
049where we want to go and then you make the adjustments in the projection I'm going to hand out later you're going to see one of the first things after that the numbers like the revenue stream versus the appropriations is I make I'm going to give you the assumptions assumptions that I have made in building this budget because I don't have a crystal ball I don't know what the stadium numbers are going to be and I want you to understand where we had to make some judgment calls and I may or may may be right I may be off you know we might come up with something that we didn't anticipate you know we get a notification that we've got three more out-of-district students coming in the things special ed is a very large area of
050the budget which you'll see tonight too so that's another area that's very very unpredictable especially this year we've seen the with the building down here on off of Millhurst it's just been unpredictable yeah I think that's great I mean understanding the assumptions right that is the basis of every budget is making sure that you understand the inputs right for the budget so thank you yeah and your special ed is going to be your wild card you know I don't know how you budget I know how we did we would budget three John or Jane Doe's in our budget and we did one at the highest school one at the middle school and one at the lowest school like expense-wise and then when those kids moved in during the year we knew we had the money
051there now what happens when we had more than three and that did happen then you have to look at your existing budget and say okay we're required to cover this so where are we gonna get the money from I think that that's part of where some of the districts that you're speaking of got into problems because it's a totally beyond anyone's control situation and legally you're responsible for it and I think you just get through the year and not realizing that it sets you up for failure in the following year because you really can't cover your costs no can't and you could like I said you could have a student that moves in that's gonna cost the district 200,000 we've had kids plus dollars 250,000 yeah transportation alone is a fortune you know and then
052if that person needs you know a nurse or an aid a one-on-one aid that's beyond the tuition that you're paying so you know so I mean like I said it's a wild card it's it's a it's something that you're dealing with as a school district and these are the unknowns but that's where you have to be as informed as you can be so when these curveballs are thrown you understand that it was a curveball and that you know how your district is going to best approach handling it so when you look up here again manage all personnel decisions that doesn't mean that you're interviewing anyone besides a superintendent but you are looking at the recommendations by the superintendent in the area of personnel and you're you're making sure that that person that she's recommending is
053the right certifications for whatever the position is you will have conversations about positions that's different than people so there is a distinct difference between those two when you talk about positions you may be adding positions you may be removing positions that's not necessarily the people that are in them so those conversations are part of that managing personnel and then the last one is governs curriculum and instruction once again you're not you're not deciding on the nuts and bolts of the curriculum but you're understanding what the curriculum is what it's intending to address and how they're planning on doing it so that you can make educated decisions on purchases or professional development or any other resources that you might be having and so all of that will fall under the curriculum instruction and this nice graphic
054for the superintendent to give you an idea what her role is her role is really the what as we said before she's to take that what that you guys created and then figure out how she's going to do it so whatever your vision is of what you're looking for the district she then looks in these different areas of like instructional leadership personnel management operations and logistics safety and community liaison you're all community liaisons but these are the areas that fall under her in every every administrator would like to say that they are an instructional leader 100% of the time unfortunately that's not the reality the reality is they also are that met those manager managers and that falls under that operations and logistics could be under personnel so you there is a managerial component to
055being administrator in a district but she has to figure out how to balance all of that and so she does that on a daily day in and day out basis so for years I managed like it's easy what was that with no issues like it's easy absolutely for many years I managed an amusement park and yeah I've always had multiple jobs and never had just one and so I managed it and one of the obviously at an amusement park what you have are bumper cars what you don't want to be as a board is a bumper car board and the reason why I say that is because as we know with bumper cars they're going all over the place they're banging into each other everyone's going in their own direction and sometimes they end up
056like this where they're all clumped together and not moving anywhere if you as a board are not moving in the same direction then you will get clumped up like that and the things that you're trying to achieve will not happen you want to be more like a go-kart board where you're all not bumping into each other you're putting the pedal to the metal but you're navigating the curves and turns within the track all moving towards that same goal which is the finish line that's how a board should be operating and so when you think about and when you're operating and you're thinking about are we operating well think about are you being a bumper car or are you being a go-kart and then that will help maybe get you right on track again so you
057like that I segued into track so as a board member a lot of times board members especially new ones and there's no mock against new ones but board members that are especially new will think that oh I'm on the board so I'm going to make changes I'm going to do this it is not about you a board gets all of its power from you as a team the team itself is the only one that can actually take action and you can take action like tonight where you're at a legally advertised board meeting you have an agenda items before you and that's where you're taking votes on it so you cannot as an individual make decisions for the board you can't take action and you can't speak for the board there's only one person who speaks
058to the board and that's the board president the superintendent is the only person that speaks for the district so there's difference between those two you as a board member can never tell staff what to do and how to do it that's the role of the superintendent and you can direct the superintendent but not as an individual as a team you can say to the superintendent hey we would like you to do this that's okay to do because that means the majority of the board is telling a superintendent how to how to move forward so as a board you cannot make personal promises or push special interest agendas because once again your goal as a board member is to be working on behalf of all students not just a subset of students not a special interest
059group as we know politics and special interests have made their way into our public schools and although there's a place for them not necessarily here in the school district and the reason for that is their focus although sometimes it is related it's not the same focus as what yours is so you have to make sure that those things are not being pushed into your to your board you must follow the chain of communication for the board and every district operates this differently so in some districts I have seen where board members can go right to the superintendent if they have a question in other districts they say no no no no you have to go to if they're in working in a committee structure you have to go to the committee chair ask your question
060there and then it will move up that way in other districts they can communicate with the superintendent but they have to CC the board president and on those communications it's not right it's not wrong it's just everyone does it differently so as a board you have to decide what is your communication chain and make sure that everyone is following it that will create the best opportunities of sharing information and to make sure that you're operating the best way that you can be you have to follow that as a board you have to make sure you're doing all the right things and then the last part which is kind of blocked out there is follow your bylaws your bylaws are a part of your policy that tells you as a board how you are and are
061not supposed to operate so if you've never read any other policy in your district read your bylaws okay that's the most important set so that you don't misstep as a board member as a member of this team I already said about communicating you are the cheerleaders for the wonderful things happening in the district but you're also the ear in the community that you can bring that back to the superintendent as a board member you should not be communicating directly with staff you shouldn't be going up to them and telling them what to do because that goes back to the code of ethics of protecting your staff members when you go in and you direct them or tell them what to do then you're not protecting them because technically you're their boss and so you may
062be telling them something as an individual board member that is against what maybe the superintendent told them okay so you shouldn't be doing that you should never be surveying staff if you want to get information by all means tell your superintendent say hey we would like you to get information on X Y & Z she she then can figure out how best to get that information for you visit the building is totally fine but you should really loop in the superintendent and say hey I'm thinking of going to such-and-such a building for this purpose stay focused on the purpose of why you're there so if you're there for a parent-teacher conference stay on the parent-teacher conference don't all of a sudden come in here and say oh some of these lights are out I'm gonna
063go see the director of building grounds and tell them they have to fix these lights you've just overstepped beyond what your role is and you've ventured into the day-to-day operations so don't do that if somebody from your community comes to you and they will and they come to you with a complaint redirect them to the proper level on the chain of command most of the time that's a classroom teacher because somehow some way it's all going to come back to what's going on in the classroom and if it's sports it's going to come back to the coach so you redirect them back to that level in the chain of command it will work its way up through the chain of command if it needs to but that's how you do it you then also loop
064in the superintendent and you say hey just so you know I had this person come to me with this complaint I redirected them to the proper level in the chain of command I'm just looping you in once you do that you're done you don't have to do anything else as a board this is a chain of command always starts at the lowest level do not solicit means do not go out to your staff and say hey how's that new curriculum working that's soliciting okay hey how do you like your new principal everything working out well there that's soliciting don't be doing that any questions on on roles and responsibilities all right we're gonna jump into goal setting now goal setting the idea behind goal setting for board goals is so that you as a board
065are the best board that you can be so that you're operating the way that you want to operate you're focusing on the things that you want to focus on as a team you have members that come and go you have new board members that will join and you have to also get them into the groove of what this board is doing and how they're doing it so board goals will help you do that Iowa did there was a called Iowa lighthouse study which focused on like what what do effective board members do or effective boards do and one of the main things that they do is they define clear goals they know what their goals are and they're they have a plan to get there so that's one of the things that you want to
066do as a board is whatever it might be set your goals set your plans and then work towards them and your your plans and your goal should have high expectations that are reasonable so don't set it so high that you can't achieve it so set something that you can achieve and make sure that your team is on board with it because if it's one person saying this is what our goal should be and everyone else is like yeah whatever okay that's not a strong goal that's probably not a goal that you wanted to do because you're not going to have to support on the team so looking at board goal development and I bring up these two because these are usually I would say mixed up or combined for board goals you have board goals
067and district goals district goals are goals that you're setting as a district with the superintendent collaboratively these are things that actually the superintendent is responsible for accomplishing your role in that is really to support the district goals and the work that's being done the district goals actually are part of the superintendent's evaluation so that's one of the reasons why she has to be the I would say the lead and what those district goals are but she creates them in collaboration with you so you are all standing behind those same goals board goals are different those are goals that you're setting for you as a team that doesn't require anyone else to do anything like administrative doesn't require a superintendent to anything or BA or anybody else it may require me to come in and do
068stuff but it doesn't require anybody else beyond the board it's things that you're going to do as a board to be a better board and so you're setting these goals for you to be able to do those I actually included some samples in the packet of these are board goals that other districts have set by all means you don't need to use their goals but it gives you an idea of how they're structured so that you understand better of how it's not it how it's different than a district goal because these are things that are within the control of the board so when you're looking at a goal cycle generally most districts will follow this and the dates can vary but when you're looking at creating a goal you're always going to start off with
069basically looking at where is the need you know what is it that we think we want to work on what is it that we think we want to achieve it always starts there and then you start to set those goals whatever those goals are once you set the goals you then create an action plan to address them now an action plan breaks down who's going to do what when they're going to do it when you expect to actually accomplish it and how do you know you actually did it you being successful all of that will inform you and set basically your plan for how you're going to move forward districts that set goals and do not have any associated action plan generally either do not achieve their goals or they don't achieve them as well
070as they were hoping to so it really keeps you on track and it has everyone focused once again on the same things you're going to have to do periodic check-ins to see how are we progressing with it so that action plan provides that so if you say we're going to do X Y & Z by December well if it's November and you've already done that then you know you're ahead of plans if you haven't done anything on it and it's something that's going to take three months to do then you know you're not going to achieve that you may need to adjust your your action plans you may need to even adjust your goals it's okay to adjust as long as you understand why you're adjusting it that you're not just taking the easy way
071out there was things that happened we always start when they're evaluate CSA by July 1 I did have a district that when we were doing board goals I had suggested that be a board goal for them and they said wait if you're telling us it's mandatory we have to do by July 1 why is that a district goal and I said well here's why because we're now in October and you haven't done the board of superintendent evaluation so therefore you missed that July goal so I think that really should be a goal for you moving forward and they were like oh okay that does make sense so sometimes when you see some of these goals you may say doesn't make sense for us and that's okay but it didn't make sense for those districts that
072formed it a good way of approaching how to establish board goals is the first thing to do is look at your previous board goals if you had any and reflect on them how well did we achieve them did we achieve them and if you had been if you had been reporting out during the year and you've been looking at your progress then you'll know where you all stand on that another suggestion and it's not a requirement but it's a suggestion is that you do a board self-evaluation that forces you in a very structured way to look at how you're doing as an individual board member but how you're doing also as a board team in a bunch of different areas some boards will do that some will not some will just have an open discussion
073about what they're doing well and what they're not either way is fine but that reflection piece is so important when you think about the superintendent when she's doing her evaluation she's actually reflecting when she does her piece of the evaluation she's looking at the district goals and saying this is what I accomplished this is how I know I accomplished it and whether I exceeded it met it or fell short of it she's able to reflect on that she's looking at the six standards that are part of the evaluation and she can reflect on those as well your teaching staff is doing the same thing they're creating a documentation log for their final evaluation where they're saying hey these are our standards that we're looking at within our evaluation this this is where I think I
074did really well because the people that are writing up those evaluations are not in the classrooms every day so it's a way for the staff member to actually highlight some of the things that they've done that they might the the observer the administrator might not even be aware of so for a board you should be taking that same approach where you're reflecting whether it's formalized within a board self-evaluation or informal where it's just a discussion either way that's a great place to start and as part of that to look at your previous goals if you have them and to see how well you did with them these are just some questions that you can and there's some over the pictures a little over it on this projection but these are just some questions you can
075ask yourself when you're forming board goals doesn't mean that you have to ask yourself these but if you're looking for starting points these are definitely some good questions for starting points so I already gave you the examples of board goals when you create a board goal it generally will have these components to it you'll have the goal which is what you're hoping to achieve you may have multiple objectives underneath it meaning these are the subcategories the sub focuses that you're going to do in order to achieve that goal some boards will do objective some will not so it's not right or wrong it's just what works for you but as part of your action plan you're going to have the activities that you're going to do what are the things that you're going to do
076so that you know that you achieve those goals and that is all captured within your action plan and I gave you a blank one in your packet there one is a blank sheet and the back side of it is a sample so you can kind of see how it's laid out and it wouldn't just be one or two things it would be multiple things in terms of activities but that's what you're doing you're listing the different activities that you're going to do you're going to list who's going to be involved in it and then the resources that you may need a lot of times it's it's people it's time it's money those are generally the three things the timelines when you expect to accomplish it and then how do you know that you actually were
077successful in achieving it I always recommend try to report out to your community how your progress is on your board goals it's great to do that at the same time when the superintendent is doing her reporting out on the progress on the district goals we always suggest four times a year most districts do not do four times a year at the very least I suggest twice a year because if you wait until the end of the year then when you get to the end of year you're gonna be saying oh what were we supposed to have been doing and by then it's too late so if you least do it halfway through the year you're basically checking in and saying okay yeah we're gonna read readjust and you know move forward oh yeah we're gonna
078start those things that we hadn't started so create the action plan that will really help you with it once you do the action plan like I said you're gonna create that you're gonna implement it and then you're gonna report out any questions on how to do board goals do boards ever thank you do boards ever solicit from the community like a survey as far as what the community would like to see the board I have not and I guess the reason for that is because it's not the community's goal it's your goal so you as a board kind of know because once again you're in the community so you hear like their comments about what's working well for the board and what's not but you also know because you're firsthand here about what's working and
079what's not and your perspective may be different than their perspective but that's where that open discussion about it comes up and you can say well yeah some of us really do feel this way and so maybe we should make that a board goal you could do that within the community if you really want to but if you do you're not sending out the survey you're gonna ask the superintendent someone out for you and then you just have to construct it of how you wanted it what what questions you wanted to ask them but yeah I mean you can do that there's nothing saying you can't I've just never heard it done good question though now watch every district I go to that's doing board goals is gonna ask me that question any other questions on
080board goals now I know we had talked about how you were gonna approach it and I know that's kind of you're still working on that you may decide to do board goals you may decide not to and if you decide to do it you know you may decide to do a board self-evaluation you may decide not to once again any way you approach it is fine the idea behind is to create goals and then work on it yeah you touched on this a little bit earlier are the board goals meant to be aspirational to the extent that they should be multi-year or they only supposed to reflect what you're trying to do within a certain 12-month period or a combination of they could be either or I've some and some when some boards they'll create
081some of the goals that actually are multiple year ones and then they'll have other ones that are just that one year they're gonna work on it one year for example board certification is one some boards will say okay we've decided we're gonna strive for board certification when they do that they have to get 16 credits they're not gonna necessarily do that in one year so that might be a multi-year goal I had a board that did that and they had a time frame and so part of their action plan was they were gonna sit down with me and map it out and work with me on setting up the trainings and what topics they were and when we were gonna check in so they established all that in their their action plan and because they
082did that they actually achieved that goal they actually achieved a little head of schedule so you know that's where you can do a multi-year because they did not do it all in one year but then other boards like that one I was saying they're gonna set that July 1 valuation for the superintendent that'll be their one-year goal and hopefully they'll hit it and then that will become part of their normal operation and so that would be considered more of a one-year goal that is a Q sec item as well 100% yeah any other questions and I know we talked about committees and committees you have two different kinds of committees you have committee structure which is individual smaller committees which does not involve the quorum of the board and then you have committee of the
083whole also known as a cow so when you hear about a cow that's a committee of the whole that's where there are no committees there's just every view you have two types of board meetings you have a regular action meeting which is what tonight is also known as a ram by the way so we have cows and ramps and then you have your your cow meeting which is where you're just doing discussion it's basically taking all your individual committees instead of doing them individually you're rolling it all into this one meeting where you're talking in all these different topic areas now I've had districts that have moved from a committee structure into committee of the whole I have others that move from committee of the whole to a committee structure either way works it's what
084works for you as a team one of the things you have to understand that when you're going to a committee structure from a committee of the whole is that you're now having multiple small meetings because it can't be a quorum of the board in those meetings that means you may be on multiple committees where you have only met one other night now maybe you're meeting two different nights and you have to do some coordination of when those committee meetings would happen for districts that are moving from a committee structure into committee of the whole they don't realize that that committee of the whole meeting tends to be a lot longer than the regular board meeting and I had one district that moved to that and then they asked me to come out and evaluate them
085because it wasn't working and they didn't understand why it wasn't working so I got there their meeting started at 630 I looked at their agenda and I said I'm just letting you know I'm leaving at midnight and they said you're funny I'm like no I'm serious so don't be offended when I get up at midnight and I just go like this I left at midnight they were there until 1 30 in the morning because they took each one of their committees and did a full committee at that that cow meeting and so therefore it was really long so then part of the discussion was what did you have there that really shouldn't have been there that should have really been in your regular action meeting and so some of the presentations that they did was
086part of that so you you'll have to fine-tune that the one suggestion I can give though is you don't bounce back and forth you don't do this year committee the whole next year committee structure next year committee the whole you you jump whatever you're going to do you do and the reason for that is because whether you're in a committee structure a committee of the whole there's a lot of things that are going on behind the administratively that they have to handle and so they have to change some timelines for certain submissions of things so you have to be aware of that that if you're going to change from what you're doing to something else there may be some shifting in that trying to think I gave you a lot of resources for the committee
087of the whole and I can send those to you just send out to the whole or actually you already have it so you could send it to the whole board I don't know if you have any specific questions so on the agenda tonight I don't know if you caught it earlier but we put we passed a resolution to formally create an ad hoc committee right to you know to analyze this and and basically you know build build the pros and cons and and come back to the board with a recommendation so we're going to start that process now and kind of dig into it you know a little little deeper dive and see what that group comes back with and start while the rest of the board can still contribute to that you know everyone
088is welcome to send that committee any bits and pieces of information or suggestions oh I you know I heard about this or I read this on another district's website one of you know how they do things or whatever it might be so it should be still a collaborative effort but allow that committee to really do the grunt work of you know coming together with whatever information they they compile and come back to the rest of the board with the recommendations so we can then you know choose how we want to move forward one of the things we had talked about which I didn't bring up here is that you can't even do a hybrid we have a committee the whole and you may form small committees on a couple areas like maybe one area would
089be finance you may do a separate one just for finance or building and grounds if that's a big one you know every district is different what their focuses are in that case you would have a small committee and would operate just like a regular committee structure where that small committee would be they would have an agenda that should be shared with the whole board prior to the meeting they'll have their meeting and then they'll share the minutes or notes from that meeting and then at the board meeting they'll actually do a presentation on on presentation a report on what was covered during that committee meeting so that everyone's informed and that's the key whether you're working under a cow or you're working under committee structure you have to make sure everyone on the team is
090aware of what was going on can I can I share something and I think when I read looked over your resources and the more we're talking one of the things I noticed and Ronnie I think you can input on this and maybe Christine Parisi probably pre-covid and I hate to use that as the the turning point but we had or it was really pre fleas we had our board meetings at the board office and it was a very it was a much smaller setting very few people came and I think back then the committee meetings truly ran more as committee meetings I think that once the fleas came and we came to a bigger auditorium and then kovat happened and we had more people and we began filming each meeting our committee meetings became almost
091like second agenda meetings and we still have presentations but those conversations around all the different areas and topics tend to be more emails now than open forum conversations so I think that's something for the committee to consider as well is that I don't know if our current committee of the whole structure has as much fidelity as it should either if you go back to those committee of the whole meetings and you see agenda items on there chances are that means you've kind of deviate it which a lot of districts unfortunately do because you have more business and so you say you know let's throw it on the cow meeting we can do it then and I one district I was working with had been and still is a committee of the whole but they had
092deviated to exactly what you said which was every meeting a portion of the cow meeting was an actual cow the other part was an agenda an action meeting so they realized they had deviated way too far and they had to reset and so you may find that for you you may decide to stay with your structure and you might just need to reset it or you may tweak it a little bit and say you know what we want to have a committee of the whole but we might want to have one one separate small committee that's what I was going to ask you Tim about the hybrid because that's something I was looking into we are a small district I know the larger districts focus on the different committees because they do those deep dives
093because some districts do take many many hours to get through their addendas so hybrids are possible right they're possible if you're finding though that you have a committee of the whole and then you have these committees and you have all these different committees then you're really not a hybrid you're actually just trying to balance both of them and what you'll find is that in districts that are doing hate this microphone the districts that are doing that they're actually finding that at their board meetings they're having staff or board members that are saying I don't know I know I didn't hear that how did this end up on the agenda because it was discussed in the committee and so whatever happens the committee does need to be shared with the full board before anything comes to
094the agenda because then you don't want to end up with that and if you end up with that then what you end up with is a board that's split and a board that is split is not going to be an effective board because you always think that you know you don't have the whole picture and so you want to avoid that so you can absolutely do a hybrid but if you're going to do a hybrid then you have to operate those little committees that you formed for the whatever purpose that they can do that deep dive into whatever the area is and making sure that everyone is aware of the agenda and everyone is aware of what was discussed I think we moved away from the committee the whole meetings being just strictly true committee
095the whole discussion where we're doing presentations and state of the different departments when the referendum passed because we had so much activity going on with the referendum we were putting out I mean I right now I have 20 active bids right now and I've got five more coming so I mean when you're doing awards and bid openings and time is of the essence and we're trying to get projects started for that first summer blitz you know that was really where we kind of started to have to throw more and more changing it from an agenda meeting from a cow meeting to an agenda meeting just for those purposes but we do try to limit it to what only business that is absolutely and personnel like you don't want to not hire a staff member because
096it's the wrong type of meeting or not have a certified teacher in the classroom in a sub for an extra two weeks and say well it's the wrong meeting that's where if you have to do that during your cow meeting you say we have these agenda items on here and this is why and this way at least the community knows you're not putting it on that agenda that cow meeting because you're trying to hide it because that's sometimes in other districts will say well you weren't supposed to agenda items at your cow meeting but yet you had something on there okay but things do happen like you said personnel is one of those areas you know we kind of worked around we didn't have we were a committee structure but we only did one board
097meeting a month and so my board actually said you can actually give out letters just like as if it was you know the board approving it that you're approving them and so I did that so that we can get around that yep I'm sorry I just have a quick question about something that you had said so right now in theory we're a committee of the whole and we have our two meetings of month and one should be the cow one should be agenda right so you had mentioned if we were to move to the committee structure that or I guess this is the question I have so we have the one meeting that's agenda and instead of that cow meeting we have our random committee meetings but it wouldn't necessarily be on that same night
098that we would have a board meeting could be on any random depending on how many committees we have and how often we're meeting so you can in theory still have two meetings a month depending but if you're on more than one committee you could have now three instead of the two and and all that stuff okay and if you're somebody who's on three let's say you go to a full committee structure and let's say you have six committees you may be a board member that's very involved and is on three different committees that means you might be out three different nights which then also means internally you're gonna have to coordinate when when those committee meetings are I know when those committee meetings are so that those members can actually attend because that's that's always
099another concern that some board members will have I want to be on that that committee but it meets at the same time as his other committee can we change it and so you have to kind of orchestrate that so it could it would be probably more scheduling depending yeah I mean once again like you know one of the things we did change was my my board was concerned that they were having committee meetings and they didn't know when they were and so we actually had a shared calendar of when the committees were were meeting they would have those dates and times on the calendar so every board member knew just by looking at the calendar when those meetings were and so they could orchestrate all that and if they couldn't make it that was the
100other thing too because you can't have a quorum at a committee meeting so when they couldn't make it they may tell the other board members hey I'm not going to be at this one so if somebody else wanted to go for whatever reason they could. This is good this is good information and good conversation does anyone else have anything they'd like to ask or state related to this committee discussion obviously it's not the end of the you know discussion the committee the ad hoc committee is going to continue to dive into it and we'll continue to have the discussion and you know come to a decision I think as Tim pointed out right there there's no right or wrong answer right it's what works best for this group right as a whole so and that
101and that's the idea of having this discussion especially with several new board members that thought it was you know the right time to discuss it and bring it to the table so everybody you know could at least gain the understanding of what our options are right and then we could come to the right decision and if you end up with any questions after you have your committee meetings and committee ad hoc committee meeting and you hear questions from the board by all means you know reach out I'm happy to try to answer anything I can but I would say forward everything I sent you guys forward to all of them because it is the full presentation that we would do for boards that are considering shifting and then I gave a lot of other resources
102with it that may you may find helpful you know it's like pros and cons actually one last question and so I don't know if this sounds like a crazy question or not but well one is typically when when districts have the committee meetings as opposed to committee of the whole is there a standard number of committees that districts usually have like like I know it would obviously depend on the district but like is there a norm I've seen anywhere as low as three and as high as seven okay and anywhere in between so now here comes the crazy question and I'm just my wheels are spinning but um let's just assume you had three like there's nine of us and there's three committees and there's three people on each committee would a district ever have
103committee meetings like if we already have our Tuesdays twice a month if we had small enough committees in number would it be absurd for a district to keep their meeting and just everyone does their separate or is it we're all still in the same building it's considered a quorum no it wouldn't be a quorum so you're saying schedule your committee meetings at the same time as your normal board meeting if we had a small enough like if let's say we only had three committees we may have ten who knows I'm just saying I'm just thinking no you could absolutely do that just realize that if you do that then you limit each board member to only one committee exactly and some board members will say no I really have a passion in these two different
104areas okay yeah no you can have that would not be considered a quorum though if they met on the same night as long as you don't mean the same room and you're not talking all together it's not a quorum they're just curious yeah I mean that's a good suggestion a good possible option depending on how many committees if we went that direction and maybe it's not all meeting on the same night as our committee of the whole you know our whole meeting but it's I'm sorry our agenda meeting but you know maybe two at five are possibly meeting on that night or you know so we can make it work however it tends to work for everyone's schedules and certainly meeting even prior to you know for our normal meeting start at 730 maybe 630
105the committees are meeting ahead of time too as an option it just makes sure anything that occurs or discussed in the committee meeting doesn't all of a sudden appear on that agenda on that same night it's because you should number one let your public know but also it allows other board members to know and you avoid that whole you know I didn't know that that was being discussed and that was an agenda item the other part of this is you're gonna want to look at your bylaws for committee and look at that one specifically to see if it's already written in there some have it written in there where they can operate as a committee the whole or a committee structure they can jump between them that kind of a thing it covers in both
106ways others are written where it's just based upon what they're using so you're gonna want to look at that you also want to look at what committees are listed if you do have a committee the ability to go to a committee structure because if you're thinking of nine committees and you only have four four listed you are going to have to go through a first and second read on that policy before you actually put those committees in place yep for districts that have a committee structure does it administration person or some of administration come to every one of those meetings yes and how is that determined is it just like finances the VA but beyond those obvious it's up to the superintendent will pick a liaison that makes sense so for example I operate under
107a committee structure so for our finance budget finance building and grounds committee they were actually two committees at one point and then we realized they're so connected let's just make them one and we had to change our policy and everything so it made sense so that one the BA and I both went to that one but like the curriculum instruction one my director of curriculum instruction went when I changed from when one resigned and I was hiring a new one I then showed up at that one until that new person felt comfortable enough to be in these committee meetings because once again the committee meetings are yours as a board your liaison is your expert in that area so whoever those experts are your superintendent will be able to pick the right people and sometimes
108you know depending on what you're talking about it may shift who's showing up as your liaison because if you're talking about data or whatever and and there's somebody better in the administrative team that can really dive into that that person may be invited as your liaison so yeah you should always have a liaison expert there. Can I just ask a question? So hearing what you said at every committee meeting it's your suggestion that we have a administrative representative at that? Yeah you should you really should otherwise you're you're operating without that insight of the person that's the expert so like if you had a finance committee meeting and you didn't invite and the BA wasn't there you're gonna be really limited on what you can talk about or even have an in-depth knowledge on because
109there's gonna be questions that come up that you're not gonna be able to answer like process and all that. Right but if you're if you're a committee and you're tasked with figuring out a right and you just want a roundtable and and you know strike a path to to what your end goal is and roundtable what you're gonna discuss I just don't see how you would like it's not for you to take any action it's like you know we set up this committee to to discuss this particular whether or not we go to a committee of the whole or what have you like I feel like we're just bouncing ideas off of each other and we're researching yep and if we need to get input from that particular you know staff member you know then
110we say okay the next meeting we'd like to have that person there but we at least put a roadmap together as a group and then have them there so that's why I'm just little so his best practice is you have administrative liaison there and just so you know like a committee can never take action that's the purpose of a committee so what you're doing is as a committee you're discussing topics that you might want to then bring to the full board at a regular board meeting so having all that background knowledge with the expert there is most beneficial because like I said you can create the roadmap they can tell you as you're trying to create it if there's gonna be some hurdles along the way I don't know how you've did it in the
111past when you had committees but that's how most districts do it they have their their board members that are on it and then they have an administrative liaison that's there who's not running the meeting that's that's the board that's the committee chair that's running that meeting there they may add things to the agenda based upon what people are saying and what they want they may present at those meetings on topics but a lot of times they're there as a resource and be able to answer questions and identify potential roadblocks my concern would be like what you're saying with roadblocks that you could spend two hours coming up with a plan within 30 seconds we could have told you which unfortunately there's a statute that doesn't allow that and just to piggyback to clarify so if
112if we're saying the standard best practice is to have a district liaison there so I know like obviously you know the superintendent the business ministry we have certain admin that are you know here at our meetings but what if it was someone who's not typically at the meeting are are they going to be like I don't know if their contract requires that they have to come in the evening so would that that mean then it would have to be during the day because would that preclude you know what I'm saying I'm just most administrator contracts say you come in when you have to come in yeah well that's what I'm asking so like they would it would not be a problem for someone to come in I'm sure they wouldn't love it but it well
113yeah but that's what I'm just asking like yeah well I'm asking is that yes okay yeah okay yeah like when you're talking about buildings and grounds they start sometimes at 630 in the morning so an 8 o'clock committee and they don't live close is giving them a 14 or 15 hour day so in that instance I would like the committee then to start earlier because I don't want to tell anyone that they have a 16 hour so depending on the committee and the person that would need to come would determine what time it needs to meet which could affect who's on that committee then I guess that's just something I wanted to think about that's something that that's the logistics that you'll you'll work around and and understand too that who's on the committee this
114year might be different who's on the committee next year and so what you have in place this year might So once again you have to be flexible with that whereas the cow it's already pre-established you you approve those board meeting dates everyone knows when you're needing a special presentation that's when the superintendent's reaching out to say the director of curriculum instruction and they're scheduled to do that presentation on whatever the topic is so I'm sure they already come out to your board meetings for various reasons I would think and this is what we were just talking about for the 99% it's going to be the four of us yeah or five of us including Shannon and Jeff and Jeff probably would be the only addition maybe Christine for transportation but I think that right but
115now what if somebody wants a special ed committee what if somebody wants a security committee what if you know now you're asking all these people to come and stay like you said at 14 15 hour days how often are they going to do that and can they say no I haven't some of those any director I haven't seen any districts have special ed committees because it's so structured and legally driven driven by law yeah like you don't have a lot of flexibility but yeah I mean like I said there's districts that have like nine committees or seven committees and you know a lot of times it is a superintendent and the BA that attends them a lot of times it's just a superintendent because the BA you don't generally is not going to those other
116ones unless they're finance and building grounds or transportation because that always falls under BA's so I say we need anybody else we just have Rebecca come because she loves to be here anyway sorry there was a time there was a time when I when I first started as the assistant BA here where they had four meetings a month for action meetings a month and committee meetings and it was it was just too much I mean for everybody involved did the board members the administrators you just can't be out that many nights a week no you can't that many nights a month two two questions one is to clarify the hybrid approach that's still retaining two meetings a month as a committee of the whole but also additional meetings for each committee as needed okay so
117think about it as like you have an ad hoc negotiations committee because your whole board I'm assuming doesn't do negotiations it's an ad hoc committee that'd be very similar to that where they're not doing that work when the whole cow is meeting they're doing it at a separate time so if you decide to have other committees like small committees that are gonna operate they're gonna operate outside of the whole cow meeting so yes all right and then my second question this touches to on the logistics piece of it in theory we don't need to meet in person these committee structure or meetings could happen virtually they can if if logistics proved to be an issue and I've had that where even in my own district we had one committee that did meet virtually and it
118worked for them but all the other committees did meet in person some committees meet early in the morning I know I know BA's that have finance committee meetings you know at eight o'clock in the morning before the day starts there's everybody whatever works and there's certain committees that may not even meet monthly they may meet every other month as well yep it really depends on you know the committee what what the goals are what the agenda items are and you know how urgent the need is and there's there is there is a workload on the board side of things it's not just the ministration the board has got to be committed to working on agendas working on minutes for doing their doing their they're reporting out it's not just dependent it's not like solely on
119our shoulders I can tell you as experts one strategy that worked with one of my committees was they would have their they would have their agenda and as they were meeting the they designated one of the board members to be constantly adding in the notes they would add in the notes when the meeting was done everyone's job at the committee was to look over the notes to make sure it accurately reflected what they captured and then they would send it out that time so it eliminated some of that because they were finding that exactly that that it was overwhelming to have a meeting then have to go back and create the minutes it was too much so they kind of put it all into one I only had one committee that did that but they
120were very effective they have all these apps now that you know you can set it up and it'll record and it'll type the minutes up for you are we allowed to use stuff like that be careful with Oprah yeah and also you want to be careful too which app it is because of the app itself the data that's in there may not be protected so that's where you have to look at your policies and all that too so yeah we go on Google meets now AI sometimes will try to join and I always say no because for that reason like I don't know what's happening or what someone's gonna say you know as a student matter gonna be brought up our personnel but I was thinking the same thing like there's an app for that
121Tim will let us know when NJSBA creates their their own yeah we haven't but and I know the question I think Jamie was asking before I you know in my investigation in turn and into these committees I've seen a lot of repetition generally there are a core let's say five committees that most boards that are standing committees it's the same it's policy it's curriculum it's finance it's buildings and grounds right there those tend to be like some of the core and then there could be you know very sort of specific one because of technology is another big one technology right and then and then some of those can always be done I think as you pointed out before as an ad hoc committee right if it's really specific project based or something right something that's
122got a shorter term goal on it right yeah like you were talking about approving Chromebooks tonight you know that might might be a committee that will form based upon that one topic and then once that topic is finished like you've approved it that ad hoc committee dissolves referendum committee is an ad hoc yeah it's a lot to think about and like I said there's there's pros and cons to everything and that's one of the sheets that I sent to them it kind of lays out some of those pros and cons gives you some food for thought and whatever direction you go in at least you would know that you thought it out and that you understand what maybe some of the hurdles might be regardless of what direction you go anyone have anything else all
123right good all right thank you sir thank you we appreciate it all right we are going to move into executive session for a couple of items yes we are we are going into the executive session for the purpose if I can find my notes for the purpose of discussing TWU negotiations and personnel involving a personal matter involving employee number four two eight three can I have a motion in a second to go into closed session at nine oh one p.m. Eric and Jamie yes no action after but we will have discussion after correct we have old and new there's action okay action oh yes there's actually okay all in favor anyone opposed noted we're in closed session okay so no so this is um preliminary budget I just want to explain and for those of
124you on the board and I will send out when I send out my letter that goes more into depth with the budget it'll say the same thing but I always like to do this in my mind and none of these are accounting terms and none of these are something that another district may use it's my definition that there's three ways that a district can do the budget in some districts they start at zero so they start with no budget and then they add each item in other districts they do a flat budget and then they say oh how much more or less money do we have and then they choose what they're adding on we do more of a wish list budget so each department the principals get allocated births on per pupil amounts and
125then each department adds what they would like with they think would make them the district the best for children and then I go through and cut that all out not not always um and then you know we go in we they each submit their rationales we have conversations I meet with them Ronnie and I talk I mean even today Ronnie Jessica Jody and I sat down with special ed to discuss some of their budget Jody and I will meet and go over the different avenues of curriculum like yeah this is this they really would like this is what we really need and we balance so Ronnie finished the budget on Friday morning this is the amount she came with she sends it to me once it comes to me there's about 3,000 budgetary lines I
126spent Friday and Saturday night shows me about my Valentine's Day because remember I was a math teacher kind of like this stuff I sort the 3,000 lines into different spreadsheets based on what they relate to so I have one for salary I have one for other salaries benefits instructional supplies office supplies tuition and dues and then from there I have all my spreadsheets connect because I like that too and then we go we start to look at okay what do we need to cut for those of you who have been on the board for a long time 1.3 million short is nothing there's been times when we started here at 7 million that being said and I'll let Ronnie talk about all the specifics I'm just going to give you an overlay of what I
127want to say in the past we have already always been able to cut staff we are enrollment kept going down and was our moment with down you know staff we never really cut staff we cut positions I'm going to rephrase that we eliminated positions that were no longer necessary looking at our current enrollment although it's going down it does not look like that's feasible we have a lot of new developments coming in and they're causing influxes in certain grade levels certain schools without increasing our class sizes it that doesn't look possible the other part we're looking at is as the special ed presentation told you at their last meeting we've gotten almost double the amount of in-district special ed children move in than ever in the past somebody has to teach those children so we're
128seeing a lot of our our staff you know they're needing to stay flat or even go up due to the enrollment increases and the special ed increases and you can remember Ronnie said that the state did give us a hundred thirteen thousand dollars for that so it's gonna go a long way but anyway so this budget is going to be a little different for us to balance than in the past because we do not have those positions that we used to have but like I said us to start at 1.3 million I mean I already from the work that we did today been able to reduce that to some and that is a much smaller deficit than we've started with in prior years part of the reason for that if you look on the first
129page about towards the bottom it's a surplus appropriated that audited excess surplus that's higher by about one point four million dollars and it was last year well it's great to have it and and what it that is from is when we went to nine point nine percent with the tax levy increased in twenty four twenty five we were very prudent and how we spent it we held it in reserve we looked to not like as Tim said just go out and and hire a bunch of staff that we knew we couldn't sustain there were leftover funds at the end of last year which rolls to what's called audited surplus that we are forced to use in our 20 in our the building that you the budget you're building next after that so that's part of
130what put us in a better position if we didn't if we were at where we were last year that number would be about one point six million dollars higher so keep that in mind because we can't always get regenerate surplus and we want to try to break our surplus dependency but also we know after coming off of years off of s2 and having a cumulative loss of aid over that time frame of close to 50 million dollars the only way we're going to get back to any great position is to take advantage of any adjustments at this that the state gives us to to take advantage of and I just want to surplus so when you talk about surplus it's kind of like what Tim was talking about too is let's say for like for
131electricity we budget a certain amount because the rates are going up and we don't really know much and we have to keep the lights on right some districts may then take that money and buy something we tend to put it into surplus for the following year we tend not to just buy things for the sake of buying things if we don't need it we don't just like oh we have this money let's we're just being fiscally responsible and how we that's a better way to say it is late at night thank you responsible and how we how we spend the funds and so that that I don't feel we're going to generate especially since in this year we started out with anticipating a 22% increase in health benefits and we're winding up with a 30
132again better than if we had remained in the state health plan but it's still more than what we anticipated it's only for half the year I'm in the position where hopefully the March bill that we just received will give me more insight as to what it's going to take us to get to the end of the year and I'll you know be able to look at that and project that out through June but basically ad valorem taxes are now but in English town tax levies they allow us to raise last year's amount by 2% so what they did was they took last year's amount they added that enrollment adjustment of about a hundred thirteen thousand dollars and then they increase that by 2% so I want to just go over that too because for a
133lot of the new people on the board may not realize that all these new houses do not mean a larger budget for us our budgets still only going up 2% but the share amongst the community right should go down so there's like a misconception oh the schools are going to have more money because they're building all those new houses we do not more students more students but not more money more cost not more money so we're limited in that respect and then the state also allows us to take an automatic tax levy adjustment for increases in health costs so that's the next number we actually qualify based on my calculations right now for about two point seven five million dollars of extra of tax levy adjustment for the increase in the health costs that leaves
134us with a tax levy of about 90 million dollars we have some tuition that comes in from parents that pay for you know when they're moving in they have daily tuition we have a couple tuition students from other districts that we're kind of saying are going to be here for a few years so that's tuition facility rentals field rentals before and after care program we do charge small amount for the summer program graduation tickets interest income is it has gone up quite a bit in the last few years because we renegotiated or we buys that revisited that I should say with our bank other miscellaneous revenue about two hundred thousand then we deal with some our state aid numbers here that are in the center of the page our last year or this current year's
135numbers that's all I have to work on I don't know whether they're gonna go up I don't know they're gonna go down but right now we're hoping that they remain flat so that's this projection is built on that extraordinary aid remaining at about eight hundred thousand and then there's some small amount of money but it's an offset between a revenue and an expenditure for menstrual products the state has this thing where if we spend it they're gonna reimburse us so that's what we're anticipating for that semi is basically a money loser for us unfortunately what's the extraordinary aid in an extraordinary aid is special education costs over certain thresholds okay so it's like a at the end of the year we have the application we have to submit so Gigi or the special ed director
136will look at all the students that we have in district that are special ed and out of district special ed and there's different amounts if it's an in-district student over a certain threshold or out of district over a certain threshold we apply for a certain number of dollars the state has a pot of money that they once they get all the applications in they just basically prorated okay across so when after March 10th we'll get the actual numbers we're using what they gave us last year okay thank you well in the extraordinary a we won't know to the end of the year so seventy five hundred is what they gave us for menstrual reimbursement that much but the revenue and the expense kind of wash each other out so if I spent thirty five for
137that right yes we don't just get seventy five hundred we have to submit bills to get reimbursed the money but that's what we got last year from the state was seventy five hundred dollars to repay us for miss we spent less so we were reimbursed less it's almost like flat because I'm in and out it doesn't on one side we but we have seventy five hundred in the account for that and then we have seventy five hundred in the revenue so they'll always be balanced they wash okay we can't we can't apply we can't apply for more of a reimbursement than what we spend with the end of the year no I get that I'm saying I understand that what I'm saying is the state gave us if we're using state figures right for roughly
138eight hundred thousand seven twenty three zero three two the state gave us seventy five hundred dollars in reimbursements for menstrual products up to seventy five hundred no that's just what I have budget we can we can spend more they'll give me more this is just a placeholder no I'm asking how much did we get from the state in menstrual reimbursement last year because that's what we're saying we're using these numbers so the accurate number is they gave us seventy five hundred or they give us forty two hundred like that's what how much did the state give us in menstrual reimbursement but Jesse it's it's on the appropriation side on the expenditure side and it's on the revenue side if I put fifty thousand dollars on both side it doesn't really matter because they wash each
139other out it has no bearing on on putting the budget in a in a in a deficit or a surplus situation the numbers are always going to be the same it's embedded in one of the on the on the last page right so that same number is embedded in one of these numbers just right I get I get that I asked this question last year it's irrelevant honestly it's not irrelevant it's it's part of how we get money to fund our schools is not not if we get ten cents somewhere it's not irrelevant I mean it all goes towards a kid's education it's not irrelevant it is because it's not on the expenditure side we can't so say we spent thirty seven hundred we're only gonna I'm gonna spend thirty seven hundred even though I
140budgeted seventy five hundred so I'm not gonna spend my whole appropriation and I'm not gonna realize my whole revenue amount the two are gonna remain right so you're budgeting to buy seventy five hundred dollars worth of menstrual products to be reimbursed at seventy five so I did very quickly look back it looks like it now these I think are right don't quote me but looks like in twenty three twenty four we spent one thousand four hundred and fifty eight dollars and sixty one cents so moving on semi is a federal aid that we get we're required to participate in we never receive the full amount of benefit the state takes a big chunk of it off the top so but this number we're told we have to budget in our in our budget whether we
141realize it or not it's a requirement of the state the surplus numbers and they hold on that was a different menstrual line if I go to a different menstrual line in twenty four twenty five we got five thousand eight hundred and thirty five dollars and nine cents and that's the seventy five hundred this year to date so we did almost six thousand and twenty four twenty five this year to date we have encumbered four hundred and ninety six dollars and thirty five six cents of tampons because it's only it's only at middle school and above it's not it's not at elementary buildings I believe it's only at the Pinebrook and MEMS then we have capital reserve there are a couple projects that we are coming that we're taking money out of capital reserve to do
142we're doing locker replacement at Pinebrook I believe now we're doing bleacher replacement at Pinebrook locker replacement in another building and then we have a technology we're doing a Wi-Fi access point project which comes up to one point one million essentially one million dollars again that's on the appropriation side where we're spending and on the revenue side if I put nine hundred dollars less in the appropriation I have to take nine hundred dollars out of the revenue they all have to they have to balance maintenance reserve is one point two five million which is a stable number that we've been doing every year for the last few years and that just ensures that we keep some funds in reserve to provide for maintenance God forbid the state ever come back and crucify us like they did
143in nine ten and years after that that's just a way of kind of committing to building maintenance is it based off historical or is there a set amount like per you usually use about half what's in the reserve we kind of use we put it back in at the end of the year if we have the money to put into they put a little bit more in generally that's about what we pull out and then the rev on the appropriation side if you turn to the last page you'll see this is what currently was making up the spending and these are in the same categories the same broad categories that the state uses in their their department budget that we have to put the software the numbers go in the software if you have regular
144education now if you combine special education on the second line there out of district placements include and add in the eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars which we have allocated to our IDEA grant and look at the equipment we've got a bus budgeted in equipment we have transportation includes some special education costs that are not split out because I just did the department total but you're looking at an overall special ed cost of approximately 14% of the budget it's 15 million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars towards special ed so as Tim was saying earlier when you start looking at mandated special education costs staffing costs health benefits of 20 almost twenty seven point five million dollars you really don't have anywhere to go the other numbers are very small in comparison there's not a
145lot of discretionary spending let's say we can maybe buy some different supplies we can push off a curriculum adoption maybe we don't refresh a grade level of computers for another year but that doesn't really make up a lot of money in the overall general budget we do have to transfer funds to charter schools that that number is an estimate based on the number of students the state will also give us that number when we get our state aid numbers the SDA assessment is something that's been in place for I can't tell you how many years now I don't understand where even comes from but the state charges us for that too that's for debt service any questions on anything yes security that's that's the guard salaries the director's salaries any supplies that he needs share
1469-1-1 comes out of there or whatever you know version of visitor management we're using or a 9-1-1 alert hmm correct yes yeah uniforms is um is the cafeteria budget in this or is that actually is an enterprise fund it's completely separate okay no it runs more like a company it's it's on a more of a profit like a breakeven type profit motive it's on a totally on a gap basis this is not on gap okay Jeff expressed some some concerns over the lockers being unsafe that they're getting old and just get rough and sharp and they are in need of being replaced he got a couple quotes and we just used an estimate from the quotes again that's because it's coming out of the capital reserve the funds come out of the reserve and go
147into the budget any money we don't spend on those projects say we decide we're not going to do one or we spend less any reserve any money left from those appropriations has to go back into the reserve at the end of the year so it's in and out last year we budgeted for yes exactly and only certain projects can be funded yes and only certain projects can be funded with capital funds yeah dude are we able to know the balances in those current there's about four million dollars let me see what I had to be ordered about four million in capital reserve and there was 2.5 which is about half of what we're pulling out so about 1.2 left at the end once I take this out there's 1.2 left okay thank you historically how
148much have we tried to keep in those accounts in the past we had difficulty keeping money in it because of being an s2 district we didn't have a lot of funds to allocate to it that's why we needed a hundred fifty million dollar referendum we try to put money back in when we're looking at surplus when we can right Ronnie yeah I want to be balanced with knowing what we're gonna need in the future you know any money I suck away with a limited access and it's geared towards either maintenance cost of the state defines a more capital cost as the state defines them doesn't allow me to use that money to support the general operating budget or provide for staffing so it's it's a decision we make at the end of every year you
149know are we putting the money into capital reserve which will be just there for that or are we putting it into the general budget to balance and we usually try to put some money back into capital reserve because you know before we had the referendum with the roofing a roof goes or something yes the boiler goes you're looking at you know a couple hundred thousand dollars so we wanted to make sure it was it was less during the really bad years of s2 but as we were able to kind of recover a little bit we have put money aside and we haven't tapped into it no no last year we actually did we did a project and budgeted the full amount in the appropriation and out of the revenue from the withdrawal for something in
150the technology area it was um the phone was not the phone upgrade it was something else that Mike had and it we didn't spend 400,000 of it because we were able to use e-rate funding from the new universal services fund paid for 40% of it so that 40% of that project went back into the capital reserve because it came from the capital reserve the other thing in there is the bleacher replacement which again that's been something we knew was coming for a lot of times we get to a point like where things become end of life you know our access points are basically at end of life they're they're not being supported again through licensing and maintenance so we kind of are forced to make these expenditures that's the beauty of technology is we have
151a lot of great technology but the problem with it is is so much of its license and subscription based that not like I'm not buying you know a piece like a circuit or a piece of equipment that's gonna sit in the last 10 years I'm spending a small amount of money on the supplies and a lot of money on the licensing that is only maybe three-year license or five-year license and then it starts to get to end of life and you wind up having to refresh the whole thing so that's kind of where we find ourselves with technology and that's the core and I know you that you hadn't talked about this at the onset of going through the budget in terms of surplus appropriated so just so I'm I'm clear on it because I
152just want to make sure I'm clear on that large of a number so that was that surplus is a result of a tax levy from 2024 24 25 the year we just ended yes and so with that tax levy we are obligated to spend that money in the next calendar year any any surplus over to over 2% of your operating expenses by statute goes back into your good has to be used it was into what they call excess surplus it's in the audit report it's a calculation that they have to do and we are obligated to use it in the next budget cycle that we're building and use it for actual like some sort of improvement not necessarily put it into any kind of capital reserve I mean you I guess if you if you
153wanted to you could budget a dip you can also budget a deposit into a reserve but we're not in a position where we have funds to do that I know you had mentioned that this are going to be used for one-off type thing so it's not a recurring cost that we have to carry over into next year what are those do we have every said what these are going to be used for at this point right now it's benefits and salaries you know it's off sending the all total operation we're also have two big curriculum purchases I think Jody will be sending it yeah an email soon our math program has needs to be updated based again on what Ronnie's saying is that math books are different now they are also contracts and when the
154contracts up in this case they changed the the teacher manual as well so that's a large cost of this budget and I believe she'll be sending you another email I think you've gotten a few already about Thursday you're gonna get an email update about the pilots we were conducting with arts and letters and service my perspective it will tell you exactly what we're aiming to do and where we're saving money as well so those are two large purchases that was also included in this budget that won't be continually in the budget as far as large purchases so the curriculums one-time costs I'm assuming one time for five years the ELA cost is three it's over the course of three math will be until five years but benefits and salaries are something of course are perpetual
155so we're using it to fill a hole for this year but we'll see what happens next year we don't know how that's good I'm hoping I'm hoping the I'd actually expected that the tax levy adjustment that was available to us would be higher closer to the maximum that the state has established for us based on last year's expenditures and I was kind of surprised when it wasn't and I was like that I make a mistake somewhere I sort of really like looking back at my numbers and started to think about it and I think the difference is this year is that we are in a situation which we've never been in before we actually know what our benefit premiums are for the whole year next year it's not like I know them from July to
156December and then I'm budgeting an unknown amount from January 1 to June I know what they are and they had told us approximately 2.5 million dollars would be our savings and that's about half of the other half of the adjustment that we're not qualifying for which makes sense now to me I kind of feel more comfortable in my numbers okay I know this is only point zero three percent of the budget right transfer to charter schools thirty five thousand dollars I'm just curious where that number came from because in 2023 2024 the average cost for the state was twenty nine thousand nine hundred and seventy eight thousand last year the average tuition was twenty one thousand one hundred and ninety four dollars which was a decrease in eight thousand eight hundred and twenty nine which
157is also a decrease of thirteen thousand eight hundred and eighty one dollars from the projection it's based on what we spent this year and the state will give me that number when the state eight numbers come out that'll be revised so we spent thirty five thousand dollars to two students go to Hatikva in East Brunswick and they don't qualify for all of the cost per student of the state aid basically we're allocating a portion of our state aid that we receive to the charter school students so roughly seventy percent of their student of their tuition is what we're on the hook for roughly whatever the state tells me I mean if you do thirty five hundred right and it's our thirty five thousand that's seventeen fifty or seventeen five right and some of them they
158may they may have special ed they may have LEP they might be have income issues as far as like low income they qualify for low income eligibility so it's not one rate it's one rate and then there's other factors that they add to it depending on the status of the students we'll know more when the state aid numbers come but it's roughly 65 to 70 percent of their tuition is what we're covering it's yes whatever they tell me I get a lot I get it I get a state aid notice from the state that tells me what we have to pay the charter school and I can't I can't refute it Jesse we've had one to two children and for the last few years we're up to three at this point okay that number has
159increased that number will increase them it can I can't say for sure but it can that's the part of our budget mom that's what I'm asking is if you look at other districts right 90 percent of those students in a district go to a charter or a different school and everybody's attacking them for how they're spending their money but it's not getting factored in so I'm just trying to bring that awareness to people that look at the budget to see like hey wait this money's going here roughly like I want you know I want the community it's not to be a jerk and question Ronnie's numbers it's the fact that we get money from the state but then we have to pay for this transfer student here this one here I mean I was gonna
160ask offline what the IDA 860,000 like so we're adding that's that's the total number with the 860,000 added into the 3.275 million is that or is it 3.275 million plus 860,000 so it's roughly 4.2 okay so so that goes on to the added of the deficit of 1.6 that goes to no so now we're at above 2 if we have to add that 860 I mean I'm just trying to figure out math right I mean we talked about we have to be at 110 percent efficiency for for busing like I'm still trying to wrap it I mean a hundred is a hundred I'm still trying to figure out that math that's what I'm that's why I'm asking the questions I'm asking is math doesn't math sometimes so IDAA is a grant it's it's a federal
161grant we always estimate about we usually get a certain amount of money so what Ronnie does is for the out-of-district placement she takes some of the total and then she moves it there now as we said we haven't went through this budget and this has changed one of the things we look at is we have to budget again we're budgeting a year out right we don't know who's moving into the district so we do budget extra placeholders because when you're looking at a possibly a hundred fifty thousand dollars in tuition a hundred thousand dollars for a nurse and transportation can be up to a hundred thousand dollars one child can move in and it would cost us three hundred fifty thousand dollars two children move in and it's different right another child could move in
162and cost us forty thousand dollars to go to a neighboring school we don't know right this year let me go ahead so this year I believe we had five out-of-district students move in we made sure we had enough in the budget this is what special ed is initially requesting that we budget over there's some placeholders in there just in case movement we had some conversations with them today that number may go down a little bit but this is where all the budgeting becomes risky right and this is where I think Tim was trying to say that districts get into trouble let's say we said no we're only going to budget for the current out-of-district right now a child moves in and now we're scrambling to find that money so this is again another category that
163can sometimes lead to surplus because we're budgeting in case someone moves in and then if no one moves in their surplus if they do move in we're also not panicking of where are we going to get that money from because it was budgeted appropriately the same thing with charter schools again we're doing an estimate like Jody said we had one student now we have three students we we can't budget exact because we have no idea what the whole next year is going to bring so we do budget to make sure that we are we don't wind up like those schools that you're talking about that have budgeted exactly what they need and thrown in extra staff or what have you and then one person moves and wipes out our budget that's something that we've always
164been very cognizant of and does add to our surplus but yes what you're looking at is that and you're looking at probably about another million dollars in out-of-district transportation all right so let me ask this question a little easier than so I can process it I guess is this the cost right out of district is it a 4.1 number with the 860 or is it a 2.4 number it started out at the higher number and I subtracted 860 I'm not gonna budget the full amount in in the general fund and and cause it to have to find to cut teachers to make that happen because I know I'm gonna have eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars in the IDEA grant that I'm gonna use for tuition so the state allows me to take what I
165might here's my student list I subtract out eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars off of those appropriations because I know I'm gonna transfer those costs to the grant so that's the net amount after moving eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars right but what we're spending is four point one not three point three right now that's what the budget estimate is correct I think again it's gonna change a little point three it's what's two it's three point two but that's everything that's three point two so I'm rounding up like the government's doing right now with doing away with pennies okay yeah okay as Nicole said transportation I looked at I looked in the transportation account they have a hundred thirty two thousand dollars budgeted in the equipment line for a special ed bus they have almost
166one point million dollars for joint your transportation contracts through mosh to get kids to their out-of-district placements they have about six seven seventy five about six hundred and seventy thousand dollars worth of salaries for special ed drivers and overtime and special runs so when you start factoring all that in even though it's in the transportation line I pulled it out just to like demonstrate what special ed really truly cost us even though some of those costs are buried it's over 15 million dollars but not all our out-of-district placements are a special ed yes they are that's they have to be in order to charge them there and the and the transfer to charter schools to our schools is not special ed charter schools is a parental decision that's the state just like non-publics in if
167you send your child to a non-public school like st. Thomas Moore for example we have certain grants small and entitlements for technology security chapter 192 193 special services auxiliary and handicapped services public nursing and non-public textbooks we have to give a portion of our state aid to those schools because they filed a lawsuit years ago and said well you know I'm sending my kid to a private school but that's my choice I'm still paying full taxes in your community what am I getting for those taxes so the state forces us to spend some money for on non-publics it's it's just in the laws it's doesn't always make sense but we have to go with what we have to go with I get numbers from the state and I have to plug them in I don't
168have a choice and where does that number go on here that's in that's in special revenue fund it's not part of the operating budget that's due to a grant that's all grant related it's entitlements yeah it's probably as a grant yes one of the cost lines is for the before and after school programs I thought we didn't run those we just outsourced them so why would why are they a cost for us before and after is beyond the school day so that's our when the children come for RTI services yes that's beyond the school day so it's not the programs like where the kids stay and no and that's not like latchkey no no no so it's beyond the school day and again we haven't went through this yet if you remember we had the
169HIC grant and then the HIC grant went away and I increased those last year to make up for the HIC grant that may be an area that we can cut back on comes down as well all right thank you that makes more sense unfortunately the state is very the state chart of accounts is very rigid and it tells me where I have things have to be charged and unlike a municipal budget where you look at like the business office or the finance department they've got two lines salaries and wages and other expenses we'll have like 15 lines that we have to like pigeonhole expenses and based on definitions and how it relates to what the chart of accounts says it's it's quite I've sent it to Janae it's quite large and it's complex and oftentimes
170we even have to look back and say this is what we're spending money on you know is it a is it a related service is it an extraordinary service where does it fall you know really take a hard look at what it is and compare it to what the state says to know where to place it to question on two more line items general administration that's just basic Gina general administration is the superintendent's office and then the line item below the school administration administration is front the school the school principal offices okay thank you and central services would be business office in HR okay and then I know you said they're all the historical budgets are out there but I know this is not a final budget do we know it will be and when
171we see the budget is it gonna be in the similar format or just yeah I can give it to you in this format okay mm-hmm thank you eventually once we do once we do tentative adoption once tentative adoption triggers a couple things I then have to submit the state budget I have to push the button and certify it like to that it's tentatively adopted to the state then the county office will take a look at all the different line items there's a number of documents that have to go along with this a position control roster information supporting the health benefit increase information supporting some other stuff related to like this financial disclosure we have continuing disclosure requirements we have an agent that does it I've got to send them a letter saying that they've done
172all our you know disclosures once they have it then the county office as a review once they come back to me with questions or changes deal with all of that then they'll approve it then I have to create what's called the public the public notice goes in the newspaper with the ad that has more detail than say this would so once I have that that'll be something that's in the newspaper it'll be I can share that with you as well and then we have our public hearing it's just it's helpful you know when you see different iterations to get it I don't mind seeing it in the other format as well but just to get you know so I can get my bearings apples well unfortunately sometimes you're not really comparing apples to apples because
173you can have kids moving in and out that's the thing it's such a fluid living thing right well but the buckets right essentially yeah yeah but like we may have like this year coming up we're budgeting for a curriculum adoption we may have had one for two or three years so you won't see you know you'll see a big blip out right you know that's an easy flux variance to see mm-hmm there's years where we purchase buses if we think we can squeeze it out of the of the appropriations all the times we have to do at least purchase you know so that's helps us in the short run because it reduces the amount in each individual year but ultimately you're spending more for a bus over time because there's an interest factor you know
174it's but sometimes that's what you have to do to get by are you using an inflation factor anywhere in the budget for anything most of the stuff has been either quoted or like in the utilities just at a very in-depth analysis of our usage and then our new because we had increases in natural gas rates and electricity rates so she's used an updated you know cost per therm or cost per kilowatt hour and kind of did a projection that way it would really probably be more on the smaller stuff right yeah yeah and then the schools essentially what they get for their building supplies their front office supplies their instructional supplies we have a an allotment based on what we feel their enrollment we kind of roll up the enrollment and say a certain amount
175per student her head yeah so and that's they have to kind of work within that confine and then if they have something that's over and above like they want to do a refresh of a couple Promethean boards they can put an additional ask in like like Nicole said and then that will be depending on what funding we have and whether we can squeeze it in or not well we'll look at those individually last question for me and then for licenses are we doing like a review at any point on you know how many we have like how are they active can we change from like you know enterprise to you know that kind of analysis I know Mike Vackerino's office IT handles a lot of the licenses and subscriptions and they have a very in
176depth listing of all the licenses and the renewal dates and the cost escalations curriculum is another area which Jody manages with the supervisors and reviews all of that great thank you just to give you a heads up on what you're going to get on Thursday there is a program I don't want to say yet without you reading it because teachers still have to get told but it is in the email you're getting that is very expensive almost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars we are doing something new moving forward and we've done our assessment of the program we've run into some problems with the program so we have some alternatives that we actually think are better it will save us money and the money that we will need for the consumables for the new ELA
177program moving forward for this year next year the year after and following up we actually will get the money for those consumables by not having that program so we're trying to find balance we also evaluate usage reports and if it's not being used we do get rid of it and our goal with moving forward for a new ELA program is actually to decrease some of the subscriptions because the program has a lot of what we need so we don't need this whole big smorgasbord that existed after the pandemic no that's great and I know that's a lot to go through and a lot to maintain so that's like I said unfortunately everything is subscription based anymore like things you don't just buy textbooks you used to buy textbooks you don't buy textbooks anymore we should
178do And in the employee benefits I mean that's that's a really rather large number but I wrote down exactly like what that encompasses that is our social security costs we have a PERS PERS public employees retirement system contribution for our teaching or staff that are not enrolled in TPA app which is the teachers pension or not like that aren't represented we have DCRP which is a defined contribution plan that the state enacted as a way to kind of replace their own pension system workers compensation the health insurance is dental insurance tuition reimbursements which are contractual we have small amount of money there for the EAP which is our employee assistance program severance when we pay out our accrued sick and vacation as people retire or resign drug testing and then there's New Jersey sick leave
179pay which is a mandatory thing that we have to pay out so there's a number of it's not just only health benefits there is a number of things that are in that in that category can I ask one question please the summary of appropriations by cost the last page that you provide us has categories at what point do we see the breakdown of each of those categories and just use an example like transportation and you know you mentioned you know the purchase of a vehicle maintenance what have you at what point do we see the actual breakdown as to so so that's kind of what Tim was talking about getting against the weeds but what we do do is any major purchases like that when we in May if you look to the best budget
180presentations that we've done I send them out to the whole district we will outline any large purchases like that okay so that'll come that way I guess I guess what I'm trying to understand is just using I'm gonna use transportation as an example because I started with that six point five million dollars for transportation costs what what I'm looking for is the breakdown of what that six point five million pays for okay I don't I don't I don't consider that getting into the weeds like I consider that into understanding what six point five million pays from again I'm just using transportation as a couple like like we mentioned security David asked six hundred thirty thousand is that for that's for that's for salaries that's for uniforms that's for training that's for equipment like transportation would
181be salaries benefits it's their programming like trot traverse they have a lot of programs for their cameras and what have you it's estimated cost of two fixed buses yeah repairs and maintenance gasoline fuel all right so so so understanding all that I guess my question is do we receive besides just categories for what we're paying for a specific category do we receive a a list of those ten items encompass transportation no because the budget has over three thousand line items that I'd have to divide up that's all I would do like I said it'll be like every every budget account it has multiple lines so that that's for transportation purchase the top of our heads technical services supplies for the office supplies for the fleet there's a differentiation between office supplies and fleet supplies right
182there's fuel there's I understand I guess I'll use general administration one point five million dollars I if I recall you said that's for the superintendent's office well it's and you're off in your cost too and my so that's what I'm saying I feel like I should have like general administration encompasses the following seven items and this comes out to one point but what I'm saying is the whole budget encompasses three thousand items so to give you those seven for each of these categories it would be giving a list of three thousand items not three thousand specifically but Eric I can send you the chart of accounts and that will there's a grid in the back that shows you what in those cost centers what makes up like where we can have money and you'll see
183the general category maybe if I see that I'll understand it but I just I like just looking at a line item saying it costs X amount for this doesn't really give me anything and again not trying to get into the weeds of everything but just says this is what we pay for this but quite frankly when when we receive a budget and we're gonna vote on this budget and we're relying on your expertise and your experience I still want to know what I'm voting on as opposed to just saying I just approved XYZ for three million dollars but I'm really not sure how that's broken down I guess is what I'm trying to understand I'll send you the chart of accounts I send it to Janae it's it's voluminous and it would get also give
184you the details of and the definitions of what goes into each category as well okay I appreciate it I think that's why the the comparative in whatever format we we decide is helpful because I think it'll just very easily you can say like okay well this is what are typically what we spend on these sort of things I think it just adds some level of another another compare if you want if you would like to in the audit report the audit report does also have the line items yes yes that was that was good that was but they don't really miss all the difference with the audit report though is because it's on gap it doesn't include encumbrances which I show encumbrances expenditures right that's why I was like it'd be great if we can
185get something along the way that at least in the same bucketing that we can kind of sanity check to and in addition to whatever needs to be submitted okay you know I can maybe send her the DOE version of this it shows it broken down in the same general categories we'll take a look at it tomorrow see if that's something that I don't I don't want to create any that'll have multiple years but it'll have multiple years whatever is the easiest way for you to put it together I would appreciate it but basically this this is essentially a status quo budget there's no real big bells and whistles in it other than the couple things that like we've talked about with curriculum adoptions and things like that and that's the purpose of the public hearing
186is to go over those things the position control roster documents all of our staffing and believe me our county business official reviews it with a fine-tooth comb I mean it puts you through your paces you know you kind of always you know how hard you try to get it right she's always got a question on something but that's fine because that's her budget review and she has to approve our budget before we can move forward I don't have a problem with that co-curricular and extracurricular our athletics the student activities things like that are we overall I mean this is again guys remember this is preliminary this is just the start it's the first round on this and certainly as you look over this even after tonight obviously free welcome to even current encourage you to
187email Ronnie Nicole with any questions for the more you know particulars that you may want to understand a little better but you know we're gonna continue to obviously dive into this and and but yeah listen a lot of great questions but again I don't think you know necessarily we need to continue diving into the specifics of line items and everything tonight here but it's questions to follow up on if you you know if you need to gain a better understanding of so if everyone's good but like what I can send you Janae's I have this from the final adoption last year like the same summary so you can see like lined up like it'll compare to comparative okay all right all right thank you for this guys appreciate the information I think we are all
188we got new and old we have action after close yeah please okay sidebar agreement with Transport Workers Union of America local 220 bus mechanic entitlement over time on inclement weather days recommend the board approve the attached sidebar agreement between the Menalpan English on regional Board of Education and the Menalpan English on Transport Workers Union of America local 220 the sidebar defines bus mechanics entitlements to overtime on inclement weather days and the sidebar language is attached can I have a motion and a second Christine and Eric yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you okay and now moving on to new and old okay I just have something real quick at one of our last meetings I know when mrs. Patillo had done her update on special ed she discussed briefly but I wanted to
189let people know in case there's any parents watching the replay that there is a virtual workshop on Friday the 27th which is next week at 7 p.m. it's building coping skills how parents can support their kids with anxiety so that is something that is available I do think a flyer went out to parents on backpack oh well it said seven but it might be at five so check the flyer so that's with dr. Salzman from the behavior therapy associates another one that's coming up before we have our next meeting on March 10th at Menalpan High School Menalpan Police Department will be doing their blue envelope program which is for teen drivers but for parents and districts who have middle schoolers you know 17 will be there before you know it so it's it's a program
190available for students with special needs as it relates to getting a driver's license and having this blue envelope that helps the the students new student drivers and the police officers if that child should get pulled over while driving so I think that's really important and I believe that's March 10th at 6 p.m. so those are two events that's in person and that one does not need to be registered ahead of time you can just show up that's all I got I just want to say thank you for everyone's patience with going through my budget questions tonight I appreciate that's a lot I just got one I know last meeting I gave an update on the success of a lot of the wrestlers over at the middle school and I'd like to just say that Luca
191DiGenerro is the Tri County champion he's the eighth in school history I'm gonna have further conversations with mr. Ferber I already made contact on the discussion we had with mr. Sincata to recognize some of the outstanding athletes that we've had before meetings and not do it on the excellent thing at the end of the year but you know a couple minutes right before the board meeting or right after we start acknowledge some of the success I know that we've had some pretty successful programs this year at MEMS and just want to make sure those kids get the recognition that they deserve I don't have anything I was gonna yield all my time to mr. Sanger I don't have anything I just want to thank Ronnie and her department for putting together this budget the number
192is looking very well I know you'll have it down to zero the next time we meet like you always do and I appreciate you taking the time to answer everyone's questions especially our new members who are just learning how you break down the budget but trust me you're in very good hands Christine said it best so I will rely on what she said given that time of night and I have nothing else to add thank you great thank you yeah thank you everyone thank you Ronnie and in the admin team for putting this together and yes looking really good you know on the preliminary side so that's really encouraging to see and in addition I'll follow it Christine said that you know by next time around I think we'll see a positive number on there
193but we're looking good so thank you for that and thank you to everybody because I appreciate a lot of the questions and if you know I don't ever want to feel like I'm cutting anyone off or stopping people from asking questions at the same time you know we want to also stay on track and stay on schedule and stay on agenda and sometimes certain discussions are intended to be maybe more high level or knowing that there's going to be follow-up to get really into the more specifics and obviously you all have the opportunity to reach out you know via email or phone calls in you know in between meetings if you have questions to dig deeper into things too so but thank you to everybody for a lot of thoughtful questions just wanted to point
194out for anyone who may have overlooked or not be aware that we got read across America coming up the beginning of March you probably received some invites from some of the school principals so I encourage everybody if you have the opportunity to try to engage and and you know take advantage of that opportunity it's a lot of fun to you know be able to be there with the with the kids as well as this Friday principal Orlando I know I know sent out an invite for grade 4 living museum so if anyone has the opportunity to be there that I'm planning to be there I'm excited to see what that's gonna look like so take advantage if you can and that is all I got thank you dr. Santoro oh I'm good thank you all
195right we're all good could have a motion to adjourn mr. singer Capric this is her thank you