001By the prominent posting of said notice in all district schools and other public places, the mail in yonder hand delivery of said notice to the designated newspapers, the Asbury Park Press and the Monalapin Patch, filing with the clerk of Monalapin Township and the clerk of English Town Borough. Please call the roll, Jess. Mr. Ferber? Here. Mr. Green? Mrs. Herr? Here. Mr. Cain? Here. Mrs. Lucas? Here. Mrs. Parisi is absent. Mr. Santoro? Here. Mr. DeCetti? Here. Dr. Wallace? Here. 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. All right, David, it's all you. Mr. Green has arrived at 7.31 p.m. Good evening, everyone. Okay.
002Do we have any additional changes or revisions? We had a few throughout the day today. I think we had enough. I don't think this mic is even, maybe this, yeah, this one's a little. I think the mics are down low or something. I don't, it's not. One, two. Better. Okay. Okay. Public comment. If anyone in the audience would like to speak, you have three minutes. Okay. Going once, going twice. Public comments is now closed. Item D for the board's information. Anyone have any questions or comments for anything in Item D? Sounds like it is coming down out there again. Okay. Nothing on Item D. We are going to move to our action items. Can I have a, excuse me a second, could I have a motion and a second on Items E1 through E2, please?
003Mr. Tessetti and Mrs. Herr, any questions, anyone? I don't have a question. I just have a statement that I'd like to say in regards to E2. With all the division across the country in fighting, I think it's a good time that we educate our students on what's the significance of the 250th anniversary of our country. And even though we can be opposite views that we come together, I'm talking into this thing as loud as I can. Like I, it's, so. Ryan, can you see if maybe that needs to be turned up on the, on the box? Yeah. Great work. Thank you, Ryan. And Rebecca. All right. We are back. Okay, I think we're ready for roll. He said he finished. Yeah. No, no. You're good. Okay. Mr. Ferber? Yes. Mr. Green? Yes. Mrs. Herr? Yes.
004Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mr. DeCetti? Yes. Dr. Wallace? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Okay. Can I have a motion and a second on business items F1 through F7, please? Mr. Cain and Mr. Green. Any questions? Gentlemen? I do. I have a question. This is the first time I'm looking at something like this. So I'm just curious about, on page three, what the extraordinary services are. So they're pretty extraordinary. So I just want to see what encompasses extraordinary services. On the ratification, the check register ratification, number one? Extraordinary services just is services that are provided to students based on IEP requirements. It's a state definition of there's extraordinary, there's related, they all have a different definition. Okay. My other question is, on page 14 of the same thing, under school health supplies, just what
005is a health supply in Hepatitis B? I don't oversee the nurses, I would have to ask. So basically that category in our budget is called health supplies in Hepatitis B. It's just the name of the thing. This is, I believe, just the orders that the nurses are putting in for their building. Oh, just the general title of the account. Okay. And one of the descriptions. So I understand health supply, but what is, I mean, I'm just curious why the title, Hepatitis B. Because we used to have to purchase serum, Hep B serums, yes. You did, really? We don't do that anymore though, right? Because that's supposed to be district out, it's supposed to be... The account number, the name hasn't changed in a long time. Okay. How would we go about updating that if it
006no longer relates? I can change it whenever. It's just something that I... We have complete discretion as to what the titles of the budget account are, codes are, doesn't... I just try to tie it back to, sometimes the state definition would be other purchase services. So we try to define it a little bit more so that people understand, like, you differentiate what goes into that versus other purchase professional technical, other purchase educational. There's like different standard titles, but we try to differentiate and make it more identifiable to the staff that are actually using the account so they know a little bit more of what's budgeted in there. I can change that at whatever. What would we change it to? I don't mean to... Just health supplies. Health supplies? $2,000. Is it we're buying Hepatitis B
007supplies? They just don't like... No, we're not buying Hepatitis B supplies. Right. So what's the $2,000? Other health supplies. Like what? Oh, I don't know. We'd have to... It's for the nurse's office. This is why we ask if you... Yes. Send these questions ahead of time because we could actually pull it up and look at it. Well, I missed it and I must have missed over it when it said supplies of Hepatitis B, she just showed it to me. I looked at it and I didn't flag it, so I apologize for that, but like I just... Okay. The nurse's office has supplies in general. They have gloves and ice packs and tongue depressors and so at the beginning of the year they start purchasing their supplies, band-aids. I mean, I understand that. I was just
008more curious about the Hepatitis B because I know that schools don't do that anymore. It's been there for a long time. It just... Okay. So we could just change the name then eventually, right? Okay. That's it. Okay. Mr. Green? Yes. Mrs. Herr? Yes. Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. On one, two, three and four and seven, abstain on five and six. Mr. Santoro? Yes. Mr. Tosetti? Yes. Dr. Wallace? Yes. And Mr. Ferber? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Can I have a motion and a second on curriculum item G1, please? Mrs. Herr and Mrs. Lucas. Any questions, anyone? No. Okay. Mrs. Herr? Yes. Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mr. Santoro? Yes. Mr. Tosetti? Yes. Dr. Wallace? Yes. Mr. Ferber? Yes. Mr. Green? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Can I have a motion and a second
009on action items, personnel items, H1 through H19, please? Mrs. Wallace and Mrs. Herr. Any questions? Anybody? Okay. Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mr. Santoro? Yes. Mr. Tosetti? Yes. Mr. Ferber? Yes. Motion passes. Dr. Wallace? Yes. Mr. Ferber? Yes. Mr. Green? Yes. And Mrs. Herr? Yes. Motion passes. And that concludes the action portion of our meeting. We will move forward with new and old business if anyone has anything they would like to bring up from the board. I'll start with you, Mr. Santoro. First I want to compliment Ryan on taking the meeting notes from the referendum committee. His notes are so on point. Yeah. So big shout out to Ryan on that. I'm excited that the referendum project is underway. There is a couple of little hiccups, but I think we should be okay. Other
010than that, I hope everyone is enjoying their summer recess, all the teachers anyway. Kelly? Nothing? Good? Ryan? Good? Jamie? Jess? All good? Serena good? Mr. Kane? Good? All right. Well, I'm great. I hope everyone's having a great summer, but I'd like to open the floor to our administrators if anyone has anything they would like to bring up. I thought you were wrapping up. I was like, me, me. No, no. I was going to come. Sorry. Don't forget about me. Okay. So yes, Ryan, you will be happy to know our website had its soft launch today. This real launch is August 8th, but you can go visit our website and see the soft launch. There's still some kinks we're working out, like how to actually change things on it, but sort of the biggest kink right
011now because we haven't had all of our training, but it is launched. It's very beautiful-looking. Additionally to that is we did add some pictures to the referendum page. So the referendum page has been updated today. going out in two days to remind people to check out the page. And if you want to see what's happening in our schools and see some pictures, I will say this morning I was pulling up to Wemrock Brook and there was a big crane lifting things up off of an 18-wheeler and putting them on the roof. I took a shot very quickly of that. I thought that was pretty cool. I missed that the man was waving to me, but I missed that in my snapshot of the picture. So that's all underway. I'll talk a little bit more about
012the referendum in a second. I believe we finalized this when the budget was done because it's not in the budget, but I just want to remind everyone or just if it wasn't finalized, we are again waiving student activity fees and graduation fees if the board's in agreement for this year. We don't need to ask the community to pay them, so we will not ask the community to pay them. In response to what you had said about the 250th birthday or anniversary of our country, I had sent you guys an email, but I'll just remind you that we have agreed to participate in the Revolutionary Schools program at MEMS. Revolutionary Schools, MEMS will officially be recognized as a partner of Revolution New Jersey and the goal of Revolutionary Schools program is to support and celebrate schools
013that commemorate the 250th anniversary of American Revolution through exemplary social studies, civics, engagement, and local history research. I will say I have went through some of the resources that was put together by the county and as someone who grew up in this county, it was very interesting because you're reading about places and people and getting the whole story. There's a whole section on Huddy whose Huddy is in Colesnack and what he did and how he died and you're like, oh, that's interesting and you know, Covent Hovin and just a lot of different places in the community and a lot of names of streets where you're reading the name, you're like, oh, I know that street, I bet you he lived there. So it's a nice way, you know, we have a very big history here
014in Monmouth County and especially Monmouth and an English town. So it's really nice for students to be able to recognize those places and make those connections. And then as far as the referendum, a lot of the work is way underway, HVAC, all the, for the most part, all the unit ventilators have been removed from the classrooms. They're putting the other ones back in. As Mark had referenced, we do have an issue with some RTUs, which is the system that goes on top of the roof, they're delayed due to a tornado, I believe it was a tornado where they're being made. They're supposed to come in October 30th. At those schools, they are going to get everything ready for them. So when they come, we can just drop them in. But it may mean that the
015gyms in some of our schools, the classrooms in some of our schools are not going to be accessible in the beginning of school. Now you may say, well, that's odd because the gym already doesn't have air conditioning. So why does it matter if it doesn't have air conditioning now? Well, it's not about the air conditioning. What it's about is the fresh air that's brought into the room. So you have to have in schools a certain amount of fresh air that's regularly circulated in the rooms. In order to get everything ready, they have to pull out those pipes. And we can't have children in the rooms if we don't have a certain amount of fresh air. So that's where we're at with HVAC, paving. Paving is really underway. If you go by, you will see in
016some places we're pretty much done with paving. And Ryan will actually have most of this in his update if you want to read it on the site. And then the roofing is going. They're moving right along and they're doing everything in sections and we're meeting with them regularly to discuss that. And that's what I have on the referendum. Again, check out our website. I think that's it. Great. Thank you. Jody, anything? We started the summer program at MEMS last week. It's went off quite well. It was a busy day at MEMS. We were housing two ESY classes, the entire in-person summer program, which is small in comparison to what it normally is. And Camp Invention was renting our facilities, so it was a bustling place to be. But we were all on traffic duty getting
017the children to and from. It went well. And I'm happy with the turnout. I was just counting. I still have a few more classes, but we're around 200 students still considering that we made modifications to how the program was being run this year due to the referendum work. So thank you to our staff who's working. I actually think they're enjoying the virtual setting, those of them virtual and the ones in person with our kindergarteners and first graders are finding it working out well. So smooth sailing. Great. We like smooth sailing. Thank you. David, I just have one question. Of course. I was just going through our emails. This is loud. And I saw something came through, the Bush Law Group and also the NJSBA. They mentioned the religious freedom case regarding the opt-out option that
018was going on in the school district. And I was just, hopefully we could get this, I'm not sure what kind of books we have in our school district at this point. But there's any concerns the parents have. Are we going to, I would like to see an opt-out option if we don't have one already. For students who, if the topics are against the religious freedom, this is brought up by the Muslim community and also the Christian community. So I just want to put that out there because that's right now it's, the US Supreme Court decides a game-changing religious freedom case. So they're making changes right now. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, thank you for mentioning. And I'm quite certain that at the beginning of the school year we have our opt-out options as it relates to those
019topics. Ronnie, I'm sorry. Go ahead. You wanted to say something? Yeah. One of the things that's somewhat pertinent in our budget, I know Dr. Santora mentioned that we are not charging activity, athletic and graduation fees. And part of what made that possible was the tax levy adjustment, incentive adjustment and aid program that we participated in and we increased the tax levy by about three million dollars for that plus a little bit of state aid with it. I did check with the county office because we really haven't heard anything on it yet as far as whether it's moving along, whether it's passing, what the situation is. But I was told that the state budget had some minor language changes to what they were permitting to be paid for with those funds. And in checking with the
020county office, we're fine. Everything that we applied for is still going to be approved. There's nothing that we have to adjust or tweak at this point. So that's a good thing. I don't, hopefully we'll get some word soon within the next week or two and we can start spending that. We're kind of holding that in advance right now until we get clear approval. All those new positions, they're still on hold, they're still in limbo. There was a few that we absolutely needed that we move forward with and if that money doesn't come through then we'll have to find another way. But we're still on hold and we're hoping they tell us soon because we want to hire good people and the longer we hold out. And Jody, did you want to touch base on any
021of the title funds that we're also waiting on word to? So we haven't got an official word from anybody who should be telling us the official word. I've been reading in articles that title funds, which would be Title II in this case, Title III and Title IV are temporarily on hold by the federal government until further notice on their end. I did reach out to the NJDOE. They said that they do have access to Title I funds at this time but they are holding off on distributing allocations because they're hoping to have everything at once. I have Plan B in place because there are many things including a lot of our professional development that we utilize that funding for. Some of it which cannot be put on hold such as our September and October professional
022development days that teachers get paid to create the presentations. I've dug through budgets to find the compensation just in case. What we are able to do is once they do, if they give it to us, which I'm being optimistic that we will get those title funds, we can do a transfer to compensate what we were using locally. But I was able to put on hold some local funds until we get those allocations and until those funds are released and then we'll make the swaps where necessary. If they do not release the funds to us this year and there are no allocations for 25-26, it puts us in a little bit of a predicament because whatever we do purchase can no longer be used out of title funds moving forward because it's called supplanting. So again,
023I'm remaining optimistic that before June 2026 we will get those funds so that we can continue with what we need. Otherwise we do have to find local funding and then determine in the future what we would use those funds for. Obviously if it's something we don't need to have, I will make sure it's cut. Some of it, again, professional development for our staff is really important because we need to continue training our teachers to give what's best for children. Another impact that that's having as well is because the state is not releasing allocations, it's also not releasing our IDEA, which are special education funds, which unfortunately is a much, much larger number under that grant, consolidated grant, than in the titles. With Title I, it's probably close to $1.3 million that we don't have our
024allocation yet. So unfortunately that also puts us in a predicament because we use about $900,000 of that money to provide for out-of-district placements for our special education students. So hopefully we'll get word on that as well soon because that will start to create an issue within the budget. Yeah, I don't think it'll start to. It will create an issue. Well, I mean, from what I've heard, those funds aren't so much in jeopardy, it's just not knowing and having the grant application in place to start allocating and encumbering the funds. I'll have to encumber it other places, which means moving money around. And I was advised that they're waiting to try to release everything all at once as opposed to piecemeal, pending the timeline, of course. Plus, while working in a new platform the state issued,
025it was called eWIG. We have eWIG 2.0, so there is a whole new application platform, which is greatly different from the one that we worked in last year. So I'm sure that there will be some bugs and hiccups and tweaks with that, with that not working properly and having to reach out to the help desk to get through some things. But I'm hoping we have our numbers soon. OK. On a final note, I just wanted to express on behalf of the board our thoughts and prayers to all the families and people affected by the absolutely catastrophic flooding in Texas that took place. Unfortunately tragedies occur all the time, but sometimes when it's such a catastrophic event, especially when it affects school-aged children in the way this has, it really resonates on a global level. So
026we're all thinking of everyone over there and praying for everyone to get through that. That's I think it for the night. If I can have a motion to adjourn, please, Mr. Tassetti, Mrs. Hart. Thank you. Oh, it's at 7.59 p.m. And that is a wrap. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? I highly doubt it. Thank you, everybody.