001Okay, it's 730 and we're going to start the meeting. Statement is hereby made that adequate notice of this meeting was given by the prominent posting of said notice in all district schools and other public places. The mail and gander hand delivery of said notice to the designated newspapers, the Asbury Park Press, and the Monalapan Patch filing with the clerk of Monalapan Township and the clerk of English Town Borough. I'll call the roll. Mr. Ferber? Here. Mr. Green? Here. Mrs. Hearn? Here. Mr. Kane? Here. Mrs. Lucas? Here. Mr. Tosetti is absent at this time but I hear he's on his way. Dr. Wallace? Here. Okay, we do have a quorum. Please rise for the flag salute. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one
002nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Rebecca, will you help us? Yes, please. Good evening everyone. We are going to jump into our budget presentation and using the big screen, right? Sorry. It's coming. There it comes. Yes. The other stuff we're gonna do later on. Thank you for clicking. So here is our 25-26 proposed budget. The budget process is very consistent from year to year. We establish the budget deficit based on anticipated fundings. We say deficit because we always receive less fundings. We evaluate the budget to ensure efficiency. We review and maximize all revenue opportunities. We examine and project enrollment. We determine staffing needs and then we, after that, establish our program supply needs. So just the realities of S2. I feel like a broken record. We've been saying this for years.
003From 2016 to 2017 to 2023-24, our enrollment decreased about 7% but our state aid was decreased about 59%. We've lost around 12 million dollars of annual funding which equates to approximately 50 million dollars cumulatively. For the 25-26 school year, we lost another $17,050 in state aid. Although that does not seem significant, it also doesn't mediate the gaps in our budget. It doesn't restore the prior loss of funding nor does it address the increases in the cost of living. On this slide, I'm not going to run through this but this is everything that we have done in the past to reduce the budget. And as I always say, I'm very proud of our district. I think you see a lot of districts right now in the paper. They're struggling. As soon as we learned that this
004was happening, we really developed a plan and Ms. Wolff was instrumental in that and we've implemented it to not be where other districts are. Last year was probably our most dire years because by the time we got to last year, we had made all the cuts that we could possibly make. We had renegotiated with all of our unions. We had worked through different ways to hire people to save money and really last year there was nothing left and we were able to make it with the revised budget in July. We also have a continued source of revenues. We have Chromebook fees. We have facility rental fees. We have our field rental fees. We have our summer enrichment program. We have our YMCA building usage charges. We have our ice cream concession and then we also
005have any interest that we earn on cash balances. This year, the state has allowed us to apply for a tax levy incentive aid program. It is a provision included in the 2026 budget only for certain schools. The opportunity applies for schools that meet two specific reasons. So one, if the general fund tax levy is less than the local fair share as calculated, and I will explain some of that Ronnie may have to jump in, and if we're spending below adequacy. Manalapan English Town regional school district meets both those criteria's and the reason why is they're saying that if you are under your tax levy and you're spending below adequacy, then you're not satisfying a thorough and efficient education. So this is something that they've offered to allow us to get there. So what is a
006thorough and efficient education? A thorough and efficient education is mandated by the New Jersey Constitution. This principle ensures that every student has access to high-quality education that prepares them for college, career, and civil life. The school funding formula of 2008 defines what is needed for a thorough and efficient education by setting funding formulas to meet student needs. So what is the adequacy budget? This is calculated cost of providing a thorough and efficient education to each district. So basically what the state does is they look at each district and they say for a district your size you need to have X amount spent on security, X amount special on special ed, X amount spent on this on that, and then they say okay for your district what do you actually have? And if you're spending less
007than what they estimate you should be spending, then they say that you are below adequacy. The next part is local fair share. The state also then goes in and they look at property values and income levels in a district and they calculate how much money the residents of the district should be paying in taxes. If you're not paying what the state calculates then they they deem the district paying under their local fair share. So in our situation we were both under adequacy and under our local fair share. So this is what the state calculates for adequacy. They're saying that a school district our size with meeting our needs should be spending about $88,271,224. Our budget is $85,279,983 which is almost $3 million below adequacy. For local fair share they're saying for the towns that we
008are in the DOE is saying that the local fair share should be about a hundred and five million dollars. We our tax levy is actually 79 million dollars so they're saying that we're about 26 million under what the local fair share is and that's why we were approved for this program. So what does that mean? There was two components of the program. One was that we could raise the tax levy to meet the adequacy level. So we could raise the tax levy the almost three million dollars to meet what they're saying we should be spending to provide a thorough and efficient education. The next part was they said if you do that they will kick in five percent. So those are the numbers there. If you're looking at this that's about a hundred and forty
009two thousand that they would they would put in. So with the tax levy incentive what does that mean to our budget? What are we going to do with the money? Because it's for a thorough and efficient education what we wanted to make sure that everything we did would directly benefit children, right? That everything was tied back to students to tie back to learning. So what we've added to the budget is an additional five staff members to reduce class sizes. We usually try to keep our class sizes around 22 and K through 2 and around 24 and 3 through 5. Right now we have some class sizes that are about 25 and that's now we get people that move in. We have a lot of building going around town so we want to be prepared for
010that. The next thing we would do would be adding a guidance counselor or an SEL interventionist. They both do pretty much the same thing. Guidance counselors are usually at the middle school level. Our SEL interventions are usually at the elementary level but with adding someone we haven't figured out what direction we want to head yet to support student needs. So when you look at our middle school we have two guidance counselors. Each service around 500 to 600 students. That's way above what our neighboring districts have. Most of them service between 200 to 300 students. So we can go with the way it's always been but in the last few years we've seen more and more of a need for support and for student support especially at the middle school level. So we would like to
011add another person to provide that support. The next would be to add a fourth district mental health clinician. Our mental health clinicians we started this year. They work one-on-one giving tier three interventions to our most neediest students. They're very busy. Probably more busy than we anticipated them being. So we'd like to add in a fourth person to help with that. Right now we have one person dedicated solely to MEMS and the other two people are going to all the other schools. So a third person would would help that. We'd also like to add a third district BCBA to provide our behavior support. Again we have two BCBAs. We also outsource a third BCBA with the company and those are three people visiting all of our schools. We'd like to have that somebody else to help
012and work with our most neediest students and to help provide those supports to our staff that are struggling with behaviors in the classroom. And a lot of these behaviors you're seeing are disrupting the learning process for every student. So our BCBA helps to train our staff on how to work with students showing the behaviors, how to make sure that our classrooms are still functioning, where everybody has the equal learning opportunity. The next goes to updates and upgrades to our curricular resources and technology. One of the reasons why we're able to get by so long and I think one of the reasons why you're seeing so many districts in the newspaper is we received a good good portion of money during COVID. We usually call them COVID funds but they're actually ESSER federal funds and we
013used a lot of those federal funds to support our curricular needs. We use them a lot to do one-time purchases and that's how we were able to keep current while losing 12 million dollars in state funding and almost 50 million dollars cumulatively. That money has run out and just like anything else our curricular programs need to be updated. We're looking into new language arts programs and we need to have a way to purchase them. The next was to repairs and upgrades to our classroom application systems and the last is to replace aging and adequate network switches to support our instructional programs. So that would be our immediate. That's what we want to make sure is happening right now. Some other long-term goals is we can keep our instructional programs, we can make sure as the
014future continues that we keep our beyond the school day programs. We have effective class sizes that even with the new construction and new more people moving in our class sizes aren't affect it. We be able to keep no student activity fees. This budget again allows for no student activity fees so we want to make sure that keeps continuing in the future and we also want to not be forced to make the decisions we're currently seeing in the paper. So those are what that tax levy incentive means to our budget. So some budget highlights. Due to the previous levy increase and the proposed levy increase we will not see significant budget reductions. Class sizes will not increase. We will expand our instructional programs, we'll expand our student services for counseling, mental health, behavioral health, and we'll
015continue the suspension of student activity fees. I am now going to turn this over to Ms. Wolfe to talk about the technical stuff. Tax levy cap. Tax levy cap is a combination of items. It's a 2% increase over the prior year's tax levy as stated in the previous year's budget plus certain eligible adjustments that were allowed to make related to health care. There's also one for enrollment which obviously we haven't qualified for in a while but we did when we expanded to full-day kindergarten we were able to take advantage of that. So cap is a combination of things. We have taken advantage of all of our cap adjustments since 2007. We've been very diligent in being at cap and as Dr. Santora said earlier that's part of the reason why we are finding ourselves a
016little bit better off than some of these districts that you're reading about in the newspaper because I know personally a lot of them did not take advantage of going to the tax cap and the consequences are what they're seeing now. While we've had minimal increases in state formula aid based on S2 since the implementation of that and even earlier than that there was some fiscal crisis is around the 9-10 school year where the state reduced our aid dramatically but when you compare what we're at now to where we were back in 2009-2010 our state aid is about 13.3 million dollars a year less than what we were receiving there. So it takes a lot to make up that that loss. We are using all of our tax levy adjustments available to us. We have an
017increase in health care costs of about 1.8 million dollars. Unfortunately we are in the state plan and that's the projected increases that they're they're sending to us. We had a small amount of banked cap from last year that we were able to use of about $70,000 and we are taking advantage of the tax levy incentive aid as Dr. Santora said earlier of about 2.8 million dollars. Our tax general fund tax levy which is the general fund is the operating portion of the budget. We are seeing about an 8% increase over the previous year but we are still seeing a net reduction in tax rates for both communities. So the tax rate in both Monalapan and English town will be going down over the current tax rates that we have now for 2024. Every year the
018state puts out what they call taxpayer guide to education spending and it's it breaks school districts down into various categories by grade level and size. So we fall into the category of K to 8 school district with 751 or more students. We are the largest category in the K to 8 grouping. So what it does is it looks at about 25 different indicators that are budgetary and staff related and compares us to the state average and the state median. So for budgetary cost per pupil in these numbers we have always traditionally fallen to the better side of the ranking and I mean by better meaning lower. So we're not on like we're not spending more than the average. We're typically spending less than the average. So of 76 districts in our category we are the
019ninth lowest in in budgetary cost per pupil based on last year's report which means that we're spending about $17,500 per student when the state average for a K to 8 is about 20,000 and the state average for all types of schools is also about 20,000. So there's a significant difference there and that's partly due to our state aid loss where and the inability to make up the difference in tax revenue. Administrative cost per pupil we rank 18th out of 76. So we're looking at about $1,800 per per pupil in admin costs compared to $2,000 for both state average and all other types. If you look down the categories I'm not going to read them all but we are on the better side of all of these equations. So while it does mean that we are
020very fiscally responsible and efficient it also means that we are not spending as much per student as some of the other school districts that are of similar size and complexity that we are which again is related to our S2 situation with the state aid decreases. As I just stated we're about $3,000 per pupil less than the state average when you look at the cost per pupil and when you look at the admin cost per pupil we are about $172 to $261 depending on which one you're comparing us to whether other K-8s or all other school districts. So we are very cost effective, very cost efficient and we do keep these things in mind when we're building our budget. State aid comparison this is just a historical vision of where we are in 2021 to the
021current 2025-26 school year. You'll notice as the years progress our equalization aid has decreased. That's really where we lost state aid in those category there and they also in the current year what they did was they they really ran the formula numbers instead of just getting us to like a net number and keeping things very similar they actually gave us state aid reports that break down our numbers based on the actual formula in the actual categories that that the SFRA includes. So we no longer get equalization aid we did see an increase in transportation aid an increase in special education aid and an increase in security aid. Overall when you look at those those top category of aids which are considered formula aids we did see a decrease of about $17,000. So while it looks
022like we may have gotten more money when you net them off we really are at a reduction of about $17,000. Extraordinary aid is the way the state tries to help us recoup some of our special education costs over certain dollar thresholds that number is based on the number that we received in the previous year we always try to keep it as realistic as possible I don't want to overstate it and then have a shortfall which could have an impact and I don't also want to understate it where we have a windfall we try to really find the middle ground there. We haven't had stabilization aid in several years there is a new category of aid for menstrual products the state will reimburse us for any menstrual products in our sixth to eighth grade buildings so
023we do have a small budget appropriation and offsetting revenue for that that's basically budget neutral $7,500 revenue item and a $7,500 budgetary item so there's there's no really no real impact on the budget over that and then this the amount of that 5% aid number that Dr. Santori mentioned earlier for the offset to the tax levy incentive program of about $142,000. Looking at our base budget this is our entire budget all categories it's not just our operating fund it is also our special revenue fund and it is our debt service fund you can see the progression from the 1920 to the 2526 school year again I'm not going to go over every column but we do have a slight increase this year over last year we do have an increase in the overall budget base
024is about 4% when you look at budget to budget 3 points through actually 3.7 percent you do see in the tax rates in the next column line Menalapin was at 78 cents per thousand of assessed value it is now at 76.8 there is a reduction there English on as well went from 8.2 cents to 7.9 cents per thousand of assessed value our enrollment is fairly stable I think we actually are anticipating a slight increase based on the numbers that dr. Santora had used for the budget projection of about 1.8 1.08 percent this slide outlines our where we come up with our revenue stream or a tax levy cap I'm sorry our tax levy so as I said earlier our prior year budget was 79 million dollars we are allowed a 2% increase on that which
025is about 1.6 million so if you compared this 1.6 million we're allowed to have on our tax levy compared to the increase in our health benefits alone it doesn't even cover half of what we are expecting to have in our health benefit increases so it makes it very difficult to keep pace with cost increases in all areas across the budget we're hearing and I'm sure as a homeowner to you're experiencing electricity costs a natural gas costs property insurance costs are going up our health benefit costs are going up we have salaries with increases so just about everywhere we look we see tech we see increases in our costs but our structured increase in our budgetary revenue stream is very limited we are taking advantage of 1.8 million dollars of automatic adjustment for those increases in
026the health benefit costs it doesn't offset the entire increase it offsets a good portion of it but not entirely we had seventy thousand dollars of bank cap from our prior year the tax levy incentive aid of 2.8 million which brings us to a statutory tax levy cap of eighty five million four hundred nine thousand seven hundred and sixty one dollars which is where we are at which leaves us no bank cap for use in any future years and bank cap is only eligible for three years if you don't use it in three years it falls off and you lose access to it on the overall revenue stream general fund tax levy is eighty four point five approximate million dollars we've got about nine million dollars in state aid small amount of money comes from the
027federal government through semi and Medicaid reimbursement that number has significantly decreased I believe last year was about fifty fifty thousand dollars and it's down to ten the state recalculated how they're going to do a revenue sharing between the state and the districts and unfortunately they're taking a larger piece of the pie so we get less we do all the work unfortunately but we do get less we are using one point two five million dollars from our maintenance reserve we have miscellaneous revenue of all sources of just over a million dollars and then we're using four point seven million dollars of surplus most of which was excess surplus which we are required to use in the current year's budget bringing us to about 101.5 million dollars in our revenues which again equals our appropriations we always
028have to have a balanced budget regular instruction you see the different categories here regular instructions about twenty seven million special ed about eleven point five other areas of instruction are about fourteen million general administration and the school administration are about four point three central services which is my office human resources in the ten the IT department are about two point two million plant and operations at about ten point six transportation six point three employee benefits at twenty four point two million dollars so that's a big chunk of our budget when you compare our employee benefits and our salaries that is really where our budget is it there's not a lot of wiggle room once you factor out staffing and staff related costs doesn't leave us a lot of places to go when we have to
029cut the budget by millions of dollars other than to impact programs through reduction in staffing which increases class sizes and implementation of fees and such which we had to do in the past charter school amount we owe about thirty thousand dollars will probably have one student next year in a charter school locally so we do have a responsibility to pay a part of our state aid to them and then capital outlays a small number about five hundred nineteen thousand dollars which is mostly replacing aging vehicles in the physical plant department that are just becoming unsafe for them to drive again a hundred one point five million dollar appropriations tax levy tax impact this is where I said earlier we are actually going to see a tax rate reduction in both manalapan and English town the
030reduction here is about one point two cents per thousand of assess value so we did some hundred right per thousand of assess value it says per hundred per hundred or per hundred all right sorry I'm thinking you divide it by a thousand sorry we did a couple illustrations here to say if your house is assessed at any of these variables six hundred twenty nine thousand six hundred is the average when you look at information provided by the county tax board that's the average assessment in manalapan so you would see at that level between your 24 and 25 all things remaining equal about a seventy five dollars seventy six dollar reduction in your taxes based on the increase in the tax rate and accordingly you know the different value of home would have different decreases in
031English town you're seeing about two point five cents reduction per hundred of assess value in the tax rate again the illustration four hundred ninety two thousand four hundred is the average for English town so they will see about a hundred and thirty eight thousand dollars I'm sorry hundred and thirty eight dollars not thousand I'm so used to saying thousand everything's big when you're talking budgets of over a hundred million dollars hundred thirty eight dollars per year so that's just an illustration and again you could take your property tax bill from this past year for 2024 and divide your assess value by a thousand that will give you your tax base and then just multiply that by the tax rate that'll give you some sense of where you can expect to be for or at least
032our portion of the tax levy and I think that's it thank you thank you for putting that together it's very informative and thank you for you know everything you miss wolf and dr. centoro and and other staff that helped work on the budget and get us to where we are and I think all things considered we're in a pretty good place you know there's so much sort of working against us that it's not easy and we see what's going on around the state and other districts that are you know struggling to keep buildings open and keep facilities open and they're having to close schools or or do major staff cuts and we've been able to really manage and fare pretty well you know fortunately because of I think you know kudos to our staff for
033really you know thinking ahead and planning ahead over the previous years to you know Matt manage our finances in the best way possible because it really you know it's tough now where you see that payoff right it definitely is a collaborative process though I mean I I do put numbers together but it's it's involves every level of staffing all the department heads the principals the assistant principals so you know curriculum supervisors it really is and we owe you know where we're at I think to to this the collaborative of everyone that touches the budget yeah yeah I couldn't agree more so thank you for that so anyone from the board of any questions about the presentation all right all right well thank you again we are going to move into executive session for a few
034matters yes can I have a motion and a second to adjourn to executive mr. Tessetti and mrs. Herr and that is at 7 59 p.m. and we will be discussing two two matters in closed session it's an HIV appeal regarding student number four zero zero five zero and a potential litigation matter with the borough of English town I how long do we expect to be in closed now about 45 minutes so um there are some refreshments too that we do have a presentation or later in the evening from our food service management staff and company so please feel free to snack a little bit while you're waiting for us there's some beverages as well all in favor of going into closed session at 8 59 I anyone opposed noted we're good thank you all right
035we are back and open and we are moving on with our agenda changes and revisions anything else to add Nicole you have to read the resolution what number is it G my microphone's not on I'm sorry G one resolution overturning the decision of the superintendent and HIV matter involving student four zero zero five zero whereas now putting this town regional school district received a report of an incident of harassment intimidation and bullying and whereas the district promptly investigated the report it pursuant to board policy whereas the parents of the student a student involved in the investigation requested a hearing before the Board of Education whereas at a meeting on May 6th the board held a hearing pursuant to statute and whereas after considering the position of the parents and the student and the evidence presented
036by the school administration the board has determined to overturn the determination of the superintendent now therefore it be resolved that the man alpha English town Board of Education pursuant to statute hereby overturns the superintendent's decision in HIV matter involving the student okay what she said and that's I had no changes I don't know anything else all right thank you moving on to public comment if anyone would like to speak please come up to the microphone you have three minutes floor is open as seeing that there is no one here for public comments public comments is now closed thank you okay for the board's info Nicole or Jody would you like to speak regarding the the high school art program sure one of our parents is a teacher at Monalaf in high school and he the
037kindergartner students create projects and then they turn them into clay statues and then they come and they present them back to the students so they don't need really need board approval but we think it's a nice thing that we want that the board to be aware yeah awesome it sounds like a fun interaction for the kids yeah very cool all right thank you all right moving on to our action items can I have a motion and a second on items G G G 1 G is it one through seven no it's just that's just administration G 1 is is the HIV okay so gee I could have motion a second on item G 1 Kelly mr. and Kelly Lucas mr. and Kelly thank you any questions I just had a discussion point yeah regarding this
038resolution I think it's extremely unfortunate that the board is passing this resolution I think it undermines our staff and I think it undermines the victim in this case so I'm proudly voting no on this thank you thank you anyone else Ronnie I'll just want to address mr. Green's comments I don't think that a yes vote lessens of victims feelings or actions that happened to that victim I don't appreciate saying that those of us that are gonna pass this resolution are minimizing actions and minimizing the feelings of a victim thank you Jamie I just also would like to add that I I agree with mr. to study in that I don't think it minimizes the victims or I would I'd like to say that that's not the intent I do I think there's a very big
039difference in voting asked to pass the resolution doesn't necessarily mean that we don't feel the victim was a victim we don't necessarily feel that it was conclusive enough as far as who the person was that was being charged with the hip so and and I think it's important as a board that we do our due diligence and it's not undermining the admin I think you know we're all humans and if if we have children in this district that have a hit brought against them and their parents want to come I think it's right that we just make sure that we look at everything and we vote based on the evidence that was given to us and I don't think that at least for my sake I value our admins but again with the information that
040was present I think we have to do our due diligence to everyone involved to make sure that we vote based on the evidence that was given in so I just wanted to add that thank you sure Mr. Kane you have something oh no anyone else all right Ronnie go ahead mr. I am a no mr. Green no this is her yes mr. Kane no mrs. Lucas yes mr. Tosetti yes and dr. Wallace yes so that's four three that is successful thank you okay moving on action items H our budget adoption items H one through seven can I have a motion and a second please mr. Green and mr. Kane any questions and please understand that they all they all have to be they all go together like you can't really vote yes on one and
041no on them because they all they all inter relate to each other just to make that point okay mr. Green yes mrs. Herr yes mr. Kane yes mrs. Lucas yes mr. Tosetti yes dr. Wallace yes and mr. Ferber yes that is successful thank you thank you I have a motion and a second on business items I one through I ate mr. Tosetti mrs. Wallace any question I want to apologize in advance I'm not I didn't get a chance to ask this question earlier I see that on six and seven we're buying vehicles from way way outside of our county our city how does that process work like when we're buying a vehicle like is it like RFP and then the dealers come to us with a price or something I'm just trying to figure out
042how how come we bought buses in Mount Holly and vans and Ram vans in Morristown maybe the buses only get sold in Mount Holly like I'm not I meant to send this earlier I apologize I'm not trying to be difficult I'm just curious you know like our community supports us it'd be nice with purchases like that to support our community the the buses we have maintained a fleet that is basically similar makes and models so when you're looking at you're either buying bluebirds or you're buying this particular model different vendors sell different models of bus and it is beneficial to have the fleet as similar as possible because of maintaining parts and and repair supplies and things like that we also have to look for something like this to purchase off of a state contract
043or a cooperative contract because of going out to bid we also have to look and see there aren't that many vendors that sell buses like that on the flip side with the maintenance vehicles I would imagine that Jeff and his team had a specific type of truck in mind and we knew our budget parameters when they could afford to do and then this is where they were able to find it again this is also a contracted vendor under a co-op so we do have to look to to keep things otherwise we have to go to bid on our own for yeah no I appreciate it thank you I was just quite curious like I said I apologize for not sending it to you for earlier in the day thank you go ahead Ronnie okay any
044other questions mrs. her yes mr. Kane yes mrs. Lucas yes mr. to study yes mr. Ferber yes and mr. green yes thank you those are successful can I have a motion and a second on action item on curriculum j1 through j7 to study and mrs. her once again I have an apology for not send this email to you and put you on the spot can you just explain a little bit about number one teacher visit like is that a observation is that them trying to look at one of our programs like I'm sure it's all positive I just like I said I apologize had every intention of emailing you this before today and blindside new I apologize but I'm ready for it don't worry we are all set one of the teachers from the McDivitt
045school in Old Bridge would like to observe a teacher implementing daily three cycles so that teacher is at Clark Mills school so in order for that teacher to come into our schools board approval is necessary they're looking to see what we do because it's exemplary thank you anyone else go ahead around mr. Kane yes mrs. Lucas yes mr. Chesetti yes mr. Ferber yes mr. green yes and mrs. her yes as a successful thank you thank you can I have motion in a second on personnel items k1 through 21 mrs. Wallace mr. Kane any questions anyone go ahead Ronnie mrs. Lucas yes mr. Chesetti yes dr. Wallace yes mr. Ferber yes mr. green yes mrs. her yes mr. Kane yes thank you those are successful and this is student matters L1 and I have a motion
046a second on items L1 mrs. her and mrs. Lucas just call it any questions anyone all right thank you mr. Chesetti yes mr. Ferber yes mr. green yes mrs. her yes mr. Kane yes and mrs. Lucas yes that's successful and that concludes the action portion of the agenda great thank you okay we are moving on to our very patient guests from pomptonian mrs. Figueroa and mrs. Ogle oh be careful you won't be tomorrow you'll remember that hi my name is Heather Ogle this is Chrissy Figueroa Victoria will be back with us in a minute as we come to the end of the school year we just want to give you some things that we've been doing this year this year we started a breakfast program at Taylor Milford it's been successful we're gonna be moving
047it on to the rest of the district next year Chrissy had taken over my position this year so she's the new director she is doing wonderful things with Victoria we're doing more scratch made cooking and everything else like chicken parm from scratch like with we had local funding this year so we did fresh produce whole meats legumes like all these other different items that she's currently using and Victoria she has a culinary background so they're doing really great things like I think I said we're looking forward to implementing the breakfast program that's something that we are we were required to do at the two locations this year because of the level of free and reduced population at that school at those two schools and then it's been expanded to the rest of the district for
048the for the following year so that that's something that's pretty big for us to be implementing which is it's a challenge but it's it's a good thing for kids yes so it's free for the students who qualify but all children have the right to go and get breakfast yes so parents that aren't morning people can send in some money and have pick up breakfast versus making it mm-hmm absolutely I would like that yeah I may stop it now for breakfast and we have I monthly get an update from Mark Vitovich with the president knows that marks the president I guess there's it really candy candies but we do we are on target with our revenues for the year even without some of the larger cove it type revenues that we've had we've had significant revenue
049streams from cove it and in the past few years which have so somewhat inflated our earnings but we're still on target this year for what our revenue structure is and we should and the with a profit so and then you were the profit and be good with that we will put that back into the program we purchase smallwares and update equipment as needed make necessary repairs things that are permitted within the child nutrition guidelines because there are certain things we can't use the money for but we do make the most of it and put it back into the program yes and we appreciate that and and your food is absolutely phenomenal question so I wanted to know based on a lot of things happening with the new administration with Health and Human Services and all
050these initiatives with removing certain ingredients and products you know what changes or is there other changes you guys are looking at in terms of you know implementing some of those initiatives and and any plans to you know change up ingredients going forward well a lot of our vendors are reformulating a lot of the products to meet the new standards so we have to go with the new standards so like they're reducing the sodium restriction so those items are going to be reformulated for schools a lot of the items that parents see in our schools are not like the Doritos they're not the typical Doritos they're reduced fat their whole grain like a lot of the items are formulated just for schools it's not something that is like you buy off the shelf at the store
051is there a timeline that trying to meet in terms of making those changes whatever the state guidelines are we tend to follow those yeah the manufacturers have to have to be the ones that kind of it's like anything else with supply chain issues and I imagine you may have some supply chain issues as we go forward being uncertain with certain products where it's coming from a lot of our items are required to be by American so like some of the items like we do have the ability to buy some items with a waiver and other restrictions but most of it is by American and they did have a local food for schools program which tried to incentivize us making purchases from local farms within the community like Jesse like you said to try to really
052support our local people but I believe that that's been discontinued this the coming year yeah we're spending down whatever's left of our allotment and that's not going to move forward no unfortunately not I had a question you said you were making stuff from scratch is that at every school like I know every school's got a kitchen set up or is that like piloted at other school how's that word most of like our fresh like salads and stuff and different things that they're working on that are menued at the elementary school are prepared at mems but mems is getting like some of the other items that are like the raw chicken just based on like culinary experience and stuff so we cook some of that stuff out there and then send it out so the chicken
053farms getting cooked at mems could be chicken parm being cooked at mems well the elementary schools don't have chicken parm men a radish slaw for Cinco de Mayo so I made 70 pounds of radish slaw sent it out to all the schools so they all do participate in the fruit and vegetable of the month program so anything that can be made in our kitchen and sent to them we do and our driver will deliver it in the morning that way we can you know try to give the kids a different taste and not so much yeah they're not full cooking kitchens like we have here I mean this is impressive yes yeah just so Jen gets you on the video so yeah every every every kitchen has its challenges with storage space with cooler space
054you know we try to optimize as much as we can and we've reconfigure where we can push some stuff out into the cafeteria or cafeteria serving area like the stations and but there are limitations of the buildings especially the elementaries for actually making a lot of cooking work they're more warming and and reheating I am also just wanted to make a comment my children just left MERS last year however I will say that our food service is top-notch I can tell you because I've worked in several districts myself in the area and in Monmouth all throughout the state but nothing proves it more I obviously don't go to school with my kids so I don't see what they eat and I too I'm gonna put the money on the school account and let someone else
055feed you because it's one less thing I have to do and I just they never complained I assumed it was good but during kovat when I saw what we were getting home we would pick up the lunches and and and everything that came and what people in my family and my friends were getting at their schools was almost inedible in comparison so I was like oh now I know why you guys want all that lunch money so you guys do a phenomenal job feeding our children we I don't think you realize the quality that our children get in this district until you see what some of the other schools get and it's a real testament to what you do every day so thank you how did how did um the did we did anyone take
056part in them like the Ramadan like with the with the fasting and all that it wasn't a ton of kids it was definitely worth sending the students home with their meals okay because I was something new this year that they let us do it varied depending on the week okay it was it was a good thing I think to continue to do next year if they offer the waiver again okay yeah because the state that was something offered by the state that we took advantage of that's good okay that comes along sorry we did not do sushi at mems this year we did not did not we did a fresh pasta promotion we didn't yeah yeah we did a fresh pasta promotion at all of the elementary schools this year so our sister company brings
057in a pasta machine with a pasta chef and all the kids get to see them make the pastas there's a bunch of different promotions that they do they have an omelet promotion so towards the end of this year I'll be scheduling for next year the kids can buy fresh pasta to bring home so their parent I would send a notice to the principals the parents would get the email and they were able to buy fresh pasta to bring home for them to cook for dinner so yeah the kids really enjoy the watching the pasta machine be made he makes he plays Italian music sets up so it's nice to see it made fresh what you're eating for lunch that day I like the little informational stuff that comes in the video too like what was
058like the picking corn in the cornfield and like they're fun to watch yeah is there any other questions so thank you for coming I'm sorry you're here so late I know you have a very early morning oh that's awesome thank you so much thank you thank you so much Rebecca can you boot me up again or dr. Cere could you please turn on the computer for me thank you are you ready for me to go into the presentation okay so this is our end-of-year goals presentation it is normally our mid-year goals presentation but when I normally do it between we had a lot going on with the redistricting so we kind of put it on hold we put it on hold and it went from mid-year to end of year so this is normally the
059presentation that we will do in March just so you know I have drafted a letter that includes the budget presentation and this presentation and I will be sending it out to the whole community within a day or two so that they can see both which is normal usually there's two separate emails now it's one letter for both I'm not going to read through everything but I will we go down two more slides just kind of an overview so basically we had three goals this year our goals tend to be somewhat consistent from year to year we modify them based on what we saw the previous year to improve them but they're always around the same topics right it's learning environment making sure we're providing environment that is safe and nurturing and for the children to
060be able to learn how we were that looks differently a little bit differently each year but it's usually around that learning environment the second is about academic mental and behavioral support right what are we doing to make sure that we meet the needs of every student and we meet the needs of every student in those three areas academic behavioral and mental and then the third is usually about staff training so that that's usually how we classify them and again they change based on what we're doing that year but they're always around those three areas so this year our first goal was a district will continue to implement comprehensive strategies and resources to foster an inclusive school community where every student feels valued supported and empowered to reach their full potential to is the district will
061continue to utilize a variety forms of standard-based data and implement special programs including RTI and gifted and talented to address students growth premised on individual cognitive effective and behavioral student needs and the last the district will continue to support and apply instructional and assessment practices aligned with the 2022 Danielson framework for teaching evaluation rubrics model school principles and high-effects instructional strategies to reflect strategic thinking require authentic application of concepts and increase academic outcomes what I did I did the presentation a little differently this year each goal has two slides one is what is new for this year and then one is one of the stuff that we reoccur for this presentation it's after ten o'clock at night I am NOT going to go through what we've done in the past like I said I'm sending
062it out please feel free to read what we've done in the past but I don't like always just saying oh we're doing the same thing every year because we don't we add new things and I think it's good to highlight that so new for this year we had created a bank of guidance resources about different things we've been seeing in the classroom we put in place some different new parent support such as a book study on student anxiety MEMS is currently working with Rutgers through a grant to launch a new positive behavior intervention and support program schoolwide it is actually going very well we've received very positive feedback on it WEMROC is working with the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education on a grant centered around inclusive practices in special education that too I believe
063is going very well we hired three mental health clinicians which was new for this year and they are giving our students tier three support and we are we had actually written this many years ago right before COVID we were supposed to implement it COVID happened we didn't implement it and this is the first year I'm excited to say that we're implementing social studies and family engagement activities that bring parents into our classrooms that focus on the diversity of our community as a whole so now if you want to go to goal two so the goal two is split into three parts the first is our cognitive so we update the curriculum miss Pipchinski went over all that work in August I'm not going to rehash all that but all that has been updated we updated
064the RTI protocols mr. DeMarco explained that a few months ago my my original message to last month but now we're months out so a few months ago she went over all that and then we continue and what you just Jesse had just asked about we continue to have neighboring districts visit us and seek guidance on our RTI programs as well as other programs due to the success and I think that speaks volumes when when other districts are saying we need to come into your district to see what you're doing it means we're doing something right which we'll get to later when we talk about the success on our state assessments so if you go to goal to effective emotional new and behavioral that one yes thank you so new for this year we've created the
065two BCBA positions and there they really focus on student behavior they work in collaboration with the special education coach I talked about this a little earlier as well when we talked about the budget but they really are there to support the teachers and give the teachers resources and give them support on what they can do in the classroom when working with children that are showing behavioral needs we also create a district registered behavior technicians or rbt's we have seen the need increased need for rbt's they work directly with students under the direction of the BCBA they're like an instructional assistant with a little more knowledge on behavior or certification on behavior I should say not knowledge certification but we had in the past had outsourced some of this and we're now bringing in into our
066district and our own people and then we also like I said before create the three mental health clinician positions we will can now go to goal three of what's new goal three is a variety of updates on the teacher evaluation system when we implemented the new teacher evaluation system we're continuing to you know provide professional development to our staff and administrators on how it works and then we've continued our for PD on focused on high effects size instructional strategies and we go over something new each month with the teachers some of the stuff is stuff we had done years ago but we go back and revisit it to keep it fresh and in teachers minds I just had went to a presentation on this on my problem solving problem-solving teaching and it was fabulous so
067now can we go to data okay so this is our I'm actually I didn't have the actual presentation pulled up but I am going to jump to it so every year the New Jersey Department of Ed releases the year before is NJSLA assessment data and what they do is they give you this big report and it has every district every school in the state and then you can play with it you can sort it you can you can play around with it so there's two things that I do when I filter it and when I show you these numbers that's what you should know that it's off of one I remove anyone that doesn't have test scores because they don't have test scores and then I look at I remove any of the charter schools
068because they have they function a little differently than public schools so when you're looking at this it's comparing us to public schools not charter schools and people that actually had scores so this is the all the original data can be found on that link you have access to it you can open it you can go through it this was my data analysis of the data the next slide is district ELA scores so if you look at this as a district on all grade levels we scored in the top 12 to 22 percent of the state so what I do is I take the mean score for the district and then I hit sword and it just puts them in order and then I count to see how far down we are so there could be
069multiple districts with the same mean score I don't take that into consideration I just count where we are in the list so if you look at this in I have too many tabs open if you look at this we are between again 12 to 22 percent in the state so out of anywhere between 498 districts to 458 districts you're like why is there a different number of districts because there's some districts that are k6 there's some districts that are k8 so the number of districts changes based on that you have regionals that send to a 712 district so that's why the numbers look different there that's how we did I do want to say that I think which I say every year it's really impressive our district is very huge right we're comparing ourselves to
070some districts that are very small you when you have 30 students you may have higher test scores than a district that has 500 in a grade so the amount of progress that we have with such a large number of students and our socioeconomic status although high is not nearly the highest in New Jersey so we're also comparing against districts with smaller populations much higher socioeconomic and we are definitely we're on the top 12 to 22 percent I think it's very impressive and I do think that a lot of this is due to that individualized support we provide a lot of this is due to RTI a lot of this is due to the data meetings that the principals have with staff it's due to us looking at each individual child and saying what can we
071do to for that child our problem-solving meetings if you want to just go to math that should be next for the next is math math is always very very very good so for math we were in the top 6 to 17 percent which again is very impressive if you go back to English I just want to say one other thing I think this is an anomaly in our data and I don't see this in a lot of districts so I just want to bring it to your attention our children get better as they get older and that's not something you see in a lot of districts and a lot of districts districts start off strong with the younger students and then as they get older they get disaffected and and the scores start to go
072down we see just the opposite we start in third grade with 22 percent fourth grade 21 percent and by eighth grade we're at 15 percent and at 12 percent so that again has to do with our programs and are focusing on individual students every year we're like narrowing down who we're focusing on what supports we're giving them and you're seeing that growth straight through for science fifth grade was at 21 percent eighth grade was at 29 percent very good and then the next report I'm not going to go through each school but it breaks down each school by grade level and and overall we're fairly consistent you always see a grade that is a little often in the school and you're like what happened to third grade there or fourth grade there and there's a
073lot of things that take into a place you may have teachers going out you may have a different group of students so we kind of look at it overall but I think it's still important to share the other thing when you look at the schools the numbers for middle school are going to look different so in ELA for instance for middle school it was for eighth grade out of 548 districts but when you look at this for schools it's out of 686 schools so that's important to recognize because there's many districts that have two middle schools that the percentages may look different under schools than under districts and you may be like but it's the same scores how does that why are they different because you're comparing against different things in the first slide I
074showed you you were comparing against district so there's 458 districts in this slide we're comparing against middle schools and you know for the schools you don't really see that because it's the district as a whole but I do want to say why the numbers look different and again overall I'm very proud of our district and our schools and the progress that we're seeing and the progress that we're seeing over time that our students are just improving the next one is math and then we have our school science so in summary this year our motto is empowering minds inspiring futures we we definitely strive to reach that goal every day we utilize a variety of data points to identify potential academic gaps and have meaningful conversations through data meetings and problem solving to create these plans
075and year after year we can see how that is paying off we focus on the whole child we include their social and emotional needs through a variety of measures and supports and that is also showing that that it plays into this and we're excited to continue on this course and look to the future and keep finding ways to make sure our students are more and more successful and make our district a better place for them I know I spoke fast but it's late I wanted to keep your attention it's appreciated but still thorough thank you so is there any questions on this I had a question just related to looking at some of the data so when you see let's say a particular school where you know they're averaging first second third fourth you know
076they're nine percent twelve percent thirteen you know more or less same ballpark and then maybe at fourth grade or fifth grade there's a jump to twenty two percent which is still strong but it's a you know it's a big jump from where they were in other grades how do you address that or you know does that get looked at and yeah so this summer what we do is during the summer we look at all this data and then during our cabinet meeting we sit down and we analyze the data we talk amongst each other we talk about what we're seeing different grade levels why that could be we talked about what different things are doing so like if one school shows a large increase in their in their achievement then we'll ask that school what
077did you do differently this year what did you try can you share it the supervisors also spent a lot of time analyzing the data they meet with the principals they follow up as to why there may be an anomaly one year sometimes it's the group of children sometimes like I said you may have every teacher out on maternity leave and you have no one in that building that's taught that grade level before but usually we they get back on track Nicole I just had a quick question do we have this version like just like the these pages from the year before to see the growth oh yeah okay yeah cuz I'm just curious because I feel like yeah I feel like we've seen it before but I'm just curious to see you know how how
078they schools I feel like these scores are better if I recall in in some areas anyway it depends yes certain schools but barely consistent though yes and then what are we like I guess there's some schools I know when we say some that have the greater growth one year we kind of tap into it and be like hey what do you do and share if there's a school that we see the opposite like they're scoring their percentages even though it's so good but we talk about that too now I mean are we gonna do we do that something similar to like hey you know yes the supervisors will meet with the principal they'll follow up sometimes we have larger conversations depending on what it is but yes we absolutely follow up and take into consideration
079programs I guess to like it our programs are all consistent okay so no I mean like you know certain schools house certain grade levels but I was I gonna say oh I know what I was gonna say if you know our principals are all type-a and they're very competitive they have one percentage point that that goes down they're like calling up telling on themselves hi did you see I'm down one percentage and then you have to calculate like well that was two children different than last year you know like so two children left from last year's class performed better than two children from this year's class it's okay but you know we'll keep looking at it but no we're not our administrators do not take it lightly and they all want to win okay well
080that's what I love to hear but they I will say as much as they want to win for their own building they also all support each other and each other's buildings and I think that's amazing that they will jump in help anyone that has a question who you know is asking them what they do they want everyone to be successful they just want them to be like this much more but I'll send you last year's too I didn't put it in here the comparison because like sometimes we go up one percentage here two percentage here that's one or two children and then it gets confusing I you know like we went up one here we went down here yeah it's not large enough to make a significant difference I'll send it to you real quick
081total schools in New Jersey right yeah on the bottom yes I'm just curious where the number comes from per grade like per testing right because in sixth grade there's 778 for both but then this one's 683 and then on the other side it's 686 and then this one's 679 and on the other one is 632 I just take the list that they give me and I just I take out anyone that doesn't have a score and I take out charter schools and then whatever the end number is is what it is so some of them may not have enough students in that grade level to test if they're a really small district okay no I was just trying for I would have thank you no that's why it looks confusing anyone else have anything okay
082thank you Nicole all right we are going to move on to board business new are new and old I'll start with Kelly do you have anything mr. green no nothing tonight Jamie I actually do I had the pleasure of having some gelato at gelato day with senora Chiano and I got to dance the tarantella with her and the children and it was a lot of fun so she does an amazing job the parents there were some grandparents I believe mr. Santoro's wife and in laws were there so we all just had a great time everyone had fun some of us didn't understand the conversations that were going on there was a lot of Italian going around the room the children just like they did when they were here they showcased what they're learning in class
083and it was just a lot of fun the kids had fun the adults had fun and I think the kids are really lucky to have her as their teacher so if you have not gone to gelato day you are missing out nothing says breakfast like gelato so yeah these wonderful test scores right and that's a direct result of the teachers that we have in our district so I just want to take a minute and recognize national teacher recognition week appreciation week and thank all of the teachers for everything they do for all the kids in all of our schools yeah go ahead Serena I'm sorry no I'm good a couple of things thank you for the presentation and yes again thank you to our staff all our buildings for obviously your hard work and clearly
084the results you know year after year usually are pretty impressive and I'm glad to see us continuing on that path of you know really standing at the top of the schools in our state so great work everyone and yes again thank you to everyone teachers and staff this is teacher and staff appreciation week so everyone you have the opportunity thank you say thank you to your your kids teacher for all the hard work they do a couple of things I wanted to point out Clark Mills has their chorus concert coming up May 14th we have a CPEG meeting this Wednesday so for anyone that is interested to attend you should have received notification and that is this Wednesday also related to CPEG we have created a role a board liaison to the CPEG group and
085that person is Jamie Herr so thank you for Jamie for taking on that role and you know we look forward to just working more cohesively with CPEG and being able to support them in any way possible and I think having this liaison in place is really going to help create that communication between us and them and again help us to be able to offer support where it's needed yeah Jesse I think that's everything I got on my notes so I am good thank you yeah go ahead this Saturday Mercer County Community College is the state delegate assembly I'll be attending as the board's representative for that and then I'll come back and discussed thank you Jesse dr. Santora that's a wrap well that's a wrap all right I had a lot to get a motion
086in a second to adjourn the meeting Jesse Jamie thank you meeting adjourned officially we're at 10 30 p.m.