04-01-25 Manalapan-Englishtown Board Of Education Meeting

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 or hand delivery of said notice to the designated newspapers, the Aspect Park Press and the Manhattan Patch, filing with the clerk of Manhattan Township and the clerk of English Town Borough. I'm going to call the roll. Mr. Ferber is absent at the moment. Mr. Green? Here. Mrs. Her? Is absent at the moment. Mr. Kane? Here. Mrs. Lucas? Here. Mrs. Parisi? Here. Mr. Santoro? Here. Mr. Tostetti? Is absent at the moment. And Dr. Wallace? Here. All right. Do you have a quorum? Please rise for the flag salute. From the United States of America, considering public for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty

002and justice. All right. Thank you. Hey, thank you for everyone for being real patient. I know a lot of you were sitting here for a little while waiting for things to get started. So thank you for that. And we are going to go into our workshop for the evening, starting with our redistrict proposal update. I'm going to hand it over to the superintendent. Hi, everyone. Sorry. I'd like to thank everyone who had reached out to me and the board over the last few days and provided feedback. We have carefully considered your input and taken it into consideration and took it very seriously. One of the primary concerns that were raised was about siblings attending different schools. In response to your feedback, we have revised the resolution on tonight's agenda. So if you look at the

003agenda itself, there is an exception for an option for fourth and fifth grade students to remain at Taylor Mills. Additionally, siblings of those fourth and fifth grade students will be allowed to stay at Taylor Mills School for the duration that their fourth or fifth grade siblings are enrolled, after which they would then transition to Lafayette Mills School. If the resolution is approved, I will send a letter within the next couple of days, which will include a survey for those granted an exemption and explain next steps. I'd like to now turn it over to Mr. Duffy, who's going to talk a little bit, and sorry, and Ms. Singer. So Mr. Duffy, the principal of Lafayette Mills School, and Ms. Singer, the assistant principal of Lafayette Mills, that's going to talk a little bit about their proposed

004transition plan. We're on here. So welcome, everybody. Can you, is this okay for the recording purposes, Jen? All right. So, Lindsay, come on over here. So we said at the last meeting, or I said at the last meeting, we want to run more of a partnership, okay, with you, and moving forward, kind of a couple of highlighted ideas. Some things we typically do, so for example, new student orientation always happens every year. That's not special. But custom tours for each of your families would be something that is, you know, individualized to you. An ambassador program where our fourth and fifth graders, we talked about, you know, the fifth graders will be there as leaders for our fourth graders, and they will help our ambassadors guide you through the building at an evening event. And at

005that same evening event, those same fourth graders would be there the following year as mentors if that opportunity arose or where the need arose where you wanted a child perspective on the tours and just how the building functions differently than Taylor or any other building because they're all unique. Ms. Singer and I also spoke beyond the meet and greet, but the invitation to our annual Lafayette Mills PTA, they would be invited as typical parent. And it's May 30th. It's a Friday night. It's our best event of the year. It's huge in our backyard. Pretty much every staff member comes, and we would love for you to join us if you are coming. Just see what our school is about and meet the whole staff. And you get to throw pies at me. And me, yes.

006Yeah, yeah. So that, Mrs. Cooperman is in the back. She's got the best arm of the staff so she can tell you all about it. I think the other purpose tonight was also to introduce ourselves as people that would be here for you. In other words, we'll be here tonight to answer any questions. I have two teachers in the room as well. They can answer questions from a teacher perspective and a parent perspective because their children went through Lafayette Mills Elementary School. We're available to you. I've heard from a few parents. The other thing, Ms. Singer noticed a few prospective students playing on Friday at our playground. I would encourage you to do the same. Visit. See what we're all about. You know, if you, again, want a tour at that time, that's fine also.

007But just to come over and play on the weekend, it's a nice place to visit. And even after school, a lot of our students who do parent pickup, they stay and all the kids play on the playground. So when I left on Friday, I noticed a few students I'd never saw before. So I walked over and it was Taylor Mills students coming to check out the playground and just meeting them. And they got to meet some of our students. So anytime you would like to do that, please let us know. And we can add that in with a tour as well. So those are our highlights for this evening. Can you talk a little bit about how you're planning on scheduling the students? So, you know, we talked, I've talked to some individual parents and

008I have also talked to Ms. Singer. If you are comfortable, and I would assume comfort is there that you want to be cohorted or clustered, I think was the word you used, Ms. Singer, then you will be clustered with other students from Taylor Mills. If, however, there's always an exception, you did not want that, then you would have to communicate with either of us about that and say, I would like my child to be able to make new friends in a way where, you know, it's outside of the Taylor mold. And that's okay, too. What I don't want to do is box people in to a particular situation in which they're uncomfortable. So I just want to make it very clear that we will cohort when it's appropriate and when requested by you, that's something

009you as a parent will have some control over. And I think that's important. Does the board have any questions for Mr. Duffy or Ms. Singer? Sorry, I'm trying to get back to you. No. Okay. I would like to thank you both for coming tonight and presenting and sharing your vision for successfully acclimating the Taylor Mills students to Lafayette community. So thank you. You're welcome. We'll be in the back. Okay. Thank you. So at our workshop, we're going to talk about the tax levy aid. And then after that, we will open up to public comment. Ronnie, do you want to go over kind of how the aid came about? As districts were working their way through the S2 state aid reductions and loss of aid, we're expressing the fact that it was really difficult for us

010to really respond to it in any kind of appropriate way because of the fact that our tax levy was kept. So while we were losing state aid in, you know, the millions and millions of dollars, there was no way to go about recouping any of that through the tax levy, regardless of the situation of whether a district was over or under adequacy or over or under local fair share. So last year, the state allowed us to make some adjustments. And again, this year, they offered to districts that are spending below adequacy, which is how they measure us against what they consider thorough and efficient education and spending and also taxing their local community under their local fair share to raise their tax levy by a certain amount to the point where they get us to

011adequacy. It's a difference between where we're spending in our adequacy budget. And 5% of that, they will match as a state aid program. So what we're asking tonight is for the ability for us to submit the application. And as Dr. Santora confirmed with the county superintendent and executive business official today, that it's basically just an application at this point. It gives us the permission to move forward should we choose to. It does have a deadline of April 14th, which is during our spring break. So we really did need to act on this tonight. It does require a board resolution granting permission. So that's where we are this evening. We've looked at what we would like to do and just need a little more time to finalize some of the figures and the numbers and work

012everything through. But this is our first step. So just to build on that, we got the email that we could apply for this at 3 o'clock Friday. So it's not that we waited on it or we're trying to rush a decision. 3 o'clock Friday, we got the notification. I actually called the county superintendent because I had some questions on what the money could be spent on. Ronnie reached out to the business county, the business official at the county to find out some more information. We actually also again reached out today what we were looking at doing. And it's very important that any money that comes to us has to be spent on a thorough and efficient education. Right, Ronnie? Thorough and efficient. I don't know why my words aren't working today, but I'm going to

013work really hard to make them better. So one of the things that we're looking at is the additional additional classroom teachers to lower class sizes. We have a number of new communities coming in. We're starting to see that increase. There's a ton more units being developed. So you look at Menalapin Grove, which is supposed to be completed next to June's from now. They right now are sending to Milford Brook. There was one hundred and seventy five units. Seventy have sold. Sixty six have closed. And we've 19 students so far from there. Menalapin Landing will be going to the ELC in Weymark Brook. Their work, their completion date is March 26th. There's one hundred and fifty units total. Seventy seven have sold. Twenty six have closed. And we've gotten ten students so far. And Cantor Square,

014which by far is going to be the largest, is not going to be completed until fall 27 or January 28. So we're looking at three years out. They have two hundred and twenty four total units. Twenty four have sold. Twelve have closed. We have four students from there already. So we're looking at increases and we want to make sure that we plan accordingly for that. Right now, our class number, our class sizes are where we like them in range. However, as the new students come in, they're going to start to get larger. They're where they normally are at this time of year, but they're normally at this time of year without all these developments being built. So we are a little concerned about that. We also have some special education needs where we're trying to

015make sure we're providing the least restrictive environment for students. And as we do that, we need more teachers to provide that environment. We also are looking at increasing our number of behavioral and mental health supports, possibly through the addition of another BCBA and another mental health clinician. Currently, we have two BCBAs for the whole district and we also use an agency for a third. And we also have three mental health clinicians. One mental health clinician is stationed at just MEMS and the other two are split between our seven other schools. So we would like to increase that to be able to provide more support. And then the other thing that MEMS has been asking me for a very long time for and we just haven't had the money to do would be to add a

016guidance counselor or an SEL interventionist, which is what we call our guidance counselor at the elementary level, to provide more support. Right now, our guidance counselor ratio is about 600 to 1. When you compare that to all the other districts in the regional, we're double. We're double where they are. So we'd like to be able to provide that extra support. That being said, MEMS has always been like that, but times have changed. Students' needs have changed. And it's something that they would like, but we just haven't been able to fund. And last is curricular programs. We're looking at piloting and then looking into a new ELA program. One of the reasons when we lost $50 million cumulatively over the last seven years, one of the reasons why we were able to sustain our curricular programs

017was through the use of the ESSER funds or what people refer to as the COVID funds. Right. We use COVID money to keep our district running. The COVID money is gone. And programs that we bought 10 years ago need to be revisited. And we don't have the budget currently for that. Ms. Pipchinski keeps sending me all these expensive programs that she thinks will be great for children. Wonderful programs. And it gives me a little panic attack when I look at, you know, she's piloting next year for implementation the following year where I'm going to find the funds from. So those are where we'd want to use these funds. All the funds would go directly to students, to helping students, to lowering class sizes, to providing more supports, and also to making sure we continue. What

018we've always had is one of the best curricular programs around. Again, as Ronnie said, this is just allowing us to submit the application. It does not mean that we're definitely going to go forward. That would still be voted on when the time comes. It's just the application. Ronnie, do you want to just talk briefly about what you estimate at the tax impacts? Yes. And I just want to preface before you begin. So when you look at all the new houses and being built, you think, oh, well, what does that do for the schools? Well, for the schools, it adds more children that we have to educate. Right. But for you as the taxpayers, our tax levy is set on the previous year. So we can only do 2% of the previous year. So more houses,

019more children does not mean more funding for us. What it does mean is that your taxes are now spread out amongst more people. So when you calculate it, what did you? Actually, the budget as introduced and adopted tentatively on March 18th, I was projecting, based on those figures, a tax rate reduction. I was expecting that Monalapin would see a 2.5 cent reduction in their tax rate and English Town would see a 5.3 cent reduction in their tax rate. Taking advantage of the full effect of the tax levy adjustment and the incentive would still result in a tax rate decrease. It would cut it in about half. Monalapin would be at a 1.2 cent decrease and English Town would be at a 2.8 cent decrease. So even taking advantage of this additional funding opportunity, which we

020don't have otherwise available to us under normal circumstances, we're still going to see a tax rate reduction. I can't tell exactly what that means for each individual property owner. I could give you a formula that would tell you how to estimate what your impact might be based on your assessed value. Part of, as Dr. Santora said, the assessed value of the two communities went up by over a billion dollars this past year from 2024 to 2025. So that's really what is helping to drive the tax rate decreases. And as Dr. Santora said, new houses and new properties coming onto the tax rolls don't mean anything to us. We don't get advantage to take any advantage of the dollars that are coming into the community. Our levy is based on a percentage increase over the prior

021year. So that's a very important thing to understand. And the total amount we were eligible for is just under $3 million. Of that amount, we would qualify for about $145,000 of state aid as part of that. According to the state numbers, our local fair share, we're currently 25, almost $26 million below our local fair share, which means the state, according to their calculations, using property values and wealth as reported on your income taxes. That's partly why when you submit your New Jersey income tax, you put your municipal code, because that's what ties back into this. They know the income or the wealth of the community through the income tax reporting. We're still going to be, we're only going to tax maybe under $3 million. We're still going to be $22 million below what the state

022feels your communities should be able to support for the school district. It's something that we would never get advantage of otherwise without taking the application and adding to our budget. And it will build upon that in the future years. We'll become part of the base, which will earn percentage on in the future years. So Ronnie, excuse me. So in like simple terms, what we're asking for the taxpayers in the community to do is to raise the tax levy, which would generate approximately just under $3 million, right? Coming from their taxes, our taxes, and the state would kick in an additional $143,000. That's kind of like a bonus for doing that. That's why they call it an incentive program. Right. Okay. And then that's the amount we're spending under adequacy. What the state does for adequacy

023is they look at what they kind of create a model school district. How many of certain size, certain buildings, needs one principal, an assistant principal, certain number of guidance counselors, so many teachers, busing. You know, they take all that into account and they create what they call an adequacy budget. So our adequacy budget is $88.2 million. Currently, we're spending $85.2 million. So they're saying that to become adequate and reach our thorough and efficient status or standard, we need to spend another $3 million. That's really where we're at. Again, they still feel that even with adding that our local fair share is still well, well, well below where the state feels it should be for local support of the district. I bet they do. Ronnie, quick question. Since this is termed an application, does that mean

024that it could be turned down or does it just mean that's a form we have to submit? This right now, it's- When would we hear back? This is based on, in the memo that I sent the other day, this is part of the governor's budget, the funding for the incentive piece of it. So in order for any of this to happen, the budget has to be approved and then it has to be included in the budget. So yes, there's a possibility that they could pull the plug on it. They don't think that's likely, but it is a possibility. And everything that we apply to spend the funds on has to be approved by the county executive offices, executive superintendent and business official as being necessary for a thorough and efficient education. As Dr. Santora said,

025we can't buy a bus with it. That is not something that factors into that calculation. So we're not permitted to buy an additional school bus with that. Sorry, Jess. Ronnie. Yes. Just a quick question. The application I said, I heard you say was due April 14th. Yes. When would the actual decision be made if it does get approved? Probably, they're hoping. The hope is that we would have approval for whatever we move forward with for our final adoption of our budget, which would be May, I believe it's scheduled for May 19th. That's the hope. Otherwise, it will have to be like we did last year where we would have to have a special meeting to readopt our budget with the added funds. The application that we would send in, would it be for the full

026three million? I would recommend that we do. That is always been my recommendation. One of these things that we, I think we're in the position we're in now and we were able to stave off severe, severe reductions or severe pain in absorbing the cuts that we've had to take from state aid reductions is the fact that we have gone to the 2% tax levy cap. We have gone and taken advantage of any automatic adjustments that the state has permitted us like for health benefit increases and things like that. We've been doing that pretty steadily for the majority of my time as the business administrator here. And I know Dr. Marchante supported that. Nicole supports that. That's the only way we're going to continue to be in a position that we're in now and not finding

027ourselves in the newspaper as having to cut 30 staff. If you think about it, this is approximately 30 staff members between health benefits and not 30, it's going to be more than that. But I don't want to be in the newspaper with that having to cut 30 staff or sell a building or massive reductions like some of our school districts in the county are in. So if we apply for the full three million and it gets approved, the board would ultimately have to decide if it's going to do that. And could we potentially decide to do less than three million? Yes, you could do. Essentially, we're not trying to we're not committed to the three million tonight. No, you could do all or nothing. I mean, that's the guidance we got today. Or anywhere in

028between. Or anywhere in between. Yes. Again, I would recommend taking advantage of it simply for the fact that it's a revenue stream that's lost and we don't have opportunities to add to our revenue stream unless we take advantage of these kinds of opportunities. I mean, the irony isn't lost here that there's a 2% cap on raising taxes and now the state is incentivizing school districts to raise taxes. So, I mean, for me, it makes sense to at least apply, but I'd be curious to see what comes back before making a final decision. I think and something that we've mentioned in tons of meetings that 2% cap was a bad idea. I'll go on record saying whoever came up with that bad idea, because there's nothing that increases at 2%. So as they're increasing our health

029care by sometimes 20%, right, as the rate cost of living increases, as the natural gas increases, the electricity increases, they put us in this predicament. And I think what's happening was districts like us that were asked to in what 2007 we were at 23 million 22 million 22 million dollars in state funding or down to eight. So when you look at districts like us, we were the first to start to say, Whoa, there's a problem. What they're seeing now around the state is other districts that weren't as two districts and are still receiving their funding are now unable to sustain their districts. They've created a system that's honest, unobstainable, and that's why you're seeing all around us. Everyone's going out for referendums because most people did what we did. Right. You prioritize education, you prioritize

030children, you don't prioritize building and grounds, and you're looking around the state at all those buildings and grounds starting to need maintenance. Yeah, they're starting to fail. You know, you're looking at massive layoffs because they're starting to fail. I'm very proud of this district. Dr. Machante and Ronnie started it before I before and I'm glad they have continued it that we did not have to do with those other districts that we've been able to maintain in light of losing over 12 million dollars of state aid 50 million dollars cumulatively. But I also want to be proactive to not be in that place in the future where we're having a meeting where we're saying, Hey, we have to close buildings. We have to have massive layoffs. You're looking at large class sizes. You know, our class

031sizes were fine. We've been able to maintain them as well. We are concerned with the new residencies going up and the effect on that. We had little to do with planning that or knowing that it was going to happen. Like I've said before, we know that's going to happen when we drive past the community. Ms. Vistano, who's here today, our transportation director, she'll be like, Hey, I just drove down 33. Did you see all those houses? What are we doing about those? You know, Hey, I just I just drove past the English town flea market. Did you see all those houses? What are we doing about those? You know, that's how we're finding out about these developments and how we're planning for them, which is unfortunate. But we've been able to do it. Sorry, did

032we take into consideration also the fact that the state is mandating that English town has to provide 30 to 35 low income houses being added to the community in the next two years? Also, just so you know, I know it's only 35, 30, but still added things. Do we do we include that number too? This is this is the only community I just saw that there was the one with now up and being completed June of twenty twenty seven. Another one that's going to go to Wimrock. I just want to make sure that these are only developments that are currently being built. Like I said, we find out about them as they're being built. So anything that's perspective. OK, Ronnie. Yes. I have a quick question. So it's on. You got it. So you said

033that the projections, I'm sorry, the tax levy would be lower to the community tax rates, the tax rate, the tax rate. I got my words correct. Sorry. I hate taxes. Don't we all? Yeah. The tax rate would be at, would you say, three percent to the community and one and a half percent if we decide to go forward with the. That's like the tax rates are based on like cents. So it's per it's how many cents per thousand dollars of assessed value formula you had mentioned. That's right. So initially, when I when I look at the certified tax rates for 2024 and compare them to what I'm saying 2025 will be initially, I had said that Menalibin would see a two and a half cent. So it would go from seventy eight cents per thousand

034to seventy five and a half cents per thousand. So that's two and a half cents per thousand. I'm saying with additional taxes, it will still be a reduction, but it'll go down by one and a half cents instead of two and two point five. So it's it cuts it about half. Overall, still a reduction to the overall still a reduction to the one and a half cents per hundred thousand of assessment. Yes. And that's for Menalibin and English town would see even with the incentive, English town would see two point eight cent reduction in their tax rates. OK. Thank you. Did you know what the actual percentage increases that we're asking for? I would have to figure that. I don't. That's the one thing I don't think I figured out. It's I could I would

035have to figure that's the one thing I didn't figure out. OK. Thank you. I can get that to you, though. Like I said, this this all kind of came about Friday at three o'clock and we just started scrambling to try to get the numbers together and rationalize what we were looking to do and come up with a game plan. Anyone else have any questions? OK. Thank you. All right. Moving on with our agenda changes and additions. Anything else besides what we received earlier today? No. OK. OK. We are going to move on to public comments portion of the meeting. Many of you probably are familiar with the opportunity. Please come up to the microphone, state your name, your street location. You have three minutes at the microphone to speak, whatever you would whatever you would

036like. So please, the floor is open. If you'd like to speak, come up to the mic. Thank you. Hi, Jacqueline Pazillo, Briar Heath Avenue. I just have some questions, if that's OK, which I realize may not be the format, but I would like to ask to of the new term on the resolution that allows current third grade students going into fourth grade next year to stay. Can you tell me the number of children that you're now accommodating? So just for the record, we normally don't do back and forth, but I recognize that you guys have questions and I don't want to withhold information for you. So that would be six, 14 students. OK. And one more question, if you don't mind indulging me of the siblings of the incoming fourth and fifth grade students in

037the next school year. Was there a consideration after those older children have matriculated through Taylor Mills to allow parents the option of keeping their children at Taylor through their tenure with driving as an option year over year? We have not talked about that. I'll just state for the record, you know, many of us returned here tonight, I think, just wanting to see this through, understanding that we are now accepting what will likely be a redistricting proposal for our households. I don't want to speak for anybody else. I have found a lack of empathy and humanity in this process. And also I've been disappointed with the communication and I realize you're all in positions to make decisions, but we are all dealing with children that are quite literally crying at home. So unfortunately, I think this

038has eroded the trust of some of the people in this room with the administration of our school district and personally has changed the way that all vote on future ballots at a district level. But thank you for your time. And obviously we're all here just to kind of see this through, but accept that our children will be going to different schools and clearly there's great administration. My own child, obviously, as you know, will be a kindergartner next year, which we have communicated about. And while I appreciate the option to talk to you in July about maybe keeping her at Taylor just can't quite wrap my head around making her wait that long when there's already a lot of uncertainty for a five year old. So I'm, as you know, accepting the fact that she'll go

039to ELC and she's quite upset about not being with her siblings. So I appreciate the time that you all put into this and realize that you're in a difficult position. But it doesn't change the way that we all feel and what our children are dealing with. Hi, Jillian Hopter, Tamarack Drive. I just I have some private concerns that I guess I have to express publicly. You do not. If you want to reach out to me, I can talk to you one on one if you do not want to share private concerns. I can't be the only parent with this concern, but my child has an IEP and I have had no no one has contacted me about how that would affect him. We have been moved around a lot in preschool. I was he was

040kicked out of the program and had to move schools because he couldn't continue with the ELC because they decided he didn't need an IP anymore. He was moved again. Then he was moved back. Then he went to Taylor. Then now he's being moved again. And I have emailed the child study team and asked them if they would have in class support at Lafayette. No one has gotten back to me. I would like an answer on that, as well as I have some personal concerns with before care. You're changing. I'm a teacher, as you can see. You're changing the time of the school. So my son doesn't need before care. Now I pay for aftercare. Now I'm going to need to pay for beforecare and aftercare. So you sat here and talked about, you know, financial

041and cost of living. Well, what about my cost of living? It's now gone up twenty five hundred dollars. And I'm the teacher. I mean, there's teachers in this room. So I don't get paid more money. And now I have to. I've changed my job to make this work four different times since my son started school. And he's in first grade. So I've changed my job. I've changed my school, my position just to make it work to now have. I'm not doing it again. So it's just this is like becoming insane to me at this point. So if you'd reach out to me, we'll talk because it's your child would be based on programmatic needs. So they may not be going to Lafayette Mills. But when was someone going to communicate that? Well, right now, the

042proposal hasn't been approved yet. So we were going to wait to make sure that the. Well, as this parent said, I mean, we've all pretty much come to. We know that what's about to happen, you know, and I don't really have a problem with the move in the school. He's a first grader. I have a problem with how it's personally affecting my family. And, you know, but we weren't going to go into individuals, people and start the conversation until it actually got approved tonight. And then we could move forward. OK, so if I email you personally, I can speak to you privately. Yes. OK, thank you. Absolutely. Anyone else for public comments? About that three million dollar application, is that for state funding or does this mean my taxes are going to go up again?

043As you said, part of it is part of is a tax levy adjustment because the state feels that the community doesn't support the budget to the degree that it should based on the wealth, the calculated wealth of the community. So but there is an element that is state aid. So they're going to it's five percent. So say we asked for three million, they would give us five percent of the three million dollars. The rest would come from taxes. So you want to raise taxes basically? Well, what we just showed was that the taxes, which the tax rate still showed a decrease for next year. Correct. With the three million dollar application? Yes, yes. Yes. That's my question. Yes. Yes. Now we're happy. The tax rate will go down. Even with the additional tax levy, the

044tax rate is still scheduled to be a decrease. Yes. OK, here's another question. So in November, we voted on a referendum, right? And that referendum passed. So we're already going to be paying. How like is that counted in anything in terms of like what you were talking about before? The debt service portion of the of the budget in paying down debt. First off, there's there's you're going to have a slight increase for a few years. And then the existing debt that we have now that the district is paying was issued 20 some years ago. It's it'll be paid off in two years. So that debt goes away and that payment goes away. So this is kind of kind of filling the gap on that. It's really not going to it'll be a slight increase over

045what's there, but not not as if we're taking on the whole referendum as a whole new element. So when this referendum kicks in, which I think is going to be next two years, 27, I think the tax tax element of it. OK, and this application will kick in for 25, 26. So would it even kind of even? Well, it's no, that that includes the reduction includes the debt service. OK, so it includes debt service. It's for the general operating budget and the debt service that's included in those numbers. It's both pieces. OK, I have a general question as well. So how come like Board of Ed doesn't communicate with township with all these like, you know, buildings and everything going up? How come there's no like open lines of communication? Because we have asked for

046that moving forward in the future. I have met with the town council and I've asked for better communication as far as that's concerned. Yeah, so I spoke to the mayor on Friday and he said that in the plan of five years, there's supposed to be 250 more units of affordable housing from 2025 to 2030. Now, all I did was just call up and ask a simple question, have like a back and forth conversation. So I'm just surprised that, you know, I mean, it's good that you ask now, you know, obviously, like, why was this never kind of? It's just been that that we haven't. You understand why I'm coming? I do, because we were surprised to. Yeah. New administration, better communication moving forward. Well, I hope so. Yeah. OK, thank you. Dr. Sorry, Dr. Santora,

047if you don't mind, I could just add the Township Committee is a separate entity that we have zero control over. So we have no ability to decrease development. Well, yeah, that comes from the state anyway. Yeah. Affordable housing is a whole nother meeting. But yes, there are massive affordable housing mandates placed on communities that are very difficult to fight. And the most we can do is express our opinion to the governing bodies of English town and Menalpen and ask them to build less. But they're under no obligation to listen to us. Yet we deal with the consequences of those units. Right. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. If you guys are more like prepared. Well, in order to be prepared, we have to raise taxes to pay for teachers, to pay for facilities have shot up

048for a few years. A lot. I'm sure, you know, and it all goes to the schools. That's what we're told. Right. Because that's what I mean. That's what we're told. So, I mean, you got to understand as taxpayers, you know, every single time, it's like there's nothing for the budget. And we're just like. So I will tell you, probably the majority of your taxes do go to schools because we are one of the largest employers. When you look at how many people the town employs versus how many people we employ, it's not even close. Right. We have over a thousand employees. We actually most live in town. So where was I going with this? I had a point. So when I think when that statement that you were saying about most of your tax go

049to schools, they do go to schools because. That's where it goes. That's where it goes. But remember that it's only two percent more than the previous year that comes to us. So although the most goes to schools, when you see this large increase, it's not really going to the schools because we're only getting two percent more than we had the year before. So I think when people say that, it makes it seem like the schools increase taxes by 40 percent. Right. Right. No, most of the taxes come to us, but we're still at that cap of two percent. Yeah, I guess it's like a difficult, you know, yes, situation. We recognize that. Yeah, it's difficult for us to, you know, as taxpayers, as parents. So, I mean, it's very difficult situation. I was just really

050surprised that there's no kind of like between Township and Board of Ed. There's no open lines. And I think in New York, it's actually different. There is open lines of communication. I don't want to say that our Township Committee is wonderful. They do meet with us. But this has been one area where we don't get informed ahead of time. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else for public comment? As everyone doing? Quick question. First, I appreciate the board's reevaluation, continued efforts. You know, I know it's a lot of variables that go into the redistricting. I know it's a lot. I had was subscription busing or paying for busing considered as part of the redistricting? We did not because one of our other concerns was making sure that Lafayette Mills had higher enrollment

051and Taylor Mills had less. It was really to balance our resources and make sure that there was equity between the two schools. We also didn't want to seem where if you can afford to pay, you can. And if you can't afford, you can't. We didn't want to create that have and have nots condition and make it up to the parents. I think that would be hard to say to your children, right? You know, this child can go because their parents can afford for me to drive you or afford to pay for transportation where this child can't go because you can't afford it. As a school district, we don't want to put you in that situation. We don't want to put your children in that situation. So that was not something that we considered. I will

052say it's a little bit easy discussion, in my opinion, than asking your older sibling to separate either from her sibling or all of her friends in the school. So that's just in my opinion. I understand that. That was why their first proposal on the first day was to just fifth grade, right? When I first proposed this and I first sent you the letter, I said just fifth grade. You know, parents spoke out. They wanted to allow siblings. Parents wanted to allow more children. The board was listening to this. They were very receptive to it. So we allowed the fifth, fourth grade and then we allowed the siblings and then it put you in a whole nother predicament. But if you remember my presentation, I had said that I wasn't initially offering siblings because I did

053not think it was a good idea. I didn't think it was best for children. You know, we listened to the community. We offered this and I 100 percent understand that predicament that it put you in. No, I appreciate that. The only other comment, too, I had with respect to the siblings, I appreciate kind of the exception made, you know, ideally in a perfect situation. It would be nice if you could do it prospectively. Again, I don't know all the data behind the reasoning. So but with respect to at least the siblings and the exception with that, I have a third grade and a first grader. So, you know, let's just say the third grader decides to stay. Now, with the new exception, my little one is going to be essentially in fourth grade and then

054potentially have to switch schools, which I feel like a little bit hard of a decision. I recognize that. That's why it wasn't my first, my first option consider grandfathering them in completely for their tenure. I don't think we're ready to discuss that just yet. I think right now we're doing this plan. I'm not going away. That would be two years down the road. Bussing wise, no, because that would require a whole nother bus route. And one of the purposes of this was to make sure that we freed up a bus route during the second year. So, no, would I provide transportation for all those years? No. Could we look into if the parents provide their own transportation? Possibly. But I don't think we're there yet to have that conversation. Would that be something that could

055be considered down the road as part of your board meetings? It could be. Right. Nicole, you bring up a good point, though, with with the busing situation. Subscription busing would work possibly if we had enough buses to make it work. But we don't have enough buses. We would have to purchase buses in order to make subscription busing work, which we don't have the funds to do. No, and that's fair. It's a fair point. The only comment to that, though, I guess, if you have folks that are in third, fourth grade that have the busing in the area anyway to add a sibling or two that's already part of that, I wouldn't see that being an issue. It does become an issue, though. So we have a 54 passenger bus, right? Right now. And the state

056also requires us to have certain level of efficiency within our busing. We have to we have to utilize our buses to one point two percent hundred hundred and two percent. Basically, we have to use our buses. They have an efficiency rating that we're held to. Otherwise, we get have to have corrective action plans in place. So there's a lot of factors that go into that. I don't know. I just want to make sure I heard that right. Sorry to interrupt. We, by the state, have to go above one hundred percent efficiency. Yes, one point. So like somebody please once again. Hold on. One hundred percent is the standard that we teach in school. How are we expected to go above one hundred percent? Like, you know, you tell your kids, hey, do your best. One

057hundred and ten. Like, no, that statement makes no sense. One hundred and ten percent effort. You can't give one hundred and ten percent effort. So how can the state make us follow to one hundred and two percent efficiency or whatever the number was? Like, it's the one hundred percent is the maximum. Like, you can't go above that leak. Like, what are we doing about that? Like, that's a problem in the thing. You know, and I and I and I hope that people have the patience to hear through this whole thing, because I'm sure that my comments will surprise everybody on this issue was considering the summits that I made before. I just want to understand how we're expected by the state. That's why we have that's why we have tiered busing. That's why we have

058a four tiered system, because we we utilize those buses four times a day. And that's how you get to that one point two or above efficiency rating. It's a public. I mean, I could pull up what our ratings are. I understand that. But what I'm saying is maybe somebody above us needs to look at the fact that we can't expect the district to go at above one hundred percent. Like, that's like raise the number then so that it's a hundred. Make it make the math make sense. Right. Like, I still get confused on how we're going to get money from the state at a five percent. But somehow, magically, the taxes are going to go down like that still blows me away that we're going to get three million dollars and we're only going to

059get five percent of that. But the residents are going to pay more. But, hey, your state, it's going to go down a quarter of this to that. No, like this is magical math. It's ridiculous. And somebody needs to address it. And if it's got to be me at the state legislative level, then I'll do that too, because you can't get one hundred and two percent efficiency like teachers in the room. I'm a teacher. Right. Like if they came in to do an observation on me and said, oh, you got one hundred percent, but you failed because you didn't get to one hundred percent, one hundred and three percent like that. That doesn't work like it. Like, I think we're glossing over certain things and people need to understand it like simple. Sorry to interrupt you,

060but the gentleman is still at the podium and it's the public comments portion. Right. I think the formulation is different. But we could further have this conversation. But let's let the gentleman finish. Thank you. Last comment. So with respect to, I know the conversation came up about everywhere there's houses going upright in the communities. With respect to the projections, I know there's a gap and a variance right now relative to Taylor Mills Lafayette. But in our area, at least we see a lot of houses being put up for sale. More kids coming in. What does that projection look in the future? Because, like, if you thought about this prospectively, I've got to imagine the gap would at some point in a couple of years bridge a little bit. But I'm not sure if that's been

061looked at. I know there was a chart on the last meeting with kind of the different grades, but I'm just curious, like, what that looked like. So we did do a study, a demographic study a few years ago. And they had estimated that we would remain a little bit flat. We're surprised by that with all the developments going up, to be honest. So we do have a demographic study saying that we're staying flat. However, we don't believe it 100% with the amount of developments going up. Right now, over the last few years, our enrollment has been dropping to some extent. We kind of, and that also helped us when we had lost all the state funding to keep going. Right now, MEMS' eighth grade is going to be at 607 students next year, or 604.

062And you're looking at Pinebrook at 550. And I think fifth grade is around 500. So you're seeing that. And then once we get to fifth grade at 500, we're kind of straight down between 450 and 500. We start to level out again. If you look back 10 years ago, I think we were about 600 straight through. So we have seen a decrease, which, if you look at what we cut last year, was majority staffing. We cut staffing, and that was how we kept balancing the budget part of the way. So that's kind of where we're at. We did do a demographic study, and it says we're going to be somewhat flat. But we're concerned, because the person who had done the demographic study years prior, we went back and checked their work, and they were

063dead on. If they said this was the enrollment, five years later, that was the enrollment. And they were no longer in business. I just think it's a tough predicament, and I don't envy, obviously, the board's decision up here, because it is difficult. And with the children's mental health in mind as well, it's a lot. I know people say children are resilient, but that's on the surface. Sometimes you don't see deep inside that now academic progress can be impacted because of some of these transitions. This wasn't something we wanted to do. There's no one here that woke up and was like, this is going to be a great thing. But when you look at Lafayette Mills right now under 400, and you look at Taylor over 500, and you look at, well, are they getting the

064same resources? When you look at what then happens to Lafayette, if we don't do something now, and we don't fix this, in five years are we going to be closing Lafayette Mills and having overcrowded schools somewhere else because nobody will shift over? Lafayette Mills is a wonderful school, and I've watched them welcome new students. I was there recently when they welcomed new students, and the students were excited. They were happy. Mr. Duffy and Ms. Singer did an excellent job of making sure everyone felt included, and it was a really smooth transition. And I do trust them to make sure that that happens for your children, and I think it's a nice school to be at. I heard great things, and I have. We have folks that we know that go there, and I heard it's

065a great school. It's more about the transition for a kid that's been there for four plus years, friends, staff, faculty. It's just hard to break them away from kind of their friendship or choose their siblings over their friends or vice versa. It's just a difficult choice. No, I understand that. It was not something we wanted to do either. Yeah. Has the board of the district looked at... Wembrock doesn't have a huge chunk in terms of the district map? Yes. Have they looked at the potential? Wembrock is quite large. Wembrock has in the past been up to almost 700 students. Rebecca was here. I don't think she's here. Right? Close to 700, Dr. Siri? So they were a bit up to close to 700. They're in the, like, around 515, 500. No, you're under that right

066now. You're in the fours, aren't you? So she can go up to about 700, and she's projected next year to be at 469. So there's tons of room there. And then we may have to look at providing more resources and extra guidance, counselor. In the past, she was one of the first schools that got a health assistant that got extra lunch aids when she was up to 700. Back then, really, mental health wasn't the issue that it is now. But now, moving forward, she may need more resources. But her building itself has the capacity to handle it. Got it. Okay. Well, I appreciate the board's consideration and, you know, public comments, so thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else for public comments? Sure. The whole demographic situation, you know, when you said that, like,

067the one that was really good went out of business, now we're going with another one that we were a little bit nervous. You know, why are we going with this one? Why are we not getting, like, you know? It was just a study that we did to do the demographics. Because there's very few businesses around that do that. It was the one we chose. What they're showing is that we're kind of going to remain flat, but we're being cautious about that. Right, because, I mean, you guys yourselves, and we all know that, you know, we've been talking about this the whole time. Developments are going up. Kids are coming in. How could it possibly remain flat? It doesn't make any sense. I'm not a demographics expert. I think where it remains flat is if you

068have 600 falling off from MEMS. Our enrollment has naturally been going down, so they're balancing that out. So it's not like K-5 is non-demographic, and it's the whole district. We look at the whole district. But even if, right, even if you take that, you still have, like, a bunch of kids coming in. That's why we're trying to prepare. Because we can't get, like, someone else to kind of be more specific on that. We could look at another demographic study if the board wants that. Just to kind of, I mean, listen, like someone said before, I'm sure, you know, you guys made your decision. But just, like, for future, even, to have a kind of a more concrete study and numbers so that, you know, nobody could come back at you and be like, hey, this

069doesn't make any sense. And how do you know that this many kids are coming in or not coming in, you know? You know what I mean? Like, it's just the numbers have to kind of add up, is what I'm saying. I understand. FYI. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And just for information, our transportation efficiency rating is 1.879%. So we are using our buses almost two times, you know, almost at 200%. That's why we have a four-tier system. And we can get by with doing that. No, no, I said the state requires 120%. The state minimum is 120% usage. We use to almost 1.9%. And that's because we transport as many students as we do with the number of buses. If we were to add more buses transporting the same number of students, obviously, our

070efficiency rating would go down. But then we would have to purchase buses. And we don't have the funds to purchase buses. So it becomes like a vicious cycle to some degree. Thank you. Okay. First chance, public comments. Going once, going twice. Okay. Public comments is now closed. I want to thank everyone who did come up to speak and expressing, and everyone who's reached out regarding this. Trust me, it hasn't been taken lightly. You know, board members have had countless hours on the phones with each other trying to hash through this and come to a place that we feel, you know, is acceptable and trying to be accommodating and compassionate at the same time, doing what we feel needs to be done for the district. So thank you again for expressing your concerns. We are going

071to move on to the next portion of the meeting on our agenda. For the board's information, we have a couple of regulation updates. Does anyone have any questions on those? Okay. We're going to go to action items. Can I have a motion and a second on items G1 through G4? Jamie and Jesse. Thank you. For G4, legally, let me ask for clarification before we have this vote from the attorney. If we vote no on number four, we're voting on how it's written, right? Yes. Yes. So there's no, like when we did the 57, 56 discussion about the resolution, changing wording, this and that, right? Right. There was a change. Yeah. There was a change to the resolution, which is on. Right. That's what you're voting on. Okay. There's. Well, I'd like to make a recommendation

072that we do a case-by-case analysis for each single person that's moving and open it up for the kindergartners to go to Taylor Mills. I'd like to have the board discuss because certain people have brought up stuff. I mean, we got an email. I got an email forwarded to me from another board member about a mom who changed her schedule and cannot physically make her kids get on the bus. We have to understand what we got this society, this community to do is approve a hundred plus million dollars for us. Well, you tell them to get closer. You tell me to back up. So I need to put in a motion to change the resolution. What do I got to do so that these people get at least some, some empathy? Like if that's what I

073think what he's trying to do is he wants to make he wants to amend the resolution. I want to change the resolution just like we did when we did 5756 because people didn't like wording that was in there and this and that. And we all had a discussion about it before we voted on it after it was already on the agenda. We changed words. We did this. I'd like to add 56 was a policy. Okay. That's fine. Okay, fine. But we'd use that same procedure. That's why I'm asking our attorney. How do we do this? Because I'm going to vote no on this resolution. If I don't get the caveats that we include kindergarten and we do this on a case by case basis, I will vote no. I recommend you vote no. But I'm

074asking him. I'm not talking with you. I am talking to our attorney about how we legally procedurally do this. Hang on. I'm going to ask the board attorney if you can direct us. So what would be the proper procedure? Well, there's a couple of different procedures that you can go through. I'll just talk without it. They can't hear in the. This is picking up. This one. Yeah. So there's different ways you can do it right now. The president has proposed a motion on G1 through G4 altogether. Okay. There would be a motion, a second discussion on those items. You can vote separately on them. You could say I'm voting yes to G1 to three and no on G4. The other thing that could be brought up is somebody can make a motion with a second

075and carrying by the majority to say I want to segregate the vote on whatever items that you want to. You don't have to vote on them as a group is what I'm saying. But you would need a motion and a second to separate them. And then it would have to carry with five members. All right. But then after that, after you segregate it, you would then need another motion and a second and five votes in order to amend it and change the resolution. Got it. And you would have to have very specific wording as to how you want to word that resolution would need to be worded for whatever you're going to vote on has to be correct. Okay. All right. Could I have a motion and a second on segregating items G1 G4 before

076we go to that. You're going to be allowed to talk more like if I wanted to ask a question or add a comment before we go there. I just wanted to add something that Jesse said and I just want to clarify. You said let's show some empathy. And I think I'd be remiss if I didn't say that I think every single board member has empathy and compassion for these families and suggest otherwise is the percent. I understand. I want to make sure that my words were not miss. Well, the perception is that we have not been empathetic. You and I both know that we've all been empathetic. 100 percent. So having said that, what I will add, and just to clarify, I do want to thank the parents for coming out. And as Mr. Herber

077and Dr. Santora have said, we have had plenty of conversations about this. And I will add and I'll be the first to admit my kids went to Taylor's. And if I were going through you, I'd be leading your charge. I'd be in that audience. I'd be demanding. And if you all voted to pass the resolution, I'd be angry at all the board members. And I say that wholeheartedly as a parent, right, as a parent with three kids whose kids have an IEP who had social emotional issues. I get it. And I do. I empathize. I don't I wouldn't want to be in your shoes. Having said that, we're here as board members. And although your children are extremely important to you, to us, there was also four thousand nine hundred other kids that we have

078to think about as well. And so I'm just adding that to let you know that this was not something we have lost. We have lost sleep on this. I can't tell you how many times I've had different conversations with different board members over this. It's not something we did lately. And I just want you all to know, because it does. It breaks my heart as a mom for you to think, you know, we just said, well, we know what we're doing and we don't care. It's really not how it went down. And again, like I said, I'd be leading the charge. I'd be I'd be right there with you. So it is something that we've really, really thought about. And it's not an easy decision. And I just want to put that out there. Whether

079you believe it, it's you know, that's up to you. I get it. But we do have a lot of compassion as far as the families are concerned and what you're dealing with. Thank you, Jamie. So, Mr. President, if I could just to make it a little bit more streamlined, you could vote on one through three. Yeah. And then just separate G4. Yes, I think we can we can do that. All right. Without taking a formal motion, we'll administratively administratively. We will amend the motion to be one through three and then we'll take G4 on its own. OK. OK. OK. So can I have a motion and a second on G1 through G3, please? Mr. Tosetti and Ms. Parisi. Thank you. Lucas. Yes. Mrs. Parisi. Yes. Mr. Santoro. Yes. Mr. Tosetti. Yes. Dr. Wallace. Yes. Mr.

080Ferber. Mr. Green. Yes. Mrs. Herb. Yes. Motion carried. OK. Now, regarding item G4, Jesse, I believe what you're asking for is making a motion to amend the resolution. Is that something? Yeah, you have to move it. You have to move it in a second. A motion and a second. And you need to have the wording that you want to make. What's on the table right now is the existing resolution. So if there wants to, someone wants to have an amendment to it. Yeah, first and a second to five votes. I think now that we took it. Let me just, because I have to record all this. Right now, we made a motion and a second on G1 through G3. I need to get G4 on the table. So I need a motion and a second

081to bring it to the table for discussion. Then a motion to amend. And if that motion to amend is supported by a majority of the board, then we'll go forward with that motion to amend. Otherwise, we'll go forward. We'll just take a vote on the motion as originally proposed. I agree. Sorry for the AB issues. OK. Can I have a motion and a second to reintroduce item G4 to the agenda? Mrs. Sette. Mrs. Wallace. Mrs. Wallace. Thank you. I'd like to make a motion to amend the resolution that we're up for discussion. Hold on. Wait. We've still got to get roll on. Yeah. First and a second. Now it's on the table for discussion. You're good? Now just who wants to make a motion to amend. OK. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. All right. But you

082have to, what do you want to amend it to say? You need to tell me what you want to amend it to say. I'll repeat it again. The second to last paragraph where it says fourth and fifth graders that elect to remain using the above exception will have the option of remaining at Taylor Mills only for the time period that a sibling is above exemption remains enrolled. I would like all students, including incoming kindergartners, to be grandfathered in to Taylor Mills. I need the word. Are you saying every student or just siblings? I'm confused. The first paragraph creates one exception. Are you saying both? Are you saying both exceptions are out and it's just everyone's grandfathered in? Are you saying the first exception? I'm saying that anybody that has a sibling there, right, that fits

083into this category fourth, fifth, third grade, and then they have a younger sibling gets to get the grandfathered extension in also indefinitely to include kindergartners in the incoming year. I'm not talking about preschool kids. I'm talking about the young lady over here who has a kindergartner. We have to look at this. I was actually we use the word currently enrolled. I was open to currently enrolled, including the kids that have already enrolled for kindergarten. No, that's fine. If we're going to add that, then we can add the current enrolled kindergartners. But what I'm saying is if I have a student who is in third grade and I have a first grader and I have a kindergartner, I want them to be able to be grandfathered in just like third, fourth, and fifth grade. I also

084want to add, I don't know where we would add this, be it further resolved, that each individual with an IEP or transportation need or anything on a case by case basis gets screened by the assistant superintendent or the superintendent. I don't know how you guys make the bread. I'm just trying to say that the mom that came up here and said that nobody talked to her about the IEP is not right. And each person has got an IEP. We need to understand those if they've got transportation issues, if they've got this, if they've got that. Jesse, the IEPs we were following up on and IEPs are based on programmatic needs and what the schools offer. So I can't say one child is going to go to one school or another. That changes from year to

085year. But we need to communicate that to the parents. And obviously that parent didn't have an idea because she taught all day, came here and spoke to us. Because it wasn't passed yet. So I wasn't going to tell parents exactly until we just changed the plan yesterday for today. I understand that. And now I'm throwing out an option to change it tonight. Okay, that's fine. Well, how do we get that documented? So, I mean, because we've got all kinds of issues. Which contains the IEP. That's an administrative function. Okay. So getting back to that motion to amend. What exactly am I amending and what is it going to be? Jesse, if I understand correctly, you're talking about the second paragraph to the last, correct? Jesse, I do want to say that's why I asked if

086anyone wants to talk about this to let me know because we could have done this ahead of time. I understand that. But life happens. That's why I was 30 hour late because of my job as a teacher in a high school softball coach. I had a three and a half hour softball game and then drove from Camden here. I could have just said to Dave Ferber, I'm not going to be here tonight, but that's not me. That's not how we do things. You know, I'm not going to send a text as I'm driving down the turnpike trying to get here because I value what these people are saying and that we need to listen to what they're saying. I teach six classes a day and I usually have a coverage in there in classes. Like,

087there's no time. I mean, I was able, luckily, to answer the phone when the principal for my son called today. But that was a few minute window that I had. I apologize. Jesse, I'm a little confused on what exactly it is you're looking for because this last paragraph is grandfathering in the siblings. Until that older student leaves. I want them there to have the option the whole time. We've discussed this at the last meeting. Well, that was before certain emails got reached out to us. That's what things think. Things change. I'm one vote. You guys don't want to do it. I mean, I've got to get a second for this. You were on the committee. I understand that. And the idea that I floated against the idea that I'm talking over each other. Come on.

088We can have a conversation. You were on this committee that created the very first plan. And now we've redeveloped another plan. And now we're all here thinking we're on the same page and you're voting against the plan that you created. So if anyone here now votes yes, it's looking like, whoa, we should know what I was on the plan. But my but what I what I brought up to the committee didn't even get put in. It didn't even get talked about. You know, get it on there. Get it on there. That's not true at all. And no, it's not. And to even know it's not OK. And the perception from them is that we're not empathetic either. Guys, come on. Listen, we're going to have a civil conversation or we're not going to have one

089at all. OK, I think we need everybody. We need let's take a we're going to take a five minute. I don't I don't even have a second. I don't even have a second yet. So why are we getting all upset? And could I have a second on a five minute recess? Since our thank you. OK, we're turning five. Call me to order. We are back. And thank you all for being patient. OK, we are. Can I have a motion and a second for item G for the redistricting proposal resolution as it is on the agenda? We have that. Jesse and Serena already made that motion and second earlier. OK, so we have that on the table. We also have a motion to amend G for by Jesse where we're just doing one at a time.

090We're going with the what was originally first and second. OK, and then we'll figure out if we need more action after that. So do I take the motion again or you go? We have the original motion. You know what? The original motion is motion and a second to vote on the resolution as written in the agenda. Right. Yes. OK, you said we had the motion second on that earlier, right? Motion and second to vote on item G for as it appears in the agenda this evening. Go ahead. Mrs. Lucas. Yes. Mrs. Parisi. Yes. Mr. Santoro. Yes. Mr. DeCetti. No. Dr. Wallace. Yes. Mr. Ferber. Yes. Mr. Green. Yes. Mrs. Herr. Yes. Mr. King. Yes. Motion carried. Does anyone from the board have any comments? I'd like to speak to the resolution. Can I just say

091at the outset, if you don't mind, I just want to point out Jesse and I had a dispute beforehand. You all don't know this. We actually have an excellent relationship. It's more like a brotherly argument, honestly, and we've worked it all out. I apologize to you all and I apologize to Jesse for saying something to him. It may not appear that way when we're up here, but we have a very good relationship. So I apologize for creating a distraction. Thank you. Anyone else? I'm debating, Dave. I mean, look, under normal procedures, we would have discussion prior to the vote. I understand tonight there was a special circumstance, but I do think and I hope anyone else who wants to add something has an opportunity to do so. But I do think it's important to note

092that, you know, as board members, this is not an easy decision. And we as board members have to consider all of the students affected by a situation. In other words, we have to think about the greater good and how all the students at Taylor Mills are impacted. And that's not easy. Now, I realize there are people here tonight who are not happy with the outcome. I certainly respect that. You know, the only response that I can I can think of about that as a board member is that we did take into account what the public said in a big way. The original proposal had 16 kids staying at Taylor Mills. I'll say that again. Sixteen students in the original proposal to stay at Taylor. What just passed is now 40. More than half of the

093students proposed to move now have the option to stay. That is a massive increase. So the feedback that was provided by the community was heard. Now, some kids have to move. There has to be some way to balance it out because it's not equitable, as Dr. Santora emphasized numerous times with more than 100 students at Taylor compared to Lafayette. That's not sustainable. I'm glad you reference Middletown earlier tonight when schools slowly dwindle in their population, they get closed. We do not want to deal with that in the now. So I'd like to commend the board for this process. It's been one of the most transparent processes I've ever been a part of in my time in public service. The initial plan was put out. Parents were invited to attend and give input. I mean, as

094you can see, you're seeing all the discussion out there for everyone to see. So we've worked to make this as transparent as possible. I commend Dr. Santora and the administrative team for helping with that process. And I appreciate that the board collaborated. It wasn't easy, but we got to something that is for the greater good and does try to accommodate as many students as we can. So thank you. Thank you, Ryan. Anyone else? Ryan, I agree with you. It has been a very tedious process for all of us. I know a lot of parents who are here tonight, they have siblings that are going to be affected by this. And we really have really expanded it to the fifth graders and the fourth graders. And I think the parents that have the younger children, the

095siblings to the fourth graders and fifth graders, you guys have a decision to make. And I think we did really try to do a great job in offering a option for you and not telling you what to do. And I think that really should account for something because it is not an easy decision. You're looking at your child and you want your kids to stay together. But then you have to take into consideration once that older sibling leaves, what's going to happen. So your choices are you have a choice is not an easy choice. It was an easy for us to make this decision. And I just want to let you know that we are here for you to reach out and any other future concerns. Please feel free to reach out as time progresses

096over the next two years. Mark, go ahead. I'm sorry. I just wanted to echo to the parents in the community, everyone else who spoke before me, certainly not an easy decision, certainly not able to be an easy decision and then have to face the community in public, which a lot of us, you know, we are around town and we do see everybody in the community. And I would specifically like to apologize to the one parent, Miss Bezillo, who referenced the lack of communication. I just did revisit my email inbox as I'm sitting here and I do see your email and I didn't respond to it. And I'm not sure if any of the board members did specifically respond to you, but there was a couple that I did respond to. And for you specifically, I

097do apologize. Thank you, Mark. Anyone else? I would also just like to add, I know that the parents, a lot of you are feeling disappointed tonight and in us as your board members. And again, if I were you, I would too. I'm not going to lie. I'd be mad at me. I'd be mad at myself. Right. But it was not something that we did. You know, I saw one of you at the bagel store this weekend. I recognized you. I was like, oh, they're going to give me daggers when we're getting our bagels. I know. And we do. We see each other. We're all in the same neighborhood. And I do. I feel for you. I'd be just as pissed off and angry. And I'd probably not want to see me at the bagel store

098for a few weeks. And I get it. And I do. And I want you to understand that. But as Ryan pointed out, and I think, again, having children who have a need to see the guidance counselor and to be able to have access to that sensory hallway and to have adults to speak to when they're having a meltdown because they miss their mother. When you have an extra hundred kids to split that time with, your child gets impacted because if my daughter needs the guidance counselor and they're dealing with another kid in crisis but Lafayette has a hundred less kids and they have more availability, it's just one of those things we have to think at. And again, we're thinking all of the children in the district. But you should be most concerned about your

099own children. You're their greatest advocate. And you're doing right by them coming here and being angry at us. And you'll hold a grudge. And that's fine. And we'll own that. But I do want to just reiterate that we really have spent a lot of time trying to make it where we can get the most children, the most options as we can, but still be ensuring that we have that equity amongst the districts and that all of the children in the district are getting their fair share. So again, we apologize if you feel let down. But we really did try to do the best by everybody. I just want to tack onto all those quickly, not to repeat anything. But a few parents in the last two meetings have referenced this, that it isn't an easy

100decision. I always appreciate those who say that because there really is a balance between the hard facts that we have to deal with and the empathy that we do all feel. And we really do. I mean, I can tell you personally, I spent time on the phone with multiple board members and with Dr. Centur. I mean, we had, I don't even know how many phone calls about this, with the options, what the numbers are, how to move forward, what to do about it. And I think all of us, someone, it might have been Jamie said we lose sleep over it. I mean, we think about this at all hours. It's on our minds all the time. I know that doesn't really make you feel better about it, and I get it. I just want you

101to understand that it isn't something that we don't have empathy. We just have to balance the empathy with the hard facts of the district overall. That's a tough position. And that's what we're elected to do, is to make these hard, tough decisions. And we know that sometimes it makes people unhappy. It doesn't mean we're not sympathetic, because I absolutely am. I have three little kids, and I know how hard it would be for my family. But we are in tough positions sometimes, and we have to make some decisions that unfortunately make some people unhappy. We tried to reduce it as much as we could. We literally took the circle and shrunk it to as much as we reasonably thought we could under the circumstances, and that's where we can lend out. So that's where we

102are. But we certainly do have empathy, and we certainly put a ton of time into this. So thank you for listening. And I just want to thank all of you for coming out again and really being persistent. We do listen to the community. And like David said, we try to do as best we can to give that equity and compassion to the families. I know Mr. Duffy and Ms. Singer are looking forward to showing you what a wonderful Mr. Duffy is very, very passionate about Lafayette Mills. And I can't wait to go to the carnival. Looking forward to it. Jesse? Yeah. So I want to reiterate that things like this have to happen, right? I said it last meeting. The state goes out and says like 102 percent is what you have to be at,

103right? The state says we gave $376 million additional aid this year. $125 million went to two cities, Camden and Newark. Just like we're doing the best we can trying to do all this, not on the backs of the taxpayers, make sure these kids get the education that they deserve. And I want to second Mr. Duffy and Ms. Singer. They're phenomenal administrators. Your kids, if they go there, are in great hands. I know that there's some fourth graders that leave that are at Taylor Mills and go to Lafayette Mills that my daughter will miss some of her friends. It's tough on the other end, too. So I apologize. Tough decisions have to get made. Thank you, Jesse. Anyone else? For just some levity, Mr. Duffy has said that he will let me jump in for the

104pie throwing contest. I will not this year because I don't. It's worse than the bagel store. But always thank you for the offer, Mr. Duffy. Okay. I'm pretty sure all the board members have to be up there. Yeah. Hey, Mr. Duffy, I volunteer. I'll be the first one. I want to thank Mr. Duffy and Ms. Singer for their time they've really put in and, you know, trying to help make this as smooth a transition and trying to open themselves up for the parents to answer questions and be there for them. So we appreciate that. And as it's been stated, you know, we take these seats knowing that sometimes we may end up having to disappoint people. And that sucks. Trust me. It's no fun, especially when it's our own neighbors. Because we're all residents in

105the community. Most of us still have kids in our schools. So we get it. And as it was said, you know, we don't take this lightly whatsoever. But unfortunately, tough decisions have to be made. So, again, we thank you. And I encourage you to continuously reach out, express your concerns should anything else arise. You know, we're always going to be open to hearing and hopefully, you know, being able to make changes and pivot and do what we need to do when the opportunity allows for it. So continue to advocate. And whether it's on this topic or whether it's something else that should arise down the road. So thank you for being here again. We are going to move on with our agenda. We are on to item H, business. I have a motion and a

106second on items H one through three. Ms. Parisi and Mrs. Herr. Thank you. Ms. Parisi. Thank you. I'm sorry. Do you want to have discussion or anything? I'm just going to vote on business items. Any questions? Anyone? No questions. Sorry. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Mrs. Parisi. Yes. Mr. Santoro. Yes. Mr. Tosetti. Yes. Dr. Wallace. Yes. Mr. Ferber. Yes. Mr. Green. Yes. Mr. Herr. Yes. Thank you. I have a motion and a second on items I one through nine, please. Mr. Green and Mr. Kane. Any questions? Anyone? Mr. Santoro. Yes. Mr. Tosetti. Yes. Dr. Wallace. Yes. Mr. Ferber. Yes. Mr. Green. Yes. Mrs. Herr. Yes. Mr. Kane. Yes. Mrs. Lucas. Yes. Mrs. Parisi. Yes. Motion carried. Items J. New and old business. If anyone has anything they would like to speak of, I will start with

107Mr. Santoro. Yeah. So, I'd like to lead off with a very big congratulations to the students who performed tonight. That was an amazing performance. I can't decide if I liked the Journey rendition or the set. The instrumental was amazing, amazing. And the teachers who, the music teachers and the program and the chorus, they were all stunning. And just to echo the sentiments of the meeting, hard decisions do have to be made sometimes. And it really is, it's a bad feeling when you can't really please everybody sometimes. But as board members, I think we all came here to be involved and advocate for the district, for our own kids, for our children's futures, for the kids of the community's futures. And we do the best we can. And that's all we can do. So, I guess

108we, as a group, just keep on marching forward and do the best we can continuously. And hopefully things will come out in the light. Thank you, Mark. Kelly, anything? I just want to thank Mr. Mauss. Mr. Mueller and Ms. Sosinski, they're all retiring. So, thank you for your time here in the Merce district. So, just quick for new and old, I know in light of everything else we talked about, we did approve the calendar change tonight. Ending school now on June 18th. So, I'm assuming, Dr. Santura, something will go out district wide about that tomorrow. Yes, we will send that out tomorrow. Okay. I mean, once again, that is very helpful for the referendum. Not that you would mention that in the letter, but it does help to have us get a jump on summer

109projects. So, thank you. Yes. Jamie? I also want to congratulate the kids that performed tonight and their band and chorus instructor, big proponent of the arts. And I always love when we can come see them perform. And we do have another meeting before them, but there is going to be, I believe the Menalopans are playing the end of April in Allentown. So, I guess we can talk more about that. But if you're watching at home on the replay or here, it's always a fun time to see them playing. And also for those retiring, thank you for your years of service. Thank you. Jessie? Good. All right. Serena? I too like to say I really enjoyed the performance tonight. I think that the band was amazing and the chorus was amazing. And I was tapping my

110foot and wiggling my shoulder. So, I really did enjoy it. And I also want to say congratulations and to Mr. Moss and Mr. Mueller and Ms. Isinski for their service and being here and providing their time to the students. And we really appreciate it. And congratulations on your retirement. Thank you, Serena. Christine? Yes, I want to congratulate the band and the chorus tonight. Mr. Rusin and Ms. Pecoraro, phenomenal talent for sixth graders. That wicked performance, I mean as a fellow music teacher, performing that at that age is very challenging. And it was wonderful. They were very entertaining. Also, MEMS is having their play this week, Beetlejuice. I will be attending on Friday. My son got an early preview today and he said it was fabulous. So, I'm looking forward to that. And I hope we

111can really showcase all the talent we have in our district, a little more phenomenal talent. And thank all the art teachers and music teachers. Phenomenal job. Thank you. Thank you, Christine. Go ahead. I echo the sentiments about the performances tonight. Obviously, they did a fantastic job, much better than I could ever do for sure. My only question is, are we going to circle back, and maybe one of you guys is going to address this, on finding a date or dates for the interviews? I assume that we need to plan that in advance so that those who will be interviewed can see if they're available on that day. So, I don't know if we have a plan for kind of getting back to everyone finding a mutual date that works. Thank you. Yeah, on that note,

112so yes, the intent was to revisit it after spring break and kind of start looking at the calendar and figuring out a date that works for obviously both the candidates and as well as the board members. I have an idea. Sorry to interrupt, but it just dawned on me. We always put that extra May board meeting in the agenda, and we do that in case we have to because of staffing, we give ourselves the two dates. Right now it looks like we may be prepared. I'm looking at Shannon because most of the agenda is hers for the first date. We can look into that. If that happens, then we have the date on the calendar. I had made a presentation that day, and one of the reasons why I did that was because we were

113supposed to see Lafayette's band. And last year we missed Lafayette's band because we didn't need the meeting and we canceled it. I didn't want to cancel on them twice. So we could even maybe do it before if people were available earlier or start at a certain time and maybe take a hiatus for the band concert and then go back. Looking at probably what, three hours needed for the interviews? Yes, we're looking at possibly six interviews, at least a half an hour each. So even if we did like an hour and a half, watch the band concert at seven, an hour and a half or two hours, band concert hour. But I am not sure if we're really there from just jumping. But what meeting would that be? I don't know. May 13th, maybe if that's

114a board meeting day, I want to say the 13th, possibly May 13th. I was going to do my presentation and keep that meeting on for the musical, the band concert. But we could possibly do it then. I'm open to that. I don't have a problem with that. That's why it's already on everyone's calendar. Is everyone good with that? We'll communicate. Yeah, we'll communicate. But that may be an option. The 20th is a regular agenda. The 27th. The 27th is a regular and that becomes, I think that might be one of our, it's the evening of excellence. But the 13th, we always leave on for emergency, that third meeting. A case like anything with budget and stuff like that. Yeah. No, well, we're talking about having. It may be a meeting, but closed session. A closed

115session only meeting. And then around the band performance. Yes. No, closed session. No, just an executive session. No, Jan. We'll let you know if anything changes. Yes. So you can come to that. Yes. Yeah. Well, I'm telling you, I just came to me now. It was an idea. I sparked an idea. All right. Again, I wanted to congratulate and say definitely amazing job by the choir and jazz band. The performance was fantastic. It's always impressive to see what they're working on. The wicked theme was pretty cool, too. It is Autism Acceptance Month. So I wanted to recognize that. And I reached out to be asking if she can maybe highlight some of the things that happen in the district during this month in recognition of Autism Acceptance Month. I'll jump to you. You can speak

116to that. Sure. Each building does something more unique for their own. Some schools to highlight what the schools do from what they have shared. Sometimes they purchase autism awareness t shirts that the staff may wear throughout the month in recognition. There might be a celebration where everybody wears blue in some of the schools tomorrow. Each school does some sort of morning announcement as part of our April commemorative month. We have other commemorative days or events that are highlighted within that. Autism Awareness Day, which is actually tomorrow, April 2nd, is amongst that. So it's part of the hallway display and TV studio presentations where they explain what Autism Awareness Day is. It actually ties into goals where we have to talk about curricularly about different disabilities and acceptance and understanding to help build with character education

117and other areas when it comes to state statute. Some specific activities that we sent out district wide. Mrs. Marcella has taken over for Mrs. Scuteri in arranging those different awareness activities. I'll give you some examples. They were to review one of the following videos that was suggested by Mrs. Marcella. One of them was Autism Awareness Day for Kids. Another was Sesame Street and Autism Highlight Reel, basically giving an overview of what that means. Another Sesame Street video to make it very age appropriate. And then there was an activity that would correlate for that grade level where they can create a puzzle piece that was then displayed throughout the schools. There are some other suggestions such as a read aloud, a different kind of brilliant focusing on abilities as opposed to disabilities. Researching a public figure

118who has autism to let students know that there are people out there with autism who have gone on to do many wonderful great things, highlighting what they've done quite well. And then for grades 6 to 8, they're working on a series of posters to decorate bulletin boards throughout the school to highlight and commemorate the month. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. Do you know, do any of the buildings bring in speakers? There's all different things that are occurring throughout the year specifically for this month. I would have to ask if there's any assemblies. But I do know that there are some schools that have done things with maybe not necessarily autism, but like I can say Lafayette has done a Seeing Eye Dog assembly focusing on disabilities in that regard. So there are different activities that

119occur and that's at the building's discretion in collaboration, sometimes even with their PTAs and PTOs. Good. Thank you. You're welcome. I wanted to just touch on quickly that, you know, we've always at least for my time on the board, it's we've always had a very sort of casual almost experience with how we have conversations and discuss things. And I think it's great. And I'd love to see it continue down that road. But we, you know, we need to stay mindful of allowing each other the opportunity to speak and trying not to speak over one another. And of course, when certain topics are sensitive or, you know, it's it's understandable that can, you know, sometimes we lose sight of that. But just that, you know, we try to stay mindful of, you know, being considerate to

120one another when we're having these conversations and, you know, allowing each other to say what we need to say and then passing the mic over to the next person. But outside of that, I appreciate everyone, you know, collaborating, whether we I think among the board members, I think there's nine of us and I think we all probably had nine different visions of what we would have loved to have seen in a perfect world as it relates to the redistricting. But unfortunately, that's not going to accomplish much if we're if nine of us are not on the same page. So, you know, we had to collaborate and come to a point that we felt we can live with and feel it's the right thing to do by our district. So I appreciate everyone working together. And

121as was said earlier, everybody from the board and certainly people from administration, Dr. Santoro, Ms. Pachinsky put in, you know, countless hours and, you know, a lot of time and heartache trying to labor over this and figure out coming to the best solution. So I just wanted to thank everyone for that. Thanks. I don't have much to add. If you have said what I wanted to say, I thought Pinebrook's chorus and their band today was absolutely amazing. They always put on a marvelous show. It's amazing how that band comes together for the first time this year and by now are playing harmoniously. So very impressive. See, I tried to like a little pun there, but OK, then the other thing I wanted to say is what Ms. Parisi said that Beetlejuice starts tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday

122and Friday is Beetlejuice. I'm excited. I'm planning on going tomorrow with my daughter. I can't say a third time, but I am excited. Good one, Ronnie. So if you're available, I do suggest that you come and see MEMS plays have notoriously been amazing. I mean, it's like a college play. They surpass anything that I've seen at middle school or high school level. Always a top performance. So I'm excited to see that play tomorrow. Can I just add one last thing? I'm sorry. I know we all want to get home, but I think I saw on social media the therapy dogs. I don't know what school they were just out, but I was so excited because it looked like it was a great success. So it did make me really happy to see that it was

123there and that the kids seemed to really have. I think the adults enjoyed it, too. Everyone looked pretty happy in those pictures. I know a lot of our schools are doing a doctor series here and she's called me up many times. I think she has them come in every day now for a few hours or she'd like to. But yes, it's been a great success. Well, I really do suggest that during meetings like this when they're very contentious that we should have one, too. I like that idea, Serena. Dogs make everything better. Can I just say one thing, too? Please go ahead. During the meetings, when it gets like this, we're trying to move through the agenda and things are changing. Please understand, I'm not trying to be difficult. It's just my job as the

124Board of Secretaries to memorialize everything that's happening and to be able to put it into written minutes. That's why it has to be very specific. When, and I always say this, I don't like motions from the floor because we've had unintended consequences of doing that in the past where things went awry because of not thinking things through and really wordsmithing things the way they needed to be. We had issues with stuff. So that's why I try to do that. I try not to have that happen. I try to ask if you're going to do amendments or you're going to bring something like that, please bring it in writing so that it's worked through. We have it. Everyone can sit and look at it and read it. And we all understand what it is that we're

125passing and not just a concept. I can't put a concept into wordsmithing things the way they needed to be. It's got to be verbatim, word for word, what we want to say. So please, I'm not being difficult. We have adopted Robert's Rules. I try to stick to that and follow the procedural aspect of what Robert's Rules sets out as far as motions and seconds and motions to amend and calling the question and all of that. So please just do understand that. And give me the time to read it. I'm going to read it. I'm going to read it. I'm going to read it. I'm going to read it. Give me a few minutes. And give me a few minutes. Sometimes I do need time to just focus and get everything just the way it needs

126to be. So I thank you for that. Great. Thank you, Ronnie. Okay. Can I have a motion and a second to adjourn? Jamie. Mark?