001Statements hereby made that after notice of this meeting was given by the promenadual listing of said notice in all district schools and other public places, the mailing and again delivery of the notice to the designated newspapers, the Aspect Park Press, the Menalca Patch, and finally with the court of Menalca Township and the Court of English Town Borough. Roll the roll. Mr. Berber? Here. Mr. Green? Here. Mrs. Hart? Here. Mr. Cain? Here. Mrs. Lucas? Here. Mrs. Parisi? Here. Here. And Dr. Wallace? Here. We do have a quorum. Please rise for the flag to be presented. The flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All righty. We have one remaining. Thank you, sir. Okay, changes in positions. You
002don't have anything to say. We are opening up the floor to public comments. If anybody would like to step up to the microphone, you have three minutes to state your name, street address. Thank you. Out of here, we will close public comments at this time. You too. Item E, board's information. Anybody have any questions, comments related to the referendum committee meeting minutes? Thank you, by the way, Ryan, because I thought the comments were really well done and well documented. If maybe I could just take a minute for the sake of the board and, of course, anyone. Now, right now, we're still deep in the planning stages for this summer. The proposed schedule for the summer. The administrative team committee designed the plan. Multiple people, professionals, groups look at the plan and are going to be
003opened on March 18th. We're hoping to have to award contracts to actually do this work. HVAC and the next meeting about that. So, since extensive work is being done at Clark Mills, the ELC this summer, E and Squad will be hosted on the first floor of Webrock. Additionally, Webrock is also getting their rooms done, which means we cannot use their second floor, which means summer school is going to be a mix of hybrid and in-person. It'll be a mix of hybrid and in-person based on what the course is and what the work does for the children. So, younger grades in classes such as music will be in-person and then some of the other classes will be hybrid. I want everyone to know that this is only an issue for this year. Next year, we believe
004everything should be back to normal. So, you know, we're asking the community to bear with us for one year and it'll be back to normal hopefully for next year. That being said, we do have a great plan for the summer, but I want everyone to know and remember that construction is a messy process. And although we don't foresee any issue come September, we were warned that, you know, the rooms may not be put away yet. You know, it may not look like a regular September in terms of where we're at, but we will do our best and we will make sure that our schools are still clean, warm, and welcoming for our students because that's always our priority. Anyone else? I have a question for Ryan. I know that when we had the meeting where
005the company that I came in and he spoke to us, I'm going to call him a construction manager, I'm going to call him a general contractor, but I know he's not. He mentioned, like, the materials being an issue, so do we think we'll get what we need in time based on one of his, one else? So right now, and Ronnie can talk a little more about this, they do believe we will have the materials on time. The materials will start to come in in June. Anything for the roofing will go out to the roof, so it won't be, like, in the way of the children. It'll just be placed on the roof. And they, but they cannot really forget the project until all the materials arrive. But right now, they do not foresee a problem
006with that. That was part of the reason why we tried to get the bids out quickly and get the, you know, opening and then a quick award, because it gives them that additional time to get the materials on board. Okay, thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Thank you. Moving on to action items. Administration. Can I have a motion in a second on items F-1 through F-3? Mr. Her? Mr. Kane? Any questions? Dave, I have a question about the tags. Are we completely complete with the process of the fuel tanks? We're authorized to work. They haven't. This is, right now what we have is we were issued a stoppage from the DEP. They actually put a tag on the one tank. We weren't allowed to use any longer. So we had to make arrangements with the same
007company that's doing this work to rent a temporary above-ground tank for several months until we could get the other project underway, get the materials ordered. So this will start the process. We will prove it tonight. I can issue a purchase order tomorrow about all that. I'm going to start ordering materials to get that going. And we're hoping by the end of summer that that will be complete. Does that in any way tie in with any of the referendum work? No. It doesn't interfere, right? That's at the transportation center, so it's far away from everything else. Anyone else? Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that all these policies that we're doing on the second reading on tonight that are marked mandatory or 100% mandatory, like the 57, 56 mandatory label was designated, if it's a
008mandatory policy and identified as mandatory, then we nerf. So I personally went through each policy back in July and August as they're all required for the completion of the comprehensive equity plan, which is a requirement of the state that gets updated every three years. What I did was I pulled the list of what we had and compared it to the last update. They all are required. In fact, when we submit our comprehensive equity plan, which you will see in May, once it's finalized after our team meets pending approval this evening, it actually has to be listed, those policies. That's a requirement. We have to actually include the date, but they are all mandated. There are actually very few changes. I outlined them on one of the documents to actually indicate the language is actually better
009in these versions. They're much more concise. And any other notable changes were explained for you, what they are. Yeah, no, I just wanted to double-check that, you know, in the past, it's been marked mandatory and then it ended up in a lawsuit because it wasn't mandatory when it was labeled mandatory, so I just wanted to make sure that if it is mandatory... I had gone back multiple comprehensive equity plans, I believe, the last three rounds, and all were listed as mandatory. For the first reading of this and reviewing the second reading, I appreciate all the work that's being done here and the change in the wording. Concise. I just have a question regarding one of the policies, 1140. If somehow, if you were to prove it for the second reading, I'm trying to understand the
010difference between, in the second paragraph on policy 1140, it says that board education equity policy shall recognize the value and diversity of persons and groups within the community and promote the acceptance of a person of diverse backgrounds, regardless of the protected categories listed in the statute 6A7-1.1A, and pursuant to the statute. Then it continues saying that the education of equity policies will promote equitable education opportunity and foster a learning environment that is free from all forms of prejudice, discrimination, and harassment based upon protected categories listed. The two are, it's one saying one thing regardless, and then one is saying that it's being protected, which I think the statute does protect everyone. So can you just explain the difference between the first few sentences and the last few sentences before we continue to approve the second
011reading? I have to look back to really read it because there are a lot here, but I can tell you in regards to the noticeable differences from the original. Will that take us off topic? Well, for the original, I mean, I didn't see the original, just looking at that one paragraph. Okay, so from the original, from my notes, most of the revisions in this policy remove the list. Prior to they actually list what every single protected category was. Instead of listing every category, they just say protected categories. The remaining revisions are minor updates in the actual code. So the updated administrative code, and they relocate the information addressing the comprehensive plan to a different policy. So they actually removed something. So that's another difference. So essentially just in paraphrasing, this policy is to protect those
012classes. It's just ensuring that there's no discrimination and that we're cognizant of that. The other note I have, just to put that out there, the proposed revision notes that parents and other community members are aware of professional development training provided to the school district personnel regarding topics around equity. This is always disseminated to the board when we put out our professional development plan, which is adopted every summer. You approve that in June. And that's also based on the Board of Ed agenda. That's how we send that information out. That's some background to that policy. But the notable difference is actually condensing that section. Okay. And I guess my other event question would be regarding the changes through the Trump administration with the diversity, equity, inclusion being changed within the schools. If that is the case,
013and I want to make sure that we are protected as a school and making sure that nothing's going to happen to us, these changes from the federal law to the state law, and there's definitely a little overlapping going on and confusion. So before we solidify all this, will this be reviewed again by the mayor also to make sure the terminology that we're using is correct to protect ourselves from any kind of federal loss of funding or any lawsuits that need to be brought up by parents? Because there is something going out to parents in general to report to the government regarding once these policies are written, if there's any room for, let's say, the terminology in here, and it's not clear the terminology, and we're getting the ability to maybe sue or press charges against
014us by using certain words when we could just use statutes at the same time. I just want to make sure that we're protected under this. So things have changed since July and August. So where we're standing right now, and I know that we're on the timeframe also for this affirmative action for this comprehensive equity plan. So I do understand that. But I wanted to make sure that when we say yes to this and move forward, that we are protected and we know what our rights are as a school district and are the privilege we're being using. So we don't have a representative here tonight, but I did talk to Cameron. And right now, this is what the state of New Jersey requires for the comprehensive equity plan. And we report to the state of New
015Jersey. So he said right now we're reporting to the state of New Jersey. So in the future, if something changes within those couple of months, we can revise this again. We can revise this whenever. We can revise this policy whenever. I think, and additionally, Joss SMA, the company that does it, they do have a staff of attorneys that review code, and they will put out emergency alerts should something of a critical nature where we had to make a provision, they would notify us with an e-alert. So that would happen as well. Jesse, I think I'm going to guess what you're going to say, but I'm going to just speak first if that's okay. I know Straus SMA brings up concerns, but if there's a notable change we have to make and we are notified, of
016course we'll adjust the pivot. That's our role as well. Does that help, Jesse? I just want to put it on record that Straus SMA is what led us to a lawsuit. I'm not 100% sure I agree with continuing them. I've tried to bring it up before to the NJSBA for switch. I know there's districts in the surrounding county and other counties that have done that across the state. I think that's something that we should explore because I myself, speaking just for me, am not 100% confident. Hence the reason I asked the question if these mandatory were truly verified to be mandatory because I don't want to have more suicide, not suicide, more death threats, my kids getting pictures taken. I don't want that because we didn't do the proper steps and verifications. I 100% understand
017where Serena's coming from, but having been through this once before with this company, I don't want to rely on just that fact alone. I would love for us to explore switching. I've said that and I'll keep saying it because I'm not trying to go through what I went through the last time as a public speaker because somebody didn't say something the right way and we didn't do this. And as Serena pointed out with the new administration and the holding of federal funds, I understand that Cameron said this, but right now, I mean this is last week, we sent out an RFP for a new attorney. The people we're supposed to have on there is not here. We're having these difficult legal questions that we have to ask. If we get some kind of thing, I'm
018going to abstain on all of them. I'm just going to address the part about Tri-Thousand S9, I think. In policy, there was a lesson learned, and from our meetings, I think that lesson was learned statewide. I don't foresee that happening again, but there's also a lot of lawsuits that Tri-Thousand S9 has kept us out of, that we don't have a list of those. We'll see HASBA get sued for their legal representation of what they're having to do. No other markings of policies have led to a lawsuit. I'm saying if we're trying to avoid lawsuits, and I think that's what we're trying to do, is there's another company who's a competitor for the company that we're supposed to use. What do you mean it's not true? Almost 600 of the schools were fooled. That's what I'm
019saying. And people are starting to change from that because that was the accepted company to use. And there's other options. I really think that we should explore those. We have been with New Jersey School Board. That's what we've been doing. Okay. I understand that. We bring up concerns that have just... This, I don't know. That's because of... And there is a policy titled, it's number 5145.4, legal, equal educational opportunities. It mentions comprehensive equity plan must include policy statements that recognize and value the diversity of persons in the society. It's still mentioning a lot of the same terminology that we're using in this process. And when we had 5756, we had the critical alerts that were there also. I'm not misspeaking. We all sat here except for Serena. Right. Why are you saying that it's school
020board's critical alert? You didn't say school board. You said Straus Espen. You said Straus Espen. You know what? You said Straus Espen. It was intended that it was... Just so I would say, welcome to every step during the 1-0. Discuss it further, right? Let's get through the agenda, writers. If you want to abstain, you could abstain, of course. But if you want to discuss further about what we do with our policy consultants, we can definitely do that. We can have that conversation. But let's do that during the 1-0. Which is something everyone should be aware of, that every policy we have, right, even when it's mandatory or not mandatory, the language that we're getting from Straus Espen, or even if it's NJSBA, it's suggested language, right? It's not gospel. Not word for word. So we
021have the ability to modify and change it to maybe certain aspects that have to be in there, right? But we have the ability to construct it the way we feel makes sense. I 100% understand that. I'm talking about the designation of a mandatory regulation policy, and we went down that road with the mandatory, you know, designation to find out that it wasn't a... If you buy a car from us, you sue, we ended up in court marking something. Mr. Berber? Yes. Mr. Green? Yes. Mr. Santora? Yes. Mr. Tosetti? We understand not to. Yes on one. Yes on one and three. Motion and second on items one, G-137, please. We already answered the question on the guess. Mr. Green? Yes. Mrs. Hearn? Yes. Mr. Kane? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mrs. Gracie? Yes. Mr. Santora? Yes. Mr.
022Tosetti? Yes. Dr. Wallace? Yes. Thank you. Motion and second. So that is one of our self-contained classrooms and it focuses on their individualized needs for social agclamation. Typically they'll go to teach them social skills including how to shop, how to act in a store. There may be, I'll give you an example, this may not be an instance that might occur, but it's something that could occur. Let's say a child has impulsive free activities and starts crying, or there's a temper tantrum, it's a skill that they work on in the store so that they can acclimate socially. with others. It's a nice trip. Thank you. Yes. Mr. Kane? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mrs. Creasy? Yes. Mr. Santorum? Yes. Mr. Tosetti? Yes. Dr. Wallace? Yes. Mr. Berger? Yes. And Mr. Green? Yes. Those are successful. Thank you.
023Now onto personnel. Can they have a motion and a second please on items I-1 through 14? Any questions, anyone? Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mrs. Creasy? Yes. Mr. Santorum? Yes. Mr. Tosetti? Yes. Dr. Wallace? Yes. Mr. Berger? Yes. Mr. Green? Yes. And Mrs. Herndon? Yes. That's the agenda? Well, so far. Thank you. All right, we are going to go into our budget presentation. This is Dr. Jones. This is why they dropped them off at my house, about to drive them in, and then broke his arm. So I'll give you a few minutes to take a look at where we stand. The first page is essentially the anticipated revenues, and at the bottom is our current deficit, which is just a little over $300,000, which is extremely manageable at this point. All right, how does that compare to
024last year? Do you recall where we were last year? Last year we had a much more difficult time. I think at this point we were still probably a million five or two million away from where we needed to be when we, when the stadium numbers came out. And that was even being close to what we expected them to be. And then the last page is just a breakdown of the budget by the different categories as the state breaks it down, major categories. I would like to thank the state for this year because they told us we would not lose more than 3 percent, and we were able to budget at least now with the money we had from last year to have an idea, and we were able to plan a little better knowing the
025most we could lose. Otherwise we got where we could be anything from, you gave money to millions of dollars, and I found at least knowing that the lowest we could lose was $273,000, a manageable way to begin the budget process. And even under S2, we had some way of calculating, even though the numbers were large, we had some idea of what it was going to be, so we could at least try to plan for it. But this was my kind of noble sport because S2 was sunset basically. Ronnie, can you refresh my memory? Equalization aid, it looks like we lost almost $2 million right there. No, it's just how they restructured it. In the last few years under S2, they weren't calculating the formula in the way it needed to be, so they didn't really
026adjust the special education aid, the transportation aid, the security aid. Everyone lost equalization aid. They just had dumped that into the category because they hadn't worked out the actual formula arrangements. This is more towards the current formula, how it sits right now, based on enrollment with certain adjustments that they make at the state level. We're still trying to digest how... Yeah, I'm just trying to figure it all out too. I mean, you see on the news that the increase is getting $1.4 billion in state aid. I'm not trying to completely lose $17.32, but like... There's actually, if you go onto the State Department website, there is a listing of the entire state as to how everyone faired with... Yeah, no, that's why those two districts in the state get $100 million. About the loss of
027aid though, as Dr. Santorum mentioned, we were limited to 3% of certain categories. The three categories of aid that we get, transportation, special education, and security aid, are the ones that were capped at a 3% loss. There were districts that had other categories of aid that were not capped, and they did lose or gain in those areas, depending on their formal situations. That's in, I don't want to say cuts, but reductions in preschool expansion aid. I know some of my colleagues are trying to look into why that had happened. Yes, that is something that we saw this year, and we're trying to see if they're going to give it back to them another way. But a lot of those districts that used the preschool expansion aid that we talked about last week, they lost all
028that funding. So now they have a program that they do not have a financial backing, or can't afford anymore. I was on a New Jersey Outdoor Lunch and Learn today. They went over what happened there. Any school district that had preschool expansion aid in 23, 24 school year, and at the end of the year had carryover funds, they were allowed to carryover into this school year, the state reduced this year's allotment by the amount of their carryover funds. So that was kind of, they were saying that there may be a way that they can make an appeal, I guess, through justification as to why that occurred, and how they're using it this year, and that it really shouldn't be a reduction, but that's yet to be seen. Question as far as the budget, are we
029getting these numbers finalized, are they 100%? The state numbers, yes, they came out, we have a report, they came out on Thursday this week. Now I know last year you guys did some really good work with the budget. Looking at the $300,000 deficit and the sunset on us two, I think we have a pretty confident picture that I think we should be okay with the rest. Well, Dr. Centaur had made some reductions already, which I believe you shared last week. Yeah, I think this year, first of all, I think it's important to recognize that we are under adequacy and we're under our local fair share. So the state comes out with numbers, and that I shared with you, I think, the state comes out with numbers and they say, for your district, your size, this
030is how much it should cost to run it. That's called our adequacy. We are under that. So we're running our school district for less money than the state thinks we should be able to. Now, is that a real number? I don't know, because when I'm over adequacy, I'll tell you that that's not a real number, and we're fine. It changed a lot in the last year. Last year, we had 2.5 million over adequacy, and this year we're about a couple hundred thousand under. We're not way under, but we are under, and a fast swing from last year. So those numbers change based on what they guess that you should have, how many security guards you think you should have, how many computers, that type of thing. Then when we go to fair share, that's what
031the state says the taxpayer should be paying. We are also under our local fair share, which means according to the state, they do not feel our community is paying their fair share of the process. Now being under adequacy and under local fair share is a good thing for us right now, because if they pass any new bills or they look into anything, they tend to highlight the districts that are under adequacy and under fair share. So we will need to see if anything comes of that. So what they did last year with the bill, with the tax levy, we're not sure. I think it's also important to remember that everything that the town has given us for the referendum can only be used towards the referendum. So nothing in there was used to decrease the
032budget for the referendum. Now that being said, knowing that the groups are being repaired, we didn't have to set aside money for potential group repair, because we know the groups are being prepared. I think one of the hardest things about planning a budget this size, and we are now in February planning a budget to be implemented in July that has to make it through next June. We have 10 facilities. We have nine lay-out property sites. We have 60 buses. When you look at your house, when you look at the amount of boilers we have, ventilation that we have, roofs, sinks, and vehicles, and you're planning that everything is going to work. So when you plan your budget, you have to put money in your budget to make sure if something does break, you can afford
033to fix it. And last year was really a struggle to make sure we had that. We're also looking at the same things that everyone at home is looking at. We're looking at the energy costs rising in New Jersey, and how are we balancing that, making sure that we have the money, because we can't all of a sudden in February say we're going to turn the lights off. We still have to keep the lights off. This year, I will say, was much easier than the last amount of budget, but that being said, because we have done over $50 million of state funding cuts, there was very little slack. In years past, we can say, okay, well, we put a little extra money in here if something breaks, we can pull it out of there. That's gone
034at this point. We've pulled all that out already, so when you're looking at the budget lines, it's not like, oh, maybe we can pull a little out of here, we can pull a little out of there. Also, our class sizes have kind of flatlined. Our last large class would be going up to eighth grade next year and moving out, and now our enrollment from grade to grade is pretty much stabilized. So where we were able to, in the past, cut staff because of the reduced enrollment, we don't have that play anymore that we used to have either. So although we were in better shape this budget, based on everything that we did last year, you can definitely see going through that we didn't have the areas before where we could. I'm happy to report that
035we are, we're going to be eliminating very minimal staffing positions, and most of them can be done through attrition, so there will be no non-reheals due to increased enrollment. I'm happy to share that. I think that has been something we have not done in a very long time, is keep our staff, and I think that's terrific. I will also say we were able to maintain our class sizes. We increased our beyond the school day budget. We had used a lot of money from the HIT grant. We found the HIT grant to be extraordinary. We did try to get the money that was in the HIT grant because we don't know if it's going to continue next year into our budget, but we could not do that. So what we did instead was we increased the
036beyond the school day budgets a little bit, and we're going to kind of take what we did for HIT and look at beyond the school day and see if we can merge them into a program that meets both of them. Now I've heard the senator say that he's trying to bring the HIT grant back. If he doesn't, we'll absolutely apply for it because we saw the benefits, but we did try to increase beyond the school day, so we didn't take a hit from losing the HIT grant. So that's something we're also proud of. We added some new RTI resources for math that Mr. Marco shared with you last week or two weeks ago or a few weeks ago, whatever, that we were very excited about, and we were able to actually increase our budget a
037little bit for instructional resources, and this is something that we have not been able to do in many years. So we're really excited that our instructional program's also going to stay the same. The other thing Ronnie has tried every year to decrease our dependency on surplus funds. Surplus funds happen for what we said. I mean, we fund thinking, you know, what if a bus breaks or what if not, and then it doesn't, and we have some funds, and they're from two years prior, and we don't want to depend on that. So I have here, and these numbers may not be accurate, in 23-24 we used about 7 million to balance. Last year we used about 5.3, and this year, according to this right now, we're just being using about 4.3, which is also healthy for
038our organization to not rely on surplus. Again, we do have enough, though, that we will be able to balance what Ronnie's showing here. When we go back and look at this, the teeth will come back. One of the other positions we were going to cut through the nutrition we may try to bring back based on what we're seeing with the new developments in the class sizes. Although our class sizes haven't increased, some of them are on the cusp. So in K-2 we do not like our class sizes to go over 22. Occasionally they do. Going into this school year, we're pretty good with K-2. In 3-5, we like to keep class sizes at 24. We do go occasionally to 25 or 26, but we try very hard to keep at 24. Right now we do
039have some schools with grade levels important that are at 25, other schools that are lower, but some at 25. So we may bring back a teaching position to kind of break that down and make sure, because we always have children moving in, and we don't want to be co-operating and we're telling a child that you can't go to your home school because that school is full and sending them to a different school. So this is something that we sometimes sweat. In years past, we're not sweating this. We feel that we can have the staff to do that. The other thing that I wanted to bring up was two years ago we suspended pay to play. Not two years last year we suspended pay to play. Right now we can balance the budget and keep pay
040to play suspended again for at least another year. I would like to keep pay to play suspended for another year. I do recognize it's about $225,000, but I think it's appropriate if we don't have to do it to not do it. Is it, I'm in complete agreement to keep it suspended, even more so, like, how do we not, does it need to be kept in suspension? Is it like formally suspended? No, it just means we would just be able to implement it again if the need ever occurs. I think too Nicole, you are also maintaining the mental health services and the positions that we added to this budget. Yes, that was another thing. This year we added three mental health clinicians to the budget at the BCBA and I sent you guys a report of
041everything that our mental health clinicians are doing in the school. They are truly doing an amazing job. They're working with some of our most needy of students in that area and we're seeing positive effects and we're so happy that we were able to bring in those positions and meeting them. You know, a lot of districts did not look to do, I think we've always been on the for fundamental health. We did cholera services before that was even, anyone had thought about it and then once we saw how successful the cholera services were we introduced our own staff and started our own program and we're seeing the benefits of that and I think it's something our district is able to offer that a lot of districts aren't and it truly is a positive thing for our
042students. Can you, Ronnie, for the abbreviation, just recollect for me what EHP and GSP is? EHP, those are the two different, the state health plan offers three different levels of plans. The direct plan, which is a direct 10 or direct 15, there's a horizon and an Anetna plan and then there is, EHP is the employees health plan, which is a all new school employees at a certain point in time, which is in the past, must go into EHP. They're not allowed to go into direct. Only grandfather staff members were allowed to stay in the direct plan. So everyone has to go into EHP. Another plan which is very similar to that is called the Gordon State plan and that's what GSP is. Okay and where's that projected number? I know it's, I'm trying to figure
043it out. One is that, and this comes directly from the AON reports that the state uses their actuary to set the rates and our health end broker also provides some insight as to where they feel the results of the rates are going to be. Usually I would just apply a straight rate across all the plans but because there was such a difference in the two, I actually increased them based on the EHP and GSP were a little bit less. I used that rate and then I increased the direct plans for those staff members that chose to still living in that plan at the higher rate, which they recommended. And where does that cost for us? No, I mean I'm looking at the numbers. I'm just trying to figure out where it costs. That's in your
044employee benefits. If you look on the third page, that number, about $24 million, that's not just health benefits. So that's health benefits, that's pension contributions, that's severance pay, that's tuition reimbursement, worker's compensation, you know, those things that we have to pay into, it's all levels. So that's the $24.3 million? Yes. And that's the overall budget, yes. Okay. If you look honestly between salary and benefits, you're talking at 50% of the budget is salary. Right, no, 100%. I just, that's what I was just trying to figure out. I have two questions. One, in regards to the capital reserve fund, looking forward to the referendum, a lot of the projects are going to get updated. We may not need as much maintenance and emergency repairs, but some of those projects and things that we have in the
045past, are we still able to allocate to that fund to contribute to it at the same rate without the risk of the state potentially viewing this like they did the other district and saying, you guys have it over the rig, you can use it today. On a district our size, our capital reserve is slightly over $4 million on a $100 million budget with eight physical locations as far as schools, and it's nowhere near what I would even consider adequate. I mean, I know districts that have $15 million in capital reserve that the budget and the school district are sized. So we've always made the decision to put that money, instead of putting it into a reserve, we put it into the educational program. But that means we have to be very careful and wise with
046how we spend it. When we look to use in the past stabilization aid or broad grants where any money we contribute in this state would match, you know, the 60-40 split so that we would at least get something more with the use of our money by having a matching contribution from the state. Understood. I have one more question, and I think I already have the answer I just want you to probably roll over. In regards to the GSP and the ESP employee benefits, it is the second largest line item on the budget. Is that able to be shopped open market, or does it dictate that it has to? We have, unfortunately, every year we actually have our health benefit broker pull our claims ratio, claims experience. In order to be marketable, they want, for every
047dollar that I pay in to health benefits for our employees, they want to pay out no more than 90, 92 cents. 92 cents at the most. So they, to be profitable. We pay out $1.05 for every dollar we pay in. We've paid, they've paid out on our behalf as much as $1.19 for every dollar we pay in. So unfortunately, while we could, we're not marketable, we're just not an attractive client, it would wind up costing us more. And all of our contracts state we can make changes, but they have to be equal or better. But we do have to care for ourselves and we're very healthy so we're always in school. But that doesn't mean that we can't have somebody come and do a little work for a free audit. Like an audit? Yeah. To
048see if they could, there's nothing that says we can't do that, correct? Well the state sort of audits it for us, and I know we've done audits in the past of our, to make sure that our staff members that have dependents on their plan are actually, you know, dependents have an HDL or say you had a spouse on your plan but got divorced and didn't tell us they supported that. Right. But let's say there's a company that's willing to come in and do something and say hey, you buy this service at this amount and they look and see what we get and they say hey, we can get you, we can save you a million dollars by switching to your pharmacy benefit or something like that is what I'm... Our pharmacy is packaged with our
049health, it's... Right. What I'm saying is... Our consultants do look at our issues. Our consultants look at our issues every year. Do you know of a company that does that? Well there's Brio and then there's another one too that I've talked with other board members around the state that have lowered their stuff that was in the state that we were in. That's why I asked what those were and they were like hey, this guy saved us XYZ, a million dollars. This company saved us 150,000 dollars, like in different insurance policies. So I was going to bring that up and we'll do it because I had a phone call Dave about it after so we got to be saying hey, you guys have your budget, we just did ours. This company came in in January and
050looked at our stuff and we're going to... How many information? Me and Dave, not only just medical but... We market our jobs comp, we do that every year too, we fill out extensive market applications and we mark... From other districts. We stopped to get a free look at our stuff and they saved us this, they saved us that. I think one, I don't know for now, but they saved almost... And they're a smaller district, so it was... Property and liability though. I mean, health benefits obviously, but their property... I think it was combined with the health and both. I just, I definitely had Dave. I'll get the contact stuff from those people that Dave had. Yeah, just looking back, I'm looking at the numbers, Ronnie, I know we said before about the proportion of the
051budget, our salaries and benefits. I'm looking at it, if I ended up correctly, salaries alone are close to 50 or about 50% without people in benefits. So, talk a little bit to that. So, as I told you guys in the email, when we get a... When we pull the budget out of Genesis, it has close to 3,000 line items in it. I can't balance the budget, but I can get 3,000 line items. So, I take about four hours, it takes me to take... I go to each line item, and then I divide it into subcategories that make sense for me. So, this way, once I have subcategories, office supplies, I can go down. And if I decide I'm going to cut 20% of office supplies, I can go down and quickly cut without going every
052time through 3,000 line items. So, when you look at that, I took all of our salaries and put them in one spreadsheet, and they came to initially close to $54 million. Anything that's benefit related, so I look at things like what Ronnie was saying, and things that I know I can't cut because it's workman's comp or that type of thing, I put that in another category, and again, this is my interpretation of that, and that's about $23 million. Instructional supplies were almost $3 million, which was interesting to me was, this is the first year I've done this, I've created one that was called Extracurricular, and I took out the Beyond School Day program, all of our sports, our plays, all that, and that came to $872,000, which I didn't think it was going to be
053that high-filler, so it was very interesting to see. And then I put it to other salaries, and other salaries are when we pay teachers above to do different things, and that was around $652,000 over time, that type of thing. $6,000, yes. So that has to do with overtime, though, like sub-pay, sub-pays in there, and that's a large chunk of it, the teachers and things like that. But yes, when I first take a look at the budget, it says $101 million, because that's where we started, and then you take out $54 million for salaries, and $23 million for benefits, is gone. I was actually looking at, usually I used to break this down differently when my first line was salaries, that's why I was looking at the 24-hour rate. That's just regular education purposes. Salaries are
054throughout the school. That was my mistake. I'm just curious, while we're under adequacy overall, how do we fare in terms of our salaries and benefits? Is there a certain percentage that districts try to stay within that's considered reasonable or normal? I don't know that. I think it's hard to compare. We're a K-8 district. If you look at a district with high school, it changes because they have different needs. When you look at a K-8, we're going to have more OT, we're going to have more PT, we're going to have more speech. If you looked at the high school, they may have less of that, because those are a lot of areas where you focus. I'm talking, obviously, relatively speaking, right, comparing the districts that are similar in size, similar grades. I've never broken it down
055that way. I think a lot of it, too, is the age of your staff, as far as not age, but your tenure of your staff, how long they've been, how many are at the top of the guide, if you've got good longevity in your staffing, they get to the top of the guide, you can have a majority of your staff at the top of the guide. Eventually, sometimes then you'll have where a large chunk of people will retire, and then you're filling that with lesser expensive employees. It depends on where you're at in benefits versus family benefits. Where you're at in that cycle, sometimes it makes a difference, too. Right. We have a very stable staff. We have a very stable staff, yeah. Is there any other? Is it stable or senior? Senior. Tenured, well-tenured.
056I didn't mean by age. I didn't mean by age. I meant experience. I didn't mean the second-year teacher who's almost 50. I didn't mean that. I meant... I meant... Okay, let's move on. We were projecting on a large increase in utilities. We were told to project for our energy costs a 25% increase because there are new rates coming out in June, so I have to factor that in. It may not turn out to be that way. We always have to budget for snow removal, but this year we've been very fortunate with snow removal. What we tend to do with that is any funds that don't get spent on those types of things we will use to do a small one-time project. Transportation will use some of their money. If they've got money left over for
057repairs or maintenance, they'll try to buy one bus or two buses as opposed to lease purchasing the following year. Having a lease that's going to have interest over five years, it winds up costing us less. Yes, in this budget we do have to lease purchase on buses, but if we're able to at the end of this year based on not having things like snow and gas prices and what have you, we will try to buy those buses outright again. That's my plan. There was also some folks that were in this budget that were going to try to buy outright this year too that we removed from the budget. There were some conscious decisions made. I think we're in a good position right now, especially with building this budget, because of taking the advantage of the
058tax levy adjustment that we did last year that really did help. We would be literally $5 million off this number if we didn't have that in there. It would not be where we're at. It would be a very, very different scenario. We thank you and we thank the community. I have no doubt, if I could just make a comment, I have no doubt that Nicole, Ronnie, and Jody will find this $303,000. I remember my first year was like $3.7 million. I'm going to go home and sleep like a baby. I'm not going to worry about it. We're now hardly in re-review, and I think last year was a pretty good testament as well, and we pounded it and killed it. We managed to do it, but again, at the expense of the building maintenance, and
059now thank you to the community for passing the referendum because that was becoming a critical issue because we did focus on more on the instructional program and diverted funds that direction. Yes, so we're in good shape to remind everyone that our numbers came out on Thursday. We're going to be able to have a clean presentation on Tuesday, and in two weeks, Ronnie will present a balanced budget. That'll be tentative adoption, and then we'll have our public hearing in May. I was going to ask too about some tax, tax levy incentive program, but they haven't announced it yet. I'm not quite sure what it entails, or it could be something that we would be interested in, but as soon as I find out more about it. And I do want to say something that we do
060as a district that I don't know if every district does, and I don't want to say they don't, I just don't know what they do. We balance this budget now when it really doesn't have to be approved until May. Anything we do from now until May is very minor, maybe moving a staff here, moving a staff there, that type of thing, because we have to still staff our buildings and that's the next conversation. There's districts that they just say it's balanced right now, and then they have the next few months to worry about it. So one of the things that you'll know with us is that what we're presenting, we did the work already. We're ready to move on. We're not enabled going to be fretting. Okay, that's it. That's what we got. Any other
061questions anyone? Thank you. Thank you for putting this together and all the information that's really helpful and I'm glad to see that we look to be in pretty good shape. Thank you. Yeah, I just have a comment. I didn't know anything in this really confidentially five minutes ago. And if anybody would like to see what the dating report looks like, I have a copy of it and I'm going to share that with you. I want to see exactly what it looks like. Wouldn't hurt. If you want to, can you email that to the board? Can you email that? Thank you. In case anyone wants to look through that. Okay. So now we're going into closed sessions. First, we'll open it. We want to open it. I will start on that side with Mr. Santar. I
062want to thank the children for their artwork displays and congratulate them. All of them made it and I know that the... I, too, would like to congratulate the children here tonight. Some of their artwork I couldn't do as an adult, so that was really nice to see. I'd like to thank the administrative team to read at schools this week. It is read across from an invitation. I was at when Ron Brook earlier today. I urge you to do it. Once again, thank you for hosting me today. I thank all the administrators for that opportunity. Jamie? I wanted to thank the children. I think I said every year I'm humble about the arts because there are so many children in this district and in this state and the country that are not athletic and they need
063to have an outlet and be recognized as well. So I think it's really great that we have this available for them so they can feel proud of themselves as well. I did not get to go to Read Across America, obviously. I teach and it's hard to take off work to go read to kids in another school district. It is very rewarding and I do appreciate being invited and have fun the rest of the week. Thank you. Jesse? Just two things and congratulations. Recommendation lets me make some key bullet points as to the differences between companies, what that might look like, making a change, factors, different natures. Everyone can kind of compare apples to apples and then make a better assessment of work with that because I think that's a vastly different undertaking. We would have
064to review the numbering systems and the breakdown of the policies are vastly different between when we undertook moving from school boards to Strat Cessna back in 2001, it took us 18 months. And you have to revamp every policy, review every policy, every policy, the numbers change dramatically from one system to the other, there's no crossover at all. I want to do what's best for our kids, for our board, for our community, to avoid lawsuits. If it takes 18 months, it takes 18 months. I'm here for 33 more months. I'll send you the information you asked for. Yeah, please, that would be helpful. It's about concern and certainly not as long to be on any kind of legal issues because of misinformation or something like that, but I hope to believe that there's also other potential
065benefits that we're going to go through that process. But let's evaluate it, can't hurt. Anyone else have any comments on that topic? Do we do the same with the rec fees? What do we do? Yeah, we can definitely have that discussion. We want to talk about our fees. So we've increased the rec fees this year. Right, and that's why I brought it up is I know we did that, and then the rec is making money everywhere you turn, and they're not passing it on to the community. We've got to absorb and really raise ours, but the inflation, cost of living, everything is going up. I think it's a good idea that we look at it so we don't get stuck in the same position for two decades. Could we do that over the summer like
066we did last time? At a different time? Yep, I think. For the creativity and the artwork that's displayed, I tore this many years ago. It just really warmed my heart to see the students up there today. With that said, I do look forward to the Reading Press America. I think I'm supposed to be attending Clark Mills this week. I have to double-check, but I'm looking forward to being there and reading to the students. And, Jussie, I do agree with you to see if there is another avenue as far as using another policymaker. I know it is hard to make those changes if changes are needed, but really it's the best for our school district and our board, and if it is possible and it is feasible and it is the best way to switch, then
067I think we should do it. But I do look forward to even working with you and trying to figure that out and across the difference we're making. Again, I would like to thank our young artists and winners in the art installation. I would also like to thank our art teachers who really inspire our students to appreciate art. When you heard them, listened to them speak, they were discussing things like their form and technique, and you can see how the art teachers really impacted their work, and I just wanted to thank them as well. Reading Press America, I did receive the invitations. Again, unfortunately, like Jamie, I teach, and unfortunately at this time I'm not allowed to take off, maybe next year. Jussie, I'm open to discussing policies. Even if we don't change policy, if we
068do stick with Straus, us may perhaps some kind of accountability, so that doesn't happen again because I was part of that with you and David, rewriting the policy, and we were led, I agree, we were led to believe it was a mandated policy, and we did not find out after until we did go to court that all of a sudden it was not a mandated policy, so I agree with you 100% there. I am open to discussion, and even if we stick with them, there needs to be accountability, so we don't end up in a situation like that again. Nothing other than congratulations to the students. Every year that I've been here for these art presentations, I'm blown away by what these students can do. It's really, really impressive, so congratulations and great work by
069everybody, and thank you to our staff for supporting them and helping them achieve that, because it's really, really impressive. I wanted to mention, Dr. Centoro had released a letter related to redistricting that went out to the community, which is going to be spoken about in more depth at our next meeting on the 18th. We received some emails, I know Dr. Centoro received some calls related to this from concerned parents, and certainly understandable that they're all concerned and questioning what's related to this, so I just wanted to speak to that briefly and just let the community know, the parents know that you are being heard, and we're certainly taking everything into consideration, and that was the point of inviting and trying to open the floor at our next meeting to allow everyone to bring their concerns
070to the table for consideration. Nothing has been written in stone yet, nothing is finalized, so I think some people may feel that decisions have already been made as to how that's going to be handled when that's not the case, so I know it's nerve-racking for a lot of people, but be patient, and I have a feeling we're going to come to a conclusion that everyone will be pretty comfortable with, but at the end of the day, as a school district, as an administrator, and as a board of education, it's like, and you guys can speak to this a lot better than I can, that it's probably the last thing and the worst thing that you want to have to come to and address and deal with, because it's never a happy thing for a community,
071but obviously it's become the best intentions for our district as a whole, and looking at the big picture in the long term, sometimes, unfortunately, tough decisions do have to be made that will impact some people in the short term, but again, I'm hopeful and confident that we're going to come to a place that the big most can feel pretty comfortable about. That being said, I don't know if you want to speak to that while we're on the topic. Yeah, I'll speak to that a little bit. I want to thank you for what you said. That was one of the reasons why we sent out the letter two weeks early. It was for transparency. It was to let the community members know we were going to have open dialogue about this and invite you to come
072and also give you two weeks notice so that you weren't telling the last minute and you had to not be able to make it or you could arrange your schedules. So the initial plan that was sent home in the letter was very vague. It doesn't explain the rationale. It doesn't explain the why. This is what the administrative team, when we reviewed it, felt was best. That does not mean we're not amenable to solutions, but what we want to be able to do is to explain our rationale for why we're doing this, also explain our rationale for that proposal so that when parents make a decision where are amenable to alternatives that's in the best interest of their child, they understand why we felt our plan was in the best interest of the child and have
073decisions that are looking at it from two different sides. So I do want to know that this was not about throwing that out there and it's a done deal. This was about let's meet, let's find amenable solutions, let's compromise and do what's best for children, for the children that we're discussing as well as the district as a whole. And I hope that those parents that are concerned, I hope they come out next week, I hope they hear what we're saying, I hope they consider what we're saying and I am welcoming that open dialogue and that's why we did this. So I think, what? Two weeks, I'm sorry, two weeks to 18th. I'm already on to the next board meeting. Thank you, Nicole. One last thing I wanted to bring up and this kind of circles
074back to what Jesse brought up regarding the policy consultant and considering other avenues and that in the near future I'm going to be suggesting the proposal to the board with a lot of different aspects of our contractors and vendors that we deal with that we're going to reevaluate and put some of our fees out and it's a way of us being responsible to our district and making sure that we're getting the best bang for our buck, not just financially but the services and as well as just keeping everyone we are using on their toes and everyone should understand that it's an opportunity to provide and serve the district like ours and that we expect that they're not taking it for granted and everyone is staying on the up and up. So we'll talk more about
075it in the coming weeks but just something to know is coming down the pipe pretty soon. That's all I got. Anyone else? I just want to say just one thing. Thank you for approving for our affirmative action team to meet. That is occurring tomorrow and David and Kelly will actually be attending so that they can review the process with us as well. So thank you and I look forward to tomorrow. David Berger. Yeah, thank you. Yes, looking forward to that. And last mention, I forgot to mention that I'll be reading tomorrow at Milford and then I think Friday o'clock. So I'm looking forward to those two opportunities. That's always fun. I enjoy it. These last couple of years that I've been doing it so I appreciate the invitations and decided to hopefully have some fun
076with the kids. Thank you. Are we going to close? Really? Yes, we're going to close. I'm going to say at least an hour and we will most likely have action after. And just one more thing. I'm going to be reading at Clark Mills on Thursday. I'm really looking forward to that too. Okay, going into close for the purpose of three different matters. We have a student matter involving student number 40505. We have personnel negotiations for contract terms and conditions. And we have a legal update. We have a second to go into close session. So Jamie first and then Dr. Wallace. And it is 8.43. Okay, so I guess we're back into open session and we have some business after close. We're going to be reading in. Because I'm changing for action after close, if you're
077using your computer, you have to refresh. Janice, do you want to unlock it for me because I want to make sure you get it open. You have to refresh. So I guess I'm going to be reading in first and then Wallace for motion in a second. Okay. Personnel action after closed. And one, I recommend the board approve the following recommendations as I've just noted. Christine Hamlin, confidential secretary, dash payroll, effective more 17. Item two is, I recommend the board approve the attached revised job description effective March 5, 2025 for payroll specialist. Item three is recommend the board approve the following perjury and payroll specialist as needed at the discretion of the business administrator. Paid by timesheets and hourly rate of $75 per hour, effective as noted. Jamie Brown, March 17 to June 30. Christine Hamlin,
078March 17 to May 2. Can I have everybody else? Mark and who's second? I'm not sure. Any questions? No? I'm going to read them all. Mr. Ferber? Yes. Mr. Green? Yes. Mrs. Hearn? Yes. Mr. Keene? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mrs. Parisi? Yes. Mr. Santoro? Yes. Mr. Chesetti? Yes. Dr. Wallace? Yes. Those motions are successful and then I need a motion to adjourn at 1043. Mr. Cheney? Yes. Mr. Chesetti? Yes. Dr. Wallace? Yes. Those motions are successful and then I need a motion to adjourn at 1043. Mr. Cheney? Yes.