001Welcome to the annual budget hearing and regular meeting at North Hunter and Boris School District. The North Hunter and Boris Regional High School District Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, April 29th is now called to order. In accordance with the requirements of the Open Public Meeting Act, NJSA 104-6, adequate notice giving the time, date, location, and to the extent known, the agenda of this meeting was published by the Hunton County Democrat in the Star Ledger on January 9, 2025. In addition, notice of this meeting has been posted at North Hunteran High School and Boris High School provided to the municipal clerks clerks of Betham Township, Califon Burough, Town of Clinton, Clinton Township, Franklin Township, Glen Gardner Burrow, Hampton Burough, Hybridgeboro, Lebanon Burough, Lebanon Township, Tukesbury Township, and Union Township, as well as other interested parties
002and posted on the district website. Fire exits are located in the directions indicated. If alerted to fire, please move in a calm and orderly fashion in the nearest smokefree exit. And just so everyone knows as well, bathrooms, there are bathrooms for use for the public just behind me. At this time, please silence all cell phones. Roll call, please. Doug, yes. Mr. Kaggnel, here. Mr. Chapman, here. Dr. Deany, here. Miss Gallow, here. Miss Hint here. Miss Be Miss Katrron here. Mr. Lordy here. Mr. Gaiser here. Miss Rays here. Mr. Span here. Miss Viota here. Miss Celino here. You have a Thank you. Rise for the P flag, please. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. At this time
003we would like to welcome Patricia Reese from uh NJSBA. She's going to give a presentation on the superintendent evaluation process for the board of education. Welcome Patricia. Thank you very understand agenda superintendent your board president and that many of you have done this before in the past. The process for the superintendent evaluation hasn't changed. Uh so we'll we'll we'll go through that quickly. We'll try and touch on if we have time the board's self-evaluation because that was newly revised this year. Um it's not significantly different. it's um been um aligned better to the superintendent evaluation and more similar. But um we'll see if if we don't get through it all tonight. Feel free to reach out to me at any time with any questions, a phone call, an email, whatever, whatever it is that you
004need. Uh I'm always available for that. Um but um you know I will caution like we're going to talk about the legal um the legal guidelines, the process and then the tool itself. Uh I understand that you don't have there's no board members that have a family member that work in the district. If you do, you're considered conflicted and can't participate in the superintendent evaluation. But if you don't have anybody um then everybody can take part in this evaluation. Um you know it it's you've done this before so you know this you're you're held accountable um to the public for oversight of the district and for advancing student achievement. Your primary tool in oversight is the evaluation of your superintendent. Uh so that's why it's critically important uh that you do uh that every year.
005And in fact, not only is it important, the legal guidelines statute says that you must do an annual superintendence evaluation, uh, as I said, every year, uh, it has to be in writing. It has to be done by a majority of the non-conlicted board members and that the uh the majority of the board hopefully the whole board uh and the superintendent must meet to discuss the evaluation and it must be on the goals and objectives of the district and the responsibilities of the superintendent. code tells us that you have to have it done by July 1st uh every year uh and and that you need to include the areas of strength, any areas that you feel need some uh refocus or improvement. uh any if there's any recommendations for professional growth and the indicators of
006student progress and that the summary there must be a summary conference meeting between the majority of the board hopefully the whole board and the superintendent all by July 1st. You're also um it is also uh reviewed during your QAC monitoring review every year and if you don't do it by July 1st you have the potential of losing 13 points on the governance indicator. What that means is um in any of the indicators on the different sections of QAC you can only lose 20 points. So if you lose 13 um you only can lose seven more in governance to fail that that indicator. So that it's all important. The tool that you use um that we provide for you is done as a service. It's certainly not the only tool that you can use. Um but
007um we feel that it it streamlines the process. We also developed the tool in collaboration with the admin the um association of school administrators so that we feel it great better reflects the actual job duties of your superintendent. Um, I looked at your census. We talk about how to make the process easy. Your census needs to be up to date. I looked at yours. It's already up to date. Um, you already have um, you know, board goals um, and that, um, you're working on an evaluation timeline because this is a good time to have this conversation, right? You still have time before um, July 1 to get through what you need to get through. Talk about an evaluation calendar. There's a samp this is a sample of it. There's some in your packet uh of
008this because you can't read it really. It starts with setting the board and the and the superintendent setting district goals generally in like June July uh and then uh talking about you know the progress towards that throughout the year and and this timeline will get you to a July 1 uh deadline um which is the goal. Again, it is in your packet. This slide essentially says the same thing starting with the district um that goal setting uh updates to the goals uh and then um from there all the way through to your summer conference. We do recommend although it's not mandatory that the board and the superintendent have some kind of pre-conference talk about the progress towards district goals uh any challenges that there are or any questions that board members may have. This really
009just starts um like everybody off on the same level on the same page. Again, it's recommended but not mandatory. Not all boards do that. Uh you have the the district goals are generally three to five goals set again collaboratively between the superintendent and the board. Um and these are the areas that you feel are the primary focus for that year that will advance your student achievement. And that's really uh what you need to do. Uh the action plans, as you probably know, are set by the superintendent. You you talk about what it is you want to accomplish. The action plans say how you're going to do that. And that's all part of the district goals assessment that you're going to go through. This slide shows where you can find access to the self to the
010um superintendent and the board self-evaluation on our landing page. If you go to our homepage and scroll down, you will see this slide. Uh, and then, um, just click on that. Um, if you do that now, uh, you won't be able to get into the superintendent's evaluation because the whole process starts with the superintendent inputting their self-ealuation. Uh, and so you'll see not you'll you'll you won't see anything that that's available for you at that point. They input um the district goals. they input their um any information they want you to consider and then for the leadership standards which is the second part of the evaluation um they will uh input any evidence links that they would like you to consider. Once they put that in and they hit submit there's a 48 hour waiting
011period where they have the opportunity to make any changes that they feel um they need to make. At the end of that 48 hours, the board an automatically generated email will go to board members saying your super your superintendent's evaluation is ready for you to start. There will be a link and it will take you directly to the superintendent's evaluation. If by chance it doesn't, because sometimes, you know, the internet works until it doesn't, um, just go back to our homepage and you can access it from from this link um, on this page and and um, you'll have to you'll have to log in with your district email address and your password that you set and then click on the um, the superintendent's evaluation. So, and if I I feel like I'm talking quickly, so
012I'm a trying to slow myself down. Um, but again, if you have a question during the presentation, feel free to raise your hand. Uh, and I'm going to try to address it. Go ahead. Um, when you mentioned the option of pre-conference before, uh, are you talking about something that basically just follows sort of the format of the evaluation instrument itself or something that's just more It's more about just kind of, you know, the the progress towards district goals um where you are in that should not really be a surprise. There should have been updates throughout that. But if the board member has a question um about some you know one of those circles, hopefully you've had that conversation all along. Uh but it it's just like if if there's any concerns that have cropped up
013amongst the board members or a board member, it's just helpful to let the superintendent know. It's all about forming a good board team which is the board superintendent uh to work together um to advance student achievement and however you can do that um is really the best. Um I have a followup. I have another question too. So we have a unique situation in that the current superintendent um has been sitting in the position for less than a year. So when we do the evaluation should we be assessing the period of time in which the superintendent was in place or do we also assess the interim role as well? Uh was was it a different interim? No, same person. Um so even interim or you can assess the the um progress towards district goals. Absolutely. You
014assess um from the time he was an interim because there's not much difference um in the job duties between an interim and a full-time the the the leadership skills. but he sat in the seat for a year whether it's intern or other. The the the only caveat for that is newer board members you are only evaluating from the time you were sworn in and sit in that seat. You can't evaluate the superintendent for time that you were a private citizen because as you now know there's a lot of information that you get as a board member um that you don't get as a private citizen. Uh and so um for those people your the progress towards district goals is pretty straightforward. Um and that you should there should be information that you can assess the
015superintendent on where that progress is. Um the leadership standards however you there there is an option the leadership standards um you you may not have enough of of an opinion for what four or five months of service to assess the leadership standards. So there is an option there that says not observed. It doesn't work against the overall uh evaluation of the superintendent because you know it clear you you were only in the seat for what maybe four months, five months when you do it. You you may not be able to assess what the leadership standard the leadership skills of the superintendent at that point. So again it doesn't work against the superintendent. Um but uh just wanted to make that caveat that question on the QA. So you had mentioned if we don't hit the
016timeline it's a ding so to speak of 13 points correct it can be. Yep. Okay. And you said the maximum is that you reaches 20 points. 20 in each indicator. Yes. Okay. Hypothetical say that happens then what? Like what does going over that 20 or reaching that 20 point? What happens in that case? Um well, you know, your QAC review goes to your executive county superintendent and they may um come up with a ask you to come up with a way to make sure you do it by July 1st every year. Um can I say that every county superintendent looks at that? I I don't. Everybody's different. Um but it it's just you know it it really is better for the management of the district that the the the superintendent evaluation the board self evaluation
017has no timeline just the superintendent um it really is um better for the whole functioning of the district that you do this every year but but we'll like it's hard to say what each county superintendent will do um honestly We haven't established board norms yet. Does that impact any of these decisions that we're making? No. No. I I mean, you can use the board self-evaluation to determine to help you identify board norms, but it doesn't really um it doesn't impact it doesn't impact the superintendent evaluation. But the board evaluation. Yeah. It doesn't it doesn't impact that's that there's that's not required. It's a best practice. uh and it helps you function better and govern better as a board. It's supposed to identify your strengths and the areas that you may need for more professional development
018or some kind of growth. Did you have I saw a hand over here. Okay. Um the so I said the first part of this board of the superintendent evaluation is the district goals assessment. So the superintendent would input um what the goal is. they would um put their comments and any links they want you to consider and then what their assessment is. When you log in, you'll see all of that information. Uh and then you'll have the opportunity to assess progress towards that. And so you would then the the the review is um sat you know achieved satisfactory progress made or little or no progress made. uh and it is strongly encouraged and highly recommended that you put commentary there, comments to support what it is, whatever your rating was, whatever your evaluation was. I
019will say that when the compilation report comes out, it's um it's anonymous for the board members. There's no names next to who made what comments. Uh, and in fact, if you're the first person that finishes the evaluation, your comments may not always be first in the list of comments. It it's just it the the goal is not to to identify you in the in this report. Now, if you say something say that was my comment that there's no reason why you can't, but it's there's nothing in this report. And so, you see that for all the different for each goal. You'll see that that slide. This is what the compilation of the goal looks like, the compilation report. So, it'll list the goal. It'll have the superintendent comments and then you'll see the board members
020comments in a list. Uh then you'll see underneath that the ratings, what the superintendent rated and then uh where the board members fell. You see in this one, seven ft it was achieved. Uh one felt it was satisfactory progress and one felt little or no progress made. The other main point to make about this evaluation, it is a majority written piece. So whatever the majority v um evaluation is or ratings are, that's what's included in the evaluation, the written evaluation at the end. Uh there there we'll talk about in the summary conference an opportunity for the minority opinion to be expressed. But um the the the written evaluation itself is um a majority written piece. I have a question. If you are in a a tie, there's you know split. Um I know in the
021past um Gwen had said if when it's a split decision that needs to be summarized that it was a split, it wasn't one indicator or the other. What do you recommend when when you're split? when it's a split when you're giving them when you're noting the indicators and it's you know seven are achieved or six are achieved and six are there's 12 of us so oh wow so 12 so yeah usually there's there's an odd number so um I that's when you when you're your value then the the board member board members will come together with the compilation uh before you meet with the superintendent we talk about that in a little bit and you will as a group discuss what the eval what the majority opinion um will be. I I would say that
022um if it's if it's evenly split, you probably just should note that. I mean, it's it's helpful for um the superintendent to know these to know these things. Okay. Go by weight. We don't go by evaluates the superintendent evaluation. It's anonymous, right? Your comments will you will complete this your comments. No, but I'm I'm what I'm saying is like there would be no way for Dr. Burax to know how the outcome came out. You could still score it anonymously. You can't Well, it's anonymous, but no way for what what what I'm saying is when this is compiled the data and let's say six people say it's it's um satisfactory and six say exemplary, it's not necessarily one or the other. the the superintendent isn't isn't just rated as satisfactory. Yeah. Or exemplary. It's halfway in
023between. So, it has to be measured. It has to be stated as such. And like Patricia is saying, and it's constructive criticism. We want the superintendent to know um that window. Y it's the difference between achieved and satisfactory progress and you have 12 people, the majority of the board feels that the that that there was progress made towards that goal. If you I was thinking if you say six say satisfactory progress and six say little or no progress that that to me I would think that you at least want to let the superintendent know but the superintendent doesn't get and I'll go into the process of who gets the compilation report. Um they don't have access to that unless you give it to them which which can be helpful as well. The next part of
024the superintendent evaluation is you're evaluating the superintendent on leadership standards. We've developed these again with the New Jersey ASA Association of School Administrators and we use these profession this organization for their professional standards because we feel that um their the leadership standards um best reflect um what it takes for superintendent to to lead a district to um that leads to student achievement and student success. Um and it it we also feel it helps you identify areas of strength and areas where more focus may be needed. There are six leadership standards and these are the six leadership standards that you're assessing on uh for the superintendent. Um and just how how does the oh the leadership standard look? I'm going to put up all the dings instead of one at a time. Oops. Um so when
025you pull up the leadership standard part of it you'll see um the standard will be the standard will be identified the definition of what the standard is and then underneath that you'll see a rating scale. Every standard is either exemplary proficient area for growth unsatisfactory or not observed. But the definition of what exemplary is or all changes per standard. Um, so it's they're not they're not all the same. So you'll see the standard, you'll see what the rating scale is. Um, and then there's a list of suggested um resources that you might consider. And then there's also a spot for the superintendent to add resources or a link to resources for you to consider. Underneath that, you'll see the um again the the standard name and then the indicators for that standard. This the first
026standard has two indicators and you'll get to select um what you feel um it was based on the rating scale that's there. And again on this one you'll see there's an option to say not observed. So if you're a newer board member with four or five months of experience you might this might be where you say that something is not observed. Uh and then you do whatever rating you feel is appropriate. Again, it's really helpful if you add commentary to support um because as you know when you have performance reviews at work, it's helpful if you know why you got the rating and where you may need to improve or where you're excelling. It really just helps the overall process. This is a sample of the compilation of a leadership standard. This is uh standard
027number two. Uh and this standard has seven indicators and here you will see how they each fall out. So um you'll see how many board members um registered whatever their rating was and on on the bottom and any commentary um will also board member comments will also be listed here. Just in blowing up the the for the slide we can't fit it all on the slide but it will be identified here. Um and then you'll see down below what the overall assessment is um for of the board members where that falls out. So the the compilation report is all the data come together. Um it's generated in our system. Again the the written um evaluation is a majority opinion piece. It's the way it is by nature. It's the way it is by statute. Um
028and so um and so that's how the annual report is written by that. So what happens um to get to the annual report generally boards need two executive sessions to do that the once the evaluation is completed uh the um I will send a um an a confidential email to your board president uh that will include a link uh to the confidential uh site for that their your your superintendent's evaluation. uh you first um executive session uh sometimes board presidents I don't know what your process is sometimes they kind of rough draft a written commentary beforehand to bring to the board sometimes they sit together uh and and you all hash out um whatever that commentary that written narrative might be uh but you need to do that in have the at least discuss it
029in an executive session without the superintendent at this point you need to rice the superintendent And then based on that discussion, your board president will write the the summit of evaluation, sum the narrative evaluation. Um, and your second executive session will include the superintendent. And again, superintendent needs three rice and you will have that opportunity to discuss with the superintendent um what the um what their evaluation is. There is in in your packet a template of this. This is a template that you can use um to write the report or not. It's there as a convenience and a service to you. It's not, you know, it's not mandatory. Whatever your process is um that's been successful is okay. But if you want something to kind of help you along, this is what it is. Um
030that was the standards. the goal. This part is the goals um about the goals whether it's been achieved and this part talks about the leadership standards where they fall. Uh and then uh as I said earlier this the evaluation must include areas of strength um and areas that um may need more work with. And so this allows you to do that if you choose. You can choose more than one areas of strength and in the leadership standards and more than one area of of needs improvement or none. It's really however the the evaluation falls out. So what happens at the annual summary conference? Um again you have to write the superintendent and it should be a majority of the board members present during this evaluation during this conference. It's really helpful to share um the
031evaluation with your superintendent ahead of time. so they have the opportunity to read through it uh and and have a more productive discussion because I I know when when when you sit down in the moment and you've not had the opportunity, it's hard to have a productive discussion. Um and as I said numerous times, it's a majority written piece, but this is the opportunity if there are minority opinions for them to express their minority opinions because it really is helpful to the superintendent. um to to move forward hearing all voices um and the process just is as majority but um you know you want to they they want to hear what the everybody's opinion is then to so that you can show to CQ that you've done it you just identify in your executive session
032minutes that the conference was held. Um so the the next steps I think I've talked about most of this um um your board president will receive the compilation the confidential compilation report uh via our website um you write the superintendent you have your two you have your one executive session and then the second um this first executive session where you discuss it then the the board president writes the uh summit of evaluation and then you have the second Um now who keeps a copy? Um it's a personnel document. We can't keep a copy. So every you know on about December or January, we purge the system of the prior year's evaluation. Again, it's a personnel document. It's not there for us. So um if you don't have a copy, we can't get you one the
033next year because because we don't have it. But we do recommend that the superintendent keep their own copy. Um, and many boards give the board copy to um, the board attorney. You know, I talked about it being an ongoing communication throughout the year. They're they're really um, except for maybe new board members, shouldn't really be any surprises. A good functioning team that's working towards um, student success works together collaboratively throughout the year, not just at specific times. Um, and then, um, does anybody have any more questions on the superintendent evaluation? I know we kind of powered through it. Um, again, you can always call me. Do we have time to touch on the board self-evaluation? It's up to you. We can give you another five, five, five, six minutes. Can you Okay. Five or six
034minutes. Especially for the two new board members. Only only because it's a new version this year. Um and so um I just touch on some that I mean so you know why you do it. It's a self-reflection of the board. Um it there's no timeline and it's the board team. So the superintendent can be part of that can complete the board self-evaluation. Uh some do some don't. It it's really up to them. There's, as I said, no deadline. Um, and it's not required, but it is considered a best practice because it helps you improve your governance and helps you improve working together collaboratively towards student success. Um, again, it's an annual thing. Many boards do it over the summer and and it helps you maybe uh identify what board goals you may want to work
035on in the coming year. Um, so this is where when you log in, this is this is kind of what you see. Um and uh with you start but like this is where the big change is with the we've aligned this to be uh more similar to the superintendence evaluation and so the rating scale is similar uh and and there's definitions before it was you know commendable good adequate and satisfactory and people were like they're kind of vague like what is that? So um this is exemplaries all the time profession proficient is most of the time and and so forth as you go through that. Um you and new this year is an evaluate uh if you have board goals that the board president can input the board goals and you can evaluate the board
036on progress toward those goals. If you don't have board goals, the president still needs to go in and in the upper corner, you'll see um a check box that says the board has no goals. Uh and then you won't have to complete that part, but the board president has to go in first and either check that or enter the board goals and any uh links or documentation they want they want you to consider. But if there's no board goals, then we move on to um as you go past that. Uh and this is what um you see when you look at board goals. You list the goals and board goals are usually three to five um areas you want to focus on. You see something as for boards that don't get it done by July
0371. Many times their next year they'll put that as a board goal um to do that and like district goal periodically report out progress towards those goals. Um um and then this is the big change as well. There's the board goals that you are assessing progress towards that. But now there are six standards that you're assessing not um and these are you're assessing the board team the board team and how you work together um before each for each of the nine before underneath that you would then assess how you impacted that. That's that's gone. There is a section where you can put what you've um your impact on that is but you're for this you're just assessing each of these standards um you know as a board team and this like the superintendent so you'll
038see the same thing you'll see the standard uh the indicators and however you uh rate them put in any commentary that you feel um you know supports whatever it is that you said and then on each standard you there's an open-ended question where you're saying what's the team's the team's greatest strength and what's the team's need for improvement or further development that's on each of the six standards. Um and then at the end there's this rating of your individual contribution to the board team. There's no open-ended questions. There's 11 indicators and you just rate them what your impact is. what you feel your impact is on the board team on these 11 indicators. So these are the the the main differences. Um again we feel um that these better reflect the duties and responsibilities of
039the board than they have in the past. And then they're shorter and then at the end there's just two questions. What do you consider to be the board's and this is when it says the board it's the board team's greatest strength. uh and what do you think that you need to focus uh more attention on? And sometimes it's those two that help you determine board goals. Um when you go in to do the board self-evaluation or the superintendent's evaluation, when you click on you will only see your results. Um for the board self-evaluate and self-evaluation, you can go in and see the tracking report which tells you who started, who completed, where that is. um the board president can see that for uh the the superintendent's evaluation, the tracking report to see um who is
040where they are. Um and then to get the compilation report, it's somewhat different than the superintendent's evaluation. Um I pull the results and I bring the compilation report um to you uh or send it to your board president um you know with a review of the data. Um new this year also is a chart. This chart is different. Uh we feel that it's easier to read uh um especially for the six standards. And you see it tells it shows you by color where the ratings were in this. Uh and many times when you see a lot of the um lower half in this example, there aren't m much to that might be areas that you key in for a board goal, whatever that might be. And then in future years, it won't show this year
041because this is the first year we're doing this version, but in future years, you'll see the current year in the past year where the board rated itself. Um this is the landing page when you go to um our evaluation site from our from our and there's lots of resources here for each of the evaluations um that that you can access. And then when um you when the superintendent's evaluation is available to you, you can also access it from here where it says begin now. Um you have to log in uh with your um to the to our system first. Uh but it's all here and there's there's FAQs for each of them. Um and and lots of other stuff. Um and just a caution that you are evaluating the board team's performance as a whole.
042It's not a tie. This is not an evaluation where you're looking evaluating staff or the district. This is looking at the board team because you need to work together to advance student achievement. That's really why we're all here, right? That that's exactly um your goal. And so that's what this tool is helpful for. Um and then I think I again powered through it. And um if you have any questions, feel free use the resources online, but again, reach out to me, email, call um or you know, I'm available. All right. Thank you. Um the board members has uh sent that to um Dr. Burj. So it'll be in the drive so you can have a review of the whole presentation. Okay. I'd like to call for a motion second to bring the February 25th, 2025
043school board meeting minutes from the table. So move second. Uh it was Nicole. It was Brendan and Nicole. Okay. It was Dan. Oh, sorry. Sorry, Dan. Sorry. My apologies. Now, can I go ahead and move for a second? I need a motion, second to approve agenda items 4.1.1 and 4.1.2. All in favor? I. Any abstensions? Abstension 5.1.2. Point of order. We first needed to vote on removing from the table and then have a second motion. I'm sorry. Yeah. So, if we could if we could go back. Let's go back to the first motion. I had a motion from Dan. Dan and second from Nicole. Right. And we need a we need a vote. Just a voice. I just had a question. Why did we move it off? Why did we put it on the table?
044I forget why we had delayed in approving it. It was review just review of minutes. It was review of the minutes. No, I know. But why did we pull it from the table or pull it from the vote last month? I forget. It was questioned regarding language. So, it's been reviewed. That's correct. It was it was a language issue that that was there was some concern about. So, we pulled it and and we're just rebringing it back to Did you change anything? No. That we should know. No. Okay. Voice. So we need uh all in favor I any nays or abstensions? Abstensions. This is for the the first February, right? Cuz I was um not getting the February. So that's Christina. No, I I was confused. I'm sorry. I thought we were voting on both.
045So I'm Yes. For February for the 5.1. Beth is a is an abstension for five point from the table. Remove from the table. removing from the table. Oh, I see. Okay. So, no. Yes. I'm removing it from the table. On the point now, we now we need a motion. Right. Now, we need a motion and a second to approve agenda items 4.1.1 and 4.1.2. 5.1. I'll get it right tonight. 5.1.1 and 5.1.2. So, we got Cia. I saw her hand first. Who's Terra? Thank you. And we need a just voice. Are you going to do a roll call or just voice vote? You you can do voice on this. All right. Voice vote. All in favor? I I Any nays or abstensions? Abstension from 5.1.2. I abstain as well. 5.1.2. just Okay. Okay. At this
046time, we'd like to have recognition of our student achievements. Um, Dr. First. Yeah, that's what Dr. Contra student is not going to be grass. There was no recognize. It's my pleasure to introduce to you tonight Claire Rospadowski. Uh Claire is an outstanding sophomore that we're very proud of at North Horn High School. Um Claire has actually won this year the state fencing championship in women's foil. And that I mean just to reiterate what that means is Claire is the best in the state of New Jersey in women's foil. So, a little bit more about Claire. Claire started fencing in seventh grade. She devoted herself to the sport, traveling all over the country, spending countless hours practicing and competing both on our school team as well as uh in a variety of tournaments. Uh, and her
047victory at the state level is a testament really to her hard work that she's put in. This year, Claire competed in the prestigious 2025 Junior Olympics uh in the 17th and under under division, and she placed sixth in cadet women's foil out of 216 other Olympians. Claire's That's impressive. Yes, Claire is also ranked first in the region and 34th nationally as incadet women's foil. At North, she won fencer of the year for the 2024-25 season and went undefeated this year uh with a 33 and0 record. as a freshman last year. She also started on the team and she has been a standout leader on the team and she's again uh amongst her peers on the team, she's uh acknowledged for her hard work and dedication to the sport and for her team. Clara looks forward
048to a future uh that that includes a marketing and business degree in college hopefully. She hasn't decided where yet. Obviously, she's only a sophomore, but she's got a bright future ahead of her and we look forward to watching her success both here at North and in her fencing career. So, congratulations, Claire. Sure. [Music] Mom's first. It's great. at this time. Ron Mr. Peterson. Yes. Good evening everybody. Uh Brooke Angler is a sophomore at Borhees High School um who was really looking forward to being here today and unfortunately got an email from mom this afternoon saying she wasn't going to make it. I said, "No worries. We'll catch you at another time and bring you back up." So, I'm just going to give you a little tease to who she is and what she does. Um,
049Brooke is a sophomore and she competes on the regional and has been invited to um, compete at the national level in a series just under the World Cup in mogul skiing. So, and she does that with probably at most a third of the practice time with the other girls that she's competing against. So, I'll go a list through of her accolades and everything else when she finally can be here. But, uh, it's very impressive. Um, and before that, I'll send Dr. some videos and some photos of her skiing so he can share that all with you. Okay. Thank you. Lot of talent here. A lot of talent. Um, moving on. recognition of um or excuse me board student representative report uh Siobhan Patel from North High School and Sarah Schwerk from Boris. Um who would
050like to go? All right, I got um first I want to say like thanks for uh welcome me back as it's been a while since I've been here. So um for the report, so North Show at the Oxford Invitational, they achieved a golden ranking in their very first appearance, which was huge. And they placed second overall in in the category for a show, pop, and jazz. So um also for Claire, I was going to recognize her, but she's been recognized. I guess we'll recognize her again, obviously, because state champion is a huge feat and that's as a sophomore, that's amazing. Um, so this Wednesday and Thursday we have peer leadership outreaching to middle schools. So that's two for eighth graders moving into high school to comfort them in the move up. Uh, get them to
051know more about what the high school experience is like, get that like edge off about Yeah. Like high school is so scary. We're trying to help them get that edge off. Um, so this Thursday, May 1st is culture day. So at North that's run by the diversity club and that's a huge thing that we do at North. Um parents and students volunteer uh they volunteer their time throughout the whole day. They set up a table um a poster and like TVs and bring a lot of food to show um their culture and bring um uh some awareness for their culture. Fat day is also decision day for um a lot of seniors. So that's exciting. um special the special Olympics event is happening this Sunday. So special needs individuals are trained by North student volunteers
052to compete in their events against the county and that's a big event and also um North holds the holds the event here for 180 and more in the county. So that's interesting that we hold that for everyone. Um the cabaret is coming this weekend. AP testing is on May 5th, May 9th, 6:30 to 8:30 on Zingley Fields. We're having a remembrance for Sophia de Torres and to just come together as a community and if you do decide to come uh come that would be amazing and it's pink theme um because of Joey that's an event that we're holding here in place for life. So that's to raise money for pediatric cancer foundation and May 22nd specifically to raise money for pediatric cancer foundation. Uh looking ahead, we have the spring concert and senior prom and
053then eventually graduation. So So for me, starting with sports, we've had a lot of successful sports so far this season. Our B boys golf team is currently undefeated. Um, boys lacrosse is currently 7 and three and they're going to be holding a dime and donate uh next, not next week, this week, tomorrow on April 30th at Max's. Boys volleyball is also off to a very good start. They're 7 and three as well, which is a big improvement from last season. Um, girls track was at Pen Relays this past weekend. We had both a 4x1 and a 4x4 competing. And of course, track will also be holding a car wash this Saturday, May 3rd. Boys track is also off to a very strong season. Recently, we had um some of our boys distance athletes compete at
054the Bridge Night of 1600s. And one of our runners, Dylan Divine, won. He came first place out of 567 boys running the mile. He won the entire thing. He's a junior, so he's still got a still got time to cut that time down even more. And then our unified football team, this is the first year that we're having it. They did a practice partnered with the New York Jets back on April 10th. That was an amazing opportunity for them. They had their first ever game uh April 28th against Westmore Central and they won 2712. They had another game after school today. Don't know what the final score was. They were winning 13-6 when I left. So they won. They won. They won. Okay, good. Good to hear. Um, as for uh our arts, Fiddler on
055the Roof had their performances earlier this month. They've been very successful. And then more with clubs, Unified, our unified club held their silent disco March 27th, which was a huge success. And the class of 2026 held a silent auction on March 28th to help raise more money for prom. Students for Change hosted uh Carter A high school in the beginning of April. So they did a lot of bonding with those with that school people from those school. They did a scavenger hunt. They had a dodgeball tournament. They just went around. It was a really fun day for them. Um our student high school integration program held their eighth grade move dance on April 11th and that had amazing attendance. And similar to North this week they're also doing their outreach visits. The first one was
056yesterday and the second one was today. To all the Sandy middle schools. Those were a huge success. We are hosting our third blood drive of the year this week on Thursday, May 1st. And we had a representative from the New York Blood Center at school today during lunches. And then we will also be hosting our Relay for Life later this week on Friday. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, moving on. I'd like a motion and a second to adopt resolution 042925-5 for an executive session to discuss matters reflected in the attached resolution. The board expects to be in exact session for approximately 1 hour and upon return to public session, action will be taken. I need a voice vote. All in favor? I I need a motion. So moved. This is Thank you. Motion
057second. All in favor? Thank you. Now I can. All in favor? I Any needs or abstensions? We'll get it right. It's been a rough night. Yes. A motion and second to reconvene public session. Second, Beth and Nicole. Okay, moving on to Oh, sorry. Sorry. This has been my whole night. Um, I can do a a voice over. Correct. All in favor? I. Any nays or abstensions? It's been a long day. Um, moving on to public hearing and adoption of the 202526 school year budget. We'll have a public hearing presentation on the school year budget. All right. Thank you, Mr. Lino. Uh, G, can you put our first slide up there? Excellent. All right. Thank you. Welcome everybody to the um public hearing presentation for the 2025 2026 school year budget. First thing I'm going to
058talk about is our budget goals. So as a superintendent, this is really why we are developing a budget for next year. And I want everyone to be very clear as to why what our rationale are and what we try to accomplish by um you know collecting money from the taxpayers every year so we can educate students in this district. So the first goal that we have is to provide a thorough and efficient education to the entire student population. I do want to expand on that a little bit to say that this includes every student regardless of ability so that they are successful after completing their high school education. Whether a student is going to the workforce, whether they're going to the military, whether they're going to trade school or an Ivy League school, we want
059all of our students to be prepared for that and this budget um will do that. The next one down says maintain current levels of student academic courses, co-curricular offerings, and athletic programs. Uh that is the way that we prepare those students as we mentioned in um item one to provide that thorough and efficient education. This budget supports that through maintaining 27 advanced placement courses. In addition to three different levels that our students are eligible to take, which are college um level, advanced, and honors level courses, we also offer a slew of electives through our visual and performing arts programs that benefits our students. that also includes 154 clubs and activities throughout both of our schools uh as well as 36 different types of sports offered both girls and boys, multiple levels, uh freshman, JV and
060varsity in most cases uh and unified sports which is also another um you know um great part of our district and and what something we're very proud of. We also maintain um this program also maintains many of our self-contained inclusive programs for our students with special needs from career development to autism and multiple disability programs to the Lion Pride Academy. Again, all of the this budget was developed with the students in mind to be able to make sure that we are providing for our students what they need academically, socially, athletically, and through the visual and performing arts. The next one down says maintain safe and functional and clean facilities. Um, north was built in the early 1950s, bores in the mid70s. Uh, maintaining these facilities is increasingly expensive and we also want to continue to
061maintain a safe and secure environment through our facility projects so that our students feel safe when they come to school. Uh we've done that through, you know, the double entry doors, the bulletproof glass, uh making sure that we maintain um personnel and all the things that make our students feel safe once they get in school and they're in the middle of their um academic program. Uh we also have the unique distinction of having two high schools. Um there are many times we are compared to other high schools in the area. Uh we are the only one that has two. So that means we have two buildings to maintain including athletic fields, two football fields, two stages, two gymnasiums, multiple boilers, um, etc., etc. Everything that you can imagine a high school has to maintain from
062a facility standpoint, we have two of those. We also want to meet our contractual obligations and why our largest contractual obligations are professional association contracts through teachers and administrators. Uh but we also contract for our transportation services and our food services program. Um things like speech and language services. We contract out for we contract for a lot of different things that we don't have enough to be able to maintain a full-time person to provide those services but we have to be able to contract out for them and this budget prepares um for that meets our contractual obligations. We also want to attract and retain highly qualified staff members. That is um you know one of the most important aspects of maintaining a reputation of our district. Competitive salaries and a working environment that is professional
063and welcoming are things that this budget will support. So we'll pay our people well. We'll treat them well and we will make sure that they are doing their jobs well so that our students benefit from that. We also need to meet state the state of New Jersey mandates. Um each year we are faced with more and more unfunded mandates from the state. Uh something we talked about um in the past many times is our HI laws. That's an example. Um with the amount of resources including personnel that are required with no additional state funding. Um the teach NJ and achieve NJ act which is our evaluation process that we had that we were um forced into by the state to choose one of their approved evaluation models. Um that cost money. And things like the
064park exams and we had to administer that. You know, we had to make sure every student had a device to be able to do that and things of that nature. These are all things that we have been able to maintain with our budget over the years. This budget allows us to continue to maintain those mandates. And last but not least, we want to prepare a budget that is fiscally responsible to the district's taxpayers. Um, we are a fiscally responsible district. We always keep costs as low as possible. Um, but there is a time where we try not to be pennywise and pound foolish because looking to the future of what our district will be, uh, we want to make sure that we're prepared for any unexpected um, expenses and to make sure that we have
065some cushion so that we don't expend every last penny and then find out that we need to raise a large amount of money in one year so that we have to go up for referendum or other means to be able to meet those needs. Um, so far we have been able to do a phenomenal job at that and I hope that this budget will I know that this budget is prepared so that we can continue to do that. So when you hear the details of this budget coming up, I want you to understand that this is for the coming year. But the implications of how much this budget goes up will have some impacts for many years to come because if we don't raise the money this year, it's not going to be there next
066year and it's forever lost and then we will never get that back. So I just want to make that clear that we have developed the budget with that in mind that we want to look at our immediate concerns but also we want to plan for the future for our district as well. Okay. So let's go on to the next slide which is enrollment. And this slide is going to be very difficult for you to see because it's hard for me to see and I'm right in front of it. But you can get this online. It is available for you online so you can see this in more detail. Um but the gist of this uh slide is to talk about where our enrollments are at North Hernand and Vorhees. At Vorhees right now, Vorhees students
067that are just Vorhees students at North at at Vorhees High School. There's 742 students there. We also hostmies at Vorhees High School. We host an environmental science academy, a computer science academy, and an animal science academy. All of those students that are in thosemies are considered Hunington County Vocational School District students. So they don't count towards our roles. But when you add those students in who we provide education for instructional program um English, math, science, all the other programs besides their academy classes and um counseling services through guidance counseling and child study team services, nursing services, all those other pieces. We have 966 students at Borise which keeps us about flat. Same thing at North Hunter. 1262 students would be in North Hunter if we didn't have anymies. North Hunter hosts the biomedical academy um
068that has two sections in it and that adds another 163 students which brings them up to 1435 students at North Hun. The purpose of this slide was to really show you that our enrollment in our district has been declining um and somewhat significantly over the last 5 years. We have been able to um through innovative ways be able to invitemies into our buildings. Some of these academy students would have been our students anyway um but some of them are not. They're from all across the county. we provide the education for them and then the benefit to us is that we get a percentage of the tuition that Hunter County Poly Techch charges. So, it is a win-win situation uh for the Polytech students. It's a win-win situation for our kids because they don't have to
069travel somewhere else to um get this um academy experience and um and it's a win for us because we get to maintain our enrollments as well. Okay, next slide and I'm going to turn it over to Doug who is going to talk about a lot of numbers. Thanks. Um, I'm Jeff Pag. I'm the your interim business administrator. Uh, filling in for Katie Blue. And I just want you to know that that when I arrived here in the middle of February that, uh, both her and Rich had done a lot of work already on the appropriation side of of our of the budget preparation for this year. What we didn't have at that time were the revenues to take a look at. But the the programs that Rich is talking about, this is how the the
070the communities will uh support uh our ability to to provide those services. Keeping in mind that what I'm showing you here, this is the um March 18th preliminary budget that was approved at 2.67% increase over the prior year. Okay? That's what we're giving you tonight because that's what the county has said. Your your budget works. you know, you can move forward with that as you as you see fit. So, with that in mind that we we're looking at a $56 million uh local tax levy, which is going to be spread out over the 12 communities, that's a $ 1.4 uh% almost $ 1.5 uh million increase over the prior year. And as you can see, our our total operation expense is about 66.5 million that we need. We have a couple other components that that
071build into our revenue which is uh you know uh tuition interest, state aid, um got some good news on that this year. Um Medicaid declined u but not a significant impact to the overall budget. And then we have our fund uh balance that we always push forward each year uh to utilize and that's generated a as a result of u a budget plan operational year endear there may be things that or dollars are left over. And that's what you're seeing here. So, uh, you know, the the board's authority is, uh, on an annual basis is to increase, uh, tax levy by 2% uh, without having to go to the voters. That's that's your your ability to do that. Anything above that, you must have either a waiver or some bank cap. And I'll talk about
072that in just a minute. U,, let's go to the next slide. So, those dollars that I had just shown you, this is how they they'll be allocated uh, for for the coming years. And as you can see the salaries and benefits are the biggest part of this. Uh almost 68% of the total budget go to salaries benefits. And then you can see that transportation is a large component of professional services and and I'm down all the way down. And the reason capital is so it's it's it's less than 1% and it's shown in zero. Uh you you've spent a lot of money on capital in other years. You just didn't do it in this f this school year. So that's why that's number. Uh go ahead G. And this is this is just a quick
073summary you know that we got 66.6 million that were uh needed for operating budget which is 1.7 million increase over the the current year. So um we have increase in taxes but we also decreased the budgeted fund balance. Go ahead J. Now, this is this is a uh this is your state aid. We got $4.2 million almost 4.3 for fiscal year 2526. That's up 200,000 over the prior year. But here's what's important about this slide and and and you'll see it in in a future slide here is that in 201819 you were getting four $5.8 $20 million from the state of New Jersey to fund education here. Now we're down to 4.2. And and what does that mean? Where does the balance of that comes from? Well, it comes from the taxpayers. That's what those
074dollars are made up. And so what the state has done over a period of time and as you can see for a period of years, we it was declining. They uh they pushed the support of education back to the local level by withdrawing some of the state aid. Uh so I wanted you to see that and know that. But it it was helpful that we got this 217 to help close the gap between our revenues and our appropriation that we were planning on. Go ahead, G. Okay. This is just a little history on our our local tax levy over the years. Uh in 2021, you uh did not increase taxes at all. And here's what happened as a result of that. you've got you have $978,000 in bank cap that would that materialize as a
075result of not utilizing. So you have three years to utilize that and then over the the subsequent years the past 5 years you can use either bank cap or as in this fiscal year here the current or the the 25 26 um you have a healthc care waiver that's available to you and and uh and that's that's where why this is 67 over 2% because it's about $386,000 I believe is what that waiver provides you. Next slide. So this this gives us a an idea of what and and the source of these numbers when I look at the the revenues and expenses prior to here they came out of your your annual audit. You know shows you revenues and your expenses. As you can see we're uh you know meeting our our expense and our
076obligations as we go forward or in the past. As we go forward and this is a projection saying hey you're only going to get a 2% tax levy increase. you're only you're going your um budgeted fund balance is going to stay flat. Uh we don't anticipate that uh state uh aid is going to increase that much. So it's kind of a real conservative view of what what kind of revenues we'll have over the next 5 years. And then we looked at you know well what's what what can we anticipate in the way of um increases in expenditures and of course salaries and benefits are the biggest component of that. and and we we factored in I I I recall I think it was whatever the last settlement was we project that over the next 5
077years and then you see that in time you know the the we we develop a gap and uh we'll come up short in the long run. So that's where that state aid when you think about that state aid being withdrawn from the district to be utilized that uh now you've got to come up with with local dollars and next. Okay, the tax impact next page. I love this slide because it's so confusing. Jeez. So, because you you're 12 municipalities, uh you each get a that that uh 56 million that I was talking about at the beginning of the local tax code. Each community gets a portion of that. And here's how it's determined. You know, this is the percentage share of that 56 million that each one of your communities will be uh handed to
078uh you know, uh collect from the the local homeowners. Now this shows that last year and I'll use Bethlehem as the top of the list. You know they got 7.1% of the the bucket and this year they get 7.4 and say well why is that? Two factors. One is equalized values that can change yearover-year. And number two is that there's a enrollment component. And what what the uh state department of taxation does is they look at the elementary enrollments and the high school enrollments and they do a ratio and they lay that ratio against the equalized evaluation and attribute uh the the percentage of high school kids to the high school and the percentage of elementary to the grade schools. And that's how that is determined. And I'm going to stop there because I go
079too much further than that and my eyes will start to roll too. Okay. Um and then oh yeah, you can go back go to the the pie. Uh that's this is just a picture of what I just showed you on the screen. which uh community and and again you you you can lay this against the uh the percentage of of uh the tax burden against students and you can see there's there's a the ratio fits. So and then what else do we have here? One last slide. Okay, this was just we we put this together just to show the difference between a a 2.67 67 tax levy in the for the coming fiscal year versus if we were to go to a 2% based on average home values of our communities. This is what you
080see. So in order to go from a 2% to 2.67 in Bethlehem Township, it'll take $21.77 uh a year for that that change. And and and you can see the rest there. And I think with that um last slide, yeah, we're we're at this point right now. We're at the public hearing and hopefully we have an adoption tonight and then once that's occurred by May 19th, we have to certify tax clerks and then we'll implement the budget and uh we do have resources. The userfriendly budget will be available 48 hours after submitted to the county office. That's all I have. Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Doug. I know. Okay. So, I'd like to call for a motion and second to approve resolution O. Oh, I keep doing this. It's going to be
081the life of this today. 9.2. Um, sorry. We have an opportunity for public comment during this portion of the meeting. The public is invited to address the board with questions or comments. On the 2526 school year budget, the public is requested to sign the register provided for purpose and to state their name, municipality, residents, group affiliation, if applicable, and direct their comments to the school board president. Uh, yes, this is just on the budget. Hi everyone. My name is Ivonne Shepard and I am from Franklin Township. Punter County. There's so many Franklin Townships. I've been a resident of Punterland County for 49 years. Uh and I hope to stay here until I am 10 feet under this lovely land. Um, I uh been very pleased to be here and one of the reasons I'm pleased
082is because my property values have been kept up and I believe the school system has been a key component of keeping those uh property values up. So, I'm speaking to you as a taxpayer here. I totally approve and support the budget that requires 2.67% 67% of the um uh municipal tax uh burden. The reason for that is um that I have had interactions with administrators in in the in North Hunterdan and Borheis teachers and students and I never cease to be impressed by what they have been able to do and and their professionalism and ability to produce good educated citizens which is what we are all wanting to have. So I totally support the the schools. The second thing is that when you look at that budget and I did attend the last meeting online
083because I couldn't be here in person, but I did uh attend the last meeting online. When you look at that budget in detail, we all have at least most of us have tried to get healthcare lately. Well, that has gone up significantly. We all know that with all of the shenanigans that are going on now with uh um that tariffs and everything else, all of our prices are getting driven up. So, our teachers and the professionals that support our school system need to continue to have the ability to to live and and and live well and we're in a competitive environment with that. I further assumed that the budget had been socialized before last board meeting that this didn't come as a surprise. Um I listened to Mr. Spanton um talk about the need uh
084and uh the downside potential if you don't adopt that budget what the downside potential could be. I'm not willing. And I also heard um President Selenino say that she was uncomfortable uh with a budget that was higher than 2%. Well, I'm here to tell you, Miss Kimberly Stelino, that comfort and feelings have nothing to do with this, only facts. So if we have facts that say that the budget was developed in a bad way or that there is a problem in a budget area, let's bring that out. You don't have to bring it out to us, but let's bring that out clearly to all the members of the board and let's deal with that and let's find a solution to that. But feelings have nothing to do with this facts. Nothing but the facts, ma'am.
085And the second point I want to make about that is that I was very disturbed as a result of the last meeting. The toxic environment that I found in that meeting was really appalling to me. The fact that Mrs. Solino bang at that gavvel until it fell out of her hand to shut out one of her fellow board members was incredible to me. I have a lot of business experience. I've been in a lot of boards and you as a leader what you have to do is channel the talents of all of your board members so that together as a group you can come up with better solutions. But what happened at that meeting with that budget meeting was unconscionable. And I think Miss Solano, you owe an apology to all of us for your
086bullish behavior which puts out a very bad example to everyone and to all the children that are students that uh may have seen you. Thank you very much. Any questions? Hi, I'm John Michonne from Toukesbury Township. Um, as you can see, I'm an old guy, you know, living on my 301k as retired. Um, uh, but and I appreciate anybody who's trying to save me money. I really do. However, I also come back to 26 years ago when I moved my family to Hon County. I moved here because we had a short list of good school districts that we wanted to send our kids to and that's part of the reason we came here and you know property values continuing to be increase and be valuable you know we want that school district to continue but
087more importantly you know I support the 2.67 67 number versus the two because of what the future is going to bring, right? You know, if you cut out that difference this year, and I think it was about $350,000 I saw in the chart, you know, that's four or five employees. But more importantly, let's talk about next year. Between now and next year, the president has uh moved to cut out the Department of Education, which will have a cascading effect on money, you know, throughout the entire education community. We will have a new governor. We will have new state legislatures. The governor and the state assembly could switch parties. We don't know the impacts that will have. And as you read of all the other boards of eds who are out there trying to figure out
088how to cut multiple dozens of employees out of their staffs, we may be in that position next year because the formula could change significantly between now and then. instead of being up 300,000, maybe we're down 300,000. So, if we voluntarily take out this money this year and can't have it again next year, we may have started off a process where we're going to be looking at several dozen cuts next year. Now, if you feel like, you know, I'm being dramatic, right, you look at, I think was Lacy Township cutting out all of their athletics, right? There's a school district cutting out 52 employees. There are schools being closed. So, if we're on the wrong side of whatever formula is used next year, you know, where do we want to put ourselves? Do you want to
089put yourself in a position to minimize the damage or do you want to put yourself in a position where you become known as the people who, you know, made our school district head downhill because of a lack of foresight. You know, that's that's an important thing uh to consider. Now, I I know you want to save me money, but here's the $10 that you're going to save me. Here's the $10 that you're going to save my wife. I'd rather you save our our school district and make sure we have a solid education for all the kids of our community. Thank you. Uh Jennifer Cusack of Hybrbridge. Um about five years ago. you I needed to move. Uh I'd been living at my father's house. My father had passed away. I only I only inherited onethird
090of that house. So when I sold it and you know my sisters got the other two/3s and have a ton of money to put into a house. I really wanted to be in this district. Now that oneird of a house from New Jersey, I could have bought something pretty dang nice in Pennsylvania. I looked at a couple of things. Um, I had a late girlfriend who had really wanted to move to Delaware. I looked at those. You know what this had though? This had this school district. This had this school district that had athletics my kid was interested in. School district had excellent rating. It was one of the highest I'd seen in any of the school districts I considered. I bought a tiny little 700 square foot single wide because I needed to I
091just needed my kid in this school district, you know, instead of, you know, how much money am I, you know? Yeah. I, you know, yeah, I got my kids into this school district. I've set down roots. I'm staying even, you know, though my kid is done with the school. And I don't see any reason why I should deny other parents who are in situations like mine this opportunity for what, as he said, 10, 20 bucks per year or even quarter, I don't even know. But it's not that much money, but being able to have a place like this to send your kids is invaluable. And if we nickel and dime that budget, this is not going to be that school district with like the giant those high ratings. It's not going to be the school
092district that can offer athletic programs like that kid who was the top state in fencing. You know, the fact that this school district had a fencing program. Yeah. That was one of my motivations for moving here. You know, I fenced in high school. It's not the cheapest sport in the world, you know, and it it made a difference, you know. Um, have you been to the, you know, the the the pops concert that the band that the Vorhees band does? It's amazing. And the kids, they get the opportunity to participate in something like that. You nickel and dime the b the you nickel and dime the budget. Are we going to be able to afford to keep doing things like that? We don't know. you know, it it's worth 20 bucks a year. It's worth,
093you know, to every person here. I I can't imagine that anyone here would say, "Oh, no. I care more about 30 bucks than whether or not this continues to be a great school district." Thank you. [Applause] Karen go of Hybrbridge. Everything I say here is being said as a resident and a taxpayer, not as a school board member and does not represent the hybrid school board whatsoever. Um, as shown in the presentation, oh, sorry, North Holland and Vorhees had almost $2 million in state aid cuts over the past seven years, managed to keep the increase to 2.6% last year with no loss of programming with state health plan costs going up about 9%, contractual staff increases, probably 3%, transportation cost increases, and a whopping increase in state aid of $215,000, which doesn't bring the state
094aid even close to where it was, keeping the increase at 2.67%. 67% still with no loss of programs is a monumental feat. Kudos to the BA. I'm also okay with paying the extra $14 a year to keep providing excellent educational programs. On another note, budget talks start in November. The 2.67% has probably been on the table since January. If any of you as board members were not aware that the 2.67% was on the table, then shame on you. To have multiple board members vote no on the budget, claiming they needed clarification is absolutely ridiculous. And to claim you didn't receive clarification prior to the meeting. When did you ask for that clarification? That morning. Thank you, Miss Viata, Miss C, Mr. Miss Coltran, Mr. McIac, Mr. Stanton for being the voice of reason and reminding
095the board that you are all elected and therefore entrusted with voting in the best interest of the students and not whatever political item you are passively aggressively protesting. Thank you. [Applause] Hello. Okay. Good evening, board members. My name is Nicholas Lavell from Union Township. I'm a proud resident and also a proud graduate of this institution. So, once a lion, always a lion. I'm happy to see heartened to see some other younger folks in the room with me as well. Something that speaks to the importance of across our society, both old and young, preserving our school district for for various reasons. Just want to echo the thoughts shared by other speakers and that you know the budget proposed as a 2.67 versus a 2% rate increase is not extreme or not something the residents of these
096municipalities would find issue with. I think for Union Township it was $22.18. Speaking as someone in the household that helps contribute will all chip in. I think uh one of the six of us would all trip in for that household. So uh please you know I urge the entirety of the board to support the budget for various reasons. um speaking not on any professional basis but as someone with experience in healthcare you know it is quite clear that these costs are rising in many many communities at an unsustainable pace and it is not fair to our working professionals and teachers to penalize them for such an industry uh consideration and then more so given that this district is part of the school health insurance fund or shift which is a consortium of 121 districts you
097know self-funded uh there are mechanisms of governance to address those issues among that body and not by penalizing workers, you know, by effectively reducing their pay, reducing their purchasing parody by not accounting for an increase in healthcare premiums. So, there are various issues that this board should be aware of and is aware of. And quite simply, the budget accounts for them and provides for a longer term sustainable future for the district. I think the administration mentioned it quite well that if you do not have money in this current budget year and upcoming, there's a time value to money and you can't get that back. So, I would just encourage you to consider that in this vote. Thank you. Hi, I'm Sandra Marzo from Franklin Township and I'm also in support of the budget. I really
098hope that tonight's vote doesn't go like last time when you all voted. Um, by all appearances, it seemed that you all did a backdoor meeting of some sort or went through back channels and came up with your own idea of what you wanted to tank the budget. That's how it appeared. I mean, you can look at me like I've got five heads, but it was very easy to see because this was in committee. I mean, this is how boards work. It was presented. It was expected that it was going to pass because it was on a Tuesday. It had to be at the county by Friday. And the only way if it got shot down was that you had to have a new version to get voted on again, which would have to be done
099in committee or by the BA at a new meeting. And meetings have to be advertised publicly. But newspapers have a time frame that you have to submit the your your meeting date and time by. And then there's a lag time between when you submit this and when they will publish it. And so I really really doubt that that would have been published publicly for people to know by that Friday. And then would you even can you guarantee that you would have had a quorum? I mean probably you're a pretty big board. It's not like you're one of the sending districts where some of those boards are pretty small. But yeah, you were taking a huge risk and making a lot of assumptions when you tried tanking it on that first vote. And it really looked
100like you were just playing some childish games and so unprofessional. I mean, you had to have known or you were choosing not to know or you didn't care and wanted to make a statement. Again, this is like 10 to $35 the average depending on the municipality for the average household of the varying sending districts from 2% to 2.67. And you all wanted those that you voted no wanted two like not a big difference. It's not a big difference. So So the it was I think the the amount I have is 368,000 was what you were arguing about that you wanted removed out of the budget. So what are you going to remove? Which teachers, which sports, which programs? Coaches, they don't make that much. to come up with that amount, which out of a budget
101of over 56 million really isn't that much, but it's going to be it's going to be staff. That's the easiest, fastest way to do it because you can't take out busing. You can't do that by law. You got to bust the kids. I know that. So, you're going to cut teachers. You're going to make class sizes bigger. You're going to get parents mad then. Like come on. [Applause] Is there any other public comment at this time? Anyone? I will close public comment. We'll call for a motion and a second to approve resolution 0429254 adopting the 202526 school year budget and establishing maximum travel expenditures and maximum professional services expenditures. Second. We at this time we'll have we will take discussion but it will be board members. Each board member will have an opportunity to have
102a comment and you can address it to the ta to me at the table. We're not having Banshee back and forth. It is a statement. We've already gone through the budget. We've been through FFT. We've had the last several weeks to send questions to the administration through the chair and I think everyone has had their questions. I've seen the questions and everything's been uploaded in the FFT folder as well for everyone to review. So at this time we can go around um if you'd like some have something to say. Um otherwise we will move on to the um the motion and we will vote. Brandon. Well, I mean, I'm obviously supportive of the 2.67 um and everything that it entails. I think my concern is looking further ahead. Um because for the past 12 or
10313 years, districts have been allowed to not have to go out for a vote so long as they kept it at 2% with the various allowances. Um and this district has obviously done a lot to sort of compensate for those losses with programs with bringing in other students, but we are getting to that point where there are fewer and fewer moves to make. Um, and I do worry without some sort of advocacy um, or some sort of reformulation on the latitude that districts are afforded that more and more districts will just fall into having to make some very painful cuts. Um, of course, the alternative is before that 2% um, opportunity was there, districts used to go out every year for a vote. uh and they were typically 3% um higher um and it was
104a year-to-year phenomenon and the 2% allowed the districts to not have to do that. I don't know what sort of advocacy we as a board could potentially participate in um because we recognize how difficult this has become. Um and whether that's a board statement, something to the legislature, um something to what whatever levers we have to lend a voice to, uh whether it's, you know, Tara's role uh on on the county and state level committees. Um that that's just sort of my expressed concern going forward. I don't see this getting easier and I I'm looking for help and direction so that this work um doesn't get harder and the conversations don't get more and more difficult year after year. Thank you, Bren. Is there anyone else that would like to make a statement? Yeah, I
105just I one of the the forms I I requested from from Doug at the last meeting was that projection going out five years because I remember going back when I first came on as a board member and we were dealing with the decrease from the in state aid and I remember Katie having that projection going out to today where we were hitting this physical cliff and we were going to be in big trouble right around this time and then the um changes that were over those years has has pushed that off. And that's that's what's been great with what the current administration has done to get there. And I think now we're we're kind of seeing the same thing. We're seeing the in the future we're we're we're going to hit we're going to be
106impacted if we don't keep maintaining uh pushing, you know, making those reductions, making those changes, bringing on programs, things to to increase our enrollment, things like that. So, um, I support the the 2.67 based on Thank you, Dan. Anyone else? Mr. Lordy. So, here's the bottom line for me. I've spent a ton of time on this. I think a lot of us have. So, anyone who thinks members of the public or whomever that thinks that people haven't invested a slew of time on this, that would be an inaccurate assumption. Here's how I feel about this. Without teachers, you don't have a school. Without money, you don't have teachers. That's just the bottom line. I think what we need to do now is we keep talking about fiscal cliff and and financial calamity. Let's not make
107any mistake about it. We're here right now. It's not coming tomorrow, next year, a year from now, two years from. We're here now. That's the reality. Look across the state. Look across the country. All the schools are in the same boat. It's just to what different degree. So the way I saw this, there is absolutely room in this budget to make cuts so we don't impact the classroom. And that's what I want to do. And I believe that there are several ways that we could go about this working with the administration and hopefully we see forward. But at the same time, if you look at the the slide that Doug uh presented, that gap between costs and revenues, it ain't getting any narrower. In fact, it's getting wider. And if we don't stop that right
108now and curb the spending right now, it's only going to get wider. And I think there is mechanisms that we can and levers that we can pull that will not only re in the spending, but do so in a manner that protects the teachers in the classrooms and the programs in the sports. So there they are not anyone and I'm my opinion that is saying that if we do not pass a budget that isn't fiscally prudent to the taxpayers that we're putting teachers in the bullseye or the crosshair. I think it's the exact opposite by by going off this by by going in this manner the money is dried up and then the first ones that will be on the chopping block and I agree what somebody said will be the teachers and I and
109I look to avoid just that. So that's why I've looked at this data as as as best as I can. I spent hours looking through every facet of this budget and I feel comfortable that there's a path forward to be not only fiscally prudent but to protect the classroom, protect the program, protect the students and and at the and the most important protect the teachers. We keep going down this road. I'm telling you the teachers are going to be right in line in in the crosshair. And that's the exact situation I want to avoid and I think everyone at this table feels the same way. Rich, what are you proposing for your cuts? I've discussed it with Dr. Bergax. He's well aware. Understood. But point of order. What about the board? What about discussing it
110with us? What suggestions? Uh, we just had a point of order. We are out of order. The question was to make a statement and Mr. Lordy had stated to you. He spoke with Dr. Burgjax and he followed he's on the FFTD committee and he followed the data if you'd like to direct something toward so the BA or the superintendent watch the FFT committee meeting and one of the cuts that Mr. Morning is presenting is cutting our SRO uh officers as well as our class 3 security officers. Not correct. I listen to the meeting and I'm just questioning. You're looking at taking and um restructuring and putting suggestions were made to cut officers in half, possibly coverage for two schools out of one office. Factually inaccurate. I I have no point of order. But my question
111is that if if again we have a point of order called by Miss Gallow. I just have a question. Isn't it normally that somebody has to present to you? Not with you're just presenting. You're asking if you're asking Miss You can ask uh the superintendent and the VA. Well, this all this information has already been vetted through the FFT committee. We've had several weeks since our last meeting to ask any questions to administration. I'm not asking what you're asking Mr. Lord. Here's what I would like to say then. Here's my statement. I'm for the 2.67%. I wholeheartedly agree that we need to look at the big picture and look forward. Um, however, if some of the solutions for cutting expenses include cutting our uh protection for our children and our school, I'm opposed. To be
112clear, To be clear, if you're saying that I was proposing that, that's not correct. Okay, we're at point of order. Point of order, Mr. Lordy. You've had your your comment. It needs to go around the board to everyone first. We need to come back, we can. Thank you, Jessica. Brian, um I'm on that committee as well, and I will disagree respectfully. Mr. Lordy, I was already agitated by the level of uh cuts that Mr. the BJAX and and the VA had to make in order to get the budget that they proposed tonight already. Um, anecdotally and kind of tongue and cheek and it was uh I hope we have enough toilet paper in the in the facility. I did hear that as well. Um, so I think it's my opinion is that it's wishful thinking
113that there is a lot of fat that just going to cut away um that you know before you get to teachers. So I support the 2.67 is just a why would we want to dig oursel into a deep deeper hole today for what's coming? I mean, um, there's ideas for what how do you address this big gap, right? And I don't think it's going to be completely trying to bend the cost curve. Um, health costs are just going up too fast. We've got contractual increases in um this, you know, the three quarters of the budget that's increasing at a higher rate than our tax uh levy is increasing. So, it's not going to come, in my opinion, it's not going to come from bending the the uh the cost curve with all this mysterious fat
114that's laying around. Um, that doesn't get into and and you know, we'll have a discussion hopefully respectfully as a board what those kind of things might be, but I also agree um I I I draw a line at the safety of the students. I I think if you if you're not um safe, then you're not going to be in a good learning environment. So, I support the 2.67% increase in tax levy. Thank you, Brian. Beth. Yeah. So, just to start, I I support the 2.67% tax increase. Um I absolutely would not support um a reduction in any kind of school safety. um uh work that's being done by the officers. I know there's been some discussion around the SRO, but I I don't think that cutting that is necessarily the right idea. Uh may just
115be a matter of reallocation of cost in case you're not really eliminating cost. There just may be a slight reduction. I also don't um I'm also not really happy with where I see the current reductions going. Um, there are some key things that I think need to remain in place. We need to make sure that our students have counselors that can help them through any crisis. Um, and uh there are just some I mean it's there are just things that aren't going to go away, they're going to increase. So trying to remove them is almost trying to go against where where everything is is moving towards. Um, I also think that we are really fooling ourselves if we think that these kinds of increases that we're going to be able to go through a budget
116and eliminate significant costs to account for the gap that we're going to see because I think honestly given where things are going from a political standpoint, an economic standpoint, an environmental standpoint, everything is leaning towards an increase. And so what we need to do is really actively look at what those increases look like and then see what steps need to be taken because otherwise I don't cutting is not going to get us there. It's going to need to be potentially open conversations um with the public about where things really are going to net out and what it's going what's going to need to happen to maintain two schools that are very old um into the future. Uh and I and I think that we need to really evaluate what the plan needs to be in
117order to ensure the future success of the school district and I support the 2.67%. Thank you. I would like to say that um I do support the 2.0 not the 2.67. I think the amount of money of the difference can be um obviously admin can do that um go through line items to figure out what needs to be taken out. I don't see um or I do not believe that the cut would be anything with the SRO or class 3es. Um I think that's um an unfair comparison that that would be one of the things that would be cut. Um if it needs to be addressed because of the security thing that would be discussed in a different committee. Um I believe that if it's minimal dollars, we can ask the administration the same thing.
118They can take that administration or can take some of that money out and try to keep us flat. We are regional school district. We also represent our local towns where they're also raising um taxes. So, we have to be mindful of the taxpayer, especially for the ones that no longer have students in school. And I know that some here are representing some, you know, they don't have students in school, but there are also young parents um that are financially could use some extra cash. So, I support the 2.0, not the 2.6. Seth and I'd like to make a comment. Um, we went through FFT. We've had numerous conversations, questions back and forth. Um, from the last meeting at a 2.0 2.67. Um, the BA and the administration have had discussions in committee as to what
119a 2.0 2.67 six, seven, uh, reduction deductions would look like. We talked about that. We talked about the costs that, you know, we have in in the classroom, on the fields, activities. We talked about safety. We've talked we've talked about everything. Um, and my first and foremost question was, does any of these deductions affect kids? and the superintendent and ad and BA it was no we're looking they're looking at reductions in other areas as far as the SRO first and foremost is safety of the school for students staff everyone that that conversation was an open conversation we had a guest speaker we were gathering information and I think administration's looking at other opportunities there it wasn't a discussion to to um cut an S the SRO completely or not to have class 3es. That was
120not the conversation. I also year over year if you go back to 202021 we were flat which we we should have went out for our 2%. They chose not to. So over the six year look back we've been we've been increasing. Yes. To some you say it's small it's dollars. In my constituency, most of the families are not families with children in the district. They're seniors and empty nesters. And a paycheck to paycheck. And those funds, although minimal to some of us, is not to others. And when you we are a sending district of 12 sending districts that filter here and we are watching our local districts and the majority of that goes to those local districts. You see the cost, the percentages. I have a concern where year overyear we're going out to the
121taxpayers to ask for monies to frontload to pay for those in the health benefits, salary costs, other driving factors when those you're talking about those small percentages and it is $368,000. It's not that we can't find it and our administration has been doing a great job searching looking and has stated they don't want to affect nothing will affect students because if it was I don't think any one of us that was sitting in that FFT would have been saying go for it we're on that's not true so I I have to defer Jessica that that is not true and that's not what happened. Okay. Why don't I just speak then because I would like Is there anyone else that has not had a chance to speak? Jessica, I'm sorry. I I want to make a
122comment. Um excuse me. I apologize. Um this is definitely this when it comes to budget and when it comes to um making those tough decisions in areas where you may need to as a board member. We were all elected and we all went through training governance too. One of the board roles in finance is to balance the needs of students and taxpayers and safety of the students is crucial important. So are the programs and teachers. We need it all. We need it all for our students for our district. Um, looking at the budget and during the meeting and FFT, getting a closer look, I see that we are not cutting teachers, programs, or safety for students. We did have a guest speaker and I have to say my impression was perhaps they're looking at cutting
123um a SRO. Um and it was brought to my attention that that is not the case. And when you look at it, you see that they are not cutting that. They're not cutting it. It's it's a projection, but they are not cutting the SRO. They are not cutting any jobs for teachers or any programs for students. And that is first and foremost. Now, year after year, since 2016, we've had a decline in enrollment year after year. And we have as a district I've seen the numbers for uh above 2%. Each time and we're still in the same place. We're still struggling. We have to think of very mindful creative ways where we're not going to affect the students needs, programs, teachers, and so forth. We need to invest in that. 2.67 is not is it's
124it's it's not the way. It's not the way 2.0 and 2.67. You're not cutting any of the students needs. Now, when it comes to taxpayers, what are you cutting when we when I know I'm out of order, but we're talking talking garbage. Excuse me. Well, who you cut, ma'am? It's it is a board discussion, right? But I'm hidden garbage. I understand your passion. It is a board discussion and we we need to continue business. Thank you. The projected budget that was shown for 2.0 0 and 2.67 does not show any cuts for students and programs or SRO. Therefore, I'm in support of 2.0 in being fiscally responsible to balance a budget to meet the needs of all students and taxpayers and invest in our teachers and the future. Kim, can I speak now? Yeah, because
125I was going to add something to I I know that would be your second comment though, too. My second you go ahead. I was just going to say so the documentation that I've seen that's in our folders shows that the way to get the gap filled of the 367,000 is to reduce an SRO to half and to reduce the out of district special education contingency. that is how we would make up the difference and I think the public deserves to know that. So you're saying that we would not cut things that are that would be to benefit of or to help the students but that's exactly what we would do in order to get that $367,000 made up. So, let's just be clear about what we're talking I would also like to comment on the
126things that we are cutting just to make this budget. We are having a teacher retire. We're having a secretary retire. We're not replacing them. We're reducing an aid in each building. We're doing restructuring of our administration. We're holding off on repairing or replacing uh equipment like trucks at the school and hoping that they don't that they don't die. We're reducing funds for textbooks. We're reducing um funds uh contingency funds for retirement, contingency funds for maintenance. Um, all these are funds that we had surplus in that that we're now taking from that in hopes that we don't run out of toilet paper, that we don't have a crisis where we need to replace a truck, that we don't have um an instance where we have a big maintenance bill and something unexpected happens at the school.
127We're taking our reserves away. Um, we're also going to be um going out for RFP for behavioral health. We're reducing our tutor.com hours per student. We are um we've we have received a grant for tech services. Um but we've removed our contingency fund for tech. Um we have capp travel and supplies and we are cutting supply uh consumption by 10%. Um therefore the comment for toilet paper is valid. If we continue and we don't increase um and we stick to the 2.0 there was a 45minute presentation on the value of the SRO and class 3 officers during our finance committee by Chief Tom D. Rosa. He defended the actions and the um what the SRO and the class 3 officers do in our school. Um and it was questioned as to the validity of all
128of having those officers in our classroom. We are voting to establish the budget tonight, but we're also voting in the finance committee on whe on the renewal or the the passing of the SRO contract and modifying it. So, there is talk. It is it is on the table. Um, and it has been discussed. Our biggest liabilities are obviously s salary and benefits. We're part of a consortium. There's we can't take raises away from people. um because we're looking to cut the budget. That's there are there's been talks about eliminating raises. Um so those are the while it's not directly impacting our impacting our students. If we don't give someone a raise, they're not going to they're not going to stay and work with us and we're going to lose the good people that we have.
129If we cut our security and we um and something happens at the school, who's liable? meal cuz we took them away. Um, if we cut our SRO officer, we have to wait for the police to come in hopes that they can get someone here in time to help a situation. That's what Chief D. Rosa told us. So, if we cut that down to half, now we have a half coverage waiting for a police officer when we call 911 instead of having one here in our building to protect our kids. If there's an active shooter in our building and we remove our SRO or we reduce our class three, we won't have protection for our kids and we will be waiting for for 911 to come. And it doesn't matter that it's an emergency, we wait
130just because and it will there will and Tosa said they'll make every opportunity to get here. Because if there's a fourc car emergency on 78 and we've got an incident at the school and they have no one to send us, we got to wait for a sending police district to come to our school for our non not as emergent issue as a car accident on 78, but we have to wait just like the regular public for the police to arrive. So, and our class 3 officers are not authorized to ret. All they can do is sit with an with a perpetrator of a crime. They cannot investigate it. They have to wait for a police officer to help. So the things that we're cutting while aren't directly involved in students class, you know, reducing class
131size or anything like that, we are reducing our contingency plans. And if emergency happens at our school, we could be we could be underprepared. And that's what we have to do to meet the 2.67% today, not the 2.0. And the only things that have been brought up are reduction in SRO and the reduction in special services to meet that $367,000 difference. So where is it going to come from if we don't pass 2.7 2.67? Where is that money going to come from? And I'd like to to respond to you, Jessica, just we all have the same information. and we're all looking at the same information and the BA and the superintendent uh shared this with us and the reductions that you're talking to speaking to the few that you have there was a crisis counselor
132uh we're using Ruckers now we are going out for RFP um the you mentioned the tutoring we're not taking that away they administration said they they have evaluated the data and that they were just reducing the the the amount of overall hours. I didn't say we were taking it away. I said we were reducing our exposure for tutoring to our students. A point of order. I'm I'm speaking now. Would you please let me understood? But you were telling me that I could say that. So, and then you noted reduce retirement the attrition. Okay. We that that is happening year over year. we haven't used in um technology services. We haven't used it in several years per the administration. They're not they're not taking they're taking specific amount from each and they came to us with
133the with the reductions. This was not something that the FFT committee said, hey, we want to cut these. We asked last month to have something put together for us proposals in FFT so that we could have an earnest discussion. The BA and the superintendent have done that. There is also a line item we had um reduced maintenance uh contingency. It was over 800,000 in the account. They pulled money from that. There is when you talk to textbooks as to superintendent had noted reduced replacement textbooks it's not something they use they haven't used it he said they've used a couple thousand dollars here or there that's not used because it's technology so these driving things that you're you're referring to I think there there's we we need to be transparent as to what did transpire the
134conversation and I will say that in the FFP we did have a conversation Chief D Rosa name. There was discussion. He was coming to explain the job the roles of an SRO class 3 and he was also there to share the costs that we are incurring and there wasn't enough clarity. There was not enough information. Chief D. Rosa could not respond to us and he had no answers. He said he was going to have to go back to the township to the mayor and they were have a conversation. Now, as far as the contract, yes, Dr. Burjax has has said that we are looking at a contract. We are approving a contract that is from last year and we're almost finished with this year. Exactly. So, not not being, you know, fiduciary. We asked uh
135spoke with D. Rosa and asked him several questions. He did not have the information for us. Again, we've been asking for that. Dr. Burjax has stated that yes, we want to look at reconfiguring, restructuring the contract. Look at what we're spending benefits for the class the uh SRO because it is soaring. The SRO is uh I don't have that 195,000,000. It's going up 45 thou $45,000 and we are paying and there was not a conclusive with the benefits. We had a we had compared benefits and there was differences in benefits. Well, we're paying 116 plus her benefits which equal 195,000. So, we had we had we we asked all those questions. I I mean Brian was there uh Cynthia Rich Lordy the same conversation. I I I don't Are are we discussing that at 15
136right now? Because I don't really think that's part of the budget. Yes. So So therefore, um the superintendent and the VA made recommendations to the committee. So their recommendation is our budget at 2.67%. Correct. And everyone's sharing how they feel about that. Yep. Everyone has their own Yes. their opinions, their concerns, and they're weighed all the data. I just have a question. Couldn't we spend next year evaluating everything and see where we might be able to make cuts as opposed to not approving this budget at 2.67%. because it the timing at this point if we if we reject it and go to 2% we're going to be in a worse situation next year which means potentially increasing the tax burden more to potentially 3% for example as opposed the 2.67% 67% now. So I wonder
137if it if there's we should actually sit down really evaluate the various costs by line item in the 2526 school year and approve this budget now. So there's also less of a tax hit to the to our constituents because you'll you it's it's done in small amounts versus in large chunks, especially going into what we don't know what the economy is going to look like going into 2026. So just want to throw that out there as an idea for anybody who's not favoring the 2.67%. I would like to thank you Beth for that and I agree with your point on that but that's what we did with the preliminary at the table to where we are as the final budget. So I think there's been a month and a lot of back and forth and
138I think there's been a lot of work with the administration trying to figure this out. So that was going to be the case. I think some of us were expecting to come to the table with with with a an option for the 2.0. Um again, can we work on this for next year's budget? Of course, you know, and I think administration would be able to do that. But I think that some of us passed a preliminary budget basically on the fact of procedural only because it was due that Friday. We didn't want to hold up the administration. We didn't have want to call a special meeting. I don't even think we were able to do that at that point. So, but that just gave us a one month period to really look at that's one
139month period. versus starting, you know, for example, come September, start in se September time frame and really looking at things and then coming back to the board in January or February with what's being proposed in light of the re the full recommendation um versus a one-mon window of of closing out any open questions that I know that there were um and giving the additional time that would really benefit benefit I think all of us to see where we can make cuts that won't impact programs or teachers. Okay. Is there anyone else? Just real quick. I just I I want to re I agree with what Beth is saying. I think that's the path forward is to look at things over the next year. um you'd mentioned, you know, we asked for the the administration. They
140did look at the the two 2% and how how we could do that, but the thing is they don't recommend it. And it's because it's not physically responsible for this district to do it at 2% because of the cuts that we would have to make. And it's all with contingent in the contingencies that and what that does is that increases risk to the district. That's what the contingencies are there for, to protect the district. If we're not supposed to reduce those at the beginning, they're supposed to be there in case we need them. So to we don't want to increase risk and then put ourselves in a deeper hole so that next year now now not only are contingencies lower but we also have less coming in. We have and we lose that one forever.
141So um I think the responsible thing is to go with the 2.67 except as the administration has as the professionals have decided. So, uh, Mr. Le, Dr. Bergax, were you going to say something? No. When everyone was done, I was going to say something. So, a couple things that I've heard here. Um, I guess coming in brand new, fresh eyes. I would first ask the question, when was the last time a budget was not approved here? I suspect never. Never. Yet, here we are. the definition of insanity, right? Like literally doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different fiscal result. So, I I believe we're at a point in time where we know where we're at now, right? But the administration has made it clear and I want something that you said
142uh that the administration is trying to avoid a fiscal cliff that could potentially have happen in 5 years, four years. I don't believe anything is getting touched next year. So, and so which means that runway is there to do exactly what you you had mentioned. Um, and I have some things on the SRO, but I'll wait on that and I I do respect your opinion, but on the SRO, I I just wish you were as more accurate as you were passionate on it. And I and when we talk about that, I took notes and um actually, let's talk about the SRO. Let's just finish with the budget. So, on the budget, I'm concerned my concern was if we do go to 2.0, is it going to be cut? No. So he here is at least
143in my opinion. So he here's where I think we have to understand. Someone mentioned I think maybe it was Brian that we can't take this dip in costs, right? There's no way to bring that down. Well, how else the hell do you expect to to to lower that that that graph, that gap between costs and and revenues? If you know your revenues are topline revenues are capped at 2%. the enrollment is 24.18% down since 2016 2017 school year and the costs are exploding. So unless you do something to bring that curve down, we're going to continue to widen that. So what I'm saying is is that there is a way that we do look outside the box, take a different approach that we can be fiscally prudent while at the same time not affecting students
144safety, teachers or programs. That's a fact. Anyone saying that they're they're they're linked together has I would I would suspect either not spent as much time on this or really hasn't dug into the numbers because if you're going to try to convince me that there's no way to stay at the statemandated 2% tax levy cap without waiverss or exceptions without making changes to your your your costs. The math doesn't math at that point, guys. rich. It just doesn't. You have to you have to do something different. So, so that's what I'm saying. This is we're at that crossroad now, right? So, if the only way to fix this is to bring the cost line down. The only way because you know your topline revenues are capped at 2%. I think we can all agree on
145that, right? Well, they're not capped because the state gives us allowances outside of a waiver. So the expectation is you're not going to get an enrollment waiver anytime soon. I think the administration would probably agree with that, right? So you're only looking at a benefit waiver at best. So and and but then that's the point. The the answer unfortunately listen here's the bottom line for me guys. Going to the taxpayer for lack of a better term can't be you can't be utilized as a crutch. It has to be at an absolute last resort. And for it to be an absolute last resort, I have to be able to go back to Union Township and explain, listen, guys, this is the bottom line. If we didn't do this, I'm telling you, every rock was overturned. Every
146efficiency is taken in place. This is it. Believe me, if I felt that way, I would say 2.67% all day. I would say go higher if we had to. But I c I don't believe that in my in my core. So if I don't believe that, right, then I can't I can't continue to go down the road that we're that that we're doing because nothing's going to change unless something's going to change. And the only thing that's in our power to change, right, is the cost. That's it. That's the unfortunate reality we can't control, like healthare, but there are certain things that we there's certain things that we can. I'm telling you that there's certain things that we can whether we agree on it. I'm not telling you. Whether we agree on it or not,
147they are. Well, what Rich? Well, the administration's telling us that that's not the case. Okay. We're going into uh they are we're going into make your Please make your statements and we'll go around the table. It is time to make I have a before we take a vote, I have a question. If we don't pass the budget tonight, which could happen, what happens to us? Do we lose our state aid because we haven't submitted our budget on time? Is there do we go into next month with like what's going to happen to us if we don't pass the budget? Address. Well, you know, because when I was here last month and it was my first experience of not having a board of education pass a a budget and thank God you did at least allow
148me to to submit to the county office. I led you to believe that if we didn't pass that night that we couldn't meet the deadlines. Here's what will happen if you don't pass tonight. uh the superintendent and the board president are going to get a call from the county superintendent and they're they're going to come in their room and they're going to say, "You guys need to make a decision about what direction you're going in here and and we got to get enough votes in order for there to be an authorization of tax for the coming year." Now, the only big deadline hanging out there is May 19th. And May 19th, what's important about that is that's the date that we have to cast the the tax certification. so it can be sent to municipality
149so by July 1, you can collect your funds so you can begin your operation for the next fiscal year. That's what I can tell you about. There's probably more to it than that. I would defer to an attorney, but that's what what my this question was asked and answered today, I believe, because the resolution could be amended. Correct. Yeah, there you go. That's the answer. But we'd have to wait for another board. Well, it be voted on. It'd have to be voted on today, but it could be amended today and voted on tonight. That's the answer. with the budget amount correct increase to be amended. Correct. But it still may not pass. It still No, I'm not saying what's going to pass or what's not. I'm just saying that the amount of the tax increase
150can be amended and revoted on tonight. So, for instance, if we don't pass the 2.67, you can call a motion to pass the budget at 2% even though we don't have a way to meet 2%. and the and the members of the board can pass it at 2% while others vote against it because it doesn't have to be it's not unanimous. It's by weighted vote and therefore we're going into a new school year or into school year beneath with a deficiency that we don't know how we're going to fill. I would say correct in the fact that the budget could pass tonight. I would disagree with the rest of the statement. Well, you would disagree with it. However, if we pass a budget at 2% and we don't have 400,000 to meet the bottom line,
151where is it going to come from? And that is what I want answered. If we don't pass the budget at 2.67%, what cuts will be made? And where will we find the extra 400,000 from? Where? Cuz it's administration can't find it. So, where is it going to come from when we can't pass it at 2.67? Where is the 400,000 going to be cut or found? Where? I I outlined in the document. You you you told us that in the meeting that was in the that we in the document. We're going to lower our um out of district um special education contingency and hope that we don't get one or two people to move into our district that we don't expect. Um and we can reduce the SRO to have time. So So you really I
152understand it. Um I'm a parent of a daughter who's just in an active shooting situation and it's real. Ma'am, we appreciate your passion. We hear you, but this is a board discussion and we need to finish business. Please are ridiculous. So here here's what I would like to just leave my comments with and I'll answer any other questions. Um, you know, it is a combination of revenues and expenditures. As you've mentioned, um, Rich, you know, expenditures do have to be hauled in and we've given you a whole list of expenditures that have been already cut to meet 2.6%. Just that's with that. Um, we're trying not to dig any deeper. That's really what it comes down to is we don't want to dig any deeper than we already have. Um, I have officially been in
153this role since October. Uh, my current BA is out on leave. Um, if you know, as Beth said, if we look at this, if you want me to start looking at line items starting tomorrow on what we're going to do for next year's budget, I will get right to that. But to do any less than what we're recommending tonight, I believe is shortsighted, but it's completely up to the board. So, can I ask you one question on the on the you mentioned the reduction in the um special ed contingency? Yeah. So, okay. So we reduce that couple students come in next year that we have to take care of. What do we do if we don't have the money for the year? We have to pull it from some we have to start looking at
154Yeah. I mean we're we're our biggest line item is staff. So sometimes yeah we might have to cut some staff in the middle of the year in order to pay for the bal the budget has to balance at the end of the year. Right. So again we're trying not to hurt kids by taking from these contingencies. If we don't need them we won't hurt kids. But if we do, we're hurting. Then we're going to end up hurting kids, programs, something. It's just there's no other way around. And we're already cutting our contingencies. And like Dan said, we're exposing ourselves to risk that that and we're praying something doesn't happen. So we're already at a at a exposure to risk with the current cuts you made to get us to 2.67. In order to get us
155to 2.0, know we're going to really expose ourselves to more risk by cutting an SRO in half and we're not going to have money available if a new student enters our school with special needs. And we're going to have to cut a teacher to accommodate a student moving into our school after we at a 2.0% budget because we don't have our special ed contingency to support that student because we cut it to keep a budget at 2%. Is that correct? Yes. And let me be clear again, we are in a good place fiscally as a district. This is a good place. We're not talking about cutting 35 staff members tonight. That's where we will be if we don't take advantage of the revenues while we can. Let's not look to try not to get I'm
156trying to explain it. This is not a a one-year look. This is a future look. It's what we do this year is going to impact us for every year over the next three years. So, if we are at a 4 $400,000 deficiency today and we're cutting to make that um at a 2.0%, what's the deficiency going to be next year when we have nothing more to cut? And where how far down the hole are we going to be next year when there's no more contingency funds to pull out of accounts to replenish a budget? We don't have we've cut down our our class three security, our SRO. Stop saying that. It's factually inaccurate. Can I correct? It's not being stated at the table. We are not cutting an SRO in half. That's not that is
157an absolute force in the Is that true? Rich, you just said that. That's what he said three times. You said class. You said class three. No one's listening to one another. Everyone's arguing. Listen and get the facts and make a decision. Terry has not spoken. Excuse me. Um, I'm in support of the budget at 2.67. I do find it very difficult to hear that we would put our special education off because that's very discriminatory. And as a parent who has a child with Down syndrome who went through our school district and was phenomenal, the thought that I know of other parents coming into our district that had children with Down syndrome and they're going to be in our district really soon. So I know that as a fact where they they come out to Boris
158or North that'll be their decision, but they're in the grade school level now, new to the district. So, I'm just concerned for our students with disabilities that we're not going to have the funding when they move into our district to support their educational needs. So, legally, we will have to have that funding. So, we can't not have that funding. So, we would not we'll provide services to our special needs students no matter what. But at what expense? But what what I'm saying is what we when we look at the budget, when I say it's a contingency, we look at the budget. We know how many students are coming into our district next year. We know how many are here right now. So, we know what our expenses are based on what happens. But we have
159a contingency in there so that if somebody moves in over the summer and is already in and out of district placement that we would have to litigate to get them out of and you know even if that was possible you know that's what the contingency is for. We're lessening that contingency so that we won't have as much and that's a place we can take money from without hurting current students. It has the potential to hurt future students as well. Exactly. Rich, I do have a question though. I mean like in reality if you're looking at your line items like you're heavily weighing on the special education and the out of placement stuff but there could be other areas where you guys can pull from and leave that alone. That's not it. In other words, that's
160not on that's not on the table as that's what you have to do. That's what he did. That's already been done to get to 67 with with with the list that I listed. I don't know what else I can do. Yeah, we're good. Isn't this where we are supposed to not try to run the district? We're supposed to make the district, you know, make sure the district is run well. The the administration has given us their budget. They've given us the reason to have our budget uh their budget and and I don't think actually that it's it's fair to say that cuts will not with respect to Dr. Bex that any cuts will not affect students or or schools. Any cuts will affect students. Depends on where they are at. Any cuts in my opinion,
161you can disagree with me. I do. Any cuts will affect students. We don't have people running a restaurant on site uh or a separate business. They're all doing work for our kids. you might it's fair to have an argument uh a discussion about whether it's done as efficiently as it could be but and and so maybe maybe I would concede that if you found something really done inefficiently and you could save some dollars and you don't change the activity that's resulting but if you you can't just start cutting administrative oh there's just too many administrators we're just going to cut them all rich is just going to run the district by himself, it's going to affect kids. Um, so I I just I you know, Rich has said, and I admire the thought, you know,
162I don't want to do cuts that directly affect students, but I just don't think you can just cut and not affect students. And and you're right, we're going to have to make those kind of decisions, right? Right. Yeah, my my I may may have um worded it poorly, but my my my intent was you can't bend that curve with fat. You're not going to cut your way to bending like fat like oh we'll just cut that. We'll just by cut by cutting administrators, we'll just we'll just again have if Rich was going to run the district all by himself, then you know that number would go down for sure. But it's just not feasible to just I think to to believe that you're going to get it all through FAT. I would add to that.
163I mean Doug shared a chart with us where roughly almost 80% of our expenditures are above 3% that we have to manage and are beyond our control. Um except salary which is at 3% still above the 2.67 but we were patting ourselves on the back some months ago at finally having a competitive guide. Uh so not something that we uh we did we did that very deliberately. Um, and everything Rich is going to do is going to try to do every single reduction so as not to directly impact kids now. But has been indicated, the minute we have to make a hard decision, it's going to impact kids and programs. Rich, if asked, will cut to the bone. and next year he will have to cut both because if we don't give him the latitude
164to work um that's where that's where we're going to be. Okay, I think it's time we we've all unless there anyone that hasn't spoken anyone I'm confused about one of the um going back to the safeties SRO's um I think some of this process is given opportunity for a deep dive in the one contract showing that something maybe that wasn't maybe looked at as um as it was with this opportunity and that is that um I think it's stated that that person is an employee of the township and not of our district meaning that maybe we were paying for insurance for them. Um and that's a substantial amount. So I know we're just looking at the contract up until June now. So then we'll be looking at it for next year. But how does then
165that decrease knowing that okay wait we're paying for something we shouldn't we were able to shape that. Does that then create um not that maybe not cut that could free up some space so that we don't have to cut the but we don't know that yet. Okay. So that's but the difference between that's why if I could have the year I can try to fix some of these things. the difference is $80,000 is the benefits difference. No, she's we can we can talk about that at 15. That's that is on the agenda for both. At this at this time, um I would like to move forward and um we close discussion and we call for a voice vote. Motion second. I said it' be the whole night. I need a motion and a second. You
166already have it. You have a motion, a second on that resolution. You just had discussion. Oh, did I? Did I? Okay, now you're ready for Yeah, I was. So, voice. Sorry. Call. Uh, yes. Roll call. Ready. So, we're roll calling on the 2.6. It's Yeah, we're just trying to fire. Okay. Ready, Mr. Kagno? Yes. Mr. Chapman? Yes, Dr. Deni. Yes, folks. Miss Gallop, no. Miss Hint, yes. Miss Katran, yes. Mr. Lorie, no. Mr. Mazi. Yes. Miss Rays. Who? M. I'm sorry. Miss Ray. Reyes. Reyes. I'm sorry. No. Mr. Stanton. Yes. Uh, Miss Bato. Yes. Miss Selenino. No. Motion carries. Okay, we are moving on to the T school administrators report. Thank you, Dr. Box. Seleno, first of all, thank you for all your support. Um, I do appreciate everybody that's supporting this budget. I think
167it's going to be um good for our kids and I will take to heart what everything was said tonight and do my due diligence to reduce costs while we make sure that we provide services for kids. All right, so if uh it's weird doing my superintendent report at 1110. Uh but I do want to uh throw some congratulations out there. First of all, congratulations to North Hunter senior Brooke Richards and Vorus High School senior Juliana KTO who are recognized as an unsung hero by the Hunter County School Boards Association. I know we mentioned this at the last meeting, but I wanted to make sure we got the students names on the record. Um, an unsung hero refers to someone who performs remarkable acts of kindness, service, or heroism without seeking recognition or praise. These individuals
168often go unnoticed by the public, but make a significant positive impact on others and their community. And both Brooke and Juliana um are the epitome of that. So, congratulations to them. North the North Hunteran Theaters Organization attended the Bucks County Playhouse Student Theater Festival on April 1st. In addition to attending the theater workshop in the morning, they also performed two cuts of Mamma Mia in the afternoon. They were awarded three spotlight awards for their performances. Uh Megan Simonelli and Oscar Opericio for featured duet as Donna and Sam and Kareem Lapos Lapinoso for featured vocal performance as performer as Rosie and her excellent dance ensemble. So great job to all. Um it was a great um event all around. Um Shiv also mentioned u the North Iron Show Choir performed at the Roxberry in Invitational for
169the first time received a gold ranking. Um they were selected to perform in the evening showcase and won second place overall in a show pop jazz category. Senior Bo Partardo competed in a solo division and received an outstanding achievement award as well. So congratulations to them. Uh I would like to congratulate Kevin Zang for participating in the Terra NJ STEM fair with his project an AIdriven systemic systematic approach to understanding and predicting spotted lanternly proliferation. Can't believe I got that out. He won several awards including first place in the animal science category. So congratulations Kevin. Uh the 21st Prism concert was held on March 20th. Congratulations to our music staff and students for their exceptional performances and a huge thank you to the NHS music association for sponsoring this event. It wouldn't be possible without
170all the hard work they put into it to make sure they fundra for it. And um but it's a fabulous event every year. On April 9th, the Tri Music Honor Society performed a national anthem at the Somerset Patriots game at Pat at the Patriots Stadium in Bridgewater. That was a nice opportunity for them. And this spring, Vores High School introduced United Flag Football. I think Sarah mentioned this as well as a brand new um sport for athletes. They are um com they're working with the Jets organization who has sponsored this program. Um and it sounds like they're doing great based on some of the stats that um Sarah shared with us earlier. So, uh, the Bory's Drama Club also proudly presented Fiddler on the Roof on April 10th through 13th. It was a production inspired
171by last year's trip to the Paper Mill Playhouse. The production highlighted our students talent and teamwork and Voice Production. The Voice Production received special recognition at the Bucks County Student Theater Festival. This morning, the Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Awards announced nominations and honorable mentions in nine categories, and Boris was honored in several of them. They were nominated as an outstanding overall production of a musical. There was only four in a state that received that. Vor was one of them. Outstanding performer in a male identified leading role. Jacquine Ars is as Tavy. Outstanding performance by a chorus. Outstanding achievement by a teacher or outside director, one of our very own Nancy Lis Reynolds. Outstanding achievement in music direction. Again, one of our teachers, Andrew Fank. Outstanding achievement in choreography and staging, Morgan Strael. And outstanding
172costume achievement, Briana O'Halerin and Nancy Lis Reynolds. Again, um they also had some student achievement awards. Matt Sam was um awarded received an award for his lighting design and Samantha as the stage manager. So, Boras had a very good year this year with their theater program um this morning. That was hot off the presses. So, I hope everyone um joins me in congratulating all of those individuals for the outstanding um performance and awards they won. And last certainly not least, I do want to say that um I I am in conversation with Clinton Township um the superintendent there. This is very preliminary. So, um I want the board to be aware that we're talking about um a consolidation study. Uh the state has allocated funding through the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs to cover
173the cost to conduct a feasibility feasibility studies regarding potential school district regionalization and consolidation. Um I've been talking with um Dr. Stager at Clinton Township and we'll be exploring and sharing more information with our board presidents and the rest of the board at some point. Um and if we decide to move forward it the the grant is called the school regionalization efficiency program and basically it doesn't bind the board to anything. What it does, it it allows us to apply for a grant so that the state will then pay for an efficiency study, which is one of those things that could possibly pull us out of our fiscal hole in the future. So, this is a step, I think, in the right direction. There's a lot to be um you know, evaluated in regards to
174that. Um, but we also reached out to all of our other setting districts to see if they would be interested and they will also be talking to their board of vets as well. So, that is my fun administrators report. Um I do have a a report on harassment, intimidation and bullying. Um and we have we have four um instances to report to the board tonight. Um one is two are unfounded. One is founded for some but not for all of the offenders and one was unfounded inconclusive. So, those will be put in the folder for your um review and then you'll be voting on those next month. So, that is the report on harassment intimidation tonight. And then Kim, do you want to handle 102? I do. Uh I call for a motion, a second
175to affirm the determinations on the HIV incident reported at the March 18th, 2025 board meeting. Second. [Music] All in favor? I I. Any nays or abstensions? Okay. And the monthly reports are there for your review. If anyone has any questions with that, let me know tonight or at another time. I'll answer questions any other time you have. Thank you. Monthly school reports. Yeah, that's what I just said. The monthly school reports are there um for your approval. Questions, let me That's good. Okay, moving on. Uh, school board president's report. Uh, next month, May 27, 2025, 7 p.m. is our next board meeting. Um, and I'd like to um announce graduation for Vor High School will be June 12th, 2025 at 9:00 a.m. And North Hunan High School will be at 10:30 on June 12th. And
176I know administration is providing a bus for the for the board of education so we can attend both and I hope everybody does. I do and it's fantastic to see everyone and to be at both schools and representation. So um I think that's great that they're providing the bus for us this year. Is there anything else a school board members might need to know about graduation or thinking? Is there a speaker from the board? sing. [Music] Okay. New members start. I won't shy away from Yeah, I I can sing. In the past, Marin had I guess Jul. Well, you'll get they'll get an email for that. So, you got an email to I did get that, but Oh, I'll be wearing my doctor. They'll give me your highest your fun fact and first time I'll
177be wearing it. Well, that's awesome. That's awesome. Your highest. Yeah, that's awesome. Who is [Music] um Yes. Uh as as Dr. Dr. Bja said there would be more information given to the board as we approach um as directives and the bus timing because it's going to be early. We're going to try to have it here I think to catch Yeah. The plan is to the bus picks everybody that wants to do both graduations up here. Jesus Vorhees um we get ready up there participate in a graduation run to the bus as quick as we can get on they bring us back here drop us off. We walk in. So we have to wait. So after passing the 2.67 there's no limo. No, we're lucky to have a bus. You're lucky we found you. Transportation. We
178don't have that. That's at a loss. No. So, everyone look for that information, please. And um I hope everybody attends both. Moving on. Um it will be a public comment. During this portion of the meeting, the public is invited to address the board of education with comments. You are requested to sign the register provided for this purpose and to state your name, municipality of residence group affiliation if applicable and direct your comments to the school board president. While all comments will be considered by the board of education and a response may be forthcoming if and when appropriate. Individual school members may not respond to the speakers at the time of their appearance. The public comment period will be a maximum of 30 minutes in length unless there are unusual circumstances. You will be allocated three
179minutes to speak and no one will be permitted to speak more than once on the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic have been heard. Please keep your comments respectful and non-defamy and maintain a level of decorum appropriate for a public meeting where students may be present and in the audience. Carolis, Carol Clinton. Um, I came to my second board of education meeting last month to recognize a wonderful job by a district bus driver. I decided to stay and watch the rest of the meeting and I'm so glad that I did. I am absolutely appalled at the behavior of some of the elected board members. Instead of respectfully agreeing to disagree on items, we had grown educated adults attacking each other. I thought we were all here for the same
180common ground, the students, and what's best for them and this district. I began to compare what transpired at this meeting with experiences that my children had with teachers and administration in this district. The similarities in behavior is absolutely frightening. The standard we hold our students to is not the same standard you hold your board colleagues, teachers, and administrators to. The behavior displayed at public meetings makes me question if we really have the best people making decisions for this district. Many of you need to check your egos at the door and get together and do what's best for the students and this district. If I behaved the way some of you behaved in the last meeting at a board meeting at my job, I would be fired. you represent all all of you represent this district
181and there are students at the at these meetings and this is what we're leading by example with. It's terrible. It was disgusting. We all need to be kind humans and that's something that I think a lot of you on this board have forgotten. Something to also think about. You have your table set up in a U. Half of the board on one side and half of the board on the other side. You're splitting it right down the middle. You guys should be across and having a discussion with everyone out here. No one is right or wrong or left or right. And that's how you're presented to the rest of this the rest of this community. I have a strong feeling that many other people in this room feel the exact same way and the comments
182tonight will be very similar. Thank you for your time. [Applause] My name is Michael Pier. Uh just this year the girls basketball team the boy and the boys basketball team finished. At the end of the year, the boys basketball team got together, had gave out awards, coaches award, the line award, awards based on statistics. The girls basketball team, nothing. Are we now discriminating against the women? There's two players that were on the team this year that were recognized by the Scotland Conference. One got second team. Another one got honorable mention. Nothing. One of the girls was put for Lehi Valley a voting for her. The principal was given notification of it. The coaches were given notification of it. The students nothing. What are we doing? These are our future. These are our children. When a
183child does well, you don't always have to reward them. But you know what? At least um good job. The board of ed has a policy. I read the policy. Sports are supposed to be given awards. So why are we denying awards to students? To me, that's a problem. Somebody needs to look into it. You know, I understand not everyone's going to be a star. Some people are better than others, but at the end of the day, we're supposed to teach team. We're supposed to teach these kids how to improve, how to get to the next level, whether it's sports or education. But what I'm starting to see it in North Hunter is that the school system or the administration that's in place right now doesn't care. How do you have a parent and children go
184to a dinner and nothing be given out? So then I sent an email to the coach asking, "Hey, one of the girls scored underassman over 250 points, 200 rebounds. Has that ever been done here in North before?" And he said, "As far as he know, no, but that's such a great accomplishment." So I said, I want to use that to help that individual to do even better next year because that individual wants to bring a championship to North High School. But at the end of the day, why are we not recognizing our children? I'll leave it at that. [Applause] Wow. I hope some of you never run for the board of education again. Good evening. I'm Bob Imhof. I'm from H Highbridge. I've put three kids through this district, the last one in 2020, and
185overall, I've been very pleased with the results. In 30 years of interaction with this school district, I have never felt the need to come and watch these meetings. I stand here now very concerned. Full disclosure, some of you know me. I've been a board of education member for 17 years. I've served multiple times as president and vice president of Hunan County School Boards and I currently sit in the board of directors for New Jersey school boards. I am not speaking as a board member tonight, but I do know what I'm talking about. Your primary responsibility is to ensure our schools are wellrun. I know firsthand that the extraordinary amount of time your superintendent BA and their team are devoting to needless items coming out of these meetings is time that they are not spent making
186our schools better. That is not wellrun. I suggest each of you go back and watch the last several meetings online. Watch yourself, your tone. Think about how you're perceived by the district, by the students, by the public. Think about how these meetings make our district look. A former superintendent got me asking myself, can we do better? I suggest some of you start individually asking yourselves that question. You're also responsible to set the tone for the district. The current tone is appalling and disappointing. If the students in this school followed the example set by this board, there would be disciplinary action against them. It's terrible. The lack of respect, the communication, the trust issues, the lack of sharing, and the unwillingness to discuss information is an extremely serious and damaging issue. While you should each vote
187for whatever you believe is right, discussion and even disscent can make for much better outcomes, a much better system, but it requires listening and an open mind. To quote your very own board agenda public comment section, please keep your comments respectful and non-defamy. maintain the level of decorum appropriate for a public meeting where students may be present in the audience. End of the quote. It's not a suggestion, folks. You guys should follow that too. I know each of you dedicate a lot of time to serving and I sincerely thank each and every one of you for that. It's not easy and I know these are not high-paying jobs and I would say that continue the training with Patty because they will teach you in board leadership. They'll teach you how to run meetings. They've got
188a whole bunch of other things that they can teach you. How to become a better board member and most importantly how you could all become a better board of education. I implore you to lead by example as an example to lead by example to our most precious resource, our children. I implore you to act in a civilized, respectful manner, even when you disagree with the person sitting next to you. You're all supposed to be here for the same reason. Thank you. [Applause] Karen go of Hybridge. Again, I'm not speaking as a board member. I'm speaking as now just an observer, I guess. Um I I thank you for voting for the budget. That was smart because cutting your out of district contingency is really stupid. Some of your sending districts have over 20% special education
189students. one kid going out of district is going to cost you $200,000. You don't want to be caught without that. So, just throwing that out there. Um, and point of order, President, um, according to Robert's rules, when a motion is on the table, debate follows. The president doesn't get to dictate that everybody can make a statement and then call point of order, everybody, every time one of your board members tries to debate the issue and get clarification, which is what you were seeking so desperately regarding the budget. Thank you. [Applause] Good evening everyone. My name is Scott Capetto. I'm a cheer father. I am here with a consortium of group of parents who are intending to uh express their support to the board for the excuse me, where are you from? Clinton Township. Okay. I'm
190the father of one of these beautiful ladies over here who's listened to everything going on. We've got some great themes tonight, right? I mean, you guys really I mean, I I applaud each and every one of you for your commitment, your dedication, whether or not the personalities mix. You guys, I believe every single one of you honestly at my core want what's best for the school district, right? And sometimes the message comes out a little rough, maybe not even polite, but you're sending a message, right? You're sending a message to these girls over here and this school and the school district sends messages to them and they grow up like a gentleman that was here earlier who's a graduate and they may come back to this county and they may be taxpayers and they may
191have raised their families here. So, this group here would like to give you some information and some insight into their support of their cheer coach and how their cheer coach has brought them to competition after competition after competition and how that cheer coach and that staff has brought them to believe in competition, teamwork, honesty, loyalty. And I would like to ask someone here. We've got parents. We've got alumni who drove up from South Carolina directly here sitting here listening to all this other stuff because they feel this is important. We have alumni parents. We have current cheerleaders. So give us a few moments to step up and have them say a few words to you. Thank you. [Applause] Hi. Sorry. Okay. Hi, I'm Emily Rush. Um, I'm a sophomore at the College of Charleston and
192I cheer there and I was on varsity cheer for all four years of my high school experience and I was also a varsity lacrosse player all four years. And um I had coach Narin as my coach for three of those years. My first year was a different coach. Um from direct experience, rehiring Norine would be in every athletes best interest regardless of if they end up continuing sports in college like I did because of the lessons, grit, and strength that she instilled in me. I know that Coach Naren is the reason that I'm a division one cheerleader and have been able to compete at this high level. She never gave up on me and she made sure that I never gave up on myself. I'm majoring in sports psychology and I'm studying to be a
193therapist for athletes. I understand firsthand how hard it is and challenging it can be to feel the pressure that come with the environment that sports put on, but the expectation that a coach that has on you can add to it. I get that. But that only makes you better. And coach Narin truly makes sure that her athletes reach their highest potential if they're willing to work for it. If they're willing to work for it, which has prepared me for the real world and motivates me to keep pushing forward. I remind my bless you. I remind myself of the high standard that she's had on me to lead me to my success over the years. I'm a sophomore and I just finished my sophomore year. I had a captain role and I truly would not be
194who I am as a person or athlete if I didn't have her leading the way. When it comes to sports, it's up to the athlete if they chose if they choose to stay or if they walk away. Like I said, I played lacrosse for all four years and there was many times that I questioned that if it was worth it for me to stay. Inevitably, I stayed because it's more than if you get to play if you get that playtime or if you don't get the play time. It's more than if the coach likes you or doesn't like you. Not everything looks exactly how you want it to. And I learned from coach Narin that you get to determine your worth on a team. No one else gets to determine your worth on the team.
195My mental strength, my fortitude, and resiliency are all thanks to what she expected of me as an athlete. I would not want to see other athletes lose the impact that she had on me. Thank you. [Applause] All right. Hello, my name is Maddie Tolson and I graduated in 2023 and was also a four-year varsity cheerleader at North. My freshman year, our team had so much talent, yet we did terrible due to not the best coaching. We were taught how to edit Instagram pictures rather than being taught how to progress our cheerleading skills. Sophomore year, Coach Norin started her first year of coaching. And I'm not going to lie, we were nervous. And that was because our first day we were running, we were lifting, we were working out, and basically we were finally being treated
196like every other sport. And because of that, we got real and amazing outcomes and accomplishments. Once we hit high school and we play sports, it becomes more than just a fun thing you do with your friends. You're not going to walk into practice and have the coach hold your hand and hand you everything on a silver platter. With that being said, I believe Norine really enforced a what you give is what you get kind of coaching technique. She held us accountable. She taught us how to hold ourselves accountable. She taught us grit, drive, respect, and many other important qualities every great athlete needs. Sophomore year was COVID, so it was kind of wacky, but junior year, we are still receiving the amazing coaching, and we got the best placing at nationals that North has ever
197got. From going from like 130th place my freshman year to fifth place in the nation all within two years. That right there is proof that Norine and her coaching led us to the top. Overall, Norin would go to the ends of the earth to help an athlete with drive that's hardworking and willing to listen to succeed and cheer no matter what their skill level actually was. Norine coached at a very low skill level school before North. And yet, while she was there, they were placing well, hitting a sharp routine because, as she told us, they showed up, they put in the work outside of practice, and they never gave up. Still to this day, I'm close with Norin and I know this year the team has struggled with attendance issues, attitude issues, skipping for silly
198reasons issues, and those are the athletes that are not in favor for coach Narin to return as coach. And I wanted to add that Norine is human, too. She has a life. She wakes up with random pains. She has more than one job outside of coaching. She experiences every other tiny reason cheerleaders are giving her to skip practice. and yet she is still there every single day and all she wants is genuinely coming from her heart and that is to help every single cheerleader be successful. I truly believe with everything in my heart that Coach Nor is the best coach North has ever had and will ever have. And if tonight's vote does not go in Coach Norin's favor, not only would that be terrible for her, but also the future athletes that aspire to
199be an amazing cheerleader. I also want to throw in my junior year. I very strongly disliked school. I disliked work. I pretty much hated life in general. And the one place that I didn't hate life was at practice because of coach Norine. When we won fifth or not won, but got fifth place and the school announced it, I was so happy and I just wanted to say that. Thank you. [Applause] Good evening. Almost good morning. My name is Susan Lynn. I'm a resident of Clinton Township for 28 years. I have two children that have one that's going to school in district now and one that's graduated. I'd like to express my support for the rehire of Coach Noren. My daughter Calli Lynn cheered for three years under Coach Norin from 2021 to 2023. Callie's currently
200a behavioral neuroscience and psychology major at Florida State University. And I have a brief statement to read from her. Coach Narin fully prepared me to be a college cheerleader competing at NCA nationals for Florida State University, which says enough. The fact is that she helped me build confidence, leadership skills, and contributed to my preparedness for life beyond high school. She instilled the importance of showing up and striving to reach your full potential. Her dedication to the team and strong work ethic extend well beyond the cheerleading world. And those are notes from my daughter. There are several current and prior passionate cheer team leaders also here tonight to support the rehire of their coach. A coach with whom they have excelled personally as athletes, as a team, and as good citizens in the school and the
201general community. These are our future leaders. These are our future advocates showing up and exercising their voice. I hope they're all heard. Thank you. [Applause] Hi, my name is Natalie Capetto. I'm a junior here at North. I'm here tonight to speak on behalf of my cheer coaches. Standing here is very nerve-wracking because this is my own future I will be addressing. I've been on varsity cheer for all three years I have been here at North as well as well as doing an alternative competition team outside of school. I've also been in both of our competition performance routines as well. When I think of support, I think of my cheer coaches. These coaches include Noren Stanbury, Failen Stanbury, and Chris Vitelli. I would not be the athlete I am today without all three of them. My
202coaches have given me countless of opportunities and I am aware that is because of my personal hard work and effort. But without the support of my coaches, I would not have come as far as I have. They truly want the best for me and always notice the hard work I apply to myself and how I try to put that onto others as well. I would specifically like to talk about Coach Norine. At the end of our season, our season banquet that happened last month, Coach Norine presented me with the Lion Strong Award and followed that up with a few words to represent me. These words were, "Strength is not just about being powerful in stunts or resilience and conditioning. It's about perseverance, determination, and an unshakable presence." These words were said about an athlete. But
203I think they also apply to people in life. Coach Marine works two jobs and still perseveres through all of her life struggles and always makes us as a team a priority. Her determination is something I admire more than anything, and she has taught me to do the same thing for myself and carry that throughout the rest of my life. It's sad to say, but most of the time it is very obvious that coach Norin cares more about the team and the sport than majority of these athletes and parents. At the end of the day, this is a high school sport cut out to be fun and possibly help us out in the future. Nobody is holding any of these athletes there. And if they didn't want to be there, these people have no right to
204blame that on these coaches. Coach Norin specifically cares so much about us as individuals. And if we didn't achieve a placement we wanted at a competition or a certain trophy, I know she will toss and turn all night trying to figure out where she went wrong. None of our per performances are her fault. There is nothing she can do. She's not the one who's on that mat. Cheer has been a part of my life for almost 15 years. The experience I have at North is like no other. It has been a it has had a huge impact on my mental health in the most positive way. High school is a is a hectic time and can be some of the worst times of your life. When I felt like there was nothing going for me,
205cheer was there. I have a family that will support me and make me realize there is always light at the end of the tunnel the second I walk into practice. Not to toot my own horn, but I feel that I'm very incredibly talented at what I do in cheerleading, and I know others think that, too. My freshman and sophomore year, this team was very successful, and we all felt like the team was right where we needed to be. My junior year, I didn't feel much other than disappointment and anger. The big thing that didn't change between those two very different emotions was our coaches. They are the same coaches I've had all three years. They do their job the same way they always have. You cannot blame staff for your own faults. It's the same
206concept as if I were to go up if I were to receive an F on a test and I walked up to my teacher and told them that that bad grade was completely their fault. I would be the one taking the test. It has nothing to do with them. My senior year is something I have always been looking forward to since I was a freshman. I cannot see myself having the senior year I always dreamed of without my coaches by my side. Throughout my whole high school experience, I have never been afraid to stand up for myself and stand up for others. This is because of my coach's lack of judgment. They always say, "You don't need to be a te or to be a senior to be a leader." Me and multiple underassmans have
207taken on that role because we know that we can't rely on anyone but ourselves to achieve the things we want. Sitting here at almost midnight on a school night is not something I would willingly be doing if I did not feel my coaches were a right fit for the job they have. I can guarantee you I will fall asleep in multiple classes tomorrow. But I have no regrets sitting here right now. I think this is ridiculous and I'm very happy that I'm able to say what I'm saying. In in conclusion, sports are hard, but nothing in life is ever easy. It's about how you take on challenges, and when you don't get your way, you have a right to back away or push through. And that's nobody's choice but your own. I feel change needs
208to happen, but the changes that need to happen involve the parents and children in this program and not the coaches at all. I hope you consider these words carefully and understand the point of view of this situation coming from a student athlete. Thank you for your time. [Applause] Can we I have a long last name. I'm sorry. Good evening everyone. My name is Stephanie Rekowitz and no, I am not a parent. No, I am not a cheerleader. I did graduate from this school system in 2022 and my sister who's sitting over there and who is probably going to kill me for saying that is currently a North cheerleader and will be a senior next year. I am up here not only as a family member but I am up here because now I am at
209East Strawburg University studying sport management. So I know what it takes for teams to be successful. I coach, I lead, I build teams and I know exactly what it takes to destroy one too. Tonight, in front of this board, our parents, our current and former athletes, I am not here to sugarcoat it. Three years ago, when my sister first joined North Cheer, it was a program rooted in discipline, unity, and excellence. You either bought into the mission or you didn't last. It demanded sacrifice. It demanded a team first mentality, and it delivered success year after year. The coaches didn't fail us. We failed them. We failed them when respect became optional. We failed them when sideline gossip became louder than team support. We failed them when we allowed a handful of individuals to sacrifice what
210should be all about our athletes. Our coaching staff, however, showed up every practice, every game, every challenge, no matter what. And I am the coach that I am because of Norine. Because I watched her do what she did and the passion that she led with. I am the coach that I am today. And I cannot be more thankful for the North Tier program. Thank you. [Applause] Good evening. My name is Lana Brennan. I am here as a parent of a senior and two upcoming eighth graders. I am from Clinton Township. Um, while I applaud these girls for getting up 100% like it is not an easy task to get up, um, their experience is not necessarily the same as everyone else. As we know, you get different experiences based on who you are or how
211it goes. Um, I am getting up now. My daughter is a senior. I have not said anything for four years because I like to give people chances. I like to give situations chances to flow out. But seeing that I have two upcoming eighth graders who also want to cheer even though I strongly suggest otherwise, um they want to continue on. So I feel like I need to get up and say something because I can't teach my kids anything if I'm not willing to do it myself. Um so when my kids participate on teams, any team, the expectation is to work hard, do the best you can, learn new things, and be a member of the team supporting others. I would like that I would think that the expectation of any other team, freshman, JV, whatever,
212would not be to sit on the sideline watching varsity team, but physically participating and working on techniques to move forward as an learning similar to how we do it in our classrooms. Um, no matter what my feelings toward a coach, my kids are always expected to listen to them and show respect. Learning to deal with difficult situations, it's part of life. Um, I've also sat on the LCL board and supported the coach and not in any way try to um push anything. I've I do believe in supporting the girls and the coach. I have already shared my concerns with the AD, the principal, and the super. And at the end of the day, I will be honest. I'm not expecting change. However, as I said, I will teach my kids by example. You stand up
213for what is right, not just what is easy. Um, everyone's experience is different. So, I'm glad that other girls had a good experience, but that was not necessarily the case for mine. So, thank you this evening and I hope that since that this has been brought to your attention, anything comes up later on, you are aware. Thank you. From South Carolina making your night go a little longer. If you've been here a long time, I bet you're shocked you're seeing me again. probably want to run the other way. Chris Rush. Chris Rush. Um, Clinton Township. Yes. I had to move the mic down, guys. Yes. Um, I don't have anything prepared. My daughter spoke earlier. Her name was Emily. Um, former cheerleader. I am just here honestly to speak as someone who has been in
214this district 20 years. um and had three children grow go through the north uh athletes, student athletes, all multiple sports, soccer, lacrosse, cheer, track and um through those experiences I as a mom uh experienced a lot of different um things watching through the eyes of my children and what their experiences were with various coaching and um teams and dynamics. and all three of my children are now out and they are all amazing and very proud of all of them. Um the thing is that they are who they are and I can say it now because they're there. They're all young adults. They're out of my house. and um why I cry myself to bed sometimes knowing that um even more elated at the fact of the young uh adults that I see in them because
215of the experiences they've had, good, bad, indifferent. And while I'm proud of them and their accomplishments and all the things that they have on paper and jobs and whatever, I am honestly the most proud of the fact that regardless of the struggles and successes they had here, and they had them all, and at various levels, but across all boards of the athletic programs here, the thing I feel like I am the most proud of is the fact that regardless of those things, not even regardless, because of those things, they are who they are today. And they are dealing with things that are so much bigger than high school sports and coaches who never played them. Um, coaches who supported them in ways that we are still blown away by. Um, and everything in between. But
216all three of those young adults today um are who they are and doing what they're doing um in healthy, strong, resilient ways because they went through what they went through. And I looking back at how I handled all those situations for them and with them, not for them, with them. Um because I could have done it for them. and three kids and eight years at North. I didn't do anything for them. They had to go through it. They had to experience it. And now all three on the outside um handling life like the champions North made them. And so I want to thank North for that. Um, and I want to just say when you're voting tonight, um, please remember that they don't stay high schoolers. And I don't say that to you to be
217disrespectful that you don't know that. I know you're all parents for the most part. I don't know everybody, but you're all here for kids. So, just speaking from this mom's perspective that's no longer a North, but forever a Lion. Um the three children that were produced through North because of their experiences, good, bad, and indifferent. Um you should know they are extremely extremely prepared for what they're experiencing now. And I believe what they will experience. And it's because of the coaching and the experience is good, bad, and different. And I just hope when you make your decision tonight, you recognize that it doesn't always have to be pretty. It doesn't always have to be perfect. And I can't say it any better than these amazingly brave young ladies. Um but just take that into consideration
218that I can give perspective on the other end. I've seen it all and my heart broke for many many nights for my kids many times throughout the time. But um it's not breaking anymore because um they're exactly who they're supposed to be because they went through it and they're on the other side of it. So please take that into consideration. And I didn't even mention her name, but I am so so grateful for the three years that coach Norine gave my daughter. Um I know my daughter gave a lot to her and to this school and this program, but what Norin gave to my daughter will forever forever be um something I will carry with me. And thank you for your time tonight, too. By the way, I really appreciate all of you and everything
219you do for the district. Thank you. [Applause] Is there anyone else that would like to speak? Anyone? Just want to follow finish up and follow up. Is that okay? You've heard some amazing things from some amazing people. And I will I will even agree with Miss Brennan. Not everyone's experience is the same. None of us are will have the same experience. You see five cheerleaders here, five young women and one surrogate mom for her daughter. Each of them has had a different experience, including Lana's wonderful daughter, too. And they're not all going to be great experiences. We don't have great experiences through life all the time. And as I said into an email to to the board today, um sometimes our roughest experiences are the ones we learn our greatest lessons from. So we want
220to thank you. I will on behalf of the parents and everybody for listening and indulging us in this. And I know like I said earlier, you all want to do what's right and what you're doing, whether it's budgets or cuts or organizations or anything you do. I don't have to tell you. You've been through this. Look at those faces because you're doing it for them. I mean, and I mean that, right? You're doing it for them. You're setting examples for them so that one day they could do what you're doing and set examples to others. So, thank you very much for tonight. [Applause] Is there any let the kids go to sleep? Yes, I would think so. Appreciate it. Is there any other comments? Okay. With no other comments, we will move forward uh with
221our curriculum instruction technology committee report. So, I'm going to get this done before midnight. I was going to give you um so the committee met on the 16th. We have a number of items that we looked at. We looked at attendance. Um there was some conversation about the way something events like the spike for the cure where kids were accounting for attendance that was creating some discrepancies. Uh so that's uh those types of things they're going to continue to look at. There was also some recognition that the way the animal science students are going to be moving from an academy listing to a full-time listing. Uh I think the some takeaway is that we're going to continue to monitor grouping and have students get listed. The next item was common assessments which have rolled up
222to 10th grade in English, math, science, and social studies. We're now using a computer platform this year. Uh these have been collaboratively developed and reviewed and we will be looking for correlations with testing. uh and the different uh performance levels uh or academic levels by by subject and grade. Uh and this is working towards a dashboard of results uh and it has and an assessment schedule that we can start to use for uh data and analysis. We looked at third marking period grades, shared the quarterly distributions, some discussion about just grading practices uh and and and approaches and uh more conversation to come about grading practices. There was a a request to break out trends by program level uh and explore those practices to see what they might reveal. And the last assortment of items,
223there was an AI update. Um the district is developing some in-house resources to train and appoint staff using Gemini. Um we are also going to begin undertaking a monthly department review where Rich Broom will um kind of uh brief the committee on each department so that in the course of the year um we're up to speed on on every department, every trends, what those offerings are. Um the last item was looking at PD uh and gathering data on its impact on construction this and it's still 4:00. Thank you. October one. Keep it roll. Okay. Yeah, we'll keep it rolling. Um I need a a motion and a second to approve items 13.1 through 13.2. So move. Second. Second. Uh Beth and Jessica, I think. Was it? Yeah. Beth and then Jessica. Thank you. All in
224favor? I Any nays or abstensions? Uh moving on to policy and school security. We have committee report from policy. Yes. So um policy and security meeting uh met on April 14th. All was in attendance. Kim was unable to attend. Um we discuss we are currently discussing the 5,000 6000 series of the policies of the New Jersey school board that we are in the process of conversion. Uh we discussed a spreadsheet that's being used to track comments on policies as we review. We agreed it's although helpful and useful. Right now we're and to for more detailed later, we're going to kind of go through the um policies a little bit quicker just to see if there's anything in there that stands out. There was a discussion about medical marijuana which led to discussion about administration of
225medicine in general schools. We talked about redundancies and policies throughout the manual um with the HIV policies being a good example of that. There was also discussion about certain policies that state they need to uh be renewed by the board annually. So some policies state that they have to be reviewed every year. Uh Rich is going Dr. Berdox is going to contact uh New Jersey school boards to see if there's a list of those policies. Um we also discussed board docs and um getting that set up sooner than later to allow training and hopefully we can we can possibly have that live by July 1st. There was questions about policies that are discretionary, non-mandated or monitored regulations. Um 6163 was example of that. Rich, Dr. Burjax will also clarification on regulations and those of discretionary
226from New Jersey school board. So some policies have a regulation that may not be mandatory and we may not need it or can be redundant. Um we will our conclusion is that we will be moving on to the 7,900 series policies for May but we'll also continue to review the 6,000 series as its portion was very long and the only action item is that contacting New Jersey school board for clarification questions mentioned above and any uh discussion for Nicole on those policy committee report. Okay, moving on to uh finance facilities and transportation committee report. Uh Dan, please. Thank you. Uh we met on April 14th at 6:30. Everyone was in attendance. Uh obviously we discussed the budget. I'm not going to focus on that. I want to focus on the agenda items. Talk about obviously.
227Um so uh 151 uh on the agenda is the approval of the contract for the SRO. This is um the contract for the current year. So from 2024 to 2025, but it'll go to through till June. Um we did have discussion uh which we can get into um is about the contract going forward from that point and that potential changes that that uh that Rich would like to make in that contract going forward. Um but the current contract is to kind of close that and this was a contract that we receive until Feb late February or something like that. Um and that's why the there there was a delay in in um get getting getting it uh on the the um agenda. Um items uh 152 is district donations. This is um there's uh two
228donations that are both for the upgrades to the uh throwing circles. Uh they're donating the labor materials to make those upgrades. Uh we're in approval of that. Um items 153 through 158 are just the standard uh monthly um resolutions. Uh 159 contract with strong associates and educa and education consultant. Uh I have talked to to Rich about this um and uh the description is that this is for training for uh training our administrators on the strong evaluation system. is the system we use to evaluate our certified cert certificated staff and some non-certificated. In order to keep using it, we are required to have everyone reertified each year and that's what the contract is for. I think this is required by the state, correct? Correct. This is the vendor we're using. Um 1510 is change orders
229from Billy Contracting and the Cessa Engineering. Billy Contracting did a interiors project. So these are b we're basically closing out these projects. The projects are done. Um now that the projects are done, there's contingencies and things in place that um were not used. So that money is coming back and that amount um for both projects combined is going to be coming back to us in uh is $460,000 uh $479. Um and this money uh these funds will be returned to the district for future projects. And that's what we had we did have this discussion about tax uh about it going to tax levy and things like that which is not allowed but we can use it for future projects. Um and the committee was in approval of these items uh except 151. There was a
230lot of discussion back and forth obviously about the the contract. Any questions? Sorry. And I was even at the meeting what you just said that sorry I was going fast. Last the last item 1510. Yes. We we we would were kind of unsure. I mean it was stated that we were unsure what was going to happen to that money whether we gave it back to the taxpayers or put it in a bank account. And you're saying now that we figured out what the answer to that was. It's going to you can go. Yeah. Just to clarify because at the time I I didn't know if that had been a part of a referendum. Okay. And and it was part of the capital reserve. So that money will go back into capital reserve for other it
231would have been debt service. Then you would have been able to reduce the the debt uh service for the taxpayers. Okay. Thank you. Goes into capital reserve. Correct. Which you showed was getting kind of well bare bones that was showing operational capital not the other. Okay. And and then my other question, sorry, is on 151, Rich, you were able to I thought that the we had a contract that ran calendar year and you were, you know, because that mismatch, you were able to get it to go school year. So, it will still have to be approved by Clinton Township. Um, but I did notify Chief D. Roza that that was our intention is just for the SRO contract because the SRO contract went here. Um I did notify him that the board um wants it
232to go school year and so we agreed that we would approve this contract for through June and that's going to give me and him time to negotiate and figure out what the contract will be from July 1. Right. But we don't know we have time to put that in place before the school year starts. I'm sorry. What was that? Will we have time to put the new contract in place before this? That's one of my goals is to make sure all of these contracts are completed before school year starts so we're not approving something in February. Sorry. And what if t Clinton Township does not come up? what's our contingency? Are we going to be next year voting the whole school this that that's what happened and it's it's interesting cuz we someone did bring
233it up that Lebanon Township was it was much quicker the process. I don't know what the delay was this year. I'm going to tell you that I will give everything you know my full effort to make sure that these things are done prior to being school so we can do it fiscally each year. Okay. But but it is it is just for full disclosure we we we don't it's not a unilateral decision. They have to agree. They do have to agree. Yes, that's correct. And the and the township is got a saying in this. It's just not chief's Yes. decision. Correct. That is correct. Have a question about strong associate. So, um, how long has a district been using the strong evaluation model? 2010 I think. Yeah, it was when the state actually made us
234choose between Danielson, Strong, and I think it was Marzano. There was only three at the time and then you could come up with your own, but you had to get it certified by the state if you remember that that time. And um we chose strong. We evaluated all three. They felt like the strong was the model that we um fit our needs best in our district. So with that reertification, is that a state mandate or is that and and does the district have liberty by which they can fulfill that requirement? Meaning, you know, especially given you have longevity with administrative staff that use it, that can turnkey it. Um, so it it is required by the state that we have one of their approved models. Mhm. Okay. Um it's not required that we do this
235reertification by the state. The reertification is required by Strong Associates because we use their model. So if we want to continue to use their model, they make us get reertified every year. So if we didn't want to do that, we would have to look at moving to a different model, but it's my understanding and again I don't know the exact cost, but I could find out what those every system has a reertification every year. I don't know if it is comparable to this cost. So yeah, cuz I um I know there are options and actually I believe there's more than three now. I mean again I'm going back when we chose this um I believe since and there's been a few more that have been approved by the state. So we could look at that
236as something um you know in personnel under evaluation. Um that could be something that we discuss in committee. Yeah, I definitely think that's a really they all follow the same protocol 4,500 for that. I think pretty much all the different I I don't know what they charge for the other um systems, but we can look into that and give you some comparisons and we can determine what is our best case scenario for the following year, right? But each system is going to cost there's going to be a cost for not necessarily for training. Well, that depends how you do it. You can do it in-house. You have I mean the fortunate thing about this district is the administrative staff have used this for quite some time and there's longevity with them. So is there an
237opportunity to turn key? I don't know. And I'm not I'm not overstepping. I'm just, you know, I'm just, you know, saying that are there other ways to look at that $4,500. Yeah. No, I think it's a good point because it's a big and and we will. Well, I don't think we have time to change that between now and the opening of the school year. Um, but yes, without a doubt. Any other questions? Okay. I need a motion, a second to approve agenda items 15.1 through 15.10. Second. Uh, who was first? Was that Dan and Jessica? Thank you. Ready? I wasn't sure. All in favor? I. Any knees or abstensions? No. No. You're voting no. One. 15.1. That was no on 15.1. Did you guys want to clarify some of the discussion that we had on
238the budget with the SRO or because I know that some questions came up and I held off on talking about it. because you were waiting for 15.1. Well, here it is. Here's the opportunity if you'd like to. Yeah, sure. Sure. I mean, you were speaking to Jessica. So, but just to be clear, these are the contracts that cover the current school year, which ends in months, right? Correct. And by the way, yeah, Kim, I misspoke. I didn't mean to say no. I meant to say yes. I don't know why I said that on the vote. I'm 151. So, let's Okay, let let let's let me go back. Let let's go back to that. Okay. Can we table that MO or uh set that motion aside and and have this discussion? We just voted back the
239clock. He can change. He can change his vote. Absolutely. He can change his vote, but the vote stands. We're not changing the vote. They want to have a discussion so they can share facts about I just heard what you said. I was yes for 15. So he was confused. Yeah. So you're Yes. Correct. Okay. So it's it was unanimous. Yes. My fault. 15.2 right it's okay now would you like that opportunity to clarify so so so the this conversation came up I I think it's important to understand the full story right so I think maybe some some members know some members don't so how this came to the to at least the our committee's attention back in January right and it came to our attention from Dr. Bergax and he said to us, "Hey, security
240might be something that we need to take a look at. We're running up against a budget situation." That's how this first came up on our radar. So, I think everyone knows me by now. I ask a billion questions, right? So, I started asking some questions and say, "Okay, like what what is the what does the safety presence look like?" I honestly had no idea. Um so we have five officers at North, four at 40s, so a total of nine um seven class 3es and and two SRO's one at each school. So I took it from the beginning. I said, "Oh, okay." I said, "Before you go or before we even think about reducing safety, we have to make sure that our inefficiencies or there isn't waste in other areas because it's the that's got to
241be the last thing that we take a look at, right?" So, I think everyone's in agreement there. So, I said, "Okay, one of my very first questions was, how did we arrive at this number?" And I asked that question because Dr. Bergax rightly pointed out in the beginning of this conversation is that nine officers is more than any local town that that is not policed by state police has on the road at any given time which is a fact. So that led me to the question say okay are we overstaffed maybe we're underst staffed I have no idea. I asked him how did we how did we come up with that number? Is there a best practices? Is there some guide guidance out there says if you're going to go down the road of class
242three or SRO? Is there some sort of recommendation uh for officer per x amount of students? We didn't have that data. So the the answer that we got um was essentially correct me if I'm wrong Dr. Ber was that this was at the direction of the prior superintendent and we didn't really know how the numbers came up to. So I said so that would be step one at least for me. Are we underst staffed on on safety or we overstaffed? I think it's fair to say we still don't have that answer, right? So, and it could very well be we're understaffed. It could be we are over. I have no idea. But in in lie of any type of data, it's it's hard to say one way or the other. So, that's how we started
243getting down this road. So, then we looked at okay, we have an SRO in each school and we have class 3es. So then we had to ask ourselves what's the difference between a class 3 officer and what do they do every single day versus an SRO and what is the cost of a class 3 and what is the cost of an SRO right so the first question was okay a a class 3 is predominantly safety their main function is safety presence so when the public or anyone on the board thinks of of of an officer I think that almost everyone one thinks of safety presence, not what is the officer doing above and beyond safety, but the first thing that we think of is keeping students safe. That's 99. You ask anybody of the public
244or this board, what is the purpose of an officer, they're going to say safety. That's just the bottom line, right? So then we said, okay, we're looking at the cost. a class 3 officer is approximately, correct me if I'm wrong, 55,000ish 58 58 58. Um, and then we looked at the cost of an SRO which was 51,000 change for 2024 escalated up to 195,000. So, first we asked why is that, right? Uh, and then the other thing before I get into that, we call this a contract. I don't really know if that's the best terminology here because it's more of like an agreement I would say because the board never approved it, right? So, I think we're all in agreement that this situation that we're in now can't ever happen again. Meaning like we can't
245go ahead and approve contracts in the middle of the school year, right? Because if if it hypothetically failed, what would we do? Because the vast majority of the services were already rendered. So, we can never be in this situation. And I think and it's not any fault to the administration. I think it's whatever the processes were from the municipality or the police department, it just slowed us down. They It's probably easier for them to work off a fiscal year or a calendar year versus us we have to do in a school year, right? So, I think that played a part. So, then when we look at, okay, the cost, what are we doing? What does an SRO do that a class 3 does not? Dr. Bergax did his best to try to explain it. Um,
246I'll be completely honest and transparent. I mean, I wasn't seeing the value. I was unconvinced. Right? So we took it a step further. Dr. Berdax, rightfully so, brought in Chief D. Roza, right? And and his sole function at that meeting was to basically explain to us what an SRO does and why they're uh an added resource versus having a class 3. So couple things that he pointed out to me. He acknowledged that the vast majority of the work is safety, but in my mind, I I looked at it, what are they doing above and beyond safety that we can then justify the 4x cost, right? It's the only way I can look at it. So, basically, he said there's there's there's three things that they do. One, they more or less teach classes, right? Whether
247that's drug prevention awareness, whatever the classes are, I don't know exactly what they are. So then we asked or I asked the question I said okay what is how many classes are we talking about is it once a day once a week once a month once a year we don't have that answer I don't know that answer the committee does not have that answer so uh he did say that he would get us the information as of today that we don't have it right the second part is and I I think uh Tara mentioned it is that they they do reporting. They take reports. So, one of the big differences is that a class 3 officer is a current pardon me, an SRO is a current police officer, which means he or she has full
248authority of a current police officer, which means if an incident happens, they can take a report in real time on campus without having to call the police. So, I pushed back on that. I said, "Okay, in an emergency situation, if there was one to happen, it would be treated as if any other emergency. If it was more of a situation where a report needed to be taken, the class 3 officers are more than equipped and trained to deescalate a situation and if a police officer has to be brought into the school to conduct an investigation to isolate the the kids or the students and then the CL and then the SRO comes in and conducts investigation when when when they're able to come. Now Terry mentioned that well if there's an accident then we might
249have to wait. Jessica Harvey Jesse we might have to wait. Yes, that is true. Exactly. But but but but you have to keep in mind it's in a non emergency situation if it's not like Rich when your kid's in the high school and he's sitting there and there's an emergency in school and we can't get 911 to come right away. Do you want your kid there? You're misspeing because it's not 911. It would. It's not an emergency situation. It's an emerent. It's not. You wouldn't call 911 to take a report. That's You would call 911 if there's an incident at the school and it doesn't have to be a active shooter, but if there's an incident where there's a, let's just say, a fight where 10 kids get in a brawl and you've got to
250separate them and you've got, you know, people getting injured and all of that. I there could be any scenario. You could have a bomb threat, which we've had bazillions of times, where you have to have that SRO in that school searching for bombs. Well, the class 3 would do the same. So, that's what I'm So, let me if I can finish. But you have a qualified and I understand qualified. Yeah, they're a qualified active police officer in our school to cover our kids safety. Correct. A class three officer is not an active cop. That's a retired cop. Yeah, but I would say I would say respectfully to say that almost 75% of our security presence is inadequate. I would disagree with that. I'm saying they don't carry gun. They don't have they do carry guns.
251They don't have the authority of the SR in an emergency situation. Just to be very clear, if there is an active shooter situation, a class 3 officer has full authority to pull his or her gun. Just to be clear. So anyway, so we're asking what is above and beyond that outside of safety presence does the class 3 officer do? The last thing was investigations, right? So obviously a current police officer has to, you know, take the lead on investigations. So what we what we have to look at here in these unique situations, we ask them, okay, how many classes, no data. How many reports taken? No data. How many investigations have taken place? No data. So where we struggle or I struggle as somebody looking uh at this situation from fresh eyes is that if
252the if if the sell to us or the upside of an SRO is that they can take you they they they can uh teach classes, do reporting and investigations. The chief has to be able to quantify exactly what those numbers look like so we can have a good idea. Hey, listen. Are we getting the bang for the buck here at 195,000 versus a 55,000 because they're doing the same role as as safety? So, so then we looked at then we looked at the the actual agreement, right? And I think and I don't want to put words in your mouth, Rich, Dr. Bax, that we're in alignment that there's problems with this agreement, hence why it's being amended to end June 30th. I think we would all agree with that. if we didn't have problems with
253this this agreement, it wouldn't be amended to end June 30th. So, there are I I think we need to acknowledge that there is significant problems uh with with this agreement. And I'll give you some of the things that I pointed out to to Chief D. Roza that he said he was going to check with the CFO on that we we haven't gotten feedback on. And I asked Dr. Burdox if he's gotten feedback and and and and we have not. So, I don't know why he said he would get it back to us and we haven't got it. I I I can't answer that. But where where this this agreement or this these numbers don't make sense and why we have to take a look at this the salary on a calendar year is 127,000 a
254change because you have to understand the language in here. They're not employees of or the officer is not an employee of the district. They're still an employee of the town. So, we pay a pr-rated portion of the officer salary because the officer doesn't work for the district for the entire year. I think that would make sense to everybody, right? That the district is not paying 100% of the salary when they're not working here 100% of the time. It's common sense, right? So, then you only paying for 10 months. I think in our previous contract, we only paid for 10 months. I would I would I would caution the board members that contract negotiations should not be discussed in public as it potentially gives a advantage to the other side of the contract negotiations. So specific
255details about positions, strategies, things like that. Yeah, I don't I don't think I'm going to get into strategy at all, but um I'm just going to lay out the facts. Can I just raise a point of order? Um and I'm sorry that I missed the front end of this. Um, I thought we discussed and voted on this. We did. We did. Okay. We did. So, I'm I'm just It sounds like there's a conversation that needs to continue possibly in FFT to come back. Well, there was a conversation that came up during the budget where I didn't articulate this because I knew it was coming back up on 15.1. No, that's why. And you voted no uh on this on this I voted yes. Okay. I I said no but I I meant that. Oh. Um
256so going on and I won't get into strategy but I'm going to tell you where my concerns were. So if we're prrating the salary that's number one. I have concerns that we are paying 100% of some of these benefits here. So if the salary is prrated then why are we asking oursel why are some of the benefits which I would argue should we be paying FICA pension and health insurance I'd say probably not is I I it's not happening at at at Lebanon correct that's correct so so so that so it it bears the question why are we doing it here so then the difference of 2024 to 2025 is because the officer decided to take benance so in this particular agreement, the administ the district is paying full freight on the officer's benefits when
257they're not an employee of the district and they do not work here full-time. I think it's we'd be selling ourselves short of not of not pushing back on this. Additionally, keep in mind this is essentially a carryover agreement from the prior agreement. But there is one discrepancy on here is the health is the health portion of this that was not in last year's agreement because the officer wasn't taking it. So I mentioned to Rich I said I would even push back even further and say okay we're going to keep this agreement in place but we're ending at June 30th. That would be a negotiation point. So let's be careful of what we have going into. I I think you've gotten your point across. Yeah. Okay. But I mean I I needed to clarify that there's
258reasons not just outside of safety to take a look at this. And the other thing is is that there is it isn't just a scenario where if there's no money there for 195,000 SRO, there's always the option to replace the SRO with a class 3 officer because the vast majority of the work being done is safety according to what was presented to me. Thank you, Mr. Lordy. And can we then move this to committee to FFT and have this discussion? And again on what does it go to security policy and security or are we just discussing the contract and FFT? Well, I think we're discussing the contract terms right now. Um we could talk about um in policy and security. We could talk about um strategies on how we want to staff this. Has anyone
259consulted our security advisor that we employ? Yeah. Yeah. I've been working with Shane. Um Shane's been actually doing a lot of work on this. Okay. I also do urge that when we do that if we can look at the SRO as a whole like their their full responsibilities cuz there is a lot to it and we want to make sure that we get that full picture full snapshot of what they do. Yes. And that's part of what we'll discuss in FFT and policy and D. Rosa did mention that there is room for negotiations and that if that's something that we'd like to discuss, we can. Well, let's take this back to committee. Um Dan, Rich, if you have further questions, anybody has questions, please start using the committee uh uh forum and send those questions.
260And if we could have those just posted in the drive like we've been doing, you've been doing, then there's open communication. And so that would uh to your point will be you can send a question to Dan but please utilize that format. Okay, moving on. Uh community relations and student affairs. Tara, good morning. The committee met on April 15th um at 6:00 and all were present um except for Dan Fan. Um we was a short meeting which was great. I'll be real fast here for the Brandon but um we discussed Dr. Burgess uh provided an update on the inperson strategic planning sessions and I believe everyone was able to attend either north or gory. So um he shared that the data was wellreceived and has given us a clear sense of direction for where the
261district should be in the next five years. Uh the process to developing the goals and objectives is underway and the feedback so far including from staff has been overwhelmingly positive. Uh Dr. Burgess did mention that the plan is underway within the right time frame and we should have um data before the next main meeting. Um the uh if you go in there's a a notebook LM and I we recommend everybody to go in to look at the data um and come up with any ideas for the mission vision statement. Uh there was a few areas where we played around with AI and then doc uh Mr. Lord I um came up with a a mission statement that was wellreceived. So that's still in the process. So if anyone has any ideas or want to put
262more uh thought into the finalized mission statement, that would be fabulous. Um so yeah, so right now everything is in process. We're on schedule and everything should be for our next meeting and then once that is done um the strategic plan will be built and will be put in place before the beginning of the 25 26 school year. Um and it was short and sweet and we're done. If there's any questions or if you haven't participated or looked at the notebook um LM, I recommend you to do so. I only shared the notebook LM with committee members, but if anyone else is interested, if anyone else is interested in it, let me know. Yes, please. Shoot me a quick email. That way I get How about you take a number and just send it to
263them how many people want it? I think it's only a couple and then just saves herself the trip of all those emails. Christina, Nicole, and Nicole and Beth and Beth and [Music] So there's four. You got it. Yeah. Okay. Moving forward. Um, can we please have a personnel committee report? Delegates. Delegates. Why? I told you this, Tony. It's tomorrow. I've been doing coffee. Um, delegates report. Sorry. I sent everybody link to the delegates handbook. Um, and there's three resolutions. Uh, the delegate assembly will be next Saturday um in uh at the Mercer County Community College. So, if you want to attend, just do an RSVP, but we only have one voting delegate. But, it's really worth um the wild to It's still virtual, though. You can you can 9 to 12. Didn't it say it
264was still Yeah. So you can watch. So you could attend virtual, but you no participation, but we wouldn't anyway. Terara is our voting delegate. Exactly. And um and if anyone has any questions, um the subcommittee had um recommended the three resolutions, but they're kind of interesting because we brought it up um looking at the nursing and not having bachelor. Um so that's one of the resolutions that's coming up because of the nursing shortages. So that was brought forth by um uh what does Franklin Township in Warren County. Um so that's an interesting one and the subcommittee recommends the resolution um and as the verbiage has been presented there and if you go in and click on them you can see the the resolution. Uh the other one that was interesting is that um regarding attendance
265um the kit tiny um Sussex County proposed new language for students that are um trade show any state or that they're not penalized for going to events that's part of their vote programs or other we have our ummies. So when they're gone from their other classes they're not penalized because they're participating in a a program like that. So that's a positive. And then the other one was recognizing um the intercolastic esport activities. Um it's not mandatory, but there's a focus on the whole of all of these other extracurricular activities and students being able to be receive Garcia letters. It's not mandate but they are recommending that those kind of inter scholastic activities are recognized just like we recognize sports and that the students um can receive um the appropriate recognition and we've heard a lot
266students you know their effort should be recognized too. So, um whether it's giving them a letter or not or a of recognition that they participated whenever you know extracurricular um that we as school districts do that. So, thank you Tara. You're welcome. Now, the personnel Well, it's delegate. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Well, there's you don't have a report. You have a date and a special report. There was no meeting in April, but the the last meeting for the school year is this coming Thursday. Um, and it would be great to have anybody there. You can still register. You could either be virtual for there is going to be dinner if you attend um that early. The big part of it is Megan Luick is going to be recognized and celebrated for her nomination, her um
267notation, but her award of teacher of the year um math teacher at Northland. So that's exciting. And also it's the end of the year uh voting for officers and our own Tara is one of the candidates for president. [Music] Y congratulations So that's it for that one. Now we can go to personel. We're trying to move it. Okay. So for personnel, um we were all in attendance. We met on April 16th at 6:30 and we discussed the personnel committee um agenda. Okay. Call I need a motion second to adopt um resolution 0429252 for an executive session to discuss matters reflected in the attached resolution. The board expects to be in executive session for 30 minutes. Not even for one hour and upon return to public session action will be taken. If we're there an hour,
268somebody's serving their breakfast. I'm sorry. So moved. All in favor? I Any or abstensions? All right. Second. All right. session. Second, Bassen Nicole. Sorry. Uh, all in favor? I Any obstensions or or nos? It's a long night. Wow. Uh call for a motion and second um to approve agenda items to include 21.1 and 21.2. So Beth, Beth, and Dan. Beth and Dan. Okay, we need a roll call vote. Okay. Wait. Is this Rich? Yes. So, it's a roll call. So, it's a roll call. So, he'll go around and he'll tell let you know. Sorry. Um, Christina. Okay. No. Uh, yes. For 21.1 and abstain from 21.2. Wait. 21. Okay. Um, Jim, yes. Angela Denini. Yes. Nicole Gav. Um, yes. Do I have to Can I Can I pull some stuff out or No. Um I
269v Oh yes to 21.1 but no to 2.2 and the 2.8. Okay. Terra Hint. Yes. Beth Colin. Yes, Richy. I vote yes to all except 2.2 and 2.8. I vote no. Okay. Brendan Mack is Cynthia Ree. Cynthia, I vote I abstain from 21.2. 2 and for 21.1 I vote yes except for 2.2 and 2.8. Okay. Uh Dan Smith. Yes. Um Jessica. Yes. I'm sorry. Yes. Thank you. And uh um yes to 21.2 and 21.1 is no to uh 2.2 and 2.8. But TS says to the rest of 21.1. Mhm. All right. So take a few minutes to figure that out. Christmas all over the place here. Actually, with the yeses that I have that are fully yeses and not just partial yeses, I got 6.5. Uh that's not the total vote because there's this is
270broken into segments here. So there's more overall item 21 for personnel is going to carry. Yes. Okay. It's carried. Yeah. I'll figure out the details of the substance etc. That'll show up in your minutes. Okay. Mhm. All right. Okay. Moving on. Um old and new business. I wanted to um make note uh Brendan sent a request and old and new business should be anything that you want to move into committee. You want something to be in committee. It's not something to go a fest where you're just listing everything out and laying it out and that I think the list that we have to go over that compilated from from February. There's things that could be sent to committees. So again, I'm asking you to use the committee process, send it to the chair, copy Dr.
271Burjax and send it to uh copy myself and and and utilize the process. Okay. So there are things that are on the list. I will go through them with Dr. burgers and we will address them and we'll put it on the there's a spreadsheet Dr. Burj has updated. We had it from way back when from 2020. We still have stuff out from 2020 that hasn't been addressed under previous. So, uh Dr. Burjax has cleaned everything up and we will address that and put it on there. But moving forward, old business and new business is for anything you want actionable you to see something going committee as an a possible actionable item. What if it's just a general question? Send it to your through the chain of command. Well, but the question is you sent us
272an email two days ago about the ad hoc committee. It is about committees. So, you sent an email yesterday about the ad hoc committee. I just want to know when that committee was formed, who was involved in the formation of committee and why there are no new why there are no tenur other than yourself board members on that committee to help address. We've been lots of us have been on the board multiple years and there's not a single member other than yourself, Kim, of of of an opposing opinion on that committee. You've you've stacked the committee. Okay. First of all, first of all, the the committee was selected. When was it selected? That after the last meeting, it probably when we got the RFPs listed um March, I don't even know when the deadline. April
2734th and I had spoken sat with Dr. Burjax and I gave him the committee. Right. But why was it never announced to the rest of the board that you made a decision? Because Jessica, yeah, as I said in the email, there were time constraints. We were dealing with the budget. We had committee meetings. We couldn't get together as a committee. And it was just that process. It was not a meeting. There's been there's 26 days between April 1st and today. We got an email last night without having a chance to even address it with the board in any of our committees that you put a committee together over a month ago in response to the RFP process and never asked anyone on the board if they wanted to be in it, if they'd like to.
274I did not. I created the committee. You did the I did I created the committee with in mind that we have board members that are right now again dealing with a um uh a an ethics complaint and for perception we I put together this committee and I think the committee members you're doing a disservice saying that there's other board members. I looked at varying I put new two new board members that were for experienced seasoned you know they're seasoned she's a educator and a fresh eyes on top of that. So I don't I I I kind of disappoint tell you that it feels to the people who are not on the committee to know that it's and I know for a fact because my constituents told me about the committee cuz they opened you overed
275you. So they knew about it before the public knew about it. You were offered your emails were open. your emails and disclosed this fact to the public before you disclose it to your own board. Well, how's she supposed to know that? That wait a second. Can I add one more thing? Yes. Uh you'll remember two or three years two years ago when we put together the ad hoc committee, the DEI ad hoc committee, you raised the same complaint about how we did. I didn't raise any complaint cuz I was not here during when that DEI committee was created. Yes, you were. Yeah, you were. I was of the board. Yes, I'm a member of the board, but I was not privy to that. I was not on that committee. I did not during that selection
276period. I I disagree. I'm happy to pull you off. But you did the same thing that you always complain about, which is lack of transparency, no full disclosure, nothing. There was no lack There was no lack of transparency. But you didn't share it. transparenc went out the the proposal. It was documented. It's in the drive to see but you named the committee and the public found it's a it's and I know we're arguing for a very mute point cuz there's nobody here but the point of the matter is is you did and you didn't you weren't transparent about it and you preach transparency open whatever it is it was the discretion of the discretion of the president and I will say something Jessica you were in the seat once once before. Mhm. Twice before. And
277you chose a committee and did not put it out to the group at for and this was for an RFP for legal. And you went through an RF. Uh yes, it's all it's all public. It's still and there was inter interviews and we had no we were not part of anything. The committee I was on the committee. you selectively with a previous vice president evaded the process as well and did not include anyone. So I don't think that's the case but I think we can go back and look at that. We can go back and look at that. I don't even think it matters cuz it's water. Kim, you're such you're you're so just so hypocritical though. You say something out of one side of your mouth and you do exactly the opposite on the
278other. And I I disagree. I disagree. I think I put together I think I put together you know what a very good committee and they will do their due diligence. I'm sure they will but you're being disrespectful to other board members who likely to sit on the committee. It's not disrespectful to any other board members. It's disrespectful to the ones you didn't tell about it. That's who it's disrespectful to cuz you didn't respect us enough to tell us what your decision was. Again, we were in the process trying to find 26 days, Jessica. 26 days. We had committee meetings. We had a vacation and we were tied up with the budget. 26 days. I'm just saying 26 days of non-disclosure. So I just will say that if anyone else is feeling the same that those
279that are new don't have the same to offer those that have sat here. Um I would just like to ask for your respect in the process that I will bring the best that I can in that role that I've been selected and I'm not saying that you won't. Thank you Angela. I would also like to add though just to like when when the DEI committee was being formed. I don't recall and I remember having this discussion with Rob. I I never got an email. I never got any like hey who if anybody wants to be No, we did. Hold on. I'm speaking. Hold on. I'm speaking. Okay. Are we finished? Okay. That I wasn't aware of the committee being chosen either. And when I finally reached out to Rob, Rob was like, "Oh yeah, the
280committee's been chosen." I'm like, "Well, I didn't get any email. I didn't get any notification. And he said, he's like, "Oh, okay. Well, we kind of have so and so many people. Let me reach out to the committee to see if somebody would want to step off to allow you to be on." Which was a nice thing to do. But again, it wasn't broadcast it to the the board asking for people to be on. Well, yes, it was. That's a lie. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's 1:30 in the morning. The truth. It's 1:30 in the morning. We are going to do your conversation or Robberly remember moving forward. But one thing if I can Yes. One one thing if I can add um Jessica respectfully I'd like to correct what you
281said in regards to stacking the board. If you recall I agreed with you on two votes on the attorney. So I don't know if and I believe Angela did his job. I'm not saying that. So if you're saying but I I need to correct you. So if you're saying that she stacked the committee, I don't know how that can apply to Angela and I when we I when both of us agreed with you I wanted to say you agreed with me on the semantics of firing the at or displacing the attorney or switching the attorney at the time. But you're it doesn't mean that it we're that you're it I'm not saying you're you're not I'm losing my train of thought. It's like and I just lost it. And I'm not going to argue with
282you cuz it's 1:30 in the morning. I can't think straight at this point. I just know that I feel my personal opinion is there is a lack of transparency between you and the whole board. Yeah. And again, that's your opinion. Yeah, it is and I'm expressing it in new business. Brian, just ask um you to repeat maybe but clarify. You said you chose the board, sorry, the committee members to avoid the ones that are under the ethics because we would be interviewing the attorneys and I and I have said this before in my my opinion and perception it's a conflict of interest and so I chose I I chose board members who were not conflicted who happens to be everyone. Well, not everyone. We're good. Exactly. And eight of us are up on ethics charges.
283So, so Brian, actually, just an observation. If you if you didn't like or if Nicole didn't like how a previous committee was set up that you're using them as examples of, well, no, no, we did it this way before. If you didn't think that was the best practice, why' you do it? Maybe we should change that. Yeah. If I didn't think what was the best practice? You didn't think setting up a committee. That was my comment. No, that was Nicole's comment, not my comment. But that had nothing to do with that committee. That was my selection selecting the committee. Based on that, so I I chose individuals on the board and and that that is my prerogative. I put the the committee together. I gave it to Dr. Burjax. We uh posted uh Doug posted
284the um uh proposal for RF for legal. April 4th was the deadline. We had them come in. It was late trying to get everyone together trying to commit and then we got into committees and other Yeah. So we haven't moved because we don't have we don't have to have a decision till through uh May or June. I'm just asking so so your st position is this is this is the job one of the job functions of the president is to set up these committees without input from any anybody else. So if you're someday sitting not in that seat anymore and it happens again to you, you'll be fine with that. It's it is the nature of what it is. It's the president's role and it has to happen. But you'd be okay being on the
285receiving end. I've been on the receiving end. Exactly. But so you're doing it as policy retaliation or what is your vote? No, cuz you I respected the board president. It was Rich Rich Kurtsburgger, yourself, whoever was here. I didn't It wasn't an issue. They chose the committee. It was an issue. It's There have been issues you have expressed in the past about non-transparency, and this is one of them. Well, I'm sorry you feel that way, but this is the committee. This was chosen and we're moving forward. That's fine. Thank you. Why don't we adjourn? Well, I have new business. Oh, okay. Cara, thank you. Um, I'd like to put I've heard from three constituents regarding gas lines up to Bory's and they've been told that if Bores puts it in, they can get them. They're
286on the line coming up from 78. So, I don't know if it's been looked at by the VA if it'd be costefficient for us, but that these homes that are on their way up from 78 can't get it unless Mores commits. And I don't know if we've ever looked at it to see if it's a cost reduction to have natural gas natural gas natural gas. So I don't know if we the FFT can look at that and you know and then it would help constituent is that because the board use runs on what? Propane or something. Actually it runs on propane and fuel and there there's a gas the gas lines coming up. There's the cost to go they won't go all the way up to unless is committed. So somebody's got to pay. Yeah.
287I did I did it for my house. They they said if so many people on the street come in they'll run it up. So they reached out to me to say hey can we bring it up because it would be a benefit for the district to reduce cost. Who knows? Yeah. So if we could look at that that would be and it is a big cost saving versus program. Yes. And then who is the one who has to incur the cost about tapping into it that way? They bring it up to the hat to the question where they bring it. So the gas company will run the line 40 wouldn't have to fit that bill. Correct. So all of our constituents going up to there. Yeah. I'm not going to put it up 513 to
288that point unless they have 40. So good. It's a good Yeah, that would be great. We'll investigate who to contact and yeah, give you an update. I shall have a quick new business. I just want to acknowledge uh Katie Blue, our school business administrator, uh who is on leave right now. I think she's amazing at her job. She deserves everything she gets. the millions of dollars she saved us in grants and everything she's done in the past to save us millions, literally millions of dollars. She deserves every dollar she gets. I second that. Here I supposed to be talked about in the committee. New businesses and stuff like that. You made a statement. Okay. I'd like to call for a motion second to adjourn. Oh, Angela. Sorry. I'm not sure which committee to take this
289to, but um in our drive, it looks like we have 30 plus people that have access to our board drive. So, I don't know what committee to give that to, but um it's a little I've already I've already addressed that with Dr. We handled it. Sorry. Sorry about that. No, that's okay. It's But it was as of a day or two ago. Yeah, it was just recent. If you check now and you see something that looks out of the ordinary, let me know. But what might also apply to that for example is like our agenda and the um and the attachments in there that are public are in our folder. So we need I don't know what committee can look at that but it's it would be that we should be saving PDFs and attaching
290it um to the website for people to access. But what happens is the way in which it's set up now then people have access to it which means that they're in our drive. There should really be a distinction. I agree with that. I didn't even know there was a way down. I wouldn't even Yeah, we can look at tightening that up. Yeah. If you go in the drive and you're on a page, you can click at the top and see how many people are in there. And there were people that we questioned, why are they still in there? So Dr. Bjax has addressed that curriculum instruction technology report. I can report on what we did instruction technology. That's okay. Okay. Good. Call for a motion. Second to move. So okay, that was Jessica and Angela.
291All in favor? Any nays or abstensions? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.