001Okay. Uh like to open the meeting. Roll call, please. Mr. Accomando. Present. Ms. Barelli. Present. Mr. Debello. Present. >> Mr. Ruccello. Here. Ms. Ainello. Present. Ms. Roloff. Here. Mr. Torbic. Present. Mr. Verso. Here. Ms. Addarelli. I'd like all of you to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Adequate notice. Adequate. Adequate. Notice of this meeting has been sent to all members of the Board of Education and to the Bergen Record in accordance with the provisions of the Open Public Meetings Act, Chapter 231, 1975. Everybody turn off your cell phones, please. The purpose of this meeting is to adopt a tentative budget for 2026 to 2027
002school year, approving a transfer from the capital reserve funds, and approving renovations to the elementary playgrounds and other items that may come before the board. I'd like a motion to open this meeting to the public >> Motion. for comment. Motion. Second. On agenda items only. Okay. I'd like to close it. Motion. Motion. Second. At this time, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Accomando for budget and finance. Do you have Yes, I do. Okay. Okay. Good evening. The 2026-27 budget uh build started in November. The superintendent and business administrator reviewed the budget submissions with the administration and they made cuts and revisions. The budget was then presented to the budget committee. The budget committee consists of Ms. Barrelli, Mr. Arachello, Ms. Roloff, and myself as chairperson. The budget committee and the administration met many
003times and worked hard to complete a tentative budget for the 2026-2027 school year. As you have been hearing in the news, many school districts are facing tough times with health benefit cost projected to increase another 30%. Contractual obligations, utility costs, and many other items in the budgets that are pretty much fixed. We had to use tax levy adjustments uh above the 2% tax cap in order to balance the budget. Taxes will increase, however, we were able to maintain almost all staff and programs. After the county superintendent's office reviews the budget, we propose to hold a public hearing on May 4th at 7:00 p.m. where we would detail the budget. All this time, Ms. Violetti and Mr. Caratti At I'm sorry. At this time, Mr. Ms. Violetti and Mr. Caratti can highlight a few items in
004the budget. Okay. I'll share that to begin with, we did eliminate a middle school Spanish position. It did work out. We have a vacancy in high school Spanish, which we have a long-term sub in. So, one of our middle school Spanish teachers is going to slide into that high school Spanish position. This was the first year we actually had two middle school Spanish teachers, um which worked out really well for our students. However, we did need to find some funds. So, we did eliminate the middle school Spanish, but that staff member is still going to stay with us. We also decreased instructional funds. We were able to put some back, but we did decrease the amount of instructional funds our staff are going to receive. However, we were able to retain all other staff positions
005and our student programs. We added several iPads for related service providers, child study team for test administration. Our one of our middle school classrooms, their science classroom, has extremely old tables and stools, so we do have new science tables and stools for that classroom. Our Washington School has never had risers, so what they do is they transport the risers from one of the elementary schools to Washington School. And now that we have a full-time, a real full-time program there and so on and the population is growing, those every time they transport those risers, there's issues. One of them breaks down with the wear and tear of them, so we are we do have in the budget for risers for Washington School. We are maintaining all current technology and continued the funding for new Chromebooks for
006grades 5 and 9 because if you recall, every student in grade 5 and 9 will get a new Chromebook because it's a 4-year lifespan and then their Chromebooks older Chromebooks go back down to the younger grades. We are also starting to update our staff Chromebooks, so we did provide our staff one-to-one Chromebooks and we're going to over the course of several years um replenish those update those Chromebooks. We are really excited that we are going to continue with the Amplify program for grade 5. And the NJSAIA um has is saying that girls wrestling is going to be its own sport next year, so in the budget we do have a girls wrestling coach. Okay, and also in in the budget, we have a school bus that's going to be aging out next school year, so
007we we are financing for a new purchase of a new school bus. We also are trying to continue our electric vehicles. So, we want to replace the electric van for food service with electric van. And we also like to get a um a small van for school bus transportation. Give us more flexibility that you don't need a school bus driver cuz we have work-based learning, students going from different businesses and also times we have different students we have to pick up from different areas due to homelessness and stuff. So that will give us a lot more flexibility in doing that. So we put in for financing of those two vehicles and we have projects in the budget. Now we we able to maintain the general maintenance. We kept the number the same as the current
008year to do our normal maintenance for HVAC items, tile abatements, water fountain upgrades. But then we did the same thing we've been doing the last couple years. We had that maintenance reserve balance that we could do additional um additional items. So so many items again, a lot of HVAC, plumbing, electrical repairs, concrete repairs. We're going to upgrade the bathrooms at the field house. Um we got to replace the fire fire panel here at the at the high school. Repairs to a section of the parking lot at Franklin in between the parking lot and the field. Replace a bunch of bathroom partitions at Long School. Um we're going to replace some window balances at Long. Um Smith School in the lower level we want to renovate um the part of the part of building that has
009the uh hallway by the elevator and also there's a right now it's a storage room we'd like to create that in some kind of meeting room or small group instruction room. Um We have other bathroom renovations at Washington, put more exterior lighting at school. So we are doing a lot of stuff with that maintenance reserve and that got added to the budget as well. Um So all these items and the and the huge increase with health benefits and other like Mr. Rackemann said before contractual items, salaries, energy costs and stuff. It was still a uh a huge number to try to get the budget down to 2%. It's almost impossible with everything way above 2%. So, we're able to use what you see on the agenda tonight two tax levy adjustments. One major one is
010the health to absorb most of the health benefit increases that gets put on to uh property taxes is almost $1.6 million. And then we had from 2 years ago um they call it bank cap some some tax levy cap space that we didn't use uh like I said 2 years ago, $400,000. They were able to use that as well. So, the two together have put us well over the 2%. So, the impact to a house now next year actually this year 2026 is estimated to be average house of $500,000 is a $399 increase for the year. Break it down to a month. It's uh I think it was 33. Let me just double-check. It's 30 33.27. $33.27 per month um to the again to the average house. And again, we weighed this with the budget
011committee. Um to to bring it down to bring it down like $8, you're cutting out $100,000 out of budget, which is a again a a ton of supplies or it's a a staffing position. So, again, if you want to bring the, you know, down to $16, you're cutting $200,000 and and so forth. So, it's just a lot and the committee felt to take advantage of to not lose that $400,000 of uh cap adjustment that we have cuz once we don't if we don't use that this year, it goes away. And then next year, it's we have to deal with um the 2% cap and whatever that health cost adjustment is and that's all we'll have available to us. So, next year is going to be even tougher. Any questions? Uh through the chair. I just
012want to say that we've been very fortunate over the years to where we can keep staff and programs and and with the cost of everything like you said going 30% here for health benefits and then uh utilities it's going to get harder and harder every year and uh people I'm you know, we feel it at home, too. So, we're going to feel it in your schools. So, unfortunately, eventually it's going to catch up to us where we might have to cut stuff. But so far, you know, Ray, Tony, the the committee, you guys have done a a great job over the the years to where we've always been the budget has been um What's that called? balanced. Yeah. We've been lucky enough to that and so uh unfortunately, it's going to go up a little
013bit, but thank you for your hard work and dedication to the district. Yeah, I want to share that, you know, you may hear some districts with these large number of staff cuts. They have fluff in their district. So, I spoke I've spoken to several superintendents and you know, they're not renewing some wellness coaches and you know, some positions like that. Um instructional supervisors. We don't have that here. So, we're cutting the middle school Spanish position and that's we don't have much more to fluff unless we're cutting student programs. So, if we want to cut basic skills, we're cutting a student program. If we want to cut a school counselor, not ideal. We don't have a lot of fluff in the district. So, I just want to make that clear cuz you may hear about these
014districts have with all these cuts, it's a little different. And the administrators did ask for I forgot my name of the word, several positions that uh all across the district that we just couldn't couldn't fit in the budget at this time. Now, you know, after we adopt the budget, things change, people staff members retire, you can always go back and look at that, but we just couldn't fit it to this budget. Right. There was um I know an ESL teacher for elementary schools because our ESL population is growing. We have one teacher We have two teachers for three buildings, and one of them travels. That's 20-minute travel time. And with the increase in the ESL population, their groups are really high, and they're they're they're very dedicated, and we're so appreciative of them, but we
015were trying to get an extra ESL teacher for K to 6. Also, our middle school counselor, we just have one for 7th and 8th grade, and as you can imagine, middle school population is quite busy with the counselor, so we were hoping for another middle school counselor. Our PE and health classes here at the middle school high school are large, so that was another request for an additional PE health. Again, it would all be lovely if we were able to do it. Um but at this point for we wanted to be financially sound, and we eliminated the middle school Spanish, and we didn't We were trying our best not to make any more cuts because we feel if we make any more cuts, then we are not doing right by our students. They would lose
016out on their programming. And as I stated in my emails, too, if you have This budget is getting submitted to the county office probably tomorrow. Um it'll take a couple weeks by the time we get it back from them in time for our May our May meeting to adopt the budget. So, you have You have time in between now to look at all the the links I sent in the detailed budget. If you don't want to If you don't want to really go through them all, there's a lot of stuff there. Uh I forgot my accountant up the lines. I don't have it with me, but I will say it again, anytime call me, email me, uh come in, I'll be glad to go over any part of the budget with you. Uh Ask any
017question you want. Uh if you don't know how something really operates, you want to bring in a fellow board member with you. I don't bite. Uh I'll be glad to do it. I mean, as I said, it could be any any one little thing. I'll I'll I'll go through I just want you guys to, you know, uh fully understand it, and uh so we can go forward cuz it is it is like when people see it, you know, 40 where we have here for almost 46, 47 million dollars in our just in our general fund for almost 50 million overall, uh everybody just thinks we have tons of money all over, and it's all kind of fixed. Uh there's not much uh leeway into cutting, you know, taking out stuff until you start hurting uh
018staff and programs, so. Through the chair. Ray, is this the biggest benefits increase that you've seen in your career or you're in the last 5 years? Like, can you talk to the increase and how it impacts the district overall? Well, like like this current year went up the same pretty much the same thing, so we're getting the same increase. I'm hoping the state could do something. I don't know what they would do, but um I mean, our I would say our our our biggest hope right now we're doing some experience reports where we could see if we could come out of the state fund and go into maybe a different self-insurance fund. We're kind of capped at increases. Um but I don't I don't know if that's going to be available to us. Our our
019use of the health benefits is pretty high, so we're not attractive to any insurance carriers. It would be huge increases, but we had one years ago probably I don't know, 12 I can't remember the years anymore. 12 years ago we we thought we could come out. We we went to a separate plan and that next year was a 40 like 43, 46% increase. So, we've been through some bad times. Um but this is 2 years in a row where that that's a huge number going up 30%. We had to um we did email the staff because to remind them that the increase started in January. So, at this point we did stop professional development, so we won't unless it was already board of it approved. They would have they have been told that we need
020to stop that at this point. I'm sorry, say that again. Stop what? Professional And other and other lines too. We we we shut the budget and jeez, back in October October, November, I I stopped some of the projects that were in the budget or put them on hold for now till we could see how how it goes. We had a bad winter, you know, a lot of energy usage and and custodial overtime. So, you know, there's there's no breakage from those accounts. So, we see how we hobble through the year. It's it's almost end of March. How we finish up the next 3 months? You know, so far we're looking okay, but it could swing any time. We get we get pipe breaks and pipe clogs and everything that are thousands of dollars. So, it's
021tough. Anybody else? I also want to thank Mr. Carotenuto and Ms. Violetti for and our team for doing such a great job at the budget this year and for being very transparent on everything and letting us ask questions. Um So, at this time Mr. Accomando, would you like to uh read? Before Well, before that, if you want to let us I guess talk about before we make the motion to Any other questions? So, if I can continue to tell 70.77 was the budget we just did which shows those health care costs and bank capital, those two bullets in the middle there. Uh the paragraph above it was 418,000 for maintenance reserve. Um And then if you go down to the next item, the next couple are just standard items that we have to include with
022our budget submission is to show the maximum travel expenditures. It's a state law. I just put a higher number in there in case we get any kind of grant funds. Um The next one is uh this federal special education Medicaid initiative. Uh that's a line item in the budget, roughly 20 What is it here? 21,000 dollars. Uh but they make us put a um cuz we're not achieving we're we're close to it, but not achieving the revenue stream that they feel we should be have, so there's a corrective action plan, and that's what that is. And then, as Mr. Oakman said, we want to have May 4th, which is our Caucus meeting, uh to do a separate, you know, presentation at that time and public hearing. So, that's all the budget items, and they will
023get submitted to the county office. The next the next two I've said in a couple emails to you, and this this helped us um uh bring down the amount we were over cap in the budget was to take this financing. Since the playgrounds kind of got stalled out by getting the proposals and everything together, we had money in this year's budget, and then we were budgeting for the next payment in year year two, next year. So, I talked to the county office, the auditors, and I found a different way to fund it is since we have funds available in our capital reserve funds is to fund it that way. So, that that was able to cut out 100,000 dollars in the current year budget to offset those huge health care cost uh increases. And also,
024next year take out 100,000 dollars. So, we're saving um although it's it's it's you know, good with it with all the tech Chromebook um financing we're able to get and stay in top of uh current technology. We are paying a finance charge. We would have with this playground, but we're we're not we're able to get some more uh playground equipment and and get that surfacing. So, that's a transfer from capital reserve. It doesn't agree exactly, it's a little bit more than what the two numbers below equal. Any money's left over go back into the capital reserve, so that is to make sure I have enough in case there's like an unforeseen item in there that has to get done. But then, the next 182 is our final approval for the three playgrounds at them at
025the Franklin, Helen Smith, and Long School to to award it to Liberty Park. So, pretty much the they're going to have similar pro- uh playgrounds. Ms. Valletti can go over that if she wants to. And then general recreation, we we um are going to finish up the Washington playground, the last two phases. So, those two items together and then we're supposed to get um we got awarded and when we put the submission in, $81,000 from a a grant a playground grant. So, there will be money going back into Caprice Reserve and we'll get playgrounds that will be good for for many years. Sorry if I took anything from you. I'll gladly speak up to playground talk. So, our principals got together, very excited. This has been over the course of several months and they we've
026um agreed or this Liberty Park he worked out um as far as the budget is concerned. So, they've been meeting with him and as it turns out, originally they had slightly different play structures and as it turns out, they basically picked very similar ones if not the same. However, the colors will be blue, gold, like navy, gold and blue and kind of mix it up to make it look a little different. Um they have a playground apparatus, like one of the larger ones and then there's two smaller ones. I forget exactly what they might be. I think one's a climbing dome and one's a a 10-person spinner. Um with the rubber matting. So, they are really excited to get started on this. The Washington playground, if you know it, the whole fenced in area, if
027you're enter that fenced in area, that rectangle towards the back, you see the rubber matting and the apparatus, that final part is going to be towards the front where they'll put more rubber matting and then they have some um stay along like fire engine rider and things like that that they're are going to go over there. Mr. Chair, how long will it take for all of this to get done? This this summer. It'll be done for like September? Yeah. That's the plan. That's the plan, though. Okay. Okay. All right, Michael. So, now do I have to reread this again now that Ray stole my thunder or just ask for a motion? >> Just ask for your motion. >> Okay. Can I get a motion for all that? Motion. Second. Roll call. Mr. Scaramuzzo, Mr. Raccomando.
028>> Yes. Ms. Borelli. Yes. Mr. DiBella. Yes. Mr. Richello. Yes. Ms. Ainello. Yes. Ms. Torbeck. Yes. Mr. Traverso. Yes. Ms. Rollo. Yes. Thank you. So, with that being said, let's see where it brings us. At this point, I'd like to uh adjourn the meeting. Can I get a motion? And we're closed.