001Crystal here. Missy Giovanni here. Miss Hansat here. Mr. Sher here. Mr. Sampone here. Mr. T is absent. Miss Wadwitz here. Miss Calgone here. Notice that the April 28th 2025 meeting of the board of education would be to the clerks of the girls into the township of Fairfield and to the editor of progress on January 7, 2025 and started on the same day. Welcome back everyone. week off. We're going to change the agenda a little bit tonight just um so that we can let our independent study young lady go first so he would be bored as the rest of us Mr. Learn everyone else is staying to be bored like us. So the science department has one more uh independent study under the tutelage of Miss Diana Lippy. Um Nia Ashley did an epidemiology uh work
002this year. So here she is. Hi everyone. My name is Nia. Something a little about me. I'm planning on going into bioengineering this fall. And one of the reasons I chose this major is because um I love science and I wanted to do something in the medical field. But I realized after seeing how my brother did um you can only do two things if you want to go premed. You can be a doctor or you can do research. And I realized that I wanted a little something more in case I changed my mind. So I chose to do bioengineering cuz an engineering major sometimes you can get a little more. Um I chose epidemiology because it really focuses on like the wide public health of just populations and not just um certain people. And I
003really like to see how I can connect bioengineering to that. And I have learned a lot. So to get started, first I want to just recognize some past students who did epidemiology as their independent study. We have Sierra Alamia who goes to Penn State now and majors in nutritional sciences. Her brother Jimmy Alamia who also goes to Penn State. He's graduating this year with a degree in chemical engineering. And then we have my brother George Ashley who goes to the University of Rochester. He's graduating this year with a degree of biochemistry and genetics and is moving on to medical school this fall. So to start off, what is epidemiology? Epidemiology, like I said before, is the study of health problems across populations and not just individuals. It focuses on patterns, causes, and effects that affect
004these disease outbreaks. And epidemiologists really focus to see how they can stop these outbreaks and why um they need to focus on present tense and not past because the technology that we have now is a lot more advanced than past technology. So it is easier to stop certain outbreaks like CO 19 which we are all familiar with. Um so what is the role of epidemiology and what do epidemiologists do? Um, I first researched how they detect and monitor diseases and why they do that. When CO 19 first started up, we know it started in December of 2019, but we weren't very alerted by it until March 2020 when it became a big thing. So, first new health threats were identified and then risk factors and modes of transmission were also found. We found that uh
005talking to people and germs and they spread through uh contact of different objects and epidemiologists really worked hard to create different experiments and tests to see how they can stop this disease spread and why this disease spread was happening. Then safety guidelines and vaccine development and treatment protocols are approached and they are found and vaccines new different vaccines were found. And I'm sure you guys all saw on the news how different things were found and they were being tested on different people. Um then uh these these prevention methods are actually tested to see how well they can actually stop the spread. And lastly they are really shown to the world to end up protecting our communities. So what is the importance of research in epidemiology? Epidemiologists with the research from them uh they were allowed
006to track these diseases and find what was causing these different mutations. Again, CO 19 is a very big one. Other things that were researched was the black death, the Spanish flu, um just really big things that caused a pandemic and ultimately a lot of people to be affected by it. Different different public health strategies are also supported by epidemiologists. Like for example, vaccinations and quarantine. Public schools were shut down. Uh we the world went into like a worldwide pandemic and that was all because of the dangerous spread of CO 19 because we did not know why it was spreading so quickly. So overall new trends were just found and everything that they were gathering is eventually used to prevent these future health crisises from happening again. There are four different major concepts in epidemiology. Something
007about epidemiology is that it looks at trends in real time and it doesn't look at past trends. The real time it's very helpful that they are looked in real time because of our new technology that we have. So with tracking these disease trends, we are able to then find out what makes people most vulnerable to these and then end up understanding and stopping the disease spread. And then lastly, we create policies, vaccines, and treatments to stop this. So, how does epidemiology and bioengineering, how do they go hand in hand? Like I said, I'm planning into going into bioengineering because after seeing what bioengineers do, I've realized that I want to be the person that creates the medical devices that are able to treat, diagnose, uh, and diagnose patients quicker and more efficiently. For example, there
008was an article about X-ray machines, and I'm sure you guys hear how like the UV rays are dangerous. There's something that was talking about how there's this pill that you can take and then these X-ray machines are not dangerous anymore. So, I think it's so interesting that we can study that and um I want to look more into that in the future. They really show the data to help us design those effective medical technology and they overall just give us a safer and more efficient product to develop for to for the treatment of patients. So how do epidemiologists study diseases? First they gather information through the different tests and surveys and lab reports that they take. They look for trends over time and they look at different types of people that are affected. Something about
009epidemiology is that though it looks at o like an overall population, it also looks at different age groups. So why is this age group more affected than another age group? And they try to prove that like we saw in COVID, we saw that those who were um for example above the age of 60 were getting a lot more affected by COVID and those um who were also very young who didn't have very strong immune systems were also being affected. So those vaccinations were created to stop that. Then risk factors are studied and then we find then the source of the outbreak is found and how it spreads and that ultimately re uh leads to the development of different preventative strategies to stop this spread. I would like to thank Miss Lippy for being my independent
010study adviser and all of you guys for being here today. Thank you. All right. Hello everybody. Hello. I'm going to present the 2526 budget to everybody. Um I will say as I start this was um one of our more difficult budgets to um balance but we were in a good place. So we are able to maintain existing district staff, academic offerings, extracurricular activities and regular transportation. So I just want to say this here um we heard all the concerns from the community. We listened to everybody. we took into account we were able to figure it out for the year to keep busing intact and not go to subscription for the year. So, um that will not be a thing for next year. So, we hope that that helps and eases everybody's mind a little bit.
011So, um what are the new things we're doing in the budget? Middle school and high school guidance office renovations are happening this year. Um that'll be a summer project. We are going to renovate a middle school science classroom. I don't know why that keeps moving. I'm not touching anything. Okay, we're good. Um, and additional security cameras. Um, and we're meeting the increase of salaries and benefits and operational costs. So, here's the overall budget. Um, the total general fund is 49,133 531. The special revenue fund is grants 272 272,000. Sorry, I just like these numbers to mirror. Uh, and the debt service fund is 469264. So, this is a breakdown of the budget. I'm not going to go line by line. This is just a general overview of what the budget looks like and how the
012breakdown happens. This will be posted, so if anybody wants to really like dig into those numbers, um, but you'll see where there are larger changes um, and variances for next year. um and where there were cuts. And one of the big ones that I will point out, I know you'll all see the capital outlay went down. We just finished a culinary arts project. So, and the STEM rooms. So, those two rooms took money out of capital reserve. We are not taking money out through the budget for capital reserve. I will tell you in capital outlay, which is not really capital outlay, but you can out of that line buy a vehicle. We are looking to purchase a um passenger van so that we can move some of our special ed students around um our community
013based instruction students on our own without having to use buses. Um that the law is changing effective July one. So I will just point that out to you guys. Uh grants have gone down also. That's another one that you will see a big change in. Um we're expecting some sort of cuts federally uh but we're not sure what. So we were told to budget at least 30% under what we had. So and charter school tuition that increase this year that comes from the state. They give us that number when they give us our state aid. Um so we had I believe next year there's five uh charter school students. So that increased 147%. This is a pie chart just so you could see where the money is allocated to. Again, this will be posted for
014everybody. I know the question always is where does the money come from? Nobody like, you know, where do we get all that money? So, most of our money obviously comes from raising taxes, unfortunately. Um, so the tax levy is the biggest bulk, but we do have money for other things. So, we have miscellaneous revenue. It's $1 million. That's interest in our bank account. Uh that's rental fees, paytoplay fees. Um uh gate receipts. I'm just trying to think. Just like miscellaneous things. Tuition. We do accept special ed tuition students only in our 18 to 21 program. Um so that's a forecast of potential tuition. Uh state aid went up 6%. We are fortunate a lot of districts around here lost money. Uh budgeted fund balance. So there's an excess surplus that carries through annually. Um and
015we draw some that down every year. We took a little bit more this year to bud balance the budget. So that's 900,000 maintenance reserve. That's because we're going to do a little bit more remodels. We use that money for that. So that's about 200,000. Again, grants went down and debt service. Now it won't move. Uh, sorry. I don't know why it looks like that. It didn't look like that earlier. Um, but I'll have it cleaned up before it gets posted. So again, just a pie chart of where it um all the money comes from. So the overall difference from last year to this year. So last year's tax levy was the total tax levy was 42,597,614. This year it is 44,1243. We were able to um increase the general fund levy 3.64% because our health
016benefits are slated to go up over 15%. Prescription 20 was 20%, thankfully that renewal just came in at 9. Um but that's all unknown when you're doing a budget in March and you don't have we're still shopping the market. Um, unfortunately the state health benefits, we're at the mercy of everybody in that plan. Our experience rating is not good at all. So, I can't even get out of that at this point. We've tried to shop it. I can't control it. Um, so we just keep looking at it. Every time we're getting there, we pull it. We pull a report. Um, but they're losing money on us, so nobody wants to take us for private. Um, debt service aid is dropping. Uh we have I believe five more years about on our debt service and we'll
017be done. Um and I do just want to make another comment because I realize I missed this. We are increasing the paytoplay fees for next year. Um we did speak about that before. Um but they are going up $25. So a high school student will be they're 125 now, right? They'll be 150. Middle school will be at 125. There will still be a family max that will all will update all the forms before we start pushing all that out through the parent portal. Um all forms will be updated. Okay. So just again just what how we get there. The overall budget is 49,874794. Revenues from state aid, miscellaneous revenue, tuition, grant money, etc. is in that 5,750,651 the overall tax levy is 44,124143 okay so every year we present this this is a potential okay
018so we get these numbers in March from every town um and I just I do want to point out a couple big changes for this year so Essex Feld's um percentage share went up almost like a full percent because they obviously have more students coming here now than they have in years past. So Essex Fell's percentage went up. Fairfield's percentage share has declined. Um North Caldwell went down just a little bit, but Rosland went up um over one and a half%. Also, another big thing I want to point out on this is that Roseand just went through a large reassessment, right? Town reassessment. So, your numbers have changed significantly. And I just wanted to point that out because I know people looking at home, you don't realize that. Um, but last year the average residential
019value was $470,368 and now it's $639,600. So that is why there's such a big swing too with the property tax for West Essex and the increase. Um I just like to point those things out. All of the other towns, they pretty much stayed consistent. You'll see the only one that went down is Fairfield. The um annual decrease is $118.64, but Essex Fell's um average tax increase will be 6181.70 annually. North Caldwell's increase will be16418 annually. Again, Roseand is $351.17 annually. Again, this is forformational purposes only. I do not control what comes out on your tax bill. I just I know people like to know that my presentation Thank you. I'm here for questions now. Board members questions first. Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you to everybody here on the admin team because they've
020all worked with me. Um because everybody stayed flat this year basically and has worked within their means to make it work and we're all working together. So, thank you guys too. Do any of you have questions for me after? All right. Thank you all. [Applause] Okay. So, at this time, I'm going to open up the floor to any comments regarding the budget, questions. Okay. All right. So, we will take a vote. Mary, sure. Please, please. Sure. Item one, adoption of the 2025 2026 school year budget will be voted upon in one motion and I second Miss Yes. Miss Crucible. Yes. Miss Giovani. Yes. Miss, yes. Mr. Sher, yes. Mr. Samp, yes. Miss Wajitz, yes. Miss Peru, yes. I would like to thank Melissa on behalf of the board of ed um you know we did
021discuss subscription busing we felt that was the only way we needed to go in order to balance the budget um because we didn't want to actually take a hit to academics athletics music department nothing so we felt that was the only way to go um and then Melissa one day said I think we're going to be okay and we were like okay you know so we're just relieved We we're very grateful. Melissa puts a lot of time and effort into this. She does it a lot at nights and on her own time to make sure that the school is fiscally responsible and that we are responsible to the communities and that we make sure we provide everything for the students and for the staff. So, um we applaud Melissa. She does a hard work with
022this and and we really do appreciate it and thank you to the administration for coming out and morning for tonight. Okay, that being said, Mr. Joe. All right, there's just a couple of things I want to mention tonight. Um, things that happened since the last board meeting, and I know at the next board meeting, our principles will do a wonderful job of doing their reports. Um, but, uh, there's a couple things noteworthy that I want to mention for tonight. First of all, I echo the the, uh, the comments from, um, Miss Calderon about Melissa. you know, she does a great job and um she put together a great budget this year and um so thank you Melissa for for doing that. Um on the calendar tonight, I know everybody's excited about this, our unused uh
023snow days. Um so we will be um giving back two days. Friday of Memorial Day weekend uh May 23rd and then we be closed we will be closed Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Memorial Day closed on Tuesday also May 27th. In addition, we will have a single session day on Thursday, May 22nd. So um I'm glad that we didn't really have a u bad winter um because it's nice to be able to give those those days back. So everybody can thank me later for not calling so many snow days. Um, couple things. All right, so the New Jersey Department of Education recently released high school summitive rankings and scores based on the school performance reports from the 2324 school year. NJ.com ranked those high schools based on the summit of ratings. And uh we are proud to
024announce that West Essex High School is ranked number 34 out of 358 schools. um statewide, up from 39 last year. Um this achievement is a direct result of the hard work and dedication of our outstanding faculty, staff, and students, many of our administrators, and we have some teachers here tonight. Um we want to thank you for all your hard work um which uh contributed to us um coming out favorable in the rankings. Um our former high school principal is here, Mr. D. Labberto, the admin from the high school is here. They all work together with our entire admin team and that's a direct reflection of everybody's hard work. Um, on the athletic front, on Thursday, April 24th, uh, West Essex boys lacrosse player Anthony Drago reached a major milestone, eclipsing 200 career goals in boys
025lacrosse, surpassing the previous school record of 200 career goals set by Michael McWills from the class of 2000. Um, but Anthony didn't stop there. scored four goals that day to reach 203 total career goals and added eight assists, giving him 12 total points in the game, which also resulted in the school's single game um points record. Um he's now on track to um break the total record for total points of any athlete for boys lacrosse. So, good luck to Anthony and congratulations to the coaching staff. And I see Mr. Walsh is here in the audience as well. We'll break it tomorrow. Um, academics, congratulations to the high school and district administrators for successfully recognizing over 400 students on April 15th and April 16th. During uh these days, our students were honored at 10 induction ceremonies
026for outstanding academic achievement. So, thank you to all of our staff, our board members, and parents who joined us for the occasion. And congratulations to all of these amazing students who were inducted into the following societies. The National Honors Society, World Language Honor Society, Science Honor Society, Math Honor Society, Roappa Honor Society, Art Honor Society, English Honor Society, TryM Music Honor Society, and the International Thespian Honor Society. regarding culture and climate. Uh, congratulations to the middle school and the high school for being designated by the Anti-Defamation League as gold star no place for hate schools. This is the second year in a row that our school has received this award. Um, several of our students and staff will attend a banner ceremony on May 20th at NYU to be recognized by the ADL. Upon return,
027we will again proudly display our banners in each of our schools. I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to our entire school community for supporting our school culture and climate initiative. We're so honored to receive this award and we truly appreciate the commitment from our students and staff. And I want to give a special shout out to Dr. Dunlevy, Dr. Westervelt, and Mrs. Hulse um for their hard work and for supporting these programs in your buildings. It takes a lot to execute those lessons every couple months. Every department has to be on board. Everybody's doing the same lesson at the same time. So, I want to commend you guys on on the the great work that you've done with that. And the nice thing about this program is it's all studentled. So, all the
028discussions are led by students. A lot of the activities are developed heavily by the input from the students. So, it's very student driven. So, congratulations on that. And then before I conclude my report this evening, um again we have some teachers here. So I want to thank you guys. Everything that I mention tonight is definitely a result of the hard work of our teachers. Um I but I often don't get my administrators together like this. So I also want to um recognize them tonight um because a lot of the efforts that happen, our administrators play a critical role in leading, supporting, and inspiring that work. So, um I just want to thank them and um just let you know that I'm proud to work alongside such a talented and dedicated team. And that's and that's
029my report for tonight. Thank you. Correct. Yes. I think it's May 4th. You remember the date, Mr. Alberto? May 6th. That's the next one. board member comments for anything. Sorry. Board member comments. Um I was able to attend um part of the honors um event this past week and I just want to say it was nice to see first so many families obviously there excited but also like Mrs. nice. I heard what you were saying in the English honors um assembly in particular um because that was the one I got to sit in on. Um and I I just I thought it it you took time and care to to really think about how to inspire these kids and I know all of the administrators do that. Um, and when we see kids talking about
030epidemiology, Miss Lippy, like the opportunities that these kids have, like the these are examples of just how many opportunities there are for kids to feel inspired and be lifted up in this district. It just is really just makes me happy. So anyway, I Mary Adele and I were uh in attendance too. We attended the first honor which was the world languages, correct? And it was just overwhelming these, you know, There was a young lady there. What? Oh, we were Oh, that's right now. I'm very forgettable. I don't know. I just followed the the crowd. So, we started out at that and and the languages and and the presentation that the kids put on um the speaking, the singing, it was just great. It was a phenomenal day. And then we did go on to math
031and we did recognize all of those and it was it's just great that there were so many parents involved that you've changed it over to the day production and and it was a really nice it was a really nice event. So congratulations to all of you for doing that. Um and I would like to thank you know our administrators our teachers you know for the fact that we are ranking where we are ranking in the state. Um, it's not one person, it's not one department, but it's, you know, an entire team that keeps this school going the way that it does go. And, you know, with the fact that we're able to keep the budget and we have no cuts. There have been so many comments from people in the community saying, "What's, you know,
032aside from the busing, what do you intend to cut? What's going to happen? Are we losing staff? Are we doing this? Are we having that?" Because they see it on a daily basis. all of these school districts that are coming out. There was just one Jonathan had showed me down in Little Harbor. Little Lake Harbor, I think. Yeah, they're getting 65. I think they're cutting. That's it. Number 33%. And raising the taxes 33%. So, um I think you know we as a community up here are very lucky. Our students are very lucky, our staff that we are able to continue, you know, the quality of education and we thank you all for, you know, everything that you do. We really do. We want you to know that we appreciate it and we support you for
033everything, all of your efforts. So, you know, let's just keep up the great work and just keep those numbers rising and rising, you know. So, anyway, with that being said, I'd like to say Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Um just still to follow up with what you said. I mean excellent job from everybody here. I also would like to acknowledge Damian um for doing a wonderful job. It takes a village and uh we recognize all the supervisors and uh I just for the record I also wanted to recognize Damian for the great job that he's been doing that he's done. Okay, with that being said, start the agenda, please. Okay, finance. Greg, please. Uh, the following finance motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools. Anything placed on this agenda, items 1 through
034nine, will be voted upon in one motion and I move. Okay. Miss Amal, yes. Miss Crystal, yes. Miss Giovani, yes. Miss Hansen, yes. Mr. Sher, yes. Mr. Stamp, yes. Miss Wad, yes. Miss Calgar, yes. Uh, Alicia, building grounds, please. Sure. Following building and ground motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools. Anything placed on this agenda in item one will be voted upon in one motion. And I so move. Second, Miss Am. Yes. Miss Crystal, yes. Miss Giovani, yes. Miss Hollstead, yes. Mr. Sher, yes. Mr. Samone, yes. Miss Wadwitz, yes. Miss Calderon, yes. Jonathan, personnel, please. Yes, ma'am. The following personnel motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools. Anything placed on this agenda, items 1 through 11 will be voted upon in one motion, and I Miss Emo,
035yes. Miss Crystal, yes. Miss E. Giovani, yes. Miss Hollister, yes. Mr. Chair, yes. Mr. Samone, yes. Miss Waj, yes. Miss Calderon, yes. Ruth, curriculum and special education, please. The following curriculum special education motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools. Anything placed on this agenda? Items one through three will be voted upon in one motion and I still move. Second. Second. Miss. Yes. Miss Christoal. Yes. Miss Jubani. Yes. Miss Ha. Yes. Mr. Sher. Yes. Mr. Samp. Yes. Miss Wadwitz? Yes. Miss Calgary? Yes. Uh, do I have miscellaneous, please? Following miscellaneous motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools. Anything placed on this agenda? Items 1 through 14 will be voted upon in one motion and I so move. Second. Miss Amal. Yes. Miss Principal. Yes. Miss Giovani. Yes. Miss
036Hollister. Yes. Mr. Sher. Yes. Mr. Stamp. Yes. Miss Wadwitz. Yes. Miss Calderon. Yes. Okay. At this time, I'd like to open up the board for public comments on non-aggenda items. One minute. [Laughter] Well, I hate to tell you this, but by now you might as well introduce them. Everybody's like, "What's going on?" So, we have two of our new association reps here from the teachers association. So, they um we're new leadership next year, the president and vice president. Yes. So Caroline from the high school and Susan Dy from the high school both [Applause] teachers we look forward you know I know Melissa and I look forward to working with you we keep our relationships where they are um work together collaboratively and I know the board um will be you know ready to do the
037same you know we've always maintained good relationships with all our associations and we hope to continue do that. So we look forward to it. I know Suzan and I have discussed that we are lucky that we are inheriting such a good relationship with you and the board and the administrator. So we hope to have a nice calm transg thank you everyone for coming this evening and supporting us through the budget process. We do appreciate it. Okay. Um, there being no further business before this board of education, be it resolved that this public meeting be adjourned at 809.