we're good Eric I just okay the New Jersey Public's meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to add advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the beler board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time and place thereof posted both The Star Ledger and The Express Times and submitted to the town clerk of the town of beler on May 2nd 2024 the meeting will be live streamed at www.bad sd.org flag salute iedge Ali to the flag United States the for stands na indivisible liberty and justice for all the mission of the beler school district is to celebrate our past and Empower our future while focusing on the four cornerstones of our district tradition Excellence academics and Community we strive to build confidence and promote collaboration we encourage an equal partnership with our students and staff as well as its community members we Empower everyone to develop the best version of themselves the beler school district is committed to shaping students into Global Citizens who take Initiative for their their success and contribute to the continued Excellence of the district our students are leaders in the decision-making process of their education and will be prepared to excel in the 21st century Society roll call please Mr Akerman here Mr Blum here Dr zeith here Mrs Duckworth here Mr Scott here Mrs Stefan here Mr wner Mrs wner here Mr chikar Mrs Gardella here Mrs ratham here we're going to go a little bit out of order on the agenda tonight because we have couple of outstanding presentations ready to go so we are going to start with Mrs Smith and her third grade presentation I'm not going to see any of your thunder Mrs Smith so the floor is yours I was saying I don't really need this I got a big mouth but the children will so our third graders have been working hard well a while ago now uh we have a manuscript out to a publishing house getting our books published which we've done in my third grade for many years and we have a few of our students tonight that like would like to present their um illustrations and their stories which are just photocopy or photo uh photo um photographs of part of the manuscript that out at the end of April so we have a few children here I'll go through the order boys and girls okay and then as your name pops up come on up so Freddy you're going to be first first on our list so once upon a p qua the title right here Ali zimsky say thank you people thank you very much she came up with a very creative title for us all right ready oh and for those of you who are not sure a pora pora means why in French and it's a story written to explain um why something is the way it is things from nature so you'll see some silly ones here Freddy want you hold no please remember hold it right up to want to go on the story side M long long ago elepant elephant were fighting and elephant pulled giraffe's short neck and kept pulling it never snapped back back then one day giraffe was so tall elephant never fought giraffe again giraffe could finally eat the tall tree leaves and the only and not only the short grass today we see giraffe with long necks Freddy a whistle I don't know who's is ital here no um Anna no that's Anna second by the way the artwork's phenomenal these children are in love with those directed draws but not all of them use them they're phenomenal Michael uh honor Maddie's not here Tommy Grady woo nothing like a presentation nice and close to your lips right here think of like Eric ten hack but way he speaks in the mic long long ago rangang lived in a big jungle he was in danger because he bright white fur could not blend into it bot oh yeah you can't tap the bottom just hold it in your hands I'm you got it nice and close start long long ago rangang lived in a big jungle he was in danger because his bright white fur could not blend into his environment his Predators could see him easily early one morning A Rang Tang was being chased by a snake and snake said come back here orangutang kept running away and found a huge bed of orange FL Flowers by the lake he jumped in and rolled around to hide from snake orangutang looked at his skin and it was orange he realized snake could not see him I must not stand out anymore he thought to himself orangutang could finally hunt and roam the jungle without being seen and he never worried again we still see orangutangs orange till this day [Applause] age here you go okay got it how the raccoon got its mask long long ago raccoon and wolf lived in the rainforest raccoon was a furry fat raccoon wolf was a Sleek light gray wolf they were best friends wolf never knew his uh this wait Wolf's never wait best friends wolves never knew yeah I think I forgot to wait out that's okay he forgot to wait out that's right um he never know his friends just keep on Wolf's family hunted raccoons Wolf's family hunted raccoons one day raccoon needed somewhere to sleep wolf said wait wolf sleep wolf said sleep in front o uh of my cave raccoon agreed and he did Wolf's family W uh was inside uh they all saw raccoon raccoon ran into the bushes I mean into a black AC berry bush or no into the blackberry bushes and and the blackberries went squash all over raccoon's face he he uh he did he hid in in there wiping his eyes over and over until it it looked like a mask he went out of the bushes and scared Wolf's family away that's how we see raccoons today good job buddy excellent Daisy you've got this girlfriend and close the second page you'll see CL how the octopus got eight tentacles long long ago octopus only had two tentacles he lived in the ocean where there were tons of games to play octopus's friend dolphin love loved playing twister with him but octopus always lost because he didn't have enough tentacles so one day after octopus played twister with Dolphin he was about to go to bed he thought about always losing and that's when he realized that he wanted to win so octopus said I wish I had more tentacles but nothing happened so octopus just went to bed he was woken up by a Shining Light that's when he saw fish fairy fish fairy fish fairy I didn't know that you were real said octopus I am real said fish fairy now are you sure you want eight tentacles octopus yes yes I am sure said octopus okay when you wake up you'll have eight tentacles said fish fairy so octopus went right to sleep the next morning octopus woke up jumped out of bed and ran out the door just to show off his new tentacles later that day octopus was walking to dolphin's house when he finally finally arrived dolphin said whoa how did you get so many tentacles it's a long story said octopus wow that's cool do you want to play Twister with me dolphin said sure said octopus then at the end of the game octopus won now today we see octopuses swimming around round proudly with all eight [Applause] [Music] tentacles did RF come he was gonna come they might not have made it back in time oh I added some extra uh whatever you call those things just to fill in weight paper um J look ATS and long long ago ladybug was wandering in the thick grassy swamps all of the sudden she could help help ladybug ran as fast as she could she found fly Tangled in the vines of the tall grasses oh no said ladyb when she tried to pull fly out tiny flies jumped on lady bugs back yeah jumped on L's bugs backs that's how she got her spots today the more flies that ladybug to safety helped to safety the more spots will be will be on the backs all right e how the Narwhal got its horn many moons ago Naro lived in the Arctic Circle Naro thought he had a truly amazing life but she thought wrong Naro had no friends the reason was she wasn't pretty enough to fit in every day everybody looked at her in school like there was something wrong with her so she went to normal school and found out that this other narwhal had one of the prettiest things she had ever seen she was so jealous she couldn't think of any anything else that was prettier than that pearl necklace before she went to bed she wished for something prettier than the that pearl necklace the next morning Nar Nar woke up with the most beautiful thing ever she went to school and everybody adored her amazingly brilliant colorful horn from this day forward people can see Nar was jumping out of the frigid water showing off their brilliant beautiful horn [Applause] this is oh allly I went right by you okay you ready which side you want to stand on I'll s on the side so I can see better nice and close to your lips how the red fox got its black tail long long um a long time ago in the deep dark woods red fox lived inside a tree um red fox had no friends she was very sad one day red fox went to go see her only neighbor weasel who is known for his EO painting good morning weasel good morning red fox hey weasel Yes red fox I have no friends maybe I can help weo took out his black paint and painted red Fox's tail um thank you um weasel I'm GNA make I'm going to make friends now red fox would um was never um never alone again and that's how red fox got its black thank you everyone great job I can't wait for our books to come in well thank you Miss Smith and our our third graders it's not easy for adults to get up in front of a room of adults and speak so you guys did an outstanding job so thank you for coming and I appreciate you guys thank you okay next up we'll have Dr mckeny and Mr Barto do both the top 10 and our uh scholar athletes what a great job that was I said to the gentleman in the back they'll be in Mrs poyer's creative writing class when they get to high school um I have the pleasure of announcing this year's top 10 for the class of 2024 our hardworking students who really have done so much to to you know earn this accomplishment um your efforts your achievements have not gone unnoticed and now we just get to praise you a little bit more so I'd like to start off with calling up our valedictorian for the class of 2024 Mr Andrew Durr want I just want you guys can so Andrew will be attending Virginia Tech University and he will be studying architecture our salutatorian for the class of 2024 is Miss Alyssa Shipman stand on side angel Alyssa does not know where she's going to go just yet she is uncommitted but her top three choices are Stockton University Fairley Dickinson University and TCNJ she plans to to study nursing so we're excited about that all right next up we have Robbie Moore Robbie is also uncommitted but his Top Choice is Fairley Dickinson University and he ising to study English and secondary education so maybe we'll see you back here at beler high school okay all right I like that I'd like to call up next Tyler price Tyler will be attending Rutter's University and he in New Brunswick and he is going to be studying computer science we have next Gian Franciso who cannot join us this evening she will be attending the sales University and studying biology Gavin Balmer Gavin will be attending Centenary University and he will be studying exercise science so maybe you'll be back here as maybe our athletic trainer I don't know let's see Candace vicaro unfortunately could not join us she is undecided as to which college she'll be attending but her major will be psychology Alexander nicolopoulos Alexandra will be attending Ruckers University in New Brunswick and she will be on the Premed track so exciting Sil Capone could not join us this evening they will be attending more College of Art and Design with a major in animation and game arts and last but not least Evan or Chuli Evan will be attending the University of Tampa and as of right now she is undecided as to which major she will be pursuing I just want to say from the bottom of my heart I am super proud of all of you continue doing great things make us proud come back and let us know exactly what you're doing school year is not over yet we still have more celebrating to do okay thank you Nick please all right so up in front of us are our scholar athletes as you can see um the groups are pretty synonymous I'm not going to go into exactly what Dr mcken just said but Mr Andrew dur is our njsiaa scholar athlete he will be going to a banquet at the Pines Manor in Edison I believe on the 29th correct I should yeah um so he will be receiving a $500 scholarship from the njsia so again njsia scholar athlete um Mr Moore and myself and Gian who can't be here she's at the lacrosse um senior night over at North Warren which is one of our co-ops um they joined me in the Skyland conference scholar athlete at magiano in Bridgewater earlier last week and then Alexandra and Nick are our 100 Warren Sussex and they will be joining me at Architects on the 21st I believe um so they can get their Awards as well so this year's 2024 scholar athletes I think we saw a couple of third graders that might be the futurist scholar athletes as well so congratulations guys thank you cheer also want to Echo what Dr McKenna said we are extremely proud of not only our top 10 and our scholar athletes but you guys represent us extremely well um some of you guys I've known since you're first grade and Beyond younger than that so it's sometimes it's hard to realize that you're seniors but congratulations um all very well deserved and and you guys really make us proud so thank thank you for for being you really um now do uh Mr BTO is going to bring up the cheerleaders so we did bring the cheerleaders earlier in the year to congratulate them on their state championship um the njcdca um New Jersey cheer and dance coaches association did I did I get that right coach nice anyway they were uh state champions so we have not had a state champion ship here in badier in a while we've been close a couple of times but in Championship fashion I don't think they're aware of this but um the school has bought you jackets so um I'm G to have Coach come up here please and she is going to call you up and give you your jacket a I just wanted think do I really need this I think in particular this year the community rallied again around these girls and the teachers really cheered them on the whole way I don't think they've ever felt such support and love in a long time at least in my coaching tenure so um here we go so Julie come on up Jada come on up I feel like I don't need this because oh the live stream Michaela come on up oh she's not here so a lot of our girls play a Spring sport so some of them are not here Kristen come on up [Applause] Maya precious [Applause] an Kelly so once again congratulations ladies you forgot coach as well congratulations girls welld deserved next up national champs next year right [Applause] okay thank you coach Exley and thank you ladies for making us proud uh as cheerleaders and you do an outstanding job so we really appreciate what you do um Mr Barto you're all set I assume okay so now we'll go back to the regular part of our agenda and we'll pick it up with the committee reports so we just have one committee report for tonight looks like curriculum which just meant the Tom you're on never given just sum it up you need to follow up in Freddy's footsteps sum it up yeah sum it up Bader's SAT scores uh are higher than the states and all SAT scores as an average uh so that's really good to hear from uh last year to this year um I don't have the numbers on me but I know that that we're going to get those um does everything we discussed just kind of a quick review what we talked about agenda the notes will go out on Friday okay um we discussed uh field trips and and when students are excluded from field trips and discussed how uh those exclusions happen U because of certain issues and it's all covered in the handbook in the handbook handbook so um you know again when things happen we go to the handbook and that's why it got cleaned up and uh all right there in front of everyone in black and white um we discussed uh uh guidance position uh having someone come in and assist the guidance office in non-counseling uh activities um especially with scheduling coming up and and kids getting ready to oh yeah yeah move on to uh the next year um we talked about some changes with the science and math curriculum um they're just going to the idea came up to flip the math curriculum so it more aligns with what they're going to be doing in science um throughout the year that way the kids get all that math uh and trigonometry and all that stuff that way uh kind of coincides with science if that makes sense uh what was happening is they weren't getting to those topics until the end of the year and they were teaching them in science uh while they were doing it so hopefully this will help science uh flow a little better with linkit we've been with linkit for four years now it's a great way to collect data but we're looking into some other things out there that are more adaptive to individual students and um that'll help teachers more easily find ways to help students grow in their learning and kind of improve everyone from from Square One moving on and something that it is easy for the teachers to uh to use and and find the resources they need um it's also going to be able to consolidate a lot of resources that they're using in K through 8 into one uh product so that's going to help out also we talked about before and after care was looking for uh companies that can do before and after care but keeping the the cost uh equal or lower for the parents and um I think that's about that cover everything good job that was my first good job thank you I think you should do it again the next meeting I don't know chis if you got we did have a sports meeting did have sports you want to just talk real quick Tyler about yeah I can just do a quick overview um it was on 420 to Brad Joe and myself and we discussed again some budget restrictions unfortunately we're not going to have the summer programs this year um but we're going to be looking to some Alternatives we also discussed um ways to build the sports programs with the young athletes and what it would look like if we had Middle School sports and things like that and talking more about that um The High School coaches are visiting the sending districts on May 14th to talk to the students about the upcoming High School sports programs which is good this way we can get some you know interests we discussed having updates posted on the school um social media pages and things like that with recognizing additional athletes and just kind of creating some excitement around you know kids doing well within their Sport and things like that um we talked a little bit about the soccer program coming up and I guess we'll be looking for some new um uh coaches for for the varsity soccer right now Mr Carl is currently running the program for the summer until I guess we find a new coach the boosters are also running the fundraiser for the Huddle cameras I'm not sure if anybody's I'm sure everyone has received that but any additional funds or any donations are greatly supported the Huddle camera is a way for them to similar to what we were talking about collect data stats they can live stream the um sporting events and things like that a lot of schools have them we also talked about the Varsity Sports are having their combined banquet on 65 and that's going to be here I believe outside um and then again we just discussed talking about other ways to re to get interest so that kids coming up in the program would be more involved in sporting activities when they get into high school um and then we also talked about maybe getting some Community hours for kids and they could talk to Mr Barto and ways that they can help do that whether it be keep stats clean up the fields things of that nature so this way they can get their Community hours that was pretty much it I have a question yes um has there been any discussion about just improving coordination with the booster clubs in the sense of like establishing a quarterly meeting that the the clubs can meet together just to coordinate fundraise um organize activities so there isn't any duplication we we did not discuss that but I don't know if Mr B is here if that's something that you've had discussions with the booster presidents on and I know there's support from the Huddle cameras yeah so I think if the booster clubs are supporting you know some of the athletic programs schol may just like two times a year just to hey what are you working on what are you working on because I think even you know going back to some of scoreboard and coordination um you know I think there's probably a good opportunity there for the the groups to work closer together with the school in organizing and supporting those activities abolutely you also said May 14th it's May 21 oh okay okay thank you all cordially invited I don't have an invitation currently but to the banquet on the 5th of June on Wednesday night at 6m in the a thank you any other questions on that no okay any other meetings okay all right so we would be looking to go into executive session now I need a motion to go into executive session for personnel and Hib motion second any discussion held by the board which need not remain confidential will be made public as soon as practicable minutes of the executive session will not be disclosed until the need for confidentiality no longer exists the board will reconvene in public session at the end at the conclusion of the closed session in approximately 15 minutes all in favor I any NOS extensions okay we'll go to exec microphone out there for public probably not he has it good evening you can take the microphone right out the thing that's there you go sorry I don't do this uh my name is Al dport uh I'm here on behalf of my children uh both of them have who is he we got this something over here better yes yes oh yeah good evening my name is Al Port I'm here on behalf of my children both of them have severe nut peanut tree nut allergies um there have been several times that they've gone on field trips uh we've gotten permission slips from the school you know saying that they can't have nuts on the field trip multiple times uh there have been students seated across next to my children with peanut butter jelly sandwiches I understand simple go-to easy field trip um I received for the upcoming Crayola no mention of no nuts on the permission slip itself uh not only is it safety at the school it's for the parents at home who don't know that their kids have penod allergies it's up to 3% doesn't sound like a lot of Western countries US Canada Mexico uh that have peanut allergies in kids age 0 to 10 That's not including over up up to 5% depending on where you look of family members older 10 years and older that have a treut or peanut allergy um depending on where you live if you know for first off if you know you probably have an EpiPen good chance that you're going to be okay if you don't and you don't realize you're having an anaphylactic shock or no one in the house does you look in area around like here somewhere 15 20 minutes for an ambulance to get you get to your house then however far you are from local hospital I'm sure they're going to give you effort and effort out of the way there but could be too late by then I'd like to see if we could do something maybe make the school nut free it's a big ask I'm aware but my child safety your child safety the safety of small children at home and parents if you could thank you thank you good evening my name is Rachel Baris nicolopoulos I'm from White Township and I'm here on behalf of track and field booster club and the track and field team I received an email today which was kind of very upsetting in that yet again for the third year in the road in a row there has been or will be no busing for this team to attend meets on 513 57 17 521 and 523 most of these are their Championship um meets and I don't understand why that I as a booster club president and being asked to reach out to parents to transport their children to sporting events while you claim you wish to build your athletic department and your teams you cannot get people and and kids to join teams if they can't even get to their Championship matches to create their state champions or even their District Champions so I find this phenomenal we're more worried about a huddle right now than the transportation and I'll let you know something else I've had to in the past transport children three years ago when this first started and then I got an email stating that if anything happens to to these kids while I'm trying to help the team for the school I will be personally held liable and sued so my children will not be getting transported by another parent and if they transport themselves since both my children have a license and God forbid if they get into an accident I will come after each and every one of you who sits on this board today the town of beler and the Board of Ed and high school if they get hurt or if they accidentally die whether it's their fault or not for the wrongful death that this town this committee this school is creating so please explain to me why we don't have buses I have to look into it first I'm hearing of it Mr nicolopoulos so we can get back to you but I don't I'm assuming that there's just no bus have I was say I still had not mean to cut you off I still have old emails from two two or three years ago because all of this was brought up and Mr Barto said transport them yourself or they don't go to the meets and then we had to all sign a waiver saying that if we transport it and I refused to sign it and I told all the parents if you sign it you're taking on the liability don't sign it and I'll tell you now one time when I had to transport that that team to Hillsboro somebody cut me off as I was trying to get off of 31 on to 78 coach bun at the time was actually right behind me saw the guy almost take my whole front end off and besides from my two children I had one two three four four or five other children in my car and I'll tell you now even if somebody sued me for their child getting hurt I would have come after every single one of you three years ago and he told us your responsibility sign this waiver the town said basically you and bup the athletes and I still have those emails so I don't get how we're raising money for huddle I don't think it's an issue of money I think it's an issue of getting a bus I don't know that it's I understand that but if we like if there's no money for buses why are no no I don't think it's that there's not that there's no money for buses there's no buses to come get the kids a different bus company Charter I we we've tried very many bus companies it's not as easy as you think so if I gave you a list of bus companies and to our limo companies that could fit their team I I don't think this is productive in a public session you and I can have a conversation about this I'm just saying besides from actual bus companies there's the charter bus companies there are limo companies that have buses that could do it we see many private buses that come up from other schools it's just very disturbing and I'm just saying it's very disturbing that again and if you need those dates again I can give them to you because in the email I wrote them down you wrote 513-517 521-523 correct and all of those are Championship um meets I'll follow up on this you I'll talk to Mr BTO about it tomorrow and and we'll see where we're at all right I appreciate it will you um be able to let me know I can leave my email address or something somebody will be in touch with you tomorrow via phone call thank you any other public participation no okay any correspondents yes um the board president received a email today um it is with great it is with great regret that I write to advise you and the board that I must resign my seat as a beler board of education member effective immediately when I ran for the position my work schedule was such that I would have been able to make most if not all meetings of the board however certain of my client meetings were changed from what they had been and now as a result I have meetings every Wednesday of the month this of course makes it impossible for me to discharge my duties as a board a board member as I cannot regularly attend board meetings due to my work schedule this is is incredibly frustrating for me as I greatly enjoyed working with my fellow board members as well as the administration I am confident that the district will continue to improve provided that the board remains committed to and focus on the discharge of its duties to the district I hope to one day be back on the board but until then I stand ready to assist in any way possible and wish you all the best of luck sincerely Rich wenner except with regret is that any other correspondents no okay so at this time we will look at a motion to accept Mr wenner's resignation motion second all in favor I except for his wife who says no no any abstentions and he knows unfortunately I'm sad to see him go but we completely understand that work sometimes doesn't do us any favors so hopefully he will be back someday okay so on to the school budget public hearing fun all right we we cut this down to almost two hours so you guys are in for a tree tonight thank God do here I Again aour Tour okay thank you we'll try to we'll try to move this along um as quickly as we can um just just to start out obviously we approved our preliminary budget back at the March meeting um we haven't made any changes to the budget since then so it's just worth going through everything and kind of reminding everybody where we were and where we're going uh real quick we'll start out with just our our student enrollment where we've been where we currently are and what we're project for next year you can kind of see um just down the the right hand side is probably the most important piece of that where our projections are um you know 40 again in in preschool we have 30 next year for kindergarten just keep in mind we are going to have two kindergarten classes next year um just to say that again so everybody knows that we're not just going to have one class of 30 um first grade you know then going down 16 18 18 24 17 24 to 6th uh 2842 a big eighth grade next year and uh we are projecting at 257 four prek to 8 and then as you can see in the High School uh the number 79 68 8577 and for right now for 309 so that's again how we're projecting the um High School numbers will always uh fluctuate on how many freshmen come in it's a little bit bigger of a potential class than it was this year but we're still not sure how many students will be com in here versus going to Tech the total general fund budget that um we already approved preliminarily that we still looking for final approval tonight is $1.8 million which is $524,000 more than last year's budget so last year's budget was probably the toughest one um that we've had in the 10 plus year years that I've been here um and the biggest reason for that is that last year we had a budget decrease of 7.35% overall where this year we're showing an increase of 4.64% so we're able to grow our budget this year mostly because of um switches in our sending District tuition um it rotates year to year I'll talk about that a little more on the next slide but also a surprising state aid increase that we had never really seen before and this board is committed to funding um the school and we have had some decent tax increases over the last few years to catch up for tax increases that we hadn't made in previous years um so for that reason this is a lot smoother budget to to go over um the special Revenue budget which is our fund 20 we had a decrease this year um of 17.5% the main reason for that is because the Sesser funds which are the the covid money um it's the ARP funding Sr funding different different types that we've gotten over the last three plus years that goes away at the end of this year so we had to take that out but we did actually also get um an increase in our preschool funding which is part of that special Revenue fund so that offset some of those decreases so this is our overall sources of revenue um basically that's how we put together a school budget is pretty independent each year where we look at what our Revenue sources are and then we have to take our expenses and make them match so our Revenue sources are from our sending District's tuition which is about 4.3 million our local tax levy um is about the same this year it's um a little less than 4.3 million our state aid has grown to 2.7 million we are currently in the semi program because we have over 40 projected people that may qualify for that so we have to be in the program with a anticipated revenue of 26,000 we have a little bit of miscellaneous we use our fund balance to try to fund the following Year's budget basically that means at the end of this year we are anticipating that we'll be able to take $300,000 and push it forward to the 2425 budget we've been doing that for many years um and we're very tight in trying to do that this year because of some unexpected special education costs that came in at the end of last year but we're hoping that that's going to be able to happen here by June 30th and we have generally been able to take money from our maintenance Reserve that we fund with any additional funds at the end of each school year to fund our maintenance budget um there's only a couple types of reserves that we can keep money for and the two main ones are maintenance and capital reserve so that totals our eight 11.8 million in Revenue so this year um for the tax levy like I already mentioned we did go up 2% which is the regular cap that you're allowed to go up we also then utilized Bank cap um of $77,000 that's money that we hadn't used previously and then you're if you didn't go up your 2% you're allowed to hold that money over for up to three years so we last year used half of our bank cap and then this year used the other half and then we also qualified for I think it's like a $112,000 um increase for a a medical adjustment that we that's why it's 2.25% total increase instead of 2% so we used everything that was available to us and um increased taxes for that the tax rate um from the school is then one $1 1713 per 100 um I did get the ratables from the Bader Town tax assessor and based upon the ratables one cent increase for the town is $24,900 so our taxes are increasing I think it totals $169,000 so that's 6.8 C increase for the 2425 school year an average household um assessment in Bader right now is 239,000 I think you probably all realize that last year the ratables were all r done they basically then doubled it used to be around 100 and something thousand they pretty much doubled and now the average house is 239,000 so this 6.8 C tax increase comes out to about $225 that's based upon the numbers that I got from the tax assessor um and that's my tax the state aid increased $192,000 this year uh for a total of 2.7 million like I said we were not necessarily anticipating that um many districts lost funding um and we were lucky that ours uh went up and that really was very helpful to us being able to balance our budget and not have to go through and make different cuts this year um one of the other primary reasons that we were in a good spot this year is because of our ascending District tuition so every year we do our best to come up with the tuition rate that we hope will equate the actual tuition um because every two years we do a true up to make sure that what we actually charged is an actual number so we'll project it now and then two years chew it up and we don't want we don't want it to be over and we really don't want it to be under so that's one part of the tuition adjustment the other part is each of the sending districts have to tell us by December 15th how many kids they're going to send to us and then from that that's what they're charged that year the number that actually comes is the other part of the tuition adjustment so each year um depending what the adjustment is we either will have to pay money back to the s distri sending districts or receive money in so last year in the 23 24 budget it was not a good year for tuition adjustments we had to um pay back almost $433,000 in tuition well that was the net decrease the payback was 324,000 but then we had other changes in tuition that it was a decrease so from last year we had a swing of $587,000 in a decrease where this year we're showing $154,000 increase so that's a big swing um so you take that add on the increase in the state aid and then the increase in the tax levy that really helped this budget out the reason for the $154,000 increase um is that we are getting $29,000 back on that two-year true up from the other sending districts we are having a tuition decrease because we're have 17 less students projected in the high school but we are trying to establish um a more even keeled tuition rate now that we're trying to align our staff with the number of kids in the school district so that's why we only increased tuition this year from 191 to 192 for next year I even think that might be a little high that we may actually be paying back I feel like the tuition rate may be less than the 191 next year um but we do meet with the Senate districts and that's what everyone decided they wanted to use for the 2425 budget um um our resource program tuition increased 38,000 that's a a formula based upon the resource room Staffing that we have projected in the budget um it's then build out over the number of students that are are from each of the sending districts um and our self-contained tuition this year is relatively flat most of our students come from our MD programs and again the maintenance Reserve withdraw was 225 which is the same as last year sure okay as I mentioned before um we will be adding a second kindergarten teacher um we also at this point are anticipating that we will have 40% wood shop teacher in the High School uh we'll be sharing our art teacher with Harmony Township and you can see then um we did we did Pace a little bit of an increase in AO District special eduation education tuition and transportation um I know that Transportation has become a big issue around the county the Esser funds are gone um there has been some talk about some sort of Esser fun funding coming back but obviously we had to have our budget balanced by today so we can't count on that I don't know if that will actually come back um we do of course put in our estimated salary increases um I think one of the other big wins even though it's an increase is only 6.5% in benefits increase we've seen those at times be closer to 15 and 18% so 6.5 is has been very good we are reducing one Special Education team te and then we have non-replacement of two retirements um and we only have three levels of Elementary empty instead of four and we realize that the high school ER program is no longer needed so that gets us to a balanced budget this just shows you um how the expenses break out um 35% of our expenses go to regular education 12% for special education uh 20% is for employee benefit 11% for operations operations and maintenance 10% is Administration 5% for support services and 5% for extracurricular and this last um chart it shows you how the tax rate has increased over the last 10 plus years um so you'll see the zeros in there and that's where we're even a decrease the one year that's where we were able to bank the cap that we are now using and the columns towards me are showing how our general fund has grown and then decreased over the years um to where this year's budget is actually very similar to the budget back in 1415 so um I think that's it [Music] any questions on any that information no do want to mention a couple other things in my report uh number one I think I had mentioned in one of my weekly updates and I see mayor Myers and councilman Roth there they're always interested in the Third Street update um we did get um the appraisal back uh the latest appraisal was I believe 850 820 I think I said whatever um so we're just working with our attorney now to get the process going so we'll have more hopefully over the next week have an idea of what the exact timelines are on everything um and then secondly just want to talk a little bit quickly on regionalization um we have sent the lon share of information that the Consulting Group has asked for they're in the process of now uh putting everything together so we're still on target for getting reports Sometime Late July early August as far as uh my my contact with Dr Green has been so I think that's on on a great uh path obviously this is part of the discussion you know right now with with finances and the last thing worth mention when it comes back to the budget if you remember last year um the state had approved um giving districts that lost money back it was like 67% of their funding they still haven't done that as of today they were that was going through U I think it was the Senate today but that just shows you the difference of last year and this year and how much it was more of a priority last year and this year it seems for some reason been pushed back and budgets are do so and if you're free Thursday night we have our BHS uh Spring Concert say holiday concert but Spring Concert which takes count of everything choir and band my report okay all right student representative report okay get comfy because I have three pages um the Spanish National Honor Society inducted 10 new members on April 24th um we would like to congratulate our newest members on their high achievement in Spanish class additionally having met all academic and service requirements all 10 of our graduating senior members will be graduating with their Spanish National Honor Society honors and will receive their graduation cord um snhs and Mrs hanle would like to wish them the best of luck in all of their future endeavors as prom season approaches sad will be working to remind our students of the many dangers of drinking and distracted driving FEA had 18 children of Staff members join us on take your child to workday our high schoolers had an amazing time painting playing kickball doing s science and reading books with the children um Extended Learners is going to compete in Wham which is Warren hunon academic meet on May 29th and we are excited for a chance to bring home a trophy Spring Cup week is happening now on Friday we will be ending the week with our school worldwide rock paper scissor competition also elections to decide next year's Student Government executive officers will be on May 23rd um the Leo club and FFA are going to the Chelsea to plant flowers with their residents on Friday this week the Leo Club is also hosting a food drive for Mrs Ko's food pantry Leo Club is also helping at Flowerland by assisting with parking during Mother's Day weekend as well as the following weekend next week FFA and Leo Club will be together again going to low Patong veterans Rally Point to assist with landscaping and planting flowers in April the badier FFA chapter competed in two events the agricultural mechanics CDE and the dairy cattle evaluation CDE the a mechanics team this year was made up of Tim bck Mason ficner Dustin Klein and Dan rundo and this team plays second overall in the state and then the dairy cattle evaluation team was made up of McKenzie kavich J Larson Jake M happy and cold trauma and they placed fourth overall on the state um during the month of May beler FFA chapter will be taking part in several service projects along with their annual plant sale for the greenhouse these projects include planting flowers with the Leo Club at the Chelsea planting flowers in helping T mulch the L pakong Rally Point and lastly planting flowers at the American Legion and beler Cemetery in preparation for Memorial Day and then since we began at the start of the school year beler buddies was was able to raise $165 from our t-shirt sale which allowed us to open an account through Mrs Shone um we have annual we have our club meetings once every month during lunch we held a friendship night where we had pizza together watched a movie and made bracelets we attended a girls basketball game and had a bagel party afterwards we had an open gym where we played two hours worth of floor hockey um we attended a the softball team Senior Day game and held another floor hockey event um we're having our archery morning on June 1st we're having a car wash next month and we were also able to raise a total of $971 for a former student Joelle this past weekend at our Shaka can fundraiser to support him as he continues to undergo his cancer treatment um and then we would personally like to thank you all for this opportunity that you have given our students to trial this club this year belet your buddies would like to thank coach Kay and Mrs kooch for their immense efforts over the past year year to make this such a success it has been amazing for every single one of our members and I am hopeful that this group will be able to continue next year thank you wow our students are definitely busy and thank you for that awesome Report with everything that's going on right now all right so that brings us to our regular agenda we are looking at Personnel items 1 through 16 there's also the extra sheet you have with the red on here for um item number 16 can I have a motion to look at these items one 19 wait that's one through 19 19 yeah yes one through 19 one through 19 motion second okay any questions about these nobody okay so roll call please Mr Akerman yes Mr blun yes Dr zeppi yes Mrs Duckworth yes and I abstain from number I don't even know what it is sorry too many numbers here 13 Mr Scott yes Mrs Stefan yes Mrs wner yes Mrs Gardella yes but Iain from number 11 Mrs roboam okay we need to look at education items change page those are 20 through 25 plus there is one on your extra sheet tonight can I have a motion for 20 through 25 motion any questions on any of them no all in favor I I any nose any extenstions so that takes us to business items 26 through 37 can I have a motion for for 26 through 37 motion any questions on any of them no all in favor I I I any nose any extensions okay that brings us to continuing business anyone have continuing business Chris jumped in and took over all our questions he answered about regionalization in the Third Street I think there's anything else just one quick thing I think when it comes to just when we approve the Personnel like Mrs guard I think it could just abstain on the one person you know to abstain on the whole motion I know I know your reasons for abstaining but I think it's just specific to the one person you don't have to yeah yeah so just maybe you know for next time we any business just want to make sure you know we're closing out the year soon um getting ready for next year just again I'd like to say we could tighten up the cell phone regulation school um again it would definitely cut out a lot of things that that we see happening hibs and pictures being taken in classes shouldn't be being take um you know it's easy to just keep the phone in the locker get at the end of the day so that's again all I want to say is it am I good can't hear you online I would just like to reiterate again that uh just tighten up the cell phone usage in schools for for all grades um we have a lot of ways that we contact home uh a lot beler calls me every day and uh I just think uh you can definitely tighten that up to kind of help with discipline and and help with a lot of things that happen that wouldn't be happening if we didn't have cell phones at our fingertips thank you any other continuing business no business new business just kind of going on with cell phones um I didn't know if there was anything that's recently been done to educate and I'm sure there has been and I'm just not aware with um social media the use of cell phones appropriate um things to be aware of we we had a really nice presentation from one of our local police officers that kind of went through the dangers of social media um the risk liability to parents as well as the child um and also provid some good resources for parents from a community standpoint so I just wasn't sure if that's something that we um have available here as well okay certainly tell we haven't done that in a while it's probably a good good time for a refresher on that okay uh new business I would like to say number one the elementary school concert the other night if anybody saw that was excellent I think it was very enjoyable some new stuff was thrown out there and our students did very well I was very very happy to see that concert um and the FFA banquet happened last Saturday um if ever you get a chance to attend when you get your invitation as board member I would highly recommend it the students do a phenomenal job they do a whole meeting ceremony everything memorize it they do the whole thing and um they they should be commended for how well those kids do the activities that you see that they've done through the year I know some of them were highlighted that just happened now and collaboration is great um but it's it's pretty impressive in my opinion and lastly when we were talking about sports earlier and stuff too I would like to see when we were talking about collaborating and stuff between the um boosters if we could go back to years ago not going to date myself but years ago we used to do a a fall banquet a Winter Banquet a spring banquet now they all do their own little banquet which is nice but I almost feel like we're not encouraging them to support each other at those Banquets you know it's x amount of money for each ticket so if you want to go support your friend or you know a brother sister whatever you're paying an extra fee to go to their banquet too and so I would love to see if we could get some collaboration so that all the sports for that time meet together they see each other get recognized and talked about and can support each other so that we're bringing them together together instead of pulling them apart is just my suggestion any other new business oh it was at the top yes so the next page yes okay then we are going to move on to our last public participation any public participation out there no okay then um tonight we are going to go into an executive a second executive session um to review our CSA evaluation and some negotiations and a little Personnel right uh negotiations that's on still okay so can I have a motion to go in executive session all right any discussion held by the board which need not remain confidential will be made public as soon as practical minutes of the executive session will not be disclosed until the need for con confidentiality no longer exists the board will reconvene in public session at the conclusion of the closed session however we will not be taking action so nobody needs to stay around um for that that it okay all in favor to go into our executive session I any NOS abstentions okay