okay we're live we're live okay everyone welcome to the March 22nd 2024 public meeting and budget hearing comination meeting uh if we can all stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag United States of America and to the Republic which it stands one nation under God indivisible Liberty Mike Russo doesn't have the link so someone can send it to him Frank can you send Mike the link Frank he said yeah okay very good okay I'm going to read a quick statement if I may uh the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the rights of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provision of this act the cite Park Board of V is caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time and place thereof posted in the office of the burough clerk burough Library bur Rec Department the office of the Board of Ed the offices of school numbers 3456 in the high school on March 11th 2024 and notices were forwarded to the reporters of the record on March 11th 2024 this is an official meeting I like to take the role if I may please uh Mrs Abu here Mr capano here Mrs Fredo Mr Gara here Mr nadw Mr nreu Dr pontano latia here Dr pontano okay here Mr ranc Court uh Mr Russo mrakia here and Mr yzi Mr uni all believe Mr yoi is here I saw him let me call Mr yoi just give me one moment Frank did I lose it if you if you could jump up I'd appreciate it I did lose I lost it over here I apologize touch it again okay all right I'm gonna put you as a yes and you stay I I'll leave you on my phone for now on speaker okay is that okay great okay Mr Unice he's on my phone he having uh his own internet ises at home so we'll work through this okay well thank you everyone for coming today on a Friday night to go through our uh budget hearing and our public consent agenda uh as stated I'm going to first run through the budget hearing presentation I sent out some notes last Friday and resent them last night and there's uh the budget resolution the final resolution as one of the attachments and there's the uh three-year snapshot sheets of key Appropriations and revenues I'm going to run through them um quickly and give you an overview of some of the key metrics so again our budget for the 24 2025 school year uh the total budget is approximately $ 67.9 million of that 67.9 million about 65.4 million is from our general fund and approximately 2.6 million is from what they call our special Revenue fund which is essentially um some federal and state grants um again you have the three-year sheets in front of you I'm going to go through the Appropriations there's around approximately 10 light items I'm going to go through to give you an idea of the movement year-over-year and some of the key notes of these key metrics again the first page we're looking at is the budget Appropriations and the first line item is instruction and you can see we gained approximately about $200,000 year-over-year that's essentially comes from uh our increase in our special education uh we put a couple of new heads and obviously some salary increases there as our special education population continues to grow uh the next line item is employee benefits and this is the one that um is probably one of our biggest challenges in regard to balancing our budget we're up again approximately 10% year-over-year for both our prescription and medical again you can see on an absolute basis about $800,000 that's almost equivalent to our 2% cap so obviously that's quite the challenge uh and it's been very consistent over the last few years that we've been pushing plus uh uh plus uh 10% increases for uh medical and uh prescription operation of plant um is up a bit again that's all a lot of this is the care of our facilities all preventive maintenance contracts um supplies payments to outside services and the next line item is our Administration and that's salary for our technology folks uh a lot of our Professional Services such as legal grant writers Architects principal supervisors secretaries that's up incrementally uh year-over-year we try to be very um competitive especially our information technology folks and also we're taking another close look at our secretarial staff to make sure that we're priced appropriately uh for both the IT staff and our secretarial staff the next line item is transportation we're actually down a tick and really the the root cause of that is we have less out of District busing cost this year um we've had the ability of taking on some of the students who were we were busing out of District uh and we were using a southb and jointure commission and we are now using our own busing so that's we're about down about $100,000 just in out of District cost busing and that's really due to us bringing the out of District students are being bused by our transportation team not being outsourced by the jointure uh the next line item is instructional support services and we're down here and this is actually a really good news event and we can uh Pat Uh Charlene pinto and the child study team staff on the back uh they brought in they moved a lot a significant amount of dollars from contractual services and brought in our own child study team behaviorists and other staff so essentially our Contracting Services have gone down that's what this line item is for otpt purchase Professional Services because we brought in our own folks who are actually are much more cost efficient and honestly will do a better job much you have much ownership when you bring your own folks in house than when you work with contracted services so that's really kudos to Charlene Pinto in the child study team the next line I name is capital outlay and that's essentially the the open bid projects that we engage gym Lobby unifence rtu units and it also incorporates any Capital Equipment so here it ticked down a bit because last year we had about $3.5 million in capital projects open bid projects this year we have about three million but the Delta is less than 500,000 because this year we've the board was kind enough to grant us the capability of purchasing two new 54 passenger buses versus one and that's very very helpful obviously because we the more we can replenish our Fleet make them safer and newer the the more business we can take on in regard to busing our own students both in District and out of district and then the final line item is what we talked about is the state and federal grants are up a few hundred thousand EUR of a year that's essentially from our Title One money and Title One money essentially Services some of our lower income students and we've got about an incremental about nearly $300,000 more uh year-over-year starting in 23 24 so we made the assumption that our Title One money would be flat year-over-year and again they service our lower income students so essentially those are the major expense appropriation line items we're around 66 million in change and this year we're pushing about 68 million in total for our budget for 2425 I'm going to jump to the next Pages which essentially is our revenues and as everyone knows our largest revenue source is our tax levy and this year our tax levy went up approximately 2.78% it's 2% plus an allowable Health Care adjustment as I spoke about in the appropriation expense section our benefits both prescription and medical are about 800,000 year-over-year about 10% the state allows us a certain percentage of that to go towards what they call a health care adjustment and our healthc care adjustment this year was approximately $300,000 so that $300,000 is above and beyond the 2% cap that's why we came up with a 2.78% total cap but it's allowable in regard because it's a health care adjustment which allows us to offset the considerable Health Care increases we have year-over-year and again on an average assess home of approximately $377,000 and impacts the taxpayer approximately $118 per aom or 32 cents per day so again that's our biggest Revenue line item the next line item we looked at is miscellaneous income and we're up a couple hundred thousand year over year and that's simply we are earning more interest on our money in the bank you know we are earning one one and a half percent for multiple years and this year we're over 4% that translated into about an incremental $200,000 in interest income per year it's like found money uh tuition it's essentially as you know Fairview is a feeder system to us they're we're the host they're the sending District about 550 students so that 9,700 th000 great the great majority of that comes from the tuition we charge for Fairview and there's a certified rate that we are allowed to charge it's a mathematical formula through audit that the state sends us probably a month before we have to finalize the budget and so we are around somewh 15,000 in change per regular student in regard to tuition and we have about 550 students that's where we came up with about the $9.7 million the next line item is what they call uh budget appropriated fund balance that's essentially excess Surplus we use our Surplus in two ways over the last several years we use it to help us offset expenses and Appropriations for for future year budgets and we also use it for capital projects such as roofs and boilers and rtus and univan projects so that million 35 is essentially that's the piece of the Surplus that we use to offset expenses and we try to keep that static each year about a million dollars plus or minus because we don't know when our Surplus is going to Tumble if we get less grants as we know the op Grant the uh American Rescue plan Grant expires this summer so we keep that Surplus flat and anything incremental above about a million dollars we throw into capital reserve to help us rebuild our facilities like I said whether it's roofs or boilers univ vents rtu units new floors uh renovation of bathrooms and that leads us to that next line item is withdrawal from capital reserve those that $3 million is essentially those capital projects that essentially we go out for bid we just completed the bid opening and tonight I'm going to respectfully ask you to approve the award of the gym Lobby award letter and resolution uh we are going to take on that in the late spring and summer we also are installing our roof new rooftop units at school number six a chunk of them will be installed during the spring break starting they actually going to be on site Good Friday and we also will be doing um replacing our unit ventilators that piggybacks on the rtu they're both at number six school which will really button things up the HVAC at school number six and then we are also going to complete uh the majority of our schools we're replacing our stair Tower security doors and we also will take on as we do each year hopefully some if we have some additional Surplus we'll be replacing some additional floors classroom floors and hopefully do a uh a bathroom remodel or two and our next the next biggest Revenue line on him besides the tax levy is state aid uh state aid has been uh very interesting the 11 years I've been here we've been going up and down like an EKG this is the first time in my 11 years that we've had cons consecutive increases in state aid uh last year we had approximately about two million increase in state aid this year we had approximately about a $1 millionar increase year over-year in state aid and that really was the driver of the 1.2 1.3 million Delta increase in revenues year-over-year when compared to 22 uh 23 so that's kind of pretty much the overview of the approximately $68 million budget that we're respectfully asking the board and the public to approve I'd just like to take a minute to really thank the board for all their support um I can't thank you enough obviously the public and the taxpayers our own internal staff and our municip municipality and burrow um everyone has been so supportive uh we appreciate here in the business office and we believe we have a good clean tight budget that will uh hopefully provide robust education for our our 31 3200 uh students that's pretty much the overview in a nutshell I don't know if there's any uh questions from the board or Mr savastano if there's any questions from the public any questions from the public Mr savastano no no questions from the public any question from our board okay and I see uh Mr nadw has joined us OU I've been here uh since close to the beginning of the no worries okay thank you so much you so much okay so that concludes that concludes the uh budget hearing portion of the meeting i' now like to take us into the public consent agenda portion of the meeting and I'll move it over to Dr pontano and Dr Hayes thank you L Dr pontano would you like to go first with your report yes I'll go first I had a very nice meeting this week with uh Mr alfano Dr Hayes and Mrs calibri and we discussed the budget and I'm also very proud to uh inform the board that the budget includes some significant educational enhancements there's going to be a significant um invest M of capital in something called Renaissance Learning Renaissance Learning is a kindergarten through grade 12 computer program and it assists the teachers in developing and delivering the curriculum the instruction and assessment and the wonderful thing about Renaissance Learning is it's one platform that connects kindergarten through grades 12 so all of the assessments all of the work that the students do can follow them throughout their entire uh their entire careers when they're in Cliffside Park from kindergarten through grades 12 so we're hoping that's going to give us significant bang for our buck in our test scores and our ability to deliver cutting Ed education also in there is another significant investment and it's an investment in the math program kindergarten through grade eight so there's a new math series called savis math Savas and that's going to cover all of our students from kindergarten to grade eight so yes we have a large budget yes it's very robust but I'm very happy to say that it includes some significant curriculum pieces and just to show that I'm not the only one who is uh you know so happy about these curriculum Pieces Just So that everybody's aware when Cliffside Park submits the budget to the Bergen County office they also have to submit with it a narrative and in that narrative they actually have to explain how the budget supports all of the educational initiatives and all of the state mandates that it's supposed to support and there are two very lovely uh women over there who are the educational Specialists who read the curriculum narrative and that is Sharon and Nora and rarely does someone or does a district get something that's called a Hoin one which means everything was absolutely perfect on the first try and I'm very proud to say that our curriculum Department received the whole in-one meaning that the educational narrative absolutely you know is borne out in the budget and that we are budgeting appropriately for all the curriculum and instructional pieces that we need so I'm very proud of them and I want to thank everyone who worked so hard on the budget and again I'm happy to see such significant investments in educational enhancements in the Renaissance Learning and the savis math aside from all the other programs that we continue with also uh just a couple of things we didn't meet on the preliminary calendar for the 2425 school year we are still in discussions on a couple of issues so that will probably be on the agenda at the next meeting correct Dr Hayes correct Dr pan and uh I want to take this time although I don't know her well but I want to take this time if we look at number 10 Jacqueline St John will be leaving us uh for the purposes of retirement and I really want to thank her for all of the time that she has given uh in Cliffside Park and all of the students that she has affected over the course of her career I want to wish her well and say good luck in the next phase of your life and lastly um if we look at number 44 just for the benefit of anyone reading the agenda because all it says is it's the calendar for 2324 has been revised and the revision to the 2324 calendar includes no school on Tuesday May 28th which uh extends the Memorial Day weekend so those are just a few things I want to again thank uh Miss St John for her time here in Cliffside and thank her on behalf of the parents and the students the entire Cliffside Community for all that she's given to us over the years and I believe that concludes my report Dr Hayes thank you Dr pensano my report is very brief I would just like to the Board of Education in public to know that on behalf of our school district's directors supervisors and principles that our school business administrator Mr Lewis alfano could not have been more generous with his time and his expertise as we went through this seasons and this year's budget process which you know goes all the way back to October November Al's been supportive as any school business administrator could be in helping us build what we need for the 2425 school year and hopefully meet our school our students needs and our Board of education's expectations so again Lou thank you so much you couldn't have been more helpful and we appreciate you thank you Dr Hayes it was a as you know a team effort thanks uh the only um so Board of Education there are 40 Personnel resolutions as you see but the vast majority of them are maternity leaves and maternity Replacements um you see two termination notices in there resolutions 13 and 14 in both cases I want you to know that I talk to Mr fogy and they he he's in line with both of them um I also wanted to congratulate Jackie St John and I want to please point out to the Board of Education two retirements a resolution seven full-time custodian Amil Cola I wish am a fantastic next phase of his life thank him for his service to the school district as a stum and I would like to acknowledge Anna Marin a lunch Aid at PS number six thank Anna for her service to our district wish her well in retirement also going over to the policy section of the agenda um asking you to approve first readings of policies a through b sections I'm sorry policies a policies B along with regulations A and B um there the majority of them are mandated revisions to are existing policy from Strauss s May and again tonight's the first reading lastly five Hib investigations throughout this reporting period four alleged one confirmed in each case support was Prov was provided as needed and remedial action was provided for the confirm T case any questions from the board thank you for your support thank you for being here on a Friday night that concludes the report of the superintendent thank you thank you Dr Hayes and I just want to congratulate Mr Cola on all of his time and efforts on behalf of the cliff side Park Board of Education thank you doctor and I have just a couple of quick quick uh Finance items above and beyond the budget there's really three resolutions respectfully ask the uh board and the public to approve it's resolution 71 is the budget we just went through the approximately $68 million budget resolution 72 is what they call a SDA capital and emerging Grant that's going to help us fund the univ ventilator project at school 6 in combination with our Rod Grant and in combination with our capital reserve and resolution 73 as we also spoke about briefly when we're going through the revenue and Appropriations for the budget we are respectfully uh requesting approval of the award letter resolution for the gym Lobby renovation and that's resolution number 73 that's that's pretty much all I have Dr Hayes and Dr pontiano is there any any reports from the the committee any committee reports no everybody's well uh aware of tonight we'll be approving uh the bid for the the lobby it's been a two-year process um you know number came in higher than we expected what I'm seeing uh uh you know across the country all these bids are coming uh in higher uh you know HVAC uh equipment is all on delayed generator Etc so I think uh it's uh prudent that the Board of Education takes this project on even though it's a little bit above the budget but Lou is able to uh allocate some dollars uh to it uh it's going to be a nice enhancement I know Dr Pento was a a really a force in trying to get this uh Lobby upgraded and uh we're going to have a nice facility once it's all done with the beautiful upgraded gym uh the lobby after the lobby hopefully we can get this weight room uh uh upgraded and uh we'll have probably one of the the better uh uh gymnasiums in uh the southern end of uh Bergen County so uh you know I respectfully asked the board to pass the resolution this evening and uh I be I will be uh if I do get reelected uh assisting uh Lou with the process of it and working closely with Dr Pono and uh in the process of getting this uh moving uh forward and that's pretty much it on my end thank you Mr capano and the good news with that even though it came in incrementally higher than with our architect and engineering firm assessed there was a project um earlier in the year that helped fund this project where it came in significantly lower than with the architect and Engineering so which just swapping so net net we're probably washing so we're we're in pretty good shape um so like to your point Mr capan it's really the opportune time we don't want to wait another you because who knows what supply chain and everything else is going to look like in regard to materials and also the yeah I think I think it's I think it's the right time uh Mr savastano is there any uh questions from the public no questions from the public thank you Mr savastano Mr Alo I may jump back in sure of course I wanted the Board of Education also to and Dr Pantano if you would recognize Irene and say as she's muted but Irene you have anything to say actually I'm sorry just give me one second Mr rainc court has been trying to get on the meeting and he's been texting so I just want to share that with you oh okay and then yes Irene if you have a report for us please share all of the wonderful news from the high school um there's not much going on in the high school with it being colder we can't have many outside events our talent show did we have to postpone it for further date I'm pretty sure one of my other board members mentioned that that we were having one a little due to lack of interest but also um there's scheduling problem because the drama club is hosting a play and all their stuff will be on the stage so we're hoping that will like happen eventually we're probably playing for the next month and not much going on We're just trying to plan the next pep rally and spirit week for the students that's all thank you again for being with us on the Friday night arena thank you of course so we're back to you Mr Alano okay thank you Dr Hayes um if it's okay with the board I'd like to uh have a motion to accept don't moved l Al Alo just before voting begins I just wanted to get some clarity is resolution 43 being postponed or is it being accepted preliminarily with potential additions uh at the next meeting resolution 40 I CL I assume you're talking about resolution 44 for the calendar uh 43 now 43 is the custodial calend that we're that's that's solid that's different that's different from the calar that's SC custodial and then what Dr pontan was was speaking of was the school calendar which we're tweaking I believe correct me if I'm wrong Dr pontano the 28th is the new day that uh so so there's there's three resolutions pertaining to calendars I believe the one Clayton is talking about 43 is the custodial calendar correct and that one just says what days off our custodian will have next year per their contract correct every year per the custodial contract they get X number of holidays that we have to approve so that's only for that bargaining unit number 44 is for the current school year the 23 24 school year which revises the calendar to include Tuesday May 28th as being no school day now what we put off is the 2425 calendar because we're in preliminary discussions about that and that one will be on the next uh agenda so there's really it's a little confusing because there's three calendar issues one the custodians for next year which is which is set and solid one is the revision for this year which is adding the extra day off in h Tuesday May 28th and then what we've put off is the full school calendar for the 2425 school year that'll be next meeting and I I believe when we always discuss in my 20 years here uh the school calendar uh preliminary one comes out from the recommendation of the superintendent and then we have a conversation as a board of education in a work session if I'm not mistaken okay I'll make sure we do that Joe thank you the next meeting is a work session right I think it's a work session our next meeting yeah we have to button that up we have the reorg too so we have to figure out we may have to do it back toback um but we'll as we get draw a little bit closer we'll get a more we'll get more clarity for the board so the reason is because the extra snow days we didn't have that's why we're using them for clarification correct correct Lieutenant thank you we had one extra snow day that we didn't that's the Tuesday right that we're getting back to May 28th that's the recommendation yes yeah okay very good we ready to take a vote oh Mrs Abu yes Mr capano yes Mr Mr garga yes Mr nreu yes Dr pontano yes Mr teraka yes and Mr yanui yes again I'd like to thank the board again for all their support and also coming out on a Friday night um I can I just have a motion to adjourn I'll make a motion thank you second that thank you thank you again everyone have a good weekend and we'll talk uh we'll talk soon okay thank you