good evening and welcome to a regular meeting of the East Windsor Regional School District Board of Education I hope everyone's adjusted to the time change and is not struggling like me written advance notice of this meeting was provided at least 48 hours ago such notice provided the time date and location of this meeting and included the agenda to the extent it was known at that time notice of this meeting has been given in accordance with law minutes of this meeting are being kept by the board secretary and will be made available promptly to any member of the public requesting them from the board secretary at 25A lesen Lane heightstown New Jersey minutes will be provided at cost and in accordance with board policy are there any board members present who believe this meeting to be in violation of the open public meetings act there being none we may proceed in compliance with the fire code of the state of New Jersey I call your attention to the emergency exits for this room which are located at the side and the back please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance now move on to item C can you stand right up here please raise your right hand I state your name I paulia do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of New Jersey that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitu of the state of New Jersey and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the and to the governments established in the United States and this state under the authority of the people and to the governments established in the United States and this state under the authority of the people I state your name I call do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law for the office of a member of a board of education that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law to the office of member of the board of legislation that I am not disqualified as a voter to rs9 4-1 I not disqualified as a to RS I am not disqualified due to any conviction of a crime or offense listed in njsa 18a 12- and that I will faithfully and partially and justly perform all the duties of that office ACC to the best of my ability and I will conratulations can take your seat congratulations and welcome Paul move on to item D having read the materials received I move the agenda be approved as submitted second are there any questions pull the board please M Drake yes Miss Lans yes Miss Murphy yes Miss boli yes Mr weeks yes Miss Patel yes Miss Salter yes Miss Kalia yes Miss larusa yes item e be it resolved that the East Windsor Regional School District May hold two closed sessions at this meeting these closed sessions concern Personnel Hib report of March 11th 2024 superintendent evaluation training M minutes of these closed sessions will be made available to the public when the need for confidentiality no longer exists second there any questions hold the board please miss Drake yes Miss Lans yes Miss Murphy yes Miss boli yes Mr weeks yes Miss Patel yes Miss Salter yes Miss Kalia yes Miss laruso yes now we move on to one of my favorite Parts student representative report thank you last Wednesday the girls volleyball team in class of 2024 hosted annual student versus staff basketball tournament one of the student teams won the tournament and many members of the HHS Community came out to support the players the event was a success by all Ms and we hope to see it happen again in the future about 40 students participated in the annual ski trip this past weekend where they headed up to Vermont to ski for two days the students went to two different mountains this year giving them the opportunity to explore a variety of slopes and test their skills I had the pleasure of going this and can confirm it was a lot of fun we'd like to thank our teachers that chaperon for managing everything so well and we hope this is a tradition that continues for many years to come as we move into a new season HHS spring sports are beginning to pick up this week with baseball tennis and softball starting tonight and the rest of the sports starting on Thursday we wish all the teams good luck as they begin an amazing season on Friday our Spanish National Honor Society hosted a school dance with the DJ lights and food in celebration of World Language week over 100 people attended and the event was a big success Additionally the Spanish German and French honor societies hosted their annual NHS induction ceremony two weeks ago where approximately 40 students were inducted into their respective honor societies on the weekend of March 3rd robotics kicked off their competition season in Hatboro Pennsylvania they took home the prize of the autonomous award setting off an amazing Benchmark for the rest of the season we are excited to see how they place in the upcoming competitions last week Deca members also competed in Atlantic City at scdc which is their state level competition approximately 50 students competed with four students qualifying for Nationals in Anaheim California Andrew Roberts qualified by placing third with his Independent Business Plan event Sonia Aurora Jasmine nales and Alicia rajad also qualified taking home fifth place for their Community giving project we are proud to see their hard work recognized and wish them the best of luck at the next level of competition the members of FBLA will also be competing in Atlantic City tomorrow and Wednesday in their state competition based on their work this year we are certain they will bring back good news an upcoming opportunity for the business students is a business Symposium on March 21st the department has arranged four guest speakers for successful in the bus world to come in and speak to students about their careers there will be a Q&A as well as a breakout session so students can closely interact with the speaker of their choosing the Symposium will take place from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. and is open to Deca and FBLA members as well as any business students that receive a teacher invitation this is a great opportunity for our future business professionals and we hope to see them take advantage of it for the past several weeks the students of heightstown have been going through the process of course scheduling for the next school year students submitted their requests through the grade portal and are meeting oneon-one with their counselors to ensure they are on the right track as the underclassmen pick their classes for next year our seniors are taking a different route to prepare for their Futures while decision day is still up in the air they're preparing as much as they can by going on college tours and attending admitted students days many seniors have already committed to schools such as Princeton upen Ruckers tcj Rider and UMD as well as many many more we hope to provide you with more updates as we get closer to finalizing our decisions the juniors are also taking important steps to prepare for graduation by sitting for the NJ GPA test this week today was the first day of testing and it will continue through Thursday they will partake in two days of math testing and two days of English we thank Miss riy for planning everything very well as the first day went very smoothly the rest of the student body is enjoying their delayed openings as they are able to arrive at 10:30 each day this week this past Saturday heightstown hosted our first sat that use the new digital format the updated test is two hours long instead of four and is adaptive to each student as they move through the sections the questions adjust to their level some students found this software to be slightly difficult to use but others seem to like the convenience of a shorter testing time on the technical side there were no issues with the new test on February 27th a group of heightstown students attended the first strategic planning meeting many students expressed that they felt their concerns about the school were heard and will be taking advantage of the next meeting on Thursday to give more feedback we'd like to conclude our report by inviting you all to come and watch the drama club's production of SpongeBob musical the club will be running previews tomorrow and Thursday during the school day for the high school and both Ana and I are excited to see it on Saturday there is a meet the characters event at 11: a.m. which would allow families to come and meet the cast of the production we hope to see you guys at the shows the musical will have shows running March 21st to the 24th and we hope you are all able to come and see their hard work that concludes our report for tonight thank you very much thank you so much and um I think I speak on behalf of everyone that we encourage any students that want to come to the strategic planning meeting this Thursday at 6 pm to definitely attend does anyone have any questions we'll move on to the presentation so good evening everyone um each time of this year this is when we kind of engage in the process of sharing a proposed budget for the upcoming school year uh just to provide a little background we we typically um begin this process in the fall where we engage with members of of our district leadership team in terms of trying to assess needs uh obviously to support our our academic and educational program but you know also evaluating the the things that kind of underg and support that whether it's facilities uh specific programs uh equipment for uh staff and students um but also Personnel so we engaged in that process and um tonight we're going to twofold I'm going to share a little bit about um what I believe or what we believe are some areas to focus on to support our our academic program and some other things and then Paul I'll I'll pass things over to Paul to kind of really get into more of the uh numbers right to talk about how we are responsibly kind of preparing the budget adhering to some state requirements and ensuring that we are uh good stewards of the taxpayer dollar so I'm just going to just quickly I'm not going to spend too much time on these issues I I'll talk a little bit more when we get to some areas of focus but just want to provide some reminders in terms of where we are this uh this year so when we talk about a budget um you know it represents a number of different things but ultimately we want to make sure uh there are some key areas that we focus on in terms of the meaning behind it right so for us the budget obviously is a planning tool um because it should reflect we talked about strategic planning um there was a correlation there because it should reflect our values as a school district obviously it enables us it forces us actually to Prior prioritize our resources um we also have to look at contingencies you know the wh ifs just to make sure that we are prepared um as I shared before we we need to be fiscally responsible and we also need to make sure that we are considering safeguards uh buffers so for us um you know our mission this is a a kind of the heartbeat of our mission when we just talk about you know what we represent as a school district as an educational institution um you know just a few words to pull out right we want to create a safe inclusive environment we want to focus on best practices want to obviously strengthen the academic and social emotional skills of our students when we think about that Continuum uh as students exit us we just heard from our student representatives in terms of where some of our our graduating seniors are looking to to to move forward to hey it could be an Ivy League institution it may be a trade school it may be the military we want to make sure that our students are well rounded and prepare to kind of make that transition um after their their their secondary educational experience and really looking at the K8 I could say pre8 uh experience in our school district is serving as that Foundation to adequately prepare students so when they get to the high school U they can kind of navigate and kind of hone in on their talents and interests as they're pursuing adulthood so just some go areas in our district we you know we're in the process of of determining where we're going from a goal standpoint but just a few pieces that we have here that undergirds that uh mission statement and we have some core goals or fixed goals or long-term goals and I'm not going to read them um you know all the way verbatim but I'll just highlight what they represent so obviously the first one speaks to the notion of a student graduating from our school district with the necessary skills right to prepare themselves for uh postsecondary educational or work rated opport opportunities the second goal talks about the importance of foundational literacy skills and looking to uh have our students serve as uh skilled readers by third grade um we you know we begin to transition to kind of reading to learn versus learning to read we recognize postco there's been some some challenges for some of our students in terms of the developmental um experiences they needed to have but that's still a focus for us obviously the third goal um this is just a we're talking about creating opportunities for all students to uh reach their potential we recognize there are some of our students Based on data student performance data who are underperforming and uh we want to keep a keen lens on that to ensure that that Gap um does not widen uh and I'll highlight a few there where we have our current inform of multilingual Learners our economically disadvantaged students as well as our special education students so just ensuring that students are getting what they need uh to to move throughout the Continuum that's a keen area of focus for us the fourth and fifth goals the fourth goal just talks about ensuring that our professional development plan and opportunities are aligned with the district's uh vision mission and goal so um that was put in place to just ensure that there's an element of uh continuity as a relates to you know what we're providing as tools and support to our Educators to ensure that the in line with where we're looking to kind of have our students move um fifth goal just talks about providing safe and secure environments obviously we can talk about the physical safety of a school environment but you know equally as important will be the psychological emotional safety that students need to feel when they leave their their homes in the morning obviously you know in recent years in the digital age in the 21st century uh that's also been something that we need to provide a sense of Education to our to our students but also us as adults in the ever evolving world of technology uh we recognize that that can be a vulnerability in terms of uh what we need to be mindful of um we added a actually two more goals so I we talked about our social emotional um skills that we want to connect to learning for our students but also life success and then we added a a goal in recent years that was connected to the fact that we wanted to make sure that our our district decisions uh were a reflection of the diversity within our community and it really goes back to the notion of an inclusive environment where all students have opportunities um and access to to high quality educational experiences but also you know connected to that as recognizing that in a diverse community and diverse School District uh our teachers our staff need to also be equipped um to address the various needs and have a sense of cultural competency we're dealing with our students so to underg guard those or support those core goals each year we been establishing Focus goals which are short ter shorter term typically one-year goals that kind of bolster springboard reinforce and support those those core goal areas so for this year we have three um Nicole referenced one earlier which is the strategic planning process U that we're partnering with New Jersey school boards with this year um and that is really to kind of just take stock in terms of where are we and to determine where we're going as it relates to creating a fiveyear u cycle and action plan in terms of getting there so we we had our first meeting um about two weeks ago we scheduled a Mee on Thursday for our strategic planning meeting number two first meeting was really focused on kind of areas of strength and areas of need the the next one will be kind of looking to kind of crystallize a sense of where we're looking to go and identifying some areas um to kind of prepare us to solidify those gold are areas for moving forward but this is really focused on the fact that um you know recognizing the importance of really engaging the community having stakeholder feedback voice um so you know there's a collective sense of you know what we value and where we're looking to go second Focus goal was uh leveraging the uh Equity audit that the district engaged in last year uh and really kind of trying to to leverage some of those recommendations to determine uh how we want to navigate uh some of those areas as we move forward so um I've shared this before but the the equity audit was framed around kind of actually framed around five domains uh the first one was structur systems resources the second one was culture Community um the third one was equity and the educated Workforce fourth area was professional learning and personal growth and the fifth uh domain was curriculum instruction and learning so we have a district Equity team um we we actually been engaging in kind of taking that feedback and leveraging some meetings with our um teachers recently and um we're looking to kind of determine how we want to attack each of those domains one by reflecting in terms of what do we you know where do we see ourselves in each of those domains and let's continue to build upon those areas and then also identifying some areas where we need to potentially grow and maybe focus on um to be somewhat more intentional moving forward and the third goal was attached to professional development but specifically Under the Umbrella of our multilingual Learners um now right now we have about 50% of our population student population is Hispanic we have about 20 just over 20% uh of our students are eligible for uh some level of um support Under the Umbrella of English not in their their their primary language so we recognize the need right we want to make sure that our teachers have those tools and they feel a sense of efficacy as it relates to addressing the needs of students I always say that if a student does not speak English as their primary language that is not a learning deficit for us and we want to make sure that we uh Poise to still ensure that they are grasping and and excelling academically so we engaged um teachers primarily under the bilingual ESL umbrella but not just there in a three-day intensive professional learning experience uh at the beginning of the school year and we've been kind of embedding and and you know following up on that throughout the year but that was uh based on the feedback that we received I think teachers were were were somewhat thirsty for that as it relates to engaging in some best practices to support our multilingual Learners so a couple of highlights I'm going to transition into kind of what we um identified as some areas that we needed to address for the current school year so just a quick look back uh so these are just some areas that we we identified last year supporting our preschool environments uh from a speech and language standpoint we also advocated for a preschool social worker in recent years we've been noticing some increased um preschool referrals to the chel study team to just ensuring that we were equipped to address those those request those needs U behavior is another area in the earlier grades where we uh have identified some uh need for some additional support So increasing our team of behavior bcbas we were looking to engage in some uh tutorial support um and that was you know we we decided to move forward with Varsity who provides some one toone tutoring beyond the school day but they also provide a pretty robust collection of resources and On Demand support for students as well uh just some building and ground support just in terms of some staffing position floa uh custodians that was just to ensure that we were adequately supporting our buildings from a cleanliness standpoint and uh last year we were preparing an you know um appropriating resources for our salary uh increases connected to negotiations last year we were in the process of concluding negotiations with ewe our teacher group in addition uh we supported the music program which is really based on growth and participation uh our Strings program has been growing in recent years um so we kind of moved towards increasing the support to alleviate the string teacher from having to work in two buildings we also supported our middle school program musically uh to ensure that the scheduling of uh lessons was structured in a manner that did not provide situations where students were missing you know core academic coursework um we wanted to make sure that the schedule did not have to create um a difficult Choice difficult decision for students so we did support some additional music teachers at the at the middle school which appears to be working out quite well uh we increased our campus security U by two I think we're still in the process of actually filling one of those roles um um special education surface as a need at the high school as well as a chemistry teacher we did add an athletic trainer who primarily works at the middle school but also provides support to our high school AFF program and that's been it's been a welcoming addition um we were looking at last year um holding in on math so I'll start with the bottom we we uh advocated implemented a St developer which is really a teacher coach in essence at the middle school to provide some additional uh embedded support for our Math teachers last year from a budgetary standpoint we also asked the board to support some additional Math teachers on at three in particular and that was focused on uh one um looking to see how we could address some individual needs of students whether it's through smaller class sizes um but that was something that we we definitely wanted to shine a light on providing some support for students under the math umbrella at the high at the middle school excuse me especially in our course one and two and three um classes that are more heterogeneous classes and we wanted to make sure the students were um and teachers were supported in terms of meeting the needs to those students just some facility upgrades this is kind of twofold this is really a combination of what was budgeted during the 202 22 23 and also current school year the difference when we talk about uh budget and um facilities typically the the projects are completed at the end of the school year and sometimes transition into the next school year so sometimes it can be difficult to uh determine kind of which year it's it's plotted in so first few items here so G&R WCB mhk um um and that yeah including the parking lot of mhk they were actually part of the 2223 budget the projects were completed during the summer of 2023 so we just finished those up so like those are like fresh in my mind in terms of um the headache that they caused but but you know for us when we talk about um twofold one we do have some agent buildings especially in heightstown not limited to heightstown but our Heights Town builds older so therefore we need to make sure that we are creating environments that we think are welcoming and conducive to learning so we've made a concerted effort in recent years to um upgrade things both from an aesthetic standpoint but also and I'll give you an example you know G&R when I first arrived here walked in that main hallway and it was so dark um so we engaged in some upgrades the lighting um some case work within classrooms uh and I'm pleased to say that in about a fiveyear window we've actually upgraded every classroom space at G&R still work to be done there but in in in addition to that we've also been looking to uh focus on air quality um as well so we've been upgrading our HVAC equipment U we've kind of been doing twofold so those phases have been pretty successful the work at mhk in terms of the renovations that a lot of that work was done internally with our maintenance department I'm pleased to say we have a a pretty skilled team who uh enable us to fortunately work on some projects internally obviously when we have volume larger projects our team's not going to be able to do that but there are some projects that we could undergo uh obviously the mhk parking lot was a pretty big uh pretty big job last year twofold one the surface just was old um and it just not not great condition it was only but so much patching we could engage in we also needed build some additional parking spaces so that was a successful project uh transitioning into the last three bullets these are kind of like the the primary um projects that will occur during the uh tail end of this school year transitioning into the summer of 2024 we will uh continue the renovation process at G&R there are some large spaces like the cafeteria that we need to hone in on there'll be some additional HVAC upgrades um that building one area that we do need to address at G&R we just walked the building uh last week teen in Judy Jenna our hallways um although we've completed our classroom upgrades we've got some hallway work to do but this summer we'll focus on primarily on some large spaces uh within the school but also HVAC just kind of completing that work um a high school security entrance so five of our six schools in the district are designed in a way where when you enter the school through the main entrance there's a I guess you can call it like a a contained area um the high school does not have that so the high school as most of you are familiar you you uh there's a security booth which is probably about 25t away from the main entrance so you know doors are locked you get buzzed in but then you're in the building we believe that we need to have a safer structure there so we've got about four different designs um the design I think we're going to move forward with will be kind of taking what was once the principal's office um and he's no longer in it it's funny we when we first suggested this model the principal wasn't really happy about that proposal but he he embraced it we didn't even have to do it but he decided to to to go with it and uh he ended up moving his office so we're going to take that office we're going to take a piece of it um which is now occupied by an assistant principle we're going to convert some of that and create a little bit of an additional walkway but I say all that to say we're going to create um an enclosed environment when visitors are approach you know coming to the high school whether it's to have an appointment drop something off or whatever the case may be to limit uh individuals from kind of walking right into the hallway um when entering the school last item is the auditorium lighting upgrade uh this past year we engaged in upgrading all the stage lights at the high school and uh nice job definitely notice the difference especially when we have our Productions and performances the continuation of that will transition to the house lights uh and the ceiling uh and we're also going to install an updated projector structure in there as well but that will take place this summer Personnel just a few items under the Personnel umbrella so we are going to increase or we're proposing to increase our guidance counsel support uh we have a couple of counsels at the the K2 level who are transitioning between WCB and emk we're going to add an additional counsel which will alleviate the need for folks to travel uh we believe that you know one of the areas that we've noticed is that our students that have been transitioning to us especially at our earlier grades do um need some some additional support under the social emotional umbrella both proactively but also reactively we're going to try to hone in on the proactive approaches and we believe by adding councel that will that will support that process I have an elementary special education teacher on here this is really just based on program there's a couple of factors that we're we're we're always considering one we want to minimize sending students out of District um obviously we would prefer to educate all of our children in our home schools sometimes based on the individual needs of our students we need to explore other options and obviously we'll continue to do that but we also want to make sure that programmatically we're exploring ways in which we we can maintain our students here as an option uh within the district so we're looking to increase uh I believe one of our uh multiple disabilities classrooms uh just adding a teach us to support one of those environments um middle school guidance Council similar Dynamic right now we are looking to propose that each grade level has two councils assigned to it right now the way we have it configured it's not always the case um so we're dealing with about 400 or so students per grade level once again we want to create a sense of heightened Community heightened support we believe that um increasing our guidance counselors will will contribute uh to a sense of culture and community at the middle school volatile age group students are going through a lot of changes both uh emotionally developmentally physically so we recognize it can be a bit of a a roller coaster ride and we need to ensure that our counselors can serve as a component to uh to steady our students during that transition language arts this is really just based on on need and numbers just in terms of ensuring that our class sizes are appropriate special education teachers I think based on need at the at the middle school level uh I have special education twice on here education education assistance really really reinforcing that um but this is this is one of those areas um we are I talked about not wanting to recommend that students leave the district um and this is this is a tricky dynamic because I also get worried sometimes that this can come across as being kind of a a Panacea but you know one of the strategies that we sometimes engage in is supporting students individually and once again we typically would do that if we believe that that will alleviate uh the need to to move towards recommending that a student may need to leave the district uh to go to a special education environment out outside of here so we we are looking to um you know increase our team of of of educational assistance but uh that's just something that we believe we want to do to support classroom environments but also individual student needs I have transportation dispatch on here really just as this is just part of the I would say the growth and report of our transportation department you've heard we talk about our transportation department previously you'll hear me talk about them again this enables us to have someone that can provide logistical support which is an obvious need uh but also someone who can drive a bus Which is also a de so therefore it just enables us to have some some backup and some flexibility uh to support the needs of the of the department uh this is some some summer work um um for the summer of 2025 so this is proposed projects capital reserve projects that will be connected to the proposed budget but this work would not break ground until the summer of 2025 which makes it feel weird it's like it's part of the 2425 budget but we'll be talking about this next year um so a few things one highlight uh in terms of you know the h faac upgrades that we've been uh focused on throughout the district the one building that we have not attacked in the way that we would um expect has been high school large building uh old building just an older building to some degree so um we applied for a rod Grant uh through the the uh New Jersey Department of Education we are awarded a grant for about $6 million we in order to to get the grant you need to show show that you can fund the project so we're going to ask the board to support an $8 million investment the Department of Education will support um $6 million to that project talking to Paul that will and when we complete that project I'll say about 80% of our high school actually our instructional spaces I I'll frame it this way probably about 100% of our instructional spaces will be upgraded there'll still be a few other areas that we need to address but but but overwhelmingly our instructional spaces should be uh in in a upto-date modernized um hbac standpoint scoreboard so we have a scoreboard on here which has been an issue that has been kind of on and off kind of like the scoreboard for the past few years so our scoreboard in the stadium has some kind of issue that we've been trying to figure out we thought it was external we thought it was an electrical issue we thought it was a wiring issue I think we've determined that is is actually the equipment itself so we're asking to to move forward with a new scoreboard um it's been a few you know few not so proud moments where we're in the heat heated Battle of a game and then the scoreboard blanks out for a moment and then it comes back but it's time we need to move forward with a with a new scoreboard Transformers on here so just these are things that you know we don't really talk about until they don't work appropriately so we about three Transformers um that that we need they're really uh you know crucial to our operation as as it relates to ensuring that we have power to buildings we've got three Transformers that are aging uh we had an issue a couple of years ago um connected to one of the lines associated with the transform we repaired it but it's it's is something that I'd rather address now so therefore we're not in a place where one of them are not functioning and then we're stuck so we're asking to to upgrade three Transformers we have a playground black top replacement at eel mcnight school this is really just um a wear and tear you know we've patched it and patched it again uh it it just needs to be uh updated so we're proposing to get that replaced uh G&R so G&R uh has a preschool pod uh population amm program um as well as a uh self-contained settings there so we do have some playground equipment in in a little area that um we've questioned the developmental appropriateness of the playground equipment and also the location it's probably not the best location because it's not really connected to a playground or field it's kind of NE l in a little Courtyard so we're looking to move that um into an area that we think is more appropriate more conducive to that age group that population but also having some equipment that we think is um just more tailored to to to their needs but also who they are as three four and five year olds um the last item on here is is something connected to the White House so the White House is as a as a an old house very old house that has great character we are just questioning uh the functionality of the White House so it's an old building it needs a lot of work internally and I think we've determined that investing in that moving forward to any large degree probably would not be a wise use of money um so we are proposing that we find a new home so currently in a White House we have our Central registration but we also house our buildings and grounds department on the second floor we used to we actually used to house our bilingual yes so our language department on the first we actually move them we transition them over here to the to the administration building but we don't have enough room here to bring everyone over so we are in the process of determining um should we purchase something should we lease something but we need to figure out an exit strategy to to transition ourselves away from the White House in the next one to two years and we need to kind of seriously pursue uh some options uh within the community so with that said I'm going to turn things over to Mr Todd thank you Mr Daniels I always I always like our budget presentation superintendent gets to come in and kind of paint the The Rosy picture for next year and then we send in the ba say okay Paul what is it going to cost us now so we're going to talk a little bit about some numbers so let's talk a little bit about a process first so we start building our budget in October internal development is usually the months of October and November uh we use our financial accounting system online and all the Departments go in put in their budget requests we use zerob based budgeting and we ask everyone to account for their budget each year so it's just not like whatever number you had last year at 2% that's the number you next year we actually ask for all the Departments to itemize to the best of their ability you know as I tell people a budget is a guess but we want to make educated guesses and we document that so we start that in October November usually when we get to December we close that process down and then we start central interviews and and meetings to talk with each of the Departments about the budget Quest that they have and then in the new year January February we start having those conversations with the board kind of where we stand um so we get school and departmental built budgets also the largest part of our budget is our is our Personnel we're a labor intensive industry we all know that so a big part of our budget is our position control report where we document each FTE where they are what they do how much so we have a pretty solid data driven budget by the time we get to this point Sorry Wrong Way all right so we'll be accepting our audit shortly and we'll have our Auditors in and we can talk about the financial position of the district historically we've been in very good position and 2023 is not going to be an exception to that so we're only allowed to maintain 2% of our budget so when you look at our budgets which is going to be about 126 million you're only allowed to save 2% as a rainy day fund which is about two weeks worth of cash if you think about that so imagine in your own personal finances is if the most you can ever have in all the money you know you can stash away anywhere two two weeks worth of cash that that's basically how um to the bones the state makes us you know run so uh we have to be very careful with our budget we have to make sure that if we have any needs coming in the given year that that's budgeted because we do not have a large windfall to fall back on uh you know the proverbial roof caves in we just don't have those kind of funds um when you look at our Enterprise funds our KidCare cafeteria have been you know very favorable for us they're they're not a financial draw on the district and they provide great services to our communities uh we can now add to that a few years ago we went to our self-insured health benefit fund this year was our last year was our first full year and uh we had very positive results and instead of giving you know a lot of money to the insurance company to keep his profits we're able to hold on to those funds so in case we have a bad claim year and claims run higher we get to offset that with funds from the good years so we're definitely kind of in the driver's seat now whereas before we were kind of behooving to the insurance company when they would just come in every year you just know 10% increase at least 10 15% so uh we have not seen a raise in rates now in a few years so that's definitely something we're very proud of and also we have sufficient uh Capital reserves to continue our building renovations Mr Daniels went on you saw what we've done over the past couple years and what we even continue to do so right now our building uh Renovations program is running anywhere between 10 to 15 million a year depending on what's Happening so this year it's more closer to the 10 million Mark so we have a very active summer every year so just to get into some of the numbers here's a a little historical view of our budget breakdown over the past few years and the amount of inre increases of you know how large the budget increas year toe I would say the vast majority of those changes has really been driven by uh fluctuations in capital projects so when you see an increase you know 19% in one year next year we only go to 1% that's because you know one year we not only did get a lot of state aid but we could have also increased our capital reserve our building projects a lot um but this year we have a pretty flat overall budget it's only up about 1.2% Revenue breakdown I mean we only get our revenue from one or two places we all know this number one unfortunately the largest share falls on our taxpayers and that's the local Levy which next year will be at about $ 71.5 million our total state aid will be about $ 48.8 million that number has grown substantially over the past five years I think 2016 was about $18 million so we our state aid has grown somewhere around 165% over the past 5 years so we've definitely definitely needed that we were severely underfunded so when you were talk when you read the newspaper where the governor has been taking money away from the overfunded districts to give to the underfunded districts we were definitely the poster child for an underfunded district and state AIDS up 165% not too many schools can can you know say that so even though we've had an incredible rise in our state aid we kind of knew this year was going to be our final year the governor said he was going to have a seven-year march to fully funding the formula so we knew that was going to be this year we're hoping for a little bit more money than we actually got we're we're hoping for a million to2 million dollars and it looks like we pretty much got flat funded this year um I'll go into those reasons in a second but you can see those increases on the right hand side year toe the state aid has been growing pretty substantially so where did our money go so we have uh all right so we have the adequacy budget so our formula is kind of broken down is like a calculation to a calculation to a calculation so let's talk a little bit about our adequacy budget okay so right now we have an adequacy budget and then also a local fair share so every year that that adequacy budget goes and what the adequacy budget is it's basically a formula which they created about 20 years ago and they gave you an allotment and they said okay you get a superintendent 1ba so many administrators and basically they figure out what it should cost or what they're going to pay for a district of our size and that's what the adequacy budget is and then you can see the local uh fair share and that's the the state's way of saying this is what we think you should put towards that standard district and you can see through the years how those percents have increased through the years now you'll notice in this last year while our adequacy budget grew you'll see our fair share jumped extremely uh higher than expected extremely higher than we've seen in in any given year uh and we're going to get into that right now so when they look at your fair share they look at two things the first one is equalized valuations which is a little different than your net valuation or taxable valuation your your net taxable evaluation is what's on record at the tax collector this is what's tied to your tax bill that number could be based on a 1970 evaluation what the state does is they go through and they actually take actual market sales of houses and they actually see what the house is selling for compared to what it's actually evaluated on and they give you a current market value that's exactly what the equalized valuation is and you can see we've had some nice growth in that over the past few years this past year we had a really big growth and then also we had a very big growth unlike some other years in the actual District income and that comes from the New Jersey Department of Taxation basically they just look at your ZIP code they add up W2s and that's how they kind of come to that number so you'll see over this past year this is something we all know East Windsor and heightstown it's a great place to live property values are are going up District uh the incomes in our neighbors are going up extremely well so according to the state they feel that we should be paying a little more towards our to support our schools and that calculated about you know 1.4 million of almost $2 million that we thought we were going to get this year uh the state now said we that 1.4 we think you because of these factors you can pay a little more towards your schools okay here's the uh the general fund over the past couple years this is also another point of Pride over the past five years as we've been getting those huge increases we've been contributing back to our to the levy so we have not taken all that money and spent it we actually contribute a piece for that for uh tax relief so off the bat the state says you're allowed to you know maximum without adjustments to increase your Levy by 2% and you can see just over the previous three years we're well below that because we're taking those large uh tax uh increases I mean state aid increases and giving them back for tax relief so you'll see those numbers substantially under 2% and here's a little detail we had five years we've given back a quarter million with those particular fiscal years one year we actually gave back half a million so really our budget should be somewhere about 1 .7 million higher than what it is now but it's not because we actually um gave that money back so we like to say that we have accumulated about $1.75 million in tax relief into our budgets which you know you always see how they estimate Federal program so over the next 10 years we're going to contribute somewhere around 17 and a. half million to to uh tax relief and that that's not something a lot of districts can say so not only has our budget grown we've obviously hired the resources which we've been underfunded for years but I think this is a big nod to giv the tax relief that our community so sorely needed this is just a very high level summary of the budget breakdown actually everyone has a packet in your hands with a lot more detail but this is a high level summary of the of where we are in the different categories as you can tell when you add up salaries and benefits you're you're talking 70% of our budget just in those two lines alone uh tuition that's out of District special ed tuition um pretty steady which it's another area it's a point of Pride I I know a lot of colleagues and a lot of districts from around the state you know they're looking at 10 to 15% tuition increases a year you know we do a pretty good job of managing who we send out so when you see you know Mr Daniel's talking about special ed teachers and those special ed AIDS we're trying as best as possible to keep you know students not only we feel that's better for them but it's also better for our budget because we feel we can more economically you know service our students that way rather than sending them for an outside placement and there's our capital budget so you can see like I said it fluctuates you know pretty good from year to year so we're down about 2 $2.2 million in facilities from year to year insurance and all the other items so just a summary expense points of interest Mr Daniel went over our new FTE so even though we're flat funded I think it's a pretty good thing to show we have about 10 new FTE built into this budget that's a that's a pretty good talking point uh we also uh have developed kind of a set it and forget it with our technology we have programs in place that as our technology ages we're able to replace it before it gets too old so we have uh new laptops new iPads coming every year for all our students so we're very proud of that and also we have a pretty good handle on our facilities and we have a I think in the past eight years we've done about 40 facility projects if you can believe that or not so every year we just add another five or so onto that list and it just keeps on growling all right so here we go so how are our taxes shared so we're a Regional School District so unlike most uh School District we just have a single town we have to split out the tax Lobby and how we do that here you can do it one of two ways number one's enrollment the other way is based on equalized valuations which we talked about a little earlier and we get that report from the state so this is probably the biggest cause if you will when you see some fluctuation especially in the heightstown tax rate because their equalized value isn't as high as these wind are so just a little fluctuation on their part uh can make a difference so anyway this is how the uh tax levy has been split out over the past four years so as we come up you can see the share has shifted slightly over to swins are a little more than the past few years so here's our tax impact so when we quote a tax rate it's that's you know dollars and cents the tax rate and it's based on a $100 of assessed evaluation and then you'll see for both East Windor and heightstown for the past two years those are the average assessed evaluations and we get that right from the tax collector's office from each of the municipalities so as you you look at that number you say hey Paul that's nice but that's not my house it might be more it might be less so if you kind of want to figure out what your tax bill is going to look like just for the schools take what you think your house is assess that divide that number by 100 and then multiply it by one of those tax rates and that's going to be your approximate tax bill for next year so next year we're looking at the average home for East Winds will'll be paying about 95 and you'll see you know because of that switch in the evaluation and the split um the taxes and Heights down on the average uh assessed home is actually going to go down about $150 so where do we go from here so this is you know when you read this is the preliminary adoption it's not final so we're going to preliminarily adopt tonight we have to send our budget in for County review to the 20 20th so that doesn't mean necessarily we're done or everything is Frozen at this point we can continue having conversations actually we're a lot different than municipalities if we were a Township like East Windsor when they set their budget they can't do any budget transfers for 10 months so they pretty much have to be spot on with their budget when they pass it they're locked in they they can't change anything for 10 months uh we're not in that situation so even though we're going to preliminarily adopt tonight and we're going to have a public hearing coming up that doesn't mean we can't change our budget between now and that public hearing and then even after then so I just you know people get a little nervous when they're ready to pass this because they think this is our only opportunity to to have a conversation on positions or needs um that that's not the case the point of having a detailed budget is that when those needs come up we know it's already in there so then we can kind of trade Hey listen we need this new position however we have this position we haven't been able to fill we think we can do it a different way we kind of horse trade like that so this is an ongoing uh conversation all year so after today we're going to send it to the county it'll be approved by the 20th we have to go there's a hearing window where they give you the first and the last date which this year is April 24th through May 7th is when you can actually adopt your budget and then we just kind of look when we have a regular recurring board meeting so for us that's going to be on April 29th so on April 29th we will actually have our our uh public adoption which will be very much a conversation like this actually a lot shorter we're not necessarily going to go through this um presentation again even though we have a queued up ready to go it'll just be if anyone has any final questions and with that any questions hi thank you for the presentation um just a clarification I'm looking at the page seven of 16 Health Services uh there was an increase from 46,000 to 743 th000 can you tell me what did we purchase or what services we rendered yep so we had a conversation this year when we went through when they looked at where things were being coded if you actually look in the special services area 110 219 you'll see a big decrease so really that we just reclassified from one line to another thank you I have some questions um first the $6 million Rod grant that is excellent that's great news um if we do Transition from the White House will we be getting rid of the White House would that be part of the plan yes it it will become well you know what as of today that would be the plan because right now we've been racking our brains about Alternatives and all the Alternatives speak to significant upgrades um accessibility compliance and it's just financially I don't think it's worth it so um that would be the the goal to remove it and create some additional parking and we compared the budgets from this year to the proposed for next year are we coming in on budget for this year or actuals higher yeah usually you know we have pretty good budget control and our costs have been pretty reasonable so we're we're going to be you know under budget I would say absolutely just two more um it went by fast but the salaries were flat pretty flat but we're increasing headcount are we expecting decreases somewhere or yeah usually there's you know we have people to turn over when you know people retire so there's going to be some breakage in that and this is you know kind of the sad State and this is not only us but you know sometimes it's it's difficult to find a replacement so there are periods that you know we go with a vacancy which we fill with the sub from ESS you know either a daily sub or a long-term sub so there's usually some Breakin there as well so and last one do we have a a list of all the capital type projects that we're projecting the next few years what we have and I can share with you we when we took on three big projects that was um really our HVAC overall we we had U an HVAC analysis done by an engineer about three years ago and he came up with a huge $60 million estimate of what it was going to cost to upgrade our HVAC because we're kind of at that point where we're starting to see significant failures like if you were at WCB prior to the summer the wing that we did pretty much that Library area out of those six classrooms I think five of them had temporary air because they're just they're time to be replaced they the units are 20 years old and time to go so I have an analysis of that I can I can share with you and also we had a a breakdown of both G&R and WCB in phases you know each about seven to eight years um that's only a drop in the bucket as far as facility goes as I tell anyone no matter where you put the construction shovel you're going to be right I mean our needs far exceed just those three things um you know you hear Mr Daniels talking about wanting to put a you know pre prek program the state funded prek program we just don't have space for that uh we need to have that conversation we're a sports mad town and we do not have enough sports facilities for all of our teams I mean you know during the winter this is the uh practice arena for our wrestling wrestling team so every night our our custodians come in they clear out the tables and our kids are wrestling in this room where they were eating three hours ago uh we do not have enough you know sports facilities I'm sorry um so yeah so we we we have a lot of needs and just when you look at some of our facil they're just they're just age they just need to be updated hi I have a few questions all right so my first question is the electrical buses are they in the budget for for transportation no because they're free nice yeah so we we received you know a million dollar Grant to to purchase the buses $1.2 million to purchase you know for buses um as a matter of fact in fact one of those uh Mr Daniels talked about the um electrical Transformers one of those Transformers is going into the into the transportation yard for our EV buses okay thank you all right the next question is the White House um if if the the idea is to tear it down possibly for a parking would that be shared parking for both schools WCB and G&R or would it just be for GNR have not determined that yet I mean it's closest to G&R both schools need parking okay next question the playground if the playground for the um the younger students is moved um has there been discussion with the teachers as far as where it's going to be moved because from what I remember I think that it was closer for the for the teachers to bring the kids outside that one particular uh playground you know any decision we make the teachers will be a part of that conversation there actually been conversations going back probably at least a year um uh so I know teachers have been involved in that right now you're right the current location is convenient because it is in close proximity but there's some issues in terms of surface ground surface and just a few other things so um the teachers definitely are are uh in there's no concern regarding the placement actually I think we've had some suggestions from teachers in terms of where we're actually going to situate the the uh the proposed playground okay and then one more question so when um back during uh the pandemic right when we had remote learning there were some issues with like the Wi-Fi going down and different things did that did the electrical Transformers contribute to that at all no no that that was uh a couple different things at its core that was a combination of having a collection of Chromebooks that were different varying ages so in terms to zoom there was some issues connected to zoom and Chromebooks that were a little older you know we we kind of you know so that was a lesson learned so as we scrambled to kind of make sure that we could maintain some continuity of Education we we Leverage The the devices that we had at our hands right so we learned from that um and no so we we are engaging in some other efforts to ensure that uh ju bandwidth is appropriate um I was talking to Tina and I think jaui and J the other day talking a little bit about um strengthening and controlling some of the connectivity between buildings to almost have interet structure within buildings from a communication standpoint in recent years we've also created an additional Hub in terms of um internet accessibility so like the high school typically was kind of like the main point of um internet access for the district we also created another Hub at the middle school so so therefore we just wanted to kind of have a backup right so therefore if there was an issue with the the high school we could transfer to the Middle School to Ser as that so there there's some behind the scenes infrastructure network uh related projects is a you know the dark fiber project is the one that we will be moving forward with next year that's part of the technology budget the established technology budget thank you I have a just one other comment um not to make the White House a Hot Topic tonight but um that intersection is already kind of nightmarish and to put a parking lot right there close to it with either an additional access RightWay um I'm hoping that whatever planning happens with that you're engaged with the town to to review what other possible uses that could be or what other access to the school might be planned well well anytime we engage in a project you know we involve our Architects and just to be clear that the the the White House is already attached to a parking lot and it's not a large facility so we're probably going to gain minimal parking space it'll be the existing structure we're not looking to reconfigure the park the existing parking lot we're just looking to determine what we can do with the space so um look and and I'll be the first to say that from a character historic standpoint we would prefer to actually preserve the White House to be quite Frank um and and that's not off the table it's just a matter of preserving it and occupying it kind of like two different things so uh but your point is well take it we don't want to create additional traffic woses uh in that area uh I I don't anticipate adding a few additional parking spaces because yeah I want to be clear we're not creating a parking lot we're just adding spaces to an existing a lot that's probably a better way to frame it that would be the goal but Point well taken and I'm in fre frequent communication with I usually use the chief of police for those issues so he's like my point of contact Frank jendra um because we have a lot of conversations regarding traffic flow and how to hinder issues in that area so um we definitely will not exclude them from that anyone else have any more questions no superintendent report that's fine with me I'll be brief I'll be so good evening again everyone uh just a couple of things to highlight this evening um in terms of budget preparation I I just want to commend our business office uh with the leadership of Paul to business administrator for the numbers and the preparation and the detail associated with that but also it's a collective effort in terms of our district leadership team um kind of providing input uh regarding needs that that we anticipate for the year ahead uh I just want to congratulate Paul aalia a new board member welcome look forward to working with you on behalf of uh the students and families of of our community um just to Echo what our student representative so eloquently stated today I just want to kind of um just give a shout out to our robotics team uh just actually had a chance to bump into Chris Gregory over at plld last week he had a few members of the robotics team um down at the Elementary level uh working with some of our g&t students I thought it was pretty pretty uh cool to be quite honest with you to see that level of collaboration in terms of students from high school uh working alongside students uh at the elementary level so definitely uh our robotics team is a point of Pride I just want to commend our students who were inducted into the World Language the respected World Language National Honor Society recently and also want to commend our our students who were successful at Deca last week uh I'm going to plug again our strategic planning meeting um that we are scheduled to have on Thursday of this week I will just kind of back go backwards a little bit so we did have our first meeting on February 27th right here in this room uh we did have a little over 60 participants I would call them I referenced them as you know members of our school district Community um kind of divvy people up that night so that number was about 35 i' say members of the community who are not staff actually like three of them actually were staff but the we had about uh 13 students which is really impressive um and about 30 members of the community under the parental umbrella or just living in the community um we had about about 30 or 35 Staff to some degree whether a teachers administrators like I said I think we had about three folks who were teachers and residents uh and parents interesting Dynamic so um I was impressed with the with the number of participants typically the strategic planning process it's difficult to determine who will come out and um you know typically the recommendation is to have at least about 35 to to 50 folks to have a meaningful um engaging kind of uh process so having 60 on on the first meeting I think is um a good reflection of our of our school district and our community so meeting number two don't want to lose that momentum uh highly encourage encouraging folks to come out again so as I shared earlier our first meeting was really focused around strengths and challenges Maryann Freeman from New Jersey school boards Association did an excellent job kind of facilitating that evening she's here tonight for something else but wanted to give her a shout out so Maryanne will be back here again on Thursday uh Thursday's uh meeting will be kind of taking those strengths and challenges and looking to kind of refine those and engage in a conversation and a process centered around aspirations and expectations for students in our district so definitely looking forward to that Thursday 6 pm here um last week we well nationally uh schools acknowledge participated and read Across America activities really just to kind of high highlight literacy the importance of reading the love of reading the enjoyment of reading um I just wanted to uh thank uh some teachers who welcome me into their classrooms um and the students were amazing so just want to thank um the following GNR and emk teachers so from G&R Miss McDonald and Miss tro thank you kids were awesome at emk had the the opportunity to visit Miss Cunningham Miss Bernstein Carol Mr Palmer and Miss Sheridan Mr Palmer had a uh as I was reading she said I think you came here to read to my students when you first got here so as I was reading I saw her scrolling through her phone and as I was leaving she said here and she showed me a picture of myself and um it was sad uh because uh I must have aged about 20 years since that time so I said thank you so much Mr Palmer for sharing that with me um she's said yeah you're seasoned now you're well seasoned now back then you were fresh you didn't so thank you Mr P that was a great reminder so uh moving along you will notice that we are kind of doing a soft um roll out of the new District logo you saw tonight at the beginning of the presentation um you're going to be seeing more of that as we move throughout the the the remaining portion of the school year we're kind of have an official launch um in the summer into the new school year but you will begin to see that uh be somewhat more prominent just as a reminder we did engage in a process last year in terms of you know Gathering feedback from various stakeholders in the community really just to get an essence of what we believe the school district reflects represents and um I'll commend Elise mioli our coordinator of communications for kind of spearheading a lot of that work but uh you know once again it's something that there were some themes that were developed uh in the process and and those themes are reflective in our new District logo so those themes are diversity education growth Unity the kind of a HomeTown uh sentiment that we we got that feedback from students staff parents just in terms of uh what the district uh reflects so I do believe that it um you know the theme is kind of a six piece connectivity Dynamic whether it's the district logo or the respective uh School logos we did not change the mascots at any of our schools um but the but the process is now common across each of our schools so uh I do believe that the the new logo reflects voices the diversity the inclusivity of our community and I think it serves as a refresh Mosaic um that represents the e winter Regional School District and I think with that I'm going to conclude my remarks tonight thank you thank you Mar does anyone have any questions hi I just wanted to comment on the logo I'm actually um the logo is really nice sometimes when I gole East Windsor another school district comes up and in Connecticut in Connecticut and it and it had similar logo so it's nice that our logo is different now yes yeah and that's interesting we yeah we had someone reached out to us to let us know it did create a little little little excitement recently so it is interesting though right I know I know so hopefully this will be a clear definition in terms of who we are in New Jersey but thank you any other [Music] questions um we'll move on to first opportunity for board member comments are there any board members who wish to speak or have a [Music] comment so um as Mark mentioned um JY Janna and I went and did a tour of uh mhk G&R and wc last week Ken was supposed to join but I guess you couldn't make it after all which is fine we'll tell you what happened um so yeah they're Mark touched upon a lot of the upgrades but it was really we like to go in we like to see these things after they've you know been implemented obviously we can't see the HVAC and the stuff that goes on behind the scenes but mhk was really nice we saw a lot of upgraded rooms you know they've been overhauled they've been painted new lighting it's such a great way to see like if you see the old classrooms compared to the new ones it's such a difference it's bright it's cheerful it's very conducive to learning so it's great to see that stuff um specifically we also saw the new dance studio the music room the ABA room and where the athletic trainer room will be it's kind of in the process of being put together um but they've been very um Frugal and creative about using space and giving an actual location for that very important part of our staffing um and then obviously the parking lot G&R we saw lots of classrooms upgraded again the paint um new Cabinetry sometimes the layout of the rooms and the lighting the lighting is so important and they had a lot of HV on which we couldn't see and then over at WCB the star of the show was the new library um what a drastic difference like it's beautiful like we didn't want to leave we stood think we stood in that room for 20 minutes just like admiring every little facet including the live plans really really great um so yeah that's about it so we'll probably do one again next year um if you I guess anytime there we go I didn't want to speak for you but anytime contact Mark so you have another opportunity to go um yes so that's it really is and and the mural at WCB as well that we saw the last time we were there because the art room had been readone too but they were working on this mural it's a collective I don't know how many people were involved in this mural all the classes schoolwide it is now on the wall right as you exit the library um it's phenomenal hopefully we'll see has that picture made it into any of the newsletters I haven't noticed we should probably get a picture of it okay okay we should we should that was a great project yeah it was a great yeah and it's up it's not fully grouted it will get fully grouted but you don't can't tell unless you're like really looking at it in detail um but it's up there and it's gorgeous and it just makes the students really happy they smile when they go by yes touch that yeah so we appreciate being able to see the before and after so um that's it on that I do have one other remark um but in case anyone was interested our Esports team had their first tournaments last week and against West Windsor Plainsboro and they won in both rocket league and Super Smash Brothers so kudos to them we're off to a great start so and then you can be up for curriculum okay now we had a curriculum committee meeting this evening um a lot of content and we've uh asked to flesh out the calendar get some additional touch points but in general tonight we went over a review of the gifted and talented program uh for K through 5 um specifically that they've moved over from the uh coat testing format to nn3 which is a non language focused based assessment to make sure that they're able to capture participants that aren't necessar spe specifically ESL students or people that have um uh learning disabilities and other issues um talked through the enrichment programs for uh anybody that might not fully qualify for gifted and talented but still has aptitude and uh opportunity for additional um support uh beginning with special projects happening in CER 2 then with math and reading um having additional enrichment through grade four and math continues into grade five um we discussed um uh curriculum and syllabi processes uh curriculum moved in 2018 from a static model to a dynamic model meaning that the Core Curriculum that the board would use and approves is um is static but there are elements that are not pushed to a full review based on Dynamic needs for pacing of the program digital resources that are deployed um and other other things that allow the curriculum team to be able to respond to student needs on the fly without having to pull in a full administrative vote um the we addressed uh talked about the syi process um and how in some cases syi is used um uh as a not a substitute curriculum but what we're what we're as a district providing at the famili is primarily for electives um due to the nature of electives and uh specialty subject matter where the CI truly is effectively the curriculum as to being taught um and then we briefly touched on graduation requirements uh where we reviewed quickly the state requirements alongside with the district requires and the offerings both standard and AP course loads uh through graduation and any one of those topics could have been a standard L meeting so we G try to find a way to get more time yeah and if if you're remembering anything else that I didn't remember a note on let me know yeah you kind of touched upon you got you touched upon all of it but there's a lot of in-depth information and I think we'll have a lot of questions for Sandy still and we'll we'll come back to it we'll Circle back okay perfect I was gonna ask this we can send that to everyone that's great thank you I have a question for the curriculum committee did was there any discussion or update on software there there was um and right now they're in the in the midst of learning evaluating you're in the evaluation phase and making sure we make the make the right decisions so that it will be yeah it can actually meet our needs now and in the future um yeah so so we have I know we're in the shopping phase do we have an estimated arrival of this software I know that probably nothing's going to be even fully vetted until at least over the summer like because right now we're in the middle of all the new testings and and and all of that so basically we don't have the Staffing available to totally commit to just work like working out and vetting all of the products that are available when they're working on necessity needs of the district right now so will'll be looking at most of that stuff over the summer is that what you discuss did you discuss it in minut more am I off but I wasn't expecting anything by the end of the school year based on what we talked about so if there there's no system so is the curriculum currently on the Google Drive so that's the only place for board members yes yes I mean we we have new Ela and math standards that need to be um incorporated into our curriculum for the fall in the perfect world The Fall would be a good roll out for for a new system because we're in the process of revising curriculum it will'll be in the process of revising curriculum this summer U so stay tuned right I guess one more comment because Sandy you had mentioned you're trying to find a happy meeting between the syllabus syllabi and the curriculum and making a sylli more robust and more accessible to parents for getting more in-depth information without you know opening our staff up to like pacing issues and all of that um because pacing issues need to be differentiated and it can be from teacher to teacher and I think what we need this is one of those areas where we definitely need to have another meeting and go over it more get more in-depth information and figure out what best serves our district with all of that so again there was a lot in this meeting so we couldn't cover all those nitty-gritty issues I know where our concerns are and they're heard but how do we how are they going to be addressed is still being fleshed out just Ju Just what I'll say is the one of the one of the um one of the reasons for tonight's content was to one provide some context in terms of some of the district practices that we have in place for example um you know course Pathways versus compared to New Jersey graduation requirements and how we may go above that but just in terms of where they came from but also just providing some context regarding curriculum development and improval and yes the syllabi is something that's there and I'll say this and I've shared this with Karen before you know obviously we want to have an element of transparency in terms of what a parent guide will be um without one being too cumbersome without it being too granular like you know I'm not we're not expecting parent guys to be the exact same curriculum that teachers are following and planning lessons for and then two we don't want to be in a situation where it could be some intellectual property there that we want to preserve um and two we don't want to be in a predicament where it becomes um that the the the parent guide is something that that's being used against the teacher as it relates to like why aren't you here right now so there needs to be an element of understanding in terms of flexibility regarding meeting the needs of students um but yes we want to make sure that if a parent and furthermore if a parent needs to see the actual curriculum then we will provide that to the parent right but we want to make sure that we we engage in that process in a way that pursuing a software curriculum mapping tool will enable us to have a should enable us to have a more uh fluid and flexible approach to that so therefore one the parent guide should provide you with what you need if you need to go deeper then we we can provide if necessary something that is more detailed more granular But ultimately the parent guide should provide you with a clear sense of um you know what's reflective of the curriculum so um and I just want something that's user friendly just something that's easy to to manipulate and access I just have one more clarification you said something about gifted and talented K through five is gifted and talented started in or was it three I have a question the it's enrichment programs special projects and other other okay right okay thank you so I have uh just two questions the one question is when um the board members went to do with the the superintendent went to do the tours did you guys just tour two schools because I thought it was supposed to be three we did three we did um creps uh Rogers and black okay and then did you guys get a chance to see lunch at all no we did not okay we were we were there to tour facilities not not processes situations or we didn't want to subject ourselves to the The Noise Okay and then the next question um you talked about the E Gaines which was awesome by the way but how do um what grades are involved and how do they register from what I understand it's the whole High School Mark if you can talk to that more this this is something that came about as we as we you know there are some things that we establish Lish whether it's through mandates from the state uh or something that's you know a curricular expectation or an extra or co-curricular expectation then there are other opportunities that are more organic that come through students and teachers so this is something that we've been kind of toying with this um Esports concept but we had you know we had a um a teacher who advocated for a club and it kind of comes through a club dynamic so um this is kind of where we're starting it and then we'll look to kind of see how um how it kind of flourishes here so that's really where that came from so right now it's at the high school um it doesn't mean it can't live elsewhere but right now this is kind of we it Blossom all right okay thank you do we still have the club in middle school too because I think what happened is the middle schooler started the club brought it to the high school and then the club still exists thank you you're right think the middle school I think I think the CL yeah it does exist the Esports has a little bit more um there's a little bit more definition in terms of some of the criteria that comes along with it but I think there is something similar at the middle school at least there was because I'm not going to be able to recall This Acronym but who is the governing body of athletic sports NJ s i AA yes I knew it was something but I wasn't going to get it right so they also consider eort Sport and Athletics where students can earn Varsity letters and then they can also receive tuition um um uh scholarships from colleges yes yeah Hamilton has an orts team so that's where we're moving towards right but usually it's like it's like volleyball right we had a pretty vibrant robust volleyball club here that we looked at the attendance of that club over some time and we recognize that we could quite comfortably transition to establishing an inas Scholastic athletic team both boys and girls under that uh you know under that tag because we saw the participation rates that we had from a club so hopefully Esports will continue to flourish and more you know possibilities are endless anyone else yeah I had a question on the curriculum I know there was a lot of information that had to be shared when you're not haven't gotten into it uh when will you be getting to the P classes and Counting toward graduation when are you planning to schedule I guess the next meeting I guess you'll do like a focus meeting to you know tackle one issue or because it looks like there's so much information take a look at the information because it's it's in there okay okay the path the course pathways are in there and then if you have any questions we can address those all right thank you I think we definitely need to have a separate graduation requirement meeting well um there's two ways to look at it we have another uh curriculum committee meeting uh on the calendar so we can we can wait till then or we can establish a convenient time for the curriculum committee to reconvene so how about I share some dates and then we can determine what seems to be most appropriate all right I wanted to just I have a couple question quick things I know that we have um training Mark in terms of the tours I know it's really difficult to schedule those tours so thank you so much for doing that if um if possible if there's I know it's it's hard to schedule them for you but it's also hard for I know I couldn't with work obligations I wasn't able to make them and I know now that Paul is here too so if there are any other dates even if it's just one or two schools you could so um what I'll do is if if um board members are interested in visiting schools remember this was tagged it doesn't it doesn't necessarily have to be tagged to facility upgrades I just tied it to the work I think it's important for for the board to see the Investments right these are these are these are pretty significant undertakings in terms of financial commitments so I think it's important to see it however it doesn't have to be restricted to that years ago I recall we visited I think it was Bob at that point in time we visited some of our stem classrooms we you know we were establishing stem intentionally at the elementary and middle school level and then um Bob was interested in just kind of just seeing it so it doesn't have to be restricted to that but it just seemed like it lend itself to it so um I can revisit that that invitation quite honestly is open but I'll I'll put it back out there um I'm going to save my other two comments I think I can put them under old business um if there's no more questions we'll move on first opportunity for public comment is there anybody from the public who wishes to speak nope um we're now going to move on to exec session we do have um a training for superintendent evaluation so it may take a little longer than normal what you thinking out AR like half hour 45 so we're going to be gone about an hour um and then we'll be back to vote on some items thank you e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e um okay we're back in session we'll move on to item seven old business list of the committee meetings as always um if you have a problem or you can't attend one of the committee meetings please just let the administrator who's running the committee and Paul know um and I guess we will be adding Sandy you'll throw out some dates to the committee for curriculum so we can yeah I had two things I thought maybe we could add for old business that had come up previously um one was back when Chartwells was here and they gave that demonstration I can't remember that was the end of January or February um I know that we had talked about briefly um there's a lot of waste with the food with the kids that are throwing stuff out yeah I know we're talking about composting or working with the schools that have the gardens and then my other thing was I know I had also mentioned at another meeting um some of the design classes and the arts classes use [Music] MacBooks and um I've heard that There's issues with either I don't know if it's a connectivity issue or if it's a Macbook itself issue that there are some issues with some of the computers I do record that was an issue but I thought that issue was resolved so I have to follow up I believe I thought it was resolved yeah I think but I I don't I I think it might be I think maybe that one instance was resolved but I think I think it's something that happens more often with I'm not always all of them working or there're being connectivity issues yeah I'm trying to recall what the issue was because we we identify what the concern was right now as escaping me so I will follow up with Rees technology coordinator that follow thank you um if no one has any questions we can move on second opportunity for board member comments anyone have any comments in in hearing the uh presentation earlier the budget presentation um the goal about the equity audit is that something that we've received yet or are we waiting on those findings Shar you did I have to share it again okay I presented it I guess it wasn't a great presentation we were to present the findings presented the findings at one of our December meetings yeah yeah and then I believe I also shared the the comprehensive audit but I can revisit that I can share it again no that's all very familiar right now okay yeah thank you it's the time change are there any other board members who have any comments um I just wanted to talk so about chart Wells right and we were talking about maybe looking at another food vendor uh when are we going to get information on that vendor so we're beginning the renewal process so we'll put an RFP out on the street and then other companies will submit their proposals and when they submit the their proposal is that going to include like a um maybe like a gallery of what kind of food he wres food or something that we can better understand what they would actually be serving the students yes I believe as part of the process they have to submit a 30-day menu okay thank you Paul that's not something we have to go with lowest bid on is it or I didn't think so it's a competitive bid so it'll be graded okay anybody else it's not second opportunity for public comment is there any member of the public who wishes to have a comment there being none we will move on to item nine having read the materials received I move that the board approve the routine agenda items as submitted a staffing for March 11th 2024 B hip report for from excuse me February 26 2024 C approved travel and related expenses virtual and in person D approve new field trip sites for upcoming trips e approve carryover amendment of Essa Esa fiscal year 2023 to 2024 Title 1 two3 3 immigrant and for f approv heightstown high school overnight trip to for the New Jersey FCCLA 2024 State leadership conference in Cherry Hill New Jersey in March of 2024 G technology recycling batch number 45 H approve mhk Surplus equipment I co purchases J approval of the 2024 2025 budget so for 2024 and 20 to 2025 total expenditures in the general fund there's 27,467 55666 we approving special Revenue 2,1 15688 Debt Service 2, 37642 20 for a total of 132 m186 less the anticipated revenues you know and I did this wrong I was going to go down in columns do we care okay 50 55,8 69,99 186 under general fund special Revenue 2,156 1888 Debt Service zero for total 58 million 26874 with taxes to be raised under general fund 71,543 special Revenue zero Debt Service 2,376 420 total 73 m97 4,990 okay K approval of hit Grant vendor L final change order number number four for H back upgrades at GNR and WCB M final change order number four for internal re Renovations at GNR and WCB and board minutes for February 26 2024 o board minutes for special board meeting February 27th 2024 P report of the board secretary and financial report January of 2024 Q expense and transfer reports of school monies report for 20 January 2024 and our bill list of March 11th 2024 second any questions I have a question oh sorry I have a question for 9C for overwork and lands their amount is under $10 is that for like parking for 9 C orward it's $878 and then for land it's $7.70 those seem like odd numbers is that and then for a nine R what does um for batch number uh it says 50 what does 50 stand for about is just the way the accounts payable department goes ahead and he kind of pulls the invoices to be paid they just kind of assign random numbers okay thank you doesn't mean anything in particular yeah I had a spot it was something about the there was some type of assessment uh done for the varsity to during and I lost my spot there was those there was a chart on it with percentage on it can you tell me what that is I can't find it where is it's you're referring to the the award of the vendor for the tutoring item K item k k yes please item K so this is a hit hit Grant it sounds hit high intensity tutoring um so this is this is actually a revisit so I know it's going to feel convoluted So you you're right rewind the clock we had an RFP um out to determine if we could identify a vendor to provide tutoring high intensity tutoring at that point that RFP though was designed for students in grades one through nine that's how we kind of advertis it actually kind of went beyond that we wanted to go elementary middle high and we we uh ended up going with Varsity for host of reasons mainly because they provided this catalog of resources and access accessibility on the heels of that the Department of Education put forth a high-intensity tutorial Grant specifically for students in grades 3 through five to address learning loss so we pursued that Grant opportunity um that and I'll just rewind a little bit so the the initial Grant proposal tutorial grant that we pursued at that time we said you know what this this tutorial support will be more so to school you make the appointment via parents but then we had this other resources connected to it and some on demand to touring as well on the hills of that there was a grant opportunity that presented itself for students specifically in grades 3 through five we pursued that right um that proposal was tagged to providing before school support and potentially in school support under the tutorial umbrella the difference with that approach was that it would still be what was deemed to be high intensity and that's really two to three days a week you know one to one small group but we were looking to have that occur before school and then we were going to go a step further and enlist some of our teachers to be present so there'll be some some uh inperson support of our teachers but then you would be uh connected virtually to your virtual tutor during the before school session right so that was a little bit of a hybrid model we were exploring we were also thinking about the possibility of that tutoring occurring in class at some point and then we believe that the technology associated with it I'm kind of rambling here but it was tied to go Guardian that we currently use to monitor Student Activity on a on our devices and we were envisioning uh teachers being able to have an awareness of what that t that tutoring would look like in class and also before school with the with the teachers are assigned so we identified a vendor before for this grant here if you if you recall a few meetings ago I shared that you know part of the RF RFP process is us as a district outlining expectations and then you as a vendor you look you say oh is that something we can do or maybe not but this vendor said sure we we're we're on board when it came down to actually beginning the process they then turned around and they said to us oh you want us to do this before school we didn't realize that it's clearly stated in there that that was an expectation so it was a bit embarrassing so we had to do an about turn communicate with families and students to say hey we need to pause this right now and then we have to kind of go back out again to determine who an appropriate vendor would be Varsity is here because they put their hat in the ring for this specific type of tutoring um so it's a little bit it's a little bit different there's some similarities but there's some differences in terms of the the tutoring that we're offering so this was more so Grant oriented yes there are some Provisions associated with the grant that we need to be a little bit more prescriptive about in terms of how we were pursuing it but now we find ourselves with Pho edtech who were actually one of the vendors where I think rewinding the clock that when we put the RFP out there for the grades one through n they were in that mix as well but there's a slightly different expectation um the price point is is is actually a good price point uh they indicated that they have the tutors available so um this is where we find ourselves because we we're feeling you know it's one it's difficult to plan something but also promis something we've identified 112 students that we think would benefit from this at least to get it going who've committed to wanting to come before school so so we're like back at this point again to restart it in essence right tutoring is a yearly contract Varsity tutoring is is yes we still have a contract with them for this year um the approach like I said is a little bit of a different approach that we're using with them so yes we're still connected to them okay so we'll be able to do another reassessment like this we have no we have no obligation Beyond this year to pursue them I mean to stay with them as a partner thank you is there a reason um that we just didn't use teachers for the tutoring before school so that it was completely in person versus this hybrid yeah the the reason as I just shared the rationale was one we definitely wanted to have some inperson support but we wanted to pursue like a onetoone dynamic which we don't have a teacher pool to provide that I mean as much as we would love to we would prefer that but we were looking to leverage the possibilities of providing some individualized support actually during during class time like that's where we wanted to go so um that was one of the reasons why we initially the two to meet a vendor was attractive because there was a connection with some software that we could leverage we thought we could leverage in the classroom setting uhu so it's twofold one um because we would prefer it to be one toone tutoring we don't have enough teachers to do it uh so therefore we're trying to say okay we wanted to have in some inperson support that inperson support is more so small group then we would peel you off to get some individualized tutorial support and that teacher would be aware of that and we were also anticipating that in your classroom your classroom teacher would also be very familiar with the type of support you're getting real time that that was the rationale behind that and how long is the contract for for this year yeah you know there's there's a window I think it's it's through the end of the school year I mean we have to utilize the funds based on the grant grant was about $280,000 so through that Grant we're paying some of our teachers to do some additional work but also the the virtual vendor this is so minor but just in case we want you know um accuracy uh yes I should say we can actually transition into the summer if we need to just just I'm G that out sorry about that that's fine um on o for the list of people who were in attendance for the special meeting the only reason I noticed this was because she was in my SE uh group uh number 42 Lon Emerson should be Lori it was probably her handwriting let's BL it on that issue I could have given you the yeah this is this is based on the fact that this is how people signed in and marann ciphered these off and fed us the signing sheets but you're right again so actually the same thing with 37 now I'm looking at it Lor it should be Lori Chappelle not lur all right sorry I didn't mean to open up a flood gate here so we yeah we can clean that up yeah we pulled this right for Maryann sign in let me I'll take it back it's a lot it's a hot mess so we'll replace it it's the editor and me sorry no I think yeah Brodney Point toour ours are right as Jean pointed out so it doesn't matter we'll corrected Paul we had discussed that we were going to edit the meeting minutes for where for when Paula was nominated I didn't make any motions that is correct I'll go back and talk to tomorrow okay thanks any other questions I do have one question and I'm I'm kind of late on it but the committee meetings um curriculum and finance are both on April 29th I thought last meeting we talked about um piing different dates e any other questions pull the board please M Dr yes Miss Lance yes oh except my computer's restarting so the travel and related expenses I abstain from any line items pertaining to myself M Murphy yes Miss boli yes Mr weeks yes Miss Patel yes Miss Salter yes Miss Kalia abstain from n yes to the rest Miss larusa yes um there's no need for a second executive session motion to adjourn don't don't turn your computer off hold on a sec hold on let's get this