thank you for joining us oh this meeting is being held in conformance with the open public meetings Act and the time place and agenda of said meeting has been conveyed to the appropriate newspapers and posted in the board office three schools municipal building and F with the clerk of the BAU of Emerson TSE for the Pledge of Allegiance please I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all meeting is called to order at 7:30 p.m. can we get roll call please Mr Grow present Mrs Mara here Mrs ricardi here Mr Smith here Mr Pasar here student representative M Rivers she she uh notified us that she wouldn't be able to make it this even okay thank you Mr mamora uh good evening everyone uh today's uh meeting will have two sections to it uh first is going to be the regular meeting uh and agenda and then uh following that we're going to have the budget uh meeting so uh with that we are going to uh tonight we're going to be uh discussing the superintendent of schools evaluation process uh we have uh from the New Jersey School Board Association our field service representative Mr Matt Lee thank you for joining us uh and you're going to give us a a presentation on the school uh administrator uh evaluation process ready to go yes okay for is it better you all can see up there okay perfect so nice to be here nice to see everyone um so I'm going to walk you through the superintendent evaluation process there's a couple of components to it that um maybe you guys have an experienced before or maybe you're only aware of um as something that um uh is available to you through njsba uh but I do recommend the process and I think that um the way we've organized it in cooperation with Asa really makes it um sort of logical and uh easy to follow and easy to accomplish so we're going to talk about uh all of the steps in it we're going to talk about the tool that we offer as an association to help support board members uh the process itself and and um just a couple of you know sort of tips to make sure that you guys um get through the process smoothly it is um one of our habits to remind boards that if there's anybody who has a relative who works in the district you are likely um conflicted out of the process so if you have any questions about your specific situation uh talk to your board attorney to make sure that um you know you're in the right area so starting off with the legal guidelines because this is a statutory obligation of the Board of Education to evaluate the superintendent on an annual basis and there are a couple of components to it that are really very much in sync with the how we've put the process together so it needs to happen at least once a year it needs to be in writing um board and the superintendent need to meet to discuss the findings and this is something that sometimes surprises boards because they feel like maybe the board president or the board leadership can do this but no it's a requirement for the entire board to take part um it needs to be based on the goals and objectives of the district so your annual goals that youve set are a key component of how you evaluate the superintendent's performance and also other responsibilities that um may have been prescribed by the state board on the right side of the slide you can see the uh code that accompanies this piece of the statute and that is that it needs to be done by July 1 uh it needs to talk about strength areas of strength areas needing Improvement other uh recommendations for personal growth and indicators of student progress and go growth and the last piece of course is a summary conference meeting needs to include at least a majority of total board membership but it should include everybody as own in addition to the legal requirements there's a monitoring requirement that is part of qac that is part of the governance part of qac so there are five parts of qac the governance part is the piece that the Board of Education supplies the operation of the district and you can see in governance indicator two there's two pieces that relate to the evaluation the first a is that you have a policy and a contract with the superintendent to evaluate him or her and there are seven points associated with that on B it needs to or excuse me it says that the Board needs to have that done by July 1 and six points associated with that um as you know there are only 100 points on each section of qack so if you lose 13 by missing this deadline you're already behind the eightball on that particular piece so important to keep up with the process um basically the board is um doing what's known as the oversight or appraisal portion of their responsibilities and really what that's about is ensuring The Continuous Improvement of the district through monitoring the superintendent's performance on achieving the board's goals and objectives and it's important of course because a board should be dedicated to ensuring that the district moves forward and it may be sitting at a high level right now but it's always how do we get to the next level and this process is meant to effectuate that by making sure that the superintendent and the board are communicating about where they want to be and also that the board is overseeing the superintendent's performance on getting them there so we want to look at how we're doing as a district um did we achieve our goals if we didn't why not did we have those conversations are we looking at ways to um tweak those goals to make sure that we are um putting the right resources in place and making sure that we move forward against those goals and what is it that we can do better and the process itself is a cycle so if you look at at the uh the upper right of that circular diagram there we start out with goals and again the evaluation process starts with that b basically 12 months ago when you set the goals um uh when the goals are set the superintend then goes away and puts together a a way to achieve those goals known as an action plan and that's very specific about the programs and tactics that are being applied the resources that are needed the Personnel the training and also the indicators of success those indicators of success are the things that you can measure Up Performance against to ensure that you move forward um throughout the course of the year we um recommend that their progress reports take place over time and those those should naturally take place ac across the conversations that you're having as a board finally there's a CSA evaluation and uh mostly accompanied by a board self- evaluation as well and from that sort of measurement of how you progressed you begin to set goals for the following year so you can see it all works in a cycle um the evaluation tool that we um recommend that you use uh again is able to help you meet of the requirements of the statute and code so it's documented right we uh we ask that multiple sources of evidence are pro provided for the superintendent performance whether that that be against goals or leadership standards uh there's an area for Ratings uh we have criteria defined there's area for written comments from the board and the superintendent majority opinion is reflected and that's important because um the superintendent doesn't report to a set of five individuals the superintendent reports to a body right so you derive majority opinion and that becomes the tone of the evaluation and of course it provided for evaluation conferences which are important and prescribed in statute that you should meet in person to discuss these findings when we created our tool it's about four years old now but we did spend a number of years about two and a half years working with the association of school administrators to create a tool that both helped the board meet its oversight obligations and became a useful tool for superintendence to facilitate professional growth okay so um we looked at a lot of different things in order to create that evaluation tools from other states um what the superintendent's actual job description is what the board's role was and also um what we had done previously which we kind of built on to create this tool so there are two components to our evaluation tool and I mentioned before a couple of times that a large component of that is the uh progress toward District goals okay and then accompanying that is a section called leadership standards and again those are designed to help meet those requirements that were defined in the statute now when we uh evaluate the progress against District goals um this is kicked off by the superintendent logging into our system and um basically specifying what the goals were we have room for five of them in there and that's what we typically recommend three to five district goals within that you can see on the diagram that the superintendent has a number of areas that he or she will put in to to start the process the superintendent will describe the goal then give a self- rating on the goal then Supply comments to help support the evidence that he or she is supplying to indicate progress also at the bottom of the page page in red you can see that there's a an Evidence link area so if the superintendent has more evidence to supply against that goal he or she can put a link there and any number of different assets can be supplied in that folder where that link leads to support um what it is that was achieved in that area the rest of the page you can see is indicated in blue and that leaves area for the board members individually to give a rating basically the same scale that the superintendent is using and also board member comments are available in there so that's how we assess a goal and again three to five typically each year Matt do you want us to hold our questions till the end or whenever you're ready shoot if you go back to that last Slide the the tool will record each individual board members rating and comment it will um but it's a good juncture to bring up this little tip right so the way the um evaluation tool is built uh you can navigate back and forth across the pages however it won't consider a page finished until there's a mark in each box okay so if you're having trouble going backwards maybe you forgot something you want to add something pop a character into each of the boxes that will consider the page done and saved and then you can M navigate back and forth that can be frustrating that good tip I'm glad you asked thank okay so part two is the leadership standards part of the evaluation tool and again these help to meet those requirements in the code that you see on the left side of the slide they were developed from the Professional Standards for educational leaders I think there's 10 of these in total but we selected the six that are most relevant to a superintendent job responsibilities so those are areas that can help the board identify areas that may need Focus or areas that are real strengths of the superintendent and um those are those standards are really built around those qualities that are necessary for a successful superintendent these are the actual standards and um we'll talk more about what they look like in the evaluation tool as we go forward but you can see that a lot of them revolve around sort of the breath of the superintendent responsibilities within the district so as we go through each of these standards each one has its own rating scale so it has uh General categories that are all the same so exemplary proficient area for growth Etc but as we go to each of his standards you can see that there's an extensive definition for what exemplary means in that area right what satisfactory means in that area so it's important to read those things uh before you do the evaluation on that standard um when you do the standards assessment we'll name the standard we'll uh give very specific instructions about what each rating means in that area we also recommend some resources to consider that the superintendent might want to reference when he or she is supplying his or her evidence um and then links are also um placed in that area the superintendent chooses to the next section where it says indicators so that's even more specific um proof points if you will that the superintendent is performing in that area and each of those is rated separately as well so you can see across in the dark blue at the top there's a scale there right so each of the indicator in each of those standards gets rated also and then the last piece um is the overall rating performance on the standard now just from uh once again a tip perspective if you look at the indicators piece and every one of those at the top has exemplary and then you get down to the overall rating and you put unsatisfactory doesn't really compute right so those things should correlate and then the last piece is that board m comments are are available there as well um so we we talked a little bit about evidence um so the evidence uh required to demonstrate performance on District goals might include performance data it might include um you know building project data it might include safety data things of that nature and those are um proof points that the superintendent will supply um and then there are a number of different places where they might find evidence for that um it does pay once again another tip for the board to maybe create or or develop their own system of retaining evidence across the course of a year and that could be something as simple as writing notes on your agendas and saving them across time and that really helps you to do a fair 12-month assessment of the superintendent's performance and not just like the last few months that may be sticking in your mind okay highly recommend developing an evaluation calendar okay and this is something that each board does individually and sometimes it's predicated on your regular meeting schedule if you can fit these activities in across that uh schedule sometimes it might necessitate creating special meetings in order to make sure you meet this deadline but the the principle is that you you start with the July 1 deadline and you work backwards so that you could fit in at least two if not three meetings that revolve around the superintendent evaluation um there there's a final meeting that occurs right before the July 1 deadline and then there's one um and that concludes the superintendent and then there's one just prior to that where the board itself meets without the superintendent in order to arrive at majority opinion okay once again superintendent reporting to a body not not five individuals and then prior to that there's often a pre-evaluation conference and we'll talk about that a little bit when we go forward as well um the idea here really is that you don't let these deadlines sneak up on you and that you plan out every step so that you're doing a fair evaluation so here's the evaluation process in pieces we talked about District goal setting that's been going for a while District goals progress updates those are the conversations like I said and you know the agenda items that have gone toward fulfilling those goals across the course of the year the pre-conference again I mentioned that earlier we'll talk a little bit more about as we go forward but as a model this is very much like a supervisor evaluating a teacher right so often they will meet with the teacher prior to that evaluation talk to them about the things that they're going to be looking for in the course of the evalu ation and just kind of level set what is expected and this would be your opportunity to have a discussion about progress on District goals right before things get committed to writing okay so the superintendent then uh goes ahead and completes those pieces that we saw already in the form um once the superintendent is done the board will get a system generated email that says the superintend is done now it's time for you to go and do your part one little tip about that piece that email that comes to you has a link in it it's not a dedicated link so if you didn't get the email don't worry about it it really is just going to take you to a place on our website that you can access very easily by going to the homepage scrolling down to the bottom right and clicking on the link for superintendent evaluation takes you to the safe place okay after all of the individual input is put in the super excuse me the board president will typically reach out to me and then I'll open up a gate in the back of our system that will allow the superintendent excuse me the board president to download what we call the compilation documents so there'll be one compilation document related to the goals one compilation document related to the standards those get aggregated together and and that becomes resource material for the board to consider when they meet to develop the majority opinion final document make sense yeah okay um at that meeting there's kind of two ways to approach it the board president who is typically the person who writes the final evaluation document can come with a draft of that final document and say you know based on everybody's individual input this is what I'm seeing as majority opinion or you can go to that that meeting and have the conversation and then commit that piece to writing once that is done and um you've notified the superintendent typically you would tell the superintendent at least a couple days in advance that you know our meeting date is such and such Here's the final evaluation document and we're going to we're going to have our conversation about this when we meet in person um so that is uh a conversation basically about the document and the the juncture at which the Su superintendent and the board president are going to sign off on the document one important thing to remember about that that is an opportunity for minority opinion to be expressed verbally okay not written into the document again majority opinion rules in the document but minority opinion can be a useful tool for growth both within the district and for the superintendent professionally so you should have that conversation it should be a constructive conversation about how we can improve things does not get entered into the document though uh sign and date and you're done okay yeah quick question sure um so a board of five here let's say we had one conflicted out member um would the president serve in any kind of like a vetoing or overriding position in that case where we have a dead split between two and two no so yeah you're right it it would be split between two and two so um the notes on that particular area whether it be a goal or a leadership standard would reflect the board was split on this and you know these are the things that came up and it gets left that way okay all right fantastic thank you sure um we talked about the pre-evaluation conference again that's really to kind of level set of everything before you commit things to writing um so you might talk about goals there you might talk about some of the evidence that's going to be provided um any questions or concerns from the board's perspective on what's going to be documented uh quick note if that update on goals is um agnostic to the superintendent's performance then you might have that in public but usually they are very specific to the supernet performance and once again that becomes executive session material okay um so with our tool the superintendent group has gotten um links to begin the process um a couple months ago at this point uh there are some folks who really can't wait to start this process I don't understand it but we send it out early so if they want to jump in they can there also some people who build their body of evidence over a period of time so it's a handy place place to keep that stuff um while you're completing the process um yeah so then the board members once the superintendent is done the board members get that email it has a link but again not a dedicated link you can access it from the website another tip if you haven't logged into our website and you don't know your password do it now just try it just get in there if you forgot your password there's a reset link right there right next to it sometimes um system generated emails will go caught in your spam so if you didn't get it right away that's probably where it is um if you're still having a problem let me know one thing that has to be in good shape is your sensus census uh John will know from um reorganization basically it's where you enter the terms and the names of board members and in order to be eligible to work in this system for the evaluation you have to be in the census okay further to that there's also certain permissions that are granted to the board president in other words downloading those evaluation documents so if the board leadership positions aren't designated in the census that can delay things as well so as long as those two things are good you shouldn't have a problem getting into the census or excuse me the evaluation okay so uh I mentioned that we can easily get you to where you need to be for the evaluation uh this is actually one page deep but if you go to njsp.org all the way down to the bottom right you can see a link for the CSA evaluation tool this is where it gets you to that page under field services for online evaluations you can just access that link indicated by the red arrow once again you need your username and password this is what the um board president will uh download the evaluation documents from so there's an area dedicated to each person's um ability to to uh go in and out of the evaluation system so if you look at those uh links that we see there in the red box the one on the top is the individual person's uh input into the evaluation the next one down is a tracking link so your board president can see who has finished the evaluation and who has yet to do it still the next piece is the compilation report one which is the goals compilation report two which is the standards and the last piece is a Word document it's a report template okay and that is the final document template okay you might ask why don't we store that online we don't because it's a Personnel document and we don't want to own the responsibility of safeguarding personnel documents that's why it's done offline and kept locally in the district uh this is what the compilation would look like so once the superintendent's done or president has downloaded the documents you can see that uh this indicates that this is a goal compilation the goal in this case the sample is Future Ready schools superintendent's got some comments in there superintendent also does um a rating and there's board member comments there so going against the principles that we talked about before which is superintendent reports to a body you can see the superintendent mark this satisfactory progress made of the nine board members in this example one said the goal was achieved thought the superintendent did better than the superintendent thought seven board members agreed progress made once that little or no progress made so the rating obviously is satisfactory satisfactory right this is a compilation for a standard so again you see that the standard here is standard two and that there are seven different indicators for progress on that standard once again there's a distribution against each of those standard uh indicators and um you you can see you can identify in there what the majority opinion sees uh across each of the standards and then you can see at the bottom there's a uh basically a summary of all of the assessments standard to in which case this one would indicate majority opinion says proficient in this area the uh the board member comments would also be on this page there's just too much to show one time so uh important the compilation is not the evaluation we get that question all the time um do you have my evaluation no because your evaluation is really what comes out of that aggregated data not the individual input um so the compilation is everyone's opinions evaluation is the opinion of the board majority uh once again you need to meet to determine majority opinion and um superintendent's evalu evaluation report that final document is majority opinion and that is the superintendent evaluation annual performance report that word template that we discuss is typically written by the board president or designate depending on board president's availability and or comfort with doing that kind of work um there's an executive session meeting with members to determine a majority opinion and those comments that will um describe the board's opinions about those areas and the uh compilation document that word template is a really excellent guide to make sure that you hit all the marks on the evaluation final document and of course it's there to help you meet all of the legal requirements that we discussed in the statute and code and Matt that executive sessions to the exclusion of the superintendent right when you arrive at majority opinion correct yeah okay um so this is what the template the word template looks like basically there's corresponding sections for each of the goal areas and for each of the standards and it allows you to um organize all of the outcomes from the discussion that you have to arrive a majority opinion um again here's a leadership standards piece once again a a place to keep everything organized uh at the end there's a piece about the leadership standards that allows you to indicate areas of strength that areas needing growth um you can check off more than one box in those areas okay once again the should be approach from the perspective of we're trying to work together as a team to improve both the district and the superintendent's performance over time if needed uh make sure of course that you rice the superintendent when you have these discussions anytime you discuss the performance of an employee you must rise them uh do share the evaluation prior to the final conference only be fair majority of total members must be at that final conference if not everyone ideally of course everyone uh and minority opinion may be voiced but not written into the document uh the big thing I think is really to make sure that you address that calendar in the timeline as soon as you can everyone's availability goes kind of crazy in the spring time between sports and graduations and all those kinds of things so uh do take the time to sketch out the timeline uh I talked about retaining evidence already I talked about um you know reviewing performance over a full year right and that's the the idea of developing that system to retain evidence is that you can go back and refer to notes from last August or last September when you're doing an evaluation in May okay talked about the census already I think John you're good with that I don't think we need to go over that maybe for future I know now it's not an issue but if your board president happened to have been conflicted we have an alternate role in the census called CSA alternate lead that would give whoever um was designated that way in a census the same permissions as a board president um there's a lot of resources on our website so if you go to Field Services then you go to the evaluation um in addition to that green box that allows you to begin there's also PDFs um there's a pamphlet there's an FAQ there's a webinar all kinds of resources to help you uh refresh yourself on the process and that's it great questions just um a question with the summary conference yeah so does that need a separate public advertisement that specifically states that there's it it does executive session ex well for would it say for the purposes of superintendent about I'm assuming this is not in conjunction with one of your regular meetings what if it's a regular meeting like as as Mo executive session okay yeah any other question thank you very much before you one more question no just not a not a question because I didn't know if you're going to stick around or you're going you're going to leave I just want to thank you for for your work you work with that with New Jersey school boards and with our board members I know that uh you've been a great resource for them and um so thank you thanks guys thank than so much okay uh our next uh item on the agenda is uh Dr Vasquez is going to make a presentation on special education so Mr Vas how about you good evening it's good to see you you as well um so I am going to be giving you an overview of our special education department special services um so so I'm going to be going over some of our data and our New Jersey Department of Education annual report our disproportionality project as I discussed last year we were um found disproportionate with um students who were classified communication impaired and also from a Latino background um some of our highlights this year I'll go over that um liown was a CBI instruction trip that we took to Livingston so I'll share some photos of our little ones there and some of the things that we did um partnership with fdu for school psychology continues with our doctoral student um who is with us and then our special education parent Advisory Group which we um hold meetings throughout the school year and then there were some presentations that we did as well so here is our overall data Memorial School has 41 students uh who are classified and have IEPs IEPs are individualized education plans we had 23 referrals and out of those 23 we have eight still in process um volano school has 43 students with special needs um we we had a total of nine referrals and five are in process our Junior Senior High School has a total of 72 we had five referrals this year and two of them are in process we have 32 students at a district and it brings us to a total of 188 and our total referrals for this year are 37 um just with any state report um for district special education um also we receive an annual report and so I will go over some of the elements and indicators um that I feel are really important to share you receive some of the information under attendance suspensions hi through the schools um in in their monthly reports but some of these indicators um are not shared so I figured let's just you know let you know how we're doing in these areas so indicator five is about least restrictive environment and it brings us I should actually say that it's about a year behind so this time next year we'll we'll be reporting on this school year so this information is from last school year um it was updated on May 23rd 2023 um and this is public record it's out there you can just Google it it's you know out there for the world to see um so the first one is 5A percent of students with disabilities aged five who were enrolled in kindergarten and aged 6 to 21 students served inside the regular class 80% or more of the day so the state Target is 45% our local data was almost 37% so we not meet the target there um and it's something that we need to work towards I think that we have a lot of little pockets of supports and programming within our district um and so we need to kind of move our students more into general education population 5B is the percent of students with disabilities aged five who were enrolled in kindergarten in age 6 to 21 students served inside the regular class less than 40% of the day and so there we did meet our Target the state Target is almost 15% and we are almost at 90% And I think what helps us here is that we have some students in Hybrid models so they may have for one course a special education uh program but then for the other courses in their day like science social studies elective courses throughout may actually be in gen Ed without access to a special education teacher so that kind of offsets and balances us a little bit there um 5c is the percent of students uh from Age 5 through 21 who are placed at our district and they could be in a public or private placement residential placement or homebound Hospital placements um and as I shared with you in the previous slide we have 32 which is a substantial number and that's and I talk about this a lot um so we it's another area for us to really look at and work towards um so we did not meet that Target but again I think we need to like just unify come together and truly figure out how to manage and best support our students um at a district there to bring them back home um so this is indicator six and this talks about prek and our least restrictive environment there so here we didn't have 20 students we need to have at least 20 students to report on so this is just you I just shared it just to show what the state Target is looking for and this is compliance so overall um indicator 11 measures the percent of children who were evaluated and within that state established timeline of 90 days from start to finish and really it's the date of the parental consent that starts the clock so the day we receive yes you can proceed with evaluations then uh we have 90 days uh to evaluate and determine whether a child is eligible for special education related services so we have met our Target there our child study Team Works really really hard to ensure that we are in compliant um and compliance I should say and then the same here with EI we didn't have enough students we don't have more than 20 students to report on but as you could see this is a huge thing for the state they want 100% of any student referred over to us being taken care of by the time they're 3 years old if they're eligible they should be in their classroom in their seat um indicator T here we are working like I said before on our disproportionality project and we meet um with Dr Fergus and his team we've met several times this year and last year and we truly are just working together on discovering our root causes and building our multiple uh tiered systems of support our BSI which is our basic skills instruction um and overall just our gen ad interventions so we're we're truly trying to build those up and some of our highlights here here we have U Mrs sella who is um supporting students at the most recent prom of Junior Prom um so they're very involved and and and try to be outside of the classroom as well not just in the classroom or at meetings um and then we have our Regulators group that runs over at Memorial School and they truly are working on just finding out about themselves becoming aware and how to actually regulate their emotions and talk about it and just have self-regulatory skills overall that's what they're looking to do during this time together I have to tell you I this year I have been able to go out to other districts and visit and I've shared this with you as well Dr lenov that we have a beautiful space like no other that truly we had a vision for it and our children really enjoy their time there um it's a really beautiful space um a lot of sensory a lot of things that we want to continue to build on so this space allows for co- treatment between the occupational therapists and the physical therapist and sometimes you evaluate as well because i' I've gone into observe evaluations happening at the same time which is really neat to see and the kids have no idea it's like it's play time so it's uh neat so um here we have our therapy dogs uh our westbon mental health clinician coordinates um it's just throughout the school year anytime that there are stressful times there may be exams here or any anything that may be going on she may feel like it's time to bring them back so um during these visits we could kind of see how like the stress begins to melt away in some of our programs and in our children here so just wanted to share that and the one in the middle is Mrs Gordon um along with some of our teachers here in our eids um so I'd like to you know just say a special thank you uh to the agency that works with us they're bright and beautiful therapy dogs um and again to Ashley Gordon that for us so this was our life Town trip we have covered our students faces here for confidentiality um some of our students are non um that go that went out with us this year and um it's it was really neat to see them a lot of big smiles uh that were happening I think that they enjoyed their time the the big piece about lifetime is there's a centered piece to it and that is it's a simulated town and the students were able to practice how to get on a bike and actually wait for traffic lights before moving also crossing the street there are sidewalks there's a park there there's all sorts of shops that they were able to use their money exchange um so they really had a fun time um so they were able to practice their life skills and uh we really enjoyed our time together I think of all the spots uh the Pet Shop definitely won really Peak their interest they had some guinea pigs they had dogs they had Birds um and fish there and I really had a good time so um know that's we you'll see some of our staff here our teacher and our speech and language therapist Miss gasperino some of our AIDS are here rbts so also our bcba helped and coordinate that for us she's our behaviorist um and then just continuing with our school psychologist intern uh one day very soon she will be Dr Britney Giuliani she's been with us now for three years um and continues to provide psychological testing under um supervision of our school psychologist both at the elementary level and the high school level uh she runs social counseling groups at both of our elementary schools and um just works on the social emotional overall with the students so our cpeg here um a big thank you to Mrs saag she is AR liaison and has done a really really nice job um puts out a newsletter um to our parents and there is an email exchange that happens so you know if there's anything that comes up she'll discuss it at our meetings she has also presented as like a learning session on inclusive language and so what to use what not to use when we're talking about students and their special needs um so I think she also did that presentation for Dei so she did like a a trial run with us first to see how she did um and so I I know that it was well received we really enjoyed it the parents enjoyed it and then on May 2st we will have child study team members discussing the I process with families that is my presentation I thank you for your time um a special thank you to our teachers to our AIDS our CST members case managers um lot that goes into it right it's a village so um thank you thank you thank you m Dr Vasquez uh before we uh just before we move on Sandy thank you great presentation um director of special services position is is one of the most difficult positions in education um and we we thank you for your work after you the work of your case managers is also one of the most difficult uh positions where you're working uh to benefit children getting input from teachers from parents who are going through very emotional times um so we we thank every body uh everyone for for for all of that work um some of the data that was pointed out um it's something that we are working with on the admin team and taking a look at very very closely uh without getting into details you may be able to pull some of the information that you saw on the screen from the special education uh presentation you're going to see similar information later in the evening when we talk about our budget presentation um so they're very very uh closely related um but we're working as a district and as a team really looking at uh ways that we can better serve uh all of our children uh finding all the resources that they need uh and it and Sandy you basically talked about it with when you were referring with our work with Ruckers and um with Ruckers to reduce the disproportionate classifications in special education but that work involves us having good discussions about what we're doing districtwide in regular education before they even get to our child study team's doorsteps um so we're H right now we're having really good conversations about them um I'd be remiss if I didn't say that the outcomes of these conversations wouldn't have budgetary price tags to them going forward um but I don't look at those as uh costs I look at them more as Investments that will reduce costs in the future because the more we can reduce our uh students being classified the more we can reduce students being sent out of district and you will agree with me again with that point when you see our budget presentation the more we can reduce those costs uh it'll probably uh uh uh the savings from reducing those cost would probably outweigh the Investments we make in other areas but we want to be smart and we want to be deliberate as we make those uh as we make those Investments the otpt room it's it you know uh I go back to when we had to uh work on selling the budget to the community and you know we we take it for granted it was only a few years ago we were putting our most neediest children and giving them related Services occupational and physical therapy on stages in the auditorium in the tower room at volano in the basement the volano school um so we really do have a new space there and uh a great space there and I'm glad you highlight I never even mentioned this to you but the uh the architect of lifetown uh I graduated high school with and so when he designed that project we had extensive conversations about what he was putting in there and and I remember all of those conversations and you know here I'm thinking of wow this is just some facility they're building for uh you know Mammoth County or you know out you know out there and it it just it's it's it's great that our children uh get to experience that that facility um and lastly you mentioned our our uh fdu intern that we liked her so much she's on today's agenda she has a little bit of time at the end of the year and we're going to bring her in for a few days to assist us um in a in a few different capacities and so I thank the board for um for approving her appointment uh tonight as well so again thank you good job well I'm I'm glad that you said everything you said because I was going to highlight the fact that the the work is so difficult and so sensitive and to thank you and and the team uh that you lead so I'll stop right there because it was so eloquently uh said by Dr niss off on behalf of the board thank you okay um uh Mrs ricardi can I get a motion to open her meeting yes I motion to open the meeting to the public for input and comment on agenda items only all in favor that's second oh thank you all in favor I I I Mr grolik may get a motion to close the meeting I move to close the meeting to the public for input and comments second second it by Mrs Mara all in favor I I okay uh the board has had an opportunity to review the agenda items and uh with that uh Mr Smith I get a motion to adopt the items on the above consent agenda sorry I don't have my glasses so you picked the right day to do so I might ask somebody in the first row to hold it there Pete resolve uh it's uh item a on all right I move to adopt all the items on the above consent agenda I second seconded by Mrs ricardi roll call please Mr GRC I Mrs Mara hi Mr ricardi hi Mr Smith hi Mr Pasar hi thank you Mr mamora uh we'll move on to uh committee reports uh uh Mr grck facilities buildings and grounds report thank you uh good evening Emerson uh the facilities buildings and grounds committee we met twice since our last board meeting on April 4th and 25th both uh with myself Miss Marin attendance along with Dr nenoff and Mr marur um between these two meetings we reviewed the district's planned summer projects which I reported out at our February meeting uh and among them this includes an electrical service upgrade at the high school which is on track for an August 31 completion date this is ultimately going to allow the high school to accommodate future building improvements such as air conditioning in the gymnasium uh we took a look at subdividing an unoccupied room in the Junior Senior High School uh into two separate offices in a waiting area uh repairing flashing on a section of Memorial's roof scheduled to be completed this summer a volano classroom renovation project uh which has since been reduced from five classrooms down to two due to increased construction costs the project is also going to include hallway and faculty room uh floor replacements uh we conducted a walkthrough of the high school which included areas of recent upgrades as well as areas identified for future work uh just now the board approved a resolution to award a tennis court renovation project mentioned at the previous meeting as well uh to move ahead with the very first steps of a much needed overhaul and resurfacing uh upon inspection of the committee um it really confirmed it's in great need of repair uh the committee reviewed uh itemized proposals from contractors we also had an extensive discussion about two possible options uh asphalt or something called post tension concrete and ultimately the committee did agree with the administration's recommendation to proceed with something called post tension concrete which has a larger upfront cost but comes with significantly longer projected lifespan as well as less maintenance and repair the committee also discussed a potential project to Turf our baseball and softball fields and examined quotes from uh three contractors Administration presented to the committee projections on anticipated long-term savings uh the committee is excited by the prospect of this consideration for what it would mean to our student athletes and Community given the potential project would exceed a bid threshold Mr Mur will be issuing a form noral RFP or request for proposal for this project in which the committee Administration will review any submissions for possible board consideration uh the tennis court and turf projects as well as the other projects mentioned in my report would be funded from The District's capital reserve account uh as I reported in February capital reserve accounts are established by new school districts New Jersey for an accumulation of funds to be utilized specifically for projects in the districts approved long-term long range facilities plan the committee will be meeting again on Monday May 6 and uh among items we will conduct a walk of volano school this concludes my report for the evening great thank you Mr brck for uh budget and negotiations uh I will report that um Mr Smith and I met a couple of times to discuss basically the the same topics that Mr grck had just mentioned the memorial roof the tennis court projects uh Turf for the baseball and softball field I won't get into the details because Mr mamora is going to cover them later on in this uh in this meeting so in the interest of time uh I will defer that to him and that will be my report and uh Mrs mea curriculum instruction and student achievement thank you so we just came off the heels I like to call these our marathon Monday Board of Ed meetings because we spend an awful lot of time in the Board of Ed office um so we just came off of our academic committee meeting for this month and I just want to highlight a couple of the things that we discussed um first that we're planning for a summer Enrichment Academy based on tutoring grant that we um are focusing a $559,000 grant on grades three and four so it's for students that are going into grade three moving from grade three to grade four and also those students exiting grade four and the focus is a onetoone tutoring for the summer program to help alleviate that summer dip that you can see um so the right now we have tutoring available for 45 students and if there are spaces left that don't fall within that confine of the three to four grades then we will see if there's other students that might really benefit from having this tutoring available over the the summer so very excited for these Grant funds to be able to help fund our um our great work over the summer um we also talked about proficiency based uh writing rubrics that uh they're being worked on for the K through3 Ela curriculum and I wanted to highlight this because I know this is a heavy meeting tonight but watching the presentation from Matt Lee about how we're evaluating our superintendent just folds so beautifully in what our district strategic plan is for proficiency based learning and this is how we are evaluating our superintendent of our school um and that is now how our teachers are really evaluating our students by using these rubrics that are proficiency based and giving them a rubric of how they how well are they doing right and so now you see this practical application just married beautifully in what the board has to do in this important work of evaluating our superintendent so it's great Kudos too Mrs oerman because the work that you do to create these rubrics and all of the links that are involved is very ensive and um it certainly shows that this is where we need to be so it's fantastic very happy to see that um I also wanted to wish good luck to Mrs Espinosa who's presenting at an education week conference we just found out about this this evening on standards based grading again um tying seamlessly into our proficiency based learning and that's going to be in May miday that she will be presenting at this conference so um she's going to be a fantastic repres presentation for this topic because volano has been doing such tremendous work um on this these standards and that's my report for this evening great thank you thank you Mrs Mara uh so we'll move on to board member reports Mr gr all right uh good evening again everyone um first I'd like to thank Dr Vasquez uh for your overview on the district special education and special services programs and um specifically I really appreciate apprciate the district's willingness to look inward with regards to data that does suggest any disproportionality and and efforts and hard conversations that go into uh working for reming that remediating that uh thank you to Mr Matt Lee for coming earlier to uh this evening um uh I feel like it's been a little while since we've had our regular meeting and there's been a lot going on a lot of awesome things um it feels like forever ago which was Memorial's amazing third grade heritage night which we all know as an Emerson institution and and I it was a wonderful uh show um kudos to students and staff and I just love it because it really showcases our communities uh strength and its diversity uh thank you to M oerman for uh bringing in uh the burn County prosecutor's office for the April 2nd Internet safety presentation uh which was put on by Burton County prosecutor's office um and I also appreciate the efforts to have that live streamed uh for the community I believe that's also up on a link on the main page um really much looking forward to the May 7th presentation of parenting in a parenting in parenting in a digital age and I just thankful for the district for bringing these presentations to the community uh volano uh play was absolutely amazing uh our district is filled with uh Superstars and I was blown away at the talent on stage um so amazing uh work um and a lot of late days for the staff there thank you very thank you very much uh this past Friday my daughter and I attended probably one of my family's favorite events in Memorial system night and uh not only selfishly is a fun for my family it's obviously just a wonderful way to engage the community and our students in all things science technology engineering math but I was really reflective driving home because uh it's really just that event really just highlights uh what amazing volunteerism can do for our community every single one of those booths was family in town or a high school teacher coming down to work with largely elementary students all on their own time and um it really just reinvigorated uh uh my um just love for uh how we are all in on education here um that being said I just want to wrap up I think the weather today really just reminds me we've got a lot of amazing events coming up and I just wish uh everyone involved in academic extracurricular athletic events the best of luck and uh it's going to be an exciting last few months for the school year so this concludes my report and thank you great thank you Mr BR Mrs Mar um sure so first and foremost I wanted to thank Dr vas's uh fantastic presentation and also helped really build and and um build together some of the topics that um Mrs oerman and myself and Mrs ricardi and um Dr Nissen off had been discussing at our academic committee meeting and um looking for those way ways to really just make sure that we are um really keeping all of our students and all of their needs top of mind what that's going to look like downflow to budget and Personnel Etc and um I I can say personally based on these meetings that this district has their pulse on that topic and I really do think that you have it covered so it's fantastic so thank you um I'm going to thank in advance to Dr nissanoff and Mr mmura for their work on the budget along with the finance and budget committee um Mr pazdar Mr Smith um I too was able to attend some of the districtwide uh or District events over the past month the high uh Middle School Musical volano was fantastic um loved High School Musical my daughter's been listening to it on some since then um so it's reinvigorated a little music in our house Heritage night Mrs gagano had warned me when we sat down like make sure you have tissues ready oh okay she was right I was crying by the last song it was just beautiful these students are so talented they take this so seriously it's just such a beautiful night um stem night was another great evening you know it was buzzing from the moment that it started until the very end of the night when you were like forcing people to get out of the door and away from the ooble station that they kept going back to um and then lastly I did want to thank um the work of the ad administrators with with Mr Marmora and Dr nissanoff and as well as Mr grck on these renovation projects that we are planning for um as part of our longterm planning our long range plans um for updating our facilities I would love to say that our tennis courts look like they do because of the earthquake and that there was a fault line that's not the case okay and there's some term like fault in tennis that I know is appropriate but again not for the way that these tennis courts look this is long overdue project it's very thoughtful on the part of the administration to um approach these projects you're thinking about it at a very crucial time where we're losing certain Personnel to upkeep these areas of concern and this is going to benefit this is an investment for our community for our student population so um Kudos and I'm so thankful to be working alongside of all of you to get these projects under underway and lastly I'm just going to say number nine according to Us world news report I mean it's fantastic it's good things so thank you great thank you MRSA Mrs ricardi thank you um I have a lot of echoing here so for the sake of time I'll I'll try to expedite it but something I do want to give a lot of attention to is thank you to Dr Vasquez it was a very thorough and it it doesn't even skim the surface of how much work that you truly do and it is very heartfelt work between you your team how it's incorporated into the classrooms just thank you thank you to everybody involved um everybody appreciates it I want to thank Mr Lee who was here earlier uh Mrs oerman for all of the work that you do just to again Echo Mrs Mara we were literally just talking about this before this meeting it truly is a marathon kind of night and it's it's so enlightening to see it in in multiple aspects um of the meeting so I too have been participa or not participating but attending all of the fun functioning events that we have going on in the district my stem night is a fan favorite I unfortunately was not able to make it to the Heritage night but I did watch it on um on the the video that is up on YouTube and I too cried uh so that's Lord knows what's going to happen next year the High School Musical was amazing there was so much dedication and hard work put in by the students and from the the teachers who dedicated their time and it was obvious uh it was wonderful to see we had opening day for softball and baseball this past weekend um it was a ton of fun and I too appreciated the virtual option for the uh Internet safety training from the New Jersey Prosecutor's office because I was not able to make it in person but I sure was able to watch it online so thank you very much for that uh and that concludes my report great thank you Mrs cardi Mr Smith I know you love going I I do I think it's purpose F because you know I I already heard everything and most folks ditto exactly no but I do want to thank Dr Basquez that was great I think what does get missed and is worth repeating what we've talked about the you know the impact on the students the impact on the community um the impact is they'll talk about from a budgetary standpoint and a good way to make things more improved for our students is tremendous so um it's something that I've learned more and more as I've been here in this seat uh and really have taken appreciation for so I I do want to thank you for that and the and the excellent presentation um you know some of the things that haven't been talked about you know I've been through Heritage night it is great I did not cry though I promise um the Internet safety was something I did go and watch because as having two teenagers and myself um and you know not being the most internet Savvy uh it it is a crazy world out there um um but we also have some very good things going on in the Sports World here I know I sound like typical but it has been brought up um our softball team has been doing very well our baseball team is doing extremely well um I Echo all the sentiments on a tennis courts because not only do the students use it but our whole Community use them um you know a lot of other towns have tennis courts in throughout Parks we don't so this is something that's widely used so it's a great benefit for everyone and yeah money well spent so that's it great thank you Mr Smith I'll move on to uh my board president report and I will as always combine board president report and my Bergen County uh executive committee report and the New Jersey school board report into one speed speech session so um I've already thanked Dr vasos I'll do it again quickly thank you uh for the presentation and for your work work um I had the opportunity with Dr nof to visit the senior center um and it was really um it was nice to get out there and and be among them I hadn't done that before and uh there were more welcoming than I thought so I really appreciated that um volano play fantastic I will uh I will admit that I left there feeling very unaccomplished comparing them to my my you know uh 10-year-old self uh very talented it's amazing so it was very nice to see uh stem Knight I'd like to really highlight this um uh it you know I know it's been touched on but this is a tremendous event it's a success every year um and it gets more advanced more interesting more fun every year um there were I'll throw out some statistics about 200 students and 100 parents uh attended there were 21 tables or stations uh the majority of which were run by parents or uh teachers all volunteers all put in their own time and effort and in a lot of cases their own money um I wanted to highlight the non-parent L ones mad science Mr Mark from the closer Nature Center Arena stem girls who co uh who code and I was told that the robotics team was out in full force so um it was just great that they had this event uh they had some new events uh new tables this year stations make your own ice cream math mat laser and Optics so I I hope everyone out there who's listening they get out there next year and really um attend this really great event uh so thank you for uh Meg Smith for leading this and organizing it along with assistance from Craig poke uh Marcy pacura Monica McCarthy Lin the robotics team and all of the other volunteers and and folks behind the scenes so thank you for your work on that um Harlem Wizards uh my wife and I had the opportunity to volunteer at this fundraising event uh it was great to see the Emerson Community there was packed house um they did a great job the Wizards did to get the kids out there the young boys and girls and and some not so young boys and girls out there uh and involved in participating in the drills um I think the highlight of the evening for me was when Dr nissanoff um performed to a stirring rendition of YMCA so um and yes we do have that on video and uh we are not afraid to use it so uh I I can't guarantee that that won't make it into the superintendent evaluations but we will we will use our best judgment in that uh so I'd like to thank Mrs mahajer and Mrs graph for their work on on setting that up uh uh Relay for Life event coming up Saturday May 4th you know I think everybody knows what what this event is all about and I encourage everyone to consider uh attending and and contributing to that um great event uh on the county level uh I would like to congratulate Mrs Amy Mera for attaining her new board member certification so congratulations there's training and time and effort involved in that and and uh uh Mrs Mar has been great in in doing that so I wanted to thank her for her work and and that attainment uh and then on um that's it really New Jersey school board uh uh meeting next meeting is Friday May 3rd and I'll be attending that and I will report anything that is relevant and uh that concludes my report um miss m Rivers is not here so we'll move on to superintendent work so Dr okay I'll try to be um I got a long list here so I'm going to go right at it it's not in any priority order um first uh first thing we had a solar eclipse here in the district and I I just want to uh give uh a lot of credit to the staff Alice for for taking the lead on organizing it but our entire teaching staff uh from pre to 12 uh use this as a teachable moment I think we were a model for how District should handle uh a natural event such as this one and uh not to disparage any of the those that closed their schools and panicked um but I certainly enjoyed uh enjoyed spending some time on uh on volano field with the volano staff uh watching the kids it was just amazing that the joy that they had laying down looking at this and uh they they they really had a great time and here the high school uh High School get lets out at uh 3:00 there were dozens and dozens of kids and teachers that were still around the school at 3:30 just still marveling at at at the eclipse it was a great day it was a great day uh talked about the bana School play um a phenomenal event and not just the children that were performing which they were they were in fact outstanding but so many aspects of of the district were were involved um Mr Olman from the high school kids from the Middle School that were there that were Al that also participated and helped um Miss Espinosa's son Lucas was doing the sound I mean so many hands were involved in making that production that was great stem Knight a lot was said about stem knight uh I the only thing I want to emphasize is just how many uh groups and people were involved um by board members very gracious mention mentioned many of them but making that happen really is a just a big partnership with the parents for stem the PTA the Board of Ed we were thanked a hundred times for our contributions uh to to that event and to our teachers um not just the ones that that volunteer but our our entire Teachers Association was pre you know had a presence there had a booth there as they do every every year and it's uh so so well appreciated really is a community um Community event um the high school Key Club had another midnight run into New York City to uh provide supplies for the homeless uh kudos to them the high school had another amazing pep rally spring pep rally uh this year but I think about all these little events that had so much excitement and that was yet yet another um wonderful wonderful event the kids just had a had a had a great time we had some celebrations some uh over since our last board meeting we inducted students into the National Honor Society the National Art Honor Society the national business Honor Society um Harlem Wizards as was said another wonderful event for the entire Community there was so many people there uh I'll just leave it with i' I've learned a lesson when I show up to an event like that don't wear a suit I should just kind of blend in a little better with the crowd and that might keep me from getting dragged out uh onto onto the floor um today yet another uh large community event bringing people together is that we had which I apologize for those of you who drove here and couldn't get a parking space so we had the League championships for trap um I worked the grill from to three if you were lucky enough to get one of my Burgers um but there were with me was probably a dozen parents all came together to help volunteer and they'll be back they'll be back tomorrow schools from all around the county and they come here why do they come here they came here for our facility which is one of the nicest facilities in Bergen County uh and so we're so proud of that and think about that as we go go forward uh with with other uh facility projects such as the the tennis courts Renovations um we talked about the uh the Cyber safety meeting that again is part of the board of education's initiatives to bring parent training programs to our district and that was uh one of four we have another one coming up next week uh which is analog values in the digital age so it's a talking a little bit more about continuing to talk more about um uh the effects of uh social media and uh technology is having on our children and we will be broadcasting that we're really expecting that to be a a uh a wonderful um presentation thank you to the board for approving the revision of the calendar it's now 100% official it was kind of unofficial but we are uh we have revised our calendar and uh we will be uh extending our Memorial Day weekend to from Friday to Tuesday um there's uh many many people who are really really happy about that so on behalf of them I'm thanking the board uh another in initiative that uh has come up by a parent of a kindergarten teacher uh at Memorial School that we are looking at and going to be talking about and going to talk further with the board uh and that is a an initiative to uh get parents of kindergarteners to make a pledge to wait until 8th grade to purchase a smartphone for their child um we can talk all night about it I'm not going to do that I'm just going to socialize that here today that I may be talking further with the board um about how we might be able to support that initiative uh that is at this point parent driven but my understanding is that approximately 40 uh parents from the uh current kindergarten class of about 70 something have already made that pledge and so I'm so excited that they have that they have done that and I'm sure that the kindergarten teachers that are here uh today also appreciate that this week we uh we had a new event we had a fishing club who knew Emerson had a fishing club uh I saw some video I was able to see video of one of our high school kids catching his first fish uh I thought that was fantastic Mr platty were you there for that I was not Bliss was there you'll be at the next one I now that you found out there's a fish fishing club um this past month our our uh the Emerson Junior Senior uh band went to uh and chorus I believe music program went to Disneyland uh they had a they had a they had a great trip but uh right after the right after the event Mr Leone sent me a video uh an email thanking thanking uh the board and thanking me for the trip it sent me a video of their performance and it kind of sat in my unread for you know for a couple of weeks I finally had the opportunity catching up on my email I clicked on the link and I watched it we all know when we watch musical Productions over video the the quality can be degraded somewhat um but I watched this video of our kids performing down in Florida at uh I think it was Disney Springs I don't think it was Disneyland it was Disney Springs and there wasn't a large crowd there there was a little bit of a crowd the performance was amazing was fantastic was really they really did a superb job so kudos to them um I just wanted uh make everyone aware that our uh the wrestling uh partnership with Park Ridge which was not taken for granted and was we were actually concerned that the league would not approve approve our uh partnership with Parkridge for wrestling but it has been approved for another two years so that their tradition can continue um looking uh oh speaking of the senior uh the the the the the meeting at the senior center uh that Bruce and John and I attended you know as long as I've been here our seniors have been supportive of our school system always always always I've always felt that way um and when we met interesting there were there were only a couple of questions but two just come to mind they asked questions about student absenteeism and they were concern was that a was that an issue was that a problem they asked about if our high school students uh were registering to vote and would they you know are they involved in the process and I just thought th I thought those questions were just were were great um and what was wonder what was nice is that I was able to report that not only are our 17 year olds here at the high school are they registering to vote we had and just happened this P this past week 20 of our upper classmen uh were being trained by the buron County Board of Elections to work as pole workers in the upcoming primary and the general election they were thrilled about it they were the kids were thrilled about it they were engaged they set up in the in the uh in the cafeteria uh they brought all the equipment in and and train now I don't know if they were excited about the election process or they were excited that they got to get out of class and got paid for it by the county um but it was wonderful to see that they're involved in election process um I look forward to working with the board with regards to the superintendent evaluation process um I just want to let the public know it the superintendent evaluation is not new uh our superintendent has been evaluated every year as required uh by by law we are looking at a different process which is the online process uh that was described by um by Mr Lee so I do look forward to working with with the board with regard to that uh and and lastly uh you hinted at it which was the the the the number nine and I'm going to preface my comment uh very slowly here you know our firm belief is that these all of these rankings all of these rankings are not valuable information for us it doesn't help us uh we don't believe in the accuracy of them we've seen it from time to time uh they can be uh you know misrepresented from year to year there's wide variations wide variations the school goes from here to here in one year and that just makes does not make sense to us that being said when we're ranked N 9 in Bergen County um I think we have to we have to stand tall and be proud of that uh ninth in Bergen County if you take out two uh magnet schools off the list we're seventh in Bergen County with regards to uh public high schools in uh in the county and so very very proud of that our teachers and staff should be extremely proud of it because it's their work that uh that made that happen I've heard comments throughout the community uh as recently is today how um uh people are so proud of that how they're going to their friends and neighbors that live in other communities and kind of you know giving them the business about L um but um yes on one hand uh we don't want to to use uh my predecessor Brian gon's quote we don't want to spike the football every time we we we rank really really high because you know any another really is data that's based on you know one age level one group of kids very often and we know that that varies from year to year um but we're very very proud of that ranking everyone in this room should be proud of that ranking and this board certainly should be so uh with that I conclude my report great thank you Dr nof um business administrators report Mr mamar thank you um so most of my report I'll be saving for the uh budget hearing that's going to be coming up um but I just would like to um recognize resolution number nine uh from Miss scaion and I'm sure Dr Miss will agree with me that she'll be taking over for um Mrs soloco in our office and we wish her all the best and it's great to see someone from within the uh the office get a nice promotion like this so good luck to Virginia and good luck to javana too in her retirement and that concludes my report thank Mora uh with that U Mrs Mara may I get a motion to open a meeting to the public I move to open the meeting to the public for input and comments second seconded by Mr gck all in favor I I I I just wanted to say I feel like um Emerson being such a small District most of the top schools I thought were big districts so I think that's something to really be proud of considering how small it is compared to a lot of the you know other high schools there small But Mighty yeah thank you any other comments okay um Mr Smith can you close the meeting I moveed to close the meeting to the public for input and comments I second seconded by Mrs ricardi all in favor I um Mrs Meer could you uh close out with motion B sure I move to close the meeting to the public and adjourn at 9:05 to discuss an executive session legal and Personnel matters in the conference room of the Board of Education offices no action will be taken at this time the board will return to open session upon completion of discussion and mayor may not take action at that time the next meeting of the board of education is scheduled for May 13th 2024 at 7:30 p.m. in the high school media center second seconded by Mr gck all in favor I that's it um just want to make make a correction that we are going into executive session after the after the budget hearing so we're not going just want to make it clear that we're not going to Executive session right now still don't thank you thank you for coming okay so should I just go the next all right so we're just going to roll right into the budget um budget hearing uh am I still reading the meeting yeah you do that part we just we don't this meeting is being held in conformance with the open public meetings Act and the time place and agenda of said meeting has been conveyed to the appropriate newspapers and posted in the board office three schools municipal building and filed with the clerk of the burough Emerson um Mr marora would you like to go into the uh budget presentation sure so while uh while John is getting set up I'll kind of start us off this will be the first budget hearing in 30 years that I didn't have to prepare um I'm happy to to stand alongside John as he uh goes through his presentation he did a wonderful job he's worked really really hard on it and um I'm going to talk a little bit later on about some of the educational components that are going to be built into this into the budget but I'll leave the uh floor to you John all right so thank you everyone for up so yes thank you everyone for staying and listening to the uh budget presentation tonight Dr nof kind of stole my line about the first time in 30 years newba is actually going to be giving a budget presentation here so it's no pressure or anything I but um it's uh you know I'm very excited and and just honored to share the stage with him tonight and to present a budget that I feel really good about um finance committee and the board worked really hard in directing us and helping us so um we'll get into it so just tonight to kind of briefly go over um what we're going to be speaking about we're going to talk about the budget process and how we get to our end product U we'll go over some budget facts which include some more key information um what makes up the differences from last year what increased um what the expenditures are made from what the revenues are made from and then some of the educational and other program uh enhancements that we're looking to do for next year um I'll go into some of the capital projects that we've spoken about so far this uh past meeting and then we'll talk about this tax impact um what the tax impact looks like um for the town the municipality on the tax levy as well as for the average uh homeowner and we'll leave it up to some questions at the end if anyone has any questions so um with the budget process um we like to get started as early as possible I'm already thinking about the 25 26 budget if you can believe it but really officially it starts in sometime in uh mid to late September is when we get our budget documents and budget packet ready out uh get ready to send out to all the administrators and um have them fill it out to return back to us in the uh business office to start the review um like you see here it involves all the stakeholders all the stakeholders especially uh finance committee which is um Mr Pasdar and Mr Smith here who give us Direction and guidance um as to where we're going to lead with the budget and the method that we use for the budget is primarily a zerob based budget so it's not a copy and paste from year to year um we try to start from the ground up and really have justifications for every line item that we have in our budget so after we have all of our information and compiling the data we start to balance the budget so it's like any other kind of budget that you have you're going to have your revenues and you're going to have your Appropriations or expenditures and it's just a balancing act from here so um a couple things that make up the revenues it's primarily the tax levy that's the number one um we also do get some state aid to help offset that and other Revenue sources such as rentals um when we rent out to Bergen uh Bergen County special services um as well as interest and other miscellaneous revenues um as far as the Appropriations the line share is going to go to salaries and benefits and as you'll see that's um a big chunk of the budget um we'll use district and board goals once we get to a number we use district and board goals to kind of narrow the Gap and try to balance the budget uh which leaves us with a tenative budget which we approved at our last meeting in March so the tenative budget is um approved in March it's at a public hearing and it's open for anyone that wants to come and make a public suggestion uh just like today with the final budget uh presentation um after it gets approved at that uh March meeting we'll submit the budget electronically to the county uh they check off the backup paperwork and once we get the blessing from the county that everything looks okay and everything is in order um we advertise so we have to advertise for tonight's budget hearing and that brings us to tonight which is the final budget hearing it's a public meeting um after tonight we have to post our userfriendly District budget to the website within 48 Hours uh it's a condensed version of the budget so instead of an 80 somewhat page doc it breaks it down to 15 pages or so a little bit easier to digest I'm sorry no no you're okay I'm just just realizing I'm uh I'm my back's toward you I'm sorry all good okay and um we go we work with the with the uh buau to certify the tax levy and then finalize the data input into our accounting system so we can have everything ready and have um purchase orders ready once uh we get a little bit closer to that July 1st St so some of the budget facts and this is for the general operating fund that we have uh this is the 24 25 school year so next year um the number for the budget is going to be 26,8 46,8 40 so if you take that number and then you subtract it from this current year the 23 24 budget year you come up with a budget increase of a little over a million dollars so that's a million doll A Milli 48,6 55 so that's the number that we have to be able to tie out with our Appropriations and with our revenues so now what is that million dollars made up of well as we heard earlier from Dr vasquez's uh presentation the number one um increase for this next year the uh 24 25 school year is added District uh tuitions but this also includes vocational um placements and other added District placements um and unfortunately unlike a school district where we have a constraint where we can only increase the tax levy 2% um with some adjustments um private schools really don't have that so they can increase their tuition rates as much as they want um and it's just something that we have to uh manage and be creative about uh next up is health benefits um pension P so these are costs to employ our our Workforce our staff um same thing with the health benefits too there's no constraint on that there's no Governor the health benefits can go up um I think in this case for the 2024 year they're on a calendar year it went up approximately 11% next is salaries salaries is going to be um a large increase here too that's our number one um cost we'll see later uh child study team special education cost as we kind of went through before um this is related services like occupational therapies physical therapy speech services evaluations and transportation we're still feeling the effects of uh Transportation so um we did hire a new driver to try to build capacity within our own transportation department to try to have some cost savings there which is wored um that's represented in this uh this number here but it's also the um third party contractors that um the rates for roots are just very high high and we're left with not much of a a recourse General Insurance is our uh liability property Casualty Insurance um cyber insurance is is a huge Factor now so cyber insurance rates have gone up quite a bit in the last few years um Athletics coming up a little bit Professional Services these are um for the school district's attorneys Auditors um Architects and then just a bunch of miscellaneous so this includes in the parentheses as you see the some of the buildings and grounds Health Services Nurse Services technology school supplies and then it brings you to that $1 million uh number so going over to the revenues now um we were lucky enough to get some of uh an increase in state aid approximately 177% um state aid increase for our district some districts you might have seen in the papers not as lucky some of them got less and much less um this is going to be the last year that uh Governor Murphy is fully funding the budget formula so for next year it's still it's up in year it's going to be a question mark it's not something we can depend on for next year but we're glad we had this that we were able to utilize for 24 25 school year uh we're increasing our use of surplus so this is leftover fund that we had from the previous year that we feel confident that we'll be able to return um year after year but it's used to as a base to increase our uh revenues um we increase a couple of our revenues our our our preschool revenues we increased some rentals we increased and interest rates have been much better so we're able to afford to budget a little bit more on our interest rates and then finally the tax ta Levy the tax levy is what makes up the majority of our um revenues that's um showcasing a 2% increase on our prior Year's uh 23 24 school year uh tax levy and then in addition to that we were able to qualify for an adjustment for enrollment which I'll talk about a little bit later and then we arrive to our $1 million number there so I'm not a graphic artist and this is Dr niss off's favorite um slide here it's a little fuzzy but I just wanted to quickly Showcase with the budget a lot of it's um fixed plus as you could see here so the three largest CL drivers it's salaries benefits and tuition if you even just look at salaries and benefits that's 75% of the budget right there adding in the added District tuitions it's about 22 a little over $22 million um about 85% of our budget going to just three cost drivers so there's not a lot of wiggle room for us um when it comes to the other areas of the budget okay and now I can turn it over to Dr niss you want me to click through click before I before I go to the the first bullet because I know it's not a bullet there is that one of the most important uh aspects of this of of the components that are going to be in the budget is that there are no reductions in force with the exception of one position within the buildings and grounds Department which um due to retirement that we may not be refilled um and I think that's I think that goes should goes a long way John you did a great job of preparing a budget for our first budget hearing where they didn't have to come and and and deliver that kind of news so some of the things that that uh that this budget is going to support one expanded ESL support for prek prek classrooms we're going to be revising our math curriculum K12 next year uh this year we were piloting the Odus assessment software at volano we're hoping to implement that formally for next year uh that's to support some of the things that Miss Mara uh talked about earlier today about um our uh Performance Based uh assessments we're going to continue working with the Ruckers group around disproportionality and uh to build our tiered systems of support at each school we talked about that at length a little bit earlier continue to support our professional learning groups um in uh in all these areas um diversity Equity inclusion social emotional learning proficiency based learning uh some things that are not there habits of work uh reading instruction um safety and maybe one or two that I'm missing um but we really want to continue to support that work and we thank the board for giving us the time to actually do that cyber security um is as we know we had quite an experience this year so we want to make sure that we're doing what we need to do to make the right Investments um to protect the DAT within the uh there is one new position uh a learning disability teacher consultant at the high school well with the child study team but will be hous at High School uh we the board has uh approved the purchase of new history textbooks um to replace what was the copy rate thing 96 yeah it was in the 90s it was in the '90s in the 9s um that was the last time a different business administrator gave the bud all right just just one one funny story I I've been here so long that I was paid had a paid trip to beautiful Minneapolis or someplace like that for the National Convention of school business administrators to present to a room of probably 300 people on how to use PowerPoint to give a budget presentation in the early 90s so I uh crazy um okay uh continue our sports program with parkbridge and Cresco we're happy we talked about parkbridge uh continuing but also our Cresco football partnership is going to continue increase funding for elementary school activities uh and that's something that uh we're seeing um is being very well received by children and parents moving some of those activities after school activities uh to Memorial School as well going to continue our onetoone Chromebooks although I'm going to say it publicly now yes we're going to continue our initiative at one to one Chromebooks but we're also going to look at how we might be able to scale back the use of those Chromebooks uh for uh for some of our students we're adding an astronomy course here at the high school very excited about that uh going to reconfigure the sixth grade we have an opportunity with the uh incoming sixth grade to reconfigure their schedule include uh a cross-curricular period that's going to extend instructional time for math and language arts and add a cycle course uh that uh is going to include some Spanish some movement and uh science technology engineering and Mathematics as well we're going to be maintaining our class sizes as I said no reductions in force and we're going to continue uh to support the academic achievement in this district and uh we're going to take our ranking of the ninth best high school in Bergen County and we're going to take that and we're not going to rest on our laurels we're going to continue to work to improve on the things that really matter to us which are not rankings but the things that really matter to us which is the performance of our kids okay so on to capital projects um which seems to be a theme in tonight's meeting um in this budget the 2425 budget built into the budget is money that's going to be taken out of capital reserve which will have no uh impact on the tax but money taken out of capital reserve to replace um a partial section of the roof at Memorial School um if you could see it's pretty much the areas where the red circles are and red notations are um so like I said that's capital reserve funds no impact to the taxpayers now some other capital projects that might be happening in the 2425 school year um as we've mentioned today the tennis courts is uh a large project that we're looking forward to completing uh as you can see here there's a picture um of the tennis courts with a nice big crack right down in the middle of the uh the lines there in the playing area of the tennis court so uh tonight we approved an engineer who's going to be helping us um develop some specs and we'll be going out the bid and hopefully um have some nice new tennis courts um by the Fall um also as mentioned um we're going to be looking at some field improvements right now uh baseball softball uh Turf improvements also with Bano school um we're going to continue renovating the classrooms at Bano School uh had to scale it back a little bit this year but there'll be two um classrooms that are going to be renovated and in addition to that we're going to be renovating the hallway uh flooring and the faculty room flooring and then finally here um a project that's been ongoing for a little while it's the high School electrical upgrade um this is going to hopefully afford US the ability to have um Power that we can have H back into the um the gymnasium so finally get some air conditioning in in the gym in high school okay so now on to the um the tax impact and what we'll look at first is the base tax levy cap so this is going to be the total amount that we are allowed to um tax uh for next year's budget so in order to do this what we do is we start with our 23 24 budgets tax levy and this is the general operating fund and we include enrollment adjustments so this is one of the adjustments that we're allowed to actually increase our base on um we had an increase of approximately 46 students so it goes through a formula with the state and it comes out with number of $531,500 so this becomes the pre-budget amount that we can actually increase by 2% so once we have that we have the 23,8 15,37 and we also qualified for a health care adjustment because like I mentioned previously because the healthcare went up such an exorbitant amount we were able to tap into an adjustment that was available to us so total tax levy that we could increase by it would be 24, 17,488 so now that's the cap that's the max that we can go with our our uh tax levy but tonight we're going to be proposing uh 23,5 14,000 um so we're underap approximately 53 ,000 um now with that 53,000 number that doesn't just go away it allows the district to bank it it's called Bank cap so now that 53,000 will be able to be stored we can use it it expires in 3 years so we have three years in case we need to dip into if we don't have enrollment adjustment if we don't have health care adjustment we have this to fall back on if we ever need to go over the 2% amount so now that 23,5 14,000 what that translates to it's about a 2.9% increase in the general fund tax levy um included in that 663 th000 number is approximately 206,000 that's the enrollment adjustment we just took a portion of the enrollment adjustment that we had and the 2% that we were allowed to um increase so now what this means for for the average taxpayer in um Emerson if we were to compare last year versus this year it's about a $219 increase in taxes um it's about a 2.6% increase compared to last year's uh this is based on an average home assessed at 447,000 and now you might be saying well it was 2.9% for the tax levy but 2.6% for the average homeowner um but the reason for this was in Emerson there was actually more ratables and increase in the total valuation of all the homes which drove the number down for the average uh taxpayer and um that's it any questions any questions from the board okay thank you Mr mamora appreciate the presentation thank you very much okay so with that um Mr mmore I guess we'll do a roll call for the uh for the um meeting Mr G here Mrs Mara here Mrs ricardi here Mr Smith here here Mr passard here okay um so obviously we've had a chance to review and and listen to the presentation for the budget um Mrs Mar can I get a motion to open the meeting to the public sure I'll move to open the meeting to the public for discussion and questions at 9:30 p.m. second seconded by Mr grck uh roll call Mr grck here Mrs Mara I Mr Mardi I Mr Smith I Mr passard I Mrs ricardi can I get a motion to end the public session I motion to end the public session I second seconded by Mr Smith roll call please Mr gr I Mrs Mara hi Mrs ricardi hi Mr Smith hi Mr passard hi okay um having reviewed the budget um Mr Smith would you make a motion to adopt the items on the agenda please I make a motion to adopt all items on the above consent agenda I second roll call please Mr Grow I Mrs Marin I Mrs ricardi I Mr Smith hi Mr Pasar hi and uh Mr GRC could you make a motion to close the public hearing I move to close the public hearing at 9:32 p.m. second seconded by Mrs Mara roll call please um at 9:32 correct 9:32 BM roll call please Mr GC I Mrs Mara I Mrs ricardi I Mr Smith hi Mr pastar hi all right thank you very much everyone appreciate you attending have a good night did it got a lot