good evening welcome to a meeting of the mountain side Board of Education in accordance with the state Sunshine Law and state regulations adequate notice of this meeting was provided by mailing a notice of the time date location and instructions for accessing the meeting to the Union County local source and the Westfield lead filing the same with the burough of clerk posting the notice at the main access door of Mountainside Board of Education building and the mountain side Board of Education website these meetings are reserved for board deliberation and for review of items contained within the agenda the board reserves a right to vote on action items the board welcomes participation of interested individuals we encourage questions about specific School practices incidents or events to be brought directly to school administration each participant sorry public comment will be permitted at the beginning of the meeting for agenda items only each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making a statement in addition time will be allotted at the end of the meeting for public comments on any item speakers shall limit their comments to three minutes roll call please Mr Bill Dylan here Mr Michael Goodwin Dr Dana Guida cro Mr Jordan Heyman here Mr Vivian poopo here Mrs cesano here Mr Carmine Venice here at this time would like a motion to go into executive session it's 6:35 some move second uh all in favor iose motion carries we'll be back bu good evening we are returning from our executive session it is 7:36 at this time we will continue with the rest of our meeting let's all stand to salute our flag I pled alance 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 can I please have a motion to approve minutes from our January 23rd meeting second any questions or comments roll call please Mr Dylan yes Dr g g p yes Mr Heyman yes Mrs poopo yes Mrs shano yes Mr benis okay we have no correspondents at this time I would like to open up the floor for public participation on any items we are voting on please come up to the podium state your name and address see none we're moving on I do not have a president's report I will turn um the meeting over to our superintendent excellent thank you very much to those who have joined us this evening in a moment I am going to have Mrs chrisa fish join me and in congratulating two students who have worked very very hard in working towards a program our noetic math competition and so we are very very excited tonight to recognize Scott keki in fifth grade and Dean F Flynn in sixth grade um so we are going to have them come on up in a moment and we will present Awards to them but we are just excited to be able to share them with you on the screen and live so um without further Ado I'd like to bring Mrs chrisa Foley over to the podium and have her explain a little bit of the program good evening good evening how are you um in November we had 71 Mountainside students participate in the no etic math learning contest and we had over 27,000 students representing 528 schools across the country that participated in the fall contest uh Scott and Dean I am so proud to say you re got National honorable which is the top 10% of the athletes in our nation so [Applause] congratulations um couple other things we had 16 students in our District reive National honorable mention and this title is award to the top 50% of participating athletes so I just want to congratulate everyone who participated all 71 students for their enthusiasm and excitement just to come out and try this that's what it's all about and that's how I present it to them this is for fun it's for fun and I'm excited to say we have another one in April mid April will be our spring so I'm looking forward to being a part of this and thank you okay so we could come on up let's start with Scott you want to come up your C congratulations nice job thank you and Dean congratulations excellent thank you Mrs Chrisi and we truly appreciate this opportunity to really show off we already know which is our students working so hard and giving them the opportunity to have kind of a larger stage to see how do they compare what does their knowledge base look like when compared to students not only outside of Mountainside outside of New Jersey and across the country so thank you Mrs chrisa Foy for bringing this program to our district and we look forward to it continuing congratulations that's impressive that's a big wow good job okay congratulations and those of you who are here you are welcome to stay however we do understand that there are many other sports and activities and life and dinner and whatever else you may have so you are welcome to stay or we do not take it personally if you leave good job boys congrats congratulations Scott's going right into the Deerfield gym for basketall right okay going right into the next yes yeah good luck congratulations I'm rooting for witch though um just a couple of other quick comments on my side of the world so on the agenda tonight is to accept our student safety data system report for the first half of the year um ssds as we know the state of New Jersey loves acronyms so we have them for everything this report covered our interventions regarding HIV for harassment intimidation and bullying what trainings we've done what programs we've had in place in both schools any trainings that we do as a whole District um as you recall at our January reorg meeting I went over the process of our policy and our procedures with you as a board we do that annually with all of our staff as well as our students so this report covers all of those types of incidents um I will say that for the first half of the year we did not have any um HIV reports that needed to be investigated we're going to knock on wood everybody please so that we can continue this um as we go we did have some other incidents some leading to student removal which would be if it says leading to removal as you see in your attachment that means they might have had out of school suspension or an in school suspension so that's really what that means um and it covers all of the areas that we need to so that is on the agenda for approval this evening um a couple of other District updates Thursday is our cusac visit so we will have the county superintendent as well as all the members of his staff coming in to take a look at all of the data on site we did already have a building review of Deerfield the county ba did come in and walked Deerfield with um Mrs Sullivan as well as Mr Johnson and took a look gave some feedback on a couple of areas of but overall was very pleased with the state of the building um Mount Beachwood will occur whether if it's not on Thursday it may occur at some other future date um depending upon Staffing and availability um we have already sent a lot of information to the county many many folders and many many documents have been sent to them for their review so they have already taken a look at a lot of that they will then do some stuff on site um and we hope that they will be as impressed with our district as as all of us are so we will be sharing all of that with them on Thursday but a lot of work and a huge thank you to Kelly Castro my secret she has done just hours and hours of time putting this together assisting with the Gathering of information preparing everything to be in sharable format and PDF in and re-uploading and just really helping to organize all of this other staff on our committee has all helped to gather but she really I just owe her a very very big thanks for all the hours and time that she has put into assisting with this process um joh what what happens after Thursday what's the like the readout or the report back is it like the week after we get something a months later we what's can you remind us again I you said it before but I forget um it can take I have no idea to be honest with you I know Springfield it took into the summer it's not it's not weeks for sure and you're waiting and we get what back we get a full report or what what what comes back it's really a a a point structure so they'll give us a report for how many points so every single document every single section is worth points two points here eight points here four points for each curricular area um no real Rhyme or Reason why something's worth two versus something else being worth eight um that I can really gather so each so we have five different indicators we have Personnel we have operations we have governance we have curriculum and instruction and fiscal fiscal and then each of those each area is worth up to 100 points got it so in each individual area you need an 80 or higher to pass got if you get less than 80 points you then have to create an action plan for how to rectify that individual that section that area um so the goal of course is you know we'd love to be a perfect hun um but there are certain things that are also outside of our control some of it comes from the state so our njsla scores um while we had very very high performance we may not get full points because you have to get like basically perfect to get full points got it so there's areas in there that we do not have control over um based upon the way that they the ratings are set up from the state down got it so um and even once the county is finished it goes to the state and I know from other districts that there are times where the county awarded points and the state pushed it back and question the points that the county had given and wanted to have more justification or more information that has been happening as well okay so um we will we will see we will clean for company tomorrow we will be ready got the cookies uh breakfast we'll get some bagels whatever and uh and we will be ready Candace thank you for as being part of the committee Candace will be joining us in the morning to meet um the uh others as they come and then we'll go from there uh in addition to that in our spare time we've been looking at preliminary budgeting so we met with budget and finance this evening that is an ongoing process Dana has been spending hours and hours pouring over that and working hard at it um we have some state reports that are due as well so quite a few things that are keeping us all very busy on the student front because they're the most fun we had Spirit night for anybody who was able to be here it um occurred last week or so and really well attended the kids had some great basketball I mean the the boys game was down to the wire at the very end and it was well attended a really nice evening congratulations to Mrs Posner and the coaches for putting together a very nice night there was a the cheerleaders from palal they were here to entertain there was a pep band Led by Mr wise um so it really worked out nicely uh they put the risers up on the stage this year which was fabulous it got the kids kind of in a much better spot I twitched a little bit less over the crowd um and then last week we had the eighth graders versus the cops basketball game which is a tradition fundraiser for the eighth grade class and the uh basketball teams won it also was very close at the end but I will tell you there were some amazing three-pointers being thrown by our students uh boys and girls alike so that was a nice way to wrap up basketball season for our sports teams and they're in the process of already Gathering physicals to get ready for baseball and softball in the middle of all of that we have our Little Mermaid on the first weekends in March so that's coming up so Mr Rosen Bloom and the crew are all practicing and rehearsing so a lot of different things happening our chess club got started over at Beachwood if you recall we approved that last month and a really great turnout from our youngest students over at Beachwood a lot of interest there um so really happy to see many of these activities going on um and in the middle our students all have finished up the midyear assessments so now talking about data Dives we had um the teachers are delving into the data looking at groupings we had our professional development last Friday so we had a professional development afternoon and we were very pleased we had um not only our teachers we also Mrs rolu put together PD for the power professionals so we had the Paras come back and had them spend a couple of extra hours with us in the afternoon working with our bcba on strategies for working with their students Mr Johnson had a PD for our custodians on safe techniques for lifting and safety on ladders so really doing some training for them as well and our teachers all participated some were doing um a webinar live webinar with I ready which is one of our big platforms that we utilize on how to do personal Pathways and how to best utilize it it was amazing I jumped in for a period of time and the woman talked about it showed it gave them time to play brought them back talked about it showed it gave them time to play so they really it was very immersive and our Middle School teachers had an on-site training with linkit so our representative from linkit came on site and she was working with them on how to delve into that data and how to use Link it in a more meaningful way to create tests and to do other activities um our related arts teachers had uh some time together and they were looking at classroom practices I spent some time talking with them about connectivity and ways for them to work together and work with their grade level teams so I think that all in all it was a very productive afternoon for us um and one that would really help us as we move forward for SEF so we've been busy and that's all I have thank you you're welcome and now now on to our business administrator good evening so annually we're required to have an independent auditing firm do a full audit of all of our financial records um so for the 2223 school year you guys contracted with missia um we have Kathy mantel here from she's a partner at nisaia and she's here to present the audit um the board is also required to accept the audit um as well as any corrective action plan there were no recommendations so there is no corrective action plan so you're just required to accept the audit so Kathy would care to go to the podium and there at each of your um seats there was a synopsis of the audit as well as um highlights that Cathy prepared you have an extra book if anybody wants thank you for the the opportunity to serve the Mountainside Board of Education I'm sitting here tonight I'm greeted by people who are so friendly and to be appointed without seeing each other is an amazing thing so thank you so much never worked with Dana before known her forever both her and Steve and um you really do have um a wonderful setup here and I do have to speak on behalf of the superintendent so here we were getting the audit out and Dana was away and I've never seen such cooperation she just said Kathy tell me what I need to do I'll go in home room and I'll upload the documents I was blown away so Spirit of cooperation is wonderful and they always say um communication is probably one of the key ingredients of everything in life so such a positive experience here this year it's really difficult in a first year but um again with the positiv ity and help and of everyone here it was definitely a success we did have a few things that we found they were not big it was in terms of you know parlaying from the last audit to this audit so you might notice as you're reading through the annual comprehensive report we did a few restatements but it was pretty much that the asset inventory that the district had on hand didn't quite match up to last year audit so we went with the details that we had so definitely a report of inventory that's the biggest thing I can um remember that we did and it's outlined in the footnote so I explained to Dana today that the synopsis that is before you for the public is something that the department of Ed requires it reports the balance sheet for the governmental funds that's the general fund special Revenue funds make sure I don't speak out a term um Debt Service fund and I don't think you have a capital projects fund just double check so that reporting there's three different bases of reporting in the Acer and the first year that happened I was well into my career and I would come to the board meeting and say I feel like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth because there really are three different bases of accounting so the synopsis um matches the B1 that is in the acro and that is the gap basis so many many years ago the state came out and said that um they were not recognizing the payables to the local districts for the last two state aid payments in June had never heard of that before in my life and so the numbers that you'll see in that synopsis tonight and on the B1 have them subtracted from the fund balance so what I present to you I've been doing this for a number of years just trying try to wrap my head around what happens in a school district from year to year and because the report is so voluminous I always say there's a few takeaways for a board member to you know just be familiar with the information so of course the fund balance on the budgetary basis is the C1 and if you look at that you'll see it mirrors the board secretaries report that you see each month and so it reports the revenues the realized revenues the expenses and just to um reiterate that the open incumbrances at the end of the year are part of the fund balance as you can see we compare the balances from last year June of 22 to 23 Mountainside keeps a very low um number of open purchase orders which is a signal that things are being reviewed things are being liquidated by year end so that's really um a good sign so at the end of June it was only 9,000 so if you compare it year-to year you'll see that overall the fund balances were reduced by 561,000 you have to look at the components of that and so the state requires that in the management report which is the smaller report the excess Surplus calculation so prior to the pandemic it had been 2% plus allowable adjustments and during the pandemic the state increased it to 4% so I believe that was 22 and 23 no 21 and 22 and then in 23 it went back to 2% so when you see that 41,000 abund assign decrease that's the reason for that so again the economy was doing well this year and you'll see that that change was created by excess local Revenue that detail is on J5 in the acur if you wanted to reference that primarily in interest earning so we all know that the interest rates over the past year were um up and about 160,000 of that 198 was attributed to interest on the state side again besides just saying the last two state aid payments were required to report on the C1 that all those payments that the state makes on behalf of the district for tpaf pension um contributory Insurance there's a number of them they have to be reported as Revenue that hasn't been budgeted and an expense that hasn't been budgeted so when you look at them on the C1 we adjust them so that you can see what the real numbers are when you look at that schedule it appears that the um Appropriations were overexpanded and they were not but at the end of the year the district had about 175,000 of unexpended funds which is about 1% of budget now the pandemic was truly a unprecedented event never saw anything like this in my life and so throughout the pandemic everyone knew you know don't use those federal funds for salaries if you can had some very small districts that said to me we had to you know we use them for counseling and the board now wants to continue that and it's a very small district and they had a referendum and the public voted to keep the counseling because they're things that we just Overlook through time and so I think that Mountainside did a great job when I have a new client such as Mountainside I try to do a look back because I like to see a little bit of a trend so I think I went back two years and I I think you did all the right things this is probably the third conversation that I have to say that um it's just been a really tough three or four years and um I'm sure that mountain side will rebound and I know when Dana switched positions with Steve Robinson we came in to finalize some procedures and she said I just want to go over a few things and make sure we're on the same page so again when we're looking at the 23 audit we know what you budgeted in 24 in terms of how it impacts the June 30th what was in the subsquent year budget but we don't know how you're doing with your 24 budget so I'm sure that Administration has been going over that and um the task of putting now together the 25 budget is uh been a challenge for everyone so not bad news just meaning that you're in the same boat as everyone else with the challenge and the conversation I had today with another um School District was if you have the opportunity to increase taxes above 2% nobody ever wants to you have to look at the underlying raises because the state really there are very few instances where the state will allow you to go over 2% so if you have increased enrollment you're going to have more costs coming and so you need to be able to evaluate whether you can carry that cost without increasing taxes so not a proponent of increasing taxes just saying that um it it's a tough spot to be in but there are so many things that are outside of your control and so couple other things you know I always like to look at how much fund balance is being used each year so again the amount that's being budgeted is consistent I think that's a very good um indicator and then I know late in the year the district um had the board approve a $325,000 appropriation from fund balance because again special ed trans Transportation costs that weren't um predicted I'll say um and then I just show you I Mountainside does withdraw money from capital reserve that's what it's for when you're able to put anything above the two or 4% into capital or maintenance Reserve certainly you're doing that for a purpose so that you can achieve some projects on that way and then the tuition Reserve is for any districts that have a sending receiving relationship and you're allowed to reserve up to 10% of the annual cost of tuition it's really hard to track but the tuition Reserve that's created this year is for use in two years because the state law says you can estimate a tuition rate and then two years later it can be adjusted so that's to put money aside so that if you are hit with a larger adjustment that you have money in reserve for that purpose and then um Food Service the overall increase and again when I sent the report out to Dana I said oh there's a number on there that didn't match so we actually did restate the capital asset inventory based on the inventory report that we saw it was a minor adjustment it was about 25,000 and so the overall increase in the food service was 72,1 161 for the year and you can see that the operating revenue is up because the subsidies are down and that the costs operating expenses were down slightly too and so I think that's it for the Food Service fund I think you're fully oh do I have a number that you don't have on your page I I didn't see that on the summary that we handed out it might have been on the the book so financial highlights service I'm not sure what they Food Service bottom page second page top of the second page bottom second page so aside looking at what the fund balance changes are and how they were created and how much money you're using in your budget the last Financial bit of information that I think is good for a board member to be associated with are the long-term liabilities because again this is the third basis of accounting they don't have this no we do they do okay third basis of accounting so these are the financials in the very front of the book and um this is where serial bonds are paid over a very long time Finance purchases are um they used to be called Capital leases but that changed last year with the implementation of GB 87 compensated absences again are all the acred sick vacation days of the employee emplo es in the district and so that's what you would pay out should everyone leave on the same day which is not likely but there must be a cap in Mountainside because $296,000 at the end of the day is not um relatively large and then the net pension liability is gby 68 and that's the PS liability and the district ises not re doesn't pay the tpaf because as we said the state pays that on behalf of the district so this is just the pur pension liability this is the ninth year that that's been implemented and the state hires um very large accounting firm and an Actuarial to come up with that information it's disseminated to us and then we have to vet that information we have to you know look at reports of employees covered cost of payroll and those are reported in the middle of the report on El schedules and so at the end of the day today the net pension liability represents all the people in Mountainside who are currently enrolled in PRS and based on all that Actuarial data such as their life expectancy what would be the cost of their pensions for the rest of their lives so $2 million at the end of 2023 so these are just things when you look at a comparison of revenues and expenses in the front of the Acer you'll see that they include all these numbers that really don't affect operations of the district so that's why we lead you to the middle and C1 is where it is and that's where you'll get the most information again the first um first um part of the audit is the financial statement audit making sure that all the um financials are stated correctly then compliance audit if a school district spends over $750,000 in federal Awards we have to do a single audit of federal um Awards and if the state aid exceeds 750,000 we have to do an um compliance audit for State Awards and what happens there is there's a compliance supplement there might be compliance procedures in there and um we have to answer you know we have to go back to all your program people and ask them question questions doe has statutory compliance some of the things that they ask us to do really don't have anything to do with an audit or Finance such as lead testing and other things that the state has us check on and so I just wanted to say it's pretty comprehensive however if one of our management suggestions and we put this in every audit of every school district that we've done for the past three years is the new Grant for covid-19 because they're new they're riskier and the compliance supplements that I referred to are much simpler than the program people who would come out if you were subject to a desk review and so we just say their account codes they want to see other things that we mentioned in the management report in detail just saying be aware make sure you dot your eyes and cross your tees and then the other comment that we made is federal grants receivable if you look at the schedule of federal Awards which is in the back of the Acer it's schedule K3 it lists all the details of those receivables so on title one two three and four it was about $29,000 for the new Esser grants it was about 317,000 and for the idea grants it was about 30,000 so what happens there is they say that you should be drawing down those erer funds on a regular basis but some people are using them on an irregular basis so you might be using those funds for a one-time purchase and so just saying that at the end of the year to make sure that you know you're submitting those reimbursements as timely as possible and then no audit recommendations I think that's amazing it's a hard task with all the things that put upon your staff and you so I just want to say thank you for this opportunity and if anyone has any questions be happy to entertain them thank you so much anyone I I do then um can you I I missed in the beginning there is this fund balance and there's the line that says unassigned you went through it just take me through that one more time sure so I like to refer to the I don't know if you have these reports with you we all like to be digital brought my paper copies but each year the state CH I don't think it's going to change it only changed for the pandemic so when we say the state's excess Surplus calculation says that you take the total fund balances or the total expenditures that the district made during the year and subtract those on behalf payments that are included in those expenditures and then you're allowed to have 2% or 4% so for the longest time it was 2% of that and for two or three years during the pandemic it was four so it's back to two so if you look at that the adjusted expenditures for the district were 20,1 191 2% is 43,000 and then there are allowable adjustments one of the biggest allowable adjustments is extraordinary Aid and non-public Transportation Aid so the state Awards those in may you apply in May you get the money in August so this is where the state says because you're getting it so late in the year and you didn't have an opportunity to utilize it we'll add it to your 2% and you can budget that in the next succeeding year for anything that you um for any purpose and so you'll see the extraordinary Aid was used in full during the 2023 year and it was the non-public Transportation Aid that was the add-on to that this year so basically what it is is they say that your fund balance which is your Surplus basically your accumulated Surplus so what they say is 2% of that can be held for any reason and anything above 2% either has to be used for tax relief in the following year or it has to go into one of your legal Reserve accounts that you're allowed to keep but all in we we we withdrew or reduce the fund balance 561,000 last year but because prior to that we were able to keep it at four for a couple of years at 4% so when you were able to keep it at 4% you were and because of the pandemic and then once the pandemic was over it it had to go either into reserves or it had to be used you could you had to go back to 2% you yeah you had to or you had to you didn't have to spend it but you had to either use put it into Reserve accounts or correct to the savings of the overall corg tax levy yeah can I ask one more the uh the tuition Reserve is there is there a reason why we we went steady 2011 200 and were 86 because we didn't we didn't generate enough money in the 2023 year to put 200,000 into the tuition Reserve so we we took 375 of what was left um and designated that to the 23 24 and then we also have 375 for the 242 budget right and then what was there was only 86,000 left so we in Prior years you had more fund balance that you could put into the tuition reserve and that tuition Reserve is used the following year also as Revenue in your in your budget so that's a shortfall in your 2425 revenue is tuition Reserve because we went from 200,000 in Revenue to 86 that a concern or yes we that we were able to cover with other areas Kathy mentioned earlier that interest income is up so we were able to increase other revenues so that it turned out to be a wash but yeah would have been nice to be able to just increase the other revenue and have that as well General Ed I'm sorry just general Ed tuition the it well that no that that's not what that was is money that from the fund balances it could it went into a tuition Reserve which is one of those legally set up reserves that you can exceed 2% so you were able to have your 2% then put 200,000 in tuition Reserve which has to be used in the following year budget for Revenue so for a couple years you were able to do that at 200,000 but at the end of 2023 you only had 86,000 left to designate for that so because Mountainside is a k to eight you're sending all your high school students out so it really should be reflective of that contract with Berkeley Heights okay and so this is my first year but I do have other um sending receiving relationships and so we look at that on an annual basis and say okay how many times have you um been hit with an additional fee two years later where the tuition was based on an estimated rate and it actually came in high and so um I haven't had an opportunity to look at that so whether the district really did utilize 200,000 it's just a safety net in the event that it does but I know I was reading into it a lot more this year and so if it's really designed for the number of students who are reported so if you reported 200 students and you ended up with 250 that would probably have the largest impact not the rate per student so it's very important that um and the receiving District does the same thing when they hear something that's a little bit off um it's a very Cooperative relationship that I've seen where they work together to make sure that the impact is um not devastating to the school district thanks you're welcome thank you thank you welcome thanks thank you so much for giving us the opportunity do have a couple of copies of the hard bound um and these other summar so I'm happy to share it out with anybody if you would like to read into it a bit further and that's it that's it okay now we're moving on to Mr Hyman report yeah uh this should be pretty quick we actually did not have a meeting since our last meeting we had two in January we were supposed to meet uh initially on um Feb 8 uh to start the superintendent search uh firm interview process um that was moved to 213 and the snow knocked that out so the actual the next meeting will be 226 actually we're we have two meetings coming up 226 uh and 228 uh I can tell you for 226 uh well oh back up um County Superintendent did did uh select Gail Bradford as as president Berkeley Heights Board bore you guys with the story on that but obviously there there was no decision that could be made in terms of a vote so it went to uh basically anyone who wanted to apply to Daryl and took took a while but we we got a decision and it's Gale Bradford who's a longtime teacher in Berkeley Heights and I've encouraged our president to at some point get coffee with Gail and all will be well um but I can tell you for 226 uh that that full meeting um so we'll Daryl didn't pick a VP so we'll do that as part of that meeting you've got committee selections all the stuff that should have happened January 3rd 4th 5th we'll do on the eve of March um I I mentioned I think I've mentioned so the Beyond committees I'm told that there'll be one liaison from Mountain Side so not a committee per se um so as soon as I know exactly who that is I'll obviously share it out um we have Patty ree coming to that meeting for board ethics training 26 uh she will also at that point do their presentation for uh school boards to be uh the to run the CSA search uh and then on the 28th two days later uh yes two meetings in the same week we'll have three other firms that will come in uh to present for to run that search and then presumably uh we would make a decision that night and hopefully kick off the process for uh for the superintendent search at least that's on paper um also 226 we'll have a a um review and discussion of the transportation consultant report uh and the auditor auditor report same as we just did here tonight so more to come thank you yeah okay now we're moving on to Administration can I please have a motion to approve under Administration items one through five so move second any questions or comments just one comment to share is the extended school year um item three it is expected that the full program will take place at Beachwood this year rather than split between buildings we are looking to bring everybody together into one location and we'll most likely hold that at Beachwood roll call please Mr Dylan yes Dr GRE C Pedro yes Mr Heyman yes Mrs poopo yes Mrs shano yes Mr Venice yes moving on can I please have a motion to approve under budget and finance items one through 12 second any questions or comments Chan do you want to go through those want me to touch on any of those strategic planning stuff now are we for committees or well you can do right now since they're going to it's on the agenda for a vote so so item five uh we've got a recommendation to move forward with uh leveraging school boards to lead development of of fiveyear strategic plan so um the strategic planning committee uh we met it was myself Dana and Mr Goodwin uh January 30th so we talked about just the process and the options of of how to go about it um and the committee felt strongly back me up here Dana that uh considering all the issues that could come into play um and I think also the need to try to to want to to include as many stakeholders as possible that it would make sense to look at uh what offers uh school boards has to to help with this process uh there are two different um levels that that they offer the one that that we had Janet research and that we ultimately are recommending is called 3D strategic planning um and uh carries a cost of $4,000 uh and basically um it's a slightly Slim version of the much more comprehensive plan but still pretty thorough uh and and uh the process as as Patty will probably describe on high at our next our next board meeting is basically three separate inperson meetings with all stakeholders uh each meeting would last about an hour and a half um these would be at one month intervals so April May June at least on paper would be the first second and third we cover things like District strengths and challenges uh developing a common Vision on how to get get there uh developing identified goals and setting them objectives after those meetings are conducted the goals will be presented to the administrators uh to work to with Jan to define the goals and outline the steps uh and then the full plan will be presented back to the board um and Patty will develop the outcomes Report with a summary after each meeting uh and that that will then get posted on the on the uh on our website for the public to see as well um I think one important note is is that uh while there's three members of our committee this process is open to other board members so if we want show of tonight or just to let Janet know but um that's important because obviously that triggers a public meeting so if that's the case all good we would just want to know about it because um we'll need to advertise it and open it to the public so I have received from Patty some suggested dates that she's available to hold the meetings um so I'm going to confirm those with her and with the strategic planning committee and then once they are known I'll send them out to the entire board and if more than three people want to attend it's absolutely fine all we do is we add advertise it as a board meeting we open to the public and state the um meaning for the meeting that night which is strategic planning and then we go about our business and then at the end we just close the meeting so not a problem as many people as want to be are encouraged to be a part of it um but I figured let me set the meeting dates with her with the committee and then we will get that out to the rest of the board to determine and all I would ask is if you plan to be a part even if you can only attend one and the structure of this is because of those follow-up notes you don't have to commit to all three right you can come to one you'll get the notes if you can't make one you're you're welcome at any point in time um we would just want to have enough notice so that we can get public notice out there that we're holding a meeting any other questions or comments roll call please Mr Dyan yes Dr guid to C Petro yes Mr Heyman yes Mrs poopo yes Mrs shano yes Mr Venice yes I please have a motion to approve under Personnel items one through four so moved second any questions or comments have one quick question for number four for Subs we're going my math is Right plus one but minus four how that's that's negative3 how how how I'm not good at at at multiplication of the negatives but yeah anyway how you know my question yep absolutely and uh Miss Castro and I had that same conversation today as I said take me through the four two of them found jobs elsewhere okay so more permanent positions one we removed because attendance was not happening so was taking the position and then not showing up and there was concerns with that um and the other one was um again something just really was not appro was not reachable was not coming through and when finally contacted um had chosen just that this was not what they wanted to do so wanted to formalize that they were no longer on the list because it gives the the look that our list is longer than it really is how long is the list these days um you know what it all es and flows okay so I don't have a final count at this moment some are college students who are available at certain times when they aren't at others um today we had a great turnout of of half day subs for some PD that was going on other days we can't get a single person it's really it really there's no Rhyme or Reason sometimes or Friday or the sun is out right yes yes okay roll call please Mr Dylan yes Dr GRE C Petro yes Mr Heyman yes Mrs poopo yes Mrs giano yes Mr Venice yes can I please have a motion to approve under curriculum just item one so move second thank you questions or comments roll call please Mr Dylan yes Dr G to C Petro yes Mr Heyman yes Mrs poopo yes Mrs shano yes Mr Venice yes may I please have a motion to approve under policy items one and two so moved second questions or comments roll call please Mr Dylan yes Dr G to C patro yes Mr Heyman yes Mrs poopo yes Mrs shano yes Mr Venice yes uh do we have any old business a on let's move on to new business I don't know if this is new business but just putting it out there the senior citizen uh viewing of The Little Mermaid will be March 7th um I believe there will be a uh usually there's a reception before Snacks by the MF um so hopefully it'll go up on the board um so I look to scene as last year we had a great turnout with seniors I believe it will start probably at 4: with the show starting most likely 4:35 and I think that's it while you're on events the the PTO spring fundraiser is going to be Thursday March 14th it is a sure thing Jersey Shore theme and there's going to be a cocktail hour where there's drinks and food themed for the Jersey Shore so get your tickets we got ours ours looking forward to it it's a big big thing for us and we appr the funds go back to the school P dones all the funds back to the schools much appreciated thank you we're moving on to any committee reports before I go budget committee met just before this not much to share we got initial uh view of some of um the thoughts around the budget how it's shaping up um no real surprises um you know some some decisions will have to be made we have to wait for stadium to come in um but as you know a majority of our budget is kind of fixed right with the tuitions and the other things that we deal with salaries there you know contracts um so we'll just wait to see where all the state a comes through and then we'll be prepared to present it March 19th yeah so but it's a good start you know just thought provoking you know what are the priorities of of the board where do we want to move to so on so forth no updates on the state on the timing of State funding or next Thursday oh we okay yeah 29th looking good okay we had some conflict so we moved up this meeting just to say what if right right yeah that's some assumptions there just to start thinking about where we're at Y and then hope yeah with Governor's message is next Tuesday and they have 48 hours from his message to release state aid they usually take the full 48 yeah um so I expect sometime on Thursday next week we'll know got it okay as far as um our committee uh during our reorganization meeting we established a new Committee of Berkeley Heights committee um it's not a liaison it will be a committee it's consists of myself Mr Dylan and Mr um Goodwin we did meet for the first time uh virtually on February 12th which was very nice we all had you know a great discussion uh we all actually received uh the send and received contract uh we met and we discussed the aligning with our send and receive um current contract that we have and we are excited to engage on a deeper level of conversation with Berkeley Heights well maybe if they only have on the ason maybe we'll do a lot of talking a conversation we'll do a lot of talking but we are a committee so I any other um report okay we're moving on at this time I would like to open up the floor for public participation on anything you would like to discuss see none we're moving on um I think this is it can I please have a motion to adjourn so move second all in favor I opposed thank you and have a great evening thank you