e e have to do a redo or we're good you've been recording stepen you want to start over or we're live so it's officient so Mr secretary can you please take the role M Cherry present Dr Connors here Mrs gordino here Mr King Mr Rashid here miss Rivers here Mrs Salgado Cowen here Miss Smith here miss Stafford we have eight present thank you hereby be it known that the Piscataway Township Board of Education has complied with the notification requirements of the open public meetings act for the announcement of this meeting date in place on April the 30th 2023 in the following manner posting of the public notice on the posting Board of the Board of Education in the administration building email notification to newspaper servant Piscataway the home News Tribune and the cura news email notification filed with the municipal clerk at the municipal building on Hos Lane this meeting is being videotaped this recording is not an official record or supplement to the minutes and is in intended only as a source of information that the public might utilize at a later date to familiarize themselves with the board's activities executive session be it resolv that the board ATT returned to Executive session for the purpose of review and discussion of the Personnel agenda litigation Hib monthly reports and other matters persu to l njsa 10 semicolon 4-12 B can I have a motion can I have a second all in favor we're in executive session for e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e uh being resolve that the board reconvince to public session have a motion so move second second all in favor we back in public session student presentation how are you guys tonight we're good okay awesome all right good evening everybody I hope you're all doing well um um the weather's getting nicer we're slowly inching towards Spring Break um but and the high school has been busy as always um last last week was read Across America and so our national English Honor Society Club took a trip to the elementary schools last Friday so to gwood Eisenhower randville and Grandville and we went and um we just went and went to all the classrooms and it was a really nice experience um having um Honor Society members free to the younger students and we also took it as an opportunity to encourage them to keep doing good in their classes so that once they do come to high school they also have the opportunity to join um honor societies just like um those students um and then also the high school we brought back our Incorruptible us chapter which we basically are focusing on health and wellness um there's like a vaping component to it so go going to the middle schools and talking to them um and so we're in the works of planning that maybe doing some tabling in lunches um just so that because having like your peers speak about it could be more impactful than another adult coming in so we've been working on that um and we're still planning that and then I know the Ceramics classes did the empty cups fundraisers at the end of February and that was very successful I know many of my friends created mugs for that in their ceramic classes and they were able to raise a lot of money for a great cause so that was exciting um there's also a food bank drive going on all across the high school for replenish um and it ends tomorrow and people are been donating cans and box items throughout um this week and I think the past week so that they can then donate it um to the food bank um the annual coffee house is coming up on March 22nd um so they have auditions coming up for that and so they're just looking for singers poets um All That Jazz so that they could um present that to the community um our day of dialogue meetings with Miss April and Miss s Becky have been continuing and we've been making we've had a lot of progress over the past two years that we've done them and um especially this year we've come up with new ideas and we're potentially um looking into suggesting um changes to like maybe the Freshman sem seminar curriculum so that they have a educational opportunity to learn about like current events and really immerse themselves in the world at right right when they're coming into high school so that they have a more nuanced understanding of the world so that they could understand the many like diverse perspectives we have at the high school the drama club put on an amazing show The Mean Girls it was so so so good I know some people went like twice or three times because it so good um and yeah like um I know they put in a lot of work for that like the backdrops everything just so amazing um so kudos to them and I know um the middle schools actually have their um showings this week so Kakak has the Adams family um today tomorrow and Saturday um so I'm looking forward to seeing that um and then the black student union and public forum seminar held a Black Culture Night at the end of February and that was their second an annual um culture night and I know that was really successful and many students enjoyed being there um and then Ramadan started on Monday so that's been exciting for a lot of students at throughout the district um and it's great to have like places for us to be during lunch um since students are fasting so they could like go to the library or the MSA advisor rooms so there's um that throughout the district which is amazing and then the Muslim Student Association at the high school was holding a CommunityWide ifar on Thursday March 21st from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. um so you guys are more than welcome to come to that and then the Muslim Center of middle sex County I know I emailed you guys about this um we are holding our annual Interfaith ifar on Saturday March 23rd um and it's just an excellent opportunity to learn more about Ramadan um and just meet people uh and have like a mosque tour just learn all about it um so yeah we love to have you guys there and that concludes my report thank you R um like ran mentioned the weather has been amazing I'm so so so excited for spring um it's also that time of the year where there's so much going on for juniors but thankfully it's kind of coming to an end um so New Jersey State Testing was for juniors actually took place this week um today was actually the last day it's been kind of a long week I did not take the other ones but today I took it and I was like oh I understand what the students are going through um icca Club is hosting an international night tomorrow which many cultures and countries will be represented so it's a really fun night to learn about the diverse countries and festive activities that's offer um I know they're going to have a DJ and there's going to be food and a lot of volunteers for National World Language Honor Society will be there so it's going to be really exciting um psychology Club is having a guest speaker um Professor David Barker of psychology at wers University um come sometime next week as a guest speaker and just talk about his experience um Spanish club is hosting its first Spanish club soccer tournament um called PCAT Champions League um this is taking place like next week on March 22nd um which is also super exciting because it's the first time it's ever happen um science night on February 23rd science National Honor Society hosted its first ever science night um and students from all of piscato elementary schools were invited and over 200 families attended the event um students participated in a very variety of experiments such as like volcano themed room um Ock and engineering design and there was a lot of things for students to see um they also had access to the pen atorium which I know a lot of the elementary kids enjoyed I was there I volunteered and all the kids were so happy so it was so good to see um and thanks to miss Pritchard and Dr motch um and over 60 plus members dedicated and helped operate the event so it was really successful um and the reason I didn't take njtpa is because I just came back from um FBLA trip uh from Atlantic City which actually this is the first year we had about 100 Kids qualified to even go to the event um it's a state conference New Jersey FBA hosts um it's really fun you get to meet a lot of people um they you place for regionals by taking a test and then you go to the trip um a lot of groups including myself placed for the top 10 finalists um and some even placed to go to Nationals which is later in August and that you go to Florida and it's like a really great time so we're really proud that these many students placed um so it was really fun and going off um safety ambassadors which Rah and I do every month uh the coordinator from Robert and Johnson came and saw our last um time we went to the school and it went really well and we got to see the kids engage in our activities so that's still going on we have our next one in a couple weeks um going off for juniors the SAT was also the last weekend which I also took so it was digital so we'll see how that went but overall it was pretty good and that was about it so thank you so the fpla trip what uh um types of things that the students you guys do right so mine was Parliament future Business Leaders yes future Business Leaders of America so parliamentary procedures so I just saw like starting the motion and all of that so it was pretty exciting to see how meetings run there's a bunch of events business ethics international business um Healthcare and management like there's a bunch of things you can do and uh R um did um is there a Barcelona Exchange program this year um no I don't think they're doing it they're not they're not doing it so I live in Burlington County and my wife was over a neighbor's house um today and their son came back from FBA yeah and he made the comment when my wife was there they know I work in mcway mcway was all over the place and they won a whole bunch of so I was like of course they did what you know what you expect it was really good it was so good we're so happy because there's so many kids that place yeah it was great so they me proud two counties away yeah thank you you guys are awesome as always I know you're really busy like this is the time that everything heats up so uh we we thank you very much for giving up your time and coming and and being part of this thank you okay moving on next on the agenda is the president's report my president's report to March 15 2024 want to say congratulations to cascadeway High School drama club with their wonderful presentation of meme girls last week the cast and in crew did an amazing job putting on a very entertaining show for our community congratulations to the director Mike yon and all of the faculty and staff who helped our students show off how much talent we have here at PHS thank you to Piscataway High School foundation for all their hard work and hosting the annual designer bag Bingo and Tricky Tray to benefit our students and schools this event is the foundation's largest fundraiser of the year and collected over $15,000 in profits the foundation is committed to maintaining a positive relationship between the school district and in pasaway community the money raised through designer Bingo and other fundraises will be used to F stud student scholarships and Innovative classroom in initiatives and support other District programs thank you to everyone in the community who attended and to all our sponsors for supporting the foundation's mission next we have the superintendent report thank you very much just to uh to comment on the uh designer B Bingo uh it was there for a little bit and it was packed everybody seem to be having a great time I'd like to thank the two people over there Dr lman uh colie pongratz as well along with many other volunteers that we have had that uh were there some board members that were there that night we appreciate uh you know your participation as well uh great night a lot of planning and preparation going into it and I really want to uh we don't we don't take any of that for granted I guess that's what I want to say we really thank thank all of you for for everything that you've done so um as always please check out our superintendence report on our website under superintendent Corner highlights this month include our students becoming teachers in many ways right in the front page our PHS future Educators club which we're really proud of um many diversity celebrations uh Community School involvements uh and our excellence in arts and Athletics are also in there so please check that out when you get a chance and there are always past ones if you weren't able to to see them at the months they came out second thing on my list uh our strategic plan for 2024 to 2029 our next five years uh we had our three meetings in October November and January and uh thank you very much our our students participated our board members uh in our community and we are at the point where at the next CSO board members um you'll see a draft set of the Strategic plan goals along with a draft uh sort of uh rubric layout for activities uh and then I'll ask that when you get that on that Friday I know many of you wait till the next week to look at things if you could just look at those uh as early as possible and get any feedback to me because at the next meeting in April I'll be asking you to approve the Strategic plan uh we tried to capture uh many of the things if not all of the things that came out of of uh our meetings even down to uh you know taking four or five sentences making sure one of the words were in there because it's really important it was important to people so you'll see some of that and I'll be able to uh answer any questions and and make sure I present things uh uh to the community and you the right way all right so that be the last piece that we could update all of these right correct well this will be updated by the time you get back as your vote on that tonight uh that annual goals are good but the Strategic goals won't be up until uh June 30th July 1 whatever maybe for the for the new school year okay and the last thing I have which is uh a lengthy one is our uh budget presentation for the next school year uh Mr ala again and the finance committee and all the work that you do we really appreciate it uh along with all our administrators uh and and everybody who had input in putting together this budget uh it's not a small task and it takes many any months to do uh I think David you sent out your first uh piece of information in October right yeah um so we're proud to be able to present this to you and uh hopes the presentation goes well and any questions you may have play the money yeah that's works a it's a black presentation so yeah that's that's actually better yeah no no we're going to fall asleep don't do that our pupil are getting to workout I already took a Diet Coke I mean I'm good we'll just do the one yeah um before you get started would you prefer any questions and comments to be done at the end right or you want us to go along you can you can interject okay because you might lose your point I would write down I'm going to write down my questions on the side so that you can have talking about three four five years down the road so we're really proud to be able to do that uh because we uh are very fiscally responsible and try to do the best we can with the funds that we have because we know uh it's extremely uh extremely difficult to uh to work all these formulas all right so our budget guidelines I'm not going to sit here and read the entire presentation to you but I really want to highlight some of the things that that we look at uh and again I think that one of the most more important ones on this is straight is the bottom Athletics uh all the things that we do our clubs our uh we really try to make sure that everybody feels included and everybody has a place here in SC no matter what so these gu these are the guidelines that drive uh our budget okay the new world curricular instructional programs District technology of course special education and again I pointed out uh the counseling andl services next slide again uh consider the most important part of my job right is the Safety and Security of everybody in the district uh we talk about that a lot uh between the fiscal committees between the schools we have our drills Dr lman talks with the principles uh weekly uh for from every building weekly about uh their drills about their safety protocols our yellow shirt safety officers our black shirt safety officers at the uh at the high school uh we do a really nice job uh part of challenges in uh the state and the country recently in the past five or six years has been recruiting and retaining confident staff many staff members who are leaving the profession all alt together and just going to another profession uh I think there's a I don't know the statistics so I don't want to say it but there's many many more staff members just leaving the profession before five years than it was 15 years ago U so we need to be able to recruit and retain these people so um what I look at and if you remember the presentation from uh lenise where Dr uh Equity survey is that is this a nice place to be right do people feel comfortable here and want to be here do they feel like they're being taken care of socially financially uh you know given the support so they can do their jobs and we feel we do a good job of that right um Joe toas here we do okay with that Joe yes you're okay anybody put you on the spot but you know hope hope you didn't say no he was shaking his head yeah yeah uh health benefits is a is a big cost the investment capital for the maintain the school buildings uh and and the fund balance which a capital reserve which David will explain so what drives our budget yeah just for the benefit of the public I'm going to flipflop the lights so that the camera can pick up the presentation for the benefit of the public and you all have it in front of you yeah that's not too bad yeah okay better Stephen okay so what drives our budget the state mandates of course um and again many of these Federal mandates and state mandates come and they're not funded right so they'll they'll tell us we have to do something districtwide and and not give us any more money uh and not change the formula for how we can budget throughout that our enrollment and David again will explain our enrollment uh how that kind of figures into our budget and how we how we get money for that our staffing needs salaries and benefits uh our greatest resources are people and it takes about our budget between the salaries and benefits uh New Jersey student learning standards technology security and special ed and we uh prioritize based on the available Revenue uh what our needs are from year to year and if you look at the Strategic goals from the past five years and the ones that you'll see for the next five years they're very general because from year to year we don't know what our needs are going to be we couldn't have predicted eight years ago that Co was going to happen and then all of the things that came after that so we prioritized based on the needs that we for the coming year and we try to predict in the next three or four years what we're going to need for buildings what we're going to need for our kids um and what we're going to need for the curriculum to to succeed all right over the money guy uh Dr anell just one question is that um so we the district priorize on available Revenue I know Dave's going to get into that but in this year's budget when you guys are putting it together what doesn't include that you would have wanted it to include um specifically things that we could do to the buildings okay all right and there are many projects in the building we have I'm sure you've seen in your fiscal meting Tom um we have a list of 10 major things that would Encompass $40 million right some of those things we're not going to be able to do right so if I had my brothers it would be all of those things right bring our bathrooms up to Ada compliancy uh put all safety door locks on there um you know all of the the locker rooms okay all all of the baffling in the gyms you know things like that and they just cost a lot of money and that money gets eaten away very quickly so if you're asking me if if I could have anything it would be those things that we had to eliminate because the things that are right in front of our faces we don't eliminate right the counseling the Staffing uh enough enough uh programs for our kids right we we took and we knew we knew this was going to happen right we took a leap into the pond with our iPads right we knew they were more expensive all those years ago we haven't changed because they are the best tool for our delivery right we took a leap into the pond knowing knowing the academies were going to be expensive right because some of the academy classes are typically a little bit smaller as they get older they kind of specialize right but these things are really really important to the growth of Pas scataway and why people want to be here so like we we take those things that are right in front of us and make sure that we do fund them and the things that we can't like you asked or we kind of pick away at you know we do because of the creative you know budgeting and finance that David and his team does m okay so we'll start out with the revenue side of the equation so this just gives you a sense of who's footing the bill for uh the education here in Piscataway so the taxpayers pay just under 73% of our general fund budget uh state aid this year did go up I'll get to that in in a minute but uh that is funding just under 19% we use fund balance which is um excess money that's left over from one budget year it has to be used to fund operations in a future budget year that's about 5% um miscellaneous Revenue was things like uh our solar energy credits interest facilities rentals um tuition Revenue subscription busing Revenue all that adds up to just 2% of our budget so you know we do a lot of great things there we have some pretty good miscellaneous Revenue sources and because of the scale of our budget still only about 2% and then other state aid is is primarily what we call extraordinary Aid uh which is specialized uh special aid for special education students that exceed a certain cost threshold so kind of your high cost special ed students so the tax levy the biggest piece of the budget the tax levy can only go up 2% uh in a given year there are a few waivers um we we've used a few of the waivers here in padway primarily Healthcare cost and last year we were eligible for an enrollment waiver and we did use that um but other than that that's our cap is 2% of an increase the healthare cost waiver was available this year we are not opting to use it we did not need to use it um and so that will help us down the road but uh it was available and that's totally based on how the state plan is doing and the state plan's increase was 63 6.3% for this year so what does that mean for a pasca away in terms of the tax Lev were recommending only a 1% increase in the tax level so uh we could go to 2% plus the health care cost waiver which would have been you know maybe about 2.2% we're only recommending one 1% and I'll talk more about that as we move through the could you just quickly though explain that health care cost waiver because you know you throw out 6.3% increase in the state and boy what what does that really mean it means that we can't get the cost what does it mean so the healthcare cost waiver allows you to go over the cap if the state plan increases more than 2% you can go over the cap for the difference between how much the state plan went up minus the 2% so the state plan went up 6.3% so the amount over 2% which is 4.3 percentage points you can go over the cap up to 4.3 percentage points and then Levy that with the tax yep with the tax state plan only went up 2% there would be no health care cost waiver if our costs our internal cost only went up 2% even though the state plan was higher we couldn't use the the waiver because our costs didn't go up above 2% so there's a lot of like mechanisms in there um that kind of limit you but it is an option that does become available in some years I think it's important to point out that you know look how much and and everybody knows the health the price of healthcare has skyrocketed the fact that you're not passing that on to taxpayers is um we we've had uh the last two years we had uh fairly difficult years uh board members that have been here for the past two years know in health benefits and we've seen a bit of a stabilization which is great and so our projection for next year means we don't have to raise the rates um very high which is great but last year we did use the the last two years unfortunately we did use the cost wer last couple years but the years before that that we had a benefit because it was Co and people weren't going to the doctors and and and then because of that the next two years were everybody was going to the doctor and that's where the trend our long-term trend is pretty good uh we're self-insured and again our long-term Trend there is a very reasonable percentage increase uh when you are self-insured though you do experience ups and down some of those spikes um I was talking to our broker actually uh as we were going through these numbers a couple weeks ago and uh we have a new broker that you know the board approved last year for this current U school year and they were telling me last year our results were so poor that we went over our um stop loss insurance and oftentimes districts that are s insured will go over that for an individual so we have stop loss insurance for an individual like David Al's expenses went over a certain amount and then we have it for the whole District last year was the first year the whole District went over since I've been here but also so for this particular broker of all his self-insured clients it's the first time he's ever seen any client go over that stop loss threshold so that gives you a sense of how bad that year was for us here's a 10-year history of our tax Lev increases so the blues are the individual the blue bars are the individual year increases and you can see the last two years oh yeah we were 3.8% and then 4.3% this year we're recommending 1% the orange line is a 10e moving average so at this point looking back 10 years our average increase has been 2.2% per year so right around what the tax ly cap is and those last two years were the two combination of 2% and a waiver we were able to get correct and you know considering the way some costs have gone we we've managed the budget you know pretty well over that 10 year period with a 2.2% average tax L increase so here's a summary of the actual numbers our tax levy was 103 million in the current year that we're currently operating in a 1% increase is a $1 million increase 1,30 629 and you can see total is 104 million we do not have any Bank cap available I'll have a slide where we talk about that and then uh the healthare cost subject exact I usually do so the healthcare cost waiver we're not um recommending that we take this particular year as a matter of fact you can't actually use the healthcare cost waiver unless you raise your Levy at least 2% so we're not even allowed to use it until we go up at least 2% right but we will be generating Bank cap so the fact that we're only going up 1% this year and that we're not using the healthcare cost waiver that money is going to fall down into bank cap which I explain on the next slide so Bank cap is if a district does not raise the tax levy to the maximum amount it's allowed to so in this case we do this next year we're going to do 1% instead of 2% and we're not taking the health care cost waiver so that differential of money there we get to save and keep it available for three more budget years so you know if next I say next year we're really moving two years if in 25 26 when we're doing that budget we need more funds those funds will be available for us to go and add it on to our tax levy and taxpayers you know have to pay at that point but it's available for us to use should we need it down the road how how does that get generated the bank C it's purely based on the so again this year the maximum tax levy we could have achieved was the 1,300,000 plus this 1,366 000 so we could have raised the tax levy almost $2.4 million this year okay we're only raising it about a million right so the difference between that 2.4 in that 1 million is what's left over that's the bank and that remains available to us in three future budget years so if you needed to raise it two years down the road you would have an extra one point about 1.4 million correct we could tap that money added onto the tax levy and then the taxpayers would have to pay that as part of the tax if next year we had a good year as well and only ra at 1% we'd have 2% in Bank cap that's that the following year if we needed to we could raise at 4% yeah it's a percentage below the 2% cap that gets changed into real dollars that you put forward and then later on if you want to ask it for the taxpayers in the future years that's what it is you have up to three more uh fiscal years so let's think Logistics so if you don't do it this year and you have three years and then you don't do it next year do you have three years from next year or is it three years collectively it rolls so the money this year we have three budget years to use it if next year we generate more cap Bank cap for that portion of money we have three more budget years for that portion of money just for the yeah each one is for three years rolling so the fourth year no matter what if we don't use that you can't yeah you can't we've had Bank cap that's expired before you yeah we've um so I've been keeping track uh since I've been here of the bank been here I'm sorry uh nine and a half years I've been keeping track of the bank cap that has not been used Bank cap that has expired and if we had added it on to the budget and if we had our tax levy would be $4.8 million higher than what it currently is so the over the years a district has allowed some uh Bank cap to expire um you those were years when we were receiving state aid increases um but you know some people would view that as money that's left on the table right to to do some additional things to add more money to capital reserve or whatever the case may be so you that's not and that's not a one time thing right that stays on the base of the budget and you add to it yeah right so it's not a one time 4.8 million if you had it this year it's stay like it's it's it's our BAS budget and then it would just keep going on so you know some people would look at as David says money lift on a table we look at it as savings to the taxpayers because we didn't we're very fiscally responsible we didn't need it so we didn't take it at the time just like the 1% now we could hold on to and if we don't need it we won't take it but it is something to keep in mind when I get down the road to a future slide again just as we talk about things um you know Frank and I are very comfortable with our recommendation for this budget and we have that bank cap that'll be there in reserve now 1366 million um but something to keep in mind whether you use it or not bless thank you the next biggest piece of our our Revenue puzzle there um the pie chart just a little history um seven years six years ago there was a Senate bill called S2 that implemented a change in the funding formula over a seven-year period next year 2425 is the seventh year of that implementation of that formula um for most of that period And even a little before that we were receiving state aid increases 20156 till 2223 last year we had a decrease uh for the first time in a long time and it kind of caught us off guard that's the vagaries of the formula which I'll try and explain a little bit um as we move along um so we had a long run of of state aid increases one year down and then this year we had a nice increase so there's just the last five years you know kind of smallish our increases were bigger the the couple years prior to this but you know 00,000 700,000 5 then we went down to 500,000 and this year we have an increase of 4.8 million so the formula really benefited us this year there's a there's a a chart of what percentage of our budget is funded by state a and you can see that kind of gradual progression our little drop off in the current year that we're in and then for next year it's going to a much bigger piece so in the year we're in it was about only 15.6% of our budget next year it's about 18.6 so that 4.8 million increase helped us a lot which is why we can lower the tax which why we can keep the tax levy lower especially after two years of a tax levy increase of 3.8 and then 4.3% again Frank and I were comfortable moderating that increase for this year resetting where we are and knowing that that money is available in Bank cap should we need it in the next year or two or three when the state makes their decision and I I just want to make a comment about you know once these figures come out in state aid is that you start seeing a lot of articles about about it and um the article I have in my hand is you know you mentioned vager of the the funding formula it's like winners and losers and why is it that right next door in South planfield they got a decrease of $3.5 million so you know so we here we are getting that District half our size last year they got an increase yeah and so what I'm saying is it's just like one size doesn't fit all it's kind of you got to think about it that there's a well there are many districts that are very upset yes with their loss because then they have to make the tough decisions yes um and we're very lucky that they decided to fully fund uh what they haven't been doing do we know what the factors are for the formula or we're supposed to know but doesn't make sense the biggest question out there supposed to know we know a lot the boy but it's not very predictable I'm going to talk about a little bit of that as we move along here you might know more than you want to by the time we're done um again so this is a fiveyear just a chart so uncapped SF a is if SF is the uh the acronym for the fing formula if that was run in its full and run and all the money distributed as the formula says you can see four years ago we would have been entitled to over 27 million the way the formula spit out the numbers it went down to 22 and a half million this is this is why our increases started to moderate um then it went up again a year and then a 1.3 million drop and that that's why we ended up losing money 324 in state a and then look at the jump again in the aid $5 million increase in our what they call our UNCA formula Aid that we should receive and you see our actual state aid figures we were underfunded 6.3 million then somehow all of a sudden we were only underfunded by 874 th000 wow really erratic um last year the current year we're in they said we were overfunded now they're claiming we're fully funded as per the formula so the largest category St for us anyway there are some districts who don't even get Equalization aid but for us the largest category is Equalization Aid and what are the key factors in determining uh that calculation one is your enrollment two is the characteristics of your enrollment you know how many free R students do you have how many limited English students do you have then we get into the areas that get really difficult to predict and and assess and that is property valuations we always talk about ratables average assessed home price in town the property valuations for the entire town are analyzed as part of the formula for all towns in the entire State and so the state of New Jersey in determining their school aid uses that and then take the the raw valuations that they get from Skyway Township from South planfield Township and they what they call equalize them adds another layer to the complexity of of the calculation District income is kind of the fourth main factor that is merely uh how much did all of the residents make in piscato based on tax New Jersey tax returns that were filed that's all that is problem with that data is it's a threeyear lag okay so for for the formula for our state aid for this year I think it's using 2021 data okay really not relevant for us but without using the name of the town David tell them about the lottery winner oh yeah really interesting um so they actually had a senate education hearing today on the funding formula and revisiting it right and uh one of the superintendence that was speaking you know was he was actually he was happy because his district got an increase but he was talking about a neighboring District that the district income Factor spiked significantly and it sounded like it was a small town like you know smaller than dellan type of thing right you know I think kind of in Western Jersey um their District income spiked so significantly they said what's going on here they said you know did Bill Gates move into town and we didn't know about it um and they actually dug deeper um and it turns out in that particular year it had not happened but I guess they also started to um look at the future the upcoming year tried to assess that and they had a New Jersey Lottery winner who won 2 million that's crazy your income income in that subsequent year um so I asked him to tell that story because there's things that there's factors that one little thing could throw off a lot of things think it's far the calculations right and you know and then yes do we know do we know the formula we think but well and sorry just one more thing and the property valuation similar type of stories you have think of these Shore towns um you know they have a house that's that's run down and it's sold and it's rebuilt and it sells for $6 million right you know and in a town in a big town like a Long Branch maybe it doesn't have an impact but a small tiny you know Beach Town Ceder coin or what Harvey Cedars whatever those towns are in LBI you know it might have a significant impact in that property valuation number for that Township yeah was what I was going to say is that we're fortunate you know David and I have had conversations over the last few days and you know I've been in his office and we've gone through the formula and we're you know trying to figure out where the you know the multiplier factors come from for property valuations and District income but at the same time you know using the leverage of the New Jersey school boards the middle sex County and at the state level we're very fortunate that um uh Senator Vin goal got reelected from Mammoth County and he's in Long Branch in which some of these things happen where people move in from New York and all of a sudden the district income goes way up just like lottery winners Etc so he's aware of it but at the same time since it is so contentious to what you said about people you know being published winners and losers and no one if anybody tells you they understand the formula they're lying is that I felt compelled to um to uh in a zoom meeting with him to to point these things out to him also you know in my role as the Vice President of Finance for the New Jersey Schoolboard Association and with David's help and um you know they need examples that there's a hearing today because they are at the end of S2 and they are discussing can we fix it because as we discussed before each year they just can't put stabilization Aid one time to try and fill back the you know the quote unquote losers so what I'm saying is that I felt comp the other night to write a public comment that um David called me today and said Tom they mentioned the Piscataway public comment in the testimony today so we were part we were an example of how we swung from this 500,000 to the other time and they need those examples because our state senators you know they they they serve us and they want to they want to fix it but too many people will not tell them like what the data is that they're getting individually and so on so that's very appreciated of of David being on the legislative Committee of the New Jersey Association for school business officials and then everybody here getting involved you know legislative committees and things like that because then the people that are making these decisions get good information and can try and you know make it right going forward hopefully there's good momentum I'm not of the opinion that the formula is broke I think is a good base and that it just needs to be uh tweaked a little bit it's never going to be you're you know you're dealing with imperfect information um but hopefully there's some good momentum to kind of make some suggested changes that might make it more predictable more predictable exactly you know Fair more fair you know fair is in the eye of the beholder but you know more predictable would be helpful right so what drove our increase in state aid again the 4.8 million couple things so the per pupil rates that the state used in calculating uh the adequacy budget and some of the other calculations went up 5.8% now that didn't just help us that helped everybody in the state but it surely was a factor in our individual calculation that that absolutely helped us and our projected resident enrollment increased by 29 students um I have a couple of graphs on this that I will try to explain um because in general our generalized trend is that the population was decreasing it's kind of stabilized a bit and it's to go down a little bit more but at least it's stabilized and that helped us so here's our uh here's seven years of enrollment okay K to 12 this all these numbers are exclude to preschool you can see 201819 we are 761.5 students we dipped as low as 6793 and these are the three years of a bit of stability here that I'm I'm talking about we're 68 43.5 next year Pro out to maybe 6850 I arrived in 2014 and there were 73 and change almost 7,400 K 12 not pre quick quick question on the enrollment so the equalization Aid is equal to the adequacy budget minus the local share which was we're talking about through the property valuations how has this enrollment affected our adequacy budget uh have we has that changed dramatically it has but mostly due to the increase in the per pupil rate okay because our enrollment hasn't changed you know it went down a few years ago but even if you look at a five-year period 6797 to 6850 that's that's a fairly tight range so it hasn't been so much driven by that um it's been the the per pupil rate that has driven up the adequacy budget okay and the reason we're not including prek is because that's funded separately correct y it has its own Grant system right yes um so a couple of the categories I talked about um LEP and free and reduce so our Le students in the last five years have gone from 484 to 584 So 20% increase um still growing when we get to the Staffing you'll see that is that drives some staffing decisions we make and and how we try to deal with that population to better serve them and you know we talked about this we had big concerns a couple years ago coming out of Co about are people going to fill out the free and reduce lunch applications uh were they used to just free meals and would they not fill them out and um they have thankfully so thank you to the community to the board to everybody the District administration that has really kind of sent that message out because it's important um you know this is the kind of thing where I'd love the percentage to be zero but the reality is is if there's a need in the community you want to make sure that people are filling out the form so that we're receiving funding to help address that need and our free and reduced percentage uh the first year coming out of Co was 35.1% then it was 36.1% and in the current year it's 36.9% um I I heard from other board members and um in not even in Piscataway but um that even if you don't qualify that that people should be filling out the questionnaire even if they they're not going to qualify for the free and reduced Lynch is that correct does that somehow help us as a district well the pro the reason why we do that is because we don't want people to just assume they know the numbers and that the calculation will work okay so um the the it's confusing charts it's confusing to for some folks to even understand whether they will or not qualify on top of that you have the added layer that the state of New Jersey aside from the federal guidelines they provide additional um reimbursement and and A reduced rate or they make it free actually for certain income levels of parents that don't qualify in the federal level oh the state has adopted legislation that says we'll pay for for these folks initially it was 19 186 to 199% above the poverty level and it's moving I think from 200 to 224 yeah I heard that recently at at that it get really confusing so our message and I think the message of the school Community should be fill out the application because you may qualify and you may not even realize it um if you're making 500,000 a year you're not going to qualify I understand why you don't fill it out but that's other benefits besides free rce lunch right that's an important salian point for public people to understand because this is a federal program but our state passed the anti-hunger act right and it became Public Law so whenever you go out to k6 County School Board you go to Neary school boards they'll talk about that law coming into play right but that's a state so the so to David's Point fill it out because you don't know if you're going to qualify for that 224 per above the poverty level and for the state for the state so it's different what happens to um if when you're filing you're eligible and during the year you're not eligible anymore what happens then it's we don't know about it so till you file another form yeah there's no requirement um you know for you to fill out a new form and tell us and us not to so it's just for the whole year tooke yeah and conversely uh Sarah if you were not eligible in October When September October when you filled out the form and you lost your job in November and your income plummeted um fill out the form and you will become available as of that date when you're when you're fill out the new form so your situation changes during the year you can fill out another Form and become eligible how many languages do we put it out in nine nine languages we put that form okay so here's the same chart with a little bit a uh additional analysis in it the orange line is a threeyear rolling average trend line and the reason I put that in there is just to try and do a a a basic explanation of how this ties into the adequacy budget and the enrollment calculation formula so for 2223 they calcul the way they calculate your projected enrollment which is how they base all these Aid calculations is what is your Trend okay are you growing or are you declining and they look at years 65 and four versus years three two and one so they actually go back six years so for 2223 are the Yellow Boxes here they compared 7,46 students to 6,814 students so we reduced 232 students for that window and so then they calculate what our declining uh enrollment is and they apply that percentage and they figure out what they think our enrollment is going to be and then they calculate our our adequacy budget which feeds into our state aid so that's you know a significant decline the next year which is the current year we're in is the green boxes and you can see the comparable numbers were 6,942 and 6,830 we only declined 112 students okay so again it was a a flattening curve okay we're not declining by as much that helped us in our projection helped us in our state aid calculation the last one is our the current budget Year we're talking about for 2425 the um light purple boxes 6853 versus 6824 the same projected decline of only 29 students which is virtually nothing when you're talking about 6,850 students so that minimal decline in our enrollment because of this flattening of the curve helped us in the calculation of Equalization a okay a lot of numbers a lot going on there any questions makes sense power on we talking about Equalization Aid Tom mentioned it a few minutes ago so they use that enrollment uh they project forward of what our enrollment is going to be based on those Trends and they calculate our adequacy budget they they throw into the equation free and reduced population they throw in limited English proficient they throw in their per pupil cost and they come up with an adequacy budget then they use those other factors I talked about property valuations District income and they figure out how much should the residents of piscato be paying towards that that's called the local fair share the difference between those two numbers is your Equalization Aid so if you're adequacy budgets 100 million your local fair share is 90 million 10 million is the difference that should be your equal so here's a fiveyear trend of of how that's been going you can see our adequacy budget just under 120 million it dropped and it back went back up up up local fair share was pretty stable went up 5 million went up 11 million again this is the year that hurt us yeah the calculation all of a sudden our local fair share went from 109 million to 12.6 million and then for next year they're saying it's 125 million DAV in theory what is your thoughts on the local fair share number that that the state generates in relation to how much we are able because we talked about tax levy we should be a we we uh collect in other words the local share is always higher than what is being collected for us in in property taxes right so so way it is but I'm saying in theory yeah that's what I'm saying but in theory what's the relationship is there a relationship or it's it's a it's an indicator it's an imperfect formula but it's an indicator you could make the argument again going back to bank cap you could make the argument that we shouldn't have not we shouldn't have declined that $4.8 million over the years in the tax levy because we're we're only raising what are we at 104 million they're saying the taxpayers should be paying saying so we're already below yeah so there's an argument to be said we shouldn't have left that money on the table and you know what David we should go to 2% plus the healthcare cost waiver this year and ordinarily I I'd make that argument I'm okay not make that argument because it's there in Bank cap and I might be coming to you next year and saying we need to take that money yeah right um but there you know that's part of what the legislators wrestle with is there instances like this where our tax levy is less than the local fair share right and so you know they get confused and you know why in the hearing today this blew my mind the formula for Atlantic City Public Schools calculates that the tax tax payers there should only pay $30 million their tax levy is $77 million so they're actually taxing their residents $47 million more than what the formula says they should wow wow wow uh and you know you can see the formula changes over you know in five years this local fair share changed 21 million just for us so those things happen in districts like that uh in any District but in Atlantic City what was noted on the call was you know their property markets suffered significantly worse than let's say Piscataway or Franklin or or uh you know East Brunswick in any property Market declines so that input into the equation gave them a smaller local fair share and they were already collecting that higher level of tax so does the state ever say like part of their argument well you should have levied higher taxes so why should we equalize if your fair share is not what it should be is that part of their like so interestingly not often I heard it today so brick was a town that was down there um they lost aot money correct they've been losing money all seven years of um S2 and they the senator gopal actually asked them of you know 10 years ago what were you doing with your tax levy you were because he said you were overfunded the state was giving you all this money when Piscataway was getting short you didn't say Piscataway I'm saying PCAT was getting shorts changed and they admitted that basically when they were overfunded they were raising the tax levy like 0% they weren't even raising it because they didn't need the money the state was giving them money and they so they said hey we don't need it we don't have to charge our taxpayers so we're getting it from the state the whole point of the formula was to make that fair yeah the only sympathy I have for a place like brick is that as my friend David here has said to me many times you are where you are right so brick is in this situation they can't rewrite 10 years ago choices how do you fix it from there and Brick's argument is we're capped at a 2% Levy so even if we wanted to raise taxes at 5% we couldn't unless unless and this is what they never want to talk about the towns like brick reference unless they do a budget question right which they can do I brought up last year at some point we may have to consider it when I thought we were in Dire Straits of state aid before the little miracle came this year exactly um so you know brick never admits that that is an option but it is you know but you know what they want to be able to do is raise the tax levy to three four 5% without asking the voters well see that was yeah that that legislation actually got to a point um in um about four years ago uh through the delegate assembly and Sweeney was our uh of the New Jersey school board was our our guest speaker we're talking about this subject is that there was a resolution and then it actually became legislation but got vetoed by Governor Murphy that if a district could not meet its local share through the property tax that the there would be a a law that would say you could go out to the voters without a question and ask for 3% 4% 5 5% whatever and Governor uh we got it he got made it to the governor's desk and he vetoed it because that just meant that more property taxes around the state for people when that happened and that was his reasoning for doing it and it didn't happen for governor and if he wins a SI Murphy maybe he'll bring it back um so here you can see in red our Equalization Aid was below what the formula said it should be then we were over what the formula said it we should be and then this year we are smack on right where it should be the increase in the adequacy budget was driven by enrollment and our per pupil costs and that leveling right that leveling of the SL leveling en and Tom you were talking about this you beat me to my little text box there the local text Levy is 21 million below our local fair share well we don't talk that much that's fine okay so what did we do with this this state aid increase okay in one year we went from a 530,000 deficit or reduction to a 4.8 million increase how did we spend it what did we do so first off prior to us knowing this when Frank and I were reviewing and the administration the full budget we were going to use some of fund balance to pay for some of our recurring expenses not a best practice I was comfortable doing it again we were going to view next year as a reset year to figure out where the money was get the extra State a we don't have to do that so all the the recurring expenses the salaries of all our staff is covered by recurring Revenue to the extent we can count on state aid but it's covered by recurring Revenue not fund balance so we were able to to make that adjustment in the budget we have a few new staff requests that's funded with recurring Revenue we didn't have to use fund balance for that we'll get to that slide in a little bit in the current budget Year we're in we took a maintenance Reserve withdrawal to help fund the budget we were going to do that for next year we don't have to do that any longer so we'll keep that money in maintenance Reserve save it for another rainy day rather than using it next year interest income um we didn't go we've been making a lot of interest income uh because interest rates are high you don't know where they're going to be in a year so we budgeted that conservatively um because of this extra state aid you know we didn't have to be as aggressive with predicting our interest income we could kind of pull back the Reigns a little bit because we had the state aid and what did we do with the fund balance this has always been our our best practice of trying to allocate it to one-time expenditures you know things that if we didn't have fund balance we could survive without you don't have to cut teachers you're not using it on salary exactly we try to avoid that because that's that's the last resort do so instructional technology maintenance upgrading maintenance equipment things that we need I'm not going to tell you that we don't need them but if we had to cut them we could uh you know some excess Transportation costs so we we've kind of put some money in there not knowing where transportation is going to go we've had a decent year with it but you never know and inflation Hedges and what I mean is is that costs keep going up so you know fund balance helps to protect us against that in case benefits are more than what we're currently projecting or tuition added District tuition which is another big uh line item for us I'm comfortable with what we budgeted but the fund balance gives us an extra level of comfort the impacted estate Aid increase uh these are just two anecdotes Tom stole my thunder earlier mentioned South Playfield uh general fund budget of 75 million in the current budget year we we're in they got a $65 million increase I mean it was Christmas for them last year when the state a came out for next year's budget they're losing three and a. half million so just talk about that you know think about that swing um in state a from one year to the next for a district that's you know 25% smaller 30 even more you know 40 50% smaller than us and then I put a quote up here that I found in the paper you know about a South Jersey superintendent I think this particular District superintend it was losing like $6 million a big District you know we were in utter disbelief we thought that perhaps it maybe was a mistake and when we double checked that it wasn't a mistake our disbelief turned into shock and Devastation and there's hard decisions yeah yeah yeah so $6 million even if you have $3 million in Surplus to cover half of that it's still people it's still jobs it's still you know it is it is devastating yeah so remember this has always been our approach but despite the fall for next year you know we have to remain cautious with the budget and the tax levy keep all these factors in mind very comfortable now with our budget going into next year but it doesn't mean that we won't be sitting here next year having a different conversation we just don't know about state aid but this would be the last year that that that S2 is in effect right so they're going to have to do something about it correct not that it's in effect so the formula was always there but when they would run the formula if the formula said that rck should get 60 million and they actually were getting 80 million before they started doing S2 they just kept getting 80 million they never cut it nobody S2 said we're going to take you from 80 down to 60 we're going to do it over seven years so it's not a all at once and you know it gets a little more complicated than that because every year they run the new adequacy budget they run the new Equalization number so it's not quite a smooth 80 down the it was unpredictable but that's the concept so now they're saying okay we've made that Progressive adjustment where we've gotten rid of all that some people call it hold harmless money all that that money you were getting you weren't supposed to that's all been netted out now now the formula will just run on its own and so every district is just waiting to see what it spits out next year what I what I learned is six years of chairman of the school finance committee for New Jersey school boards Association representing many different types of districts from all over the state is that this is a law and so if you want to change it it's it's very difficult and that's why you need data from all over these geographical areas and inform your legislators of how you're affected and that's why I said again I think it's very important now that um the governor makes a statement that said at the end of S2 will look at this formula which means there's an opportunity to take recommendations and and change it but it has to go through and become law again and that's that's that's what you're up you're up against and so just a few bits about our ratables which is another word for the valuation of the properties in town uh 60% of our properties are residential 27% are res uh industrial 9% are apartments and then the rest is other commercial vacant land Etc scataway is very up to date there's districts that haven't done a towns that haven't done a revaluation in 40 years 50 years uh that affects the money that has an unknown impact on the total valuations by town across the state yes because they try and back into that's when I said earli about equalized valuations they try and back in to make sure that they're comparing padway's apples to South plainfield's apples not to southfield's oranges MH so that's what they try to do but it it's too confusing to to really get it right when you have so many towns that have not revalued in so long and you know it cost P scatter away money and I know sometimes it hurts to be doing the right thing but they are doing the right thing revaluation and updating 20% of the properties in town every year they're doing on a fiveyear rolling cycle it's the right thing to do every town should be doing it right uh rable base uh Residential Properties you know and Industrial because they're the biggest portion of the the base they always account for the biggest increase in the valuations and our average assessed home went up from 413,000 to almost 449,000 the value of your home is going up so in summary uh of the revenue piece uh New Jersey school aid funding formula is quote fully funded uh state aid is unpredictable we talked about that talked about the taxevity increases and how they're limited uh Bank cap and you know I left the last bullet point in there it's not directly relevant to us this year I don't think it'll be relevant next year uh but there are districts that's becoming more and more relevant you know more and more districts in my opinion are going to hit a point where they're going to be at cap they're still going to need more money and they're going to have to put budget questions where I live this is the second year now they'll be doing it budget questions to raise money above the cap right because they they're saying they don't have enough money to pay for what they have and certainly not if they want to add a guidance counsel to the middle school or whatever they may want to add so I think more and more districts are going to end up there last year I feared that day might come a little sooner for us I don't have any immediate fear but it inevitably it may come all right thank you so the next couple of slides are about educational initiatives and if you'll notice on all of the slides the word program isn't on there right we really try to make sure that we take our time really do the investigation and research on things that we want to bring to M scataway so it's not a fleeting thing where we're doing something for two years we're doing something else for another two years we're doing something else because then the the parents the the students the staff members are like well what direction are we going in so we try to again research the proper things and what our district needs and and what our where the community is going and and the the state of the world right now to make sure things are in place long after the people in this room leave right because then we know we did the right thing right some things on here uh Again tutorial services to deal with the learning loss uh you know transition programs we as a district and you as a board really took hold of the transition programs because anytime you change buildings uh many many students could take a step back just to the new environment so the transition years are really really important particularly the transition Year from 12th grade to what's next whether be Career College twoyear fouryear military and we made some great strides in the in the past couple years to talk about careers for for kids in the council department at the high school um again I'm not going to read everything here one thing I wanted to to point out here and we just put this on today is the efficient use of spaces so we want to try to maximize the spaces that we have okay uh whether it be this building whether it be the media center at the high school and and part of the educational initiatives and may seem like a one-year thing the educational initiative but I don't look at it that way David myself the cabinet we try to look and see well what do we need how can we best spend our resources to maximize them to benefit our community for the long term right the planetarian is a great example of that right at the high school we maximized our resources at the time and it Services a lot of people including elementary kids Saturday enrichment classes things like that so efficient use of spaces we really look at particular looking at the high school media center uh in the coming year or so um and it's really important to us to make sure that we have spaces that kids want to go into uh and really maximize could really maximize what it could be right computer spaces different kind of furniture things like that meaning the um the what it's currently the media center in the high school correct yeah and Susan the yeah yeah it's a large space and it's very Antiquated it's and it's not laid out right it's not laid out right it's very antiquated it's dark considerably uh just because of the paint color and things like that so we want to freshen that up maybe lay it out a little bit differently but that comes with architect that comes with you know plans that comes with the doe approval a lot of things so so that's when we talk about the the use of spaces but that but that relates to the question that I asked at the beginning of what isn't in the budget and one of the projects on that 5year plan was to redo all of the media centers so where we did the auditoriums at the middle schools in the past two year over the past two years they're fantastic people love them they love going in them it just makes a big difference in when you walk into a school building if it's bright if it's fresh if it's new and it really hits the educational initiatives that are current not 10 15 20 years ago and in the media center at the high school probably lower than um specialized classroom materials uh I put that there because I think it's important for you to understand look we might need to spend $200,000 on computers for uh specialty classes at the high school our engineering things so those are sub initiatives where uh we want to make sure that it's at least laid out here so you understand that it's a it's a good number if we're buying 20 computers at $10,000 each because they need that kind of power and that that are't in their iPads uh to run the Adobe programs and to run the gaming programs and things like that all right technology uh I initiative remains in place so we replace two grades every year which if you look on your uh board minutes tonight I think it ranges about $500,000 yes right uh that comes with the maintenance of it that comes with the cases of them you know cases of them comes with the people that are going to deploy them so that's a big initiative that um gez I'm your 10 years so 11 12 years ago the district dop into understanding it was going to be a longterm expensive Endeavor but it still is the best use of the one to one scenario that we have and do we purchase those or do we lease those we buy them we buy them y yeah so tonight we'll be buy two new R and what do we do with the one do we put them on the lower level we recycle them to the younger I see good and when they're really low functioning we sell them understood smart the last two bullets are really important here so the cyber security initiatives and what we just the letter home about is the safe and appropriate use of artificial intelligence yeah um it's a it's a never ending like John B off is in Glenn's office Dr lotman's office every week talking about security he meets with David once a week on Mondays and his group uh to talk about these types of things and what kind of money it takes uh to to run a district our size and to keep us safe right every once in a while and unfortunately it's getting more common you reading the paper that you know a district or a fire department a police department or whatever may be was held hostage from a Cyber attack so we try to make sure we're we're as as uh defended against that as possible and then comes in the the artificial intelligence which seems great but it's really really dangerous when we don't know we're um so that's going to cost us money right to research and to figure out what we want to do to have John be able to put the things on our computers May whether it's deploy them uh virtually to all all our iPads and computers and things like that uh but also to make our regulations and policies David we we talk about the policies that are available for AI and they're really not widespread yet so we'll be on top of that as well so our preschool uh our preschool Aid uh our expansion Aid next year we will be able to uh increase our students that we service um so 535 students okay so we started with 67 in 201819 and this $8 million will allow us to uh educate 535 students and families uh for for no at no cost to that and what you had said before so the teachers the administrators uh you know the the buildings that we rent for that uh what happens with the buildings though causes some issues is they don't we don't own them right so if there's a heating issue if there's a lighting issue something like that uh we have to work with the the least sour to uh to make sure that we're we're having the best experience there um I meant to ask this before with the preschool and the fact that we do have this available in Gat and younger families might be more drawn to coming here would that then ultimately impact our uh numbers in terms of uh student enrollment do we see any any so we haven't seen an increase there just yet because we don't know what the total population is of of threes and fours that would be what what the state calls the universe right they want to have Universal preschool for free right so we don't know that population what we are seeing increases is is our special education population in preschool uh we have a great reputation across the state for having a strong uh special ed program in all our grades and uh preschool is not excluded from that so we we have a lot of special services that we deliver uh which is side of the preschool expansion a along with Transportation as great as our preschool program has been in terms of the history of the expansion of it and are going you know using uh the dasis touching Cabrini and and then leasing the r how what is the percentage of the waiting list for people and how are we dealing with that do you know that around numbers or call your we can get through our almost scho because that age group is want to keep the seats so one goes out then you you just keep on going off the waiting list yeah they're never not full the classrooms yeah keep in 535 two and that includes tuition students right there no tuition any students no the only yeah there no tuition students so everything is which is why there's such a probably a big waiting list yeah so 200 about 200 and it's rolling throughout the year new kids move in and apply but kids have been here who did not get it uh so as we sit here the middle of March there's still people on a waiting list so if you're on a waiting list there's no guarantee obviously you're going to get into a program so you're just waiting next year list this year doesn't mean you you hold that place going to next year but if you're enrolled you hold that place no there's a new Lottery each year so if you're a three-year-old that that made it in the lottery then there's no guarantee from three to going to four you'd have a spot yes right there must be yeah I would think that's what I mean there must be but but you would hold that spot right you would that that's what I'm talking about if you're already a three-year-old okay then you would get your spot you wouldn't be part of the lottery correct I got you okay at what point when at what point of the waiting list would you consider expanding to a forth location if we want to keep David Al I don't think we want to do that uh it's it's interesting right space in in town um already two of the buildings that we lease are really old and and hard for us to maintain because they're really our buildings um you know we we install cameras in buildings we don't own uh we have to supply air conditions when it gets hot because there theirs don't work um so already two of those we have that right uh we looked for probably three years for the space that old Brunswick Road at many different buildings and layouts and scenarios for us to be able to build something like that so that's a a tough situation um you know looking at our current buildings that we have and I know uh you all approved us to be able to use some State money to build classrooms on one of our uh buildings Eisenhower right so that would be the way to go if we we were to choose to do that you would add it into an existing building you'd add preschool and existing because right now even even the private providers even the private providers in town don't meet the standards that the state has for the size of roads for things like that so we can't even go to ks corner here and say you know can can we can we work together the state won't let us do that because the rooms are too small or they don't me the compliance in some other way right so um as with everything else that's a conversation that we have all the time on what to do next right what happens if the Leisa at older Brer grad doesn't pan out the way we want what happens if the two build right so or what happens if our we we you you all choose to say Frank and David we want to grow right we want to get as much as we can here what do we do um so we have that conversation on a weekly if not monthly basis all right operate I think this is a repeat slide is there anything here that this is expenses the other one was Revenue so this is expens okay so as I said before salaries and benefits add up to about 75% all right uh what the Dre par AIDS and Subs uh this blue would be our maintenance transportation um is that is that normal David or is that high like what do is that normal for for a district our size I think it's normal for a district the the transportation yeah you know a smaller town it's all dependent on how far your your community is from the schools and a smaller town by Nature not they're going to be and so they may not even be eligible for busing you know so a district like that Transportation cost is very low but for our size I that I think that's spot on how much of that 8% is uh activities Athletics pretty small pretty small okay all right so we'll turn our attention to Staffing for a couple of slides right Staffing requests are renewed annually we ask the buildings and and the supervisors to give us their Staffing requests when they submit their budgets and um what we try to do is again maintain class sizes uh the k3s we try not to go we don't go over 25 but we try to maintain it a little smaller than that and our 4 to8 uh 22 students per class and our high school again depending on the program depending if it's a single class or multiple classes uh we we judge and figure out what we can do in in that way um recruiting and and retaining staff remains a challenge but we're doing better yeah right we were uh fully staffed by the middle of September and then you know you'll see throughout the the year and the agendas people leave people have't hired but uh we do a really nice job Colleen and your team are fantastic we really appreciate the hard work there all right so Staffing cost benefits like I had said before about 73% of our budget are uh uh we remain to try we try to remain as efficient as we can even though we have this state money as David said before we're not just going to go out and spend the state money on eight 10 12 15 more staff members because we don't we know that money is not going to be there next year right so evened right yeah even when we were in a situation last year where we we thought we were going to get 300 we wind up getting 500 less um the cuts that we make and still do right as trying to be as prudent as we can are our vacancies rather than people right so we we try to really make sure that no one loses their job because we have to make cuts and we've been successful so far with cuts that we've had to make um and that's that's kind of our philosophy we're going to stick to that as much as we can and again David and I have been successful in that whole transition when we have to make make based on staff members over the last um couple of years because of the budget Cycles uh we probably went down like 15 vacancies that we didn't have to so they're out of the budget there but they were vacancies they weren't people how much of a role does our uh breakage play a lot yeah uh David could really but he'll he'll say that because because of that uh I'll go back right because of this bullet right here remains a challenge we have to hire people at a higher rate so there's not as much breakage as you would think as there as we saw for those I'm sorry breakage is if we if somebody retires making eight uh 95,000 and we bring somebody in step one they're making $56,000 so $30,000 is breakage and you do that you know 30 times throughout the year or with bigger numbers you'll make a lot you'll save that money that last year you spent on salaries that you didn't have to spend this year okay right that's the breakage in the salary that we would have spent but because of the question should yeah you're hiring people at which would normally maybe not as much because you you need staff but now because we need staff and they're harder to find we're hiring them at a higher rate so a higher step there one uh things like that and in many cases we have to do it because we don't there's nobody else so we're not seeing as much breakage Tom as as we would have as we have in the past did I get that right that all right uh Staffing so in this budget uh we had some adjustments right the Staffing additions were for pro programmatic needs we're asking uh you to approve the budget to add six staff members a math honors teacher in Intermediate School ESL teachers at all levels a bcba in the preschool and a safety officer at the middle school okay there were four full-time reductions so the net addition is two staff members it's only one additional safety officer for all of the middle schools yeah because there's a program that we think is going to be there that we're going to need an additional safety okay right so you know addition to subtraction we're asking for two additional positions and again David used the phrase a couple of times we're comfortable asking for this and putting this in the budet that's where it is I know that was in our packet with the bcba that's that's a teacher that you're hiring for the preschool not a bcba uh that's cons we're doing something different okay if we could find we'd love to you know of any s all right so talk about federal funds back to um just a a brief refresher on this our we got a lot of federal covid money a lot of acronyms cares Esser aress um we're on the last Last Mile with this our V of funds have to be spent by September 30th of this year okay so um we're really winding down uh and our whole approach to the federal money again similar to fund balance our whole approach has been let's not overcommit to recurring expenses because we knew the S our money was going away right so what did we do probably the biggest allocation of that money went towards tutoring programs we expanded our in-year tutoring and we aggressively expanded our summer tutoring programs so um that is where we spend a large portion of the Mone we spent a little bit on some HVAC work um so again the theory behind the tutoring was was to recover the learning loss and next year the plan is to go back to more of a traditional tutoring schedule you know where they start in the spring and they tutor through from you know like February or kind of late winter I guess February through to May um and we will still have some sort of summer program we'll we'll have an assessment of that summer 25 as we get into next school year facilities projects the esip is is winding down uh you know I keep the fiscal committee a breast at each at each meeting um so we're working on the Seaman BMS that's really the last major task I just talked about our bestor helping to fund some HVAC equipment this summer we're proposing to do uh paving at Arbor Grand View and the high school and then the maintenance department will do you know individualized request from schools they'll supervise I to do uh a significant painting project this summer go out to bid to get a painting contractor um for this summer where are we with our capital reserve and maintenance Reserve first off capital reserve that money once we put it in there it's restricted to capital projects so building remodels building additions um you know HVAC work anything uh substantive affecting the structure of the building our Reserve in there at the moment $28 million maintenance Reserve is restricted to maintenance activities things that are just maintaining what we have painting uh repairing uh uh hbac work things like that and we have $6 million in that reserve and we were not we are not going to tap that for next year's budget I talked about that earlier a reminder the district is debt free uh which is um you know a great achievement but absent of referendum the types of facility upgrades we're going to encounter we are limited so the 28 million in capital reserve is great I'm sure if you asked a bunch of neighboring districts I don't know if any of them would have that amount but at the moment that's the only way we have to fund any capital projects we want to do uh unless at some point the board determines to go for a referendum um and we will get a decent amount of work done with the 28 million but you know a more substantive substantive or robust Capital push probably would require a referendum some of the things that we've been talking about in the fiscal uh committee uh Media Center upgrades Frank mentioned that earlier acoustical upgrades so hopefully by the art show next year in there the Acoustics will be better um we are looking to upgrade the Acoustics in that room because we do use it for board presentations and also at the Susan B Anthony gym um K to8 bathrooms has always been upgrading those has always been something um that we've talked about for a couple years now we did the high school bathrooms um I think they came out great we've really like to upgrade the K to8 bathrooms some exterior and selected indoor interior door Replacements uh security film maybe for the exterior door windows um repurposing the space in this building it's Antiquated you know can it be brought up to you know current needs and and used in a better way and we touched on earlier we applied and we granted the Eisenhower addition which would be specifically for preschool classrooms um and that would require an outlay by the district State's not paying for all of it so um at a minimum it would require about $6 million from us probably at a minimum so uh that's something that's under consideration and we'll get more into that conversation Frank said we talk about it regularly we are once we get through this budget cycle that'll become more of a board issue to decide how we want to go that's based on like A10 million model where the state pays 40 and we pay 60 right correct all right so that's why we pay 6 with it probably doesn't go in there but with the with the budget is there is there somewhere that um maybe under this I don't know if it goes under facilities but I'm probably asking in the wrong spot but my my question is about um upgrading or um how does the um drama Department get funded for their mics their um you know audio equipments and stuff like that is that something that gets just under a line item or is that under a different program or how does that so um we obviously redid the auditorium and upgraded the soundboard and so the district does significant projects like that right um the things like microphones often the drama club purchases okay and the reason why we do that or we we have them do that for smaller scale stuff is because this doesn't happen in all districts but in Piscataway the ticket Revenue it goes into the drama Cod right in some districts ticket Revenue goes right into our budget okay so you know that's why we split it significant costs right we we handle right you know if they want some more wireless mics because you know they need more for particular show they may uh purchase those it just depends subm yeah I was Wonder with that side note I know this is just a projection of a possible Esports gaming area but I think that again shows the progressive side of our district of thinking ahead at how things are changing um opportunities through college so I think it's a really smart uh plan to put into place and to really think um again putting piscatway at that place of forward thinking thank you ongoing challenges um not as big a deal this year but there are always things to keep in mind um you know salaries are increasing greater than 2% which is a tax City cap talked about the shortage of teachers um health benefit costs you know always rise and as more people shift into the New Jersey Educators health plan which is a specific type of plan um they contribute less towards the cost of those expenses which just means the district pays more that's just how it works somebody's got to pay right so um you know it has that hasn't hit us hard yet at all it it may you know I just try and put things out here that we need to be aware of and when they become more of a red light issue that's when you'll hear more from me now it's just you know putting the seed in your in your brain um but I missed that slide I was but you made that point that we're debt free and that we are in a great position because we haven't been going out and and doing these questions but there could be point where you know we have to if we want to do the things that that question like what else we do the last three bullet points Frank touched on those and the educational initiatives are always there the challenges that we always try and tax levy analysis oh white doesn't work too well okay um so this is just a breakdown of the tax Lev so this is a fouryear period with this last column being the upcoming budget year that we've been talking about you can see the increase in the general fund Levy this was The Debt Service Levy and we paid off all our debt in 22 23 we're debt free so we don't need to raise money for that okay so the total amount we raised in taxes the increase in the average assessed home and how much that what is the impact of this on a tax on an average assessed home so for next year average assessed home there school related tax I can't through the municipality or the county uh will be approximately 4522 42 once again a reminder that we're debt free and if you happen to know your own assessed valuation want to figure out what this means for you for every 100,000 of assessed value it's 17.5 of school tax so you can calculate for your own individualized house what the school tax in fact might be again um here this is break down of the increase uh or how much tax we're raising and calculating what the increase is the bottom row is the increase so over these four years these are the increases we had the one big year here in 2223 last year even though we raised taxes 4.3% the reason the impact was so minimal is because that Debt Service came off the books right okay and here's our increase again with a 1% recommendation it's 90 increase on the average homeowner over the last four years the average increase is $646 per year very good by comparison to other towns very and the schedule from here so you have this presentation tonight I have to submit the budget to the county with supplemental paperwork by March 20th they review it uh ask questions responds usually no substance of changes at all and our budget adoption public hearing and budget adoption will be on April 25th and then I generate what's called a userfriendly budget and we post that on the website uh the next day so that's the schedule I want to thank you for making it very clear right like like you have a way of of making the numbers make sense in a way that you know are easy to understand so I I thank you for a lot of information report want to keep going no no we're good that's okay I think we're full okay next one agenda for tonight person it resolve that the following motions identified as items a through D be approved as presented e e e e e e e e e e [Music] [Music] e [Music] uh what's the uh best use of our limited capital reserve funds that we talked about that might have the greatest impact on students and the community so um again no board action required but um we're going to hit pause for a minute and uh you know reevaluate how we move forward with our next Capital project I want to give an example of what the committee discussed because this is under the the theme of you know overall Safety and Security for schools in our district and uh one thing that uh we're David's going to look into which is a uh a safety factor that is not that expensive and you can see it here happening is that he's doing an assessment throughout the schools of how many schools have Shades like this especially facing outwards toward parking lots and so on and that we feel is a measure that we can take within the budget that you know uh provides another lay layer of safety in in the form of a lockdown or something so it's not like we're just walking away from this because you know but it is an expensive so we're not we're not just walking away from it we're thinking about other things we can do to add to our overall Safety and Security of our schools thanks thank you next we have policy and legis the policy and legislative committee met on March 6 2024 to discuss updates to various policies and recent legislative developments under policies the committee discussed updates to numerous policies and regulations reflecting recent changes to the administrative code regard regarding comprehensive Equity plans and equal access to educational services in particular the State Board of Education expanded the list of protected categories the following policies and regulations were approved for consideration by the board on first reading um Abol abolition of current policy SS S no that's not an S 5755 equity and education and educational programs and services as unnecessary because because it has been absorbed into other policies update to policy 5570 sportsmanship to align with current njsi AA bylaws and regulations and finally updates to policy 9233 notification of juvenile offender case disposition policy and regulation 2423 bilingual education and policy and regulation 24314 prevention and treatment of sports related concussions and head injuries to reflect changes in governing law of or other relevant standards under the legislative category Mr Rubin briefed the committee on recent legislative developments most notably a bill establishing the New Jersey educator EV valuation review task force to review evaluation requirements for teachers and administrators Dr Connors also addressed recent development in state aid and the school funding formula and that concludes our agenda have be we resolve that the following minutes be approved as submitted this is meeting for February 8th 2024 in executive session February 8th 2024 so moved can I have a second second all in favor I special meeting February 12th 2024 so moved a second second all in favor Dr thas fisc planning and operations he resolve following motions identified as items a through M he approved as presented second Mr secretary can you take the wait can I just have one question before we do that um we talked about G um with the paving I know that we're just um like sending it out right to figure out um I don't know what our timeline is as far as like when we plan to hopefully get it done I guess I just wanted to make sure that we're not paving at inopportune times so just to put that out there I mean I'm sure we know but yeah the um I think you're referring to the high school primarily so uh the portion of the high school is the patent side the patent Loop um and we always try and be cognizant of everything going on in the summer and try and juggle the projects based on that so should be good M Rashid yes M Rivers yes Mrs Salgado Cowen yes Miss Smith yes Miss Stafford yes Mrs cordino yes Dr Connors yes Miss Cherry yes motions Carri poliy Miss Smith be it resolved that the following motions identified as items a through C be approved as presented can I um ask a question second first second go ahead um I saw that there was all the policies updated um with your the meeting most of it seems to be related to like you said in your um report having to do with the protected um categories but in policy um related to curriculum content which is um I guess [Music] r22000 there was like a whole paragraph that's like removed that I wasn't sure if that was also because CH Tak out because of the protective uh categories or whatever yeah so it's the policy number R2 r220 Z it's like curriculum content it has to do with the superintendent or design shall develop a procedure or address the eliminate any possible bias in the curriculum has to do with the curriculum but it there's a whole like a through D that was removed and it seemed relevant so I wasn't sure if that's some like if there's like a rationale for that yeah I'm just pulling up the stress es rationale for that just me one second they say is the only Revision in that policy is the removal of the list so what they okay so what they did was in all these previous policies they had a specific list of protected categories a fairly limited list what happened was the State Board of Education and their meeting last summer said we're going to sweep into that the entire list of protected Cate categories under the law against discrimination which is a couple dozen or more and what SC s did is say because that's such a moving Target and may may be adding even more to those we're just going to take out the entire list here and just simply incorporate by reference whatever those protected categories are in the law against discrimination so it like on the one hand the removing protected categories actually they're adding them by incorporating by reference a whole other law that has a lot more in them so is that what's up at the top of that where it says on the bias of protected categories reference the NJ blah blah blah blah blah right okay actually increasing the number of protected categories not decreasing them it's just that it doesn't it doesn't have it bulky into the actual they said there's so many of them we're just going to make it easy we're to say whatever's in that other law is protected here without going through all yeah that's what I thought for most of them but the curriculum one didn't seem to make sense and I know David explained like in the meeting that because the state's always adding and changing sort of like yeah so then we don't have to always go back and revise our policy that we just say whatever the protected categories are through the state then we're covered okay what you said I was listening to your meeting yeah but to that point the thing is that so how do you list everything in njac unless you look it up and it could be quite a you know it's reference and you have part of the job yeah discuss that okay Mr secretary can M rashed yes M Rivers yes Mrs Salado cow yes Miss Smith yes Miss Stafford yes Mrs cordino yes Dr Connor yes Mr Cherry yes motion to carry what working on Mr King is out so I'll just go ahead and read heol that the following motion identifi as item a the appr that presented second Mr secretary can take the RO M Rivers Mrs Sado Cowen yes Miss Smith yes Miss Stafford yes Mrs gordino yes Miss rashed yes Dr Connors yes M Jerry yes motion carries people services you know be resolved that the following motions identified these items a through C be approved as presented secretary take the Salado Cowen yes M Smith yes M Stafford yes Mrs cordino yes M rasheid yes M Rivers yes Dr Connors yes M Cherry yes motions Carri administrative and auxiliary Miss St be it resolved that the following motions identified as items a through C be approved as presented second Mr secretary can you take the V yes M Stafford yes M cordino yes M Rasheed yes M Rivers yes Mrs Salado yes Dr Connors yes M Cherry yes Carri old business anyone with any old business Dr Madam SEC Madam secetary Madam president uh New Jersey School Board Association uh board certification uh sessions good news is that um you need 16 credit hours and we've been doing two two two hours at a time we're halfway there and uh we always pick topics um and so we need to schedule our fifth session which would get us from eight to 10 credits out of 16 to keep going towards that uh the 16 that you need and I took a look at the topics uh that we've covered from uh you know the field services going through my recommendation is that we cover next uh the board's role in policy and governance by policy I think going into this is so that's what I'm recommending we do and uh I'll I'll keep uh I'll get I'll contact our field representative I'll try and get some dates and so look for an email for me for April so that we have our next session uh uh and it'll be on policy okay thank you thank you Thom anyone else old business any new business I have new business um just want to make an announcement to all of you to formally invite everyone in the community scataway Coral Collective will have our spring concert on April the 9th uh of this year at 6 pm at the high school and yours truly will be singing thank you Nancy is the coral Collective where it's it's um it's Community it's just the community yeah it's just the it's just the old folks we do have some kids coming to help us we need that yes April all right thank you okay anyone else want to extend the meeting any longer we already know can I have a motion for a chair motion have a second all in favor we are chair Miss Smith you were right on with 9:30 e e e for