do roll call then we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance and then we'll do your performance all right so Mr bernai can we just do roll call Board member Elizabeth Callahan here board member Nubia dval Wilson here board member Regina eert here board member Bill gford board member will Meyer here board member Shaya sacket Gable here board president colie talford here board member Arun VOD lamani here board member Caitlyn Whit letter here thank you all right let's all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag the United States of America stand na Y and now we'll have a present uh performance by the South Mountain Elementary Stars e e [Music] the be [Music] TR [Music] [Music] moment [Music] [Music] [Music] ch [Music] that get all [Music] [Music] you e e make sure get everybody I can't even remember the lines to my favorite song I know I got that one go with the flo all right please take notice that adequate notice of this meeting has been provided in the following manner that written notice was sent from the office of the secretary of the board at 2:30 on January 5th 2024 that said notice was sent via email to Maplewood and South Orange Township clerks and the editors of the news records Dar Ledger tapen tooma and the Village Green whereas while the senator Byer and M buer open public meetings Act njsa 10 4-6 requires all meetings of the South Orange Maplewood Board of education to be held in public njsa Den 10 4-12 sets forth nine types of matters that may lawfully be discussed in executive session without the public being permitted to attend and whereas the board has determined that one issue is permitted by njsa 10 4-12 to be discussed without the public in attendance and shall be discussed during an executive session to be held on Thursday April 25th 2024 at 6:30 p.m. and whereas the nine exceptions to the open public meeting set forth in njsa 10 2-4 are listed below and next to each exception is a box which will be marked when the issues to be privately discussed fall within that exception and after each exception is a space where additional information that will disclose as much information about the discussion as possible without undermining the purpose of the exception shall be written any matter which by Express provisions of federal law state statute or rule of Court shall be rendered confidential or excluded from public session the nature of the matter described as specifically as possible without undermining the need for confidential is attorney client privilege hip reporting litigation status report and Personnel matters whereas the length of the executive session is estimated to be 60 minutes after which the public meeting of the board shall reconvene and proceed with business where formal action will be taken now therefore be it resolved that the South orang Maplewood Board of Education will go into executive session for the above stated reasons only be it further resolved that the board hereby declares that its discussion of the aformentioned subjects will be made public at a time when the Public's interest in disclosure is greater than any privacy or government Interest being protected from disclosure with that I'd like to make a motion to go into executive session have a second thank you thank you board member volani all in favor all right heading to Executive session 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 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 first want to do a motion right like to make a motion for the approval of board minutes executive session and special meeting minutes for March 14th and executive session and regular meeting minutes from March 21st second thank you board member vman all in favor all right all right I also like to make a motion to have any students that have come to speak at public speaks tonight to come and speak first a second second thank you board member valman all in favor right so we'll have any students that have come to speak for public speaks tonight um you can come up um right now so we're just going to get the the list first not speaking do with Hannah gutnik yes good evening um my name is Hannah gutnik and I'm a senior who is involved in the music program and the art program I write to strongly oppose the proposed cuts to the art and music faculty and Fine Arts budget I'm a student who particularly thrives in the Arts and I can't tell you enough how grateful I am to be part of such an amazing community of people and faculty who have supported me and inspired me throughout my years of high school I went to private school up until my high school years and I chose to attend the school because of its highly regarded Arts and Music program I am not a particularly strong academic student I never really found my passion or felt motivated in that area of Education and when I came here for high school I felt like I had finally found my place in the crowd because of that I have created close connections with the music and arts faculty as well as the other students in those classes some teachers include Miss Vite Mr Diaz Miss Stuart and miss kuchi all of whom are outstanding teachers who truly value their Student Success and artistic expression as a senior it is a privilege to look back on how much I've grown as a musician and artist but it's even more of a blessing to see how many new underclass take part in the arts program each year I know that many of the students at the school use the Arts as their Muse and because we have such an excellent program we are able to produce talented and creative uh students who explore diverse themes and subjects through ART music in the Arts built community and I and many other students have found comfort and belonging in the program Not only would cutting funding for the arts program be a huge mistake but it would limit the opportunities for students like me who have found their creative and educational success in the Arts it would be a shame to let down those students as well as parents to whom the art Department means so much we as a district need to protect these incredible teachers who not only help their students but provide educational and emotional support during the process the music and arts program at CHS has helped me find my feet and and my voice in the educational world I urge you to repeal the proposed cuts to the Arts and Music program at CHS thank you [Applause] next we have or minutes no we'll do three minutes actually so next we'll have Ellie Levy hi my name is Ella Levy and I a sophomore at CHS I'm a member of the CHS marching band Jazz Ensemble percussion Ensemble and the stage crew in my time in the Band program so far I have grown immensely as a person and as a musician I am so lucky for the opportunities that I have been given because of the program such as master classes from worldclass musicians like Lee Howard Stevens Freddy Hendricks Carl leam and many others the marching band was also given the opportunity this year to perform with Miss Lauren Hill at the concert at a pack credential Center these are all incredible experiences that I know I will not forget even long after my time here at CHS I personally would like to continue with music After High School through that being in a college marching Banner just as a hobby the program here in nesd has cultivated that love and passion for music I'm surrounded by fantastic talented musicians in my band class every day and it is such a joy to be able to share and make music with them but even more of a joy to call them close friends our band director Mr Bower often says that band is a family and so my real concern with the proposed budget cuts that are being made comes before high school the middle schoolers in the music program were ultimately the Legacy not us I think that budget cuts are affecting them more than the current high schoolers in the long run and that it's not fair the middle schoolers are part of that family too I understand that budgets Cuts have to be made but as for the Arts why can't we be role models for these kids why can't we show them that we want them to keep going with music these younger students see people from their High School on the news because they're performing at the credential center with a Grammy award-winning musician they think this this is what I want to do when I'm older this is so cool and then they get to middle school and then high school and they see the budget cuts in The Condemned Auditorium and they think that this District does not value the Arts why should they be in the musical in band and Orchestra in chorus if the district is cutting funds we as a district and as a community need to think about the future the future is the current eighth graders the class of 2028 and it is the current fifth graders the class of 2031 it is every single child who sees us on TV and in the community and wants to be us when they grow up when I leave this District I want to be proud of what I left behind and quite frankly right now I'm not thank you next we have EMT Simon EMT Simon hello uh my name is EMT Simon I a student at Columbia and a member of the marching band jazz band and percussion Ensemble uh the Columbia High School music program has provided a unique and special experience to me which has cultivated a passion for music which I would not have without it with talk of budget cuts in the music program and the firing staff it should be clear and understood that no student should be deprived of an experience as special as the one I have had in this school district our school district has set a precedent for nurturing generations of young musicians into incredibly talented individuals and continues to do so to this day but to cut the budget of the music program and to fire any music music educators within this District would prevent future generations of musicians in South Orange and Maplewood from ever gaining an equivalent or potentially greater experience than I have had with the school's music program so I urge you to repeal these proposed budget cuts to the music and arts uh programs to help a future generation of students thank you next we have Brendan Delaney hello I'm BR Delaney I am a junior in high school whenever I hear family friends or a member of our community remark on the quality of our school's Arts programs I can't help but think with a twinge of annoyance about the fact that these programs exist as they do not because of the efforts of the school but despite them the financial support for the Arts in recent years can have best be described as subpar the proposed budget cuts were turned it into downright unacceptable as a student heavily involved in chs's music programs I can say that activities such as the marching band and our annual student Le concert exist largely through the support of the mer of the music parents Association and the donated time time of our dedicated teachers this this this generosity however cannot be extended to inside the classroom which is exactly where these proposed Arts these proposed budget cuts to the Arts would have the largest impact without the fair and Equitable access to the Arts that these programs provide the creative and artistic environment that defines these two towns cannot continue to exist these Cuts represent a significant and disheartening regression for both our school and the mava community as a whole and those who face the most to lose will be as it so often seems to be the students whose academic Futures lie squarely in the palms of this board thank you next we have Izzy Sandoval hello I'm Izzy and I'm a sophomore what I look forward to every day when I go to school is my music tech class that is period 9 and to be blunt that is what keeps me motivated to get through the day as Hannah said I am also not a very academically talented student so I think cutting the budget cuts would restrict a lot of students from finding that motivation because not only is the variety of Arts that we have a Colombia not only does it is it an outlet for self-expression but at least for me and I can I'm sure that I can speak for many others at Colombia it is a relief of stress that enhances our emotional intelligence and it just as a school that is nationally recognized for its arts program seems illogical to me to cut funding instead of expanding the talents that have been cultivated here over decades if I had not had the privilege to be in the music technology program I would have not been in my band that I'm currently in I would have not met my closest friends it wouldn't have helped my mental health as it did it it helped me learn social emotional and Leadership especially leadership skills and just like learning a universal language that not only unites people socially but culturally and I think a restriction on that would be a restriction on one's personal expansion and knowledge of what there is beyond this curriculum um yeah Colombia the core of Colombia are the Arts and I think that is a fact um and as Brenton said like not only people from this District but from outside this District have commented on how the Musical dance the plays all of these they they look professionally made and the reason behind that is because this is what we live for and this is what motivates us and this is what brings out the passion and the best in us next we have Killian Kyle hi I'm lilan Kyle and I'm a sophomore Columbia High School I'm here to oppose the proposed budget cuts to the Arts and Music program um the smos school district has always prided themselves on being a welcoming community and a place for equality where kids of all backgrounds regardless of their race uh gender sexuality or socioeconomic status can express themselves and achieve anything but this is only possible with continued District funding where any kid can walk into any music or art classroom and pick up any instrument or any paintbrush and express themselves because without funding art and music classrooms will filter out until primarily only children who are able to afford their own supplies and instruments outside of school will be able to participate kids who come from primarily primarily wealthier and more privileged backgrounds and kids who are therefore primarily white because defunding the Arts is a class issue and therefore a race issue as well and for this reason the Arts and music programs at CHS must received increased funding from the district so that all students from all backgrounds can participate and have access to them because if you want to uphold the diversity and equality the this District claims to represent then you must back that claim with action thank you next we have Bonnie Garcia hello my name is Bonnie Garcia I'm also uh here opposing the proposed budget cuts to the Arts and Music Department at uh throughout the district to me uh there's been a problem in Maplewood with you know talking a lot about progression but often failing to act upon it and I think this proposed budget cut is just another reflection of that growing up I mean Maplewood and art they're synonymous they're Inseparable and I think you also can separate art from Columbia High School I mean I would know that I'm the president of the music studio Club at Columbia High School and our school has a reputation for its arts for its musical theater for its marching band uh for its Visual Arts and overall performance we have so many different programs and so many passion students we have over a dozen students involved in the arts program right here at this board meeting tonight so clearly we care and I think when you cut the budget of the arts department and potentially lay off teachers or in the arts department that's sending a message that message is that the district is more than willing to undermine the soul of the community and I know that's not a message you want to send but that's up to you to prove that you don't want to send that message you feel me that's all I have to say good evening good night next we have Veronica Levesque hello um I'm Veronica LEC I am a senior and I have been involved in the arts program at Columbia since I was a freshman I've been involved in so many extracurricular art and music programs and through being involved in these programs I have seen my band directors have to fund raise for necessities and my art teachers have to use their own money to to buy supplies and I'm left now with one question are we seriously considering cutting the budget right now when we arguably need it the most this program is already relying so much on outside funding from teachers and parents and this is not even mentioning the fact that we do not have a stage that this is usable we about to have a Shakespeare Festival on the we about to have a Shakespeare Festival on the floor of an auditorium rather than the stage we did a musical at MMS and on Saturday I will be performing in an orchestra concert at South Orange Middle School playing a piccolo that was entirely funded by parents though I deeply appreciate the generosity of this District's parents we should not be relying on the outside wealth of our parents to fund these programs we should be able to have these programs be funded by the district so that we can all participate in them equally without needing all of this outside funding all of our music programs are already severely underfunded the orchestra the band why are we requiring parents to fund this that is all I have to say thank you for your time next we have Z urist [Applause] hello my name is z Urus and I'm a junior at CHS we the student body in this room that is passionate about Arts and Music hold in high regard the accountability of the Board of Education the fundamental question here that I would like to raise is what are the specific causes of these budget cuts and why does nobody seem to know about them additionally additionally we demand to know who responsible for choosing to cut the Arts budget over other programs thank [Applause] you all right the next we'll have the student Boe representative update um okay now for the recognitions which um I think it's important to note are majorly regarding CHS art which I think is just a testament to everyone who's spoken today so two CHS students were honored for the photography by the Scholastic art and writing Awards Junior Z erist was awarded the gold key and the silver key and two honorable mentions Junior Sam Rosenthal received two honorable mentions congratulations to three CHS photography students senior Carlos Sanchez Junior Sam Rosenthal and S sney rosi all three of them have submitted work that will be exhibited at the upcoming inspired Minds Exhibition at soac in May several CHS students receive Scholastic arts and writing Awards this year Samuel Taber K received a gold key award and the American Visions nomination for his work titled the acrobat the American Visions award for art and the American voices award for writing are prestigious Honors that represent each region of the Scholastic Awards the acrobat is currently on display at the CHS AP art show at soac and will be in soacs inspired mind show Taber Co also recedes an honorable mention for his work to Moo which is an exploration of mayori tattoos as a ninee for American Vision award Sam is one of a select five student artists who could be in the running for a national medal Reggie dble Jackson received one silver key and two gold key awards for individual works as well as a gold key for her entire portfolio submission of six Works Sam rosenal and Alistar Ramsey also received honorable mentions for their submitted work as well special thanks to CHS art teacher Miss Alexandria kuchi for working with students on this opportunity and thanks also to the achieve foundation for supporting student entry fees through a grant that was awarded to miss kuchi for the third consecutive year a team of Columbia High School students have won first place in the 2024 NJ Chinese Cultural project contest over four months the team of 14 students developed a research project based on the contest research topic of how artificial intelligence impacts learning China Chinese language and culture congratulations to team leader Bryant Yang Emily Hing Sydney Anri Salah iar and Sherry Chen who made the final presentations at Satan Hall University on April 13th congratulations also to sophomore Rachel mayor and juniors Ella O'Brien Henry mayor Thompson and Benjamin RIS who assisted with the project research and to Juniors May liau Carris Evans Audrey Haber Sharon Chen and sophomore Coco Fox who helped make props very special thanks to miss leaping mang CHS teacher of Chinese and faculty advisor of the team CHS senior Michael Briggs was honored as an unsung hero by the Essex County School boards Association on April 11th Dr quawi telesford president of the South Orange and maplehood Board of Education and a CS alumnist presented the award to Michael in his remarks Dr teser noted Big's lengthy list of extracurricular activities including participating in the Cs fencing track and track and field teams and his work on Saturdays as a volunteer tutor and mentor to Mid middle school students and the CHS Mac Scholars Program congratulations to the many staff and students and staff members at tuskin elementary school who produced the outstanding annual tusin show this year the show was entitled any Any Dream Will Do and it featured more than 40 songs from a wide selection of Broadway musicals special thanks to teachers Katherine Rickard and Missy Whalers who directed the show the Tusk and PTA and the many people who supported the cast and crew in putting on this tremendous show for balen Elementary School students artworks are on display at the Essex County hall of records in honor of the youth art movement the featured Stu student artists were Frederick McDaniel third grade whose teacher is Deborah Gib Gibbons Isaac urac fourth grade whose teacher is Kate scasso abigil cry fifth grade whose teacher is Laura gsus Charles McDon fifth grade whose teacher is huru Stewart art teacher Evan MCN and and teacher Christopher FY recommended the students's art for the exhibit's final elections the students were honored at a very special reception on April 17th hosted by Essex County Executive Joseph D venzo and attended by Dr Kevin F Gilbert Acting Superintendent and James Mano the district's fine and Performing Arts supervisor now for the report this month gwenith and I met with Mr Pedro we have been very impressed with Mr Pedro's enthusiasm and Hands-On leadership the students believe that Mr Pedro is doing an excellent job acclimating to the school and making himself visible on most mornings Mr Pedro is at the front of the school greeting students some of whom he's already seemed to make a personal connection with gwenith and I had the chance to meet with him several times over the past month and while doing so we asked him what he believes could be in improve could be improved at the high school a common theme he brought up was the importance of a culture of Excellence that Colombia seems to be lacking in this has a lot to do with a little things such as holes in the walls dilapidating ated ceilings and messy posters around the school he believes that is that it is the little things like this that contribute to the slow erosion of a climate of success at a school like ours in addition he has been very proactive in already beginning to tackle some larger issues which we are very impressed by giv his minimal time in the district so far students cannot be expected to care for their school when it does not seem like their school cares for them Mr Pedro suggested some solutions such as organizing Bulletin bulletins for Club posters or even some semblance of enforcement of the dress code again it is the little things that will create a sense of order and reinvigorate our culture of Excellence that we know Colombia and its students are capable of this is just the start of the changes but it demonstrates his proactive leadership which we deeply appreciate this month we also had the opportunity to meet with Maplewood Middle School student government to see how things were running when we asked them about student engagement with their guidance counselors the answer was very similar to the one we received at SS a student can go through their entire Middle School experience without even knowing who their guidance counselor is it is important to understand that habits are formed early on and a lack of use of guidance counselers for academic and high school planning in the middle schools is what leads to a lack of use of guidance counsel in the high school what's more from what we understand the guidance counselors at the middle schools act as disciplinarians which can cause a harmful connotation to a department where children should be experiencing Comfort rather than punishment students and teachers alike believe that understaffing is a severe issue in the godance department that does not allow for godance counselors to effectively and efficiently do their jobs the guidance department is an incredible resource for all students in the district and we hope that some of these issues can be resolved so students especially who those who can't receive guidance at home get the help and care they deserve the enforcement of student IDs at the high school seems to be going very well and admin has done a great job at making themselves visible both of these things have been an incredible help been aiding in returning the school back to normaly after the hectic few months we have experienced gwenneth and I both thank everyone who played a part in that because it is truly helping the student body rebuild confidence in our school but again we still have a long way to go thank you next we'll have the superintendent update let's give it up for G and ASA who are doing an outstanding job as representing their students on our board and let's give it up for all of the students who spoke tonight I I've said it time and time again we have some great great students here in the school district of South Orange and Maplewood and the courage it takes to stand in front of all of us grown folks who think we know everything is is acknowledged and I really appreciate uh your advocacy welcome Mr Pedro I want to take this opportunity to officially welcome Mr Ricardo Pedro to the South Orange and Maplewood School District as the interim principal of Columbia High School Mr Pedro started on April 8th his 32 years of education experience includes serving as principal Arts High School in Newark where he worked with Lyn Herby hill before he was appointed principal of South Orange Middle School she was appointed principal of South Thorns Middle School we're glad to have Mr Pedro with us I'm going a little off script I'm going to ask Miss Anne Bodner to please stand I want to personally thank Miss Anne Bodner who worked in two rols for us from January until Mr Pedro's arrival as the acting principal of Columbia High School it was not easy but it was it was an experience that I know she will not ever forget and I want to thank all of the staff and the students for working with her very patiently and allowing her to lead to the best of her abilities and Miss Bodner the District of of the sou the District of South Orange of Maplewood thanks you for your dedicated service and we really appreciate you thank you so much reunification training earlier this month earlier this month I parti participated in the reunification drill at Roxbury High School led by the New Jersey State Police and several other Public Safety professionals this exercise focused on learning about procedures for reunifying students with their families after a crucial incident or emergency I want to thank District director of School Safety and Security Stanley valis for his work in arranging this opportunity as well as the following District Personnel who participated Seth Boon Elementary School principal Shannon glander South Mountain Elementary School principal Kevin Mason Clinton Elementary principal Melissa Butler and District access and Equity director Carrie wable CHS Jared K I'm sorry kuchi sorry Jared I mess your name but I apologize he pitched a no hitter I want to congratulate him on pitching a no hitter with 14 strikeouts in the team's twoz Victory against James calwell high school on April 9th kuchi threw 95 pitches in the game in which the exx news exx news record said he simply was dominant kuchi committed to play for Ruckers University last summer many thanks to the Cs CHS counseling director Anthony veon and the entire CHS counseling department team for hosting a very successful second annual College military Gap year and career fair on April 11th hundreds of students and family members had the opportunity to meet meet representatives for military branches local employers trade organizations and many fine colleges and universities congratulations to everyone who helped make this very important event happen earlier this month we announced that Khloe barter in the Columbia High School class of 2024 Valley Victorian and Benjamin GTS is a a salutatorian among Khloe's extracurricular activities have been leading the CHS Model United unit United Nations Club which just has awarded winning showings at this week's competition at Corell University she has been accepted to Georgetown University and attends the major in government meanwhile Benjamin is a leader of the EHS Shakespeare club which will host the 22nd annual CHS Shakespeare Festival tomorrow he has been accepted to Har for college and is still deciding on a major both seniors will be honored at the exx county academic Awards on May 1st we congratulate Chloe and Benjamin on their exceptional academic performance I want I want to recognize Columbia High School transition coordinator Matthew Enick and everyone on the special services team who have the peer mentoring lunch and high school tour last Friday for Rising freshman coming from south ORS Middle School this very special event brought eighth graders with IEPs together with high school juniors and seniors who have IEPs the high schoolers shared their EXP experiences offered their mentorship and demystified Columbia High School for the younger students students the same event will be held for Maplewood Middle School eighth graders who have IEPs in May I want to commend CHS physics teacher Randall post and the members of the CHS astronomy club for making their heads up play on April 8th by making high powerered telescopes binoculars and sunglasses available to the people who wanted to see the partial solar eclipse safely thank to your effort students and staff were able to safely participate in this rare event Audrey Nera who has already gained notoriety as a children's book author has now been awarded first prize for Enterprise journalism in the report of American student journalism Awards last fall n nagora a junior at Columbia High School wrote a featur story about CHS Parisian Society production of dark comedy called DNA she developed the story by interviewing a variety of people involved with the play including director English teacher James Dyer and members of the cast and crew we congratulate Audrey Ela teacher Jennifer Dalton who is the faculty adviser for the Columbia student newspaper and Hannah gross a journalist and 2019 Columbia High School graduate who mentored Audrey and writing the story I just want to remind everyone one that the achieve foundation in partnership with the South Orange and Maplewood school district will host Madness on Satur will host marker Madness on Saturday April 27th from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Columbia High School this free familyfriendly event will feature more than 25 stations of Hands-On learning members of Columbia high schools robotics Club will be there showing young people how the team builds robots for their competitions the CHS astronomy Club will also be on hand helping part participants build sunds and launching and water power rockets while the district did receive $1 million increase in state aid it does not offset the $37 million drop in total Aid including federal aid we will face next year we have been proactively working with our state representatives to explore every possibility of increasing state aid to our district by 4 .2 million to avert a reduction in force and keep all programs that serve students and families intact in the meantime it important to remember that our district does not stand alone in facing a budget deficit and a reduction in force public school districts throughout New Jersey are facing sharp decreases in aid while cost and demand for Ser Services have escalated but that does not mean we have Shrugged and accepted our budget circumstances as bad luck in March within days of this board board's approval of the preliminary budget I testify before the New Jersey state senate budget and Appropriations Committee and the New Jersey State Assembly budget committee to make our case for increases in age I want to take this opportunity to thank New Jersey State Assembly woman garet hall for meeting with me and members of our Administration team last week to discuss our request Assembly wman Hall has been a Maplewood resident for 35 years and has put two children through our school system one who is now a new work police officer and another who is a registered nurse assembly woman Hall told us that our our request for additional state aid is a top budgetary priority and I thank her for her support and we will continue working with her in May I am scheduled to meet with New Jersey state senator Renee Burgess who also represents New Jersey's 28th legislative district and as a member of the New Jersey state budget and Appropriations Committee we will continue to do everything we can to make up for the revenue that the district needs to serve all students and family our priority will always be to provide a thorough and efficient education to every child who enters our school with this thought in mind tonight is not easy this budget process has been one of the hardest experiences of my 15-year plus educational leadership career it is not lost on me that tonight we are talking about a reduction in force make no mistake about it our administrators our teach teachers our staff are essential to the success of this District they keep this District moving forward they are the movers and Shaker who make the miracle of Education happen every day our commitment following tonight as department leaders and as your Acting Superintendent that we are going to be taking a balanced Nu new nuanced approach to our resources and utilize them efficiently as effectively if possible I want everyone to understand that this budget process is fluid our work doesn't stop after tonight we will continue to do everything we can to try to lessen the impact of this reduction in force and save as many of our South Orange and Maplewood School District employees as we can thank you I'm now going to move into just a presentation on our district goals as I stated when I began my role as the Acting Superintendent one of the things I wanted to make sure we understood is that our district go process needs to continue for the sake of time I'm not going to go through each and every slide we're going to have this presentation available for you online you can go in and uh check it out can we go ahead and get the presentation on the board I want to talk a little bit about how this presentation is going to go I'm just going to briefly review our district goal process I'm going to review the district goals and act action plans currently being implemented by the senior leadership building leaders and teaching staff they come underneath five areas academics deals with our sale our inrs and our CHS Freshman Academy diversity Equity inclusion strategic plan our facilities our intentional integration and our student services audit next slide next slide there we go goal setting by setting goals for public schools the school board represents the community aspirations for its students your field service representative who is from the uh National New Jersey School Board of Association can help us through this process and I think we've seen that individual here many times and they're able to watch us our district goal process is part of us fulfilling our requirement with the New Jersey state boards Association Next slide please the process Contin uh consists of the formation of District goals begins with the Board of Ed Retreat which some of you may saw on some time ago the Board of Education and superintendent of schools reviewed the previous year's outcomes challenges and triumphs they then come to an agreement on selected goals understanding that some goals are so robust that they take multiple years the goals are formally adopted the superintendent then takes the goals and facilitates action plans with the applicable School leadership team members these action plans are shared with the board and the public and lays the road for a map with map map for successfully addressing these goals the superintendent then reports updates on these in a timely manner to the board this is an update in June we will present the final version of what we have been able to do with our goals next Slide the first goal is our district goal of academics which deals with our seal inrs and our Freshman Academy you can just flip through these next series of slides till we get to the update pieces this gives you an example of what those action plans look like and what all is entailed in those you can go back and view those uh online go to the next slide yep stop right there here's some updates on what's happened with this particular go Freshman Academy did hold two family nights this year parents were given support and accessing their children accounts and power school so they can keep up with the attendance and grades we had coaches who taught the our instructional coaches who taught parents how to access their child's canvas accounts and to look at assignments and messages for teachers parents were also taught how to get their students on tutor.com workshops we have we still are working through having some uh intervention workshops for our students our ninth graders to help them primarily in ela and math due to the many challenges this year we started some freshman huddles but they were discontinued although the concept was strong implementation was difficult but the offices of cni a and A&E will be working with the administration and counselors to develop a pathway forward please understand Freshman Academy is a concept and a community it is not a class the huddles provide an opportunity for us to do social emotional learning we are working to create another experience around the huddles that takes care of that but the plan is next year for all of our ninth graders to be housed in the new bwing of Columbia High School Communications uh is to be developed that would normalize the fact again that Freshman Academy is a concept and a community inrs all teams seem to be up and running and Dr kareah sat in on the freshman inrs team work and cni and A&E members will sit in on meetings we we anticipated uptick in our inrs meetings across the board not that not not that the first marking period not at the first second I think we're in the third marking period now have all ended next goal was our diversity equity and inclusion uh strategic plan you can flip through the next slides and go to the update [Applause] please we've conducted anti-bullying specialized specialist training including Equity training investigation training and determination in and Hib we've conducted training for all adult teams for culture respon and for the cultur responsive audit involving administrators parents community members and teachers we met with Miss marcer Hicks to examine student Affinity groups and plan for their expansion the district Equity team meetings to identify values mission statement and currently working on strategic goals planning for Community engagement Dr Fergus continues to meet with the district team to assist in the implementation of his recommendations he also met with District triple I team members and the Alvis Alves group as well in November we initiated an audit process with teams ongoing implementation of anti-bullying curriculum in all of our schools ongoing meeting with team and prek teachers to support social emotional learning professional learning in elementary school we've been providing School Equity team trainings with it with using the book Street data and Equity team training is underway and using the framework of Street data data to continue and the compr the comprehensive Equity plan is still being developed I mean still uh have been developed and we are still evaluating its process going forward Equity coaches is uh up we're updating a job description for the potential of having some Equity coaches we're still working through our student Affinity spaces uhal lesson study group is up in action and we have done our first lesson study through this the climate teams check in on the uh checked in on the last ABS meeting as well as PD on how to review data information on supporting situations where biased incidents have occurred and work with abss to develop a Resource Bank to respond to HIV incidents this the next District goal deals with facilities skip to the update this update if you would go online when we post it you would just click on each of these links and you get a complete comprehensive update on all our construction activities that happened from November uh on to now and then there's also summary of the work that's been done at Colombia high school and Marshall and montros and uh our VA from time to time gives us updates on that work in our meeting the intentional integration initiative action plan we go to the action Plage please we know that there were some issues around our preschool uh engagement enrollment into our triple last year so we have done extensive amount of work to make sure to mitigate that that issue does not happen again we have internal checks going on underway now between students on our prek roster and our integration prek has already verified preschool grade level assignments we're doing still doing monthly checks until registration and integration are complete uh sibling verification for prek and kindergarten the triple I team is is handling the verification for prek and kindergarten over the next few weeks the alsl group we met we meet with the AL group on a consistent basis and we met with them on two significant times in November and January to discuss the unparent and current registration cycle and we're not listed here oh it is here we did meet with the AL group and our transportation team met on March 11th and the ALS group actually was with us when we conducted our Marshall Bolding unpairing timeline of when families will be notified of placement we've already notified our dilia Balden and Marshall parents of their placement we've already notified our sixth grade families of riseing sixth graders of their placement rise and kindergarten placements will be revealed or given to families in May of 2024 and right now we've added a regulation to the recently updated passage of policy 5124 on internal student transfer and weight list and that is currently being under review by our members of our Board of Education and once that regulation is confirmed and complete and we're all in agreement we will begin the waight list process starting with our kindergarten students who are enrolling for our next school year this the last District goal deals with a our special services audit to update you on where that audit is the data has been shared data has been continuously being shared with our special education ad hoc committee third-party reviewers have secured audit is currently in progress continue communication with the Audi and agency continues we provided them access to Frontline program and outline shared staff interviews scheduled survey for parents and staff underway we also had an independent audit company progress which uh Frontline system access was given record review is ongoing they've had meetings with the child study team and Administration program visits are scheduled the Auditors are scheduled or have visited already on March 19th and March 22nd the first audio vit occurred before the break two additional visits are scheduled for the Auditors to complete their program observation a date is set for the Auditors to review hard copy records in the coming weeks um steps completed by the officers so far include they have finished their review of the Frontline records uh they have visited several special education programs they are conducting inperson reviews of specific records the audio the Auditors will continue visiting special education classrooms during the week of April 15th reminders have been sent out to parents and staff to complete the survey I will now stand for questions eer thank you Dr Gilbert um you know I know stepping into this role you kind of just inherited a lot of work that was some of it underway but a lot of it you've had to move forward so I just want to want to thank you for providing that update um this is actually just more of a um more of a statement you know you were going over the intentional integration action plan and I know that last year years prior we've usually discussed that I I think February March board meetings a little bit earlier um but the plan is to address the year three recap in the following meeting right is that may yeah okay yes that's correct so our timelines got a little shifted just by things that were going on and so the plan is in the May board meeting to go over the year three review of intentional integration as well as review the first round of the triple I survey data results that will be broken down demographically Miss eer you're welcome remember thanks I have a few questions but I'll just um do one at a time thank you for that presentation you're welcome um for Freshman Academy acad uh academics um if I heard you correctly you were saying that the seal and social justice component um a Freshman Academy was really woven into the huddles correct correct so um for next year is it going to be that same type of format or you or you're re-evaluating how you're going to because it looked like there I know there're supposed to Beal and social justice was like a big part of that goal and it seemed like still grappling with how to incorporate that into the academy so yes so that is still a major part of what we want to do the idea and the reason why I want to stress that we need to think about Freshman Academy as a concept in a community it is being intentionally focused on all of our ninth graders we house them together we provide them intervention specifically toward them they have all of their core classes together um the the huddles were designed this year supposedly designed to give us a leg up on trying to figure out what those social emotional and community building things would be and we just couldn't get it together so we have re-evaluated that we're constantly uh talking about that and next year we may have a new design around the huddles where it may not even be centered on class time in particular but it may Center be around group activities and things like that we're going to be thinking outside of the box to make sure we can make that piece successful because that is the biggest piece of why the concept community of Freshman Academy is important giving them an opportunity to build community so that when they enter the 10th 11th and 12th grade they create a atmosphere Community throughout all the Columbia High School okay um sorry next question for the Dei strategic plan when do you think we'll get copies of that I knew that was coming so uh the plan is for uh you all to get your first view of the Dei strategic plan next month and we're also going to be trying to plan uh Community unveiling to get feedback from the community on that plan with a comeback to make the adjustments at The First beginning week of June because that plan has to be complete by the end of June to complete that uh process and so um I do we've been working hard all year and um so we hope to have that to you and additionally while we're there we hearing a lot of talk about the workforce diversity plan that works being led by uh our HR Director Mr adad Doan that Workforce diversity plan will live inside of this and we will make sure the highlights of that will be ready for you uh as well next month Mr ad Doan if you hear me next month okay all right okay go work yeah yeah last question um so thank you for meeting with um the Alves group or bringing the Alves group and the transportation depart Department together um that was something that we had talked about a lot um last year and so thank you for making sure that took place um is there were there any uh key takeaways from that that you could share um with the community I'll just give you a sneak peek I was going to wait to give this all to you next month but since you asked the question the exciting thing about what came out of the meeting with the AL group and transportation is they're going to have continued meetings together but as you know we or you may not know and uh we are doing we we're upgrading the kind of software that we use to do our routing system and we will be giving access to the ALS group of that software and they're going to field tech and beta test the use of that software to help us with distance and help us with aligning our routes through intentional integration but I I call is the beta test this year because we want to see if the system works with the algorithm and how we get everything down so we can do a a roll out for not next year's students which is 2425 but for the 25 26 year of intentional integration the plan is to be linked with the algorithm and our software for transportation that will finally link those two pieces together and move in our intentional integration work forward all right now we'll have the business administrator update thank you uh before I do tonight's presentation I do have the uh Bond sale bid results that I have to read by law so the the uh the the first ranked uh bidder was UBS Financial Services with an interest rate of 3.7 43082 per. and unfortunately yes I do have to read all these decimal points um number two was Robert W Bearden company uh their interest rate was 3.74 269 per. number three was Rosevelt and cross their interest rate was 3.77 4201 mesero Financial 3.83 7782 RBC Capital markets 3.89 577 and the last one PNC Capital markets LLC 3.92 3449 per. so once again uh number one was UBS Financial Services with an interest rate of 3743 82% [Applause] sorry a quick question before you go on what what was the the notional amount on the uh this was for the bond was for $2,175 th000 and the bid date was on April 18th so the budget process begins with the central office staff and administr administration outlining and prioritizing the tools and components necessary to provide a thorough and comprehensive educational program the school budget is a proposed plan to enable the leadership to successfully achieve goals this budget includes approximately an additional $1 million in state aid since the preliminary budget hearing Administration has continued to meet daily with each other to continually improve the final budget here's the overview tonight we're going to cover projected Revenue enrollment and Staffing budget increases expenditures tax impact and budget highlights first up is the projected Revenue the two main sources of the district's Revenue are the local tax levy and state aid the tax levy increase is $ 4,418 35 for the 2425 school year this is a combination of the allowable 2% cap increase as well as the allowable enrollment adjustment and Health Care adjustment and you can see those are highlighted yellow traditionally the district has budgeted extraordinary Aid at1 million as this funding isn't awarded until July this year we've increased it to $2 million over the last three years has been consistently over $2 million so we felt very comfortable increasing it before the pandemic the state allowed school districts to carry 2% of our general fund budget as a surplus for the following year during the pandemic that percentage increased to 4% now that the pandemic is over the state lowered the percentage down to 2% this budget does include the use of a withdrawal of $1.5 million from maintenance Reserve this will leave us with a balance of approximately $3.2 million for future use South Orange maplehood district has established a stable base with Reserve funds providing some security for emergencies the funds from capital and maintenance Reserve could be used to soften impact of an emergency the district does implement procedures to maximize interest earning opportunities and receive some tuition-based students we are conservative in our budget concerning state and federal grants as we don't apply for these grants until June so we budget 80 80% in case there are reductions this also shows a decrease as the co relief funds are being spent one of our revenues is also preschool Aid this revenue is outside of the general fund and can only be spent on preschoolers attending montros or one of our providers this is the operating Revenue that is currently being budgeted for the 2425 school year this pie chart shows that 7.89% of the district's budget is financed by the local tax levy and 7% of the district B District's budget comes from state aid enrollment and Staffing this section of the budget is could also be titled how did we get here this chart represents the history of enrollment in the district you can see that enrollment has an increase by 132 students from last year to this year even though enrollment has been increasing you can see that we are still below the enrollment of the 201617 school year by about 46 students at our Peak enrollment in 1920 enrollment was 7,198 students when comparing the current school year to the 20 19 2020 enrollment is down by 301 students Staffing this slide shows the increase in certified staff over the last seven years you can see that between 201617 and the current 2023 24 school year there was an increase from 648 to 753 certificated staff this is an increase of 105 staff members this slide shows the increase in certified staff and District enrollment over the last five over the last seven years you can see that between 201617 and 2324 there was an increase in certificated staff but enrollment had remained somewhat flat when you compared 201617 to the current year the reason for this comparison is to show that even though enrollment decreased the district kept hiring staff from from from 2020 to 2022 there was an increase of 29 staff members during the pandemic the increase of 105 certificated staff members is one factor of of many why the district faces the challenges it has in creating the 2425 school year [Music] budget this slide shows both certificated staff lines and enrollment lines on the same graph budget increases employee benefits as you can see on this slide it shows the increase in employee benefits since 2020-21 there has been an increase in employee benefits of over 6.5 million PA of professionals since 2020 and 21 there has been an increase in expenditures dedicated to professional pair to to pair professionals over approximately $6.5 million this year we are on track to spend over $10 million expenditures you can see the celery benefits and contracted Services has an increase of around $4 million you can also see that uh tuition had a decrease Transportation had a slight increase and Debt Service also had an increase saries benefits and Contract Services this budget is anticipating contractual contract increases because the state requires us to perform a public bid every 3 years even though our custodial Services were bid last year we did do a rebid this year because of additional Services needed for the additions from construction on multiple buildings Co funds were paying for permanent sub substitutes in our schools these funds have expired and we will be removing the substitutes from our schools to help reduce the burden of the loss of permanent substitutes the district recently increased rates for substitute pay this year so we could stay competitive there's a slight increase in the category with a special services technology and curriculum this is where the increase for the PA professionals is budgeted tuition the district does have programs in District to support special needs students as our special services department continues on strategies to build these programs out of District tuition has had a slight increase however with all tuition accounts combined the overall cost of tuition decreased and this was led by a decrease in cssd County Special Services District Preschool funds are for regular Educational Services only the preschool program is run as a full inclusion program The District reserves seats for needs children to participate in a full inclusion inclusion program and the district has to fund the special services portion of the preschool education there's a transfer in the budget and it comes out of this category of the budget and in the 2425 school year the transfer is approximately $1.5 million Transportation um we do have a slight increase that was mainly driven by an in increase in Aid and loot payments to families who send their children to non-public schools we do this in place of providing transportation we will also be reviewing and exploring shared services and a reevaluation of all indust in District routs this spring school/ Department this covers a myriad ad of expenses however this expenditure did have a decrease as the k to5 math initiative was implemented last year and we don't have those costs this year or going forward into the next year's budget special services technology curriculum maintenance and operation utilities Etc the district is increasing their investment in technology with a least purchase Finance uh agreement and we are also uh had an increase in the cost of our utilities this slide shows that tonight we do have a balanced budget budget challenges this slide shows that our budgeted fund balance reduced by approximately $4.2 million from last year before covid the maximum unreserve fund balance the district could maintain was 2% during covid districts were allowed to maintain 4% of unreserved R unreserved fund balance this 4% allowance ended on June 30th 2022 and during the preparation of the 2324 school budget the state budget software calculated the amount of fund fund balance the district was required to budget the amount of the fund balance budgeted in the 23 24 school year was a combination of excess Surplus generated in the 2122 school year along with the unreserved fund balance calculation I mentioned earlier so these increases in the following areas on the slide are what contri are are what helped contribute to the deficit so payroll and benefits was about 5.3 million uh the increase in custodial cost was 750,000 lunch AIDS 185,000 Transportation was 365,000 the tech lease purchase Finance we've actually uh reduced that one recently so that's actually only $636,000 PA of professionals we increased that by 1.5 million OTP increased 128,000 home instruction is 138,000 and Professional Services for the child study team was about 200,000 due to the challenges listed above the district was facing a reduction in force of approximately $2.7 million and now I'll turn it over to Dr gber to meet the challenge as he just said about the $2.7 million we had to Institute a reduction in force the there was an original project ction to be a reduction of force of 30 to 40 employees during our preliminary budget hearing this was to reduce the deficit that we just spoke about but in the end we reduced our budget by only 28 positions and this will impact 10 employees the methodology used we first examined all District programs from a compliance and mandate standpoint on the general education side and the special education side we then analyzed projections for enrollments in both general education and special education we communicated with both district and building leaders on several occasions to review various scenarios looking for the least impactful scenario for each department and building We examined positions that were created and not mandated during times of surplus some of these positions we were able to maintain and others we opted to reduce we attempted to make reduction decisions that minimize as much as possible the impact on our classroom instruction and stayed as true as possible to the social emotional well-being of our students non-instructional Staffing was also reviewed and reduction decisions were made to maintain operational Effectiveness and efficiency as I stated after the preliminary budget hearing we went back to our departments to relook at our budgets one more time to see if we can come up with additional savings after meeting with all our departments after preliminary budget the district was able to reduce our Fergus implementation by $175,000 I'm going to pause here the original assessment for our Fergus implementation regul uh uh implementation was around $525,000 that was an aspirational goal remember there were no there were no dollars assigned to implement this recommendation last school year we have to have monies to implement it this year pther settlement agreement but plus this is the right thing to do to build our diversity equity and inclusion program around making sure we secure those recommendations however I could not in good conscience start a fresh budget at half a million dollars knowing the situation that we were in so miss wble and I went back and looked at the Fergus implementation recommendations that we're putting together and we did a real cost analysis of what are the things we can put in place now after doing that assessment we feel very comfortable that a $350,000 investment is which it is now is not only uh suitable but we think is a valid investment in moving some worthwhile work here in our district not to mention the $175,000 that we put back in the budget was able to save two positions and one of those positions is actually going to help with some of the implementation efforts because it gets to one of our recommendations around Equity coaches and we're actually going to be using person that we were able to save to help with some of that work so we didn't have to go hire five new Equity coaches to do that work so it was an intentional effort that if we give the money back we want to make sure that that money also works towards the recommendations to help us Implement those then there was an additional finding of $223,000 through our technology lease purchase finance agreement the next steps it is important to note that we looked at with positions and not particular employees let me say that again we looked at positions and not particular employees we were able to reduce many positions through attrition that's through resignations that's through retirements and through non-renewals we will be using or we use the last in first out principle to determine which employees are impacted by the reduction in force Mr Burnside thank you Dr [Music] ybert budget challenges reducing projected expenses and increasing revenues assisted in offsetting the projected deficit as you can see on the left we had savings for expenses and on the right were the revenue areas where we were able to increase tax impact this reflects the impact of our enrollment and health benefits adjustment on increasing the tax Lev from 2% to 3.01% but with the additional Debt Service Aid the overall impact is 1.66% this is because we received some tax relief with the interest earned on bond money as construction carries on the amount of interest earned decreases from the funds being drawn down due to the property reevaluation in each town the average assess value has been updated this slide shows our debt service payment and includes the breakdown of our payment and as the uh results I read right before this presentation um last week on April 18th the district add the Ron sale for 2,175 th000 and this is reflected on this slide budget alignment with District goals so obviously the first goal is intentional integration and this budget still has funds to procure the ales group as a cons as a consultant to continue the implementation of the initiative facilities the board of school estimate authorized US 20 approximately $25 million towards the successful completion of our multi-year construction project student services bus office the board has received updates on the rising cost of PA professionals and the 24-25 budget has increased funding for the investment in our pair of professionals there is currently there's also currently a third-party review of special services taking place the goal is to continue this review Into the 2425 school year to perform a review specifically on the legal cost of special services student achievement the business office will continue to work with cni and access and Equity to continue supporting the implementation of this goal and access and Equity um as Dr Gilbert just stated there's there's there's 355 there's $350,000 budgeted for the Fergus recommendations and this includes professional development materials supplies budget highlights this is the third consecutive year that we have technology built into this budget to continue the district's commitment to technology infrastructure the district is participating in a lease purchase finance agreement this will ensure that the technology needs of the district will continue to move forward once again we do have uh the funds for implementing the Fergus recommendations and the curriculum and instruction department will have the funds to continue the implementation of the K to2 Ela curriculum and for the last slide we have the town pip Town tax impact Maplewood taxes increase approximately $255 South Orange increases by approximately $527 and once again these figures are based upon the newly reassessed values we we receive from each town thank you this concludes the presentation all [Music] right I'm going to ask that we're going to go around to each board member um you get two questions and if you know if if the discussion is more organic then we can ask more questions but we're not going to go through each slide and ask questions on each slide [Music] so why because you I think need to be I think we're just going to have I'm going to open the floor if board members you'd like to have ask questions any um oh unless you want to go down the line you want to go first so um I have a I have a lot of questions but my first general question is just um thank you for thank you for the presentation and thank you for showing us year onye changes when it comes to um the teachers enrollment um I'm curious as we look at this year and we know that we had we had a deficit last year and we've been pulling from our Capital reserves how are we going to do things differently next year to avoid having to do such large riffs what I don't see in this presentation is like uh where we go from here I think that obviously there's always room for improvement right whether it's our tracking systems how we're evaluating data and so I'm just trying to understand how we know that what we're doing is going to continue to put us in a path that um will provide our will provide our students and teachers with safety of knowing that we're not going to continue to have these issues these huge deficits moving forward but that we have a better way of tracking and understanding how we got here and what we can do better well it's it's impossible to predict what our state aid is going to be next in the next coming years um we'll just go ahead do our analysis we could try to keep everything flat we could do a threeyear analysis where we just use 2% tax levy as the basis um hopefully we'll have some assistance going forward from the state um I can't guarantee there's not going to be another deficit Dr kber and additionally um as I stated in my opening statement there will be meetings with department leaders once whatever decision is made on the budget as we look to next year on how we can efficiently and effectively utilize our department budgets with the eye towards making sure we're centralizing those Services directly to the supports of our students in our schools and then making sure that if there's any excess or extra monies that we have we put them in coffers to protect ourselves in case this situation happens again we know that the formula is of question we know that the the amount of money we received as a state has less is going to be lessen and so in order for us to make sure we meet mandates we're going to have to do some responsible uh uh spending of our resources so we can make sure that we try to insulate ourselves and protect to Mr burnside's point we can't guarantee that's going to work but I think if we increase our intentional habits about how we spend our money and have an eye towards the future on things that we want to do we can help mitigate any type of other Rifts or mitigate any kind of severe challenges that may happen additionally we want to work with our building leaders to help look at efficiencies around some of the other areas we talked about our pair of professionals and what that cost is seeming to rise through our through our current contract with ESS one of the things we are going to do is we're going to look to we know that in one of the areas one of the reasons why we're seeing a rise in our pair of professionals is the rise of using our 504 behavior of of PA Professionals for things that come out of our 504s Miss Budan and I are had conversations we're going to actually be looking at trying to build some type of Behavioral framework in our schools to kind of help mitigate the use of of of of a PA of professionals to assist with behavior management uh we're going to be very intentional about putting parameters around making sure we've done everything we could outside of the meet their legal mandates that cause us to use par professionals but the things that we can control we're going to try to make sure we help our leaders and strengthen our leaders so they're able to be more successful at doing that and then finally and it comes to our pair of professionals uh we're going to be working with our school leaders in terms of the hours and things that they use and the the time that they use to try to mitigate some other uh concerns with uh ESS but that's just an example that I want to give you of the kind of thinking we're going to be doing going forward when it comes to managing our resources and our budget we've got to do our part from a leadership standpoint to make sure we help mitigate reductions in force B Meer um so this is either for uh you Mr bid or you Dr Gilbert uh it's sort of two parts number one I know that um the public has not uh seen or received right now a detailed comparison last year to this year as far as all the parts of the budget uh and I I believe that's because uh it would be too easy to see where different parts of the Riff are taking place without employees being notified so I'm wonder if you can speak number one to when we'll be able to uh give the public that detailed info uh and also as a followup when we do see it can you explain where uh how we've determined where the funds where the the cuts are coming through were there different parts of the district's budget that were targeted more than others or it was this an across the board cut I'm going to answer the first part of your question and I'm going to turn the second part over to Mr Burnside okay so the first part of your question is why you can't see the detail budget you're exactly right because we have not notified staff we have not talked to the 10 impacted employees yet or who have who are going to be reduced and forc we cannot put that budget out there because it's too easily identifiable on who those individuals are here is the timeline after passage of this budget and we've secured passage of this budget I'll be meeting with Mr adad Doan and we will schedule a timeline when we will meet with the 10 individuals who are going to be impacted by the reduction of force the plan is to have those meetings with those individuals before our May 9th reorganization meeting following that May 9th reorganization meeting we should be able to go ahead and post which you need to see the comparison simply because we're trying to protect the identities of these individuals as much as we can to we as an opportunity have opportunity to let them know that because of the reduction in force uh we're going to have to let them go and I think it's important and imperative that we have the opportunity to meet with these individuals because I do not want these individuals to figure out who they are because we've posted some information online and so we also have to meet with our principles because if you remember we said we're using the last in first out methodology what that make what that means is someone who was tenur in one of the positions that we have Rift actually bumps someone else who was non- tenur so there's moving pieces to that puzzle and so one of the reasons why we haven't given you the positions or you haven't seen the budget yet is because someone may figure out if we did that someone could figure out oh my that's my position in there but that does not necessarily mean that they have actually been cut and so it's about protecting and about giving us the opportunity to do what's right and that is let these individuals know personally before they without finding that information out publicly Mr Burnside now with that said uh Dr Gilbert's talking about the cost center the very detailed report by law we do have to post the userfriendly budget within 48 Hours of the budget being approved by the board so that will be no later than Monday that's a that's a very high level budget though yes so just for the second part of my question if you don't mind um since we can't uh release those numbers could you talk about the manner in which uh the district looked to cut costs uh we've heard obviously both an email and tonight from the many talented members of our Arts and Music students uh and interested parents are there certain parts of our budget that have been singled out as opposed to others or how are we addressing the cuts as far as different uh uh departments so we did not single out anyone Department nobody got cut more than anybody else just I've got three examples here um for instance textbooks that was a a a reduction of 35% across the district it it didn't just Center on one area anybody that had a textbook they got it reduced supplies anybody that has supplies whether it's Mr jilo and the in the uh uh facilities department or if it's um somebody in social studies they their supplies were reduced also a professional development across the district that was red reduced as well so it was a very methodical approach we didn't just identify one Department we went across the entire District all departments were impacted the same remember e you yeah thank you um it's a followup to Mr Burnside what you were talking about in the the cuts in textbooks and supplies and and you know going back to Dr Gil what you said like the first thing that you have to assess is like what's the impact to the students and I I guess for me and my assumption probably a lot of other people how how can I trying to triangulate all of that you're there's 35% cuts across every single Department in supplies and textbooks what is the plan to to supplement that like how are how are teachers going to be doing what they need to be doing in the classroom I know it's it's it's a very broad question but I I don't like I think that's a very obvious so when we need to be answered please keep in mind it's not me making the cuts myself it's not me all by myself I consult with assistant superintendent of Cur instruction we talked about this she said she would be able to make it work I said okay we can dial back if you need she said we're good hold on yeah yeah and I think that gets and to add to that I think that gets back to what I talked about in terms of really working with our leaders we're going to have to be Innovative we're going to have to be creative we're going to have to look look and see what our budgets look like and make sure remember when I said earlier when we talk about that I want all of our departments to look at their resources and figure out how we can still best meet the needs of our students you don't have a large number of money that you had to do textbooks so we need to make sure the the the areas or the subject areas that need the most investment at this time they will get that investment and then we can figure out on the back end are there some grants that we can apply for are there some other means to bring other funds in to try to support some of the things that we may not be it's going to take us elevating our thinking it's going to take us elevating our thought processes to make this work I feel your question I hear I hear what your question is but make no mistake about it we can still keep students as a priority based on the amount of resources we have we just have to be more Innovative in how we use those funds and creative B Callahan then B wil thank you so as someone who has personally experienced uh the difficulties related to reduction in force within the education set sector I uh approach these conversations around budget decisions with a heightened sensitivity so when we're talking about the gravity of these decisions on individuals in our community I just want to implore us to really navigate these situations with empathy and consideration for the folks affected um and our district leaders who worked incredibly hard to reduce it um as much as was possible with that something I wanted to to lift up here was the data demonstrated that we continued hiring even as we saw a dip in student enrollment across the last few years so I would love some insight into how we review and assess enrollment as it relates to staffing needs and hiring and then given where we are now are there additional monitoring steps that we're considering or anticipate making in light of that in terms of both hiring personnel as well as monitoring our budget on a more frequent basis to potentially reduce the likelihood of this happening again in the near future so Mr adid Doan and I have talked about this and we're going to take a step-by-step approach where from here on out we're going to just look at the needs and wants the needs of the districts and the wants of the districts and we're going to evaluate every position and see if we can get by without it do we need it or do we want cont and additionally we're going to take this time of transition and moving with people movement to really look at central office and see how central office is organized in a manner to make sure all the services and needs that we put for students we're actually Meeting those needs we're going to look at how we're doing our social work program we're going to look at how we're using our guidance counselors we're going to look and see how we are making sure our coaches and things are meeting the instructional needs we're going to look and see what programs and services that we have and make sure that those are the effective programs and services that we have we're going to do a complete assessment in times like this this is a time for us to really re-evaluate ourselves as a school system and then figure out from that school system basis how we can actually achieve the goal that we want to which is meeting the needs of our students and our staff we're going to look at what kind of supports our staff needs we're going to be very paying close attention to how we're implementing new programs we're going to pay close attention in how we're offering the professional development to our to our staff when I talk about us being intentional we have no room for error now we just talking about trying to pass a budget that's is going to ca some people to have to lose their job I'm not taking that easy I'm not sleeping at night because of that and because of that when we're going to come back if you pass this budget is the expectation of every leader in this District that we now have to take ownership and make sure that we are the true stewards that the taxpayers expect us to be and that's going to be the message that we're going to drive home and that's how I hope we can continue to meet the needs of this District going forward sure oh sorry um so I know we place a really large emphasis on on social emotional learning and I think in most folks will agree that the more priority we place on adult social emotional well-being the better off our kids are too and so in this time of challenge in our district how do we anticipate prioritizing the well-being and morale of our staff who remains in light of this RI in light of these budget cuups which have these across the board deficits to board member ard's Point um which really reduce the the things that they have available to them or what they have I think we you know the the phrase do more with less was used at a prior meeting um and so I'm just curious um I know it's something you plays a lot of priority on Dr Gilberts we just love to hear your thoughts on that thank you yeah absolutely so and you'll see a lot of this reflected in the diversity and Equity plan Workforce diversity plan when it comes out we are trying to place a high premium on morale we understand that morale was low and it's still totally ticking up but this has done a lot to kind of harm that some of the things I've asked Mr adado Doan to do and his team who are putting together their diversity Workforce plan is just look at ways of how we can be intentional about building up morale we're going to try to get a survey into our district into our hands so we can get real data on how our teachers are feeling what kind of supports that their needs I struck something where we have listening sessions with our teachers where they actually can come in and express themselves we'll probably see more increases in doing things like that um we want to look at you know how what are some things we can do to help support our teachers more you know giving them more choice and voice in some of the things that we do when I talk about being Innovative we're probably going to do some things that we're not used to doing in the school district of South Orange and Maplewood right you know we're we're not used to sitting down with our Union and and working collaboratively on building uh building up the morale and building up that those kind of things um looking at you know how we are investing in the growth of our of our leaders of our buildings as well as how we in investing in the growth of our teachers as well and just listening to them we're going to build build up our Affinity spaces which are going to give opportuni for educators to come around we we heard a lot about student Affinity spaces we're going to be investing in adult Affinity spaces so that our adults whether whatever uh whatever uh role they have can have an opportunity to not only talk to one another but also bounce ideals off of one another so you're going to see when that Workforce diversity plan come out a huge emphasis on helping to build up the morale within our school district going forward and that doesn't stop because we have a budget deficit that we had to uh to to to work with thank you you're welome letter um one quick comment before I ask my question but I think it's really important just to add some context that going back to the Arts budget conversation is that not all budgets are equal so a 35% reduction in the Arts budget can literally decimate that budget and I just want to make sure that that that we're aware of that cuz the 35% budget for other programs um and departments that have significant funding it's going to feel a lot different for students and for teachers um so one of the things that I think the board and the community are really grappling with um is the impact right so we just you know we're using these broad Strokes as 35% what is the actual impact for students what is impact for teachers um is there an impact so as we look at the budget reductions that we're looking to make can you talk us through the analysis that was done on all expenditures and can you provide a detailed description of each of the expense reductions that is being taken so it would be helpful if we could put the slide up it's slide 27 um I have it right here but for example we're the idea of eliminating permanent building Subs um one of the questions I have about that is that was one of the recommended strategies from last year's budget um that we were going to do last year so I just wanted to understand did we do that last year were we not able to do that last year and that's why it was pushed to this year um you know just going through this like moving some lunch monitors to Food Service what is some eliminating some Aids on buses like if you could quantify some of these things and walk us through what this will look and feel like next year that would be really helpful so leadership last year um the decision to remove the permanent Subs was over how do I say this the decision to remove them was not the decision of the business office um initially it was a recommendation and then as the final budget was passed we we were told not to do that um it was just a leadership call um I followed What leadership was orders were given to me um as far as going through every single you're you're talking about the budget challenges which is actually slide 28 yeah okay so um the second one is going to be moving some lunch monitors to Food Service so this is just basic accounting um we're moving the cost or the the charges if you will of the Food Service monitors from fund 10 to fund 60 we've worked with the Department of Agriculture we got the go-ahead on our uh application so we're we're we're moving ahead with that um eliminate some Aids on buses yes board member eer you are correct we're not eliminating all AIDS and I realized after the preliminary budget hearing how that could be construed that was not the intent um if there's a special needs child they will certainly have an aid if they need one um we're moving a our dental insurance to a self-insured model that doesn't have any impact on benefits the quality of the benefits or the cost of the benefits to the employees it's just going to save the district money um the tuition from the uh County Special Services distri District uh our enrollment is down and it's been down so we were able to find some savings there as well maintenance I talked with Mr julo we sat down we looked at his budget and this is the number that we both agreed to that he could still function very well yeah it's going to be okay he's he's very comfortable with this um supplies that was just an across the board like I said said same with textbooks I spoke with Anne Bonner assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction the 774 562 number this was the implementation of the K toy math and it's over with so that initial cost we don't have that anymore and professional development that's I believe that's about $300,000 line item and working with an Bodner we were able to move that down we were able to decrease it $74,800 on the right side this screen you'll see the revenue um the healthcare adjustment and enroll adjustment that is from the state that's what we're allowed to go above the 2% which brings our tax levy to 3.01% and miscellaneous Revenue interest rates are up we were able to work with our bank and calculate a $75,000 uh Revenue increase just from the interest on our our cash in in our bank account um the semi number that comes from the state I'm not quite sure how they calculate that that's just given to to us so that was an increase of $26,000 um like I said extraordinary Aid has traditionally been over $2 million for the last 3 years traditionally we've only budgeted $1 million so we were able to double it and make it a $2 million so we increased extraordinary Aid by1 $1 million and then just our Flat state aid increase $1,251 78 um just a real quick followup so regarding maintenance I know it's coming down by 600,000 which is decreasing by about 28% um so right now in the budget allocation there's just over 2 million for maintenance projects next year um can you give us more detail because it wasn't in there but I know that this is a priority for the board and obviously something that the community is really concerned about are we going to be fixing uh the CHS Auditorium next year yes we are and that's going to be capital reserve not maintenance Reserve let me let me let me follow up I'm glad you put that in the space cuz you know we had a meeting with some of community members who were concerned about that and so yes the we are going to be using our I want to get right our Capital reserves to help uh get the auditorium back in order at Columbia High School and we're actually planning to bring those groups of families in with us again to actually help us figure out how to do it right we're going to invest in we're going to use these Capital funds to invest in building as close to a state-of-the-art Auditorium as possible for our students and our staff uh at Columbia High School and we're going to be collaborating with a group of families who of those group of parents who came who have ideas on what that could look like I'm sorry we couldn't get uh a uh intermed Med plan to get that gy the auditorium ready for people to use this year but make no mistake about it that is still a priority of us here uh in in the administration and our intent is to invest to make sure we get the auditorium ready for our students and for our our staff to be able to use and invest some quality dollars into that just a quick followup on that what is in our capital reserve I'm am I missing I don't see it on Slide Five that's why I'm asking well the overall balance is approximately 9.2 million and I believe we have the rigging quotes and we're just waiting the lighting quotes before we can uh start to evaluate uh the entire proposal and committee and just so since I'm on the record with the community the plan is to reach out to uh Mr glass who was leading the amilies at some point next week so that we can organize a meeting with that that group again with them and the team of our administrators who they met with soon so Mr glad if you hear me I'll be sending a message to you soon for gford I'm not going to lie that uh 600,000 decrease in uh maintenance scares me a little because I have parents coming up to me and is speaking about how bad the bathrooms are so I think it's going to be hard to keep um don't forget we did pull 1.5 million out of the maintenance Reserve so we're good no no no that was just some humor but um no no so um I appreciate Dr Gilbert making the effort uh to save as much of the Fergus initiative as possible um but we're still making some pretty substantial cuts to it can you describe what exactly that looks like and are we legally covered to do so could this endanger us uh from falling out of compliance with this settlement my fear is such a large cut in the initiative could set us back in addition to the those huge cuts and curriculum and instruction and professional development which probably affect that indirectly as well thank you I think that's a very important question so we we went from zero to an aspirational version of about $525,000 at the initial ask and that $525,000 investment included some aspirational things around a data warehouse system um professional development Equity coaches which actually if we would we wanted five new Equity coaches that actually would have pushed that number a little bit above the five I don't have the exact number of what that actually would have looked like um helping to bring consultants in to kind of help us build these Affinity spaces for um our staff and our students um I'm trying to bring this all and then I think there's a couple of other things in there so the reduction the the reduction from 175 centered around this we're going to do some changes outside of the Fergus recommendations to get us to our data warehouse house we using a performance matters system right now that's not working we're going to move away from that we have some Renaissance star Renaissance or uh reading data and math data work that aren't working we're going to remove those and then go out and get a data warehouse that can replace both of those that money doesn't come out of Fergus it meets our it meets our demand to meet the needs because Dr Fergus has talked to us in order for us to be successful we've got to build infrastructure and until we get our data infrastructure where it needs to be we won't be able to monitor our successes or failures but we don't have to use Fergus dollars to do that because we got other dollars to to actually do that around the professional development you heard about the cuts that uh cni offered but there are professional development dollars still inside of the Fergus recommendation the monies we will use those professional those professional development to help in their word in the words of the recommendations build high level intense anti-racist anti-bias training and other cultural trainings that are going to help us meet the need meet the needs of our students ramp up our cultur responsive teaching work which also now Dove tales in the curriculum instruction which means we can help curriculum instruction offset some of the money they had to put back but still meet those recommendations uh in the Fergus in the in the Fergus recommendation plan um we were very we were very clear to make sure we didn't move the dollars out that's going to prevent us from really building our staff infrastructure through professional development and to also not build mess with our data infrastructure which we found other outside sources the $350,000 is a start and not having any money to do any work on that and now saying in this budget crisis we are going to invest in $350,000 I think that's going to give us a great start to implement it and then also gives us some gives us a a benchmark to start looking at so we can assess how much more dollars we may need to invest going forward this is just we've done a lot in year one which we're going to uh uh present to you at some point when we do our next uh committee meeting as a whole and you will see the amount of progress we've made year two is going to be about building up these infrastructures so that whatever work we do will sustain I have a ask question anyone else have a I want all right I's have a question um I guess we talk about reduction in force which is a reduction in positions and and I was wondering how does it affect our classes and the class sizes so the reality is that um when you have to do a reduction in force especially when you're talking about eliminating positions that we want to add there is always a concern of possible class size increases what we did was to try to mitigate that as best as possible is we looked at a very many different various sources to help us predict enrollment we have FTE counts our curriculum and instruction department does an exceptional job of looking at class sizes we also looked at how many classes that are in the minimum of what our board policy says and we did an analysis to look and see okay if we move one teacher here what would that do to class sizes and if we saw that it ballooned the class size we did not make that move for example I met with uh Middle School a particular Middle School principal and their assistant principal who handles the scheduling and we looked at their class size uh class sizes in some of the classes that don't offer that are the minimum and we actually went through and say okay if I take two teachers out of say Ela in your middle school what would that do they would put the calculation up and it gave me a prediction on how big the class size and we would go that's too big we can't do that I asked the curriculum and instruction department for our elementary schools to do a wholesale scan of what certain impacts would happen they provided me three different scenarios and on those three different scenarios we looked at what it would do to our policy in terms of our classroom maximum and I picked the policy with the least I picked the scenario with the least impact and we still were able to not to reduce the number of teachers that that plan actually called for we have what we call what I call and I may be doing this wrong hidden FTE what does that mean we have one school for example that has been funded for five particular sections in a particular grade but for the last three years they've operated with three those two FTE or we call Hidden FTE they're FTE that we have not used there FTE that we haven't used that haven't we haven't had students in we haven't had teachers in those were some of the first Cuts I would make so basically it was positions that we weren't even using that I was able to pull that that helped keep bodies here in I know we talking positions but it helped to keep bodies in while we were able to reduce those particular positions there were lots of meetings there were lots of uh convers ations and we did pay very close attention and I believe where we've landed in terms of our ruction and force we still should see minimal uh influence on our class class sizes and I don't believe we're going to go over any of our class size uh numbers inside of our current policy but I can't guarantee that but I believe we did a youngman's job to protect our our class sizes as much as possible um two things one is just more of a statement um you we over the past couple weeks get a lot of information and I know the community has not gotten a lot of information and so um one thing that um I'm concerned with is just even though that even though we have 10 staff members there are still positions that are just not being filled that are no longer being being uh that are through attrition are leaving our district and so I want to make sure that one the community understands that um the reason why we keep talking about the riffs even though we can't be totally transparent about it thank you Dr Gilbert for explaining that is because there are a lot of positions that our district just won't have because of the attrition and that does give us pause and I think that is why we are very concerned about classrooms very concerned about the students experiences in this District um at all grades because it's just it's just not clear how that is going to impact them not just next year but future years um the second thing is uh when it comes to supplies again the presentation doesn't really offer all the data that we have received so for example when it comes to math we have data that shows that as early as 2021 our math supplies were $128,000 this year it's $6,000 for grades 9 through 12 um for us to see such a big gap and then not have any summary or analysis as to why is what's impacting all these questions tonight um you know you can only do so much when you're just getting emails with data and looking at folders with data um which is why I said I don't want us to be um micromanaged when it comes to our questions because this is the one time that all nine of us can come together and really try to understand what all this data is that has been given to us um especially some data that has been given to us as early last night that we're still going through um so with that said um I do think it's important that people understand not just that this is 30 35% cuts across um the district when it comes to curriculum uh textbooks and supplies but the fact that these numbers are low and perhaps Mr burn said you can give some clarity perhaps some of the numbers were higher in 2021 because they were from Esser funds could could you provide a little bit of clarity because math is really low science um what do we have have here in 2021 science supplies was $49,500 and is it not public information it is not public information this is these are supplies numbers it's not public information please don't share but nonpublic information I don't understand how it cannot be public it is not that's a different problem whe public or not but it's not public information all of this is going to be in a Coster analysis that you're going to be putting on our website when when they put it out there you're welcome to talk about it are public right now so my question is this these numbers were very big in 2021 and the six figures and what I want to understand is is that because we were using err funds thank you no we were not using Sr funds case and point my point is just that's why we've been asking all these questions about supplies and how students are going to be impacted thank you uh thank you for that um or member Deval Wilson and I also want to say pick up on something else that you talked about in terms of how we going to make sure we monitor this going forward I hear I hear your concern and Mr Burnside and I have talked about the next year as we move towards the budgetary process we're going to put different checks in place to make sure we're monitoring as well as providing information so we can guide ourselves along the way to make sure that the information that you request in the information that you desire or the board desires that they receive we're going to work together on this e Dr Gilbert I appreciate it I think you've done a good job of talking about the monitoring and and the kind of path forward in how we can keep a closer eye on this um you know the one thing I just uh want to make sure that we are doing I think moving forward is you know when it Mr burn when you talked about some of the challenges like the timing of state aid I mean I it it concerns me because it feels like it's almost like shortsighted um shortsighted budgeting because we're not forecasting at least two to three years out which I know is pretty common practice across other districts and has been done here before so I I want to understand if we can understand those challenges and why it it can't be done I think that would really help I mean for me myself like kind of grasp you know again the situation that we're in and how do we potentially prevent in this this in the [Music] future I just want to make something clear um me and my staff obsess over the budget we have been monitoring it and I think we've been pretty clear about that in fftt so I just want to clear that up um as far as forecasting it's a little difficult right now just because we're in the middle of negotiations I don't know what state Aid's going to look like I don't know what health benefits is going to look like we can try to guess but it's just a very difficult climate to try to predict and forecast anything as far as a budget three years out I I just want to clarify that 100% of the information that the fft committee got was immediately sent to rest of the board so let there be no doubt that information was not flowing through analysis that's different but 100% of any information that was given or provided or talked about in the fft meeting was available immediately to the rest of the board so I don't want anyone hiding behind the fact saying I didn't have enough information yeah no for second Gable thank you a lot of and thank you Mr Burnside and Dr Gilbert a lot of my questions have been answered already but I I do have one more I think it was you Dr Gilbert you talked about using resources responsibly going forward to try to rebuild and get to a better place um in future years just curious if you have any thoughts on how um as we rebuild um how the district will prioritize what to phase back in um as we're looking if we're looking at you know supplies curriculum we looking at uh Staffing Human Resources how will you prioritize um the business office prioritize what comes back as we go absolutely so I will be working closely with both the human resource department and the Business Administration office to help our departments look at if there's a an influx of funds or anything that comes in to kind of help us rebuild you know what those priorities could look like part of training up our leaders and our building leaders is to bring people in to help talk about you know budgeting uh Equitable budgeting what does budgeting look like in terms of moving uh the work uh in your office the first major thing that I'm going to be doing is priori izing will positions go back if we get monies uh I'm hoping all of the conversations with our elected officials that I'm doing is going to pay off um I'm hoping for that I think it's going to be the uh the assembly woman that I mentioned earlier she is on board with saying this is her priority and we're going to prioritize what happens next again with this frame in mind classroom instruction student well-being and our staff well-being all being important areas that I want to concentrate on to make sure we build that up and so um I'll meet with SLT to kind of help come up with that priority list and once we have it we will then make sure we execute when appropriate you're welcome from W letter so I would just want to go back to one of the statements that you made and I really do appreciate your honesty you said you can't guarantee that there won't be a deficit in the future um and I want to go back to that because as a board we're sitting in the same seat that we were last year where we're looking at a balanced budget but we've just learned of a shortfall last year with 4 A5 million this year we're learning of a $9.5 million deficit during the budget process and so so I just have to underscore like how serious this is starting now what confidence can you give this board and can you give this community that we are not going to see these steep budget shortfalls again because at a certain point this money Runs Out based on the reserve balances that you've said that we've had we could not sustain another three-year period that we're currently living in based on the reserves that we have and so I just I need to hear from you that this it just can't happen again and I need to know from the business office like how you're going to make sure starting tomorrow that you're doing the work necessary so that one the board's involved every step along the way we we are identifying when uh expenditures are going up by a lot um and that we are flagging these things that we're on top of it and that we're mitigating as much as possible I've heard some bits and pieces but you you know almost $15 million um we just we can't sustain this you're asking me to guarantee a lot of things that are out of the business office's control number one state aid I can't control that if they decide to take money away I have no control over that I cannot guarantee you that you will not have another deficit I can guarantee you that the business office we'll do everything we can to make sure we have a balanced budget and to minimize the impact on the classroom and the students I ask a follow up I ask a follow up follow yeah one and then money great um just to to build or piggyback on on what board member with letter said I think it's it's clear right there's plenty of things that are unpredictable in in basically all sectors the the things that are in your locus of control though in terms of the role and the financial stewardship could you talk us through potentially like a handful of items that are in your locus of control um that would contribute potential to more sustainability more stability moving forward those that are so might be things I'm thinking about would potentially be um more participation from the departments on an ongoing basis more update like things like that that would be in your locus of control kind kind of working with the team and working with with your team and with the extended team so if you could talk us through you know obviously we know the unpredictable things but what are the things that are in your locus of control as ba that potentially could could use some movement or could be improved so one of the biggest things that we have control over is purchasing and we always look for cost savings one of our best instruments for creating a savings is going out to bid um right now we're working with special services we've got about four or five different occupational Physical Therapy home instruction that kind of uh those kinds of services and we're creating competition and we're trying to make some savings there um another one's Transportation um we're constantly looking at revamping our routes looking to have some efficiencies shared services maybe something with another District those are the kinds of things that we have control over and those are the things that we do very well V I mean it kind of surprises me how little we understand what the business office does I mean business office is not sitting out there and spending money the cni is spending money special services is spending money you spend money on Transportation they are just accounting writing checks and being the CFO so asking them to say how can we have less cost next year that's a useless question they have have no clue the real question you should be asking is where have the increases happened which is very clear on page 27 that you correctly pointed out on the slide and look at each line atem and say why are they increasing and you will find that that's what our community wants I mean we if the if the transportation cost are increasing well the community wants that we're spending $375,000 paying for transportation of kids who don't even go to our school they go to a private school we pay for that then that has increased by like a a good 100 students there similarly par professionals I mean it's not like we going to deny a special you know anyone a par professional I mean it's increasing now the real question is how do we control that telling asking the business office to say that oh can you guarantee there's not going to be a deficit is not going to work there will be a deficit next year if the same Trend continues I'll this right now if if the par professionals continue to increase that the rate they increasing healthcare costs continue to the way they increasing we will have a deficit next year so it's not rocket science this is simple addition I think I think one thing that we're missing here is that well oh sorry yeah you have a question or I do have a question I want to know what the board can do to help because we're the ones that vote on this we're the ones that are supposed to understand it but we're not the day-to-day and so we have all these committee meetings and I don't think it should just be on fft fft has a lot on their plate and fft you've done a great job of trying to keep us up to date you really have but it's not just up to fft I think that we need to have a different way that we talk about budgets in our committee meetings I think based on what um Dr Gilbert has said about how we need to redirect and think more innovatively about how we're going to move forward I think our committees need to be part of that the Board needs to be part of that conversation because we're all accountable for moving this District forward and if a run is feeling like people don't understand how the ba office is working obviously there's a lot that's just not working in general there's a lot of silos happening I I've experienced it myself when I've been in cni asking about certain budgets and then there's a disconnect I think that our our meetings need to be structured a little bit differently to have more accountability for conversations in our committees every month there needs to be a tracking system that is used across all committees when it comes to our finances that we're all each using that we all understand so that we can support central office so that our departments can support central office so that he can say confidently actually after the past five six months of getting all this data from cni and from curriculum instruction fft special services I can very confidently say XYZ it shouldn't be in silos response to that or I mean Callahan then we're okay so I I think connected to what nubie is saying I think some of those those points are are thank you for making them so one thing I've been thinking about is um you know potentially thinking through something different I know we've talked a lot about being Innovative here in in our district um and I think it's very clear we have a community that seeks transparency that seeks engagement and I think that as a board and as a district we should be responsive to those things and so I think figuring out how we promote more engagement and empowerment um around a more particip participatory it's a tricky word sorry budget process that allows for some of that to your point that breaks down some of those silos even between us on the committee um but also invites in some feedback from our senior leadership from our students from our teachers from our community um I think would be a great move going forward um to kind of get at some of those points board president just a point of order I know we're going to talk about all this stuff again in the action portion of the meeting could we finish questions just so we can get to okay I just want to make sure we get to the public speaks it's 10:30 at night I mean if I think we kind of have reached the point of like we're done with this discussion but I just want to push back on this idea that there are silos we have probably to me one of the most transparent boards this year um one of the things that we've done is we've created a document repository where everyone can see everything from our committee meetings as soon as the committee meeting is over those meeting minutes are there you can see all the documents that are shared with those boards and I can tell you in previous years it was said to be shared but no one could find anything because they were all in these specific places for the board members in that committee we've changed that this year so that everyone can see everything when it happens as it happens so I will push back strong against the idea that there are silos we share information and we want to make sure that everybody knows what is happening but if there are there any more questions all right I guess then we move on to the board president's update all right good evening good evening everyone tonight we received the final budget presentation for the 24 2024 2025 school school year I want to take time to address the administration's difficult decisions regarding the reduction in force it's important to recognize that these decisions are never taken lightly and they deeply affect our staff students and the entire Community first and foremost the board's priority is always the quality of education and the well-being of our students unfortunately budget considerations always influence these decisions that we make to ensure that there's fin cial stability in our district we understand that risks can create uncertainty and anxiety among staff and we deeply appreciate the dedication and hard work of every member of our school Community throughout this process the Administration has worked diligently to minimize the impact of Rifts on our students learning experience likewise members of this board have been committed to preserving the Integrity of our academic programs and ensuring that our students continue to receive the support they need to succeed we have all played a role in ensuring that any reduction in force will have minimal impact on students in our district nonetheless our budget shortfall will require Staffing cuts to bring our budget into balance the administration took great care to distribute these cuts across departments so that no single area Bears the brunt of this budget season we understand that this news may be difficult to hear but every decision made by this body is made with the best interest of our students in our community in mind moving on to another prominent topic on our agenda The Greenway project has taken on a much larger role in our discussions as discussed in our Municipal Partnerships meetings the meetings was was to be discussed in our April fft meeting and if everything was okay it would would be brought before the board for approval tonight that is exactly what happened one question the board received why was there a delay there was no delay it's simply the reality of our calendar other topics required more immediate attention such as the findings of the district's Federal audit in February the preliminary budget in March and the bard of school estimate meeting to secure funding to finish the longrange facilities plan additionally we've had labor negotiations a superintendent search and the recent arrest of a high school principal I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for patience from town Leaders The Greenway project may seem straightforward but it's not it in involves more than passing a resolution because we are told it is a gift when we looked at the agreement one thing stood out it was signed between Town leaders and a developer regarding use of school property without first including District administration in the discussion the agreement signed in May 2023 didn't reach out didn't reach our business office until late last year I believe as mayor Adams has stated that such agreements should include all stakeholders from the start including the district the developer and town officials unfortunately this did not happen when the fft committee examined the agreement it revealed that while there were improvements to one section of school property for the greenway all liability and maintenance costs fell to the district after its completion given the budgetary challenges fa by our district and municipalities I made sure to request an agreement that town leaders would provide maintenance however we did not receive this agreement from Maplewood until this month keeping that in mind we were glad that Maplewood will provide maintenance for the greenway for the next 10 years in the end I'm pleased that the board can make this project a reality but in the future there needs to be better cooperation between M Municipal leaders and the school district it's important to remember that the board is not the school district in closing let us continue to strive for collaboration and transparency in all our endeavors ensuring our best outcome ensuring the best outcomes for our students and community and I'll Now read the board president statement the school board meeting is a meeting in public and not a meeting with the public where is the I'll just move on to the online version hold on I'm missing she here the school board meeting is a meeting is a business meeting in public and not a meeting with the public often times it may appear to members of our audience that the Board of Education takes action with very little comment and in many cases a unanimous vote before matter is placed on the agenda at a public meeting the Administration has thoroughly reviewed the matter with the superintendent of schools if the superintendent of schools is satisfied that the matter is ready to be presented to the board of education is then referred to the the appropriate board committee the members of the board committee work with the administration and the superintendent to ensure that the members fully understand the matter after the committee discusses the matter it is then shared with the board members for consideration only then is it placed on the agenda for board discussion and action of the public meeting thank you for coming and person and dialing in by phone this evening the South Orange MB Board of Education certainly respects that you've taken the time out of your busy day to address the board at tonight's meeting we value public involvement in our school district and we are eager to hear what you have to say the board does have time limits by policy and will'll be enforcing those to enable as many people to speak as possible this evening each individual will be given 3 minutes to speak please do your best to stay within the time afforded to you the first public comment period is usually limited to 1 hour and the second public comment period may be limited to 30 minutes all input shared with the board of education has taken very seriously and will form future deliberations and work by the Board of Education and as committees and tonight we will be prioritizing more um anything that is on the agenda and then anything else will be moved toward the end for the first hour all right so the first person we have for public speaks is Henry satone here there we go hey guys thanks for hearing me um now it's late so I'm keep it short um I think there's been a lot of arguing in the community I don't think that this situation here because this crap happened last year too it just didn't cost 10 people their jobs because of some Ninja accounting you guys do but now it's come to a head where it's starting to cost jobs is the fault of anyone sitting on this Das you know whose fault it is it's our fault the tax taxpayers in this District because we keep asking you guys for stuff and then we get the stuff and then we don't want to pay the bill and we also don't want to raise the money for the stuff privately if we can't get the taxpayers to do it we don't want to do that stuff at all you get a huge amount of push back when you know you when the bill comes at the end after everyone's had the meal and had the drinks and they got divide the bill up so one of the problems is we've been treating our town like it's disposable you to push your kids through the school system to college you're going to sell your house hopefully for more than you paid for it which it does because we have a great school district and if you lived in a place with a crappy School District like places where I grew up you didn't get that option okay my parents house actually sold for less than they paid for it um so what we need to do is say hey if we're going to have these shortfalls on a regular basis we either need to go and Levy this money I'm the only person here who's ever said please increase my taxes but please please increase my tax okay or we need to raise the money privately somewhere or we need to find donors like have we reached out to Staples to ask for um you know school supplies from them because they have a whole wall over there of pictures of districts you know and our we're not up there our picture is not up there I don't know if it's because we didn't take a picture or because they don't donate to us but like we've got to find ways to get money the other thing is we're sitting on this building right here I don't know if you can tear it down but we're not using it and in New York and I I don't think a conversation I had with gentleman back there but in New York City they took private property that you know the city was using and they knocked it down and they put buildings on it and then they leased back the space they actually needed so they made some money and have you thought about solar panels on our parking lots I know some people say you can't do the roofs here but you can make a good amount of money my doctor's office has them they have they've covered the entire parking lot and parking garage type solar panel things so th those are the things we need to start thinking creatively about how we raise money but the taxpayers here all of us that are sitting back here that don't want this music program cut we need to be writing checks right now because we cannot get out of this crisis we need to save these 10 jobs because we cannot go down the road of cutting teacher jobs and St and even if you cut staff jobs you're still jamming up your teachers you know so please please find a way to get this money and we need to as a community the Civic leaders in this community need to step up and do a fund raise for this for now and then we need to do a systemic fix later thank you next we have Amy [Music] Goring okay I've had to rewrite my speech three times after listening to the last hour of this crazy meeting um so uh what I was going to say was uh I'm here to emphasize the importance of not applying further cuts to the underresourced district Fine Arts budget and staff it's been cut over the past few years um we heard at one point it was going to cut another 35% maybe not we're all on edge um and thank you for speaking up and uh and going through those um as a parent of two students who have gone through CHS heavily involved in the music and theater programs since elementary school um I can attest the Arts budget staff maintenance are critical have a lasting impact on their lives I've spent considerable time as a parent um over the last 10 years uh providing my leadership and expertise to the arts program at every single grade level um LED fundraisers like somar rock enables groups like chis mppa um these parents already give tons and tons and tons and tons um to uh help fill the small gaps but we need the district to retain the budget for basic needs staff enable parents efforts to be supplemental versus critical to success and we need more transparency in the budget process we know that the music program is growing and rebounding after covid uh with a positive impact uh we heard about middle recent middle school music lesson teachers um and uh so the whole last in first out scares me a lot uh uh you know the impact on them it sounds like the incoming freshman next year into CHS now they want to stay involved in the music program because of those lessons um and might even double the uh the previous year's addition to uh groups like The Marching Bay so they're significant and um I plead not to just look at the last and first out rule on these some of them are making a really big impact um we can't support their activities and most basic needs like uniforms Transportation infrastructure with cuts and budgets and um soon we won't have to cut teachers because no one will want to work here because it's uh listening to this and uh and seeing what's going on um anyway so I'm asking the board to just help commit to the following please maintain the district and music Arts staff at the current levels um no other F uh further cuts to the music and arts budget um it sounds like there's a plan to restore the CHS Auditorium so thank you please do it soon not too long um uh it was a painful spring um and uh you know if we can't do these and uh you know during during every campaign I know that all of you uh you know are are champions of the Arts and uh please let's let's make sure that we actually um put our money where mouth is make sure you do that and uh and make sure that we we don't fall short of the district's responsibility to fund the music programs um otherwise we become a district where only those with Financial Resources will have access to this real well-rounded education um that's the main point but I think um the other point I think is just uh you know as we're listening many of us are you know we have all other careers and uh I'm just thank you yeah I um I'm I'm also just I'm appalled at just the the the business administration office uh and lack of accountability and ownership thank you next we have Ken Kramer thank you do I have to press here no it's working okay uh thanks for this opportunity to talk to you guys tonight and thanks for all the diligence that you put into preparing the budget that we heard about tonight I know it's a hard job job um I know it's difficult to make difficult decisions and you know I appreciate the diligence you've done going building to building to uh administrator to administrator to try and come up with a good plan um I'm the father of a freshman at CHS and a sixth grade at Psalms uh music and the Arts AR only the Cornerstone of their academic and intellectual development but have formed the foundation of their Social Development too both of them needed music and arts to get where they are today and I'm proud of both of them because of it I wanted to leave you guys with a few points like Amy I had to revise this in Full full uh real time because of what I heard going on here tonight I Haven been to a lot of your meetings but I've learned a lot tonight um I'll say this uh from my original points cuts to the music and arts program budget staff cannot be allowed no further Cuts okay 23% over the last two years is already um embarrassing especially for a district that puts music and arts at the Cornerstone of of of our reputation um some of the stuff that I heard tonight I'd urge you guys not to paint music Arts with the same brush as every other department I think it's different the instructional ratios are different the Dynamics are different and the costs are different there's not enough granularity in the budget you showed tonight I plan to talk all about transparency but I think you guys all know the issues especially the board members um there's not enough granular to know what this budget is going to do to music and arts um but uh you know I think it's important to know that never would I ever sit here and Advocate that other departments get cut instead of arts and musics but you've heard all these amazing students tonight actually the first two went and I was starting to tear up I'm like I'm not going to be able to talk because of the stories these guys are telling um we heard what we already know that music and arts instruction is a multiplier on success in every other classroom those students touch into we know that that's factual okay separately to Music Arts I think you've heard all about it tonight and I think the students did a better job than I could um I want to respond to this conversation about the budget I appreciate the diligence you put into it but when I hear that we just have to accept less and do more with less next year and be creative I love that term I use it all the time with my staff uh we have no idea what is coming next year and that we're just doing what the community wants I start to get really very angry okay I think that if you guys think that the community wants constant tumult unpredictability decreased Services higher taxes and an unpredictable future you're wrong and you're not do purporting your office as well indeed some of you are looking at your laptops the whole night while while people are talking to you we want people looking for how to build this District how to make it better how to improve it not just for a few but for everyone in an inclusive way and not just manage the status quo and say I can't predict the future okay we employ you guys to do that all of you we voted for many of you and we employ the rest of you I'm I agree I'll pay higher taxes if it means better Services thank you for your service to this District I appreciate it next we have Bridget [Applause] Brown good evening I'm Bridget Brown um I'm here to speak as both the parent of a CHS Jor and uh as a chis mipa board member my daughter was a member of the stage crew leadership for this year's High School Musical Mama Mia and she spoke before all of you at the March board meeting um I'm here now in part just to sort of amplify and reiterate her plea at that point um the preservation and upkeep of the auditorium facilities throughout our district have been painfully overlooked despite the importance of the Arts in our community our schools known for the quality of our Performing Arts those who work intimately in these spaces and with these programs see that this success is due to the overwhelming dedication of our students their current space on the other hand is holding them back we implore the board to look into all options for the CHS stage but Place emphasis on longevity when searching for a solution um there must be continued focus on the long-term health of our district auditoriums really gratified to hear that that process is underway and I hope that we'll there'll be some sort of transparency where we can understand how it's proceeding but that's an exciting development um and then I'm also just want to reiterate some of the Highlight some of the points that uh we made in the the open letter to you all um from chis mipa uh while we understand that budget cuts are sadly necessary due to budget mismanagement over the last years our Arts programs really can't sustain any more of those cuts and remain viable so I'm again repeating points that have been made now several times uh but I'll I'll ask one last time uh to maintain District music and arts staff at current levels cease any further cuts to the music and arts budget for next year and communicate a plan and timeline to restore the CHS Auditorium um thank you so much for your time and consideration thank you next we have Jen Spiegler good evening Board of Education members and Dr Gilbert thank you again for this time here tonight I too have Rewritten my notes because as I spoke last month I was told by one of my Columbia High School students to be respectful to be kind and to have my thoughts in order my thoughts are no longer in order and I will do my best to be kind and respectful after listening to what happened a few these past few hours I have a few questions and this just this is not what I had drafted top of Mind why are we in this budget crisis how do we get here these past three years Dr Gilbert you mentioned different checks in place for next year why weren't they in place the past few years no forecasting I don't know of any organ ganization corporate nonprofit or homeowner that does not forecast blaming State funding is not the answer ask the right questions please this has been totally non-transparent since Mr Roth has left remove the payroll line if that what is what is needed to be have confidential the community and the Board of Ed the fact that you just saw these details last night is an embarrassment to the community at large and our students I don't want to hear any more of the staff morale and the beautification of spaces for them my students come my children come home every day hearing from the teachers of what the morale is like at that school there will be no jobs will they need to keep their jobs and their salar should be matched at minimum to neighboring districts and the new hires we are in a severe retention situation teachers are the reason we have these accolades you heard from from these students so what I've heard tonight is that we're sending our children to a building that is decrepit with no teachers and no school books and you can't forecast or tell us how we got here what's the timeline for the stage and there is no humor in the bathrooms situation so now I'm just since I have a 50 seconds left I would also like to understand the concern that the teachers and students have about the asbest project no information that I am aware of has been shared aside from a letter taped the door the ongoing construction is creating unsafe conditions jackhammering during quarterly exams and Grave health concerns for those in the building please pause this asbest project until adequate planning and safety can be [Applause] addressed since I still have 23 seconds I'm going to go back to my original because of this man mismanagement of this budget the music program is strin and continues to be neglected financially the stages are still unusable and the marching bands chalk is in inadequate to car's members instrument so we're at a point of deciding which members cannot be in marching band because their instrument doesn't fit on a truck that doesn't work please allow the appointed superintendent to make the decision on the business administrator thank you good night thank you next we have Paul gusovsky hello and thank you everyone for um being here tonight thank you Dr Gilbert for all your hard work and continuing to reach out to meet with students and staff as I can tell from your report it was a firsthand a you know acknowledgement of everything that you've been able to do it's not just from a secretary or something but I do have to say everything that happened tonight is real embarrassment I don't think you should vote uh to keep your accounting department and you should fix it I'm a graduate of CHS uh and is just incredibly embarrassing I'll save I'll spare you all the rest good night next we have ambra Teague hi everyone Amber MCB um so I went back and I relistened to um the March 14th meeting um because I thought maybe it wasn't as bad as I remembered um but it was and actually we kind of got a repeat tonight um we started strong with the um I got to put my glasses on sorry um with the explanation of the budget process proc central office and administration outline and prioritize the tools and components necessary to provide a thorough and comprehensive educational program the budget is a plan that enables leadership to achieve its goals of maximizing resources infusing flexibility and providing tools to ensure an exceptional educational program that sounds great sign me up but what followed that solid introduction was a rushed and jump B presentation of a lot of numbers with very little context or explanation that buried the lead that we have a $2.7 million short shortfall luckily for us our board members had some time with the materials and pressed on a few key items board member eard clarified that the Gap was actually 9.6 billion prior to cuts and additional revenue board member Gord asked for translation of what 2.7 actually meant and I was stunned to learn that that would meant eliminating 30 to 40 positions now tonight we learned that it's going to be 28 positions which is better than 30 to 40 but it's not 10 right because just 10 people that aren't going to lose their jobs it's still 28 positions um and board member sacket Gable asked what it would take to operate at an optimal level a clear acknowledgement that this budget was not actually delivering a thorough and comprehensive educational program the answer to that was we have to do more with less this is a district when the elementary schools are about to start asking for reams of paper usually happens in May and that if we save money for a few years we will be in a place where we can Thrive again that is not a plan that's a pipe dream who's been minding the store why should we trust the people who got us here and that you can get us out of this in a couple years we cannot continue with Personnel who would spring a crisis upon us with no warning and then proceed to act like it's no big deal it's a huge deal right up there with the fact that our wonderful principal is facing felony charges for doing what our teachers do best caring for kids and putting them first this must be a rock bottom as a district if we go any lower we'll be six foot under and dead and by the way I am a finance professional I manage budgets for a living I should have been home the NFL draft which I manag the budgets we do forecasting you plan that's just Paul Stefan Paul stefen hi good evening I would like to talk about solar panels and and it's not I an environmental lawyer but that's not why I'm talking about it it is Earth week that's not what why I'm talking about it I'm talking about it because it has to do with our budget problems which as tonight's cqu Illustrated our budget problems are not going to end this year they're ongoing part of the reason is that the district's major source of Revenue is the tax levy and by law that can increase by more than 2% and our expenses often increase by more than 2% so solar panels Energy Efficiency projects are not a silver bullet they're a peeter bullet they help the problem right we can save some of our electricity costs over time we can put some of that money back into instruction back into Shoring up the Arts budget so that Arts remains a point of Pride for the district now of course we have to pay for these projects but there's more good news there because these are capital projects they don't have to be paid for through the limited tax levy they can be bonded so that's borrowed money but it's money that uh it's an investment that will pay for itself and we can use some of that extra money to to fix some budget gaps I'm not suggesting this is a total solution to our problems I know it's something that been discussed before but I think it's something that should be reexplored um I know you all know that we are in the middle of a climate crisis I think it's incumbent on the district and every entity public and private in the world to try to do what they can to Abate it this is an opportunity to do something to do that and if it will keep an extra teacher or two in the classroom that's all for the better thank you thank you next we have Lisa [Music] Cohen good evening my name is is Lisa Cohen I am a proud parent of uh CHS Jr who has been involved in arts programs uh since Tuscan elementary through Maplewood Middle and now at Columbia they recently performed with the jazz band at soac and beat Fest at the Woodland and also they are an award-winning photographer thanks in large part to Mr catrona music and arts are an important part of our family and our community I asking the board not to not make cuts to the already underresourced music and arts programs while there is while the district is lucky to have parent support groups and Community organizations that supplement these programs they cannot and should not be expected to scale funds just to meet the basics here's some examples musical instruments are not being adequately maintained or repaired the marching band's truck is inade quate to carry its members instruments I'm glad you have a plan to fix the auditorium with the capital funds but our music tech program has no District funded performance opportunities and lacks essential equipment the choir program was denied District money for uniforms these are just a few examples of the broader problem which is that our district now expects parents to privately fund raise to meet even the most basic needs of our music programs it would be helpful to know more about the budget breakdown more transparency especially with the Arts budget the teachers don't even know how they you know they asking for money from us for basic things from chisa and it that does not fly right it's not how it's supposed to be so the music program's budget is shockingly opaque and not just to us but even to instructors therefore I urge you to not cut any funding to the music or Arts programs as it was said any budget cuts let alone a 35% cut to the music and arts programs will be devastating and music and arts cannot take any more Cuts we just had budget cuts over the last couple years we don't want any more two do not um vote to renew the business administrator or at least postpone till we have a new superintendent there has not been enough transparency the plan to cut the funding for the Arts is majorly flawed and there's no forecasting we can do better better than that thank you for your [Applause] time next we have Joshua urist Dr Gilbert members of the board I urge you to table the approval of this budget um I it's it's been very disheartening to hear the discussion of of what we're dealing with and I know that none of you like it um and I don't I don't envy any of you in in your jobs right now um but uh can a majority of you really look at a 35% across the board cut of materials and books and say that we're going to have functioning system of schools 35% across the board Cuts in books and materials that the best analogy I can come up with is saying we're all going to go scuba diving but we just we we don't really have the oxygen so we're just going anyway and uh we we'll hope for the best so we're a district in crisis in in a lot of ways right now um and then I I think in light of that crisis what what I would have hoped for is a communication of how we got here and what we as a community can do together to overcome this crisis um and and what I've seen is is more opacity rather than sunlight and and um and that that's disheartening to me I I would I would have liked to allow the community to come together to to to help come up with Solutions um Beyond 35% across the board Cuts I'm I'm glad to hear that we'll have a repaired Auditorium but I don't think we're going to have any performances in that Auditorium potentially if we don't fund the programs that operate within those performance spaces um again table the approval of this budget communicate to the staff that may be impacted and make public the analysis of the budget give us time as a community to come up with answers and analyze what it is that you're about to do thank you next we have Deb angle hi it's abbah Engle I'm resident of Maplewood three kids in the district and Maplewood Township Committee Member and I'm here in that capacity to talk about the greenway so I'm going to try to be nice and civil even though board president your remarks kind of frustrated me I understand that you're frustrated with the process and I think we've talked about that so I just want to um State for the record some other information that maybe you didn't have but in March of 2023 our then mayor um Dean daffis had sent an email to Dr Taylor Mr Bernstein Mr Giglio and Mr delgo sorry if I'm mispronouncing that name um introducing them to the developer in May the developer emailed a draft agreement to that same group I'm told because the feedback was let's see an agreement and we can talk and then there was no feedback in July with M Deval Wilson we brought it up at the municipal Partnerships because this has been an issue that's been talked about in our community for over 15 years I moved here in 2009 and people were talking about the greenway it is something that I think could be very beneficial to our community so I brought it up at the municipal Partnerships to figure out where was the where was the the shortfall because I heard in Maplewood we couldn't move forward with the greenway on our side while South Orange was doing phase one phase two going out for funding for phase three because of the school district property so that's how it came up in conversation in July of 2023 we went on site with missal Wilson Dr Taylor people from the environmental advisory committee our engineers and then again there was no progress when Dr Taylor Jo Dr Gilbert joined in December two weeks after our first meeting we all went on site those same people Mr bernside Mr Giglio and it seemed like we had a lot of process and then you guys reorganized and then starting in January it just felt like there was no more movement in March in February we talked about it that was the first time that question of Maintenance came up we were told that we would come to the March meeting to present and then that was changed because you have budget concerns which I totally understand I respect all of you I know you have a lot going on on your plate and this is not your priority but we have this deadline coming up May 15th for this developers agreement to be signed and I don't even see it on your agenda today and since Tuesday I've been trying to figure out okay our shared agreement is on the agenda that's great we want to do maintenance we want to cover the liability but the development agreement that's about to expire is not so I'm frustrated because here I am hearing from the community seeing how traffic is increasing the integration plan is amazing but it's causing more cars on our road kids are not being able to get to school safely having a walking and biking path along the river that connects Maplewood to South Orange is it's going to enable kids to be able to get to the high school safely it's going to enable kids to be able to get to both middle schools safely it's going to be a thorough fair for our community to be able to walk more and bike more safely in our two towns which is a priority so I please urge you to put this on the agenda and vote on it today thank you thank you next we have Raya Beck before I begin um Dr Gilbert I wanted to extend my condolences to you um this is I think your first board meeting since the loss of your beloved father uh please allow me to say that I hope that his memory will be a blessing to all who loved him uh I wanted to thank the the board of ed for launching an investigation into the unauthorized leak of the faulty draft report to the Maplewood Police Department um I want to acknowledge that this must have been for many reasons an unpleasant decision to make but sunlight is the best disinfectant it's imperative that you expose the rot so the community can begin to restore its faith in this body I hope we the voters will soon have a full account of what triggered this leak including who else on the board knew about supported or endorsed the intention of the former board member who violated her oath of office um within the last 30 days or so this community has raised almost $775,000 in support of Frank uh Frank Sanchez's legal defense most of that money was raised locally from donations as small as $5 in just two days we have collected over 1,000 postcards to be sent to the prosecutor's office in support of Mr Sanchez these postcards have been written by former prosecutors parents community members and students ranging from CHS class of 1968 to 2026 this community stands firmly in support of Mr Sanchez many parents of black students at CHS have submitted good character references to the County prosecutor on his behalf the so-called black parents Workshop which is comprised of two individuals one of whom is the a resident of the great state of Maryland does not speak on behalf of black families in this district and we were eager to let the County prosecutor know as much I share this to remind you that the community is United about the outcom we desire which is not only a dismissal of the spirous charges against Mr Sanchez but a reinstatement of his principal ship at Columbia High School you in your role you in your role as the elected representatives of this community must remain steadfast in ensuring our vision for our schools and our students is made possible the money raised the $775,000 the postcard scent the 1,000 postcards and Counting the continued outrage is a clear indication of the community's will have a great night next we have marel and Dawkins um I'm Mary Ellen Dawkins Maplewood resident I'm a Columbia parent and longtime school and Community volunteer I spent much of 2021 and 2022 in the high school working for the South Orange Maplewood Adult School currently I am the HSA Safety and Security representative I also serve on the school's culture and climate committee we've met several times this year to review how the district's Hib policy is implemented at Colombia and to discuss how to strengthen School climate and culture what is the difference between culture and climate how do they impact student Behavior culture is the Traditions rituals and expectations that take time to establish climate is how people or places make you feel and how you perceive others it also frames how you are perceived by others when Frank Sanchez started at CHS we appreciated the immediate positive impact on climate his enthusiasm and optimism resulted in students and staff feeling better about their school experience and about themselves his absence has been detrimental to both culture and climate CHS has suffered as we've heard from our student reps admin and staff in the interest of Columbia culture and climate I implore you to do everything in your power to restore Mr Sanchez once the charges against him are dropped thank you we have Kathy [Applause] greenstone hello I'm Kathy greenstone from South Orange and a CHS parent and tonight I'd like to talk a little bit about safety safety does not equal policing safety also means teachers admins counseling staff who feel protected and appreciated it means asbestos free classrooms lead free drinking water and it means maintaining facilities to at least the point of building Parts not falling on students and staff it means safe spaces for all types of Learners art Tech science dance music Sports and theater kids our student reps to the board were thoughtful enough to conduct a student survey on safety which they shared at the last meeting so thank you to both of them unsurprisingly students largely responded that they felt less safe without Frank Sanchez in the building safety also does not mean locked bathrooms last week a student vomited in the stairwell because the closest bathroom was locked what should a student do if they are in the Halls during a code red or God forbid an actual violent event if they can't find an open bathroom in which to shelter access to gender neutral bathrooms is a district policy and state law that we must follow it is not up to a principal's discretion please treat our students with basic respect unlock the bathrooms safety also safety also does not mean allowing police to question students inside the school building during the school day without parent knowledge or consent our students are in the building during the school day to learn so Frank Sanchez has the right idea when he decided not to interrupt their studies and not to stand in locco parentis for the convenience of police who want to question our children police work is not education work and should not be encumbering our our faculty state law allows principles to stand in locco parenes but it does not require them to so please consider District policy that would Shield our administrators from having to perform this function thank you next we have Kate Crowley Kate Crowley good evening board members Dr Gilbert thank you for your service my name is Kate Crowley first time speaker here um I'm from South Orange I have children at both SS and Columbia I've been a New York City public school history teacher for 24 years and a restorative justice coordinator for 5 years I'm here toight tonight to express my continued unwavering support for Frank Sanchez I want to apologize on behalf of our Som Community to principal Sanchez and to the Columbia staff I'm sorry that the initial investigator bungled the investigation and that Miss Malisa took action when she knew Dr Gilbert had already taken all necessary steps we are so lucky to have a brilliant team of teachers and devoted administrators at Colombia who certainly do not deserve this I imagine this issue of will I be targeted or falsely accused next must be deeply unsettling most of us Educators go about our day assuming we will not be the target of Bad actors and that our principal superintendents and Union will have our backs if ever necessary for example last week at my school one of my students ran down the crowded hallway grabbed a fellow seventh grader by her hair and started beating her over the head I had a laptop chart paper water bottle phone in my hands and instinctively thought I have to dump this stuff and protective protect this child we in education protect and advocate for children all the time Frank did this all the time there are principles who sit in their offices Frank is not that leader he was out there in the mix building relationships every single day teachers and administrators we see you we support you we will always assume best intentions we have a lot of restorative work to do in order to repair our community I look forward to Dr Gilbert and his team meeting this work I hope Dr Gilbert will be able to bring together key individuals to get at the root cause of this toxicity as a teacher one of my most important Community agreements in my classroom is we will take care of each other despite X Y and Z we will take care of each other I want the Colombia staff to feel that we as the Som Community will take care of them as they take care of our children I hope that they can see that the few misguided individuals who are using Frank to achieve their goals will not get to ruin other careers and lives thank you next we have Barbara Peart Barbara Peart all right then we'll move on to our online portion uh our first public speaks is Julia flath hi um okay uh I'm a South Orange resident and first I have a question about the tax impact of next year's budget um it showed that the estimate for South Orange residents is 527 which is double that of Maplewood even though um both are based on average property Assessments in the 800,000 so um hoping those numbers uh which don't make sense will be addressed um second I'm here as the chair of walk bike ride South Orange and a member of the South Orange Greenway committee um I hope you will vote to approve the agreement to develop the Maplewood Greenway area it's a no-brainer to accept this offer for other parties Maplewood and and the gleon developer to pay for improvements to the district land the stretch of land between Parker and Jefferson seems like um a small area to care about putting a bike and pedestrian path but it's actually a very important Cornerstone of connectivity between our two towns on the north end it will connect to the South Orange Greenway which already has active plans or negotiations underway to connect all the way from parav to Maplewood um sorry Parker AB in Maplewood all the way to the West montro neighborhood um on the other end we will allow Maplewood to develop their own Greenway PL Southward on the East end it could connect to a potential bike lane on Park gra that is being considered um and we need to approve this now so that we can take advantage of the funding from the developer before the agreement expires so um if it is you know concerning what um Deb Engel mentioned about the developer part of the agreement not being on the agenda so I hope there's a way to rectify that and get that signed before the development agreement expires on May 15 um our community leadership needs to start placing a higher priority on carving out safe spaces for students families and people of all ages to walk in bike safely to school to the train um just to get around town without cars um we need to do this to address both Traffic Safety as our population increases with all the new developments and also to reduce our um impact um it's Earth week to reduce our greenhouse gases and emissions and our impact on this planet um so thank you for taking this small step which is actually a big step um toward that goal thank you next we have Shannon cuddle La Community memb is not online next is Bridget Hughes Community member Hughes you're unmuted Community member Hughes can you hear us let's go to the next one we'll go to Robert holey he there sound okay oh yes you're unmuted all right hi I'm Robert Howley Maplewood resident and District Parent calling in to voice my support for the greenway shared services and developer agreements uh The Greenway is an important part of the long-term vision of our towns and a crucial investment Som Transportation infrastructure this route will allow people to get around without a car our students in particular and do so safely I'm going to assume that the CHS students uh filling up the bike racks each day would appreciate the greenway I suspect the many families such as such as mine that drop their kids off at school by bike would appreciate it and I know that the families of the four kids at least I know of uh in our school district that have been hit by cars while riding their bikes including one this week would definitely appreciate uh so approve the shared services agreement that's already on the agenda add on whatever you need to do do right by your students in your community help move this project forward thank you bye all right let's go back to to Bridget Hughes member Hughes you're unmuted looks like no you think I know how to do it by now uh good evening everybody Tony masaki Maplewood um took a few notes while you were speaking adjusted but look as a former a Boe member and former chair of fft I have not seen anything like this budget presentation uh it it's been quite hard to watch and I appreciate that you have a transparent board now but you do not have a transparent budget transport uh uh presentation here I I heard a lot of talk this evening uh but the evidence is is not there uh I hear a lot of talking about being intentional I've heard that word a lot over the past four years I'm sure the community has but um this district has gone from extremely good fiscal shape in 20120 then flush with Co funding to really what appears to be a real hot mess right now in three short years the difference in transparency between the pre I'll call them Burnside years and now is night and day let's focus just just on the Riff every year that I was on the board of education and boards ofed before me the community would see all of the positions that were going to be cut not the names the positions if you go on to the district website you'll see all the previous budget presentations the excuses that I heard tonight as to why those can't happen have nothing to do with privacy and everything to do with the work that you have not done yet the reduction is 28 it is not 10 cuts through attrition can be more damaging than other cuts when you don't replace a teacher that leaves you you may not replace a program you may not replace a lot of different things cuts through attrition are very damaging there are people who are retiring you have the list it's going on in two weeks have you seen the list do you know who's on that list because those are the programs and the people that aren't going to be there that worries me greatly uh are you reducing district office admin you should you must before you reduce any headcount in the teaching ranks it appears that you're either hiding things from the community or you don't have a clue what you're doing yet and either are not good the Boe should vote no on this budget not because you don't like it not because I don't like it because you don't have enough information at your fingertips to be able to make an informed vote I don't and I've done this many times I do not see it up there so um you might hear that it's damaging to vote no the the damage has actually been done I would vote no I'd send this back as far as the Arts Cuts those have been brutal over the past couple of years and they've been quiet and that is a problem uh 23% absolutely where are the actuals for this year along with the budget numbers and the budget for next year and you'll see previous budget years we did three year out projections okay it's not like you can't do them nowon next we'll move on to committee updates so we'll just start down the line thank you the special services thank you to everyone who's still here thank you so much for all the commentary tonight um the special services ad hoc committee met yesterday evening April 24th we began at 7: and adjourned at 9:07 p.m. myself board members m and Whit letter Acting Superintendent Dr Gilbert and assistant superintendent of special services Susie budine were all in attendance we began the meeting with a review of policy including finalizing the language in r504 policy for additional Clarity and an initial robust discussion of policies 3217 4217 corporal punishment and 5561 restraint and seclusion for students with disabilities I wanted to just take a brief moment to thank Miss budine publicly for bringing forth this discussion and uplifting staff feedback and the desire to ensure that they are protected and empowered to intervene if needed to maintain student safety and to work on our additional protections for student safety for the sake of transparency and acknowledging the title of these first policies as decidedly off-putting we are considering rebranding some of them uh these policies are meant to articulate for both certificated and support staff what they can do to intervene during challenging student situations these policies were brought forth as I said due to concern from staff and administration around ensuring that we did have policies that provide adequate Clarity and protections for general education students and staff members to ensure excuse me the safety of all parties as that Clarity exists already for students with disabilities the corporal punishment policies are going to be Rewritten for further review and discussion and while 5561 did not require additional edits at this time the suggestion was for the board to adopt the corresponding regulation um as soon as possible to ensure the requirements for implementation are clearly articulated once finalized Miss budine anticipates folding those in for review of these updates into Handle With Care training to ensure understanding amongst our school-based teams we did already receive an update on audit and federal monitoring in committee but Dr Gilbert discussed this already this evening um in his superintendent update so you can refer back to that for those updates we regarding the budget there were no new budget items for this month but a discussion was had regarding the the implications of the budget shortfall for next school year The District administration shared they are focused on how they'll most creatively leverage available funds in the next year and attempt to identify cost-saving measures continuing with an eye toward next school year Miss budine shared that she is planning a retreat for herself and her supervisors over the summer to reflect and plan this committee will join or meet afterwards to set our vision for the next school year collaboratively we also discussed the creation of a high impact calendar that would drive Focus towards important events mandated deadlines and departmental moves next we discuss chronic absenteeism from the perspective of special education Miss budy spoke to how often the presence of having a case manager allows for quicker tracking and responding for attendance issues than perhaps the general education counterparts who are struggling with chronics absenteeism we discussed the issues with younger students who might want to stay home middle and high school students where mental health issues might lead to school avoidance and parent issues with separating from their children we touched on interventions that Center collaboration such as those with outside therapists develing developing home and school support plans utilizing ESS to the home to support engaging with bcbas to create plans and provide higher level of mental health supports as needed and we also discuss how this intersects with the work of cni and the inrs process where this issue was also discussed this month and for which board member sacka Gable will provide additional insights next we discuss our extended school year program which will run July 1st the 4th and 5th will be off and it will run until August 2nd potential locations are being fin finalized by the district and will be communicated shortly additionally start and end times and transportation decisions are also being considered and postings for staff will also be live soon lastly we got an update on the May 4th CAC resource Fair the facilities have been requested and approved a host of providers have signed up and we discuss the availability of providing a sensory room should the bus be unavailable to ensure that we meet the needs of all of our kids and families who we look forward to seeing there in closing this month it felt as though Clarity was at the Forefront of the work that we did in the special education ad hoc committee ensuring we have clearly articulated policies and regulations that provide for the safety of our students and staff members and prioritization of planning such that we have clearly articulated Visions goals and plans that drive the work month-to month thank you any questions the Personnel committee meet uh sorry it is 12:00 the Personnel committee met on Monday 22 at 6:30 p.m. in attendance were board member dval Wilson and myself as well as Dr Gilbert Mr adad doyan and Mr Durant from The District board president telesford and banii could not attend as they were in um a conflicting fft meeting we started reviewing the perspect uh the respective Personnel resolutions we have a few new subst substitutes that will be joining the district which is a good sign given the shortage we've been experiencing we also reviewed and discussed the process to renew and non-renew staff performance related for the 2425 school year we had a brief discussion around vacancies although there hasn't been much movement in the past month or so this is the time of year when we're getting a lot of the um retirements and resignations come in and we will continue to review during our monthly meetings for the rest of the year but come July and August we will have a clear picture of where we are going into the into the next school year and uh lastly we touched on a few topics were covered earlier this evening the district goals and Personnel related action plans um and the process that uh Dr Gilbert and his team followed around the reduction and force um it's a bit of a short update as uh a lot of the other things were uh confidential Personnel information and our next meeting will be Monday May 6th at 6:30 p.m. any questions the fft committee had two meetings this month one on the 17th and one on the 22nd on the 17th we first spoke about Perkins grants and how we will actually not be participating in them because a we are out of compliance and B we spending more on the program while receiving less so we spend about 40,000 and we receive about 35,000 and we can actually administer it all by ourselves for about 9,000 because the largest user of uh Perkins GRS is the TV program uh we ALS then discussed about the greenway project and as you've heard I mean this this portion of the greenway project will run on Boe property from Jefferson to Parker streets and uh the developer is going to only update that small portion of the parking lot the parking lot will remain as is in whatever state it is in they have offered to stripe it which is which is great it's nice but uh so we have a resolution today to pass the thing pass the uh accept the proposal and maple Township has agreed to pay for insurance and maintenance uh during the construction up update we spoke about the long range facilities plan and updated the plan because it needs to be done every 5 years and the architectural firm is going to do a comprehensive audit of all our schools and submit that to the doe and then of course then it's on us on how to fund them and and what what how many to finish um change orders we had you know a bunch of change orders that's you know coming up the CHS gym ceiling needs aspas abatement and that's about $400,000 and the other line item that I think people would be happy to know is that the elevator modernization is happening with which costs about $355,000 so so everything in the elevator except the you know the frames that hold the doors together are going to be replaced and that's ongoing right now uh the next line item for construction is the auditorium the CHS Auditorium in particular where we got bids back for rigging and the fire curtain and also and it's going to be approximately 800,000 it'll take about 5 months to complete and the lights will take about you know give or take another 1,000 more I mean we'll have exact numbers you know once the purchasing orders go out uh this there is no temporary solution this is the actual solution and we need to fix everything and that's going to happen soon and the money is going to come out of the capital reserves and the plan is to do CHS Auditorium this year SS the next and MMS the year after the budget I mean obviously you heard about the budget there's nothing really I mean this is all participating in there and uh you know you've heard enough about the budget there uh Bond sale Mr uh Burnside mentioned the bond sale so we this it was done for 25 2.17 million which now ensures that every line item in the long range facilities plan uh for South Orange middle school and maple Middle School is taken care of except for reder reder which is a separate line item so that's that's a good thing because now at this point we can say with certainty that by end of next year we should be able to say goodbye to most of the uh projects out there um we looked at policies and regulations we looked at policy 8420 which is good to go up for first reads and um that's yes for new business we brought up U various you know uh committee members brought up the question about General neutral bathrooms at CHS ADA compliance audit get a mark to Market to see what we need what where we are and what we need to do so I'm going to move on to the second meeting which pretty much covered the same topics but uh you know in in in in light of the budget we had uh you know more discussions there um there was a small point that came up about the Marshall constructions happening at Marshall school and the roof was the the what should I say the construction company put in an incorrect roof they were willing to give was a credit but we chose to go back to the original one on the spec uh budgets I I'll just skip the budgets part because we discussed on that uh one thing that'll come up is we will have public documents available as soon as they can so at the very least we'll have the user defined budget that's you know coming up in you know 24 hours or or maybe 48 hours after the budget is passed uh we spoke about facilities use fees that basically means what do we charge other people B to use the school facilities and like the ptas and hsas and everyone else and we decided to have no change there because it is not a significant uh Revenue increase from there this is this is important I mean the Food Service delinquent accounts I mean it's it's strange but we have about $250,000 that we are in you know we're in delinquent from parents who need to pay for their kids lunches I mean every year we kind of write out write off about 60,000 because you know that's the we we're a very inclusive District but I am actually urging everyone who's listening to this and if they are still listening to at at midnight to go to pay schools and update your account cuz I didn't realize that I'm I mean I have two kids in you know high school and middle school and I had about $350 that went into negative so I went in there updated I'm you know I'm fine now so I urge everyone to do this hopefully we'll you know reduce the 250k to 100K and that'll be a good thing to have uh CHS gener neutal bathrooms what happens is the bathrooms themselves there's nothing wrong with the bathrooms but the frequently there's you know there's vandalism and there is you know that happens there so they have to be closed and one good idea the facilities team came up with is that they will have a member who's going to walk around to every stall and paint so that way all the vandalism and graffi and all that is taken care of so that's the thing there um content another thing that came up which many U members brought up is the content Management on school devices that's basically can you as a parent control what your kids sees on YouTube or whatever that is the answer is yes we do have software that can do that but currently it's a little bit of more of a blunt tool where it can do across the board but hopefully we will have finer tool tools to control and that be available starting next year and thanks to Mr bonds for providing that and that's pretty much what I have questions not a question really but just a comment we had two people uh come here and talk about solar which is something near and dear to my heart and um when I was in fft last year I bothered Mr J jigloo about it and he he was adamant that we need to execute on the long range facility Plan before we do any of that and you know I kind of backed off but given um you know our short shortfall I think you know it's worth kind of challenging him right we as a board have to do that and I'm not you know I'm not getting at you this is not a critical thing but I just think it was great for these folks to come and talk about it and it did remind me when I was on fft I I did talk about so I just think it would be good to maybe challenge them on it I do know that there's so many programs there's even you know things called Power purchase agreements where we don't even have to buy it we can have a Solar Company actually um own the system operate it and just provide savings to us um by selling it and cheaper anyway just an idea that's just a quick question will that be your Solar Company no no I will not no no no we don't we do not service public entities um so but I I I could even not not vote on it a a quick response to that I mean no I mean listen everybody is for I mean there's nobody against it right I mean the couple of things I have heard which we need to clarify is one of the first things was most of our roofs are not up to par and they cannot handle the weight but which will get fixed by the end of the longrange facilities plan so at that point the all the roofs will be strong enough to handle all the solar panels that go on top and also what Mr jilo you know he kind of said is that finish the longrange facilities plan and put all the these kind of upgrades into one that talks about you know improving environment things so again I get it a phed approach yeah not phased approach I would say a phased approach but Mr jiggo he kind of wants to to the next no no I'm happy to add it to the next fft oh sure Mr no but thank you but great thank you for the update one more uh comment and I didn't catch this when I looked at the uh fft minutes before but is to clarify our discussion on 8420 which will Dove tail into my report uh we had talked in fft about policy 8420 emergency and crisis situations with an eye toward the question of whether uh it made sense to consider going back to what was in a policy a few years ago where we gave notice in advance of an emergency drill happening not simply at the beginning of a drill which we do now uh and after getting uh uh opinion from the administration including uh Mr vales the determination was made that we were going to leave the policy as it so that will not be proceeding forward but that was discussed yeah so I'll just pick up right into our policy uh meeting report we met uh on April 16th uh and uh we have put forward five policies tonight that are going to be voted on for second read so I just want to go over quickly what it is that we're changing in the policy book tonight uh we have a few that are sort of quickies policy 8462 reporting missing children and policy 8320 Personnel records are both uh just being updated in light of uh changes to the law and upon the recommendation of our vendor stuss Esme uh policy 34213 postnatal accommodations that's a small change we're making just to make sure the language in there is uh updated to be more inclusive as far as gender neutrality uh the two big ones we have policy 50 512 harassment intimidation and bullying uh this is a major change that we're making as discussed last time with regard to how HIV complaints are investigated right now uh under a version of the policy we adopted last year every single HIV complaint is being fully investigated up to the superintendent level uh feedback has been that that may be Overkill as far as not finding additional HIV cases but doing a whole lot more work uh which is over taxing uh so what we're going to do is move to the other version of the proposed policy language which allows for an initial determination by the principal before we go to a full investigation uh we made a local change in this policy in requiring that every month we're going to get a report uh broken down by each School building and by any demographic uh information available of which reports were brought to the principal and uh turned down at that level the other policy is 2418 Section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act that's doing two things we've refined language here in detailing specifically who should be part of the 504 team that makes a determination on whether a child needs that 504 plan and saying specifically that the teacher who participates need to actually be someone who works with the student in that particular area the other piece uh is that uh we have decided to put in place timelines that go above and beyond what the uh actual Law requires for when a 504 plan is done and giving more clarity for parents um so that's being put in place there was Community feedback regarding some lack of clarity in the language and it being uh slightly misleading as far as what our initial 20-day period was so we've made a um a a clerical change here just to clarify that uh where before Section 3 evaluation had we were proposing the language uh will hold will'll contact the parent within 20 calendar days now it says we'll hold a planning meeting with the parents which was the initial intent so our second read will be approving that uh editorial change there are three policies up for first read tonight as well uh these are implementing uh changes that uh Strauss asme has recommended in light of an expansion in New Jersey Law over uh the list of protected categories of individuals uh that's policy the uh 1530 equal opportunity equal employment opportunities 1550 Equal Employment anti-discrimination Practices and 3211 code of ethics there's some uh small changes to the language in there as well in light of U uh changes in the law since the last time they were put through uh we had a few discussions again I'd encourage folks to go to our committee page on the website where all these um minutes are there we have a lot of information there but we'll note briefly we discussed uh first of all the review that the district has of regulations we are behind in adopting a lot of regulations that are needed to implement our policies uh and that uh has been an issue that we've been behind on so number one the district is committing to taking a few uh days over the next few months to have regulation writing parties try to bash large numbers of these out we've also floated though the uh considering changing our policy on policies to uh actually have a timeline requiring how long from when a new policy is issued that requires a regulation to having that regulation issued so that's going to be up for further discussion we've also sent out uh consideration for revisions that might be necessary for policy 6220 on budget preparation on 1330 the evaluation of the school district administrator and on 9180 School volunteers those have been um sent out to committees and when we get feedback we'll take a look any questions all right okay so um curriculum and instruction committee we met on April 18th with board members Callahan dval Wilson and I um then from the district we had Miss uh Miss Bodner Dr karea and Miss weel um we started out with a the presentation on the Perkins Grant review and considerations which board member valani um mentioned already miss pario from the district gave us some background to explain the funding behind the TB production program at CHS and offered an alternative way to fund and continue to grow the program um the compliance cost to maintain the grant the Perkins grant part of it would be would exceed our budget and staff capabilities so um they've come up with a more cost-effective plan that would require less than $99,000 for the next academic school year our current teaching staff will be visiting other schools um their TV production programs that are not funded through the Perkins grants and this will allow them to gather some best practices um in that realm and allow them to enhance our curriculum and the availability for internships associated with the TV production program too um we talked about the equity audit Fergus Rec recommendations and Affinity spaces for students one of the recommendations of the equity audit is to provide Affinity spaces for a bipox students across School levels Miss wble has been working with Miss Hicks on this and they're currently um developing a framework for Affinity groups so if students would like to start one they'll have an option of using an existing structure to build upon this is like with norms and agreements a mission Etc as an option uh they're also looking for leaders for the leaders of current Affinity groups there are 15 at the high school Alone um but they're looking at the leaders to join forces and to share ideas about what's working in their individual groups um we talked mostly about students but we did touch upon staff too and there are Affinity groups in schools for staff there's one at Seth Boyen and one at CHS then we received updates on other ongoing cni topics such as inrs schools are finishing up their final round of inrs meetings Dr kareah is pulling together the data looking for Trends and she's collecting feedback from assistant principles on the new inrs process and the handbook um she'll create a survey too for parents who went through the process to get their feedback and now that the inrs framework is consistent across the schools she's ready to create an FAQ for parents that will live on the website the then we went to gifted and talented the N naglieri test will be completed by the end of the month for first third and fifth graders Dr CA will organize the data and compile it for parents the next round of Assessments will take place in the fall and at that point all K5 students will have been uh screened um staff members from the district attended the New Jersey Association for gifted students conference and they're debriefing and creating next steps um we did touch on Freshman Academy which Dr Gilbert has already discussed and I'll just add that they're looking to name Miss Cabrera The Freshman assistant principal for next year who will oversee the Freshman Academy um we also talked about the budget even though there are no new budget items for this month board members wanted to hear more about the implications of the budget shortfall for next year um the district admin really know shared that they're more so focused on how they'll be able to use the available funds for next year and that classrooms won't necessarily look any different um fortunately many of the supplies are reusable from year to year such as books that have already been purchased and math manipulatives the types of supplies that are often replaced from year to year Miss Bodner explained um were are more so like um consumable items like CH chart paper uh dry erase markers consumable workbooks like for math things like that and they're also reviewing some cost savings from Tech tools that have low usage such as canvas at the elementary school level and looking at those that are high cost and low efficiency to see if they other um better and cheaper options out there in new business um we learned that the job postings for summer school are out parents will be getting a letter to sign up for summer school by the end of the month there was a question about high impact tutoring grants and whether the district received received any feedback after being denied two years in a row um but the district has not um maple wood shop is coming to the schools and teachers will be trained after State Testing we talked about chronic absenteeism which board member Callahan touched on too um but they are looking the curriculum team is looking to make attendance a more intentional part of the inrs process um and looking at personal cases too like just beyond the numbers like what's really going on in students lives um and lastly Miss Bean uh math k math system supervisor will be reminding current fifth grade um parents Guardians how to select their middle school math courses in power school and we discussed the policies that board member Meyer mentioned that are cnii related and that are up for review review and vote any questions um it's a crossover um we were talking about the Perkins Grant and the Production Studio I think it would be great to have on ff's agenda something that we discussed which was trying to rent it out and make money because I'm always thinking about money how we're going to make more money and that I've been in that studio it really is amazing and there are a lot of film and TV Professionals in Soma that are struggling right now to like create content to get deals and they could be using that studio to keep their craft going and so one thing that Miss Bodner said she would do would look into maybe something like you can put on fft look into a way to monetize that space and rent it out um because it's not being used I think to capacity and we can be making money from it [Music] yeah all right I think I'll move on to the action portion of her meeting thank you Trustees for your consideration tonight we sorry can we sever resolution 4597 F so normally people ask for the sing I'm sorry which motion which resolution 4597 f 4597 f it's just the just confirming it's the budget right yeah adoption of 2024 25 school budget and tax levy 4597 F trust for your consideration tonight I have resolutions 4594 d465 can I get a first second I mean can I get a second it's slate sorry thank you are there any other requests to sever which one are you looking at right now so we're looking all the all the resolutions except for 4597 f so that's up for discussion now yes all [Applause] right all right sure discussion discussion right now no we're discussing all the resolutions yeah so this is everything else not the budget right go ahead um I just want to say you know um that I'm really happy that we are passing resolution 4605 that's the shared services agreement for the greenway project um and to I want to shout out Deb ble no she's not here she's probably sleeping now um but I do really appreciate all the work that she and the township has done I'm not going to reiterate all the things that she said um but you know being on fft last year it was something that was a priority for us um and it just shows the power of partnership when it comes to the board being able to work with our our towns um to improve um to improve our society and this is going to be a great improvement from a pedestrian standpoint bike safety walkability and so I'm just happy that we're finally getting to putting this forward thank you I guess I wanted to add um we are very much happy to be in partnership with the community leaders um but one thing we really want to stress is that much of this work should start with the town leaders working with the school district because you know the the the Dr Taylor and the ba should be the ones doing the touring of facilities to understand what the greenway would be and that didn't occur so I think one thing I want to stress for future reference not for this we're going to pass this but for the future I really want to stress that town leaders reach out to the school district so that they can bring it to the board and then we can make a decision sorry I just have to because it was brought to us in municip Partnerships and it was brought to Dr Taylor we happened to be in Municipal Partnerships but it was presented by the town leaders to Dr Taylor and you heard that Dr Taylor and Mr Burnside um had attended site visit so it wasn't something that was board driven but it came to be in a municipal Partnerships committee and I think it's something that we all you know now there's new people on the municipal Partnerships committee and you both are part of this too so we should be celebrating that we are going to be beautifying our towns um taxpayers want to see the results of all the money that we spend and being able to create such a valuable resource is going to make a huge impact on this community so I'm very excited about what we're going to do tonight really I'll just say I have the meeting minutes right here and the site visit did not include Dr Taylor or the ba so I just want to ined but that doesn't that's the point they were invited but they were not there so I just want to lift that up um I I think we all share an excitement around the greenway project I think um you know as board me member Engle pointed out earlier there's been we've certainly got some public speaks about it we've gotten some emails about it um I think part of the frustration potentially stem from this intimation that it wasn't being prioritized or wasn't being taken seriously um and that um you know I think Dr telesford pointed out um I think has reflected in the minutes in Municipal partnership that we were taking it seriously that things were moving forward that we had communicated clearly that it would be on the agenda um and unfortunately I don't think those things were communicated clearly with other stakeholders um but I do just want to stamp that there there was a lot of enthusiasm and excitement about it even though there was transitions around who was on Municipal Partnerships um as as Dr teser pointed out there there was just other priorities that we had um but excited nonetheless that we're able to um hopefully move forward and pass it tonight right roll call Board member Callahan of the budget correct yes board member dval Wilson yes board member eer yes board member gford yes board member Meyer yes board member sacka Gable yes yes board president telesford yes board member V Lani yes board member Whit letter yes motion's passed next up is 45 97f can I get a second second now in discussion forol the money yeah I know we had some uh people walk over and say how easy it is to not pass the budget and how chill it is to ignore it and throw it back right at the district so that they come back with something better I think we need to be a little more realistic about what really happens if we don't vote for the budget it'll go directly to the county business office who will force us to have a meeting we don't have a choice they will force us to have a meeting and ask us to pass it again they will look at it if it seems reasonable they will they will pass it on our behalf at that point we lose control whatever little control we have on the budget is gone so please don't take this as a very trivial thing where you know just to show 20 people who walked up and complained about the budget I'm going to say vote no on it voting no is a big deal so think before you what all right anyone have any questions or um I would like some clarification on that please on what aun said Thank you you'll be compelled to have a meeting um right away and you already submitted this as the preliminary budget so there's relatively minor tweaks to it um you do have to pass a balance Buton budget obviously things change as you spend next year and you reallocate um but going into next year you cannot proceed without a balanced budget so in all honesty you'll probably be forced to meet until you pass a balanced budget the defeated budget mechanisms don't really exist anymore because you do not submit your budget to the voters to vote on an increase in tax levy so typically if there's any concerns about a budget it's usually to reduce the taxes in districts it's not to you're already cap so there's no nothing to reduce at this point all right guess we'll go to vote this is this is is the discussion portion discussion yeah sure I'll jump into for a second um so I I you know I I hate this budget this is awful to look at uh and the situation that we're in is really awful uh and we look at the number of uh expenditures and the things that had increased uh some of them were easier to forecast than others the one that's probably easiest to forecast is par professional costs cuz the line is looking directly like this for a few years but it's also one of the toughest to actually do anything about um you know there's a lot of folks that have talked about the timeline that we should be looking at for preparing a budget and uh we've heard from the board has heard from a lot of folks in the past few weeks that have talked about look you ought to be looking at this budget starting in November if not earlier uh and you know I wasn't on the board November I'd love to make sure that going forward we are uh we have a a great calendar for doing this um you know I'll point out that uh for variety of reasons uh our board and District had a very tumultuous time starting in November uh which is part of why we are where we are um you know in last month we uh looked at this preliminary budget and it was after having a number of conversations in committee with all board members having chances to speak to uh the superintendent the business administrator and we came uh last month and we had a unanimous vote to move forward with the preliminary budget and that was tough uh I think it was also really notable that everyone here at the dis um had some buyin and said we are facing some really really tough choices uh and we're all facing them together uh and we all have some some skin in the game and that's tough and everyone probably had some political flak from that in addition to just having trouble sleeping at night knowing what's on the table with the riffs with the cuts across the board um everyone has to vote their conscience that's why we're all here but um it is you know we can be upset about uh misgivings we have with the process and the circumstances that got us here and that's different I think from misgivings with the numbers we have um and unless there are proposals here tonight for things we'd like to see change uh and of different numbers in this budget I think you know we do have an obligation to move forward and then once we are here then we should make a plan for the budgeting process for next year that's meeting everyone's needs and addressing the frustrations they may have with this process um you know I'm looking at this the cost center analysis between this year and last year and I wish that we could share it with everyone and I know the reasons why the U Administration has determined we can't yet but you know it's important for the the public when they do see it to know um are there Cuts in Arts and Music yeah there are as we discussed is a 35% cut in a couple areas here um if you look at this budget you know I have the it's colorcoded with changes it's a sea of of red um you unfortunately you know Arts and Music does not pop out because we've had to make cuts across the board and there's a lot of areas of much more you know core parts of our instruction and look Arts and Music I mean they saved me through High School um but let's understand there are a lot of parts of our district that have major Cuts uh and I am hopeful that um Dr Gilbert's you know work with everyone in the district and hearing you know what can you afford what can you afford to give in this and that area I hope it works because we don't have another option here unless we say okay we're going to buy a lot more supplies and we're going to riff you know six 10 more teachers um so this is this is a tough decision uh I'm not happy to make it but I think this is the tough part of uh the board being given the information that we have in having to make a decision so if anyone does have material things of of ways that we can make this better I'd love to hear them um but that's that's where I am just want to ask Mr Burnside one question when do you start your budget process I started in uh September end of September beginning of October I did try to start at the beginning of September one time but that was a bad idea is that's when school starts um so I'm going to try to make this quick um you know I think if there's one thing I think we can all agree on not just this board but the community I mean the the financial crisis that we find ourselves in is absolutely devastating on many levels um you know taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being spent and feel confident that it's having the most positive impact on our students um and you know I think we've all said it in some way shape or form there's no easy way around this situation um we are facing a riff that will impact the fundamental aspect to educating our students it's teaching and learning um it really has been devastating to see the year-over-year cuts across all departments science math the Arts um you know thank you to all the students parents that showed up tonight um and emailed over the recent weeks but whether that's textbooks supplies it's it is actually oftentimes the little things that have a profound impact on the experiences of our students um and you know you're right this is not this is not a a good situation to be in I I think I mean quite frankly I I have a little bit of a different view of it like we aren't supposed to vote because we like like or don't like a budget right like we're not the ones operating in the schools um it's not about that it it is about um you know the vo vote boils down to confidence in the process and regardless of whatever situation in whether we're up we're even we're down um and you know that all the stakeholders board members staff students community members alike receive the transparency they deserve and um you know it just uh I think at this Point we've all kind of voiced our thoughts and at at this point I think we just agreed to disagree that we view this a little bit differently um and that's all I have to say thank you I don't have much more to oh sorry can I um I'm it's late I know we need to wrap this up the only last thing I'll say is to to board member Meyer's point I I personally think that we should should actually re-evaluate um the cuts across the different departments I think that it shouldn't be the same for all I think every department is a little bit different and that there needs to be deeper analysis of um of of those cuts I don't I don't know what the context was of for a lot of things I still need a lot of context and everybody is different with how they look at data and how they evaluate I'm not saying I don't have information what I'm saying is I need additional contexts and my my thought process when it comes to the Departments is that some of these Cuts might not all need to be the exact same percentage um and I don't have enough information because we haven't had enough conversations to even know to feel confident that 35% in every Department makes sense so that's that's one of a number of challenges that I have and if that means we had to come back and look at it again I mean the community voted us to do our due diligence uh we sacrifice a lot of our time to do this role and if I have to roll up my sleeves and look at something again so be it right just really briefly to that point you know I um I hear what you're saying that it it I think there's an open question that I would be interested to hear the district's response to as far as what the rationale was and if they felt there was a solid pedagogical rationale to making this cut in a way that was uh looked at you know evenly across departments I'll also note you know there was mentioned earlier uh about things having been received last night and it's true the district has pushed out many different versions of our final documents as changes were made I mean Dr Gilbert has worked really hard across the board to reduce the number of staff that are going to have to be uh uh riffed and number of positions that are going to have to be closed off overall and so we have gotten different numbers but we've had the bulk of this and the bones of this for a month and a half uh we've had meetings and discussions and opportunities for discussions about this so you know well I say and I I stand by you know if there's a material change that someone is proposing that we make to these numbers it's going to make this better we should do it you know as far as deciding we should we should take a deeper dive and kind of dig in and do more analysis we could easily do analysis for a whole year but we've got to pass a budget um and that's where we are right now and and just to add to the fact that we did spend time looking at some of the analysis I mean you know obviously we can't do any more than what we normally do but don't forget I mean we the board as you know as as the organization we we said no to a new website know we saved money there we said no we we asked them to reduce by a large chunk the tech Lee initiative so that's you know that is like almost a million dollars there which corresponds to about $230,000 in payments and that's like about I don't know maybe four five staff so it's not like we have not suggested some deep Dives uh can we do more I'm sure we can but then at some point there diminishing returns to you know how long you'll spend on on doing this so we here I mean nobody nobody's certain nobody likes doing this but we have to and I'll just add that looking at the questions that have come from board members about certain aspects of the budget when you see the answer that's given it's not just I made a cut there is a a long paragraph that describes each of the parts in pieces that are connected and interconnected to that one choice because it's not just a simple choice of okay I'm just going to flip this lever they're not levers it is I looked at this position or I looked at this area of the budget I looked at how can we I guess improvise or change things that we're doing or are we are are we are these parts of our budget where for instance we have I guess in Hidden FTE we're seeing that level of deep analysis that they're doing um and we've and we've heard that and with every question that we have or concerns from board members you see that with every choice they make there is a deep thought process that goes with every decision anyone have any more comments I guess I'll just have to make this one comment and then I don't really want to say anything but I feel like I have to because you know you're right we did have a ton of fall of questions after the last budget hearing I'm looking here I have a list of at least 15 questions that were emailed to fft and to um Administration I have an email chain I just forwarded to you will I followed up at least five times asking for those questions to be added to the budget tracker asking for those questions to be answered that never occurred I only asked a few questions tonight because at this point if they weren't already answered and we got a budget presentation at 6:00 p.m. last night I was up till midnight trying to review it tried to do what I could today sent some of the questions of which were supposed to be addressed in the presentation and that didn't happen either so yeah there's a lot of outstanding questions um and I just forward it to you and maybe you know the people in fft who've been who've been privy to these direct conversations I'd love for you to walk through them and answer them for me because otherwise we're sitting here and we're voting on something that we don't have all the information on and I'm I'm just sorry I'm getting a little um animated about it at this point like I've made my decision so I'm personally ready to vote because I don't want to go back and forth with people but this idea that all of our questions have been answered is not true again I will stress this idea that information is being siloed by committees is not true information being siloed about the budget is not true all the information that board members get in the fft committee goes to every single board member immediately after and I credit board member V lamani for taking all those meeting minutes and then saying here the meeting minutes send it out to everybody for any update here's information to everybody and he's been doing that over and over again so I will have to gently push back on this idea that there is a silo of information that board members are locked out of everyone is getting this information um I think it's it's clear this isn't um this is a challenge for all of us right no one's enthusiastic about this challenge um there's certainly things and questions that that might remain but I also I just want to uplift too that the district has done a lot of work and in fact one thing that I thought was unique and something as a newer board member that I I was told wasn't something that was common practice was also that um Mr Burns I did provide office hours at one point I believe after the preliminary budget had been been passed to that board members could make appointments they could ask questions one to one um and I thought that was a step in the right direction whether or not board members chose to use that time that was afforded to them to meet onetoone with uh our our business administrator I can't speak to um but I think that would have also been an opportunity to ask questions that perhaps were were on your mind or not getting answered um so I just want to uplift that that was something unique that did happen during this process that I thought was helpful to sharing um information and getting questions answered as well I do think that was great it was 24 hours I had 24 hours notice and I work full-time and sometimes just hard to turn on a dime didn't mean to rhyme um but yeah I think that that should be a best practice but I think maybe it could be more structured and give us more lead time um because our schedules just aren't always as easy to just cancel everything and then be able to Pivot for an hour the next day thank you all right let's just go to vote board member Whit letter no board member VOD lamman yes board president telesford yes board member sacka Gable yes board member Meyer yes board member gford no board member aert no board member dval Wilson no board member Callahan yes motion passes all right we'll move on to ours I'm sorry I've got two hand carries sorry hand carries there we go yes I've got 4606 and 4607 sh [Applause] I should have F no for Resolutions 460 6 and 4607 can I get a second Mr Meer thank you we are in discussion Dr tford could you read 4606 into record please okay whereas the Acting Superintendent has provided a recommendation to the Board of Education regarding the construction easement agreement with 7 Parker Avenue West urban renewal LLC for the greenway area to facilitate construction access whereas the construction easement agreement is deemed essential to ensure smooth construction operations and timely completion of the project whereas the Board of Education recognizes the importance of maintaining positive relationships with stakeholders involved in Community Development initiatives therefore be it resolved that the Board of Education improved the construction e agreement with seven Parker seven Parker West urban renewal LLC any comments questions for member of bamani just so that people have no confusion about what this really is this is the greenway project this is the easement we're providing to everyone else to kind of do that so we passed one portion of it up front that was a that was an agreement with uh the the contractor and this is the easement the two parts together and this gets it done so you know hopefully no more you know historical please for agreement project correct just reverse that the first one was with the town this one is the construction easement the first one was with the town we're very happy we're very happy to be you know uh positive relationship with Maplewood stakeholders and this one is with the the company thank you I just also want to highlight that it is now April 26 it's after 12 and it is still before May 15th and so with this vote today we will make the deadline all right up for a vote board member Callan yes board member dval Wilson yes board member eert yes board member gford yes board member Meyer yes board member saki Gable yes board president telesford yes board member vman yes board member Whit letter yes motion passes that that was for 4606 and 4607 that was for both all right on hearing of individual and delegations are there any new names Henry satone it's late so I don't want to take a lot of time but um yeah it's 12:30 um I'm here on behalf of my son he's 11 he didn't want to come down cuz he said he didn't want to disgrace himself with yet more public speaking because he does enough at school so I'm going to speak for him um his laptop has been Chromebook has been turned in 13 times for repair and come back and then it breaks like the next day or even in the last time it broke within an hour I did some research online these Chromebooks have problems internally the Wi-Fi cards come loose and they short out so you can software reset them or whatever the guys are doing and they work and as soon as the kid moves the Chromebook or jostles it or anything they go back to not functional so we need to save money by just buying another Chromebook and there's a number of kids in this situation at songs and they do not have Replacements they're begging from teachers sometimes a teacher has one that they've kept because a kid left the district or something and they can give it to them in class but they don't have one to take home so you know it would be really great if we could get a Chromebook the second thing on the solar panels you can start the um stuff on the I would say go to a company and talk to them now and ask them what you need you know because you can start some of the project on your um parking lots I agree if you're doing roof work you cannot install solar panels I have them on my house and they didn't come on until after we put the new roof on because you're just going to have to take them off to repair the roof anyway so nobody's going to do that project but my wife's company over at River terminal they have tons of solar panels and they make a fortune off to things thank you thank you all right now we move on to new business anyone who new in [Music] business the money so I from what I understand all new business be made as a motion and then you know I I that's what I understand and then voted on or withdrawn unless you just want to discuss all right let me discuss this can we change the public speaks policy where all the out of town voters who come in to talk are moved on to the non-agenda portion of public speaks which is basically the second public speaks that is a proposal I have obviously I don't expect a decision right now we can talk about this in policy we can wait for this and and then do that so this was just a yeah this this has to go through policy because um your other business is for emergent M matters only this would not qualify okay I think yeah but but I could actually this is a question about new business I I wait two more minutes okay you want to go die so I could so if I wanted to bring up new business which is emergent I mean this is as far as I'm concerned the most important thing so I bring it up and I could always withdraw it correct after you convince me that it'll be discussed in committee H how do we handle this as Robert rules how to how to prioritize your public speaks or how to change your new business new business it's in your bylaws and you have a bylaw that speaks to the topics that the board has permitted to be addressed during new business so you would go through the policy bylaw amendment process which is two meetings to change a byw policy and so it would you would look at that to change it so so in the new business can I bring up new business of changing the new business policy is it emergent it is absolutely emerging emergency I I'm willing to pass a motion on it right now I think we can move that to the policy committee have that discussion there thanks anyone else all right the Board of Education will meet in public session on Thursday May 9th 2024 at 6:30 p.m. in the district meeting room at 5:25 Academy Street in Maple New Jersey immediately following the opening of public session the board will move to our go into close session in the superintendent's office at 5:25 Academy Street at map Maple New Jersey as well as using an online video conference platform to discuss Personnel matters with the attorney client privilege legal negotiations and other matters that may arise and requir discussion to be announced at a later date immediately following the closed session the Board of Education will meet in public session at 7:30 p.m. for an or an organizational staff renewal meeting in the district meeting room at 525 Academy Street in Maple New Jersey in person and utilizing an online video conference platform which will include hearing of individuals the community can view the meeting by following the steps which will be listed on the agenda if there are members of the community who would like to attend the meeting in person please note that mask and social distancing are optional in accordance with the guidance received from the local do do and the CDC action will be taken the Board of Education will meet in public session on Thursday May 30th at 6:30 p.m. in the district meeting room at 525 Academy Street in Maple New Jersey immediately following the opening of public session the board will move to go into closed session in the superintendent's office at 525 Academy Street in Maple New Jersey as well as using an online video conference platform to discuss Personnel matters with attorney client privilege legal negotiations and other matters that may arise and require discussion to be announced at a later date immediately following the Clos session the Board of Education will meet in public session estimated to be at 7:30 in the district meeting room at 525 Academy Street in Maple New Jersey in person utilizing an online video conference platform which will include hearing of individuals the community can view meeting by following the steps which will be listed on the agenda if there are members of the community who would like to attend the meeting in person please note that masks and social distancing are optional in accordance with the guidance received for the from the local do and the CDC action will be taken with that I'd like to make a motion to adjourn second all in favor I and we are adjourning at 12:34 a.m. good night everyone