her good evening everyone call the me order uh yes good evening everybody Welcome to the public hearing for the Board of Education fiscal year 25 tentative budget um if everybody would please rise for the flag salute I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act I wish to announce that the New Jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon notices announcing the date time and place for the special meeting were sent to All concerned individuals associations and sent to Union County local Source in accordance with chapter 231 of public law 1975 for the roll call Mr cologne here Mr Cho here councilman migar here Council uh woman Allen here and mayor Fagan is attempting to get onto the link virtually so we have been going back and forth so I anticipate that she will be here um that's it I'll turn it over back over to our acting chair Mr Cho uh thank you Mr Jess I think I think the first item on the agenda is a presentation of the school budget uh by superintendent huff and Mr J all right good evening and welcome I'd like to welcome the board of school estimates the Board of Education some viewers in the audience and some viewers at home we are here to present our annual budget this is for fiscal year 2425 before I get started with the presentation I'd like to uh give many thanks to many many people this is a major undertaking as one of the things we do in the operation of our school district and it takes many many months to get to this point and I'd like to thank all of the administrators all 32 supervisors principles assistant principles central office staff administrators as well and certainly Miss Kathy Sno and Derk Jess in the business office were doing a wonderful job with this budget we know the challenges that we face more and more each and every year I'd like to thank the operations committee for their questions their Ness their thoughtfulness they really hold us to account and we have a shared value of putting the best possible product and experience for our children in the classrooms and thank you again to the board of education for your support always for what we do and and supporting the partnership of the community the schools and the Board of Ed so with that when we talk about Summit public schools and the budget before I even get to this slide I want to just just remind people that um the budget process takes as I mentioned before many many months we start back in November and we take our uh budget submissions from all of our administrators departments principles and we sit down and meet with them each and every one of them individ individually in December and January Eric Jaz Kathy Sno and myself and we talk about what the submission is for and what it's aligned for so things other than facilities or supplies or equipment we always make sure that we keep our goals our board goals and our vision aligned with what our budget is it's a shared belief and our budget has to support the mission and the goals of of summit public schools and that's what we do each and every year and that's what takes us to this point Summit Public Schools a little bit about us and the community as you know we're very highly ranked School District we enjoy being ranked up in the top 10 top 20 consistently among schools among school districts and a shout out to Lincoln hub covered this year in US News and world number one ranking Elementary School in the state of New Jersey and as nice as that all is we do not hang our hat on rankings we have a very diverse student population we teach the whole child but it's nice to celebrate when we get recognized and notice and the consistency is an important thing and we all know the Summit Community the summit public schools and the Summit Community go hand inand is one of the best places to live in New Jersey that's why we have so many families move here to take advantage of our Public Schools highly qualified teachers we understand and we know that we must put the best the very brightest and best teachers in front of our children that's what's going to give them the summit experience we recruit the highest and most talented teachers we can in the area and once they're in we have a a professional development regiment to keep them here and retain them as best we can especially our novice teachers our first year teachers for the first two years they go through a professional development um regiment to support them and to understand what it is to teach our curriculum here in Summit public schools and of course our commitment to Excellence what makes us Summit so many things make us Summit we know we have we live and go to school in a great place Summit Public Schools is committed to Excellence there's nothing here in Summit public schools that is going to be staying status quo we are always looking to take the next step towards the future to provide our kids with what they need to be successful when they leave here after the kada2 experience as I mentioned shared values and beliefs our goal is our our budget is developed and created to align with our goals and as you may know we're in the middle of a major steam initiative uh which started a couple of years ago in the elementary schools and we are now scaffolding up with some new curriculum new programming at the middle school we're really excited we hope to kick off the Middle School portion of our steam initiative at the beginning of the 2425 school year and you will see some staffing um in this budget that's going to reflect that steam initiative at the middle level we're still in the midst of our social emotional wellness and our mental health and wellness initiative and when we talk about this we are providing supports programming and services to all stakeholders not just students staff this year we embarked on a major Initiative for staffed for taking advantage of Health and Wellness webinars uh a biometric screenings and the like so we really invested our time and energy into taking care of all stakeholders I'm very proud to say we are going to take on our first summit Wellness Symposium in April and I encourage everyone to take a look at the announcement that went out today it's April 10th and it's a CommunityWide event which is going to have be for parents to come out and learn tricks strategies and tips to take care of their children in this challenging world and their mental health and wellness please look for that an announcement that you do have to register and we look for forward to people coming out and of course we know we have a diverse population of both students and staff and we pride ourselves on that we make sure that we take care of the inclusion and belonging for everyone in our school [Music] community so every year we get multiple staff requests and as it becomes increasingly harder to um Grant all those requests about 84% of our budget is salary and benefits so when it comes to Staffing it's a big portion of our budget every year you'll hear Mr Jess talk more about that but you see we are getting the two Middle School steam teachers aligned with our initiative to kick off the program at the middle level this year and we also have one Elementary School teacher in the classroom teacher in the budget and one Elementary special education teacher in the budget when it comes to positions like that they are based on either enrollment or increased IEP students with who need Services okay special education students many times that's out of our control uh we'll often have students move in prior to the school year and we try to maintain class size according to policy and guidelines um so we do a really good job of that enrollment has been going up and there's nowhere there's no way to predict where and when students will move in at any given grade level at any given school so those last two um teaching positions are based on that and our strengths as a district and this is my favorite slide I love updating this every year and you can take a look at academic rigor we're excited to um launch a new Elementary Ela program grades three to five next year it's around the the concept of Science of reading which we now know is the best way for our students be to be become good readers um we piloted it in two schools this year and we're going to roll it out all grades three to five next year we are adding new AP courses namely geography and a different way to take some AP Physics uh we have a whole list of honors courses as you know and last board meeting we celebrated 42 National Merit Scholars which is really astonishing and that's another Testament to the wonderful teachers that we have in the classroom who can challenge even our our brightest students to achieve and Excel of course we mentioned the district steam initiative and we also have a multi-tiered systems of support which is our intervention and enrichment initiatives to meet kids where they are in their learning and finally we're going to take on a full inclusion pilot in one of our elementary schools next year taking advantage of a grant where we're going to have a co- teing setting with a special education teacher a general education teacher in the same classroom teaching all children which is best practice right now and we're looking forward and very excited to take that on the next two columns speak for themselves everyone knows the accolades in our Athletics and co-curriculars over 30 Varsity Sports we have over 900 students participating in our Athletics and co-curriculars that's just amazing and you can see in the past three years how competitive and successful we've been with six state championships nine sectional championships Five County championships nine League championships and when he comes to the Arts and theater I don't know if there's anybody better if anybody's attended the fall play this the spring musical they're just wonderful each and every time Awards in Music Awards in speech and debate over 500 kids take advantage and participate in those wonderful programs these things up here make Summit Public Schools what it is today and that's why there is no status quo and we continue to build a budget to support our goals our mission and allow our kids these opportunities each and every year so that when they leave Summit Public Schools they're among they're among the best out there in the world today and with that I'm going to turn it over to Mr Jess if everybody gives me just a moment the mayor just texted me and said she's waiting to get in so let me see what I can do here all right so we're while we're waiting let's move on so is uh as Mr Huff mentioned all the wonderful things of where all of our money goes this is how our money comes into the district and how it shakes out so the very first line item you see for all of our revenues we is our state aid and this year we received $66,000 more in state aid so we're going from 4.7 million to 5.3 million and while we're thankful that we receive state aid and we're not one of the S2 districts which five years ago the state passed S2 which basically put districts against each other and said you guys have enough money so you're good we're going to continue to fund you but you guys over here have received too much money so now we're going to start to take money away from you and so there are many districts 40 districts maybe 50 districts within the state who every year for the past five years have had money taken away from them and they've had to cut programs they've had to cut staff we're fortunate that we're not one of those why because we're still according to the state under adequacy and that means we should continue to get some more state aid every year to help us the second line item is our uh extraordinary Aid and what extraordinary Aid is is that is money the district gets back that's tied directly to to special education tuition for students that we send out of District so when we send a special education child out of District if their tuition exceeds $55,000 the district gets back a portion of the amount that exceeds $55,000 so if we have a student it's costing them $100,000 the difference is the 45 we get probably 60% back of that $45,000 the state never gives 100% so we get $45,000 we get 60% of the 45,000 back and that's what makes up our extraordinary Aid which we count on every year the next line item is semi that is also money we get back from the state and that is special education Medicare program so again children that are special needs that get additional services for PT for OT for speech and things like that the district meets with them meets with their parents goes through a plan with the parents the parents sign off there's a couple of meetings during the school year and as those children are receiving those services the district gets money back from the state again we don't get 100% back but we do get a portion of those funds back so it's only $64,000 but it it does help the next two line items are our capital reserve and maintenance Reserve those are funds that we have in the budget that we have recouped from prior years that every year the Board of Education says we're going to put some of this money away so that we can fund future projects on our buildings we can do maintenance upkeep we can do Renovations roofs uh HVAC any type of project and so that's where that money is coming from and there are projects which are tied to that which you will see later the reason that we are using less this year is because we have fewer projects which we're going to propose to do the next line item tuition receivable those are funds that the district receives for uh our children that attend prek because parents pay to send their child children here for prek and also we receive some special education students from other school districts as well and so they pay tuition to come here based upon the programs that the children children are in the additional services that they need that depends on what their cost is and that varies whether they're getting a one to1 Aid speech counseling or whether just strict in-classroom services and so those two combined make up our special education tuition Revenue next you'll see our local tax levy which is going up $2 million which equates to a 2. 956 percentage increase and that's what we're asking from the taxpayers to help fund our budget and as you can see that's the largest portion of our budget uh the next is our fund balance so fund balance is audited funds from our prior year that we utilize to help fund the budget in the next year and for the past few years we've been fortunate we've had $2 and a half million dollars and coupled with that two and a half million has been between A1 and a half to2 million deposit into our capital and maintenance Reserve so next year because we were short on funding because of the state aid even though it went up we didn't get enough uh to help fund our budget we're going to take a million that million and a half that we would put into our Reserve account we're going to couple that with the $2.5 million that we have for fund balance to help increase that funding Gap and it's gonna we're not going to be able to put that money into the capital or maintenance Reserve at the end of this school year but we will have funds coming in from our high school HVAC project and our Middle School HVAC project through grants and that money that we're going to get back in Grants will go back to fund our Reserve accounts so while we're not putting money in this year for that we're going to have those monies coming in which we will then put into our Reserve accounts uh miscellaneous funding are um interest that we earn on our investments and also refunds that we may get for tuition payments that we've made which uh we now were now owed money back uh with regards to our interest you know with the interest rates being around 5% the district has been able to recoup a little bit more earn a little bit more interest because of the bond proceeds that we we have and also because of our general fund so that has helped us as well federal funds are our entitlement grants Title One title two title three and our idea funds Ida funds are federal funds specifically for special education title three are for our bilingual ESL population title two is professional development and Title One are for our students that are at or below the poverty level that need a little extra help and so we budget the same amount every year because we're never sure whether it's going to go up or down and so we've been pretty good with getting right around the same amount that's why we have that and then the last one other state funds are nonpublic funds what I mean by non-public is these are funds which specifically go to non-public schools St Teresa's in town oakal kentplace um oratory prep and these are pass through funds which means that they don't go directly to those schools they come to us first before they can go to the non-public public and the non-public have to request usage of those funds so they have to say to the district hey we want to use x amount of dollars from this line item so that we can do whatever the board of then those come before our Board of Education who has to approve them once our Board of Education approves it then the money can pass from the state to us to those non-public and there are several categories non-public uh nursing Services transportation services speech service security services so a technology services so those are specific things that the state decided years ago they were going to fund but as a pass through if the non-public do not spend all of that money it goes back to the state we don't get to keep it we have to return it to the state and so all of those revenues together show our increase of almost $4 million or $86 million will be our budget for fiscal year 25 that we're proposing state aid so our actual state aid it was released February 29th two days after the governor's budget address which occurred on the 27th so we're receiving $5.4 million which is 6.3% of our budget exclusive of debt service and what I mean by that is our debt service is not included in the calculation of how we're funding our budget because those monies go directly to pay the debt of bonds that have been issued over the years to help fund the district's projects so because of the investing in our future bond that we did this year our debt service is increasing by $323,000 to help offset some of those payments our transportation Aid remained the same our security aid went up almost $771,000 and our biggest portion of our state aid our special education aid went up $535,000 so the $535 coupled with this almost 71 gives us our increase in state aid of $66,000 here you can see our history of state aid received going all the way back to the fiscal year 2010 school year so you can see that year we had right around $2 and A5 million doll worth of state aid and then 2010 2011 all the state aid in the district was taken away so the district got zero that year and then the state started to give us our state aid back so as you can see we started on an upward Trend which is why we're at right around the $5.4 million now but again we're still under adequacy according to the state by the tune of $2.8 million so what are the other revenues that we use well as I mentioned we have our budgeted fund balance of $4 million which is audited excess funds reserve for taxpayer relief in our next year budget we have the tuition from our districts as I mentioned from special ed in-house programs and from our prek the local tax levy of 73 million and then the withdrawal of capital reserve so you'll see here capital reserve we're going to take out $650,000 which is going to go towards High School Paving to renovate the handicap ramp here uh some repair of bathrooms the uh renovation of the Jefferson School playground we did get a grant from the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs in the amount of $125,000 for that playground and so to do it right we're putting in another 350 to make sure that it's a great playground and it's going to Encompass a rubberized play surface new drainage allinclusive play equipment for every child plus renovated of a basketball court and because now they have a one hoop half court we're making it a full basketball court now so the kids will have be able to play full games and everything there um and then also doing some repair work and purchasing new doors for the district on a districtwide basis maintenance Reserve we have our architect and engineer fees because the fees here are directly related to all these projects so that's why we budgeted here we have $100,000 which we're going to use to replace floor tile in the middle school because if you walk through the middle school it's cracked it's you know it's a little dingy so we want to start to replace that and $350,000 for upgrades here in the auditorium specifically for flooring the carpet little outdated the uh rolled up vinyl underneath the seats where you're sitting a little cracked so we're looking to really renovate that to get that nice and hopefully in future years we'll go to the lights and then to the walls as well because we did the sound this year we implemented a new sound system and so little by little we're going to turn this into get it back to the topnotch facility that it deserves to be so how are our monies being broken out of course as Mr Huff mentioned salaries $55 Million worth for every single person within our district and $17 million for our insurance and benefits and that's for our health benefits that's for our property casualty and workers compensation benefits that is for tuition reimbursement for our staff that is for for payouts when people leave the district whether it's vacation or sick whether they leave or they retire so between those two numbers 84% of our budget are fixed costs that we really can't do anything about now we go down we have almost $3 million in special education costs we have $2.6 million for supplies throughout the district we have $2.4 million for everything buildings and grounds which is all of our custodial and our maintenance supplies our capital outlay and our equipment which are the projects I mention men before plus some other uh smaller projects that are not done through our reserves our transportation cost which have skyrocketed ever since covid and one thing I don't know if people are aware of but when covid hit in all the districts shut down and students were not coming to school and staff was not coming to school the state mandated that every school district must continue to pay the transportation contractors that they were using 90% of what our contracted rate was was so even though they were not providing us a service school districts were still required to pay 90% of what our rate was back then we had a rate say of $250 for a day now that rate is almost doubled up to $450 a day and so that's why you'll see every district is looking for bus drivers they're very hard to find every District's Transportation costs have skyrocketed both for regular Ed and for special education and here in Summit we transfer special education students and we also transport uh students to the vocational school and included here is also for our Athletics and for any extracurricular activities after school as well so it's all encompassed in that number we have professional and Technical Services of 1.2 and those are for Consultants that we lose whe whether it's nursing Services speech services um uh OT and PT so those are all of our services there District administration or costs other than salary for the business office superintendent office it's in summon Central Administration $447,000 for textbook $317,000 for athletics exclusive of salaries and then our professional development and other expenses like Postage and things like that rounded out by about 157,000 so that's where we get on the expenditure side the $86 million price tag how's it broken out by Dollar 84% or 84 cents of every dollar goes to salary and benefits and our insurance $454 goes to our facilities our capital projects $518 goes for supplies textbooks professional development and our professional Technical Services and those other expenses uh $322 towards our special education tuition and the remaining $33 towards District administration transportation and Athletics overall this is how it's spent so the category of classroom instruction you you'll see $57 million that's where a bulk of the money is going directly into the classroom we've got 1.7 million for the co-curricular which is our summer school our Athletics and our extracurricular activities $1 million for our tuition our health services our Su our speech and support our child study team our guidance media staff training for our support service which is our general Administration our school administration Central and business administration and our it is 6.4 million for our transportation Security Buildings Grounds Maintenance custodial 7.9 million and then Capital outlay which is the projects that we mentioned and some smaller ones which are not included as well as some leases that we have for equipment are uh $1.4 million and again it totals the $86 million budget tax comparison year-over year for the current year our tax total tax levy was $71 million next year the to total tax levy proposed to be 73 million as I mentioned earlier change of 2.95 6% or $2.1 million and just for a comparison so you know we went back over the past 13 years or so to show where our tax increases have been so you'll see fiscal year 12 was a zero fiscal year 13 taxes actually decreased by you know 0.41% 1. 8826 the only two years where we were over 2% was fiscal year 20 with the implementation of old day kindergarten and FIS year 22 with the state implementation of their new benefits law which was supposed to save quote quote everybody money which it has yet to do um when we went back and we calculated the dollar amount a fixed to all these numbers it's $4 million so you can look at it two ways you can look at it and say hey over the past 13 years or so we've been able to save the taxpayers $4 million by not going to the 2% or going going above it with the exception of those two years on the other side you can look at it and say had we gone to 2% in all of those years or maybe more of those years we would have had more money in our tax levy now so that this year's increase wouldn't be as big and we would have been able to fund a little bit more through the years as well so you you know there's you can look at it from both sides but I just wanted to we just wanted to show a little bit of the history here for people who may not remember that realize may not have been around so last ly is we do have a a public hearing on the budget which is March 22nd the reason that we have to do it on that date is because the state has affixed the calendar which the Department of Education gives us every year saying that our public hearing must be between March 22nd and March 28th unfortunately between March 22nd and March 29th is our spring break where people are not going to be here we have board members who are not going to be here we would not be able to get a quarum on any other day other than March 22nd we did reach out to the Department of Education and said hey this is the issue we're facing can we do it on another day and after some back and forth they said no so what did we do we went to our attorney and we said hey this is our issue can we ignore the Department of Education calendar and do it on another day and after some research our attorney said no he goes and if you do you may risk the ire of the Department of Education perhaps in withholding state aid perhaps in not giving you your state aid on time they may decide hey you know what we're not going to start paying you in August we're going to start paying you in October so all these things did go into the decision on why we're having it on March 22nd at 1 pm that meeting will be held at the uh Wilson Primary Center in the conference room there and it will also be virtual as well in case we do have some board members or Bose members who can't make it we will uh likely have them join virtually but that's the main reason why we had to choose that date and it was just a freak uh calendar coexistence if you will and so that is the end of our presentation I hope we were able to provide you with some information and insight into our budget and with that I would ask the members of the Bose if they would please rejoin us at the table thank you uh superintendent huff and Mr Jess now I'll open uh floor for the those members if you have any questions or comments questions for Mr J superintendent Huff or any comments U on the presentation and the budger uh thank you board president question on the uh child prek you said that it was a revenue generator for kids that come from out of town is that right yes the $5,000 you know what I wanted to clarify on that is that you mentioned that it cost $166,000 to educate a child but you get 5,000 in tuition revenue for prek correct so every year the upon completion of our audit when that's submitted to the state the Department of Education will go through the entire audit and they will then assign what the per pupil cost is for that year and so for prek we're charging $5,000 but the State Certified tuition rate for prek is $116,000 in change okay and it's Revenue because we wouldn't charge revenue for we wouldn't charge a tuition for our in our Summit kids correct well no that is for that's for so there's two there's two separate tuitions for the prek that is for our Summit kids because they're the only children that attend our prek the other portion is for special education students that come from say Westfield or Garwood or Cranford they send here because we have a better program because our special education department does a fantastic job and so we charge them tuition based upon their needs great all right thank you for the clarification here thank you so thank you for that presentation Mr Jess you're welcome um so you had mentioned uh the Jefferson playground and the you mentioned a couple of key terms which fantastic fully accessible uh fully inclusive I really appreciate that our city has been doing that we start we're going to start that with maybe playground as well so thank you for that um can you talk a little bit about two things and I know we didn't go into detail there but um the Transportation uh the future of Transportation but also the the specific challenges you're you're seeing right now um whether that's like what specific area of transportation is is the cost increasing in and then um there was another question but if you can start with those and I'll ask one and more after that sure well with regards to Transportation we're we're seeing Transportation cost increase all across the board mainly because um bus companies really have been given free range to charge whatever they want and districts can't find drivers as bus companies can't find drivers either but when they do they're just charging exorbitant rates and if we don't have our own buses or our own drivers then unfortunately we're at their Mercy to to hire them and to utilize them now we are fortunate that we don't transport as many kids as other districts and we do have four of our own buses and um what Mr miger was referring to is we had an earlier discussion where uh the district has submitted an application to the uh Federal uh EPA for a grant to purchase electric school buses as well as to install electric charging stations and bidirectional charging stations uh we are also going to submit an application to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for the same Grant to see if we can get one and we are also one of seven districts that's going to partner with the DP as they submit for a Federal grant for the same thing and we've met with them we had a we had a video conference and they're apply the state is applying for a $50 million Grant with the uh Federal EPA and they or D or whichever one it is I don't remember and if they're successful then each district that partners with them should get right around $7 million which can be used for the purchase of electric school buses for the installation and the purchase of charging stations both regular and uh by directional as well as uh solar power and so we're hopeful that we have a one in three chance of hopefully getting some money and you know if that's the case then we'll be better for it and you know hopefully we'll be able to partner with the city on some of these initiatives well because as as the district gains access to these we can hopefully partner to help the city get access to them as well thank you and more I remember the other question was um about utilities I'm I'm referring back to the prior conversation also electric and gas yes U I don't know how big of a portion of the current budget that is but what kind of savings do you anticipate I know it's maybe a little unpredictable because it's a it's a an auction a reverse auction so uh currently we purchase our natural gas and our electricity through the aces Aces Co-op which is uh run by uh through the state and that is where a number of districts get together and Asus bids out electrical power and gas power and then passes the savings along to the school districts um we are going to move away from Asus because our contract is expiring this year and we're going to utilize educational data services who we currently utilize for the purchase of supplies because they are a state approved Co-op and they also are able to provide services for gas and electricity and what we're going to do is we're doing a reverse auction so we are going to work with them and have a live auction in which natural gas and electricity companies from all over the country are going to bid for our business and it's going to be a 30 minute auction and we're going to watch it live on screen and we're going to see how everybody does and at the end of the day we should hopefully have a rate that is less than we're currently paying now and that should hopefully save us you know tens of thousands of dollars over the next year maybe two years or so and and that's why we're trying to do it to see that we can save the most money we can by by going some of these other directions thank you you're welcome yes um this actually is um from our prior our earlier conversation if you could just articulate um the enrollment for kindergarten in both locations and how that impacts the district so um yeah go ahead so over the last several years we've seen an increase in kindergarten enrollment postco some of the private kindergartens have closed so we are probably now on track with our average class side in every grade level so I don't necessarily anticipate but it is something that we can't predict so we're pretty full we have about close to 300 or so kindergarten students this year and that tracks pretty much with the enrollment in every grade level whereas in past years we wouldn't be at 300 we be more like 250 240 and I just wanted to say um because I found it interesting that if you get 10 more kids in the Wilson neighborhood or District then where would you put those kids so we get creative if we have to have more room in Jefferson we'll move them over there if we have to turn office space into classrooms we do that um we would certainly have many contingency plans in place to make sure that we accommodate with the goal to keep class siiz guidelines as they are I don't know if you want to answer this question but would we have ever think about redistricting if we have a big influx of kids come in that maybe certain buildings couldn't um withstand or when I was my kids were little at Franklin we had trailers so I feel like we've done a lot of construction on the buildings but is there a thought how to move kids around if we do get a big influx I think if we had a situation like that we would evaluate every possible solution but right now I don't see a disproportionate growth in any one school community that would warrant having to ship students to another school at this point but again the unpredictability of where students are moving in and what grade level would dictate those decisions thank you I know it's on this we're really hogging the discussion here down at this end um the uh I know you probably do assess the programs that you that you you pilot uh you mentioned was it uh you're in the is a third year socio sorry social e emotional learning and mental well wellness and health excuse me mental health and wellness um what kind of assessment have you done on that and what is uh available for the public to see we uh assess surveys that we put out to the students as well as our staff um we get positive feedback from the programs that they're participating in it's been a board goal of ours for the last two or three years um we've added school counselors in every school we've added a mental health clinician and when we take uh student contact data logs and time that they're meeting with our clinicians and counselors we're seeing that there's a greater need so we know that the resources that we're dedicating to this initiative are there for a reason Michael yeah just um obviously familiar with this budget I'll I'll save comments for our for our Board of Education meeting that follows but but one point that I think is worth mentioning um in this forum relates to banked cap and so um we saw the proposed tax levy increase of slightly under 3% with the state level at 2% um however this budget would not trigger Bank cap as as we've discussed and so if you could just um provide information on that for for the Bose absolutely uh so because our enrollment has increased and because our health insurance premiums have increased we were able to take advantage of two adjustments that the state provides the state provides four adjustments and we this year because of our enrollment and our medical benefits we were able to take advantage of those two adjustments in our budget which helped us to increase in the revenue section where we needed to but also stay away from utilizing Bank cap and so we don't have to use any Bank cap which is bankamp is money between what our tax Le our proposed tax levy should be and what the district is actually charging that difference if we do not go all the way to 2% is considered banked cap and the district is then eligible to utilize those costs in the next three succeeding budgets if there is a need so we do have some Bank cap which rolled over from last year to this year which we do not have to take advantage of because of the two adjustments thank you you're welcome thank you uh Mr Jess there are any more comments or questions the members now we will open up uh for public comment does anybody have any comments on the budget seeing none uh need a motion to close public comment moved any discussion all those in favor I any opposed any extensions all right motion carries no we need a motion to assur the meeting so moved second is there any discussion on that all those in favor I any opposed any extensions and we are adjourned at 7:15 thank you yes welcome to the Board of Education special meeting for March 7th if everybody would please rise for the flag salute I pledge alance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic of nation godice in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act I wish to announce that the New Jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon notices announcing the date time in place for this special meeting were sent to All concerned individuals associations and sent to Union County local Source in accordance to chapter 231 of public law 1975 for the roll call Miss Stanton here Miss Kelly here miss ER Mr cologne here miss con vice president Justice president Cho here you have a quorum thank you Mr Jess so first item on the agenda is a discussion of the 2024 2025 annual school budget we all saw the presentation from superintendent Hub and Derek Jess so now I'll open it up if there's any questions or comments from the board this go or wait excuse before we start you want me to jump in or yeah before we start why don't we have a the uh presentation from U Mr CL is chair of the outs committee yeah so uh before we we get into this Q&A just a few things take a minute to to thank uh the uh the business office uh Derek Kathy Sarno superintendent Huff as well as the leader of the organization uh as well as the full business office team because I know that there's this is a a full effort for everyone all hands on deck um everyone worked diligently to develop tweak scrutinize cut Balance Massage uh this budget into shape anything and everything and I know all of those things were happening over the last uh few weeks and so thank you for all of that that hard work as is always the case uh the goal of our District's budget process is to arrive at a budget that is prudent and fair for our taxpayers while simultaneously supporting the educational Excellence that we expect and quite frankly demand for our students based on the the work performed by our operations Committee in overseeing this process that the budget presented and proposed this evening has successfully achieved this goal it is fiscal responsible particularly in light of a stubborn inflationary environment uh that is impacting most if not all of the discretionary expense line items that Derek reviewed uh in the presentation and so uh the lines that Beyond salary and benefits um however the budget is also uh supportive of the educational resources and the programs that will continue to Define our community as a leader in New Jersey public education and so uh given that balance our op operations committee uh recommends that this budget be approved uh by the board this evening thank you president Cho thank you Mr clone um questions comments from other board members uh Miss Kelly uh thank you and um also want TOA all the hard work I know um budget season is always really demanding so thank you to the business team and the and of course the Ops committee um just a couple of questions um when I looked at the the state aid um I thought wow well that that must be the peak of of what we'll get back but you sounded really optimistic um Mr Justin so can you just explain a bit little bit more about what under adequacy means and why you think the trend of continuing you know increase in state aid will will be received at Summit sure so so the state the there we uh the state has five six seven years ago the state coined the term adequacy and what they mean by that is every district is supposed to be funded at a level in which their Community would their students would adequately be educated and be successful in life and the the state puts a dollar figure on that amount and so what they do is when they go through their state aid calculations they take all kinds of information they take our enrollment and they give it a weight so if you are a preschool student you have one weight if you are a high school student you have a higher weight and that's how your state aid comes into play they take the excuse me the community in which we live in and they say they look at our assess valuation of all our property they look at the poverty level they look at the income level of all the residents and and all of that put together comes up with how much state aid we get whether we are above or below adequacy and um what our local fair share should be and So based upon all those formulas that the state has they're telling us that we are $2.8 million under adequacy so we would need to fund another $2.8 million of the budget in order to reach that adequacy um that should fall to the state for them to increase our state aid and over the last four five six years we have seen our state aid increases go from smaller increases to larger increases this year we receiv received $600,000 last year we received seven so even though we did get more this year because we had larger enrollment it was not as much as what our Aid was last year and so that's why I'm optimistic that they're going to continue to fund us and help to bring us up to adequacy the governor touted in his budget message that New Jersey is number one in the country in education and that's why he wants to fund the fully fund the for fora and provide districts with as much money as he can I believe that even though Governor Murphy's tenure is up this year that who which whoever our next Governor is going to be whatever party they serve they will want to continue that Trend and that's why I think our state aid will continue to go up now if it doesn't go up please don't blame me for saying it was gonna go up all right I'm just giving you my opinion okay all right so but but it is subject to who's it sounds like it is subject to who's in the governor's office that formula is subject to review so it's your opinion that we would get it but it's obviously not a guarantee a go up or that we'll get it again correct correct okay um thank you that that that's helpful the the other question um is around enrollment we we've talked a lot about enrollment being up and I just on a whole when I look at the information as of September 2023 vers 2022 we're up 35 students but but can we talk a little about dynamics of kindergarten vers you know other parts the district because we're adding two two teachers to the middle school is enrollment up in the middle school year on year the two teachers in the Middle School are strictly line to the steam initiative and the new program offerings that we're offering our children which are cascading a little bit down from the high school which will allow us to reach higher marks in certain compai programs for example in engineering courses by students uh graduate through 12th grade um so they're strictly not enrollment based they are program and board goal based the two class room teachers at the elementary room uh School are based on enrollment one of them is for enrollment General Ed the special education teacher is needed because we have more children requiring services so those are two drivers that we really are out of our control okay and the elementary school teacher is also for an elementary school that has an increased enrollment you the Elementary classroom teacher because of increased enrollment in one of our schools yes um okay thank you that that's helpful on the um steam teachers which I think it's fantastic were're investing in this initiative and and certainly like the courses I took when I was in high school and you know when I was younger are going to be different than the courses our students are taking St so with that with sort of a change in the technology and The Innovation that's used in the classroom what has the district evaluated in terms of sunsetting right so if we've got introduction of new stuff what are we all looking to take out no longer applicable just how do we balance kind of bringing in new and also reevaluating what can be um no longer you know no longer useful or superus at this point well our administrators every year take a look at student interest when they talk about elective courses not required credit courses by the state at the high school students get to choose courses if they're undersubscribed over time they will phase out um once we build certain subjects in courses like video design and TV children gravitate towards that and if it comes from other places where they're not as interested we we will not offer it anymore so that's an annual basis so how often does that happen I couldn't tell you but our principles go through that exercise every year right no but specifically to the two new teachers you're adding for steam have you done that evaluation and what would be again there has to be so at the middle school there's a big change so we're changing our cycle courses from four times a year to six times a year so the master schedule is changing right now as we currently speak students are selecting what they're interested in so we there's right now um our principls went through the exercise of eliminating or rebranding some of the courses and which courses are we going to add new and it's not a one time situation so after we launch this program in the Middle School this year go through one cycle of it we'll have more information and we'll make the same sort of evaluation at the end of the first year okay um thank you that that's helpful um I think just the last kind of conceptually just trying to understand social emotional learning is there how how much as a district do we roughly think we're spending on that overall between you know curriculum and Learning and Development do have we at all carved that out just because it's it is a big initiative and it also sounds like at this point we only have anecdotal evidence of benefit and you know we are increasing we're going over the cap in a year when the state aid is higher than we've ever gotten and we're also dipping into our reserves so I just like to understand the the weight of that that initiative overall as far as how much in total in the aggregate social emotional Wellness or mental health Wellness I don't have that number here do you have anything we can point the only thing you can point to right now is the mental health specialist that we hired was a salary around 80,000 yeah so in the last several years as I mentioned we have increased our student counseling department we did not have a counselor in each school so whatever those salaries bear would be an increase we've also added a mental health clinician to deal with our most students at risk and that's whatever salary that is would be an increase in the aggregate I can get you a number if you want me to tally something up I don't have that in front of me but as far as assessing the value when we talk about um counselor case load and the increase and student contact time with the situations that our our our current students are dealing with that is one assessment value of knowing that our resources are going exactly where they need to be our students need to be socially and emotionally available for learning before they can learn and we're seeing that that greater need throughout the district okay um yeah that would be helpful if we could just kind of get a picture as as you know subsequent years are going to be increasingly even more difficult I love DK's uh Mr Justice positivity on state aid but um I think just always Imagining the difficult situations of that might not come through we've dipped into our reserves our reserves are going to be lower next year and so um I would if we could start kind of sizing up some of our initiatives and what they mean like quantitatively that would be really helpful and thank you again for all your work on this yeah when we talk about the priorities of the district and the goals of the district we also go through a pretty exhaustive process to determine what is important to us and the shared values and beliefs so we realize as the the time rolls forward and the difficulty of managing the budget constraints and the inflation and the increased costs in salaries and insurance and the like that we share um it's going to be a difficult time to prioritize to decide what we we take away out of that I understand that so it's something that we do have our eye on and we understand is very important and that's why I Echo Mr cologne's sentiment that it's an excellent balance of fiscal responsibility and maintaining our values and our budget for programs and students so thank you for that and if I I'll just add one thing is as Mr Huff mentioned during the budget presentation we're doing some social emotional Wellness for our staff as well and for administrators so we received a $32,000 Grant from our uh shiff which is a school health insurance fund where we have our medical insurance through and through that Grant we were able to provide the um body mass screenings and we're able to provide um chair massages and a wellness portal so that we can start to get our staff involved and make sure that their health their physical health as well as their mental health is good as well so that didn't cost the district anything and similarly the wellness Symposium in April that I mentioned it does not come out of the operating budget we had donations from Community groups that we're willing to um pay for the keynote speaker and we have local businesses that are offering their time to come here and run breakout sessions with parents on different various topics so not everything comes out of the operating budget that will support that initiative and that goal but I understand your question as far as the Staffing certainly and salaries that we've increased over the year would definitely be something that is an increase um I'll add just the number of the programs that are part of the social emotional learning district goal are supported by SCF in terms of kind of the third party related advisors consultants and special events so we are fortunate to have SCF help us uh to we do and some of the programs that are Mr show that are currently um here have just been revamped and S sort of rebranded to make sure we're targeting more of the needs for example the Thrive program at the elementary school which is our counseling department providing lessons on social emotional wellness and learning as well as our advisory programs at our middle schools and high schools there where we've always had those programs and they've been delivered by either teachers or counselors but we rewrite that curriculum every year to more Target the current needs of our students so that's another piece and it's budget neutral really when you talk about that it's just the focus part of the um initiatives that we we create aren't just you know for cost it's more of the the focus of what we need in our to provide the services for our students sorry one more question just came to my mind if that's okay um just for the public edification because I think um I've even gotten some questions like how how does the Board District decide and approve what gets repaired like this Auditorium what what what what's the decision sort of process I mean when I walked in I thought this looks so beautiful I'm not in here every day using it Etc so can you just give some background on which capital and maintenance Pro projects you decide for the year sure so a lot of it happens on walkthroughs so Mr Huff myself Mr Martin our director of facilities we we're always in the schools walking through and if we see something that catches our eye we'll have a discussion with the principal hey I noticed this what are your thoughts or the principles will come to us and say you know what this is really causing me an issue I need to do that and so what'll happen then is um Mr Martino and myself will have a discussion we'll see if it's something that we want to bring to the superintendent if we do then we'll go to Mr Huff we'll say hey look we've noticed these things we think that we should jump on this as a project because it's going to benefit it's gonna it's GNA you know stop a hazard it's going to create a benefit for the individuals within that school and then I'll go out and I'll start to talk to our Architects our Engineers hey can you give me just a ballpark estimate of what this is going to cost and then we'll have discussion on that is it too expensive is there a way that we can fix it put a bandid on it for the next couple of years which will help everyone until we can get more money and so that's basically what we do and then we'll put everything together I mean our our list of projects is probably this long and every year we try to chip away at some of them to ensure that we're keeping our facilities where they need to be we also have a long range facility plan that we try to uh rotate through so that we can repair things before they're completely Beyond disre repair and cost more so we do that as a part of our process as well correct but the the the funds balance is what supports the capital and maintenance Reserve pool is that correct well there's two so we have our maintenance reserve and our capital reserve which are funded from funds that are left over at the end of the year that the board decides we're going to put those away once they go into those Reserve accounts they have to stay there and they can only be used for those projects we have Surplus which is additional monies that are left over at the end of the year which when the Auditors come through and they finish the audit they say this is how much you have which needs to be put forward to fund the next year's budget so it's called excess Surplus we're only allowed to have 2% in surplus funds anything above that we have to put towards the funding of the budget that for tax relief and so next year as I mentioned we're not going to put money into our reserves we're going to put more money into Surplus to utilize to fund the budget and that was what you mentioning from the grants okay but just just to just um to confirm at the end of this budget year what will be the total amount left in the capital amance in our capital and maintenance Reserves at the end of this budget I think we're going to have tell you just a minute 3.6 million in capital 3.6 million in capital reserve 745,000 and $745,000 in maintenance reserve and and the one and so the one five we took out of the funds balance how much would be left in the funds balance so the so fund balance regenerates every year so we're not going to know that until the end of the year once all of our spending is done so what we do is we let all the principles and the directors know at the end of December that all discretionary spending is complete and the only thing that we try to put through are purchase orders for special education purposes Transportation purposes uh promotion and graduation ceremonies buildings and grounds and anything that's emergent because that helps us to regenerate our Surplus for the following school year once the orders come in you know we we may Kathy does a calculation in April and May just to see where we are and then that is either proven or disproven by the Auditors when they come in in September October and November to finish up our audit so but we anticipate having the $4 million for next year because we're not putting money into the reserves as I mentioned and we're also going to regenerate that two and a half million which has been our staple for the last few years in fund balance okay thank you you're welcome any other comments questions m s Miss con vice president Justice M yeah I somewhat entertaining question I saw textbooks on there do we use textbooks anymore yes we do who does every they're all over the place we use textbooks every we use both we use digital textbooks and we use actual hard cover 500 pound textbooks yes hard covers I they far into between having been here for a lot of years last year in seventh grade they were required to bring or at least Beth's team was required to bring home a nice classic yes my son also and then couldn't find it because he hadn't taken it out until he was going to graduate and told he wouldn't get his diploma if he didn't return it so I don't think it's hard copy textbooks are used but do we pay for the digital we do pay for the digital we have sub yeah we have subscription costs as well for all of those and and we pay licensing fees depending on the number of um electronic textbooks that we use as well corre and are as where they will whether it's one year or multiple years to use different platforms yes when you look at the SCF grants each cycle there is thousands of dollars that they donate to um readers at the elementary level for the classroom libraries Miss Co um I just have a question about the capital reserve and the grants um what what is the amount that we are expecting that the grants will add to the capital reserve in the next fiscal year so the two grants that I'm mentioned earlier during the presentation are through the uh New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and when we decided to embark on the high school air conditioning project and the Middle School air conditioning project through our architect we submitted the grant applications to the BPU so for the high school the total grant that we're going to get back is $1.8 million of which we've already received $ 1,50,000 and for the middle school it's anticipated we're going to get around 3.4 $4 million back any other comments from the board members or questions yeah I will finish up then I think this is by fourth uh budget cycle and I think when I think about the cost side that was roughly a $4 million increase as noted in the presentation roughly 85% of the costs are associated with the Staffing salary and benefits clearly the staff for all contractual basis with contractual salary increases so roughly the 15% is the sort of the services third party contractors and such and the one thing I've seen is the business office being very efficient in terms of seeking to reduce or mitigate cost increases associated with our third party Services bringing things inhouse and such so the 85% roughly speaking the contractual salary increases for staff is roughly 3% so the math would be keeping that 2% level the other 15% would have to be flat or down when we know that costs are increasing dramatically however um the other component of cost is as noted by superintendent Huff in the presentation we are expanding programming and I will say over the last four years there has been some additional resources for the El program and the special education program where we felt there was a a need and opportunity to improve our services for all of those students so there has been some additional resources there which is added to the cost space and there's also been some expansion of programs and the extracurricular and co-curriculars driven by the student demand you saw on the presentation at the high school level over 900 students participate Athletics so it's not a big number but that does increase the transportation costs and there's also been some additional coaching St typin associated with that a significant increase in students participating in the co-curriculars and such so that is a function of sort of the student demand and such but then the steam initiative does result in a net increase kind of in the cost space in terms of expansion of programming now uh as board member Kelly pointed out that clearly as students migrate to taking those classes there will be some other electives that won't be needed so it'll take a couple years to figure out the extent that we can re allocate staff or not need staff in certain subjects but that will take a couple years to figure out but all this is consistent with the district goals and based on feedback and demands from the community when we've had parent coffee type of U meetings ask with informal discussions things that have come up is asking for more programs asking for expanded curriculum for students in middle school and such so we feel that the budget is consistent with the district goals consistent with the community feedback but we do recognize that there is an overall expansion of programming such and we're doing the best and the business office is doing the best they can to mitigate those cost increases and try to keep the tax levy increases to a manual level and with a target of 2% of realizing that every year we're not going to given the constraints we are operating under one last call for comments or questions now open it up for public comment on the budget from members in the audience seeing no public comment a motion to um close public comment any discussion all those in favor I any opposed exensions so move all right so next item is the approval of the 2024 2025 school budget resolution Mr gu do we need to read if you would like me to read it I'm more than happy if you would prefer that I not because you're tired of listening to my voice then you can just motion take a look at the agenda item five approval of the 2425 school budget resolution to be submitted to the board of school estimate for final approval and again is the plary budget subject to any changes correct have a motion is there any further discussion Miss Stanton yes Miss Kelly Miss erde yes Mr cologne yes Miss con yes Miss Justice yes Mr Cho yes motion carries thank you thank you there's no need for close session so you can go right to adjournment motion to adjourn any discussion all those in favor any opposed any extensions we are adjourned at 7:49 thank you everybody thank you everyone