e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e look at me okay we're gonna call them into order Mr slam a roll call please [Music] is Miss Brock online she just jumped on okay Miss Brock are you here he is here and we're just waiting for her to unmute Miss Brock hi we just we just took all call okay she's here okay please rise and join me in the pledge of Le I pledge to of the United States of America and to stand thank you slam reading of the meeting notices please both values at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the visions of the ACT Township education has caus notice of this meeting we published inadequate notice has been provided and this meeting has been posted and New Jersey public meeting thank you Mr slam okay we will be having a presentation of the 24 25 revised preliminary budget presentation by Mr Raymond slam as a presentation comes comes up incorrect postings and fake vtst postings indicate that forign taxpayers will have their total taxes increased by 99.9% this presentation will provide you with the factual impact of this proposal on the verin taxpayer R are you going to be using this Bo here yeah y okay so Mr Sam yeah time can we cut these everybody see yeah good evening everybody um it's going to be the first TR I've done we at at the end of the road will be four rer presentations I'm glad that uh we have a good turnout tonight through uh go our revised plary budget um if anyone uh has not already seen it we do have the past two presentations available on our website um and it also can be viewed on YouTube and actually at the end of this presentation there will be a link to the final presentation from April C now okay thank you uh so I'm not sure how familiar everyone is with the two new bills that were signed in the law on May 14th um obviously the state went forward and approved those bills uh after the final budget had already been approved uh with that being the case I want to just provide a little bit of an overview um on what these bills are and then how that would affect the district just to kind of start out so everyone's kind of on the same page as to you know why was there why is there a special meeting this is the main reason behind why there's a special meeting uh so if you look at Public Law 2024 C13 so essentially that provides some districts who had Cuts in 2425 with up to 45% uh of that cut and state aid um but only for schools that had 24 25 cuts the second part is it increases certain districts school year 2425 tax levy C by a certain amount if they have a cumulative loss between 2425 and 2021 and it also extends deadlines for the 24 2024 budget procedures calendar calendar obviously that's necessary because they passed it after all the deadlines had already passed so uh it makes for an unusual uh procedure uh but we are just going off of what the states guidances at this point uh and we'll talk more about that as we move forward Second Law just essentially extends the deadlines uh and the in the budget calendar uh so your question as I imagine or most people's question would be how does this affect the district uh so essentially I kind of mentioned a little before 2024 2025 school year compared to the 2020 2021 school year and this is in relation to state aid cut over that time period so and the maximum amount that the additional tax adjustment could be would be the difference between 2425 and 2021 school aid as long as it does not go over 9.9% of the tax levy so if you see my prior presentations this slide will will look familiar to you uh it's a history of stadi cuts here in Vernon uh you'll see that since essentially 1617 through 2425 a little over 7.5 million dollars in state aid have been lost um and the reason they've been lost because they've been cut by the state there's something called the S2 funding formula uh essentially uh S2 law was passed and it changed how state aid is allocated among districts in the state of New Jersey it essentially change the equation uh so you see large amounts of money uh being cut from some districts and then other districts receiving large increases in state at the same time uh so just to kind of a note that I think it's important to put the impact of these Cuts in perspective if stateid had remained flat the district would have received an additional 39 over $39 million in funding over that time period uh so as I mentioned with the ball you look at 202 1 we had a little over 20 uh we had 20, 6819 55 in state aid 2425 17,5 35,246 so pretty significant cut and that's not accounting for the cuts that happened before uh 2021 but as you see obviously that's not the full 7.5 million so you'll see that's $3,146 712 So based off of the wall that would be the allowable tax levy increase so some of the um questions that I've been asked are when you look at 2021 and you look at this year's budget you look at the inflation over that time period you know what would be an equal budget the 2021 if you look at inflation so I put this slide together I went to the Bureau of Labor and statistics CPI calculator to figure out what the cumulative um inflation of that time period is and it's 21% which I'm sure everyone in the room is aware of in their own life uh as as a as as also uh the large effect that has on on school districts as well uh so just to kind of put that number that information out there so 2021 we had an enrollment of 2,884 students the general fund budget L Capital outlay so Capital outlay would be onetime projects 60 a little over 65 million so if you were to adjust that for inflation for today that would be a budget of about 78 million actually closer to almost 79 um you'll see you know our enrollment actually went up slightly this is a projection for next year the 2900 it was actually a little bit higher this year but obviously you know it goes up and down based off of class size if you have a larger senior class graduating and it's stuff that kind of project what the kindergarten class uh the incoming kindergarten class may be so you'll see the proposed budget right there general fund less Capital outlay about 7,527 53 that's the revised number so you can obviously see the difference there so if you were trying to create a budget that was equal to the level of buying power that the 2021 budget had that's how far off we would be and then I just kind of did a her student difference so you kind of see how much less that that buying power is today than it was uh in 2021 and it kind of just adds a little bit of extra I think information and perspective to the difficulties related to the 2% tax ly cap over that many years when we're in a high inflationary period so just a little bit of a summary uh so enrollment slightly increased uh the inflation rate significantly outpaced the 2% the district is permitted increases tax levy each year um again that's the amount of Cate that was cut during that time period more state was cut prior to that time period uh and then also another kind of added wrinkle or I'll say obstacle is that 2425 budget will be the first year that none of the covid grants are available anymore um so you may be aware or may not be aware but there is a number of covid grants that had them all listed up there they started coming out in 2020 uh and then additional grants came out after after that they're all either sunset or we'll be sunsetting this year and the importance of that is those grants um really provideed flexibility for the district to absorb some of those increased costs um and then also some of the things that were brought in during that time period Then if they are still working well have to be absorbed into our regular budget so this is an overview um and again if you saw the last the final presentation April the the second portion of that was on the separate proposal so the first portion of this will be you know very similar uh to that um the point being that if this were to go forward there would be would not be a separate proposal so it's the 16 teachers that uh were discussed that's salary and health benefits uh increased security Staffing uh additional counseling staff uh res skilled uh restored skilled maintenance position um and one of the things I like to add about that is is that's beneficial it actually ends up in many case being cost savings because you don't have to go out to vendors um and absorb their profit margin in with the projects that you're doing uh so uh we have additional Le busing then we also have a weight room sipen a sophomore class advisor and Glen Meadow trap sipen so those sens were some things that I think prior to my start I heard some of it after my my start as well uh that I think came up pretty frequently uh that were important uh and we felt this would be a good opportunity to get those back in the budget uh and then you'll see maintenance projects so the next couple slides I'm going to talk about maintenance projects uh to put it frankly there are a lot of facilities issues that need to be addressed um over the I would say the next five to 10 years um a lot of these things have you you'll see as they go for so uh and the point of this is we want to have a plan of how to address those issues so one of the things that I think is very important is updating the facilities assessment long range facility plan um additional detail um prior prioritization of what is a life expectancy how how many more years will some of our RS last for example how many you know more years will some of our system building Building Systems last um what can we in the meantime to keep them moving forward uh and that is a great tool to make sure that these issues are prioritized the estimates to cost and then you can start building them into the budget as funding allows as opposed to having them sit in the can being kicked down the road and then having everything hit all at once uh and then at that point there wouldn't be funding to address those issues uh so I I'll briefly go through um the slide uh so one of the one of the items is door access control needs to be up updated through the district obviously that's a building and security issue um updated building management system another building issue a repair a chemical storage tank uh that actually has a it's essentially uh the feed pipe into that is leaking water into the feed pipe which is going into the tank a lot of repaving projects um some additional parking seal coating and restriping they try to Main main some of the payment we have that if we don't provide if we don't essentially do that maintenance later down the road it's going to be a more costly issue uh if we don't maintain that pavement um and you'll see I'm sure throughout the district that a lot of the pavement over the years hasn't been as maintained maybe as well as it could have so we have a fire alarm replacement at Rolling Hills um one of the things that we're keeping a very close eye on uh you may have seen at the earlier in this year uh we had to do a full replacement at the high school the fire alarm system obviously it's a huge safety issue we want to make sure that these systems are replaced uh before it becomes a critical issue uh we have uh replacing retaining wall so we have retaining walls throughout the district that are leaning that one's at the high school uh we have a water heater replacement at the also at the high school uh that water heater is non-operational right now uh we have a gendary replace that generators is end of life obviously that is the safety issue of power to go out um I believe that's in the original section of the building uh and then we have uh replacement of doors uh so uh we have fire doors throughout the district or rather doors that need to be replaced with fire doors throughout the district um again another safety issue so uh in this plan these will be the the projects that we'll be focusing on in the 2425 school year uh these are some of the projects that we be focusing after the 2425 school year so again carbon replacement repair at the high school um sure probably you've probably seen the curving is uh fumbling in many areas uh so that is a safety issue uh door and plumbing Renovations um sidewalk repairs another safety issue uh we have a couple of elevators that need to be replaced um that was that was called out uh in a prior uh plan uh we have the original original generator at Lansbury Hollow which is also end of life uh we have rooftop units that are failed Andor end of life at the high school uh we also have stero door and exit sign replacement U building wide door replacement at walnart Ridge and then replace original electrical panels at lry Hollow and then down the um currently having a more in- depth assessment of the roofs completed they give us more information on that but down the road uh there will be roofs that need to be replaced um and if we can say uh repair certain sections and replace other sections we will obviously do uh work with our architect to see what is best to maintain the envelope of the building um this year I believe we put maybe 60 to$ 70,000 into um roof repairs and we obvious you know there's still leaks uh we were able to do that because we received funding through the SDA emerging Capital funds uh so we had a couple years of funding for that which we put towards roof repairs um but those are really Band-Aids those aren't long-term fixes and then also uh as you look around the district there's a lot of issues with Paving that need to be addressed uh so 24 25 uh I have all the all the great news is right uh so 2425 uh School fiscal year uh the tax levy would be increased by uh a little under 4.4 million that includes uh and is not in addition to the original uh 1,248 1093 that was approved in April so I just wanted to make sure everyone uh saw that that includes uh that prior number it's not in addition to that prior number so one of the things um and similar to what was in my other uh presentation you know what are ratables so essentially ratables are the total tax base for the township uh as rbl grow in value they help reduce the impact of any tax increase on an individual taxpayer so see there's a pretty substantial substantial increase in ratables from 2023 to 2024 uh went up about a little under uh 9.7% a little bit under $300 million so um that's going to be important for some of the scenarios that I'm going to have up on this slide in the next few slides um where that will basically it determines what the school's tax rate will be it's part of the equation determine what the school tax rate would be uh and that'll be helpful and you know figure out what this impact uh might be for your individual situation uh but General analysis uh essentially if your assessed value remained the same uh your taxes should actually still go down um I know there's a lot of reassessments in town so I'm not sure of how many people were reassessed or how many people were not reassessed so that's why I'm going to go through both scenarios up here uh so again if your assess value remain remain the same on 23 to 24 your tax bill should actually decrease uh if your assess value increased 23 to 24 uh the portion of your tax will most likely increase however that increase will be directly correlated to the amount your assess value increased uh from 23 24 because obviously the more your value goes up once it goes against a tax rate the higher that that tax amount would be uh so scenario one um so I put the tax rates up there in case anyone wants to take a look at that um and try to figure out their their own um situation with our assess value um so you would take essentially this is just an example at 100,000 uh but you could take your asss value times that rate for last year which last year's rate was actually higher it was 1.4 56% for the School portion uh whereas this year with the revised numbers it's actually 1.44% for the school tax rate and that's because of that large increase in ratables uh so if you're valuing the same you can figure this out uh to see what your impact might be from last year this year by estimated increase decrease would be $ 52 about 52 for $100,000 of assess value if you didn't have a change in your assessed value from those two years uh these are just some examples um essentially exactly what I just said is what I did on on this chart just to give uh anyone in the audience or at home just an idea just quickly if you're close in any of those ranges uh where you you might fall and you know obviously I can't put everyone's number up there but I want to PR range just to provide a bit of an um of an idea for everybody um and the average assess value is highlighted in light blue there um that was actually provided by the Township Tax Assessor just one thing I always like to mention so this is assessed value um not market value so uh scenario two uh assess your assess value increases right so you would take your 2024 assess value you multiply it by the school portion tax rate uh and that's how you get your estimated School portion of your annual tax for 2024 um then if you wanted to compare that you could take that and compare it to what your 2023 was if you have your tax bill and see what your difference would be this is another slide similar to not the last one one before that just providing some examples this one you'll notice for 2023 and 2024 there's a different assess value um I asked around a little bit and try to see what some people might have experienced and I think there's probably going to be a wide range for anyone that had that reassessment but I I did want to try to estimate a bit of a range uh just to provide some information but again the information that previous slide will show you how you can figure out what your individual uh tax situation may be uh and again you'll see the light blue uh 262,000 was the assessed average Pur value in 2023 and then that went up to 289,000 about uh and those were provided by the town uh tax assessor so up here just couple I mentioned before but you have a PR uh link to the presentation on the website from April um this presentation will also be going up onto the website as well uh I'm sure people are taking notes or may taking pictures but it'll also be available online um and uh we've been revamping that business office page trying to provide more information so feel free to you know visit and see if there's anything up there that you find helpful and uh thank you everybody thank you Mr SL do any of the board members have any questions I do if you go back to the slide where you have the long range facility plan why is it so important that we have a long range facility plan so there two parts you need a microphone yeah sorry go I'll stay here sorry um let me go back to it uh so there's actually two things here the first step is the facility wide assessment so really that will be what should be a very thick B ER and also an electronic document provided to us by the architect where they look at everything and they let us know again how many years till something is an issue how many years still need to be addressed once it does need to be addressed around how much do they think it's going to cost right and then it would uh help us prioritize in what order we need to address these issues get through the more critical issues and then hopefully get to a point where we're addressing issues before they become critical because obviously the more critical they are the more expensive um those projects will be so the the real the real importance is uh information organization and it's assists Us in planning so really what you should do is if you have a very thorough um updated facility assessment which by the way feeds into the longarm range facility plan which is the actual State portal where everything gets input then you can take that and look at that each budget year and figure out how much funding that year you have available for capital projects or maintenance projects and try to get those work those into the budget right the other thing is that longrange facility plan is directly tied to the amount of money you can have your capital reserve so as i' you know I've mentioned before and our capital reserve needs work um projected probably between 500 600 500 to $600,000 next year after projects come out uh so we really need to get to the point we're can start depositing into that what percentage of our total budget is that uh roughly so you say 500,000 on a $70 million budget going to cheat you got a calculator out okay well less than a percent seven um seven no I think it's less than that I think so too yeah so well 10% would be would be obviously seven million so it's less 500,000,000 yeah 1% would be 700,000 so so it's l that way the town has 10% in reserve I'm not sure what the town has because they might I don't know if it's their total fund balance or the capital capital reserve right well in comparison it's a remarkable difference is there a Best practice in terms of how much we should have in Reserve uh there's no real set value um but there should be a correlation between the size of the district the number of facilities issues and the amount of money you have in reserve right the more issues you have the larger your District the more buildings you have the more money you want to have in reserve because if something happens mid year or you have projects you need to address um a lot of times it's very difficult to get those in than a normal budget right um because the con of the 2% tax levy c um obviously this is a unique situation we're talking about tonight but uh essentially you need to have that reserve the pull from to actually get those projects done uh in most cases so this says update facilities assessment when was the last time we did a facilities assessment uh 2021 so that's not that long ago right um how often do District typically do should be like a five-year plan so we're coming up on five years uh and when I looked at that assessment I noticed things that were missing um so I feel like it could have been more thorough okay for example I know for a fact the Roes are right an issue but they're not in the plan that's why I'm asking because I do recall that assessment and uh I don't recall the roofs being even mentioned right they're not they're not mentioned they should have been uh the roofs I think are going to be an expensive and I think it's G be a big issue but I'll have more information as we have a more in depth assess done to the roofs I know that most of them have three layers already so we may not use the same people in the last one from the last time we may not use the same people from the last time uh no um well I always like to go through rfps um just every few years just to make sure that we have the best Professional Services so I would probably do an RFP um and go through competitive process just to you always want to make sure even if it ends up being that person that you want to make sure that you're getting the good price and you want to make sure that you're getting the best service and the costs from that assessment would be out of date now because of inflation right I mean there were cost yeah they they would be pretty far off inflation from them was 21% uh cumulative uh and then in addition to that I'm sure a lot of people have seen um in terms of construction and things like that a lot of cases it went even higher right I don't know if I rememberers the price of wood you more on that I don't could we does anybody else so a couple of things they had on here uh go back to Jen's question we had a facilities audit in 2021 you said right no we had a long range facilities planned done 2021 they're usually yeah they're usually tied so usually you do an assess and then after the assessment is done then the arm trility plan is updated based off the assessment okay so on here and I'm going to bring up something else is on here I know can't want to go forward but um I'm gonna cheat a little bit right so on here we were replacing couple steers a couple of walls right is all safety right walkways for the CH children and then right here on this one on this side we have firewall uh fire doors so were these items on that assessment do you know know uh fire doors were not um and I'm sorry if if the fire W doors aren't did the RS change last year that we have to replace these doors no so I'm assuming if if they weren't on that that assessment five years ago and the state is telling us to change it didn't happen overnight so there's been neglect for years right and and and and I and I'm aren't blaming on anyone or whatever it's but but there's been neglect in our school district and we're paying how how much do we have in reserve this year I'm projecting that after so there's always a so at the end of this year there'll be money going back in but then there'll be money coming back out for the projects over 2425 that I mentioned at the prior uh presentation just recap for everyone there is a window project at Glen meow which we would get part of that money back because it's uh SDA Grant so 40% of that roughly we would um get back essentially right um and then there's a two two items I consider one project at Cedar Mountain uh one is a Stairway that is in bad shape uh it's partially taped off the other is a retaining wall um that is that is starting the bow right it's a wooden retaining wall right there the parking lot area um and then the other item is at the high school C mology building I used to be known as the plus building uh and that is a Stairway and ramp um that is probably settled maybe about half a foot um the railing is now secure but we I have them secure when I started um and the concrete is not in the best shape so all these project I mean ster wheell a ramp doesn't settle a foot in a year right I mean I mean Ray you're more of the construction guy right that ramp doesn't go down in year so we have this over year and we're paying for four small projects this year what I consider small compared to some of the other things that we have a million dollars yeah it's just under just under a million dollars um for those three projects we're going to continue to have more projects and we're you're projecting 500 to 600,000 in the reserve next year for yeah it's going to depend on um what the window Pro because essentially those are estimated costs Bas off of The Architects when it goes out the bid because everything we do goes through a competitive purchasing process um it could come in higher it could come in lower obviously I want to come in lower but um that's about right just under a million dollars and I would say between $500 to $600,000 I'm giving a range because I'm trying to give a little bit of leeway for if it comes in higher or lower and so right here you're telling us what our plan what your plan is to start moving forward we get out of where we are what we're going to start with yep so these items are items that are safety related right that we'd like to address in this upcoming year um that we have to look at also the fiscal the fiscal portion of it that we can address in terms of timing in terms of if this passes we can fiscally address it uh this is what i' be looking at for the next year um the next slide right here are projects that are more long-term projects that's always say 25 27 um and these projects during that time per period could change somewhat and that's going to depend on what that assessment says right so if that assessment comes back and tells me something of you know a significantly higher priority needs to be done you know these projects will be shuffled right so we always go to what is the highest safety issue so I mean just looking at this we have 1.5 um million right and we're projecting 600,000 what we will have towards projects so we couldn't even do half of these projects next year the way we're going without making significant Cuts or changes to the district uh yeah well this would be the second slide so when if this pass we couldn't even do half of these half of the first slides projects don't even start to touch second slides projects so for two for and that's not all the projects either there's more projects in addition to that um that we're aware of uh but some of we don't have pricing information on yet and we're investigating and honestly when you look at the list it's and when we get that if we were to get the update facility plan that's really your plan for the next you know five years five years in terms of range facility plan but realistically in terms of how expensive it's going to be over those years and how you have to break it up and make it into budgets it's probably gonna be a longer time period than that to actually address all those issues so if I could just add because John's brought it up but the physical state of the district is at best poor okay it's been years and years of kicking the cans down the road when I first got on the board we went around as the board to look at the buildings the two ramps leading into the building mean I'm an iron worker when I'm not here there were GI holes in the channels that could be seen from the street and when I went underneath I could literally take the steel with my hand and break it off that takes many many years for the water to Contin to run to separate the steel that could be rusted and broken by hand so this has been kicked down the road for probably 20 years of not fixing stuff doing quick patches to get on to the next step and eventually it all comes home because the buildings don't care about anything about themselves they're just objects that need to be maintained and when they're not maintained they get worse and they just keep getting worse if you look at this list there probably prob 10 to 12 things there end of life end of life that means they've been getting ignored for many years you don't get to end of life in a year you know Fire Systems balls all this stuff should have been addressed partially not every piece of it but a lot of it should have been addressed probably 20 years continually every year they should have been looking to fix or improve something and now it's probably the worst time financially for the district but you can't just keep ignoring it because now it's getting to the point it's going to start getting more and more problematic we have six rooms or five rooms with three roomes on them that are all leaking and are all R life in five to seven years so you know you can keep kicking it down the road but it's not going to get any better so you know I mean the district has had to make I said it couple weeks ago you can't turn the ship around in five minutes it's going to be keep chipping away and stuff and getting it all back to where it should be yeah that's unfortunate so like just that like you said you have to chip away at it a little bit each year and if you stop chipping away at it then the list just continues to grow and part of the issue um a lot of times what I see is when you have those budget constraints when you have you know inflation you have the 2% cap you have stady cuts um you you have all this happening at once a lot of times the first thing that kind of goes you know is oh well we'll do you know this project next year and then next year we'll do the project the year after that right because this just kind of what happens like you said the can gets kicked down the road thank you Mr SL can we also look at the slide with the uh additional teachers and um other things that I do have a question about that as well um so it says 16 teachers to reduce class size and support um students what kind of an impact are we looking at in terms of class size reduction because I remember earlier we were talking about some classes having 28 30 children how many are we looking at with these additional teachers oh my apologies what kind of an impact will hiring 16 teachers have on the size of our classes because I remember earlier in the year we were talking about some classes having between 20 8 30 children hiring 16 teachers what will that do to what kind of numbers will we be looking at then I know it's a bit are they well it's from first grade on I know we had parents come and talk in the crowd earlier this year of having 28 students in some of our first grade classes I believe that was all the way up through the high school um so it's based on yearby year and we place them based on what we had the biggest impact to help reduce class size I think some are projections for next year some of the class sizes are 28 29 so we' go go in those uh classes but you're also going to hear about and we've heard about already uh multier systems of support and response to intervention that'll provide students assistance before they become classified and Mr Fay will talk on that uh next uh board meeting as well as uh interventions and how that helps the district to uh make up gaps that students may have I'm just so glad we can finally do something about the sizes of some of these classes because hearing about 28 30 students in class as a teacher myself I know it's virtually impossible at that point your classroom management and the hard part was we either talking about either uh if if we address some of these issues in the uh and maintenance the class sizes would have to go even higher um and I noticed that the late buses on here which is wonderful yes um the number is different than what we had heard cost before so can you just clarify why it's I don't know how much different is it 105 really when we when we cut it we were talking about 120 so did we did we manage to find some savings there somehow or is that are we running the bus all year is that was our that was our last estimate from the Transportation okay so it's running it's it's the we we didn't reduce any routes or anything like that uh no but with late busing that's also tied to U out of District students because when we provide late busing for our own students that is required for us to do that as well okay okay and so treps was previously uh gone and now it's coming back yeah those are three of the I think three of the stiens that we either heard here or from the schools the most this year during our board meetings yeah okay that's great traps was is that very successful programing yes and then the additional counseling staff what um what school distri what schools are those going to it's still based on who we hire and what their expertise is we're looking for a social worker or a um psychologist at the high school and I believe a guidance council at lsbury Hall those are positions we had lost last year thank you thank you Mr s put the lights back on when we open it up for public comment thank you shut the light thank you okay I'm going to open the meeting me up to public comment there are a lot of us here today um I'm going to limit you to five minutes uh it's public comment um we will write down all you're saying we're not going to get into a dialogue we're going to listen to what you say and take it in so the meeting is now open to the public you'll be limited please state your name and what municipality you live in and uh you'll be limited to minutes I'll set the time thank you good evening Kristin good and cof I live in spart New Jersey I'm a principal at Cedar Mountain Primary School as a graduate of Vernon Township School District I'm grateful for the education I received and the opportunities I have had as an employee of Vernon Township School District for the past 30 years I'm privileged to currently serve as the principal of Cedar Mountain Primary School where the faculty staff and students are truly amazing however this year presented new challenges as we lost a first grade teacher and a math interventionist due to budget cuts this resulted in many of our first grade classes starting with 28 students for the 23 24 school year I had Parents reach out to me and come to board meetings regarding their concerns with class sizes despite this I proud to say that our teachers persevered through the challenge and worked tirelessly to provide the best education possible for their students at Cedar Mountain Primary School teachers are dedicated to De to developing the whole child teaching them not only to read write add subtract but also how to be friends and show kindness they strive to meet each student's individual needs and with the loss of our math interventionist this individualized math instruction fell entirely on classroom teachers with their large class sizes they have done their best and I'm proud of their dedication and hard hard work I'm here to advocate for our students they deserve the high quality education they received before budget cuts teachers need manageable class sizes and a robust RTI program where students indiv individualized needs are met through specialized instruction by experts to fill in the gaps and Foster a lifelong love of learning it would be greatly appreciated if we could have lower class sizes and restore the RTI Staffing at Cedar Mountain Primary School to provide our students with the same quality education they have had in years past thank you for your time and consideration thank you Mr good good evening my name is Jacqueline van Orton and I am the principal of Glenn meadow middle school I reside in Glennwood New Jersey I am here this evening with my husband Mark Van Ordon we are proud residents of Vernon Township for over 30 years we were married 26 years ago today yes we are forgoing anniversary plans so that we can be here this evening and we always knew that Vernon was where we wanted to raise our family Vernon schools have always had a positive reputation as a result of the phenomenal faculty and staff employed here as well as the prior amount of State funding once received for daily operations within the school district as a building principal of Glenn meadow middle school a parent to two Vernon graduates and a taxpayer I stand before you to support the revised budget that Mr slam shared with you all this evening in an effort to sustain the status that Vernon schools have earned over the years adequate funding is imperative board approval of the budget this evening will have a positive impact on ver Vernon students and their prek through 12 education while taxes may increase for burnning homeowners myself included I ask you to think about the impact this additional funding will have on our students our children and how this will bring back what was lost over the last school year so what are some of the benefits of approving this budget reinstating after school busing this will allow all students to participate in clubs activities and athletic programs without after school busing many students have been excluded from these opportunities trust me I have seen it firsthand reinstating treps at Glenn meadow middle school this would bring back a highly regarded entrepreneurship program for our sixth graders and I would propose including our seventh graders in the program next year as they missed out this year building entrepreneurship skills is the backbone of the treps program and students look forward to the skills-based program as a right of passage coming into Glen Meadow Middle School addressing maintenance in school parking lots this is necessary for the safety of all who utilize the parking lots and driveways and this will be included in the revised budget and of course most importantly reducing class sizes this is the most critical component of a student's academic success and the overall structure of the learning environment by employing additional teachers we immediately decrease class size research has shown that smaller class sizes at the middle school level have resulted in a positive impact on test scores and higher levels of student engagement and if you're into research like I am d and West 2011 the Vernon Township School District Prides itself on students coming first and tonight's vote is no exception by approving this budget this evening we will give our students what they deserve thank you thank you happy anniversary to you and your husband good evening Mr Sweeny Steve dunlo Vernon good evening Steve moved here in 1995 with two young boys I've put three kids to the schools my boys were both involved very actively in sports soccer wrestling baseball my daughter graduated with four ropes National Honor Society German Honor Society Science triam music concert mistress some of these classes sizes we had like 5,000 students my kids used to tell me about running from one class to another to make sure they got a seat they got to find education I was looking at something that Mr uh Kus had sent me going from the 2010 school year to the 2019 school year and our budget was in those years 66 million 69 million 69 million 69 million 68 million 67 million 66 million 66 million and 66 million over those 10 years during that period of time we went from over 5,000 students close to 5,500 for less than 3,000 students but our budget stayed pretty much constant they were not reducing the budget based on the reduction of employ of of customers students I've said this before I worked 37 years for a major oil company if I went to my board meeting and told them I'd lost 40% of my customers by I cut my budget by 1.5% I would have been walking out of the building with my belongings in a cardboard box you guys weren't here you guys weren't part of this it was previous boards that did this let they bring in a superintendent and say we really have a problem we have to close a school we have to move the eth grade to the high school we need to get rid of Administrators I heard him say one night if you're not in the classroom we don't need you and then she he's replaced by another superintendent that lay comes back and puts in all these layers of management that arm in classrooms department heads and our grades just continue to just drop and drop and drop so I don't know what the answer is my kids got a good education here we had good teachers I think of all four of my kids I still have one in the system the three of them I can name two teach I I I can think of two teachers that probably weren't qualified the rest were wonderful the other problem that we have that you guys can't do anything about now because it was previous administrations we went from teaching five periods of an eight period day to teaching five periods of a nine period day well if the teachers are only in a classroom for half of the day five of the nine periods you're gonna need twice as many teachers so I don't know what the answer to that is but nobody ever wants to talk about that I think if you guys approved this budget tonight it would be unconscionable it is a an incase that many many people just can't afford I'm retired fortunately I still have an income my wife still works she's forced to work because of my special needs child who has a lot of Medical Care needs this school's been good to my son they've been great to my son next year's his last year here he now I was driving him to school up until last year when I had health issues and now the school is providing Transportation so I know that my costs are more than some other students cost and I want every child to get a good education but I had a conversation with a man the other day who said my daughter works in the school system and she has 31 kids in her class and I said well is there an aid he said no there's two teachers so I don't think we always see the full picture here the state reports that our student to teer ratio is 12:1 I've been told it's wrong but that's published in three major newspapers coming right from the State Department of Education I know there's some classes that special needs that have five or six there's some that may have 25 and 30 but if you got 30 kids in a class and there's two teachers that's not making a fair representation so I would just ask you guys to be very careful with this we would be living within our means if previous boards had done the right thing they did not from the numbers I gave you you can see that our our our budgets didn't increase at a time when our student population dramatically decreased and now you guys are left to pick up the broken pieces but I think would be unconscionable to increase our taxes by $4.4 million it's wrong so I'm sure I've gone over my time now you have you got 15 seconds great glad I got it all in thank you for your Indulgence I hope you all think about both sides of this yes teachers have a lot to say and teachers are the ones that are teaching our kids but you have to think about the taxpayers as well we're all in this together thank you very much thank you Mr D new thing here sign in huh yes please good evening Doran Edwards Highland Lakes you know I'm thinking back in regards to when I was going to school grammar school and how many kids were in my class and I could tell you I could see in my mind a picture of all the kids lined up and I think there had to be close to 30 kids at that time as well and I feel I got a good education so I don't really know why the Dynam Dynamics have changed so much um maybe because the state put extra uh burdens on the teachers I don't know but what I would like to see is more AIDS than if they need it instead of more teachers in the class or the size is because it costs less for the AIDS now um somebody had said that it was said last meeting $40,000 per family um medical and Dental per um teacher administrator whatever um that's that's a lot and I've been trying to figure this out in my head to find out exactly um and I did some research and I was told if a teacher or administrative is making over $100,000 that they have to contribute I think 35% if they're making under a 100,000 then it's less perhaps 25% but then also I had heard that there was a give back at the end of the year of approximately 10,000 or so so and that was something that the board um had opted to do um we are all in this together I'm on a uh budget I have I don't work anymore okay I do a lot of community service I put a lot of my money like the teachers saying well we put a lot of money into our classes that we don't get reimbursed for well there's a lot of citizens out there who do the same thing I put a lot of money out food banks um or or um dog pound I mean that's part of being a community as you give and you get back with different type of rewards for different type of people so um it was said at one point that um I I don't I think I was one of the teachers I believe who said well I'll be happy to write out a $50 check to whomever here if they feel we don't deserve an increase well first of all that's a lousy attitude to take uh second of all I'm sure that the medical and the dental have gone up I don't know by what percentage I would really like to know that percentage and I'm sure it's costing the taxpayers additional money so it's in disingenuous to me to say listen if you want your $50 back I'm sure it's a heck of a lot more than $50 um I want to thank um Charles for your good comments I don't know why we have to keep on Reinventing the wheel if if the U management asset thing was done in 2021 why weren't the roofs on there if they're in such bad shape I mean I don't I don't understand this we it's like a NeverEnding Saga and every year we go through the same thing it wasn't this board it's the previous board it wasn't this Bo when is it going to stop when are we going to say listen I'm sorry but the buck stops here now you know I understand there's things that have to be done safety wise but it's just crazy that it just keeps on going on and on and I don't understand I mean um I was I worked at a thing and I was accounted accountable to whatever I quoted for a customer if I under quoted guess what either I felt obligated to reimburse my company the money or they forgo it depending on the circumstances but I was held a cannibal and I just find it I don't know I I'm just really really sad at that we're in this situation now that's what I was saying I'm really sad about it because it's not us against the teachers okay we all have a part in this community okay we all have a part in this world you want to be a teacher fine I was in a in in a service field helping customers out there get their goods and we all have things to do okay which makes up this world today I don't think my husband used to say something made me laugh he was a maintenance manager he did budgets for this he did the assessments okay this is nothing new this has been going on for decades that companies are supposed to do this so I don't I don't understand why it keeps on why we have to keep on Reinventing the wheel kudos for you guys to finally say okay we need to do it but like you said it could have been at a worst time so that's my two cents thank you thank you good evening Hannah Larson also from Glenwood um I I have a few comments um and I don't mean to sound offensive or rude but Mr Mr Ram when you talk about the taxes and the revaluations you're you're not staying in your lane okay it's unfair it's disingenuous for you to point out that a $4.4 million increase is going to end up in a net loss reduction in our taxes you got to stop doing it it's not it's not legit it's not legit and quite honestly you should probably be swor in before you speak to numbers like that it's unfair to us I'm going through listening to all these comments about the maintenance and so forth you know triple roof layers no no no no roof for the conscience would ever put a third layer on a roof we all know two layers is it for roofs so I don't know where they found that person or those persons maybe we should go back and get refunds or partial refunds or some sort of assistance this this is just crazy that we keep having all these problems I had a conversation with the mayor uh just what's today today is Thursday Tuesday night I had a conversation with the mayor about blacktop we're talking about black top to the tune of $300,000 our Ro aren't being black topped they're talking about oil own chip and most most places and some new epoxy system that's $4 a square yard versus you know whatever is 11 for for the black and we're going to Black toop a parking lot seriously these aren't serious they're not serious Acquisitions that you're looking to make it's just throw whatever out there it's unfair to the taxpayers Mr Rogers you mentioned before about the after school buses have to uh have to accommodate the students going out of District having had my kids go to Pope John we drove that after school bus every day we had group of of of parents we drove back and forth to spida every day now you're telling them that there's a bus that takes the children home from after school activities back to Vernon that wasn't the case that wasn't the case and if we manag to go back and forth to Vernon maybe fighting the battle about the buses isn't the biggest issue maybe we have far more pressing matters instead of just the buses I I mean I'm going on and on here um carbing we're worried about kurbing seriously we're going to talk about kurbing when we need $4.4 million and the scores are PL this is just like neuro fiddling while Rome is burning we don't need to talk about curving till he we get the scores back up and we fix all the other things like the roof that's leaking and a chemical pump that's leaking these are things that are not you know the things that you shouldn't be ignoring and we're worried about curbing I mean does that sound silly to you it sounds silly sitting out there that you're you know you're looking at minutia instead of important matters so I'm sorry I could go on and on because I got a whole lot more of these silly expenses on by the way that $55 you mentioned was it you that mentioned Colleen are you Colleen okay you're not Colleen no okay forgive me but the woman who mentioned the $55 she did leave without leaving the $55 we got plenty of senior citizens that could use that $50 to make the uh to help with their taxes people un fixed incomes single parents and we're just really nearly talking about curving and $300,000 worth of blacktop this has to stop this this madness has to stop so I urge you reconsider and cut that thing to the Bone 4.4 is insane in this in this Dylan age and actually M Mr Zimmerman you found out at the at Highland Lakes this week people are tapped out they voted no on Highland Lakes improvements people are tapped out we can't keep spending money and getting nothing in return thank you probably save some money on the electric if you turn that down right please state your name and what section or what uh mun Highland Lakes I'm sorry what Andy stall Highland Lakes okay thank you um I was raised on a te by a teacher my father on a teacher salary so I have great admiration and respect for teachers and the school system but not so much anymore I'm not familiar with the curriculum and and what's going on in the school that much uh I don't have kids in school but I I just see the kids I see kids who can count who can't can't can't count change they their reading skills are are not good they don't they can't think critically um I just see so much what do you call it decline in in cognitive thinking and and what's going on and it's got to be the schools they don't want a population of of citizens capable of critical thinking how did George Carlin know this he studied John D Rockefeller and the history of public schools John D wanted Factory workers for sure but he wanted more John D wanted the children in the hand of the state and here we are at the end game of his wishes with the state over top of everything Poe reading skills as I said no practical skills life skills um maners etiquette I I just think the schools are failing and I've heard that the scores have really dropped here I don't know what the issue is I said I can't speak to that but to spend money put money on this is is just it's Blasphemous so I I think you should just go back to the drawing board or whatever you have to do and and please don't pass this budget I'm on a very fixed income um after losing business to co and such so and a lot of people are so please don't do this and and we have nothing to show for we don't have great kids I mean great you're not producing great education all right thank you thank you hello Denise Hart uh Vernon um it's great that we have I don't know if the Lounsbury H principles here because I don't know who that is but we have all the principles here I've asked you at two meetings if you could give us an idea of how many classes in our school system needed to go under because when I last meeting I think I mentioned not last meeting because I was in the hospital the meeting before um I brought up the fact that myself as well as another a number of parents that I had spoken to we we went back to our K through sixth grade class pictures we counted the number of students in the pictures and they ran from 20 to 25 so I asked this twice how many classrooms does it sub does it support the 16 teachers needed I also asked why can't we bring more AIDS in you p on nothing I just don't understand that I I I really don't you you could really balance this out a bit maybe you do need some more teachers but maybe you could bring in more AIDS I would love to know because we're using 2020 and 2021 numbers but I'd really love to know how many students did we have in 2019 before we got to the Unicorn years where the state was giving us a ton of money how many students did we have in 2029 how many teachers did we have in I'm sorry 2019 how many teachers do we have in 2019 how much has that changed to present forget the for you we got for the SRS money whatever it is forget that I'm like you know I'm tired of hearing that the Busy please remember the 105 we were told a couple of meetings ago that that 105 could go away and the busing is temporary the whole idea of the busing is temporary because if the bunnies needed somewhere else that is not guaranteed to stay in the budget for the 6:00 5:30 whatever bus it is it's not guaranteed please remember that because I feel like we've been sold a b in a swamp um shoot I had one more thing it went out of my head um I'm sorry I forgot anyway thanks for listening thank you Mrs Hart uh Scott Cel from Glenwood I know we're not being alive but I just have a few questions and comments that I'll just throw out there um on the maintenance projects I was wondering how many of them are would fall under the shared services and if they were costed as such because I would think that that would drop the cost on on a lot of them um I think that well an lson brought up a lot of these questions and points so I won't repeat them but they were really good I think that was one of the things I saw were these actually immediate needs that we had in those projects some of them look like they were some of them you know did not seem like that um I I know I'm kind of a broken record on this every meeting but um to me the maintenance costs should be somewhat offset by administrative cost reductions or restructuring um you know no one is saying don't make needed repairs for safety or security or whatever but I think they're uh you know there should be some give by the district too there shouldn't always be like the only solution is we've got to raise everybody's taxes and there's no pain by the district at all we're just going to keep everything exactly the same um and I I I brought this up a couple meetings ago but again it would be really good to see all the administrative costs I'm not talking about teachers anything like that all the administrative costs the overhead um courses training you know all of that stuff listed and analyzed with you know for positions roll and responsibilities um to see if there can be some reduction because we are looking at huge tax increase I mean it's it's insane the amount of money we're talking about um so some combining of responsibilities things like that to to somewhat offset some of this I'm not saying it's going to cover everything but it should you know we should have some kind of even if it's listed that we looked into this and it didn't work you know I've said this a few times I know everybody's tired of hearing me say it but you know I would love to see the work that went in to say uh you know these are all their position we had we thought we might be able to combine these two we can't because of this you know at least some effort put in for that um the last thing I have is it was stated previously and I asked the question actually but what what happens at the time we had the second question what happens if the second question is not passed and it was basically stated that the district stays the same as it is so with the second question we we going to improve class sizes and a few other things but the district would remain how it is so why would we not leave it as a second question why would we put it in the budget and not give the residents a chance to speak on this I know you know if Mr Zimmerman has alluded to everybody's happy except for me and like two other people then it shouldn't be a problem I mean you can shake your head that's basically what you were saying you can you know look down if you know if you want to um but why would we not let it go to a vote then if it's going to pass it may very well pass there's a lot of people that have students in in schools and I'm sure they're getting hammered to vote Yes but why would we not at least have a have a choice on this I mean we keep talking about the inflation piece and all of that and I understand it drove up the schools you know I know I'm not arguing that it drives up the school but it also is driving up my costs that I'm already paying on my own and now I'm going to make up for it on on the school too without any anything else so I'm going to steal a great question that Carolyn encarnado had few meetings ago but with this much larger increase what would be the inspect expected Improvement of the district so you know in the standing for the District say in the state or in our County what would we expect that to be I know you can't be held to it but what would be the benefit of that not just saying oh you know we're gonna we're hoping that we're going to reduce class sizes and and that's it you know our our scores are not good I know again not picking on you Mr Zimmerman but you don't think scores mean anything to me it means a lot and I think people moving to this town young people with kids I know I did you look at the school scores you're saying okay let's see how the school Stacks up that's hurting the town to not have good school scores so if if you're going to tell me that this huge increase is going to is going to raise it up you know that's great but that's that's what I'd like to hear so thanks for letting me go over thank you very much good evening evening I'll write my name down my name is Nick demac I'm assistant principal of ver Township High School um I've been an administrator for eight years they just want to provide some context when I was an administrator I don't have the numbers off my head exactly but I'm talking about mid-management I consider myself mid-management I'm not sitting at the board I'm not at the central office there were about 21 of us um there are 14 of us now and that's in eight years and that's a significant reduction I just wanted to put that out there um for us in mid management wise and I think the the board is aware I know the community is aware that we had an assistant superintendent last year we don't have an assistant superintendent this year and those person's responsibilities have been offset by some of my current members I'm also president of VT AA the administrator Association and we've taken on lots of responsibilities and I just wanted to put that out there for the public to fully understand I think it is fair um to look at administrative costs as well too but if I don't know where else you would cut I'm just being straight up um there's not many of us left but I do want to say in regards to this I'm I am not a taxpayer so I'm not going to fight that fight and speak to it there but I could say I am a taxpayer in a different town excuse me but I feel like some of the things that are offered here directly impact student opportunities and just the things that are on there there too as I uh as I drove here from I live in Stockholm just passing all the fields and seeing all the kids and seeing all the sports and all the activities just the one thing and it's very small cost but it's included is the weight room stien after school um I don't know if you realize we follow Sports and like this is why some of these kids come to these schools and if they're successful there then they're successful with test scores they're successful everywhere else and and that's a big part of the programs our our our High School athletics have and and I got to say kudos to the staff and kudos to the coaching is that like it's been volunteering for the entire year people did not stop working um to allow the opportunity for their students to to continue to excel to grow and this this year's Sports season in my five years as a VP at the high school has probably been the most successful and and and you know the kids know this you know one thing I always say whenever I speak I have a catchphrase that anytime I make an announcement let go Vikings because we are a family and I don't you know you have a tough decision to make and I understand you're hearing both sides of the situation and I don't envy the decision that you are making but I feel like that it it does have an impact um in the here and the now that doesn't directly impact test scores but indirectly will or doesn't and and will impact our our student body and then what are we trying to do I'm the disciplinary and every time I have a conversation with a kid is an opportunity to learn and grow because I want them to be good citizens in society that's what we that's what we did that's why I got into education that's what I try to do as a father and I always say that like you know I'm dad first I have 937 kids at the school I'm the dad of the building so but my fellow family members are struggling the aspect of high class sizes I know brought up of 12 to one where does that number come from and that's a great question because every day I'm walking around you know I have a daughter with special needs not in this District but she's in a class but that has brought up of five kids in that class but then you know my other son has like 22 in at different neighboring district and then I go and work and see that some of the high school students yes their high school can we handle more absolutely but I'm just going to throw this out there as I said I'm a disciplinarian right higher class sizes directly corresponds to behavior increase of behavior leads less focus on academics leads less focus on Improvement and actually concentrating on what we're trying to be here for so I'm just it is what it is it's my job but the increase of behaviors has gone up with high class sizes and then we're strugg in regards to that and two teachers in the classroom and that's thrown out a lot it's IEP driven they're co- teers and an aid in the classroom would be awesome please do it but it doesn't negate the fact that you have to have two teachers in there because it's a team driven IEP approach that has a requirement which didn't exist 30 years ago which didn't exist 20 years ago didn't exist I graduated high school 25 years ago it's a new process that was put in place so there's those contexts we're doing the best we can we will continue to do the best we can with what we have I do appreciate the support of all my colleagues and and all the effort that the parents and the family and the community give whether you have children in the district or not I know I don't live in town but like I do Bleed Blue and Gold harston's blue and gold too so like I think feel like realistically we're trying the best we can and I do want to just throw that out there I'd be happy to have conversation people just like in just regards to what we're doing on On My mid-management Level but it's it's it's a struggle and we're going to keep doing the best we can no matter what the outcome of the meeting is but if you vote Yes I think it's going to make things a little bit better thank you thank you you good evening I'm Heidi L of Veron um I uh I've been watching for a couple years how how things work I've been researching for quite a while to learn that even though um every point of Education every school has the same problems exactly um budgeting unions teachers taxes and it's never changed and it won't change until uh somebody stands up against what is forced upon our district and I believe what what the state demands of you is to follow their curriculum follow their um or bribe you into doing things and forcing you to buy through their prors that charge an arm and a leg or 10 times as much as Maybe buying local so um the state is not our friend because um as everybody's been saying um our children have Dum down and whatever they're teaching our kids or how they're teaching it's changed the way I went to school and the curriculum critical thinking and and Common Core math and it's then you got to buy programs and then you got to train your teachers to teach that and then well that didn't do well because the test scores are lower so I'm wishing um many of you in your heart find a way to find some way to go back to basics instead of taking command from the state because uh I don't trust the state I don't trust our country it's in turmoil and it's getting worse so I'm hoping you as human beings will um look at it at a different way and say we had enough we really got to do something drastic because it's just going to continue and I've seen my kids what they went through my grandkids and nothing's changed on nothing I've seen my brothers been pushed through one grade after another in the seven seven no in the 60s and my mother begged him hold him back hold him back they pushed him forward pushed him forward until they dropped out and when I graduated uh High School um I was The Quiet One I was the lost one and never did anybody in my district uh approach me like a um a counselor um what do you call them that to see if I want to go to college or anything but uh I didn't know they had that so I managed I did very well I did very well even without it so anyway it's just uh I think I'm just tired of um finding out and realizing how much you are the puppet of the state and they tell you what to do and that's why our taxes keep going up because you keep buying these new programs and curriculum and so on and the raises go up because of the union and it's just got to stop and I I hope you don't raise the taxes or the budget because uh it's outrageously expensive to live in Vernon and anywhere anywhere you go it's pretty high I thank you for your time thank you anybody else good evening uh my name is Dr lawren shell I Williamsville section buron uh just to give you a little perspective about myself uh School business administrator for 28 years deal with many of the problems that Mr slam is dealing with in this age uh my wife was a teacher of 36 years uh she's here tonight out of her concern also um and we've talked about this we've been living in the township for 42 years we had two sons go through the system very successful in their careers one the school business administrator one school business administrator of the year for the New Jersey asbo I want to put a little bit different perspective on what of course I don't know all of the board members have you considered what this is personally going to cost you if you have I just want to put a little perspective uh another way looking at it what has been established from the 23 24 tax levy roughly $ 45 million to the proposed tax levy of $49 million is uh 4, 394,000 increase in the tax levy that equates to 99.65% so if you're living in a house in the township and your tax bill and I just took uh $1,000 increments if you're paying $133,000 in taxes you tax bill is 57% of your total tax bill right the other roughly 25% goes to the municipality then the balance of it goes to the county tax and then there's the county library tax so if you take 57% of that 13,000 $741 is the amount that is going towards the schools you increase that by 99.65% you got a $715 annual increase on that half property I'll bring it down to further under $10,000 total property taxes that you're paying 57% of that is $5,700 multiply that by 96 99.65% you're going to be paying $550 now I have other examples but the way that is working you all understand I believe that the tax year versus the school year lags by six months difference so so you're going to be paying half of that in the 24 uh tax year it's the balance of the next six months from July of this year till December the other half is going to be in the following in 2025 and when you're going to pay it so the initial impact will be half of that amount I just said like the $110,000 $550 you're going to be paying 275 in the first two quarters or last two quarters in the third and fourth quarter of 24 and after 25 the first two quarters you're going to be paying the 575 or 275 so if that's all okay with you guys that's the way you're going to vote the other thing that I think people have a low sight on are that tonight is not the end all to this discussion much like you did with the public hearing you what you're proving tonight is for the submission to the count superintendent County Superintendent has to sign off on whatever actional you have to provide to them and then as I believe I read I think it's June 13th there's going to be a public hearing on the budget and as going to be provided the second opportunity for the the public to question it during that time you could even modify the budget that goes from here to the county public hearing you also have a chance to modify it based from input from the public as well so tonight is not an end all it's the beginning of the process and that's how I'm looking at it and if I'm wrong please correct me if I'm wrong with that understanding all right so uh my closing work is I think you know it's a a burden I think it is uh to include all this when you start talking about facilities and the facility needs uh I think the last time uh the word was mentioned it was a a referendum to provide for capital projects and a referendum is much like taking out a long-term mortgage I think the referendum this S I think you R long enough to have been part of the board back then I think that was for a 25 or 30y year period and so the Deb shice portion of it in the budget uh that's being paid you're still paying off that that that the project loan but what that does is like with a mortgage if you go out and you pay for all these expenses up front you got a high amount uh money to lay out to achieve all those projects do you have a referendum you have that payment spread back over 25 30e period with a much lower payment that's that part of the current expense budget so I'd urge you if all these projects are have been determined to be in need or maybe there's others that you haven't looked at as well maybe the referendum is the best approach thank you Mr okay thank you my name is Kelly wishnik and I live in High Lakes uh I have two kids in the district and I'm very proud of their education I think all the teachers here and Veron are doing an excellent job and I'm just so thankful um I teach here in Glen met too and um I just I think it's very obvious our our students are doing great but I think as a community we need to put our priorities in our children in their education and I mean I know what it's like to to have to pinch pennies and I you know I think sometimes in life it's it's hard to pay our bills and make all these payments and um so I do hear you know how how it's you know we don't want to always you know it's a struggle but at the end of the day you know we need to just know that you know things can come and go your car your your you know you might not be able to pay you know your mortgage on time but I know that I'm very satisfied because I know that my kids are having you know such a great education here in Veron and that's my priority you know Sports after school sports being you know Transportation I just don't think that our children should go without the the basics so that's how I feel about it thank you thank you Mrs if no one else in in present has anything else to say I'm going to move it to online comments sure okay go ahead that's to sign this um just say your name and where you're from we should be able to get that so my name is Max Taylor I'm the Vernon Township High School band director for the last 24 years I'm also the director of the Viking marching band who this year won and was awarded the title of New Jersey Championship marching band for the first time in the district's history as you may be aware our high school band students fun raised oh thank as you may be aware our high school band students fundraised and band parents subsidized the cost that afforded band students just last week the opportunity to represent the school and Community the concert band students and Jazz Band students performed and received clinics in Chicago the jazz band performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of F and Cleveland and the marching band performed for the first time in the Washington DC National Memorial Day Parade my band my position as band director includes the recruiting and retention of students in the Band program as well as advocate for the students and music programs of the Vernon Township School District this includes for our future music students to have as close to the same experience as the students that they that currently receive uh going forward prior to the 2022 and 2023 school year there were many cuts to our music program our music production classes at the high school and our guitar classes at the high school were cut to due to reduction in staff a teacher was moved to the primary school as general music teacher because um we had to satisfy a retirement and we didn't want to replace that teacher music theory has not run eths for the last several years due to having to run it as a six period and smaller class sizes are a risk of not being run General music in grade seven has not run in several years due to a reduction in teaching staff there used to be two general music teachers like Glen meow for grade seven and eight and now there's only one General music teacher for grade 6 through eight if this increase doesn't pass facility needs don't go away class siiz issues don't go away inflation costs for student instruction doesn't go away salaries cost of living salary increases and benefit increases don't go away it's inevitable that if this doesn't pass teachers become more at risk of being cut and programs become weaker and also at risk of being cut real estate values decrease and unfortunately this means that the taxpayer pays either way there will be upcoming costs that increase uh that this increase will help to satisfy just in the area of the marching band we are using the same uniforms that that we have used for the last 15 years since 2010 new marching band uniforms in 2010 cost $60,000 we have strong programs including our music program in Vera School District that attract many people to move into and stay in the district if we become weaker there are strong programs in neighboring districts that become more appealing to current and future residents thank you Mr T anybody else Angelo we gonna go online we have Martin peringer Mr peringer yes minutes P Highland Lakes you can hear me assum yes uh okay uh I hope I get through this number one I before I get cut off I want to see I support the increase and here's some of the comments I would like to make uh we have heard repeatedly that in past years pre-2020 where you based your numbers with the inflation on we had student enrollment Decline and we didn't lower the budget if you take 2024 and you go 20 years back to 2004 when we had like 5,000 students and you are morti sized that through enrollment decline we had an average enrollment decline of 2.5% a year if you look at the New Jersey inflation data we had an average 3.6% inflation over the past 20 years so that means if we kept the budget the same we cut the budget by 1.1% because the inflation was higher than the decrease in student enrollment and that's even a rough calculating because certain costs that is not including direct costing because there are certain costs that do not go down just because a student leaves like this the school building still needs heaing that brings me to the next point and if you are Modz and we say we should have just spent the same we spent in 2004 we come out to roughly about 80 million budget right now so we about 8 to $ 10 million short we're growing back for and change so probably about half of it that we should that's one of the reason I'm for it the other thing is and some of the people are correct here past boort and I hope this will change have only thought of today in to the point that in 2020 I was part of a referendum committee as a stakeholder of the uh of the people and we went through all the buildings and the plan back then was to get like a 10 or 12 million referendum and pay back over many years because that's about how much we had in stuff that needed replacing some of the stuff I've s seen was from the 60s and I hope some of that stuff got replaced now that fell I don't know where went it just evaporated as soon as Co hit because we had those meetings in January and February of 2020 and then by March April May we had covid and it was over so the uh the point is your estimates of a million and change a year for the uh improving of the schools in my opinion having seen what I've seen is low so you should probably budget more plus I've been going to meetings here for over 20 years and the rule of sum made up from the prior pues was usually a million five in capital reserve I remember that so 500,000 in capital reserve uh anything major happens we in big trouble so so I would hope we bringing our capital reserve back up I mean for your home you should have 2% of the house well you should expect for repairs every year so and I think it should not be much different uh for the schools so you can figure out what it would cost to replace the schools fig up 1 and a half to 2% of that area and cost of fixing roofs windows and stuff and you should have a good estimate on what your uh what your capital reserve should be and yes I'm 100% with the people say we let things slides our the shape our schools are in what I've seen is atrocious okay so for the increase you have two choices you don't do it and in my opinion things will stay the same or and most likely get worse because the 2% increase does not cover inflation so our chances are results testing results student experience will get worse or you pass the increase and we at least I know you don't want to guarantee if we have an increase we going to have our I'm wrapping it up we going to have 10% increase we're going to go to space 110 in the ranking or something like that but we at least have a chance Mr par your time is up thank you very much there anybody else no that was all okay then we close the meeting to the public and move on to item F recommendations Mr slam or is Mr Rogers item one uh be it resolved that the Revival budget be approved for the 2425 school year using the 2425 state aid figures and allowable 2425 additional tax levy C flexibility use in the amount of 3,146 712 and that the secretary of the board of May authorized to submit the 2024 revised budget to Executive County Superintendent approval in accordance with Android 18a 7 sorry 75-5 try to get too fast all you don't have to read all those um as seen below do we go through the whole resolution no okay heard enough for me for tonight I get it um and then we have item two we're gonna have a yes okay all right we have a motion for I item number one so moved so moved by m cantino seconded by m pellet discussion who wants to go first Charles I I'll go first thank you um I just want to say um there's two things that bother me with this and I've been vocal with you guys and so you should know um should be not surprised I mean two things is is obvious what we've heard from a lot of people is a tax burden I am a taxpayer here just like everyone on this board um in the times we struggle I have several children it's not easy and it's not I don't want to increase taxes I want to increase my taxes um this has been a difficult year these last couple years actually since covid right um gas prices have gone up they gone down they gone back up again uh fuel cost is going crazy and the school is not not immune to that right all the school we're still buying fuel oil so those prices have gone up but yet we have no money for that right so but it bothers me because you know somebody else said something about the state and the state is actually I don't I don't agree like the state is our friend I mean they dropped this at the end of the year I mean we had a whole budget season we all everyone knows this is throughout the whole state and they said okay Finish budgets and all of a sudden let's pass something and why they pass it because they feel like maybe they made a mistake and they took money away from people but it's not saying let's help them they're like okay yeah we made a mistake you guys go and fix your mistake on your own so I'm a little to torn near with the tax burden but um I don't think I have to go into that as much and the other thing I have a problem with with is the um the second question again because of the state did not allow us to increase we had to put a second question out there we have to tell the public that we were doing it have a second question all of a sudden the state says hey yeah by the way you can go and raise it a little higher so have we not had had the opportunity before then I don't think we would ever had bring up a second question and this would have been dealt with during the regular budget season right and so I have a little problem with that I mean that's that's a struggle of mine it's been a struggle since uh our budgetary budget meeting last week a finance committee meeting last week um because I we gave the public the chance to vote on something and we're essentially now taken away and it's a struggle whether what to do right but one thing I I do want to say look at that as we move forward and we all should look at this is there is no extra money we we don't have extra money we have the bills we I I see I mean honestly they're estimates right so they can be up and down but could we could we have this the Town come in and do half of them shared services I I don't know but let's say it's we I looked at we look at number I don't know $30 million so that's if we did a million dollars that's 30 years to fix right if we had the town maybe help us and we did 15 million a year there's 15 years to get it done I've been living on in my house for 20 years I've been Town most of my life but my house in 20 years my street has never been paved it's just falling apart I don't I I go up to the this the Vern High School to drop off my son in the morning it disgusts me there's a cone in a hole this is what our schools are turning into we have children who drive for the first years going to on that driveway every day um unless things have changed our cross country team used to run down that and that's just something obvious that's right there when you first walk in so we have a lot of problems and we have no way to fix it so if we wanted to do a million dollars right every year and fix something what we gonna do let 10 teachers go or 10 people go every year to make up that money because we're not going to get any other money um so it's a for me but I I I see that there's this is for the first time and and I told rce and and Ray there's a plan and I know people don't don't want to hear hey here's our wish list this is what we want to do I think we have a plan this time it's been written down and I think as a board if this gets passed it is Our obligation to make sure that they follow that plan cuz I am not I'm not up for election this year so I will not vote on a budget next year if these things have not been done and we're not meeting the same things next year I I know we can't always commit to 100% of the items but the the the items have to be tried and we have to have a good reason why they're not done and I and I I and having more teachers and and and working with our students is just a phenomenal thing we don't want to we hear the Tas score is having increased but why stay the status quo why keep on doing something we know is not working and and I and it's hard for me to make this decision tonight and I just want to let people know that like I'm it's been a struggle all week um to to think about it but we can't keep going the way we're going this is our one and only opportunity because the state not only said that you have to make this decision 30 days but they said if you don't too bad you don't get to do it another time this is this is one and only so uh it's a hard decision I think we need to everyone has needs to decide what they what's what's the right thing to do for themselves but we have to think about the the future of our school district and and doing what's right with for the students and um you know it's it's it's a shame that nothing has been saved up we don't have we don't have a pension fund for the school we don't have a trust fund for the school it's just we have what we have and we're we'll probably we blow through it every year and go through it and things in the past have not been maybe have not been done correct we we know we lost students and uh but the budget stay the same and that money disappeared we spent it on something else but course of that we're stuck here we have rooms that need to be done we have parking lots that need to be done we have for furnaces boilers everything and not only are we working on they have a plan but they also said what are alternatives we're looking for sell Tower to make money for the district to bring in some some extra Revenue we're looking at an EIP um proposal so we can do this but if those things don't work we we we can only give us so much money we have to find another way so um I just want everybody to think about it I'm sorry I talked probably pass five minutes yeah I don't talk that much you guys know that right but um it has been increasing lately keep an eye on so whatever we decide tonight and whatever you decide as a board member we need to if it goes through we need to stick sure make sure it goes through because not all of us are going to be here next year and administration all may not be here in the next few years too right so we all change we all need to make sure it goes forward and it stops what has been done in the past so thank you thank you m uh Charles I share a lot of your concerns about how this was rolled out to us the idea that we presented a ballot question and now if this goes through we won't need the ballot question but I thought about this all week and I lost sleep over it because this is a very very difficult decision but the reason that we get on this board is to make difficult decisions I understand that the cost of living keeps going up taxes keep going up and people's wages are not going up but when I think about the kind of education that I got in Vernon schools the kind of education that my sister got in Vernon schools the kind of education that I know our faculty want to give to our students in the current state I don't feel they are getting what I got there's no late buses we're dealing with paper shortages I've heard of 30 kids in a class this is not the kind of education that we want for our children and it's not fair that they're not getting what I got and what the rest of us who went through Vernon schools got so given the opportunity to change that for the better and make our budget sustainable like Charles was saying making sure that all this money goes where it's allocated to having a plan I feel we're doing the right thing that's all I have to say say Thank you Mr Cino good so um I too am really upset about how this rolled out with the state um I've been upset with the state for a number of years now ever since the S2 formula changed and uh start our Cuts started rolling in um but for all the same reasons I'm not going to repeat everything um that Carl and Charles said um this is you know this is a lifesaver for our district um it was also upsetting to hear our teachers and students criticized tonight and um I guess I have a different perspective I spent I'm sorry little course I have allergies um I spent a number of days at the high school at various award ceremonies this past couple weeks because my kids are graduating and um the kids are just amazing and uh they've done some you know they've some of the Honors that people the kids received were so impressive in music and in sports and and in academics um it was also fabulous to see all the kids who graduated from our CTE programs which are you know really fabulous ways for these kids coming out of school to graduate with actual skill sets that they can go directly into the um job market with uh so that was really exciting in uh cosmetology culinary engineering um all of these programs I know I'm forgetting a bunch um I've also been do a lot of L this year for you know sports games concerts art standing all these wonderful things things that my kids got to be a part of and the kids coming up through Rin today um they deserve all of that they deserve manageable class sizes they deserve teachers being able to teach effectively because they have resources they deserve support services guidance counselors interventionists all the staff that they have that that help Drive student achievement um and they deserve safe buildings uh they don't deserve crumbling infrastructure um and they need after school program those are not actually you know a something that you can get by without in a district that's 60 square miles without a downtown I mean this is where our kids can go to do healthy things right they do clubs they do Sports they do music they do after school um activities that that really keep them engaged and motivated to come to school so those things are all they're in Need for our kids and the after school busing is necessary to get them home from those activities or they can't participate in them um so we need more of all of that not fewer and we need more kids to be engaged in all of those activities not not fewer activities and not fewer academic resources um and in the past four years that I've been on the board due to the budget cuts we were headed in the opposite direction we've been cutting cutting cutting we cut teachers we cut administrators we cut programs we agonized over infrastructure that we couldn't afford to repair we heard about you know all this stuff the can getting kicked down the road um this is all absolutely necessary stuff that our our children deserve and that our our staff deserves and our district needs um and now we finally have the opportunity to do something about it and I'm actually uh really excited to do that um because I think it's really important for our town thank you Miss bellet anybody else I have a comment sure are you guys hearing me okay yes yeah I I just wanted to comment on what two members of the public had spoken about um regarding the choices that are being made um and the availability of alternate programs perhaps better programs in competing districts I think that schools are the lifeblood of the community right we've all kind of touched on that a little bit and I think that parents often have to make really difficult choices in in everything that they do but one of the most important choices that they can make is what school they're going to send their child to and if the school starts to deteriorate I think it was Mr peringer that touched on it and somebody else in the in the audience touched on it if the schools start to deteriorate the community is going to fall apart um you're not going to get people who are going to be willing to move into the district um those who do move into the district might send their children somewhere else but you're not going to get people like me with small children willing to to make my life here and send my child to school here um once that happens your property values are going to tank once the property values start tanking you're going to see the Community start to kind of fall apart from the inside out so you know I I don't want to ramble but I do want to say that that that there were two points that were brought up by the community and I think they were good points and I just wanted to kind of circle back to those to make sure that people do understand I think it was Mr peringer that said you will pay for it either way um and that's not to be callous or rude or to try to just this is the way it is but it's just unfortunately what will happen if the school district fails the community will fail um and as everybody else said my esteemed colleagues here we need to invest in our kids they deserve it um I have four step kids in the district well sorry two still two are gone um and a toddler and they're great kids um I I don't think that the assessment necessarily was fair that was pushed upon you know the children in the district um maybe there are always room for improvement but at the same time I think they're great kids they deserve good things and just because some of us have struggled in the past and have had to overcome and have had to make sacrifices it's not that we're unwilling to make the same sacrifices it's just if we can do something for the kids and make something better for them just because I struggled or I suffer doesn't mean that these kids have to um if we have an opportunity to make something better I think that we owe it to the children to do that and that's pretty much all I needed to say thank you very much Miss Brock so I'd like to add you know I agree with Charles we put it out for a vote now we're taking it back it's a concern but the state decides these things we probably would to put it to a vote and they've done this two months earlier but they didn't but my biggest concern is I mean I'm off of the after school and the sports and all that I was the hockey coach for 18 years I see when you have a winning team what it could do for the district but I'm more nicely concerned if we're going to make this investment I want to see the stress of the educational part of it the teachers in the class size is reduced you know I will admit it I was duped once by one Administration I'm not going to let it happen again so if we hire these 16 teachers you know my kid benefited from an inter naturalist even though they called him something different back then he had struggled with read they pulled him out of the class they taught him for six months he CAU up graduated college did fine but kids need that stuff they need the teachers classroom size I understand when I went to school in the 70s in a cathic school and night we had 40 litics in the class and sister cerado went up and down the row and if you R line you were put right back in line which that's 197 that's not 20 24 so there's all sorts of different stresses and pressures put on teachers through mandates that happen way above our level that we can B the system where you want but we won't be having this tax question because the taxes were quadruple if we tell the state we're not going to get in line and then told the money we heard that over covid don't wear masks wear masks and the stat said these districts were not going to wear mask they were all the Mone two weeks later they all reive it and everybody's wearing the masks so it's a tough decision to make you know we're looking at the future I think somebody else said it these are first second and third graders I'm pissed off that the previous board for the last 20 years just kicking this down the road because we've had people tell us that it was a lot of money here this and that whatever but they weren't fixing any of this stuff you know we've seen some this stuff in the first our long range facility plan it's all just pinging out more and you know it needs to get done because whatever the bill is today if we don't do it it's going to be double or triple five years from now and the kids are being trailers okay districts have these problems when they can't fix rules can't fix their facilities and I don't think anybody wants that so unfortunately taxes will have to go up if we approve this but we need to work stress the educational part of it all the other stuff is good but to me it's more getting the kids the best opportunity to learn better and move it forward to education if that's somewhat better test scores more kids going to school or trade school just be better prepared for the next step when they leave High School thank you thank you with no further discussion we going have a roll call vote please m b YES magazine yes Mr gtino yes Mr Krauss yes Mr pet yes Dr Ross yes Mr SW yes Mr Zur yes motion carries okay that is the preliminary budget will be go to the county now thank you we'll move on to item number two item two is recommended that the of food service contract with mon Food Services Inc for the 2024 20125 school year as listed as listed may have a motion some will move by Mr Krauss second second by Mr Cino discussion um what changes were were there any changes in this uh the only thing that changes is that the contract is renewed at the CPI uh which if correct was 1.5% increase okay okay thank you roll call please Mr Saga yes Mr K yes Mr Krauss yes Miss bellet yes PA Ross yes Mr Sweeny yes Mr Z yes Miss Brock yes motion carries okay those are the items we have for resolution and I'm going to open up the meeting for public comment again uh for anything other than or the budget or anything else so meeting is open to the public once again you'll have five minutes because of all of people here hi Nick themac again I just wanted to say a couple things a couple people from the public spoke either before me or after me brought up good points that now that you have approved this there's some time to review it and change things in regards to I think it was a couple and I know I'm directing my comments towards you Mr Sweeney um if there's opportunity for share Services I only I would it showed up late for presentation but it sounds like there's lots of things that need to be fixed so if you're able to save money on some of those costs then other things get fixed so those are things and those opportunities present itself the money's in the pool you can decide how to use that pool for the maintenance things so use your contacts use your relationships and if they actually are able to do that and reduce some of those costs then other things get fixed as well too so I just think that that's that's that's a good there was good comments that were made in regards to some people from the public as well and and I think Mr Sagle brought up and a lot of people echoed it so I think that that's really good and you know I do I do want to say you know thank you for you know putting the Trust In in US the the leadership here to try to solve some of these problems to continue to work and in hand inand with our teachers and our students and our families to continue to provide support and uh and and continue to take care of business here and do the best we can thank you have a great night gos any else he well anybody online we have again Mr yes I just want to say I think you made the right decision and I'm counting on you guys to keep an eye on all the things especially and I want to remind you the best predictor of student performance is parent involvement and there can be a lot of done from the school district to help in this regard the second best predict for student involvement uh is uh work climate in the school is school climate and a lot can be done in that I believe and I hope you're going to focus on this and the third best predictor is money and you did something for that today so now that you've done number three according to sence science I hope you do number two and one too thank you thank you that's all we have for uh uh item m n h open board member Forum anybody have any comments I'd like to talk about some of the comments I heard about uh teachers students and staff um I'm very proud of our students teachers and staff in the next couple weeks you'll hear a list of um colleges professions Serv is that our seniors will be entering in next year and every year I'm very proud of that list and what they're able to accomplish um the voting intership school district is making significant strides toward enhancing the educational experience for its students restoring positions to decrease class size and providing necessary interventions through multier system of support is a crucial step in ensuring high quality education additionally restoring After High School busing and the ability to maintain enging facilities will contribute to to a more supportive and well-rounded environment for students many of us choose to live in Vernon to raise our families in a strong School District that offers a wide range of activities Performing Arts Sports and academic opportunities through this shared commitment and hard work we will achieve continuous Improvement and provide a comprehensive education for all students building on the successes of the past we appreciate everyone's support for the veran township students school district and our dedicated staff thank you I like to say something concerning test scores and stuff like that my kids all went through the the Vernon School District as well and I I want to point out I went to a music program at the high school a couple weeks ago it was phenomenal they're doing amazing things but those kids as my kids did started out in in the lower grades screeching out things like three blind eyes suffered through that but then as we followed them along through Middle School they start getting to become really pretty good musicians by the time you get to high school they're doing full professional things these kids go out and learn living they didn't have to take a score State mandated exam to show that they learned they learn you could see it and you can and hear it if you have eyes and ears I want say the same thing for the art programs or any other the programs that the kids you know you putting little scribbles on your refrigerator and they're in kindergarten by the time they're in high school they can be going to art school and again they didn't have to there's no state test score that said they they could pass that or something they just learned you can see it and you can hear it so I have to say thanks thank you I'd just like to say I'm newest member of the board um I'm very encouraged I'm learning a lot I'm really grateful for how thoughtful everyone is on the board about these kinds of difficult decisions um very grateful to the public and encouraged by the involvement and um how much everyone cares obviously all of our staff the process experience so far has been very um encouraging and heartening to know how many of us are acting in good faith for the best uh TR just trying to do our best in difficult circumstances so I really feel a lot of confidence about that and that's uh been a wonderful experience in the few months that I've been on the board so thank you all for uh what you're doing thank you thank you um and I'd just like to remind us all that we still need to focus on our board goals these things are really distracting sometimes and you know I know a lot of us lost sleep over this decision and maybe got distracted but um we're all have homework for the next um board meeting and so I don't want us to forget this is a special meeting this I know I'm just mentioning it so that everybody stays on thank you miss pet for such a reminder do your homework just for class I just wanted to thank everyone who came out tonight and broke their mind we live in a beautiful thing called a democracy and you know I teach social studies this is what I live for and when I see so many people in our beautiful Community come out because they care about our schools because they care about our community it reminds me of why I wanted to do this and how much of an honor it is to sit on this board and make these kinds of decisions so thank you to the public thank you for everyone and I'm glad that we were able to get through a tough decision as a community thank youo Joe I just wanted to um I just want to say my I would lost as a former student [Music] um in Frank in Franklin this year uh this week and uh just want to give my condolences out to the family um uh besides that also sorry about that um it was um front of my my so I need the family and everything so um I also want to say this is only our first step right if this if this budget goes through if it goes through the county and we do vote on there is another vote right so if we do vote on and it goes through is that the money's there now we still have to we have the other part of that right we have to keep working and chugging along and getting those those kids learning get you know whether how we all disagree agree or not about test scores there is a sub meaning to them right and we have to make sure they grow they grow and those kids are achieving better so I'm looking forward to uh if we get this I'm forward to a good year and a very productive year for the school district I look forward to those discussions in the buildings and grounds committee meetings and curriculum committees committee meetings as well thank you all right if there are no further comments I close the meeting seconded by Mr Cino all in favor I I we are adjourned thank you