yeah everybody a minute um welcome everyone it's so good to see all of our little humans here um we're very very excited for the surprise that is to come in uh shortly we will just so everybody knows we will um move this presentation to earlier in the meeting so that you guys can all take your children home and you don't have to sit through a very exciting board meeting because I know that's exactly what you want your preschoolers to be doing um but I'm excited to have you here and I'm excited to see the presentation um we will call the meeting to order pursuant to the open public meetings ACT public notice of this meeting has been given by the board secretary and the following manner posting written notice on the official bulletin board at Vorhees Township Public Schools administrative building on August 17th 20123 sending written notice to The Courier Post on August 17th 2023 filing written notice with the of Vorhees Township on August 17th 2023 and posting on the Vorhees Township website on August 17th 2023 please rise for the pledge of [Music] allegiance aliance to the flag of the United States of America the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for [Music] all the yes board secretary will you call the role Mr Bryce Miss K over here Mr Rosen here Mr Rosner here Mrs Rudder here Mrs Stewart here Mrs stuper here miss verie here Mrs Watson here y good evening everyone I am so excited that tonight you are going to get a little sample of our preschool students we talk about preschool at quite a few of our board meetings so tonight we want to just show you the work that our amazing staff and students are doing along with our supportive parents so at this time I'd like to introduce Julie Lions who is our director of early childhood and she will present our preschool students Miss Lions good evening everyone I'm Julie Lions the director of Early Childhood in K5 literacy first I'd like to thank the board for graciously allowing our preschool students to showcase a snapshot of their learning a special shout out to our families for supporting the preschool program and bringing your little ones here tonight I'd also like to Express gratitude to our fantastic coaches Miss chimento who's our preschool instructional coach and miss ambrus our preschool intervention and referral specialist their unwavering commitment and support to our teachers students and families is unparalleled it's also important to thank Dr alagria our director of special services and Miss Williams who is our community parent involvement specialist and social worker for their input support and collaboration from the special education department as well as a heartfelt thank you to our preschool principal Miss moris and provider director Miss Corey and our amazing teachers Miss colone and Miss BAC who are out there in the hall with the little ones and our wonderful instructional Associates Miss hod Zig Miss Anderson Miss Pearson miss eileene and miss caffini for their dedication and collaborative efforts that have made this presentation possible and of course a huge thank you to our preschool stars that you can hear right now and you're going to see very shortly who are here tonight to share their newf found knowledge with all of us the district's preschool program just to give you a little bit of background operates across multiple locations throughout the district from Crescent Elementary School to our partnering private provider sites tonight we have students visiting from our four-year-old class at one of our private provider locations fervent beginnings and our mixed age three and four-year-old class from creson Elementary School this is just a small representation of our rapidly growing program and considering that this is our first full school year since the district received preschool expansion funding I'd like to thank everyone involved with the preschool program since our expansion would not be possible without your continued support tonight's showcase centers around the children's exploration during their clothing study which is part of the creative curriculum throughout this study students engaged in firsthand experiences that allow them to practice growth and fine motor skills as they zip dipped snapped and buttoned various articles of clothing they also explored clothing and shoe sizes compared the attributes of clothing based on texture and color and you can see some of that on the displays on the wall and they even learned about the process involved in designing making and buying clothes and how to properly care for them finally they learn more about the different purposes of clothing from clothing that we wear based on the weather to special occasion clothing clothing that reflects a person's culture and the clothes that people wear for work the evidence of their learning is beautifully displayed on the wall and as you can see academic areas like math and literacy are woven into everything they do throughout the school day for example teachers are incorporating math skills in the tally charts that you can see where they're practicing grouping by fives and then they can count how many the teacher is constantly modeling literacy skills as well like reading and writing which children are then encouraged to engage in as part of their play tonight the preschoolers are going to perform alphabet songs that they're eager to share as they explore various professions and you will see from their clothing their professions while addressing sound and letter correspondence simultaneously parents um as we mentioned when your children finish their presentation um they are going to go back out in the hallway and they're going to exit the room through those doors they'll be coming in through these doors exiting through those doors and you can then meet your children out in the hallway and um there's a little token of thanks for the students so when they're finished performing we're going to ask the teachers to hold them and so now without further delay I'm thrilled to present our preschool students we can't wait to see what they've been learning thank you we [Applause] go They're Gonna face that way e that's pce Patrol hi kids what's your favor [Music] animal he alligator a a b b fly b b [Applause] [Music] c c c d d d D dog ruff ruff [Music] [Music] d could [Music] is she also I say while we're waiting we can do our end part now so we can sing our Alphabet Song first and then we can do this so we'll we'll start a b c d e r t u w [Music] [Music] [Music] what color am I are wearing blue green orange purple yellow red pink hi kids what do you want to be when you grow up he astronaut a a b b ballerina B C- C- C conductor c c d d d d doctor d d [Music] e engineer e e f firefighter f f g g- g- [Music] g- g g h hairdresser h h [Music] i illustrator i i [Music] j joy j j [Music] K karate instructor k k [Music] l librarian l l m musician m m n n n and n n o o o o optometrist o o p p p p pilus p p [Music] qqqq Queen q q [Music] r race car driver r r s scientist s s t t t teacher t t u ah umpire u u the that [Music] W waiter ww [Music] X x-ray technician x x [Music] y yoga instructor y [Music] z keeper [Music] [Applause] [Music] ZZ you [Music] y [Music] sh they super it doesn't really get any better than that thank you so much to all of the kids and the parents for joining our board meeting they did exceptional you are all free to leave if you so choose we're gonna give you some time to do that can clerk make it a little cooler trying to get his attention oh they're not here for us you H so sad dying it's all right I'll power through yeah I was gonna try and get his attention but hey that's supposed to be yeah well she's ready girl focused she was the whole thing I agree I don't even understand thank you that was a lot of parents I now the whole room you know how that work sorry I'm on fire oh yeah it is it is really hot he said Clark just gave the thumbs up yeah I there's like although he may have been giving me a thumbs up for that okay we can get back to the meeting there is no executive session tonight um can I get a motion to approve the board minutes of the February 28th 2024 regular meeting so move mov D second voting is open I'm sorry you know what I I did the wrong thing I'm really sorry I have to stop it I'm sorry this was executive session I put the wrong thing oh no problem so let me start over thanks Clark try this again sorry the the motion voting is open the motion unanimously passes there's one abstention by Mr Rosen and seven yeses thanks um president's comments very brief um I had the honor and pleasure of attending the VMS show 13 The Musical it was outstanding um I cannot believe actually I can believe because our District's amazing so I can believe how incredibly talented those students are um I was blown away every single time someone got up and said something someone got up and sang something um I know that Miss Kover will be shy but her daughter had a leading role role in the play and she was exceptional Caitlyn can't be mad at me but she can be mad at Julie um I I was just ridiculously impressed um and they made the entire District incredibly proud um so thank you thank you to everyone I know it took a a Monumental effort for everyone to put that show on um so thank you to everyone that contributed and made it a huge success um fire drills and safety drills as shown on the attachment harassment intimidation and bullying report is also on the attachment as well as suspensions and bus evacuation drills we have one Oprah request that we received that has been closed out and I am going to move to the board secretary report right thank you I think I will move over to the podium so that way I can be able to address the board sounds good thanks okay uh good evening everyone um all the board members have a binder a budget binder um that contains the information that I will be going over in a more highlighted fashion um on Wednesday March 6 we had a finance committee meeting where the finance committee receiv received budget binder and then budget binders were delivered to the rest of the board members the next day and the binders include this these categories state aid comparison and notifications advertised Revenue detailed Appropriations budget account analysis and comparison by totals budget account analysis by category budget fact sheet technology funding special education funding construction projects and grants so at this point I will go over the highlights of those items under Finance there's agenda item 19.10 and that's the budget so that's what you see up on the screen right now so that is the budget motion and it it it totals the entire budget that is being submitted to the county so the process is tonight we present to the board the board votes to submit the tenative budget to the county the county reviews it they give us feedback if they have questions about anything um and then it will go to a public hearing on May 1st and then voted on the final budget so contained in this motion is the general fund budget which is 67 m657 48 with a tax levy of 52 m445 979 special Revenue that's our grant funding so that's not tied to any tax levy it's purely um grants and and state aid and so forth the biggest part of that is our preschool program but there's also Ida and title funds in there and any other kind of local grant that we might get goes in there so it's really ins and outs uh the total of the budget combined is 76 million 949 324 we don't have any Debt Service because we don't have any debt uh the other items that have to be approved along with this budget are some of the funding sources so the one source is local tax levy and then there's the capital reserve withdrawal that's $4 M20 and that funds our capital projects underneath that you see the statement of purpose so the state requires us to detail what that 4 million will be used for so the projects listed there uh read as follows uh to maintain the facilities such as replacing Windows interior doors repaving a parking lot refurbishing restrooms replacing carpet with hard surface flooring renovating a vestibule upgrading HVAC control systems replacing hbac units conversion of Municipal sewer and construction related to the preschool expansion the aggregate is $4,200 uh the maintenance Reserve that we're using towards the budget is 1,744 962 emergency Reserve you can only use that for security items or increases in health care so we're using the remainder of that which is 18691 and another item that has to be approved every year uh is travel regulations and really uh the the state refers to um professional development that's offsite is travel so it it that encompasses the fee to go to the seminar or convention and the travel and that is for employee travel versus Board travel board travel is is in a different account and doesn't have to be reported in the same manner as this so as I was saying the budget itself and we'll just focus on the general fund because that is really the one where there is different Revenue sources other than grant money so the 67 million 605 uh the pie chart kind of shows the breakdown of it and so what you can see is the local tax levy is the largest part that represents 68% of the revenue side of the budget then there's also let just back a minute um the 15.9% is our state aid piece which is about $5 million um the federal is 2.1 which is small and 13.8 is the other sources so the other Revenue resources are made up of as follows I have a different chart that I will follow from dollar amounts so I mentioned the tax levy the capital reserve which we talked about four million maintenance Reserve emergency Reserve state aid other revenue and fund balance so other revenue is made up of um estimates so in the past we would do is just estimate really low because if you don't meet it it's good it's good and if you if you surpass it it becomes Surplus and the surplus funds can can be used to replenish your reserves so what we decided to do and again this was a tough budget year and I'll address that in a minute in order to help balance the budget on either side we said let's take a closer look at our Revenue we know that we will get more than we were putting in there before so we'll up it a little bit in order to be le not less conservative but just more realistic I guess um so we instead of budgeting 880,000 for interest we budgeted 500,000 for interest we know that we'll make more than that um also we get extraordinary Aid every year and that's tied to our special education costs that are over a certain dollar amount in the past we've gotten 1.4 million we said let's budget one one million so and then there's another smaller piece called semi and we usually that's tied to uh Medicade reimbursement and we usually don't budget for that we budgeted we we we I'm sorry we do budget for that all the time that's 79,000 so that's the other Revenue piece the fund balance piece is made up of three figures of $2.5 million every year when the auditor comes in and does their work they tell us how much must how much Surplus must be applied to the next year that amount was 1.3 million as of June 30th and on top of that when we work in the state software it calculates another amount based on where we are this year and it says you can probably come up with another 292,000 out of this year's money that you're not spending yet and put that towards that we said usually we know we generate more than that that we like to use to replenish our reserves we're going to go go a little deeper this year and some of that had to do with the the cut in state aid so we come up with another 800,000 out of this year that we're applying to next year so in total that's how you balance the revenue side of 60 M 67 milon 65748 uh we have in this budget uh when we start it out whenever you start the budget process people submit all the expense side of it and then we we find out what our healthc care is going up which is 10% we find out the cost of living that they tell us contracts can go up which is 5.86 for like transportation and so forth and we put in all the I guess wish list you could say when we looked at this year's budget oh and then on the revenue side we just start out with local tax levy at 2% because that's how much you're allowed to go up by and that's how much we do every year we look at Flat state aid and the local tax levy well when we looked at those two pieces we were short by $5 million so like well this is not going to work you know so we had to look at the expense side say what can we scale back on the expense side what can we maybe not do put off till another year maybe do it now this year before this year ends so we we we went through that and decided what to do there and then reduce things once you know that you've reduced it as far as you feel comfortable reducing it you look at the revenue side and you say all right well I know all my capital projects are funded by capital reserve so that's pretty much a wash how much can I take out of Maintenance Reserve can emergency Reserve do some something for me which in this case it did because our Healthcare went up 10% and not the 4% that the State Health was going going up so you just work both sides until you come to a balance so I would say this year basically how we kind of filled that we were caught a million dollars how we were filled that was combination of using more Reserve money and some fund balance right so I will jump around a little bit here um so you saw the revenue pieces right there the next slide shows the appropriation so the appropriation side stays pretty consistent every year but the things do go up so as a percentage of the total cost uh regular and special education instruction is 64% 18% is employee benefits 6% Capital outlay 79 7.9% operations and maintenance and 3.4% insurance sometimes people uh like to talk about Administration and if that's higher not we're below the dollar amount that's for South the southern part of the state so we're well below that that's maybe 24 $2,500 per pupil we're about $1,700 per pupil so there's a lot of criteria that the budget software looks at and that the county looks at as we're doing the budget but again as we balance this budget it was more difficult than before because we did have to reduce it by the five million and then when the state aid was red released on February 29th you can go to the next slide Bruce thank you the next slide shows our state aid compar comparison so in fiscal year 2324 our total state aid was 6, 81445 and it was reduced this year to by a milliion 52956 to get state of 5, 2,488 and again it's it's a surprise when it comes in because you always kind of count on flat Aid um so we did not expect the $1 million so we had already cut a lot out of the budget and balanced it for the most part and then we had to take another look and say okay now we have another million to address so we did and at the time there's other districts around here too that were hit just as hard percentage wise so I think like some of them maybe were hit um five million but that's 16% of their budget where we're this is 177% of our budget so um I mean I'm sorry not a budget 177% reduction it's a 17% reduction where some other people's numbers seem high but as a percentage of their total Aid it's um it's comparable all right so you can go to the next slide so people were asking why did this happen why did your Aid go down so we made some charts to show why that is so this chart here there's there's nine pages to the state aid numbers and uh like I said they're always released on the two days after the governor's address and everybody gets them at the same time and then you you uh frantically analyze them to find out what happened so the state has a calculation called an District adequacy budget and that's based on your enrollment that's weighted and averaged and multiplied by dollar amounts per type of category so like like the regular number per student is 13,000 something special ed is 21,000 something so they come up with what is your District adequacy budget based on this formula so you can see that our District adequacy budget has increased over the last four years it jumped up in 2223 because that's when we instituted full day kindergarten so before that our kindergarten enrollment was calculated at a weight of 50% then once we went full day it was 100% so right there our enrollment jumped and from that point it kept going up now the red line is the local fair share the other part of the calculation or the formula for Equalization Aid they look at your property values and the income that's in your Township so when you do your state tax return there's always a four-digit code that you put on there for the township that you live in that gets gathered and that's tied to our Township here so they compare those two numbers and run a calculation on that too there's different um factors that are applied to it and they can change them each year if they choose to but as those numbers go up your fair share goes up so in our situation as you can see the local fair share has has gone up significantly and that's tied to an increase in ratables or they call equalized valuation and an increase in the income in this Township now the income is based on 2021 and the ratables are based on 2023 but again that's just how the formula works so you can see on this chart that the local fair share was above the adequacy budget in 2122 and then the adequacy budget surpassed it and then for two years and now the local fair sh is above it again and what that means is either you're eligible for Equalization Aid or you're not so when when our adequacy budget is below the local fair share then we're eligible for Equalization Aid when it's not we're not so in this particular year 2024 um the local fair share which means how much taxes do they think we can contribute to the the adequacy budget is higher so we don't get an equalization Aid um at the bottom this yellow line shows Equalization Aid and as you can see we it goes up it goes down so there were two years that we got it and we didn't get it it's very complicated but anyway that's how the formula works then the next page shows that same adequacy budget and it shows the reduction in state aid so you can see that we were cut in state aid in 2122 which was about 300,000 and then it went up a little bit like we got about a million dollars extra in 2223 we got 70,000 extra in the next year and now we lost a million and it's all tied to this Equalization Aid calculation okay the next page is what called chapter 67 S2 that's the law that came about in 2018 to try to level out the state aid funding for a while before that state aid was flat so there were districts that had increased enrollment that were getting flat Aid and didn't cover their students and there were districts who had decreasing enrollment and they got more Aid than than the calculation would come out to be so chapter it started out S2 I think in the Senate became law 67 and this formula would be run the equalization Aid and this other few other populations to determine whether you would get additional Aid to smooth it out or not so this chart shows uncapped Aid uncapped Aid is when they run the state aid formula based on your criteria with no cuts no no no adjustments at all and then they say what was your pre-budget Aid the year before and do you get a reduction or not and they phased that in over seven years so in the beginning stages we were getting cuts and Aid and we knew we were getting them and we accounted for them and at the peak it was $300 some, which I believe that was in 2122 and usually to close that hole we would use maintenance Reserve um but 300,000 wasn't as hard to close as a million all right so then again when when pre when full day kindergarten came in that changed the whole calculation for us because now our kindergarten kids which might be close to 300 kids were now weighted at 100% not 50% so that boosted everything up we're like Yay this is how it's going to be going forward and then it kind of leveled off and it was fine last year until the property values went up and the income went up and then it changed it again so as you can see we were cut in 2122 we're cut in 24 25 but the other two years we got a little bit of an increase in eight I know this all sounds kind of um complicated and it is um so it's hard to predict um I A lot of people are very upset there's a lot of towns a lot of school districts that are very upset with the cuts and we have met with we've met on a few different occasions with them we have had um a zoom call with a bunch of the local districts just talking about it like why did yours what what factor caused yours to go to your budget to be cut and it's a little bit different in each situation like in our situation we are pretty much paying our fair share like the calculation that they have has us paying about where we're paying like close to that $52 million we're actually a little bit under but close enough there's other districts when they run it their fair share is so much higher than what their tax rate is right now that they can't even get to it like it would be well over 2% and that they can't it's impossible for them to get to it so sometimes it doesn't really work out but again I think when the formula is derived not all scenarios can be predicted so in our situation um the formula was run and that's just how it worked out because of the increase in the income and the property values again we want to find out as much as we can and and talk to people as much as we can again there were um we had a local meeting with local um and superintendents and then there was a New Jersey asbo meeting and people are talking to the state on our behalf but I know some of one of the bills I read about was actually talking about lifting the 2% and that's really not that's not something that we're interested in here like we don't really have that issue where some towns need to do that because they're not at their fair share level so that's really not our scenario our scenario just worked out that there was a blip this year in the property values and income and the adequacy budget is less you know so that's is how the formula came out um the next slide is the tax rate um so what we did is this is called a budget fact sheet we we present this even we did it a little bit differently this year we decided it' be more meaningful if we backed out the capital reserve so we start out with our general fund budget which ties out to the motion that we're voting on and if you look at last year it looks a lot higher but the reason why it's a lot higher is because of capital projects that we put in there so if we take out the capital reserve money which ties to the projects then you get a more comparable number so last year's general fund without capital reserve was 61 mil 42872 this year 63 milon 585 748 so it's an increase of a little over $2 million which is an increase of 3.51% so considering all the increases that we face whether they're contractual or health care or Insurance other insurance being higher than that it's it is a good number I believe to come out at 3.51% of an increase uh the tax levy we we don't go above the 2% we would be able to because there's something called banked cap and banked cap is another formula in the state aid software that says if your health care is over x amount percentage you can take you can get more taxes if something else like there's different thing reasons you can go above the 2% we do have banked cap that can be used but banked cap does not mean it's money sitting there for us it's a capacity which means we could ta we could raise the tax higher than 2% we don't want to do that so we stay with the 2% as we have every year but what another thing that happens is as the ratables go up that 2% has a different effective rate on the taxpayer because it gets spread out amongst a higher ratable number so at the bottom of the chart it shows that in 2425 the 2% increase in our tax levy equates to 1.84% on the taxpayer and what that means is it's on the average house the average house assessed the 200 $63,800 um the increase would be $766 a year or $6.39 a month but you'll see the comparison at the bottom like even though it's been 2% increase every year on our number it varies based on the ratables at the bottom okay so the one thing I wanted to touch on that is not part of the the whole general fund budget is preschool and that was also on the motion that's in included in the special Revenue number um our preschool school is funded the majority of the preschool is funded by state aid and how that is generated is we submit an enrollment number rejection and they give you a certain dollar amount per student and there's calculations against that too but it all comes out where um we're projecting a higher number next year because we're planning on having a building so this year our projection projection I'm sorry the year that we're in we got State a at 4.8 million next year at 6.3 million the total budget for preschool is 7.8 million because we also have to transfer money over for the inclusion students because the preschool education Aid covers uh the regular ed students and the regular budget general fund budget covers the inclusion students so we transfer over a million for that so there is a comparison and the reason why the state aid went up there is because of the enrollment number and it can only be used for preschool so that's why we didn't include that in the other analysis um some other questions that had come up is with our anticipated Surplus that we said we're using 800,000 of it and the 200 it's roughly a million we're using about a million dollars of this year's anticipated Surplus and what that means for us is that we can't we won't be able to have that money to put into reserves so each year we want to replenish reserves and we try our best to do that however also we've had a lot of projects in the last so many years and we've done a lot of amazing things with um you know building a 10 classroom Edition came from Reserve money um that was a $5 million job um we have pulled out money for the preschool building that we were going to purchase um part of the numbers that I backed out um last year we we withdrew $ 11 million from capital reserve this year $1 million so that's 12 million and we're getting a $6 million grant for the rest of it so even though we won't be able to put as much into capital reserve we should have less projects but we do want to be conservative with everything and continue to replenish capital reserve as we have the money um in addition um let just think we also cut off spending at a certain point in time and we usually do that around now so from now to the end of the year we watched everything very closely to decide do we need this do we not need this can this be put off till later um but we also want to look at common practices that we've done and over time decide whether we should continue with them or not so it's really like it'll happen over so many years but we want to be very careful with spending um question was asked about miscellaneous revenue and that's what I was talking about like we used to budget 880,000 for interest we decided to up it to 500,000 I believe I believe last year we made 800,000 and you'll see on this agenda that we have some other ideas for investing which're we're going to put some money in New Jersey arm which has about 5% interest return where our normal account is 2.3 um also at TD Bank they have Municipal uh CDs and we're going to invest in them too so that'll bring in more interests which hopefully we can then put into reserves um let's see what else we have here I had addressed also that we have we have met as a group of superintendents and Bas with people that are very familiar with the calculation just so all of us can say here's how it impacted our district so that way everybody can understand what exactly caused this to happen and it is a little bit different for each person each each School District but again we are getting the word out there just so people can understand the calculation because this is the last year of that calculation S2 chapter 67 was over a seven-year period to level everybody out based on their enrollment and this is the last year so I guess next year if nothing changes they'll just run the formula and we would hope that we're where we are now because there is no more Equalization Aid that's over and we got zero of it this year so if they're comparing one year to the other AR enrollment should not be going down um so unless our income and property values Skyrocket again I mean that would be the only difference but that that took away our Equalization AIDS so if Equalization Aid goes away then that won't be part of the calculation so it's really hard to fully predict but um you know things are changing because that S2 is ending let's see if I have anything else to go over um does anybody have any do does the board have any questions for me I have a question oh sorry um what is the chances that the state will reconsider and come back and say okay we'll give you more money so I've seen other districts ask people to reach out to their local con like uh representatives and things like that to kind of advocate for them yeah I I mean I guess there's always that possibility I know in year years ago there was a situation uh when I was in my other District where state aid was cut in July like we were already in the next year and they cut it and then they came up with emergency aid so you would have to apply after the emergency aid and you would have to say why you needed it to justify why you would need it and then you would get it and it was maybe like a one-year fix um I think a lot of people have been vocal and we've been vocal also um that I don't know if they'll consider it but I've seen it done before you know I have seen it happen before now if we applied for emergency aid would we be qualified for it I'm not sure it depends on what the criteria is we always try for everything you know so we would we would give it our best effort uh but I haven't heard about that I've only heard about laws being proposed to raise the 2% and again that's not what we want to do we'd rather have we'd rather you know what this Equalization Aid cut this year because it was the last year it was at 100% years before were eased in like 76 35 whatever if they would have taken a little like maybe one more year you know like take it at 70% it wouldn't been wouldn't have been as hard I don't know if they're going to change it I don't know sorry um so will people like were the students feel the difference or will families feel the difference of this a million cut or no one will I would say no okay I would say no we tried to we did not cut any programs we didn't cut any staff um we just tried to just rearrange some things like like on this agenda right now uh we're buying some iPads this year financing them over a number of years to you know soften the blow and that way it's in this year's money and we're getting them in sooner so we can get them all prepped and ready to go um we're starting some things ahead of time because we know we have a little bit right now so we're just trying to plan it's a cash flow planning thing but no nobody should really notice anything or Panic it's good we were able to close it however I think going forward we just have to be very conscious of this every time we make a big purchase or start something new that's all we just have to be very conscious that um you know we don't know what state aid is going to be you know so we have to be careful and prices go up uh the thing that that started to hurt last year is the CPI like they assign you a CPI it used to be like 1.7 1.9 which one of the biggest areas that applies to is transportation so every year we can renew Transportation Roots so if we like the roots that we have we'll send a letter I think that's on the agenda tonight too we send letters to the contractors and we say here are the roots we'd like to renew are you willing to renew and they can renew up to the CPI and it used to be 1.7 1.9 now during the whole covid time period you know how difficult it got with to get drivers the rates went up the the fuel went up so the state has adjusted the CPI it was 5.86 last year 5.81 this year so a lot of Our Roots were not renewed when it got upped because people are like I'm not renewing for the one well I'm sorry let me back up they they did renew they did before they didn't renew when it was like 1.9 because they're like this is not working anymore we had to go out to bid so once we did go out to bid and it was gone up to 5.86 they said yeah we'll renew this is fine with us so no matter what the ones that we're renewing are going up 5.81% right we can't help it because we could choose to go out to bid but it could be more like you don't know you know so if they're willing to renew at the 5.81 and we like the roots that we have we're staying with that I don't know where that's going next year so there's that Health Care our health care um we're not with state health benefits last year St state health benefits went up 15% ours went up eight% that was great this year state state health benefits went up I think four four or six% we went up 10% like you just don't know so there what we what we did there too is because we're part of a shift the school's Health Insurance Fund there's pulled money based on experience there was money available for that and we're voting to bring that back in it's our money anyway you know so we're bringing it back in to offset some of the premiums same thing with our joint Insurance Fund there's Surplus we're bringing that back so whenever there's money of ours out there we're bringing it back to help offset we didn't do that before we would just let it accumulate until we needed it so I think we did it we did it with one of them last year so you just try to find other ways to make it work and every year is a new year and um you just say do we really need this do we not need this and you just try to be careful with everything what about building costs for the new building I mean you anticipated obviously things keep getting more expensive CPI keeps every time we hear the reports right well hopefully that's okay our architect had given the projection the architect uh when we applied for that $6 million uh Grant the projection he put in like five $15 million and so we get the their percentage of it I mean hopefully it's still the same hopefully it doesn't keep getting pushed back longer and longer that it would go up more um I think our architect still feels that we're in the same ballpark I think there there's always a little contingency built in like when they spell that out it's not hidden like they put some kind of contingency amount because you don't know where the prices are going um but yeah we'd like to get started on that and our $6 million is fully approved I mean it is fully approved and I think we have the acceptance of funds on there too actually I wrote down a few different motions that's find My Notes here there's three motions that I wanted to talk talk about oh the budget is the 19.10 the the preschool education Aid budget is 19.11 and then the $6 million acceptance of funds is 19.4 so all these are tied in with this year's budget any other questions I don't have a question but I did want to say thank you so so much because um I feel so comfortable because you are the one that's taking care of us in this situation and I just want to thank you and Dr hacket for the communication that went out to the parents in the district because I have seen communication that has gone out to um parents in other districts that are losing money and it has a very sky is falling um tone to it and we did not get that from you so I just want to say thank you so much for everything thank you and I also have to thank my staff who is amazing so Danielle cury she did the bulk of all this this budget part of it I just kind of in I do the revenue side she does the appropriation side we come together and we clean it up together and then we go and tell Dr hack at the bad news and say help us so the cabinet and Trisha Mady she's been great she helps us put all this together my other staff helps I mean it's a team this is definitely a teamwork project I just get to present it that's all so any other questions all right thank you you know I think I'll just finish my little part of here um the next thing I have on my section is something really great and we've gotten this I think three times s um the Acme has joined with um it's called gen youth during covid we applied for some grants and we got money back from it was from gen youth at the time and we got money at that point where we could buy things to help with our food distribution and back then we got these huge zipper bags they were insulated zipper bags we put all the meals in them they went out to all the schools so that was really great but then you know we're on their list so thank goodness it comes up all the time and so Jen youth is tied in with the Acme and so when people shop the Acme I guess they say do you want to contribute towards you know this project called Acme Markets foundations nourishing neighbors so people do and then last year they had their grand reopening and they invited us there Clark and I Clark Mathis and I went to it they handed us a big check we got $2,000 that equated to gift cards and we give them to the schools like we give them to each of the schools and the schools help families in need so this year they sent a letter again to Dr hackit and said we've collected money for you again and it says we are thrilled to announce that vori school district is slated to receive $3,350 in 25 Acme Gift Cards through gift card Bank on behalf of Acme Markets foundation's nourishing neighbors program and gen youth gift cards may be distributed to schools within your District um so that's what we do so we split them up amongst the schools and I I don't recall whether the nurse holds on to them or the social worker somebody gu the guidance counsel the guidance counselor holds on to them and as there are needs then they're distributed accordingly but we're really happy to have that and I had one more item on my section which I forget what is the next item the food service advisory okay so on Monday we have our second food advisory Council virtual meeting the first one I think was really productive um people have they send in questions ahead of time and Tina compiles them with answers we present all those questions and answers in the Forum we take additional questions and then we write back to all the people people to let them know so it was really very helpful last time so we hope we'll get um good participation we've already gotten two question two people submitted questions so far but it's Monday night at 6 6 to 7 right thank you everybody thank you thank you superintendent report okay thank you good evening again and once again I want to thank Miss Haley and her team for doing such a phenomenal job on our budget it's it's an excellent they've done an excellent excellent job I also want to state that I also saw the musical 13 13 Musical and it was absolutely phenomenal every single student on that stage was amazing and I'll embarrass your daughter a little bit more uh she was simply amazing in her role uh it was just a wonderful wonderful performance I just want to commend all of the parents the teachers uh and the students for doing an amazing job um at the last meeting February 28th there was a concern raised about uh the funding for the drama club program I just wanted to announce that I do have a meeting with the director on March 21st and so I will bring up the uh new report to the May 1st meeting so I don't have a report now but I do have a meeting schedule with the director so that we can discuss uh funding for the drama club and my last announcement uh for this evening is I am looking forward to tomorrow at 7 o'clock I will be having a virtual meeting with the President and Vice President of all of our elementary student councils and I'm looking forward to hearing the numerous suggestions and requests that I know are waiting for me uh that they had from their fellow classmates but I'm looking forward to hearing about them so that's tomorrow at 7 o'clock it's one of my favorite things to do to meet with the students and hear about what they would like to see uh in the district so I'm looking forward to that meeting and thank you very much board president that ends my report thank you moving to committee reports um Miss Branch Stewart could you please provide a policy committee update sure the policy committee met earlier this evening Dr Hackett Mr MTZ and board members Julie Kover Moren Rudder Julian verie and I were present for first read we discussed the following revised policies and regulations policy 0155 board committees regulation 2200 curriculum content policy 2340 field trips policy and regulation 2423 bilingual education policy and regulation 24 31.4 prevention and treatment of sports related concussions and head injuries regulation 5440 honoring student achievement policy 5750 Equitable Educational Opportunity policy 5841 secret societies policy and regulation 7610 vandalism was tabled and will be brought back again for first read and policy 9323 notification of juvenile offender case disposition was also tabled and will be brought back for first read for second read we discussed the following policy 11 1140 education Equity practices affirmative action policy 1523 comprehensive Equity plan policy and regulation 1530 equal employment opportunities an equal employment opportunity complaint procedure policy 1550 Equal Employment anti-discrimination Practices policy and regulation 2260 equity in school and classroom practices and equity in school and classroom practices complaint procedure policy 2411 guidance counseling policy 3211 code of ethics and policy 5570 sportsmanship we also discussed abolishing policy 5755 equity and educational programs and services due to redundancy thank you thank you so much uh Mr Rosen can I have an update on the finance committee sure uh the finance committee me um the finance committee meeting was held in this building on March 6th at 6: p.m. uh the committee reviewed the 2425 budget including the budget reconcilation between fiscal year 24 and fiscal year 25 we reviewed the components of the New Jersey funding formula we reviewed how the budget was balanced after the recent 177% cut in New Jersey funding and we also discussed longer term budget planning possible reductions to consider over the next three years and plan purchases and financing options we also disc the committee also discussed investment options to optimize short-term investment income while maintaining liquidity by allocating between the New New Jersey arm program which is an investment vehicle used by other districs and uh certificates of deposit available at TD Bank uh the committee also discussed current bids for the fiscal year 2425 for transportation routes and construction of preschool classrooms uh the next step for the preschool building is the Gibbsboro planning board meeting on March 27th 2024 and the next finance committee meeting is scheduled for June 4th thank you so much uh Mr Rosner can you please provide a Personnel committee update yes um we held the Personnel committee meeting yesterday we discussed the desires and challenges of Hing hiring Spanish teachers for K through 2 generally and in light of the budget constraints we also discussed the attendance bonus structure um how it came to be for custodians and Food Service employees and that is the update thanks thank you audience participation anyone wishing to address the board please approach the side table on the right and write your name and address on the login sheet while the board is limited in its ability to respond to the public on matters involving Personnel litigation negotiation and attorney client privilege the board will will now hear comments from the public relating to items on the agenda for this board meeting Comm uh comments are limited to 3 minutes the board will not take action this evening you will be notified at some later time by letter electronic mail telephone or in the context of a later board meeting of any action the board does take again I will reiterate this is audience participation related to agenda items only seeing none um comments I got I got one um you know building on what maren said about um the uh balancing of the budget and just sort of the curveball that was thrown um I want to commend you know Miss Haley Danielle Trisha anyone else who was involved in this whole process for your competence diligence your demeanor you went through it and even in the way that you describ these somewhat challenging topics to um people that don't really aren't really super involved in it with like you know it's almost excitement which I don't understand but it's great don't stop doing that um and we really uh are lucky to have all of you so really thank you I I wanted to reiterate as well um you know thank you to miss Haley and all of the administrative staff for the hard work on this budget it is truly a work of art and I appreciate the really detailed explanation that you provided here tonight I know I got a lot of clarity and I very much appreciate um you know the thorough exp explanation um I'm also blown away by how quickly and nimbly our Administration pivoted when we were made aware of the reduction in state aid um and I was also impressed just as Moren mentioned to uh not just with the ability to rebalance the budget in light of that cut but how quickly and professionally uh the administration communicated to the public about the issue to reassure families about our District's ability to continue to Pro provide highlevel education and programming to our town um regardless of um this situation so thank you so much see no further comments um moving to policy can I get a motion to approve all of the items under policy so moved second voting is open the motion unanimously passes I get a motion to approve the items under curriculum so moved second voting is open the motion unanimously passes can I get a motion to approve all of the items under 16 Personnel so moved second voting is open motion unanimously passes make get a motion to approve all of the items under 177 Transportation so moved second voting is open the motion unanimously passes there are no items under 18 buildings and grounds can I get a motion to approve all of the items under Finance section 19 so moved ask okay online voting is open the motion unanimously passes public comment anyone wishing to address the board please approach the side table on the right and write your name and address on the login sheet while the board is limited in its ability to respond to the public on matters involving Personnel litigation negotiations and attorney client privilege the board will now hear comments from the public comments are limited to three minutes the board will not take action this evening you will be notified at some later time by letter electronic mail telephone or in the context of a later board meeting of any action the board does take s question how might they interact with m e you I just wanted to comment also work that goes on behind the scenes thank you seeing no further comments board comments I'll just make a comment about the show not about my daughter um I am I'm Blown Away by the talent in this community I'm Blown Away by the dedication of the teachers and the staff and the engineers and the sound people and the set Builders um parents who do come back and volunteer year after year some of whom do not get paid and the kids the kids who were doing the tech and building the sets and learning these invaluable skills um there are so many kids I actually don't even know how they the teachers Wrangle them throughout the year um middle school middle school kids are wild um and they did an amazing job putting on this production that um was a departure from prior Productions it was not a Disney show it was a show about um Coming of Age and I think for kids including my daughter it was really resonant and relevant and um touched on so many themes that they deal with every single day in their lives so I just really want to honor all of the work that went into it um second thing I know this this is getting to be uh repetitive but miss Haley you are a genius and your team are geniuses you um I I I too want to appreciate not only the work that you did the quickness with which you responded there was no um at least I never felt like you couldn't handle this we all felt calm we felt um that you would you would figure it out and you did with um your your customary Grace and professionalism and it is a testament to this community that we have you and your your staff here so thank you so much thank you on behalf of my staff as well thank you thank you see no other comments we will not be um going to Executive session the next um meeting will be May 1 2024 for a regular meeting um and district reorganization and a public hearing on the 202 4 2025 budget it will be located here at 7M can I get a motion to adjourn the meeting so moved second second all in favor I I thank [Music] you all right