the adequate notice of this regular meeting as required by the open public meetings Act was provided by the posting mailing delivery and filing of this notice on January 12 2024 this notice was on that date posted on the bulletin board in the township office sent to The Courier News and tap into Warren and filed with the Township Clerk of the township of Lauren all in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance Mr Hegel I will call the rooll now Mr Bai Mrs fight bomb here miss Keller here Mr Metta here Mr AO Mr Tor Mr Valentino Mr Weinstein here Mrs Zan here miss count resolve that the Board of Education approves the public private session minutes February 26 2024 you have a second J I call the RO Please Mr Desai yeah Mrs fight bomb yes Miss Keller yes Mr Metta yes Mr Weinstein yes Mrs Zan yes motion passes Dr mingle correspondence and information thank you Mrs an in correspondence the board is in receipt of three emails one on the topic of polling places two on the topic of njap there were four HIV investigations one was at alt which was not confirmed and three at Woodland one confirmed two not confirmed and there was one out of school suspension at Central School thank you Dr mingle good evening and welcome to the Board of Education March meeting on March March 8th I had the pleasure of attending the Crescent lighting that was held at the warant township Pavilion commemorating the start of Ramadan the war Township Middle School choir sang again this year under the direction of Ms Jensen it was a real pleasure to see our young singers perform and it was a beautiful ceremony the Crescent will be lit each evening through the month of Ramadan and will conclude with the celebration of ID this year on April 10th I want to extend my thanks for this invitation I want to draw everyone's attention to an addition to tonight's agenda under new business and offer an explanation annually the district receives a grant to provide State mandated training on the prevention of child abuse to kindergarteners and third graders prior to the student sessions parents are notified that the sessions will occur and are given an opportunity to attend an information session and if the family wishes to exclude their children from this training this year notification of the sessions did not go out on time to two home rooms of kindergarteners and two home rooms of third graders at Mount horb School these were the only sections and the only school where these notices were not sent in a timely fashion this is a serious failure for the parents of these students there was no opportunity to opt their child out of attending some or all of program the Board of Education takes serious L parent concerns about the timeliness transparency and effective communication of options for opting out a child from certain curriculum accordingly the board's agenda for tonight has been changed to include a motion under new business to direct the Personnel negotiations and Communications committee to review the district's optout procedures and to report back to the full board with any conclusions and or recommendations Dr Mel thank you Mrs an just two things for me this Thursday and Friday the middle school will be performing Foot Loose junr it's always a hot ticket to get into the Middle School Musical and I know our students and their faculty have been preparing for this performance for a long time we're very excited about it I also wanted to mention uh we talked about this at the last four meeting there will be a public information session related to polling places at alt Mount horb and the Middle School information about how to register for that has gone out by email to the parents at all three schools alt Mount H and the middle school that session is on March 27th at 6m Via Zoom it will be recorded and shared in the subsequent Community briefing as well for those that can attend in person thank you Dr mingle we have a presentation this evening by the business administrator Mr Hegel on the tentative 2425 budget so I will turn this is over to Mr great thank you good evening um my name is Chris Hegel I'm the school business administrator of Warren Township Schools and tonight I'd like to present on next year's school budget of course doing so I'd like to say a quick thank you is my mic I might have to hold it yeah I'm sorry that's okay before uh moving forward with the presentation I want to say a quick thank you to our finance committee members um who are important part of our budget development Mrs Zan Mr a Mr Valentino and Mr moletta are part of our finance committee uh we met in detail both in February and March we go over the budget and it's um with their uh support support and dedication that we're able to present a uh a solid budget for the coming school year so thank you before moving into the details of the budget I want to take a step back Advance the slide and talk a little bit about our school mission our budget is essentially a financial representation of our school priorities our district priorities and before getting into the details of the budget I think it's important to reflect on what those priorities are each year our budget puts students first and prepares in this particular case as it did last year is working towards preparing our district for anticipated and growth in student and now a little bit about the budget process our district has a six-month budget process that typically starts in the fall that process begins usually in October uh when information is distributed to our nine budget managers they then take that information back move that uh work work on that with their teams and develop budget proposals which get returned to the business office in the month of December during the winter break a lot of that information is then put together with our district information about salaries and other important line items that we're going to talk about and is put together to create our first draft of the budget that draft is reviewed with the finance committee in February at their February meeting which in this case took place on February 20th we then await a very important day which is the day we learn about state aid uh entitlements for the new year that happened on Leap Day this year on February 29th after that and with in consultation with the finance committee we were able to put together a final draft of the budget and we went through the process of working through that draft with our individ each individual board member and I'm happy to report that um Mrs Zan and I met with each board member either oneon-one or two onone in advance of tonight's budget vote to discuss the budget with each of them in detail that leads us to tonight where we approve the tenative budget it'll then be reviewed by the county um the county superintendent of schools in the meantime the finance committee is going to meet in public in this room in in eight days on next Tuesday March 26 to have a public budget Forum that'll be at 6 p.m after that we will get together again in late April for our budget hearing at which time the budget will be adopted as a part of the agenda for that evening's meeting now into the details of the budget so our budget each year tends to have the similar budget drivers items that continually affect how uh how our finances are going to uh work in the next year our biggest driver by far and we'll see this a lot in the presentation is our increasing enrollment and warrant but there are other drivers that I want to mention briefly here before we uh get into enrollment they are increases to contractual salaries increases to Health Care out of District tuition for some of our special ed students our employer contribution to our pension here at this at the district the first pension for some of our employees not all a mandated Transportation uh contract inflation rate of 6% this is the second year in a row where that has been roughly 6% for a cumulative over 12% over those two years and then finally um like a lot of uh a lot of companies we're seeing increases in our rates both for our uh our casualty insurance as well as workers time I want to take a take a step back now that we've talked about the drivers a little bit of the budget talk about how do we pay for some of those things as they go up one of the ways we can do that the board does it to a certain extent but not the extent I'm about to explain is through increases to the tax levy the tax levy can be adjusted through four different adjustments and this is a maximum that the board can do but is not our proposal toce those adjustments are an enrollment adjustment of $1.2 million for the 2425 year an inflation adjust adjustment for $900,000 also for next SCH year the district is not eligible for healthcare adjustment so that is in at zero and then as in past years we are we are eligible for Bank cap this is money that the board could have tax taxpayers and warrant but did not and it gets set aside for potential future use this is called Bank cap and amounts to$ 1.7 million when taken in total these adjustments could increase the tax levy to 3.8% EXC be 3.8 million without voter approval this is a tax levy increase of 8 8.5% in addition going to cap the first two of those two adjustments is 4.73% now the administration you'll see some of the ways we did that has worked very hard to make this increase lower than going to cap and our proposed increase was 3.61% another important revenue for us is state aid as I mentioned state aid was uh was reported to us on Leap Day February 29th and on that day we learned that we uh had an increase of state aid of $121,000 that's an increase of 3.8% moving our aid from 3 point from 3.175 to 3.3 million I'm rounding here course in addition we depend on other revenues and they include interest in in and investment income of $225,000 this is a substantial increase over past years the district has done a very good job of U what I would say aggressively investing our our Assets in uh in treasury bills which is doesn't sound like much you know compared to what some of us put our investments in personally but uh for a school district it's it's one of the more aggressive ways you can treat Investments we also uh earn revenue from our summer program and the tuition that's received from it our preschool program and the that's received from it I'm going to skip past the subsidy for just a second and come back to that this year we're starting a new program where we are going to uh begin the process of um applying for Medicaid reimbursements for some of our students that are part of our our special programs in addition we receive uh that's called semi um sure that stands for but m& a is definitely for Medicaid we be applying for reimbursements a very small Revenue amount of $23,000 in um in the transportation of the miscellanous revenue area we expect to receive $115,000 the bulk of this is is runs that we do for other districts when we have availability with our drivers and our buses finally we have a practice in our fund balance policy of using a portion of our fund balance each year to support the New Year's budget so I talked about the revenues in in in detail let's talk a little bit about the expenses and how we work to reduce those meet the budget in the middle the first thing I think the uh the most important thing and something that our budget managers should get a huge Applause for is each of them work to reduce their budget by 10% from this year the 23 24 year and next year the 2425 year um in some cases that tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars they should be commended for doing that work and also doing it in a way where they feel that little to no change will happen for our students and their experiences at our district the other thing that we did is um my office did a thorough analysis of our historical data to make sure that all of our district line items are where they should be or trying to take you know any additional resources that we don't need in in a in a line item out so it's not there and then finally we we looked at our position control roster and and uh looked at a projection in terms of what next year's enrollment would look like by classro numbers to see you know where we needed our staff to be and what that meant in terms of our budget projections for staff in in all of those all of those activities reduced our budget some form of other important notes for this year's budget I think the first first bullet is I one of the most important statements in this presentation the Staffing levels included in this budget maintain our current class siiz guidelines there's no need for the board to come back and look at uh changing those guidelines to be higher um we are prepared to stamp as the guidelines are today for all of next year in addition next year's budget includes all necessary supports for basic skills as well as advanced reach supports the summer uh the summer program the academic support program that occurs each summer as a part of our summer fund program that is fully supported in this budget as is the continued funding that started this school year for our child study team and our therapist staff to meet or increase special ed and mental health needs so once again here's a summary of that proposed budget just sort of sums it all together on the revenue side uh the proposed tax levy uh is 46.2 million that's an increase of 1.6 million or 3.61% state aid moves from 3.3 from excuse me from 3.175 to 3.3 $125,000 increase or about 3.8% increase our other revenues and I mentioned those on a prior slide increase of $70,000 an increase of 7% total budget growth is about 6.6% and you'll notice that those larger numbers are all in the same general um same general rate range which is what you want for a budget you want it to modestly grow in a rate that's that's sustainable and achievable regarding the tax levy and how that's going to impact our uh our residents um that first uh first row comes from the prior slide now let me explain the other the other rows just to give everybody's in context let's skip to the third row which talks about the total Township assessed value we note that our assess value year on year this is the market this is the market value of all of the properties within Warren Township is growing by 9.25% however the average assessed value of the residential home is only grown by 8% so what that means is when you apply our tax levy to the average assessed home the average assessed homes tax rate is actually growing at a lower rate than our tax level because the Assumption here that you can make is that the total Township assessed value includes commercial properties that are growing at a faster rement of Residential Properties so they're bearing more of this burden than their average residential tax another thing that's important to note this budget uh refills uh our bank cap just as a quick reminder bank cap is how much money the board has was able to tax in a certain year but did not need and therefore it gets bank is the term U for use in a prior in a future year uh at the beginning of this year the board had roughly $1.7 million available to it to use in future years that year 2122 rolled off was approximately 493 th000 of both memory it's replaced by $499,000 in Bank cap which means we are essentially replacing with the cap we lose as a part of this budget so that is flat terms of our next steps after tonight um we are recommending that the board approved this budget for review by the county the county superintendent's office we will have a public budget Forum here next Tuesday March 26 at 6m not 6:30 6 p.m. uh we will look to obtain the uh approval of the office Office of Education I will submit that either tomorrow or Wednesday it's due by Wednesday close of business we have a budget hearing scheduled at the next uh board meeting on April 29th that is at 6:30 and at that meeting the board the budget will be on the board agenda for adoption and I will return to my seat for questions thank you Mr haval does any board member have any questions okay moving on we do not have any discussion item on the agenda for this evening so we are going directly to committee reports the first report being curriculum and Technology committee Mr Tor so we met on uh February 26 for two of us myself and actually our first meeting so Mr you goals there were no changes recommended by by any of us to the goals that exist today we also reviewed the I ready winter results uh there were clarifying questions but no material by no material comments I mean no comments that led to any significant actions but we did agree to take a deeper dive at the next one when we've got more data for cic the it then looks at the K5 program review committee's uh scope of work specifically to better understand that the recommendation for materials that program needs for future committed meetings but again it's fairly early stage so there was no material concerns or recommendations for change from from any of us and then we have one new item which was Health instruction and we myself and Mr pck agreed to provide background information on PS and process in the history government for any Committee Member who would want to live here that me thank you Mr Tor moving on to finance operations and secur security committee um much of what I have here is going to be a repeat of either the superintendent's comments or the presentation um just the same the finance Operations Security committee met on March 11th with two members and the alternate member present with the third member joining labor in leeding the meeting commenced with a final discussion of the tentative 2425 budget at this time all board members as Mr Hegel stated have attended individual or small group meetings for a deep dive into the budget after months of work the finance committee unanimously recommends approval of the 2425 tentative budget which was presented by Mr Hegel this evening and which appears as item B7 on tonight's agenda I would like to thank Mr Hegel the business office staff all budget managers including our various departments such as Transportation building administrators in each of our schools special services it operations curriculum and of course our superintendent Dr lingle for their hard work on developing and finalizing this budget the proposed tax levy is meaningfully below last year's Levy despite a continued increase in student enrollment as a testament to the length of time it takes to get to this point I would like to also thank the members M of the finance committee that worked on this budget for 2023 committee members were Mr G Mr Otto and Mr Valentino for 2024 committee members are Mr Otto Mr Valentino and Mr Metta as an alternate the development of the budget is complex and the time and energy demanded of committee members and board members is significant um I will Echo Mr hegel's reminder that on March 26th at six o'clock there will be an open meeting of the finance committee here in the Warren middle school residents are welcome to attend and ask questions about the budget the committee then moved on to the five-year Capital Improvement plan the five-year Capital plan is nearly complete importantly the finance committee meeting scheduled for April 15th will be held in person at the board office so that the committee can review the plan and begin the process of developing a recommended priority list of projects and the final item discussed at the committee um Echoes what Dr mingle stated earlier um this is a reminder that the Warren Middle School alt and mount Moro have been identified as polling places going forward and specifically for the gene primary and November general election the county has approved specific locations in each building were polling withs parents with students in these schools have been notified of details about a public information session which will take place March 27th at 6: p.m. that's all for finance Personnel negotiations and communication committee Miss Kell the negotiations committee met on February 26th and March 13 for their continuing negotiation sessions with the WTA thank you Miss Keller at this time um we will move into the first opportunity for public commentary this is the first of two opportunities for public commentary I ask that anyone interested in addressing the board please raise their hand or use the raise your hand feature on Zoom each speaker is asked to limit their comments to three minutes please begin your comments by stating your name and address and by directing your comments to the presiding officer and that would be me please know that the Board of Education welcomes and encourages input from the Public Public commentary is intended as an opportunity for the board to receive such input but is not intended as a cumin session following public commentary if appropriate the pro the presiding officer or the superintendent May provide some response for this opportunity we ask that your comments be limited to items that appear on tonight's agenda there will be a second comment opportunity for all other comments later in the meeting so at this time I would look to the audience but we do not have an audience so going to zoom oh I'm so sorry Brenda is here BR would you do you wish to make a comment all right my apologies now going to zoom do we have anyone on Zoom who wishes to make a comment once all right do I have a motion to close the first public commentary a second all in favor post abstain first public commentary is closed moving on to items for board consideration Dr Ming do you have anything you'd like to intervention to the only thing I'd like to uh say is regarding item B7 the tenative budget to Echo Mrs Zan's comments thank you Mr Hegel members of the finance committee of which Mrs Z is the chair and did not give herself any credit during that process while she thanked many other people um it was a lot easier to develop budgets in the years of declining enrollment than it is now in increasing enrollment it's exciting to have new students and full classrooms and full schools but it requires a lot of resources so thank you Mr Hegel and everybody for their work to get us to the place we are tonight thank you Dr mingle does any member of the board wish to pull any action item for separate Vote or discussion see none Miss no motion to move items for board consideration A1 through A3 B1 through b11 C1 through C9 and D1 through D3 have a second may I call the rooll Please Mr Desai yes Mrs whiteon yes Miss Keller yes Mr Metta yes Mr Tor yes Mr Val Mr Weinstein yes Mrs on yes motions pass 70 thank you Mr Hegel the agenda does not have any unfinished business so moving on to new business uh the new business section has a resolution for the board's consideration the resolution is that the Board of Education directs the Personnel negotiations and communication committee to review the district's opt out procedures and to report back to the full board with any conclusions and our recommendations does any board member have any comment Miss yeah I have one oh I'm sorry Todd hi um so I I think what would be helpful to guide some of this conversation if I recall and please correct me if I'm wrong in years past there was discussion around optin versus opt out what the technology does and does not allow for in terms of T current structure for either of those options I think again I may be getting this wrong but for a a opt in I think there were technology Andor platform restrictions that wouldn't allow us to do that which is fine and if that's the case I think we should just know that going in so that as we evaluate what can or should be done we understand what some of the the technology limitations may be if I'm getting this right um are you proposing that the resolution include additional language with regard to evaluating available technology no I'm proposing that as a precursor before the meeting occurs we understand what's technologically possible and what's not to help guide the conversation because if we're going to if we have ideas that we would like to propose in order to amend the current procedure but the technology or process does not allow for it then those ideas are null and void I would think right I I do View the direction being given to the committee here to includ all of that I know I know sit on that committee so this would be um certainly something in the process of that committee's work to investigate before it comes back to the FL board and just to just to kind of echo what Tod is saying was there how was there a technology issue to opt in and not a techn technology issue to opt out that doesn't seem doesn't make sense to me right wouldn't it be the same technology I think that that's something the committee should definitely take a look at like yeah and this we're at the stage here where we're actually designating a committee to to look at all of things think yeah and I'm not I'm not opposed to it being in the language of what we have on the agenda tonight I I just think in some way shape or form we should just have knowledge of it so it shapes the conversation right so we're using our time as best we can can I agree we all want to make the best use possible of our time um the chair of that committee is Miss Coler so I do invite any board member who has follows or or comments about this process to contact her and um with that I think that we uh the board should be directing committee to do their work second motion to approve the resolution directing the Personnel negotiations and Communications stimul toess procedure and report back the full board with any conclusions and recommendations have a second I call the RO Please Mr Desai yes M spob yes Miss Keller yes Mr Metta yes Mr tor yes Mr Weinstein yes Mrs Z yes motion carries 7 zero thank you Mr Hegel this is now the second opportunity for public commentary and it is open to any topic you wish to raise to the board's attention again I ask that you raise your hand or use the raise your hand feature on Zoom remember that comments are limited to 3 minutes and please state your name and address before beginning looking to the sole person that we have present no okay and now looking to [Music] zoom see nobody on Zoom is there one oh I'm sorry Miss Singleton Rachel Singleton uh 22 dearwood Trail West um when the revised um sex ed Health curriculum um was eventually pass last year on June 12th um was it also agreed and discussed um that there would be uh third party providers um who would be providing uh curriculum content for the um sex ed um and health part of the curriculum or other topics that got close to that um because I don't recall that it mentions in the um slides that we you know that we had access to that there were third-party vendors um who were approved to provide uh curriculum aspects or um presentations or documents I I did see you know that it said that there would be um Smartboard would be used and handouts would be used but there was nothing specific about um vendors so I'd be interested to know if that was actually intended that third party um providers would be used or if that was just something that's that's come about recently and and being added to added to that um sort of after the fact um and I'd like to say thank you very much for taking a look at the um optin versus opt out um as you know I said opt out doesn't work as was clearly evidenced uh this week and I'm not the only proponent of that and not the only person whose child in the past the opt out has failed and I liken it to opt out being closing the door after the horse has bolted whereas optin is preempting that and closing it before it has bolted so thank you for looking at that thank you very much thank you Miss Singleton do we have any other participant on Zoom that would like to speak last chance see none may I have a motion to close the secondary the second public commentary all in favor I opposed abstain second public commentary is now closed Dr Ming yes thank you so the the health and physical education curriculum approved by the board does not use any third party providers the NJ capap or Child Abuse Prevention program is separate it's not part of the health curriculum directly that has been approved by the board at least for the last 10 years I think it probably goes back closer to 20 and done every year with kindergarteners and third graders but that is unrelated to the health and physical education curriculum as approved by the board last year thank you Dr mingle Miss Keller whereas the open public meetings act njsa 101 permits the Board of Education to meet CL session to discuss certain matters now therefore be it resolved the Board of Education JS to close session to discuss collective bargaining agreement Andor negotiations related to it a matter involving purchase lease or acquisition of real property with publics action will not be taken upon return to public session the length of the meeting is anticipated to be approximately 20 minutes and be if further resolved the minutes of this public session be made public when the need for confidentiality no longer exists we have a second all in favor I opposed abstain the board is now heading into executive session e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e okay motion to return to public session second second all in favor opposed abstain the board is back in session motion to adjourn second all in favor opposed abstain meeting is done thanks guys