##VIDEO ID:WwY6U1EsCAU## 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 okay um good evening everybody thank you for coming in accordance with the requirements of the public meetings act open public meetings act chapter 231 pl1 1975 announcement I wish to announce that the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the school district of the cadams board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time and place thereof posted in the board administrative offices sent to the clerks of chadam bur and chadam Township the library of the cadams The chadam Courier The Daily Record The Star Ledger and tap Mr dqu M Ross here M Allen here Mr delandro here M Kenny Mr Ryan here Mr Smith M Weber here Dr Zang yes and M chiarelli here seven present and accounted for the flag is behind Dr lusan okay perfect please join us a few minut Al Al to the flag the United States of America okay well we will start with the update on the Harding discussions Dr Lusa you will man the a slideshow yes send it everybody out yes I think if the board could go into the seats Miss president wanted to give a brief overview of status and part let's hope I don't fall off stage okay so we just wanted to give a um quick overview of some of the facts surrounding the possibility relationship between Chad and so why would we accept to students so plus or minus 90% of the school district of the Chad's operating budget comes from from local property taxes we would like to reduce the Reliance on property taxes tuition is one Revenue source that offsets the Reliance on property taxes and as you can see at the bottom potential Revenue that we could receive from taking on a send and receive contract with Harding is at 120 students could be $1.8 million 130 students $1.95 million why now so chs's enrollment as's presentation showed at the last board meeting has and will continue to decline if you can see by the uh slide up here both in the graph and the table um in 2019 our enrollment was at 1340 students and we anticipate that by 2032 be 1,000 students more budgetary pressures now than we ever had in the past obviously based on lots of things we can't control inflationary pressure wages and health benefits which just keep increasing and interest rates higher rates obviously equals more cost to borrow which equals more cost to complete Capital work why Harding so outside of the fact that Harden approached us Chad and Harden already share both bus routs be first student and Green Village half of it sits in Chad and half of it sits in Maring obviously they are direct neighbors and it would make sense CHS can easily they hard 9th to 12th grade based on our enrollment so 25 to 40 kids per grade level is what hard would be bringing in obviously it's just for 9 through 12 um significant number of par eth graders historically attend private high schools so obviously not all of them would be coming here and 100 to 130 students total across grades 9 to 12 if in fact this did go through um transportation and extraordinary special education cost would be 100% paid for by Harding I know we had some questions about what our cost per student is in chadam versus what the tuition would be but you need to take into account that we do pay for transportation and special educ education cost for our students which would not be a factor for the hard students it would be 25 to 35 students one year at a time for example a 4E ramp 25 to 35 students per year 1.5 million to 1.95 million per year in revenue and a plus or minus 5year contract length to begin in August of 2026 which is when they the year that their um current contract with Madison is up at the end of the school year6 that's it that's the basics yes yes Met's one that's okay good moving on hi Brad okay any questions comments M Weber yeah thank you thank you and thanks for all these notes this is great so already in 2024 it looks like we are we have declined more than the total number of Harding kids so our replacement rate we're already kind of in the hole if you will um but Dr Lusa my question to you is Harding aside if we if our enrollment continues to decline is there a scenario where there's not enough um students even in to offer certain classes yes I think Miss Allen tried to ask or asked this of me last meeting and I was a little confused but yes of course if if our enrollment goes down we run our courses and other programs off of the number of students who participate or are interested in those programs so depending on which program or course sees enrollment decline would depend on which ones we potentially would not be able to run great so it's almost the opposite effect that some folks are saying oh my gosh it's going to be overcrowding it's actually the other way if we don't get enough students to to cover some of the classes AP whatever we may not be able to offer it and then you know shift you know shift our resources yeah and it's not just AP it's you know right now we're sharing um we've been co-oping some of our athletic programs like wrestling um we've had low numbers in other athletic programs that we've tried to continue to uh keep keep propped up uh we as you know ran into staffing issues with German this past year and we're not running it in sixth grade right now so it's being phased out of our Middle School Chinese is lowly is has a very low enrollment uh throughout the district so there are programs or courses here or there that aren't just AP courses now there are one or two AP courses that where the enrollment is already low and that those are ones that could be jeopardized too right so it's really to the it's any elective where we don't have right large number of students if we can take in these students it may help us run the class which otherwise may not have been we we just couldn't if we don't have enough bodies in the seat um my other question is not question but comment and um on your I think it was your very first slide you had mentioned this is like I think the key thing it I think we all agree that it's not sustainable to keep just raising tax raising taxes raising taxes raising taxes at some point something has to give I mean I don't want to speak for the councils or the committee but I they speak all the time about not being a not wanting to raise taxes and doing more with less and you know robbing Peter to pay Paul and putting expenses off so this is kind of a a once in a generation opportunity to offset our Reliance on property tax so you know if everybody you know comes to meetings our meetings committee meetings said oh you got to lower you got to lower taxes you got to lower taxes this is one way to do itre this is one way to alleviate and it's not it's not a small amount I mean if 120 kids come you know by your math here it's $1.8 million annually that's not one time you know okay but put new roofs or new Turf this is annually so this is one of the only ways to increase Revenue totally right we can't put we can't just put out a bond we can't just you know there's really no other ways to increase Revenue at this rate so so I think based on what you said an um aside from the money the enrollment decline I mean this seems like it's beneficial to chadam students so that we ensure that we run the classes certainly taxpayers this bill Heap doesn't yell at us all the time um you know hopefully it'll help the the committee and the councils as well um if we can you know not you know not pit the school needs against the the the the the the count the town needs um so I think this is a win-win if you know I get it's preliminary You' said that a bunch of times but you know with a lot of the negativity I you know I don't know that the negativity out weighs $ 1.8 million right right oh overcrowding oh my kid won't get to play football as much I don't know $1.8 million maybe take a rest on the football Sidelines and have a drink of water right 1.8 million is a lot of and I think too you know there are other things in town that the district does help to pay for such as you know you need new turf field you need a new right whatever um $1.8 million is a lot of money yeah every I mean each turf field cost just to re just to refurbish it it's 500,000 500 for hos 500 for cougar that's a million dollars every you know 8 to 10 years other schools don't replace them as often because they lock them up right we obviously let you know it's it's a town resource that's why we have to replace them more frequently um but that would that infusion of cash would help with all of that M it would have certainly have helped last year running that um you know the referendum for extra cash so those are the things that we might not have to do in the future not run those those questions not pull at people's heartstrings that oh my goodness we need to you know we need security well if we have an additional $1.8 million you know you can live a little bit more within your means but um that was that was my comment I just wanted to ask Dr lus about the also brings us closer to free kindergarten and and is 1.8 or Bradley isn't that like our almost our entire 2% tax levy yeah the tax Lev is about 1.4 I'm sorry the tax 1.4 the tax levy right now is and the budget we just passed was about 74 million so 2% of that is 1.48 right so this is the entire tax levy right and that we're talking about that's pretty much the cost of kindergarten did we not gather that kind of money from kindergarten yeah so you know it would be irresponsible of us not to consider this right people say oh my gosh why do this it would be irresponsible not to even consider it right so that's what we're doing we're considering it nothing's nothing's signed we're not we're not going to make a bad contract right we're considering it which as we should and that is the most important someone came to us and said we're willing to give you $1.8 million we're not going to say no we're going consider now let's not go spending all the money yet right I mean we we have lots of things we need to do we need to address you know maybe we need buses or maybe we need improvements to the cafeteria or other things whatever it is right including free all day kindergarten whatever um but this 1.8 million or 1.4 million whatever it turns out to be is something we absolutely from a fiscal responsibility perspective have to consider Bradley without increase Revenue How likely it that we can get to free tuition for kindergarten anytime soon costs continue to go up right every March we sit here and have the same conversation about having to pull on different levers and we constantly talk about the one lever we have which is reducing employment and that in turn reduces classes it increases class size and no no one wins so and tuition and right so we bring in tuition it's it's found money right and that's why we charged kindergarten too that's correct you can only pull on so many letters that's correct I don't know I have a couple questions about the current environment at CHS and um given if the Harding students came over we'd be at parody to where we are a couple years ago right about is that what I saw or maybe even a little less yes but I I just would point out that if contract were to take effect in 2026 M by 2026 we'll probably have if we have 1,200 students in the in the uh high school now will probably be at 1170 or something by then okay but then there's a 4-year so we're two years away from the first Harding students joining us if this were to happen and then we're only going to incrementally take them on over a 4-year period so we're actually six years away it won't be till 2030 that we have the full 120 or 130 or however many students it would end up being if this were to happen so it's six years out our enrollment by then would be uh below 1,00 at that point so mm and right now we're at 135 right now we're at 12200 we were at 13 1940 when the pandemic started okay so my questions are um and I've heard I know what I've experienced um at the high school which has been nothing but honestly phenomenal but um are there or have there been weight lists for any classes based on enrollment um and can you speak a little bit to average class size in a typical class and when we end up maxing out in class size what that looks like on the weightless question I would need to ask Dr Walker uh how course selection came in last year so typically speaking so the what usually happens is that we hit January or February uh students begin making their selections with teacher input so teachers make recommendations into courses that require a recommendation students uh put into Genesis their requests for courses that do not require teacher recommendation we match all that together and then we begin scheduling Rising seniors then we move on to Rising Juniors then Rising sophomores then Rising freshmen and we B we what we do is develop a course tally for every single course in the school and the course tallies then inform how we section how we aot our staff and that's why it's important we make decisions about which courses run in which course courses don't run based on the tallies but what happens is you move through um the grade levels and then also once you make the allotments then there tends to be movement which is why we have a couple of different Pro uh deadlines for students to to request changes or to put in for waivers so typically speaking we don't have any weit lists when we are at the point of taking the course tallies and translating them into a master schedule based on the students requests and input into the courses they want the weight lists more often come into being a month or two months after that when there's movement because students have a change of mind and want into a course or because there's a different uh recommendation based on how the student has performed over the final three or four months of the year or there there's a waiver process that's when we usually get into issues regarding weight list and then we also and this year we experienced more of this than we usually do we have movement into the district from students who have been studying in other states countries private schools and when they come in we have to find places for them but there are times when courses might be maxed out in terms of class size and we can't get them in so it's a much more Dynamic process like it's not as simple as this is you know this is the way it is our class sizes right now for the most part are maxed at the high school at 25 five there are some exceptions where we'll go over we tend to be more willing to go over in AP and upper level courses than we are in courses where students require more support uh I I can't give you an average class size because it really depends on the course and the and the department and what we have I'd say if you know we're probably in the 23 range or 22 range right now which is extremely low for high schools it's probably one of the lowest uh class siiz number in all of New Jersey I would guess my own kids go to a high school where class sizes are between 28 and 30 in multiple places and there are plenty of high schools around that are north of that north of 30 per class uh so those are some of the answers but we would need to have Doug Walker come in and give a real analysis or at least give me you know some time I could pull more stuff up uh if we wanted to look into that our class sizes right now at the high school are definitively lower than they were when I was principal which was 2006 to 2010 and they're definitively lower than they were even five or six years ago because we have reduced staff but our rate of reduction of Staff has not matched completely the loss of students thank you anybody else have any questions comments I think it'll be can you hear me I think it'll be helpful if I know Jill and Chris and I think an were at the meeting um to put some numbers on how many kids coming from Harding would be playing sports here I think that there's a lot of misinformation on how big and what it's going to do to the teams and how much playing time there'll be so if you can I I think that putting it out there for everyone to hear um if you guys can give us just a little brief overview of what that looks like I don't think it can hurt so yeah back I mean back at the envelope if there's 30 kids and we have 17 programs I mean if you just divide not everybody's playing you know and let's say the gender is split 155 each grade you know I mean just back at the envelope without you know polling a kid that may be playing LaCrosse or football or a young lady playing softball I if you're talking 30 kids 15 gals 15 fellas we have 17 or 20 programs I mean and you're assuming all of them are athletes yeah that's right right that's good point Mr Ryan assumption yeah but yes I hear what you're saying um if we can get some sort of you know slide I don't know just yep to alleviate the fear that that's what is you know we could use wrestlers yeah totally kids wrestle with Summit they Summit in Providence or something like that just Summit right now right now yeah um okay anybody else just want to add one thing for Miss Allen's question too there are also some courses some elective courses that we always have much more interest in than we can accommodate so for example The Culinary you know the culinary courses that take place in the in the kitchens in the elwing of the high school we always have a lot of students who are interested in that but we begin with preferential treatment for seniors so we may have like you know let's just say we have a 100 students who want in a course or couple of courses that we have in in that take place in the foods rooms we might give all of the seniors who sign up for at that class we might be able to make our way through a bunch of the Juniors but then say we're not going to provide this course to the sophomores they'll have to wait until next year when they're juniors or the year after when they're seniors so we do have a couple of courses like that they tend to be dictated by the Staffing that we have and the facilities that we need to run those kinds of elective programs okay well that's it for me um moving on to the administrative reports Dr Lusa sure so first up is the lovely set that is behind you um um is for our fall play which will take place next month and as a result of that we will be in the Middle School auditorium for our next board meeting which is on November 4th um and then the very next day is election day and a reminder that we will the schools will be closed for students on Election Day we swapped election day with uh Columbus Day which is today uh so no school on Election Day uh second bullet is just simply that we continue to uh have conversations and make progress with the reorganization of the district uh on November 5th election day our teachers will be here all of our staff will be here and we uh plan to have some of our third grade staff be at Lafayette Avenue School making some progress and getting to know uh who will be their new colleagues and a bunch of our fifth grade staff will be spending time at the middle school on that day uh to continue their work and then uh I have my final Point here about large scale overnight field trips which the policy Committee of the board has discussed recently and the curriculum committee as well um we have primarily two significant overnight field trips that we have run uh depending on the year in the district the first is the uh Disney trip uh out of the performing arts department once every four years and the other is the eighth grade trip to Washington DC and what I recommended to the committees and what I explained to them what we discussed was that it's becoming uh in my view untenable to continue to operate these large-scale overnight trips um for a variety of reasons uh the first reason is that for quite a long time now predating the pandemic we've had almost an impossible time in securing nursing staff to attend these trips and we have an increasing array of medical needs that we have to administer to on these trips uh the last couple of trips we've run we've at least in the eighth grade side we've been able to contract with an agency who provides us with nursing at a significant cost which also drives up the cost of the trip but it's been tenuous to get the type of coverage and support we feel comfortable with with the students that we bring along um it's also become more challenging to have staff uh fully outfitted and have a level of supervision that we're comfortable with obviously when staff attend overnight trips they have to leave their families or their personal lives or their pets or whoever behind and um that's become challenging uh for a while we were uh compensating our staff with compensatory days if they were overnight on a trip uh we've moved to paying them a sum of money like the cost of a substitute um but it's still not enough really for us to be comfortable that we've got the level of supervision that we need on these field trips uh they also have been disruptive to the operation of some of our schools generally speaking so for example the last time the high school went down to Florida uh there was terrible weather on the way back flights were delayed uh multiple staff members couldn't make it into work next day even though schools were running uh Doug Walker couldn't even get on a flight until the next morning I think Lori Gera got home at 3:00 a.m. so they're just very disruptive and the level of liability that we now have in this area is significant so what I recommended to the Committees and what the consensus was is that it's late in the game for this year to cancel uh the eighth grade trip to Washington DC so we'll run it this year we'll muscle through the trip is going to be more expensive than it's ever been before for a variety of reasons and uh looking forward to next year uh whichever group whether it's eighth grade performing art or anyone else uh we'll give everyone a little bit of time to investigate other Alternatives and try to find meaningful experiences for students that would take place during the course of the day maybe over multiple days but not overnight and not involving air travel and that will be the my recommendation in the plan moving forward and that's it for me okay anybody have any questions for Dr Dr Lusa okay moving on business administrator's report Mr jwell Sure uh very briefly uh have a meeting tomorrow with the architect uh and representative from John O'Hara to discuss the status of the delivery of all the uh security the interior security doors and the completion of the project so I'll have more to come at the next meeting and I don't mean to correct M Weber but the cost the current cost to replace attorney field is closer to $1 million the 500,000 was the cost approximately eight or nine years ago so the cost have escalated that much in the eight years wow it's doubled yes D wow okay that's all I have okay and for student Le ASM report aana oh yes you would need that sorry okay um so just recently we've had um we had a great student and Community turnout at all of our Cougar weekend games so lots of school spirit which we were really excited about um we also had a really successful homecoming dance and then some upcoming stuff so I think tomorrow the Key Club is hosting an information session here for um anyone in the community to to learn more about getting involved and giving back to our community like getting involved with quanis and other students and events within the high school um and then this Wednesday is the senior breakfast also the PSAT will be administered this Wednesday and then the chadam Performing Arts Club has like a talent show this Friday night in the CHS Auditorium so that should be fun um and then one like minor student feedback thing is lately there have been some occasional issues with like slow or Wi-Fi in parts of the building and then as well as like weaker cell service in and around the building so I'm not sure that there's really much that we could do about that I have a feeling that it's kind of just like a bandwidth issue just like lots of people trying to get on at the same time but it's just been something that students and teachers alike have been complaining about a a little bit so just something to note um but aside from that everything is pretty much business as usual mid semester is coming up in I think exactly like two weeks so yeah that's that's all I don't know about the cell service but I do know that our tech department has been working on the Wi-Fi and I would butcher the explanation but it has to do to do with multiple systems and configurations updating and being on the same version and whatever they're so they're working on it they're working on the wifi you can send it back put a cell tower on on the building and charge $1.8 million .8 million perfect we've actually been approached by that multiple times from cell phone from Wireless providers to stick something on some place in our in at the high school in particular but it was nowhere near 1.8 million it was like 5,000 a year or something ridiculous like5 it was they didn't want they weren't offering that much all righty thank you ahana sounds like so far good year um okay moving on to committee reports for personnel Miss Weber yes thanks an uh the Personnel committee met on Wednesday October 9th we covered a number of personnel matters that are not currently eligible for public discussion and of course we always discuss Staffing concerns substitutes Paras again if anybody knows anybody that wants to be a substitute please go to the website um and then just other you know teacher shortage type stuff which is just you know a constant so okay Sub sub Subs perfect when do you meet again no idea okay November 13th November 13th okay perfect um okay moving on to curriculum Miss Ross y uh we met on Wednesday October 9th um we touched on two issues at the Middle School uh the first is potential start time change I know there's been some questions so for reference adjusted times would if it happened uh would mean that the middle school would start somewhere between 8:30 and 9:00 a.m. elementary schools would then Swap and start somewhere between 7:40 and 8:00 in the morning um potential schedule Chang have been sent to the bus company to see if they could accommodate them uh if the root changes are possible and that's a big if uh the decision would still have to be made of when to make the change so to be clear we have not committed to anything uh for the 2526 school year so stay tuned for more information on that second issue at the middle school um is there was a recent streamlining of study halls and by that I mean um putting more students group together under the supervision of multiple teachers instead of in individual classrooms um the reason for that was to make study halls more productive and consistent across the board uh there have been some mixed reviews on how that's going so CMS is reassessing and uh decision on what the best format will be is probably going to be reached by the end of the first trimester which is two weeks away so details on that as well to come uh njla scores were sent out October 4th you probably got them in the mail uh as we do every year Dr Donahue will review her presentation on All State Testing results at our next board meeting here uh at the middle school which will be on November 4th uh Dr Lusa touched a little bit on this but November 5th is professional development day so on that day the main intention is to get the faculties together that are going to be shifting around for the reconfiguration so as you mentioned fifth grade will spend the day at the Middle School third grade teachers will spend the day at Lafayette and you know team building Getting to Know You activities the multilanguage uh presenter that was here in August is back and we'll hold out uh we'll hold breakout sessions for all the grade levels and then finally Katie harmes who was the new Ela supervisor will meet with the K to 5 um grades as she has already met with CMS in high school and then finally reconfiguration plans continue to be fine-tuned uh particularly for fifth grade a decision has been made that fifth graders will only take Spanish there's not enough Staffing to have them choose a language so that'll have to wait till sixth grade which is pretty much how it works now and new electives are being developed that will run on trimester specifically for the fifth graders and that's it and our next meeting is going to be November 13th any questions okay no thank you so much um okay moving on to finance and Facilities Mr Smith yes thank you um finance and Facilities met September 30th um we discussed a particular W uh sports team in town um using um facilities uh and and determine that um the reason why they're being charged for the use of these facilities is that we are paying for custodial overtime uh that goes beyond regular uh hours of our custodians and those fees have to be passed on um we discussed our emergency Reserve um we had to use some of it to do two emergency projects including uh a new p a system at CMS because there's no longer parts available for the existing system and also we have bricks falling off uh um uh CMS that we have to repair immediately um we also had a construction update Mr duila touched on that briefly before but um the interior security doors are still being fabricated but the timeline um is online to to be done here in a few weeks um we discussed projects at CMS in the summer of 25 and also C F CHS roof uh sections 9 and 10 uh which we will tackle uh next summer um we discuss the capital reserve um and and uh balance and the ability to continue to fund that capital reserve account each year being important to us um and then finally uh continued discussions on both Harding and uh full day kindergarten which take up um time at every meeting we have um our next meeting is uh October 30th okay great thank you and uh policy and planning Mr Ryan uh yeah we discussed uh policy uh 5118 which addresses non-resident students uh we were in the process of making some changes to that policy uh to accommodate certain situations and we actually came up with one uh during the meeting where there was a request for uh a resident a chatam resident that was doing renovations uh to their home and they would be displaced from their home for a long period of time um and had to addressed you know that student uh any students in those situations so we're we added um temporary situations like that to policy 1551 those students will be uh allowed to continue although they're sleeping in a different place um they are going through a home renovation they own the property they're paying taxes in chadam so uh we're allowing those students to remain um in the school district uh we discussed it's on the agenda tonight 15 31.9 the passive alcohol sensor and we had uh two tuition uh two student tuition in inquiries ironically from Harding third grader and a nth grader uh their parents want to pay for their students to come here and we accepted those and we had two hardship cases for kindergarten one was approved and one was not next meeting is October 30th that's it okay uh moving on to Liaison reports anybody have anything to report yeah I have one for um it's reported in the finance part but CF uh approved a grant totaling $6,300 to bring the New Jersey Symphony partnership back to the district um mainly it's going to expand the program at the middle school but it's also uh present at the high school and Lafayette and then trivia night which is cf's major event super fun it will be um this year Saturday November 16th held at the high school gym um registration is going to open this Thursday uh the 17th at 9:00 so we remind everybody to register quickly as this one really does sell out fast thanks awesome always a fun plus I'm looking for trivia members if anybody wants to play okay November 16 yeah okay go ahead re board met on September 17th uh meeting covered basically basketball clubs uh gym needs and how they'll be paid for pretty much what Brad was talking about a few minutes ago and I believe they had a meeting today Michael and uh Dr Mike and Peter had a meeting with the club because we no longer provide uh custodians that any of the grammer schools or the middle school on Saturdays as cost-saving measures for our school district so they have to pay basically over time for a fellow to be there or a woman to be there over time a custodian so uh that was discussed I they worked it out today and so that was done uh also there was a meeting about the idea that if in the I the event that Harding comes over here with their uh for high school that the rec department might be able to consume and accommodate Harding kids to come play Rec Sports in our town and that meeting went way sideways so not a lot got done there and they'll have to have another meeting about that later on so uh that that'll come up in November at some point right okay anybody else that's it okay moving on um I'd like to motion that we pass the minutes from the last meeting Mr second as a reminder Miss Ross and Mr Smith need to abstain uh uh M Ross M Allen yes Mr delandro yes Mr Ryan yes Mr Smith M Weber yes Dr Zang yes and M Chelli yes resolution passes 602 okay perfect thank you um okay this is going to be our first opportunity for public commentary hearing of the citizens during the public commentary section of the agenda is an opportunity for any member of the public to be heard about issues which are or are not topics scheduled for the current meeting to help facilitate an orderly meeting and to permit all to be heard speakers will be asked to limit their comments to a reasonable length of time and if you would just please sign in and state your name and where you are from that would be great hi my name is Mandy major I am the President of chadam Education Association the new president I have this is my 20th year at chattam middle school so you could say I am a longtime listener first time caller um I am very happy to be here though to speak on behalf of the teachers and staff cons specifically about the various transitions of f day kindergarten Third Day third grade entering into Lafayette Avenue and fifth grade joining the chattan middle school as we all know the changes will be impacting virtually the entire district from secretaries custodians maintainers power professionals and teachers in five of the six schools the middle school has begun to prioritize all the parts to make this a smooth transition and to say this is an overwhelming and far-reaching undertaking for the staff and administration is an understatement however as with all the other changes that the staff of our district have experienced over the years we will do our best to rise the occasion with Grace and professionalism we hope that the administration will be as transpar as transparent and communicative as possible by continuing to allow Association representatives to be present when various decisions are being discussed and made at each building it goes without saying that these changes are impacting adults and children and as you all would like us to have open ears and open minds we hope that the administration reciprocates this when it comes to the concerns of the staff that will be implementing the changes on the day-to-day also just to be clear teachers are creatures of change we are definitely not creatures of habit we literally get a new class every year our math and ELA teachers have to deal with Ever Changing instructional programs more often than they probably like just in the 20 year just in the 20 years 20 years is a long time I've been at CMS almost half my life I've seen four different principles and three different daily schedules now going on to a fourth schedule next year it's an average of having a new principal or a new schedule every 5 years the the change is the exciting part right September is the exciting part of the year it's a new year but the the space that we're in right now is how is this going to happen what is that going to look like exactly and that space makes things stressful for everybody but I'm hopeful that in time these anwers will come and next year the teachers and staff at Milton Southern Boulevard Washington Lafayette and CMS will hit the ground running thank you thank you and congratulations on your presidency and 20 years about to good evening Bill Heap uh Chad and burrow uh with regard to Harding um I was out on my bike uh last weekend and this weekend riding through the swamp and through Harding and somebody has taken the trouble to make up lawn signs uh in opposition to the merger uh it appears that um they want to stay at Madison so I don't know uh who you're talking to and whether they are in line with their constituents and how big this is but somebody went to that trouble and there was more than one of them just wanted to point that out um also I don't really have a dog in this fight but I do find some ironies um with regard to this starting six or eight years ago uh at the dawn of River Road and when all of these things were being talked about with regard to affordable housing and development uh you were uh clutching your pearls and sweating bullets about the number of students that were going to be sent your way by the municipalities due to this development and now we find ourselves in a position of talking to our neighbors next door uh I think you found out what uh lots of manufacturing and uh production fa facilities find out is that you need feed stock I ran a machine shop for 45 years and when business went South I could pull the plug on my Milling machines and grinders I could tell my guys to do some maintenance uh to build some new fixtures we would pull in our horns and wait for business to get get to get better uh it's not easy for for you to pull the plug on teachers uh you can't tell them to go up on the on the roof and fix the HVAC systems so you need bodies flowing through to support the level of assets that we have built up uh we have an educated population uh they should be able to understand that fact they may not like it but that's what it is um as far as uh whether this is good for the taxpayers or not I guess I would be in much more favor of this if you were besides saying it was to do something like oh maybe declare a moratorium on second questions for the length of the contract I'd be thrilled about that and could come around to uh see some Support also I would warn you to not give away the goods on the cheap um things cost more uh than it appears we have hidden costs we were just just discussing how all of a sudden turf fields go from 500,000 to a million uh it's easy for Harding Township to get a price they're thrilled with that they're uh going to be paying our our student cost is approaching $25,000 you're going to give them a discount I hope the discount is not too steep uh you ought to consider the fact that uh Kent Place and uh Mo beard and and all the other private schools are somewhere North of 50 Grand now they will be getting a tremendous bargain by coming here because this school is every bit as good as any of those private schools and quite frankly if they don't like the price let them build their own High School uh so please don't give away uh don't give away the merchandise uh I think um it would benefit you to uh make sure that the price they're paying is going to be in line with what it really cost us to students here so thanks thank you Mr heat hello Cara F here um representing Washington Avenue School um just a couple quick things I know you talked about the um times potential time changes is there any idea when you think that might be made um and I know not right now and you're talking to bus companies and stuff but just any kind of little bit helps when dealing with little mini children changes um the other question with regards to the ma to the Harding situation is there any kind of timeline that you I know you're saying it wouldn't be starting until August 26th but any idea when you guys are would be fully extending the offer to Harding or when they might be accepting or making their final decision uh and then also any idea if there will be a cap involved or if we're just assuming that it maintains between the 20 to 40 kids um per year and with regards to kindergarten for the following year if you have any idea what the price will be um I know again two years ago it was stated that it would be free for 2025 2026 doesn't seem like that's happening looking around the same higher um any guidance that you can give to any of those three issues would be greatly appreciated thank you okay I'm going to go ahead and close this session of public commentary there is another opportunity later in the meeting um just to answer some of those questions uh I'll do what I can and then pass over to Dr Luso what I don't know the answers to um as far as carara for a couple of your questions as far as the Harding timeline we don't have any exact specifics because there are still a number of steps that they have to go through such as applying with the state and the county and those kinds of things so we don't know how long those will take we're just trying to help them with any due diligence that they need that we can give them information on so that's kind of where we are right now and we won't really know until they make those formal applications and it depends on how long that takes I mean I would assume that they know the county and the state know that they have a contract that's expiring in 20 26 so I would hope that they would help them to be able to make a decision whether it's here Madison or wherever they end up going but we'll keep you guys in the loop as we hear any further information as we move along um as far as the time change I guess we don't know yet right as to the goal would be uh by the end of January if we were going to make a change to announce that uh but we're still announce it by the end of jary if it were going to be for next year yep got it okay and then kindergarten you want to answer that as far as kindergarten tuition yeah that's premature because that will depend on what our budget picture looks like when we are looking are putting it together in marchapril okay and just to be clear we never um to my knowledge said we would offer free kindergarten what I what we said is that everyone up here wants to get to the point where we can offer a free kindergarten but unfortunately the budget doesn't allow it at this time and we'll see what comes of the next budget yeah and the only other one there is if if a district enters into a send receive relationship it can't cap the number of students it's we take the entire town the relationship is that you accept the students that are graduating or moving up from eth grade from the K8 I mean how many they traditionally they have what 40 kids and that that those 25 to 40 kids per class right if we were to explore what other districts have done which is to let's say Harding decides they don't want anything to do with chatam for one reason or another and we were to explore admitting tuition students at large here and developing some type of process where students in nearby districts wherever they might be could apply to attend school here then we can cap the number um right but you can't yes so there are districts who say we will admit up to 10 students in the freshman class this year up to 20 students up to whatever it might be and we could base that number on our enrollment and uh we then would be in a position where we could limit the number of students total and put in other parameters uh on on what we want and I should just mention that we've averaged over the past 10 years about 20 kids per year tuition paying students in the district but the majority have been staffed the children of Staff members because board policy at the present time is that board is that uh District staff pay 35% of the published tuition rate so we've had tuition students here every year uh for as long as any of us can remember and I think this year we're down to about 10 students um but the number has been more like 20 for most years and that's throughout the whole District obviously we're only talking about the high school right now right right so yeah and basically the cap with somebody like carding would be the the length of the contract so you know it's not going to be an open-ended contract we will determine a specific length of a contract probably somewhere plus or minus 5 years um okay so moving on to our regular agenda now the action items for personnel Miss Weber great thank you an I'd like to move Personnel items A1 through a25 on the regular agenda and there's an addendum so number seven on the addendum replaces number seven on the regular agenda and then 13 14 and 20 there's just additional names added to that particular category and number 26 on the addendum is a brand new item 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