or less than five days like to call the meeting to order at 59 can I have a moment of silence please please stand for the flag salute I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all roll call Mr Kenny here miss blin Mr Bramhall here Mr Evans here miss ion here Mr Meer here M Topps here m trumpe m Fitzwater here statement is hereby made that adequate notice of this meeting was given by submission of said notice to the Burlington County Times carrier times cinnamon and Township Clerk and the district website on the following dates March 3rd 2023 March 28th 2023 January 17th 2024 March 14th 2024 and April 11th 2024 good evening to everybody and we will have opening remarks by Mr Capello yes thank you actually we are going to transition over to the podium so if you just give me a second I'm going to invite Mrs livingood uh over to join me at the podium we're going to begin with our budget presentation so pause for just one second all right and now I'm at this microphone uh thank you to members of the board members of the public and anyone watching along at home for being here at our public hearing on the 2024 2025 bud uh while this process will happen by way of statutorily required public meeting this evening lest anyone think that this has not been a very long process to get to this point Mrs liven Goods office begins developing the budget back early in the fall uh our board and our finance committee have reviewed um the materials that we'll discuss this evening a number of times and I look forward to sharing what our prospects look like for the upcoming school year and the budget so um as I mentioned this is our public hearing on the proposed 2425 District budget uh where we typically begin with our public hearing on the budget is uh reaffirmation of our District's mission statement I will not read it here uh but it is available on our District's website and the reason we get back to our mission is that everything that is in our mission statement everything that is in uh our our schools everything that is in our curriculum gets back to our core Mission and uh everything that we are proposing tonight is in line with this mission in addition to the mission statement uh also statutorily required uh and part of the qac process the district must develop budget objectives and these budget objectives are broken down for this year into four areas um and again I don't mean to read off of slides uh but as members of the public and the board can see uh we are always looking to create efficiencies within our budget and provide a quality education for our students and I think you'll be pleased that this program or that this budget will commit to continuing on with all of our personnel and programs from prior budgets uh so in making this budget we also look to assess the financial needs of the district uh everything that we do comes down to Dollars and cents uh to money to run our Personnel Transportation support our curriculum the extracurriculars uh everything comes down to what is a want and what is a need and when we're developing and going through the budget process we have to consider that so that will be uh discussed this evening uh we're very proud of our curriculum and meeting the needs of the New Jersey student learning standards Dr goldurn and his curriculum team have done an excellent job ensuring um that we are compliant U by all areas of the qac review process and that our students have access to a quality education that begins with a curriculum uh that meets all of the state standards uh another area that has been important for this board for many number of years is our target class sizes uh we realize that this has become a challenge in recent years given the substantial growth that we've seen as a school district uh to the tune of about uh 20% student population growth it has certainly become a challenge for us to be able to maintain class sizes that we feel comfortable with particularly at our lower grades but I applaud this board in being committed to maintaining these class sizes and what that has meant for the last few years is additional sections um particularly at the New Albany school and the rush school and we'll talk a little bit about what that looks like moving on to the next school year uh so we continue on with our budget objectives again I don't want to read uh directly from the slides um but these budgets need to be able to provide training uh for our Board of Education administrative teaching staff and support staff and throughout the course of the Year our staff have access to uh various professional learning opportunities and professional development and most of them take place in the course of our six provided professional learning days for staff um we'll hear about some of the technology that's supported in the budget obviously in this postco era we've channeled even more money into supporting uh more learning uh via technology and Technology INF fusion into the classroom uh we also talk a lot about transportation in our Budget Transportation costs have gone up and we're very proud that we we maintain all of our buses we have in-house transportation and our budget continues to support that uh we're also a point of Pride for our district is our facilities and we'll learn about some upkeep in our facilities uh for the upcoming school year but this board has been very good about reinvesting in the public publicly funded school district schools and our physical plant so that will continue in the 2425 budget and then of course um Safety and Security we are continually looking to secure the physical plant that is our school and our buildings and Harden our entrances security cameras uh secure vestibules all of the things that um point to making our schools safer for our students and for our staff remain a top commitment in this budget as well so talk you know kind of from like the 30,000 foot overview of where we're hitting uh in this budget some of the highlights and then Mrs living good will talk about uh the dollars and cents items so as I already mentioned before programming is a key part of any budget uh I know some of our colleagues throughout New Jersey and even in Burlington County uh cannot share the same information that we're we're very proud that we're able to maintain all of our personnel and all of our programs that's not only our educational programs which we're actually looking to expand a little bit but also all of our extracurricular activities as well uh so specifically in terms of adding to and augmenting our already existing programs uh we're looking to add some new science electives uh to cinnamon in high school uh as we talked about in public and at board meetings in the past uh we are adding to our prek population and we've got some exciting plans for the upcoming school year to continue to augment on our journey uh in a 5-year plan are looking to offering uh full day free prek to all students in the cinnamint and public schools universe so definitely more to come on that and we have some new extracurricular programs in the Arts that we're looking to also add to our student program uh in terms of Staffing uh this has definitely been a big point of impact for the cinnamon School District as our student population has grown as you might imagine our staffing has grown uh I keep at these presentations thinking we are approaching a plateau in our student po population and our our rate of growth has definitely slowed but we do continue to grow and I am hoping that as the pockets of students continue to move you know from New Albany School L working their way up to the high school that we're also leveling out with staff I do uh uh our numbers do project that maybe next year there'll be a little bit of Staff addition but I think we are starting to wne away from uh needing to add to staff but for next year uh we have additions in kindergarten and first and second grade and again this is just to address class size issues right we talked about uh what our what the board's class size objective and expectations are uh those class sizes have gotten a little higher in the last couple years than we're comfortable with that is also obviously um impacted by the amount of space that we have for those students to learn in uh I I would love it if we could just keep adding staff and making class sizes smaller but also uh factored into that consideration is the classroom space for them to learn and I've heard I've used the term here in public before we have some square footage challenges and we're also looking to address them in this budget as well at the rush school we are uh looking to add a speci education teacher and a number of these additions are compelled by ratios um that we need to maintain to be compliant with our uh special education population and as that growth moves up into the middle school and high school um it's not quite as easy when you're addressing class size in the middle school and high school because the students aren't in the same Home Room every day so it's not just a divide by end situation uh so we sometimes look at this over the course of many years and look at you know where our highest need is and at the Middle School uh some of our class sizes are starting to creep Beyond those budget uh objective expectations so we are looking to add a social studies teacher to the middle school for next year and at the high school that same principle appli looking at the classes where our class size is starting to get north of where we're comfortable and looking at the population coming from the Middle School to the high school it looks like class sizes will only increase uh so we'll be looking to address that with a math teacher and in order to save uh a little bit of funds uh for a health and physical education teacher we're looking to do that as a part-time position um and then we mentioned some growth and expansion in prek um while we might not be hiring staff for next year we're going to hire that staff this year uh we are going to need to augment our support staff for the prek rooms as well so again more to come on prek over the course of the next few years but uh we are excited that program is growing and so is the staff uh in terms of Technology uh this is Mr K's area and I'll apologize for reading off of the slides but uh as we add some new learning spaces to the district for next year they will need to be supported by new technology uh we're doing some bell system upgrades in addition to being a Health and Human Services issue this is definitely a school safety issue um so uh we have some aging Bell systems in some of our older schools and our Communications uh is critical particularly uh when you're talking about real-time threats uh so we're very excited to be able to address some of those needs uh every year we make an investment into expanding our security camera axis and since we're looking at adding some new learning spaces uh those spaces will need to be augmented uh with some security camera expansion as well and then uh we are a district that has a on toone Chromebook Initiative for all students students grades three and up uh so as as a part of that so that we don't wind up with uh aging devices we have a commitment to uh refreshing those Chromebooks uh a little bit at a time every year similar similar to like our transportation bus replenishment uh cycle I'm actually going to skip right over to Transportation because that's the shorter one um as as board members know uh school buses have a lifespan used to be 10 years now we can push them up to 15 years um so we do need to continually replace some of our buses uh for next year we're looking at a new 16 passenger bus and then a 25 and a 40 passenger bus uh each with a a lift uh for accessibility access uh so in the past we've we've maybe purchased four or five buses uh next year are doing A needs assessment it looks like we are only in need of three as board members are aware the costs of school buses have gone up dramatically uh like everything else um so we try to you know only purchase what we need uh even as our population has grown and we do need to replace buses that hit that 15year age cycle uh we're comfortable going into next school year with uh these three buses that are listed here uh in terms of our facilities I've said it before I'll say it again this board has been excellent about reinvesting in our existing facilities uh we in invested the community supported us in 2014 to do a referendum project uh but those are not one-off projects right if you don't maintain the new facilities uh then you can see what you see on the news all the time of schools falling into disrepair and uh this this board has been very clear that that's not to happen here in cinam Inon a big part of that um and fortunately we're able to do a lot of this work in houses we'll see in the next uh slide uh we'll be doing phase one classroom Renovations at the rush School we're tackling four classrooms this summer when we do those that's uh new new floor tile uh new ceiling tiles new light fixtures new paint uh technology upgrades and just creating a better brighter uh learning space for all of our students and by doing them a few classrooms at a time we were actually able to renovate the entire New Albany School the exception of two classrooms and a prog excuse me a process that began 7 years ago uh so we have two minor upgrades to finish the new ALB school and all of those classrooms will have been refreshed uh we're also uh looking to augment our learning spaces with some additional learning Cottages to address our square footage issues uh that's at the New Albany school and the rush school um and then at the existing learning College facility uh looking to build a canopy at rush and again fortunately we have some skilled laborers in our district who were able to do these projects in house so uh there is significant savings when our folks are able to do the construction projects we had some proof of concept this year when we added new canopies in the front of learning Cottage one at rush school and we'll look to continue that uh with the additional learning Cottages uh at rush school as well uh we talked about some prek classroom space uh we've talked a lot about prek and budgeting the last few years we had a three-phase uh prek project at the memorial school we had to take down some walls to uh make prek accessible classrooms again the Department of Education really prefers our prek classroom space be around 950 ft uh those are large learning instruction areas and we don't have too many of them in the district so as we look to expand our prek it's it's it's not helping our square footage situation but fortunately again with the skill labor that we have access to on our maintenance team uh we're able to take existing classrooms and upgrade them to be prek compliant uh little smaller projects along the way too um safety uh focused as well we need to do some restriping of our parking lot uh we'll be renovating The Culinary classroom here at the middle school again in-house labor will'll be doing that this summer uh we have some fire doors that need to be replaced here at camens of middle school and you know that's one of those requirements for health and student safety uh we're looking to refinish the gym floors at the high school and the Middle School uh we need to replace some sidewalk again another safety issue at the high school and we're also looking to uh to do a little bit of work with some very crowded Fields there and uh provide a little bit better extracurricular space for our students who are on campus at the high school um by installing a well and adding some irrigation so that we can use some fields that are are not necessarily in a condition to be uh athletic or marching band Fields right now but with a small investment into some irrigation we'll be able to get a little bit more use out of stuff that is on campus um at the high school uh we're also looking to begin a a a smaller project replacing some windows at the memorial school as you can imagine replacing all of the windows in a school would be an enormous investment the cost and materials on Windows upgrades has gotten significant but we if if we don't make a commitment to do it at least a little bit at a time uh the problem will only continue to uh grow exponentially so we're looking to just uh in some of the more problematic areas address some window replacements this year and then of course we always budget for some emergent needs um tree work um cement work and uh HVAC which this board knows has been a challenge uh for this board over the last couple of years uh I did mentioned that we do a lot of the work ourself in house so what you're looking at uh on the two uh images to the left um you're seeing a classroom being renovated so you're seeing new ceiling tile grid being installed by our team uh after um paint jobs are done in the classrooms and then uh that bottom picture there shows us uh tearing down a wall to build a larger instructional space from the memorial school so 1950s classrooms being updated to um come up to spec in the 2020s and then the two pictures on the right you see the end results of what our classrooms look like with brand new floors brand new paint LED light fixtures they're bright wonderful spaces for our kids to learn in and um we and again we're able to accomplish those in housee so um coming up next I'm going to invite Mrs livingood to join me and she is going to talk a little bit about the budget process and get into the dollars and cents uh members of the board you'll have an opportunity to ask some questions at the end so if you have questions about uh what I've just talked about kind of hold them till the end and members of the public will also have an opportunity to talk as well so Mrs living good you good evening um some key budget facts to take note of the total proposed budget for the 2425 school year is 70 mil 336 270 this amount is a combination of the general funds special Revenue fund and Debt Service the general fund is the primary operating budget and it's used for salaries benefits supplies student Support Services textbooks maintenance and operations Transportation tuition security capital projects and all other expenses that are deemed necessary to the district special revenue is made up of only Grant funds this budget of 1,468 223 is a projection based on a percentage of the current Grant allocations which we know we are eligible for next year this projection also includes the actual Grant allocation for the preschool expansion program these numbers are subject to change and will most likely increase once we receive our actual allocation which is in the summer prior to the start of the school year The Debt Service fund is the annual payment that's owed for the financing for the 2014 Bond referendum the debt Balan as of June 30th 2024 is 36 milon 438 750 the debt will be paid off as of August 1st 2039 state aid is increasing by 1,747 655 the proposed tax levy increase for the general fund is 2.48% which is equal to 866865 the proposed tax levy will result in an approximate increase of $99 per year for the average assessed home in cinamon which is $235,600 state aid versus a 2425 state aid we receive Equalization Aid categorical special education Aid categorical security Aid Transportation Aid and Debt Service Aid the total state aid for the general fund is 21, 96,9 44 and The Debt Service Aid is $672,500 cinnamon is gaining an additional $1.7 million which is an increase of 9% Equalization is the primary Aid that a school district receives the increase in Equalization Aid is determined by the calculation of the district's adequacy budget it's a weighted value based upon enrollment this year the calculation is stating that we should receive 13,946 per pupil for regular education and 21,8 168 per pupil for special education it's mandated that we are entitled to receive funds for providing a thorough and efficient education process for every child there is a state aid differential which affects Equalization Aid and it's determined that Cinnaminson should have received larger allocations in the past this is why we've received additional funding over the past few years last year we actually received $3.9 million in state aid while we are still receiving an increase this year the increase is about half of what we received last year so it's not quite as high The Debt Service Aid is a percentage of the debt payment owed for the 2014 Bond referendum and the district qualifies for 79114 however the state continues to fund only 85% of that which is why we are receiving the 67243 when building a budget first we must determine the total revenue that the district will generate once the revenue is determined then we know how much we'll be able to spend this slide shows what makes up our revenue for the 2425 school year the local tax levy is increasing by 2.48% a district is allowed to raise the tax levy to 2% which is the cap beyond the 2% limit a district may be entitled to additional adjustments the bank cap is an adjustment that generates when a school district doesn't raise to the 2% tax levy over the past three years cinnamon has generated Banks cap we've went to 1.1% increase a 1% % increase and a 1.9% increase when Bank cap is generated by not raising the tax levy by 2% the district then has three years to apply those funds this year camenson had 3, 21567 of Bank cap of that total 33,2 189 which was generated in the 2122 school year is expiring we are not using any Bank cap funds for the 24-25 school year year we do have an enrollment adjustment which we are using in the amount of $18,350 this adjustment number is based on a projected enrollment increase which is calculated and given to us by the state of New Jersey we also have a health care cost adjustment of 65,562 182 any excess adjustment funds that we're not using will roll into our bank cap Miss aneous revenue is made up of tuition payments received Transportation joint ches with other District Medicaid reimbursements e- rate reimbursements interest earned and any other miscellaneous payments that we receive throughout the school year this is projected to increase by 33,000 due to projected increases in tuition and our transportation joint ches state aid is increasing by a total of $2.2 million we reviewed the 1.7 million increase on the last Slide the additional $450,000 and our Revenue increases due to our projected extraordinary Aid school districts are able to submit costs associated with students that have significant needs the aid calculation is done by the state of New Jersey and is generally a percentage of our total submission the use of fund balance is increasing from $4.6 million to $4.8 million this amount of fund balance is required to be used and is determined by the appropriation of excess Surplus which we reviewed in our audit report and it's automatic added on our budget software capital reserve and maintenance Reserve withdrawal These funds are these funds that are taken from our Reserve accounts are being allocated to facility projects and required maintenance in the current school year we've used these funds for the renovation of classrooms at the New Albany school and the memorial school and any other required maintenance that we've had throughout the district funds for the 2425 school year are allocated from maintenance reserve for the renovation of classrooms support for the learning cottages facility upgrades and repairs and all other required maintenance throughout the district as you can see as of now there is no funds that are allocated to be used for capital reserve and this is because the projects in question have to be approved to be part of our longrange facility plan which we have submitted once we receive that approval by the doe the a resolution will be presented to the board to approve a capital reserve withdrawal at that time prior year incumbrances are rolled purchase orders that go from one year to the next in the 2324 column you see that open purchase orders that rolled from the 2223 school year the0 in the 2425 school year will change based on the June 30th 2024 open purchase orders and our total budget comes to 70 mil 336 270 oh there we go thank you here's a revenue chart which shows the percentage breakdowns of all of our Revenue that I just discussed as you can see tax levy and state aid make up the majority of all of our district funding this next slide shows the appropriation of funds which is how the money will be spent for the 2425 school year salaries and instruction will increase due to salary increases which result from negotiated contracts and the addition of new positions co-curricular activities in athletics will increase due to salary increases in supplies support services are made up of Social Work attendance nursing Services related Services child study team curriculum and Media Services for students this is increasing due to salaries and individual student needs administ ation and Technology Services include all administrative costs and also supports our 1 to1 technology initiative operations and maintenance will increase by 6% this is due to salary increases as well as the maintenance Reserve withdrawal which is a one-time withdraw from our maintenance Reserve account for required maintenance throughout the District transportation will remain about level this is due to a bus lease payment schedule and the payment completion of some of our buses this budget includes salary increases in the purchase of three new school buses employee benefits contain the adjustments for medical prescription and dental health benefits general liability insurance workman's comp insurance social security contribution and the pers employer pension contribution the overall increase is based off of our projections from each of our providers tuition will increase as well these are the funds used for students placed out of district and this allocation is based on our current enrollment and projected enrollment based on student needs Capital outlay funds are allocated for technology equipment to include server Replacements Network infrastructure upgrades and Pa upgrades throughout the district if additional capital projects are board approved in the future the reserves will be withdrawn at that time and to reiterate from the budget fact slide earlier the special revenue is a projection made based off of the current Grant allocation and the grants that we know that we're going to have next year debt services our payment from the bond referendum and this will decrease next year by 28,6 25 which brings us to a total balance budget of 70 million 336 here's a chart of our Appropriations which shows the percentage breakdown of the expenditures we just talked about salaries and instruction make up the largest part of our expenditures at 38% followed by employee benefits and support services here is a breakdown of how one tax dollar is spent more than half 56 cents goes to salaries instructions co-curricular Athletics and support services while 15 cents goes to benefits 10 cents goes to the operations and maintenance to keep our facilities updated six sense goes to Administration and Technology as well as another six sense goes to Transportation 3% goes to our debt service payment schedule 3 cents goes to our tuition for out of District students and one penny goes to Capital outlay this final slide shows a tax rate analysis the proposed 2425 budget contains an increase as I said of 2.48% on the tax levy this top chart highlights the tax impa impact for the average assessed home the average assessed value is 235,000 comes out to $825 a month um this concludes the budget presentation and Mr capello's portion was much more exciting than mine um at this time do any members of the board have any questions I just have one just for clarification you had said on the when you said where the money coming from that the capital reserve doesn't have anything in it yet so that is that we're not currently we have about $4 million in capital reserve I can't allocate those funds to be used until we have a project number from the Department of Education um we plan to have the modular classrooms possibly be part of that um they the plans have been submitted from our architect to the Department of Ed once we receive project numbers a resolution will be presented to the board and if the board um pushes that forward then we will remove those funds which would then increase the budget by whatever the total dollar amount is that we withdraw so to summarize the money is there but we can't move forward with putting it into the projected budget for next year until those project numbers are approved by the Department of Education so the conversations that take place in the facilities committee meetings and the finance Comm mean are still very much in the plans there's just a couple mechanisms that need to happen before we could show that in a budget so um it would be an authentic to vote on it um before those projects are approved so essentially the money is in a separate savings account okay okay just not showing in the budget correct thank you any members of the public with a question any other board members questions I had I had the same question but then also uh the capital outlay later on where it goes how do how does that affect because there's zero there for that right I understand it's there but capital outlay is actually our it's a term for our fund 12 account fund 10 is General operating expenses and um purchases from fund 12 they do include capital reserve but also any piece of equipment over $2,000 has to be allocated to the fund 12 account so it doesn't mean that it's coming from our capital reserve it's General operating expense but it's just allocated to Capital because it's equipment okay cool thanks other questions thank you to the board for your continued support thank you good question I had her question WR down too she took my question okay I would uh next move on to public comments but see that we do not have members of the public present tonight we will move on to section five adoption of the 2024 2025 school budget thank you Mrs Fitzwater that the board approves the final budget adoption that was presented during the public to the public during a hearing held at the cin Middle School on April 25th 2024 the total base budget 70 million 33 6 270 with a local tax levy of 37,7 352 and Debt Service of 2, 22652 thank you Mr C oh I'm sorry Item B item number one that the board approves a tax levy cap adjustment of 118,000 330 based on enrollment increases item number two that the board approves a tax levy cap adjustment of 52,1 182 based on the healthcare cost increase item number three included in the budget line 630 budgeted withdrawal for maintenance Reserve is 7713 70 for required maintenance projects item number four that the board approves the resolution establishing the maximum budget amount for travel and related expenses for the 2425 school year and item number five that the board approves the travel and related expense reimburse ment of school staff and Board of Education members for the 2425 school year is attached thank you Mrs Fitzwater thank you Mr living good Mr Kenny can I have a motion to approve section five adoption of the 2024 2025 school budget items A and B so moved second second thank you Mr Evans comments or questions from the board hearing none we'll take a vote Mr Maker I I I I I I I motion approved moving on to section six Personnel Mr Capello thank you Mrs Fitzwater two Personnel items this evening seeking the board under letter a uh to approve the resignation for purposes of retirement staff number listed in the agenda and under letter B appointment seeking the board to approve uh item number one as listed in the agenda thank you Mr Capello Mr Bramhall can I have a motion to approve section six items A and B so moved second second thank you Mr Evans comments or questions from the board hearing none we'll take a vote Mr tops i i i i i i i motion approved I'm moving on to section 7 business and finance Mr living good thank you under Section A operations that the board approves the completed School boss emergency evacuation drills that took place between Monday March 25th 2024 and Wednesday March 2 7 2024 and Item B contracts that the board of education is authorizing the execution and delivery of the grant agreement for the rod grant for the boilers and domestic hot water heaters as attached and that the board authorizes the delegation of authority to the school business administrator for supervision of the school facilities project thank you Mrs Fitzwater thank you Mr living good missia con can I have a motion to approve section s business and finance items A and B so move second second thank you Mr Evans comments or questions from the board hearing now we'll take a vote Mr Maker i i i i i i i motion approved uh we have no executive session tonight so uh with that uh Mr Evans can I have a motion to adjourn so move second second thank you Mrs Topps all in favor I opposed meeting is adjourned