to write my stuff down okay I would like to call this meeting to order will the secretary please call the role Mrs Becker here Mr Cummings here miss guas Mrs herck here Mr Hong here Mrs ree here and president l here we have a quum please rise to salute the flag I Ali to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and Justice the New Jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the rights 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 and acted on in accordance with the provisions of this act the East Brun board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time and place thereof posted at the Board of Education offices written notice was also provided to The Sentinel the New York Star Ledger the home News Tribune the alternate press of East Brunswick and the municipal clerk of East Brunswick all Board of Education meetings with the exception of executive session discussions are taped for later broadcast it is a policy of the Board of Education that videotape meetings are not edited for any purpose individual ual who speak at the board's public meeting should be aware of these videotaping rules good evening to our Die Hard fans um we are going to have a motion to go into close session so whereas the Board of Education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for discussion in a public meeting these subjects are within the exception to the open public meetings act and are permitted to be discussed in Clos session the Board of Education intends to discuss the matters as follows those items listed on tonight's agenda the length of close session is estimated to be 1 hour after which the public meeting of the board shall reconvene and action may be taken now therefore be it resolved that the East Brun Board of Education will recess into close session for only the affers said subjects and being further resolved that the East bronck Board of Education hereby declares that its discussion of the affers said subjects will be made public at a time when the Public's interest in disclosure is greater than any privacy or governmental Interest being protected from disclosure in accordance with the open public meetings act move by Mrs Becker second by Mr Cummings is there any discussion all in favor opposed exensions motion carries we shall see you in an hour welcome back I see you brought some friends always fun um we are going to start off the fund with Dr ves's report what do you have for us this evening well Mrs LAX I have a lot of stuff to tell you about good evening everyone Frost celebrated read Across America in March with some amazing guest readers and activities Anthony Zakaria visited the third and fourth grade students to read two stories to them Anthony is n Bruno graduate and the son of Sue Zakaria who is an instructional Aid at Hughes he is a nonverbal quadr quadriplegic and operates his device in wheelchair with his head he was happy to share how he communicates and participates in everyday activities just a little differently Frost also hosted their first Library Olympic Games students at every grade level participated in events that were focused on the library Sciences author Gail gallagan visited the K4 classes at Frost students were so excited and engaged By Her Interactive presentation Beth Fair author of stick and stone and many other children's books visited waren storfer elementary school last week and shared her love of writing reading and the power of imagination with our students the author visits were made possible through a grant funded by the East Brunswick Education Foundation Central Elementary School celebrated career day on Friday March 15th career day introduced the students to a range of career options that explored their interest and help them Envision future jobs none of which were interested in what I do by the way St students students were able to meet the professionals and the vehicles they Ed for their careers the vehicles present were a police car a police rescue truck a fire truck an ambulance a pipe cleaning truck and a mail truck our local community sent wonderful Representatives that help broaden our students understanding of the world of work and the diverse opportunities available to them in their Futures the East brunic High School orchestra and chorus had a very successful 5-day trip to Orlando Florida and they look very relaxed in this Photograph don't they the groups were rided in the excellent and Superior categories and additionally the overall outstanding vocal soloist trophy was awarded to Charlotte Wells and Charlotte is a sophomore at the high school the 135 students and attendance represented East Bruns public schools in a remarkable manner both on and off the stage so thank you to them for representing East brunck Public Schools so well on the national level Living Voices took place at Churchill Junior High School Living Voices uses historical perspectives based on real people events Living Voices combines live performances with audio visual aids and discussion archival films and photos blended with sound and synchronized with a live actor provide a dynamic interactive experience of how the world looked sounded and felt during a significant time in history all the eighth grade students saw the right to dream which dramatized the story of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and all of our ninth grade students saw Through The Eyes of a friend which tells the story of Anne Frank in the Holocaust last call for tickets to the East Brunswick Education Foundation annual partner and Excellence dinner which will be held on Tuesday April 2nd information could be found on our website at ebnet.org ebef the district will be hosting the 15th annual night of jazz on Wednesday April 3rd this annual event is co-sponsored by the East Brunswick Education Foundation and the Mario a de carolis Memorial music fund this year event will feature the Garden State Jazz Orchestra along with performances by the hambers Upper Elementary School Churchill Junior High School the East brunwick jazz bands as well as the high school jazz choir the Garden State Jazz Orchestra was founded in 2010 by director saxophonist Ken zampella and credited with being a wall of sound this is a big band in an ensemble that features a variety of musical styles from Jazz to swing and mtown to rock featuring accomplished musicians with a wide variety of experience and backgrounds this group of individuals have come together to provide a quality entertainment to people of every age as well as promote the betterment of jazz education tickets are now on sale for night of jazz and can be purchased at EB Arts that's EB ts. booktix b o k tix.com just a reminder that all schools and district offices will be closed Monday March 25th through Friday March 29th for spring recess and I hope everyone has an enjoyable break and now I would like to turn it to Mr Juliana who will provide an update on the board vacancy process and timeline thank you Dr veski so um at the last board meeting announced the procedures uh for filling the two vacancies on the board of education information um is available on the district website the main page at ebnet.org uh there's uh a tile on that page that is specifically uh noted to be board member vacancy and the instructions are uh indicated within that tile in addition uh we've had uh two advertisements uh in the local newspapers and uh it has also been running on ebtv um in terms of the timelines uh those individuals who request um packets to uh make a submission for consideration those submissions must be received in my office no later than 1 p.m. April 5th 2024 and that is in order to be considered for the vacancy uh email submissions will not be accepted so they must be paper submissions um and so uh beyond that I ask board attorney to um add a few remarks regarding um public Communications so any individual who is interested in applying for the vacancy or who may have already applied for the vacancy and is waiting for the board to engage the interview process um it is advised that everyone please submit all additional information that you wish to be considered to the board secretary whether it's in your application packet or to hold on to your information and share it with the board during the interview portion of that process um and the reason being is that any individual Communications emails or just contact with the individual board members uh will not be considered so it's not that the board members don't want to respond to individuals or get to know them but in order to ensure fairness to the process and to everyone who's interested in applying the board members are going to be considering the information as is shared with the entire board through the submission process and the interview process so if you don't receive a response from any of the individual board members to any Communications emails or um just inquiries as to the status it's because the board members are choosing to um with the advice of council to ensure that the process is fair to all and transparent so all information will be considered as a collective um and no individual board members will be applying so don't take that as an any kind of slight but it's really more to ensure fairness for the entire process thank you and I believe Mr Julian we're ready for your attentive budget presentation [Applause] good evening this evening the Board of Education will be adopting a tentative budget uh before getting into uh some of the information on the budget I did want to take a few minutes to review um the status of how the covid-19 grants were utilized I think that's uh an important piece uh as a refresher um I had reviewed this during last year's process process but I think given that we're at the end of the period for utilizing funds um I think the refresher is warranted um I'm not going to spend a lot of time on each of these slides but basically this provides an overview of each of the various grants that were received uh from the federal government and how those funds were utilized uh they applied toward Mental Health Services technology um in addition we had many positions that were funded through uh this process we uh performed various uh upgrades to systems in our facilities um HVAC systems at four of our elementary schools disinfecting systems and our buses um again you see on this slide Mental Health Services and so on um there was quite a bit that was funded many millions of dollars funded through the federal grants um and these funds if they haven't already expired are now in the process of expiring so any of the items that were part of these grants that would be ongoing there needs to be a resource to be able to fund these so with that being said let's talk about the tentative budget for the 2024 2025 school year and I provided an update on a few of these items at the last meeting but um these are important to note uh firstly state aid you see on this chart what the history of state aid had been and for many years in the middle of this chart state aid remained flat no changes to it uh whatsoever then in the last few years prior to the prospective year uh we start to see some gains in state aid the objective from the state was to bring school districts that had been pretty much flat in state aid to where they should be and that was supposed to take about a 4-year process and looking back over the last couple of years one of the things that I noted during these budget presentations was just that we were anticipating that there would be increases in state aid prospectively and I believe last year in particular I said maybe one more year and then that would probably be the end of state aid increases as it turns out that one more year is not happening uh we have a state aid reduction of over $1.3 million uh we've heard stated uh in the press that um the governor had stated that state aid school funding was being fully funded I think the anomaly in that is that the state funding formula was fully implemented and through that formula we see the result of a state aid reduction we're not unique East Brunswick is not unique to this particular situation there are many many districts hundreds of districts in the state that are seeing state aid reductions on the otherand there are also many districts that are seeing very large increases in state aid uh for next year nevertheless let's focus on East Brunswick $1.3 million of a reduction in state aid has a substantial impact upon our ability to provide services to our students the next item is the charter school increase the uh Charter School in East Brunswick is uh was approved by the Department of Education to open uh additional section for students based on the projected enrollment the district the East brunwick Public Schools must fund those additional students the result is $740,000 that comes out of our budget so take that together with the state aid reduction we're now looking at about $2.4 million in reductions very significant and the story does get worse because when you take into consideration the fact that not only did we have a state aid reduction not only do we have a substantial increase in Charter School costs and what I said early on that we're not receiving that additional state aid that was anticipated we have a very significant issue we have been working to plug figure out how we Bridge revenue and Appropriations to the tune of over $8 million that's not easy to do it has been an arduous task and we are not finished I remind the board and the public that this is a tentative budget that means means that it's a placeholder it is a document that must go to the state for review and we will be continuing to do work on this budget health benefits for existing staff this chart depicts what the changes in health benefit costs um are from the current year to next year we are generally seeing on the health benefit rates a 7% increase in rate so the budget at this time is $16.8 million revenue and Appropriations are in Balance we will not at this time be discussing the details underlying the budget only because the we still have a lot of work to do the budget is um in the process of being reviewed reanalyzed discussed so that we're making the best possible decisions given the circumstances there won't be a magic pot of money that Bridges an $8 million gap it's important important that everyone understand that there are very hard decisions being made they're not final but there are very very hard decisions being made but I will say this this won't be the first time that the district has had to undergo significant reductions due to state aid circumstances we've faced this two times in the past about 14 years ago 15 years ago and we recovered and I have no doubt that that will be the case going forward but this will be painful in terms of the budgeted tax levy tax levy increase on the general fund at over $5.7 million that includes the use of bank's cap Banks cap is an amount of money that's generated through the state formulas in its budgetary system that says at some point if it's needed you may raise this amount in additional taxes and so that is in incorporated into the $5.7 million our debt service fund which is the fund that pays our mortgage is going down that tax levy is going down so effectively the net tax increase will be 5.4 5.8 million 5.48 7 million that's a tenative amount at this time and that reflects a composite tax levy increase of about 3.8 % now I also want to point this out because we're not happy with 3.8% but I think it's important to note that for every one half of a percent that might be reduced in that 3.8% that will require an additional $720,000 in reductions beyond the $8 million we're already dealing with the public hearing on this budget will be April 25th 20124 and rest assured that the board and administration will be working diligently between now and then to arrive at what that final budget will be at the public hearing we will be presenting the final budget no changes can be made at the public hearing that will be the final budget in the coming days we will be posting uh the userfriendly budget on the district website so um that information provides summary information the userfriendly budget is one that is generated through the department of education's budget AR system okay now moving on to the next piece last year at this time I provided a report regarding the regional greenhouse gas initiative so this is an update on [Applause] that so as a reminder uh last February the governor announced a sweeping electrification initiative there was 70 million in funds dedicated for medium and heavyduty electric vehicles and charging infrastructure in March there was a press uh release naming the projects funded and East Brunswick was one of those projects and it named that 11 electric buses would be funded for East Brunswick and the details would follow prior to this the district had made several applications for grant funding to fund fully the cost of replacing 11 buses and we had been rejected several times because the focus was from the state's level they wanted to focus this is what they told me on the urban districts East Brunswick was not a candidate so we were cautiously optimistic when we were advised that we were now approved but the devil is always in the details so let's go through and visit the [Applause] devil this is the cost to proceed with the project so in the first part of this chart it depicts the D grant funding the maximum funding per bus is $300,000 the maximum funding per charging unit is $20,000 and then there's funding for a Data Logger where the state will be monitoring the usage of the vehicle so one bus total funding $321,000 what's the cost the real cost for one bus the last price that we received was over $440,000 the cost of electrical charging station 86 more than $86,000 and the Data Logger is a wash the base funding shortage for each bus is over $27,000 that does not include the cost of adding cameras to the interior and exterior of our buses as we have on all of our district owned buses or the cost of radios that are used to communicate with the transportation department and the police in an emergency that's another almost $112,000 we enlisted psng to come and evaluate the facility uh um because we would need to have a change in the Transformer psng visited and they said you're going to need to do an electrical upgrade at the site I can't even tell you what that cost would be but we're talking about a substantial cost to do an electrical upgrade at the site so without the electrical upgrade we would be looking at a base funding shortage as I said for one bus of over well if you take into consideration the required add-ons nearly $220,000 shortfall per bus or to do all 11 buses over two million I'm sorry to tell you that there is no way that this project can move forward if the district is expected to to take on that kind of a cost the the orig Grant process was to fund fully the program what we and we've had many many meetings with the D in trying to work through this process what the D found was that there were too many moving Parts too many moving parts to what they wanted to accomplish so and Joe correct me if I'm wrong but what the bottom line came down to was they had to come up with a number that they would provide as an allowance and the rest they basically said you figure it out yes yes so there we have it I'm sorry I don't have good news tonight you don't have good news tonight no um are all the other districts that were approved for these buses in the same situation I would imagine they would be because the cost the cost the amount of funding that's being provided versus what the cost of a electric bus is districts would have to make up the difference it's it's so substantial so that's what I'm wondering all this money that they then approved this additional 70 million tell you who'd be able to get it the districts that got a lot of state aid I'm sorry it was a little bit snky you know what you have to have a sense of humor I get it and we we we just a reminder for the board and members of the board who are who are newer to membership we've been talking about this for the better part of 10 years and we had hoped that the cost of the individual bus vehicle Les would come substantially down and they haven't yeah and you know we've come to figure just like on a lot of the large scale projects electrification the the logistics of manufacturing you know the battery pack and that that's the major component driving the cost of of manufacturing these vehicles so that that has not shifted to an economy of scale yet no that's just a shame finally thought we were there questions on that I just wanted to mention that I think um to note that this was something that um Dr veski and the board tried to Champion uh nine years ago Victor would you say tens um 10 years ago um Dr veski went down to oh Victor I don't want to speak for you but um oh you're doing a good job well thank you um but he went down to the University of Delaware yes to see prototypes and um to get educated professional development if you will on the concept of these buses so this has been something that um he's invested time and the board has inv the board with a bunch of board members that's right we won then no before no yeah I didn't go but you went I presid L went Lori went so they a lot of time has it was a lot gone into this so this is a a big disappointment but um has do Bernie do you think that there would be uh enough of an outcry of the districts that didn't get $10 million increases that they would consider um offsetting the cost more no unrealistic I I don't I don't see that happening okay I so let me just add on to that I think I think what might be a driver is if there are a if there are a lot of districts that were awarded grants and are unable to follow through and that then the initiative just is nothing and so they'll have to go back and retool and figure out what do we do differently what what do they do differently it's not us that needs to do something differently you can't dangle something wonderful and so wonderful for the environment wonderful as a role model for our children to live with sustainability moving forward um embracing sustainability you can't dangle that in front of us and then say oh did we not tell you that we're not paying the whole cost well and I think another important aspect of this is you know we would to to try and cover the cost for one bus we'd have to really change our replacement program and so I think part of the concern becomes what happens to those vehicles that we now extend the amount of time that we own them because with warranties dropping off repair costs will increase we'll end up incurring other costs that we're not having now and so we extend how long we keep a bus now we incur additional costs as a result to pay for one bus we add two buses and that goes even further into exacerbating the problem with our existing Fleet not that we have a problem with our existing Fleet we have a good program in place to replace vehicles but I'm really very hesitant to try to change that because it will result in costs that I don't think we can even anticipate what that would be and and you also recall that that I believe it was last year right Mr Juliana that you started to expand last year's budget or this year's budget was the expansion of the bus fleet and so that was an initiative that we presented the board in terms of uh trying to phase out our Reliance on contracted Services because our our bus fleet and our bus drivers are of such a high standard and such a level of professionalism that we wanted to get there where all of our students or at least most of our students were being delivered uh by East Brunswick drivers and East Brunswick Vehicles so that would have an impact on that initiative too it's a huge loss for us okay Mr happy thank you um Chris is not here this evening so we are going to go on to the good of the cause for the public the Board of Education recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest to protect the privacy of all students and staff concerns regarding individual students and staff members should generally be addressed by first meeting with the appropriate administrative staff in order to permit the fair and orderly expression of such comment the board shall provide a period for public comment in every meeting of the board residents are um given three minutes in which they can speak to the board we always remind you that your comments or to us we are not going to be communicating back and if anything does need followup we will leave your information with the lovely ladies up front and that being said is there anyone this evening that would like to speak to the board okay quiet group tonight it's okay you're still Shell Shocked by Mr Julian I understand um so I'm going to move on to our Board of Education agenda may I please have a motion for the two items under the Board of Education not one item I'm so sorry the one item sorry that's okay Mrs Becker is going to move it is there someone who would like to Second it for me second second by Mr Cummings is there any discussion on the one item okay all in favor opposed extensions motion carries um bringing us to community programs may I please have a motion for the one item by Mrs gu second by Mrs Becker is there any discussion no all in favor I opposed motion carries may I please have a motion for the five items under curriculum and instruction moved by Mrs Becker second by Mrs herck is there any discussion Mrs Becker um I was just wondering if um somebody could elaborate a little on the grap SE pilot program CH certainly uh the state is requiring districts to start providing uh services for multilingual Learners English language Learners in preschool this is a uh curriculum piece that we want to Pilot at no charge to The District in our pre in one of our preschool classes and see how the students and the teachers like the product and then look to potentially implement it next school year thank you else no all in favor opposed OBS motion carries may please have a motion for the four items this evening on financial services so move move by Mrs Becker second second by Mrs gu is there any discussion on those four items on financial services this evening no then I'm going to ask the secretary to please call the role Mrs Becker yes Mr Cummings yes Miss gu yes Mrs herck yes Mr Hong yes Mrs Reese yes president LAX yes motion carries may I please have a motion for the two items under Human Resources this Mrs Becker and Mrs Harris is there any discussion will the secretary please call the RO Mrs Becker yes Mr Cummings yes Miss gu yes Mrs harck yes Mr Hong yes Mrs ree yes president LAX yes motion carries and I'm now looking for a motion for staff development this evening so you look at them when they call Mrs Becker and Mr Cummings is there any discussion all those in favor opposed exstension motion carries we have eight items this evening under student services Mrs Becker and Mr Cummings is there any discussion on those eight nope then I'm going to ask the secretary to please call the role Mrs Becker yes Mr Cummings yes Mrs gu yes Mrs herck yes Mr Hong yes Mrs ree yes president LAX yes motion carries and may I please have a motion for transportation services that item this evening Mrs Becker and Mr Cummings oh sorry um see I was staring him down um is there any discussion on Transportation no then I'm going to ask the secretary to again please call the [Applause] r Mrs Becker yes Mr Cummings yes Miss gu yes Mrs herck yes I don't know why I had a hard time getting that out Mr Hong yes Mrs ree yes president LAX yes motion carries bringing us to committee reports information items and for the good of the cause for the board Mrs Becker um I actually had a question um a request from Bernie um if there's a a statistic he could provide maybe next meeting um when we talk about the charter school the charter school accepts children not just from East Brunswick correct from correct is it throughout the county or the state throughout the state okay would it be possible to find out is it available the breakdown of how many of those children are are East Brunswick residents yes I do want to note that um Just for information purposes for the public that the funding that comes out of the District budget is for East brunwick students only okay so I'd still just be curious to find out how many children we'll we'll be glad to report out on that uh for the April 11th meeting thank you Mrs Reese uh just good to the ca kind of thing about uh The Living Voices presentation at Churchill I I was lucky to attend and I had been to Churchill for a while and I just want to compliment the principal Mr Matt Hannis it was a wonderful presentation um very meaningful the students asked very uh thoughtful questions and it brought history to life some of it more difficult history for the students to have to Grapple with and I thought they did so very well the teachers prepared them well and they were about to learn some of these units so they may not have had the particular historical knowledge but they knew how to compose the questions how to think logically and and to be kind and um also in the hallway they had butter the butterflies up of the butterfly effect so I want to thank the teachers and the staff at Churchill it just was a very nice um it wrot they had on the butterflies good things they had done for one another kindnesses that they had given so um in this day and age it's nice to see some positive things happening um in you know among our teams and I really think that there was a a very warm environment that day at Churchill so I wanted to compliment the the administration and the staff over there and the students of course thank you thank you for bringing a little kindness to the board this evening so always good to keep in perspective that we're raising our next generation of kind human beings these are ways to teach them so thank you Mrs Eric to piggy back off of Churchill I just want to let uh the community know that the Churchill PTA is having seventh and eighth grade TGIF on April 19th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. and um if you wanted to register or sign up it's always in Mr well it was last week and probably will be this week in Mr Hannah's uh weekly Weekly Newsletter that comes out on Friday thank you thank you okay oh Mrs Boss oh I just buz I know I just wanted to say thank you to the administrators and the teachers for the week of conferences I realized while I was waiting outside an elementary school classroom that this was my 14th year of conferences in East Brunswick and I felt ancient all of a sudden um but it was I believe the smoothest year of conferences which was just you know you sort of realize as and I ran from the elementary school to the high school and got to each place on time and I just wanted to compliment the teachers for their level of preparedness for the conferences they were so ready and so energetic and I just kept looking at them going I know how long this day is and how long yesterday was and still um the amount of time and energy they were willing to give to the parents was just really appreciated that's pretty cool I actually got to see some of the teachers the memorial teachers since I live right behind the school walking through the neighborhood which I figured was their break in between the conferences it was kind of fun okay well we do surprise surprise uh we do have a need for another close session so where's the Board of Education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for discussion at a public meeting and these subjects are within the exceptions to the open public meetings act and permitted to be discussed in closed section the Board of Education intends to discuss matters as follows those items listed on tonight's agenda the length of Clos session is estimated to be 1 hour after which the public meeting of the board shall reconvene and action will be taken now therefore be it resolved the East brunic Board of Education will recess into close session for only the afor said subjects Su Mrs Becker and Mrs heric any discussion all those in favor opposed extensions motion carries thank you and for those who don't feel like waiting the hour for us to come back out have a wonderful spring break and happy holidays it's a lot of good holidays these days so lots to celebrate