I call to order the Highland Park Board of Education hybrid special voting meeting preliminary budget presentation today Monday March 17 2025 the New Jersey open public meetings Act was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of
and to attend the meetings of the public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in compliance with the open public meetings act the Highland Park Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting setting forth the time date and
location to be submitted for publication to the home News Tribune and Courier News and posted on the board's website at least 48 hours in advance of this meeting members of the public who wish to address the board will be given the opportunity to do so before the board adjourns for the evening may I have a
roll call please Dr baby here miss Calon here Dr Coleman Dr Pixley here here miss pruce here Dr scholman Miss Sano here miss bardman
here miss Bor here stand for the pledge IED it's behind the pole we'll give one second sorry thanks Mr Rosa I pledge allegiance to the pike of the United States of America and to the Republic for wi St
one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all um there's no Communications to report this meeting and there's also no approval of minutes our student Representatives do not have a report either so we're going to go straight to our superintendent report jump right to
it good evening everyone uh tonight I would first like to invite uh Miss O Sullivan to come up to the podium uh we're very excited um Miss O Sullivan is our head uh girls basketball coach and for those who also don't know Miss suvan she is a school counselor at the high
school and she is going to share a little bit to honor a very well-deserving um basketball player Miss O Sullivan right okay hello everyone my name is Dana O Sullivan and I'm the girls varsity basketball coach at Highland
Park High School I'm here today to honor Vanessa ker who is one of our senior athletes who has made a profound impact on our girls basketball program I first met Vanessa when she was going into 7th grade and I was just beginning my time at Highland Park it's hard to believe
that as we stand here today Vanessa is just a short time away from completing high school and beginning a new chapter at rampo College where she will major in criminal psychology and play for their Women's Basketball team Vanessa ended her Highland Park basketball career with
1,6 70 points which makes her Highland Park High School girls basketball alltime leading scorer the record was previously set by Nikki enano 36 years ago in 1989 in addition Vanessa ends her time
with playing 104 games earning 835 career rebounds 195 career assists 51 career blocks and 370 career steals Vanessa was named to the GMC first team
all blue division multiple times and this year received GMC All Conference honors Vanessa was also nominated for Sports Illustrated National girl athlete of the week and was a jersey Sports Zone game ball winner Vanessa's accomplishments are one
for the record books but what I am most proud of her for is her Relentless work ethic and will to win no matter what opponent that we were up against and no matter what the scoreboard said Vanessa gave it her 100% effort and never backed down to anyone Vanessa was constantly
hustling on the court and trying to get any deflection steal loose ball or rebound that she could she never stopped working the resilience that Vanessa has displayed throughout High School is something that is truly admirable and a testament to her toughness and the
unwavering support from her parents grandparents and siblings who were there for her in the stands each and every game Vanessa I am truly so grateful to have been a part of your basketball Journey and I know that there are bright things ahead for you at rampo thank you
for all of the time and effort that you put into help our team be the best that we can be as you take this next step in your basketball Journey at rampo never forget the Lessons Learned on and off the court to honor Vanessa's achievement we achievements we placed an order for a
plaque to display in the Athletics hallway and thanks to the HP boosters we'll be ordering a thousand Point scorer Banner to celebrate all of the Thousand Point scores in the holl Park basketball history um so congratulations
Vanessa uh yeah very well deserved you get what their family congratulations again Vanessa I um a lots of honors is well deserved and thank you for your Relentless pursuit of Excellence both on and off the court and we wish you nothing but great success in
your future so congratulations again and I cordially invite you to stay for the rest of the presentation tonight but I always give the option feel free to you know excuse yourself no worries and especially Mr brazowski and Miss O Sullivan who put in a long day of work thank
you one day someone will take me off on my offer I just know it one day one day all right so I'd like to shift our uh the rest of my presentation to the preliminary budget which is the frame work uh and dedication of tonight's uh
board meeting so tonight uh Denise D Roa our school business administrator and myself will present our preliminary uh budget so I put copies for all the board members just because uh some of the font gets a little a little fine there a little small so that you can follow along um so the same I
give a lot of the same presentation year-to year uh just to remind everyone since we do this these meetings really twice a year when we talk about budget um but our budget process aligns with several things first we do our best to align our budget with District goals and
objectives it's something that's very important to us uh we do align our budget on the elementary and secondary Education Act the every student succeeds Act and the New Jersey student learning standard so we take into account all of those different buckets when we are
planning for the budget so in addition our process proc really spans quite a long time in fact when we were passing the budget last year um Denise and I got right to work thinking what we were going to do for this coming Year's budget so it's really
an ongoing process but um the reality is it starts for the entire team really in the fall so what we do is we have a budget build process and what Denise and I do is we go to our team the administrators and say build a budget uh
for our building level administrator they get a per pupil spending allotment and then they decide how they want to divvy up that allotment and then for the rest of the team they build it based on uh our the needs of the of the district
each of the administrators meets with myself and Denise that happened between December H and January so they meet with us and we go through their budget looking at line items we ask for justification especially if it's a new expense um a larger large scale expense
to to justify it we also look for quotes invoices things like that to um basically prove that what they want to spend is how much it costs so it's not just we estimate something's going to be a certain amount of money we want to make sure we get our budget aligned as close as
possible um so that process happens and then in uh February the uh members of the department administrators met with the finance and Facilities committee to review their budgets as well um and then tonight is the overview of our budget well then on uh March 11th the finance
and Facilities committee met to have an overview of the budget tonight we will have our discussion pass the preliminary budget then what happens is we in just about a month or so a little over a month we'll meet again at our end of April board meeting to have the final budget pass so what we have to present
tonight and what we have to put in to the county is a balance budget so that's what we have to propose and that was a very difficult task this year um but I'm really proud of the work that we did to get there uh and then we'll pass the
final budget um at the end of April so in terms of our uh planning process our budget uh takes three levels from a philosophical uh perspective the first item that we hit when we're budgeting is any of our legal
requirements so for example special education is an area that people are very familiar with that is a legal requirement uh requirements for students that are ESL things like that if it's um something that is requirement of the New Jersey student learning standards for
example World Language uh physical education a certain amount of teaching time for mathematics and Elementary level or reading things like that those are all legal requirements or doe requirements that we have to meet so those are all our first level budgeting
items that we take into consideration then from there we go to level two so if there's still room in the budget after level one we go to level two which are required by board policy so for example a couple of years ago we um changed our
graduation uh requirements so they're still Al line with the doe but we adjusted them so that would be for example by adjusting them may require for example more Staffing or more variety of things or whatever it is more variety of courses so that would be a level two requirement so if it's board
policy that becomes a level two requirement in our budget if there is money after that left over then we hit a level three requirement which are not required but high priority and a high investment for the community so those are things for
example our music programs so uh music at the K5 level is a requirement but it's General music so things like band and Orchestra would be above the requirement but that's a high investment for our community mental health and social emotional learning
programming are required standards in physical education and health but we go above that by requiring about by having mental health professionals on staff and our teen center and R ubhc to support our students and things like that so those are examples that when there's
money left over after the first two buckets of requirements we can then hit some of the areas that are what we think are valuable for our students so in terms of our fiscal responsibility so
a couple things to note uh this year like I said this year was a quite a challenging budget uh for us one of the things that's important to note is in September we had to exhaust all of the covid relief money so any of the extra money
that we got from our arer the covid relief had to all be expended by September which means we didn't have that cushion in our budget uh through the past couple of years with that covid relief money we were able to shift some things out of our operating
budget to that set of funds which was really helpful in offsetting a balanced budget but we are now exhausted all those funds so things that we may have put into the covid relief money we took back into the operating budget uh we have continued increased
costs for students with disabilities um you'll see in our presentation for example the um our out of District students actually in same thing like last year the number of students going out of districts has declined but their tuition rates are increasing the amount to transport students to those places
are increasing and then locally as well uh we increased um our budget to include an additional social worker things like that so that has increased um our facility maintenances U maintenance projects as you can see through throughout at least the past year to two
years when we neglect facilities and problems happen they get very expensive to maintain so you'll see that we um you know have approved uh the to fix the structural issues going on at ble but that comes as at an expense so we have that fiscal responsibility there are a
lot of federal and state mandates that are required so those level one and two took up a huge chunk of our budget so the harder decisions that we had to make this year uh and that that Denise and I really had to present to the board were you have to make some decisions on those level three requirements what's really
important in addition the Highland Park administrative Association contract expires June 30th of 2025 so we have contractual obligations last year we had the um uh the HPA contract that was
ratified with great success and now we're working on the ratification of the admin contract so we have to build that into the budget um we're constantly in terms of a fiscal responsibility looking for ways to save money um interestingly enough when our
snapshot went out in October our enrollment was down so we constantly are looking at student uh enrollment but also their needs so a lot of The Da the information that was sent to the board in terms of where we had to cut in our budget and what that would look like
came from datadriven decisionmaking so we pulled every grade level um every student count every special ed count every literally every nook and cranny and everything was made based on are we getting most bang for our buck with the money that we're
spending um and then of course the analysis of factors like the effect of state aid uh that we take into account so speaking of state aid uh this year was a a little bit funky in how they calculated our state aid I'm going to toss the mic over to Mr Rosa to
explain the changes in the calculation to state aid right so as Dr cesa mentioned uh the state did reform formulate the state aid formula and they change the way that they calculate what they give to each district so it was important for us to take a minute
analyze the state aid calculation so that we can determine what factors really went into effect and what we can do what's in our control to um mitigate anything in the future so the changes in this the calculation this year uh the state actually provided funding for the
actual number of at risk and special education students so that was different this year so you'll see in the table below that our special ed categorical Aid has increased almost $725,000 because they're actually providing um
funding for the actual number of students um the state also used an average of the last three years for district income and property values which is different in year than years past this average um took into account
years 22 23 and 24 I believe but what they did was they also weighted those um those areas more than in the past so what they're doing is Shifting the responsibility of of school funding
to the taxpayers in the community um the state also capped amount the amount of state A that could be increased or decreased so um one of the issues that many districts across the state of New Jersey talk to the state about is it's really hard to budget when you can't
when you don't know what's going to happen to your state aid it's like a mystery formula um so the state heard that and they issued this cap and said no District could have their state aid increased more than 6% and no District
could have their state aid decreased more than 3% so um looking at the table you'll see that our state aid calculation um had there been no cap the state was going to reduce our state aid
almost one .1 million uh and because the state looked at District income and property values and weighted them more heavily our local fair share is actually higher than our tax levy which means that the district is below
adequacy thankfully the state did Issue an adjustment to the cap uh and we only lost 184,000 um but most recently the state did release information on Friday about something called the tax l Aid incentive
program um this will be an application uh on New Jersey home room that districts can apply for um and it could be it's if districts want to increase their tax levy above the 2% taking all enrollment adjustments health benefit
adjustments any adjustments that we can they will share the cost based on this this application so it's something that the board should really consider um because it's a way that we could stabilize our budget and hopefully um
deter any future Cuts or future formulas of state aid that will be neg a negative impact to the district thank you so I know last year when we were having these conversations one of the things that we got truly lucky on that I think I communicated last year was that we were able to
balance a budget with very little um uh publicly facing cuts um I believe if you recall I think we had to riff an ESL position and we cut the Middle School sixth grade Mandarin program so we got really lucky last year a lot of
uh what we did we did through attrition so as um you know people were leaving the district we just didn't replace them and we were able to stabilize it nothing was impacted from an instructional perspective I made sure of that and we you know are well Machine um I'm hoping
to that we can get through that that same thing this year although I'm not really sure what the future holds um you know there's a new you know new turnover at at the governor's office um for an election in November so what the
what the state um will produce in terms of uh School budgets thinking about that million dollar cut in mind we really have to be sensitive to how we're we're spending the money so I'm hoping that what we can do between now and the final budget is to mitigate the impact through
attrition as well um although there might be a couple of areas that un fortunately we're going to have to the cut um but hopefully the budget will enable us to maintain that schools will be fully staff with qualified Personnel so that is something that I can
guarantee through this round that that there won't be any issues with having fully qualified full staff in in the buildings um we will be able to maintain our instructional resources updating our standards to ELA math um our
multilanguage Learners areas like that so we'll be able to maintain our instructional resources um I will say that we for in terms of maintaining our instructional programming there will be some adjustments due to enrollment and changing student needs so like I said we looked at it we had a decrease in
enrollment so we really have to look across that to make sure that um you know the the reality is when we actually looked at it we found that there were some classes with very little students in there and so through some adjustments we were able to shift shift things
around and start to close sections um so we just need to be really mindful of that so it's um you know it's not really best practice to have a special ed class of two students you know and um you know we're doing a lot more with our inclusive education model and it's
really working the the PD that's happening the co- teaching models that real focus on closing our achievement Gap with special ed has really helped and we're taking a deep dive in those numbers so we're looking at everything very carefully uh to make sure that our instructor programming is adjusted to
meet the needs of our students um but that we're being fiscally sound in doing that so nothing is at the expense of instruction but rather to enhance instruction um something that was really important to the budget was maintaining our interventionists um the ones that
were meeting data driven needs so again when I asked the staff I said please bring me all of your data to see where we're having the most bang for our buck we looked at it and for the majority of our interventionists um the data was very profound and very
impactful like we're meeting a lot of students needs some of them are getting them in getting them out others are are in there we have more that need to be in there's basically a waiting list in some areas in other areas the data wasn't there so in that case we might not need
that position an additional position anymore so we're really looking at those details very very carefully that data we're maintaining them but where the needs are and I'm very pleased to share that we will continue providing courtesy
transportation for students on hazardous routes um the budget will enable the district to include uh facility improvements so we will be able to fix the uh structural repairs that need to happen at ble the area formerly known as
the walkway um we will not be repl I'm call calling it The Walkway but it won't be a walkway when we're done with it we're uh going to close that area up and ensure to make sure that uh the area of the boiler room and the business office are secure structurally um but unfortunately we aren't able to replace the whole walkway
so um so we'll have other ways to get in and out of the building uh we will be able to fund 40 uh 60% of the preschool classroom so starting for the 26 27 school year we will able we will be able to open up one additional preschool
class so next year we're maintaining the students that we have the the number of of students the following year will open up an additional class because they have to do the renovation so they're taking the cafeteria chopping it back in half to its original of half being the cafeteria and half being a preschool
classroom um and we were able to do that because of the 40% that the uh state has funded us and we will be able to include some additional increased security cameras at the middle and high school um additionally we put a small allotment of
money in to fund support supervision for in District after hours public facing events so during safety committee meetings it's been brought up um over over time to talk about you know we've been doing great things to increase security during the school day but at
our events after school it's hasn't been um we haven't had much attention paid to that unfortunately we're not able to support funding like in um a company to come in to provide those services for us so we'll we'll work with the uh HP a to
negotiate a compensation we'll build a job description so that will be coming soon to the board and then we can post that and have basically crowd control for our IND District staff to support events so that any public facing events like a a High School Musical or something like that that there's
somebody there for crowd control and help help with those events so there was a small allotment of of money in the budget for that so now we'll get into uh the most favorite part of the whole presentation are the finances so first uh Mr Roso would you like to talk about
the revenue sure so for the 2526 school year we're proposing a 2.88% general tax levy increase this includes a 2% increase plus uh a roughly $280,000 in in a health care cost adjustment what the state does is
analyze um the cost of health benefits last year versus what's budgeted for this year we're anticipating a 14% increase in our healthcare insurance costs so um we were uh we were qualified for an adjustment which the board has is
taking um you'll see the decline uh of state aid of uh 184,000 we're projecting extraordinary Aid of a million dollars this is just an estimate our 2425 extraordinary Aid figures will not
be known until July 2025 um our other local sources and interest um is a decrease uh we're projecting 450,000 it includes interest income um tuition of students that attend our
schools pilot money from from the township Enterprise activities um and refunds for prior year expenses we're we're projecting a decrease because we have one less student that's going to be coming to our district she now resides in Highland
Park um federal aid is semi so that's what the state tells us to budget there was um there has been a change in how they pay out semi or Medicaid reimbursements so our uh projected revenue for semi has decreased
significantly um we're also going to be utilizing capital reserve over $2.2 million uh the majority of that $2 million is for that structural repair at ble um and the other portion is the Irving alteration for the pre clay
classroom we're going to be using 80 ,000 of Maintenance Reserve to support our maintenance of our district and $10,000 of our emergency Reserve to support those additional cameras at the high school and middle school we're also going to be integrating the door cameras
at the high school and middle school to the Milestone uh platform which will enable um the administration to view who's at the door um from their computer instead of it's just one computer now uh and then we're projecting surplus
of roughly $1.4 million so our total uh revenue for 2526 is 43,7 189,900 million uh total special ed uh instruction a roughly $4 million
bilingual is increasing we're projecting 300 86 that is directly related to our enrollment um we have a significant increase in elll students um our co-curricular Athletics after school and summer programs is
86,000 our total supplemental atrisk in instruction is 430,000 our outof district tuition cost is 3.7 million that's a decrease because it's due to enrollment our attendance health related other support services this also
includes um that those extraordinary Aid costs one to one nurses for those specific students um is increasing 5% to 3.8 million other student Support Services the special education department 1.2 million roughly uh
Improvement of instructions St sta staff training Media Services roughly 800,000 School District Central and it administrative cost roughly 3.3 million ion our operation of our plant 3.4
million student transportation services is decreasing a little bit because of that out of District tuition we were able to collapse one one route um employee benefits is increasing 8.27% like I mentioned before we're
projecting our renewal for health um medical and prescription to be 14% our capital outlay is is increasing tremendously because of that ble structure control repair and the Irving classroom of 2.3 million um we pay for
students in the community to attend charter schools that is increasing we have projected I believe 23 students going to Charter Schools it's roughly $400,000 and we also utilize some interest for capital M maintenance
reserve for a total budget of 43,7 $89,950 so what does this for the average tax taxpayer so um the average assessed home value in Highland Park is $481,500
um with the general tax levy at 32 million roughly in The Debt Service tax levy which is to pay our bonds back our long-term debt and the estimated um net taxable valuation the average home will
will have an annual School tax of $ 7,773 187 it's increasing $260 51 for the year and that concludes our presentation I know that there are um probably going to be questions or potentially comments
so we will open up the floor for board members who would like to go first sah go ahead um just to make sure I'm recapping this because I I think um the work that was put in here is pretty incredible I can kind of see can you all hear me um just
to recap so it sounds like uh we would have owed a bit more but because of this kind of state resolution we weren't right what in that instance if that didn't happen and I guess that's not reliable right so the idea is we need to acknowledge that something like this
could happen where we have a deficit and um and now while we're not having to bear that this time where we would have had to make much trickier cut offs or tradeoffs we're not having to do that but we do need to think about kind of sustainability moving forward correct and we were talking
about this idea of if if the board would like to pursue an increase to the tax levy to fund more additional things some things to consider you know might not be might be more of those facility projects or areas that um are sustainable in the
long run versus personnel items because next year you know it's like okay we're potentially saving something next year but it yeah I mean the prediction is it's probably going to be far worse you saw what it could have been so just to kind of backtrack um I really appreciate the
way that uh Mr Rosa um starts the budget process so essentially what we do is when we sit around the first thing I ask the administrative team is what new positions would you like in a perfect world what would you like extra school counselor extra mental health staff
extra this we I want this I want you know smaller class sizes in math right so we go through all of the I mean it's not outlandish by the way they're they're reasonable requests and then what we do is you know for example I know I presented on this the uh program evaluation from the school counselor uh
for the school counselor program and they had suggested another counselor at least at Bartle or Bartle middle to to share so we build those into the budget and then we looked and we're like okay well we have about $4 million to to to cut to get a balanced budget so we
started our budget process in a $4 million deficit because we predicted a significant drop in state aid so then from there I said okay no new positions we're going to take those off because you know the Hope was if you know we've had that uh two years ago we we did get
an increase in state aid so we were able to fund that's how we got the assistant principal position at ble things like that we were able to fund newer positions because we had an increase in state aid we that was not the case this year so any new positions were out off the chopping block and then
from there we chipped away and I mean every nook and cranny we searched high and low we went back to and and evaluated everybody's budget where can we save unfortunately sometimes what we do too is we look at the title funding
and say okay can I put this PD in the title funds can I you know can we absorb the cost of the interventionist in the title funding unfortunately there's going to be a big hit to our title funds potentially uh they're they're predicting up a 25% reduction in our title funding and potentially the title
TWA which funds PD could be abolished altogether um so and we don't know those things so that's why it's anything that is sustainable we really have to put in the operating budget um so again we uh pretty much put a value and itemized every single ticket item that we could
find on the back end to to close that Gap uh places um and that's what we did to get to a point where we had the the Balan budget so like I said hopefully between now and April when we really look at those items um you know they can be a little bit more forward- facing and
public facing but that's essentially what we did to look at if we have um a decline in enrollment where is that Decline and how do we collapse sections or how do we um and do those things through attrition so that we don't have to go out and say well we we have to have now all these Rifts and all these cuts um I think we're we're able to
mitigate it a little bit this year um you know and you're right Miss Pixley I you know next year I'm not so much I don't I don't think I don't predict it um just something I'd like to clarify on that on that point as
well when we're talking about next year is that we we don't know who the governor has is going to be um Governor Murphy really has prioritized um public education funding and you know there's more public education Mundy coming from
the state than there ever has been in State history um you know 65% 66% of districts saw an increase in their state aid um you know 30% of those districts uh ours included saw a
decrease and I think just to reiterate the point we were looking at a $1.1 million cut um we don't know if the 3% cap on how much we can lose is going to be stat whether that's going to be a law that's
passed or whether that's just something that's going to that happened this year and then with a new governor could not be in existence next year right um similarly you know they just changed the way that they
weighted uh Town wealth right they just they said they're going to wait it more heavily this year than they did previously like so we have no way of knowing what it's going to look like next year and that $1.1 million cut
that's in here could be coming next year very very easily um and so that was actually a question I had can you just kind of give obviously we didn't have to do it because we got and we've been able
to primarily protect academics in this preliminary budget but um I'm assuming that if we had had a you know 20% cut or 177% cut in our state aid we'd be looking
at uh cuts that would impact student academics um and Personnel is that yeah that's correct and and some of the areas so here's here's how uh detail oriented we were so for just some examples so the paa grant that's going to be P the money
that we get for preschool has line items like um for administrative oversight uh Budget Finance oversight um supervision oversight things like that secretarial support so we literally were like okay if we charge some of the
supervisor salary to that that takes the load off the operational budget if we you know thosa oversees the budget for that Grant so by charging a little bit a small portion of her salary we're able to take the weight off of the oper I mean that's how very detailed we got
with trying to get that budget balanced while still maintaining the board was presented with some confidential information to say here are your options when we look at Cuts because it's these are not easy decisions but really again
any of those level three things that we value are potential options that could be on the chopping block next year I value and I love our math interventionist and we are doing some great things by closing the achievement Gap but it's something that the doe says
we don't have to have but we value it that could have been something that made the chopping block areas like our ble Bandon Orchestra or you know just Bandon Orchestra really are areas that are above and beyond the New Jersey
Department of education's requirements we're maintaining them but that could be an option so we really have to dig deep to figure out how the the that's what they're saying they're the doe is saying listen you're a
wealthy enough town that your taxpayers can support what we can't which got us into the high property tax to begin with many many years ago and the whole point of the S2 formula was really to try to balance that out to take the burden off the
taxpayers and so that wealthier towns it was equalized right so non wealthier towns and wealthier towns could educate everybody you know equally so that if you had didn't have more money you could do more so um but just seems like they just can't get that right um it's very
complicated um but like I said this year there'll be some obviously there were some hard decisions that had to be made but they were all data driven So in theory actually rather easy to make because the data spoke for itself for our cuts um but next year it so those
are just again some there are more sort of items on that list but everything has been itemized for the board um at a cost to figure out you know what what we're looking at and the same thing when we found out that it was a 3% reduction we went back to the drawing board and said okay we can save a couple of things now
so of those things we took stuff off that chopping block so that's why I think this year it won't be as bad as it actually could have been there might have been some people that would have staff and community members that probably would have been upset by some original ideas that we had knowing that we were going to lose an addition $1
million um but some positions were saved um this year uh well really for next year that um might not be in the future um and then along those lines and that we don't know who the governor is
going to be next year and you know how they're going to prioritize uh funding the school formula um you know there's also uh instability and questionability about Federal funding that we're getting and I just wanted to clarify some of the
areas of federal funding that we have um and you know please add on to it if I'm missing anything but um the special education Aid that we get from the state is federal funding correct correct and then free and reduced
lunch uh is federal correct and they've already stated they're not going to fund local food sourcing out of that so right now we get funding uh to purchase um from the local farms uh fruits and vegetables and the the state actually
pays for those those produce items so those would that would go down to the cafeteria budget which is outside of the local budget but it's still Federal funding um and then there's the title funding which we don't know if what's going to happen to it so correct and
included in this budget um the local budget did take on um an additional uh chunk of the interventionists but there is still a large portion that's charged to the esa grants which are the title grants Title One and Title One SAA um we
did take into the local budget the ble interventionist because ble is no longer a targeted school they don't qualify for Title One SAA which is good news except for the loss of funding correct well celebrate their success
yes I ask about the enrollment um um I I I thought the last numbers we saw the enrollment was slightly up but it it's not is it across the board all the school so here's here's what they do
in a great doe fashion every October they take a snapshot of all the student like a lot of student information in our in every District so October 15th is this glorious snapshot where they take a moment in time and then essentially they
use that to calculate everything so in October our enrollment with down two weeks later our enrollment went right back up so there our budget so the calculation of state aid was based on that October 15th snapshot which our
enrollment was down so even though our enrollment is up we're not getting that money so it's a it's a moving Target so what we've said to anybody who will listen is especially anybody who has connection sound in
treatent that maybe maybe they could do listen a snapshot is a lot of work we you know have people on staff that literally just go through our data and make sure everything is is sound for that snapshot um you know even if they did like a January midyear check you know is
this accurate is it not but the doe doesn't do that it's October 15th is a snapshot and as we know we actually do have a a high transient population of students they're they're going in and out their needs transfer you know all the time so uh it's unfortunate that any
given our enrollment is either up or down yeah and and this year interestingly enough if you remember we had to close a Kindergarten class and open a first grade class because typically our kindergarten classes are higher and this year oddly enough our kindergarten
enrollment was down but first grade was up so we in October we made the switch to move one of the kindergarten teachers to first grade to have the additional class there so it things sometimes our enrollment is just a a moving Target um I just wanted to ask a couple
questions I think it might just be helpful to to hear some of this um so I think one of the things that that is really important is the state calculation of our local fair share right so they're saying I think in this
coming school year so correct me if I'm getting of this wrong in this coming school year tax levy should be bringing in $ 34.2 million and even if we were to increase our tax levy as we're proposing for the
budget right now we would still be at 32.5 million right so they're saying our tax Lev is way lower than what it should be compared to other districts in the state of similar income and that kind of thing so even with this increase we're
still below what they would say right but um but this puts us in a place where we can fund kind of the fundamental programs assuming there's not big kind of federal cuts and and whatnot right is
that fair interpretation so yes the state says that we um our amount under adequacy is roughly 13 M million because they look at um ad quacy spending versus the adequacy threshold
so that's what they just released Friday morning um so uh they said that we're underfunded 1.3 million okay and the way they calculate adequacy is they look at enrollment um special education
enrollment at risk enrollment um right like that's kind all of those factors all of that student um data as of October 15th that's what they utilize to calculate adequacy funding and then they um look at what the local fair share
should be um compared to that and then they they do this calculation yeah and then I think there's another piece to this I'm really hazy on which is if we do this increase more than we um then it makes us eligible for some
State support is that correct so the state just released on Friday it's called State uh tax levy incent Ive Aid uh there's 300 districts in New Jersey that are qualified for this Aid and I believe there is $2
million um in that pot um so what that application looks like what we would actually be eligible for I don't know um I I can't answer that at this time uh but they said uh that districts could
receive five up to 5% the lesser of 5% are up to $1 million in that incentive Aid um I'm not sure what they're going to if they're going to look at your reserves to see if you have many reserves we're depleting the majority of
our reserves um doing that ble walkway um I did Le I didn't do a lot of facility projects this year uh John and I talked um that we're just focusing on the structural repair because um with the tariffs that are are set to take
place um steel could get it at a whole-time eye and it could cost me or us $3 million versus two million and then I won't have any money to pay for the repair so um we were being conservative um but there are tremendous
amount of facility projects that are maintenance that's needed throughout the district um and more and more pop up every day I was gonna say that was when we talked about when we met with the Departments to say hey we have to cut we have to cut we have to cut to close that $4 million gap facility projects were on
there no no no no Irving heat pump or no ble bleachers there was a lot of things that we're like we just we can't we're just going to have to maintain um you know uh we had tried to budget for um uh math resources to support elementary math
with invisions unfortunately that's quite expensive and that hit the chopping block we couldn't fund that so I mean there were a lot of big decisions that we had to make but um you know again but potentially some things that if if we want to bring back through that
increase in the tax ly we could consider as well right but we're not eligible for that additional funds if we don't increase our tax levy correct correct yeah um and that's all proposed right now so because the school budget is on a
different schedule than the state budget um so this is a proposed idea and right what they proposed was 20 million a$2 million putt that that could be more um you know we don't know but we know that we'd be
missing out they said that they could give us up to 5% is there a minimum are they saying they'll definitely give us something no no so we have to fill out the application first um so we have the 2.8% 2.88% that we're proposing for the 2%
that we get plus the addition for the health benefit increase and then potentially looking at um going up for um for the difference but there's no guarantee the other thing again to that point is that we won't know until like June July so we have to make the
decisions to to produce a balanced budget at the end of April then if this is a possibility and we all decide that it's a possibility we move forward with it then we can kind of add back some things that were uh priority items if that's something that you that you want to do and all that
information you have on the you know on the back end we've been itemizing all of that and you know giving as much data and information costs um facility projects might be a moving Target now because of the cost of goods uh but we're trying to even get estimates on every little thing so that we have an idea of how much these things will cost
but we won't know until early summer yeah I think the important thing too to highlight is with the instability with the federal piece too and just make sure I mean this is like a weekly update in tracking with this and I think we're all I mean that's part of this is to be very D diligent in that and when we get
more information about what we might have access to I mean we're going to have to be very forward-looking I think in there's a lot of risk I think with the federal dollars absolutely that's the I mean it's the special education money like the special
education Aid we get is federal funding and uh I budgeted 25% below what we received this year um in anticipation for a cut and that money is used for out of District tuition especially and excuse me um but
the state has already indicated to miss kessle that there probably is not going to be an allocation or we have to apply for grant funding with no allocation that means we won't know what the federal funding amount will be um the state is preparing every district for
that so we have to develop um a budget or a use for those these title funds not knowing how much we have to spend so it's just uncertain times what's the amount that we get from the in title funding now roughly um it depends on the
grant uh um the title one sa is 50,000 we got for ble um roughly the same uh for the Middle School uh title one I just can't remember off the top of my
head it's a couple hundred thousand dollars that supports um supports uh interventionists mainly um so we kind of realigned how we look at Federal funds we look at look at it from a district level down um so we utilize them for
interventionists and then we do programming um so in that programming could be brothers mentoring it could be a variety of different um things the climate uh and cultural special Specialists is charged our family leis
on correct yeah we have a lot of really great things that we do that comes out of that funding that if the funding goes away um that's a level three priority and you know have to decide what what is of most I mean this is like really critic I can't emphasize this enough
that it is the most critical time to to really decide what is of the highest value the highest value we just don't have the luxury to have everything I know we want you know smaller class sizes in in certain areas I know that
that we love there's you know things that we love about our schools but it's really really important to to scrutinize every dollar um and really look at some of the options and you know at the end of the day the decisions that are
made something has got to give um and we're at that we're at that breaking point we got we got away with a a lot of a lot of fruitful years with the covid relief money honestly we were sitting pretty good but um I feel like right now we're just sitting on some hard times and we just have to make decisions but
know that it's all data driven and to try to impact instruction um as little as possible I mean even co-curriculars scru scrutinizing that you know the the district the operating budget picks up a certain amount of money for out of state
and outof Country costs uh for students to go away out of the country we have to have a separate insurance policy for that that costs the district 5,000 $5,000 per trip so if students want to go to Quebec that costs at minimum 5,000
just for the insurance policy never mind the rest of money that the operating budget picks up for chaperon and travel and things like that you know that that is up worth up to 80,000 for um potentially those those trips so it's like again I love those
experiences for students but what are we balancing when we have a significant achievement Gap when we have students that some have some you know some extraordinary needs we really have to weigh out what is critical for for our students in our community very very hard
decisions um for I know myself I'll speak for myself and and I know Mr Rosa because we've uh been been every day um it's been tearing us up and we've had a lot a lot of sleepless nights over this it hasn't been easy and I and I predict more future sleep sleepless nights ahead
um you know I just can't emphasize that enough um I do really want to thank you for all of the work that you've done um I mean I know how carefully you guys have looked at this and when you look at um you know I'm I'm so grateful for
Denise and Christina and how you guys are managing uh this because you know this could have if we weren't on top of things this year's budget could have been a disaster um you know with the aid cut we did see and so and the end of the
covid money and all of that um and that's something that you do see in other districts um neighboring districts um even with the cap on the amount of Aid that uh districts could lose it's a a really rough budget year and we know
we're in for more next year so I just want to say thank you for you know prioritizing academics and you know the work that you've done go ahead um Monique has a question I'll come back oh hi
hi everyone yeah I'm sorry I can't be there in person this evening um I I guess I just wanted to underscore as I know we all have not you know talked about this but I do I want to underscore the importance of the fact that the state finally does have um special
education funding formula that um actually takes into account our individual student needs um in our district as opposed to looking at sort of a Statewide average model and I know again we Federal funding um stream we
know is is in great Jeopardy and Peril but at least we now will have um um you know Aid levels where they should be um which I think is important to at least have um and know what our actual need is and what's needed to reach our students
we have a real budget in terms of you know funding our special education services which um you know I think is is definitely something we we should um you know be underscore just really underscore the the how Monumental this actually is given how long we've been
operating under an unfair funding system um and then I just wanted to say I think one of the last comments you made Dr CSCO which I totally understand just the um how challenging it is to think about um um the kind of uh funding Cuts we're going to be
experiencing um you know it's very sobering I do just want to be careful that and caution us not to sort of frame this uh when when when Administration when the board is is thinking about um difficult budget decisions we want to be careful not to frame it as looking at we have achievement gaps and then yet we
also want to make sure that we're able to provide students with um the kind of extra-curricular activities that we know um uh benefits all students um I think again I know that I know your intention with that that sort of
statement but I do think it's important that we are very careful um in how we um frame and talk about and make decisions around um our funding our budget so that it's not about um uh so that no one ever thinks it's
about kind of our students that have um as you said uh are the are being impacted negatively by achievement gaps quote unquote or or opportunity gaps are the reason why right we can't sort of fund the kind of um you know programming and special activities that we know will
enhance every every students opportunities in the school district um so I just kind of wanted to put that out there because again that's something I think we just want to be careful about Ethan uh yeah I want to obviously Echo points everyone's made about the really hard work you guys have done I also want to say you know in the years
since I've been on the board I mean I've I've watched a lot of decisions being made with the with the Strategic goals in mind I I feel like the district spending its money wisely and and and and and the spending uh is lined up with
the with this with the priorities of that the board sets um I can't think of a single instance when I feel like I heard something in committee and I thought where's this coming from you know it all really makes sense um one thing that I'm struck with especially
this conversation is that um you know it's still a really tight budget and we are proposing or this this proposed budget would would raise would uh raise the tax levy higher than it normally be able to and even with that uh it's very
tight and I think we've seen past year with the facilities I mean $2 million for let's you know we cross our fingers hope there not not another ble walkway around the corner you know but um I me we're exhausting our reserves and with that we spend that down we earn less
interest and that's really important stuff it's hard to predict what's coming around the pike not just from the federal government but from our physical plant and things that policies we might think be really impactful but we might not have the the extra money needed to implement them correctly when those
could save us money in the long run right if they if they you know benefit achievement if they help students out if they you know say you know then anyway so I wonder um is 2.88 you know if we raised a little bit more would that compound and make sense
um even if we don't necessarily have to but if we can build back some of those reserves and have a little bit of a cushion I think I think I I personally think that would make sense something I would support um and I think you know the successes we've had of the past
year um make me think that the community would support it as well um and I we may hear from people about that but I anyway I wonder if that's something that that could be considered thanks Ethan um I did just want to clarify
something about the special education state aid um because it is great that instead of you know calculated from a Statewide average we're actually you know they calculated it based on you know how many students are actually in special education
however it is uh not clear that that is how special education funding is going to be funded next year um and also again in all this discussion about state aid um that does require um you know this state aid expenditure to be adopted by
the legislature in the budget um on June 30th so you know that they changed things around this year um and that's you know it's great uh however that is no it as of right now that is no way how
they're going to be funding special education in the future so write a letter right write a letter to your representatives and say thank you for finally funding us fairly um yes okay
yeah yeah thank you for pointing that out and I do agree kind of with Allison's line of thinking here that this is the time for advocacy um strong advocacy to really Shore up um uh kind of legislative support to maintain what we can here at the state level um but I
also just wanted to say to Ethan's point I was you know really thinking along the same lines as Ethan in terms of worrying about sort of the facilities needs um and the real how how that could really set us back tremendously just any um major facilities um uh uh breakdown or
what whatever repair need um so I mean I hear you Ethan and I feel like that same sort of thought ran across my mind like should we be thinking about um um slightly more than 2.88 if we're looking at if we're really thinking about um giving ourselves a little wiggle room in terms of um we have old buildings old
infrastructure and what the need will be there so I just wanted to kind of um you know of support your your your your point here on that thanks Monique yeah I mean hey for what it's worth let write that one down all right that was that
that was my concern as well I was like you're using up all those reserves how are we going to get any of that back and you know that when you spend everything that's when the big things happen so I mean yeah everybody knock on your table it's Mercy law yeah so I did leave about 900,000 in
capital reserve just in case the walkway came or the formerly known as walkway came in higher because I I just can't predict the future and um I didn't feel comfortable adding on more projects uh not knowing the final
cost we thank you for that um I mean in addition as we're continuing to talk about you know instability at the federal level like the costs of these um repairs are going to be going up so yes
uh just on the material side yeah yes so out of this year's budget we're doing a set of bleachers at ble and we got a letter from the vendor that be prepared for a 60% increase we're like we already issued the purchase order we're not
paying the increase but good try that's that's what we're that's what we're doing that ble area is steel and Steel's going up a lot y all right so I think um thank you again for all of your hard work on this budget um and thank you to
everyone for all of your insightful questions and um we can bring this conversation about um the tax levy back to committees um and once Den need has more information um we can start to kind of have those conversations see what
that might look like um so for now we're going to move to public comment the Highland Park Board of Education welcomes public participation and has reserved this time for your comments board policy number
0167 establishes and regulates the right of the public to participate in public meetings um is there anybody online or how many people do we have three two does it's one of them
B okay um is any is anybody online for public comment you can raise your hand okay and with no hands raised we're going to close public comment and we're going to move on to board action
items um we we're doing committee reports next week I guess so committee reports will be next week okay um so finance and Facilities I'm G to have you introduce your action items you're the only one there are many of them um as we've been discussing evening we have
the authorization to adopt the tenative budget for the 2526 school year um the numbers on here are what were on the uh PowerPoint that we all saw so I'm not going to repeat them and they've been advertised um as required by
law so that's our first action item um along with that here um the Highland Park uh let's see I'm just going to read it as it is and there's a read in on number two so I'm just going to read the whole thing be it resolved that the Highland Park Board of
Education includes in the final budget the adjustment for increased cost of health benefits in the amount of $ 280,201 that that second sentence the additional funds will be used to pay for the additional increases in health benefit payments so what that says is that we
were able to uh raise above the 2% um because of our 14% um projected increase in health benefits I'll just add that was an area that we were very fortunate that Denise and and the board followed up on those Insurance changes the state
health benefits are going up higher than 14% so we're starting we saved a Million last year I think roughly and now we're we're saving on the increase still a very big increase but not with the state health benefits would have been so that's also an area that we were uh we thank you for your conservative
budgeting and for that change so that's number two number three is um this Capital reserves withdrawal the capital um reserves um budget line 620 it's it's a withdrawal from Capital reserves the
amount of 2, $281,800 um this is for the um let's see let me just read it if I try to summarize it's not going to work the total cost of this project represents expenditures for construction or projects that are in addition to the
um student learning standards and in this case oh I see now in this case that 2, 281,000 is for the ble uh structural repairs and the Irving are 60% uh of the Irving uh prek classroom that's number three number
four is um an addition $8,000 coming out um uh of our maintenance Reserve account um as reported by our comprehensive maintenance plan number five is is a
$10,000 res um a $10,000 withdrawal from our emergency reserves to cover the um security camera upgrades and improvements that that we need number six uh just conf uh is approval of travel and related expense
reimbursements for 2526 um that we approve travel and related expense for our staff up to and actually board members up to 175,000 uh for the 25 26 school
year number seven is our preschool uh preschool program plan budget okay yeah our plan for pre budget and um number eight is the um is the acceptance of the uh the execution
delivery of the grant agreement and that is for the uh classroom at Irving um so our local share of that is 262,000 um and we were awarded 174,00 um to complete that
project okay and that's uh Finance facilities all right so I think public comment first right and then yeah I think this was a Mist it's there I think we would open it up again yeah but you can open up it's there it's there okay so if
anybody would like to public comment on the facilities items um the Highland Park welcomes your public comment so if anybody online would like to comment please raise your hand anyone in the audience yeah and with no hands rais we're going to close public comment all right um
would you like to move your items yes I move items uh one through not through eight second oh okay I just realized I have a question I'm sorry that when when we Pro this a tentative budget it can be
changed we're not yeah so this is the preliminary this is preliminary it's a preliminary budget showing the the doe that we've preliminary came up with a balanced budget and then we have about a month to finagle it if there if there's any adjustments that we want to make and
then yeah we'll present the final budget all right Dr batty yes Miss celon yes Dr Coleman yes Dr Pixley yes Miss pruce yes Dr scholman yes Miss stanel
yes Miss bman yes Miss Vorhees yes okay um we have nothing for personnel we have nothing for policies and regulations um any old business any new business okay I move we adjourn second
all in favor hi hi Happy C Patty's Day every