here Mr G here Mrs phom Mr brow here Mr Palama here Mr Peto here Mr raport Miss Zuckerman Dr MRA here miss Fella Mr son [Music] here United States of America the [Music] the New Jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to attend meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed direct on in accordance with the provision of the act from M Township Board of Education provided a public notice of this meeting which included the time d that was posted at the M Township Municipal Building all M Public Schools the M Public Library the M Township Board of Education administrative office building the district website and advertised in the Daily Record and the M will tap into the board's official newspapers on January 28th [Applause] 2024 yeah thanks so we're going to start off with some stuff that happened in the recent past so on Thursday April 18th at 7:00 p.m. there was a college panel night with a panel of missions representatives and the colleges featured included Boston College the University of Michigan Bon University and Franklin Marshal college and then spring Spirit Week presented by the sa happened last week the spirit days for Adam hler day anything but a backpack day country rsus country club and color Wars P valy was a huge success and it included student favorite events that were unable to be played because of the cancellation in the fall some of them included the watering toss and capture the Cod and then on April 28th this past Sunday Mr Riot and the mths international concerns club or ICC raised awareness for March of Dimes and March for babies and they raised a total of $538 and they're also still currently accept donations and this is icc's 30th consecutive year of marching also yesterday Randy a current trainer in the Seeing Eye puppy raising program came to visit the high school and a lot of the students got to see him and then yesterday at 7:00 p.m. in the media center the department of School counseling organized a presentation on the impact of screens and social media and the presenter was Lauren marela founder of the wellbeing therapist and then Mrs Einstein's AP biotech class were the first students in New Jersey to take the BAC exam so now moving on to some things happening in the present starting tomorrow we're excited to announce that students will be allowed to sit outside on the front steps of the school to enjoy lunch with the beautiful weather also the mville thear company presents Broadway night and it will be happening on Wednesday May 1st at 7:30 p.m. for a night of Broadway Classics and new hits tickets are going to be $10 and they can be purchased at the night of the performance also happening right now graduation lawn signs for seniors are available to order through May 15th also HOSA is currently sponsoring a Crispy Cream fundraiser for the bone marrow cancer organization mmdp there will be a fundraiser during lunch for this organization early next week where students can stop by for some prizes such as gift cards now moving on to some sports teams we have the baseball team currently holds a record of 7 to8 improving their record from 2 weeks ago they had a big 15 to Z game against over last week in the first round of the cter tournament the softball team currently holds a Tide record of 8 to8 Junior pitcher Daniela bigio recently had her 30th career strikeout on the mound the boys lacrosse team holds an early season record of 4 to7 they recently held an Autism Awareness game as well the girls lacrosse team starts the season with a Tide record of 5 to8 they had a big win last night against moristown beard for their senior night with six different thanks putting points on the board also boys golf is on fire with a 9-1 record senior Eli caufman leads the team coming in first place every match scho lowest and also not to mention that the girls golf team is uh 5 and one senior captains marinsky and Bailey stepan led the team scoring the lowest each match Boys Tennis is currently 2 and seven and they're looking to get a win tomorrow against W Morris and the girls football team was ranked eight in the state after their 301 record they had a declaring tie against second seated Wing B and then finally the track and field team had Randol relays this past weekend there were silver silver medals won by the girls 400 intermediate ferles and the girls scx 400 met a gold medal Was Won by the girls ja relay a fella also won the award for the furthest throw of the day the school record was set in the voice Sprint met the relay team of JZ C Rico Chris noi Anthony Feer and Alice P and then just a couple things happening in the near future have AP tests are going to be starting next week Monday May 6th and they will run through Friday May 17th and teachers are currently beginning to review material for the upcoming exams and then finishing off on Friday May 24th the seniors will be having their senior breakfast at the Manion of Mountain Lakes and then Thursday May 30th the will be the Senior Pro grow thank you I just want to two of our district uh goals well actually one of our district goals this year was to help our students and two of the action plans you're seeing are the result of that I've seen more of the therapy dogs coming to the different schools and then you also mentioned about eating outside starting tomorrow so uh that's something that we're opening up the campus for the students to get outside fresh air you know get out the side of the building you want just comment those things have you had exposure to the therapy dogs and will you be taking advantage of being outside yeah so I didn't get the chance to see the therapy do yesterday but I was able to see the one that came the past time I'm forgetting which day it was and I'm also really looking forward to being able to enjoy lunch outside with my friends I feel like it's a great opportunity and a separate place to e lunch outside of just like the cafeteria and like the two gymi so yeah I think it's great thank you the new at off [Applause] we have two presentations we going to start with Woodmont Woodmont ready all right SCA come on up and introduce our future uh novelists start right you take [Applause] the hello so my class this year um we were doing a study of animals with the new Ela unit the amplify unit my students were very inspired by the animals and we were also working with some creative writing so we decided to write our own Nar stories with a game of animal Adventures so they all had the great stor about animals and Adventure that they had but we were also working on our showing not telling so using details in our PES to show feelings show how they look and how they acted and also including dialogue which great ining dialogue so we did the whole process from until end we planed our stories we did revising we did editing and then we finally got it all together with our illustrations and sent it off to student Treasures that put the whole book together for us it's in the fact a published version um Li designed the cover we had a cover contest where a couple of students submitted covers that they want to cover story and we voted of govern so she is now the illustrator the illustrations within the book as well so they would all just like to share with you their favorite sentence their best sentence from their stories so first we have she wrote a story called color changing llama and the magic [Applause] [Applause] you want to tell him a little bit about make sure you speak loudly [Applause] please my story was about friend that tried to turn one of the friends from being back from being good thank next we had jet who wrote the story The Wolf and the [Applause] Husky when snowy woke up he carefully smoothed his soft white for snowly looked at his reflection in the ice his blue eyes spar B my story was about a wolf and a hus that will that are lost and need to get back to the Artic thank you then we have a [Applause] ready this is called rubies andent on one on one morning lovely morning with the sun shining bright named walked to school the son was listening of her gr and wife bir even though Ruby was Beau she was not really she was actually very kind and she always had my my story was about two friends that go on an adventure [Music] after her friend is turned rle from drinking in potion next we have Thomas Thomas wrote a story called Gummy's reflection on one warm sunny day in the Artic little Gummy was feeling relaxed he sat in his rocking chair drinking his orang to enjing the Saturday off little Gummy love today my story is about gummy the poing his reflection for the first time and getting scared then we had Kaden who wrote the story the big [Applause] beach on a bright sunny day a family decided to take their pu Coco where walk up to the beach as got closer to the soft sand Coco ran to the clear ocean but when she looked back she did not see her her mom dad and her sister were looking everywhere but it was getting [Applause] FY my story is about a puppy who gets lost at the and made friends with next you have Lia who wrote Luna's [Applause] Adventure while Luna was drinking she saw her Reflection In The Water she stared at her light blue eyes blue wings and pretty blue press on her head she looked perfect for the for the r for my story was about Luna going an adventure and getting lost and and last we had Travis who wrote a story called The Wolf and the hair Jack down his into the bright sunny day he walked on the trail into the woods he growled and rupted as he walked as he got closer other animals would run into the woods to hide Jack's stomach rumbled and he the when he felt how hungry he was my story was about a w who tries to eat a hair but gets tricked and has to eat a trout instead so the entire class today Travis is going to help me out with this back our entire class today signed a copy of the book and they would like to present [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] you [Applause] [Applause] that is so cool thing you know that's a really nice that's incredible and you know you seeing here the third graders and you know some of the things we worked on are public speaking writing skills and of course you know writing books and reading books and then you're going to see the next level at the high school level go the uh Speech and debates and uh you know the culmination of everything that will all it work so you seeing the beginning and the end of what we do here in Mar so thank you so much we're going to cherish this book thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right s come on up with your ladies and gentlemen you take it off uh my name is jusari I'm the current head coach of the speech Debate Club um I'm going to turn it over to our club president SP she's going to explain to you kind of what goes on in our club and kind of our achievements and pass on to some of our other officers excellent good evening Dr Gorman and M Board of Education members my name is an bot and I'm the president of the multile forensic speech and debate team for our 2023 to 2024 season I'm here today to Enlighten you all on our team's accomplishments this year and our phenomenal student leadership as well as all of the hard work and dedication that goes in to ensure this club continues to be a fulfilling and educational experience for all of our members to begin this year we had over 50 students attend our beginning of the year info session most of which signed up to become permanent members on our team our competitive season has consisted of 13 tournaments this year two of which being National the Harvard Invitational and the Yale Invitational of our local tournaments we have consistently placed as a top five team with consistent students placing top six in their corresponding events our vice presidents will highlight more into that later I had the honor of placing second at our national tournament for Yale and we have freshman sophomores and juniors advaned to final rounds at the National Harbor tournament March 16th to 17th we attended the New Jersey speech and debate league championships where I'm am so delighted to announce that we are ranked third in the state our speech team ranked fourth in the state and our debate team gr second making us one of top three teams top three teams in New Jersey which we've been able to maintain for over a decade congrat thank you special congratulations to our Varsity parliamentary teams and junior varsity parliamentary team angelene agnel and San chrishna as well as our JB parliamentary team Anisha MTI and Sh as well as our numerous other members who place top three in their events I will now hand it over to our vice president of debate angelene agnell to highlight her phenomenal efforts that have guaranteed success for our debate team thank you good evening Dr Gman and Board of Education members my name is Angelie magnell and I'm a senior at mths and I'm also a part-time sharetime student at the Allied Health academ in the vocational schools and I'm the vice president of the baate I'm glad to serve the M vice president so to share some insight about what our the debate side of our team is So currently we run weekly meetings where dedicated members argue about real world politics and solutions to our modern day problems now many students do debate all over the country but the aims for our MTS debate team this year was to push our students to create real world solutions to the problem that they identified in the debate space so in doing so we've created multiple Outreach programs such as the one started in our go techies and a nonprofit organization called P to debate which SE several of our students are part of and these are nonprofit debate organizations which aims to Target lowincome communities and health schols as well so students such as myself have gone in on to publ research on the debate topics that we've argued which have been published in many research journals and V moving on while we are very proud of these programs The Debaters at M teaches don't go without their accomplishments this year we have had over 10 awards at the state level and got 20 awards at the national level as well and this year our parliamentary debate team did an outstanding job with two state champions in the JB level and varsity level last year the debate team won first place sweep stakes in the New Jersey state championship and this year won second place by winning the most amount of awards on behalf of being the half the size of the other teams additionally the Ning State organizer picked two students from our school to compete under the New Jersey State team in the international competition which are Amy Zen and Sid SH now while the debate team is competitive we Foster an environment where students care about solving the problems that they went on which is why we actually see our results and these results come from Passion within the students and I hope that gives a deeper insight to the [Applause] debate good evening Dr and board members I'm the senior high school and I'm the DS have pren so to to help share some insight into what we do as speech team is we meet on a weekly basis and essentially we work on speeches and performances like Congress men when in the act of Congress or performances that you so then throughout the week we go through and we CCE these pces four tournament we all get together and we have word sessions sessions are essentially one-onone um like reviews of the competitor before they go to the tournament then they go to get [Applause] so we're proba to say that we are among the top three at almost every major um tournament around the and to say that we are one the best on top of that I want to like I want to address how important this stff is to me and my as a whole if you told me like 5 years ago I would be speaking in front of a group of people I would not believe you because I myself was really sh an inted person but throughout joing this club back in 8th grade through our program that we Middle School I was able to grow a person as individual and this club has become more than for me it's a family and it's a place where I truly know that I can come and express myself and it's helped me so much throughout high school with public speaking skills and just throughout so much more some of my closest friends are made this clubs and a lot of my senior friends people still talk to that we're in college now are also people on for instance this community is so important to myself and other people in the club and I just wanted to stress that and thank you guys for allowing this to be thank [Applause] you so I hope that gave a little insight to what speech the speech side and the debate side of the team is now we're going to be moving on to talking about our annual tournament which we run which is the model invitation this year it was held on February 24th where we had over 300 different competitive entries and leading up to the tournament our tournament directors kabish Boda and Mika Anu work tirelessly with the other officers and coaches to ensure that this tournament win as fely as possible with the help of the entire Ric team and this planning involves reaching out to restaurants and parents for food donations coordinating with parents and the team members for volunteers to help run sessions organizing the schedules and recruiting judges as well as prep spe and debate topics and documents necessary for this competition and the members all over helping directing teams ensuring rounds were going and that judges were submitting ballots and the overall tournament was on schedule and running admission Le would not have happened without our Sen's dedication and our tournament's team this year was music where we made different Proms and decorated our school with music motifs all over and what other students from all the other schools called the most fun tournament theme of the entire year and recently we were able to visit lar middle school and Enlighten all of e8th grade English classes on what forensics is and the events offered at the high school in hopes to recruit them when they get to the high school we continue to run our Middle School Outreach sessions this year with two onewe sessions in the summer and an 8we session in both the fall and spring we be welcomed 15 to 20 middle schoolers and taught them the art of forensics with who with the assistance of team members our Outreach vice presidents Sana Krishna and triy contella did announ standing job in organizing and leading these sessions by ensuring the kids were engaged and gained a positive experience we are currently in the process of selecting our officers for next year by interviewing members for their respective positions We Are So Satisfied that the season that we had and are excited to see what the future holds for this team after the class of 2024 [Applause] graduates I thank you for your time for hearing us and I'm so grateful to be able to share this team's accomplishments forensic will and continues to be a successful and hardworking inclusive community that provides a space for anyone and everyone interested in improving themselves in regards to public speaking and their education on current events I am immensely grateful to have the honor representing this team as president as well as be a part of an extracurricular activity that serves the bond of a family thank you and have a good night [Applause] great great job thank you for presenting that it's just wonderful what you see there again just going back to the third graders we start at the early ages about presentation skills and you can see the results of that here at the high school level so congratulations I know a lot of you have been continue this in college and and Beyond but these skills are invaluable so thank you and thank you for sharing a little bit of some of your passion and love thank you I just make a comment and and ask just as Dr just the position between seeing the third graders and seeing the high schoolers was marvelous um it it just makes all the hard work on everything's part so worthwhile so the ask is is there any chance we could get a little excerpt of maybe one of the speeches that you [Applause] do I can provide some knowledge in regards to just our event I I can actually definitely give an excerpt um um I just to preface um so I do speech and speech is separated into two different types of events one of them is public address and one of them is more interpretation and public address is definitely the events that have allowed me to kind of formulate the speech to you all and be able to articulate myself so give me one moment I will pull it up [Applause] thank you [Applause] [Applause] I've known many people have gone through pric and they all love it um my nephews did it they had a great time and I taught them a lot and I can see still in them now as young man how much it helped them so thank so I think a significant speech that I wanted to pull up was the one that I wrote my freshman year that allowed me to actually qualify for Nationals for the first time and looking back this is so interesting because this was nth grade when it was the beginning of remote learning so this was my speech where I highlighted covid-19 and how it impacted digital learning on high school students so I will just kind of share the general gist of the attention grabbing device that I spoke in the beginning of my speech and kind of Shar my piece of statement during this pandemic digital learning has negatively impacted students ability to learn there are distractions everywhere and sitting in my room for consecutive hours is not making it any easier gret and vestro from the understood team conducted a study in 20120 on eight ways distance learning has made it harder for students to focus one of the biggest and primary obstacles is our lack and change of scenery and insufficient times for breaks in between our classes I can tell you for a fact that my mental he along with my peers has definitely suffered a change remote learning has taken a great toll on our academic performance but it's important we come together together as a community and realize these issues affect not just students but teachers as well and order it is important for us to find solutions to help us during these unprecedented times because of the covid-19 pandemic affecting learning for teenagers team mental health as well well as empathy for teachers is once again being harmed and being put at risk to further explore this issue we'll analyze the causes and impacts as to why we need to improve this system and then observe the way remote learning takes a toll on mentalities for both Educators and students as well as getting ourselves to understand and observe [Applause] Solutions I'm sorry for putting you on the spot no worries thank you and you said is still true and relevant so thank you for sharing that very than you very appro [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] s [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] I believe have next presentation I do do there's the room so um so I decided to stand down here tonight just because it's so hard to see all of you I'm trying to talk to you but so so give us a little more communication um so we decide to give you a little bit more of a year in view we talked about last year about how well the district's doing but it's hard you know we come about all different board meetings you only get these little you know Snippets here and there so I'm trying to put it all together for this evening and this will lead into this one's presentation about the budget I just want to recognize we have Dr Spitzer here Mr tubs the back there two of our supervisors do a wonderful job with our teachers and with the students so I really thank them for the support but one of the other things that makes this place specialist we have a great relationship with our union leaders right here we just met with them today they do an incredible job leading the whole NT and and that just leads to some of the great things we're doing here in this District uh with that said for a wonderful board uh this is one of the best boards around we got the master board uh recognition and it's just been a pleasure to work with you and as we leave this wonderful District last year we did a survey of the teachers and we asked them to comment on you know just so many the great things that are going on in the schools and just overall we saw a lot of the common themes one of them is that we have supportive uh staff and colleagues great staff morale we are a family they genuinely love teaching uh above all else we care so much about the well-being of each other and the students administrators give us the ability to run with our ideas at the bottom there Innovative and work extremely hard to create the most meaningful and rigorous activities for our students I pop into the classrooms informally and formally on a regular basis and this is all true of what I see when I'm in there they made some comments about our students you just saw some of these wonderful presentations our kids come here on a monthly basis and what they what the staff thinks of them they they're very uh they see there students are very wonderful and respectful and which is something you don't hear too often these days you know especially if you read the newspapers like that but to have respectful students students are motivated to perform well they're active participants in the classrooms they willing to learn and the students can go to the teachers or other support members for St for uh student support which again is very important to one of our goals with commend the health initiatives we're doing a person needs to be able to relate and talk to adult to whatever they're going through so we talk about the Four A's of Education we have the academics the Arts the Athletics and activities and we're going to focus on these four areas tonight when you look at the rankings there's rankings all over the place right now uh you see them I don't put too much stock in them because we never know how they're calculated they change the calculations on an annual basis and you got to be really weary of hey you changed from a 32 to a 30 or or you moved up or down and sometimes you're talking about a 10th or 100th of a point that separates some of these numbers so but uh good news is good news and something that to recognize but what this shows you is model is consistently rated or ranked very highly by number of different independent outside agencies um you look at you know best school districts the best schools if you look at the bottom there just recently uh US News reported that the uh marel high school was number 55 and that sounds great but it doesn't get behind the scenes so that already puts you in the top 10% if you're in 55 if you want to go deeper and you pull out the magnet and the charger schools that are also in that there were 22 of them so if you want to really compare apples to apples and compare us to other public schools that really puts us at the top 33 so you know these are the things you have to look at behind with numbers and these are just just basically just showing you how excellent our schools are last year's postgraduation plans you have 95% of our students going on to uh College uh other ones going into business and employment uh you know right out of high school so very good percentages there the college EX rate something that we looked at over the past couple of years 61.4% of our students are being accepted into the most highly and very competitive colleges that says a lot the quality of Education they're getting and the level that they're applying to on average when we look at the past 3 years 61% of our students were accepted to the colleges they were applying to and know 70s are right there um but 70% of our students were accepted to their number one choice and then of that 70% chose to go to their first choice College this question comes up often and I put the one on the left hand side about Lazar that got asked earlier this year you know how many students you hear a lot of rumors and this page here is to dispel all the rumors that are out there but when you look at the number of students when they get promoted from Lazar and they go to the high school almost all of them do it's it's it's only a handful less than 10 decide not to go there I only think it's even less than five decide to not go to the uh from the fifth grade to Lazar from fifth grade to Lazar and S like that and then when you look at the student students are going from 8th grade to high school only 10% choose to go to other schools now A couple of years ago that was a high of 18 and then it was down to 13 and the past couple years it's been 11 and 10 so we've done a great job of retaining our students that tells me that the parents and the students are very happy with the quality product as you saw tonight of what they're getting at marro high school so of those 10% though kids go there they want to try something new over the years we get 3% of those students you know they move into their District or they come back just this past couple of years we had 12 students return after they decided to try the other high schools return to our uh maral title ship high school so when you look at the real statistics like senior year 7% of our students decide to actually move on that is a significant number there are many other schools out there but their numbers are in the 20s so to be at 7% and that's just the beauty of having choice and deciding to go elsewhere and we retaining majority of our students the seal by literacy is something a relatively new exam that's being offered by New Jersey and I think we just began offer had 2 years ago here we had 30 students that are proficient in two languages and of those 30 three of them are proficient in three languages you can see the nine languages that they tested in they did this test just a couple months ago uh 19 Juniors participated and 11 seniors so they get this award they get the certificate it goes on their uh you know um as they flying for college and it's something to be extremely proud in they are fluent in these languages and that's just another credit to our school system and how we're helping them go on as well as you know we don't off for polish or Korean or German and they're doing this stuff on the outside to be fluent in these languages the music I mean 8 years in a row that says right there you know you see these Productions the slide on the right you see right here talking about the elementary schools again I get to go in and see the elementary all the way through high school and I'm popping in you see the the young child right there going the basic instruments and in the middle slide if you saw the production it was outstanding of foot loot year how these kids put it all together and it's just outstanding and we're being recognized you have the acapella group there at the bottom they came through our uh board meeting earlier in the year they were singing and just an incredible music program so going back to the 4as the academics we have a lot of exciting classes that we've offered this past year we offered biotechnology and micobiology really get to the heart of these more difficult more challenging type classes and really extending the knowledge level of these students they were really getting into some real deep knowledge based uh information that they would be able to carry on into the college we also St the students we talked to them we offered a music technology class and an advanced design and build class the advanced design class is working at with steam level initiatives which is uh science technology engineering arts and Mathematics and the music technology is just taking the music production to a totally new level and using uh the technology to record live music another one was the science of design and research class I mean you can see The Smiling Faces you know just lighting up how these kids are getting just totally involved and identifying research opportunities in National sciences and engineering programs great stuff going on there and we off we have a program right now it's called the Dual all dual enrollment partnership with ftu fa Dickenson University here Jersey 170 70 of our students are enrolled in 10 courses from anything from genocide to marketing forensic science uh molecules cells and genes Anatomy calculus so our kids are taking advantage getting college credit that they can be transferred to the colleges when they graduate looking at testing just looking at the results it's very hard you can't get the data as easily as you could in the past we were able to get this data from a company um but if you look at our Ela scores which is English language arts schools scores all when all the grades were tested you know we had 1780 students that were tested in these in that subject area 80% of those most or exceeded the achievement level which was up 3% when you look to the right you see that we're higher than the county average higher than our district Factor Group which is an i rating those are the schools that are very similar to us throughout the state and we're higher than the state the second one is the math again 70% net or exceeded the achievement up 4% and that's still higher than the county our district Factor group of our finded elect schools our peers that are out there and the state and again science science 45 met and exceeded and and just to give you a little caveat that test is still being tweaked by the state they've been doing tweaking it for the past 15 years and they still has not a mandatory test but our students are outperforming other schools the county as the state as we did with the other levels activities is one of the other a the field trips that we offer this is just a sampling at the elementary levels we did 33 field trips laar had 30 and the high school had 88 and you can see kind of competitions we had Deb that just go out to Los Angeles to compete on the national level just recently you have competitions we Disney master class trip uh the elementary kids went to sequest labor land laar Dy Park and Mayo Performing Arts this is all about adding more to missing the curriculum beyond the classroom we have 71 clubs at the high school level 31 at Lazar and 10 at the elementary level again building the stronger foundation of the interest of our students Athletics outstanding Athletics program prrams here 12 female sports plus the one Club flag football which will now next year become an actual sport will be recognized we have 10 male Sports and four co-ed Sports we have uh females on some of these teams that you see right there so um and the picture just shows you the bowling team they had their third state championship we recognized them at the last board Le and just shows the accomplishment these kids are doing athletically as well and of course the last a is the Arts we had this is the Blackwell Street Award winners we had eight High School Award winners when we submitted them to the county there were 14 County school districts represented and over 500 pieces we had eight of those five that were represented at that uh program which is quite an accomplishment talking about real Ro experiences I talked about some of those uh science classes and just quickly mentioned by Ryan tonight we had Ling of our kids 100% of our students that were in the um biotechnology class that we're offering to new class but they took the the base exam which means biotechnician assistant cred credentialing uh exam this is the first High School to offer that exam in New Jersey um this is quite an exam I'm sure these kids are going to do extremely well on it this kind of credentialing uh recognition will go very far at the college level as as well as with the corporations when they graduate and look for employment elsewhere and we're extremely proud of that and the last thing is we're extremely successful because of the parent groups we have boosters we have the PTO hsas ptas we have the Ed Foundation we have all these different support groups that are helping us and making us successful and there's a lot of pride in our town just recently the Ed Foundation just gave us $60,000 to help us with our steam initiative you saw that again at our last board meeting when the students had the GoPro and they were uh going around at the elementary level and doing their news tasks and uh equipment at the high school level in laar when and I were just counting it up just quickly you know we had over 2,000 $200,000 in gifts from our community in cash as well as in light light um gifts so for instance they might donate to the playground or give us musical instruments or a GoPro or something like that but we received over $200,000 uh worth of gifts last year something again to be very proud of so that just quickly is a summarization of how well our District's doing and uh something to again to be extremely proud about I can take some questions now anything as quick and then we answer the team's presentation about the budget any questions what's what are you most proud about this year I mean that's that's a setup question but it's like I mean it's it's it's hard to see you know I get extremely proud when you see the students I I I've shared this before when I'm able to go with class and I'm seeing kids put together a book and learn how to read at kindergarten first grade level stuff like that and then I go to the high school level and I see the forensics kids where I see the uh speech and debate where I see them uh talking about uh Shakespeare it's incredible to see that growth parents only get to see that over 12 years with much frustration I get to see it you know over over 12 minutes sometimes and see it you know with all these uh these proud moments so when I see the kids so happy in the classroom and they're proud to show me what they're doing when I'm in there and they're so excited about the work you know they're learning and you know they're happy and you just accept when uh when you're uh when you're happy I think it also uh we need to recognize the fact that behind you you have administrators supervisors teachers and even the parents who are really helping the district in their own ways and their own capacities mean a lot of this credit that you're here showing us these wonderful things but a lot of credit also lies with people who are acting up and suppor you each absolutely and we just talked about that behind closed doors a little earlier tonight but to have an outstanding administrative team with te business administrator Andrea with curriculum and Casey with human resources and everything else that he does it's just incredible backup team and the other person that's backup that runs around with the camera you see her you don't see her and all that stuff is uh Miss Marinella and we made her position full-time this year and you see the rewards of her being a full-time employee she puts together these slideshows for us she puts out the communications you just saw my monthly column go out saw another communication go out to the community this stuff is keeping the community surprised of everything going uh going forward and all the wonderful things that are happening in this District plus it's her birthday to so you know we got got [Applause] that just excellent stuff going on so um uh just great stuff thank you comments questions so part of the budget process that began back in November and December this past year uh culminates tonight with the presentation of the public hearing on the 20242 annual budget the annual budget is the financial plan plan that the Board of Education and the administration collectively create in order to guide the year for the subsequent year this in the budget includes the Strategic plans of the board as well as the academic expectations of the district in order for us to create a budget we begin the process back in November and December where we are collecting information from the supervisors and the district administrators as to what is going on in their programs what they hope to do in the upcoming year in their programs so a lot of the Innovation that Dr Gorman just got done mentioning is occurring a whole year or 18 months ahead of time in order for us to plan the resources in order to get the programs up and running through the September that it's going to apply for and in doing that we are required by the state of New Jersey to have what is called a balanced budget meaning the resources of the district equal programs costs and to do that we have to be running an efficient system generally when we go through this presentation we spend a lot of time looking at the expenditure so I'm going to start on that side and I'll move to the revenue side and what we do is we take all of the transactions all the events that are going to occur in a year we boil them down to Dollars and cents unfortunately and we then organized them by like kind and those like kinds are instruction Support Services Administration and operations so the first one is going to be the area of instruction this is Dr Gorman's 4 a academics Arts activities and athletics they're all included in this instructional section and about half of the budget is put towards these types of programs when we organ oriz them from a state coding perspective we organize them by regular classrooms special education instruction basic skills in bilingual instruction co-curricular which is your activities like yearbook the plays uh flag football this year Athletics which are your Athletics at the high school and out of District instruction for those students for whom we cannot provide an effective or efficient education we have the ability to send them to a place that can serve their needs better as you look at the trending over the last three years the last column is the year that relates to 24 25 year the last two years give you a perspective as to where we stand what you notice is that each year does change and that comes from us adding and subtracting tweaking different programs um supplementing things that for example in the 23 24 year we just did a huge computer purchase where we replaced a lot of the computers in the district that's what's causing that particular year to be very high whereas some of the comparable years are not as high from the perspective of what we've included in the 2425 year this includes a new program at the elementary level which is a holistic and comprehensive language arts program that will provide different levels of um education in the area of language arts depending on the level of the child so at the younger levels they'll be focusing more on Phonics and in the older levels at the elementary and entering into Lazar they'll be working on compositions and comprehension reading comprehension programs preparing them to then move into the back and their experience at laar and then preparing for the high school we are adding American sign language as one of the language options for the high school we will be expanding the preschool program and will be expanding at Valley View we do have to face the fact that there are a lot of changes in the demography of our um town in that we have a lot of new developments that are coming online and we need to adjust for those programs and inclusive in the 2425 budget is preparing for the students that will be coming from those new developments We are continuing our onetoone Chromebook initiative each student throughout the district has Chromebooks available to them to um assist them in their educational process both in the building as well as at home we will be implementing PSAT testing for all four years of the high school and girls flag football is going to become an official sport so it'll be moving from the co-curricular area over to the athletic area um for the 2425 year the next area that we look at is called Support Services support services are services that are provided to the students that help to enhance the education that's occurring in the classroom so this can include things like attendance and nursing Services related services like speech and occupational Physical Therapy extraordinary servic that are provided to students particularly students um in the special education area the child study team guidance media curriculum and instructional training in this area you do see increases we have been increasing services to these types of areas the areas that are supporting our students in order to help them succeed in their academic programs over the last few years you can see that as you look at at the trending across the last 3 years for the 2425 year this area is going to include additional services for childrens with special needs we are adjusting again to provide additional support for the incoming enrollment we're anticipating from town growth since Co we have put a lot of additional funding towards behavioral care for students as well as mental health initiatives as we begin to transition into what is going to be our new normal the next area is the area of administration this area includes not only the central office administration but the Board of Education it includes the school administration the business office and Technology this area has been relatively flat over the last few years uh the board's professional and legal services are included in here all of the technology oversight wanted to keep all of our Machines working and our apps working on all the machines um is in this area as well as the business and board office functions another area that's included in here is the districtwide um employee benefits this includes things like medical and dental vision uh benefits to all staff throughout the district but it also includes other benefits pensions um other contractual agreements that are part of it this is an area that you're seeing large growth in uh what we have seen over the past 5 years three of them being projected here has been double digit increases in the area of medical insurance not that we're any different than anywhere else even in before profit Industries you're seeing those types of high rises in prescription and Medicals particularly and we're experiencing the same thing the last area is the area of operations this is sort of all the things that occur to make everything occur these are your custodians and your maintenance workers your security guards transportation services that bring the buses to both to and from home as well as field trips and athletic events the Food Service program that's throughout the district and then improvements and equipment that we buy in order to enhance the programs that are offered throughout the schools most of the trending um has been TR in a positive upward uh Direction places to just focus in on is rise in transportation cost the roots are additionally and consistently been higher since the pandemic particularly because it's hard to find drivers and fuel costs have been rising the food service area I wanted to just highlight this because we do not participate in the National and State uh school lunch programs however the funds that areund here fund students who are in need so we as a community have chosen not to participate in the program however those students who have needs and need food we help provide that for them during the school day the big area as part of this is the area of equipment and improvements This Is Us maintaining our buildings the eight buildings that the Board of Education owns throughout the district are the largest assets that the township of monville holds and so we feel a a responsibility of stewardship for those buildings and in order to maintain them they need to be repaired so each year we do repairs uh in the case of the 2425 year the repairs include a roof of replacement at the high school if you are unfortunate enough to be in the 5 and 600 Wing you can attest to the fact that it's a little wet in there when it rains because the ceiling is leaking due to a roof problem that will be placed additionally we'll be doing work on the elementary school roofs in order to extend their lives we are doing an hbac improvement in laar in the sixth grade wind in order to replace the units that are original to the building making them over 50 years old um and putting in new units not only will that build efficiency but those units have done their their deed uh we are having a difficult difficult time repairing them appropriately seedar Hills parking lot uh has is in need of of repair the upper level parking lot um has a wall that is beginning to crumble so that was being replaced and as you have seen aazar and Cedar Hill we have been doing security vestibules that was part of the referendum and we did indicate that we would be doing those outside of the referendum if that did not pass we will be continuing that at valy view they will actually be re receiving an internal security vestibule whereas the one at Lazar and Cedar Hill have been external and that work will be done during the summer when you take all of those areas and add them together what you have is a budget for the um 25 2425 year that is just slightly above that from the previous year most of the increase that you see in the expenditures comparing year toe relates to the money we're putting towards the improvements to the building which are actually coming from the board savings so the way the board funds those improvements that I just mentioned is it puts forth the savings that it has put into its savings account in order to make those improvements and that actually is the largest increase for out of the 23 24 year to the 24 25 year in terms if you pull that particular cost down the budget is not even going up by 1% as I mentioned in the beginning in order for us to actually have a budget that goes through the review of the county and state they have to balance so what you'll notice is that on this slide we summarize all the expenditures but then we show the matching revenues that have to be provided in order to fund all of these expenditures so there can never be a deficit budget and as like most Suburban districts most that funding comes from the local tax levy this local tax levy goes up by just a little above 2% we are allowed to have a 2% cap with a few waivers we exercised the waivers the one waiver we exercised was the waiver that that was affected by the rise in health care costs so we get a little bit more due to the fact that the healthare costs are rising at such a significant rate certainly not nearly what the rate the amount that they're increasing it's a portion of that we did receive more St this year and as I mentioned we are putting in quite a bit of money from our savings in order to go and fund those projects uh the capital projects that I mentioned but as you can see the numbers that are on the bottom for the expenditures are the same numbers that are on the bottom for the revenues meaning there are two other areas that are part of the annual budget everything thing I've mentioned so far is part of the general operating fund there are these two areas the special Revenue fund and Debt Service fund are also part of the annual budget that we submit to the county and the state the special Revenue budget relates to Grants of monies that have been given to us by local donors or by state and federal agencies and those amounts vary from year to year but a large portion of them um from federal grants and as we have done in the past we're always very conservative when we present that number we only budget at 85% of what we had received the year before so part of that decline that you're seeing from the 20123 24 year to the 24 25 year is US reducing the amount we think we're going to get we will actually find out how much we do get as we get into June and July the second area that's included on this page is the Deb service area when the township passes a referendum for us to raise money through bonds this is the place where they get paid over the life of the bond so for example the township approved a referendum in 2017 these particular payments relate only to that particular issuance and it says paying back the amount that we borrowed over the 30-year period of the issuance and that declines um each year so what you notice is the amount that we needed 2 years ago is more than the amount that we need now the average success house in monville is about $536,000 and on that average successed house the total budget including all the things that I've just mentioned will result in an increase in taxes of about $250 254 so for all all that we have spoken about all that Dr bman highlighted earlier the increase for the 2425 year is $254 and that is the presentation of the annual bu thank you so much excellent presentation th yeah actually I had just couple comments um I would just call everyone's attention $4 million our budget goes out of district for Le students um personally I State should help out our district and other districts a little bit more than they do but about that um another point was you mentioned that board expenses I what people recognize we don't get paid no you do not we don't get paid up here so the board expenses include the services that fall under the board's area thank you thank you for mentioning that um and also I would like to thank the team for a very good budget um I I know it's getting tougher every year get tougher and tougher to make End meat 2% property tax cap limits our ability to raise revenue while the expenses just keep increasing astronomically healthare being warranted but a lot of other are see Transportation we're seeing double digit increases um so team good job on the budget I really [Music] appreciate I've said a number of budget hearings and this was um very simplified and very easy to follow even through someone that has sent through a lot of these um they well done athletes and St and [Music] Diane that's great job that's L was pointing out you getting uh Great Value you moved here for the for the right reasons we're delivering a product to your to you and your children and they're succeeding and we're here for the children and help them along the way and you can see all the things that go into this budget so we really appreciate that this Lon the whole business office Diane right here in front of those Faithfully always at our board meetings does a great job of putting all these things together and making the whole ship run so really appreciate all the efforts on their any questions comments presentations I was just informed that for this meeting we do open it up for public comment on the budget so if you have any questions on the budget please come forward to the microphone we will have two other public comment sessions later but if you have any questions on the budget come up see none we'll move on um lot of good news in the agenda i' say nice shout out to the hildale science staff it one it's a great experience everyone that we move on to section g the as so so facilities and finance the committee met right before the board meeting and at this point there wasn't too much to discuss but um my understanding is beginning with the next meeting um there be much more information to [Music] share um Karen back to you the school boards on April 19th I attended uh the first New Jersey School Board Association women's leadership conference it was a huge success uh on Thursday night uh May 2nd the Mars Count school boards Association will be conducting their celebrations County meeting where board members will receive a recognition for becoming certified master or certified board leaders we'll also be handing our scholarships for students um and Boards will be recognized as well and May the last Board of director meeting from here Jo I assume okay we speaking of Jo uh Education Services our next meeting is wednes coun uh last Thursday we had our community awareness program we had 107 community members uh we had plenty of resources for health providers we had about GRS come out and provide information to all the residents that were there we have four speakers H next meeting is next Tuesday the 7 which conflicts with um so [Music] have okay uh let's go let's go on to iations Karen any more updates uh no further updates on the association and for commit medior on June 3r okay Charlie ntaa yes we have [Music] [Music] okay first public participation session uh if you have any comments about items on the agenda to microphone see none motion on items I okay any questions on the minutes section I section J questions fac section K any questions budget is here any other questions we have two retirees I just want to highlight we have Mr Don wheeler from um Willie Mason uh he was a mle Township High School graduate who stayed in town and raised his family here he represented the core tants of what it means to Be an Effective Teacher dedicated kind and committed to meeting the needs of Willam Mason students both academically and emotionally not only a te teacher in will Mason School Community he is a resident as well his connections with families extend far beyond the school and deep within the community he leaves behind a legacy of great reputation and a good name students staff and parents have benefited from his commitment to the school Community we're going to miss him and we have Miss ver stup she's a veteran power professional for 20 years and serves with distinction in a multi grade position primarily as a par professional in grade three at Valley View the St works collaboratively with General ed students and icr teachers to supplement instruction she is AD dep at working with students individually in small groups and with the whole class additionally she has taken on the role of a window dresser for the outfront fou Kramer showcase visitors students and staff members have enjoyed many creative displays as they walk up the ramp entrance that colorfully welcome each season the concerns for our students reliability and job performance do not go unnoticed we wish your happy adventures in the years ahead and I no [Music] okay section n SE n [Music] policy Dr cordino yes Mr do yes1 Che 817 Mr yes on everything except the public session minutes of Mr K yes Mr Petri yes Dr M yes okay uh CL session old and new business General Fort com um you already hit su's birthday so I mention that C okay uh last public participation SE if you have any comments about any item that you like to discuss with board please come forward andate name ask to I'll s there's still room for board members to contribute to yes don't for you would like to we're we're not quite halfway there we're getting we only have a couple of weeks left see you all in that's that thank you for sticking around everybody be safe out there talk to us come on