e e e e e e e e and to the rep for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all and please remain standing for moment of silence for all those In Harm's Way and for all of our Armed Forces overseas all right the notice requirements of the open public meeting Act of the state of New Jersey have been satisfied by the inclusion of the date time and place of this meeting in the notice of regular meetings adopted by this board on January 8th 2024 such schedule and notice of meetings is posted at the municipal building the Mount Olive Library the Board of Education offices and the six schools were submitted to the Daily Record for publication on January 9th 2024 and was filed with the clerk of Mount Olive Township on January 9th 2024 I direct that this announcement be entered into the minutes of this meeting and Ro Mrs Aquino here Mrs Fenton here Mrs fera here Mrs Fitzgerald here Mrs Melendez here Mrs O'Neal here M Dillo here Mr stach here Mrs L here and we will take a motion for the approval of the minutes U Mrs Manda present a motion uh to approve the minutes uh three section three 3.1 and 3.2 second we'll take a roll call and we'll go Mrs Melendez yes Mrs O'Neal yes Mr orillo yes Mr stachi yes Mrs Aquino yes Mrs Fenton yes Mrs fera yes Mrs Fitzgerald yes Mrs naris yes and since we skipped to point1 I'll take a motion to recess into confidential session very briefly for the purposes of attorney client privilege um regarding confidential people people matters be it uh further resolve that the matters discussed in confidential session be disclosed to the public when the reason for confidentiality no longer exists and I have a motion thank you and we'll take a roll call Mrs Aquino yes Mrs Fenton yes Mrs figa yes Mrs Fitzgerald yes Mrs Melendez yes Mrs O'Neal yes Mr orillo yes Mr stach Mrs Nores yes and we will just will uh recess to close session for a briefly less than 10 minutes e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e right you guys are very quiet all right I'm going to call us back to S [Music] and a call please M Mrs Aquino here Mrs Fenton here Mrs fera here Mrs fitgerald here Mrs Melendez here Mrs O'Neal here Mr orillo here Mr stach here Mrs L I am here and since we already did our 3.1 3.2 do we have any Communications or petitions um to the board any no no all right we will move on to the reports and discussions do we have have any um do we have the stud good evening as we enter the final stretch of our school year our high school has numerous exciting events coming up first though we want to highlight some of our recent events EV and achievements we've had so in our music department we like to congratulate our drama club for the outstanding Awards they received at the Bucks County Playhouse just earlier today we had received news that 11 nominations at paper mill Playhouse this includes the outstanding overall production of the musical for Rock of Ages we would like to wish um all the club good luck at the award ceremony that'll be held this June there are also a few thanks we'd like to give first to our families who attended the class of 2024 Community awareness night all of our seniors projects turned out really great it was really cool to go around and we were happy um for those that were able to attend and have a good time with us that night from the members of the town we would also like to thank our parents and student volunteers for attending the mo cares fair and the mo future fairs it was really a great turnout uh from both um the community and our students who volunteered in our Junior ROTC world when it comes um they had really big uh three events so starting with our Marauder challenge um we had seven schools come out and compete it was a great time um Mount Olive took second place overall which was great um and then we headed to Washington DC and not only do we bring back a lot of new knowledge but some great memories um when it comes to our Awards night we held that last week um to recognize all the hard work our Cadets have put in to really make this year amazing and looking at some of the other clubs at our school we would like to shout out our International club and World Language Honor Society they just recently hosted their annual International Extravaganza and this is a really cool event at our school where everyone can show up and share their culture with other members of the district um we had multiple performances from our teachers and our students um great food and crafts and other activities for students to do so that was a really fun night our student council has also been busy lately especially in regards to our freshman transition program so just last week we had the three separate teams from the Middle School come up on separate days to receive a tour from our students of the high school and they also sat through a informational session with Mr Felman where they could just learn a little bit about the process for getting ready for their freshman year um this program will be concluded later in August when we do our big freshman orientation and of course also we have our Athletics our spring sports are well underway with with many teams even nearing their Championship Seasons as always you can look out for Miss plays um newsletters where she announces all of the achievements from our teams and any important updates for some new business the month of May is extremely busy at the high school and we have an event going on pretty much every single night in the next few weeks so there are too many to name all of them but to sum it up we have a number of Honor Society inductions art shows and concerts that we are looking forward to to any parents with students being inducted into these honor societies can look out for invitations to the ceremonies um but all the other events are open to all of the community and we hope you can all come out and share your support um for some important dates in particular our share the keys program is happening this Thursday um it's Thursday night in the pack and this again is for all Juniors who are looking to have a chance in the parking lottery for next year they must attend with a parent or Guardian to be able to um apply for a parking spot also later this week our student council is hosting its elections for the 2024 to 2025 school year and we cannot wait to welcome in new board members Gabby unfortunately will'll be leaving next year but I'm only a junior so I will still be here um but we are so excited for new members to come in and our ideas as many parents are aware also our AP exams are coming up so students we'll be starting those um the first is on May 6th and it will be concluded on May 17th we hope all of our AP students have some success during the exam season and that the rest of our student body can close this year out on a good note thank you thank you you want to do that I don't think um do we have any no committee report no no no report and do we have CNT report no report and finance and operations report no report policy and governance reports not report do we have any board subcommittees or parent and teacher Association needa reports anyone anyone from the board have and we'll back up turn the floor over to our superintendent fantastic L perfect so misson and I will be discussing the 2425 um budget and this is an extension of the conversation we started about a month ago so at this point I'm going to turn it over to Missy evening everybody so tonight is our um formal budget adoption for the 2425 school year um the presentation that we made for you back on March 11th um you'll notice that some of the slides are still the same we have augmented some of them uh provided some more explanation tried to make it more pretty get you more engaged I think the key word is user friendly that's what we're tring so so one of the things that we wanted to start out with that um we didn't necessarily do in the last presentation is really talk about who is Mount Olive um one of the things that we wanted to focus on initially is looking at our projected numbers for the upcoming school year um as you can see we're projected to be um over 5,100 students across this district with a little over a thousand employees across six schools however one thing that we always want to keep in mind that we really have one mission which is making our students our first priority what's really interesting is that we had um had a demographic study that was completed and shared with the public back in February of 2023 and you'll can see that the 2425 school year they only projected us to us to be a little over 4,800 we've already surpassed that so one of the things that um michon and I want to be clear with the public is our numbers are going up because because we have such a fantastic School District people are moving here because they hear what wonderful experiences and also opportunities that we provide our students as well evident from our student leison that they shared a just a couple minutes ago and certainly when you look at District goals in which we align all our board work is really going back to how we can ensure that we provide the most thorough and efficient education for all our students regardless ability and that's what we are so very proud of um I'm going to turn it over to miss shony right now she's going to kind of talk about also just some things that the um School community may not know right you've known about all our accolades that we typically share in our s'mores update but some things behind the scenes that you may not be um aware of Miss so I'll give you a brief overview of our transportation department we have approximately 72 Vehicles which range in size from 54 passengers to 29 passenger to 39 pass we have 66 drivers 60 of which are permanent fulltime six are subs and these drivers deal with 286 plus routes every single day so they are quite busy um the one thing I wanted to point out the efficiency of the department uh the acronym there drrs that stands for the district report of transported students and every November 15th we have to submit a report to the state every school district has to submit a report to the state that itemizes every single student that we transport whether it's in District out of District uh we have to itemize the buses the VIN numbers it's an extremely detailed budget and once that information is uploaded into the state uh we get what's called an efficiency rating which is the standard level which every single School District New Jersey are encouraged to receive the standard as you can see is 120% or 1.2 and I listed here the districts in Mars County that transport over 3500 students and you can see that we're at the top we're almost doubling the the standard level of efficiency so I thought that was worth for the public and I think this is a line to the next slide about how we are efficient as far as our cost so this is some data that is off the New Jersey Department of Education uh School District audits for the year ending 2023 so these are the school districts uh within Mars County that enrollment of 3500 plus students you can see the enrollment there the operating expenditures and their cost per people the number of Staff you could see that Mount Olive is pretty much in the middle the know our enrollment is higher than some of the other districts so um moving on from you know what's makes Mount Al so wonderful and who we are representing some highlights of the budget you know before we get into the nitty-gritty of revenues and Appropriations and all that fun stuff or at least michon things is fun stuff um we wanted to kind of give a more narrative overview of what we're really looking at so michon do you want to kind of cover some of our highlights of our budget so so in in technology We are continuing with our onetoone initiative and what we have in this budget is the replacement of end of life equipment our technology department has a five-year maintenance plan that's itemized by type of device location the year it was purchased and when its end of life is apparent uh the budget in the prior year was cut a little bit due to funding issues in this year's budget we were able ble to keep up with our um our year plan for keeping right amount of technology and you can see I put in the quantities to show you what we're dealing with in Mount Olive how large we are 1,800 Chromebooks 120 prometheum boards and panels 900 laptops desktops and iPads for almost $2.3 million um facilities and capital roof replacement CMS and Paving projects uh for $4.7 million in transportation eight vehicles of 1.3 million curriculum writing we're investing uh more money than over the past several years to make sure our curriculum is online and serving L to our curriculum District the salaries are well funded to include our contractual negotiated obligations and the we have 36.2 new positions across the dist we get into our technology and this is free emphasizing what we had from the previous slide as far as making sure that the devices utilized both from our staff and students are up to um snuff as far as what be required in that classroom so making sure that the Chromebooks laptop desktops the interactive boards that we have is going to make be do them justice as far as the instruction that's taking place and certainly making sure that the maintenance of these devices are to a point in which we can make sure that we these um devices are lasting as long as they could and also making sure that everyone has an equitable amount of access to the resources from a technology standpoint so just to reiterate the capital projects we have 100,000 budgeted for expansion at Mountain View we're doing roof Replacements Chester M Stevens of almost 4 million and a section of the mount school for 655,000 um it's on the agenda for tonight under Finance we're awarding a contract tonight for the mount for the Mountain Valley roof that's being funded with the current budg Mountain View is that the best school maybe I'm just say I went there it's okay we can laugh so um um as you know majority of our budget focuses upon our staff that we are we attract a high caliber staff and the staff that we do have on our books are the best around hence that's why so many people are moving here so when we're looking from an elementary standpoint we're trying to make sure that we hover around the 20 student more because um one of the many conversations I have with parents from a k to 5 perspective is making sure that that's a top priority another priority is ensuring that we have a child study team that's devoted to our preschool you know as um most people know preschool is an expanding initiative across the state and we want to make sure that we have a team to voted to um those preschool needs that does not require them be pulled out from different buildings in which we lose a lot of time in just Sher Transit um another big thing that we're going to continue to do that we started this past school year is hiring of our therapist whether it be physical occupational who are Mount Olive Township employees as far as opposed to contracted employees that is really critical because um if there are employees they get to know our students and they're not being spread out so thin around you know five plus districts that they go to because they are contractors um also that we're looking to add interventionists and academic coaches from K to 8 um additional mental health personnel additional security guards at each of our buildings so um we're looking to add um to have two security guards per elementary school as well as adding an additional um high school security guard as well as a class three officer at the middle school and that's something that we've been contact and talks with the Mel Police Department you know a class through officer allows us to basically have the police officer on site to better align our practices with them and also an additional ml te at moms as well as the introduction of a K12 supervisor that solely focus upon our multilingual growing population and intervention um you know as a feedback we received from um the public what we're going to do is kind of break it down per building for everyone to understand where that staff is really going to so we're looking at Chester M Stevens which is one of our largest elementary schools in the district we're looking to replace um contracted um therapists by hiring um one um OT as well as um a three um um um physical therapist an ABA a general teacher as well as security guard so we're looking about a little over four new um Personnel at um um Chester stens Mountain View you can see once again it's the same theme about support staff whether it be OT speech olist and ldtc social worker that's a creation of our preschool um child study team that we had talked about in the previous slide we're also looking at adding a resource room teacher um three General Ed teachers and a security guard for a total of 10 positions at Mountain View sandshore once again um the addition of removing the contracted title and making them in-house which is also cost saving to the district we're looking at an new um occupational therapist an ABA a physical therapist a resource room teacher as well as a new security guard and the same goes through a tin Road as far as the therapists are concerned whether it be OT PT and ABA um resource room which is our IC and interventionist as well as security guard U model Middle School we're looking at psychologist a music teacher an Ela interventionist an ml teacher a phys teacher and a class three officer and finally at the um individual level building at the High School we're looking at um halftime nurse a Sac counselor um attendant secretary a clerical assistant as well as um a 02 math teacher right now we have an individual who's 04 we're moving that up to we have 6 and then across the district from a K12 perspective um we're doing is expanding um our existing supervisor of Performing Arts Who currently over only covers grade 6 to 12 we're making that individual K12 person because one of the feedbacks that we have received from the community is want to making sure that our performing in arts has an alignment across the board that we retain the interest of an Performing Arts between Elementary and to middle school so we're making sure that alignment by making on that individual uh K to 12 position we're also looking to add an um supervisor ml World um it should be interventionist um as we talked about before an elementary Ela coach currently we have one elementary math coach we want to make sure that another tested subject is is also um focused upon from a coaching perspective as well as the hiring of a new electrician so those are looking at as far as cost of Staffing is concerned at this point I'm going to turn it over to michon if you can talk about the numbers as far as state need is concerned so um M Olive had received quite a nice increase in their state aid for the 24 25 school year and on the next slide I have a comparison of State meure however I did want to um show you that the calculation of how the state calculates your state aid not go through the detail when you need to fall asleep late at night uh you can read this and perhaps but basically um a district state aid is based on their enrollment every October 15th the state submits um what's known as their Assa which stands for the application for state school aid this is a snapshot every year um of October 15th based on the enrollment uh the state strikes an adequacy budget which then turns into uh it Compares your equalized valuation and the district income and basically where your Equalization Aid comes from which is where now and all would receive most of their state a it's B based on the actual real estate values of the district and the total income of residents of the district it's not based on oh you didn't get much last year so you didn't get much this year there is um a specific formula and is based on real numbers and I do believe though the calculation for this year were um is based on tax returns from the 20 2020 so uh the top five districts with increases in Mars County are as follows and again um these districts are very different from one another what they have in common is that um of the income and wealth of the district and the amount that they were underfunded in past several years so here's a a 10year history of state aid again you want sleep at night you can read this this will help you you can see where the district had um Flat state aid in a lot of the categories and as you move toward the most current year you'll see our almost $5.1 million for this year last year the district almost received 8 million so over the the 10 years uh the state has really help to bring for the districts and providing them with the state aid that they truly need to manage the district and and how it should uh these are our revenues as you know the majority of our revenues are the tax levy here the tax levy this year uh the proposed tax levy is being increased by 2.27% just for comparison this time last year the tax leving was raised by almost 6% so we have really done our due Dil scrubbing this budget scrubbing every line item and creating a budget almost as a zerob based budget and see what exactly the district needs to operate where our efficiencies are and where they're not and how we can better manage them so um you will see here I'm not going to go through each individual uh piece of Revenue I'm happy to answer questions afterward uh if you like you can see excuse me you can see the state aid we have um for our tuition we have several students from other districts that come to Mount Olive because we have a very very good and District special ed program which saves not only now and all of thousands and thousands of dollars with neighboring districts who come here um so that is um Anis increase in revenue for the district uh moving down sheet Medicaid of4 that's prated by the state that's a maintained item toward the bottom budgeted fund balance excess that number is derived from our 2023 audit and this is basically savings from the 2223 budget that the district is required to put forth as a revenue uh for the subsequent year as tax releas the withdrawal from capital reserve is to fund capital projects that are in our budget the rooms and the parking lot the control from maintenance Reserve uh helps to support our required maintenance budget brings us to the total of $127 million approximately uh these are our expenditures uh proposed expenditures for next year I'm just going to you can see the grand total are going up just under 4% of our expenditures um I'm just going to go through a couple of um the major decreases and increases you'll see uh quarter of a way down our before and after CARE program is reduced by almost 90% we have still arer funds that uh we had created these programs the after school programs to um post Co and when the district received These rbor funds that's what they were using to support these programs we still have sizable money that we can use for the next school year so that's why there's such a drastic reduction in the proposed budget for next year the same thing with the summer school we still have Grant funds that we can use to spend on that this year the at risk program which is going down by 38% that's just based on projected staff um tuition going up by 40% again these are out of this these are our students being sent out of District we have a couple of new placements budgeted for next year um child study team 11% this is entitled with our new prek program that we want to put in District we have some supervisors um realigning staff an increase of 38% staff development is going down by the same amount of 38% we are funding a large portion of our professional development title 2A Grant um District receives quite a bit of money of that and that's one of the ways that we use to spend the funds going down toward the bottom security is showing a reduction excuse me increase about 26% which are our new security offices in District for next year and then finally our workman's compensation is projected an increase of 15% and our uh medical dental benefits of almost 7 and a half% those percentages are given to us based uh with our broker of the district and again um it seems you know one could ask we see a lot of reductions large reductions or even small increases and how are you accounting for salary increases I mean we all know nothing goes up by 2% so where are we getting all this money from it comes from a combination of additional state aid it comes from scrubbing every single line item and having all of our budget managers and administrators really working hard to create u a solid budget that really this um expenditure um report is all the equipment fun 12 is where we record items over $2,000 um overall equipment has gone up by 1.34% usually with equipment they're one shot items in one particular school year or another so that's why you see such drastic reductions uh the increases at the top of the page this is in line with our technology plan with the um the items that are over 2,000 the Promethean ws and some of the more expensive technology pieces the bottom is our Construction and the architectural fees to support those construction projects overall with um an increase of and this last side on expenditures is our debt service this um at this point um what's left here $4.5 million it represents in April 26 uh 2016 uh referendum for high school Renovations uh that was done in two pieces half of it about 8 million will sunset in the year 2025 and about 7 and a half million um which is reduced from that will sunset in 2021 and so this is the best part of the slide how are we going to pay this and what's it going to cost us so this is a slide to show how the tax rate is calculated and so the school district is on a budget July to June and the town is on a calendar budget so how the town raises the taxes they do it on a split year that's why you see pretty much half and half so if you compare the net valuations between the 23 24 school year and 2425 uh valuations went up by over $21 million and that translates to a tax to a tax rate overall about so when you relate it to the home assessment for 2425 the average assess was about $325,000 right now the current the current annual tax for the School portion of the tax is about $7,400 proposed about 7650 for an annual increase of $225 or monthly you want to see how that affects uh your home it's increments of $100,000 and keep in mind that this is on assessed value not on the fair market value of your I would just like to rate you know Miss Shon joined our district um in the summer of 23 and one of the things that has impressed so much is her DET um attention to detail you know we started this process for looking at the budget and talking about late fall really at the end of the day and she put together a really thorough calendar of you know events that need to take place and she has really availed herself not only I believe to the board but certainly to the admin team and the rest of the staff I I can say with full confidence that you know she made herself available to answer any questions and required detailed information from everyone so that the information that we shared with the public can be as accurate as possible and really focus upon getting as much back to the students as possible including our staff so I just wanted to thank you misson for her hard work and you know contributions to the district you have any questions from the board regards to the presentation thank you that was really enlighting you clear up a lot of questions I don't know how you do it because work I do have one little bit of confusion and a little bit of worry like discuss have by the way folks my sunglasses I left my regular glasses home I thought it was the new look Tony people said I look like Joe Biden um we're going to be hiring 36 two two new people about 20 of them will be teachers um one of the responsibilities of a board member is to oversee the operation of the district I take that literally every year that I've been on this board I've made it a point once or twice a year to T our facilities go and speak to principles and what have you at the with the knowledge of the superint and I did so again two weeks ago um we're going to be hiring 20 teachers and I'm trying to understand where we are going to put them because the use of our classrooms and capacities have changed dynamically primarily because of special ed so you go in one of our schools you're going to find three interventionists working in one room another one two interventionists working in a room you're going to find in one of our schools they're teaching music in an Al Cove in a hallway you're going to find that some of our schools are at the point where they're starting to think about part on a cart so I'm so worried about if you're going to hire these 20 more people where are you going to put them and how are they going to teach that's that's my greatest concern that's why I keep saying you have to go out for a referendum in a war but tremendous job I look at that we're going to hire all these new people but how are you going to teach them and where you going to teach and certainly I appreciate that sentiment and you know Mr trach has been a dedicated member of this board so he really brings this historical knowledge and understanding of how the district has you know evolved for the past 30 plus years and I think you um shared it you know certain buildings have dealt with two interventionists in a room we're going to probably have to go up to three you know in some cases we may have to move some of our specials in you know The Enclave of like a a little side um classroom but you know really a priority is that classroom you know environment of making sure that especially at the elementary level that we keep it as close as 20 as possible because I've had many conversations with families especially you know the past two years about you know they had 26 27 kids you know in a first grade classroom and that's unacceptable right at the end of the day so with your point Mr shapi it's going to be a tight you you know we're going to be consolidating some you know our small group instruction classrooms we're going to some teachers going to have to travel more than they've used in the past because really at the end of the day majority of the day are spending in that grade level classroom we want to keep that number as low as possible and to your point I know you asked a question of us um about modular you know you asked us for homework and I had a conversation with Mr Miller as well as our architect last week and you know it's going to cost us about 300,000 you know and it's not if not next year it's going to have the following year about $300,000 to acquire a double wide modular in order to house one classroom and that does not always include um you know electricity and plumbing and all that stuff and that takes about a year of State approval so we're going to be having conversations come this summer and early fall for the 25 26 school year because if as our numbers are exceeding our projections that's the that's the next step of our future if uh the referendum conversation is not um started again Andor the support is not seen by the public so thank you for that so I do have some questions and some coms first Mr Shing I wanted to say thank you so much for the detailed information um is this presentation going to be available for the public as well to be able to down the March 11th one is on the website and this one go to we have a section on the website that's called board presentation so at every presentation that's ever done is always loaded up there okay so I want the the public knows then you guys can access this information it's at your fingertips um the other piece then I also wanted to note is I wanted to say first of all thank you for putting all of the needs in this budget really are student driven you know the class rooms the focus on education the interventionalist but the question I kind of have is know the narrative right now is that the state claims that each district should be caught up on state aid meaning that potentially we will not be receiving that that's called the $5 million we just received so I I want to ensure that the $5 million we fil into this budget is not going to impact any positions when we are reduced by that 5 million next year and that it's either onetime tangible items that we're using that money for right now that will be used in classrooms but I I want to make sure that we're not setting ourselves up then be playing catching next year right um so part of part of the bulk of that money and was used for the capital projects the roof um because you're spending $4.6 million it's at least an expenditure that's going to last us for 20 years which is the average Ro warranty 25 years um the the Chromebook uh the technology and the buses in the past the district has financed those large items that the district pays you know1 $150,000 whatever the interest rate was we put it all in the budget to pay cash because we had thisle moving forward and and also this technology budget this year is sort of catchup of last year too so it's not going to be you know I have a slide in here that was about $2.3 million through technology it's not going to be that much for next year because we're catching up and it has yes staff right uh these are one one not one shot items but once in a while and you know the cash if I could have reduced all all of that and we could have financed everything just have the opportunity bu debt the district more than we have to and just pay cash and then I have just maybe a little bit of clarity because you know the hot number is everybody talks about 2% taking your 2% what would occur if the district in this budget didn't choose to take their 2% um that we're entitled to take without going out to a vote or referendum on that um how would that impact if we didn't this year or you know future years so so right now in this budget the tax L increase is 2.2 2.27% that consists of uh a 2% increase on the current tax levy plus an enrollment adjustment of about $185,000 uh that value is about $1.8 million so if we did not do that then I would find 1.8 million of reduction in the budget and that would be for this year and then that would be for 24 then we'd have to and then of course releasing that 2% every year because that's all you can there is also um last year the board used it a healthare adjustment um the we were eligible for a health care adjustment of about $750,000 that we did not need and we're banking it Bank cap is the difference between what you can increase your tax levy with or what you choose to do so now that 750,000 will roll forward to next year and roll forward we have years anyone else from the board have any questions Shan thank you so much and then we have no other uh subcommittee reports I'm gonna um actually throw in my board um my board president report at this moment um I wanted to bring you know two two subjects one um we actually received news today so not all the um members actually know but we have some really good news is I wanted to say thank you Mr droning and thank you um you know everybody here on the board who keeps you know we've been vigilantly looking at financials and I also wanted to say then thank you to our new vendors in doing so um reviewing some of the um legal bills that we thought for covering some of our um unfortunately having to cover our former board members with some ethics uh allegations um what we thought we would have to pay out of our own pocket we've come to find out that working with our new vendors that those bills have been submitted to our insurance company and we were able to obtain approximately reimbursement of about $16,900 um with those due d I wanted to say thank you to all of those that is very very helpful um the other thing I wanted to acknowledge is Thursday um is Mars County School Board Association um we have a meeting however this meeting is something where we have some awards so I wanted to acknowledge that Mrs Melendez Mrs Aquino and myself all have met the requirements and will be recognized as um being new board certified so that means we um had to take uh we took classes meetings that were above and beyond just the Govern one and governance two you can um meet those requirements in the first two years of being a new board member um the other one that's being honored at our meeting on Thursday is Mr stacei will be honored for 30 years of service and that is all I have for my report um before we go into com put comments on action items I do have three resolutions um they are resolutions related to heads so 11.2 to 11.4 11.2 11.3 and 11.4 11 .2 will be resolve that the Mount Olive Township Board of Education hereby affirms the superintendent harassment intimidation and bullying decision recing student [Music] 32446 and resolved that for 11.3 resolved that the Mount Olive Township Board of Education hereby affirms the superintendent's harassment intimidation and bullying decision regarding student 6501 8857 for 11.4 resolve that the Mount Olive Township Board of Education hereby affirms the superintendent's harassment intimation bullying decision regarding student number 24911 and we're going to add another one for 11.5 um res resolved that the Mount Olive Township Board of Education hereby affirms that the superintendent's harassment intimidation and bullying decision regarding student 32446 all right we are going to move on to our public comments on action item 6.1 members of the community may comment on any action item prior to board discussion please see your name address for the record all comments must be uh respectfully presented abusive and obscene comments will not be tolerated this is on action items um please also note any uh questions regarding any active legal or Personnel the board will not be responding to as well we have any members of the and this is with regards to any of the action items if there's comments that are General with Rel Rel to the board we do have another section as well I'm not sure hi my name is precious Phill my address is 37 Ro Lake New Jersey 07828 I'm not sure if this is the time to mention this or not but I was interested in the outcome of the hi investigation and I don't know if this is the place for or do i s more em so so we we cannot discuss um individual investigations but you're more than welcome to um email whoever the administrator is that your um their student school and they will guide you and answer questions as they are able to legally this is PE yes so nice to meet you in person nice to meet you we've talked on the phone so many times so many that's right so why don't you email me tomorrow morning and I I'll get back to you you know I do okay all right so we'll talk in the morning it's so nice to like put a face to the name thank you you so much you're welcome to welcome you though this day for the rest of our meeting like got a little even know he's there that's amazing I'm just impressed would not just do it for a little uh 11.1 uh the settlement agreement I was wondering if any tax pay payer dollars would be used I know we know you but Mr oh I'm sorry Christopher zire 29 sters Lane hecktown New Jersey 11.1 I was wondering if uh any taxpayer dollars were being used for that settlement no none whatsoever not that one okay so let me uh kind of understand the process because there's been some confusion uh normally when something comes in a lawsuit that's beyond general policies or procedures the general councel will pass it over and the board will pass it over to an insurance lawyer they'll playay a onetime $10,000 deductible it's dependent on the case what case would not have that it's dependent on the insurance comp's um contract okay so but you're talking about one time deductible right around the ballpark of $10,000 I I disagree okay in fact iately disagree Mr gerer you might want to chime in here as well uh but after that General C counsel is just there to supervise the case there's no more attorney fees from general counsel to address that unless there is a policy or procedure problem with the board correct well no that's not accurate the board attorney always monitors monitors Insurance matters and that involves working with the uh Insurance assigned Council for a case uh there are frequently various charges that insurance might not cover and that's the reason why the board attorney needs to be involved and to monitor what occurs each case is different but in general that is the overall pattern but mostly you just supervise and interact yes it depends on each case there each case is a little bit different and requires different levels of invol okay has that been a practice general practice previously yes it's my understanding the prior Council was heavily involved in a number of the cases there monitoring and interacting but you don't like negotiate or anything like that correct the only reason I asked is because I witnessed you in a a call on a call and I didn't understand why you needed to be there board attorneys are regularly involved in litigation involving uh Insurance matters that work with the insurance Council we are prevented and prohibited from discussing litigation in public right so I would caution you to not get into any more specifics about that but I think that adequately answered your question no 100% sure that okay uh so there was no taxpayer doll whatsoever that's just one thing I want to get you besides the deductible no other taxpayer dollars which seems to be the general practice for this district is that not correct why not because this is not a matter for for discussion this is for you to comment to us and we will answer you at a later date figured You' say something like that I believe my question is relevant and that public money may have been used to pay the settlement this amount should be in my opinion open for inspection and debate as the fiary resp responsibilities of the board and School administration and to help determine if they have performed the best interest of the local taxpayer as public entities school boards should be fully accountable to their local taxpayer and the citizens of the state and this nation for that matter and The Prudent user of taxpayer of dollars without this information being released the board may feel embolden in future actions that will result in F further erosion of public confidence if they have not been pressed on this issue other potential settlements on a different and unrelated manner could result in the misuse of taxpayer monies so is that all you have to say okay all right I have another one does anybody need to speak okay I did want to talk about action item 10.2 which was the budget one of the things I would appreciate is the referendum I do agree with the referendum we do need to BU schools but it needs to be a zero sum impact and we need to make sure that the what the referendum is for is just to build on okay um and that was kind of what we were told last time and I think that's why it failed from what I understand from the community all right uh I do have a hard you know me I don't want 2% tax increases really don't believe in them my biggest concern is that we've had 13 billion do in state aid brought to this board and now you're going to ask for probably wa about another two million3 million I find it very difficult to swallow okay the other thing is I do appreciate that you're putting the preschool CST in that's very important early detection is very very important um so again I do not hope that you do not vote for the 2% Levy we are going to be taxed by the the town and um as well what I also wanted to bring up and I I don't want to get too much into detail I have this kind of report where I compared our performance reports against are the tax factor of what I would say where schools are in our DFG okay and if anybody doesn't know what DFG is a democratic Factor group it's based on socioeconomic which is probably a better understanding of test taking we did not do very well what I will tell you uh Dr bji is you did increase over the last year in both uh language arts and Mathematics so thank you nice change Pace but what this report showed me and I could share with you I'm not going to go through here because some of the numbers are really bad for us but we are at a 10 11% deficit on proficiency with the English language compared to these others and in mathematics we're 12% down and we pay 23% more in taxes than all of these other districts so my qu my thought is please do not pass the 2% tax increase until we can kind of have a physical responsibility of return on investment for academics for our students thank you very much anyone else from the public who' like to comment on action items and action items we will move forward then we uh move on to approval of the monthly expenditures and reports can I have a motion um by Miss ferera forgot you while second any questions from the board no we'll take a roll call please M Mrs is fera yes Mrs is fitgerald yes Mrs Melendez yes Mrs O'Neal yes Mr orillo yes Mr stach the exception of on a payroll of Jody BOS yes vir Mrs Aquino yes Mrs Fenton yes Mrs NIS yes and we will take a um a motion to move Personnel action items um Mr upon the recommendation of the superintendent I'd like to move action items 8.1 through 8.19 second and do we have um any questions from the board on Personnel action items or comments um i' just like to say congratulations to M King m co and Mr Deon on their retirement um happy retirement and then we'll take a roll call please Miss Jones Mrs Aquino yes Mrs Fenton yes Mrs fera yes Mrs Fitzgerald yes Mrs Melendez abstaining 8.19 and yes to everything else Mrs O'Neal yes Mr orillo yes Mr stach an 8.19 under theater Jord B stay rest yes Mrs SES yes and we will do curriculum in technology um thank you upon the recommendation of the superintendent I'd like to move um 9.1 to 9.3 second do we have any questions or comments from the board none all right M John a roll call Mrs Fenton yes Mrs fera yes Mrs Fitzgerald yes Mrs Melendez yes Mrs O'Neal yes Mr orillo yes Mr stach yes Mrs Aquino yes Mrs L yes and we will move on to finance and operations Mr barell upon the recommendation of the superintendent I'd like to make a motion to approve action items 10.1 through 10.10 second do you have any questions or comments from the board we take a roll call please M Mrs Fitzgerald yes Mrs Melendez yes Mrs O'Neal yes Mr orillo yes Mr stachi yes Mrs Aquino yes Mrs Fenton yes Mrs fera yes Mrs meres yes and we will move to administrative action items 11.1 through 11 11.4 five 11.5 sorry we added those to and I have I'll take Mr Zillow on recommendations 11.1 11.5 second have any questions or comments from the board n we'll take a roll call please M Jones Mr orilla yes Mr stachi yes Mrs Aquino yes Mrs Fenton yes Mrs Fiera yes Mrs Fitzgerald yes Mrs Mendez yes Mrs O'Neal yes Mrs SES yes and we are on to Old business members of the board May comment on any item or topic that was previously discussed by the board do we have any old business no okay seeing none we will move on to new business members of the board May introduce any new item or topic of discussion for the board to consider do we have any new business all right seeing none we will move on to public comments students parents employees and community members May comment on any item of Interest pertaining to the Mount Olive School District please state your name and address for the record all comments must be respectfully presented abuse of our obene comments will not be tolerated do we have anyone from the public that wishes to comment you're good Ken F 133 Flanders drakestown Road um I had hoped that taking time away from a couple of Monday Night VOE meetings would help calm the disfa dis dissatisfaction I seem to feel on a regular basis on the contrary concern and disbelief seems to be at an alltime high after attending the last meeting I did some reconciling and here's what I've come up with multiple past Boe members got up to speak a few meetings ago and after an eye-opening and quite frankly damning speech the response from the board president was that she missed the sense of humor from that member I found nothing in that speech to be humorous the only thing humorous is not reading a room and knowing when to say nothing the comment came off as dismissive and rude next we have somehow managed to have three special education attorneys in less than two months I'm amazed that special education parents aren't up in arms maybe it's safe to assume that narrative going to cpeg is more comforting and being supplied to the special education Community that's not being given to the general education population I find the turnover to be nothing short of alarming and irresponsible speaking of special education I would love some clarity on why a board member abstained from voting to go out to RFP for new Council on March 25th but voted yes at the 420 uh the 415 meeting appointing that Council every action taken by this board will be under tremendous scrutiny after the debacle of the February walk-on item so I encourage everyone to realize that the perception of of your actions is as important as the actions themselves continuing with special education I'm curious what baseless arbitrary line of thinking was used to remove the seemingly capable special education attorney from shank price which has led us to two more blunders in our third representation in only a couple of months I hope that guilt by association or personal agendas were not at play using that logic we should re-evaluate our current board representation based on the failure of their special ed education attorney and the fact that we don't have a retainer which seems like a gross oversight for individuals that were concerned about the cost of the attorney I will end on this I want to take a moment to applaud the individuals that have voted against the insanity of the past couple of months and commend you commend you for not filing prosay against the board when you don't get your way thanks chis 29 sers Lan hacktown New Jersey uh I understand I didn't win I tried 2% uh I try every time um I get it I totally understand um so what I want to make sure is what people understand is I know 80% is the teachers and normally when you start talking about budget people will say oh well then we're going to cut that large section this and what I stated before has no Testament or or no against the teachers the problem is I know that there's times that the teachers don't have all the resources they need and we have shrines to this the sports out there and some of these teachers are scrambling to find resources so it's very difficult for an outsider now I'm well aware that it's 5% of the budget most of that stuff okay I get it um but it's very tough to swallow when you see all those facility upgrades and teachers are scrambling for resources uh last thing I want to ask Mrs um naris you brought up that we were able to retrieve 16,000 against ethics charges that were for board members that were indemnified uh out of those uh ethics charges how many board members were found guilty yeah it's goose egg it's goose egg no I'd have to actually look at each of items no problem it's goose egg just so you know so I'm glad that you know false ethics charges were reimbursed means a lot thank you very much good evening Glenn Miller director of billing grounds I just want to thank an unson hero that's retiring after 35 years Tommy Jon Tommy always comes to work with a big smile on his face and he makes a difference so I just wanted to personally thank Tommy for his 35 years thank you thank you [Applause] Tommy we have any other members of the public that wish to come and speak at the mic none all right I will then move on to the board administrative comments members of the board make comment or administrators um on any item of Interest pertaining to the Mount Olive school district and we will start at the end Mrs O'Neal just one to Echo that thank you for Miss showning and your work on the budget it's impeccable and I really appreciate the time and efforts you put into making it transparent yes but also digestible so thank you M congratulations to Alles U Miss Nancy gilber and and mrso ditto what Mrs Fitzgerald and Mrs Melinda said um Miss I'm going to dit them as well but I also want to congratulate the drama club for their first nomination very exciting and we'll come on over to Mr Stan sure let me let me carry on with the drama thing I think we might have the same but before I forget the Middle School play is this Thursday Friday Saturday this is the quo's daughters in it we got to go Veronica U they were ecstatic today because usually when you go to the playhouse you're up against all the big contributors down there and we just don't get anything this year we got some of the top prizes for instance we we got the outstanding play which now means that we will be be performing our play for competition down there which has never happened before and also uh we also have the male lead who got it who will also be performing that doesn't happen we received nine nominations and two honorable mentions which is only second in nominations to Summit which is what person who gets it every year do we did a pretty damn good job down there so thanks to the drama kids they did a great job I wanted to Echo Mr to the drama Department I was reading about it today and really proud and um kind of mindblown it like nomination after nomination it was like one award after another so that was really impressive I also wanted to thanking for that awesome presentation um I wanted to wish the a students good luck on their upcoming exams and I wanted to wish all of my fellow Educators a happy teach your appreciation with and ditto to everything everybody else said standing thank you Dr bans do you have any comments for us I'm good good I think the budget was enough and I'm just going to Echo 11 11 nominations for you know the pap Playhouse is amazing um and I did have you know once upon a mattress for the middle school on my list to remind everyone and the quo's daugh likes back the the and I also want to um recognize that I didn't notice we have our Ste camp registration up on our website um looking forward to the summer a couple months away um and we also have a concert coming up on May 1 we are now rolling into where I call it our busiest season of fun celebrations and awards so please check the calendars and websites and all of your emails you there's plenty to go see of our students performing you know on the sports field being recognized whether it be drama music you know academically these our students are really really talented amazing and in every Avenue that is success for them please support them and recognize them um and you know I wanted to say thank you for all the fairs we had the future spare that was phenomenal and theare spare um I think that's all I have so with that I'll take a motion for us to adjourn into confidential session I think we have a little bit of a break still waiting for some um be it resolved that the board meet in confidential session for the purpose of discussing uh personnel and matters of attorney client privilege um we further resolved that matters of uh discussed in confidential session be disclosed to the public when the reason for confidentiality no longer exists I have a second or motion so move all those in favor all right you're adjourned for the moment e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e