welcome all to this evening's meeting we'll start with the meeting announcement Wendy the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of of and to attend meetings of the public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the sparta board of education has caused notice of the time and place of this meeting to be published in the New Jersey Herald The Star Ledger tap into spa.net and notice of the meeting has been posted on the sparta Township School District website thank you PA rise for pledge [Music] allegiance oh we'll do that after I Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the indivisible andice we a roll call Joan Miss Kier here miss gagnan present miss lonsky here miss McMichael Mr pesi here miss cander here Dr Serrano here Mr wood here Mr Mars here are we going to start this evening's meeting with presentations we're going to start with an audit presentation by Laura Atwell hello can't hear her is it on is the microphone on there I have no idea all right it's on it is yeah thank you we also have the presentation over here on the board as well as handouts for the board members which has uh essentially the same information does the keyboard work the uh pres yes great I'm actually going to hand this to my coworker it's going to be easier for um Kelsey to handle that piece while I'm flipping through the papers so Chelsea is the manager that came with me uh tonight she was heavily involved in your audit over the summer um well actually was towards the end of this summer I think we came in for our uh meeting with the board got to introduce ourselves uh you asked us how we were going to complete the audit i' like you know that we're going to put a lot of hours in and that's exactly what we did so uh normally the state has been holding up the Auditors over the last seven years roughly where um there's information that comes for the accounting world where it's um for accounting purposes but not necessarily uh for the cash on hand so what you're going to notice tonight is when I go over the information I've pulled that accounting piece only out and I'm going to focus on just that cash so if you were to compare these numbers to the audit you will notice there are differences but that's why so I like to think about um the actual cash that we have available that were're able to actually utilize um during this whole process um we we've been working with school districts for a really long time uh we specialize in public school districts um we have a team that comes with us during the process we harass every member on uh the business office and then we do meet with a lot of different areas we look at your cafeteria your Student Activities your payroll uh we get to look at the fixed assets all the projects that have been going on we've had a lot going on the last few years so um it's an exciting time for the school district and I know we have a lot of projects coming up and that's why you have your architect next I'm going to try and go through a lot of information very quickly if you didn't read the audit um there is a pop quiz at the end uh but uh hopefully you'll find the handout in front of you to help kind of put things in perspective give you a visualization as to what happened during the year we've also included um information over the 10e span too before we get to the financials though I do like to cover one of the most important pieces of the audit which shows up in the very back of the audit which is your recommendations and your suggestions I'm proud to say there are none uh your business office it they were great to work with um they were very helpful every person was knowledgeable um even with Christine I have to give her a special shout out because U she was nearing retirement not once did I hear I'm on my way out she was great um so we appreciate that help during that process which did make the audit a lot easier and make it easier for us to be able to make things more timely with that being said we're going to move right on to the financials um so with the packet you're going to notice that um starting with the revenues we had uh $77 m165 th000 this was an increase of a, 452,000 since the prior year our tax levy had increased uh 2% the miscellaneous revenues had increased as a result of primarily our interest prior year refunds and Facilities use uh this is a nice thing that we've seen over the last year and continuing to this year is that those interest rates are finally improving uh so hopefully they stay uh around this amount for longer um we also received $2,282 th000 in Grants uh this was primarily related to the covid grants um or Co was a good good portion of these grants there was about 484000 of those um which had contributed to part of the increase compared to Prior years when looking at our first set of graphs on the uh top left you'll see a pie chart which breaks down your current year revenues and then um you'll notice that Sparta um between Sussex Hunter County Warren County we are pretty similar when it comes to the school districts where the green portion of this pie does make the biggest portion and then the blue portion which is our state sources is a pretty small amount the state keeps cutting our funding hopefully that won't happen to our district but it's kind of inevitable but every time they do so now we have to make up for that money somewhere else which is going to be your tax levy which is making it really difficult because not only are you trying to um navigate the budget cuts from the state sources but you're also having to navigate all the increased expenses that we're seeing with inflation to the right you'll see the tax levy um the tax rate excuse me over the last 10 years you'll notice in the first part of that graph it does dip down quite a bit uh this was due to a reevaluation or reassessment during that year it basically took the whole pot of our taxes um and our assessments and it kind of just shifted them around it didn't change the total size though just kind of how we allocated things a little bit on the next slide we have the 10 years uh you'll see that a lot of these graphs do stay relatively the same which is what we want to see um our state sources as I mentioned over the last few years you do see a decrease in that area it's pretty common I don't expect it to go opposite way our federal sources as I mentioned the last few years we've had a lot of Co funding coming through we do expect that to start kind of dissipating over this year and um maybe a little bit in 2425 that remained and again the miscellaneous income we had our interest our prior year refunds and our facilities use that had increased this past year uh again the biggest increase with a lot of the districts that we're seeing is primarily because of the interest rates and then we also had our increase in our preschool enrollment which is again another common theme that we've seen across the state of New Jersey which is pretty nice because uh we did have that big dip between 2020 and 21 with covid a lot of students weren't didn't seem like they were coming into the districts and now we're kind of bouncing back from that as for the expenditure side of things we had operating expenditures approximately 7 m 71 M38 th000 our largest increase U was for operating expenditures was student and instruction related costs when we're comparing to 10 years ago operating expenditures had increased 13,1 169,000 our expenditures had increased from 10 years ago largely due to our instruction and student instruction related Services um one of the things that you saw in the state of New Jersey over the last 10 years is the shift of the categories and where our expenditures were actually going one of the biggest um categories that we've seen change um is actually the student instruction related cost because the state started putting a lot of implementation um as restrictions as to what we were supposed to do the state likes to oversee everything so one of the things that we started seeing is uh for example we needed a librarian or a specific media person or uh maybe before we didn't have uh a media person but we had a library and now that title has kind of shifted to that route now that we're going more electronic with things um so it is interesting to see how those costs have changed in the different categories they might have um they continue to go up in some because the costs are just going up astronomically and others we kind of expected to see them go up and they are common across everywhere we're going uh so on the next SL you'll see we have a breakdown of the last 10 years uh for the expenditures the instruction um again the costs are they're just climbing up they continue you do so uh they're really hard to control a lot of these categories are going to follow exactly that suit we have our inflation that's happening uh the last couple years and continuing uh with the other instruction that does include our special education so a lot of times you're going to see that category as well as the one right below it on this uh screen the student instruction related Services a lot of times you'll see both of those categories both go up at the same time as a result of your special needs students um because your child study team is included in this as well as other uh like resource rooms um other special categories that are primarily related to our special education another common theme that we're seeing is the transportation over the last few years has really spiked since Co and that's every school district we've been in practically um so that didn't deviate from what we expected um employee benefits we have been pretty steady over the last 10 years which pretty good along with our general Administration and then our plant operation maintenance um this has actually stayed relatively um study too one of the things that you usually see with the plant and maintenance is it might fluctuate from year to year based off of the different projects that we have for example if we have to start doing a lot of Maintenance inside um but when we get to fun balance you'll see how those reserves had helped kind of steady those costs too as for our fund balance uh we had 1, 257,000 set aside for our Capital reserves uh we have 536,000 for our maintenance Reserve incumbrances which are items that we had ordered but not yet received at the end of the year was 1,4 36,000 1,100,000 is for the middle school and uh relating to the roof and then 139,000 was related to our bathroom renovation we had an allowable unrestricted um in the last couple years the state had changed the Restriction associated with this category we were allowed to have 2% of our operating expenditures this was allowed to be our unrestricted fund balance over the last couple years the state said um you can go from 2% to 4% and then this year that we just ended though we went back down to that 2% um so we did have that shift when looking at the graphs um at the bottom you'll see we have the restrictor which is our excess Surplus we have the encumbrances I expect the encumbrances this graph to actually shift quite a bit from year to year because really it's just items that we had ordered or projects we might have started we just haven't finished at the end of the year and then with the uh unrestricted this is one that doesn't tend to fluctuate too much but you do see in 21 and 22 where we did have that Spike as a result of our 2% moving to 4% as well as um this category also includes extraordinary um Aid uh which is a catch 22 because in order to get this Aid you have to spend a lot of money on your special needs students in order to be able to get anything from the state which is an application process where they're essentially reimbursing us at the end of the year um so sometimes you do see spikes uh there was a year about 2 years ago where the state um they decided to reimburse us say 90% but then the following year they would change their formula and then drop it down to 70% or 50% so now really we don't know from year to year how much that amount is going to be one of the biggest questions that I get from my school districts is how are we doing how would you compare to other places I try not to compare my school districts from one to the next except for the trends we do know which categories are probably going to go up and down Bas off of the trends that we're seeing um but the biggest piece when I'm trying to evaluate how well we're doing is to look at our reserves um are we maximizing all of our reserves as well as our unrestricted allowable amounts because the state does put a lot of restrictions on us so we want to be able to meet make sure that we're trying to meet those restrictions um one of them being our capital reserve which is based off of our long- range facility plan the state tells us we can have up to 60% of that plan put aside um one of the biggest things that we see here uh sometimes with the capital reserve when we see the ups and downs with it uh ideally we want to see it go up but at some point we're going to use that reserve for exactly what it was intended for which you do see happening over the last couple years but now that we've kind of used it for those purposes we know that we have a lot of projects that are coming back up so again we're going to have to replenish those funds with the maintenance Reserve this is another one that the state has a lot of restrictions on is based off of the square footage of our building uh and that's how much they allow us to put in it which is a a lot less than our capital reserve it's a lot easier for us to try and maximize that one obviously every time we do a capital project we're going have to maintain that project um and as we mentioned before when we have the um plant and maintenance category and we see those ups and downs this Reserve is going to kind of help offset those costs and how they were going up and down and our biggest driver for everything that we're doing is our students so here we have our enrollment over the last 10 years um one of the nice things about Sparta is that the graph doesn't shift too much um a lot of our districts over the last 10 years especially in say Hunting County and Warren County have seen a 28% decrease for years I kept telling them I really I'm I'm hoping I'm hopeful that we're going to start studying out and we're finally starting to see that so over um the last 10 years Sparta has only seen a 9% decrease which is pretty good and then however when we're comping comparing to the last year we actually had a 2% increase so we are going in the right direction hopefully we continue that way um this is one of the better districts to be at when it comes to the enrollment because those 28% decreases are very scary to see um you have seen a lot of places consider whether or not they need to keep all their buildings and how they needed to shift things around or um kind of move the grades from one building to the next so I know I cover a lot of information in a short span of time if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them if you think of something later down the line um you're more than welcome to reach out to myself or let Joanne know and she can relay the question to me and you have my card if needed any seeing none I thank you for your time and I hope your meeting goes pretty quickly tonight thank you thank you excuse me agenda during during the agenda items if you want to wait public session if they're going to stick around um when is your public session after the next presentation Kur I'm so sorry I must have missed the window but I do have a a couple questions if that's okay thank you so much um and I can email you cuz I'm sure I'll come up with more as i p through it more um you had mentioned that the audit was more based on cash on hand assessment as opposed to the you kind of put accounting to the side was the way that you explained it can you just explain that a little bit further for the people watching so the information that's provided by the state that goes into the accounting process is related to our other post-employment benefits as well as our um pension benefits for our retirees uh what happens a lot of times with the accounting side is they will give us information um it'll come in as a revenue and a lot of times uh go immediately back out as an expenditure so there's one piece that's just a wash there might be um an expense or a benefit that's also related to it but we don't actually get to physically see that money coming through um so that's what we kind of um if you think about when you're doing your taxes as a business owner uh there are two different types of basis typically that you're used to you have your acral basis and then you have uh say your cash basis Cash basis is going to be physically exactly what you have in your hand what you're able to go and spend that day and um we always talk about cash flow when it comes to the cruel basis this is where we start thinking about on the potential liabilities that we know we're there we have to pay our car coming up we have to make our mortgage payment we know there's going to happen in the future um but they might not necessarily affect our cash on hand right that second that's what's happening with this state provided information but that money doesn't even even when the liability does happen it still doesn't actually affect the school district so it is for accounting purposes solely thank you so much and then one other question in terms of our capital reserve the actual um that we have versus the uh maximum allowable through the state uh same question for the maintenance Reserve um I'm sure that you the recommendations you said you don't have wouldn't necessarily apply to this as much as general practices but my question would be based on these numbers we're seeing here um is this ideal and do you have any specific recommendations you can make in terms of bolstering this uh knowing that we are in the process of not only completing some projects but also we have many on the horizon um so kind of twofold uh is this ideal and also where should we be or where would the average uh aggregate be based on where we are right now uh typically with my more financially stable clients I do see that they are closer to about 50% for their capital reserve and the maintenance Reserve is closer to being maxed uh at the highest level of available um allowable amount obviously there are going to be times where we're going to be lower where we had some massive projects going on um one thing to consider um I know Joan and I have talked about referendums they're very difficult item to talk about nobody wants their taxes to be raised but there is a you know positive to it because when we go to referend and we get a state approval even if we don't act I'm going to let you in on a secret so um even if the state says you can do this project and your taxpayers say yes you can do this project the state decides we're going to pitch in too you know you you went through that whole process we're going to give you a little benefit so then we get some savings on the project that we thought we were going to put a million dollars out or 30 million or 50 million now me might only have to put out say um 44 million instead of the 50 the other thing with this is if we do a smaller referendum for example if we had the capital reserve set aside we know we have the cash but maybe we still want the benefit from the state one option is actually to still go to referendum and instead of getting the bond and going through that process and worrying about the interest rate with that you would instead get a bond anticipation note and you would pay this off just say a year later and the result of this is actually the state will give you that benefit as if you had gone out for a bond sale which is an unusual route I've seen a couple districts do it over the last couple years before that I had never seen it before I was amazed that the state contributed and I thought it was a great idea especially for cash flow purposes because then it gave us more flexibility with things and it did allow us to get that savings from the state which we normally would not have seen if we had gone the regular lease route or paying it fully out of pocket so that is something to consider um just for the back pocket last question I don't want to put words in your mouth but when you say more financially stable clients um yes I don't mean to say that you're not stable I do want to clarify like I said um that's why I try to mention we have a long range facility plan we have a lot of projects that we want to consider there might only be certain projects that are more immediate than others so our long range facility plan might be pretty substantial compared to my other districts that might be smaller where they don't have quite as many projects and they know those are coming up soon where they need to start actually packing away that money in order to be able to help uh those costs coming up so really it's going to depend on what our next couple years look like um those projects if we're be able to uh cover those costs otherwise um if you know that they're more immediate those are the projects where we're going to want to try and get those uh reserves up in order to meet uh that goal so not necessarily 50% or anything like that it again it's going to vary from District to District um when I say 50% it's probably a district that's a lot smaller um they have a lot less projects and a lot less buildings thank you so much is there anybody else here thank if you want to stick around a little bit for public session it'll be coming up next okay thank you thank you the next presentation will be by architect along with Dr Beck uh Alan Barnett uh yeah you can C is that is that uh that mic's tethered there if you want to walk I'm sorry what's that uh it's tethered there so uh to be recorded people yeah yeah cuz I'm short yeah all right good evening um so you all know who I am but I am joined by Allan Barnett of darar Rabino Architects Alan Barnett has been our architect for for the past couple of years and um he has been um doing a lot of work with us including the collaboration on this uh preliminary referendum proposal and I want to stress preliminary um I'll get into the actual presentation so uh I want to stress that this is preliminary so we we all know and acknowledge um that Alpine School that the population is growing at Alpine School and as the population grows the the room the space at Al Alpine School uh seems to shrink right so uh just a little background regarding that I and I've mentioned this before at board meetings but I want to just reiterate um how and why we are where we are um up to this evening so the background is and I've said this before um years ago the prek program at Alpine School was a halfday program and as was the kindergarten program was a halfday program so um and then years ago they decided to uh go from half day to full day programs for prek and for kindergarten and what that did was if you have a halfday prek program and you have one classroom you can get two classes into that classroom but when you go full day now you have those two classes now need two classrooms so um when the decision was made to go full day for prek and for kindergarten you at the time um the decision led to the fact that you would need double the amount of classrooms and you couple that with the growing population that is happening at Alpine School and and throughout our district and as the Auditors point out is usually a good problem to have with a with a growing population um just not so much when you're talking about space in a building so we uh as an admin team and as a board we went uh we we put in a lot of work mostly as an admin team we've met multiple multiple times for hours upon hours trying to figure out exactly what we might be able to do within our current uh building structure talking about moving grades um renting extra space uh there there was a bunch of different options that we went through and we created pros and cons list for all of those different options and um the bottom line was most of those um well pretty much all of those uh were not feasible or what they would do was cause uh they would just move a crowding problem from one building to another or cause all kinds of other logistical issues um because all of our other buildings are running close to Capac capacity as well so moving grades around um would just move problems around as far as um population goes so what we landed on was let's pursue the idea of a referendum let's pursue the idea of expansion um so the next step was hey let's pursue the idea of building a brand new school which would be a great thing um we ran into a lot of problems when we were looking at property and I and I've gone over this at previous board meetings before um we looked at um town Township owned properties we looked at District owned properties we looked at properties that would be for possibly be for sale um and none of those properties would work as far as either building on those properties or as far as location goes um so we abandoned that idea and came up with the idea of solving Alpine's Problem by adding on to Alpine School and that's where we are this evening we have a proposal um Mr Barnett came up with a bunch of different options actually as to how we might be able to add on to Alpine elementary school and what would Al adding on to Alpine Elementary School do for our population building addition would apply to the Alpine Elementary School in order to accommodate the growing population uh the specials would be housed in their own classrooms they would go back to their own classrooms we could design um we could design the addition to Encompass a a a room that was made for music a room that was made for art and of course other class classrooms um the modular would no longer be used as classrooms as we know the Modell have been there for quite some time um and they weren't designed to be there for quite some time um so those would no longer be used as classrooms and we would repurpose them uh all of these proposals all of these options actually have us keeping the modular there but not using them as classrooms for children and uh the addition would provide obviously the necessary room for growth and um regular classroom spaces as F and additionally some small group instructional spaces what a referendum would also include and we are still working on this is uh all of the other buildings receiving essential upgrades um and those examples of those would be like our elementary schools uh our elementary schools have partial air conditioning and and HVAC work what we would do is we would make sure that all of our elementary schools and all of our buildings would um have air conditioning we would put new windows in we we put new doors in things like that would be part of the referendum so what you would end the referendum with is necessary upgrades to all of our facilities and additional space on the Alpine campus what you'll see tonight when Mr Barnett walks you through the different ideas is you would see you'll see an additional gymnasium at Alpine Elementary School that additional gymnasium would in would um increase use during the school day and it would provide for Community use outside of school hours as you know at Alpine Elementary right now it's a multi-purpose room it is used as a cafeteria therefore it is out of commission for fizzed class during lunch periods and uh this would help with uh operations as well as with Community use outside of uh outside of school hours eventually again this is all preliminary tonight this is just uh this is where we're at right now giving the board an idea of what this might look like um the next as the process progresses we will have public input sessions and decide what the next next steps are as a board and um obviously I I spoke to our collaboration with the Cara Rabino um and what they've done with us so far and I'm going to turn it over to Mr Barnett who can walk you through the highlights of of the multiple designs that he has thank you very much when we started this when we started out with this we set a a a benchmark uh for the for the various options that we're going to study at at Alpine those include a two-story building addition which will house seven prek K classrooms 10 academic classrooms that will be sized for grades one through three three small group instruction spaces miscellaneous support spaces and a multi-purpose room so what I'm going to do I think there's nine total options I'm going to walk you through them they'll start to get repetitive towards towards the end uh so we'll we'll go through quickly and then if there's any questions along the way please feel free to to jump in and interrupt me so when we looked at Alpine School we looked at in particular we looked at the back portion of it and how that could handle this is going to there's no way I can go up there and talk there's no not while uh incorporating the folks at home okay taped yeah can I take here just leave that on that's so much better this is so so and then I just have to tell you or do I over it's wireless I I could help you know want that no all right all right so we looked at Alpine we looked at the back portion in particular as it comes off the octagon shaped modulars that were done I think they were done back in the 60s or 70s and how we could make that tie-in connection happen so that the so it still felt the addition still felt like part of the school we we you'll see where we can we looked at this building a little bit later this is the modular classrooms which we left we left alone they're going to be repurposed for uh District storage uh and some other spaces which we'll get into in in in as the referendum progresses but the first piece is you come off of this one here we have an academic Wing that comes off of that keeping the prek-k on the um on the first floor with the academic classrooms up above there is a current loop road that goes around the building this this bus drop I left this bus parking lot I left where it is in this option so I cut that that Loop off but I created a new little turnaround drop off area for prek K in particular to where they can do a kiss and drop and off they go into the classroom as opposed to working their way through the entire building to get to the kindergarten off of that is the uh I I put the new mult uh gymnasium multi-purpose room now that's sized for I sized those up in an elementary school because those are typically used for the after school programs the wreck program so that's actually sized to handle a middle school grade basketball court as opposed of just Elementary School with bleachers so that it can be used it can be used after hours and on weekends I in this option I needed to move the playground area from here up to here where the ball field is now one of the one of the constraints of this site is there are wetlands this was a common recurring theme in on the properties that we looked at in Sparta and that's really that really started to narrow down where we could build in Sparta so you see this this light line delineation in the green changed that's your actual Wetlands line on this site this line here is the 150 fot buffer Mark that's that's required by the Department of Education or not I'm sorry the department of um environment the the D doe um D I'm sorry d uh so we had to stay inside of that okay the next piece we need to work on with alpine with this is uh the topography so as this this builds momentum now we'll start to study topography and how this how this works with the landscape EXC I'm sorry just sure uh okay for public just just understand this where's the building right now in this we're just trying to figure out oh the existing okay parking is here I'm sorry parking is here we don't know I don't know parking is here this is the existing building main entrance is here um baseball there's an baseball field here baseball field here sewage sewage treatment here the site tapers down towards that okay does that give you a better frame reference I apologize sometimes I yeah sometimes I a lot longer so we get into option two again this is going to start to be repetitive base layers all the same the classrooms the academic classrooms the small group instruction spaces the gym they're all going to be the same it's how the the kid aparts get reworked to fit with with the the different the just different options right so with this one I took and one you had the gym up here this one I brought brought the gym down here I felt it was better for connection to the to the after hours brought some parking in over here kept it very linear change the change the position of the end of the connection back into the existing building all instead of on the end it's now kind of in the middle and this uh Incorporated a connection an exterior connection there can you see okay option three I think we made it a little more again more linear but I brought the gym instead of up it's now down making more of that connection Point got rid of the on this one we kept the turnar around but I got rid of the kiss and drop on this one again that's all stuff that gets worked out as we as the mo as the project builds momentum same thing Dr Beck mentioned uh music room and art room I kept it all all consistent for these options for now as we go into the programming that's when we start to see okay what do we need to do how does this need to to e and flow there's you know I'm just showing you nine tonight there's going to be there could be 20 more before this thing materializes now this one it's not my favorite but I showed it I show them anyway I turn it into a 90 degree I'm kissing that 150 foot mark from a from a department of environment standpoint they're not going to be really be happy with me with this one so but I want to show it to you guys anyway so that you see what the impacts are turn it 90° has still has that kissing uh still has that turnaround parking the kiss and drop doesn't happen on this one so the the kids will still all filter through the existing building taking a different direction going over to the other side of the site linear option on the other side and see what that does so as we study this further puts the gym at this end bus moves the bus parking from here over to this portion of the site allows that to be parking after hours and on weekends and allows this to have an entrance here makes the connection instead of in the Octagon piece it makes the connection to the this Edition I think it was done in the 80s I think that done had a very linear scheme front you know front to back brings playground from here down here you can keeps a turnaround here we don't we don't need the turnaround here but when we go to meet with the fire department they're going to want to be able to get emergency apparatus close to this so they're going to want that close proximity to get be able to to uh service the or fight the uh building if need be again just Ching that flipping it now to this side you come out this side of this building keeping this I brought a parking lot into this option for again to to work with the the gymnasium linear option with the with the academic Wing uh 6A just that just changed the bus that's right that just changed the bus parking lot parking lot rotation 6A changes it from from here back over to here seven seven I started to get let's go out let's think outside the box a little bit let's start to play with shapes let's start to let's start to see what we can do here create something that feeds off of this intersection and creates something connecting these two space these two existing structures and works off in that manner gets the gym push pushed more towards the back of the property and then lastly building upon that flipped it a different way got the gy over on this side academic Wing pushing out there this creates a much bigger connection point between using utilizing um a more of a direct connection for the gym for for after school and and evening um each of the designs are designed to where the the gymnasium can be shut down okay the gymnasium or excuse me the academic Wing can be shut down from the balance of the or from the gymnasium for after hours so you'll have a control point right with the toilet rooms so that so that this building can function by itself and not have to open up the whole the whole building so some of the next steps that we need to do as this moves forward which we've already started the process is update your demographic plan so update your demographic report so that we can find out um what the what the in projected enrollment is and ultimately what leads to a a phrase called unhoused students okay doesn't mean that students don't get to go to school it just means that it the capacity of the of the building that is a big determining Factor you hit on it with the state aid okay that unhoused students along with another portion of the referendum which I'll talk about in a second helps determine what your state aid on a referendum is okay there's a whole formula that's that's probably close to 30 years old with the state on how to calculate state aid for new construction based on unhoused students the other piece is as as Dr Beck mentioned we are narrowing down the the facility Improvement portion of it which will go across the entire District that piece alone that that renovation facility Improvement you get a certain percentage which is 40 roughly 40% Debt Service Aid on that work so it's a balancing act with the referendum right you want to build an addition but you want to try and maximize your renovation and your facility improvements so when we get into some options where we're going to be touching the building we try and make sure we touch we kind of try and touch as much as we can but without impacting the school too much because that has a fact that has that's a factor in your in your debt service Aid only way to get Debt Service Aid is to go for the referendum if you you were to fund this out a capital reserve you would not get any funding any any Debt Service Aid out of it even um oh another thing I want to just talk about quickly why I've cited the building the way I've cited in all these examples I look I'll use this one for example why I've cited this the way I did is once this passes and this goes in and this is the say this is the option we're looking at how to build this building without interrupting all of the operations the day-to-day operations of this okay so if you look at every one of the my options tonight I'm kissing the the existing building we can do that because we can then control the construction site minimizing the impact to the existing building minimizing the impact yes it's going to be noisy and yes there's going to be a lot of distractions for the kids but we're not displacing kids okay we we can look at options we can look at options I don't recommend it but we'll look at it if if the board would like putting a second floor on places there's pros and cons to that Pro is you get a little bit more fin state aid because you are touching the building more con is every kid that's in this Wing has to be displaced for 18 to 20 months so now you're talking about putting those kids somewhere else that's why I've all the options I've shown you tonight just kiss this okay another option you know the other the costly it's very gets very costly to do the second floor because you need the stairs and the elevator and a lot more a lot more um things um I think that's that's kind of it I know this is this is just the the start of this we can we'll look at we'll look at a lot of other options and I will be back a lot more times to show you guys how we are every every step of the way yeah I think what we'll do from this point forward is allow the board time to digest these I shared them with you all yesterday in an email the same exact drawing so uh you got them explained to you this evening but it was only 24 hours ago that you saw them for the first time so um go through them you know give me a call if you have questions we can always uh pull Allen in on those questions and we can start to narrow this down start to come up with more plans and figure out what the next steps would be again this is all preliminary this is just showing what we could do and what we Poss possibly would do but uh this is a starting point and we got to start somewhere because it's been talked about for years it's been talked about before my arrival um so we are actually starting somewhere this is where we're starting okay I would think so yeah yeah absolutely hi thank you very much that was really great presentation by the way and all the options look amazing I don't know if my microphone's working um I was curious about the process um as far as I know this is very early I realize but um as far as the remainder of the process and your experience doing this before how much input does the um building administrator staff the people that are existing there have in in all of these options I'm assuming they are always looped in but it seems like especially Mr Miller would be like the you know a really great asset as far as like what would be best or what so I'm like I'm assuming he's there like kind of all along the way that you form or again as this ramps up that's completely at the discretion of the of the board it could be it could be two people or it could be 100 people okay but you know the more chefs in the kitchen you know have so so far the involvement has been um asking in fact we've walked around we've walked around the property with with Pete and with Katie at the time Madson um to just start looking at property looking how look at how this might shape up and then asking Pete in an Ideal World how many classrooms would this be what would those classrooms be you know art room things like that um and that's what we've done so far and that's really that's pretty much been a lot of the the admin input so far because we we can talk about a lot of things but is it physically possible and that's we have to get out and involved before we even talk about what is actually possible the first piece is always to see as it physically possible right right right now we're kind of we're still flying at that 35,000 FT elevation right I show furniture and I show you know I show stairs and toilets rooms cuz that's easy you know we have those they're just and and my guys like to draw so they just um but we're not there yet okay the shape of this is not this may not be the final thing that that gets hopefully gets built right you know there's there it could be it could when we start to Hash through these these nine you may say I like I like the gym in option one but I like I like the entry in option two but I kind of like like option eight cuz I that's you know fun and different you know so it's then I take that and I go back and I meld those together mold those together and see what we can come up with you know as well as whatever I can think of that's that nobody else has think thought of yet and I'll you know I come back with all those we we'll take some time to to get the feedback from the board and uh narrow it down and maybe come come back with uh just a few options and then and then do a public input session at that point too and then at some point not a year from now before that uh we need to really just nail something down that this is what we're doing based on what our needs are what the board wants what the community thinks and this is what we got to do because once that's only that's only the start of the process right because from there then Allen has a lot of work to do for the next seven nine months right as far as the as far as the doe goes it's 11 months from when you say I like I like this option to referendum vote date and we use that referendum vote date and always work backwards so there may be times where I'm pushing Dr backck and saying hey I need an answer I need because otherwise we're not we're going to miss and if we miss we're the next referendum date and that's when you miss a window you might be missing three to four months of a of a window right so we need to take our time and do this right of course but also make sure that we keep the process moving or we will just be talking about this for a very very long time and then after after the vote passes there's even more work to be done that's even you know so this is the start tonight really is the start of a multi- I'll say it m multi-year process yeah start to finish right before kids are in the building it's a multi-year process and the other thing too is you don't you're not taking kids on on January 1st you're taking kids on September 1st so so we have to Target if we miss that September 1 window or that date those kids are coming whether we like it or not so we take those we set those milestones and we set those dates and those those become engraved in stone and we work backwards from those so if you say if you guys say to me we want to be in by September of 26 one that's that's that's very aggressive but um um but it that would be my first thing he like no um but we work backwards from that right 18 to 20 month construction three months bidding 6 months plus of documents then we figure out okay there's your referendum and also what we we also do is we'll work with we'll work with you on what referendum dates have the best track record right which which ones work better than others for voting that's great I have another question um I love what I think one of my favorite Parts is that the main building stays intact so that it can be fully operational because obviously there's zero time to waste with any of that so I think that's really wise but and maybe this is silly but I just wondered if there was any benefit cost-wise to keeping things as many things as you can in the back where they are do you know what I mean like obviously there's a lot going on the back the spaces but would it be helpful at all to try and keep Paving or we try but in the in the end or it's just all money it just costs like it doesn't matter in the end uh let me pull up okay say we pull up this one right your playground is about here right this is where this is contractor is going to take all that right he needs staging he needs you know so it's all going anyway you mean it's kind of going anyway this is going anyway cuz of cuz it's close proximity to the construction site so that's going anyway this we would put this in the job that they would have to remill and pave this because they're going to tear it up right they're going to come they're going to pick from here they're going to pick steel from here they're going to tear this up they need lay down space they need trailers they need storage so they're going to they're going to end up tearing this up during construction so the whole back obviously has to kind of go to say kind of kind of go but if you look at you know if you look at this option we could do something like this first right so the kids can go from playing here to playing here we put in the job safety you know the fact that we have to monitor Which Way contractors come and go deliveries that's all part of what we do as as Architects as the architect for the so that we'll say okay this gets shut down at 8:30 right it's an elementary school so 8:30 9:00 this gets shut down no deliveries right it opens up again at you guys will probably get out at 3:30 by then the contractor is gone for the day but we'll we can figure that out so that kids can still come out here and play all those Logistics I mean that's getting we're now getting into we're getting into the weeds of this thing way far away I know way way far away um first let's get the referendum passed let's hope for that problem righta okay but yeah all those kinds of things we we work out it's it's but more than likely this all will go away and and come back in a new cuz I want to study this to see if you really need that much asphalt you know really because we're going to have to deal with storm water retention that's a perfect place to put storm water retention we're going to have to deal with all that stuff um I have a few but I'll keep them super quick um so I heard several times 18 to 20 month average is what we can anticipate in terms of construction okay yeah about that 18 will be 18 is going to be aggressive right so let me let me rephrase 18 to 24 okay wonderful and I'm sure that varies depending on the plans as well too uh depends on the plan depends on depends on the the contractor and it depends on the time frame the time of year you start right it because if you're starting in Winter or you're wreting steel or masonry in Winter that slows the process down a little bit exactly you have a winter like we're having right now if you were building last winter there were no hiccups with construction this this year right now it's just it's harder um say were to opt for one of the or uh numbers one through four options the um I don't want to say basic no insult whatsoever the more the more linear options um in terms of the actual Renovations or facility improvements that we're seeing to the structures that already exist how intensive do you think those would be um if at all are we form of renovations to that or just untouched entirely we look at we'll look at this basic option linear linear you're really touching here okay you're impacting here okay from a renovation of this now that's not to say that when we narrow down the facility Improvement scope which is part B of the I'll call it Part B of the referendum that there may not be work that happens in the existing building okay now we look at that we take an approach with that with the existing building for all your buildings not just not just Alpine say we're going to do HVAC replacement right unit vent replacement uh what we try and do is we mon we phase it in a way to minimize the impact to the school wonderful okay we'll take advantage of as many Summers as we can right if you know on an 18 to 24 month building cycle we'll have two to three Windows of opportunity in that now the facilities portions can can go faster or they can stretch out longer than than than this okay that's that's up to us on how we do it right windows we do a window replacement project Windows typically how window replacements the guys like to work at night so in in here you can be in here all day long they'll come and do these windows at night next day you have brand new windows like you wouldn't even know that the guys were here right and then they move around the building right so again we do that so it minimizes the impact to the students awesome um and my last question is a random one but I'm just curious I noticed that none of the actual um the driveways or the access routes ever connect to that back parking lot is there I'm sure there's a reason for that so I was just curious so it's going to be the encroachment it's that line got it okay wonder I have to stay outside of that line so again if we were to if if when we get into the real nuts and bolts of this if we were to go and we were to say all right well we don't need seven we need four then then I can start to then take this and move this back around got it if need be right we may not need to I'll sit down with the fire department and say do you want it right do you do you feel you need it can you service can you service a fire from here and from here and not get back here and if they say yes because you have to remember you know that's all cost right right thank you so much this was super informative and we appreciate your time for sure so thank you anyone else on the board have a question I have one question regarding the are there any solution that you've seen so far that could keep any of the ball fields or not with that line I really I didn't go that route at this point I was more concerned of let's see if the building fits you know the ball field really is more of a minor this one in particular up here I think is the older one it's not in great shape so I didn't you know you could you could move this around and keep a ball field here there you know there are ways to do it I just didn't look at it yet um because I didn't want that to drive putting the building back there s and then the second question and this may be Pine the sky but um as there any any thought about even like the the addition of parking like a second level potentially of parking for a building of that size because it is always an issue uh we have not that tends to get get very pricey uh to do a to do a pre-cast concrete parking garage tends to get tends to get pricey we have not looked at that yet if that when we do a study of the building overall and what the impact from uh what the parking needs are but that would that does tend to get very pricey quickly because you for that to start to pay for itself it needs to be large than I have one more question sorry go ahead Mr be Dr be probably answer this also but as far as the other buildings like the other additional um improvements yes um you said every building would get pretty much something right so I know that in the past a lot of issues have Arisen when we even talking about this issue or other issues that electrical was an issue or H like everything would be fully replaced yeah great question great question so what we've been doing in addition to this work that Allan and I and Chris and Joanne have been working on um there's also the other piece which is the facility upgrades so years ago um before I came into the district and then it was completed pretty much as I came into the district uh darar Rabino did a full facilities comb through we'll call it where they went into all the facilities and they just said in an ideal world for about what cost would be what what what would be uh what could be improved in each of your buildings some of the stuff is highly necessary some of the stuff was if you have the chance sort of things right we started working off of that document which has a lot in it to really pair down for this referendum what would be the essentials like HVAC like Windows and Doors and um so what we so that report that they produced years ago it was long and that's what we've been work they did it by building and we've been working off of that really just crossing off like yeah this would be awesome but not right now not right now not right now sort of thing and really pairing it down to um to get to what we need and what would be reasonable within the referendum cost to add to you're going to pay for the cost of this facility and the cost of the facility upgrades in addition to that right just if I could add to that when we looked at it we always look at when we look to the projects we look at getting the building we'll call it watertight right that's first then it's life safety then it's um then it's other other pieces so you know you prioritize you prioritize one through 10 and then you say okay well we really like to do X Y and Z and then it's then it comes down then it comes down to dollars right and then it's it's how to allocate the money across the balance of your facilities to allocate the the project and and also try and you know make it fair for everyone right everyone gets everyone gets something everyone gets air conditioning everyone gets uh but you know but then then you get to see the uh we'll call it the unsexy projects the roofs the boilers the the the the infrastructure they're the ones that you know and and that's what we've seen a range of you'll see a range in these plans or in in that report of Highly necessary things like roofs and windows to things that would be nice like possibly like an an upgraded sound system um speaker intercom system in the high school let's say would be great is that highly necessary for the referendum probably not so that's that's what we've been doing a quick question for you Dr Beck this just is in my brain from earlier when you were talking about the previous modules the temporary modules um at Alpine what's the what's the plan for reusing them or the potential new purpose that they could serve or and are they staying on the lot yeah they would stay on the lot uh because they're actually they're serviceable they can be used for things we've dumped a lot of money into them over the past couple of years um to get them air conditioning to get new flooring in there if you walk through there they're actually pretty nice facilities so we wouldn't just knock them down and get rid of them what we would do is possibly uh use that for some office space um maybe some child study team type space and we have a bunch of sheds over there and and as the Alpine staff or anybody walks through Alpine knows that a need for storage within the building so um use maybe some of the rooms for office type space and some of the rooms for storage but to keep it on campus Because Why not it's there and they're actually decent decent buildings and we would have to keep them there anyway as Allan pointed out before through the construction process those students need to be in classrooms while we're working on the building thank you Alan thank you before moving forward um when we do get to public comment you can ask questions to the auditor we're not going to be fing any questions to the architect tonight um there will be full public involvement going down the road public forums public input so just keep that in mind a public comment we're going to move on to student Representatives good evening everyone first things first I want to wish hope that everyone had a very happy holidays and happy New Year and now we're going to get into what is coming up for the student council so first thing we have a student council fashion show which we like to call her stuco for show this is going to be held on March 7th and it's going to be held at the Lafayette House so something about this just little background is this is the first ever that we've ever had in school history so it's going to be high quality dinner with the show the Lafayette House and by high quality I don't just mean a dinner where you're going out to a bar around town and mean something legit where you're going to get great food great service and everything you could imagine so on this the show will feature student models and different clothing from brands from around Sparta and we will have different categories such as Sparta Spirit Weare prom attire and more we will also be having some prizes that are going to be raffled off we're not 100% sure on what the prizes are going to be yet we still have to figure that out but but then so just in general this is a fundraiser that will benefit all four levels of the high school grades not just one and this all the students and the supervisors have been putting a lot of hard work and dedication into this event and we're very excited to see what the result is tickets will be on sale next week and can be bought through the websites they can also and they can also be updated through your our Instagrams and also through the sparta.org website we hope to see some of you there and also we might even have some surprise guests for you guys oo to be determined and it's not me I believe we discussed today ways that I could support this and that's as far as I went but proceed please speak and talk um so for some past news uh our winter pep rally was in December and it was one of the most successful ones that we've had recently so students love the games that we were playing and we had a lot of positive feedback on it one of the main reasons that this was such a success was due to our new uh student uh lunch league basketball which is just randomly picked up a bunch of students have started making teams and playing basketball in our gym uh during lunch and their championship game happened to be around the time of our pep rally so we made that the main event and everybody loved it so on top of that we also had our spirit week which had themed days uh we decorated the halls for winter and the holidays which is we call Deck the Halls um and the main Spirit Week thing that we did was a a huge collection with the sparta Community Food Pantry which we also paired with Deca Key Club HOSA a bunch of other different clubs and activities in the high school it was very successful they were very appreciative of everything that we were able to give them and we look forward to working with them again in the future thank you superintendent report all right thank you all right um as you can see on this evening's agenda there is a formal resolution to recognize the Board of Education members as January is School Board recognition month I would like to draw special attention to this resolution but also would like to personally acknowledge our Board of Education members and Board of Education members across the state as I stated in the December board meeting being a board of education member requires countless hours of time commitment and making decisions that are constantly analyzed by the public and it is no easy task board members know this is all part of the job and still decide to dedicate their time and energy to serve our students staff and school community so in addition to the resolution on this evening's agenda I would like to extend my gratitude to all of the current and past board members who have served the sparta Community speaking of countless hours of commitment I would like to acknowledge the retirees that appear on this evening's agenda they are Ms Wendy Anker power professional who served our schools for 12 years M Katherine ree the Sparta High School physical education teacher who served our schools for 25 years and Ms Katherine Willie also Sparta High School physical education teacher who served our district and students for 30 years so congratulations and thank you to all those retirees preschool expansion update our first additional preschool classroom under the preschool expansion funding welcome students in the Helen Morgan school on January 2nd the class is running quite well and we are glad to welcome the Helen glad to welcome them to the Helen Morgan school as you might have seen in an email we are hosting a virtual preschool parent night on Monday January 22nd at 6:45 p.m. information regarding registering for this event was sent via email and can also be found on our district website and our curriculum section parents who register are encouraged to submit their questions ahead of time and we will provide all essential information pertaining to our prek program including the expansion of our prek program on that evening High School robotics the Sparta High School hosted the largest robotics competition in the state this past Saturday uh January 13th all of our students performed well and two of our teams qualified for the state championship team 5249 Z earned second place overall in Saturday's competition and also took home the Innovation award fall athletic honors I wanted to acknowledge some team and outstanding individual athletic honors from the fall before it is time to recognize the winter honors I apologize for the delay from the fall um Nick Curry was recognized as njs FC Man of the Year field hockey won the N Jack National division girls volleyball won the NJ American Division girls volleyball won the hws tournament with Arn Salis earning the tournament MVP girl soccer won the hws tournament with Riley mberry earning the tournament MVP and football won the NJ sfc American white division lastly are we um a school-based Safety and Security Summit on February 7th from 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock p.m. our district will be hosting our first school-based Safety and Security Summit that will be open to the public an announcement and registration link will be shared with the community in the next few days the summit will include presentations from District staff Sparta PD and the center for prevention and counseling so uh keep an eye out for that advertisement and registration and with that I will turn it over to M Rossi for uh her portion of the report okay I just have a quick update um in relation reltionship to some of the items you'll see on the agenda tonight we are recently um looking at our language arts program our Core Curriculum resources for grades K through five um we're doing a substantial program review for those resources and programs that are currently in use um at the moment we use several different resources to integrate for a comprehensive language arts um opportunity and an instructional plan um those resources are all research based in high quality but they are um kind of like siloed and we have different programs for phonics development phic awareness reading and writing and so we're really just looking at some new updated programs um that would help us to create a more line system for instruction not only between those areas of instruction but also across the grade levels um we have a committee of teachers who are piloting some new resources so you'll see that on the agenda tonight that's a nice way to kind of try them out and see you know what they look like and how they feel in terms of actual implementation um there are also new Ela standards and math standards but specific to this topic tonight new Ela standards that have been adopted by the state of New Jersey um we will have to have them implemented by fall of next school year September specifically um as the date stands and so we continue to utilize you know those uh core drivers of instruction along with our local and standardized assessment data to make decisions about our specific needs um changing core resources takes time effort and careful consideration we've gone through professional development and presentations from different vendors that offer um programs that might support this work you can see on the agenda tonight um we will be visiting several districts or or one in particular that's on this evening's agenda um but to get a sense of how teachers feel the use of these programs has been and and what the overall impact has been on student performance and um finally we continue to partner with Ruckers and the department of ed through our early reading Grant initiative to evaluate our needs to provide professional development and to continue to vet resources to ensure that they're the best products for our students and offer us the best opportunities for our staff um no decisions have been made at this point it is a collective collaborative process and there's been a lot of work that all stakeholders have put into this so I want to specifically thank the teachers participating their feedback is invaluable and I also want to thank Mrs paresi who's our K5 Ela supervisor for spearheading these plans more information to come thank you um just to backtrack real quick I forgot to do the approval amends can I get a motion for the approval of minut minutes motion thanks Craig second second thank you all in favor I um before moving forward I'm going to so we can get to uh I just want to go back for one second the um the new board members who were not here should abstain on those minutes those were from De December 14th so just reflect that the new B if they agree abstain yeah okay um we'll take any questions for the architect uh not the architect the auditor now uh because this went out a little longer than I anticipated so if anyone have any questions um you can step up the mic and lur if you just wanted to thank you thanks Jenny DK I appreciate it Miss Atwell for waiting I'll make it real quick um what do you what was that you you indicated tuition went up 27% do you know what what contributed to that uh the tuition going up in the revenue set of things uh it was primarily due to our pre students the enrollment has gone up um if we are receiving the preschool expansion Aid this year you're going to kind of see that Revenue shift from that category over into the state uh sources side of things okay because there was also a statement made that they're going to reimburse the people that paid tuition for this year so is that going to be a burden on the school that's or it will be a wash they kind of offset each other because now that we're the funds that are going back to the parents is being replaced by the money that's coming in from the state thank you um also on miscellaneous [Music] Revenue facilities use but I don't I can get the chart on that uh so for expenditures uh big spike in transfer to Charter Schools is that do we have a reason for why that happened it went up 23% just additional students that attended the charter school that's it okay 23% seems like quite a jump in one year and then you mentioned Transportation also increased and it spiked since covid do you know why there's a spike since co uh well to be honest we were just talking about this earlier um there is the Consumer Price Index right off the bat that's an increase there uh I think we were talking about 8% previously right um the other association with it is how we've a lot of school districts are seeing the increases with um the bus drivers the shortages just across the state if you're um driving around by where you see the buses all just hanging out you'll see a lot of times there's going to be signs that are posted uh where we're trying to get bus drivers when we do find them now we're having to pay them more we're getting creative in the ways to recruit them now with um giving sign on bonuses in some cases um a lot of the companies when we're having that Outsource those costs are drastically increasing um and then with covid we had the restructuring of how we might have had those routes going versus how they were going previously because now we might be distancing our students or kind of changing the needs of uh you know change with the times and how we're structuring those processes thank you um just a couple more um what is the capital reserve right now where are we uh the capital reserve I did mention this number it's about $1.2 million two um the and I'm glad that you brought this back up because after the architect came on we started talking about the referendum more I want to revisit the idea of um ideally we're going to try and maximize our reserves right um get up to what the state allows us to do but the one component that I um makes you different than other districts is that we also had to consider the amount that we were probably going to go and get a referendum for which was a big portion of our long Jour facility with the municipalities um it comes more clear about their Capital plan they specifically spell out um what the plan is for the future as well as where those funds are coming from me I don't personally feel that you see that as much with the school districts um as clearly uh so that's one component we have to consider here versus other places so um when we're thinking of stability even though our reserves may look like it's a bit low compared to what our facility plan is it might not be as low as we think it is because there are other pieces that we have to consider like the referendum that's going to be coming on and covering a good portion of that facility plan thank you I only had one other question what is the maintenance Reserve another number so the maintenance Reserve was at $133,000 and then through the audit we just put an additional $124,700 okay moving on uh president's report I just have a quick statement um every day throughout the week you we receive uh emails phone calls from concerned parents uh about questions concerns complaints about a respective school or something that's happening within a school co-curricular what have you um we understand your concern and we want to get everything rectified but your complaints and concerned have to start at a building level first don't come to us don't we don't want to be your first phone call go to the building administrator try to get it resolved there if he can't if he can't get it resolved have any questions he'll call Dr Beck and then it'll filter out through there um so please start with the school administrator or whatever Department it's involving before coming to us or sending us complaints we're not mad about it just a lot of times we'll handle it and we'll call the build administrator they have no idea what we're talking about it could have been handled weeks prior so just going forward thank okay I had a motion to approve the hi report motion thanks Craig second second you Joanne Miss Kier yes Miss gagman I'm abstaining and I just want to explain why very quickly um I didn't have or I didn't understand how to properly access the detailed report so thank you to Dr Beck for walking me through that this won't happen again thank you but I'm going to abstain tonight miss lonsky yes Mr pesi yes Miss seander yes Dr Serrano obstain Mr wood I'm going to be abstaining similar to Caitlyn Mr Morris yes okay moving on to delegate liaison reports um for the Town Council shared services we are scheduled to meet this Monday just to uh start back up New Year um new ideas projects uh will report out on that next meeting that's all I have for that one I have a couple of things uh moving forward we are going to try to report out on um um the Committees that we're sitting on so I'm going to start with that we've had a lot of presentations tonight so I'm going to try to keep it brief even though we did discuss quite a few things um we talked about lead there are some remaining eser funds for professional development um a portion of the grant was allocated for Accelerated learning coaching and educator support so this is uh the lead program is going to run um it's run three times now and this is going to be the fourth so that's going to be happening teachers can sign up to um sign up and coll collaborate outside of the school setting the teachers will be approved through Personnel um s Elizabeth this is a three-year partnership uh we're going into year two some of the next steps are for February they're going to come to a board meeting to give the community uh a pretty large update on what's been going on and some action plans for the future uh kindergarten Kat there have been some discussions for a long time in regards to this the gifted and talented teachers have attended the information session and also acknowledged some potential changes to the program manual so we're just going to do some work to align some of the assessment practices for K to 5 um for gifted and talented identification there's a high impact tutoring Grant that's going to be um approved under finance and then we're already talking about budget obviously there's been a lot of talks there making good progress there was a lot of focus last year on online licenses and we've really been working to streamline that and we're continuing to look at platform usage and how online tools complement instruction support personalized learning so we're going to continue to eliminate resources that are not worth the financial impact um so this is you know kind of a moving Target and we're still looking at that as far as SCF is concerned the 10th Annual wine and food pairing event is scheduled for March 9th it's The Barn at Hillside Park it's from 7: to 10: p.m. tickets are already on sale on their website so if you're interested in that you can get tickets there it was a great event I attended last year a lot of fun and a great fundraiser for the schools um I think that's it for me and just to follow Wendy um a quick report out of Finance kns um transportation as we just discussed in the auditor presentation of course we don't have the CPI for next year yet but we um are benefiting from the bus law being increased for us to keep keep buses in use longer and um we are um very pleased to move forward with a full-time standby driver which would allow us flexibility in routes and we appreciate um Joan and her team coming up with more solutions to save uh money within the transportation and including uh having more transportation for out of District students um buildings and grounds there's constant maintenance going on but as uh Dr B Dr Beck mentioned we um had welcomed our newest students to HMS with a newly painted refurbished room for them um and we are starting to uh equip some of the take on some of the esip savings um now that we're completing the shs solar project um which is slated for completion the beginning of this week right going on to next week like it should be by the end of um okay by the end so we'll be able to oh sorry okay okay um once that's complete we'll begin to recoup some of the energy cost savings um as we recoup the cost of gas and electricity um finally as far as budget's concerned um we will be reporting out more in February um but we were pleased to see the benefits of having two budget secretaries one for prek 5 one through 6 through 12 to help um utilize some cost savings as we're looking across the buildings um we don't yet have access to the software State numbers but we do expect to have those numbers in by the end of February um we just to note that this year the 2% Levy in addition to enrollment adjustments and continuing contractual obligations will likely consume the approximately 1.3 million from the levy so we are continuing to rely upon the 700,000 Surplus that we've historically used um to carry over and um Joanna team have uh been looking to replenish our maintenance reserves by putting um by allocating some of that1 $700,000 surplus to put 570 towards general fund and 125,000 towards maintenance reserves which should put us in a little healthier position um so we'll report more next month on the budget as we move forward but those building level meetings are being wrapped up and we appreciate everyone's efforts thank you thank you anybody else okay moving on to public comment number one public comments are invited on all matters pertaining to only to action items at this time please State the action item number as well as your name municipality and group affiliation if appropriate for the record each participant will be given three minutes to speak once you have your allotted three minutes to speak you will not be permitted to speak again until public comment number two all statements should be directed as me as residing officer the board or the administration may or may not respond spontan questions or comments after the conclusion of public participation I'll sign in when I get done um Jenny Derek's tap into Sparta 15.7 lead Wendy touched on it I believe we're talking about the resolution that has high school teachers and admin getting uh stepping into the lead program the training is coming from where um is is it going to be the same program that we see in the elementary school where is the instruction and when is the instruction taking place if it's going to be at the high school um 15.12 academic Awards policy 5440 we're getting closer on this one um in section g uh number two it says additional Awards and it still doesn't quite reflect what currently is in place and the wording there seems to restrict it um removing I understand the need to be vague and to leave some doors open for judgment calls by the Admin but what H what the language shows here is it says um the additional Awards will be announced at the annual academic Awards dinner and that's not even what happens right now there's a a senior scholar dinner scholarship dinner academic Awards presented at a breakfast in the morning underclassman academic Awards and a top 10 dinner and this is what's happening right now but the way the the resolution I'm sorry the way the policy is written it seems to exclude all of that with one academic Awards dinner at which time Awards will be presented so maybe we could take another look at that um the Hoboken visit 16.5 uh I think Miss Rossy you were explaining that that is to evaluate in uh possible curriculum Ela curriculum thank you um the 17.3 transfers Joanne it's the same transfer form as December was that was there were there no other transfers there were just some transfers but they probably were not significant okay because the form still reads December yeah yeah no it should be okay if they put the right one in yeah okay it looks like it still says December so and then 17. ain't Chromebooks um have has there ever been a discussion I brought this up in in with Administration uh discussion to go to High Point solutions to have a conversation with them about what they could do for the district to support different technology uh Endeavors and initiatives they are a an internationally recognized company that do have um work they have people on staff internationally certified to that stay in touch with what's coming and what's already in place for educational standards and so they are looking as they they say Over the Horizon at what districts need and as well as helping them achieve funding and packaging um they've even done some packaging programs some bidding processes that have had uh vendors help out with school projects so thank you thank you thank you anybody else okay motion to close public comment number one motion thank you all in favor I Tara did you say t yeah uhuh okay um so lead is confusing because it stands for something completely different there is a lead program this lead stands for lead educ theaters across disciplines so it's to build capacity for staff it's professional development outside of school hours where we collaborate share best practices develop and refined lesson plans we used the model that another school district had implemented that was highly successful and so it's a signup program and we have the funding specifically for building capacity and coaching accelerating uh professional development through Esser so we're running another round of it so it's completely different yeah I know confusing uh and then you said boken right that's to look at the implementation of core literacy programs for um grades K through five so to get feedback on what that's been like and what kind of um impact it's had on student performance and achievement and I think the next one is for you Matt yeah regarding High Point Solutions uh we've been meeting regularly uh Joanne Tara I um and some it department members as we start to build our technology plan and um absolutely Highpoint Solutions is is uh comes up quite frequently as a possible vendor to use when we're looking at um mapping our Network and uh utilizing them for uh for different Services yes because they are local and um they are um highly respectable okay moving on I get a motion to move personnel and policy 15.1 to 15.1 seven motion thank you Craig second second thanks Vanessa Joanne Miss Kier yes Miss gagan yes Miss lonsky yes Mr pesi yes Miss cander yes Dr Sano yes Mr wood yes Mr Morris yes motion for curriculum 16.1 to 16.11 motion thank you second second thank you Joan Miss Kier yes Miss gagnan yes Miss lonsky yes Mr pesi yes Miss cander yes Dr Serrano yes Mr wood yes Mr Morris yes a motion for finance 171 is 1711 before we move this uh I just wanted to bring up item 17.3 on the transfers it does reflect that this is the report for the period of December 1st 2023 through December 31st of 2023 but did so it is the same but is this the same report that we did approve at the first meeting yeah right so this should be reflective for the January report should be December or we should be reflecting de we're I just want to make sure so you're doing yeah we're catching up from December so you're verifying the December transfers and then also the December board secretary report as well right so next month January so we're okay all right I just wanted to clarify no it's okay all right so I will make a motion to move those items okay second I apologize I had a question about that so sorry um I had a similar question Joan for 17.10 um it looks like there's just a donation from the Sparta High School music boosters listed under what's a REV revision to a motion 17.8 for weit room equipment so I think it's just does that just belong right this was the entire motion that was done so the way we do handle it we just delete the line that's being amended thank you so much can I get a second on finance second okay I'm assuming there's no more discussion Joanne Miss Kier yes Miss gagnan yes Miss lonsky yes Mr pesi yes Miss cander so I am going to abstain from 17.11 since I sit on the sparta cheerleading booster club board but yes to everything else Dr Serrano yes Mr wood yes Mr Morris yes I had a motion for operations there only one item motion thanks Lauren second second Vanessa discussion Joanne Miss Kier yes Miss gagan yes Miss lonsky yes Mr pesi yes Miss cander yes Dr Serrano yes Mr wood yes Mr Morris yes okay does anybody have old business business to discuss new business moving on to public comment number [Applause] two the board uses second public comment period to invite comments on all matters pertaining your school district please state your name municipality and group affiliation if appropriate for the record each participant will receive 3 minutes to speak once you have had your alloted 3 minutes to speak you will not be permitted to speak again all statements should be directed to me as presiding officer the board Administration May or not respond to any questions or comments after conclusion of public participation I don't care are we ready for me yes okay good evening my name is Angela Delia and I am the very proud president of the sparta Education Association while the weather may be cold the activity in all five of our school schools is definitely heating up the Alpine Mohawk ab and Helen Morgan before school programs are in full swing our educators are providing extra support and enrichment in the mornings so that our students will increase their confidence and improve their practice in language arts and math skills our members teach beyond the traditional classroom walls our co-curricular advisers have cultivated awardwinning programs some may think that winter is a time for slowing down but that is not the case for us competition is in the Spartan genes our athletic teams are working and playing hard in fact coach Brennan and the boys basketball team earned the trophy at the Holiday Tournament archery has begun its competitive season robotics hosted its annual competition at the Sparta High School last weekend and earned many accolades Deca competed at Ramapo College last week and we have record numbers advancing to the next round HOSA will be participating in its first ever competition next week this coming on the heels of a wildly successful Middle School Musical SpongeBob it certainly takes a village to create such a professional production our everyday work and our after school sports and activities are a great source of Pride for every single one of our members with our Educators and Paras working directly with our students and and the support of our secretaries it and security guards the success of our students is always our priority I would be remiss if I did not mention the support of our custodians and maintenance staff who constantly go above and beyond to ensure that our spaces are clean clear and safe 7 days a week lastly today Sparta Education Association had the honor of being visited by nja EA's Vice President Steve Bey we were selected because of our deep connection to our community our pride in public education and our desire to improve the futures of both our members and our students the sea would once again like to welcome the new members of the board and the presiding officers and looks forward to the good work that is ahead of us we appreciate the support of the board and the community as we continue to do what we do best provide outstanding instruction resources and support for our students thank you thank you anybody else motion to clo motion to close public comment number two motion second second all in favor I anyone have anything for good of the order I have a couple of things um be quick like Angela said the uh Middle School play was fantastic uh with that being said the Sparta High School play Wizard of Oz is um coming up in March March 1st 2nd and 3rd tickets went on sale on the 15th um so I found them on the sparta spring musical Instagram in their bio I believe the website is is uh show ticks for you.com so those are on sale now what it's on the it's on the high school's homepage um this play sells out every year so if you're interested in going definitely get your tickets and then some other happenings I think um Mohawk Avenue and Helen Morgan have a harlem wizard event coming up I think last time it was through Alpine and it sold out another fantastic event for the community and students and teachers so that is at the high school on the 28th I believe there are some tickets left for that but not many and I apologize I usually include that in my superintendent report the the uh the Middle School Musical um I thought of it when I sat down and I saw Jen Hamilton sitting there as her son was a a lead um but Angela said it and Wendy said it um I went I attended that on opening night with my son and as always thoroughly enjoyable and I cannot wait for the High School Musical as well Dr Beck are you playing in the Wizards game um I was not invited I think he's saving himself for the fashion show is what I thought I heard yeah I I'll one thing at a time I'm focusing more on my fashion evidently that I was invited to um I'll be super super quicker um oh unless were you no um super quick uh I wanted to thank the SCF for stepping up uh to provide that donation that we see in the agenda um regarding the weight room equipment I thought that was really awesome of them to step up um and certainly I'm sure there are a bunch of students um who are really relieved um so thank you to them uh I also had SpongeBob musical written down I bought my Wizard of Oz tickets I couldn't attend the SpongeBob musical because my family was on Battleship New Jersey with our Cub Scout Pack um I would have rather been at SpongeBob but it was um yeah we look forward to the Wizard of Oz my whole family attends and we're we're very excited uh the performances are always amazing so congratulations to the middle school students who participated uh I just want to say I look forward to weighing in on the ref referendum options with the community and our uh board as a whole I think a lot of what we saw tonight was really inspiring and kind of gives us Hope on the horizon for a very long-standing issue I look forward to the tough challenges to come with that um and I also encourage the community to stay involved throughout um I understand Dr Beck is going to make sure everyone has every opportunity to be involved and I think it's really important that we all weigh in where we can some of the emails we receiv received this week that Kurt spoke to it's amazing how many issues we have that can be solved when we solve our overcrowding issues in multiple buildings um so I look forward to exploring those and lastly I'm looking forward to my new role as liaison to the Town Council alongside Kurt I look forward to our first meeting with the Town Council on Monday thank you anybody else okay we're now going to go into Clos session um Clos session will be uh legal matters only no action will be taken coming out um can I get a motion to go into close session motion second second all in favor all that