adequate notice of this public work session executive meeting setting forth day time and location has been provided in accordance with requirement the open public meance act on January 12 2024 I prominently posed a copy on the bulletin board in the lobby of the offices of the Wayne Board of Education which public place reserve for such announcements transmitting a copy of the notice to the record the Wayne today tap into way.net municip clar the district website roll call Mr Mr Bill here Mr Faber here Mr gardano here Mr Paul here Mr pavlac here Mr Pacos pres Mr Roso here and Mrs won here Dr to so good evening this is the time of the year when various National recognition programs celebrating school programs and School Employees happen so it's important to recognize our employees at the local level we see that for this evening we have a recognition program that includes three employee groups first of all it's National assistant principal week so we're grateful for the enormous contributions that our way schools assistant principles make each day to help our students this year our celebration takes even greater significance as we recognize all that assistant principles have conquered to help us through the pandemic and much more the rules have evolved been expanded to include many new responsibilities we're proud of them and appreciate their leadership and wavering commitment to our schools also April's National School library for 2024 is ready set library library and media centers each of our schools are a hug for all kinds of learning activities our school librarians and media specialist overse office today's national school librarian day so that recognizes the professionals who teach the school library working with school librarians spend long hours keeping it organized they're also dedicated to helping children resources they need to keep learn school librarians create environment where students can learn every day of the year give a proclamation my folder is I okay Proclamation for school library month April 2024 re the school library is to ensure that student stud and staff are effective users of ideas and information and whereas School library media Specialists roles to provide the leadership and expertise necessary to ensure that the school library is an integral part of the instructional program of our schools and whereas the board of education has entrusted the school librarian in each school to teach the skills of locating and using information through traditional resources and new technologies to provide literature uh and activities to guide and encourage content and recreational reading to every student whereas life War Lear learning begins and is systematically developed through the school library curriculum of the elementary school and secondary school and whereas the school library contributes to the individual growth and development of all students while fostering both excellence and and E and equity in education whereas the school library media Specialists of the Wayne Township Public Schools have dedicated themselves to work for the quality School libraries for all students now therefore the resolve the Wayne Board of Education of the Wayne Public Schools does hereby Proclaim April 20124 at school library month and all of the public schools and calls upon School administrators teachers students and citizens Wayne Township to recognize and support this action and to participate throughout the month of April in the celebration of school we and lastly National par professional appreciation day was yesterday April 3rd is a day to honor and recognize par professionals hard work and dedication in our schools par professionals play a critical role in supporting teachers and students providing valuable classroom assistance offer offering individualized support for students with special needs the district has done so much in the past few years to elevate and support our par professionals we recognize their importance by providing training opportunities to enhance their skills and knowledge power professionals also provided with several options for training throughout the school year and a new par professional leadership position was created titled program lead par professional most recently a par teacher pilot apprenticeship program was developed with monair State University for those who may be interested in expanding their skills to become a classroom teachers currently the district employs 197 full-time one part-time par professionals and 15 program lead par professionals 12 Wing Township par professionals you the youngsung heroes behind the scenes whom we celebrate today dedication compassion and hard work do not go unnoticed so um at this point we have two presentations so the the first presentation we have Scott Bolder and a number of our teachers will will be working um to explain a little bit more about our English language learn program and so if you could Scott why don't you come on in sure and you have you have your crew ready you have the teachers with you y they're all here okay welcome you mind if I come in to get pictures that okay Dr to say if I come around and get pictures thank you for thank you for good evening everyone um thank you so much for inviting us tonight we are very excited to talk to you about all the awesome things going on with multilanguage Learners in our community this is a growing diverse Community with a number of students coming with multiple languages and it's really something to celebrate these students have been working with these teachers tirelessly to do do some amazing things in the district and we're really really excited to share with you um in the interim I am going to share a few things about the demographics in the district and how this program has grown over the past few years and then I'm going to let each teacher have a little conversation about what's going on at their individual schools they'll actually be able to introduce themselves because they really want to highlight the things that are going on at their schools but I just want to say thank you so much to these wonderful professionals um we talk all the time about the amazing staff we have in here in Lane I'm really happy that you get to meet the ESL teachers these are the best of the best Really they do Miracle work with our kids every day so I'm so thankful they gave up a little bit of the time to share the things that they do with their students each and every day um little background on our program um our students and this is this first slide is all students in the Wayne Township Public Schools and for those of you guys that don't want Carle tunnel we will post this you'll have an opportunity to look at all the stats later um but when you look at every single student in Wayne Township Public Schools we now have 58 languages spoken in Wayne okay you look at the birth countries there there are 69 different countries represented of where students were born coming to Wayne and you also see some of the most prevalent countries where students come from we also represent now 40 of the 50 states in Puerto Rico so that is truly a Melting Pot here in Wayne our students are doing awesome awesome work with these teachers I am not going to belabor this but I did want to post this to the website because sometimes this is a misunderstood um area of Education the correct term now is multilanguage Learners we are not considering English as a deficiency these students will have multiple languages when they graduate I'm sure we have some board members that speak multiple languages you know that is an advantage as you get older jobs college career being able to speak multiple languages ESL is the actual course so we don't have ESL students it's the course they take and we access or some of the tests that we give to measure English proficiency so just a little bit on the more important demographic features sometimes we get asked about things like how do you capture a different country where students come from ethnicity religion we are bound by the New Jersey Department of Education in a public school you do not ask religion and even some of the races and cultures are not represented because students are not given the opportunity by the new Department of Education to answer fully all the demographic questions I say this just to understand that sometimes times there are some students that we count within the work we do but they may not be showing up on the New Jersey Department of Education performance reports as you will there's also a ton of additional funding that comes with these students as recently as 2018 we only got around $50,000 for these students we're nearly at $100,000 and when you look with the new entry students we're well over $100,000 additional dollars and that's really thanks to This Crew identifying students working with them so that that work can go into supporting those students after school programs field trips parent Outreach sessions all this is what's coming from that money and they do a fantastic job the goal of our program is that being multilingual is something to celebrate being bilingual multilingual is a superpower again it's not a deficiency these students need to receive English instruction but also respect their home cultures and their home languages so in these classes these students are able to share things from their home culture they're able to learn English they're learn learning assimilation to the United States but they're also bringing the values of their culture and the various things that they want to teach our students these are truly the melting plot classes of uh the Wayne Township Public Schools and then there's another frequently Asked question slide that'll be posted just goes a little bit more detail um this is really interesting that as of 2018 there was 168 multilanguage Learners in Wayne as of the other day there was 329 so some of that is new students moving into Wayne moving into our community some of that is also these teachers have done a phenomenal job finding students identifying them and screening them to make sure they get the services they deserve okay and even though there's still some students refusing perhaps they don't want to go to a school that's outside of their school zone we've opened two or three schools additional ESL schools in the past few years so that eventually no student will have to change their home school to get ESL instruction we're on the way um but that's a reason why we continue to talk to the board of ed because as we expand the program there's Staffing and support that need to be discussed um additionally our program is interesting that we have 183 students that were born outside of the USA but there are 129 first generation students here in uh that were born here but their parents are from other countries I'm not going to read every one of these slides but if you want to go back to this presentation you'll see where the breakdown of students are at as you can see a lot of the students are concentrated to some school zones and more interestingly look at the numbers K through2 students are coming to Wayne they know this is an exceptional District families are moving here for our exceptional schools and if you look at the back end you have students finishing 9th 10th 11th 12th grade because they want to come here for a US diploma and the these are students that are you know taxpaying moving to this uh moving to Wayne for this education in the middle it doesn't mean there's less students it means this phenomenal crew is exiting them from the ESL program because usually these students are exiting around three years so they come in very limited English within two three sometimes four years they're moving right back into gened fully English proficient and that's because these folks here are rockstars if Within in the English language Department these are actually how the breakdowns of languages are currently there's 26 languages within our ESO program alone and you can see where the prevalence of these languages are coming from and in recent years we've also been receiving um Ukrainian Israeli Palestinian um Afghani refugees into town that have been resettled and that's where you see this wide range of language so one more interesting fact is there is no such thing as one size vits all this group out of this group 129 have enrolled in the US just within the last 3 years and those students are all moving forward to English Proficiency in addition 71 of our students also have an IEP so in Wayne we're not looking at as one siiz fits all this is a classified special education student this is an ESL student they're eligible for both and the teachers work together to make sure that they're getting support as recently as 2018 we had eight ESL teachers we're up to 13 and that really is due to the expansion but also the great work they're doing to identify kids and most importantly over the past 3 years 136 students moved to English proficiency that is a huge huge number for how many students are coming to the program and again I'm not taking credit it's this crew right here they're doing phenomenal work the bulk the presentation the part that I'm the most excited about cuz I get to represent these folks is them talking about some of the awesome things that they're doing at the school level so I'm going to turn it over to Nicole who's going to talk a little bit about the Early Childhood Center our earliest Learners and we're going to work right down the the line so you get to see what's going on around the district hi good evening I'm ni and I am the ESL teacher at this preschool um first of all I want to thank the board of education for um providing this opportunity to the preschoolers when I go out um into the field and um I meet with other Professionals in the in the field they always are amazed that Wayne has a preschool ESL teacher so kudos to you for valuing this and um it really sets this District um in a leadership position in terms of early childhood education um as you can see from the slide about 25% of our preschoolers have um been identified as um a dual language learner so when they're this little we call them dual language Learners cuz they're learning both languages simultaneously um what I do on my day-to-day is pretty amazing I'm in 13 classrooms every single day I'm working with small groups of children I'm supporting the teachers I'm supporting them one of the other really big parts of it is parent communication now as we know we don't speak every single language that is shown so often I think as ESL teachers we get the question well what languages do you speak do you know do you speak Turkish do you speak Arabic I don't how do we communicate with these families well we use platforms and um I'd like to think that I've done a really nice job of connecting families connecting families to the school connecting families to one another um another big part of the um my day-to-day is identifying children with their IEPs um and just kind of being um a voice for them in those I meetings so thank you okay hi everyone uh my name is Wendy dangi and I have actually had the honor of being at Ryerson school since 1994 I see a couple familiar faces um so um I also have a partner Yana husko who's not here she's actually home enjoying her baby boy for a little while longer and then she'll be joining me again um but you probably know I service of course Ryerson Randall Carter panak Fallon and Lafayette so Al together we have 56 right now um multilanguage Learners um our main languages are right now and they're changing all the time but right now this year they're Spanish then Turkish then Arabic um so my goals for the program are of course Ive communication through the four domains the listening speaking reading and writing um but also having the children celebrate their native culture and also learning about our American culture is so important to me um I also try to pay attention and um teach using uh social emotional learning building self-esteem and um respecting one another is really important in my classroom as well um and the cultural awareness as I said is really important um just fostering inclusive inclusivity um throughout Ryerson and also in my classroom with the multilanguage Learners is really big so um one of the um sorry um one of the things that we like to do is have Multicultural celebrations and holidays throughout the year for instance um I'm teaching my I taught my children how to play dral for Hanukkah we taught children about R Ramadan um we carved pumpkins at Halloween Just American traditions and other cultures I I like to bring them all into my classroom and those are the things that they really remember and come back years later and say remember when we played that game drel and you know those are the things that really stick and they're special um we have an ESL Social Club as well which um we meet in the morning with the kids and what we really are trying to do is practice meaningful language with them and their peers in a relaxed kind of social environment so we're we're playing games we're doing read alouds um asking and answering questions we're practicing grammar all of those things come together but in a very natural environment for them so they really um they really excel in that environment um another program that we have that's not mutually exclusive just to our ESL students but also to the whole school is our Culture Club um again it's to get everyone aware of all of the cultures that we have at Ryerson and we really are a wonderfully diverse school so um we do all kinds of activities I just worked on a couple like we did Carnival and Marty gro we had an Easter egg hunt um we did a pinata for Cinco DEA we learned all about Eid so we're really trying to represent all of our students and make everyone aware and accepting um we also had a couple of wonderful trips one to Ellis Island and also Turtle Back Zoo which is like a really American thing of course to do take your kids to the zoo so um as you can see uh up in the picture in the middle we also do a multicultural dinner and dessert night uh one in one at the holidays and then one at the end of the year in May we have a huge turnout um it's really nice to see the families come and they're so proud to bring their dish and the children are so proud of their culture and they love you know look you have to try what I made it's really nice it's very heartwarming but we get a great turn up for that and the last thing I wanted to highlight was we have an ESL uh a virtual summer enrichment for the kids uh which we do like a theme we do themed weeks um we do Virtual Field Trips we do uh read alouds and games and scavenger hunts just to really keep them engaged and uh help them keep practicing their English which they might not otherwise do they might be speaking only their native language so this way we're just getting a little bit of English in there so we don't have that slide all summer and um it works out really nice um so that's really it thank you and next we're going to talk to JF so my name is sintes I work with my colleague clear Don here at jonath Kennedy I've been here since 2005 and I'm very proud um this is the third year both of us are are designated as ESL coach coaches in in District uh we service 48 students um we do both high intensity if they're new Commerce and class support I'm proud that for Upper Grade tested grades um I offer science social studies and word studies so we diversify it's not the point of just learning the language I push we push for content and academic language acquisition um something that I'm very proud of with my colleague uh since 2019 we started something called the co teaching bridging program based on Phonics support it's called DL bodies and as a culmination we have a parent breakfast celebration in case you detect an accient yep I'm bilingual my first language is Romanian now that that's out in the open uh continue um and yes I celebrate my culture and I'm proud to be bilingual um we have something uh called Unity through diversity coming up end of May um with the PTO support we are planning something amazing again to celebrate our amazing cultures um there's also a school climate team that we meet two or four time times a year with the PTO we develop programs to support the diversity in our school um with title 3 funding we're very happy to have a very rich um Multicultural bilingual literature available through the library and the libraries and um I'm looking forward to what the future brings and I'm very proud to be part of this team thank you the next be my head okay there we go I'm Christina Pito I'm one of the ESL teachers of Hines Lake this is my 19th year teaching ESL and this year I'm lucky enough to have hi I'm Alejandra Hayden this is my first here in Wayne as an ASL teacher yes and it's been so nice having someone with me um so have P we do have 30 ml students with various languages and this was a first for us because we learned a new language called Shanghai which is like a dialect of Chinese but nowhere near Mandarin or Cantonese so you know every year you learn something new um we have students that speak cirian tagala azani Hindi um we just got a new student from the Dominican Republic we really have a a vast majority of languages at Pines half of our population is also in our special education program at Pines so we have um a magnet for our lld program so some are in in an lld classroom and some are receiving OCR services and also get ESL on top of that MH yeah we offer regular and high-intensity ESL with both pushin and pull out out sessions so we do have newcomers and they do come twice with us and it's nice that we do have two teachers in the school to be able to do that that we have the time to give those students um and then for the more advanced students we do offer push in where we go into the classroom co- te with the teacher so those students are getting their you know their lessons in their classroom and we're there to assist um we started no we continued two programs this year um an ESL after the Bell as well as a Lunch Bunch group um we know that a lot of our ESL students don't have homework support at home so a lot of them are bringing their homework to have us help them with it because their parents aren't able to read the homework or they're not able to help them with those skills uh we also realize that our students are struggling with making connections with other students because there's a language barrier so we started a Lunch Bunch group that helps them with academic vocabulary as well as making connections so they have a friend on the playground or they have someone to relate to and see in specials and things like that and the lunch brunch actually worked at a really nice time this year because we did it during Ramadan so those kids were fasting they're not eating so they came with us we got you know they were able to be social and it was great they didn't have to be around food and it was it was better for them and then bonded with other students and we're also celebrating Ram them uh we have a multicultural curriculum both inside and outside of the classroom and that's with our books that we have right so they have live uh books in our library that are in English and their native language um for most of the languages and they can bring them them home and then their parents can read in the native language while they can practice their English skills and then they can we have little bookmarks with comprehension questions for their parents to be able to ask them and help them with reading and a nice bonding moment between them that their parents can participate in although we're still looking for a book in Shang hes I don't harder to find a little hard we try really hard um God oh um oh so we've also been doing a lot of social emotional learning um especially with our students that be an lld that are struggling more than a general education student we've been practicing mindfulness daily with them as well as gratitude doing gratitude journals and these are also then shared with the parents um another connection for them to bring home to their parents M we also send home um quarterly newsletters letting the parents know what we're doing in class um and the kids keep journals we're always in contact with the parents letting them know what's going on we do translate everything into their language the best that we can yeah and then we'll do another summer enrichment program we've done them in the past hoping to continue that similar to what Miss U Mrs dangi did yeah fantastic thank you for having us and the middle schol hi I'm Kimberly kiry I've been in the district since 2002 I taught in New York City and Chinatown for a number of years before that middle school it's it's a really transitional age for kids of of any ilk um so one of the really important things for us is that just just like any of the other kids in middle school is that our kids have agency academic agency and social agency so the way the program works I have a colleague Carol Olive she teaches the English portion where they're learning English literature and language and I push into social study sorry I teach social studies I have sheltered history class I have one for intermediate and advanced students there are 22 students in that course I have one for the beginner students I also do a supported study so that I can help them with the other subject areas that they need help with we just started that and I also push into science whatever the highest need science is that particular year I push in I do have a science background so I help them with the academic language in that um one of the things that we really proud of we've talked about different ESL festivals that that schools do we do ours almost like a convention the students make their own presentations and then they present to all of the faculty who come in and the other members of our community the custodial staff comes in the cafeteria staff comes in the principles come in uh Scott Bolder comes in and one of the most exciting things for the K is Dr tobac comes and they present it doesn't matter whether they are brand new or whether they've been in the program for 3 years they sit and present in English to any member of our community that is invited who wants to come again agency it's a super important thing particularly for middle schoolers so that is something we're really proud of June 7th if you're interested um another thing that we try to do you could see in our picture um I'm connected with a lot of museums and uh different NE programs over the summer that connect us with different programs that our students can have so you can see on the far right there the students are in Revolutionary War Naval costumes so they learned about that they do a lot of speaking speak speaking was one of the areas on their state test that was a lower score than I would have been happy with just letting it be so one of the things we've been working on again is academic language and academic speaking so we will do activities like this where they will dress up and then they will have to present from the language that we've been learning the academic language and we try to do that a lot perfect okay um something else in in the middle you can see that was the presentation I think you can see Dr toac you sign off on that picture on the far right you could see some of the science activities we were doing we were actually studying um Civil War technology and the kids were doing buoyancy um for some of the Civil War naval ships so um we were doing the science terms that they were learning in their science class and we're combining it with history we triy to integrate the academic subjects together so they use that language a lot and on the left the student are doing their we just did this they did a a suffragist convention where they all had to represent a certain suffragist and talk with one another and find other suffrages that had commonalities with them so we do all these different kinds of Hands-On activities the one that we're most proud of I think was during Co because during Co was a very difficult time for ESL students in particular so we developed a community garden that was using seeds from George Washington time so I just gone to Mount Vernon we brought the seeds in and then the kids in their P they grew a garden of those different products that he grew his crops and then they also talked about their gardening culture because almost every culture had gardening um and that was really exciting because Mount Vernon asked us to write an article about it so it was really nice for like Wayne to get out there they could see that the students are so active and so that is what we keep trying to do academic language really getting their hands dirty with it and getting kids excited about learning so that they will be encouraged to speak and continue to learn the English thank you there our high school okay uh hi thanks so much for having us I'm Maggie Holland ESL teacher at way Hills High School I'm Mrs Taylor also at Hills High School um this is my first year of teaching at Wayne I was in yor City previously for 11 years also teaching High School ESL and I remember actually doing my interview you were there in 1vp and Maggie said to me um so last year we had about 25 students ESL students um this year I see about 60 I think said 40 I'm sorry 40 students is said how many students did you have your school in in Jersey City I said about 400 like excuse me in your school and I said no El's about 400 for a3d students that's what we had and now they are about 500 but my point is when my interview was in July we had about 40 now it's 62 we're just in in the beginning of April that's a huge increase in such a small uh period of time so at Hills I teach um the developmental beginner and developmental intermediate and I do pushing mainly in biology um but if if you see this slide there we have other subject as needed for example today as right before I was going into my biology class to learn about genetics um one stent email me Miss stay I have a history teacher can you come pull me out take the library and there I go so a lot of times it's not it's it's a split second I need you today or a teacher might email us I need you in algebra today so we move a lot in our pushing we are pretty much in every subject helping our students because as I said like they're learning genetics right these kids they don't even know their first language gen tics it's not a a language that they would know so they are really learning in English their biology and uh algebra and history and chemistry everything's new and you're learning yeah and I teach um High intermediate and advanced classes and I push into primarily chemistry but again it's as needed I've I've been in you know business entrepreneurship uh creative writing all every class so as the students come many we get many students who are just coming to our country um in like 10th grade and they're required to take all the same classes as everybody else is taking so that's you know biology chemistry and then either environmental science or physics um so we are we are the point people on that so we're tasked with really getting them up and running at the high school um with their computers with their all the different platforms that they're on for their math class and art class and all the classes as well as um the academic support that they need you know from the get-go we have um our number one group is our Turkish students right now and um and then second would be Spanish and Arabic but we really have an assortment of students from all over the world and they are absolutely amazing young people I mean they are such an asset to way Hills High School and to the community these students are here they're not here to apply they are here to get ahead they are here to learn quickly they're they're impatient they want it na they are here to go to college and make their families proud so our community is doing an amazing job our high school is getting these young people ready for life in high school and then life after that most of them are going to college I I do a lot of college prep work with with them we talk about what what's offered you know what types of different colleges there are um or if they want to go into um a more practical you know type of you know right into the workforce we talk about that and what kind of options there would be but the vast majority of our way students want to go to college and do I rarely have someone who's who's going into a trade um so we do experiential learning also we have an ESL Festival we do field trips we do my favorite project is Time Magazine person of the year where they have to um pick some it's like it's a biography project but they have to pick someone who has made a significant positive impact on society in the past year um so they have to be alive and they have to be you know making a difference and um it's really fun so again we we're tasked with um listening speaking reading and writing for these students in English and that that project Taps into all those different different disciplines they do presentations they do them on screen castify because often in their conton areia classes they're required to do that um and really fun and interesting this is our Festival uh it's always a great time uh they bring food prepared by themselves and their families you'll be surprised the number of them that are actually making the food themselves at home and bringing it in it really it's very moving to see them share about their culture and we have found that food is the common denominator we all love to talk about food and we all most of us really do love food um so it's it's it's a fun day every year and and it's a way for us also to say thank you to their content Area Teachers who also work very hard to help them get through our Math teachers I think of in particular would constantly you know work their you know some of these students few but some don't have the basic skills that they need you know for say geometry class going in and we we work hard on that and we want to thank them so they did that at this uh last year we went to um the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and it was again a very moving experience to see these people these young people witness the the history of our country of um accepting newcomers and um the the like my you know Irish so you know we talked about my ancestors several Generations ago you know and all the different people who have moved through um our country and and then had kids and were just walking the halls of way House High School uh this is we're super proud of this slide um the this is only this year's seniors these are the colleges that they've been accepted to um we've got Ruckers NJIT College of New Jersey Montclair State Rowan pic William Patterson Satan Hall Ramapo Sunni Binghamton New York Institute of Technology Burgen Community College um so they are uh really achieving great things we had two that applied to Princeton um a Ukrainian young woman got an interview she didn't end up getting in but we could not be more proud of of both of the students that applied you know these kids they know what the IV league is they're kind of you know really psyched to to try to do that you know so there you have it okay thank you so I'm just going to wrap up very briefly I do really appreciate um I know that was very comprehensive I appreciate you guys listening to that it's really hard to CRM all of that good news in 5 to 10 minutes and with everything you deal with with the public comment all the time I'm sure it was welcome to hear all these amazing things that are going so I just wanted the close to say thank you to the ESL teachers for all the amazing work they do if you listen to the details you have kindergarten students doing all these wonderful things all the way up through that last college slide these people are truly educational rock stars we are really thankful to have them I also want to thank the principes and general education teachers and all the students all those teachers all the staff members that support our multilanguage learnning population but again thank you so much for letting us present tonight and one more time thank you very much any questions from the board well behalf on the on behalf of the board I thank you for what you do and it was really a great presentation and really opened a lot of eyes to the diversity that we do have in this community thank you again thanks for great job really good thank you so much thank you what you got oh wait so this is do you want me to CLI for you or did you want do you want do you want me to click or you want um as everyone knows the uh this meeting at the referendum timeline considerations of what we're possibly going to do in the future um as many of you know the referendum did not pass and we understand a lot of people uh many people in the community are disappointed uh here tonight uh we're here for an open discussion about the referendum and POS looking forward um one I'd like to acknowledge the mayor who has um joined us again this evening at the table that he sat out it's probably the same table by the way a few years ago uh we appreciate uh his willingness to participate in this conversation also with us is Greg sjin and John Caron from our um architectural firm uh they're here tonight to help us uh look at the the 60 some projects that we had put out um and also look at timelines if we're going to need to consider to go out for a new referendum um again the goal tonight is for transparency and input um because these projects are important to the district and you as you just saw in the slides above when people say well why don't you have enough classroom space because we need classroom space beyond first grade second grade third grade and all the way up for programs like this so you see how our students are flourishing just from those programs and the numbers that I saw tonight as far as population goes in the school district I don't care what any demographics study says I can show you real numbers our numbers are going up and where we're going to have to make some hard decisions with and especially the elementary school with different things we're going have we're going our numbers in the I'm sorry our numbers in the elementary school um our projections of what we see of our enrollment for this year have increased to the point where we're going to have to make some tough decisions about art classes music class even special ed uh classes of where they're going to be so the numbers are increasing um you just saw the ESL we anticipated 40 we're at 62 and that number is not going to go down from what we're seeing so that's why we're here for a conversation with the community with the uh town with everybody sir good evening see you again good to see you so the projects that uh we're here to talk about um are still a needed project as was just shared and so we've been asked to come in and just talk a little about how to potentially plan moving forward so the first thing we wanted to talk about was just what is a schedule for another referendum consideration the Department of Education has deadlines that have to be met in order for them to review applications to provide feedback on not just a project but eligible monies for those projects typically that's 6 months before a particular referendum date and then depending on how much work has to be done in advance of the deadline there needs to be time for the professional team to meet with stakeholders prepare the necessary documents as you know we started planning for the March 2024 referendum more than a year ago and that involved meetings it involved designs it involved budgeting and we submitted ultimately late in 2023 to get to a mark 2024 referendum so what you see up on the screen is that the referendum can take place five times a year you can do it in January in March you can do it with the election in November and then separately September and December and each one of those has their own deadlines November coming up in 2024 the deadline for any application would be April 9th that's 5 days from now so we'll come back to that topic in a second but if there was going to be a referendum held during the November elections the any applications that would need to be submitted would need to go on April 9th in December a deadline would be May 14th for a December referendum for a January 2025 it will be in July for a March of 20 2025 it will be in August of 24 and then for next November it will be April of 2025 now with that said we currently have 60 plus or minus applications that we prepared and each one of those represents a grouping of projects and if the district wanted to resubmit for consideration to the community some or all of those applications the Department of Education has confirmed that the approvals that we had and the state funding that they've offered would remain intact the only thing that we would want to do because now everything's been pushed so much further down is we would want time to revisit the numbers each one of the numbers that are included in the application are not just hard costs which are the expected cost of construction it includes soft costs which are all the professionals it includes contingencies and it includes some Market escalation I will remind everyone that the referendum that was was presented in March those budgets had to be done more than a year before that date because we had to plan for them we had to submit them and then there was 6 months for the doe to review them so if the district wanted to pick some or all of those all we would want to recommend is that we have some time to review the numbers to confirm that nothing has changed drastically the market continues to change and we want to make sure that we're carrying as reasonable and accurate a number as possible because as you can appreciate whatever even had the referendum passed this March there is still a lot that happens post referendum before you actually bid a project we need Department of Education second approval for certain projects we need to finish what are called the construction documents which are the details in the drawing Dimensions Electrical Plumbing mechanical information and then we go out to Bid And so quite a bit of time passes post vote to do that so the fact that we're now looking at a later referendum date we would want to check that so for all those reasons we don't think an April 9th for a November referendum is remotely possible the next possible earliest would be if everyone felt like they want to present some or all of the existing applications might be may but there were discussions about rethinking some of the pieces which would mean we want to meet with some of the stakeholders revisit the numbers potentially do some design work and so depending on the extent of that we could see any of the other options as a consideration depending on the magnitude of what we're being asked to edit and modify and any changes would require a new application right so the applications we have if we're going to keep them exactly the same we wouldn't have to resubmit all of the applications if we choose to change one of the applications or multiples it would be those applications that would need to be resubmitted and re-reviewed you may get less State a for that project same or more it's a function of the review and the edits we make but it would only be the revised applications that would need to be resubmitted I think we have a question if you take my question all thank you very much for inviting me tonight I really appreciate it so let me just go back to what you said I just want to make sure I understand everything if you were to go for Bond referendum in November on the November general election you already have 62 projects that some are funded by the state some are not funded by the state but you confirm tonight that the ones that have already been previously funded by the state would remain the same if you don't change those projects correct so you could cherry pick through this list of 62 come back with a number that well I've suggested 100 million and I believe you should still fund previous school which would take 50 million out of the equation so that leaves you with $50 million to pick out of these 62 numbers now you would probably come in with more than 50 million because you can transfer based on the bond referendum between projects at the end so even though you let's say you put $50 million in a November referendum if prices go up you're not going to be doing all the projects that you submitted so but you can you can shift money between accounts so you're still going to get something and that something is going to be around $50 million you're never going to get $170 million I'm only giving my opinion it's just not going to happen the sticker shock is just too outrageous to this community so can I interrupt you for one second absolutely you have any questions about the schedule yeah I just add that's where that was my question about the schedule you're saying that you can't do November 5th and I think just based on what I heard you could do November 5th what I said was we would recommend as your professional team right that we have chance to revisit the numbers in these 62 applications to make sure that they're still going to be valid in 2 or 3 years and we can't do that in four or five days so that's why we believe the November election would be a challenge to meet even if the applications we look at them and we say you know what we think the numbers can last another two or three years it would be difficult for us to do that in 5 days we would recommend that if the board doesn't want us to check the numbers then there's a risk associated with post referendum that we didn't modify a market escalation or a contingency accordingly and you wouldn't be able to do all the projects that you have submitted so you'd have to eliminate some of them and transfer in between the different individual projects that were listed in the referendum so the answer to your question is that when the voters vote on a dollar amount and we're going to get to dollar amounts in the next slide that's why I want to see if those questions on the the schedule in particular but you're voting as a community on the dollar amount in total and the projects have individual budgets you are correct in so much as the marketplace is um very interesting in the construction World especially today so if it is expected that some projects will come in a little bit under budget some projects may come in a little bit over budget and so long as we don't exhaust the amount that was voted on by the community it is also my understanding that some of that money can transfer back and forth you can't do a project even if you have left over money that was not on the vote so so you have to list more projects you could list more projects than you think you're going to have money for well no absolutely not because you're telling the community you budgeted and then they have an expectation that you're going to do it so we have to go into that with a reasonable level the word was transparency to the community and not say well you know we're GNA we're going to present more projects but we know those last six are not going to get done if we don't have enough money because those last six might be very important to a particular group that came out and voted with the expectation but the board still has the authority at the end of the day based on the bond referendum to transfer between different accounts and that means that if and please disagree with me I'm wrong if there's a project that's not going to get funded because seven other projects are going to use up that funds the board has the authority to do that I don't believe you can do that completely because the state allocates funds based on the project so you can't take if you decide to scrap a a project that was funded 40% by the state you're going to get take that money and move it you can't the intent of the intent I don't think you follow what I said from the beginning the 50 million that's going to be left over those are all going to be State eligible programs every single one of them just like you had in the referendum that went down you had certain programs that were not funded by the state the new Creek New School the bleachers the bleachers are gone you're never going to get those in a referendum I mean that's the reality of the world but the other projects were all state approved and funded there was very few that weren't funded so I guess you know what the mayor is trying to say what I'm curious to find out as well is we all know after all these months that what we need is 170 million can we go out by April 9th put all those 170 million worth of projects and say to the public we're only going to do freakness school plus another 50 million and then just deletes no because when you present a vote to the public you're asking them to support whatever it is you're presenting to them so you can't say here's 170 million we want you to vote on it but we're only going spend 100 that's that wasn't the question that he asked the question was if you put up a referendum for 100 million and 50 million was preis the other 50 million would be funded at approximately 40% by the state but the question here's the here's the because they're already approved yes but I'm not I'm not clear on the on the so if the budget number was 170 million I'm sorry if the budget number was 100 million and you put it out in November and you knew 50 million was going to go to prus the remaining of the projects you would have to pick and choose out of here and if you didn't change any one of them you were still going to get the 40% suggesting to you mayor is you need to tell the voters which of these project in advance of exactly the board would have to decide which ones of those would meet the 100 here's my other question GRE let's say let's pick a let me pick a project can you just go back to the the five days these projects are already approved you don't have to submit to the Department of Education by April 9th because they're already approved correct so the 5 days does not apply as long as you pick projects on this list that are already approved by the state that is correct but let me reiterate what I shared it is our recommendation based on the fact that this thing is going to be pushed out a year or two right that we have a chance to revisit the budget numbers and if we come back and say we find the budget numbers to be still reasonable then we don't go back to the state and you can move forward with one of those dates if we find that one of those applications for example we just learned that certain electrical switch gear is now 70 weeks out from the time someone orders it and so we may say if you calculate by the time the referendum comes up and we develop drawings and the contractor bids the work and starts construction we could be three or more years out if we needed a new electrical service panel the market may change they may be available off the shelf I don't know but what we're dealing with at the marketplace is that reality then that wouldn't be one of the projects that you'd want to include in a bond referend but I don't have a crystal ball mayor so I can't tell you what's going to happen in 6 months that will change the market I'm going to tell you what happens in six months if you recommend to the board that they wait they're never going to pass anything listen my recommendation is not to tell them to wait or to move forward my recommendation is to give them the necessary guidance as a professional for them to make the decision and all I'm suggesting is that if you want to present a vote in November you have 60 applications from which you can choose but we would be locked into those budget numbers that's all I'm saying right so we could end up holding the bag having a project half done and not having any funds to do it now the other question here let's say there's two projects here that both receive state aid we say okay we're not going to do the one we don't have enough money to do the one now that affects our state aid because we're now putting more money into to the bank so the state's going to say okay well now I'm only giving I'm giving you less money because you're put putting up more money so that's a more complicated question because the state has what they call the FEC letter and that letter says that each project has an amount that they've allocated towards it historically they don't come back to look at an individual project if in the aggregate you have to go back and forth that's my experience but if you take a project completely off the able and don't execute on it then someone eventually is going to look at Mr moffett's records and say well wait a minute we allocated money for this and you didn't do the project so what's going on does that make sense so you can shift in between as long as you do all the project exactly so if you present in good faith to the community these are the pick the mayor's number $100 million worth of project pness plus another 50 our intent is we as professionals believe the budget is accurate to execute on all of those the market will change some will come in under budget some will come in a low budget and if in the aggregate we can deliver those projects even with the state aid kind of going between some of them so long as when we bid the project and close out the project we finish less than using the mayor's number $100 million or less doing the projects to which we committed I don't see any issues nor have I seen in my experience over the years if we get to a point where we're going to these projects are not all going to happen in one year so year after year you're going to do it you're going to see how the projects start to roll out and if at the end we say we're out of money we can't do this project we just need to be aware that if that had funding in it we have to go do some mathematical calculations to see how much of that was allocated because the the state's not going to give you 40% for something that you didn't do so they're going probably request that fortune back well they don't request it back because they're not giving you the money it comes in the form of Debt Service Aid so they just won't make a portion of the payment so yeah I just wanted toer clarification so we're saying 40 million roughly state aid 50 million pness and then another 50 million which would be kind of part of right I mean if we're getting to 100 million right so you're not doing 100 million and 40 state or so so that's so that's a great question you would need to clarify that because one could argue that 100 $100 million in local um tax levy is really I'll make up a number I don't have the math in front of me because every Pro is different is really 125 million in projects right because the state is funding a portion of it or you could take the position that the 100 million is the gross number that you're targeting which is really only $80 million and I'm making up numbers so whoever's quoting me over in the paper please don't right use hypothetical numbers right so so it would be 80 million local shares so it's not clear which 100 million we're talking about exactly is it local share or is it not okay it's 100 total is what we're talking about million would be financed by by the what the mayor saying is 100 million with your total which means plus or minus something less than that for the local taxpayer your 40% would be of the 50 million that's not pre to school so You' get 20 million in state aid that would mean you'd be financing $80 million versus the previous referendum that you were financing about $131 million difference of over $50 million so we missed down on 38 million in state 8 coming back to the Wayne residents do we have any indication if there's any xery in the state aid like if we go out with the latest timeline here April 8th 2025 for November 2025 thing do we know that state AIDS guaranteed or will that so we talked about that earlier with Bond Council and there's no expiration date that we know of in statute for Debt Service Aid however the challenge is that if you wait too long and the market changes cuz remember the further you go out we still have drawings to do and to be out to bid then the the market could change so drastically that whatever you were getting in the form of Debt Service Aid shrinks from the 30 40% of the budgeted number to something less if the cost of inflation and stuff goes up but I think we talked about you know a few years is not unreasonable but even though there's no expiration technically you don't want to just let that sit out there in perpetuity for that reason right so the contingency that we have right cuz that's what this all balances on is what is the contingency that we had a year ago when we did the budgeting right inflation was significantly less but there were still some supply chain issues that were going on at the time how much of that contingency would be put into these projects CU if we can understand what that is that will give us a good idea of the risk that we are taking by the time moving for November or pushing out further yeah so there are two numbers you use the term contingency and I just want to clarify to make sure we're on the same page contingency to us is design contingency which means a year from now we haven't talked about I'll make something up the floors that we're going to put in and um as we start to develop the drawing someone says hey we want a slightly better quality floor so that's a design concy that we carry knowing that that year down the road then there is construction contingency which is we have a lot of renovation work that we're doing and when you open up a wall the state requires us to carry a construction contingency knowing that no construction is perfect I believe what you are referring to is Market escalation which is how we refer to it okay so Market escalation is a number we carry I don't have the percentage off the top of my head but I can get back to you but you know what we were seeing is probably uh 1 or 2% every quarter right now for for what we're seeing in the construction world but I can get that number to you to confirm it but yes we're carrying something for the reasons I stated earlier we developed a budget a year ago the referendum was a year later and then drawings have to be created so we're two years bidding based on when we created the budget but I I get that information the question is is is Market Market escalation more significant now than we had back then right which I believe it is right I believe it's creeping a little bit and it depends on the pieces right so um mechanical systems coming out of Co those were the bottleneck couldn't get a piece of equipment in in agria obviously we're going to look at this in and it may affect the specific projects that we would choose go back to try and minimize that kind of I'll give you a good example steel was always a challenge bleachers have a steel component to them with the Bridge in Maryland that just collapsed steel is going to be more of a need to rebuild and it will impact the marketplace so there's an example where anything that we have that Rel of the steel comes into that PO as well exactly so those are and there are probably things that some School District in new jerseyy is waiting for that's on that ship so you know at the end of the day these are some of the things that we want to rethink we could submit the resume the the applications or not submit them and go for November referendum and you know in October we can have another challenge that no one anticipated that could impact it so this is not a system but that's why we're recommending certain things just to be able to plan as best we can okay if we can get an idea of what that market es and how that's impacted how that would have been somewhat different now than it was a year ago absolutely then then we got a good audio of risk best time to get rid of Eve I had a Consulting Cost question so there's a lot of time and effort by everyone involved that gets into the referend and it comes with the price tag to the taxpayer so what do you anticipate looking over the numbers and you know preparing for next one if there is going to be one and obviously you don't have a crystal Bowl but just give me an idea of what are we looking at as far as spending on Consulting costs I mean I guess for your firm alone because I know other yeah so you're talking about if we're going to go another pre-referendum yes so arguably If all we're doing is taking whatever applications exist and presenting them for for a referendum the dollar amount is zero because there there's nothing else for us to do the applications are done they we heard all night so looking over the numbers hire as your architect what do you need to right so it depends if we only have to review one project application well it could be nominal could be a few thousand do I don't know if we have to revisit 60 applications it would be very different if we talk about pness revisiting the design now you're talking design work so I can't give you any real information here because there's no Direction being given right yeah but there could be cost I mean just so if you kept everything the same just having to verify the numbers in the least bit to make sure that things are still okay yeah I can't imagine it's a significant investment you know obviously we have a longstanding relationship with the district you said zero I said zero if there are no application changes Baris put that there zero I heard zero thank you okay the mayor has spoken that 170 is too much that 100 is reasonable okay we talked about he's padded some numbers for contingencies I've heard shuffling of money to make this work well my question goes directly to the mayor we have a list of projects here I'm surprised you're you're sticking with a new prick this Early Childhood Center at 44 million my question to you is is very simple I've listed them here we got to make up $40 million $30 million based upon your numbers what are we cutting please tell me well and don't tell me and don't give me a song of dance around this I'm not giving you a song of dance look at the your job not my job no your job is to destroy this onest and have it come back and clean it up so what are the projects we're cutting please I have I don't know what the 62 projects are they're right in front of you tell you is that you did you were not successful in March you need to move on right so moving on I'm trying to help you so help us pick them off the list right now they're in front of you what do you want us to cut I'm waiting for an answer sir I told you my answer that's your job that's your do your job pass the buff along pass right enough do your job any other questions they're looking at those now so let's yeah so so that's why I asked if there were questions about the schedule I had the list here um so these are what you have in the handout um these are the list of the individual projects that were being discussed and considered the total budget is the Allin number for those projects from the hard cost soft cost contingencies Market escalation these do not reflect the state aid that some of these projects might have gotten so what you're seeing up there is the gross dollar amount that will be presented to the community I just wanted to clarify one thing that the mayor said you are obligated to finance the whole project the state gives you Debt Service Aid they contribute on an annual basis towards your principle and interest payments But ultimately you do Finance the whole project the state doesn't finance a portion of it for you I just want to make sure you know that we're all on the same page about that so these are the projects I'm not going to go over them individually you know they range from several hundred, obviously to the largest one which is the new construction that we've been talking about at 44 million um we were asked to place that last project the new elevator at pness there was a project application submitted to the Department of Education earlier because they did have another round of Rod grants regular operating District grants in that case because you had your local share then they would have given you the cash aw for that project but it got denied so um the the rod Grant what that project didn't receive a rod grant funding so because it goes along with the Poss posibility of the pness project there was a discussion that maybe that gets included in this next question for pness to allow the buildings to be linked to bring the whole building into compliance with barrier free since we're doing all this new construction SCP it any questions I mean I think since the mayor is offering us help we should take a few hours come down to 100 m 100 million get this at no cost in November's election these 62 projects need to happen you know might take 10 years it's going to cost us taxpayers a ton of more money than if we go out to referendum New Jersey provides this tool to go out and do Bond referendums so that way taxpayers don't get impacted as much so I think it's it's our duty to at least come out with something you know with what what's already filed you know and then if we have to come back again with a another amount another year later but at least the mayor's offering close to 100 million at least let you know spend a few hours in the next few days try to get it done and and get it on uh the November ballot I don't see it passing how many uh people do we have that live in right now 55,000 okay at the last election how many people voted on the referendum approximately 8,000 8,000 people out of 45,000 register okay November is a big day we all know that you're going to have everybody come out I think you have to pick a day for a referendum that you know you're going to get the town to vote I just feel like it was such a disappoint appointment with the 8,000 that came out to vote I would try to hit the November number it's not going pass no have 20,000 people come out and vote it's going to become a secondary thing and they going to see the tax increase no you here's here's the issue I have going trying to do this hastily in four in five days one how many of these projects are inter interwin between each other I need people to tell me Hey listen the HVAC system at Wayne Hills and something else at Wayne Hills kind of go together I'm not going to sit here with a pen and just put lines through stuff then find out what you did isn't going to work yeah we have to look at that because most of these projects are Standalone the only thing that I could think of but I would have expected and I don't know if we broke it out not have to look the one thing that jumps out at me is if there's an air conditioning project got proposed in a building and there was an electrical upgrade that was needed to support the air conditioning project and if we broke that out at it in its own application to give the board you know because that was what the board requested that's one that I think could be linked because if you get an approval for an air condition project but you don't have the right electrical loads in the building that's a problem nothing else jumps out of me as being intertwined something that I would point out very differently there is there's no point putting the new hbac system if you still got 50 Windows look this is a it it's a chicken and egg thing to your point all out of the window you could design a mechanical system at a lower load if you have a better building envelope to contain it which is kind of where you were going with this but you know at the end of the day sometimes you can't put all those things together and you have to select and the mechanical systems and the ventilation may be a greater priority and Windows may not be that's that's I can make recommendations but that's a that's a possibility Don I just have to go back to the April 8th date okay is not the drop dead date as long as you're using the same projects that are already approved by the state is that correct you are correct and I would just like to also remind everyone I put an aster at the end of that so what is the drop dead date if you use the projects that are already approved by the state I'm going to say 60 May be 90 days before because you have to coordinate with the County Board of Elections that's a bond Attorney question but I'm going to say and because it's a presidential election I think they requireed a little bit earlier yeah so 7 so 75 days before or are you talking August 75 days before November 5th I'm not that smart nor am I two and a bit month the oldest one in the room two and a bit Mar so one of the things that people people have said in the comments that I've heard is that there was nothing sexy in this thing that made them that they really like and I would say that looking through it I don't know that we should go the route that we're going to go just swapping out projects and sending them back the same way because I feel like that's one of the reasons why it didn't pass like you look at this and let's say we're going to go for the HVAC controls mean it's $5 million for HVAC control that's a big number but is there something that you can do in its place is there something other alternative that we can explore because if we just put this back in exactly as it is with the same things that we have only a lesser version they're getting the same kind of things that they were complaining about getting so I think we got to review the ideas of what we were going to do and see if there are other alternative ways to get the same things done but differently but we have Mr mayor's marketing power behind us now at 100 million yeah I don't buy it I don't think it's gone I think we should probably launch that citizens committee help them come up with know 100 million worth of projects yeah I agree uh I think too little too late Mr Mayor I'm happy you're here but I really wish you were here a year ago or at any time we had the treat because that's when we had a good conversation and talked about what we should and shouldn't have done and the numbers and the projects and you know I I think that would have been very helpful and I think the last one I think was maybe December or in the fall of last year when we decided to do the spring I don't know it was like 6 months ahead and there was there was a need or want to get it done in the spring as opposed to later and not wait any longer because we've already been talking about all these different projects as long as I can remember my first retreat was in December before I was sworn in and that's when that was the topic of the conversation so really for me um little too late because so much information was put out to the public and it kind of damaged our reputation and the school's Administration reputation on all the things that we did didn't do should have would have could have done so um you know I I if you have a magic power and some kind of a crystal bow and see that it will pass I don't know but uh well perhaps if you had told the taxpayers before January of what the tax impact was going to be there might have been things would have been a little bit different but to give voters two months notice of what their taxes are going to go up I don't think that was the right way to got so you might have had you might have had nice Retreats but nobody goes to your Retreats you didn't even get the vote of your parents they didn't come out and support you I just I want to clarify the board couldn't provide a tax in on until the FEC letters were received I I understand that but still it was January when those numbers came out and you expected people to vote two months later they were in Sticker Shop I mean I and if you think I'm all powerful and made everybody vote no you're mistaken I am not no but I mean you know from other District then when we were um in training in Atlantic City we sat in on some classes on how to do referendums because obviously I'm not an expert and I don't know the one thing they say that's when you do it you do it like the 3 months or so leading into it because that's when you have all the information so it's not that Wayne didn't do something that's kind of how it's done and you know for lack of more information getting there faster as you know you deal with the state you don't get the numbers right away so it all takes time um so we really couldn't everything up to that point was hypothetical you know we just didn't know so I I wish we had they knew the numbers they just didn't know the the rebate amount that we're going to get the Imp released the impact on the citizen but if we're sitting here in April and you're talking about November you have a long period of time to sell the project knowing what the numbers are if you don't want to do this same way I don't think going the same route is the way to go you can't just give up and do nothing no I think we have to revisit it and look at it from a completely different Ang the most cost effective way is to do a bond referendum no I could have to do a referendum but I could have to revisit what's in the referendum and how we go about it I think we have to look at it from a different vantage point because I don't think that the people think windows are important they didn't seem to think that HVAC was important they didn't think that roofs were important they said just keep hatching them so we got to I think that we have to look at it from a different perspective and see if there's another way to put it through we know these things need to get done but I think if we put it back on a ballot I think they're just going to say nope you should have done it again 10 years ago anything else for your any question there it's all in your good hands gentlemen thank you sure we will be in touch thank you for coming open tonight right this time portion of the meeting is open to Citizens for comment and agenda items only ask to State their name addressing subject matter comment to three minutes per person members of the public are discouraged and speaking negatively about employee or student board Bears no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding employees and students cannot be legally responded to by the board other comments maybe respond to tonight at subsequent meeting under old business anyone from the public on agenda items evening how are you good evening how many minutes do I get as many as the mayor curious considering uh the same wasn't afforded to all of you at the council meeting okay why why is the mayor here I was going to address him but he's gone uh has brought his credit card is he willing to share it uh he sent out a video on February 8th 14 minutes long he used the Wayne alert system that goes out to who knows how many residents no opportunity to respond he sent out a second video on March 2 on a Saturday 11 minutes long no opportunity to respond he used every council meeting to share his opinion about how this referendum is the worst thing to happen to Wayne ever no Solutions proper except make it 100 million the board received no equal time they also weren't afforded access to the weighing alert system to share their Viewpoint now he claims he had nothing to do with the failure of the bond referendum he just sent out a video yeah a video filled with hyperbole fearmongering fake facts and every reason he come up with to vote now despite using all the powers of his office to get this message out to the voters he's now saying nobody heard it that justifies common sense so now he's blaming the board and administrator ation for the failure of the referendum solely at what point do we understand this is all a political maneuver on his part this isn't the first time he thmed his nose at the board and administration the mayor is a history of doing these sort of things there's the half million for the tur Fields the graduation stunt threats about the Bus location I believe he misses the bad old days when the party controlled the board in the hiring not to mention the lather rinse repeat process of starting their future Council candidates on the board so now what if the mayor doesn't cause the failure of the referendum how will he take credit for passing the next the answer is simple he can't my new name for the mayor mayor two sides because he speaks out of both sides of his mouth stop wasting money on these referendums to fail in Wayne the community and the mayor have spoken they don't care about the schools and you're on your [Music] own anyone else in the public is you to speak uh I don't know you so your name please what your name oh Gabriel nazziola I live at 1260 rater Road uh I talked once or twice before you guys may or may not remember but for purposes of know where I'm coming from I sat where you sit for 9 years in a different town last two of which is B president so I guess you could say I have an interest in education uh I think I heard in all of this discussion so far the word sell once and that's what your job is here with this referendum if you can't sell it you might as well be talking some foreign language because it's not happening the first thing that somebody has to do is take these first of all I think it was a delusion of G year to try to get 62 items accepted by the public without some background some emphasis uh I I don't know I think what you have to do is in terms of uh emergency view first of all being that we need to have a new school because we're going to have a whole lot of new building units uh and a lot of kids we got to have a place for them secondly by virtue of emergency status take these 62 laundry list and cut them down to emergency priority is a roof leak in someplace the kids getting wet put that in there uh you freezing your tail off in the school because you don't have a heating system put that in there the rest of the stuff and again I'm just giving you feedback as a taxpayer you made it look like you took everything that should have been done done by our maintenance department for the last 30 years and you're stuck it in a referendum that's the way it came across I think what I would have done to make it more salable I'd have gone out and said uh to the mayor I want to know from your Administration how many single family units we have in the town so we can predicate based on an average assessed value for those units how much it would cost per year for the next 25 years I would find out how many thousand Condominiums we have none of which you're going to approach 229,000 and change assessed value and figure out what the assess what the cost would be on them and establish that what you're looking to do is get groups of people by their status that going to go on your side if you thinking a guy with a condomini is going to pass and say yes to $370 a year for the next 25 years yeah you're sick it ain't going to happen then you should go out and find out how many thousands of Apartments we have and find out what the share of the assessed values there would be and sell it to the unit people by saying it's going to cost you $5 a month more and you rent not $370 cuz that's what's sticking in their head and that's why this thing failed you didn't sell it and I mean I heard all this talk about you know this and that there's no common sense here where where's the common sense how are you going to sell this thing if you're not reaching the average person in town I'm frustrated I've sitting here and listen to all the discussion and nobody's saying how do we establish priorities on 62 units what do we throw out and then right away when you talk about oh we're going to go for 100 million out 169 million do you realize how it's being received by taxpayers that's not a sellable a sellable thing you got to talk about emergency status of the different projects beginning with the pre School sir times up huh your time up okay thank you okay you on the agenda committee yeah motion Clos close approach we have some committees that met tonight yeah so the tech committee met tonight um we discussed some of the uh retention policies um we discussed um uh the new District website um that'll be coming out in a couple of weeks uh we actually got a little link to download it the mobile looks great um should be very uh useful uh we talked over some um uh more platal authentications um getting people to be able to log in using their phones rather than directing to ENT passwords and making that much simpler and easier for people to get hold of um we spoke a little bit about um AI throughout the schools and about the usage of AIS and being able to uh Drive some of the uh experience amongst teachers about different ways to be able to look for help and use uh AI um and we talked over the data center um that continues at the moment we're still pretty much on track with where we're going for now and preparation for testing ask a question okay when you talk about the usage of AI how is it currently being used and how are people trained on it to understand that there is biases when it comes with the AI and also if do we have a policy that prevents our teachers from sharing information in the AI especially about students because that could become part of the G ener AI uh population of information that there is so do we have an AI policy and training for the teachers it's no specific AI policy that we have we had a district goal that was on most of the district goals last year go look at AI what was specifically talking about here was starting to start general education within the teachers to be able to get them up to speed with what sort of AI tools are available as far as sharing information from students uh and from other things out to AI That's covered by general policies of being able to ensure that we don't share information with students outside of the um school systems to start with um and in terms of places where AI is being used I know it's been used in a few classrooms such as the repats and those kind of things um as well where it's being used to generate leaflets and so on but that's very uh ad hoc as far as those things are concerned not specific um changes of information or School proprietory information Don we have um I spoke to a teacher when I was actually speaking about something with my daughter um and she mentioned that a lot of kids are actually submitting work that they've done using AI so do we need to discuss a policy about what we're going to do if students are using AI to do their schoolwork or do we have something like that because right now there's technically think there is a policy that says if they use chat gdt to write up their essays that there's any kind of problem with that so that would still be a case of academic dishonesty representing someone else's work or artificially intelligent artificial intelligence FID workor as your own so that would still be something that would count as a case of cheap and that is specifically the area of topic conversation that we are working on by bringing the education figuring out what we need to be through because there was a reverse situation where there's a tool that the teachers use to validate students work and what happens is if you write your answer and actually um put the question like repeat the question in your answer it often Flags it as plagiarism but it doesn't fully explain why it's considered plagiarism there question so that's we have to kind of that's you have but that's where you got to get back to the oldfashioned classroom and the teacher has to look at it because with the plagiarism doesn't just say it's plagiarism it'll give you a percentage of plagiarism it may say it's 8% plagiarism which is pretty much could be just your style of writing that the AI detector is picking up on on a couple key words like chat GPT final paragraph in chat GP with everything is in conclusion they're the first two words that and furthermore there are two keys of AI that teachers are taught to look at honestly for most of our teachers when they read a student's writing right they've they've been with them all year they've read their writing all year so when you're a teacher like for example when I was a you could tell if somebody actual writing because you know how they write they have a tendency to write a certain way so it's pretty hard for a teacher not to know that something was produced or something was borrowed from somewhere else um just maybe in the beginning of the year maybe there's a few days or a few weeks where maybe a teacher may not be able to tell that but if you're in a classroom and you're reading someone's writing every day all of a sudden you get something that's WR compl different style probably because it's written with an AI device or something like so I'll flip it to the other end do we do any kind of assemblies for the students to kind of yeah nobody does um what we are doing is you have a essentially a year where people are trying to make sensible as how this all works um what we do have is also we have St polier writing service and so ultimately that policy writing company is putting together some type of AI guidance so something that that we'll have to go on that might pick out specific issues related to the use of AI in the classroom but something that they have not produced so I mean there might be some districts that have you know like some some programs or maybe some ideas about it but it's really not it's not something that most districts are are taking on on completely right now because we're not really in a position to do that ultimately what we're trying to have the conversation around is being proactive in the way that we get teachers to be involved with AI and think about AI so that they are prepared for being able to go through about directions to go well it's here and it's going to be used so unfortunately it's one of those things where you kind of kids are using it and but we have this acceptable use policy so whether it's any kind of software whether it's chat GPT or anything else there's acceptable ways to use it and presenting like I said your work as um you that was produced elsewhere regardless of the software is not not an exceptable thing so I have um a finance committee uh report but before I go to the finance committee report I just wanted to make brief mention that there was a budget meeting on March 26th attended by myself miss witing Mr Faber Miss liting and Mr Moffett just to provide an understanding of how we do it the procedures and uh what's required for the county uh as far as the budget goes so tonight uh April 4th at 5:36 Mrs Wy Mr Faber uh Mr Moffett and Miss lighting and myself uh at finance committee meeting there were no questions on the February 8th 2024 minutes and went through the March 26 2024 budget meeting minutes there were no questions uh we went through um the agenda items for this month um there's um a contract for jointure for next year uh appropriation of surplus um various guidance for for Cooperative Arrangements emerging checks emergent contracts um and there were some um um discussion on potential future actions uh which are all from the capital reserve um we're not sure if we we need that yet um uh additional appropriation uh for Surplus um the administration is going to keep us posted we're waiting on the NJ doe applications for a second round of Rod um as far as the Food Service management RFP um there will be a selection committee so if any uh board member wants to join there will be two board members along with u the administration uh we received four bids for the Food Service management contract um uh the annual solicitations went out we're receiving them slowly uh from various rfps um we talked about the referendum update um we continue to look at resources for Anthony Wayne Middle School's crack uh also resources for for pness um the architecture uh the architectural firm is uh who we're working with um and uh we discussed again the 2024 2025 District budget update um the administration presented a uh balanced and viable budget so we're going to try to stay within the submitted um answer trustee questions and we went through the timeline and the process so uh on April 20th um the county office is expected to approve and um we'll be able to post a userfriendly budget on the website we're going to advertise and um there will be a hearing on May 2nd for final approval and those are the finance committee that's education committee that's me that's you yeah that's it okay so we met tonight um Mr jordano Miss rman and we talked about um a couple things we we talked about 11 different policies uh we reviewed um we also talked about the enrollment and the enrollment trends that are uh that we're expecting in the future uh we we broke down um all the elementary schools and we took a look at every class just to familiarize oursel with what is going to be going on in the future we also talked about the dreams program that's a grant program two staff members will be chosen from Wayne and they will learn um different techniques on how to deal with trauma and healthy centered practices um and that's pretty much it right a move for the agenda Mr Paul Mr P any comments on the agenda roll Mr Mr Bill yes Mr Faber yes Mr gardano yes Mr Paul yes Mrs regalo yes Mrs wck yes Mr Pacos yes and Mr P yes Mo carries portion of the meeting is open to citizens will comment on any topic residents are asked to State their name address and subject matter comments may be limited to five minutes per person members of the public are discouraged and speaking negatively about an employee or student board members bear no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding employees or students cannot be legally responded to by the board other comments may be responded to tonight we're at a subsequent meeting under all business have a booer Happ because uh just a question um you didn't discuss what you plan to do next on the uh referendum there was no uh wrapping that up with the B the tree what are you going to do question this is PL up 23 tuxedo Drive um I think what I am still trying to figure out is given the mayor's suggestions that the referendum come in at $100 million and you need to sit down and figure out exactly what projects you're leaving in I didn't get the sense that he gave the Board of Education a firm commitment that he would actually back a new referendum and that's what I came here hoping to hear this evening yes he used his platform to come out against the referendum that was just up for vote and he mentioned $100 million seemingly acceptable but did you actually get a commitment that he would be happy to work with you to get this Township to approve such a referendum in that amount that's my question so thank you anyone else from the public yes hey Ferris have been doing talking to you on uh my capacity as a board member of the county 200 Club just letting you know that May 7th we're holding our annual Valor dinner where we will be uh celebrating and recognizing 17 Wayne police officers 16 will be receiving Meritor meritorious citations one police officer will be receiving a Valor dinner so I'd like to invite all of you to please attend the tickets are uh going fast we're actually recognizing close to 100 uh officers uh uh firefighters and and EMTs that night so it it is going to sell out so we'd love to have you all there buy tickets right away pc200 club.org thank you thank you anyone else would public speak so this was go on their old business I would like the board to consider launching that citizens committee that was proposed for the bond referendum I think it' be helpful which date for which date for which date yes if you're looking well I think we should launch it you know as soon as possible bu new business just response to I guess can we have a discussion sure I'm his yours I can okay my new business will work with his old business very well um there are three people at this table I can tell right now I can lay my next mortgage on it but they have no interest in doing another referendum and I'm one of them I think there's a time when you cut fate and you walk away the mayor came out here and basically gave us a whole lot of numbers and a whole lot of and then D it back in our laps and said okay we saw the problem here's the solving the problem move on I don't I'm not in favor of another referendum I'm not in favor of going back out during a presidential election which one of the topics of the presidential election is going to be the economy and when we're picking the lead of the Free World that's going to be the thoughts of everybody going into that into that voting booth it's going to be five times the amount of people that went to this one which I was shocked that 8,000 people came out and voted on it in a normal off election you're going to get two to 4,000 we got eight we know where that came from he doesn't want to take he doesn't want to to it own up to it he walked out of the room after he got the chance to say his peace but that's the way apparently does things here I think we're wasting our time this town has no desire it hasn't had a desire to do a referendum for times now over things that were a lot less money and just as important like student safety I think it's time we go on our own way and we figure out which one of these jobs we go for our emergency whatever the gentleman the back call the there and we start doing these jobs and if we have classes that are increased in size we have classes that are increased in size if we don't get everything we don't get everything If eventually because we tried to find the most fiscally sound way of doing this for the taxpayers of the town and they said no thank you then we're going to get them done it's going to cost the town even more I hate to see it happen here but I'm utterly defeated on this one the town has said we don't want this you got it we'll go out about our business and we'll take care what's got to be here but if something's lost or something is cut or something goes in price go talk to the mayor and go get his phone I'm going ask him why' you shoot this down because that was the best shop you got I would go so far to say to get a consensus from the group right now whether to stop wasting our time and move on or whether or not we go ahead and Tackle this um well I had new business but I mean as a as a part of the discussion I tend to agree I feel like a lot lot of people's time has been spent on it and it takes away from some of the routine things that we have to do and worry about I mean in the administration the Consultants it came with a big price tag and yes they said oh it wouldn't really cost so much but it costs time of everyone trying to even figure it out like you said you know what project goes with what which is dependent on what I I don't know that we can do it on the flip of a coin so I tend to agree with Mr Gano um cut our losses and do what's the most emerging thing we have to do and just pick at it so I'm not saying I would never support another referendum I don't know that that's I don't know that this will get done the way that it needs to what I am saying is I think we have to go back to the drawing board and think of other ways to get to the place that we need to get to and come up with some solutions that may not be what we've considered in the past like alternatives to deing the pre school instead of spending that $50 million what else could we do you know what other Alternatives that we discussed some but you know what other options do we have um you know doing things a little bit at a time saying okay well we're going to allocate this amount to this you know million doll hbac system you they're cheaper alternatives you know I know that we were going for the the best of what we could do but they're not going to the town is going to fund it so if you go back with this same list and they say oh you to spend $4 million on HVB controls they're not going to prove it again so we have to look at what we're putting into it and what we're doing and try to see if there are other Alternatives so I don't think it's just throw it away but I don't think it's as simple as just take these same projects and recycle them and put them back out because I feel like that's going to do the same thing that it did only it's a smaller number but it's still the same list and you're not going to get much if you look at Anthony Wayne for $15 million he didn't mention but he keep saying 50 million and then you know you have to know that there's the 14 million for Anthony Wing that we have to look at so you're really 65 million in the hole so you're getting 35 million at the end of the day that you can spend which doesn't buy much when you're looking at this list so this is the way I feel I feel that the people of Wayne Ved to sin to improve the schools that's our job that's what we do whether we come one night a week two nights a week three nights a week that's our job um I'll never stop trying to improve our schools we are aware of the different challenges that we Face maybe we didn't sell the referendum the way we should maybe the the the township is telling us we need more information we need more information before we commit to that kind of money okay I understand we hear you and it's so great that this gentleman came in today to voice his opinion um but you voted us into get results and I think that we owe it to the town to try again that's my opinion u i I agree with bar we obviously we have to do something to to find a solution but you know agreeing with Mark too is there's probably a lot of different solutions that aren't in here right right especially with the pr school it's a lot of money if we don't touch anything on these to change them we have until the middle of August to potentially resubmit some of these so from now until the middle of August we can look at all the other Alternatives we have and potentially that pre school could be off the table and we can go for whatever the other items are that we need it's not going to cost us a lot of money because we're not changing anything if we don't get the votes in November we don't get the votes we didn't cost us anything if we get the votes we get the money right and we can look at other op to be able to solve the pr School issue Bill how much cost do we have into this referendum and how much if we went for November would we need to put in as costs approximat you put in a little under half a million dollars into this process to this point um you have a lot of cost and without guidance if we don't change anything we don't change if we ignore the market impact and contingency and all that we didn't change anything you just went out with another question how much would that cost us top my head I you're going to have to pay you're going have to pay Professional Services if you're going to review the process with them if it's just plain you have um the cost of the election uh Which is less than what we spent uh we spent probably around $35,000 on that so it would be less than 35 to just if you had package it up and go uh that would be relative cost just for the election so and you heard what so some B Council work some election work maybe 15 or so yeah to me you would probably pay less than half of that 500 yeah so I would say south of 300,000 okay so if we did that and then we just split up the question so that it was this is just preas want just preus just vote for this question two this takes you up to 100 million 8 million of taxpayer money whatever that is and then question three this is everything else what do you as the community but what does the mayor want not what do we want but this is a breakdown that gives them an ability to be able to go through and say this is how much we want to spend on fixes even the mayor believes that we Pras at least which means that at least we would get Pras out of this how much he is willing to put behind this and push for himself that's his decision to be able to go through say vote for two questions but not the third but at least we will get out there in a way that would enable us to be able to move forward with this for relatively little cost now I am still worried and I think we need to get an idea what the market impact of that is and how much risk we would be taking on for those things right because that will really tell us whether or not it's worthwhile going for this for any of these projects or which projects are more risky that we shouldn't going for but I think that might be an approach that's worth discussing so I'm holding the mayor at his word at the Town council meeting he offered his help to the Board of Ed to get 100 million done so I mean he didn't commit here but you know that's what he said you know Town Council Channel 77 everybody can can see it and and live stream it so I mean I think we owe it to the children and the staff to get another crack at the bond referendum um it's going to cost us money but it's not only going to cost us money it's going to cost it's going to be cuts to services for children cuts to staff it's it's it's going to hurt people and not just Mont Tero and you know uh Mr Maola came up here and said you know we threw everything in the kitchen sink I mean yeah that's how you maximize the state aid that we're supposed to get here um Little Ferry had an approximately $38 million Bond referendum and it cost the average home $600 now think of the average person that lives in little fair and the average person that lives in Wayne the average house here was $370 cost little F voted yes Wayne voted no so I don't want to hear this about sticker shock uh anymore I mean you got to look at you know Apples to Apples so I mean I I think we need to come back and whether it's three questions you know I I think we we still need to explore this this summer I think uh you know we we got our work C out again and you know we got to give it another cry right s that's okay so I had a question and maybe this has been discussed at some point before but I don't know because I haven't been here that long um corporate spot so as you know I've talked about the bleachers and I still think that safety is very important but maybe we don't have to put it in through the referendum but we can shop around and I don't know if it has been done with districts but for corporate sponsors and you know I don't know if there's an RFP that has to be done or if it was ever explored but maybe there's some companies local companies in Wayne who would say you know we really value the safety of our children we love coming to see the uh Friday Night Lights and maybe this is something that we would want to participate in so I'm just putting it out there a suggestion to entertain and maybe maybe it's an possibility and that would be taken off the taxpayer right no I'm good um to say so there's that group we have a group I'll talk to you later okay you so just um obviously the um Fair failure of the referendum was um very upsetting it was a tremendous amount of time effort really years of work that went into it um so at this point I mean just from my own perspective obviously quitting is never an option you know we always have to move ahead we always have to do the best we can um but also know like if if you're in the business world or if you're you know really looking at a setback in your life there's there's kind of this time period be take to do kind of like the autopsy where you find out exactly what went wrong why it went wrong what are the people were thinking form focus groups do things to help you really understand what the issues were so we've heard some people here at board meetings and they pointed out what they thought was wrong with the referendum we've heard opinions from other people we read things online but I guess the whole point is that moving ahead hastily is not a best practice um that's just not it's not it wouldn't be acceptable in any other organization and I don't think it should be acceptable here to just move ahead hastily with something that we aren't really sure about that we're not necessarily behind that we don't know the details not sure how it's going to play out so we do have some time here um I don't know I'm I'm not sure about if we can make any other timelines um you know can we can we put something together by August you probably can do that but there's also there's a lot of other things to be considered that also means that like you're saying Mark any other thing that we do right if there's any changes to these plans if there's something else we do at all it's like a roller coaster ride you go you get in line you take your ride and if there's anything different you got to go back to the line again start over so that's how the department of bed works and that's what would happen any other change and so it's unusual I think for a board to move ahead with another referendum without a hook without something that will attract the voters in the community to vote for the referendum there's usually something different and if there is going to be something different then we start the whole process over again it does take six months and there's absolutely no way to make the November deadline so we do have time we do have some things to think about but that's really it is it realistic to think that we would move ahead with the referendum with absolutely no differences and um that's a question we have to think about within the next few days and and make sense of that but um is said I don't know exactly what the best practice would be in a situation like this I I was hoping not to face it but moving ahead hly isn't it um I agree with you Dr tobac I'm concerned about hastily just making the decision and taking the red pen to it and cutting through it right there's consequences to everything and to try to just shove it through and get it done right away concerns me I am or I'm on board for trying again because we don't have much Choice folks all right we heard tonight that in some schools OT and PT will be on the stage in the cafeteria because we have to have classrooms all right we've been through this Rodeo before in this District all right same thing art on a cart music on a cart going to be common every Elementary school just about all right so yeah these are the consequences of the of the referendum going down unfortunately when the refere when it was being put out there we weren't allowed by law to make those comments right we can't give doomsday comments well it's not a doomsday comment the comment is reality and this is what's going to happen you're going to see the numbers shortly and again like I said at the beginning of the meeting take all your demographic studies you want throw them out the window I have real hard numbers now you saw it tonight with ESL you're going to see it when when the projections come out and we will know what happens come another month or two come July all of a sudden the phone in the elementary school is ringing oh I want to register my child I want to register my child it's happening and we got to do something about it and I'm sure um Mr n left let's see uh my comment to Mr nuo is we didn't pick the $100 million the mayor picked that number so don't put that on our plate the mayor picked that number so I I don't know but I I want to I think we'd go back here now we Reg group we've heard what the community has said I don't you know I think November is a long shot right now I really do and I think to what Mark said uh what we need to do is maybe we need to reimagine some things and say Hey listen maybe we need to look at something outside the box here all right but I'm not going to make a decision tonight on this there's too many things that got thrown at us from the architect in two meetings I had with him today all right and with the administration in there's too much there I'm not going out for a project that I re that I I looked at cost a year ago and then I'm going to be building two years from now that scares me IR responsible absolutely 100% you want to talk about irresponsible ibility to the taxpayer I take that as number one oh well just cut something else out and put the money to that come on we and you want to talk about credibility then there's none and it's unethical as well but I I think we regroup come back as a group um in May and I think talk to the administration between now and May and then in may we come back we have a strong meeting just about the budget just about the budget wrong thing about about the needs of this dist and how we can go about getting them for the children and look at it that way and I agree with Harry let's get this we'll get the citizens committee back up he'd be happy to chair it so it's wonderful um and and we'll go from there congratulations congratulations congratulations that part till then you know let's let's do what we let's really we'll take a look Administration will do their homework we have to get the budget to bed now I mean we're pretty we're pretty well there we're in the home we're in the home stretch now and once we get that done we can take a breath and then get back into what our needs are going to be and what we're going to have to do to meet the needs of the students in this district and fast because let's face it any project even you know you wait it to November you're probably looking those condos are going to be built on Valley Road well before we put a shovel on the ground so any other comments take a motion to adjourn John do you need any new from your new business new business go ahead sorry so since we have whole bunch of new board members and I've never actually had the pleasure of having a training by Strauss Esme and kind of talking about policies and the process of how they are developed and when the changes come up how I think it would be beneficial for this board to have them come in and give us a presentation I don't know if it's like an exact because it's a training type of thing but we Public public okay so but something like that if we can get on the books it would be wonderful next meeting we're going to have New Jersey School Board in okay good that and that's that's a possibility we'll take a look and see uh if we can schedule that and what yeah I know when we met them in uh Atlantic City that they said they would be willing to come in policy guest coming yeah I know we next board meeting prepare for a long night we have a lot of guests coming to A J