Evesham Township School District Meeting 1/23/2020 - Superintendent Scavelli retirement and Preliminary Budget Presentation
There was a meeting of the Evesham Township School District School Board on Thursday January 23, 2020. Here is my summary of what occurred there. I wo
1) There were no bidders for the district owned property in Cambridge Park off Greenbrook Road. The property will be put out for bid again. If there are no bidders, the district can then take other measures to dispose of the property such as listing with a real estate agent, partnering with another governmental agency for use of the property or other actions. (I think perhaps the other 'government agency' may be trying to partner with Evesham or Burlington County to purchase the land as open space, but that is purely speculation on my part.) Bids will be advertised on February 4 with bids due back by March 11.
2) The board is now accepting applications for a new Superintendent of Schools. Applications are due by 2/10 and interviews will be conducted in late February/early March. The hope is to select a candidate by the end of March, with a start date towards the end of the school year (6/30).
3) A bill to allow school districts to provide childcare for children below school age was passed by both houses of the NJ Legislature and signed by the governor. The hope is that this will allow Teddy Bear Academy to remain open, but the district will be working with the State towards that end.
4) This was Superintendent John Scavelli's last board meeting, as he will be retiring next week. There were teary-eyed speeches and thank yous from Board President Joe Fisacaro and VP Trish Everhart, Deputy Mayor Heather Cooper, representatives from the ETAA and ETEA, plus a few current employees and former board members, as well as a cake and snacks after the meeting.
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| Evesham Deputy Mayor Heather Cooper reads a proclamation honoring outgoing Superintendent John Scavelli (Photo courtesy of Evesham Townhip) |
5) Raises were approved for Director of Personnel Richard Dantinne Jr and Director of Curriculum and Instruction Danielle Magulick. During the last school year, raises for every school district employee were approved except for these two individuals. If memory serves, there were two votes last year to approve raises that failed with a 4-2-3 vote, with Mr Mehigan and Mr St John voting no and Mr Fisacaro, Ms Barbagiovanni and Ms Stone abstaining. (A 5 vote majority is needed to pass any measure).
Mr Mehigan wanted to know if voting on this again was allowed under Roberts Rules of Order (which are the guidelines for how school board meetings are conducted), since it already failed twice. Board Solicitor Donio noted that this was a new board as of January, so there is nothing preventing them from voting again.
The resolution passed by a 6-1-2 vote, with Mr Mehigan voting no and Ms Barbagiovanni and Mr Fisacaro abstaining (due to relatives working in the school district).
6) The first reading of the 2020-2021 school year calendar took place. The calendar is not yet approved. Presumably at the next meeting it will be on the agenda again will be approved at that time. If you have issues with the calendar, next meeting is your chance to be heard.
7) Mr Scavelli presented his final the preliminary budget. The presentation can be found here. There are a couple things to keep in mind. This is a simplified explanation, but a school district is allowed to raise taxes up to 2% a year without putting it on a ballot. If they raise taxes less than 2%, they can 'bank' some of that excess for future use. If they need to raise taxes more than 2% plus their banked cap, they need to put a budget on a ballot and put it to the voters.
The second thing is two significant changes to the budget for this year. One is the new teachers contract that was approved giving our teachers a 3.75% raise for the current school year and 3.15 for the 2020-2021 school year. The increase adds well over $1 million to the budget. In addition, the estimated loss in state aid this year from last year is $1,423,539. So if everything else costs exactly the same as last year and the district wants to provide all the same services, there is already a shortfall of almost $2.5 million. Raising taxes 2% plus the banked cap (so a total of 3.44%) raises a little under 2.1 million.
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| State aid drops from 12.4 million to 11 million |
As of the writing of the preliminary budget, even with using 2% plus the banked cap in a tax increase, the expenditures of the budget are almost $400,000 more than expected revenues. Mr Scavelli noted during the presentation that many items within the budget are not finalized, and that some numbers may go down (and others may go up), and that frequently the final budget number is less than the preliminary budget. For instance, last year, in the preliminary budget presented January 2019, the suggested tax increase was 2.79%, but by the time of the final budget, the increase was 1.41%. He sounded confident that the budget would indeed be balanced by the May timeline and it would not need to be put to the vote, but there is a difficult road ahead.
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