Tonight’s Board of Ed meeting

We’ve got a pretty full agenda for tonight’s meeting of the Ridgewood Board of Education. You can join us at the Ed Center at 7:30 p.m….or tune in on CableVision Channel 77…or watch the live Webcast on the district website…or watch the webcast archive later. Here’s a sampling of what we’ll be doing:

Acceptance of some generous grant awards from the Ridgewood Education Foundation (thank you REF!).

Discussion of our bond rating and the types of financing options available for our Referendum bonds. Our financial advisors and bonding attorney will be present to talk about the different options.

Dr. Fishbein will give us an update on Referendum projects and work being done by our architect and engineer.

We’ll have an update on the 2010-11 budget, with a balanced budget presented. Of course, this is still preliminary as we’re waiting for the Governor’s budget address to get our firm numbers on state aid. We can’t finalize the budget and lock-in the cuts we need to make until we have that info. But as we’ve been saying all along – it’s likely we will need to cut around $3.5 million. The administration is working through various ideas for getting to that number, but however it shakes out, we’re all going to feel the cuts.

The Board will be asked to award the new contract for custodial/maintenance/grounds services to GCA Services Group (our current provider). GCA had the low bid and will be able to continue with the systems and work they’ve been doing (and doing well, in my opinion).

The Board will be discussing the Parent Satisfaction Survey, which the Communications Committee has drafted. The survey is proposed to be administered to all parents in the district to gauge their satisfaction with various aspects of their children’s schools, including academics, extra-curriculars, facilities and communications.

We’ll also be discussing the renewal of Pomptonian Food Services for 2010-2011 school year.

A couple of reminders on upcoming events:

DEP hearing on the field improvements at RHS and Stevens Fields – March 15 @ 6:30 p.m. at the Ed Center, 3rd floor. Note – this is the DEP’s hearing, not ours. We don’t know what the format will be, if there will be a time limit for speakers, etc. All we know is they asked for one hour to be scheduled and we’ll do it right before our regular meeting which will start at 7:30 p.m.

Budget Workshops – Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. at GW and Wednesday at 1:00 at RHS Campus Center. The focus will be on the budget process and Trenton’s influence on what happens in Ridgewood.

March 22 the Village Council will attend our Board meeting to review the proposed budget.

March 31 Official Public Hearing on the Budget.