Did Anyone Even Look At The $63 Million Berkeley Heights Public School Budget Before It Was Passed?

Oct 27, 2023

In September, BHCW finally received a copy of the Detailed Adopted budgets for the 2023-24 school year for BHPSNJ and several other Districts. In that process, the state agreed to stop redacting account numbers on school budgets. Our publication of that budget was the first opportunity some of our BOE Members had to see it – even though the entire Board voted it through.

In looking through that budget, we noticed that shared service agreements with the town were referenced.

We submitted an OPRA request to the township and discovered that these agreements did not exist.

John sent the following email to the Board of Education and Administration on 10/3/2023:

There appears to be a significant discrepancy between the adopted budget of the Berkeley Heights Board of Education and the Berkeley Heights Township budget.

Sources are: BHPS Adopted budget 2023-24 and Berkley Heights Township budget: https://www.berkeleyheights.gov/DocumentCenter/View/8200/2023-Adopted-Budget

Upon a close review of the adopted budget, I noticed some inconsistencies listed under shared services agreements:

The Berkeley Board of Education’s final adopted budget lists the following shared services agreements with Berkeley Heights township on page 99 of the adopted final budget (see attached)

We requested, via OPRA all Shared Service Agreements between the Township of Berkeley Heights and the Berkeley Heights Public School District. Compare the list of shared services indicated in these agreements with the list Berkeley Heights township maintains:

Shared services agreement with Comcast for use of Verizon

Shared services agreement on SRO with Berkeley heights police department

Shared services agreement on SLEO with Berkeley heights police department

Shared services agreement on SRO with Berkeley heights police department

Shared services agreement on SLEO with Berkeley heights police department

We received no copy of a shared services agreement with the Department of Public Works. Every elementary and middle school parent is aware of craters in the school parking lots that need to be fixed. The potholes at William Woodruff Elementary are the worst. The current solution is to mark each with fluorescent paint.

The only conclusion I can arrive at is the potholes are NOT being fixed as there is NO agreement in place to address this issue.

Background: It took multiple OPRA requests to obtain the fully adopted detailed budget. With every request, we were given an advertised budget in response to a request for a detailed budget by the newly appointed OPRA custodian Mr. Hopkins. So BHCW submitted an OPRA request to the NJ State dept of Education. After this budget (received from the state) was published, Mr. Hopkins provided us with the detailed budget.

I am concerned that neither the superintendent (Dr.Varley) nor Board Administrator (Julie Kot) shared the final adopted budget with the entire board.

According to the committee guidelines, the finance committee chair, Joy Young, and the committee must oversee the administration’s monthly management of the adopted budget. How were they overseeing the monthly budget management without sharing a detailed adopted budget with the entire board?

So the critical question is who is responsible and accountable for the accuracy of the information in our adopted budget?

Is it the Board administrator? Julie Kot’s resume and LinkedIn profile state she was the CFO for 62 Million dollar budget

Does the final accountability fall on the superintendent as she recommends the approval of the budget to the board?

This issue also raises the question of the many assistants that were approved and appointed for the Business Administrator during her term in BHPS. If the assistants and the OPRA custodian positions were created to delegate core responsibilities of the business admin role, why are we seeing these inconsistencies?

BHPS initially requested a health care cost adjustment with insufficient supporting information and later made adjustments to the health benefits account https://njedreport.com/letter-to-the-editor-my-school-district-is-deceiving-parents-and-taxpayers/

Who is responsible and accountable for correcting the adopted budget?

Is the finance committee providing the oversight it is supposed to? If not, then why have these committees?

Time and again, we have been in the dark about how our dollars are being accounted for. The most recent example involves subscription and courtesy Busing- numbers district employees are certifying as accurate to the state are NOT matching with the budget data, and there is NO response from President Angela Penna and VP Joy Young (finance committee chair) or Robert Ciancuilli (sits on finance committee) to resident questions or concerns on this issue.

Are District Administrators fulfilling their responsibility for the District’s budget? Without the detailed budget, how were Board Members confident enough to vote it through?

The district auditor, state comptroller, and NJ State Department of Education OFAC Office of Fiscal Accountability and Compliance need to investigate further if the District is unable to supply answers to these questions.

Given the history of non-response – if a meaningful response to these questions and concerns is not provided within 48 hours I will be submitting this email along with attachments to the above named agencies/offices.

Sincerely,

John Migueis

No one on that email responded to that request. Instead, we got a long email from Mr. Hopkins (who was not on the original email) that had nothing to do with our questions – it deserves its own article for another time.

As a result of not receiving a response that made sense, John forwarded the email to several state agencies to see if they would have better luck in getting answers. We got a response back saying the matter was actually referred to the Division of Criminal Justice:

In what we are sure is an odd coincidence, the Shared Services Agreement suddenly appears on the BOE Meeting Agenda on 10/12/2023 but was not available for the public to view during the meeting. So we submitted another OPRA request and obtained it from the District.

Signed 6 months after the budget was approved by the BOE.

We also heard from a couple of parents that repairs were started in at least one school’s parking lot.

This is just one tiny piece of evidence, on what is already a massive pile, pointing to the BOE majority’s lack of due diligence in the budgets it decides to pass year after year.

A $63 Million Dollar rubber stamp.

Copies of Shared Services Agreement Received from Township Prior to 10/12/2023

Copy of Unredacted Detailed Budget

Shared Service Agreement Signed on 10/12/2023

All Articles on the 2023 Detailed Budget

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