Salisbury Township’s final operations committee meeting of the 2015-2016 school year took place June 6 in the administration building, where the first order of business was the closing discussion on the budget for the 2016-2017 school year led by Business Administrator Robert Bruchak.

After reviewing the proposed plans, the unanimous decision was made to implement the suggested plan of a 2 percent tax increase.

The next order of business was a discussion of the business privilege tax which was again led by Bruchak. The presentation was centered on a proposed move of the tax collection date to April 15 as opposed to Feb. 15 after a local business expressed concerns about time constraints. After the case was discussed, it was unanimously agreed to move the tax collection date to April 15.

Perhaps the lengthiest discussion of the meeting concerned the acquisition of an emergency preparedness mobile application.

Director of Maintenance, Buildings and Grounds William Brackett outlined the school district’s need for such an application, as currently all the emergency preparedness packets the schools use are on paper and must constantly be re-printed each time the guidelines are updated.

Brackett said by using an electronic emergency preparedness system, the school district would benefit two-fold: the need for constantly re-printing the paper guidelines would be eliminated and every faculty member would have instant access. Brackett presented four companies which make such an application, although only two were the primary candidates for consideration.

The first, CrisisGo, offers laptop accessibility and mass notification capabilities, as well as video chat and student accountability functions at an additional cost. The other, NaviGate Prepared, offers a set fee for the entire lifespan that the school district uses it as well as laptop accessibility and local company representation. The committee tended to lean toward NaviGate Prepared as the preferred application. The committee took a vote to pick one of the two applications at a later meeting and the motion passed 8-1.

The committee also discussed a proposed update to the Salisbury Township School District’s website. The last design update to the website was in 2007. The issues with the current website were discussed– namely, the website is not responsive to mobile screens and it also currently does not feature links to the school district’s social media platforms. Though the redesign fee for a custom website would be $26,000, the yearly leasing fee for the website would only increase by $3,000. Additionally, the redesign would allow the school to re-brand itself in a more modern sense by adding links and feeds from the schools’ social media accounts directly onto the main website. Furthermore, a new website would also give the school access to video-related content, such as streaming live feeds for graduation and basketball games.

The last order of business before the close of the meeting was a proposed policy update. Notably, a proposed change was made to the cutoff regarding kindergarten admissions. Students born in early September would now be subject to a window and their readiness and maturity would be evaluated before they would be admitted to kindergarten.