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[Music] when i think of carol toomey there's a thousand words that would come in my mind but two or three the most prominent would be the commitment she's always had for the people and the and the athletics and just everything at center grove high school in the community and also the passion that she had towards her commitment for all the stuff that she did at center grove but most of all i think love when i think about carol the way she loved all the coaches and she loved all the she loves all the athletes and she loves every sports team i can't remember a game as a coach as a head football coach where i walked out and didn't see carol's carol sitting in the front row with her right smile and you know waving i guess i'd start with elegant graceful and refined she has such high expectations for those involved and for whatever she's doing she never shortcuts and she always makes sure that it's done the right way and she'll plan it out to the t my first word is organized when vandy needed a staff member to head our north central valuation team he picked carol i was surprised that he picked an athletic director to head up the north central team but that's who he picked and i was very impressed at how well carol planned out what we needed my second word to describe carol is dedicated carol is very dedicated to center grove high school she built the girls athletic program from gaa to a major girls program that often outshined several of our boys program the two words that most clearly come to my mind when i think about miss toomey are dedicated and determined uh scrappy and determined were the two i thought of right away just the things she was able to accomplish in in her career in the time time the era that she started in you had to be those things in order to get things done for women's sports i'm wearing my varsity letter sweater as it represents carol's keen interest in athletics but in all honesty carol is all things center grove carol is passionate she has an undeniable love caring and support for the school its students and its staff carol is also progressive forward thinking and willing to make dynamic improvement changes to make center grove better biggest impact i would say is that she hired me so for that thank you very much carol i i've loved it here also and it's been a great almost 40 years for me carol's impact towards my career here at center grove is huge because she's one of the people that really came to florida to get me and we had a person in common from florida and that person would you know really told me that i could she could be trusted and she would always have my back and it was absolutely the truth i believe mrs toomey's impact on center grove goes a long way you know when it starts just her career at the beginning of her career working with students in physical education and health she definitely has high standards for all those that she serves and she does a lot to make sure that students get the best education that they can no matter the subject or in the area that they're in most recently the biggest impact she had on me was two years ago she led a charge to get me into the indiana basketball hall of fame which if you play basketball in indiana that's about as great of an award as you can possibly achieve and she was very instrumental in making that happen for me so we've been in touch we've she's followed me i've followed her we've been in touch for 60 years and it's it's been pretty special i know that miss toomey is is part of the reason that i had the opportunities that i had as a student athlete and i didn't fully understand that as a student athlete when i was in high school but as i got older and i looked back and i understood all the things that she did for girls sports you know i really appreciate what she did for us to have the opportunities that we have when she started teaching in 1963-64 there was one team it was a basketball team and we got the gym one night a week for two hours and we got to play eight to ten games a year that was it that was what women's athletics was at center grove and we ended better than most schools when title nine passed in 1972 she put her determined foot through that door and she never looked back she did what she had to to make sure that women were given equal opportunities to every possible sport at center grove high school she took them from from one sport one night a week to multiple sports multiple championships i think mrs toomey's legacy for center grove will will be a lot of things not only just what she's done for sports in general here at the school district but what she's done for the school district as a whole when she started on the school board 12 years ago after finishing 40 years as an employee in the district she helped lead the school district to a whole new level we built more in the school district than we had in the years previous and she was a critical part of updating all of our buildings that have been out of date for some of them over 20 and 30 years i always knew that carol would support what she best what was best for center road and if you convince her that this is what needs to be done for center grove or if she was convinced that it was that she would always support what was best for center grove from our time on the school board carol showed us that you can make the tough challenging decisions and even though they're the right decisions still have grace kindness and respect for those that didn't agree she is the matriarch of girls sports um in center grove and and pretty much across the state she was a part of that and i think that she has served center grove um with great dedication and tireless love for the community for the school for all the students and all the athletes all the development of girls athletics women's athletics as we should call in today's world center grove high school is because carol 2 may had a plan and an idea and a passion to make the women's sport here just as good and just as equal as the men's sport which it should be but carol's backbone and drive really uh prompted that at the women's athletics to be where we are today i personally i can't thank mrs toomey enough for everything she's done not just for the school corporation but for me personally she was critical in bringing me into the school district bringing me up to speed on how things work who to know who to communicate with and and how to grow as a professional and i wish her so so much happiness as she continues on in the next steps after leaving the district here as a school board member i i wish carol the very best and dale also who dale is a fabulous support person for uh carol as a board member and as a coach but i know that in their retirement or in her retirement from the board that they will still be very supportive of center grove and i wish them the best i also want to give a shout out to carol husband dale toomey he has been such a support to carol in her career and accomplishments at center grove and oh my all the school board meetings that dale has attended i think makes him deserving of a badge of honor carol thanks for your time and commitment to center grove without a doubt your legacy will always be a part of center grove history i hope that retirement or whatever she chooses to call this this next stage of her life is all that she and dale hoped for and that they have continued health and happiness and that whatever direction she goes in i know she's going to be successful but i wish her all the best out we're going to miss missy carroll and i hope that you and dale take care of each other and um for the remaining great years that you have left and please don't be a stranger here at center grove we love seeing you yeah i just want to thank carolina thank you personally for being such a great friend and being such a great have a great service to our school and community uh and all the athletic programs not just football you've been you've been so loyal to every program here in center grove a lot of things wouldn't be like they are if it wasn't for you and your time you put in and i want to congratulate you on an unbelievable career uh and i like i said earlier i hope that you you hang around i'm honored to be your friend and it was an honor to work for you as a as a school board member i was honored it's honored to be your head football coach i'm still going to always be your head football coach and i appreciate all you've done for all the athletes here at center grove high school and have fun and relax this is timmy congratulations on a well-deserved retirement i know it is not in your nature to sit down slow down relax but if at any time you need pointers on this just call me we'll go to lunch and i will give you pointers because i am excellent at it and what i will tell you to do right now is pour yourself a drink pour dale a drink go sit on your couch in front of a fire and toast to a job well done [Music] you

somebody's face and then if you feel more comfortable you can turn it back off but um so tonight we have the public budget forum and we have um all of our key administrators here and so at this point we'd like to open it up to the public to make comments ask questions and hopefully you've gotten a chance to take a look at the budget presentation and listen to our december board meetings and if you have any questions then um the floor is yours so who would like to go first can i go first sure okay so my name is matty preston i live at 17 crestview drive and i'm here tonight to ask for your support for a gymnastics team at the brookfield high school i have done gymnastics privately for several years and to be able to represent our school would be a great honor it would be fun to work with teammates while learning important values such as respect teamwork and preservation thank you thank you maddie um i'd like to go next my name is catherine brooks i live at 21 crestview drive i think it would be great if brookfield added gymnastics the sports they offer so that kids who can't afford it afford to do it outside of school can still enjoy it thank you very much we'll be pleased to hear that it is currently um something that we are considering it's currently uh in the budget proposal and uh we certainly appreciate your advocacy i think those are our only two members of the public right now yeah rosa if i could just share a little bit with the girls i think it's first of all so proud of them for uh having the uh the courage at their young age to come on to a public forum like this and and uh exercise their uh their their citizen uh citizenry it's uh it's exciting to see them and uh they as you said rosa uh it is in the superintendent's uh budget proposal to bring gymnastics into brookfield high school uh we have to thank mr baldwin and mr bellanda for the work on that at the high school and then bringing that forward to the um administrative team and ultimately obviously bringing that forward at the beginning of december and that is still in the budget proposal to the board of education uh rosa just so you know we did put a school message out regarding the um budget hearing prior to the holidays and on monday when we returned from the winter recess uh as well as posting it on facebook today so we have advertised this meeting yes usually these are not very well attended so i'm not surprised so similar to our budget hearing that we had in the fall you know how long do you guys want to sort of hang on and just look at each other we'll have plenty of time to look at each other this evening yeah that's true and likely the bulk of our conversation this evening will be the budget proposal i would i would recommend we give it till 10 after which is two or three minutes from now and if nobody comes by then that's been plenty of time yeah okay i'm comfortable with that [Music] so okay so um i think uh we should go ahead and call it unfortunately so um everybody can maybe go grab something eat really quickly before we have to hop back on here again so uh without objection uh this meeting is adjourned see you in a little bit you

Board of Education policy meeting uh I'm not even sure what today's date is it's today the 5th yes January 5th it's 6:30 pm Mr jinsky uh a roll call please sure Mr grippo here miss Helen here Mr White here Mr chairman you have a quorum fantastic uh so I'll rise for the pledge is there a flag uh Mr there is okay great ah I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all how far we've come with a video of the flag waving in the uh in the breeze it's very nice I I feel like we have to start to do like karaoke style you know so that everybody's reading at the same time now there's so much delay it wouldn't matter anyway yeah well the one time I tried to designate somebody to do the pledge it was Marlene and the dog went ballistic as soon as I did uh let's see uh item two public comment Dr Solen and is there anything we have no public uh comment at this time okay great um um let's see which why don't we do um the see I'm not even sure both could be lengthy uh I guess we'll just we'll Dive Right into Title Nine how's that um so uh Katherine you had uh you had sent us uh comments of your review of Title 9 um and I was able to to review them um Jeff have we received any clarification uh on this policy from last time yes um you know in the last meeting you had asked if um and when I say you collectively we had talked about um going back to C where the Genesis of this uh document and asking you know really how much of this was V law and how much of this was Cab's uh interpretation or addition to whatever the law indicated and what I'll show you here real quick is you know what what they said to me you know they replied to Carol and I and said this is the law what you'll find in places that are bracketed uh because I know you know we pointed that out too those bracketed places are in essence uh just kind of reminders in places where uh it may not be entirely clear that uh you know you should do X Y or Z so for example um a reminder that the person who is the decision maker uh shouldn't be the title n coordinator uh stuff like that so uh I'll share my screen scre really quick uh because I just want to show you a couple of examples of of where this is coming from first is the um the actual document itself that this Title 9 uh policy is grounded in is called the the final rule US Department of Education Title 9 final rule it's called it came out in May as you can see of 2020 the document itself is 500 pages of legal EAS 554 pages of this you know really it's just all the entire uh Title Nine piece it's it's it's uh fairly overwhelming so they do provide a summary of major provisions the the US Department of Ed and in there there are this language here is what you read verbatim in the policy so even where it says like um and it seemed like not to be accurate where it says deliberately indifferent means a response to Title 9 sexual harassment report that is not clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances I think that negative in there is a little odd but it is literally verbatim from the US Department of Ed um I I neglected to uh highlight it here but it was one of the things that I uh quickly saw and was like huh um it is in this and you know I know that none of us has the time and few of us have the legal capacity to read the 550 54-page document so I thought that you know in doing this investigation what might be helpful for us as a group is to share the summary of major provisions again this is directly from you know the department of Ed uh the federal department of education for us to look at this relative to the policy but I can tell you in my going through it it is like I said word for word word right out of here with the exception of those bracketed areas um they also produce this final rule overview which is really just a it's not the verbatim as that last document of the summary that I showed you but it kind of hits the highlights so I figured I could share both of these with you uh the 12 pages is much more manageable than the hund or 554 and then broken down in a way that's much clearer for a lay person to understand um like us you know like Mo you know most of us that don't deal in that law the other thing that I thought was worth you know showing you was this um training I found for the decision maker and it really speaks to the complexity of uh what school systems are being asked to do so this was a uh PowerPoint presentation created in 2020 and IT addresses you know all the the elements that have to be considered for the person who was assigned the decision maker now I noticed Katherine in one of your comments you asked like the title n coordinator and the decision maker are these people that are um static like identified Title 9 coordinator is an identified person like right now it's Robin an Cary um and she's still trying to get her feet underneath her with respect to the the breath of this uh new law um and this new guidance but the decision maker because that decision maker has to be somebody who's uh impartial is determined per the circumstances um so we have to make sure that that person doesn't have a pre-existing relationship with various individuals so that person is then assigned by the uh the Title Nine coordinator the more I read about the complexity of this oops the more I read about the complexity of this the more inclined I would be to depending on the sensitivity and the um the gravity of of the situation is maybe even you know look to hire a somebody who would be the hearing officer in this case that I can guarantee is impartial um so like I mean when there's cross-examination where you have to ensure that the parties ask questions that are legally relevant you know it's it's not somebody off the street that just does that you know um each party can have an advisor who may or may not be an attorney um if I have two attorneys you know kind of um litigating in a sense these these s the situation it is uh incredibly difficult for your average administrator to be able to just um conduct that sort of work uh without extensive training and um you know the the sexual harassment and Title Nine challenges we've had in the past are relatively limited um and it it be it it almost becomes a cost benefit analysis of training multiple people to be able to do this work versus you know when the the circumstances arise if it's that complex and they're talking about situations where you could could be raped um and it's you know it's really going to be imperative that we deal with this with Incredible sensitivity and do it right and so you know I'm still trying to to work through this to determine the the nuts and bolts of how we flush this out Tim go ahead thanks Adam uh Jeff uh a minute ago you touched on a question I was wondering about which is so you've been superintendent for five years now correct yes just off the top of your head how many cases have you had that would fall into this bucket maybe maybe uh five or six a year that would fall into this uh realm of sexual harassment now within that however the mass the vast majority of them are issues that uh could be rectified um and have been addressed you know that we we deal with it what's different about this is that each incident of sexual harassment now is treated as if it's a court case so we have to notify the accused we have to present both parties are presenting evidence there's a 10day reflection period where each party can review the other's evidence and information that garnered through the investigation investigation we know like we do that all day every but but you know when it comes to being the decision maker in this case um I'm hopeful that there are many guinea pigs before us who can kind of help guide the way is ter in terms of the the best way to do that but I mean there as you've seen in the policy uh it's it's very different um than what we typically engage in typically we engage in and and an allegation is made um we take steps to uh provide Safe Harbor if you will for all the parties involved if if the investigation will take more than you know an hour or something like that and it often does and then you know we investigate everything out and we met out consequences it's not a situation where you have people bringing in advisors to litigate the outcomes and and challenge the evidence provided by one party or another and I I think that this is being done because of the gravity of a sexual allegation and I and I understand that but we're not a Judicial System you know where we're used to navigating these things is very different and just to be just to be clear for parents who are watching I and I'm I'm making ass assumtion on the answer to this you mentioned the extreme before rape right in a violent if there was a violent crime that occurs the police get involved right absolutely even you know nonviolent crimes um you know possession of drugs and things when people violate the law uh we have to make determinations about referrals um um you know things like I mean I look at it like this there's there's situations police when police arrest someone they have incredible discretion in in what they do like with a ticket for driving violation or something so you could say it's a crime because they were going 30 and a 25 on school property I I'm not getting into that I'm just saying for violent crime um yeah yeah the police are gonna get involved so then so my second question is with regard to that are you following their lead or running parallel to them yeah in order to preserve the sanctity of a legal investigation we defer to them so they will um whether it's a verbal exchange I mean it could be something like that or something with touching or uh theft and you know most of the time if police are involved we defer to them to complete their investigation and then we investigate okay okay just to give just to give that's what I assumed but I just didn't want parents thinking oh that something like that happens on school grounds during school and we're just going to deal with it ourselves in this investiga process okay I mean I just want to be totally clear on that yeah and we can we'll often we'll consult the uh person who's bringing the allegation forward so you know there are a lot of situations that occur where not a lot of situations but but when a situation occurs that if it's close to anything that might be violative of the law then we say to the parent that's that's your call and a lot of the time they can make the decision to go to the police at the same time we'll do our investigation the things that rise in you know such significant nature that it's clearly you know something that could Harbor on a felony though we're like we're away from that and thankfully that rarely happens you know in the five years I've been here it's a very rare occurrence but it happens okay thank you sure um so in I guess since Katherine uh went through the document which I guess forced me to read the entire document to see what comments Katherine had made because because I tried scrolling through hoping that maybe she used colors or something so I can see but it turned out I think you use square brackets if I'm right little bit of red little bit of yellow in the okay so uh so there are two um let's see how many questions did I have have all right so the main one or question one is uh that Katherine had pointed out was if the decision maker do we need to um explicitly list who the decision maker is or is that fall under administrative administrative uh regulation so we have yeah we have to explicitly indicate who the title 9 coordinator is and um the rationale for that so this is our homepage page um and on our homepage we have like you click on the link Title 9 sexual discrimination we Robin's the title n coordinator have her email address to be able to make um if people want to make a complaint or a ask a question one of the nuances here is that it's very clear about the fact that the decision maker the invest first of all there's an investigator who determine like tries to gather all the information presents that information along with any information shared by the uh alleged perpetrator and the accuse accuser or the alleged victim all that information gets presented to the decision maker who makes a decision the decision maker because they can't be partial toward any party can't always be the same person the decision maker is assigned by the title n coordinator um so that person's not static it's not a fixed individual because if that person has a relationship then at least as we understand it today now keep in mind that this this law has been on the books really it's been enforced since May where it was I mean it was released in May with a July start during a pandemic so there hasn't been a lot of um you know case law if you will for lack of a better term on how to navigate this so that's why I said I was hoping others could be kind of guinea pigs for this by the time we get toward our um July or our June our retreat with our administrator team we could get quality coaching about this protocol all um it maybe we need to I I hope that we don't have to but we may need to engage it sooner um but thankfully we haven't been in that position yet um so the the other two questions I have is that the only thing to me or well I'll start with this question there's a section about education and educational activities what is the definition of that does that include Athletics yes it's anything that we same Title Nine that I that we talked about hockey team and yeah yeah that's that's different in the sense that that's about access to they're both about access to education what is new here is that it's become much clearer around sexual misconduct and not just quote access to programming um as we would traditionally think of title um you know last year where we had to demonstrate the ratios of students to student athletes and demonstrate that and we have equal access but the board nevertheless you know um supported our girls and and funded hockey here this is really kind of a different uh arm of the the law where you're talking about sexual misconduct but it does include anything that the school really had purview over so Athletics absolutely on or off campus uh a field trip uh the eth grade trip to DC a trip to Europe you know whatever the case may be yes very inclusive okay so then that leads me to the only word there's one important word that drives this entire policy and that's the word sex do we have a definition is it biological or is it all inclusive the way yeah the way it's been interpreted is you know if you're talking about like a sexual orientation right it's it's you define what your sexual orientation is and if that behavior limits if your behavior if your conduct creates a situation that limits somebody else's access to education that is violative of Title 9 it's incumbent upon the decision maker after the investigator uh calls all the evidence together to make the determination if indeed the the alleged uh perpetrator's conduct limited the person's access to educational programming and services and the sexual thing is you know that's it's wrapped up in there too well yeah well that's why I'm I'm just wondering because it the that word is not clear like the definition isn't clear as whether it's biological or if it's uh all all inclusive to uh gender and identity um and so I I just wasn't sure in in the realm of uh of um uh discrimination uh if that is if the whole entire policy changes because the sup what Supreme Court decided in the spring you know yeah you do have Title Nine which deals with sex um gender however you also have I think it's title four that covers all other areas of discrimination so you know race color religious uh Creed you know age these can all be discriminatory conduct that fall outside of Title 9 so you know I think it's important to remember that any sort of discrimination and limiting of access to to education is not uh is something that we have to address that we do not tolerate um now that being said it's just governed by different rules that's all right yeah because I you I just do a little homework and saw there stuff on in title 7 as well which uh I forget what what the subject matter of title 7 is uh I think that's the Civil Rights Act if I recall 1964 so yeah so I wasn't sure what overlaps with what and so I you know I you know if this is all had pre-existed before or if this uh leads us into uh Grand unexplored territory um and so the entire process is brand new you know so the the whole um component the way they've articulated this was I I think the Genesis really was around uh sexual misconduct issues at the Collegiate level and it's very much written for a Collegiate audience um but they've they' funneled it down to the secondary schools which you know I I think it's that um societally and and judicially we are enforcing discrimination uh and and not tolerating that the protocol for which they use to try and do that at the secondary school level I think is a little bit you know too sophisticated but you know I think there's at that level that age group I think the the judicial system is better equipped to manage it than the public school system but you know it's it is the final rule so this is what we do yeah because there did seem to be a lot of questions as to even um I know kather pointed out there were sections about is this foilable because it it exists within our system and not as a as a a legal proceeding which I would guess has higher threshold to to getting into case documents and it's not and I don't know if this is the same as like just in a regular workplace where you had like highly trained HR or even affirmative action uh employees who who that's all they do is sexual harassment right sexual misconduct cases within the workplace and so I don't know if that's you know is that are we also required to to bring out additional staff for that or do we have staff that's Al always highly specialized in this subject already we don't have staff that are highly specialized in this I you know maybe a a huge District you know hartfords or new havens of the world may have um somebody who is that specialist but we do not um and I think it's a great point about you know what is is this violating fura you know when you're EX and that's something that hasn't to my knowledge been legally challenged yet but is an issue that we identified going through the review process that you're disclosing a lot of information about other students to the alleged victim and the you know alleged accuser or alleged uh perpetrator so these you know that's that's an area I think I absolutely agree with you that that's a a Hot Spot yeah there did seem to be a few release vals in there for furpa but I don't know how strong they were so um so know um what do you guys think do you think I I feel more comfortable if we tailed it at least one more meeting to read through this new material that you have those overview sections yeah to to add further clarification as that sounds can I before we table Yeah Tim go ahead Yeah Tim was first and Cath thank you yes um uh so first of all Jeff just to be clear what I kind of thought I was hearing you say at the be at the outset of this discussion was you were looking for Budget moving a piece of your budget into basically hiring some sort of external attorney to handle this because you were saying you don't want you don't really want your administrators the principles to be doing this the training everything else required is that fair to say you were that's one of the things on your mind uh it would be a consideration Tim based on the cir cumstance of the situation this is like a you know we go through the budget you'll hear other Professional Services so this would be like a consultative role if indeed we come across something like this that we would need an outside person to manage we it wouldn't be anything that we would you know hire just we don't have the demand oh no I didn't yeah sorry I mean like hire an attorney not somebody per staff basis as needed our our labor attorney Floyd what is it Burch and Moses I forgot who it is that who it is yeah do they have somebody in house that does this stuff yep okay okay so if something comes up in a rush you can make the whole thing happen exactly that's I mean that's why you know during the pandemic and everything that we're navigating now this this could take hours upon hours to wrap your head around as you guys have seen in so you know um I have that you know emergency insurance policy if need be to have somebody guide us through it I just don't want to spend the money right now if I can avoid it and so we're we're kind of hopeful that we don't have to go down that road and we'll use limited consultation and then of course obviously we don't hope we hope that a serious issue like this doesn't come up but you know for the for the individuals involved but we'll go there if we have to so one one other question I think which is just um with regard to the Foya so is the cons is the concern that we have here that it's foyble under federal law rather than state law no I don't think the concern is Foya that's a freedom information act public document issue for me it's more furpa which is the federal education records protection act which you know if you're talking about one child's educational record I can't disclose that to somebody else that's what inhibits us from sharing discipline when when an individual gets disciplined for something and it oftentimes an administrator it make me feel way better to tell the parent hey this is what happened to the other kid but we're prohibited because it's a violation of their their educational record um but that this really is kind of throws thrown out the window in this process so is this but is this a law or is this an administrative policy I mean what it sounds to me kind of like What's Happening Here is we have two laws that are two federal laws that are in conflict and it's going to have to get litigated and I'll just offer my perspective on this which is turn the light on thank you sorry basically status quo is where I would defer to I mean if something's going into the courts so my my recommendation to you if something does blow up tell everybody and as hard as it is as much easier as nice as it could be sometimes to tell one person what the punishment was of the other person look this could go to the US Supreme Court right now we're gonna sit on the status quo which is what we've always done until we get more information on it not that it's gonna some people will be happy some people will be mad but that that's my two cents on that yeah I mean these things are so nuanced that you know everything is so um like I said I guess nuanced that we would certainly consult with a specialist this law every day um and then just take their lead on it at this point because I don't feel confident in you know just riding my gut on something so significant yeah you know we we would take council's advice on this okay good and and I'm happy to table this if you want if everybody wants a motion on it uh Katherine you got com yes um so my intention in kind of walk you know going through this and marking it up first of all that's what I do for a living and but secondly um you know I was trying to approach it from just making sure whatever policy we put into place is you know as crystal clear as we can make it um not I'm not attempting at all I wasn't trying to like um rewrite the legislation although although I think it needs to be Rewritten but um so I don't you know these were just things that I thought were worth thinking about because the last thing we want to do is to put into place a policy that opens us up for litigation by someone who you know can just claim oh well you didn't comply with this policy policy this Law whatever whatever the right it's going to be a civil rights action I guess against the district and um you know I don't know we're I I'm much more sensitive after this discussion to the fact that we are kind of just between a rock and a hard place right now this is not you know this is a really sensitive complicated difficult potentially High very expensive um process and this is without even having a claim that would have to be taken care I mean just the training that would have to be involved um and making sure I I agree I don't understand how lay people could actually um conduct the investigation Andor be the decision maker and you know it's so legalistic and so complicated the way that this is structured that um I'm not sure that anyone could could um complete it in a way that is you know perfectly compliant with the law I don't know if I'm making any sense at this point but um I'm happy to spend as much time on this as we have to but it sounds to me like we just have to stand back for another little bit and see if we can you know accumulate more information um but I but you're right nobody's there nothing is happening I think in the world that's going to help us understand how other people are approaching it unless there's you know and we don't and who knows Department of Ed may change their mind on some of this stuff but yeah that's POS on top of everything else you know but cu there was a lawsuit brought against the department of Ed indicating that this law was discriminatory against accusers um and I think a lot of that has to do with um you know how open it is it makes it hard you know for for people to produce evidence and because this is obviously a very sensitive topic to begin with um um and it you know I think there is protection when the investigator a person of authority who's impartial says I looked at all the evidence and this is where it comes out um but now you know everybody sees everybody who's it is very judicial and it's and it's it's ridiculous I mean I don't know you're supposed to like subpoena people's cell phone records or so yeah I couldn't not it's a little intense yeah it's ridiculous but um yeah so you know we'll share I'll share the other documents with you guys okay um and then we'll come back and take a look at it we can always have somebody from Bertram Moses come and talk to us if if you choose after you review that documentation let me know we'll set it up to for the next policy meeting um because and it you know it it is so new and it is like you guys said and depthly identified in conflict with other things we know to be federal law so it's it's tough It's very tough I just had one other question or comment so whether or not we have this polic reimplement or put this policy into our little binder of policies we're subject to the law already so yeah absolutely we have to follow this regardless of if it's in our policy manual or not right right okay okay okay still I still think there's stuff that we can tweak on it because not all of that can be Lo there is some stuff in there that feels like we can I agree polish it a little at least for ourc purposes so wait till you get the summary and then we'll come back and kick that around next next month all right uh so can I have a motion to to table the title 9 policy uh all right Tim great um do I have a a second okay uh um so we're gonna we have a motion to table the Title Nine policy until we can review the additional documents um all in favor all right it's unanimous great we will table that um on to the attendance at meetings via electronic communication um we had a little bit of discussion at our main uh business meeting last time and I don't know there's a lot of shoulder shrugging there to to get a uh a desire for it um I don't know does anyone have any opinions as to whether we continue reviewing this one or um I don't know I'm kind of on the fence about it whether or not it's necessary um I just want to shoot where did it go can you can somebody put it up on the screen yep sorry yeah what is it I'm talking about 43 by the way because the other one is that's that's the other one's the temporary one yeah the other one's the you guys can see that right yep yes right yeah I mean I I like the idea I don't think it really has to be a decision I don't think it really needs to be a decision of the board chair it's just board members are members are allowed to participate in meetings by telephone or other electronic means I don't want to see it abused I think people should meet in person but we can't do it right now and I think there's an expectation on a part of the public that we're going to be you know available yeah I mean honestly the the virtual meetings I mean I don't mind them and I think the it's it allows easier access for the public um well it kind of depends I would say it's a different access and in certain ways it's easier you know when you've got kids sitting on your lap you're at home you can't go out for a meeting whether you're a board member or just a parent it's easier at the same time I also think it's valuable to have the inperson meeting because frankly you know I think it's good if someone can come and really convey the their sentiment in person um when something when something matters to them uh and so I think I I would I personally would prefer to have inperson meetings all the time um but I just think with technology today I I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be able to uh I mean there's reasons you know administratively Mike or whoever getting the equipment set up and there's a cost involved and something like that but I think those are relatively minor um next to I shouldn't say minor but they are on balance they are offset by um an expectation of the public that meetings will be held you know everybody not everybody many people have cell phones um you know you're talking online uh Zoom meetings all sorts of stuff I think that expectation is there and I also think it would be open it up a bit more to parents who just you know young parents of younger kids who don't feel as though they have the opportunity to to to go to you know three or four meeting a month but maybe two meetings a month they could do type of thing just sort of opening it up that way a little bit um so uh C did you have comment Katherine or I know there's a lot here I think that we shouldn't be making a policy for the purpose of enabling people to run for office that is not the purpose of the policy um I do think think that you know if there is a situation where someone you know these situations where you don't come to an in-person meeting should be few and far between um and I I have been you know unable to attend some meetings over the last several years because of work but if I could have logged on electronically from my office I would have been happy to participate in the meeting but I don't think that I should be doing that as a matter of convenience or um unless it's really something that you know is kind of a critical reason why I can't be there so I I don't I think there's a real benefit to in-person meetings I I I never thought I'd say I missed them but I do and I think but but I think that we should not ever forget that and I think that you're right Tim that people want to be able to come in person and speak to the board in person um rather than sending in comments you know by email or whatever because there isn't the ability to really interact on a ver you know if it's a virtual meeting but we're not talking about that we're talking about us being able to um attend virtually when we need to um so I don't object to that as a matter of principle I object to it if it's not for kind of a um you know extenda circumstances yes EXT thank you and I I will say I did I I did discuss this and our next policy with Floyd just to quickly jump in here oh good the Foya piece like the and it takes a law time to catch up with life um as things evolve and right now it's absolutely the expectation that board meetings are held in public with board members in public in present um that this bylaw would be very much the exception and not the rule um although we what we've experienced in the last six months or eight months or whatever has kind of allowed us to see like oh this is this is great and I fully agree with Tim and and you know I think Adam mentioned previously we have more viewership for board meetings now and things like that it's great and it's great for for a board member who may not have the flexibility to show up you know in person all the time um and it may you know hopefully legislatively things will catch up with that but right now from a a Foya commission perspective you should be there you should be in person this is the exception and not the rule um so that's just his his take on that this this particular policy so oh yeah go ahead go ahead no well well no I was all I was gonna say is I think that um that we should maybe just um take the opportunity to we'll table this one again go through it and come back with our with our own suggestions instead of kind trying to sort of collaboratively go through each paragraph right now um just to just to get a you know get a real better feel of how it reads and and what tweaks would need to be made so that it's consistently uh clear that it's for rare instances because if not it would be an illegal bylaw anyway right it would go against current state law right and and the point of like you know in the conversation if somebody were to just always do this the board would end up having to like censure that person yeah so right so just one thought on how to approach it could just be you know I don't think we really follow this but I'm pretty sure that Robert's Rules if you move an item on the agenda you have to take a vote on there's all sorts of things that we're actually supposed to vote on I mean what we could even do is just put in here by by way of board vote someone can participate electronically so they're not going to do it a lot because they're GNA know they're going to have to get it approved by the board it's a quick motion you make the you make the request beforehand and everybody's gonna have their own opinion as to whether someone's abusing it or it makes kind of sense I shoot an email off to the board hey just wanted you to know I'm not going to be able to attend the meeting in person because of this this this Tony put something on the agenda vote have them added type of thing or her that that ends up uh is that an amendment to the agenda I know that could be yeah I don't know I mean I think there's ways we could work through it where it could could probably you know satisfy people's concerns because I want people to meet in person too I I don't want I mean to me one of the things one of the big concerns that always goes through my mind is the federal government is distant and it is less accountable I believe because it is more distant and local people you know what you can see them at the meetings you can yell at them in the grocery store and you can really tell people what you're thinking um and for that the in-person meetings matter people can see you and they and they can share their feelings um so I like that but I I don't see any reason why we I think exception should be made because the technolog is there right all right so why don't we uh we'll we'll uh can I get a motion then to table this one one more [Laughter] time table this one more time okay so I have a motion to table policy number 993-2543 by law attendance at meetings via electronic communication um is there any discussion or further discussion um seeing none uh all in favor to table all right it is unanimous to table fantastic um so then our last uh item on the agenda is um I'm assuming we had no additions to 93212 from last time but you you guys are going to love me for this one too because you know I I look at this we're adopting you know if this if the pandemic were going to play out over the course of three years I would say yeah we we need to have firm guidance on the books about how we're gonna what we're doing here is adopting a policy that says hey you know during the governor's uh uh executive order here's how we're going to conduct business um we've been doing this for six months you know it's not going to last another six months do we really need to go through several more readings of this is it just in my mind it's a bit of a waste of time yeah like can we just why are we chasing this to put something on the books so I can print you know X number of pages and it just it's no why I I started as I was reading this again it's like why reading that I highlighted that first paragraph in accordance with the executive order of the governor of Connecticut here's what we'll do I mean that's going to expire by the time we complete three readings and put it on the books right wen't we on the third reading I don't know it is the third reading but you know really I we're going to put it in debate it I you know I just I maybe it's like I said before we got on the everybody got on the call we had the meeting it the sun was out after four o'clock today and I'm feeling very optimistic that the pandemic is coming to an end um and I'm not so sure that we need to adopt a policy at this point when you know this is going to end and we've been doing this with Rave Community reviews you for the last six months I well it's not broken so why were we did we think we had to do this by law or something well Cade put something out and I think you know before we had a a vaccine on the horizon and everything like that it was like yeah I guess I mean this we're gonna hunker down folks we're going to be here a while you know I'm spending my time trying to figure out how to get kids in school more now not less and go remote and things like we're on a trajectory that's moving forward thankfully that's guess that's my point this just feels like a step backward but certainly you know it's just my opinion it's not a strong recommendation that I'm trying to imply either way it's it's up to you um well you know what why don't we we'll we'll pause the third reading on this one too because I mean you're right because like we had just discussed before if the only reason we're allowed to do this is because of the governor's executive order we would in Gross violation of state law right now if we went ahead and did this without the exec right there's no policy that would allow us to do this no because law says we can't so basically why would we I mean my point is why are we adopting a three-month policy right yeah you know just follow the executive order and keep resend it right wouldn't we have to resend this yeah I guess I mean I mean I guess not because there's the caveat like hey folks if you run into um the governor's executive order here's how we could do things but you know we we've kind of got this down yeah if we pass this then it what it just becomes a fun artifact of history in our policy book it's just something that you know five years from now when we have the whole thing audited again they're like yes scrap this one yeah right right um all right so you know we'll we'll you know let's pause this one too and then if uh the if the full board says no we should we should have it for for the rest of the school year then okay you always do it yeah I mean the authority is derived from the executive order not from else so right right um all right so um do we need a motion to pause no because we would it would just be a motion to bring to a third reading which we are not going to do yeah yeah there's no motion for that or we could table it and it doesn't just because we table it doesn't mean we have to bring it up at the next meeting you could never bring it up all right so then move table all right is there is there a second to table all right a motion to there is a motion to table um uh bylaw 93212 byaw dtime Place notification type of meetings D electronic Board of Education meetings is there any further discussion um all in favor unanimous to table fantastic well sort of a productive meeting we we it took us almost an hour to decide to do nothing that's the government for you there you go uh uh is anything uh on the agenda uh on the for other is there any new piece of information that anyone like to bring up okay um seeing none I have nothing um I guess uh a motion to adjourn Tim make the motion is there a second Katherine fantastic um any discussion all in favor all right we are are now adjourned at 7:25 according to the clock on my computer

since this amount is paid at the at the end of the contract year this would be an appropriate time to approve an increase for the 2020 2021 contract which would be paid out in july of 2021 and i would mention that this is the similar action that the board has taken for the last couple of years so this evening is recommended that the board increase the employer 403 b contribution to twenty five thousand dollars for the twenty twenty twenty one contract year thank you dr gabriel do i have any thoughts sounds good all those in favor say aye aye aye aye no wait a minute i'm getting into motivation i move that we approve increasing the superintendent's 403 v employer contributions to 25 000 for the 2020 2021 contract thank you mr daniels do i have a second second thank you mr armstrong joke all those in favor say aye aye all is opposed motion passes five zero thank you next is to approve our new course proposals high school and that goes to mrs hoover good evening this is a time of year we have this annual request for the board each year the high school makes course proposals of possible courses available to students for scheduling these course requests are vetted through the department chairs at the high school as well as the administrative team this year the high school would like to add five course descriptions for potential courses to their academic guide these requests include courses across multiple departments one english a social studies one math two families in consumer science and a music which is actually just a transition to a weighted grading scale of the two requests and two of those are for global campus courses which will expand our online learning options for the future a decision whether or not to offer any of these courses will actually not be determined until a later date based on the high school course requests and scheduling so they're not guaranteed classes but we need to get them on the books if we want to start offering them so put put into the catalog put in the catalog correct any questions any questions i have one about how long does it take for a course to bubble up i mean um i would say about a year um we see needs um we start this process the high school does in the officially in the fall for each year but a lot of times through the department chair um of each department is talking to their teachers throughout the year at their department meetings and so to go through the process though to this point officially takes about six months starting late summer early fall department chair started having this conversation with dr henderson and his administrative staff to get to tonight so i would say august to january's of the official time frame and probably six months or so before that typically but it could be another year before we actually have kids and teacher well these don't any none of these require any teachers these are all with each other so the heist the state if you go on the do doe website has a very extensive list of courses that high schools can offer for credit i don't believe any school in the state of indiana could actually have all those courses but it gives options and so i know as a teacher i created two new courses looked in the course catalog created them in a year i was able to teach those which is basically the same thing the high school does okay thank you questions dude do we think the culinary arts classes will compete with c9 that's a great question and that's the first thing i called dr henderson and asked so we talked through that and these are courses that those two will not probably be offered next year but we want to get those on the books in case that moves they that those two courses were started because we thought they might be a career pathway for graduation and we don't want to not have that ability to have them and we have the teacher in our midst who has that licensing will be great if we offer them but we we yeah but um we don't foresee those for next year because there are so many pathway questions out there and we do not want to compete with c9 that first course the introductory course would be a great um course for students who are thinking culinary for junior and senior year so i should have clarified that the grade level i guess is where my question really is and the courses they actually offer there are different numbers than these but again we don't want to compete and take away from c9 so we would make sure before we moved forward with those that there's a lot of transparency and clarity between us and our our program and the c9 program okay on your advanced choir for dev tones and sound systems we have those programs is that just moving them to uh accelerated as opposed to a regular course yes those two courses in the music department were the only two we would say are advanced courses kind of they do college level curriculum television level performance work and the only two in the music department who weren't already weighted courses at that level that weren't we haven't um banned courses at that level so we're basically just trying to get all the students that are in those very advanced music classes all on the same page as far as um that waiting and in the advanced van can they participate 9 10 11 and 12 yes they could if they qualified i believe and then what other music courses do we have that have weighted systems to them is there anything i don't believe we do in in orchestra no but we do in bands um the whole marching band is advanced or is it a higher segment i would think there's some theory classes that probably are weighted there's an ap which all the ap courses are weighted in ap theory class that is also weighted because it's a college level not performance class it's a um content class but it's fair to say there's no such thing at this point at least as ap choir right and this will be a little different it's not for college credit or potential credit we just know that um when we look around the state compared to um the the caliber of music we're asking these students to perform is really college level and we wanna any other questions i'm still pondering but that's fine thank you thank you mrs hoover i need a motion mr president i move that we approve the new high school course prescriptions as presented for inclusion in the high school academic guide thank you mr alexander and do i have second thank you mrs counts all those in favor say aye aye aye all is opposed motion passes five zero thank you for both dr henderson myself thank you it's always good to see we keep expanding and growing and our next order business first reading of a resolution naming the high school track this goes to dr long well dr long's coming up here uh we'll just say that see bill we did save something really fun for you at the end yeah yes okay it's always good to be the closer that's right more often so mrs toomey wait there's more miss toomey it's my privilege tonight to um present to the board a recommendation to name the high school track the carol s toomey track as required by board policy the name of the high school track is be is being presented for the first reading there's no uh board action required at this time but i'd like to read it if that's all right with everyone so absolutely i tried to make sure there weren't a lot of big words in here so i could get through them a resolution honoring carol s toomey and approving the center grove high school track and field be named the carol s toomey track and field facility whereas the center grove community school corporation by and through the its board of school trustees is the authorized agent for the purpose of managing maintaining and otherwise overseeing school property and whereas carol s toomey has been a tireless and lifelong advocate for students in the central community school corporation and whereas carol s toomey is recognized as a pioneer for student athletes in general and female athletes in particular advocating are in particular advocating for equal opportunities in athletic endeavors and whereas carol s toomey has been a dedicated and faithful servant to the center grove community school community corporation through her services as a faculty member administrator and school board member over the 52 years of dedicated service to the center grove community school corporation and whereas carol estumi has been recognized for her many accomplishments which include induction into the franklin college athletic hall of fame the indiana basketball hall of fame the indiana association of track and cross country coaches hall of fame and the national interscholastic athletic administration association hall of fame and whereas the center grove community school corporation by and through its board of school trustees believe it's proper and fitting to honor carol s toomey for her dedication leadership and exemplary commitment to the center grove community school corporation and whereas the board of school trustees determined it's most appropriate to recognize the dedication and commitment carol s toomey has shown to the state of indiana and to the center grove community school by honoring her for her service through the naming of the center grove high school track and field in her honor now therefore the community the center grove community school corporation board of school trustees does hereby resolve as follows that the center grove high school track and field shall hereafter be named the carol s toomey track and field facility the center grove community school corporation administration and athletic department are authorized to take all reasonable steps necessary to designate and identify the high school track and field as the carol s toomey track and field facility and a copy of this resolution she'll hereafter be maintained in the official records of the center grove community school corporation so again no action tonight but at our next board meeting we'll have the second reading thank you dr lone are there any questions i guess i guess one at the second reading is there going to be like a design or like oh we've gotten to that point where we have any optics or two yeah we'll have one ready station i've been kind of working on what a mock-up of what that would look like okay because we are resurfacing the track this year so it's a good time to have it all done i highly regret you have to come back for a second time you're welcome unanimous consent that we all think is well earned and well deserved and we're looking forward to approving it next month yeah it's exciting thanks it is thank you all for you carol thank you dr long that concludes all the agenda business does anyone have any other business mr daniels i have nothing further today thank you mr hubbard i would like to thank senator bray and um for coming today doing that yes thank you for the wabash award for carol that's that's wonderful and i appreciate you guys take a time to recognize uh people in your community and that means a lot not only but you guys took that time out to do that thank you very much mr alexander miss mrs toomey i i can't say enough um the video i think summed up just about all the words i could ever come up with to describe you and i think the the naming of the track is is something the board had talked about you know clear back in but at least the four of us had talked about it clear back in about june as we were trying to figure out how to recognize your service to the school corporation and into the board and and i can't think of a better mentor to have when i first got on the board so thank you thank you this is counts this is jimmy i know that i have very big shoes to fill up here so i i want to say thank you for your service as well i do have 50 in the school district and i i do appreciate everything thank you mrs counts well carol and dale you know how i feel we'll be seeing each other right in the games and other things that will continue okay we will move to announcements and i think dr arkhnov has some um so our next board meeting is feb uh february 19th yeah february 9th february 19th 18th 18th february 18th um i would also um like to uh you know again mrs toomey congratulate you and thank you i would like to thank stacey conrad for putting together the video along with katie working to take photos and getting things together i'm sure she was very helpful to you as well stacy and and putting this all together i also like to thank dr long and stacy for all their work on the resolution for the track and field and just everything that's going on behind the scenes and of course i echo joe's promise for both of you gentlemen joining us this evening we appreciate what you do up at the state house for us and our kids and for us as citizens of this great state of indiana so thank you all we will have a work session in february if i remember correctly at that time as well and um so we'll have more information on that and with that mr russell i'll turn over to you for a journey don't forget the board of finance meetings yes so we are going to adjourn this meeting the regular board meeting at this time [Applause] and so if anyone wants to leave [Laughter] i saw some movement and we will now open the board finance meeting for the public following a regular meet the board finance meeting is now open call to order i need a motion to adopt the agenda mr president i approve we adopt the agenda for the board of finance meeting as presented thank you mr armstrong do i have second second thank you mr daniels all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed the agenda is adopted 5-0 thank you the next item on the agenda is public comments regarding agenda matters do i have any public comments since no there's no public i will turn it over to dr gabriel to explain the board of finance all right well if you want to bring up that first action item as this memo states the board of finance is a legal requirement and it has five purposes that are spelled out here first of all they the board of finance needs to elect officers a secretary and a president uh the board of finance has the option to revoke any public depositories if they see it necessary their third purpose is to receive an investment report their fourth purpose is to review the board's investment policy and the fifth purpose is to receive a report on the financial condition of the school district so as we look at each of these things in terms of establishing a board of finance and electing officers there's a resolution that we will ask the board to approve that will accomplish that the second item regarding public depositories the board has the option to refuse to do business with any public depository if there might be a conflict of interest or a previous bad experience and uh in in my career i've never seen that happen but that is a an option where there's there's nothing we can think of that would cause the senegal schools to have to do that the third purpose in terms of investment report for us this is a pretty simple task we're part of an investment program with fifth third bank that's specifically designed for public entities in the in the state of indiana just to give you a little bit of an indication of that at the end of the year we had invested with them 11 million 324 211 dollars and that's a co-mingling of all of our available funds and the total interest we earned for the year was 173 243 dollars and you can see a comparison with some of the prior uh years there and this is one of those casualties of covid is that interest rates have just dropped to the bottom and we're making very little interest right now the fourth purpose of reviewing your investment policy we have that as a separate item for the board to act on and also the the uh report on the fiscal condition of the school district is a separate action item so at this time we're asking the board to approve the attached resolution establishing the board of finance thank you dr gabriel are there any questions for dr gabriel well interest rates are great for borrowing money pardon me that's right that's great for investors helps when we're selling bonds but it doesn't doesn't help this revenue source for us so do i have a motion uh proving the resolution authorizing the board of finance mr president i i can't find that sorry the motion here mr president i know that we adopted the resolution authorizing the chief finance bill or if i get the right one the resolution authorized the board of fighters sorry i moved that we adopt the resolution presented to the to establish a board of finance thank you mr alexander do i have a second thank you mr hubbard all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 our next item under action items is investment resolution and uh dr gabriel you're on again yes so board policy 6144 establishes how we invest our funds and it basically says we're going to follow the law of what's allowed in the state of indiana for public schools that's an awful controversial position there doctor yeah i know i expected a lot of debate over that [Laughter] the public law 43 that was passed in expands our ability to invest in in slightly longer term funds uh and to do that we need to have the board pass a resolution allowing that so basically this allows us to have 25 percent of our portfolio invested in uh in various financial instruments that are two to five years in length and that allows us to get slightly better interest rates at least i would say in the past it has and that is part of the program that we have with fifth third bank so in order to continue this process we're requesting that the board adopt the resolution this evening that specifically allows for this type of investment thank you dr gabriel are there any questions to dr gabriel seeing as there aren't any do i have a motion investment resolution uh mr president i move that we adopt the resolution authorizing the chief finance officer or his or her designee to make investments as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second second thank you mr daniels all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 under other business we have a report of fiscal condition of the school corporation and i assume that is you dr gabriel yes it is so this is the last function of the board of finance a new requirement that took place in the first time last year at the end of so this is a requirement that all school districts present this report and it has to be based on the six fiscal indicators that are developed by a state agency called the distressed units appeal board you can see these six indicators for all districts in the state at the website that's listed there and the data that we're using for this report from the state is from 2019 it takes them a while to get the data collected and and scrubbed clean and put into their to their dashboard so obviously they haven't had time to do that for 2020 data i'd emphasize that this isn't a matter of there are right and wrong answers uh these are just indicators that are used by school districts across the state to assess their financial status and we've added some additional information in addition to these six indicators at the end of this report and some throughout the report i apologize for the condition some of these are a little hard to read on the screen these were clipped right from the state website so we did not massage the data or clean it or anything like that so the first indicator from the state is average daily membership this is an area that we are in excellent condition you want to go to the next slide uh it shows a little bit about this this is the same information but more years uh it shows you a little bit uh what our current projections are and as i've said many times other people it's a great position to be in to have a small increase each year that that allows us to expand our programs a little bit and also provides us with additional revenue since we have a formula that's based on the number of kids that you have so that's the first indicator the second indicator is our fund balances and this shows the uh balances in a group of our funds um i'm i'm using for this report that the old general fund and the new education fund and the other operational funds which is in the past had that's been bus replacement transportation and cpf and this shows the combined balance in those funds the third indicator is this fund balance as a percent of expenditures and you see that that varies from about 14 percent at high to about point six percent low this and you need to remember that this number is higher than what we have traditionally used because it's a combination of all these funds we don't have a general fund to use in and 2020 so those two pretty much present the same uh a different look at the same set of data the next slide shows the data that we have reported here at center grove for the years 2010 through 2018 this is the percent and an actual dollar amount of fund balances in the general fund but and then for 19 and 20 it represents the new operations fund and education fund together so that jump in 1920 isn't because we got more money from some place it's because we had to change the calculation because we don't have a general fund anymore so we're reporting about the same level of data that the state reports the numbers are slightly different because we we have always reported this as a percentage of revenue they report it as a percentage of expenditures the fourth indicator is uh our annual deficit or surplus and the the two lines the two tall bars represent the amount of revenue received and the amount of expenditures in that year that little tiny portion at the bottom bottom represents the deficit or surplus so you can see that except for the first uh two years we've had a small surplus uh in as we take a look at these funds as a group and again this is um pretty much where we'd like to be we establish a budget and in in many years our actual expenditures come in slightly less than what our revenue is the fifth indicator is revenue by type so you see all of our revenue on this chart and all of our funds you can see it's over a hundred million dollars in recent years uh i don't know that for the center grove schools that this says anything of interest these these are all pretty consistent from year to year i i think this might have some value if for example we were getting a big influx of federal funds and we're looking at that to go away or something like that but for us these these uh funding sources have been pretty consistent from year to year and we have to use what the state gives us and the sixth indicator is operating referendum revenue and we don't have any of that never have so this this chart is zero straight across doesn't really apply to the center grove schools but i'm reporting it because we're required to use these six indicators uh some additional data about the center grove that uh i'd like to include as part of this report uh this is our tax rate um and we've talked about this a lot we've we've maintained a level tax rate less than a dollar for since 2009.

the next slide shows how our tax rate compares to the school districts in our county and our position in the middle of the pack hasn't changed probably in a decade but that just gives you a comparison of where we are to our neighboring schools assessed value something else that we are so fortunate as a school district you see those those uh generally positive numbers uh for the last four or five years very good in 2021 our assessed value went up 8.4 percent uh this speaks very well for us maintaining a good tax rate and and having an appropriate amount of revenue it's a great position for us to be in to see these these consistent increases in assessed value and the data that i've looked at on building permits they continue to be strong i really hope that they'll assess value will continue strong i want to just present a couple of slides that talk slides to talk a little bit about the planning that we go through this is another look at our tax rate that faint yellow line there it comes is across the chart at a dollar four the bottom portion of this chart is the operations fund the darker portion that layers above that is the debt service fund and we've done we spend a lot of time looking at this internally and we've got projections that run out for another decade or so and we we use this as we take a look at our future plans for buildings and and for selling bonds that's been very level for the for pretty much the first two decades on this chart but as we look at our current situation we've we have needs for additional capacity that we've got to plan for and we're going to be continuing to analyze that and roll out some of those plans throughout this year and that's going to change the way this chart looks in the long run the last thing i want to mention is that i do a monthly analysis of our budget compared to expenses and uh there's a detailed report and it's summarized with this graphic that says how do we compare what we spent so far this year to our budget and this reflects the the end of the year which is still a little bit tentative for the end of 2020 because we're not quite done doing all of our final checks and balances to get the year closed but it does appear that our cash balance is going to be in the neighborhood of eight percent and um and our uh expenses will be about three percent less than our budget for the 2020 school year so on a report like this you'd like to say so just boil it down how are we doing and that's the last slide that i have which says on the on the ones that i think are the most important enrollment we are in excellent condition couldn't ask to be any better assessed value similarly just excellent condition i hope that continues appears that it will our tax rate is very good to be able to maintain it like we have something i think we can all be very proud of and our cash balance also is in is in good shape 5.7 million dollars roughly at the end of the 2020 school year so that is a real quick run through of this report and obviously i'd be happy to answer any questions but that concludes the report thank you dr gabriel does anyone have any questions for dr google uh you don't foresee the what is the count again it's february the next account is in february yes we don't foresee it affecting us correct right yeah the adm count will be paid taken again in february um and we've planned on a slight drop we get to blame mr henderson for that because right now the january graduates don't count for the second half so you're booted a bunch out so that's always a the situation there's nothing we can do about that obviously we we want to encourage people to do that if they if they can if they can accomplish that but uh except for that we don't anticipate any any big change and we've we've made a projection that plans for that and the virtual situation is not going to hurt us this year it's not going to hurt us well let me say that differently to date it hasn't hurt us if you've looked at what's going on in the legislature there is a bill already going in both houses that will make the virtual students funded at a hundred percent for the february count because right now the law does not allow that but i that appears to be something that both houses are supportive of i think the governor is supportive of that so assuming that that bill gets passed uh what people are kind of counting on there shouldn't be any negative impact for the virtual students for this year and again next year is up to whatever the legislature decides to do yeah that's a pretty important bill okay thank you dr gabriel do i have any other questions before i close this meeting thank you all i now adjourn the board of finance meeting that's it for our meetings this evening thank you okay

e e e us to order um if Craig you can lead off with a roll call that would be great yes Allison Buck I'm here Deborah mexicat Jonah copi David Esau here Sarah Fuller Sophie G yeah John karski here Peggy Leonard W senta young here you have a core uh also uh Travis Rina the council member here you have a quorum thank you all right next on our agenda is the approval of the agenda um if I have a motion to approve so moved thank you David to have a second thank you ASA um any discussion of the agenda for tonight John I would like an add an item under new business a city flag excellent any other additions or Chang [Music] is all right assuming that those changes are favorable to those who first and second and we can move for a motion to approve the agenda it's good with me good witha all right all in favor I any oppos excellent uh this is now the time for public comment looks like Sarah's in the waiting room I'll admit her um I think that there is no one in the public is that correct Bonita no one from the public here hi Sarah no we should just have CTN on viewing in as well okay so we don't have any um comments from the public next we'll move on to approval of minutes except for we don't have minutes from our last meeting we're going to get those in February um so the next item is old business and the item is the city of ipolani Welcome resolution um this isn't referring to the um Arts commission over at the city of ipsan Travis do you want to give that update yeah I'm happy to um in December I spoke with the the mayor uh about this particular item and he just wanted to better understand what the goal was in in reaching out to them and I expressed that you know part of it was it just kind of welcoming uh another group to to the art community but also um really the I think the the goal that I heard expressed during the meeting was um to Foster collaboration and and potential opportunities for partnership and and hopefully build camaraderie between the two groups um and the mayor suggested that he thought in order to achieve those goals that it might best be a communication from the chair of this committee um directly to their committee as well so that kind of that conversation started and so that's that's kind of what he asked the the committee to do was to reach out he wanted to make sure that um that you know the the groups that should be talking were talking was essentially instead or as well did you say um I I believe I believe that yeah it was instead of yeah so having that recommendation from the mayor um Deb and I are going to talk following this meeting on how we're going to make that um connection either through email or phone um both Deb and I know Jennifer um through previous work so um it should be an easy connection to make um and we will give you an update hopefully at the February meeting about that welcome any um other questions about that topic I know that didn't go exactly the direction we had um agreed on last week but I think it's still going to accomplish the same um goals that we had ultimately Jonah's here I just sent him the link so okay Jonah is joining us hi Jonah you're um I there had to fish around for which link we were using so I finally found the right one no worries um your video is off that's totally fine if that's what you want to do but just letting you know um we are on to we just finished old business and we're on to new business so the first item of new business is the 2021 plan and goals which um Dev and I put together that summarizes pretty much what we talked about at our last meeting the potential projects and desirable goals that we have um slated for the coming year um it refers back to our Charter and our ordinance um in each portion to say why these goals are important and how they accomplish different things that we've been tasked to do um that attachment was sent to you by Bonita I think yesterday along with your agenda so hopefully you got a chance to look at that and review it um if I got any of your um work groups wrong please let me know we can adjust those um Venita and I can work together to make those changes so that we get those um put together before this goes to city council so should we just send comments to you Allison yeah I mean I think if this a little grammatical type things that that would be probably easiest to do if you just want to send them via email um and then and but if there's any bigger discussion areas like I totally misrepresented what your goal was we should do the at this point um or little I guess a little thing like um I'm not actually in that group or I'm no longer interested in being that group you guys can holler those out right now too if you want but yeah like the more um nitpicky like small sentence structure or things like that that's probably easier via email yeah I think the content is overall great and thorough and all of that so it's just minor comments great John uh I think it's great by the way it's it's it's excellent well laid out but it brought to my attention that I am on five work groups out of the nine work groups and I uh I can't possibly U devote that kind of attention so uh let me review those and I will let you know um I I think it'd be better also to just get more voices you don't need to hear from me so um I I'll I'll convey those to you in the next day or two that's perfect good was I think we um I don't think I represented you on any of those groups I wasn't sure which of those you would want to participate in maybe having reviewed the goals of each of those groups you can let us know which ones you would like absolutely yeah I will um review them in the next couple of days by the end of the um by Friday I'll let you know perfect perfect okay and everyone when you email me if you can also CC Bonita on that we'll be working together to finalize this document and get it over to city council um I think at this time we should approve it as is with the assumption that we'll make those small changes so that we don't have to wait till February's meeting to approve it and move forward with it um that makes sense yes John is that so moved by John yes okay thank you do I have a second thank you Sarah um all in favor of approving this plan all great any opposed wonderful so we'll make a few minor changes B based on those emails um and then Craig and Venita and Travis if you guys can get that over to city council um let me know when that's going to go and I can um chime in and be available if they have questions and Travis and you and I can talk a little bit beforehand if you have any questions about it since you'll predominantly be our voice and representative at that table um I think generally it just kind of goes with all of the materials and is on the consent agenda it's not really um like when we put together the CIP list in those changes that there's anything controversial um when this goes forward it probably will just have our old CIP list included with it with everything that's already been approved um the CIP um group has been meeting but we won't have a new list of things to go forward with this um right away right David yep okay great the next item on our agenda is the city flag um John do you wna take it away from here sure I think uh I uh I copied everyone uh regarding uh this and I apologize for having it be so late uh the mayor reached out to me this weekend and said hey you know that idea I've been talking about for several years and he has he's um he he really likes the idea of of of getting it well first of all he loves Roman Mars and Roman Mars has done has has done some um podcasts particularly on city flags and how important they are to a city's identity and uh how most cities just stick their seal on a flag and that's really the worst possible way of utilizing the potential of a flag so and if you if you reviewed any of the material here uh when so the mayor reached out to me maybe three four years ago at that time the art commission uh was scrambling just to uh get more folks on it and um and deal with what was already on our plate and so I said well uh I will I will mention it and uh it didn't seem to get much traction um that uh we knew have new members and I really agree that it would it would be great not so much if we design a flag but if we facilitate some sort of way in which there could uh ideally I would like to see high school students in fact if was a high school student that sent the mayor um an idea for a flag and that sort of um uh uh began again the conversation which I've included and and this high school student came up with a great idea so I present it to you again if you think it is something that uh the art commission um could facilitate in some way or another um that um I think we should try and I think this would be a good opportunity to to do something positive about the city's identity particularly after this covid thing you know there there the city's going to be decimated in in in very real ways so having something like a flag might um really help and I think that if we could do that in a way um that you know wouldn't cost money would be pretty simple and we could um uh it would I I think uh demonstrate to a the broader community and to counil that we can do something positive like a flag even though it may not be traditional public art it's not a hero on a horse uh but it does impact on the identity of the city so it I wanted to bring that to the attention and have a discussion if there is a general consensus quite possibly uh uh Madame chair you can uh you can assign it to a uh a work group to come up with some ideas and then bring it back at a later time uh so I I present it and uh hopefully uh we will have some positive comments um so two things you're mention you mentioned the high school student and I'm seeing Jonah's face now for the first time in a little while and I'm realizing I left out the youth uh work group on this report so I will add you add you into the report um I believe that's Jonah and Peggy that's on that group um and this might be an initiative that that group could work on not with the Assumption it would all be youth that are applying but it's quite similar in format potentially to the sticker project that you guys just oversaw last year so I I think that would be a good fit I don't know what you guys think about that you go Jonah uh that was one of the first things that came to mind was um not necessarily a sticker contest because it's a little bit different obviously but um that that process does probably lend itself to something like this um I apologize I've been a little bit Mia um due to covid and the current day of the world but um yeah it does ring a bell for me I think there's opportunity there and would just be a matter of kind of getting in touch with some other people probably last time we did it with the city clerk's office so maybe something there or uh just kind of a collective brainstorm as well on how to go about doing that yeah I guess Craig and Venita do you know who I mean if maybe it's you guys but who on the city's team we would need to coordinate with for this type of a project I will ask the question who owns Who quote unquote air quote owns the flag I I don't know um also I would suggest as we consider this that we think about what sort of stien or prizes we want to offer with that because I would take that back to the mayor for him to fund um so I I I gotta believe it's the clerk's office that owns the flag but that is just a wild guess on my part so I will follow up and find out great if you can do some digging on that that would be helpful and it might be something in the back of my mind is tickling me that the flag somehow is in ordinance or in the um Charter but I don't know that for a fact but I'll look into that to make sure we don't run a fall of that okay Jonah you have your hand up the uh question I was going to pose is um the person who helped facilitate last time from the city clerk's office as no longer working there Kelly Bey I was wondering who has taken his place I I don't know and it might not be that person exactly that we would go to um we'd be looking for somebody who's fired up and interested on it so did you have a question yes um I may not necessarily want to be a part of the committee um but if I have some suggestions as to ways that can help to um bring in interest in a larger Community like possibly having you know four selections from the youth group and then having a vote on which one bringing in the and our people so to speak in on that um to that would be a nice kind of uh connection and overlap with that absolutely yep um likely we would try to follow our own guidelines as far as um the selection for art um that we put together um that you should review if you haven't already on our website but that um in that language we always encourage the incorporation of the public in a vote in the voting process and if we do do use the public which we highly recommend that be the final say for which pieces um are winning and so whatnot um Sophie yeah I I have two questions the first is um what what's the role of a flag where where would it be used what's it what's its function um but uh the other thing is that I don't think it's at all like the sticker um the sticker is kind of fun and ephemeral whereas this is something that you want to last for a long time and I'm concerned about um giving projects to um youth or children or you know nonprofessionals always when there are lots of artists and designers well designers in particular who who might do a really good job and I I'm a little bit worried that it's kind of well you know we can get the kids to do it it won't cost any money and I I I'm sure that there's more to it than that and it's but I I would like to have that thought out thoroughly and discuss sorry if I wasn't clear that's not what I was saying at all um what I said was that the process of how the stickers were selected is potentially a good process at model for how we select this do this selection process if you remember the stickers had several different categories including like adults and youth so they had areas where the different designs were selected throughout the ultimate um we might not do tiered systems like that because we only going to pick one design unless we have potentially digital flags that aren't printed and have those to be different categories um so I was just saying that the process of the how you did the how they did the call and put it out to the public and had the voting that could be similar and that I would encourage not only for professional artists to apply but for youth to apply too because it's a fun educational way of getting them involved I'm not saying we have to to select a youth but if they might have a better design than a professional artist who knows and we would pick a stipend based on the idea that we're H we'd be paying a professional or getting a professional piece at the end regardless if it's a child or a an adult that we pay for it I I think I think we'd be having both in mind when we put the process together yes Sophie um yeah I was just thinking maybe we could partner with anaba Public Schools if they would like a flag I don't know if they have one and and have the kids in the parallel thing have the kids to make a flag for our public schools because they have a lot of flag poles it's true I saw some other hand Sarah um I was wondering if uh in terms of displaying and promoting this flag once it is selected um the project of replacing um the wall of Mayors um if perhaps displaying um the flag and potentially promoting the um artist that you know is selected um their work and whatnot would be um a good way to to uh promote the new flag as well as uh the artists that created it it's a good idea yes I can jump in also the city flag is displayed every day outside a city hall it is yes it's on the hon hon Street side with the American flag in uh I don't know if the state flag is there but the city flag is there and John as a resident historian do you know the history behind how that flag got its design uh well I I I don't but let me let me just answer Sophie's question in terms of uh because I the mayor's interest required me to dig a little deeper in this and if you watch Roman Mars video you'll basically come to realize that the flag could be used in a variety of different ways depending on how a city does it usually it's just as Craig says they run it up the flag pole and that's it however you know uh some cities uh that becomes an integral part of their identity and their design that flag speaks to them and businesses display the flag in their own business they put it on garbage trucks they put it on so it it it has the potential to to to be an identifier for the city and and how it's used depends on the city um second regarding um the uh the idea of whether students could come up with a decent design if you if you look at the example of that one student that had this idea it is absolutely brilliant and I think this is what triggered the mayor and everyone else uh there's no question in my mind that the students in this city I mean I've taught at Community High for two or three years and they're brilliant kids there uh and that's just Community High so I have no no problem taking this as a student project much like the sticker um and frankly I think that they could come up with um an excellent sort of uh flag design I agree with Craig that we should pay for it I don't have a problem just making it something that uh is a student project much like the stickers um because I think we could get an excellent flag uh however I mean depends on how you want to coordinate it but I totally agree with with Allison is that our our standard way of Engagement is to uh is to have the last step be you know several uh home runs put out to the city and uh have the um have the have the residents pick you know one of of incredible uh Flags another part of this I think is the Outreach that we could do is just host meetings and run Roman Mars video and just say hey we're thinking about a flag what do you think um and and that it would give us a reason to get out in front of people and talk about something that identifies with the city so I think it has some wonderful potential and I trust Jonah to come up with some even more brilliant ideas but uh I don't I don't think necessarily it has to be exclusive to students but if it is I wouldn't have a problem at all in particular by the example that was sent to the mayor so other than I didn't answer your question I have no idea how the history of this flag if you watch Roman Mars he says usually what they do is they take the city seal and they stick it on a piece of fabric and run up a flag pole and the seal is usually to be viewed on stationary where you and you can't see it up a flag pole so it's it's it's counterproductive that's what usually happens and it looks like that's exactly what Ann Arbor did and there's nothing wrong with it a lot of cities do it uh but there are better ways to do I'm based on the level of conversation that's around this item I I think it's of Interest I think that it's something definitely a project we want to take on I would assign it um it sounds like you guys are up for it the youth working group to kind of take this on if you guys can explore this and come up with some sort of structure and questions um and bring that to back to our next meeting um questions you might have you might meet with the mayor in between now and then uh to get some questions and feedback from him Craig's gonna touch base with people over there to see who we need to be working with um and then I've got a couple other hands that we'll address before we move on David you were first um couple things first of all it's not in the charter it's in the code of ordinances title one chapter 4 or chapter nine I mean I'm sorry and I would suggest that whoever is organizing this process talk with the mayor and city council because I can't imagine them not wanting to have kind of the final say in this maybe the vote the public vote diminishes it down to a handful of of options for city council to make the final call on or something like that it doesn't seem like something that could be that should be outsourced completely outside of council's purview great ideas David thanks for that further information and dig in that up Travis David David beat me to some of it I also found found that section of the code um which also right under it mentions uh Craig that the city clerk is the the custodian of the seal and the flag um my question would be was kind of similar uh to David's Point as well um given there is a description of the flag currently um in in the code then does that require I mean that seems to me that it would require a change a vote change to come before Council um and so I I think to the initial question I agree with Allison that that there seems to be a lot of interest on this but I I also think to John's initial point I mean I think of other cities like Chicago and things like that where you can't turn a corner without seeing some representation of their flag um because it's such a symbol of of the city's Pride that that the public won't want some sort of input into kind of like what even even dictating what the process might be um you know I I think there there will probably be a lot of excitement if this is something that moves forward with the possibility of being able to design something and and integrating different um uh you know symbology into the flag and things like that and and I think coming at this stage coming in and saying you know we're going to limit it to a certain subset of of people who could submit up or submit things and things like that might from the start make it more challenging than it needs to be at this stage um so my suggestion my suggestion would be just you know to to obviously continue exploring this and having those conversations definitely um Deb had her hand up and Craig has his hand up Deb so Mississippi recently went through the redesign of their state flag and their process was such that they had an open call that anybody could submit there were 3,000 submissions um and they were from children they were from uh citizens they were from professionals they were narrowed down to 147 um that the public then was able to vote on and then there was a final winno by a uh commission I think this might be a a process to look into because I think that they have successfully navigated a very difficult flag transition not one that we were going to have um naturally but um it seems to have gone very well it's it's had the public engaged in multiple places so whoever looks into this I think um there might already be a Civic process out there that um uh we might be able to learn from and that may not be the only one but that's the one that's most recent in my mind and it came to a very successful uh and publicly supported conclusion great that's a great reference to look at you had your hand up yes um because the flag is in the ordinance it is going to have to be come city council has an ordinance change and that would be first reading public hearing second reading I would suggest that John contact the mayor and have the mayor put a resolution out um designating the his or the council's desire because the council then would vote on it and if it had a majority would be the body of the council expressing their desire for a redesign of the flag and assigning it to the art commission letting the art commission go off do their thing and come back to council with a process for that get counil to buy into the process and then go forth in start on the mission that way it's totally out in the public you've got buying from day one to the council that's going to have to approve it um and you're you're chunking it up it's first getting Council to tell you to go forth and do it come back with the process they agree on the process then go forward and come back with a final result great love it John you got that got it right you notc me on your reply to the May absolutely both you and Deb thank you and Craig and Vita thank you and anyone else that wants to be and yes Rina Travis excellent and we'll um maybe even maybe even Jonah and Peggy as the working group that's gonna be taking that on too we'll just Alla I I haven't really said much about it but I'm super excited so I I looked I watched Roman Ms YouTube or Ted Talk today it was really inspiring so yeah great I'm excited about it too great and I it really I I think it really could be a project that we could uh really showcase our talent not you know by by getting it out there and I I really imagine this being a long engagement maybe a year or more of actually talking it around and getting people excited about the flag and and then you know but I will uh I think the mayor will be delighted to hear um that um our recommendation is to ask the mayor to present this to city council as I understand Craig's request and uh to make sure that council is on board for a redesign and that ask the uh art commission to consider a process for this redesign and present the process back to C and then we'll just go from there is that kind of what yeah I guess my only question would be Craig what point do you think we address the um idea that there will be need to be some money for the design and with the process to the mayor we would lay out what the process is and what the end game is okay great great excellent all Al righty next on our agenda is report from staff uh I'll jump in and Venita will correct me where I Stray um on the Allen Creek burm project first Martin reached out to us to explore the feasibility of some sort of decorative entrance way near Depot Street we reached back to them and said yes we're interested um and tell us what you're thinking they said they would go back and talk to their boss and we have yet to hear back from them so it's it's time for me to reach out and say are you guys still interested or not um so is this on their property first Martin's property no it it would be where the trail comes out to Depot Street I believe that I don't know exactly who owns that piece of land we have an easement for the trail gotcha so it would I can't answer your question because I don't know the exact ownership right there okay it could be as much as in the RightWay which would be City control um on the burn firm project we have to uh now that the project is built we have to turn Brian slki onto uh the process of selecting some art for the the retaining wall there at the piece that's been set up for art and we'd be reaching out to you folks hous so uh as we would do on any other project as to who wants to be involved in that it would it would follow a similar format of out of going out to an outside art agency to put out the call and go forward with art selection um fita do you want to talk about your virtual binder um I can talk about it and I can actually show it if folks are interested in seeing what's there for now yeah that'd be great um we'll need a great deal of in input from folks uh so let's see here I got to go back in share computers well I'm sharing it with myself see I can see a page I can see something we see the you can see a page we just see your P says projects Central okay so it is within A2 Central um but we can certainly share a leak with everybody um it has created this for us just two groups here right now and so what I tried to do and I will need some support here I just made some individual folders I've updated some things on the calendar um within agendas I'm planning to add most of our agendas here because it is a shared item and everybody will have access we'll be able to go through add move things around and I need some help probably from Allison and Deb and you folks on how you want to really organize it um and so I've got the agendas here and I do have a project folder that I did um sop ifia you'll be excited about this um because I have most of the items in the golden paintbrush award here and I think it's a good idea and a wonderful way to organize all the things that we're trying to do and and move forward with awesome this looks great banina um so if folks are willing and it's okay um tomorrow I can share the link you can take a look at it a little bit more and then we'll go from there great thank you and that was the bottom of my list looks cool yeah excellent does anyone have any questions for staff about any of those items all right we'll move on then um the next items on our agenda are report from committees the first um working group that we have is our business owners and developers um John do you guys have any updates for us no the uh uh design review board has not met I I'm going to jump in real quick my computer just said it's going to restart so I I guess I'm gonna disappear here and I will try to come back all right good to see you Craig on the flip side y um the next working group we have is our CIP working group um David do you want to give that update yes we got the new CIP from Deb at the city um just before Christmas uh committee members talked about it last night and we have a meeting set with devb to ask questions about it on Friday um at 11 o'clock in the morning so we're moving forward with it we should have a recommendation for you in February I I know I'm supposed to know this by now but can you remind me what CIP stands for Capital improve blanking on it right now yes Capital Improvements plan I think is what it's really stands how the city plans and budgets for projects that are more than what they spend out of just the yearly budget yep and they have projects going out years from now that are included on there um in fact they have projects on there that will probably never happen but are still on there so it's a lengthy list to whittle through um but we were we found some exciting projects on there that we'll be exploring deeper with Deb um some parks projects and some um housing projects and so we're um anticipating a good conversation on Friday and some good recommendations hopefully put forward John could I just insert one the the CIP represents Municipal construction the city stands over $50 million for municipal construction and um this is kind of a leftover the percent for art project uh only it's voluntary so the whole point is the city is open if this body can Inspire the city to construct and build its stuff creatively you know whether that means light post striping sculpture um it uh it has a huge potential we have not been able to do it as much as we had originally planned our ambition were to do a lot it's not easy it's hard particularly with volunteers but I commend David I mean David has spent two years sort of looking and thinking about how to do this he's developed criteria and a process and he applies the process so I think this is one of the great potentials of the art commission if we can if we can present some neat ideas for $50 million wor of construction we can make a huge impact you know on the city it's not easy it's hard but I wanted to remind the new members of that thank you Allison sure Sarah um yeah I wanted to uh thank David as well for the criteria that he provided um because it is very useful for new members and it's seems like getting in on the project at the right time um is is pivotal um because if it's moving too far forward there might not be this you know the structure that we need to move forward so I took that um as a big takeaway from uh our conversation so thank you again David thank you all right um the next work group is Communications and art placement um I believe that's Deb and I I don't know who's the lead on it maybe me and Sarah yeah we haven't we haven't met since our last meeting so we have nothing up no updates for that working group um the fundraising work group is Deb and I um Deb and I focused on putting this lovely plan together that you guys just saw so we haven't met about fun raising um either the leadership Forum group is also Deb and I and I think John's on that one but you might be leaving us I don't know John you'll letting us know in the next couple days um we have not we don't have any updates for that as well you have Peggy listed on that too oh sorry Peggy I didn't mean to forget you Sophie you had your hand up if if John was doesn't want to be it and I might want to be on it not not that I don't want to be on the same one as John or anything but you want to be on potentially the the leadership Forum one yeah on okay more of the marrier I think yeah you can be on it whether John's taser goes that's no that's too crowded otherwise no I think I'll be going so I'll take me off and put Sophie on okay um nominating and membership um hasn't had anything any work projects right now um so there's no update that I leave policy and governance we haven't been doing anything with policies currently um go ahead DB so um I think that the only thing that's pending right now is the uh request to council for the line item uh which we had put forward last year and I think so um I'm not sure where it is in process this year um but I know that it was at this time or at least in December last year when we needed to put it forward for uh getting into the hopper and so yeah sparking In My Memory that we talked about this at the last meeting that we said it's ready to go as is we don't want to make any changes and we were one of the first groups to have ours um in the hopper so we are all set already sent to the city clerk good thank you okay well there is a policy update right there there you go see we did some work needed it for us thank you um special projects golden paintbrush yes um golden paint brush has been on hold I'm afraid for the last since the last meeting but I think we will have more in February great uh Sarah I um had one question about uh the logo um if there's been any progress moving forward on a logo for the golden paintbrush um because that is something that I can um give to our production team to um get pricing and more about uh you know creating the tile Awards um if there is a logo that exists now or some sort of line work I did have a logo but I can't remember whether I've shared it digitally with everybody or not at it at the last meeting we looked at one um you held one up at the last meeting yeah it wasn't very clear to see was it at that time um Vita is it one of those folders that you were just show showing us let me see if I let me I think so it's a paintbrush isn't it Sophie and it might need a minor tweak if it's because I think people were saying it didn't look like it had paint on it or something there's the award scroll down yeah botom yeah so if you you're looking for the side I think Robert was not sure whether you wanted a paint up down or sideways can go anywh but this is the flyer that we're going to use we we again there's many items in that shared folder that we'll have to go through a bit more um so I'm I'm kind of going off of what you all want to do with that okay I wonder if um at the end of the paint brush there isn't um paint that is com because what I'm seeing is that there's paint on the brush brush and it's like it had and you because you can't see the end of the brush is where I think the confusion comes from so but nobody would use a paintbrush with a jagged edge like that ass that's supposed to be the paint right so that's why I'm wondering if if it's if it's leaving a trail of paint if that would make it more obvious that that is what it is yeah you know what I mean yeah Sophie do you have something like that was that part of what I didn't see that originally um I can get I can put more paint on it or make it look like a trail okay would it be possible to have that in a tiff file format yeah perfect now uh do we need to to we can okay that between meetings can we if I get that to people so that then it can go off to the buttery yeah okay yeah I we have another meeting in February that we could um you know officially approve it but I think if you have a new design that you can at least get Sarah for pricing we could work out the like final details maybe at February's meeting okay um as long as it's okay because I think Sarah you need it sort of before the February meeting right you saying the sooner the better I think just just in order to get the pricing and um and just see what we can do and what timeline um we can get it done in so um you know but that being said um you know we talked about you know not needing the awards to be ready at the time necessarily of the presentation um but if we did want to get it closer to that time the sooner the better for uh to start that process if you knew it was going to be something similar to that would that help or would you need the exact um like send you a slightly tweaked design in another month from now yeah that's that's fine as long as it's in a a tiff file format so we wouldn't have to change that um that would be that would be helpful so yeah if if it comes in a month that's okay does anyone have we want to be we want to be mindful too of the um timeline that we're using to push this out and start doing our promotions and things things like that um I thought Sophie you had an April date to start or to have things coming in yeah it does need to move forward very quickly now and the yeah yeah I thought we had well we're if we're still looking and if the still the ideal is to still do this um through web uh Facebook all of our social any other social media Outlets um we could still have our Communications work on that and do those things so that's why I me in the timeline I I had a similar question about the timeline simply um because I would I would love to be able to announce when this goes public announce this at a a council meeting and and try to get some additional attention to it um I also noticed um so at the bottom there it mentions the April 20th deadline which would be coming up fairly quickly after next month like waiting till next month but I also noticed that the the website listed is not active either and so um maybe Venita this is a question for you is that is that something staff needs to help with and and if so is everything ready for that to go as well we would be working with Communications they're all set to go on everything we just need to move forward with the selection process all of the guidelines that we'd be using um as Sophie has provided all of those things already um we just need to maybe bring those I don't know if you want them at an actual meeting I I thought she's already shared most of those but we need some decisions on the flyer the website how it's post it when it's posted and again with April coming you're right we'll have to do all of those things fairly quickly so um step by step what process we need we need to change the little logo a bit um does anyone have any strong feelings about the font or anything for the flyer yeah that all looks fine yeah I have one one little nitpicky thing about the um the body of the text um I wonder if the text could be a little bit Bolder um just because it it with the the bright color against the white background it's a little bit difficult to um to read if it was a little bit Bolder I think it would be just a little bit more clear that's just my more [Music] contrast okay um so if the if the logo is changed and the text is made more easy to read is there anything else that needs doing Vanita before we ask the the design department and the publicity departments to to go I think I I have everything that you sent me um I've got your judging criteria I've got your FAQs um it would be a matter of somebody reviewing and okaying the web design and the submission process that would happen on the web and um we could do that outside of this meeting between now and February um if you and I and any other folks who are interested might want to participate in a meeting with the uh communication staff and I can try and set that up that's great yeah Peggy would you want to be on i' like to do that sure I'd be happy to be on that with you okay great okay Anda too okay I'll reach back out and um get some from you all and we'll get that moving great great guys just be sure be sure you um reach out via email and update everybody as you're going along um when things go live so we can all spread the word as well so I guess that puts me on the special projects committee Allison Vita I think we're hoping to do this as soon as possible meet right because we'd really like to get this push out fairly soon yeah maybe some I'll reach out to Robert and check his calendar and send out some dates to you all and we'll go from there perfect thanks Al righty uh the next working group we have on our list is the youth Outreach so we have not met and there hasn't been much youth Outreach that I know of uh thank you may know more than I um otherwise regarding the flag project um I would definitely be I totally support everything that has already kind of been said about the process with the mayor uh my only addition to that would be uh I can try to get in touch with Jackie in the city clerk's office she was the one who kind of brought the process to us regarding the sticker contest and um I think I did just uh kind of Peg down the person who has replaced Kelly Bey in the clerk's office because he's kind of uh or that role would potentially be somebody who would uh assist with a project like that and I think that's about it for now hey John you had your hand up I I I would white Jonah don't get too far ahead let me get this back to the mayor and let you know and so once he gets back with us then we can just go full steam but my suggestion I don't think it would hurt but I it might be we just kind I would support that suggestion John great so Jonah let's just hold off until we get that city council approval um and then we can rock and roll from there okay rock and roll yeah all right that is all of our working groups at this point I will open the table for anyone one to share any items they think are worthy of sharing to the greater good will go ahead Sophie I said there was nearly a coup in the capital is that relevant to us yes I think it is hugely relevant it's happening right now that that's something that that I was going to acknowledge as well and I've got CNN on here in the office as as we're meeting and and um the Congress has actually reconvened they've secured the capital and they've reconvened to continue certifying the election results um I know that it was a discussion that we had um by email just before the meeting about whether or not it even felt appropriate to meet tonight um and I would I would Echo something that David said which is I think you know it's incredibly important for us to continue our functions of government and the functions of our democracy and and so thank you all for joining us tonight and continuing in that and you know I I don't know that I have felt this way since I saw someone else say 911 and and it very much felt like we were under attack today um and so I I'm just I wanted to state that you know thank you all for your service and for continuing this effort of government and also um you know our our country will persevere and our democracy will withstand this so thanks excellent Travis thank you for that update um in that vein I will say that the um the Guild of artist and Artisans and the Gutman Gallery currently has a call out for art for their upcoming exhibition which is entitled reunited it's about kind of New Years new leadership um and what that all means to artists and the community and so if you as an artist yourself or um as a community that supports art know anyone who would be interested in submitting they should do so um at this time they can find more information on the Guild's website um www.the guild.

hi everyone it's Mike Morris superintendent thanks for joining me on just what a Nutty uh week what a Nutty day um I want to start obviously the topic today is about a building project uh but I want to start by thanking everyone for all the work you're doing and and how hard it is to be an educator in this moment and processing everything that has occurred for your own self um we people first uh as well as taking care of kids especially Elementary age kids in the climate we're in so I'd be remiss if I didn't start by uh acknowledging how challenging how painful it's been over the last 24 hours certainly I share that and you know hopefully the support that you know I know principals met with all offered a meeting for all the schools before school today I know some people have to run to one that's in 15 minutes I'll try to be uh pretty quick with this um but I I just wanted to um wanted to bring up that and and start that way uh if you haven't been on one of these before um we just figured this would be a good setting because it automatically records and this link you could share with anybody uh who wants to see it who wasn't able to come today uh but if you have any questions or comments throughout on the lower right hand corner you should see a little um box um I think it says say something uh in light font and you can type in any questions or comments but want to take this opportunity um to talk about where we are with the elementary building project um and share a little bit of that so I'm going to share my screen hopefully uh effectively um there we are uh if you're on a computer there should be if you hover over the screen at the bottom right hand corner there should be a way to maximize a screen if any of the font ends up getting small but um we're part of the msba program the msba is the Massachusetts school building authority they uh fund projects across the Commonwealth uh essentially they fund about in our community would be about 50% of the cost of a project um all of these projects are in the dozens of millions of dollars so they're a very helpful fund agent they also set a very clear uh approach and formula because they have to be fair to all the communities they serve um we did apply a couple years ago we didn't get in and then we got in uh for Fort River School and where we are in the process I'm going to click forward to slide um is we're in this eligibility period you see over here uh so essentially we we submitted an application called a statement of interest uh in that statement of interest for those of you who weren't part of the district then uh we engage the community the larger Community the staff uh and one of the commitments we made was that any new school would be no greater than 600 students there was a lot of concerns from a prior project that did not go through about the size of the school and there was Community consensus on that uh when we were doing this couple years ago um so we're at the tail end of the eligibility period um this is the building process is a town and school process um and really what I want to tell you is where uh because the MSB ba again who's funding and supporting the project they've made some decisions on the enrollments we are basically what we're allowed to study uh not what the decision is in the end but what we're allowed to study and wanted to get out in front of that I want people to know that nothing uh like the best case scenario of completing the project uh would be four years from now or four years from this fall upcoming fall the fall of 2025 that would be the best case scenario so we're letting you know ahead of time because this is a defining moment the the couple options we have to study not because any of these changes will happen anytime soon but we want to make sure that we're keeping everyone in our community our staff members informed uh of what's happening and so this is the full process I won't take the time to go through all of it we're here uh this is the part that's about four four and a half years away in the best case scenario if the community come to together to come up with some decisions uh relatively quickly uh these phases coming up are really hiring owner project manager architect uh doing a feasibility study where there'll be lots of forums including for staff and schematic design um so we're we're well away from making any formal decisions at least the year uh but the msba has made a decision for us and that's what I want to go over today so they they let you uh they permit you to study only a couple different options in other words you don't go into their process and are allowed to study whatever you like you submit requests um these were the three requested enrollments I submitted uh to be asked to that we be allowed to study one would be a 420 student school which is for Fort River would be projected to be if commutes goes all the way up to sixth grade um and without a consolidation so in other words this would address Fort River challenges uh with infrastructure not Wildwood I asked to study a 520 student option which is a k would be a k to 5 Consolidated School uh with a separate there's some the town has funded a separate uh study around Crocker Farm uh and maybe an expansion at Crocker farm that some folks in our community were interested in and lastly uh 600 student school that would be K to 5 uh with the current Fort River and wildwood buildings being vacated I know a question I'm getting a lot in the last couple days is why not K to6 Consolidated School and again it comes back to the fact that a couple years ago when we engaged the community uh we put it out and people felt comfortable you know going up towards 600 students and they really didn't feel comfortable going Beyond 600 students and for a k to6 solidated school that would be over students so these were what were requested uh but not what was approved by msba by the state they only approved two options for us you know one is a k to6 option at Fort River School for 320 students and that would uh what that would look like is they would maintain having three elementary schools in the ammer for the ammer Public Schools elementary schools in ammer it would involve us having some conversations of of the structure of Fort River given the kantes program uh and the monolingual program that are in in place in K1 and going up the reason they didn't approve the larger enrollment is because we at a district level they look at the capacity and they in their opinion it would be overbuilding um that if we went up to 420 students there'd be excess capacity at the other schools in ammer and they don't they only build to the capacity of the district they don't look at the individual School the second enrollment that was supported was uh 500 75 students for a k to 5 School uh that would take Fort River and wildwood offline U so that result of that would be there'd be two elementary schools in the town of ammer this new school as well as Crocker Farm sixth grade students would would need to be educated at the Middle School uh and just because I know I got this question a lot even the other night at school committee there'd be roughly five classes per grade level at that new school three in English and two from the commant program um so that's what they approved us to study and that those are the only two options we're able to study uh I think it's important to note that from the msba process this is really about what enrollments to study these other questions on here about whether sixth grade goes to the middle school and whether we change the structure of common anes all those are in that next phase of the feasibility study uh this is really just defining what the msba has approved to study at that next phase is where we'll study all of these options and come to some programmatic decisions and then the community and by Community I mean uh staff uh families uh and larger Community will have to weigh in on which of the options they prefer uh for us to move forward both schools are desperately in Need Fort River and wild are desperately in need of work I think it's worth noting that Crocker Farm has a lot of capital needs too and that came up at the meeting at school committee meeting on Tuesday night and I was very emphatic with the committee as as they were with me that we can't forget about Crocker farm and the infrastructure needs that have emerged over the last um now 18 years uh since that building was added to and renovated so that's that's sort of where we are the next phase would be in uh February the msba board uh hopefully approves these these have been approved by the staff at the msba and then we'll move forward uh but that's at this point these really this defines what we're allowed to study uh not necessarily what decision between these that we would make over time trying to be really brief given I know uh it's been uh quite a 24 48 hours for folks and I know some people are running off to a meeting at 3:30 um but I want to just open it up for any questions uh that people would have again on the bottom right hand corner of your screen there's there should be a way for people to submit questions uh or concerns or anything else you want to tell me about um this um you know something as I'm giving you time to to type in any comments or questions just want to acknowledge and apologize for the condition of our buildings um you know I started as a teacher at Fort River I was an intern at a teacher at Fort River in 2000 and uh it wasn't great building then and 2021 years later it's still not a good building and and um not something that we would want um for our kids for our staff our community and this is really the first step to addressing at least one of the two buildings that are in significant need in our community so I'll give it a little bit of time um to see if anyone has any questions uh that they'd like to ask uh about where we are with the process and what next steps there would be I'll also say and I'll put this in there as well uh if people are more comfortable um connecting with me via email uh I think people get enough emails from me but I'll still put it in there that people are feel should feel welcome to uh you know shoot me an email if that's more comfortable for uh for you to communicate uh that way with me give it another minute see if anyone has any questions [Music] okay not seeing any questions I want to thank everyone for coming um I know it's it's a crazy time on and where I started thank you for all the work you're doing on behalf of students and for your colleagues in this surreal situation we find ourselves in uh please feel free to send any questions my way uh via email or set up a time to talk I'm happy to do that and I hope you have a good afternoon and I'll see everyone soon thank you bye-bye

way of the Brookfield Board of Education YouTube channel furthermore such meeting will be recorded and transcribed and posted on the board's website within seven days of the meeting and made available as required by law all speakers taking part in the meeting are reminded that they are to clearly State their names and titles if applicable before speaking on each occasion that they speak individuals wishing to participate in the public comment portion of this meeting May do so by calling the following numbers and sorry I have to get up a different agenda because I don't have that in front of me right now okay so the public can call area code 6099 or area code 301 715 8592 and the meeting ID is 7637 5610 okay so we have um let's uh stand for the [Music] pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay uh we have six of our seven board members present tonight um so first uh we have public comment so is there anyone here and sorry um if I have uh I don't see any phone numbers here and Eric there's nobody in the waiting room right um no I don't have anybody in the waiting room okay um so we are going to move on to the student representative report hi I'm tan chenu as the Brookfield High School student representative um first I wanted to thank the faculty and staff that helped make and deliver the senior class T-shirts because that was a really nice way to end the year um most seniors have also started finish up finishing up their applications which is a huge stress relief and some have even started hearing back from colleges um there are a few new clubs that have been made which is Club e which is an environment club and women in stem and NHS and Writing Center is also continuing with their tutoring program and just helping with essays and stuff um starting January 4th when we came back from break we started ilt which I I personally enjoy and I think a lot of students enjoy because it's been difficult for students to reach out to their teachers for extra help so it was a good time in the middle of the day to do that and it's also just a nice break if you do not have any work and also the 10-minute breaks between classes has also been helpful just like to stretch your legs um I have heard some people complain some students complaining about receiving absences even though they're in class due to the new cameras on policy but I think that's just that policy is just something that students have to get used to because I understand that it's to create some normaly in like classroom experience um this Friday there's an assembly with the Brookfield High School alumni panel for juniors and seniors during ilt which I think we're just hearing from alumni of Brookfield High School and their experience in college um next Thursday the 14th there's a next Thursday or the week after that but there's a Junior College Planning webinar at 6 pm and juniors also have their PSAT on the 26th where they will be in the building but it will continue to be a remote day for 9th 10th and 12th graders and finally the last day of the first semester is Janu January 28th which is already coming up soon and that is all thank you um out of curiosity what does ilt stand for individualized learning time okay and um Mr blinda is that part of the the new high school schedule with that block yeah it was this is something that um we had talked about at Cape last year we were ready to roll at the beginning of this year but because of covid obviously we in person we didn't uh start that but it became very apparent that we needed to do something else to provide students some extra help during the course of the school day and opportunities so uh to start the new year we implemented the block Chang the schedule on a little bit to give some kids some more downtime but also get the opportunity to get help during the day so um it's it's been it's it's it's an adjustment right it's changed just like everything else I think we got so used to doing it one way and and now we're doing it this way but um it's good to hear some some positive feedback and certainly we're adjusting so that's where we are great glad to hear students like it too so it's good all right any questions for tanvi all right thank you uh up next we have written correspondence okay Christina Zimmerman wrote regarding the remote learning schedule Joe peny wrote regarding School reopening guidelines Mark Mulaney wrote regarding school grants Elizabeth Murphy wrote regarding the school naming survey and Jessica jco wrote regarding in-person learning okay uh approval of board minutes I'll move that the board approve the minutes from the regular meeting December 16th 2020 a second thanks Joy all in favor I I any opposed Bob did I see you vote I okay thanks uh the vot the motion passes uh up next is the superintendent update thanks Rosa happy New Year everyone great to be here great to see everybody um I wanted to start with a uh a brief um roll through of some items related to covid uh the first thing I want to let you know is that we received uh last week the two week update from Dr Sullivan uh there was actually some uh while we do hear a lot of uh you know concerning news regarding Co um and Brookfield and the region and the state and the surrounding areas certainly remain in what we've known to come to know as the Red Zone um we were down um from 143 cases down to 124 of of the last twoe period which gave us a 52% per 100,000 rate uh which was down from 61% uh the following two the the previous twoe period um and uh so he sees um and we're looking at some trends that are that are stabilizing the TR uh the the upward tick uh in cases that happened after Thanksgiving uh we're not seeing that quite yet uh in terms of what was anticipated although there are uh still you know positive cases that are being reported so we're clearly keeping an eye on that and uh just today um Mrs uh Le forgia our nursing coordinator and myself met with Dr suiv to talk about these very things and also about the uh return to in person uh in addition to that we talked with Dr Davis who's on um is with us this evening who I'll introduce you to in just a little bit um because I want her to share a little bit about her perspective on reopening school and you know kind of almost the the need uh for kind of rethinking some of those colored zones that we have because we're all in the red um but we're finding the safest place to be for the kids so long as we have the appropriate staff is actually in the school um the other piece that's uh really important to know with covid uh regarding that is um in looking back at all of our cases that were reported to us uh over the fall and and of recent and uh looking at all of the people that um were possibly exposed in quarantined whether those were adults in our schools or children K through 8 there was Zero cases positive cases of covid for those who were quarantined um and only four cases of all those who were quarantined from the high school adults and children so our what this leads uh our medical professionals and our public health professionals to conclude is that our mitigation strategies in school work and and that's why the earlier statement on a safe place for kids to be is in school the spread is still in those private social Gatherings uh is where the contact tracers are finding that the the spread continues to occur um it's not we're not seeing it happen in school so Dr sv's really looking at Trends now uh versus hard numbers as to is there a hard number that will uh in terms of rate that will change our course for January 19th in our return um or when once we're in person is there a hard number that will trigger us to go to remote and really the answer to that and Dr Davis can get to this a little bit as well is we'll be looking at each classroom cohort each grade level and really uh dissecting it uh as best we can that way through our in School contact Tracing Our building Administration and nurses are also aware in terms of the contact tracing once we're back in school that we're really going to be very careful and very specific that we apply the um exposure rules for needing to quarantine to 6 feet and 15 minutes total in a day um and so we want to make sure that we're communicating all of this this will be in writing I'll be communicating uh a lot of what I'm sharing with you tonight next week uh principles are already starting to talk uh with their uh staff and with their um parents regarding these particular issues and parent uh principales will also if they haven't already be asking parents um to uh let them know if they're going to change their child's status from remote to in person or in person to remote or any of these things in terms of the data that we have so we have an accurate account it's important for the board and the public to know that right now on average with the information we have we're looking at about 70% of our students uh likely to be in person uh come January 19th and about 30% to be remote um so being in full K through 8 is close to the equivalent of being in hybrid because you you're you're 70% uh uh of your enrollment so that gives opportunity for more spacing and things like that so it's just important for people to know and for some perspective um Communications uh like I said principles will'll be asking for status change uh from parents if if parents are electing to do that we'll be sending out other information regarding qu new quarantine rules as well uh we're moving from the 14-day to the 10day hopefully that helps with some of the uh staffing issues that we had uh and also getting students who are in quarantine back uh sooner um because for days let's face it is almost the school week and so the sooner we can get people back from quarantine the better uh the last piece on communication is that um tomorrow I'll actually be sending out a letter and it's a letter that I sent out in early November to the elementary parents regarding traffic patterns and pickup um while Mrs laano and Mrs Diamond will be sending out more detailed information on that I want to get that out to the parents um the Milford PD is helping us with that coordination as well because when we have uh when we're not in a hybrid situation we have more than half the population coming to the schools and driving because we've asked them to drive rather than take the bus that's going to um put some extra burden on our roads and on our school parking lots so we're working on that coordination as well this week uh the last thing I want to say before I introduce Dr Davis on covid and then I'll return once Dr Davis is finished is um vaccines obviously a very significant topic that's out there uh Dr Sullivan and Moren frell our lead contact Tracer in town are are waiting uh to in in this afternoon things could have arrived waiting on all the vaccines to arrive um for our First Responders long-term care facilities our own School nurses Etc uh to get their vaccinations in that onea group um we find the uh Educators and others will be in the 1B group um but we don't think we'll have the vaccinations for the 1B group until the end of January probably at the soonest um I think all of us have watched the news and and read read the the newspaper and understand that there is a um a slow a bit of a slower roll out with the vaccinations than uh than anticipated um so with that before we get into some questions with Dr Davis and myself on some of these issues I wanted to introduce Lori said uh shik Davis who we just called Dr Davis to make it a little easier on us uh Dr Davis works for new Vance and um she is a pediatrician and she has been advising us for the past six months since Dr um Ferrera um was uh it was not his turn anymore to be our adviser from new evance and so it's now Dr Davis and I'm excited to have her tonight we finally had a common evening where she was available and able to uh be with us so Dr Davis I'd like to just turn it over to you to introduce yourself a little bit more and uh say say a few words uh kind of commenting on on maybe where I was talking about a little bit and providing a little bit of perspective for the board and certain we love to open the floor to the board to certainly ask me questions as part of my report or ask Dr Davis things that they might be interested in well thank thank you John and thank you for inviting me to the meeting this evening it's nice to see some faces um so I'll give you a little background about myself I'm um a pediatrician I've been practicing uh for 15 years time flies um and I've been in the Brookfield area for eight now it's going to be nine years so I'm also I to tell you I'm a parent of school age children I have a first grader and a fifth grader so I understand the uh the conundrum we're all in from a professional and a personal parental standpoint so um these are you know unchartered territories we don't really know what to expect a lot of time um but I will say that I think you know in my discussion with um with your superintendent and and Anna um I think the school is in very good standing as far as um prevention and mitigating factors um I I find the fact that there is uh she Shields that the school district was able to purchase shields for all the children fantastic um we know that masks and really the social distancing are really kind of avoiding the the spray of you know of uh saliva and things like work and we know that from our health care setting you know northwell Health Care system in Long Island really at the peak of our um initial wave of infections when they did studies they showed that the even the healthcare workers taking care of the most infectious patients in the Intensive Care Unit had less they had the decreased number of infections less incidents than what they were seeing in the general population so with that in mind the mitigating factors that you have in the school are really excellent I we have not seen School Trends where we have infections from child to child and I'll say specifically within a classroom or a cohart which is what we're really looking at you know we unfortunately we're all in the red these days you know there are going to be cases but we have great contact tracing and we'll be able to what we're really looking at is the cohorts so the individual classrooms of children that are gathered together and we really haven't seen transmission within those which is great news we haven't seen it across the country we haven't seen it in Brookfield um and I think you know that's what we're really looking at as far is what's what's safe for opening I think you know over the past months you know with reopening School SCH since the end of August we really haven't seen that school transmission is an issue at all it's probably one of the safest place for the kids and their education is extremely important you know we we have made do for the most part with remote learning but they really do need to be in the classroom um and I can say that from a parental standpoint as well my own children's education so I I feel very safe having my own children in school my children don't have the shields that you yours your do so like I said I'm very impressed and you know that that's a great mitigating factor you've got masks and you've got two plexiglass Shields between you know two children so I think you know you're in a good place as far as um trying to keep the kids safe so thank Lori um I just while we have Lori here did did any any of the board members uh I I know it was a last minute opportunity to have Lori here um but might any of the board members have any questions for for her Rosa I see yeah um you know I think the the question that we get most from parents is um you know sort of they want to understand the thought process behind you know why are we in full remote why are we in hybrid and I we I know that you know Dr Brill speaks with you and Dr Sullivan you know on your daily basis and um that advisement from you comes into play so I'm I'm curious as to you know back in November we were supposed to go back back 100% And we were sort of advised that that wasn't entirely safe at that point would you say that it's just sort of a lack of data or could you just sort of enlighten me as to your thought process and how that sort of changed over the last few months yes yes so excellent question um yes part of this is really inexperience I mean none of us have really lived through a pandemic before um when this all started you know we really had some we had drawn some lines in the sand as far as what we felt was you know Green safe you know orange red Etc we kind of put those numbers out there but in the end I don't think that they as this evolves um and more people are diagnosed we'll probably really not be in the green again until we all start getting vaccinated and we really have a decreased instance so in the end what we have then is more experience as far as cases in the community and then what we've learned from actual transmission now that we're really able and capable of contact tracing finding out where the actual risks are and you know we found in Connecticut unfortunately it's restaurants it's small family gatherings and you know social Gatherings it's not the schools um those those are the things that we've learned and we've been able to kind of compile all that information unfortunately because we've had an increased incidence of infection in the community so really that's really how things have evolved with time it is experienced it's the number of cases it's the um significant improvement in our testing as well as our contact tracing such that the numbers that we kind of put out for parameters because in the end like I said we're all new to this we really tried to be conservative as far as what what we think what we thought was safe at the time but as time has gone on and we've had more people infected and we've been able to contact Trace we've been able to kind of see where is the real risk here and so that's why the original um blueprint we used really isn't pertinent now as time has gone on and we've we've been able to gather more information thank you you're welcome anyone else okay well Lori it was a pleasure having you here this evening thank you for joining us we really appreciate your time and thanks for all your help thank you I've enjoyed working with all of you I look forward to working with you further in the future if you have questions um certainly you know reach out to your administrators they can always find me and I'm happy to answer questions as they come through thanks so much thank you thank you uh Rose if I if I may continue yes um thank you I wanted to to also just hop back to vaccinations for just a second uh in getting ready for vaccinations when we know if it's all Educators and teachers and staff or is there there particular Educators that are in this one the group 1B that has not been decided by dph yet we actually just found that out from Dr Sullivan when when Mrs laforgia and Mrs cavan our Human Resources Director were meeting um but uh Terry our Terry Kev our Human Resources Director will be our um vaccination coordinator for the district and we couldn't think of a better person for that being the leader of HR and ensuring that everybody is registered properly and and and all of that to to get their vaccination when the time comes uh in addition to that Terry was was able to put a communication out today thanks to our school nurses um we were're getting aggressive with getting opportunities out there for educators to get tested if they think they've been exposed as well um and at Western Connecticut there's some opportunity there where Educators could get to the front of the line because obviously if we're going to have kids in school we need to have the staff there so it's important uh that that Educators as essential people uh in the community uh are getting uh the the testing and the vaccinations as uh quickly as we can get that done um so that that was part of my my covid update in addition to that I wanted to put a correction out there I think I said the Milford PD will be helping with uh Elementary arrival and dismissal clearly I live I've shared I live in Milford so that's just a mistake there um it's the Brookfield PD and major pesi who will be leading that up so so thanks to Major pesi and of course Chief purcel U couple more things Food Service uh under uh our covid time now the uh free lunch for all um children in the household 18 and under um uh will occur through the remainder of the year that has happened with the new legislation so that's been extended and we wanted everybody to know that and Mr post and the team uh from uh Wiens will be continuing to take care of that and making Communications available on that uh Athletics uh we're hoping by the end of the week that uh the CIA will be making uh some public uh decisions on Athletics we do anticipate that Athletics should start on the 19th when we all in in Brookfield return to inperson learning uh we're looking forward to that one of the things that's quite interesting uh and we actually just talked to Dr Davis about this uh late this afternoon uh that there will be a need for a medical clearance for those student athletes who tested positive for covid and are on their way back to make sure that they are healthy enough to participate that's so and there's also some updates from the state department of Ed uh on that that that came out earlier this week so that's that's going on um parent education just wanted to put a little uh Tickler out there for everyone um our administrative team uh has been working uh and specifically the principles and the PPS Department uh to put together a number of different uh mini workshops I guess you can call them and webinars where we'll be uh advertising and marketing those uh opportunities for parents um everything from social emotional uh opportunities to um dealing with remote learning and the issues you might have uh anything to helping parents um and it's based on the feedback we've had um and we're we're just really excited about that and I'm thankful for the team for putting uh putting those together so beond the lookout for that and then the final piece um I'd like to share a little bit under my report regarding covid is really the class of 2021 you heard tonv earlier talk about the T-shirt drop off I mean I really cannot um just so proud of of the Brookville High School faculty staff Administration in this case it was led by Mr Buckley um I'll turn it over to to to Mr Bland to share a little bit about what that was but it's important to let everybody know when the pandemic Came Upon Us nine months ago now and uh we we really watched the senior class the graduating class of 2020 um you know limp through a very difficult end of their High School experience uh we paid a lot of attention to them it's important to know that our high school folks uh and teachers and leadership are paying a great deal of attention to our class of 2021 and really I don't think any of us thought we'd be in this pandemic with the significance of its impact for this long and it's really impacted this senior all all kids but you know the senior class and so the the high school team is really thinking a lot about them and there just one kind of a fun act of kindness that they did among other things they're planning so I'll turn it over to Mr Blanda and we have a short video we'd like to show you yeah yeah I'll I'll keep it short thank you Dr burill um you know it's one of those things that that you that Dr burill alluded to that I I did not imagine we'd be here on January 6th that we'd be still out of school um and still waiting to figure out when we're going to get back and um it's been we're all hoping it was going to be over quicker and I think you know certainly the seniors are feeling it it's you know half their school year is over um at the end of January so um and they're getting ready they're preparing as tan be talked about for college applications they're getting you know um and they've been in and out of school they've only been in school really um for a couple months since March really you know you think about it it's September October and you know part of November um so it's been two and a half months and we've been out of school since March so it's just an unbelievable thing that we're going through and I know that they've been feeling um you know things that they haven't been able to participate in whether it be you know uh fall Sports you know a homecoming dance or the homecoming football game Traditions that we're all used to that um they've been a chance to participate whether it be a pep rally um or some other activity that goes on at the high school that just hasn't been able to go this year um so Mr Buckley um who's the senior class adviser uh came up with and worked with some students to create a t-shirt design we got them in just before the uh the winter break and uh he put out to teachers um you know he asked me if he could put out to teachers if they'd be willing to help deliver and we got an overwhelming response from teachers that said absolutely we'll deliver thanks to carolanne darkangelo and Karen how who sorted basically um all seniors by bus routes um and then we're able to divvy up teachers you know were able to spread out and we we gathered on Wednesday morning the 23rd and then set out across uh Brookfield to deliver uh we tried to keep it as much of a secret as possible I know personally my personal experience I went to one house um you know as you can imagine the parents answerer the door and the father yells up to the student um come downstairs and she says no I'm on Zoom I'm in class I can't come downstairs dad and you know he goes no no you have to she goes like and she's yelling at her father no she can't come downstairs and he says your principal's here you could and you could hear the silence through the house and she came downstairs and looked at me and couldn't believe I was there and I I wish you know it is it really isn't a whole lot it's it's a very small gesture uh from us just to remind them that we're thinking of them and and not just me but all the all the teachers are thinking of them and missing kids and we can't wait to get back to the 19th to see them again um you know it's certainly going to be a challenging rest of the school year in terms of you know planning and and what's going to happen I have some certainly ideas about graduation that I will be sharing with the board and Dr burill and I talk preliminarily about things we can do to celebrate um the end of the school year when that comes for seniors but um you know we're going to try to do some other things it's it's difficult it's gonna when you talk about crowds and Gathering but uh we're going to work together to see if we can put a few more things in place for the end of the school year but we just want the seniors to know that we care about them we miss them and we're we're really lucky that they're joining us on this journey and working so hard um to get to the end of their school year so that's what I would have to share and so um I know I sent this to the board but I think it's important to show here at a board meeting so we have it for the record for the public to see as well um Eric are you able to show the uh the video that uh Mr Buckley and the team put together summarizing the drop [Music] off I think it's just it's about it's three minutes so if if you if you can indulge us really appreciate it and it's a familiar song I think we'll all enjoy sorry I have to just quickly change the way I have it shared hold on thanks [Music] er no one told you life was going to be this way your jobs a joke you broke your love Liv to away it's like you're always second dear when it hasn't been your day we your month or even your year but I'll be there for you when the rain starts to fall I'll be there for you like been there I'll be there for you cuz you there for me to still in bed at 10 and work again at 8 you burned your breakfast so far things are going great your mother warned you let be days like these but she didn't tell you when the world brought down your knes and I'll be there for you when the rain starts before I'll be there for you like I've been there before I'll be there for you cuz you're there for me too no one could ever know me no one could ever see me since you're the onlyone who knows what it's like to be me someone to face the day with make it through all the rest with someone I always laugh with even I wor the best it's like your we stuck in and second gear when it hasn't been your day your week your months even know you live I'll be there for you the rain starts I'll be there for you I can feel there before I'll be there for you cuz you're there for me too I'll be there for you [Music] I'll be there for [Music] you I'll be there for you cuz you're there for me [Music] too thanks so much Eric really appreciate that and mark thank you for your your uh your comments on it tonight I really appreciate it as well um you can see there's a lot of there for sure and um again we just we want the seniors and all the kids to know how much we're thinking of them and we're just so excited to have them back on the 19th we really can't wait to get started um I just can't help a smile every time I think about that and by the way Mr belanda Mr Renda and I were were reminiscing uh about our lack of hair compared to those High School boys we remember our days of having such nice hair like that boy oh boy I tell you there it is it's it's it's amazing what's happening we we're having some good laughs about that the other day um so move moving forward uh the school naming going to move off of Co and go to school naming just an update on the survey I checked this afternoon uh thus far we've had almost 2,000 responses um at about 2 o'clock this afternoon it was 1,912 responses uh 273 these won't add up because people don't always fill out every uh little little uh uh response but uh the candle Woods both choices candle wood in Candlewood Lake um is a total of two 252 uh Lakeside 273 Newberry 256 and Westbrook 263 um so there you go um Candlewood number might be a little off because I think I looked at it too yeah that and again that was earlier this afternoon so you have the access row that could have changed over the afternoon for sure yeah I think um well unless you like maybe just wrote Maybe like you wrote it down wrong or something I don't know First Choice thousand I'm sorry what the candlewoods had almost a thousand they had like almost half the votes yes uh did did I say 9 yeah I think you said like two 250 something yeah so I'll say it again the candle Woods were 952 okay okay Lakeside 273 Newberry 256 West Rook 263 so that's that and again that was a couple of hours ago so um the survey is still open and those were First Choice numbers um so it's uh it's open and when we put out the reminder on Monday afternoon uh we started to get more responses we've probably had a four or 500 responses since Monday so um it's good that that we reminded people to uh uh get that in there we'll have that on the board agenda uh as discussed before the winter break for the January 20th meeting uh for the board to make their uh make their decision uh then I I really have to thank moving on to equity and inclusion um I know it's not a board report tonight but just to give a very brief update um I have to thank uh Jen leaden Amy Foster and of course Dr Ruby for gosh Dr Ruby has more ideas and more knowledge to to bring to to some of these committees than than any of us could imagine it's just uh just love her as my partner uh in leadership here in Brookville and um we we're just doing some great work we planned for next week's first um kickoff meeting with the committee and we really talked about the idea of building Community with the committee first before we jump into any kind of action so we're going to be reviewing all of the great work that's happened over the last six months the board and superintendent value statement uh the actual uh equity and inclusion statement that we have to kind of be the vision of our committee uh goals objectives uh little give a little history and then really get into understanding why this work is important to those people who want to be on this committee um and uh and then then we have some really cool ideas going forward for the next couple of months for the for the meetings that are on on schedule um and really we're in a in a setup mode right now to to build that Community build that trust um and and get a finally tun a finally tuned um team of people working together on this uh as we set the course for the district so we're really excited about that and then finally moving on to uh the great organization Brookfield cares uh those folks uh working with a former board shair uh Mrs Sturm who is now uh leading Brookfield cares uh she has worked with Mr Banda and Mr uh Renda from whiner uh as well as our facility director Dan Caldwell they have uh anti vaping uh signage and posters that they've produced the uh put together um turned into uh acrylic covered signage um and they're going in the bathrooms um uh at the schools where the vaping tends to occur if it does OCC and how students could reach out and uh ask for help um it's not just a don't Vape um and there's messages and numbers and contact information and so we'll we'll have those uh I think they're all installed at whis skiner and they're starting to install at the high school so they'll be ready for the kids when they return on the 19th so we continue in our uh efforts for um the whole child and wellness and making sure we're we're focused on that and we thank the Brookville uh Brookville cares Organization for supporting us with that and uh that is my report it was a little long tonight um but I but I do thank you for indulging me and there was a lot to share over the from what happened over the last couple of weeks so if there's any questions for me I'll certainly take from now let us move on all right thanks Rosen thank you okay up next is committee reports and we have policy up first okay uh the policy committee met on December 16th and really the bulk of our meeting was to um have a presentation or discussion with Dr Vince mustaro from C and uh Dr burill invited him to come to our meeting to talk to us about uh the services that cab offers in relation to our policy manual so he outlined uh the different options that are available really the two primary things that we focused on were their policy audit service and their custom policy um service the custom policy service um really basically takes our entire policy manual and makes all the changes to our policies that are um necessary uh whether it be that policies are outdated or um incorrect or if we're missing any policies they just take it and do it like basically Soup To Nuts um the part that I think we're more interested in at this point is their policy audit service where um they basically review our policy manual um see which policies need to be updated uh which policies we have that U might just need a little bit of tweaking anything that's um outdated that needs revisions and they make us aware of um Trends and and good practices that are out there that other districts are doing other policies that they might recommend that we don't have and basically sort of give us an overall assess of what kind of shape our policy manual is in um that policy audit service is about $2,200 it's a thre Monon process um and then from there we can decide whether our policy committee is able to continue making the changes on our own and making revisions or if we need to engage them in you know some more assistance and having them write new policies or make changes for us so um I think we were all in agreement that we thought the the audit itself was worth doing um the policy committee even before I was on it made um good progress updating several of the series but there's still a ton of work to do there's you know huge section of the policy manual that we haven't even gotten to yet you know seems like especially with covid new policies have come up that we didn't have we weren't aware of new policies are being written just to deal with pandemics and emergencies like the situation that we're in so when we have to address things like that um you know it's obviously taking time away from the other Series in the policy manual that we should be working on so um I believe Dr bril we agreed that he would put in um $2,200 into next year's budget as a placeholder but that we would discuss it with the board um you know have a more extensive conversation about it to to see if the board agreed with that recommendation and Debbie I did put it in there and and it shows in a couple of slides that I'll share tonight when we talk about the budget so that was really the bulk of uh the meeting it was very interesting very informative um after that we spoke very very briefly because we had almost no time left about covid Communications um and budget Communications but the bulk of it was about policy okay any questions all right thanks Debbie and we have a special Finance report this is going going to be really quick we talked about the budget we're going to talk about it tonight and uh the what we did at at this last meeting is as as you remember under my last report we've been going through line by line by line by line by line and budget we uh um we went through the last set of lines um and quite frankly we didn't find anything that was incredibly over understated the only discussion point we had was a good healthy one about insurance costs um because both the town and the school keep getting new information as every day goes on on what our insurance cost posture looks like for next year I'm sure we'll talk about that as we go through the update that we'll talk about on the budget in a little bit um but it's not it's actually not helping it's actually adding costs to us not removing costs from us but other than that i' I'd say the scrubbing work that the team's done has been superb all you know I'll ask the other members of the board but I thought it was a really good experience having gone through it and discussed and debate and asked questions and we posted the qas and we've uh posted updated uh budget reports for all us so um I think it was time well spent I mean Rosa um Jan you agree yes absolutely it really forced us um to sort of have some shared responsibility and really look carefully um and ask some good questions so I think it was really worthwhile absolutely so as we it all it the nice thing for me is it frees us up now to focus on the Investments which is what I think we ought to spend our time on tonight but because in terms of just looking at the budget from a scrubbing point of view you you should know we've spent a lot of time scrubbing at it so uh that's uh as a three of the seven members of the board that's what we felt our responsibility was so um so now we can go focus in on you know the actual investment items and do we want to support those in in our budget as we carry it forward that's all I have okay any questions all right thank you uh we have no consent agenda and no new business so next on our agenda is old business and that brings us right into the review of the proposed 2122 budget um Dr BR I heard you mention something about slides is there something that you wanted to share first yes yes there was just a couple of slides Rosa uh going right to exactly what Bob's talking about I just want to Center every everybody bring us back together uh here in the new year after our December six uh 16th meeting it's been a couple of weeks and uh just just get us all focused on the same things and then I have I kind of end my five slides with one slide that has the Investments on it and we could walk through as Bob suggested um those Investments and obviously talk about anything else that we we'd like to talk about tonight um so a I think Eric has that was going to pull that up for us so give Eric a second there here we go all right so I I purposely adjust oh Eric if you just go back to the the cover slide I just want to draw everybody's attention to this under January 6th I just have a little subtitle that this is originally presented the budget to the board on December 2nd because these PowerPoints aren't just for this meeting they are posted on our our website obviously and there's many people who don't come back and watch the video but they do go look at the link for the the presentation since I want to make sure it's very clear that people understand this is kind of an this is is an adjustment and an update uh to uh the budget from the December 2nd presentation we as a reminder for everyone we present the budget we're probably one of the six six communities that presents the budget as a board of education this ear um uh in in the the first half of of the school year we start preparing in October and we present on the the first meeting in December so it's quite early and a lot of information changes Mr beldin alluded to insurance we do the best we can with the information we have uh from our insurance folks but over that month from December into now into into early January things do change and we need to update the the figures so Eric if you go to the next slide on this slide I want to talk a little bit about the um uh process over the last month so we had a board of uh the the finance committee our Board of Ed finance committee as Bob talked about reviewed and went through a very detailed line item uh review of the budget at the December 7th meeting we had a meeting on December 14th where the finance committee did the same thing um the full board met on the 16th and we started our deliberations and discussions regarding the budget on the 21st before the holiday break uh the finance committee met again in reviewed the budget as Bob was talking about and here we are tonight as a full board um starting to to dig in as a full board even more on the budget and during that time my special note it's really important um there were many many questions from Board of Education members and I really applaud the effort of the board digging in like this there was not only budgetary kind of line item questions you know why is this here where is this budgeted and really digging in um I remember this from last year where is that located really deep great questions about the budget uh quite a bit of those in addition to that there were programmatic questions about the investment that um that I proposed and all of that um as as a document the questions and all of the administrative responses is is upwards of 20 Pages um so it's of single space type so I mean there is a lot of information that we've gone back and forth on uh between the administrative team and the board so thank everybody for their efforts there so that's been the process over the last month uh next slide era give me a second here folks and a problem with my camera get back to this there we go um so we can see that I had a slide that looks similar to this on December 2nd that I shared and I just wanted to walk everybody through this you can see that our current operating budget for the 2021 school year that's the current year we're in uh compared to last year was a 3% increase and it's $5,400 th000 the proposed budget has been adjusted just a little bit since uh December 2nd for next year's um 21 22 school year our status quo increase that's essentially keeping everything the same um with inflationary costs and contractual um agreement uh cost increases that is a $1.4 million increase or 3.12% over the 45,400 at the top of the page um in addition to that we have two categories of investment and we'll talk in detail in about two slides about that um we have one category that really specifically are student needs that must be addressed they we really we've talked about many of them for a couple of years and we we really it's important we get them in the budget uh that's a cost of $258,000 or just over half a percent increase and then the other set of Investments are program enhancements and uh we use the term improvements continuous Improvement program enhancements uh various language to describe the things we want to do to continue to move move our district forward um those costs are $227,000 or a half a percent our total investment cost of those two categories added together is $485,000 310 or a 1.07% increase over last year's budget when you take the status quo of 3.12% increase and the total investment increase of 1.07 um you get a uh increase of $1.9 million or 4 .9% now at the beginning of December I presented a budget that was a 3.9% increase so there's a little bit of an increase in my proposal and um I could share with you what that is on the next slide so Eric if you can go to that so where did those impacts come in the very first line is exactly what Mr Beldon mentioned in his Finance report uh health insurance uh getting a little clearer on the information from the Connecticut partnership ship plan and from the actuaries um and this this applies to the town as well uh we have a increase where we're looking at an estimate of a 6% increase uh plus a 3 and 3/4% increase for being part of Fairfield County and the increased cost of this part of the state and so the increase to the budget that the budget uh figures and the bottom line we're sharing tonight the adjustment is $145,000 increase to what was proposed on December 2nd in addition addition to that uh in our favor uh the pension contribution of the district is going down by $69,000 based on the valuation report we decided that the Chromebooks that we listed in investments in my initial proposal were really replacements for aging um technology and so we move the the cost of the 300 Chromebooks to the um invest um to the status quo side of things um of $882,000 so there's there's some puts and takes in the in the budget itself um we also had a decrease in what our Revenue looks like it's going to be for the excess cost Grant 29 almost $30,000 and then a couple of other very small adjustments um in athletics uh we decreased the athletic supplies budget and that was a correction uh of $4,200 to the status quo we moved $8,400 from the status quo to the investment side uh for officials and transportation costs for for the new new uh proposal for gymnastics and volleyball uh internet capacity we had that in status quo we had a lengthy discussion about uh this part of technology and we moved $7,800 for the uh internet capacity from uh status quo to Investments and then finally as Mrs Brooks alluded to in her report um we put uh $2200 into status quo to cover the policy audit at this point um so those were the main drivers of change uh in the adjustments and update to the budget proposal at this point next slide just a quick reminder for everybody all of our investments that I'm going to show you on the next slide are um based upon five key budget goals that we um annually put together and the first one is to provide the necessary resources to meet the needs of all of our students and making sure we're in alignment with state and federal law secondly maintaining our class size um and obviously adjusting Staffing patterns um with all the enrollment changes that we we uh experience during a during a change in years uh the third goal providing for the rigorous and relevant curriculum using best practice making sure our um uh instruction is as best as it can be make sure we are properly and efficiently assessing our students so we know where they're at and how we can adjust and instruction and obviously making sure we're having the best learning experiences for our students that involves professional learning for our staff and teachers as well providing technology infrastructure that supports students uh especially now in our Extreme Digital environment that we move to uh much more quickly and more robustly than we ever thought we would due to the pandemic and then finally maintaining and continuing to enhance programs while remaining responsive to all kinds of changing needs um and then I share a link to the budget assumptions and priorities that the board voted on back in October and so that was just to Center everybody on what the purpose uh of the the budget is and some of the adjustments and then the the next slide Eric this is the slide that gets us to the Investments that Mr Beldon talked about uh we have the Investments broken into two categories Investments based on student need that I talked about earlier and then on the right hand side you can see Investments for program Improvement and we have each investment listed there um and the cost and so at this point I don't have any more to share and I'd like to turn it over to either Mrs uh Fernandez or Mr Beldon to kind of start facilitating some conversation around this and have a conversation with the full board thanks for the recap sure is the math interventionist that's going to be at the high school yes okay all right I will I'll start because there's still um and Ken maybe this is something that I I had emailed you a couple days ago um and I didn't you know expect like an answer right away or even by today but I think something that uh I know we're definitely going to need going forward um especially in the in the upcoming months to defend you know our adopted budget um is you know that list of accounts that we know are still going to be perhaps updated like maybe we're waiting on a number from you know some service provider whether that's tuition or whatever their their service fees something like that because those are the changes that we end up making in the middle of the budget process and then it doesn't look as transparent as it should so you know and also it would really help for me to understand you know which which of these figures and I'm talking about the whole budget are based on just your estimate your best guess sort of estimate is it based on an estimate plus you know some known inflation based on history or you know do we actually have some hard figures so I mean I think for me those are the things that it's sort of like a missing piece I agree I don't really know how this is going to change in the next couple months right and we've actually already started some of that process uh I know Eric's been reaching out to um a lot of the software companies that we deal with and he's had a few of them have gotten back to where they have firmed up their their rates for next year which we would put in our next update some some are are lower than he estimated one or two or higher and how often do you think you'll either update well I guess update the board because I guess what I'm sort of anticipating and sort of remembering from last year is the board of Finance saying well when you have a change tell us right away so that they can see how that number is changed um and I think that's helpful for us too as opposed to waiting until there's a group of them and then updating I don't know how the rest of the board feels about that but sort of just two different styles I think we ought to have an update I think we ought have a list of them like you describ and we ought to have an update at every one of our board meetings all right um so you know pull up that same list and say Here's what the new news is right and uh and then we ought to send it over to the board of Finance saying this is what we've had since the last meeting um I think it's a very we have to be very open and transparent on this I can certainly keep an ongoing list I think a list yeah I think um and maybe this is really cumbersome but if the actual budget summmer sheet was updated with maybe just highlights like a highlighted cell that says Yep this number's changed this is why yeah I think in terms of updating our budget I think the the sharing of information is right there's it gets awkward to be updating our budget every day and every hour as things come in I think we ought to have moments in time when we're doing a budget update and the last we have one more big shot at doing a one budget more budget update it's the you know to get to the budget we're going to submit on January 31st and then there'll be updates to the board of finances they go through their deliberation but our job other than presenting things is done so and I don't think we ought to be updating in that phase but we ought to be sharing information in that phase uh dramatically so I agree I'm trying very hard to keep um the budget document that I sent out the budget worksheet um in sync with all of the backup documentation and it is timec consuming to do that so I think keeping a running list of changes that I can even issue weekly as we get information would probably be more helpful and then you know picking points in time such as before the next you know before the next board meeting updating all the documents and sending them out yeah um so Ken I why don't you and I spend a little bit of time because I think we need a chart on this in our budget presentation in February when we meet with the board of Selectmen and board of Finance because they've asked about it every time and I think we could use that as the basis for then communicating as we go forward and I think uh Rosie your point is really good what percentage of the budget is tied out to estimates still as opposed to real substantiated information and uh like for example a biggest single item in the budget that is based on estimates is the health insurance insurance it's going to be an unknown all the way through the budget cycle right I think that's usually started getting locked down as late as April um before you start really getting hard quotes So I and the town's going to have the same issue um but the uh but Ken I'm picturing a chart that says look here's our overall budget so much of it is based on real deep Source documentation so much of it is based on estimates it's not a huge percentage other than that insurance and then so much of it is based on uh requests and plans you know like you know like your textbooks and libraries type of things right you know they don't may not have quotes on them yet but you know we know we need supplies in the classroom right so um but I could I could really see a chart that characterizes it and then has a list of the things that are based on our estimates and uh and then we can just update that chart as the whole plan cycle goes along I think that' be very powerful yes which sort of brings me you know to my next point which is you know a lot of these are you know based on requests you know from the principles who came from the Departments but even in looking in that data you know it's hard to kind of understand where that number came from so if we had and this was one of the other requests I had and I know that it's more sort of like scrubbing and not talking about sort of big picture for tonight but um um you know I think I could go back and look in the history and sort of understand where we've reduced the budget but that doesn't get into the nitty-gritty of which accounts were really reduced uh purposefully because of you know budget cuts throughout um you know places where we've had to do freezes and things like that so understanding sort of past expenses can help me better understand what the current ask is and why it's like that so if you had sort of if you could run through the budget and sort of at least just even if it's just one year back you know just to help me understand and I I think to that point Rosa that was I think part of our comebacks from the last special finance committee meeting and we're obviously going to talk about it tonight but we have a finance committee meeting on Monday night uh this coming Monday night so we could talk a little bit more deeply about exactly what we're talking about here I I'm I'm with you on that I think there's there's things we can do to make this very transparent and more understandable for folks uh who are not as intimate with the budget as we are for sure what are some other questions other board members have well let me let me let me make a suggestion I you know part of what we need to do as a board um Rosa is when we're carrying forward this budget make sure that we've discussed each of these Investments asked our questions individually and then kind of looked each other in the eye and say do we support them right or do we have a debate over them right um and uh I think I would suggest that we go through a process here where we go down each line item on this chart um it'll take a little bit of time but have John um or Ken or John whoever you want uh describe briefly what's in the line you know what was what makes up the investment why do we need it just verbally right not looking for presentation material but reiterate what you told us before and then let's do a STW you know go around see have people have questions on that line item take a straw poll of whether we support it move on to the next one and get through all of them and see if we have consensus on this submission and that would be my suggestion because if you kind of go generally over it does anybody have any general question questions you know it it to me I think you need to deal with the Investments individually and thinking about them individually that would just be my suggestion I do have one question about this investment list um are any Chromebooks or anything on as classified as an investment no I know that we're trying to like expand keep going down in the grades to get more one to one but is that not considered an investment we talked about it at the last meeting that going to move those because they they really the the number of break fix and end of life um makes up for that with the 300 Chromebooks that was the discussion so we moved that um to status quo okay so if you'd like I'll lead through the discussion Ros Bob do you want to start with the yeah it's fine yeah okay so let's just start on the left side so there's a h there's a half a percent a little over half a percent of investment $258,000 um what I would suggest is we um go through them in a very orderly John you take literally a minute walk through it we'll ask if anybody has any questions um and then I'll just do a quick straw poll if everyone's in agreement to it right and uh or if we have to debate it um let's go ahead and debate it right um and because we're carrying forward a budget right so we need to say yeah this is something we as a board support so the let's do the first two together right the the tall teacher and the elll tutors John why don't you just uh if I recall this is a investment to put a teacher in and so that we have a more stability okay so talk a little bit more about that I'll be very brief and and for anybody who's watching at home the explanations are laid out in the December 2nd presentation um so we'll keep it brief so we we've talked about um adding uh t- Sal teacher uh this would be a second tsaw teacher to our program for a couple of years now um it is very important uh to support our English language Learners to have such an expert um in another body to be around the district you're talking about two teachers now with this proposal a second teacher for four schools um we would be reducing the tutors that we have um so the the $68,000 cost really is is less than than half of what it is because we're reducing two part-time tutor positions um and the stability piece that you allude to Bob is because what we do is we do uh Mrs Holly does a fantastic job training our elll tutors so much so that they use their experience with us to become certified t-a teachers and become teachers in neighboring districts so um we don't want to continue that Trend we we lose a uh we invest a lot of training those people costs money and and and time and we want to keep someone here with us to do that so our one our our solution is to have an additional Tesa teacher and that's it as as briefly as I can say nope thank you very much um no so does anybody on the board have any questions on this item no I I don't have any questions but I did want to say on behalf of the Kate committee because we we spoke at length about this so I I think some clarity from at least our committee from that subcommittee would help um you know this is really seen as Like An Early Intervention Program where it benefits all students it's not just specific group of students um you know we don't want to marginalize a marginalize a population but um it is a very needy population um they don't typically have anybody to advocate for them and you know articulate the struggles and the needs that they have so you know I think as a board we need to really advocate for them and you know these Cod teaching opportunities will open up you know a lot of opportunities for all of our students so although it's really addresses A specific group of students it really opens opens it up to all of our students so you I I would just uh agree with um God I almost called you Vanessa Joy sorry agree with with joy I think one of the things is I think we all know we've been really remiss in this area for many years so I would say this is one step moving Us in the right direction but by having sort of high quality language instruction that targets students uh you know where English is not their um is not their primary language you know as Joy was saying that type of language instruction when it's within a classroom is good for all kids so I just want to reiterate and support what Joyce said and remind me didn't we have this in last year's budget proposal as well and the year before that yes that we keep we keep having to squeeze it out and it keeps being a suboptimal program so I think we need to stand up personally I think this is one of the most important Investments that we're going to make so yeah and in our current model we're really stretched very thin we really need more um this is very conservative Dr Ruby you were going to say something yeah I also want to say that um as most of us are aware tutors cannot work independently so the tutors that we have have to work under the certified teacher so the certified teacher has to devote some that we have now as well as Mrs Holly have to devote some of their time that they should be using for their jobs to um work with these and build up these folks who are wonderful but then leave us so it's it's um it's a we're bleeding um uh by having the the current program and I do want to say that you know when we when we originally got these tutors we were very thankful to have them because it was in lie of not being able to have um another teacher so it was a it was a Band-Aid and we did we did really well with it but we did so well like John said that they left us and so it's become like there's no return on our investment and so it really I I appreciate the support because I think the time has really come that we need to move in in the direction of this ask because it just makes sense on multiple levels and druby not not discounting anything that you said but and not discounting the skill set of our tutors but we can't Overlook the true experience an expertise of a tel teacher that's the reality so um and one thing I brought up just to kind of play the other side I had I had mentioned in our meeting you know why can't our literacy Specialists kind of pick up the pieces of this and you know I thought the response was was a good one that you know we need our literacy Specialists to free up the work of our of this needy population so that they can Target you know those tier 2 students that need reading and writing interventions so um I think that is something I wanted to throw out there as a solution but it wasn't really a viable remind me the case load we have the Tesa kids is still over a 100 yeah remember number I think it was in the neighborhood of about a hundred kids yeah yeah and remember we only one teacher with one teacher yeah all right so let me just any other questions and I'll just ask if for a show of hands or who in support of this one and if anybody's against it so one more uh comment uh Bob if I if I may uh being on the cape committee is uh this move also supports the staff that uh you know that's that's that's been already I know that was already mentioned but I think that's really important that you know we mention supporting the students but also supporting the staff uh in a very important area so I just want to say that okay thank you any other questions on this one okay show a hands who's in support of this one we're not voting officially I'm just trying to it's kind of a straw poll anybody against it all right we're all in favor of this one so uh um the next one's the math interventionist so Bob I'll be brief and turn it right over to Mr Banda on this one we have um invested in Reading at the high school um but it's quite clear that we need to invest in intervention in the area of mathematics and um this is something we talked about uh last year as as well and um you know we were in a very difficult budget position as we were developing this year's budget at this time last year um so we had to make some difficult decision but this is a position that's really needed at the high school and um Mr Bland I'd like to turn it over to you to share sure so you know it's one of those we put this in the budget last year we ended up cutting it out we put it back in this year it's something that the high school um the students really need um you know if you think about the structure of from middle school to high school in terms of a reading perspective um you know we we have uh reading interventionist at the middle school and we have some reading interventions at the high school we have students that funnel into that program or get identified and can use that additional support to stay up to grade level we also have that in math at the middle school but there is nothing it's an assumption that once they get to high school they you know I almost feel like they should have all figured it out by now and that just certainly isn't the case um you know when we have our weekly srbi meetings to talk about students who are at risk in any different area um you know it's one of those things where consistent we have the opportunity or at least the resources that they can work with if it's a student that has some having some reading difficulty uh we have two reading Specialists that we can refer to that can work with those students outside of um you know their their General assignments we have nothing for math at this point we're offering you know extra help with teachers um and some additional tutoring from other students um and it's really it's not an ideal situation for us uh we really would love to have a certified math teacher who could support the growth of students in math you look at our data from our PSAT to our SAT it's consistently lower um not unlike anyone else in the country but consistently lower than our um our uh evidence-based reading and writing scores so our math scores are lower and they also have somewhat plateaued to some degree where they've been flat we need to get this up and to provide extra support uh Dr Ruby had shared some some initial um data from some things she had been reading U some articles online about you know where student growth is in terms of pandemic wise and where kids have grown in the areas of reading and math and what it's been and while there's some plateaus there are some things that are showing in math that seem to be more severe um than in the reading area so um now more than ever um and this is one person um but the ability for this person to uh work with small groups individual groups of students push into classrooms as needed um would it would support us you know right now we offer an additional support for in students that come in to nth grade to create a whole different course another course to support students um to give them almost double math um to try to help them get caught up and give them support they need to get the skills to get where they need to get so um that's why we'd be in certainly in support of that so from high school Andrew I don't know if you have anything you want to add I wanted to add something thank you Mark for bringing up the uh the what's currently trending across the country and across the globe um we recently had our district data team meeting where all four schools re this was what two weeks ago where we reviewed all the data from the um first portion of the year and uh while I don't have that data I know you don't want to hear about it tonight um the uh our our reading data across the across the school district was surprisingly healthy despite what we've been through we were really quite pleased uh we always wanted it to be better but our math data was not quite as robust um in terms of um the entire district and we were feeling you know like pretty badly about that I mean it's not horrible believe me we've they we were pleasantly surprised but we would have liked to have seen more growth in math and then I've been looking into what's going on nationally and I shared these um uh articles uh and reports and said what does this look like you know and principles wrote back to me it looks just like ours so we're f following we're we're on the same trend line as the rest of the country in terms of students doing um less well in math over the pandemic than they are in reading so that I'm just sharing that because that's a compounding problem to the problem that we're that we were trying to address last year with this ask so this ask is even more important this year because of what we're seeing and the other thing I want to um add on is that math is is is like a Gateway um course at the high school level because of the uh the intimate relationship of the use of mathematics as a language and as a problem solving tool in the sciences and so when we have students who are challenged in math and we're not able to support them in the way that we really believe that we should be that um that deficit that they um are experiencing in math can be a huge barrier to them being able to access um higher level science courses so this is this is a vital position for our high school and if uh if I can uh respond to uh both uh Dr Ruby and Mr Banda um uh all very good points uh uh another uh thing I kind of want to reiterate is um you know there are many reasons why a student might come to the high school and have uh needs that go beyond even uh the scope of the high school curriculum um we don't just get students coming from lower grades that have had uh consistent difficulty we also get students from other districts sometimes other countries and uh math curricula varies across uh different countries quite tremendously um if you read enough math transcripts you learn that very quickly and um it's uh we have a a a pretty comparatively rigorous mathematics program in terms of what the expectations are in our colle Preparatory sequence and um the cognitive psychologist um Daniel Willingham uh once put it as when a student doesn't have some of the uh automaticity in their um underlying math skills trying to solve an algebra problem is equivalent to trying to write a Sonet when you have to look up the spelling of every word and uh you know we want the best opportunity to support the kids who come into the high school um and who have these needs that go beyond the scope of the program because I do believe we have a uh robust program that we're continuing to develop and integrate more mathematics into the Sciences as Dr Ruby said and we want those students to get as much out of it as they can and to be as successful as they can so this would go a long way to helping us assure that for as most kidss as possible so thank you any questions or comments from the board members all right show a hands what everyone supporting this one looks like everyone's supporting this one all right good the next one I think is just mechanics it's the that's just Ken the benefits and uh for the two teachers we've talked about right correct okay we probably when we present it forward we ought to put the benefits up in the top two line items and just call it call call the totals um and uh let's talk about the speech and language pathologist actually Bob I was thinking if we could just if if you wouldn't mind could we go to the CES math tutor at this point because I think some of the points that were brought up um apply to the little guys as well uh under uh Mrs Diamond's tutelage so um I see Mrs uh as Dr Ruby raising her hand as well so either Dr Ruby or or Mrs Diamond who ever like to go first talk about that the that ask well I'll just build on what I said with the um high school students and what we said about um the fact that Mark um addressed the fact that that we have um uh I think we have a really healthy U program of support in Reading at the elementary school and that's because we had a big reading problem and we we went to address that but as we are have become more sophisticated and and uh Mrs Diamond will talk about this more sophisticated in our use of progress monitoring data and identifying where kids are needing support at an earlier time we have to look at what we're doing in the um earlier grades in terms of intervention and prevention and so we don't have any be because uh classroom teachers are in their classrooms um and students are getting support in Reading from classroom teachers from special ed teachers and from our reading teachers we don't have anything to give support like that to our our students in math once they start to fall behind in math it's like um it's like a runaway train and so uh Mary Rose will talk about how this um math interventionist will really help her uh teachers be able to keep their finger on the pulse of the children in in mathematics development when they're falling behind in the same way well not exactly the same way because it's only one person um but is similarly to what we're able to do in reading so U Mary Rose right no thank you thank you Dr and so um yes I I agree uh um especially with what Andrew was saying earlier about just the the prevention component um so when kids are at Center school again as as Dr was just saying we have a um battery of Assessments that we just started administering last year that would are giving us greater insights into the nuances of of mathematic the the the math Foundation skills um that we didn't have in the past so now we are better able to Target um where the the gaps might be and where the needs might be um but we don't have the the staff and the time to then go back in and provide that that intervention so um any any intervention and prevention we do at the lower grades obviously will hopefully the goal is to reduce the need um as we move forward and as students move up through the grade level so um you know do think that the the math tutor position at Center School which be working again closely with our classroom teachers um under some of the guidance of our math curriculum Specialists um to make sure that we are using the data that we had now that now that we know where the issues are to be able to really purposefully Target um where those concerns are with some intentionality so that again we're not seeing uh the um the problems just get more more challenging and bigger as as students move up through the grade levels thanks Mary Rose okay um questions from any of the board members very well said guys um it's uh I think if we can if we can nip it nip challenges that kids have in the bud it only helps them as time goes on so um all right everyone's okay with this one show hands all right all right thanks Michael um all right do you want to just go up or how do you want to do order do you want to go in John summer school or the you Bob while we're talking about nipping problems in the bud and prevention let's stay on summer school and um I'd like to turn this one right over um to Dr Ruby after I say this is something we've talked about for quite a while um we we um almost brought it Forward formally last year but with all of the pressures um and the significant ask that we put forward last year we just weren't ready for it from a financial perspective um but it's really important uh to address uh for those uh for elementary regular ed students what Dr Ruby talked about because Dr Ruby and the team have really designed what um the framework of the the program could look like so Dr Ruby please so as John said we had this all mapped out for last year and uh then it it got cut before it got to the board to to cut it because of um this constraints that we are working on and we actually talked about it in years prior um the majority of schools have some type of uh in Connecticut have some type of summer school program for uh regular ed students and it's an important one to have um now particularly in the um context that we're in because um we we're going to be seeing higher student needs so it can be quite costly so uh working with um with Dean and uh Dean Renda and C Holly we when we were I was going to write grants um for the school year for uh the title grants whiner is our um Title One school um it's it's determined by U free and reduced lunch and other things uh through the state and federal government and so whiner is our school so we looked at the monies that we had in title one and we can't spend all of our Title One money in the school year because of the framework with the models that we're working with um and we saw that we were going to have this um pot of money that we could ask if we could transfer into summer school I wrote the grant it got approved so we're trying to spread different pots of money to be able to cover the K8 population a so whiskers summer school for regular ed students is covered by Title One money all right so now we looked kemman and I looked at our title three money and I contacted our um person at the state and we wrote part of our title three Grant to cover English language Learners because that's what title three is for um part of it in summer school so now we have Gina wonik as our special ed director and she has Federal money through idea that covers special ed students so now all of a sudden the you can see um the pieces of the puzzle coming together so we're able to cover eel's we're able to cover Title One students and just so that you understand we're required to use Title One money to service Title One students however if you're providing services to Title One students that does not preclude you from including other students in in that mix so it's it it works out very well now we need to um cover the students in Center School and Huckleberry so this made the ask much lower than what we had put together last year because of the use of the the title funds um to cover these other students so what you're seeing on here is um cut the and it's all DET the detail is all in the in the budget line items but um materials $88,000 um and 47560 to cover the summer school teachers for the students at um Center School and Huckleberry so we would with with this amount of money we will be able to provide um services that would cover children from who are current kindergarteners through current eighth graders in a summer school program and while this has always been on our radar and it's always important to try to you know have um students um capitalize on what they have learned um those are called breakthrough opportunities in Special Ed but they also exist in regular Ed so that's giv kids who have made progress that extra boost in the summer um and also the students who are truly um uh at risk trying to shore up their skills that's that's just critical all time but it's even more critical in this um in this covid world that we happen to be stuck in right now so I'm really hoping that the value of this and the recognition of the fact that we worked um we worked really hard uh Mr Renda and Miss Holly to use those other funds to supplement our um our attempts to support children in the summer and there's no Transportation required because um it's it's required in Special Ed but if we can utilize we have space on those buses we can as we get closer if this was approved and we had the program we could potentially be making use of this special ed buzzes but um parents are generally when we've had other things in the summer that weren't Grand like this parents have been uh have brought their kids to school and that's what we anticipate would happen but because you're not required by law to provide summer school transportation for regular ed students and Marine was it for Rising first graders yes so the kids that are in kindergarten now who are rising not for we don't have anything right now for for preschool but I am looking for Grants because we know that that's another issue that we're going to be facing do you have an idea the number of students that would be participating in this ballpark I don't have those numbers off right on on hand right now but we it's all in the in the details all the number of students and the number of teachers and the number of hours I think I could pull it up you you that was a response you gave to my email I can find it actually how do how do students qualify for it well we have a pretty robust data system in uh Brookfield and uh as we review the um the third Benchmark period um data on students well teachers would know who who you know these our data really just confirms what we know um uh we would be teachers would be recommending students that were in in need and then the parents would be contacted and since it's it's not mandatory you know there might be people that would not take take um the opportunity because they may have other plans but um then we would prioritize the students uh this is typically how it's done in schools for regular Ed prioritize the students in terms of need and you offer you know however many spaces you have you contact the students that have the most needs and then if people decline the opportunity then you work your way you know on your on your list and needs is performance-based grades evaluation the the data are triangulated it's not one data point it's looking at the the student holistically in terms of their reading and their math needs you know so it's I found the number it's not a test it's looking go ahead Dean no I was say I found the number if you wanted to have it oh in the things just because you asked about there 200 anticipate 240 students along with 15 teachers and two teachers to oversee the programs that's at uh that's at whiner and no that's for no that was for the K4 okay for K4 okay thank you so that's a that's a significant number of students and in addition to that number our special ed students who qualify through the PPT process they're going to get serviced and additionally the um English language learner students that would be um serviced through the title three program that we got approved by the um by the state so it's more students than just the number that this program would cover in the um in the K4 grades as as well as at whiner and how many teachers I no I think said was the questions as well we answered that um I don't I don't want to give you a number because I don't have that data in front of me do you have that answer in front of you the questions that sent to the board were you looking at that yeah that's I actually can see it I I didn't see it 240 students 15 teachers teachers to oversee the program and it's two sessions uh of an hour and a half a day four days a week it runs the same days the same schedule as the special ed um summer school and the difference between the reason that the the what brought our cost down is because because it's just targeted instruction so it's just that hour and a half it's there's no Camp there's no funing games there's no activities it's just the kids coming for the intervention I hope the board can see how much it's involved with this planning and the effort that's going in I'll turn it over to you Mr beld sorry I was gonna say no kayaks no kayaks but you know what Bob you can use our kayaks there you go so all right any other questions from the board members yeah I I just wanted to clarify so is it that we're extending the program and more kids are qualifying or we don't have one we don't have a program have it at all okay what sometimes Debbie people get confused with is um extended school year which is part students with special needs and that's totally different we have nothing for our regular red students and there areund about 190 students we we projected for whis caner just so you know and I have to say the work that Dean did on this really became the U boiler plate for for the other program so I have to give credit to Dean all right the gold standard Dean he's the man so so what happens if we set aside this money and parents opt to not send their children or half of them opt to not send them since we we haven't done this before we don't know how regular ed students will feel or parents will feel about it what happens to the funding then I don't think that that would be a that would be a problem because we would be prioritizing the students and if for people if somebody declined we would just go invite more students we' just go up the up the list but but to the specific question Debbie if we didn't spend all of the money that we budgeted that would be Surplus in that account and that gets reported in our monthly finances of how we're doing oh yeah we wouldn't use it for something else or if we needed to we would do a budget we would work with the finance committee and do a a budget transfer yeah You' need to come to us do right I think another way to look at that if you ask me is like Dr Ruby said we would look we would go up the ladder to you know ask the the students um you know ask parents families of other students and in the end it could end up being where where we were projecting to have you know a group of three or four whatever it it would be a smaller group of of students um that yeah that's absolutely true and I think reality is you are going to have some people not accept or not show up but the reality is our numbers are probably going to be higher than normal because of our circumstance dealing with Co and and uh students falling behind so exactly that point Joy um there if if we we want to serve as many people as possible that's our goal and if that we had people who didn't um uh accept the invitation then that might we might then shift and say well let's look at these children that we have these students instead of coming you know X number of might need more so we might be able to just like we do in srbi when we determine you know what the we call it the dosage what the dosage of instruction is we may be able to then alter the dosage for for certain kids you know that that how how it plays out in the um actual summertime in terms of families accepting the invitation for us to you know work with their students um I'm not worried about that because any place I have ever been before um you you just can't even service all the kids that you want to service right are there any other questions all right guys I'm I'm I'm sorry I'm pushing us along because we could be here all night and uh I uh this was a really good discussion though I uh I think we might want to have a chart somewhere in our backup that shows these building blocks that we put together Dr Ruby I think that might be very useful to G you know get the finance commit board up to speed on so absolutely what we're doing uh and the last one on the needs is the speak and language pathologist a half a half position sure this is this is student need um making sure we're providing Services as well as balancing case loads among our speech pathologists across the district um and so I'll turn it over to Mrs wgic for A Brief Review good evening everybody um the 0 five speech pathologist for the high school the numbers um that we have at the high school we have 75 students um that need services and that is double of what is at uh whiskin ear so the um we we look at numbers but we also look at service hours and how to um make sure we meet the service hours in the past uh two years we've had to bring in outside support um to get those service hours um addressed in addition to some of the trienal and initial testing so when we looked at the service hours for um the high school um it's just not doable for one speech and language pathologist to be able to service the amount of students and service hours that are recommended so um that's why that 05 speech pathologist um is uh there's a need for IEP uh service hours so so we so we've had in the current year and the prior years some amount of uh you know outside Services yes so if we reflected a reduction in outside services in next year's budget to because putting this position in yeah um I'm thinking John before we carry it forward then we ought to treat this like the elll tutors line um you know we have an investment but there was an offset and put it in the Investments I think that would be a better way to tell the story then okay and I think that's in Professional Services there with special education so that and get that yes just it's always good to show them you're trading things off so yeah making making logical this it might cost a little bit more In The End by having a full you know employee instead of a service but it's a better service so absolutely Yeah question questions from the board thank you Mrs W all right no questions everyone okay with that one all right and know everyone I didn't do it before everyone okay with the summer school ones too I guess everyone I'm thumbs up all right perfect right so it looks like we're all in support of the left side of this chart right so that's uh and with with unanimity right which is good not a you know not a lot of issues or disagreements there on the right side um John is there an order that you would like to go through it um or just go down the list I think we start with the tech teacher and then then we could really hit on the the Athletics and that'll take us right through so that that makes sense so the first two lines is the tech teacher yes so so the tech if I could go Bob are you ready for me to introduce this one great thank you so um talked about uh back in December um The Proposal from the high school that I put forward to the board for um an additional technology teacher this would be a second technology teacher at the high school um really um in the time that we've established our stem department at the high school we haven't been able to while while we're introducing some new courses we really have a lot of courses that we're not able to even run because of lack of Staffing U compared to student interest and um similar to those board members who are veteran members who've been around they may recall we had a lot of business uh classes that we wanted to run and we weren't able to because we only had one business teacher uh way back and we brought in a second business teacher and those classes filled up quite quickly with uh with what the students wanted to take and what was really important um in add in addition to that kind of uh comparison with the technology teacher really to create the stem program we envision uh we need we need another teacher and um we we are just really um excited about this opportunity and want to put it before the board so I'm going to turn it over to Mr Banda and um uh Mr Hill to talk about the really specific needs uh for this position yeah thank you John I appreciate it I when I took over six years ago and I saw some of the areas and elective teachers where we just were woefully understaffed in terms of what schools of our school of our caliber uh is um the type of Comprehensive High School that we that we are or claim to be uh having one technology teacher um for is is really a disservice to kids and that's you know in this day and age we talk about just look at the term technology teacher um it's not that the other teachers that we have aren't important because they all are they all play an important role but right now we don't even have enough sections or teachers to have every student take at least one technology course they couldn't physically rotate through everybody so there's other ways for them to earn some of these um you know these requirements or credits we have in terms of um some bare minimums uh in terms of career and life skills electives um but now with the coming of the the next few years as we're changing our uh our course options and what our our students can actually choose I think it is critically important to be able to offer more classes and sections um Andrew can talk a a little bit more about the numbers of kids that actually request them and how many sections we just can't run um you know we could easily um you know I could tell you based on last year several last year uh not just last year's numbers because we proposed this last year but for the last probably three years you know um if not every single year if we had another technology teacher we would easily fill that teacher schedule across the board um it is so important if we're going to have a a true stem program um we're great with um science and math math and we're expanding some of those areas and some of the program offerings we have nine teachers in each section and each of those uh particular departments 10 in science and nine in math um but one technology teacher just is is doesn't cut it for what we need to do to prepare our kids um for the next step uh After High School whether it be career or college or some other path that they take so um Andrew I I'll kind of turn it over to you um I don't know if you want to share a little bit more and and be more go a little deeper into that sure absolutely um so I want to start by saying that um I think we're very fortunate to have the technology teacher at the high school that we do um for people who don't know Rob support you know he's been here a long time he's managed um many different schools uh many different classes and clubs um he typically has four or five different courses that he teaches every semester and that's out of necessity because of the combination of the range of courses that we offer and the um concurrent student interest that goes along with those courses and the fact that we have one technology teacher at the high school to teach them and Rob does it and you know he he um he approaches every course you know very thoroughly very methodically um and he works with a very wide range of students um every day and uh the real challenge is is that we have so many courses on the books that students are interested in in select and in the in the few years I've gotten to work with Rob as his supervisor um and to go through the scheduling and look through the requests um it's very clear that it always comes down to what will we be able to offer and therefore what will students not be able to take that they wanted to take and that's you know for me um a very unfortunate way to kind of think about how we schedule the technology um I think it's it's it's amazing the courses we do offer and the range of skills all the way from classic uh the classic shop work that people would recognize even though it's in a much more modern context these days to laser printing engraving um CAD architecture uh electronics like it the the sheer range is is is very large and and a lot of it is very academic as well and there is a lot of potential for continued integration with the rest of the stem courses but for that continued curricular work um and in order to expand our offerings to even more students and allow more students to take the courses they want to take um we really need more than one teacher um you know for our building uh I think for the building size we have and for um the fact that we only have one teacher what we have been able to offer is in many ways a testament to um to the quality of those courses and um the perceived importance of those courses in by our community um but to me that just says we need to do even more to try to expand that um so we hope that um that this is considered to be a viable part of the uh budget and that we can find somebody who will be you know qualified to work with Mr zapor and continuing to um expand our offerings and get more of our students really ready for the future of education and career thanks so much Andrew thanks Mark all right thank you um the uh do you have a sense I just I'll start but do you have a sense of what the highest uh demand classes are uh Mr Hill um traditionally there's a lot of demand there has been a lot of demand for courses like video production architecture um robotics um those courses run fairly consistently um a lot of courses like Cad and architecture have followup courses um that will extend the sequence and allow students to deepen and enrich in their skills but we can't always offer those courses to qualified students due to lack of scheduling space so situations like that is one of our concerns um It's Not Unusual for us to have you know anywhere from U mid2 200s above to uh of of um technology course request uh so um that's a that's going to end up being a lot of students who will not unfortunately be able to take a course that they were interested in taking um and that's one of the most obvious reasons why we we think this would be valuable but of course on top of that not only are we thinking about the current courses we have that are popular and courses that we'd like to be able to expand we're also going to be thinking about um courses that may need to evolve and develop as technology evolves and develops and and subsequently our students needs will evolve so cool all right any other questions from the board getting a lot of head shaking is everyone okay with taking this one forward okay I'm looking I'll everybody's hands up all right next one uh Dr bril is the athletic ones yes so we tal you know like many of these things we talked about this uh in in early December uh Mr Baldwin came back in late December and talked about the priorities and where gymnastics and boys volleyball fell um he is here and so is Mr Bland as we know I don't know that there's much more to add to this um you're right we did have a whole session on this um let me just see if there's any questions from the board after we had had that presentation uh do do we have coaches lined up for these positions or is that still okay that's my only question no we don't okay um all right um and we uh so everybody okay with taking this one forward any debates on it and the support for the the the Athletics is under there the rental fees the officials and the transportation yeah I saw that there's like four lines there um that are tied all together so show hands everyone okay carrying this one forward any debates all right all right we're unanimous on that one so the next one is the whiskin your clubs sure so I'm going to ask Mr Rena to come up on this one this is something he's put in gosh I think for two years prior to this this year's proposal um been Mr Ren has been someone who has been thinking about diversity for a long time uh even before the the the more public initiatives of the board right now um and also supporting uh the Arts in his after school activities so uh Dean would you like to just share briefly uh what your programs are about here for after school sorry I mute okay all right um I know this is something that has come up I have brought up a couple times at least the last few years about trying to give more opportunities for students um to be able to have the art club and also this allies for diversity Club um I know you saw the proposals um but I think you know like Dr uh burill was talking about the Allies for our diversity Club I think is is more important now than ever um the whole idea is to really have a club that positively impact our school um you know help helping students with you know pro-social attitude toward others increasing their uh beliefs about diversity and difference um and just building skills and how to deal and encourage social uh you know positive C uh excuse me pro-social behaviors um you know we've we've had a club years ago that uh a teacher did for us that was just he just was being nice about it after school once a week with students and um we really felt that this is a perfect time to be able to start up uh up a club like this again similar to the Art Club um we've had we have had kids stay after before uh with the art teacher you know if they had to finish projects or whatever it may be we were looking to maybe start something with uh where kids could come and you know work on Art and do things maybe even to beautify the school put together our um spring art show and again it's just I I look at things like this in my eyes are things for students to feel a part of a school because we know that there are you know we do have a handful of clubs already obviously um but to have more kids be able to participate in an after school club because we know when they are a part of a team or an after school activity some of the students do outside of schools but when they're part of a school activity or a club I think it bring uh brings more Pride to the school and um I think that's you know that's my big reason why um I would like to add these two clubs to our uh our offerings thank you Dean and Dean also helped provide me with a lot of information that I provided to the board in answering the questions in the document as well any questions on those yeah so Dean do you expect a large number of kids to be joining in on these or what do what do you hear from the kids demand for the you know in in the past for now again you I could never I never know like it would be done um I want to say the Allies for diversity at one point I think probably had 10 to 12 kids in it um but um you know again I think it with with what's going on uh in our society and world today and you know just things that are that uh students I think will will be more apt to to join something like this um both the Allies for adversity but even the art Club you know we we before it was kids staying after school with the art teacher to work on Pro their their own projects this would would be different in in that they were doing something for the school you know our Bolton boards our art show you know I've had students in the past just come and they um present something to um like a quote or a picture to paint on a wall that could be part of that club also um doing things like that and again the whole idea is pride in the school is the way I look at it okay any questions for Dean looking at faces okay all everyone okay with that one all right see in hands all right um all right next up is the equity and inclusion training so the equity inclusion training uh Bob this is uh and and again this has been answered in the document um and so the board has all had a chance to review this um but to be extremely brief um the equity and inclusion committee has started up and there there will be a need for training based on uh actions uh that the the charge of the the full board to the committee and the objectives and then the um initiatives that that the committee wants to bring forward to the board and then ultimately a ask the Administration to execute and there will be a need for training whatever that might look like so the training in the libraries are they're not yet defined but the committee will be defining those in more detail or no well yeah yeah they will I mean obviously led by the administration in terms of that but those ideas and Concepts that come forward we need to be prepared next year so like I was saying in my superintendent report we're setting the dynamic of the group we're setting the stage we're framing the the process but then the actual actions that come come out of that we need to have a budget to uh train staff in whatever that might be so that's that's you know without getting into you know all the grainy details because we're not there yet and I don't want to Define ahead of time hey committee you need to do this it needs to be genu we haven't even had our first full meeting yet yep all right so Dr Ruby I just want to clarify on the libraries um the libraries are not um connected to the diversity committee so we've been asking for classroom libraries for a number of years and that and we haven't um been able to follow through on that because even when the money was approved the budget was was frozen and so when we're looking at U particularly in uh literacy and social studies um looking at the texts that are that we would like to purchase we haven't selected them yet um because that will be done with teachers and we it's a quite an undertaking to select the text so we wouldn't go and do that work in advance of having the funding um but we want to make sure we I we put it in as div uh diversity libraries because we want to make sure given the context and the board's commitment that when texts are selected that we are providing uh the the teacher teams that are working with with the that selection process PD on the fact like what it what are we talking about when we're talking about books that are um that address diversity and I I'm just going to say this I don't want to offend anybody but it's not a book about children with black skin or brown skin and that's it it's about looking at books that might be about you know their children's picture book about children that are brown or children that are a that are of Asian background but who are the authors that are writing about this because we want to make sure that there that our teachers are looking at books in a different way than they were looking before and that they're looking at who the authors are so that they're they're authentic if if an author is writing if it's a book about Asian children doing whatever that it's it's written by an author who really has the content knowledge and the background and the cultural disposition to write that book so a very different way of looking at books and so it's almost because we're in this space that we're in and we're addressing and the board has committed to our our Equity uh Mission it's almost a blessing that we still need the libraries because I think we're going to be able to um we're we're going to be able to have a collection of libraries um that are really in line with the work that the board has charged us to do with this committee so but it's not that the committee I just don't want to be um I got it it's the need the need is the classroom libraries the method by which we're doing it is to focus on this topic which is really exactly question on the libraries though so is there um is there another spot in the in the budget for classroom libraries or is this sort of the investment for classroom libraries and you're just going to sort of focus that investment on equity and inclusion diversity this is okay so these classroom libraries are classroom libraries that are coming out of the curriculum office to support curriculum there may be and I'd have to ask um Ken to verify this with because he's been working with principles individually since we originally met there may be some classroom Library materials that are in school budgets that are different from this okay that's a that's accurate Dr Ruby yeah I I I just didn't know if you made any changes in no okay and that would be under instructional supplies most likely it would be under one of the book categories um well he's looking for that how I came up with this number is looking at the number of classrooms that we have um k through eight this is focus on k through eight um it was $750 a classroom average with the average book I said that a book I was $10 um and if you work at that it's really building a classroom Library where there's if it was books per children it's like four books per child per classroom and so it's not I mean that's a big number I I respect that number but it's not like a a gigantic number of books it's a it's a it's a healthy number of books I know no yeah I'm just trying to understand sort of if there's other classro base budget versus incremental right so so Ken how much money do we have for classroom libraries in the base budget I I don't have that information at my fingertips spot but I can get it but it is in the same line item the text and workbooks as we have the investment but School the schools did budget for additional money okay yeah it's under text or workbooks [Music] I just see that that in total in the base budget you know that line item is up 33% and that's driven by the these classroom library books not the other ones so so Rosa what's the number that's in there for books I'd have to go into like the actual details I just have the number for each school um and they're bigger than this number but there could be other things in there to other oh yeah sure there's there's replacement and textbooks so that you not the same line so yeah I can go through the budgets and and call out exactly how much is put in there for classroom libraries by the principles and also I would be interested to know how I don't remember what the classroom library number was last year that we weren't able to do so how much was recommended last year versus how much we're recommending this year okay that would I think that'd be helpful to know so why don't we make that uh Ken if you want to send a note out to all of us and kind of flesh out the story on classroom libraries as a whole or we could bring it to the you know in our last deliberations meeting which is our next board meeting right we could uh do a followup so and just to kind of maybe save Ken a little bit of time honestly I found the um the budget detail sheets that were from the principles very helpful in understanding the where these numbers came from so I would really encourage all board members to to really dig through those all right so any other questions on the this grouping of classroom Library investment the only thing I would add Bob is that maybe the title of that line item under Investments should be clarified if you know how Moren said it's not specifically equity and inclusion to support the equity inclusion training or committee it's it's broader than that Debbie would it be helpful on a chart like this that eventually Rosa presents to the board of Finance as a the first one on the training um we could put in there um uh a parenthetical that that says committee work or something like that and on the second one for the libraries a parenthetical that is instructional work or something like that I I would I would I would just flip the second one around and call it classroom libraries and then parenthetically equity and inclusion Focus right something like that the the real investment is a classroom Library sure okay everyone okay with the classroom libraries item I'm not seeing any hands come on am my hands yes yes and how about on the equity inclusion training that one too well I I I don't understand the 25 it's a big number and I feel like we just it's a number like I can give you how the number was I put that in the answer to the questions as well explain that okay so basically yeah I have I had some followup of that but uh yeah I mean $225,000 seems it seemed a lot from what you were what you wrote down it didn't really seem like it justifi 25,000 that was a lot of money unfortunately unfortunately PD is costly um what we were figuring uh how to to come up with that number this is an estimate as John explained before right um with four schools and um also administrators and staff being trained at 2500 dollar a day we're training you're only getting 10 days of training out of right that right where are we going to fit in 10 days of training well this is the this is the everybody doesn't get trained at the same time so so 10 days of training seems like a lot of training and it it is but as it spread out over the course of a year because oneandone trainings are a huge waste of money if you just have somebody come in and train people for a day it's it's it's almost like not training so whenever you do training you want to have train the trainer type of a model so that there are people that are being highly trained and then they are going out and training other people so I'll give you an example um we just recently did and and Mark if you want to chime on on this please do we just recently did technology integration training at the um at the the high school now the high school because they have a um a block schedule and everybody has a PLC period a day it's easy to be able easier it's never easy easier to be able to train all the people at the at the high school because they're available without the the use of Subs when we go to the middle school or the the elementary schools that's not the case they they don't have big blocks of time for training so we have to take advantage of the little blocks of time within the day for training so we train other people um administrators teacher leaders to be able to go in and train those people then we then we can once we have a um like a foundation of content knowledge we can bring the the formal trainers into work with teachers in small groups throughout the day but you can't get a lot done in a 45 minute period so this um 10 10 full days of PD at $2500 a day um would be that training would be spread throughout the year the beginning of the school year it could be some summer days so that that is an estimate based on an average of $2,500 and has that been our consistent with our experience on similar things yes I and I would even say in some cases it's it's lowballing when I look at some of the training that I did through the school Improvement Grant uh that we got to do some of some training for example with um letters and with scop for example scop training um sheltered instruction and observation protocol training from um the proprietary group that it comes from you know cost through the grant at no cost to taxpayers here this is through a Federal grant for four days of training cost me $21,000 for25 people that is a that is that includes travel you have to talk there's so many things that go along with that letters for each time that letters came um we had letters training for about 25 to 30 people as well um every time that trainer came it was $4,000 per day for her plus all the books plus the books so you know yes I think depending and we're not necessarily going to the the highest level of diversity training getting experts from you know uh Nation wide leading experts um but that I mean it's expensive PD is very expensive so I just I want to put that in context for people so you understand as well that there they can get expensive very quickly yeah and so to build on that uh Mark for for you Dr Murphy that that was an estimate that we put in that we felt was reasonable that the what I know that's a big number and I like I said before I respect these numbers but if we if it came when we actually met with the the committee and we agreed upon you know what direction after they identify problem we have a process for how we'll go about this work we could find um that like Mark said a facilitator that we really want to bring in because we think it's what's best for the district and it might be $3,500 it might be $4,200 and then that's going to change how much work we can do with that given um pot of $25,000 so it was basically estimate if we could get somebody for $2,500 10 or multiple people at 10 sessions that that would be we would be able to cover the training of the the different groups of people because with diversity training we're we're not just talking about classroom teachers and administrators we're talking about our support staff in the schools which includes our our you know front office staff our par par Educators um everybody because everybody interacts with um with people and we we would like everybody to be trained to be culturally aware culturally sensitive and uh not just classroom teachers and then you know we depending upon which direction the committee goes in um there may be some trainings where we want to um have parents receive some training in parent University or PTO meetings and uh and then we've talked about but we don't know what the committee will say community some kind of a community training for welcoming people into the district to hear a speaker or something so that amount of money isn't going to go as far as one one might think so I don't know if that helps at all I mean it's I think I I think a presentation from the uh the the committee would be helpful in how is how this training aligns with the mission and Mike I agree with you the problem is we start the budget in December for the following year if we if we don't want to have any training next year we're not going to be able to do we're not going to be able to do what the committee wants to do if we you know don't have the a budget for it that's right but I right I also don't want to irresponsibly just say $225,000 no I no I understand I understand it's whatever the board you know the the the board ultimately has to help with the decision here right yeah if the committee's just getting kicked off they'll probably be wanting to make decisions on this sort of thing in say June July August right it takes time committees up and running and then you'd hate to have a situation where they say okay let's go do something and someone says there's no budget right wait till next year wait next that's why so to me it's a placeholder for now um and it's hard to budget placeholders it really is but uh it's a um a rather conservative number that's I'd rather take it forward and explain to people why we think we ought to put a placeholder out there um because this is an important topic for us so yeah and I agree it is you know I I in in thinking about this that's why I took the 2500 and the 10 trying to be reasonable but I'll agree with with Rosa it's probably a lowball but I'll be looking for grant opportunities to be able to supplement you know what we do because right now the the some of the training that we have ongoing that we planned last year we um we're we're using you know part of our grant money to do that we have two very um very strong programs in um diversity and Equity training going on right now um so we'll share that what we're doing already with the committee and you know take their advice and ideas because I'm sure we're going to get really great ideas because there's a a really strong group of people on that committee and then we'll go with it and if the board is able to support the $225,000 and it's not enough for whatever the ideas are well then we have to pair that back just like we always do when we don't have enough money and we have to build a case for whatever it is they want to do go going forward in the 2122 budget budget so there currently is no equity training in the current PD at all this is brand new yeah no we are actually we we are doing equity and diversity training now okay but it has nothing to do with the board's new out of out of the June meeting that we had and the meetings that we had in the summer and the this the mission State the vision statement that we wrote and all it has nothing to do with that because was already planned before that ever happened yeah but it's but we do have a budget for that sort of thing no it's not in it's it's I did it through grants was all through grants I did it through grants it has nothing to do with the operating budget so we've never budgeted for it before you know this is I I would just sort of add that this is important we have formed a committee we've made a a board level uh vision statement and resolution and something has to come out of that work out of that committee um and a lot of that has to start with training for our teachers um if we want to uh enhance you know the educational experience of our students we have to be able to give teachers the tools to do that so training will be at least one of the solutions or one of the suggestions or recommendations to come out of that committee so of course I would argue that we absolutely need to be prepared to back up what we said we already support and what we want to do and I I I totally agree we should back up the mission statement we work so hard on uh I just don't I I don't want to you know throw money at something that doesn't satisfy the mission statement I'm sure it will I I have not sure I'm sure it will is $25,000 of I'm sure I will no I mean pretty sure that the committee being as how we have an entire committee focused on this will absolutely be bringing their suggestions to the board and every one of their suggestions has to back up and support and defend that vision statement so that's what I mean by I'm sure it will because it has to that's the entire purpose of their of the formation of that committee we can debate their recommendation and they can tweak their recommendation based on our input but to make it fulfill the mission but right now we need a placeholder and what I would say at this point is I think we've asked the question the board's asked the questions we've answered them thoroughly and I think we've exercised it um when we get to the the last item on internet capacity we've got a few to get through here uh the the board I will ask the board to give the superintendent his assignment for a comeback right you know because there's a number that the board may want to arrive at or there there's things that you might want us to explore in the next two weeks and there might be a reasonable comeback uh that we can have the time to to do uh to conduct over the next couple of weeks but we need to continue on um and if this is an area that the the board collectively wants to reduce or increase or leave as is then that's the board's probative all right let me keep going so same same thing any other questions on this one because we'll come back to it I think but and and and a general show hands of of putting this placeholder in the budget okay it's not unanimous so we'll but we'll come back to it I think it might be a question of how much do you put in more than a question of do you put something in so um all right let's the next one is technology integration so we as we talked about there are several uh new technology uh software platforms that we're utilizing uh especially in our uh transition to distance learning and that we brought forward in this year's budget um and we reallocated and mooved some materials around and we need continuing professional development in that area um and uh so Dr Ruby and the principles have been thinking that through and what that might look like and we have a budget of $155,000 for that um Morin if you could share a little bit uh more uh detail about that please basically um the work that we started at the high school which went very very well um Mark can comment on that if he wishes we want to roll out to the other schools and we want to do it next year because this year they're up to their eyebrows and um everything else that they're doing and so that's what that money represents we worked with a technology integration specialist from CES um which is a resque in um Trumble um we did not use at Advance because they don't have a technology integration specialist at this point although I'm sure they'll be getting one um and so that's what that uh that represents Mark do you want to do you want to um share a few words about how this uh sure it was the the P the professional development is very well well well taken and um well structured um the the consultant we worked at with Jackie Whiting was fantastic um she really does she worked with our small group plc's so by content area so groups of um some really was groups of two or three um and sometimes we combine multiple groups into Humanities and she really provide provided a great framework and instruction that that'll help not just for distance learning where we are now but just really you know it's it shows up now because we're in distance learning but the technology integration these are skills and strategies that um that we're going to be able to use when we're back to some level of a typical school year where we're in person you know the importance and integration Strat of technology is huge um and our teachers left uh at the end of uh uh some of these PD sessions with you know they created some unit plans and were able to actually integrate different phases of technology and different it was it was it was so well done um you know you always you know I could tell right off the bat after meeting Jackie initially when Mor and I met with her um but this sort of thing is is really important um it really it's highlighted that we're we're good at some of the things that you know integrating technology on a pretty regular basis um but there's so much more we can be doing and uh this really brought brought to light some of those other things that are going to be helpful and really engaging to kids because that's what we need to be right now to get their attention away from devices and other things um you know and hold their uh their engagement and attention throughout the course of a lesson or assign and it was just it was it was it was very eye-opening and fantastic training so we're really lucky to have it one of the things that folks might not know is when Connecticut had a mandatory ceu um program which they stopped facilitating because they weren't going to spend the money to keep track of everything that they had to keep track of when they did at the state level they've they've put that down on the districts but there was a um a ceu requirement in Tech technology for teachers every year because um back even before uh 2000 there was that requirement because the use of Technology the integration of technology is um is something that is absolutely needed and ongoing it's not about having the device I mean we talk and we've talked at nauseum here over the past several months about the number of devices that we have in the district and it's that's step one but you have to know what you're doing with the device and for this pandemic situation the device was essentially a Lifeline a connection for the students that were in the home to the school but what we're talking about transcends that remote uh use of a of a device for a connection the type of training that Mark and his um faculty had what like he said was not just for this hybrid or remote situation it really transcends remote hybrid and in the classroom and it really opens up opportunities for teachers to um have students do things with technology that they've never done before that really um re first of all engage the students in the learning and then help them to become more independent in their own work as uh as researchers because they're not using a Chromebook or an iPad or something as just electronic paper they're actually using it as a tool because the the technology is integrated into the learning and that's really um that's in alignment with what Andrew was talking about before when he was talking about um the uh the technology it's using technology for a purpose and this PD is to support teachers in purposefully and intentionally integrating the use of Technology as a tool to advance student learning and student Independence as as users of knowledge rather than just using it as an electronic piece of paper or an electronic folder so it's um we're we're very committed to to this work and I will be transparent um I found out um through Mark actually about a grant that I applied for yesterday to if we got it to potentially cover some of that but I can't say that I got it yet because I didn't get it yet but I did apply for it so stay tuned that could be something that Ken would have to adjust if we got the money all right further questions on this one sorry I'm going to push us so long because it's 9:29 at night um and uh and I know everybody's had a busy day um any questions or debate all right all in favor of taking this one forward hands all right all right good um swipe attendance system all right really excited about this one I'm gonna turn it right over to Mr Banda because he's he's Beyond energized at 9:30 at night to talk about let's go um so the number you see reflected there that $9,800 uh is more than half of that is actually Hardware uh cost initial Hardware cost there would be a recurring cost um year after year um for software and uh and some you know purchasing of things so basically what this does is this um this 9800 allows us to have a system uh that we would station um we'd actually have stations swipe stations one at the main entrance and one at the student entrance that as students come in they have their IDs their student IDs and it's a it's a really quick they can you know they've thought of everything I mean they've got you could swipe your ID you could punch at a keypad your ID number um if we had RFID we could do that there's a fingerprint scanner and there's a mobile app so kid there really isn't it any way so the kids said I forgot my ID um I don't have it it's a way for them to check into the building so we know where they are and I think in the age of accountability we have a lot of conversations about the security task force and the things that you know I'm charged with running you know a small City and it's not that other principles don't do that I think Dean and I you know when it comes to rotation in the number of different kids in different places at any given time um it's it can be a challenge to really accurately keep track of where every kid is at every given moment and you know I'm always thinking about you know what happens if unfortunately um I need to know where kids are at all times um and you know when we had to do some contact tracing for example um out of no mistake of the teachers there was a student that was marked present but really wasn't right um they were absent so you start thinking about what the implications are if we don't have an ACC and that was just it was it was an easy mistake we all make mistakes now and then but this is a way that also integrates with uh Power School our student information system uh for realtime attendance so as kids check in and I scan um when they go to to Mr beldon's first period class um teachers will know they'll pull up their power school and they'll be able to see it integrates is the student there do they come late were they on time are they here it's all there so they can verify that attendance we'd also have stations at the two biggest places that we have um you know students attend throughout the course of school day there'd be a nurses station and there'd be a School counseling station so we could actually keep track of where kids in those high traffic areas when they're going in and out just so we know where they are in any emergency situation those are the two spaces other than the cafeteria where we find the most kids um it also integrates with um you know so teachers and administrators would be able to actually send messages so you can Envision they can process kids very quickly to come through these two stations as they swipe on either side or they plug in their app parents can actually sign up to get notifications just like they do in power school with attendance so um that is a little big brother to some kids I'm sure they may not love that idea but you know when you're going to be there that the parents will know when you're there you know oh no Mom really I was in class I swear you know I went to school or I went to Dunkin Donuts or the new Mitchell gas station before I came to school um will know when they're there and when they're not and when they leave they'll swipe out um after the school period school day starts as kids come in there's the station is rolled into the main office and they scan so we know they're there so it's just it really is an accountability piece uh it makes it a lot easier for us to keep track of where kids are and then the other thing is too is we can use it for a notification system so we'll be actually able to notify kids if there's a meeting after school for example Key Club you know sometimes kids forget about the Key Club meeting the Key Club adviser can go in and through administrative rights can send a message to us and we can create a list of Key Club kids and so when Key Club kids scan in in the morning they scan and they'll hear a beep and then on the screen will say reminder Key Club meeting today and then just so they don't like we can do those sorts of things to to push in reminders so it's it is an accountability piece but it's also uh it'll print late passes we can you know when kids come in late we can you know with their totals of attendance we can really customize things to be that way um so when I think about it some larger school systems in Connecticut uh one in particular I know is Manchester a friend of mine works over there and they've had the swipe attendance system um and it's it's been very helpful for them um and their student attendance has increased we don't have a treny problem or anything of that nature at berkfield high school but I think this would just go a long way when I think of security and I think of reunification you know I I don't lose sleep over it but you know that that part of me where I take uh you know ownership and responsibility for all the kids in the building I want to know where they are at any given time because the last thing I want to do is when a parent calls and says you know could you get my kid at a class and I look and it says they're present and they're actually absent that is a difficult convers for me to have and that happens on occasion mistakes I'd like to reduce those things and make sure we have everybody accountable and any emergency situation we' be able to keep track of those kids so that's my presentation thanks Mark I I I I thought John was kidding that you were going to be really energized I thought he's at 9:30 watch him he'll be energized right oh no you're energized on can see I've lived Mark's life and when when you and when you were a principal of any building and you responsible for all those children and all those staff you you are excited about anything that's going to make it safer and make sure you know where everybody is at all times there's no doubt about it well the way you were describing it it sounds like this system would allow you to see if kids were in individual classes um the swipe but the swipe stations are only in a couple of places so so yeah so the swipe stations would really be you know they'd be at the at the main office uh the front entrance and the side entrance so that initial when they get to school um you know teachers will also have access they can change the attendance as a kid comes into class but like I would know um you can get to a point we can add modules on where I mean it's it's that I think is a whole another step where individual teachers you can have a scanner in your classroom and that's how they take attendance as kids come in they scan um that's one way to do it there's a few schools that are doing it that way this get you they're in the building right in the building which is really that's that Global piece that I'm looking for and then often times we do have kids who need to go to the nurse and go to school counseling for any number of different things that are there longer than a typical bathroom break that in these situations it's nice to we we it helpful to know it's helpful to know when they check in and check out it doesn't change their overall attendance we can look and say okay they checked into school counseling at at 9:25 and they checked out and we know they're going back that they should be back in class by now so so you'll start finding out when the seniors really do leave huh yep you Sly dog all right any questions for Mark on one uh just one is this um this 9800 that's a every year thing no the 9800 is that that includes uh most of the software and Hardware the software and Hardware that goes on it's initial cost the annual maintenance fee is I think it's uh I think it's ,500 for the program itself plus the plugin I think it ends up being like a little over $3,000 a year maintenance fee for the the software and the program to integrate with power school and then in terms of buying extra roles of you know I printer paper and things like that that IAL cost 9800 is only for that first year because that's where you really have the equipment purchase piece okay and you'd know when the students went into the building but not necessarily when they went out right so during the course of the day so you would we could if if students are dismissed let's say for a doctor's appointment right they have to come to the main office we have that pretty well uh well managed in terms of where kids are they would swipe out for the day to leave now at the end of the school day at two at 2 o' um we wouldn't be doing that um when the when the building dismissed um but during the course of school day if students had to come in late or leaving early they all dismissed the main office so it would be a way to really keep track of that and keep it accurate Mark do will it tell when students leave a classroom like to go to the bathroom for example no it wouldn't be that you we could add on you can customize these things to be really really um have some really intense oversight it won't tell that we'll still do passes of the bathroom and and have ability to track where kids are just generally um these are the big picture things when they enter the building when they're in places that they they tend to be a lot other than class which is the nurse or the school counseling office when they're there longer than they would normally uh be at a bathroom or to get a drink of water or something along those lines those things were still going to be a typical pass system um you know so it it would not do that level we could eventually if that's something we wanted to get to um but it's it's possible but just not right now okay any other questions all right everyone okay carrying this one forward I we ought to have we ought to have Mark do the presentation as long as I'm not counting how many times kids go to the bathroom I'm P this we are not doing that I'm not counting how many times kids go to the bathroom I do keep track I do keep track for contact tracing though Dr Murphy so we know when kids are in there we do do that now um but that's only because of contact tracing so and they will read signs that tell them not to Vape in the bathrooms all right presentation stations right the next two are oh go ahead Bob I'm sorry uh I would just make a comment before we get to the next two I feel like I I banged uh Eric and Ken around a little bit last meeting I want to tell you they did a masterful job coming back to the finance committee and uh and I want to thank both of them for giving us a very thorough look at the finance committee and I appreciate that oh thank you Bob and and I know they'll appreciate that they worked very hard in initially getting the budget ready and then obviously on the follow-ups and speaking of Technology the next two items are for the man who's running the meeting behind the scenes which is Eric Conlin our technology director um one the presentation station that's that's a carryover and in lie of some other things we had to do this year because of the pandemic and internet capacity is always something we need to increase so Eric I'll leave the last two for you um sure so the presentation stations um if you um remember from last budget season um I had originally budgeted to do a um a big push um to uh start to finish out the high school and move on to whisk andir um you know obviously with with certain budget restraints and and other needs um we we had uh brought that down to 10 presentation stations um that uh come in uh came in at 23 ,000 um covid changed that um when we needed to rep prioritize um and get software and licenses for zoom and classroom microphones um and things that are used for hybrid learning and um yeah remote learning and you know the idea that we may not be in a classroom for the full year with these big giant boards cemented to the wall um just didn't seem right in in the environment that we were in um but looking to next year um you know we need to get back on track with getting those uh presentation stations um getting them in classrooms and finishing out the high school and moving forward to whisk and ear um the new school will get them all in every single classroom um you know so it'd be great to have the high school done and whis skyer catching up um on that as well um so this investment here is um for an additional uh five boards on top of the 10 from last year that we brought so this is um this is a requesting for 15 presentation stations at the high school um Bob do you want to talk about the second one too you want to just do this one first go ahead and want you're on a roll talk about the next one sure um so internet capacity um we uh Connecticut is um one of few um States um if not one of the only um I have to confirm that where uh they have a state run and provided internet access service um so we use the Connecticut education Network or the C it is run out of the University of Connecticut um and provide us all the districts in Connecticut um police departments towns um First Responders hospitals with internet access and internet connectivity um and uh they've been very reliable excellent um service for us um they offer um internet bandwidth connections all the way down from 25 megabytes um all the way up to 10 gigabytes which um you know 10 gigabytes is a lot um not not something we need now but um is a lot of bandwidth um that uh will'll probably see become a standard in the future um so my increase is actually to go from one gigabit for the district to a two gigabit connection why the influx of devices and the need for technology we got all of the software um you know that has been discussed all that software needs to use technology all that technology um increases a um creates a uh High increase in the number of wireless devices the Chromebooks we're bringing in um the Chromebooks we've already brought in um and any student that beod basically we are going to see um massive increases in the number of technology devices connected um on a given day and um we want to be ready to handle the load um and um right now all five buildings I do include Tso and that um all five buildings share one gigabit connection um that's um a good you know that's a good amount of bandwidth um but that again that's shared um so to share a higher amount of bandwidth over the um devices pushes more bandwidth out to our wireless devices our desktop computers um and then all these you know various initiatives that do require te you know connections to technology um and so uh you know rather than jumping straight to you know looking at you know a 10 gig connection or um you know something really high that's just not needed at this point um you know we can kind of Step Up um as as um technology allows for it as um technology gets used more and looking and evaluate each year you know is one gig enough is two gigs enough is four gigs what we really need um you know but we're really looking to reliably support the high increase of devices that we have coming in so do you have statistics on usage and uh and uh and contention on the network um not not not on me Bob but yes we can get those uh I can certainly get that for you um actually a lot of that data is is derived for us from the Cen um all I have to do is ask them for it um and get a history but as you look at it are we getting to the point with one gig where we're actually you know running into contention issues and uh and low lower lower speeds because everyone's going at it at the same time what's your experience yeah so so truth be told um we have not seen that increase yet um you know we are we are doing we are doing okay on one gig truth be told we are doing okay um but the only data I have to go on is um what last school year looked like which you know was before the uh new devices we got this year and um any data I have for the fall of 2020 is based on hybrid learning which was only half our population in a given day got um you know so so it's it's really hard to tell we were actually slated to um test this with the Cen and December um alongside with a core you know um a an infrastructure replacement project um in December but we went remote um so so that's that's kind of pushing us back um so we're hoping we we got a contact with our vendor today we're hoping next week to have um the demo of this increase put in um in anticipation of our return on the 19th umti sorry they'll give you a demo of it you can see how it it helps with uh spee and connectivity um yeah you know this one's a little you know this one's a little less of a demo than a uh take advantage of um a um option that um is so sorry yes they would provide us with a demo if we talked to the Cen and said listen we want we want to see what look going up you know to this many gigs would do um however the way we approached this was actually a benefit given to districts um due to covid is that the Cen had offered to increase bandwidth of school districts for this school year at no cost um and so uh we were tying that in with our infrastructure core project um and then we were going to take advantage of that free uh upgrade we were going to get the upgrade it ends on June 30th um and then my intention was to keep that going for the next school year I gotcha I gotta yeah okay that's good all right so on these two topics any questions for Eric I'm seeing no some head shaking no because these are consistent with things we've talked about in the past too um I actually was going to ask you Eric if we should go for more than two gigs but you think that'll be enough from everything you know um yeah you know I'm I'm weary to um I'm weary to go too high right now based on um you know you're you're only as fast as your slowest connection and although um you know most of our schools can handle this connection um you know we are running some older infrastructure equipment at Huckleberry um we know that um it's not necessarily causing performance issues um but we know that um we're going to be investing in all that in the new school um but giving um you know giving a double the connection for example to Huckleberry is only going to slow it right back down when it comes to our infrastructure equipment so at this point I I think it's Overkill I I think we're okay on I I sorry I firmly believe um that we will be able to reliably provide service at two um but would like to look into increasing um you know as as we move forward with the new school um you know that that's it's a lot of students in in one school and a in a given day and uh to be able to dedicate bandwidth to each building um in the future will be something we can look towards okay got it all right so uh everyone since no one had questions everyone okay carrying these two forward okay I got thumbs up from everybody all right so we went through the list took a little time but you know what um I'm going to start with we're our next thing on the agenda has got to be three main points I think we ought to give a pointer to the public to this uh this section actually have we still have the new school building project but when we get there this will be number one on my list um yeah I want to send I want to send the pointer to the board of Finance let them listen to this so this has been really good guys so thank you and it sounds like as in terms of comebacks um uh the only item that we all didn't unanimously jump on was um and and say we support was the uh that 25 ,000 item um and uh and uh for the you know the placeholder for diversity training and I don't think any of us are against diversity training the question is the right amount of money so uh so we could bring that type a question back at our next meeting as a discussion point on how we're positioning the budget and uh and that's an easy discussion to have um I think um is there any other assignments we ought to give to the uh Administration to come back with given the discussion tonight no I mean I had I had my couple of things in the beginning and Ken's nodding so I know I know he's on he's working on it all right well then what I would suggest is that for our next meeting we all review the budget documents and that we'll come back there not a lot of open questions left anymore um what I would like to have us put on the agenda for the next meeting is to go through like this one the capital budget right you know because we do need to submit a capital uh project submission um John you gave walked us through it but I want to go through the just the next year one more time to make sure that we can all like we just did here that we can all say yes that's all stuff we support going in with it wasn't a long list it won't take as long as this one but it was just I think we ought to just put it up one more time maybe we could do it a little more General um but I think we need to vote separately on the overall budget and on the um and and on the capital budget that we're going to submit and Bob can just help me with that one for a second I'm I'm thinking that we we did the approval and then I went to Mr Dunn and I think it might we might have tidied that up and I I think reviewing it's a good idea can anybody help me with that I because there's so much that went on this fall I'm recalling that we may have approved it because Mr Dunn had asked us if we could get it to him earlier so he could start you're you're right we did actually formally approve that submission didn't we but we haven't really talked about it so you know it would be a good idea to review it there's no doubt about it let's review it and I'll go back and look at the minutes or maybe you should go back and look at the minutes and you know if we don't have to vote on it again that's important but you know what it capital budget's a big thing for the board of Finance important that we look at it and uh one more time and say yeah that the amounts are about right it's not just the items it's the amounts right you know and and uh so are we okay with the items and do the amounts feel correct for what we're asking for so sound good um and then Rosa I don't know I mean I I for one would be okay taking forward a 4.1% budget I don't know about everybody else's anyone have a different feeling about the budget I mean it's uh the different you know I I would I was thinking about whether we should bring it forward with 3.9 or to keep it under 4% but the that was oh go ahead that was that was my only thing I wanted to keep it under four you know I liked the 3.9 number I think we need to try to keep it under four what would you suggest we remove because we can certainly have some of that discussion I know tonight's getting really long but we could have a special meeting no we could do it at the next meeting it could just be a comeback item if if you had to bring it in under four what would you have to do and that could be well I think that could be a charge for the administration so you know he asked for something to be able to come back with so I don't think I should need to answer that tonight I think that's right I think that would be that's usually assignment you would give to the administration um how much money John is 0.1% on this budget it's uh oh uh well it's really 3% yeah yes so I'm just thinking about what it is point for Point 3% 1% of 40 200,000 can K is it about or is that a little much 200,000 to get it 0.1% would be about 47 48,000 we're so we're talking about a little over $100,000 here right because basically it's the insurance increase right we increase Insurance about 130,000 I mean that's that's what you're talking about yeah so I so I'll tell you what why don't you guys you know if you had to bring it in at 3.9 something right um you tell us what you what would be the first things to go in the budget and then let's and we can decide if we're going to carry it forward or not carry it forward so this is this is generally sort of the the position that we always find ourselves in which is do we or do we not have them exercise that because again that places a menu of options to other boards now of course the budget is in our control but it demonstrates that there are things that we could or would be willing to remove wow we're we will we we will show whether we're willing to remove them or not right um what we've chosen in the past is that we don't do this exercise until we have to so if there's something that this board does not value then by all means Bring It Forward but if this is a list of things that we value then we need to adopt it and we need to support it and be willing to defend it so that's why I don't think pre-adoption that's a task for administration Madam chairman you you decide how you want to play it well what does everybody else think if it's an exercise I I obviously Joy I I presume that's what you would want to do right if it's an exercise I don't see any harm in it it's not doesn't mean that's the be all end all okay Mike uh I I guess I I I uh don't I don't understand what you mean by like so we we task the administration for our suggestions no so typically we've had we we always get to this point in the budget where we don't like the number but we like everything that it represents and so we get to this point where we say well the board of Finance isn't going to like this number so let's see if we can make a little more um pleasing I never said anything about the board of Finance no I know I know but I know that's would i' rather have a budget that's under 4% but I could support the 4.1 that we have so it's let's be clear we're not doing this to dance to someone else's drummer this is our decision and I'm not saying I don't support everything either you're making assumptions so I guess then I'm because of people's perceptions that's that's that's the that's not my problem okay can I can I weigh in here yeah we knew at the start of this conversation that it was a 4.1% increase and we just spent an hour going through the list item by item and ex with the exception of one line item we all unanimously agreed that those things were important to us so I don't see the value in doing that again I I just feel like we we just all by a show of hands voted on what we thought was important to keep in this budget you're right about that yeah I agree D to just go to knock it down 0 2% I I think we should just that to me is an arbitrary cut right right I mean we know where we all stand and I think it should go in the way it is and we should adopt with the superintendent recommended and then if we have to cut after that at least then we do that I agree I'm I'm definitely for a discussion on what if if we had to cut or we don't have to have that now because we don't have to cut anything um but in the past 10 years the average increase has been between three and 3.2 and 3.5% so I do think we have to in some ways prepare for the reality of we gonna have to sit down and make some cuts that might be but this in time we're talking about which budget do we want to adopt right not which budget do we think is going to pass at referendum so right but we still we still have to I mean we're not done we're just we're gonna have another discussion later so I don't exactly understand the question right so what I'm saying is if there's something that you don't value in this budget then we absolutely should and can have that discussion okay but to task Administration with saying hey you know what let's just cut 3% out what would you do you already said you've valued those things so I don't see again to Debbie's point I don't see the value in doing that right no I don't I don't either point in time yeah okay so now I think I understand the question a little bit more yeah no I I don't see the the point in doing that either so at this point we won't task Administration with doing that then okay that would be my vote all right I don't think we need to formally vote but I'm assuming there's a general consensus at least so so the uh the only agenda item then for the next time our our last meeting before we have to submit is to go through the items in the capital budget we might not have to vote on them but it' be good to air them out and then we have to each have researched one more time our uh um our uh budget books and make sure we have any last questions answered right um there are other questions send them to Ken and John as early as we can let them get the answers to us they've been really really good about getting us and documenting answers I I've got to say that I've been very impressed at the turnaround this year thank you Bob um the other comebacks uh were to um on the on the chart have clean up the chart in terms of the diversity uh are inclusion areas um the SLP in the in the budget itself the tradeoff show that in the chart and um the items Rosa talked about at the beginning with Ken on just being prepared for uh updates not to the full budget as an approval but updates to changing accounts areas where we can highlight and make more clear Y and let's hope there's some things that who knows maybe we can naturally reduce the budget when we sort of take a look at that so it's every week things come out and let's hope and and at the finance committee I'd like to with with the town controller I'd like to spend some more time on the insurance rates and what are we learning and and stuff like that I just that's a that's been a big D Dynamics there's a story to be told there and I want to make sure that I'm really really clear on what we're hearing or not hearing right I've been doing some work on that already and I was I was planning on having that discussion Monday night yeah yeah I think that would be really good so because I think that's a big swinger on this budget that you know that moved us from 3.9 to 4.1 by itself so so and and there's just one one last thing I want to end with and I do not want to belabor anything is I didn't verbally say but it's in my slide that during all of those finance committee meetings we had a board of finance representative on you know at the meeting as well as um a representative from the town finance office and it's really important because that's part of the vetting process of this budget from December 2nd all the way through till tonight and and it wasn't like she was a spectator she asked par like the rest of us so it was really very effective I thought okay okay so let's move on uh we just have the new school building project I just have um a very small update with that um the bid we're obviously in the middle of the uh bidding process right now um there are currently two groups um that will be sort of bidding and the first group is due to have their proposals um on the 22nd and then the second group is due the week after that so um if all goes well and they get some good bids then the NBC will have a special meeting um at some point soon after that to award so everything is right on track uh mid-February you know definitely by the end of February there should be some um Awards going out so everything looks good and then one one thing um I will mention about the the school name survey just to kind of bring it back there a little bit I was reading through some of I don't know if any public is still listening or maybe we'll listen back to this at this point point but um I I was reading through a lot of the comments and I noticed that a lot of um people had commented why can't Huckleberry Hill uh still be the name of the school um and a couple other different comments why can't it be named after a person why Westbrook it doesn't make any sense I just wanted to sort of put it out there that um the survey itself did have a small rational for each name and then we've also um there was a really thorough discussion at our last December meeting um that kind of went through it and the board's discussion of it so it's those are just two really good resources to kind of understand why those names were chosen so and Rosa we included links in the survey and and and it links it right to the new school project website people could look at the presentations that Dr Murphy presented um you know the history that PowerPoint that Mrs Brooks presented uh put together and and were presented at the each of the schools by with Mrs laano and Mrs um Diamond so the resources are there uh for the public to review they're they're all very very concrete and very easy to to to review um the other piece on the school project I just wanted to share with everybody because there's there's always a lot of behind the scenes Logistics that go on uh representative from uh om will be coming next Tuesday morning to walk through with several folks but specifically Mrs laano and Dr pep sasi and myself uh and Mr Caldwell to walk the property to really look at the impact of play areas once we break ground in March um outdoor play areas for the students as well as the the Bus drop off in the back and and all of that so um we'll be communicating any disruptions uh to to the children and to staff and parents um as those get CL as that gets closer okay anything else or questions okay so then we can move on finally to three million points budget budget budget budget budget um I think I think Dr brill's covid update and the information by Dr Davis is important [Music] um and of course budget but I didn't know if you want to also mention uh maybe again the new school project and the an update on the naming yeah we can um we can maybe I don't know how how in-depth in in terms of the preliminary results you want to give but we could certainly sort of add it as another reminder tell people again about the resources um yeah okay certainly share that almost 2,000 people have responded that's a huge number yep and I forget did we have a deadline for for um answers to the survey when is it being taken down let me see I don't actually know uh I think we just said that we were going to share the results at the at the meeting on the 20th so I mean we could certainly keep it open until then yeah and that that at the preference of the the committee or the the full board we can Eric and I can make that we can send another reminder out about the survey and then close it midweek next week we could leave it all the way open until the 19th of January prior to the the meeting on the 20th when the board will have this on you know the name uh selection on the actually on the agenda for a formal discussion whatever you guys would like to do we can do I'm fine with leaving it open until the last minute there's really only that you know a couple of data points that we're really looking at so it's not too much analysis yeah I think the more people we can get responses from the better okay okay all right thank you so upcoming events okay um all schools have early release on Friday January 15th and our closed Monday January 18th in observance of Martin Luther King day Tuesday January 19th is the plan return to in-person Learning Center fol has a PTO meeting Tuesday January 12th at 7 p.m.

org and I hope that you will all come out and see the exhibition when it goes up um I think it goes up near the end of the month all right seeing that there are no more updates thank you all for coming tonight and spending some time together I'm glad we were able to potentially launch a new initiative um pending City council's approval it sounds very exciting and we've got a lot of exciting things on our plate as stipulated by that plan that we all looked at tonight so I'm encouraged by that work and by all of your dedication and seeing all your faces tonight is wonderful um without further Ado I will um John what did you say John I said I move to a journ oh move to a journ and do I have a second Jonah thank you all in favor all any opposed all right we are adjourned thank you very much guys thank you all

via Zoom um Huckleberry has a PTO meeting Friday January 15th 9:30 a.m. also via Zoom whiskin has rescheduled picture days for Monday January 25th and Friday January 29th and the high school January 8th is the BHS alumni panel during ilt for 11th and 12th graders and January 14th is the College Planning webinar for juniors that's 6 PM via Zoom that's it okay all right so that is it for tonight thanks you for everybody for uh hanging in so long and um without objection this meeting is adjourned good night everyone

good evening chris cooper here superintendent of clearwater schools wanted to give everybody a brief update of where we're at starting into 2021. we did make it to 2021 unfortunately some of the issues that we were dealing with in 2020 do still exist and namely cobit um when we ended this semester or ended december before break we were down to two positive cases in our entire district with staff and students when we returned we were at 10 and then also some of those who were on quarantine because of being a close contact over break also have become positive so as of today we have 10 students who are covered 19 positive and 3 staff members we are we have 55 students and 8 staff members who are currently out for some coveted reason we were a little short on substitutes today i appreciate everybody coming together and covering the classes that needed to be covered and taking care of students in that way i just want to encourage you as we do go forward to continue to practice good mitigation strategies continue to keep students home if there's any sign of illness or sickness and also communicate with the school when that happens and let us know if there's any close contact outside of school as well so we can keep this thing under control i want to remind everybody that we have added two non-student days to the calendar this spring february 1st and april 19th will now be professional learning days for staff and we'll have no students on those days so i just want to give everybody plenty of time to plan accordingly we are also out of school on martin luther king day coming up a week from next monday so no school or staff on that day i hope everybody was able to enjoy the holidays some as students were out over break it's a strange season but i want to encourage everybody to come together as we continue to face this challenge unfortunately we're not out of the woods yet with this uh coven 19 issue and and now maybe the time we need to buckle down uh as hard as we have and try to to keep this thing under control keep kids in school each and every day so that's all i have for today as i said i wanted to make a just let you know where we're at as we we came back from break all of our classes are in session but but our numbers are um concerning they're not as high as they were at one point around thanksgiving but they're getting close to those numbers again so i want to encourage you to encourage your students as well to continue to practice the strategies that we know can help prevent the spread of this disease that's all i have for today it's mr cooper signing off uh have a great weekend and uh we look forward to what 2021 is going to bring take care you

hey mr casper reconnect your mic i gotta get maybe you gotta get close to your router can you hear me fine yes okay test one yep got it we still have a couple minutes two more members if you just joined us we are live and the link's going out to the public right now right next to me i'm running i have another computer next to me maybe that's it [Music] um eric just fyi our attorneys trying to get in i'm sure you're looking but chelsea spell and bruce young no it should be derelies bruce john is another member from a different uh organizat he's from another county so that's probably republic yeah usually if we're free we all visit each other's um re-org meetings it's something that we all do there's several of them tonight so we all take turns mike can you ask her if a chance she's using chelsea's account or chelsea's computer yes good evening everyone everyone yes it is chelsea um um mr mellon yeah she's coming in right now then next this is uh um it seems like you're getting a little better um okay i mean i can understand you um okay yeah that sounded a little better so hopefully it stays like that okay so are we ready everyone this is dr robertson he's here i think everyone's here okay i guess we'll get started so good evening i'll call to order the january 7th to 2021 meeting of the clifton board of education please stand for the pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all this is our organization meeting the next item on the agenda will be administering of the oath of office to three elected board members from the november election and we're going to go in alphabetical order first uh mr fahim abhidrabo will have supreme court judge mala swear him in with the oath of office as soon as they're ready they can begin thank you one please set this up you don't mind i'm gonna take my mask off just for this moment okay you ready sir please raise your right hand and repeat after me do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i support the constitution united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey and the constitution the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same then i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the governments established and to the government's established in the united states in the united states and in this state and in the state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people so help me god so repeat after me do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i possess the qualifications that i possess the qualifications prescribed by law prescribed by law for the office of for the office of member of a board of education member of the board of education am not disqualified as a voter i am not disqualified as a voter pursuant to pursuant to rsrs 1919 colon 4-1 colon 4-1 and not disqualified due to conviction i am not disqualified due to conviction of a crime or offense of a crime or offense listed in listed in njsa njsa 18a 18a calling 12-1 colon 12-1 and that i will faithfully and that i will faithfully impartially and partially and justly and justly perform all duties of that office perform all duties of that office according to the best of my ability according to the best of my abilities so help me god so help me god congratulations commissioner [Music] congratulations since we have this laptop already set up can we have it for mr awad as well on this laptop of course okay okay so next um the next member elected member is mr faris awa and he'll also have superior courts judge mala swear him in with the oath of office good evening everyone i'm just going to take off my mask that i will support the constitution that will support the constitution of the united states of the united states and the constitution and the constitution of the state of new jersey of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and i'll bear true from faith and allegiance to the same to the same and to the governments into the governments established established in the united states in the united states and in this state and in this thing under the authority of the people and under the authority of the people so help me god so help me god okay repeat after me do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i possess that i possess the qualifications prescribed the qualifications prescribed by law by law for the office of member of member of the board of education board of education i am not disqualified as a voter i am not disqualified as a voter pursuant to pursuant to r s nineteen now how are we gonna get heavy i am not disqualified due to conviction i have not disqualified the conviction of a crime of a crime or a status quo listed in perform all the duties of that office form all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability so help me god so help me god congratulations commissioner and finally uh mr jim smith will have the city of clifton's mayor in zaldi swear him in with the oath of office as soon as soon as you guys are ready you can start they have unmute their microphone are we on yeah eric unmuted me i mean eric used me okay hi jim smith i jim smith do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey in the constitution of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith and allegiance that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same to the same and to the government's establishment to the government's establishment in the united states in the united states and in this state and in this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people so help me god so help me god i jim smith i jim smith who solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i possess the qualifications prescribed by law that i possess the qualifications prescribed by law for the office of a member of the board of education for office of a member of the board of education i am not disqualified as a voter i am not disqualified as a voter pursuant to pursuant to rs19 call 4-1 rs 19 colon 4-1 am not disqualified to the conviction of a crime i am not disqualified due to a conviction of a crime or offense or offense listed in listed in njsa njsa 18 a 12-1 18 a 12-1 and then i will faithfully and that i will faithfully and partially impartially and justly perform and justly perform all the duties of that office or the duties of that office according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability so help me god so help me god congratulations jimmy thank you thank you congratulations to our two incumbents and newly elected board member if we could just um uh be patient and allow them to get situated to give them a few moments just get situated and allow the officials to leave if they would like to does anyone need more time mr abbado mr water mr smith you're good thank you for your patience oh no problem i will now call for um roll call mr abby dravo here mr awad here here miss stasford here miss beltran here mr canova here mr daily miss danny here mr casper mr smith here we have a quorum next next is the reading of the mission statement the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to democratic society in an ever-changing world and next is the reading of the open public meeting statement the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city's clerk city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv and the local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of the apparent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight our next order of business since this is our organization meeting is the election of the president of the board of education do i have any nominations yes i'd like to nominate mrs bashford for president i'd like to nominate mr abedrabo for president i'd like to nominate joe canova for president mr uc i like to nominate mr smith jim smith as president i'd like to nominate mr daley as president seeing no more i enclosing nominations per bylaw zero one five two i'm sorry per bylaw zero one five two each board member will provide me through our private zoom chat since we're virtual a written ballot with um the name of a nominated member they are voting for after i receive all the votes i will read them into record and i'll read them in alphabetical order as i did roll call so if you can give us a couple moments they're gonna give me their votes for these first nomination for president would you like us to send it directly to our public chat right now um you can do it privately or like write to me or in the chat so we're in a private zoom chat and um as soon as i receive everybody's i'm going to be reading them aloud so the zoom chat room is is is sufficient i think well later if on if we have people in here from public speaking they would see the chat now from what i understand they don't see the back chat but i'll be reading them aloud now mr all right i've received all the the nominations are the the votes i i apologize so i'll read them out loud mr rabbidrabo uh voted for mr abhidravo mr awad mr abba voted for mr abhidravo miss basford voted for miss basford miss beltran voted for joe konova mr konova mr canola voted for miss basford mr daley voted for mr smith miss danny voted for mr smith mr casper voted for mr smith and mr smith voted for mr smith so that is a four two one one that doesn't meet the majority five we need per policy so since no nominated member has received a majority vote um i have to call for nominations again are there any nominations for president i still nominate his password [Music] nominate joe konova again i would like to nominate mr abbott rubble again mr ussie can you put in the chat who is now nominated sure i if that's seeing none i'm closing nominations and i'll do that for miss danny and everybody okay and get please give us a moment again so i could uh retaliate yes um i have natalies i'll read them off in alphabetical order again mr abadraba voted for mr abu drabo mr awad voted for jim mr smith miss password voted for miss bassford miss beltran voted for mr konova mr canova voted for miss bassford mr daly voted for mr smith miss danny voted for mr smith mr casper voted for mr smith and mr smith voted for mr smith mr smith has a five vote majority so he has been elected the president for the year congratulations to all the nominees too congratulations congrats mr smith thank you thank you thank you so uh next order of business is the election of the vice president of the board of ed do i have any nominations casper i nominate joking over my name is rubble seeing no more did anyone nominate mr casper mr daley nominated mr casper i'll type him in the chat again so everyone can see type in just the last names mr uc it's just just who are the not people nominated sure thank you so um seeing none i'll close nominations and again if you just be patient while i tally their votes so okay i've tallied the votes mr abedrabo voted for mr abadraba mr awad voted for mr abhidrabo miss basford voted for mr canova miss beltran voted for mr canova mr canova voted for mr konova mr daly voted for mr casper miss danny voted for mr casper mr casper voted for mr casper and mr smith voted for mr abbadraba so we have we do not have a five majority it's three three three so as we did before um do i have any nominations for vice president mr mr canover please vice president are there any other nominations i'm sorry there was i'm sorry there was delay could you repeat yourself okay uh mr uchiyan mr abubo [Music] any other nominations i will then close nominations so there's two nominees again please be patient while i tell you the votes it was nominated uh mr knope okay excuse me okay i tallied the votes for vice president mr abadraba voted for mr abu drabbo mr awad voted for mr abu drabba miss basford voted for mr canova miss beltran voted for mr konova mr kanova voted for mr kanova mr daly voted for mr abedraba miss danny voted for mr rabadrabo mr casper voted for mr abadrabo mr smith voted for mr aberdrabbo so that is six to three it meets the five majority so mr abedrabo is the vice president for the next year for the 2021 year thank you thank you it's usually tradition the president will take over from now mr smith would you like to take over as soon as i am muted okay do we have any other business for the board yes so next is number nine on board ducks yep okay okay reading of uh school board member code of ethics bylaw zero one four two someone like to read that excuse me mr rob oci aren't we supposed to read the ethics form this is that right now that is this right now i think we're all supposed to read it together the if you'll attach the pdf the code of ethics there's the yeah we are supposed to breathe together yeah typically we uh we go around we go around the table and everyone reads um we read one of them that's correct if everyone could open it if not then someone if someone could read more than one all right we'll start with um mr abujabo and we'll go around do you want to meet yourself i'm having some board docs issues so you might have to skip me in the reading i can't get in dana uh we're doing the code of ethics correct does somebody wish to uh i'll do it uh the board member code of ethics i'll do one and two uh i will uphold you're supposed to put your hand up i will i will uphold and enforce all laws state rules and regulations and court orders pertaining to the schools desired changes should be brought only through legal and ethical processes on procedures number two i will make decisions in terms of of education welfare of children and will seek development and maintain public schools which meet the individual needs of all children regardless of their ability race creed sex or social standings i'll pick it up from there mr uh mr president i will confine my board action to policy making planning an appraisal and i will help frame policies and plans only after the board has consulted those who will be affected by them you're on camera jim [Music] who's next anyone else want to read next if i have to read you have to go on news yeah all right go ahead here we go here we go that's fine ahead mr rawat thank you i will carry out my responsibility not to administer the schools but together with my fellow board members to see that they are well run i will recognize that authority rests with the board of education and will make no personal promises nor take any private action which i'll take the next one i will refuse to surrender my judge independent judgment to special interests or partisan political groups or to use the schools for personal gain or for the gain of friends i'll read seven i will hold confidential all matters pertaining to schools which if disclosed would needlessly injure individuals or the schools but in all other matters i will provide accurate information and in concert with my fellow board members interpret to the staff the aspirations of the community for its schools i'll read eight as well i will vote to appoint the best qualified personnel available after consideration of the recommendation of the chief administrative officer i'll go i will support and protect school personnel and proper performance of their duties i'll end if nobody wants to go i will refer all complaints to the chief administrative officer it will not act on such complaints at public meetings only after failure of an administrative solution in the coming days i'm going to have everyone sign this um obviously we can't do it this second but it will be received eventually mr smith your music next we have board member qualifications can anyone want to start i think that's that i mean we could read it that's the bylaw i mean we don't typically read it i mean okay is everyone pretty much i'm just trying to say it's pretty long i mean it's bylaw zero one four two and anyone could see it on our website if they'd like to all right next order of business is the designation of meetings okay again starting with january 24th i have a question why can't we go back to wednesdays um thursdays is a little odd for me can we figure out too to make sure that we do not coincide with any meetings on the city side whether it's council meetings or planning or anything if they have theirs on wednesdays maybe it will conflict this will give residents right they don't have to choose between city side or board of vet side since we have a lot of parents who do watch the city side okay so historically the city council is the first and second tuesday of every month board of education used to be the second and last wednesday of every month we we we staggered we changed it last year to go to thursdays but thursdays is not working well for me so i'm making a request to change it back to wednesdays well i understand his best friend and i i agree with him on the tuesdays first first and for the city side but i almost talked about the planning board because that's important too and any other meetings but if everybody agrees on a certain day i mean i'm up for whatever but um i just want to give i know there was a lot of complaints um from residents in the past and that's why we changed the thursday so i just want to make sure we take everything in no the the meetings were changed to accommodate people's uh education schedules i i thoroughly remember the conversation and and we it's since i've moved to clifton 35 years ago it's been the second and fourth wednesdays of every month set by clockwork and the reason why they did that historically was so that we wouldn't correspond or conflict with any other organizations or any kind of meetings going on that's why we did it years ago you can ask um if it's fine if i might chime in uh wednesdays is difficult for me uh just for my my schedule i just wanted to just clarify that that's fine everybody wednesday is difficult monday tuesday wednesday friday saturday sunday not thursdays friday works for me thursday through saturday works for me um i can't do friday or saturday those are the days i open and close the store unless we're virtual forever we also have football games that are on friday so i wouldn't touch the weekend is there something we have to check with the cable station first well i would make a suggestion uh that we table it outside of designating the next next meetings we have a set next meeting and put our input to the superintendent and um uh let him work it out because it's going to be difficult um it's a little more difficult in the zoom than it is i think if we submit our request to uh our uh mr dr uh and uh let him work it out outside the 21st and also i would also suggest that we put a designated time for the start-ups meetings in there do change it and that's fine but um i know that when we get our agenda we don't have time on it here it's in the public notice but it's not on the agenda so that would be my recommendation suggestion i'll make a motion to that effect okay we have a motion on the floor is there a second second second okay uh thank you mr president i would just want some some clarification from the board of course the administration will be present any night the board is having a meeting but if uh is it a majority of the board can can make it on one night and some members can't how will i decide if it's a wednesday or thursday is it a majority of the board that can make it um you know i i just want to i want to do what's best for everyone's schedule but if there's one or two people that can't make it on a wednesday or a thursday is that decision going to be left up to me or to to you mr smith or how would you like to work that i just want some clarification for that mr smith through you to danny we changed this schedule to accommodate two board members we changed it i've been on this board it'll be ten years in april we were wednesday night you could set your clock by us i think the community needs some kind of stability especially now with what's going on in the world and i think we need to get back to the way we used to do things like that i would also uh suggest shooters double check uh with this city i know to sit with what the council meetings are on tuesdays um i don't know what wednesdays that the board of adjustment meets and i believe the planning board meets on the fourth thursday so i'd if you not that we should uh defer to i don't mind deferring to the council but i don't think we need to defer to uh to the board of adjustment or but it's it's not good that there's public meetings on at the same same time either so uh you could consult with the city double check with their their uh scheduled times are for the board of adjustment city council and um planning board um and uh i you know we should all and then also put in there and you know you could consult with us in the time period before the next meeting too rather than we're trying to do it i mean it's a little more difficult on the zoom process to to work it out i'm available anytime so i don't have any conflicts i'll get everyone's schedule and then i'll discuss it with the board president and we'll put a resolution on for the next agenda if that works so we had a motion in a second to keep january 21st and then discuss and have the rest of the meetings um to be to be discussed and then voted on the next meeting is that correct yes yes okay any other discussion on this roll call uh mr abedraba yes mr awad yes yes miss basswords no thursdays is conflict for me miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes mrs danny yes mr casper yes mr smith yes motion carries so we'll have the january 21st meeting and then table the rest of the meetings all right next is number ten excuse me number selection of delegates and committee appointments yeah i uh committee appointments will come [Music] as soon as i have an opportunity to speak to everybody mr smith would it be easier to set a timeline um for people who are interested in certain aspects of leadership committees and then from there you can decide whether uh you know where to who's going to chair what yeah well that's what i said i'll reach out to everybody and get their feelings and and we'll go from there we do want to pick the delegate and alternate of the new jersey school boards association and the delegate and alternate for the passaic county school boards uh is there anyone that's interested in this i am interested in being the passaic county school board representative i have to go to them anyway i'm the president of passaic county so i'd like to sit on that okay so uh make uh judy the delegate of that and uh mr casper had asked uh to be the uh of the new jersey boards so we just need uh an alternate for each is there anyone interested in being an alternate for either of those i'll be the alternate typically if no one is interested all right mr casper is offered to be the alternate for the county is there anyone that is interested in the alternate of the new jersey school boards okay we'll address that at a later time and we need a member of the board of directors to the northern uh region educational services commission mr mr president currently that's me um in in passaic county the tradition is that the superintendents in each district are the uh the members okay and nominate mr roberto dr roberto okay all right next is number 12 presentation reports there are committees there's nothing there right correct all right next we have uh public recognition mr mountain is there anyone uh nope mr smith there is no one in the waiting room sting none i might make a motion to close the public course okay motion by mr daley a second second by myself objection any objection all right uh uh [Music] i can read that yes number one uh mr casper would you like to read that okay okay whereas on july 2nd 2021 the community noted with sorrow the passing of miss arlena gresti and whereas mr gristi had served the board of education and children of clifton faithfully and conscientiously as a highly respected middle school mathematics teacher for 36 years before retiring in 2014 contributing her talents for the betterment of the school system mr gristi was a member of the clifton board of education from 2011 to 2018 where she served as the vice president was a member of the new jersey education association and was very active in the clifton teachers association where she served as treasurer now therefore be it resolved that the resolution be forwarded to her bereaved family to serve as an expression of the great regard in which mrs agresti was held by the board of education the administration employees and pupils of the clifton public schools and be it further resolved that the contents of this resolution be noted in their entirety in the official minutes of the clifton board of education for future generations to peruse okay do i have a motion by mr casper second second by mr daley any objection okay new jersey uh school board recognition excuse me mr smith are we are we voting on ea one separately from ea too uh yes then can we have a i guess a roll call yeah i guess a roll call mr abby drabo yes mr rowan yes ms beltran yes mr canola yes mr daley yes miss danny yes mr casper yes yes mr mr smith yes all right uh number two and number three can we put those together it's only really two yes it's really only we have an ea too that's it move the a2 e82 second mr abhijavo somebody like to read this no whereas new jersey's 20 000 local school board members who receive uh no immerseration for their services act as advocates for public school students as they work with administrators teachers parents for the betterment of public education whereas school boards strive to provide resources necessary to meet the needs of all students including those with special needs and whereas boards of education provide accountability to the public they communicate the needs of the school district to the public and they convey to school administrators the public's expectations for the schools and whereas new jersey can take pride in its schools with rank among the nation's best in key achievement indicators such as the national assessment of educational uh progress scores and the preparation for college through advanced placement offerings and sat assessments therefore now it be resolved that the board of education does hereby recognize the services of local school board members throughout new jersey as we join communities statewide and observing january 2021 as school board recognition month and further be resolved the school board of education urges all new jersey citizens to work with their local boards of education and public school staff toward the advancement of our children's education roll call mr abu drabba yes mr awad yes miss password yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes miss danny yes mr casper yes mr smith yes okay um mr president excuse me yes i just wanted to mention it came to my attention from mr mountain that just as we closed uh the public portion our student representative max rubin um logged in he was having difficulty logging in as was laurie la lama the the cea president i'm not sure if we want to go back and allow that or if it's too late i just wanted to bring that to your attention sir any objection from the board no please yeah just no no objection but yeah i suggest we do that we just finished the uh d and e part and then um and we can pull in right after that yeah good call all right uh under personnel we have d one uh nurses for the covid 19 drive-thru vaccination clinic number two substitute appointments number three personnel appointments uh one two three i have a motion by mr daley second second mr casper roll call uh discussion roll call yes mr average about mr awad yes miss basford yes yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes miss danny yes mr casper mr smith yes motion carries okay under f it is uh board member comments oh i'm sorry we we're allowing max reuben to come in uh mr mountain is he available mr rubin and miss lalama are joining right now okay under ask max if you can uh hear us uh the floor is yours and welcome uh thank you sir um first off uh i hope you guys all had a great holiday break uh happy new year christmas if you celebrate that uh congratulations to uh mr smith our new president and uh mr abu drabbo the new board vice president um you guys deserve it you've been working really hard for the board for a long time now so it's great to see you guys in um in these positions now um i have a few points um first i want to bring up there was we talked about a few board me a few board meetings back the iem mastery scandal there was the um the corporation that we um suspected to be a pyramid scheme um you guys sent out an email to the district to families which i really appreciated um but just because we really wanted to get the message across um me and fellow students from the csu um created a flyer to warn kids against the dangers of joining certain potential pyramid schemes such as i am mastery academy um my secretary mustafa created the flyer we got it approved by mr doctor and mr robertosi um i believe it was from you who got who got the approval yeah um and we sent it out a few days ago on instagram on other social media platforms and it's been getting a lot of attention some positive some negative but it's been getting some attention which is good and more and more students are finding out about the dangers of joining such potential pyramid schemes um and i would just like to tell all the students out there if you go to the clifton student union instagram at clifton student union um we have a link tree in our bio with many resources such as the clifton public schools youtube channel the clifton high school youtube channel some resources if you're thinking about getting into foreign exchange or you get um people ask you to join certain organizations like i am mastery academy just beware and there's some links in our uh on our instagram page uh for videos and articles about uh those certain organizations and ways to get around them um i wanted to ask will there be any more in-person sat testing and psat testing in clifton high school and if so when um because i heard reports from fellow students who claimed that when they took the sat in school it was a bit disorganized some staff were confused about the procedures and there were little to no social distancing online i'm sure it was a huge undertaking for everyone but a few students of my a few fellow students were just alarmed at the atmosphere last time they took in-person sat testing so if there is going to be more in-person sat or psat testing i just hope that um everything is organized there's social distancing everything is planned out really well and please tell me when that happens so that my fellow students could be prepared um i also wanted to ask if students could pick up books and novels from the media center i know we when we were doing the whole digital resources uh website we created a platform where students can take out sat and act prep books um going on the digital resources website i wonder if is that just for sat and a ct prep books or is there another way students can check out just ordinary books like novels fiction non-fiction books um from the media center and if there is a way to do that i would love to hear about how to do that um a few other just important uh plugs for the chs morning show the cast program is continuing to make great content on uploading every morning just giving students announcements about upcoming programs club meetings sports tryouts and everything like that we're being more and more creative every week and um it's just a good way to stay up to date on what's going on in the clifton community especially clifton high school um also um i know it might be hard you guys probably the idea of putting on a musical production during the pandemic probably blows your mind but um it looks like this year we're going to manage to do it um mr pinto miss pogie miss sparrows mr stamnesky um just started uh tryouts and we already casted our spring musical review it's going to be a series of different musical numbers that we're going to be performing virtually um so yeah it's going to be really excited it's going to be really exciting i'm lucky enough to be a part of it so hopefully that's going to happen around the end of may early june so i would definitely look forward to that um and yeah that's it thank you so much for allowing me to speak and i will see you guys next time for the next next two weeks yeah max thank you very much for your uh your time and your comments and uh dr robitozi did you want to say yes thank you mr smith max i'll try to get that information for you um but the sats and the psats aren't run by the district um although some of our teachers may be working at those sites but i can certainly look into into what you know the confusion was but i do anticipate that there will be more in in person sat testing i i believe the dates are on the um on the sat website uh because they're universal dates that that everybody utilizes but i'll double check with that and i'll have mr doctor get in touch with you um and as far as the uh the library books i don't see any reason why we can't come up with some method for students to be able to access books at a certain time as long as we do it in a safe and socially distant manner so i'll also bring that up with mr doctor and see if there's something that we can uh do to arrange that for those that are interested always good to see you max oh thank you i actually got an email in the middle of that from mr walker and he said it's for all books okay so i guess that answers there we go yeah here we go uh thank you so much i'll see you january 21st thanks max thanks again max um mr llama you're up all right good evening to everybody i want to congratulate faras awad for his new mission and i believe you were a ccms student back in the day which absolutely dates me but that's perfectly fine i also want to congratulate jim smith and and fahim abu drabba for their second terms um the ca looks forward to working with the airport and there's something that i want to compare like my group as me as president and my vice presidents because each member is elected as an individual but you must govern as a member of a team so this goes for my group as well you didn't get to pick the team you may not even like everyone but you're the team and that's your team your success as a trustee is completely deposited of the board the public appropriately tends to judge the success of the board the board not what individuals do same thing for my group even though i'm president i have three vice presidents the secretary and we work together as a group and i think that's what propels us to the future and it's what propels you to the future because we're all interesting we're working for the kids our families and community and of course the staff this is how i guide the kids in class we work as we work collaboratively as a team students what i call kids we in order to bring them along we have to be successful as a group and that is me as an educator also that we all have to work together for the kids and staff and the community is very important and i want to reiterate that the cea all of us together will only improve clifton public schools thank you very much thank you miss lalama and uh happy new year and my best to your organization and your members thank you happy and healthy thank you mr mountain anyone else we have one edition if you're inviting additional folks we have one more the board okay with that okay mr mountain you can let him in miss i don't think she can hear us yet one moment miss langer if you can hear us it's your turn to speak hi there thank you for allowing me an opportunity to speak it's been a couple board meetings since i've been here i want to thank lori for her wonderful words on behalf of the cea and i just wanted to you know let let you know my thoughts on a few things i know that you are looking to build a reopening plan for clifton and i'm so excited for the opportunity to be in person with my kids but i also hope you will continue to put our safety first i have reached out to the governor's office on about four occasions using three different platforms including social media and his request form online because at the njea meeting he spoke about working with districts to try and help them get the funding they need to update outdated hvac systems if it was necessary in the reopening plan unfortunately i haven't heard back from him in any capacity or his office and the last time i spoke i had implored our board members to perhaps use your political connections to try and do the same and i'm just hoping that if you have not already done so that you'll consider reaching out i do think it's important that we get those hvac systems up to date with proper merv ratings before we bring us back in the midst of a pandemic i also want to thank you for working to get the covid vaccine pre-registration thing up and going at clifton high school i think it's fantastic that we're able to serve the community in that way and i hope to continue seeing us do that thank you so much for your time thank you miss langer happy new year to you happy new year hey mr mountain anyone else no one else in the waiting room mr smith okay next uh order of business is board member comments uh if we would just start uh mr abhijava we'd start with the with you thank you um first of all thank you to clifton for having faith in me to continue serving our students teachers in the city as a whole um i definitely want to extend my uh sincere condolences to the passing of arlene my family does extend her condolences to the gresti family um i was i never had um mr gristy as a teacher but i was fortunate enough to start with her on the board and got to know her in that perspective um my sincere condolences and prayers are with the skadoodle family i know um gina scadu um who lost her mother uh gina stay strong you are a strong woman and uh if you need anything my family is here for you uh for whatever you need to the kovith clinic um vaccinations i heard from a lot of people it went great um i was fortunate enough to know a lot of people who are in the medical field in the city in various places that were able to get the vaccinations the city did a phenomenal job from what i hear and a big hand in it was um high school staff from what i'm told was there dr robert tauzi and the um the nurses throughout our district and the city personnel it's a new year 2021 we haven't started off great yet but let's continue to do the hard work all around um hopefully every everybody's safe and continues the hvac information if i may uh through the legislative committee we've made contact um between the legislative committee and the superintendents and superintendent himself uh with correspondence and we are going to follow up in the new year and legislative will get back on it now that we're into the new year and the first meetings in the books so we'll follow up and dr robert tusi will help us guide the way with the administration on that end um [Music] i want to thank judge hanimoda i just want to make a correction mr uchi he is a superior court appellate division um the reason why i chose him it is a person i like tradition first of all and um we all choose certain people for certain things because they were the first in something to me not in an education standpoint religion plays a big factor in me are for me and i'm sure everybody here and everybody in the world that's a drive for them him being the first muslim superior george uh george superior judge uh appel division in new jersey to me is a great honor i've known him for over 10 years he swore me in the first time and to me tradition um i asked him no brainer the second time um great friend honest guy tell you the truth drove up here for me from from somerset county for 20 minutes and and drove back down that's who i call a true friend and somebody's always in your corner um miss la llama everybody knows me i don't have my bucks flag in the back but i'm going to twist your words a little bit by saying you're right a team is um it's not about a player it's not about tom brady it's about all the moving parts on a team that make a moving you know a moving motion that makes uh different parts come together to make sure that that the it's a well-oiled machine and that everybody does their parts everybody plays their position to make sure um that we score all the time and in that case the bucks are in the playoffs so i'll i'll leave it there and i appreciate you all thank you i'm sorry mr awad if you would go next thank you good evening everybody i don't think i probably introduced myself in the beginning of the meeting uh first and foremost hello uh it's an honor to serve the board and i would like to personally thank the city of clifton who had faith in me and trusted me and elected me into this position you know as time goes by i would uh hopefully you know get to know everybody on the board uh i am fresh onto this board i know the first year is going to be a lot of learning for me i'm ready to take on any tasks you know working with everybody on this board i'm uh very proud for the past couple of years what this board has uh progressed in and what they have accomplished and i hope to you know join uh you know with this board and continue the progress that we're doing you know with the pandemic going on and the chaos that's been all happened in 2020 hopefully 2021's a new year new chapter um you know we have a really strong team um also i would like to thank the superintendent you know you you have been doing an amazing job with the circumstances you have and for all our teachers and all our students you know you know all the teachers honestly are heroes not all heroes wear capes and i think you know in our school district the staff you know they have been heroes they have been working hard you know uh teaching online is not the easiest thing but you know what they do it with a smile you know the preparing you know the students in our district for the future what's come and you know getting through this i know it's going to make everybody stronger i hope everybody in the city are are safe and sound and as time progresses you know i will be always available if anybody needs me and hopefully as time goes by you know i get to get more comfortable with these zoom calls and you know we could do great for us our students and our staff thank you everybody thank you mr ron uh miss basford yes good evening and happy new year everyone uh first i want to start off on a somber note to send my condolences to the uh aggressive family to joe and maria on the untimely passing of arlene to gina skadoodle on the passing of your mom i know we've been uh in boxing each other about support um i uh i in time my friend in time uh welcome to mr awad to the board um you will have a lot to learn and uh i i emailed you the county meeting states i hope you show up to get some um your training in and and learn how to be a really good board member and a true board member in the right way as we begin this new year as many of you i was very excited about 2021 even though i knew we were a long way to go maybe my hopes were too high because after a few days 2021 i was sitting here very disappointed last night it was very hard to watch tv unfold real patriots are those who were on flight 93 who saved our nation's capital not the people that we saw on live tv and who were tearing it apart it would be unlikely that yesterday's events did not affect each and every one of us in some way some greater than others when you compare yesterday to real peaceful protests that occurred during the summer yesterday was one of those days that you will never forget you will always remember where you were and what you were doing no matter how what political party you are a part of what we witnessed was not only disgraceful but proves why it is important that we as a board do the best we can for the people who have elected us we have a duty to serve but more importantly to protect the health and safety of every child teacher staff member in the district and in this current climate that we are in i want to assure you every one of you staff student um teacher community member that i will continue to use my voice and my knowledge beyond just clifton we all need to pay our own we all need to play our own parts in making a world a better place better than it was before covet events like yesterday bring out the ugly truth the truth that we need better of and that we deserve better the question i leave each and every one of you tonight is what role do i play in making tomorrow of a better day than yesterday happy new year thank you i would just like to come out one day thank you very much for the kind email you sent me the other day and i know you mentioned that you had uh foot surgery i hope you're healing up well and you're safe and if there's anything i could help you with or you know your family i'm always a call and email away heal up we need you strong and hopefully you know you've been really responsible i think for that email i will be joining uh those meetings uh with the county it'll be really resourceful and if there's anything like that that comes by your way that you can help me relay that information it'll be a great very welcome mr awad i am a plethora of knowledge when it comes to school boards i have a very very long resume some people accept it and some people just miss beltran is she there okay i'll keep it short um i just want to say congrats to everyone who was sworn in tonight i welcome you uh us to the team i look forward to meeting you in real life person soon hopefully um congrats to the new president and vice president um i hope that we continued on the path that we're on which i think is a path of positivity moving towards a possible referendum and getting the kids back into school and everything else that's on our agenda for 21.

i'm going to call this meeting to order due to the covid19 health emergency and in order for the board of education to conduct its business this board of education meeting is being held by a video conference and streamed live via youtube on the district website at www www.ebnet.org just give me a moment here i will post this information in addition members of the public may provide comment at this meeting for zoom by entering the url as indicated on the web on the uh screen now and the meeting id and password upon joining the meeting your participation will be muted to ensure that there is no disruption to the business being conducted by the board of education i will now proceed with the roll call mrs becker here mr angelo here mrs chu here mr sismar here this is gloss here mr hang here this is lax here mrs reese and mr winston i'm here we have a quorum so we'll be rising for the pledge of allegiance but i do want to make a statement uh after the pledge of allegiance we will take a few silent moments to reflect on yesterday's attempted insurrection on the united states capitol with that being said please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under [Music] the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public body that which any business affecting their interests is discussed and acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the east brunswick board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time and place thereof posted at the board of education offices located at 760 route 18 east brunswick new jersey written notice was also provided to the sentinel the newark start ledger the home news and tribune and the municipal clerk of east brunswick all board of education meetings with the exception of executive session discussions are videotaped for labor broadcast it is the policy of the board of education that videotaped meetings are not edited for any purpose individuals who speak at the board's public meetings should be aware of these videotaping rules good evening everyone this is the reorganization meeting of the board of education it is held the first board meeting in the month of january uh and it is the time at which newly elected and re-elected board members are typically seated uh due to the uh pandemic we administered the oath of office earlier this week to the board members that were elected and re-elected before we proceed on the agenda the first item of business is the appointment of temporary chairperson so may i have such a motion so moved moved by mrs becker second second by mrs lacks is there any discussion all those in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries now as as i was saying a moment ago with regard to administering the oath of office we typically would administer the oath of office at this time but since we administered earlier this week i did want to share with the board and members of the public the individuals who did receive the oath so let's just take a few moments good afternoon my name is bernardo juliana i am the school business administrator and board secretary for the east brunswick public schools today is monday january 4th 2021 and we are here to administer the oath of office to susanna chu susanna raise your right hand and please repeat after me i susanna chu i susanna chu do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey and the constitution of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith and that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the government's established and to the government established in the united states in the united states and this state and the state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people and i do solemnly swear and i do solemnly swear that i possess the qualifications that i possess the qualifications prescribed by law prescribed by law for the office of member for the office of member of the board of education of the board of education and that i will faithfully and that i will faithfully impartially impartially and justly perform and justly perform all duties of that office all duties of that office according to the best of my ability so help me god so help me back congratulations thank you [Music] please raise your right hand and repeat after me i will relax do solemnly swear do you solemnly swear that i will support the constitution already in the united states new jersey and the constitution of the state of new jersey and i will bear true faith and i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and the legions to the same and to the government's established and to the governments established in the united states in the united states and this state and this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people and i do solemnly swear and i do solemnly swear that i possess the qualifications that i possess the qualifications prescribed by law prescribed by law for the office of member for the office of member of a board of education of a board of education and that i will faithfully and i will faithfully impartially impartially and justly perform and justly perform all duties of that office all duties of that office according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability so help me god so help me god congratulations what over there that's really bad today is tuesday january 5th 2021 and we are now preparing to administer the oath of office to mark tarantula sir please keep your right hand raised and repeat after me yes sir i mark carangelo i'm mark carangelo do solemnly swear [Music] do solemnly swear that i that i will support the constitution of the united states of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith through faith and allegiance and allegiance to the same to the same and to the governments established in the united states established in the united states and this state and this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people and i do solemnly swear and i do soundly swear that i possess the qualifications that do possess the qualifications prescribed by law prescribed by law for the office for the office of member of member of a board of education of a board of education and that i will faithfully and that i will faithfully impartially impartially and justly perform and justly perform all duties of that office all duties of that office according to the best of my ability so help me god so help me god congratulations sir thank you you are now officially a member of the board of education i appreciate that thank you i'll do my best congratulations to mrs lax and mrs chu and mr carangelo thank you thank you the next order of business is nominations for board president at this time i will accept nominations bernie just just a quick question uh in procedure ask a procedural question go ahead in the event that there are more than one candidates running for a position is there an opportunity for those candidates uh although i didn't see it specified in the bylaws for them to perhaps present their value and what their intentions are and lack of a better word a campaign speech uh to help shape our opinions if two people are uh running a post teddy's friend mr jacoby i hear i have background somebody's got somebody needs to knew daniel d francesca needs to mute thank you i couldn't hear um no so the under robert's rules of war what happens is you take a series of nominations um they do not have to be seconded and then after the nominations are solicited the contemporary board chair mr giuliana will call a roll for each of the each of the members um people can speak when they're when their name is called um they have the right to speak then but you there's not a debate or a dialogue in this everything and that can't be altered through motion um mr g kobe not that i'm not not if they're aware of because you you got your bylaws say you follow robert's rules of orders and that's the roberts rule of orders where there's not a debate uh over it it's just a nomination uh to see the chair uh but again each of the members when they speak um can you know each member has the right to say why they're voting one way or the other way thank you mrs lax uh you're recognized i can go ahead with my nomination yes i would like to nominate vicki becker for board president vicki is the personification of grace under pressure as she is undoubtedly shown through her leadership this past year during these unprecedented times an incredibly dedicated board member for 20 years she has always made the needs of the district her highest priority she is consistently attending pta meetings at our schools years after her children graduated making sure to stay in touch with the ever-changing needs of the district parent this past summer he scheduled weekly meetings to ensure that our covert readiness plan for school opening could best be the needs of all of our staff and students it is obvious to anyone that meets her how much vicki values education she is passionate about this district works tirelessly to not only maintain our great rankings but to constantly strive to raise the bar of excellence in academics athletics and the arts having a strong personal connection to all three you could say that vicky has always been the mother hen being the first welcome call a new board member receives reading for coffee not doing covet of course reviewing agendas and generally answering questions about all areas of wordsmanship but i also see her as a lioness bravely protecting and advocating for her ebps brood being a leader is not easy as the head of a consensus-seeking board with nine individuals with sometimes differing opinions who do not necessarily agree on every issue vicki encourages us to share our views discuss and even disagree in an open and respectful manner i look forward to our continued source and strength at our helm this year as we hopefully embark on a path back to normalcy thank you mrs lacks are there any other nominations from the floor going once going twice seeing none i will now accept um a motion to close the nominations second by mr winston the nominations are now closed and we'll proceed with a roll call vote for vicki becker as board president the order of the role is an alphabetical order mrs becker yes mr carangelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar no mrs gloss i'm proud to vote yes mr hong yes mrs lacks yes mr winston no motion carries congratulations mrs becker thank you very much um i appreciate the opportunity to help lead this board this year will be about transition of leadership and mentorship and consensus and working together to support dr valesky and his team our administrators our teachers our students and parents to weather the rest of this pandemic and god willing to deal with what public education will look like when it is over i'm proud to be a part of this group we agree to disagree i have great respect for everybody in here and together we do wonderful things i'm very proud to be one of nine board members in the east brunswick public school education thank you and now mr giuliani i do the rest of the meeting you may certainly take over at this point okay the next item on our agenda is nominations for board vice president can i uh this is true yes i'd like to nominate lori lax okay okay and um i i nominate lori lax for board vice president um first i want to wish laurie a happy birthday i think you just turned 30 right so i don't know if i have that have that a little off or not but happy birthday um lori is a lifelong resident of east brunswick and is a product of east brunswick public schools her husband mike also grew up in east brunswick and this is a family that has given so much to the community they have both been acted in so many community organizations and foundations i just cannot uh list or mention them all um but if you've been around town i'm sure you've you know run into them or seen them around this is a family that loves this town loves his community and and to quote her husband she works in the shadows never seeking glory or a pat on the back as she is always there for her family and others so well uh well said mike uh in my six years on the board though i've gotten to know lori and i've gotten to see lori's passion and dedication to the children of the community she's an advocate for excellence in academics arts and athletics she's a strong advocate of all the initiatives we have to ensure that our children have a safe and secure environment in in which to learn she knows that great schools are not just made up of buildings and books this is a people business great schools are created by great people and she's always looking for ways to show appreciation for the hard work of the administrators the teachers and the support staff we've been facing these unprecedented challenges and while we may not always agree on all the issues um as laurie stated earlier you know she among with you know many others on the board understand that we we can only move this district forward by working together and i really do look forward to working together with this entire board thank you that was lovely susanna are there any other nominations from the floor for vice president yes jeff yes thank you i first i want to congratulate our newest members to the ep board of education and mark crandall i wish you nothing but best and most success in your role and i'm very happy to have you on board so i thank you uh for volunteering for this as well as welcome back and congratulations to our incumbent susanna and laurie i'm happy to see you back and um i'm looking forward to working uh with you in the future the nomination for the vice president position should not be taken lightly especially in these unique and challenging times when we're facing uh specific uh facing issues specifically surrounding the covid19 virus and an impact on the educational community currently in a lengthy and a time-spirited conversation with our board president vicki backer in december we focus much of the conversation on the elements of change in direction and remaining mindful of the much uncharted territory which we are now facing and will be facing soon hopefully we will begin to feel and see the benefits of the vaccine and its impact uh and then rejoining the path back to something that looks like normalcy well i clearly asked president becker what she feels she would be able to do from her position regarding this she corrected informed me of the limitations of her position she felt that my lack of understanding of her role was an impediment and she was probably right and well she emphasized the role of the board is not to run the district but to assure that the district runs well one couldn't help but feel the executive role must abandon these traditions that may have shaped the passive role in which ms becker described but instead evolved to take a stronger and more proactive approach in navigating these uncertain waters president becker further went on to say that she feels that what she does and what she has done in her tenure on the board sitting as an executive role for approximately 25 of those 20 years that she's been here has been effectively uh effective and well served to this district and i would agree with that i believe based on the circumstances and the area in which she came from i think she's done an exceptional job based on those days she has indeed effectively served her position well and with that i am comfortable saying that her capabilities though are limited uh and admitted by her and she will uh she will need an experienced person beside her who possess certain sets of skills required in their professional and their private life is for those reasons i nominate mark sismar to the position of the vice president mr sismar a career and retired law enforcement professional has been called upon many times under varying situations to lead through crisis the very merit of his career lends itself to pragmatic well thought out solutions to some of the most difficult challenges his efforts have earned him many awards and recognitions throughout his life and continues his life working in a leadership role in school security for neighboring school districts as committee chair of the security committee mark has been instrumental in formulating the effective strategies that have to date protected our most cherished assets our children our staff and our administration while other uh while others on this board bring certain skills to the position we are in desperate need of skills now that mark sismar and his track record uh uh and his track record proudly speak to president backer will be continuing to do what she has done so well for many years she will continue to organize this board set at the agenda and inform the culture that is so important to the success of this district which are the responsibilities of the president's role mr sismar roles vice president would be a perfect symbiotic compliment to mrs becker's strength and would no doubt help the superintendent and his staff move and evolve the district through the recovery and onto the future and transcending where we were 12 months ago it is unfair to expect dr valesky to bear the sole burden of the demands now please upon us and he deserves to have the most qualified individuals leading this board so he can run the district and we can be assured that this district one runs well it is my hope that mark accepts this nomination and this board looks beyond the scope of figurehead leadership and embrace the hard fact that this recovery will have to be a huge team effort with the most qualified individuals at the helm thank you thank you jeff that was lovely are there any other nominations from the floor bernie do you see any hands that i don't i do not okay then can i please have a motion for closing nominations of board vice president jeff moved by jeff seconded by heather matt i need to ask you a point of order yes as we have two nominations for the role of vice president do we take a separate roll call for each person in the order they were nominated or do we take one roll call where people indicate if they are voting for mark or lori you take a separate roll call based on the order of the nominations so the roll call first promo relax followed by a roll call for mark sismar if either one of them gets the majority of the membership into this evening there's eight members so you'll need to have five affirmative votes the bylaws and although i do understand that that is impossible to do with these virtual sessions does state these for these uh for these votes during the selection process that these votes are done by a piece of paper and and uh in private uh i see now that we're moving that to a more public forum and i was wondering if there's an alternative to that to adhere to the bylaws well mark the bylaws this came up several years ago the board has always done it publicly the vote has to take place in public um the bylaws do permit for a paper ballot but i i don't you're asking the wrong person because i barely can turn zoom on i have no idea how you can do a paper ballot uh in a zoom world um nor do i i'm just acknowledging the bylaws yeah so the probably wondering if there were work around um no because what we've done in in all the years that i represented east brunswick and this exact issue came up they've done it publicly where they do a roll call following robert's rules of order there's a nomination and then there's a vote on each of the people who've been nominated um and in terms of the bylaw doing a paper ballot where the board secretary would collect it and then call out who has the votes i don't know physically how that could even be accomplished in this virtual format so i apologize but i i don't need either but i so if i'm understanding you correctly you're stating that we're abandoning the bylaws by what motion um bear with me i don't think we're banning the bylaws i think what we're doing is holding the bylaws what's that upholding the bylaws are specific to this topic bear with me matt um while we are while you're doing that research who's bringing up the bylaws right now the the uh only means by which to collect um a vote other than a voice vote being that we are virtual is for uh each board member to individually um message that to me however the other thing is that upon and matt i'm not sure if this is permitted but upon uh receipt of each of the votes each is read aloud as to the individual uh and an individual making the vote and who their vote is for yeah correct that that's you could do it that way if by by using the message but it's important to keep if you're if people are going to be writing their their vote down the only person who should be collecting it knowing who it's coming from would be uh secretary bernie bernardo giuliano so um i i don't know how to use the chat feature to be uh in order to do that i would be absolutely important that uh in selecting the chat feature that uh it is sent directly to me well wait a minute wait a minute is this something that we get to vote on whether or not we wish i'm trying to get your your your by the way your website's not opening up right now do we need to take a short recess perhaps or is this something before you even research it is it something that the board of education gets to decide who gets to make the decision whether we do it the way we have been or the way jeff is suggesting we have a suggestion from a board member so vicky you have bylaw so i'm just trying to get to the copy the bylaws but you're the east brunswick board of education website is not responding bernie can you help him out here please i will do that president becker i'll take care of that we apparently have a technical issue on our website great yeah it's not it's not my computer because i just tried my phone as well so just what i mean is i want to um give jeff the proper guidance here does jeff need to make a motion that he would like to motion that this is something we have once we find out what the bylaws say no so vicky if the bylaws say that in in a contest and i don't have the bylaws memorized i do recall several years ago um the biola's do permit for either written ballots or a voice vote and i just want to read what the bylaws say specifically um before i opine on something without being able to look at it and i'll ask again matt and bernie do you need a short recess to research this or no if i can get a copy of the bylaws i can look at it and tell you in two seconds the problem is i can't access your website to get the box okay i just want to make sure that this is handled correctly bernie can you get on the website i'm trying it seems to be down yeah i just tried also president becker yes juliana mr jacoby the uh it appears that blackboard our service provider for our website is suffering some kind of a data attack and so the website is not reactive right now they're working on it but we may have to resort to looking for a paper copy of the bylaws um i am in the process of um attempting to uh get an alternate um alternate view of the bylaws so if you just bear with me please yeah i'm trying to access it on on my different my ipad my iphone i can't get it yeah you will not be able to get it on any device the actual website itself is physically not reacting are you in touch with nick i am okay thank you victor uh matt i have uh been able to uh locate a copy and i'm doing a uh i'm going to send that directly over to you all right great by email i'm going to send it to you by email terrific thank you bernie [Music] tell me when you find this did you send it bernie i'm waiting for it to finish sending i was just able to get into the site it might be back [Music] so i'm not able to get in um is somebody trying to to get into the meeting oh my god so your bylaws say voting shall be take place by a written ballot after nominations are closed board members will be provided a blank piece of paper and shall write the name of the person they wish to see elected on the piece of paper the about to be tallied by the board secretary and the person with the majority vote of the members of the board president and constituent quorum shall be elected in the event no candidate receives the majority vote of the board of uh members present and constituting quorum the procedure shall continue until someone receives a majority of vote so i think that uh mr giuliano's suggestion of people using the chat feature and individually emailing mr juliana i have an echo um the board secretary that would comply with the bylaws um you guys could if you guys want to go the other way when you don't have a contested vote you can you guys have always typically done it where i haven't seen a contested vote before where you've done it by roll call publicly um but mr giuliana is going to have to publicly state who got the the majority votes so your biologists do say that you can have a vote to suspend your bylaw uh and conduct it under robert's rules of order because your bylaws also state that you do file robert's rules of order so typically what we've done is filed rules of order which is just a nomination in the roll call vote but in this instance um you guys would have to have a motion to suspend the bylaws if you're not going to do it this way bernie um i think barbara reese may be trying to join the meeting late have you received um a call from her or i don't have anyone uh waiting to come in i know doom is sometimes a little touchy um and so what i suggest individuals is that they just keep trying foreign okay so um please advice as to what we are going to be doing based on your bylaw what you're going to be doing is bernie suggested each individual board member will have to use the chat feature the only way you could do it is via email to bernie individually i don't know if people have the ability to have separate computers and do that i would rather not do an email map because um email service um might be impacted so oh okay yeah because your email took a long time to come through so if people go down to the bottom of the screen in the middle it'll say share screen and to the right to that there's a box that says more you click on more and there's a chat feature hurry there's a chat feature click on chat click on chat and what you'll see is it there'll be a chat a chat will come up it says two it says everyone do not click on everyone if you click on the everyone button you'll see there's a list of people all of you will be listed you want to just click on bernie juliana's name and then you can type your message and you would either write mark or lori and then you'd hit send the moment you type it it gets so i'll do a test let me do bernie tell me if you get this i'll do test guys with all due respect i have no idea how to do this come on okay mark do you see the chat button on the bottom or do you want me to call you i'm sorry i can't hear you marketing right now okay so there's a chat button on are you on the laptop okay so if you hit the chat and you look over and you look over to the right you will see on the bottom it says to everyone click on that click on that and it will be there'll be a list of people's drop down menu well i got a problem because it just went out on me yeah you can you know how do i get back to the club how do i get back to the conference down here i don't see it the chat win the chat one second all right my daughter's helping me by the way i know mark i know and this is your first meeting don't worry many of us have our kids as our tech supporters so uh that's in many households all right so i got bernie right now i just want me to type gotcha you type your name type the name and hit and hit enter it's a first meeting and this is a hard thing to do anything just finally it doesn't say oh enter i'm sorry yeah just hit the enter on this i did it okay so so everyone should do that and send it to bernie juliana bernie will then tell you the votes did bernie did you receive my vote i've got a bunch of them coming in now so okay bear with me please absolutely thank you so bernie you shouldn't announce anything until you have there's eight there should be eight votes uh members of the public uh this is not for you to vote so please refrain from texting me mark angelo are you good i'm just validating i just want to validate before i finalize but i have um i do have eight votes and i'm just going to double check so just bear with me please absolutely i apologize for my incompetence in this no no incompetence it's your first meeting and most of us couldn't figure it out i had someone pointing behind my back where it was also you're doing fine thank you vicky okay okay folks i have a tally and i'm going to read the vote uh board member by board member and who they're no bernie you don't read a board by a board member you just say there are five if you read the bylaw you count the ballots should be tallied by a board secretary and the person with the majority vote of the members of the president constantine shall be elected so you have eight votes i do you have to determine which one of the two nominees have the majority votes if one of them has five you will announce that or you know let's say i'm one of the nominees matthew kobe got six votes he he's got the majority of the vote of the quorum president and therefore that matthew cody is nominated as vice president that's how you'll handle it i do have a majority vote the majority vote of five to three is uh in favor of laurie lacks uh matt i do believe that um also does have a right to know how the board voted uh under robert's rules right your bylaws don't say that yeah there's no there's no preclusion for you saying who voted for who in your bylaws so you can say who voted i'm going to uh announce uh just going down the list um in favor of uh laurie lacks we have mrs becker mrs chu mrs gloss mr hong and mrs lax in favor of mr sismore we have mr carangelo mr sismar and mr winston i want to um congratulate lori lax and i want to commend mark sismar for always wanting to step up to the plate and be a vital part of this board and leadership and commend jeff for nominating him and again congratulations lori i look forward to working with you this year as we will all work together before we go on to the rest of the agenda i also wanted to welcome mark crangelo to our board welcome mark we broke you in tonight with technology now if somebody could tell me how to get rid of the chat feature from my screen i'd appreciate it you go and the chat feature um if you have the chat feature up in the upper where it says chat at the very top yep over to just to the left of it there's a little carrot going down close i got it hit close okay if anybody else needed to know how that worked there you go um i also would be remiss if i did not say something about todd simmons todd simmons is not with the board this year todd was on the board for 15 years he gave a lot of himself to this district the students the people who worked for it he was a very very good board member he was very knowledgeable he served on every committee he was president for many years he was vice president for many years and we want to recognize his awesome accomplishments to this district and wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors thank you we now will proceed with the rest of the agenda we are on item nine which is the adoption of new jersey school board member code of ethics what i would like to do before we do a roll pull vote on this we did this last year i would like each of us to go around and say one of we will take turns of course it's by zoom so um i can't point to people or say we're gonna go around in the order of the table but i will go first and then basically we'll go in the order of the roll call the alphabetical order on the agenda if somebody does not wish to read one of the ten just say pass and the next person can go ahead but i think it's important that we read these out loud number one i will uphold and enforce all laws state board rules and regulations and court orders pertaining to schools desired changes should be brought about only through legal and ethical procedures mr carangelo you're next pass okay mrs chu could you read number two please i will make decisions in terms of the educational welfare of children and will seek to develop and maintain public schools which meet the individual needs of all children regardless of their ability race creed sex or social standing mark i'll confine my board action to policy making planning and appraisal and i will help it frame policies and plans only after the board has consulted those who will be affected by them heather ernie could you turn my camera on it's telling me i can't start my own camera okay why don't we come back never mind go ahead tether we have your beautiful voice all right number four yes yes i will carry out my responsibility not to administer the schools but together with my fellow board members to see that they are well run leewoo please five i will recognize that authority risked with the board of education and will make no personal promise nor take any private action which may compromise the board 6 laurie i refuse to surrender my independent judgment to special interests next would be barbara so um jeff please number seven i'm gonna pass i'm not able to actually bring this document up right now on on my system so i'm gonna have to pass okay i will hold confidential all matters pertaining to the schools which if disclosed would needlessly injure individuals or the schools but in all other matters i will provide accurate information and in concert with my fellow board members interpret to the staff the aspirations of the community for its schools lori would you please read number eight i will vote to appoint the best qualified personnel available after consideration of the recommendation of the chief administrative officer number nine i will support and protect school personnel and proper performance of their duties and lori will you please finish with number ten administrative officers sorry i'm reading from one screen i will read i would refer all complaints to the chief administrative officer i will act on such complaints at public meetings only after fire an administrative solution can i please have a motion for this code of ethics moved by laurie second by leewoo any discussion this is a roll call vote with the secretary please call the roll mr angelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes mrs lax yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries i'd like to combine items 10 through 15 on the reorganization agenda can i please have a motion for that second by mark the new mark is clear any discussion seeing none will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr sismar yes mrs guass yes mr hong yes mrs lex yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries i understand now we're up to a board member prohibited act in school ethics training by matt matt's something we all look forward to every year i'm sure i'm sure you do um so you you the board just read the code of ethics so my i have a you'll see right here this is a powerpoint presentation that uh emailed to all of you so that you guys have this at your fingertips but let me just start out by saying that the code of ethics which you just read mandate how you operate schools and schools are a different unique form of government as compared to say the municipality and if you noticed when you were reading through the code of ethics it talks about that you work as a board you don't take action without board authority you work through the school administrator it's your job to make sure that the schools are well run you do not run the schools that's why you hire chief school administrator dr valesky you set policy and you make sure that dr volesky follows that policy and i've used different analogies in the past basically you you guys are the coaches on the sidelines you're setting the plays you're setting the policies and then you're giving it to your quarterback dr valesky and saying go out and make these plays and you can call in on audible but at the end of the day it's dr velesky who makes the day-to-day decisions and if you remember one of the one of the code of ethics that you just read says that you will vote on the best qualified personnel based on the recommendation of the chief school administrator so dr valesti make the recommendations on who to hire and then you vote on them the reason that the law is designed this way is because many board members have family members i.e their children enrolled in the schools so you guys have awesome responsibilities you set by far the biggest budget in the town you are educating the kids the town you set the policy for the entire district to operate and for all personnel including the chief school administrator to follow you establish what is the curriculum you implement all the different laws and regulations the state of new jersey sets forth to be followed but the day-to-day operations of the district lie with the chief school administrator and the other uh personnel that you have the assistant um superintendents uh bernardo giuliano as your business administrator etc now the there's a body in in new jersey through the department of education it's called the school ethics commission and the school ethics commission oversees and governs um the school ethics act and they do two things they issue advisory opinions or they render decisions and they render decisions if a board member is accused of unethical conduct so bernie can you go to the next slide please yes sir and the school ethics act it mandates that members of the board of education avoid conduct which violates their public trust or with which creates a justifiable impression that the public trust is being violated it identifies prohibited acts that would be conflicts of interests and it includes the code of ethics of school boards members which you just read aloud and adopted by a roll call vote could go to the next slide okay so no school and i'm going to just summarize these and give you quick examples no school official or member of his immediate family shall have an interest in a business organization or engage in any business transaction or professional activity which is in substantial conflict with the proper discharge of his or her duties in the public interest so the example here would be uh you you could have a matthew kobe has a law firm i couldn't be a board member and be the the lawyer serving the law firm that would be a conflict because i have a financial interest in my business organization so the most important thing is if you're involved in any businesses you work for a business that's doing business with the board of education you have to recuse and cannot vote on it and you cannot attempt to have the board hire your employer or do business with your employer that's what this stands for next one please no school officials shall use or attempt to use his it says his but it should be his or her official position to secure unwarranted privileges advantages or employment for himself members of his immediate family or others so as a board member you're not you can't use your position to get unwarranted privileges for yourself or your family that doesn't it's not limited to employment it's also limited to special treatment for your children special dispensation in terms of grades for your kids you're you're here as a role as a board member and you have to really separate yourself from your family um and not do take anything that would be would be an attempt to use your position as a board member to gain an advantage for your family or yourself next please no school school official shall act in his official capacity any matter where he a member of his immediate family or biggest business organization in which he has an interest or has a direct or indirect financial involvement that might reasonably be expected to impair his objectivity or independence um so to summarize this this again is saying you cannot act in your official capacity if it involves you or a member of your family or a business organization in which you have an interest so you can't take a vote on um you know your your spouse has a business uh that has applied to do work for the district you could not vote on that that would be a violation of this and the at the end of the day what i will tell you is as we go through these every one of these there's case law on this from the school ethics commission so what i advise board members is if you ever have a question whoever have a concern there's nothing that's urgent that you need to take an action on if you're worried about it recuse yourself don't vote on it but generally if you have a question before a meeting because you know what's on the agenda talk to dr valesky talk to bernie giuliano and they can reach out to me and i can give you guidance on if it's a matter that you need to recuse yourself from rather than vote the one thing that the school ethics commission has found over and over and over again it's those board members who have the foresight to ask the question if they ask a question and i give you wrong advice you're going to get a pass the school ethics commission said you took the advice of legal counsel and you voted on a matter even though you shouldn't have um but generally speaking there's case law out there so we can give you guidance on it the other thing that the school ethics commission does if you remember at the beginning one of the first slides it says they render decisions if somebody files an ethics complaint but they also give advisory opinions they will not give an advisory opinion on something that you've already voted upon but if you have a situation that's coming up that you think might be unethical or might create an ethical conflict we can seek a advisory opinion from the school ethics commission and in writing they'll tell you whether or not you can vote and a number of years ago we had a board member who who officiated games uh as a referee through the njsia and this board member asked a very interesting question that there was no case law and what was that question the question was i never officiate games in which east brunswick participates however i've been asked to officiate eight state tournaments and playoffs in which east brunswick might qualify is out of conflict we wrote to the school ethics commission the school ethics commission rented a ruling that no it's not a conflict you can officiate uh those games because that's at a state level and you're not you normally preclude yourself from it but if the east brunswick girls soccer team makes it to the state finals and you're one of the officiators there you can participate so that's an example go on bernie no school officials shall undertake any employment or service whether comp see or not which might reasonably be expected to prejudice his independence of judgment in the exercises of his official duties again what this is suggesting is that you can't take any type of action employment or service that could uh be expected to prejudice your independence of judgment this one comes up often there's questions of whether or not a board member can simultaneously serve as a member of a pta or an education foundation i've actually written and gotten advisory opinions that a board member can serve serve on a pta or the um an educational foundation uh without violating this but what the school ethics is ruled is that if something comes forward from the pta or the um the educational foundation in which the board member is undertaking that service he or she has to recuse themselves from any voting organization so again if you want to get involved in some type of service or employment before you embark on it if you think there could be a problem please talk to dr valeski or mr giuliano and then i can write for an ethics advisor opinion so that you can avoid any type of ethics violation next this one says no school official or member of his immediate family or business organization in which you had an interest shall solicit accept a gift favor loan political contribution promise of future employment basically if you expect that it's going to influence you to vote in the discharge of your official duties simply put this is the quid pro quo prohibited act somebody can't say hey i'll make sure i hire you if you get my my spouse a job in the east brunswick district that would be a violation you can it does say you can accept political contributions but there can't be any promise or a favor conferred on the person making a political contribution to you again an example i'll give you a political contribution if you hire my child to be a teacher in a district that would be a violation of this provision and frankly that would be a violation of criminal law so you can't if anyone ever approaches you and asks you to do something in exchange for something the best answer is thank you i'm not interested next please so this is no school official shall use or allow to be used his public officer employment or any information not generally available to the members of the public which you receive or acquire in the course of and by reason of your office or employment for securing financial gain or helping members of immediate family now if you recall in the code of ethics that you read aloud one of the most important items for board members to remember is that almost every meeting we go into closed executive session in closed executive session there are certain items that you can talk about so for example contract negotiations with the union the acquisition of potential property but the one thing that you talk about almost every meeting is something involving personnel or students and those are confidential highly privileged communications that can't be revealed to anybody ever and so under both state and federal law you're mandated to protect the privacy rights of students and personnel and this is one of the prohibited acts where board members get in trouble when they disclose private information especially if it's done to assist any business organization etc an example of this would be um the board is looking to acquire a piece of property and you go out and you tell your realtor friend about it and somebody uh starts a bidding war uh to help you know secure an advantage for a friend or a family member so this is very important that when you when you have access to confidential information which you do often you've got to protect that uh with the strictest of of um just protect it outright next please no school official or business organization in which you have an interest shall represent any person or party other than the school board or school district in connection with any cause preceding application or other matter pending so basically uh what what this law says is that you can't you have one master and that's the school board you can't uh be involved in a litigation that's against the school board upon which you're a trustee and a member and you can't take any action that would in any way jeopardize the district that you represent what it says is this provision shall not be deemed to prohibit representation within the context of official labor union or similar representational responsibilities so you can be a member of a union but we'll get into later on what what you can't do in terms of votes if you are a member of a statewide union but here you can't be adverse to the school district um and the biggest area where this comes up is where board members get involved in litigation against the school district there's one exception to this and and we will talk about that briefly which is you have the right to represent your own family in litigation against the school district and what does that really mean it means that if you have a child who has an iep and you need to go through due process or go through mediation to secure the rights of your child uh so that they get a free and appropriate education that is not a prohibited act and board members can advocate for their their their family in that instance next please so this is a general says no school official shall be deemed in conflict with these provisions if by reason of his participation any matter required to be voted upon no material or monetary gain accrues to him as a member of any business professional occupation or group to any greater extent than any gain could be expected of any other business or member so for example this would be uh you have a son and your son plays on the east brunswick's football team and there's a whole group of of young men and or women or that are playing on the east brunswick football team and the board votes to buy new helmets and new shoulder pads you're permitted to vote on that because your son or daughter who's playing on this team is not gaining an unreasonably expected advantage greater to any extent than any other kids where you would have a problem in this is let's hypothetically say that your daughter was a world renowned oboe player but there's no other oboe players in east brunswick an east brunswick orchestra doesn't have an oboe and you push to get them to buy expensive oboe and you vote on it and the only person who's going to use that elbow is your daughter that would be a violation of this act next please so no elected member shall be prohibited from making an inquiry for information on behalf of a constituent if no fee reward or other thing is promised and so basically you're an elected official people will come up to you they'll ask you questions uh for information you're you're permitted to get it what we suggest though is that whenever somebody asks you something what you want to do is notify dr volesky of it and generally dr valesky will respond back um to the to the inquiry but if somebody asks you about um you know is east brunswick going to have a um string quartet concert coming up you're permitted to say yes i'm aware that they are i don't know i'll find out for you i'll talk to dr valesky and get back to you so as long as nobody's making a you know a promise or seeking some type of favor uh from you you can inform your elected your citizenry that you're representing if they make an inquiry to you as a board member next so this is the one i talked about before nothing shall prohibit any school official or member of his immediate family from representing himself or themselves in negotiations or proceedings concerning his or their own interest so this is the case where i was talking about if you had a child who had an iep you have the absolute right to represent yourself and your family before this board next please this one's not applicable to you this is members of the school board so you can you can skip that so right now we're going to be finished going through the slides because the next slides are the the code of ethics the one thing that i wanted to alert you to um that the the biggest area that i have seen with uh ethics and ethics inquiries are if you have a family member who is a teacher in another district or if you're a teacher in another district there's many many rules about your participation in negotiations and whether or not you can vote on a contract as you're aware mr giuliano has sent out a questionnaire to you over uh i guess email bernie not yet the board hasn't received it yet they'll receive it after this meeting i have to see so if you remember in the last several years we gave it to you in paper copy free to fill out but given the virtual world that we're living in we're going to get it to you via email and we'd ask that you fill it out what we do is we go through and analyze it for you to make sure that you have no conflicts so that you can vote on any of the collective negotiation agreements and or participate in the collective negotiations process and or participate in grievances etc um the the one area and i can tell you i know that none of you guys have any family members that work for the district but the ultimate preclusion is if for example say you're a board member and your spouse is a teacher of the district you would be precluded from participating in negotiations and or and voting on the actual final collective negotiation agreement you'd also be precluded dealing with any type of grievances etc so again we try to be proactive that's why we have you felt these questionnaires and let me just summarize and finish up by saying there's nothing that is urgent that needs immediate action if you have any questions or concerns we can give you guidance and we'll put our guidance in writing to you so that you can rely upon it when you're making a vote coming up at a future meeting the one thing i can't do and the school ethics commission won't do is they won't correct something after you vote on it so it's always better to read the agenda and if you have a concern or worry please make sure that you get re reach out to me so that i can provide you guidance so you don't violate the school ethics act and that's the training for this evening bernie because we're not going to go through the rest of it since we're already ready thank you very much i do remember that last year you did caution us about several things about the use of social media in regard to ethics if you wouldn't mind yeah absolutely very so the use of social media um there's two laws that govern boards of ed generally there's the open public meeting act which we're at right now we're having an open public meeting for the public to witness the the business of the board uh to make public comments etc and another another law that uh impacts sports greatly is called the open public records act oprah and so all communications documents etc unless they're a privileged document are public records and so what i tell board members is it's imperative that you only use your official east brunswick email address for board business you do never want to use your business email address for board business because if an open request comes in and they want all emails saved from vicki becker and she's been conducting board business on both her east brunswick account and on her business account she'll have to produce those business emails and i can tell you that your employer will not probably be very happy with that no i will be unemployed yeah i actually had a case a number of years ago where somebody was at a major bank and they were using their bank email uh for board business and the bank ended up terminating the employee for doing that it was a violation what about what about texting so texting is also a public record so if you are texting or emailing things uh make sure that what you're writing you're comfortable with because if somebody gets a hold of it which they're entitled to the public records act it's a public record so my suggestion is is that when you text or email you should be professional it should be appropriate and you should only be using um and you have to maintain it i don't think that texting is really appropriate other than if somebody says i'm going to be late to a meeting and they text you that's one thing information official should be done on the east brunswick eb net email and the reason being is that when an oprah request comes in it goes to your business records custodian that's mr juliana mr giuliana does not have access to your cell phones he doesn't have access to your text he has access to the email systems and he can comply with the oprah request but if you're conducting business via text and somebody asks for your text guess what you have to produce them and i've been in many many oprah cases where they have asked for board members to produce texts related to it and the records custodian has to go and have you produce your texts not a very very positive thing the other very important thing if you remember i said there's two laws that govern boards of education the open public records there's many laws but the open public records and the open public meeting act one thing that is absolutely imperative is you as a board have incredible power when you come together as a board but you can only come together as board at an open public meeting and the law mandates that open public meeting is published with at least 48 hours advanced notice that the public can come watch participate speak and you can only conduct business at one of those meetings where boards and elected officials get themselves in trouble is they start emailing one another in group chats via email well there's a nine you have a nine member board if five or more members of a board are engaged in email communication via email you're having a public meeting in violation of the public meeting act and the individual who handles violations of open public meeting act is this uh uh kind of powerful female down in new brunswick it's called the middlesex county prosecutor so you don't want to do that so it's imperative that when you're emailing do not use group emails email each other individually or if there's a need to email everybody my strong suggestion is you use blind copy you if you have to send out an email to the whole board saying you know we have to cancel the meeting because of a snowstorm you would blind copy just so that people don't accidentally start engaging in an email uh communication that could be deemed a violation of the open public meeting act matt one more thing about social media about a platform like facebook or instagram we are entitled as individual citizens residents people to have facebook pages or instagram pages um where where is that line where we have to separate being a board member from a private citizen on social media so you you you everyone has uh the right to use social media that's the way you communicate that's the way you get you're permitted to do that absolutely the one thing that you can't do as a board member is you can't speak on behalf of the board in your role so if you're on social media and you're talking the school ethics act has ruled that you have the right to use it but you have to say that this is my opinion not that of the boards i'm not speaking on behalf of the board now this used to come up a lot like letters to the editor in the newspaper that's kind of gone by the wayside because no one uses letters to the end of the newspaper it's now more on social media so if you're taking a position let's hypothetically say you're taking a position on the candidate for mayor in your town you're permitted to do that there's nothing illegal about it but you have to say that you're speaking on your own behalf not on behalf of of the east brunswick board of education the one thing that's very very very important is when you're using social media and we've been involved in litigation in this on behalf of different elected officials when you use social media whether it's facebook or twitter and i'm not a social media guru but let's use facebook for example once you start using social media and you're talking about items that could be related to the board etc you've created a public forum and so the one thing that you actually cannot do once you've done that is to start blocking people because once you've blocked people you've created a public forum and if you've blocked people you are now exposed to individual liability for violating their first amendment right of free speech so it's really better frankly that the district use one facebook one twitter you have an official thing and the board communicates with dr valesky and the board and dr velesky put out the message the board wants on the board's official uh schools twitter facebook social media platforms if you want to use twitter social media etc for your own uh things you're free to do that that's not a problem but just be very cautious you're doing it on your own behalf you're not doing on behalf of the board and be very mindful that once you're doing it you're creating a public forum and you're elected official if you start blocking it you're gonna have a problem um this i mean as you know it occurred it occurred with president trump he was using his i think facebook or twitter account when he was running for office and then when he came into office he continued using it and started blocking people that was ruled you can't do it you created a public forum it's open you're not allowed to block people so just be mindful of that and if you have questions or concerns again talk to dr valesti talk to uh mr giuliana they'll get in touch with me and i'm glad to give you guidance on that so that you don't step into a first amendment lawsuit unwittingly thank you so much matt does anybody else have a question for matt mark mark mark one yes thank you matt if there's a possible ethics violation who's responsible to notify the school ethics commission so uh the school ethics commission if there's an ethics violation um the school ethics commission can be notified by an individual board member a member of the public um a school ethics a school administrator or a a school teacher could file these charges i've been involved in ethics charges where a school teacher filed it against the board member i've been involved in ethics charges where the whole board votes to have the board president file ethics charges on behalf of a board member and i've been involved in cases where one board member versus another board member on filed ethics charges i've also been involved in cases where members of the public have filed ethics charges against board members um so it they'll the the bottom line is an individual has to file the ethics charges and sign the certification when they file ethics commission the one thing that's important for you guys is if ethics charges are filed against board members board members under new jersey state law have a right to be indemnified for your role as a board member so if a citizen files i just had a citizen recently file ethics charges against one of my board members immediately notify the insurance carrier and the insurance carrier provides coverage for the defense of those ethics charges ethics charges don't don't have damages like a typical lawsuit there's findings and the school ethics commission can dismiss the charge or they can send it for a hearing before an administrative law judge and ultimately the penalties are they can reprimand you center you suspend you or remove you from a board of education in my 26 years i've only had two board members removed from boards of education for their conduct one of them was not so long ago uh and it involved with the school the to give you an example the board member had a social media blog site and was blogging about employees the union uh all kinds of stuff and saying i'm doing it under the first amendment i can do it the nja hired an attorney and the attorney had represented an individual that was being blocked about and filed ethics charges that board member was removed from office um and the other one that i was involved in a number of years ago which the board itself filed ethics charges against the individual board member it was a board member who was releasing confidential information very very sensitive information dealing with an employee who was going through a very serious medical condition and thought it was appropriate to talk about it on at the time was an nj.com blog and he identified himself on the blog he was removed from the board because he violated the one of the most sacrosanct rules is you can't disclose confidential information and one more question on the uh there was a case at asbury park in 2004 you gave us a bunch of cases last time and the board member was removed for directing a staff member to remove a recommendation that was on the agenda that hospital board member asked his students no i couldn't understand anything you were saying you were talking about asbury i don't have the asbury park if it doesn't work i'll try it another time yeah you can i mean you can so basically what what happens is um i i don't know the name of that the facts in that case specifically i'm glad to take a look at it if you want to uh you know send dr valesky an email i can take a look at the case but the school ethics commission has all their cases online if you go to the ethics commission there's a whole series of cases year after year after year um and we have a database at my firm i can research case for you but i don't know that case specifically so i couldn't answer a question for you yeah if we had i'll ask a question later it was in the training we had last year you gave us the booklet of examples yeah from strauss yes and it dealt with removing stuff from the agenda uh yeah i i just don't know that case this year i did it this way [Music] all right mark i the reason i did it this way without doing it like the last couple of cases was i try to make this a little bit more user friendly in this virtual environment with a powerpoint matt quick question for you thank you very much matt can you hear me yeah i hear you jeff okay good just a real quick question uh when we were talking about social media in the in my opinion uh clause and not that of uh of the district if approached on a specific topic that has come up in in session where there was a vote made and an individual asks you to discuss my vote and my reasoning am i in violation of anything um so the the action is already taken so let's hypothetically say you there's a big bond uh you're going to re you're going to re-uh do the fields and you voted no board members wanted you members of the the public were asking well why did you vote no mr winston by not redoing the field well i think that if somebody at the grocery store asks you why did you vote no and you could say i didn't think it was fiscally responsible i don't think that there's any preclusion from you uh on social media saying the same thing because the vote's already taken place so i can support my position should it arise yeah if somebody asks you that question you could you could answer that question you have the right and as yeah thank you now the one thing jeff what i'd say is let's hypothetically say the board voted um you know five four to vote and you were in the minority on something you wouldn't go out and say the board's a bunch of you know idiots for voting that way they shouldn't have voted that way that would not be appropriate but if somebody asks you the question why would you vote no on redoing the fields mr winston you say i didn't think it was fiscally a prudent given these difficult times etc you would have the right to justify why you voted just like you would at a public meeting absolutely okay i appreciate that thank you man okay anybody else have any questions bernie do you see anybody i see no hands raising awesome okay thank you again matt greatly appreciated good questions board members okay now we're on to our regular agenda dr valesky can we please start with the superintendent's report thank you president becker congratulations to our new and returning board members as well as the new board leadership i would like to wish everyone a happy new year or maybe i should just wish everyone a new year with my sincerest hope that it is happy and our greatest hope that we can look back on 2021 and remember it as our recovery from the pandemic and a full return to in-school operations as i stated my message to the eb community earlier today i was astonished to watch the events at our nation's capital unfold yesterday on live television i get to look at these situations through the lens of a parent and as a superintendent and i watch very closely how my son reacts to events like yesterday this very unique and isolated environment we find ourselves in amplifies my responsibility and our collective responsibility as a school district to help our students process what they are witnessing on the national scene in addition to dealing with a worldwide pandemic let me simply restate what i messaged earlier our teachers are committed to creating safe spaces for the discussion of these recent and unsettling topics especially as events will likely continue to unfold over the coming weeks above all we want our students to feel safe and know they are supported by the entire east brunswick public schools community as we remain physically disconnected we have provided a variety of high quality resources for parents and guardians to help guide discussions at home they are located on the homepage of our website for your convenience and accessibility as always please contact your schools or my office directly if you need assistance in connecting with any of the vast resources within east brunswick public schools that are available to our students and their families the east brunswick high school annual gift giving drive along with the student council class council drive through toy drive that took place on saturday december 19th was a great success it was estimated that about two thousand toys and two thousand dollars in gift cards were collected in addition to gifts provided to over 25 needy families in the area 35 to 40 bags of gifts and clothing went to the um i was on a zona family shelter in edison 10 gift bags went to a group home in edison and 10 bags of coats hat gloves went to the elijah's promise ten families in east brunswick were also the recipients of gift cards thank you to the students advisors and high school staff for their time efforts and generosity in making this event a tremendous success the learning model forms are now available on parent access for students in the elementary schools as well for students in hammershould middle school if you do not submit a new form for your child they will automatically continue in the remote learning model the learning model forms for elementary and hammersmith middle school students only will close tomorrow january 8th at 3 pm learning model forms for students in churchill junior high school in the east brunswick high school will be available through parent access beginning january 19th later tonight i will have a discussion with the board of education about our preliminary plan to return to hybrid instruction even after tonight the volume and frequency of covet infections will be a major factor in my recommendations on when we finalize our return to hybrid instruction and if we need to adjust any return dates because of newly discovered safety concerns as i committed in tuesday's message tomorrow's message at 3 30 p.m we'll provide updates for the community based on information we have at that time thank you thank you dr valeski and now we have a presentation on block scheduling proposal dr baleski would you like to introduce us please yes ma'am so the um we had previously communicated with the board of education about a proposal for block scheduling dr bolli and your team have put together a video that we share with the board members we'd like to share with the community over the last two years members of the administrative team have been investigating block scheduling as an option for scheduling for our students and obviously during the pandemic as we closed our schools went to full remote back in march of 2020 block scheduling was really the the option we had to consider for delivery of instruction of our students at home as we begin to look at our return to instruction and what the vision of east brunswick public schools will look like post-pandemic we believe there are a lot of merits and considering a block scheduling modified block scheduling format so i'm going to let dr bully lead the presentation discussion i do want to clarify that we have invested a variety of stakeholders in the accumulation of data for this presentation uh and one important piece of this is this would involve negotiations with the east brunswick education association uh the current contract does not have provisions for the execution of block scheduling we currently are within you know the parameters of of negotiations but this would be a consideration i just want to make that clear so dr bully do you want to go ahead and begin the presentation and include any members of your team in the administrative team the broader administrative team to help support that certainly thank you dr voliski good evening everyone i'm joyce foley assistant superintendent of academics and joining us this evening is nicole tibbetts director of curriculum and student achievement trudy atkins director of professional learning evaluation and assessment michael vanilla principal of east brunswick high school and matthew hannis our new principal of churchill junior high school thank you for allowing us the time this evening to share our proposal to shift to block scheduling at churchill junior high school and east brunswick high school in september we believe this schedule will help us to meet the social emotional and academic needs of all of our students this schedule shift will provide only four longer instructional periods daily allowing for more instructional time leading to more time for students to apply the skills that they just learned and more time for teachers to provide individualized attention and support this schedule will result in a decrease in the daily workload for our students this schedule will provide a standalone homeroom period offering time during the school day for classroom community building social emotional learning activities and so forth and with this schedule also comes an extended mid-day lunch period allowing students to decompress see their counselor or chat with friends so i'd like to show a brief video overview and then be happy to answer any questions in an effort to maximize instructional time for students block scheduling is being recommended for churchill junior high school and east brunswick high school for september 2021 this video will provide an overview of the block scheduling proposal this visual depicts the previous nine period day schedule last used in march of 2020 prior to the 19 break and the proposed new block schedule as you can see fewer classes in a day would help to balance the workload for students and teachers personalize the school environment provide extended learning time increase the amount of time students are engaged in their learning provide opportunities for social and emotional learning over the school year the total number of instructional hours will continue to exceed the minimum number of hours per course required by the new jersey department of education reorganizing instructional periods into longer blocks ensures that our students are still receiving the in-depth instruction needed to meet or exceed the new jersey student learning standards while maximizing opportunities for social emotional learning and reducing student stress there are many benefits of block scheduling for a student's social and emotional well-being this scheduling model reduces stress while still offering a broad and rigorous curriculum provides a daily standalone homeroom period for community building and social emotional learning fewer class changes will improve school climate discipline and cleanliness because teachers will see fewer students each day they will get to know each student better and be able to offer more individualized support provides for a longer student lunch period students will have fewer classes quizzes tests and homework on any one day there are many benefits to teaching and learning with block scheduling this scheduling model provides more time to teach coach assess and reteach with less wasted time transitioning fewer startups and endings result in more usable instructional time encourages teaching in depth and promotes higher level thinking skills allows students and staff the ability to focus on only four courses per day longer class periods encourage teaching with a variety of instructional models the 82-minute period would be structured in a way to provide direct instruction of the day's topic ample time for students to use that knowledge in meaningful ways and an opportunity for the teacher to assess which students are understanding the material and who may need additional support during the bulk of the class period students will be engaged in various ways with some examples listed here this time allows the students to apply the skills or strategies just learned into context successful implementation will require ongoing support and professional learning opportunities for staff some of the initial steps may include revisions to curriculum pacing guides and teacher planning to ensure the additional time is utilized effectively thank you for your time and consideration of this proposal we look forward to discussing this topic with you further thank you mr juliana question any board members have any question leewoo yes uh thank you very much dr podi and your team but i do have several questions for you so um but not every one of my maybe that's my concern so number one so so you have uh four class basically for each day for a b class for two days you have eight class so normally or at this moment we have nine periods for each day which means we have the options to teach nine different subjects so if we switch a b uh scheduling so i don't know if if we can provide student enough options for their choose or selectives this is number one number two so we have the uh blog scheduling abs format how can you handle the year-long class or the ap class they need longer time and number three so if a student is sick out for one day or few days and the makeup effort will be huge how can you or the teacher can make up the the absent uh student for for his missed class and the last one is so now we have almost 82 minutes for each class so that means this is will cover a lot of material so i i don't know if every student in one class can kept the paste and some students maybe can you know uh can handle the material easily but some students they may not care about the pigs and for those students if they cannot uh keep up with this space they will have uh emotional stress how can you help those students so this is that's my concern or questions thank you good questions so um currently we do have um as you said the nine periods and one being lunch so we wouldn't be reducing any instructional periods as far as uh if a student was absent the teachers are still implementing the canvas learning management system um they could still if they're well enough at home follow along in the instructional model or log in we feel that the instruct the extended period will allow the teachers the time to formatively assess student understanding of the content and the time to provide that individualized feedback and attention to small groups of students mike or matt or nicole anything to add to that um thank you dr polly i would just add as far as the pace goes that um currently in a 42-minute class the pace is very very fast and so we actually think one of the benefits of this is that it does allow more time for the pace to be more appropriate for students so that they have a little bit more time to comprehend and analyze and practice and get support from a teacher before they have to quickly even run to their next class so we actually think the change in pace is a benefit in a block schedule or maybe actually use different wording the content so i don't know this 82 millions class will cost the same amount of content of material as the 42 millions class so if we give students too much material in in one period or what or one block so some student may not get it and they will accumulate his or her frustration and will accumulate his or her emotional stress that is my concern so generally right now um because the classes are 42 minutes what happens is the teacher you know introduces the lesson has a small activity to get the students up and running and one day we'll really do a lot of the direct teaching and because the class is wrapping up so quickly they can't really move to the application and give a lot of practice within the same day so you're talking about for those students they have to be able to retain what the teacher taught them the day before with limited practice kind of live right then when the teacher is working with them um and so we really actually you know again same thing and and i'm sure that dr vanilla and mr hanus can add to this as well we actually think providing the time to apply immediately while the teacher is still right there and you haven't now done eight other classes since you were taught that skill uh is is a bonus and a benefit to this model yeah bill build it on uh what ms tibbett said what uh the other part about it is to make those synthesis connections if you saw in the presentation that dr boley had to be able to provide and apply uh to higher higher level thinking in that longer period is appropriate and the feedback loop is so critical uh when you have a longer period that teacher is going to be able to make that personalized learning gonna be able to flex group those kids instruction and provide that focus and support in the areas that are needed and i do think in the long run the students will benefit from that feedback loop as well as that personalized learning mr hong to speak to that example um recently i was in an 8th grade english classroom the english teacher started the lesson and and we're using not quite an 80-minute period in the current situation we're in but started the period by allowing students to review an assessment that the students had recently taken and look at the feedback that the teacher gave the teacher then asked the students to reply to her with examples of the feedback with what they was to ensure that the students were understanding the feedback correctly and then they had a differentiated activity that allowed them to focus on different aspects of the feedback for example it was an english class so one might be one group of students might work on learning how to blend quotes another might learn how to find other supportive evidence in their text and while that's going on the longer period allowed the teacher to get to those individual groups to provide that differentiated instruction and then as dr vanello just said with that feedback loop at the end of the period the synthesis synthesis time the last 15 minutes the teacher came back to regroup with the class and the students completed a google form which then shared an example of what they learned in the lesson to ensure that they were understanding those objectives for the day leewoo do you have any other questions yeah i have one more question absolutely for this uh blog scheduling let's say for for one class just say english class so in the a day a and here monday he'll have monday and wednesday and maybe friday so under our ninth period the uh current format maybe he will have english english class on monday tuesday wednesday every day so how can you evaluate the impact basically this kind of gap between the teaching for the same subject so how can you handle this kind of issues um are you asking that this how is if the student's not seeing the teacher every day if yes that's this is my for the same subject so it's not going to be cheap be part of every day so if every day this will help students remember where or learn where but you have won this gap that's correct so we feel that the the extended learning period will would allow for uh deeper learning and more critical thinking and more application of the skills and strategies that are being taught in the in the class period um and again to reiterate what's been said prior that feedback from the teacher and that personalized individualized attention would be available during the longer extended period um as uh mrs tibbetts said with the the current schedule the periods are so quick and taking attendance and settling everyone down and teaching the lesson and then there's a very short time for any kind of application and and closure anything else to add team uh if i may dr bully so now i'm in the professional development realm but for many years i served as the science supervisor and prior to coming to east brunswick i did teach in the a b block for 19 years my previous district and i taught ap biology i taught honors anatomy and physiology and i taught academic biology in this fashion uh mr hong and it it really does in some aspects it mimics 21st century learning in that children will be going on to college and having class monday wednesday friday tuesday thursday potentially um the the amount of of deep learning that can go on in the 80 minutes versus you know something very quick in the beginning try to get the meat of the lesson in and then try to sort of close very quickly um again i mean my experience is in science but for for any uh hands-on type of classroom or really any classroom that is not hands-on it can become hands-on because you've got that time um to really delve into whatever content you are studying so i've found great success um i have hundreds of facebook friends who are physicians and lawyers and they've done very well coming out of an a b block and if i can add on to that and i know there's a lot of other questions one of the things that's challenging for students right now is to have to think really deeply uh in you know ap bio for 42 minutes and in five minutes now they have to be thinking about math and five you know 42 minutes later they have to be able to apply all of this to english and 42 minutes later they have to move to the next content area you can even think about in your own work when you jump from meeting to meeting to meeting and you don't have a minute to kind of think in between or really you know analyze what it was that you just did at that first meeting it's very easy to almost kind of forget about that first meeting because you're so quick into the next meeting and so the same holds true for our students that allowing them the time during their period to comprehend and synthesize everything that's happening we we strongly believe will increase their ability to retain the instruction during that period and just to build on what ms tibbetts said um you know one of this start this started years ago and there's been a lot of research with a lot of students and staff and ironically it came out of me meeting with with student leaders in a discussion of that nine period day and what it felt like and i literally became a student for a day and i put on my sweatshirt and my jeans and i followed through it i went through that period day and we talked about it and many students said they felt exactly how miss tibbetts said uh eight classes eight homeworks multiple tests or assessments that may take place uh and really came out of us saying is is the eight period day or nine period day that we have right now and 42 minutes optimal and really the students told us that they felt that this longer and then we've also talked to schools across the country and locally um site visits that we had and there was a lot of work that got in with students and staff having these discussions and uh not it's not 100 but there is a strong consensus that moving in in this direction is a benefit for our students and dr vanella you also had feedback from parents correct correct correct and this all started what the initial question was very simple it was is the current nine period day the optimal schedule and the overwhelming was no people all stakeholders felt that the answer was no and more instructional time will be beneficial and really links in with our work that we've done with danielson uh our student-centered learning and our personalized learning so it really fits into what we are doing currently in teaching our children label yeah i'm done okay i saw laurie's hand heather's hand and susanna and jeff so laurie then heather then susanna then jeff laurie had the floor you definitely see the benefits of this and i know some of the things we've talked about um getting some extra time i can tell you as a parent i think it's a lot easier for kids not to have six different tests in a day so um i i'm admittedly a fan i just have one question um when we talk about double periods like your verbal thing or ila things like that how does it affect something like that i mean this is great i'm just curious does that um have any negative impact on a double period going to 82 minutes i mean i guess it's losing technically two minutes is that correct dr vanella you want to speak to the scheduling sure there were that was this is one step we had an 82 minute 83 minute and an 84 minute was was where we're at depending on the way you give it with lunch if you went to the 84 to 30 mike you're frozen can you hear me yeah okay so it as i said before i know what you heard but uh right now this goes with an we're we are right in that spot of an 82 83 or 83 minute as a possibilities with the flexibility and 84 would be an apples to apples across the board with a 30 minute lunch and 83 would give a 34 minute lunch and at 82 would give a 38 minute lunch but so the fact of the matter is that ability to have that would be in apples to apples with your courses the only change and i think we will ask this earlier about ap courses uh there is one spot with our ap sciences where we had double periods uh we would have the ability to move it to a seven and a half credit course where those students could meet twice in the first half of the in the first semester and once in the second semester and that really would benefit our ap students on getting that information front loaded uh to prepare for their ap test and mrs lax if i can just add on to that the um the double period that you're speaking of as far as verbal goes is not a model that is currently used at churchill or the high school that's a hammer shoulder elementary model so there is no impact as far as minutes for any of those types of courses that you might be thinking about mislax what it might do though is in the transition from hammer shoulde to churchill is it would a little bit more closely mimic what the students have with the double period for subjects like ila in terms of the length of time that they would be meeting with their english class at churchill in that transition thank you i believe it was susanna then heather than jeff um thanks i i first want to thank everybody else for all the questions because those questions are really helpful to to gain a more thorough understanding of of this and i have to say when i i watched the video i i was very excited about it because i kind of you look at these small segments of time and the kids running around the hallways um that's a stressful day and um i also like the longer lunch period you know because kids are just so stressed out these days uh and my question had to do with um you know we're not the guinea pigs uh and i think dr vanella and dr atkins both addressed it somewhat and um i just want some more assurance that we're not the guinea pigs um that this is a deeply researched issue uh that you know that we we we speak to those districts that are doing it um you know if you can talk a little bit about if there are any other leading new jersey districts that are doing this and what kind of downsides have they seen i mean certainly i i see a lot of upsides i was i was very excited when i saw it and you know uh lee and laurie had some you know really good questions i just want to make sure we don't have any blind spots that we've missed and take advantage of benchmarking and talk to others that have done it yes so susanna as you know matt is just recently coming from the high school so he's been part of the process for the last couple years in researching this with mike and the and the staff and i know that they've you know reviewed a lot of professional literature as mike said they've looked at national models as well as local models and did site visits um mike or matt if you want to add on to that sure so what we did was in this process is we created a committee our instructor learning committee and we had subgroups and each department uh really worked with that and worked with students so they would come to our committee they would go back to that department they would bring a list of all these questions we would make contact uh we examined uh montgomery west windsor princeton hunter and central westfield and then we also uh researched others across the country uh to see what their schedules were and it really came down to this being the one that fit best for us and i think there was just about every stone was unturned in these discussions uh with student staff as well as uh with our ptsa so i feel very comfortable with what we've done i think we are not the guinea pigs i think we're able to go into this with where we already are at plus what we've learned and i think we will be able to be very successful with the transition okay heather all right i sort of have a eclectic laundry list here um and i would start by saying just in my own personal experience i've been teaching a 90-minute period for years i completely enjoy that myself i know it's like a spoiled thing and it's fantastic i do have concerns about the lack of content or the lack of touching of each class each day though for students um i did want to ask where well i did want to actually ask for if there's been research you'd be looking you've been looking at i would love to read i really really would um but i also wanted to ask if we've considered the needs of our special education students at this level because i know the research says that special education students for retention do need daily contact with the information and i don't know that every other day even for an extended time meets that need um i do have concern about attention span i mean the average adult attention span is like 20 to 40 minutes so it's a it's a lot to keep kids going that long i know the hustle of the change every so you know every 40 something minutes is difficult but also maintaining for that long is also difficult um i do question about ap classes i know i was asking earlier today how many actual oop classes we have thank you for that information but ap classes right now are testing every week and under the current model kids are looking at two contacts with the teacher before every test that's not a lot of content you know when you have questions there's not a lot of time with your teacher i mean there's time but there's not a lot of daily context so you're processing but you may not actually have the instruction available and most ap classes science is excluded but most ap classes do seem to lend themselves more to direct instruction than you know group work and application um in class so that was a concern for me especially with the speed they go trying to prepare for may instead of june um i also just wanted to ask just trying to visualize this how many lunches a day do we have at the high school and how early would lunches have to start in the day to accommodate a 38 minute lunch so heard of the principles so right now heather we have four lunch periods in this model we would go down to three lunch periods uh and it would be very marginal the difference at that would just about be the same time that lunches would be starting and uh the considerations for our special education students with regards to the special needs students ms squats we do have ways to implement for our where we have anchor programs such as our bd ed programs there are ways that you can schedule so that when right now the students currently have an anchor period period 1 and period 12 that we can set the schedule up where they still have an anchor period period one and then on a b day the period five periods so that they if they're if it's a situation where maybe they're starting their day with a class like pathway to careers or something of that nature it can be done so that they receive those on a back-to-back day basis for students in the special needs population as well as our programs special programs that might go out to job sites that they can be kind of scheduled within their own schedule system to work with those programs still on a daily basis yeah heather with their you asked a few things is there anything else yeah there was one question about attention span i think to refer to dr atkins in one of the pieces in dr boley's presentation was the the professional development in working with teachers um to adjust teaching strategies in that 82 minute period or 84 minute period so that it's not just really extending a 42 minute lecture out to 82 minutes but um you know setting the table with a uh introductory activity getting to the application period and then coming back together with the feedback loop at the end of the lesson dr vanilla i have a question for you wait a minute lee wu i'm sorry i'm sorry um we're just trying to go in order after heather jeff was next yeah still and i had this question i'm so sorry so it's part of the last thing to build off of my question okay so dr vanilla you said we will have three lunch period instead of four so that means for each lunch period the surface number will jump up about 30 percent is high school cafeteria as the high school cafeteria have this kind of capacity to serve 30 more students each period yes it does and we've been in in discussions with joe crossfeld in detail throughout this process discussing this i will tell you normally our 11th period lunches are is usually one of the smallest months based on the issues within the nine period day scheduling process where we had a very low number of students with within their less than less than 200 kids were usually in that lunch so you only add those to the new to the other three lunch periods and we would have enough room for each student to sit and eat and it's enough time to be able to serve and feed all students mike you would just balance the lunches right the three lunches that are balanced across the platform yeah this new schedule makes it makes a lot cleaner for this for the scheduling process and chapter back to mrs gloss's question regarding ap and not seeing them every day have you uh mr hannis uh considered that dr atkins in your experience do you have any comments to add to this uh i i can offer uh one experiential from ap biology um there were 54 chapters in the ap biology book that i uh taught from many years ago um so 54 chapters right you think like a chapter test you know every week so what we did was we went to a thematic approach there were 12 laboratories in ap biology at the time it may still be laboratories and and we dove into the material in a thematic approach around each laboratory that was required so taking i mean this will be my job in the professional learning right to help and support the the supervisors academic supervisors in looking at the content and finding ways to go about approaching the content so that you could have an experiential activity in every class so the pacing guides and the manner in which the curriculum is offered would change as i did many years ago by creating a thematic approach to studying ap biology if that's helpful that's helpful i totally see how it can work with ap sciences i'm just struggling to see how it can work with ap history like apush and world history i i don't know how you make that content thematic to get prepared for the exam on time and i really did want to know i'm not trying to be difficult um but i haven't had the opportunity to have anyone actually in the high school to eat lunch when do lunches start now so on on a normal day they would start at 10 34 at the end of fourth period period five will be in the first lunch um and with the block period the period three would be split into the three lunches it would be approximately about the same time 10 10 35 10 38 ish thank you jeff i this might have been answered off of lee woo's uh questions i thought i heard it in there and maybe you didn't respond any impact you know in any way uh of electives elective availability you know will there be enough time throughout the year to experience several subject you know subject matters what's the impact it that that was a big question in our group um and our specialist teachers uh actually had those had those questions and those discussions with teachers from the the other schools that we were in contact with and we did not from what we were told and what we see within the schedule that we have no significant impact that would uh that would hinder students taking those electives or the arts okay all right good i appreciate that thank you you're welcome any other board members have any questions at this time okay most of the questions i had were answered um you all did a great job of asking questions um uh just to sum up uh i think we probably could use some more information on the impact of special education for the block scheduling i know there was a question about asking specifically which other pro high profile high schools are currently using block scheduling the impact of not meeting every day uh not just academically but socially and emotionally i think we could do some more research on uh and the thematic approach for ap classes uh we could probably use to be have fleshed out a bit more and actually the only other question i had is either dr velesky or dr boley will this have any effect on our flex school program in regards to their schedule yes uh mrs tibbetts yeah nicole nothing significant adverse uh no so miss canard who oversees the flex program right now um has been a part of these conversations and has been considering this uh for the flex program um the flex program actually right now is scheduled in a block format so the the students are already doing that quite honestly because of staffing purposes but we found have found a lot of benefit for those students so we think they will fall into this schedule fairly seamlessly dr velesky what is your expectation at this point in terms of next steps for you and the board to develop uh discuss and take consensus what do you what what is your time frame well we want we would like to accelerate the time frame we'd like to get the board's questions answered uh but as i stated earlier uh miss becker the um this would be part of a negotiation with ebea we are currently uh utilizing block scheduling in our current instructional delivery but that's by agreement with ebea for the course of the pandemic so this would require some negotiation with them but i would i definitely as i told the team before we made this presentation and i think dr bully and all the administrators did a great job tonight we want to make sure that the board's questions are answered and that everyone is satisfied that this is something that that we want you to believe as we believe this is something we believe will meet the needs of so many of the students in east brunswick public schools um at in in a variety of spectrums uh and especially in our post-pandemic environment uh we believe this is a model that will help support our students not only in their academic pursuits but in their social and emotional supports as well so um our challenge right now is to get answers for the board if any board members have any questions you can filter them to me or dr boley directly but we want to make sure that we get the answers uh and you know as always if a board member has a question we'll filter the answer back out to the entire board but i would like this to be an organic process that could occur between now and the next board meeting and potentially respond to board members the entire board and get those questions answered before our next meeting thank you mark mark two how does this affect the teachers we've been focusing on the students but you know what is the impact on the teachers are they succeeding with this yeah that's a great question so um principles again if you want to share your experience in working with your staff alongside your staff in the process and and any feedback you're receiving from your teachers in the buildings now i i could with what the feedback that i've been getting is uh the thumbs up with the fact that they feel that they can go into much deeper discussions uh it opens up their pedagogy with a longer period they can do different activities uh they can reach more students so it's been very the feedback to me at the high school has been been rather positive certain elective area teachers in the arts um practical arts technology courses classes like woodshop it allows you to get into into projects more into depth um obviously it would also still require additional support um with looking at pacing guides the use of the 84 minute period um we are fortunate to have the support of instructional coaches who can work with teachers through our profession professional learning models that we use at our department meetings and faculty meetings to provide ongoing support as needed as we get feedback from the staff just like we do from students i've also heard from teachers that having less classes a day and a longer period allows them to build deeper relationships with their students and get to know them better thank you any other board jeff did you have another question yeah real quick real quick take your time with all the uh yeah it's okay uh with all the schools that you have looked at which is a great list um i don't know what what how long they've been doing this but is there any quantifiable data uh using uh assessments uh statewide assessments park whatever uh that would show any type of disparity benefit uh is the you know zero i i mean how has that i'm sure it's been looked at what's the results of that do kids tend to do better in block just quantitatively or qualitatively as well kissing on testing believe i believe dr bullies quantitatively quantitative the numbers the scoring uh jeff you're frozen i'm sorry quantitatively now am i back kind of can you hear me yes we can hear you you're visually frozen okay uh dr vanilla quantitative data quantitative right okay vanilla i'm not sure in any literature if you recall off the top of your head uh any research here or if you want to look into that and share that i i think it'd be it'd be prudent if i went back with specifics the general research showed at least even if not or better performance with it i will tell you the schools that we talked to using park as an indicator would not be a good one because not many of those students in those schools were taking that assessment yeah and and that was a bad example but you get where i'm going with i know it's horrible but at least quantitatively something to say look at these numbers hear where these kids rank these are the schools they end up at whatever something we could use that would show a differential we'll collect an average so we'll also add if there's anything qualitatively because i think how kids feel about the day and their stress level is important oh no and your presentation on that i completely agree with there's nothing i can dispute on that it would be much better but i'm just i'm just wondering from the academic impact going forward you know is it better yeah and i'm not suggesting use that even as a reason to change it up from this i'm just curious on its educational impact on a quantitative basis you know it's a good question and i think susannah had was the one who had asked specifically if they're you know if you could give us examples of other um similar uh an academically similar uh level that are using block scheduling so again i think that um victor you could if you and the team who yes did an excellent job tonight could put together a packet of information based on the questions you've been hearing tonight that will go a long way towards helping us to be able to come up with even better questions next week yes great job team all right dr bull anything else to wrap up no thank you thank you all great presentation tonight thank you that's all thank you okay um we now have the good of the cause to the public members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password provided into the web browser of your computer that you see before you on the screen in order to be recognized use the chat feature select the zoom meeting host then enter and send your name to the host you will be recognized to speak when your name is called individuals will be invited to speak in the order in which we have received your request the board of education recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters or community interest participants will be limited to three minutes each is there anyone wishing to address the board tonight bernie is there anyone in the queue there is no one in the queue okay seeing none i will close the public portion moving on to our regular agenda tonight we have the board of education agenda i'd like to combine items one through seven i'm going to ask for a motion for that but i'd like to know if there's anything anyone would like separated out seeing none can i please have a motion for items one through seven on the board of education gender move by laurie again second by leewoo is there any discussion on any of these items and mark angelo i just want to call your attention to items one and two minutes for november and december seeing no discussion will the secretary please call the roll mr corantello yes sir you want to vote um i believe we have talked about you abstaining on items one and two because they represent minutes of meetings you weren't at right i abstain for items one and two and then for the remainder of the items yes thank you mark thank you so noted this is true yes mr sismar yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes mrs lacks yeah mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries moving on to our community programs agenda we have one item on the agenda tonight can i please have a motion for contract award i'm sorry who was that laurie moved by lily second by chad is there any discussion i'm sorry but some member of the public i think somebody needs to mute themselves there's just a bit of background noise thank you so much okay is there any discussion on this item all those in favor aye aye opposed abstain motion carries moving on to a curriculum and instruction agenda can i like to have a motion to combine items one through five but first i want to know if there's any item anyone would like separated out seeing none i'd like to have a motion to combine items one through five no more mobile second by jack is there any discussion this is a roll call vote will the secretary please call the roll mr angelo mark just mute yourself please yes thank you mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mr squash yes mr hong yes mrs lax mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries moving on to our facilities agenda i'd like to have a motion to combine items one through four i'd like to know if there's any item that anyone would like separated out see none can i please have a motion i'm sorry did somebody say yes oh okay he's moved by mark too do we have a second okay lori second by laurie thank you this is not a roll call vote so all those in favor opposed obscene motion carries moving on to our financial services agenda i'd like to combine items 1 through 19.

do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] bye [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so do [Music] do [Music] so do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Laughter] [Music] i like to call this meaning to order pursuant to the open public meetings act adequate public notice has been given by the secretary of the shem township board of education in the following matter posting written notice on the official bulletin board at the board of education office emailing written notice to the burlington county times and the courier post filing written notice with the municipal clerk of esham township at this time i'm going to read the results of the november election for school board members marianne cappello received 16 818 votes leah ryan received 14 968 votes janice null received 13 474 votes elaine barbara giovanni received 13 459 votes personal choice there was 200 votes so for the three-year terms marianne capela lee ryan and janice null um were the successful candidates who who won position on the board for the one year term we had a one-year unexpired term niece katherine received 563 votes and personal choice was 147 votes so uh anish captain it was this the winner of the one year unexpired term at this time i would ask mr donio to come forward and administer the oath of office to the new board members please good evening everyone uh and a happy new year if i didn't get to say happy new year um my privilege to administer the office to the board members our new board member our returning board members just very briefly i want to say first and foremost thank you to everyone who serves on the board of education it is uh as you know i have an educational practice that spans the state represent numerous boards of education i can tell you it really is a thankless job it really is a thankless job it's a lot of nights it's a lot of meetings a lot of time away from family so i thank you and i thank you for doing it because ultimately what you're doing has real effects for children and that's probably one of the most important roles in society that anyone can play is to make sure that we're doing good things for children so i say thank you also say thank you to everyone who runs it's not easy to put yourself out there not easy to to go through that process and you know it it really is very trying and um i want to thank you again for you know just putting in the effort to to do so i don't think our board members hear that enough so on behalf of the community i don't happen to live here i have a lot of people who work for me who live here and i can tell you that they say that you do a great job and really it's a really important job so thank you now if we will start with miss capello if you want to come up here i'm going to put this down established in the united states and this state [Music] or disqualified according to the best of my [Applause] all right right here to the same that i contest qualifications prescribe my wall when you open this up remember that i am not qualified that's right this ball you constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of jerusalem united states in this case qualify view the convention of a primary listed in statute faithfully and partially just to perform [Applause] so is very best thank you mr donio at this time i'll take a roll call mrs cappello present mrs everhart here mr fizzacarro miss fleming mr canton here mrs knoll here mr lanzalata here mr regan this is ryan here you have a quorum mr shinty you did acknowledge ms fleming is here i didn't hear her she she did she she tried to acknowledge okay i could not see her thank you that's no problem um but everybody please stand and join me with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with justice for all love you guys at this time i will accept nominations for board president yes mr lancelot to nominate joe fitzgerald for president okay i second okay mrs ryan seconds it hearing no other nominations i'm going to close uh nominations for president and since mr fraser caro was the only uh board member uh nominated for president um on behalf of the board i will cast the anonymous vote for mr fiscaro as board president thank you mr ashinti congratulations i appreciate not gonna lie i kind of enjoyed you talking for a little bit all right first off thank you everybody for this nomination and i gracefully accept it at this point in time we will be uh looking for nominations for the office of board vice president do i have any nominations mr kenton i'd like to nominate mrs trush everhart for vice president does she have a second a second second seconded by miss fleming and miss ryan i'd like to nominate janice knowles janice null has been nominated is there a second seeing none the motion fails uh mr shinty um we only have one nomination at that point so do we go yeah oh oh it doesn't miss noel do you accept the nomination or not they can decline it okay miss null you decline okay thank you miss nola i appreciate that uh at that at that point do we go by unanimous consent is there any any dissent from that yeah all right ah should we go to a roll call i'm sorry i should have my michael and i apologize for that uh you actually do paper ballots if i recall correctly i haven't done this in a while yeah and whatever what it requires is for each board member to list the name of the person they're voting for i have i have the form yeah and then sign it and then john reads it okay this might not be a bad idea for the policy committee to look at that if that's really the process you want to continue to employ i i believe that is a good idea to do i think i think we're going to have to look at that almost uh almost immediately that's a little archaic uh yes miss fleming yes um is how are we going to be able to sign when we're remote that's that's what we're just about to figure out right now okay yeah they could they could email the board secretary or if they feel comfortable they could just announce when it when when when mr recently starts doing the role of the count they could just announce verbally miss miss fleming uh and and mr megan uh what was said was you can either if you're comfortable announcing it when when the roll call happens or you can email mr shinty your your vote okay i'll announce okay thank you so i'm sorry yes do i announce now joe or am i waiting uh hold hold for one moment and i'll let you know when you're ready to announce mr meegan did you have your hand up okay all right just double checking i did i signed it that's just a line to separate that's okay that's all right okay um i will now i'm just confused if there's only one the votes normal order that we call roll call it's not going to be unanimous mrs cappah voted for mrs everhart mrs everhart voted for mrs everhart mr fisacarro voted from mrs everhart miss fleming mrs everhart okay mr canton voted for mrs everhart mrs noll voted for mrs everhart mr lanza where's mrs mr lanzalada voted for mrs everhart mr megan no okay mrs ryan voted for mrs everhart so we have at eight eight one eight one so uh congratulations miss everhart you are the vice president of the asian board of education thank you everyone i appreciate all your support thank you all right all morning upward joe thank you everyone okay at this point in time we are going to go to public comment for agenda items only this meeting will now be open to the public referencing agenda items only however if your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we'd ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person is there anyone in the audience who wishes to speak on any agenda item seeing none we will move on at this point in time we're going to move to item three reorganization items i need a motion to approve items three one through three eight do i have a motion motion by miss ryan do i have a second seconded by miss everhart any questions or comments on the reorganization items seeing none let's go to a roll call please this is capallo yes this is everhart yes mr fizzicarro yes miss fleming yes mr catherine yes mrs null yes mr lanzalotta yes mr megan mrs ryan motion carries okay thank you everyone we're going to go to item 4 now this is any items of new or old business there are no old items of business and i have no new ones to present if anyone else does that i'm aware of seeing none oh miss ryan i know everyone i know and this is it you know happy new year everyone i just wanted to give a shout out to all the pto and pta presidents during our meeting on wednesday they're doing some really really great things in the schools so i just want to give them a shout out applaud their efforts for bringing the communities together bringing the schools together keeping parents and students involved in what is going on in youth shams so keep up the good work ladies and parents we'll use uh old and new business for any announcements uh anybody have any more announcements or anything they uh okay thank you for that miss ryan at this point we're going to go to open public comment for any items of interest this meeting will now be open to the public referencing any items of interest however if your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we'd ask you to see the superintendent after the meeting since you do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person anybody in the public have anything they want to say joke story no i have nothing to read no i don't see any emails all right we're going to close that portion of the of the meeting and that will lead us to adjournment anybody wish to say anything before we adjourn miss fleming yes i just would also like to say as leah did that thank you um to excuse me as miss ryan did to thank the pto for their efforts and the great work that they are doing i think that's very important to recognize and acknowledge them thanks thank you miss fleming anybody else um oh miss miss no i'm so sorry just looking over the other side okay just briefly i wanted to say that i'm happy that dr smith is being cautious for remaining remote next week it you know i have young kids it's very difficult but i think this is a great decision at this time and i'm hoping things will get better as we move forward and so thank you tough decisions as always sometimes last minutes but i know you're always guided by the data and that's very important and as a parent thank you and of course thanks to all of our teachers who are working double time to serve our students they are still doing a tremendous job and i hope everybody had a restful winter break i i i'd like to piggyback off that for a moment miss noel those are some very insightful words um yes i i have to say that i i'd heard something um it was a pundit on on the news uh some researcher was on the news and he was talking about covid19 and he had a phrase that a phrase that has just caught my attention and it's one that i think i'll i'll use myself um you know when they were talking about the vaccinations he said that there was a light at the end of the tunnel but he said immediately after that we're still in the tunnel all right um that that is that is equivalent to us and not just with covid but with many issues that we have to face all right there is a light at the end of the tunnel but we have to remember that there's still a tunnel that we have to go through and for for this board which i i am look i'm very humble the amount of respect you have poured to me and to miss everhart this evening um and i'm very appreciative of that support my my advice yes we are my advice my advice to the board and to the public and to everybody um is that we are going to make decisions and i have learned in 2020 that no matter what decision i made it just never felt comfortable nothing ever felt comfortable you you never are going to know whether your decision is going to be the right one or the wrong one whatever you do it's just it's always going to feel like you're on a razor line and i would say as advice to listen to everybody be respectful and thoughtful to everybody and to hear people's concerns like you like you have been doing all right sometimes our role is not just as a facilitator or policy makers but sometimes our role is to simply be an ear people need us to tell us what they need to say all right and i will do my best to constantly listen as as board president to your concerns and to everyone's concerns i can't ever guarantee that i will make the best decisions because quite frankly i don't know what they are all right and um i just uh for all of us godspeed on this journey and um i will see everybody on january 28th all right thank you and happy new year uh motion to adjourn does ever heart you have something i just want to say welcome to mrs cappello yes mrs yes thank you i'm very excited to work with you welcome to the chaos we are here you know to guide and to help you so don't hesitate to ask for questions and welcome back to mrs noll and mrs ryan and mr canton it's a good team i think that we've worked successfully together in the past i feel confident that joe and i will be able to help shepherd us through some of the challenges that come ahead um but most importantly welcome and good luck to everyone and let's just keep keep talking to one another okay very important okay thanks good luck thank you mr hardy thank you it was awesome to all of you that was that was that was inconsiderate and i apologize i totally went right one right over my head you'll find i'll make those errors quite often all right any motion to adjourn motion by mr lancelata seconded by miss ryan all in favor aye thank you happy new year [Music] you

alrighty ladies and gentlemen good evening and welcome to the bcsc live stream here on youtube i am by myself tonight talking and doing camera once again is colin phillips so we will have the seymour owls taking on the columbus olympians here tonight the sea morales come in with a record of six and six and one and three in conference play the odds are on a one one-game winning streak as they won against scottsburg just two days ago winning that 54-51 other big wins were against greenwood batesville bloomington south browntown central during that stretch of those games the eyes went on a four game winning streak then lost two straight and got things back on track winning against floyd central the owls are averaging 43 points per game 24.5 rebounds 10 assists and a very good 7.4 steals on the year they are led by senior grace meyer who is averaging 12.8 points and 7.8 rebounds also junior gray schroeder who is averaging 10.2 points per game and 5.7 rebounds a game and we will take a look at the home team your very own lady o's as you can see them warming up here with just three just over three minutes until tip off the ladies are coming in tonight still unbeaten in the hoosier hills conference and are tied for first place with bedford north lawrence the lady o's are coming off a hard-fought win over madison with the score being 48-42 our very own corinne gravy comes in tonight's game second in the conference averaging 16 points per game other notable ladies leah bachman is 11th in the conference play with 8.8 points gabby dean's 12th with 8.4 and melee roberts 14th in the conference averaging 7.7 points per game rebound wise gabby dean in second place in the conference with 7.9 leah bachman fourth with 5.7 emma jenkins eighth with five and corinne gravy with 10 with 4.8 assists corinne grievey leads the conference with 4.8 assists and albany spears seventh with 2.7 assists steal-wise once again corinne gravy leads with 3.5 points per game and blocks our very own gabby dean leads with 4.4 blocks per game sage stall third and leah bachmann in fifth place so all over the place there and that's what something coach brown probably likes to see on the stat sheet is everybody contributing to the stat sheet to come away with the win here tonight two minutes till tip off seymour looking to keep their winning streak alive as well as the olympians we want to thank our sponsors columbus auto group and once again forced construction for sponsoring these a live stream so we can bring them to you at home or wherever you're watching these games and we want to thank you guys once again for staying tuned and watching these live streams so just over a minute here as you can see on your top right of your screen as the olympians are coming to their bench i'm sure they are excited for tip off as some of them had a full school day here as we are finally back in school as myself had my first day back here and some of them had their first day back to school monday i mean excuse me we had monday off on tuesday so i'm sure they're excited to be able to be back in school and play as well so here we go underneath the minute clock is ticking i will turn it over to coach pierce down at the scores table for the national anthem and the starting lineups evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the orange pits here on the campus of columbus east high school and the home of olympian basketball as this evening we proudly presenting hoosier hills conference battle between the olympians of columbus east and the visiting house of seymour high school and now ladies and gentlemen at this time we ask that you please stand the privilege of this game was made possible by those who have fought and continue to fight for the freedoms we enjoy let us honor and respect our efforts in our country by gentlemen removing their caps and everyone standing attention placing their hands over their hearts as we proudly play our national anthem [Music] so [Music] thank you and now introduce the starters for our visitors this evening see more outs and guard a 5-2 senior number one jelaine miller [Applause] at guard a 5-6 senior number three alyssa perry [Music] [Applause] center is six foot junior number 20 grace schrader and forward a 5 8 senior number 22 grace myers and guard a 5-8 freshman number 25 kendall sterling your head coach for your owls jason longmire and that is your seymour house and now we've been fans it's time to go on your feet let's finish your starters for your qualities olympians [Applause] and guard a five five sophomore number [Music] four [Applause] and forward a six-foot sophomore number save stall at center a six foot four sophomore number 32 cappy team and that guard a 5-7 junior number two karen parikh your head hopes for your olympians danny brown assistant coach willie hughes and that is your club and now so ladies and gentlemen there we have it the starting lineups for each of these teams here tonight tip on off for the olympians once again the one and only gabby dean and for the sea morales let me get a number here number 20 grace schrader here so we are underway here in the orange pit as gabby dean tips it and wins it and corinne gravy takes it up for two easy points corinne grivy puts the olympians up on the board there first with a nice pass from sage stahl there as the olympians are staying in a maybe zone look here as it looks like 2-3 zone and let's see if the seymour owls get a shot off but off the mark there and rebounded by gabby dean gabby dean once again second in rebounding in the conference with 7.9 points excuse me rebounds as corinne gravy passes it to gabby dean down low inside the stage and she will travel there and it will be seymour basketball with seven minutes and 17 seconds here see if the seymour can get something going here as the olympians drop back into their 2-3 zone and a double dribble there and the olympians will get it right back after their turnover committed by seymour as bachmann will take it out to grivy seymour staying with the man to man defense crossover gravity 4-3 up and off the mark and an offensive rebound by bachmann save to inside to stall and sage will put it up 4-2 sage stalls and stolen by gravy who leads the conference in steel she's gonna take it to the right side draw the foul and will be at the line for two free throws with 6 42 remaining here in the first quarter corinne greibe is shooting a solid 80 percent at the free-throw line if you're an olympian fan she's probably the one you went out the line as she up and good corinne gravy converts the first one she's looking at her second as it is up and gets the bounce and she's with four points here tonight six to zero is our score here in the orange pit the olympians are looking to remain undefeated in conference play as gravy gets another steal picks her dribble up throws it up court to bachmann and she gets it up and good aaliyah bachmann 4-2 assist from corinne gravy and a time-out taken by seymour 30-second timeout let's see what seymour will talk about here on their timeout with 6 28's remaining here and there you hear the buzzer seymour will get the ball after the timeout taken let's see if seymour can get it figured out here we're already down eight to zero with 6 25 remaining here in the first quarter as olympians are in their 2-3 zone look inside great move there gets it up and good seymour's on the board with two timeouts seemed to work there as kendall sturding sterling excuse me gets it and stolen by kendall two on one fast break and stolen by corinne gravy great hustle play there and she passed it to gabby dean and sage stahl gets it and corinne gravy finally gets it crosses over she's looking to drive kicks it out for melee roberts for three and off the mark and will be tipped off a gabby dean kendall sterling is 10th in the conference averaging 9.2 points per game and she puts seymour on the board first with 5 35 remaining here olympians in that zone look once again and the three-point shot is up and off the mark and rebounded by gabby dean and stepped around and stolen and great pass down low to number twenty-two meyer but she will unfortunately travel there grace myers sixth in the conference and scoring with 12.8 points grace meyer is a senior forward as a screen set by bachmann as gravie gets it excuse me has the ball screen set by sage she's looking down low great pass to bachmann and short and rebounded by 22 that is grace meyer there and she's crossing over to her left and blocked by gabby dean up to grivy rolled around there once again gabby dean leads the conference with 4.4 blocks per game and she got one early there on seymour as sage passes it to melee roberts stage down low to gabby dean let's see if she can go to work kicks it out to maybe roberts for her second three of the night and it is up and good maylie roberts for three maybe roberts comes in shooting 48 percent behind the three-point line pretty good if you ask me and she capitalizes on that one there for the olympians 11-2 is our score see if seymour can get something going there great ball movement 18-foot jump shot is up and nothing but net for number one jeremiah miller and puts her name in the stat column there with two points as gabby dean's up and hits back iron and good gabby dean with two points my apologies on the scoreboard there let's see if i can there we go gabby dean with two points there and see if seymour can get something going there corner three up and no good and rebounded by bachmann corinne gravy's looking to push the ball off the court up to maybe roberts back to gravy and low to sage she kicks it out to bachmann she picks up her dribble great move up and no good offensive rebound by gravy but gets it looks like a block but a foul will be on number 20.

Dr bow do you want me to are you saying about the oath to have it ready yes you can do that when when we go into close session yeah um I pulled up the one I have one that I pulled up when we when we did a that's that's the one it's the same just put whoever's name there perfect we're going to need to have it ready so that the it's on the screen so that the whoever it is they can read it okay yeah I have I'm gonna I have it it says her name but um I'll change it once I yeah I know who it is and I'll change it to the other person's name okay you sound far nesto how about now you sound we have a quorum and just let me know um marel once everybody's been allowed in I let everybody in that was waiting great thank you um welcome everybody it's uh um our meeting before we officially start um we're going to go ahead and um just explain a few changes and then explain the translation um and then we'll formally start that's okay with uh so uh uh caros triot can you please translate to those um who are going to need translation at this time sure can you hear me Madame President yes okay good for those who are English uh sorry for those who are Spanish speakers we have um simultaneous interpretation available in the interpretation menu at the bottom bar you can click on the on the globe and it will open up a menu which indicates English and Spanish if you are English speaker please check that setting so you can hear the session in English if you're Spanish speaking you can hear it in Spanish as well if you do not want to hear um the English setting you the Spanish setting forgive me you can mute the original audio thank you Madame President graas thank you Mr uh and um at this time I just would like to announce some changes that we've had for this meeting we will have the board trustees uh pictures up um and uh we will allow the presenters and the speakers um to have their uh time to speak um at the appropriate times um to allow for um just the facilitation uh of of this meeting um and so now I'm going to call the meeting to order at 5:34 p.m um marel can you do a roll call today is a special board meeting of January 7th 2020 at 5:30 p.m.

hi there Rick hey Dennis how's it going good good you check out that movie The Grizzlies that was good I watched that yeah that was good wasn't it yeah me and my wife watched I think the night you told me about it always looking for something to watch you know when you're stuck at home I know we are that's smoke okay we're live I believe we're streaming guys y okay and ready let me turn off the screen share we're ready to go call the meeting to order Mr um Raley will you do the attendance please yeah um roll call um Maria Rick's here Wilson so yeah Dennis Bender here adelene blasing game she uh she's absent today she's muted oh you're you're muted I'm muted to the Pledge of Allegiance okay can you hear me now yes BL will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance did she call on me yes ready begin I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America America and for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice Al do we have any public comments we do not have any public comments pertaining to closed session thank you it's time to go to we need to go into close session to discuss the following Mr Ry you read what those are yeah we have uh number one is the Public Employee discipline dismissal release reassignment transfer leave certified and classified employees and then uh appointment resignation retirement reduction title certifi certified and classified and then we have a conference litigation government code section 54956.9 a grant litigation five cases CBDs 81 3952 1 90 77172 1 197 correction 1 1937 83 and 56 and continuing on is we have U government code section 549 54 subsection 5 subsection C and 54956.9 n subsection D subsection 2 and E1 in anticipated litigation four cases 2018 1907 2019 20-07 2020 2101 and finally 2020 2105 and I believe um we have also have conference with labor negotiator with Dustin Conrad APPA Valley United Teachers Association APPA Valley United unified Teachers Association I'm sorry I'm speaking too quick and conference with labor negotiator Dustin Conrad with employee organization California School Employees Association and I'll ask for a motion to go into close session I'll make a motion okay I'll second okay we have a first and a second is there any uh any opposed hearing none we'll be adjourning to close session all right I'm opening the session now click on the join session when you [Music] see e e e can you hear me TR hello hello hello yeah I think it's best if we stay muted for just uh till the break is over and we end the meeting okay [Music] e e e okay um missar as president do you want to bring us back we may need to wait just a moment to let is this Mr banan is the stream [Music] ready yes okay just need to unmute your mics call a meeting to order will the clerk of the board please read the Clos session report if any uh yes madame president there was uh no um action taken during Clos session I'll make a motion that we uh adjourn back into Open Session I'll say that all in favor I any opposed okay hearing none opposed uh we'll be back into be moving back into Open Session call the meeting to order the board May approve the agenda as is or add or pull items from the consent agenda for discussion and or action we need to adopt the agenda as is or PLL items I need a motion to uh adopt the agenda as is I'll second that thank you get a first by Ben all in favor hi any opposed public comments um if board members would unmute their mics so that when the um uh vote is called they can hear whether you um agree or descent want need to go back um Mr so needs to unmute as does um Mrs bling game there we go okay I need not yet [Music] sorry we're getting this down do I need to go back I think we probably do I don't I don't have the ability to unmute anybody see Mr so oh there he is okay everyone's unmuted okay if you'll take that vote again please that would be appropriate says the board uh May approve the agenda as is or add or pull items from the consent it agenda for discussion and or action we need to adopt the agenda as is or or po you had the motion by Mr bender and the um second by Mr Raleigh and adop all in favor hi any opposed thank you now we go to public comments there any Kylie do we have any public comments kye you are muted we do have public comment today thank this comment was provided by Jessica kulie I would like good evening members of the board and District Representatives I am reaching out via email to speak with you because the board has suspended in-person meetings the reason why is what I would like to address with you I just got off the phone with the vas's president Dr Christy Croft I have to admit I could only hear or understand about half of what she said in between gasping for breath you see christe was infected with covid-19 over winter break spending Christmas in the hospital while fighting for her life she reached out to me to help her write a message to the board but I declined deciding instead to write a message from myself about listening to her worry about members of Auda as long as the board meets virtually it is completely insulting if a return to in-person school is being considered excuse me this sounds harsh and I am not prone to indulging in Conflict causing statements but this is the truth when abusd chose to close schools and the various cohorts one of the rumors I heard was the opened elementary schools could no longer staff their in-person classes because too many teachers were out let me assure you no member of ab budha thinks distance learning is a better option for our students everyone of us would rather be in person interacting with students helping them learn and grow as social beings there has been a lot of discussion about students mental health but how do you think their mental health would be knowing they might have carried covid-19 to their families from school or to school from their homes and putting the adults in their lives at risk every generation has something that they have had to overcome as children as a group mine was being a latch key kid years might have been cold war drills or those younger of a younger generation active shooter drills and indeed active shooter situations all of these things cause undue stress for those children who lived this children are resilient and this will mark this generation but they will survive it as I spoke with Christie she stressed that she would not wish covid-19 on her worst enemy she described a health system that is overwhelmed in the 36 hours she was admitted to St Mary's she did not see a doctor she could not get them to administer her regular medicine she had to Monitor and administer her own oxygen in between tears and gasps she explained that there were no support members to help nurses manage the ward where she was patients in folding chairs and hallways patients unable to get a drink of water or receiving food when the hospitals are unable to care for their Community we as public servants owe our community to help contain this outside threat even if it is just a virus this virus is anything but just please protect the members of our community by keeping our schools closed until this pandemic is under control thank you Jessica kolie thank you do you have another one we do not have any more thank you superintendent's comment the first comment I would like to do is um make sure that um anybody watching knows that this is School Board recognition month and um we I've commented before when people have retired from Schoolboard or join the school board that it is a service um that people take on and it it takes a life of its own and so I just want to recognize our board members for um doing the service for students in this community community and um we appreciate you and I will repeat that comment at our next board meeting because it is also in January um secondly I would like to um update you regarding um any information that has been provided um as of late Friday um the governor did a press release um not announced to school districts per se that he had a new um safe schools reopening plan um there are no details at this point other than there is a checklist that will be provided to school districts that will allow us to apply for some State funding which will align us with some federal funding as well um two different windows for those um dates are February 1 there will be the first application which is very tight timeline based on um where we are today um and then March 1st will be the next um set of timelines um and then the vaccine information is still um Coming forward um there are three phases for vaccines phase one is obviously the Frontline healthc care workers and long-term care residents um they have added to that other um a later phase that has now been added to phase one includes um other medical type professions dentists opthalmologists um they have added them and they will be getting the vaccine um it appears prior to Ed to Educators um phase um 1B is Educators and individuals over um 75 years of age um there's several people in that sector and then um it moves down the the pathway so we did ask our current Public Health director Dr Saria what timeline he believed education would start seeing those vaccinations um it appears that it's disparate throughout the state as to um the number of vaccines that have been provided even to the Frontline workers um some hospitals have excess and other hospitals um people are waiting to get their vaccines and so um we as superintendant requested that um there is a clear plan delineated as um we get closer to vaccines being available um he did indicate that he's very um optimistic that we will be um earlier than um originally anticipated which was the end of of March um when we first had the conversation but we'll see how that that comes out um this won't be an easy process because anybody who gets the vaccine has to be observed for approximately 20 minutes after they've received the vaccine and there's all kinds of um situ situations that they haven't been able to um determine how they'll process and get um people within a large school system um vaccinated um there are some concerns about the vaccine having to do with um people being required to and those are all being addressed um I have no information about that right now um it was brought up by um board members at a a recent meeting that um students not all students are even able to have a vaccine because they can't receive it un unless they're 16 years of age of older so there's a lot still to go into this um but we will keep you posted I did indicate at the last board meeting as I got information I would share it um publicly during our board meetings um and then I think the last thing that I want to share is that the hospital data continues to be one of our um benchmarks for making decisions and bringing forward information to you as a board there has been no downturn to um the data there's there's some slight um decreases in numbers at our our local hospital but that is not in any way um going back to where we were even October 1st so um I will continue to get updates from um the CEO at St Mary's and I will continue to provide um you information as we know um what is happening so that's all I have thank you thank you yeah board comments Miss Miss blasing please um I just welcome back to everybody in this new year hopefully it will be more healthy for everyone um other than that looking forward to working with you all and getting more people involved in the district thank you thank you Mrs so well I just want to point out that uh couple of us attended the uh joint meeting of High distri School Board Association members at that meeting in Ted aland count super was there I was giving a talk too I did mention to him that we need to have a coordinate approach in terms of vaccination yeah whatever success we feel we achieve in apple we're willing to share with other distri food county superintendent school so we got to have a a thorough uh uh planed a plan to to carry out this vaccination yeah yeah you heard that TR mentioned that some people parents are concerned about your 16 year old under your 16y old you cannot get it and then there I also mentioned there some parents just like the uh small Parks vaccine they some parents object to it you know so we need to convince them that's necessary so but we hopefully we we have a the uh thought out plan by the state that the the delivery of the vaccine definitely had the state had done a very poor job okay I can tell you that so that's my comment thank you Mr Bender uh these are tough times personally I think we'll get through it I I hope we have a plan to vaccinate something that's coordinated it just doesn't turn into a fire drill that's all I have to say Thank you Mr Ry uh just briefly I um was UN to hear that Christy Croft got so ill with this and just wishing her um speedy recovery it's my understanding she has gotten somewhat better but I did I do know that this um people that do get this um it takes a long time to fully recover so I'm just wishing her uh speedy recovery I think all the board can agree with that and U thank you uh my comment today uh is to um is to welcome everybody back to 2021 um 2021 we hoping will be uh a better year than 2020 and um looking forward to um having a wonderful school year the rest of what's left of school year and wishing our families well I know that many of them are struggling and suffering um financially um food um um scarcity uh and actually being at home and not be able to go to work or small businesses not being able to open um I'm hoping that this will ease up so that people can return uh to work um it's very important that we pay attention to the health and and Welfare of people in our community especially our teachers and U Miss coly um we we heard you um just so you know we heard you um and um we send all of our best wishes to miss uh Miss Croft and any of our members in our in our teachers teaching staff classified staff anybody who has had any anything to do with our district we are wishing you the very best this what's left of this covid so that covid will not find your addresses I thank you so much for hanging in there with us and uh we will do we do a good job or do better than what we've done in the past thank you for your time do we have any closing items that we will need to bring forward for the next board meeting okay there being no further business to come before the Board of Trustees it is recommended that the board be be adjourned I need a motion so move second second all in favor you opposed thank you there's nothing for them to sign correct I only have one document for Maria to sign so I will bring that down to you okay thank you very much thank you everyone yeah for

um i hope everyone had a nice holiday and i hope to see you all in person soon um other than that i think that's all i have for tonight thank you thank you miss beltran mr canova hey good evening anyway everyone happy new year um first i want to express my condolences to joe agression on the passing of his wife i'm very sorry to hear that uh thoughts and prayers with you and the family um congrats to our newest board member mr awad nice to meet you as dana said uh hopefully one day in person we'll finally get to meet um and congratulations to mr abhijava and mr smith on not only their re-election but tonight to their appointment to the president vice president roles so congratulations on that uh mr rubin you mentioned that uh about state testing so i know i was on some county meetings where i heard some conversations and and state meetings about testing and uh there was talk about that there may not even be testing at all i don't know about sat specifically but i know uh placement testing uh they were talk or placement testing the uh achievement testing they were talking about possibly deferring those i don't know if anything ever happened with that um but the next time i'm on that meeting i could ask and see what's going on i know that they said they might not even do them all together because of the the way this year went with covid but thank you for your updates and thank you for always being on these calls because i'd like to hear what's going on in the schools and with the students i'd love to hear that you're thinking outside the box and putting on a show um can't wait to see that looking forward to that it'll give us at least something good to see in 2001 um it's funny i saw a meme that was online that said uh it's if this is my trial for my seven-day trial for this year i'd like to pass and go directly to 2022.

is there any item anyone would like separated out saying none can i please have a motion to combine items one through 19. move by laurie second by jeff is there any discussion seeing them will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr sismar yes mr squash yes mr hong yes this is lex mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries moving on to our human resources agenda i'd like to combine items one and two is there anything anyone wishes separated out seeing none can i please have a motion to combine items one and two so moved move by leewoo second by heather is there any discussion will the secretary please call the roll mr corangelo yes this is chew yes mr sismar yes gloss yes yes this is lex mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries moving on to the student services item can i please have a motion to combine items one and two move by laurie second second by libu is there any discussion will the secretary please call the world michelle angelo yes mrs chu yes this is mar yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes this is lex mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries before i ask for committee reports or a student rep report speaking of committees um it is always my feeling that we get our committees together as soon as possible so that the business of the district can go on with that effect i would like to ask bernie to please send everybody a copy of the current committee list if you would if you would all be so kind as to send me an email and let me know of your current committee assignments which ones you are still interested in staying on and what you would like changed and i'd like to invite and encourage all of you to perhaps go out of your comfort zone and if there's a committee you haven't served on an area that you feel you would like to learn more about that would be a great committee for you to let me know that you would like to serve on i would like to have all responses back by sunday so that lori and i have the time to discuss my goal is to get the administration the committee assignments by monday tuesday the latest so that we may continue we are in the middle of negotiations we are in the middle of budget season we have to get the committees going so again bernie will send you the current committee assignments please look at them give me your feedback by sunday let me know what you'd be interested in and what you're not interested in continuing to serve on and then laurie and i will get back to the administration by monday or tuesday dr valesky does that work for you you're all choked up i can see i try to use my i'm sorry i tried to use my bar to speak and it didn't work but yes that works for me thank you okay and now our student rep tony how are you happy new year happy new year family had a pleasant holiday and wishing you a happy new year tell us what's going on yes happy new year and happy holidays to all of you as well um i think i can speak on behalf of almost every senior that we are largely relieved early january normally marks the final college deadlines and uh it's nice to be done or at least close to done as there are still some stagnant deadlines um but yes it's the process is largely complete um i'll try and keep my report brief no it's okay take your time um the one thing main thing that i wanted to talk about was uh the role that politics and the events that occur play into the student experience and normally like under normal circumstances uh they exist in two completely separate spheres and i think this is largely important and really good because um it doesn't let the chaos and the turmoil of politics hinder the progress of education and then when big events occur um it's a little odd as a student to continue to do homework when it seems more pressing things are occurring but the thing that kind of supports this and the thing that students need to understand is that some teachers have to operate on a really tight schedule especially those that have national deadlines such as advanced placement exams and they simply can't afford to come to breaks so uh despite what occurs there still needs to be continuity and there's still options and outlets for these students to kind of get these ideas and out of their head and talk about what happened um and in person there's normally conversing and some classes serve as an outlet but i just wanted to bring this up because it's a interesting balance between addressing things that occur and but also not letting it dominate what uh we're trying to achieve here at school and another big thing to take away is that these terrible times and challenges like either the political events are endemic they still don't divide or slow down our community as dr velesky mentioned the tour drive occurred as part of the organization from class and student council and this was largely successful in providing toys to disadvantaged children over the holidays and this occurred despite the pandemic and the despite the rising cases and overall i think it's just a great testament to the tendency of our community and our student body to stick together and improve as opposed to just depart and no matter the degree of difficulties that we face or the types of challenges that arise i don't think that will change um that was what i wanted to talk about there and then uh on the topic of blog scheduling that was brought up i'm sure i'll bring this up later in other committee reports once i uh also get the opinion of other student leaders but i wanted to personally vote or say my advocacy of the block scheduling um i do emphasize with uh i believe it was ms squash that uh brought up the fact that we won't see each teacher every day and i know to you guys it may seem that passing time those five minutes in between each class is just opportunities for mischief but some students including me see it as a chance to connect with other students that i might not have in class but i think these negatives are largely outweighed by the benefits brought up by dr and her team and one of the things that i feel like to students is going to be really important that it might not be visible right now but is the fact that you don't need to do homework for each class every day so this gives a lot of chance for students to have intellectual developments outside uh of justice's school and it also gives students the chance to you know time manage in a different way that is more fitting what is seen in college you don't have to do math homework on the day that you're assigned the math and you can do other things accordingly and i'm a little uniquely adapted to this because i took two lab sciences last year so i ended up having a 90-minute instructional period for four out of every five school days so in terms of the attention span issues it was an adjustment at first but i largely got accustomed to it and i felt very successful um in providing at least a continually educational but also like interactive experience uh and yeah those are some of the big things about block scheduling that appeal to me um i'm sure i'll talk about this later when i also hear the opinions of other students but yeah that's it for my student report thank you so much that was very well put greatly appreciated and we always need to hear want to hear but need to hear the student's viewpoint so thank you for representing that thank you president um board members committee reports information items for the good of the cause for the board laurie you'll notice um with your agenda you have the building and grounds minutes from december 10 of 2020 it's nice to see that we're not in the buildings there's a lot of work going on in the different buildings so you'll notice a whole bunch of project updates another thing that's nice to see continuing and i know we um approved is um some pta gifts you know a lot of we talk about what we can do within the confines of the budget so you will notice that a buddy bench will be installed at lawrencebrook as a gift of their pta and the water bottle filling stations when the kids get back to school which i love because i'm not a big fan of water fountains so children have the ability to hydrate um so just take a look it's in your packets but just wanted to draw your attention to that thank you lori anyone else so uh the curricular community uh we had a meeting on november 30.

for seymour that's their first team foul grace schroeder picks up her first excuse me team second once again corinne grabby an 80 free throw shooter and it is up and good corinne gravy is gonna have albany spear check in she comes in seventh in the conference and assists with 2.7 points as melee roberts will take a seat and corinne gravy gets that one to fall six points for mrs griby there let's see if the olympians can keep the great defensive pressure here and looked at a three dribbles inside kicks out to the corner four a three up and in and out and rebounded by bachmann and we're gonna have a foul once again by seymour looks like it's gonna be grace meyer with 305 remaining here picks up her first grace myers first foul teams third 305 remaining here in the first quarter once again we want to thank you guys for tuning in to this live stream please leave a like and subscribe and share this with your friends and family here as quinn gravy has the ball dribbles with her left hand pass it to sage stall on the right wing is albany and it's going to be out of bounds seymour basketball great defense there by seymour they will get the ball back with 2 51 remaining here 15-14 is our score 22 senior forward grace meyer brings the ball down guarded by albany as they're going to fall back to that zone great pass they're going to attack kick it out and miller will sadly travel there and another turnover committed by seymour coach brown giving a play may be two grabby as gravy has the ball crosses over toward left and goes to the left wing here up high to gabby dean but a little high and long but out of bounds tipped by number 20 grace schroeder olympians will get the ball back here with 2 30 remaining here in the first quarter gravity takes the ball here and they get it into albany spear and she's going to attack drive jump stop and blocked by number 25 kendall sterling and she will throw that one away in another turnover committed by seymour coach longmire does not look happy on their sideline it's quite a bit of turnover sears gravy is going to use the screen set by albany and she's going to force a pass there and will be out of bounds [Applause] olympians will remain possession here with 209 remaining here in the first quarter bachmann takes it out gives it to grivey gravy dribbles to her left back to albany spear at the top of the key up high to bachmann on the right block and she dribbles back out to albany long jump shot up and nothing but nets albany spear 4-2 great pass great shots and a great result there for the olympians gets it inside and another turnover there by seymour and we're gonna have caitlyn crothers and emma jenkins checks in for the olympians zimba jenkins comes in eighth in the conference and rebounds with five rebounds a game as corinne grabby once again has it at the top of the key on the right wing of stall she's going to drive right block up and good sage stall with her four points of the night great take there and gets it off the backboard see if seymour can get something to go cross court through the hands of miller and another turnover once again by the seymour owls if you're seymour you need to take care of those turnovers and have some leadership there as gravie kicks it to albany she looks at a three dribbles to her right crosses over to her left uses a screen set by caitlin and five second call there great defense by number 25 kendall sterling to cause that five second violation and we're going to have allison craig check in for albany speer 102 remaining here in the first quarter and once again a turnover committed by seymour grace meyer picks up their turnover and we're gonna have a sub number two for in excuse me eliza cash checks in for the senior forward grace meyer underneath a minute here let's see what the olympians can do as gravity calls for the screen doesn't use it dribbles back out and uses it by jenkins she's looking to attack and tries to get it into crothers but out of bounds and i turn over there by the olympians seymour basketball with 44.5 seconds remaining here 19 to 14 is our score as number three alyssa perry alyssa perry comes in 17th in the conference in scoring with 5.3 points as that is a good rebound there by caitlyn and gets it to allison she's looking to attack crosses over and crosses back to her right as sage saw looking to get it down low to jenkins gets a double team and perfectly tipped to sage and jenkins gets the rebound and emma jenkins puts it up 4-2 and draws the foul and puts her at the line four one and she looks to convert and she does emma jenkins with a great take and a great result there as albany spear with checking for corinne grivy coming up on 15 seconds here let's see if seymour is going to get off his shots here to try to cut into this big lead the olympians had in this first quarter great move there kicks it out to perry 4-3 nothing but nets for seymour and there we have it are the end of the first quarter this your home team columbus east olympians lead big 22-7 after one and we will send it over to the columbus east cheerleaders [Music] uh [Music] and here we go seymour basketball to start the second quarter let's see if they can get something going here as perry did hit a three to end the first quarter has a great pass there by seymour and grace converts on the easy layup grace schroeder gets and the stack call him with two points as crothers gets at two points for the olympians and rebounded and tipped away by grace and she saves it but straight to albany she gives it up to jenkins and a turnover committed by the olympians with 7 20 24 to 9 is our score as grace meyer is back in for seymour she did take a break and the olympians remaining in that zone look on the floor for the olympians is speer craig crothers stall and jenkins and another turnover committed by seymour as that one is up in no good rebounded by meyer and allison craig will pick up the foul will be her first teams first and we're gonna have looks like number heidi murphy checks in for the olympians she comes in for sage stall heidi murphy sophomore 5-7 forward with 6 45 remaining here in the second quarter across court to meyer she looks out of three pump fakes and gets it to fall grace meyer big shot there for seymour she's on the board with three points and a kickball violation by seymour olympians keep the basketball here with 6 28 remaining as murphy takes the ball out and gets it into craig and she crosses over to her left uses the screen a hard screen set by albany and albany ends up getting it and she's dribbling to her right great defense so far by seymour heidi murphy travels there in a turnover and see more basketball 6 15 remaining here in the second quarter and it looks like we're gonna have a fresh four come in looks like they're heading to the score tables for the olympians olympians staying in that zone out to perry across court to miller and through the hands once again heidi murphy stays on the floor for the olympians here passes it to murphy back to roberts she dribbles gets a download of bachmann bachmann in the corner to maybe roberts for three up and in and out good luck there by the olympians just did not fall up court so number 22 grace meyer great pass and a great shot ten point ball game here seymour is doing the best they can to try to inch closer to cut into this lead here as crin gravy passes it to maybe roberts but a foul committed by the olympians gives the ball back to seymour maybe a momentum change there to give something back to seymour here see if they can get something going bachmann's first team second foul here team foul seymour four olympians two 5 25 remaining here as perry has it crosses over to her right and gives it to meyer inside to 25 sterling and she will be fouled and will be at the line 4-2 gabby dean picks up her first team's third sterling is at the line she's shooting 69 percent on the season at the free throw line as that one did not fall see if she convert here on her second it is up and no good and a rebound by maylie roberts great hustle there and corinne gravy will push it down the court and uses the screen and draws the foul and she'll be at the line 4-2 once again for the olympians and she misses the first one a rare sight there and we're going to have 23 brook trinkle trinkle comes in averaging 3.3 points per game for seymour and corinne gravy scores the second free throw and gives her seven points on the night out of bounds by the olympians see more basketball here as sterling takes the ball out needs to get it in quick here it's hard to probably see over very tall gabby dean but they do get it in here and meyer fires up a three in short and rebounded by gravy up to maylie roberts on the right hand side she's taking it and strong on the layup and rebounded by schrader and perry has the ball passes it to meyer olympians once again in their 2-3 zone look at they have done all games so far inside the schrader trinkle takes it and off the mark in a strong rebound by meyer and she draws left fallon she will be at the line 4-2 grace myers shooting a well-respected 80 percent at the free-throw line sure if you're a seymour fan you would want her at the line as well as it is up and nothing but nets for grace meyer cutting into this lead with 25 to go see if you can go two for two at the line here and it is nothing but net grace meyer with five points in this game as corinne gravy brings the ball down the court once again for the olympians she's calling for a screen by bachmann bachmann comes up to the top of the key she gets it she's going to take it herself all the way and good karen gravy 4-2 gives corinne gravy nine points on the night the olympians sing in that zone and stolen by bachmann she's going to take it up and pull it out and gives it to murphy she sets her feet and gets it to gabadine at the free-throw line gravy takes a three up and off the mark and rebounded by schroeder to myers she passes it to sterling great ball movement there by seymour and the two-point basket goes to kendall sterling great basketball there by seymour 325 remaining as bachmann gets that one blocked and seymour is playing great defense here in the second quarter as meyer crosses over and tipped and off the hands of gravy and we'll be seeing more basketballs we're gonna have sage stall check in for the olympians and number 24 cali cummins checking in for seymour 315 remaining to go here anne meyer gets it back to sterling she's looking to drive baseline spins back and gives it out to meyer at the top of the key gets it down low two cummins and blocked by gabby dean seymour keeps it alive sterling 4-3 and nothing but net kendall sterling 4-3 and coach brown calls a time-out seymour cut this big lead down to six points here in the second quarter great job by seymour with three minutes remaining to go here in the second quarter welcome back to the live stream here on the bcsc youtube channel we are here in the orange pit for some hoosier hills conference basketball seymour has cut into this lead and a timeout taken by coach brown in the olympians let's see what they can do after the timeout as sage stahl has it on the right wing passes it to bachmann and great defense there by the owls and tips but sage stall gets it she's looking to drive and draws the foul grace meyer picks up the foul and sage stall will be at the line four two free throws sage stall is shooting a 74 on the season at the free throw line see if she can go two for two here and stall shorts and no good there 242 remaining here in the second quarter and she fires away her second and it is nothing but nets for sage stall and great defense there by the olympians and kept alive by seymour perry passes it and three ball by meyer and long and rebounded by bachmann bachmann fourth in the conference and rebounds with 6.4 rebounds a game downloaded gabby dean she takes a big drop step great pass and a great finish there by leah bachman assists from gabby dean bachmann with four and she's at the line for one as grace schroeder checks back in for grace meyer grace meyer picks up her third team seventh so that puts the olympians in the bonus here the rest of the way here in the first half in a lane violation maybe and did not call it but leah bachmann converts on the n1 there back to a 10-point ball game here in the orange pit two minutes to go here see if seymour can finish this first half and get the lead back to down to single digits and let's see if the olympians can keep this big lead going here as that is blocked by gabby dean and out of bounds by seymour great job by gabby dean a monster down low in that zone 150 to go corn gravy brings the ball down the court [Music] passes it to sage stall on the right wing grabby cuts to the basket bachmann has it at the top of the key and gabby dean gets it melee roberts for three and off the mark and out of bounds seymour basketball see more fans looking for a foul but did not get it as sterling takes the ball gives it in to trinkle back to sterling sterling leads seymour with seven first half points and schroeder takes the three and off the mark and rebounded by grivy looks like she's gonna get trapped maybe she throws it up court to sage stall saves it gives it to bachmann but she will travel turnover committed by the olympians 108 remaining to go in the second quarter looks like runoff allison craig check in for the olympians she will have to wait for the next dead ball she was a little late getting to the table there as perry dribbles the ball gives it to trinkle back to perry across court and a foul by sage stahl tried to drive hard on the basketball but got contact on the body of elissa perry sage stall picks up her first team's fifth as there we have allison craig checks in for maylie roberts 57.9 seconds remaining here in the second quarter trinkle has it see if seymour if they're gonna hold it for one last shot or get something quick here and maybe try to stop the olympians here ash trinkle has it on the right wing dribbles through the middle perry has it back to trinkle crosses over almost thrown by gravy and perry fires a three and off the mark and a long rebound goes to seymour but unfortunately traveled will give the olympians a basketball at 36.3 seconds remaining here in the second quarter let's see if coach brown will hold it for one last shot i'm assuming so gravity gets the screen from bachmann and she stepped back and fires a three off the mark and rebounded by sterling she's looking to push the ball down the court for the owls crosses over picks up her dribble long jump shot up and off the mark and rebounded by sage with 15 seconds remaining she's dribbling down the right side of the court she's going to hesitate and drive gets to the right block and off the mark and rebounding once again by sterling five seconds on the clock let's see if she can get it off got away with the double dribble euro steps and draws the foul and picks up the and one with exactly two minutes except excuse me two seconds on the clock great take there by kendall sterling is at the line for one coach brown is asking about the double dribble that did not get called and that one's in and out and rebounded by gabby dean up to grivey and she traveled on that one so there we have it folks at the end of the first half the olympians lead 31-23 over the seymour owls we will take a short break and we will return with olympian basketball why is the columbus auto group the number one destination for your vehicle needs it's the no vulture zone duh our sales staff is 100 non-commissioned which means they are 100 committed to making sure you leave in the right vehicle not the one that pays them the most from sales to service from online to in store at the no vulture zone speed is key our goal is to get you a price payment and an appraisal in 15 minutes not ready to visit the dealership no problem on our website you can get pricing payment information get an estimate on your trade and if you have any questions you can chat with a live agent i know what you're thinking i bought a car somewhere else does that mean i don't get to experience the no vulture zone absolutely not if you need an oil change routine maintenance or vehicle repairs we've got you covered convenience is important which is why you can schedule online in person or over the phone when you're here you can use our shuttle service wait in our lounge or we can come to you so whether you need a new vehicle or service for your old vehicle the no vulture zone is the place to be [Music] welcome back to the bcsc live stream we are here at halftime here in the orange pit the olympians lead 31-23 with 4 15 remaining until the start of the second half scoring wise for each of the individuals teams tonight the lady owls are scored by jeremiah miller with two points alyssa perry with three grace schroeder with two grace meyer with seven and kendall sterling leads the way for the owls with nine points in the first half and for your home scene the columbus east olympians emma jenkins with three corinne gravy leads the o's with nine albany spear with two sage stall with five leah bachmann with five gabby dean with two maybe roberts with three and caitlyn crothers with two and before this varsity matchup our jb team picked up the win over the aisles winning a very well respected 59 to 26 over the owl so great job to our jv team as they won very handily against the seymour isles so three minutes remaining until this tip off of the second half the olympians got off to a very hot start in the first quarter and seymour owls got things dialed down in the second quarter and got the lead two six cut it down to six and then they are trailing by eight now so let's see if what halftime adjustments each of these teams have made as you can see your lady olympians coming back out on the court see what coach brown has made changes for the olympians and what coach longmire has made for the owls each team looking to keep winning streaks alive here as the olympians are tied for first in the hoosier hills conference they could become 4-0 or 3-1 after this match-up tonight they are tied with bedford north lawrence and they will be taking on bedford tuesday here in the orange pit so this should be a hard-fought matchup but the olympians can pick up the win here as it will be a battle for first place in the conference with one 58 remaining here once again we want to thank you guys for tuning in to the knights live stream as normally have zach next to me but him and josh are doing live streaming at northside middle that we can be able to live stream multiple events at the same time one here at east and one at northside we want to thank our sponsors for allowing us to do that columbus auto group and forced construction for sponsoring these live streams as seymour comes back out on the court i'm sure they are fired up and ready to go and they can come up above 500 here with this win as they are sitting at six and six on the year once again leaders through the first half were the olympians corinne gravy with nine and for seymour kendall sterling with nine points kendall sterling comes in averaging 9.2 points per game which is 10th in the conference play and she comes in averaging five rebounds and 2.5 assists on the year so a great job by her to keep this seymour house team in this ball game and we are seconds away from the start of the second half and there you see the scoreboard is back up and the olympians lead the seymour owls here in the orange pit 15 seconds on the clock and there we have the buzzer each team going over one last thing and the olympians are heading out onto the court now trying to do my best keeping the score up today keeping stats and trying to do play-by-play so hopefully i'm doing good enough to your guys is watching at home your guys's standards here so here we go start of the second half up high to gabby dean and there we have it a quick turnover by the olympians and let's see if seymour can score off the turnover here as meyer dribbles to her right as seymour will be going right to left and the olympians will be going left to right as i turn over once again committed by seymour quite a bit of turnovers by each of the teams there in the first half don't have the turnover stats but i'm sure it was quite high for a half a basketball as millie roberts has it gives it to sage stall who's cutting inside she spins and jump shot up and good sage stall with seven points on tonight and gets the first half excuse me second half points on the board with 7 15 remaining meyer kicks it out to miller and she dribbles back to sterling who leads the owls and in the corner miller back to sterling she looks at a three pump fakes kicks it to myers she's gonna step into a three and fires one up and off the mark and an offensive rebound and blocked by excuse me gabby dean and rebounded by bachmann and sage stahl will draw the foul there and then we have our first foul committed there in the second half and there we have it leah bachmann off the rebound gives her seven points on the night and the olympians score once again and gives them a double-digit lead once again see if seymour can get something going here as they go off to a slow start start of the game and that is off the mark great defense there by gabby dean bachmann once again with the rebound gravi up to sage great pump fake on the baseline she fires the shot up and off the mark and sits around and rebounded by schrader and schrader will bring the ball up the court passes it to sterling olympians fall back into that zone look meyer has it at the volleyball line miller has it on the left wing looks inside but passes it back to meyer perry has the ball meyer has it meyer with seven points pixar dribble up in the corner to schrader schrader with two and stolen and a turnover by the owls and stolen by the olympians to melee roberts bachmann at the free throw line corinne gravy he's gonna attack and draws the foul and gets that one to fall great strong take there by corinne grivey will be at the line for one and then we have emma jenkins checks in for gabby dean once again that was a strong hard take there and a great shot by corinne and grivy see she converts here and it is up and good corinne gravy gets that one to fall see if seymour can once again get something to go here as they have not scored and meyer fires that one up and off the mark she follows her shot and gets the rebound and we're gonna have a foul call on the olympians awaiting a number here 22 emma jenkins picks up the foul be her first teams first sterling is going to take the ball on the right corner gives it in and miller has it back to meyer sterling has it in the corner she gets inside and schrader is going to take it kicks it out back to sterling she's going to drive baseline spin back and schrader has it she's going to take her shot out of three and good grace schrader 4-3 and we have a timeout taken by seymour a full time out so let's see the columbus east cheerleaders here we go orange and there we have it our columbus east cheer leaders with 452 remaining here the olympians lead by 12 timeout taken by seymour bachmann will take the ball out and most likely get into gravy and gravy will bring the ball down the court and it looks like miller will pick her up once she crosses half court and gets it to saw on the right wing bachmann back to gravie in the corner down low to saw a great pass and a great shot there sage stall and assist by corinne gravy corinne grabby leaves the conference innocent with 4.8 assists and a great pass there by sage stahl 40 26 is our score olympians remaining in that zone look as sterling has it on the right corner and a pump fake myra fire and off the mark and she keeps almost kept alive great hustler by grace meyer but went out of bounds and we're gonna have a sub albany spear checks in for maylie roberts with 403 remaining here 40 to 26 is our score excuse me 26 i don't know why i said 23 but 40 to 26 is our score as grin gravy gives it down low to bachmann she hesitates and fires it up offensive rebound by jenkins and she will be at the line 4-2 emma jenkins tonight has three points looking to get her fourth and fifth with these two free throws with 3 52 remaining as 25 kendall sterling picks up her first and jenkins fires that one up and good emma jenkins converts with her first gives her four looking higher fifth and it is up and long emma jenkins goes one for two at the line and they get it across half court and almost put away but sterling has the ball here olympians and again that zone 2-3 zone there 3 30 coming up on the clock seymour needs to get something going here looked at a great pass there but a foul by the olympians had the right idea for seymour 20 sage stall i think that's her second yep team second here in the second half as meyer fires up at three and good grace meyer with a big three-point basket there grace meyer is in the double digits and now leads points for seymour with ten as number three perry's gonna drive it and gets it blocked up to grivey all alone and she will throw that one up and good karen gravy once again draws the foul and will go to the line for the and one great job there drawing the contact and converting there let's see if corinne grabby can convert here as that one is up and good gives corinne gravy 15 on tonight's match up so far just here in the third quarter corinne grabby comes in average in 16 points second in the conference with 255 remaining gets it down low to schrader she draws a foul and just like that converts gray schroeder with seven points looking at eight with this free throw great job drawing the foul as well on this end of the court and she will fire it up and good grace schroeder shooting 60 percent at the line and she makes that one as albany has it dribbles it back out and gives it to sage stall and forces a pass there stolen by meyer and she's going to force a pass as well and stolen by gravy back and forth here as gravity great pass down low to stall and she fires it up and off the mark and an offensive rebound great hustle there by jenkins gravy looks at a three passes it to spear albany in and out could not get the three to fall but great hustle there by corinne gravy to save it and grab the rebound jenkins is going to get an unload of sage stall and she will fire that one up and good sage stall with two points great job there by the olympian basketball team to go after offensive rebounds and keep the play alive so at 30 second timeouts taken by the olympians we will take a short break thank you guys for tuning in to this live stream so there we have it the timeouts taken by the olympians with 209 remaining here in the third quarter olympians lead the seymour owls see if seymour can get something going here after the timeout and a great trap there causing the turnover great job there by the lady os after the timeout and bachmann fires the 18-foot jump shot off the mark and out of bounds seymour basketball a great job there by the front two in that zone gravy and spears who caused their turnover they attacked hard and forced that one as caitlyn carter's will check in for leah bachmann jenkins will slide to the right block and carlos will take over the middle 150 remaining here in the third quarter 46-32 is our score the olympians are picking their defense up it looks like as schroeder spins and gets that one to fall great move there and a great shot there grace schrader i believe is in double figures now with 10.