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is there a motion mr tennis thank you second thank you dr kaiser okay we have uh a motion and a second do we have any comment we have no public comment on this one no public comment thank you okay all those in favor of uh approving the independent financial audit um with clarification that there were no adjustments necessary other than procedural board all those in favor signify by saying ai none opposed motion carries five zero okay information on the 2021 budget update mr baltimore okay the budget cycle begins with the governor's proposal for the budget that will start effective july 1st so the governor has provided us his projection for the 21 22 budget and it really is a dramatic improvement from what we experienced really with the start of kovid and the projected decline in revenue statewide revenues frankly are outpacing even the pre-coveted estimates before the budget state budget was was reduced um and it was noted earlier that our higher earners in california have weathered this this pandemic better than those at the lower end of our socioeconomically scale and frankly our capital gains tax and those higher earners are driving continued increased revenues in the state of california reminder that we are funded on average daily attendance however for the 2021 year we have a hole harmless so we will either receive the better of next year's ada the 21 22 year which won't be known until april of 22 or the 1920.

there it's important to note that not all programs receive a cost of living adjustment that is really the local control funding formula there are other state programs special education child nutrition preschool foster youth and mandated block grant they will not receive in essence the acknowledgement of the prior year but will only receive the 1.5 percent cola special education early intervention grants we're waiting to get the details on that but we're not expecting an increase in revenue at that point and importantly the cash deferrals that we i think have talked to the board about um that were implemented that we're experiencing right now nearly all of those are are being bought down and so we'll only have really one deferral that will push us out into the 21-22 year now we're still experiencing the deferrals because they are it relate related to the current 2021 budget act and frankly chica unified because of having strong reserves we are not having to look for other means of cash like a tax revenue to assimilation note so it's also important to note there is no additional pers or stirs money that's being put to buy down that liability in the future however it's noted that the prior dollars that the government state government invested last year is actually having a bigger dividend payout so the estimate of percentage increase is going down so our multi-year projection will look better related to pers and stirs costs so just want to point out that the governor has proposed some one-time dollars associated not only with the local control funding formula that is the safe schools for all grants and our estimate a baseline estimate this is not the additional dollars for our targeted students would be over five million dollars that's 450 dollars per average daily attendance thank you but there are certain things that we have to do to receive these dollars we have to have a covid19 safety plan which includes testing for staff and students collective bargaining agreements need to be me need to be met and then we would have to provide for the first round to receive the full 450 dollars we would have to provide in-person instructions tk through second grade by february 16th and then we would have to expand um in person by march 15 to rtk through sixth grades and it is required i mean the goal here is to incentivize in-person instruction now we are already doing an amp model so we are meeting the in-person definition that the governor has provided at this point in time can we i have a question yes um when it says tk sixth um since we're our sixth grade are in with our seventh and eighth grade are we still meeting that it is tk5 for districts that have middle schools oh thank you and that was provided in a clarification update so that's the state dollars and again the timeline to apply for that is february 1st and that date doesn't seem to have changed yet and now we're just days away from that but chica unified is well positioned to at least apply for these dollars at this point in time along with state one-time dollars really this is the frankly the bigger pot of money is the state or the federal one-time dollars through the actually continuation and additional dollars through the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds so for chico unified this is over 10 million dollars of one-time dollars and it's really additional allowed uses for addressing learning loss but they did expand the definition to include facility repairs and noted improvement for air quality systems so improvements to hvac heating ventilation air conditioning air scrubbers in classrooms those types of things are things that we could spend these dollars on when you say addressing learning loss that could be spent on that as well would that include additional intervention counseling type services to meet those social emotional needs of our students as well that are probably a little bit greater at this point of our traumatic experience these last few years absolutely and i think the ed services department is already having those conversations and trying to put together some plans for that anytime you're talking about one-time dollars you really want to talk about thoughtful use because they're not going to continue forever so how do you really kind of get the biggest bang for your buck with those one-time dollars so these are conversations we'll bring back to you and the board with some ideas and recommendations sorry so i tried to create the um summary multi-year projection that you see when we do a regular budget update and i included the cost of living adjustment as provided by the governor at a 3.84 percent in 2122 and then additional 2.98 in the 22-23 year and you can see our financial picture changes much dramatically for the better because as a reminder to the board we were looking at some severe deficits in our out years not only because of not receiving any additional done money but because of declining enrollment estimates so what's interesting about this proposal for chico unified is that because we can use the 1920 ada and the increased cola we're going to do really well financially at least from a revenue side perspective well and actually a change in fund balance perspective in the 21 22 year now that's no increased services to kids which we know we need to provide and that's no compensation but we aren't running a deficit but i think it's important to remind the board and our community that we will have a problem in the 22 23 year even with these additional dollars and that's really because of that declining enrollment piece that if we don't make adjustments looking out into the future we could be right back into that deficit spending pattern now we do have very healthy reserves so if you look at the bottom of this you can see even in the 22 23 year with a spending deficit of 500 000 we're still carrying over over an 18 million dollar fund balance beyond what we're required to keep from the state and the local board so we're well positioned to handle this but it is again prudent to talk about not only looking towards the 22 22-23 year but also how do we use those one-time dollars to carry us through uh mr baltimore i have a question are we in a situation now where reaching the cap comes into play yes it does and so that is something else we're looking at for the entire board a number of years ago the legislature if if certain tests were met and there were four of them that there would actually be a cap on the amount of reserves that a school district could keep as undesignated basically and so we've hit all four of those tests and quite frankly most people and i think the legislature never thought we would hit all of those tests and we'll bring back some more information on that but there are things we can do there are some recommendations that we can make with this board regarding our reserves because just from a financial standpoint reserves aren't a bad thing now philosophically we're an education agency so we take in dollars and we provide services to kids that's what we do we're not a bank we don't want to just put money aside for the sake of putting it aside however having good reserves allows us to make better decisions having good reserves allow us allows us to have enough cash even when the state doesn't pay us on time and just as a kind of comparison one month's payroll is over nine million dollars so really when you look at just the reserve even at 18 million that's really two months that we could pay everybody before we wouldn't have any cash available so um we'll see how that plays out we'll bring more information to the board but um yes we're gonna look at having a cap on our reserves and some challenges with that so it's thank you for noting that so again this is a this is basically the governor's first proposal and we will bring back or he brings back an adjustment to his proposal in may called the may revise and at that point they have better estimates of revenues from the state so we're going to have to see what the legislative support is for this budget obviously the coveted 19 impacts are steep still being felt and this is all really good news i think for us on an educational side but you just have to ask yourself how do we pay for that really is the economy really going to hold and we'll see we have a new president and we have a democratic majority in the senate so some of the things that we had heard from um the federal side about fully funding special ed that we never thought maybe would happen even a few months ago now looks like maybe real conversations and would be a large influx of dollars on the federal side again not paying attention to how we all pay for that but there is more positive news potentially for local education agencies related to the new administration i can't emphasize this enough our chico unified school district enrollment is pivotal at this point in time and it's more unknown than ever in the past we could look historically over a three-year period to determine or give us an idea of what the future might hold with the campfire and with covid that historical data trend has been broken so we are projecting the client enrollment but i would not at all be surprised if we came back to you and that picture is completely flipped and maybe we're increasing but i think at this point from a financial standpoint we need to plan in the most economic and prudent manner which would really speak to us of a continued small decline in enrollment over the last three years over the next three years our multi-year projections um are is the enrollment going to happen are we going to really receive this cola still a lot of questions about what the future years are going to look like for us and then as was mentioned prop 2 approved in 2014 is going to try and cap our reserves in the 22-23 year for clarification so we'll have a little bit of time to talk about that and maybe provide some options and plans how to deal with that so again that's what we know to date and things are changing are there any questions about the governor's proposal will would thank you um we'll be getting any closer information through budget workshops that we're involved with with the state yes we attended one today and we also attended school services all online a couple days ago so we're still working through that but as information the board we will bring back an updated budget for the current fiscal year called the second interim we'll do that in march and this information will be included in that multi-year projection thank you kevin board any other questions at this time the school services bulletins have been very timely um so you know if you've got that service check those bulletins okay thank you on to number four and i see that mr cole has been nudged so he's awake now david cole is the classified personnel director for the personnel commission um mr cole well thank you i appreciate the opportunity to talk to you for a few minutes this evening one of the requests i had is to give a very brief overview of the uh first of what a merit system is and so i hope to do that in less than three minutes or so but chico is unique in that it's a merit system school district which means that it operates much like a civil service system uh the merit system operates under the rules of the ed code at code section 45 240 through ed code section 45320 and what that does is it gives the commission specific rules on how to operate a classified system so all of the staff in in the hr department report through a personnel commission to give some perspective on that california there's about a thousand school districts and of the thousand one hundred of those are merit system uh school districts of the one hundred uh they represent about sixty percent of all classified employees in the state of california so even though it's a relatively small number 100 out of a thousand it's a large number of employees that are represented within those classifications the personnel commission consists of three members you have a member who is the appointee of the board you have a member who is the appointee of the classified union and you have a third member who is the neutral appointed by both of those members as an example of of how the merit system operates um if you were to have a job a new job that came to the commission the uh say a business analyst position uh we would be told what posit what those duties are and create a job description around that with all of the essential functions and qualifications and then from that we're required to meet with the merit subcommittee of the union and so we would meet with that committee discuss those qualifications discuss the job requirements meet with the district reach a consensus come back to the commission have a final job description and once it's approved we create the the internal test to determine whether or not someone's qualified for that position or not um this evening as stated in the merit system it operates under the authority of head code section 45 245 which states one member of the personnel commission shall be appointed by the governing board of the district and one member nominated by the classified employees of the district shall be appointed by the governing board of the district these two members shall in turn appoint the third member this evening the ed code requires that the nominated name to the personnel commission for the classified union beverly patch would be brought to the board for appointment the code requires that the board appoint this nominee from the classified union are there any questions or anything i can any questions from the board okay thank you we need we need to um act to approve the personnel commission member of appointee for uh three years from csea uh beverly patrick is very much so move is there a second there's there's no public comment on this item i'll second that thank you yes i bet patrick was a co-worker of mine for a number of years at pleasant valley okay um all those in favor signify by saying aye aye motion passes 5-0 okay uh number two informational intent to transfer clinicians from butte uh county office of education to chico unified school district mr hanlon so this is an informational item only so i just want to update you briefly currently clinicians are employed through the butte county office of education and then they're assigned to schools on our in here in chico there are currently five clinicians they're assigned primarily to the emotionally disturbed classrooms but also to students that have emotional challenges outside of those classrooms it is not uncommon for chico unified to take programs from the county and transfer them we are severely handicapped teachers back in the early 2000s were a big group that came over last year we took the occupational therapists and this year the clinicians and the benefits there are they will be under the umbrella of student services which will be under the direction of diane olson and it's just a better coordination of services when you get a district our size programs are run a little bit differently than through the county and so it's it's just have a better coordination of those services and they they're more in line with the goals of the board and the district we um we will have a different kind of a model than what the county has traditionally served and that's one of the primary reasons why we're looking at this we will be able to use those counselors in different ways primarily in in cases of crisis and be able to pull those off currently we're not able to do that because they're not our employees so the job description will be changed a bit we are negotiating that with cta currently and um and have provided a copy of our our job description to them for comment um anyway that's kind of it we expect that to happen in 2021 next year um the funding that that that pays for those services comes with it from the county so that flows to the to the district it's about a half a million dollars and um and then but also the cost then will be ours so that's kind of it any questions think any questions board okay hearing none thank you mr hanlon for the update and we are negotiating still with the uta on some of the job description uh issues that's correct okay thank you and there's no public comment on this item we have comments on that item no thank you okay um items from the floor do we have any additional sign ups or comments for items from the floor we do not board member requests to agendize items board members do we have anyone that would yes mr chancellor i'm the one that kind of float out there a little bit um what's the situation with the shutdown because there was there was the there was a lifting of the the shutdown the other day but we're still shut down what's what's going on there i i thought it was a curfew or something that was in place from late at night from 10 pm to 5 in the morning but no we went almost back to where we were in the very very beginning with the complete shutdown where people were supposed to stay with their own families restaurants were shut down it was take out only there was not outdoor dining and that additional layer has now been lifted so we're back in the purple so the other one was kind of referred to we were referring to it as a deep purple and i think mr lando had a clarification there yeah don't mind my budding and just the language is really unfortunate we're still under state home order temporarily we had a regional stay at home order which is what lumped us in with sacramento so the regional is lifted but the original stay-at-home order from the beginning of the outbreak is still in place so what are the implications for public participation at this when would we be when are we looking at getting getting members of the public back in here to you know um be heard on on these issues i mean for example there's an items from the floor here not a particularly controversial meeting that we had here tonight but you know in the real world somebody would be able to come forward and if they didn't get a chance to be heard on on some issue now would be a time when they could get get that in you know and uh and i just want to know when we can talk about it again it's it's determined by the state and the in the butte county board of health right it's nothing to do with us so we did ask butte county public health this question last time and they did say that technically public gatherings especially in an indoor location were not allowed at this point and that will change when that would change when we go to red when we go from purple to red what if we were in transition like if a meeting had been agendized or something like that and uh and it went to red would we be would we throw it open at the last minute or would we stick with purple i think that would be a decision of the board but we won't have an opportunity to make that decision because we won't be in the context of a meeting is there is there a can we put that on the agenda for for when we go to red we can um is that do we have to agendize that i mean could we just decided so we could agendize at what point the board would move to in-person board meetings and what that would look like so if we move to red the board um i mean i'm i'm making possible language that we would move at the next meeting we could move it you know wait and move until the following agenda came out that would be the decision the board would make so doesn't i'm sorry doesn't the county health department say it has to be two weeks continuous status i am not sure that that is still the case on the movement of the colors i don't know kathy um i would like to request that we put on the agenda discussion of you know when we can open these these things back up again um i would support putting it on um because i think not only does the board need clarification but so does the public is there any other member that would not like to go right or just a consensus well that's what i'm going to ask is just for clarification on procedure these are are these action items too when we agendize something right i just don't know i'm just asking okay yes what uh this is the point where if a board member has a request to agendize an item they would bring it up mr tennis has a request the practice usually is that it's a board consensus if we have a majority who says yeah we'd like to have that come back that's what we do and yes we would make that an action item at that agenda okay i i see all the heads shaking yes so we'll we'll move forward as the next agenda is developed to make sure that that issue and clarification is on the agenda point of order and i'm sorry mr landau i'm sorry to keep up with these procedural issues but i really do want to clarify how this works um these my understanding is that these requests should still be be formal motions correct so i hear that we all have nodded and said yeah that looks good but i would really feel better if we had that um on on paper as yes we're going to agendas this okay uh i will ask for a formal motion um first though i'd like to ask a uh what would be like a point of clarification or something like that yeah on on uh a deal like this though isn't it easy for somebody to put something on the agenda not necessarily um no um the uh kelly you want to explain how how we go through screening whether or not and when sure so anybody can request to put a item on the agenda and certainly the board can request to put an item on the agenda and what we want to do is make sure that the board as a whole all has an interest in spending the time discussing that item so that's why this was put back on here so we could have a very clear process for board members to put items on the agenda so in this case it would need a motion which i think has been made a second um and then follow our life of emotion process i move that we establish a firm protocol for putting opening the meetings back up once we have moved to the red tier thank you is there a second sure i'll second that thank you mr lando any further discussion on the motion to agendize uh formally setting up a protocols and procedures for when we reopen to bring the public to our meetings okay seeing no further discussion all those in favor signify by saying i i i dr kaiser did you vote yeah okay thank you when that passes 5-0 thank you i'm sorry i didn't have my mic on i think we're at the adjournment point i'd like to take make a motion to adjourn second that's non-debatable so we're gone and i got a motion in for the night you

many of us sat wondering in november and december would that extend and really didn't know but we started to have discussions not only internally but also externally with our colleagues from other school districts in the east valley what are you looking to do are you going to look to extend this how are you going to extend this um knowing that kova 19 has not gone away although we've had some progress in terms of vaccination there are other challenges that we're still going to have to meet in that process so in december we started to have more conversations when it was clear that it didn't look like there was going to be an extension when we came back from our winter break there was a lot of confusion because the federal government did extend the tax credit related to ffcra however what a lot of individuals didn't realize as a public agency we were not eligible for that tax credit so we never actually got a credit to begin with really kind of what we typically say that unfunded mandate we had to follow the legislation because it was federal law however there was no direct benefit to us financially other than the esser and other relief components that the governor has produced which really i suppose if you look at it could go towards anything that we feel is related to covid that we have to supplement in terms of expenses that we've had so as a result we've decided that in the best interest of our employees we needed to come back and ask for an extension of ffcra but really looking at it from the context of it's going to be higley unified school districts coveted 19 sick leave but you'll see on this if you are familiar with ffcra it's pretty much an exact copy with some slight modifications and i'll talk about some of those modifications so one of the things that we would like to look to do if the governing board approves this later tonight actually the action item will be after today's information session is that we would retroactively put this back to january 1st and then go until june 30th of 2021.

we are skipping the 2021 year we are not even recording or reporting ada so the governor's proposal includes a cost of living adjustment we talk about a cola at 3.84 percent and that really is an acknowledgment of the cola that effectively should have been implemented this year of 2.31 and an estimated increased cola next year for 1.5 note that it's not a perfect mathematical equation on that but it works out to be a 3.84 cola i apologize uh which sorry while you're wave waiting which two years was that cost of living adjustment based on so the cost of living adjustment that statutorily is calculated for the current year 2021 this year at 2.31 percent and then acknowledgement for a 1.5 percent cola in the 21-22 year but the cola that the governors propose is 3.84 effective july 1.

due to circumstances covid and others we decided it wouldn't be a good time but the calendar has kept driving forward and here we are a year later facing the same needs for our schools and facing a two and a half year timeline to meet those needs now finally we see some light at the end of the tunnel we can see the potential for covid to be under control and we need need to return to our plans for some very important improvement projects that lost year now means we're looking at 2024 before we have solved our critical needs involving security efficiency and cost savings so some of these needs that will be discussed tonight in this presentation are security entrances and vestibules at all of our schools modernized bathrooms some of our bathrooms are original to our 100 year old buildings brand new heating ventilation and air conditioning systems throughout the entire district new boilers that keep our schools warm many are beyond their useful life and are very inefficient renovations to our middle school auditoriums and other co-curricular facilities these are key pieces of the clifton experience and a source of town pride and accessibility too many of our bathrooms don't meet ada standards the four levels of christopher columbus middle school do not meet ada standards the athletic facilities at woodrow wilson middle school do not meet ada standards so the administration and the board of education went into this planning process with consideration of the entire clifton community what do our students need to learn what do our facilities need to be safe modern and financially efficient and what kind of school quality does our community want this proposal is about one clifton with all of its parts working together the cara rubino architects has been very helpful as we evaluated the needs at all of our buildings the firm works with more than 50 public school districts in new jersey at this time i want to introduce joe de cara to tell us more about the comprehensive proposal to solve clifton's most pressing needs and to do that most importantly by capturing the most state funding possible at the conclusion of the presentation we will have time for as many questions as the board members have and of course there will be time for public comment before a formal vote is taken on the resolution tonight to approve the referendum joe i'm going to turn it over to you at this time okay thank you very much i also have rodney watkins who's our senior project manager in the firm we also have available kevin dwyer who is our senior mechanical engineer that we use quite often on school projects and we have representation from mcmanum in scotland your bond council and also phoenix advisors to go over any other cost numbers and the bond issue we've as dr robertosi mentioned we've we've been involved with the clifton board of ed as architect of record for approximately 10 years and in that time we've done probably probably about 70 successful projects so we know your facilities very well during that course and time we we've done various studies for the district feasibility and condition reports that over the years have identified many of the items that your superintendent mentioned that are in need of of replacement and repair they're extensive but that does not mean that the district has not maintained your facilities they've done an excellent job as indicated some of your schools are about 100 years old they would not have lasted this long if they were not maintained so so when you see the the extent of the improvements uh please do not feel that that this district this district has not maintained the facilities in an excellent manner sometimes things just outlive their normal life structure so we go to the next slide i would like to just go over a general overview of the types of projects that are being planned for the upcoming referendum there are hvac upgrades those are heating ventilating and also includes air conditioning and this is generally been established for air quality in addition to that you have several boilers that are in need of a replacement basically due to their age all important security entrances throughout the facility auditorium upgrades the toilet upgrades a weight room expansion at the stadium and toilets and new artificial turf field at woodrow wilson middle school in addition to that there's district-wide technology and security that would be incorporated into the overall referendum next slide please rodney so basically we're we're touching all of this school facilities for hvac upgrades um with the exception of school 17 um which basically um is your newest school was built i believe 2004 and the facility the mechanical system is is okay there compared to the other ones we are though also addressing certain uh additional um upgrades to the filtration system in the mechanical system which i'll get into in a little more detail uh we're also doing work at the board office with boilers so if we go to the next slide we've we did an extensive analysis of every school and i'm not going to show every school in this presentation but i wanted to give an example of the due diligence and the matrix that was prepared to identify the need and identify the various solutions in trying to be in an extremely cost-effective manner and also one that would get you eligible for any potential state aid that the state of new jersey would provide uh your community so as you can see from this floor plan there are there are two basic areas one is you have classrooms that have windows in them um and you have a certain type of mechanical system that is incorporated to that based on the type of structure this is and then you have the larger spaces like your gyms uh your auditoriums and those have different types of mechanical systems which are known as rooftop units they're big boxes on the on the roof and they provide heating and ventilation within those okay if you go to the next slide rodney um this just shows uh school five and if you go to the next one um this happens to be the middle school so you also have incorporated in this what's called the uh the bms controls those are your building management systems which is your control system for your all your mechanical systems and in the past you have a thermostat and they're not programmable all of the new systems that would be incorporated at every facility would have individual control systems that are controlled you can control them online somewhere your facility director can use them they can be programmed to come on and off at any time desired uh run for a certain time and have ultimate control of the systems to also afford exceptional efficiency in its operation so those elements have also been included into the scope and the costing of all the projects next slide rodney so go go back one rodney you know just so what i'd like to do is talk about uh the the typical classroom setup which is the beige areas and those are your now you can go to the next slide so these are these are examples of your typical um classroom with windows on the outside whether they're small big doesn't matter and there's two types of systems that we looked at for the replacement um one is and they're both known um generically as unit ventilators and you can have one and you're familiar with some of them if you've been in your rooms there's a horizontal unit ventilator and it sits against the outside wall and if you walk around your building you see louvers below the windows that's where fresh air comes in and mixes with a heating element basically all you have now is a heating element that's heated either through your steam boilers or your hot water boilers and there's a maximum of air that moves through the building in these classrooms that come in heated and then gets exhausted the other type is a vertical unit ventilator and it sits in the corner of the room and you can see the the image on the upper right it tends to take less room but there's a larger opening louver that can be installed now you may have noticed that we've um completed not too long ago some science room renovations and in those facilities you have both unit ventilators horizontal and you also have some replacements on the vertical units okay so if we go to the next slide um the unit ventilator uh the the horizontal one um for cooling now in many cases when you're going to replace your unit ventilators or hv heating and ventilating system it's prudent to include the dx coils and the cooling elements so you can increase the air quality that you're trying to gain by providing proper cooling um this is not a luxury anymore this is a necessity every school building we designed today has air conditioning in it and a majority of districts have been chipping away at increasing their air quality and providing air conditioning in various ways in their existing facilities so now with the advent of very highly efficient systems you would have the heating system the horizontal unit ventilator and then on the roof you would have a split condenser and there are various types and depending on the building and the system we would design the specific condenser that is appropriate for uh that facility but basically the condenser would be on on the roof with refrigerant lines going to the unit ventilator plus the heating elements hot water or steam to that unit ventilator similar in concept to the system you have but new state-of-the-art equipment that would run those systems and those will be tied into individual thermostats in each room which is required by by code for schools and you can control that with some flexibility next slide shows the vertical um unit ventilator and in this system the condenser is in the unit itself so you don't have any rooftop units you can't put these in every uh room because of the architecture of your building uh and the way the louvres are in the windows we do not as architects and as you know members of your community you don't want to degrade the architecture of your buildings uh you have some very nice structures they're old um but well-designed uh and we want to respect the language of the buildings and we want to make sure that when we put any new louvers in it doesn't look like it was just added on later and looks looks terrible so so it's very important to incorporate it into the existing language of the design of the buildings next slide rodney now the other type of mechanical unit that we're looking at providing is the uh rooftop units and those serve the large spaces your gymnasiums uh your auditoriums and cafeterias uh these systems are quite large depending on the size of the room they are supported on your steel structure and they are basically ducted through the space providing the supply air conditioned there and also have the exhaust system within it now at this at this point um pre we started this as your superintendent mentioned um pre-coded uh we started working on this i believe it was around october of um and normally based on the state-of-the-art codes the code compliant the uh ashrae would require a filtration system of what's called a mirv 8 and that would be both in the unit ventilators and also the rooftop units so now we're post covered and we're in the middle of it ashrae has changed those requirements and have made recommendations uh that the merv filtration system should be increased to a 13 level now we can with the manufacturers uh providing the equipment for the unit ventilators we can reach and obtain filtration using merv 13 on those facil on those areas those applications um anything above that the motor sizes um for the unit ventilators are not capable of overcoming the static pressure of the filters but this meets the recommendation of ashrae in the state of new jersey post covet issues now on the rooftop units the manufacturers have been adjusting uh their systems and there's a uh the ductwork that would go into this has a chamber that you can include a hepa filter and the hepa filters are far superior to the merv filters uh it takes out smaller and smaller particles so we were able to um through the you know discussing it with the various manufacturers as these units would be specified new we would increase the capacity or the horsepower of the motors and the drives uh to accommodate that resistance that you would have in pulling the air through those merv filters and those would have to be changed on the on the uh schedule that the manufacturer recommends and there are pre-filters before it so you can kind of keep the hepa filters as clean as possible so there's a lot of different techniques and uses that we can do there so the so the important thing is um post culvert we are able to increase the recommend the recommended merv filtration to 13 on the majority of all your classrooms and we are able to increase that on the rooftop units to use to utilize hepa filters it is more expensive but when we develop the cost we also as we explained a while ago we have contingencies that we can utilize to absorb some of these additional figures um so so that is where we're planning on the two major types of units that would accommodate about 90 98 of your uh your individual areas the next slide is is something else that has been used a lot in the last eight months in school districts to also increase the i'll call it the efficiency um or effectiveness effectiveness is probably a better word of your filtration system and it's and it's called needlepoint bipolar ionization okay um i'm not a scientist um but basically all that is is that it it um charges the particles in the air and it occurs in nature where you have um flowing air and waterfalls things like that the the particles and the airs get either negatively or positively charged and this does that um in in the unit or in the classroom and what happens is as an example with the phil the filters certain things will go through the filter and some larger elements dust particles other things will get stuck on the filter so let's take virus viruses they're very small if their gets charged as as a positive and it will connect to something that's negative so it could connect to dust or a larger particle so the particles get bigger and then what happens is with your merv 13 or your hepa filter it gets blocked out to a degree nothing is 100 but it increases the effectiveness of the filter we would we would include these in the new unit ventilators as the design and as it's specified so there's very little increase in cost if you were going to retrofit existing there would be a cost but when you do it as an order and as part of the process we don't believe at this point there would be any substantial increase in the overall cost and it would be another element to increase the air quality uh for your facilities and we we believe in working with our uh energy consultant and our mechanical engineer this would be a proven thing to add uh at this particular time uh and there's no need to go back to the state for any any approvals this is this would be all incorporated okay now one important element is that um do not confuse the ionization this bipolar ionization with um ozone right ozone was kind of looked at years ago but ozone is not good for you this is not ozone at all so please if you've heard things about ozone and health issues you're correct um this is not that at all it's a completely different system um so before someone says oh this is not right we're not sure uh it's a completely different uh completely different animal okay this is ionization not not ozone and this system has to comply with what uh one of the testing of ul uh 2928 uh which further describes the function and the uh and the safety protocols of it okay so next next slide um is the uh the boiler upgrades so we're we're replacing boilers at school 2 3 12 15 the middle the two middle schools the high school and the administration building now you you have steam boilers and you also have hot water boilers uh so we we went through uh and we if you go to the next slide rodney um to the the photo to your um to the left is a i believe this one is at the high school and this says you know as you can see it's been maintained very well i mean i could show you pictures of other school districts you know everything's rusted out you know terrible shape but it has it has exceeded its life expectancy um and it's time to to prudently plan for the replacement what you don't want to do is have a boiler failure in the middle of the winter and then you're replacing it on an emergency basis which will cost you twice as much to replace so to the to the right is what the new state-of-the-art systems look like if you're going to replace a big we we call we call the one on the the left locomotives because they're almost as big and the newer ones are smaller and they're multiple you may have five of the smaller units to replace one of the bigger ones and they cycle one goes on when you need more the next one goes on and then when they fire again they alternate so it gives it gives a longer life to the new units and they're extremely extremely efficient in terms of energy usage right so i'm not showing every school but this is generally what what is being uh planned to be replaced the security entrances uh again recent years is very very very important we are as you can see from the list we're identifying basically all your facilities what's missing is school 17 school 17 has a a secure vestibule in the design already and you also have security at the at the board office uh so we're we're planning on putting security entrances if you go to the next slide um we're just gonna show a few of them there's there's two ways to do the security and we've we've kind of explored um practically every possibility in terms of the locations where you want to enter the schools in some cases the the um the design is simple you have enough room in in your vestibule now where we can do minor modifications and provide the contact and the door controls in some cases we have to put exterior additions those exterior conditions can be simple like a vestibule or they're a little more complicated because of the the building itself and the architecture and the respect of how the building would look so in this one we're showing um you know exterior vestibule that um you have a portico already if you go to the next slide um we're basically in filling that and put in ada access because part of some of this is also to provide ada access to the new secure vestibules if you go to the next one again this is uh very difficult uh to put in um because we have the existing column the colonnaded in the front uh if you go to the next slide um we prepared a 3d model where the ramp would come in and we place the new vestibule mimicking the window structure and the rhythm of the building within that overall portico without changing too much of the facade the next the next few slides show different areas this is at christopher columbus middle school the access is very limited uh and we would have to place a vestibule with a multiple stop elevator to gain access and this would be the security point to get into the building and these are some of the other ones at school eight as an example you have the existing lobby that can be uh used uh without building an addition and then at the top and the back you can see the various locations for this secured vestibule so we just wanted to show you not every school that was designed but show you the examination and the due diligence just to show that we've we've uh looked at every stone in terms of how best to uh place these uh elements both in terms of aesthetics but also more importantly uh the cos the most cost effective manner in maintaining your your needs and this one is relatively easy it's within the existing vestibule at school 14.

hard to tell yeah we may we might be better just to deliver them to your houses thank you very much thank you we come to the good of the cause for 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 or mobile device 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 and 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 of community interest to protect the privacy of all students and staff concerns regarding individual students and staff members should generally be addressed by first meeting with the appropriate administrative staff all participants will be limited to three minutes speaking duration and i'd like to add to remind the public that this is the time for the public to come and address the board we do not feel this is a time for the board to enter into a dialogue with the public they should be allowed to come and speak to us freely specific questions can be addressed by the relevant administrators but please don't mistake our silence for anything but giving you the respect that we feel you deserve by coming to speak before us this is your time with that being said bernie is there anyone wishing to address the board we do not have anyone currently in the queue and i'm continuing continuing to monitor and no one there is no one saying no one i close the public portion um someone just spoke up just as you were saying those words okay um i enjoy having our community participate we will allow that person to to speak even though i said it uh melissa lennon hello are you able to hear me yes thank you so much for your time i i appreciate being able to to speak in this forum and to the board my child goes to frost elementary school i will have a second child in elementary school there next year as well and i i'm trying to be mindful through all of the decisions that the administration has made that we all have the same goal which is clearly to keep our children safe and to provide a quality education i also understand that the administration has been trying to manage this school district through a global crisis and am mindful of how challenging many of your decisions have been that being said this school system still needs to function with a vision of success and my child is in first grade i am watching these children sitting in front of computers all day unengaged unable to focus and i'm seeing the effect that it has on the quality of education and i'm seeing in my opinion a school system that's just floundering and i'm concerned as a parent now as we all know in november dr valesky you drove through town you saw long lines at the walk-in clinics and you decided to close the doors out of out of fear now i was at the same clinic days later and i actually spoke with the people that were there and what i found interesting is i was the only one there that was from east brunswick i spoke to teachers from madawan that were required to go there to get co-bid testing i met couples from old bridge and what i found out is the reason that there was such a large population at those clinics is it were the only ones in the surrounding area that were open that were providing covid tests yet dr valesky you saw something that scared you in my opinion you failed to do your due diligence and you reacted and the people that i see are suffering the most 30 seconds are our children i thought i have five minutes to speak three minutes ma'am okay so my question is why are we not capable of opening our doors the private schools the catholic schools the day cares and public schools in the surrounding area are open full-time point pleasant is open five days a week shrewsbury is open four days a week jackson was which is a comparable school size okay we have no one else in the queue thank you very much for coming and speaking to the board moving on to our agenda items under the board of education can i please have a motion to combine items one through seven so moved laurie moved by laurie secondly is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr angelo mark you're unmute mark angelo my apologies yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs guar yes dr hong yes this is lax yes mrs reese yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries for our community programs item there is one item on the agenda may i please have a motion for that don't move by glory second by leewoo is there any discussion all those in favor aye aye opposed abstain motion carries under curriculum and instruction there are five items i'd like a motion to combine items one through five silver move by second by jeff is there any discussion this is a roll call vote will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes which is true yes mr sismar yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes blacks yes mrs reese yes mr winston mr winston yes yes president becker yes motion carries and our facilities agenda tonight there is one item can i please have a motion for it so move move by mark second by laurie which mark sorry mark two is there any discussion all those in favor right opposed obscene motion carries on our financial services agenda i'd like a motion to combine items one through three moved move by laurie second second by susanna is there any discussion all those in favor all right opposed abstain motion carries our human resources agenda there is one item can i please have a motion for that so you will move by lee will second second by laurie is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mr squash yes mr han yes this is lax yes this is rhys yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries for our student services agenda i'd like to combine items one through five can i please have a motion for that move by lee wu second by laurie is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr angelo yes this is true yes mr sismar yes this is gloss yes mr hong is lex yes this is reese yes mr winston yes president becker are you hearing me yes we i've got that thank you you're welcome yes and motion carries and now um i believe our student rep tony is with us tonight always a pleasure to see you how are you how are things i'm doing well president becker i hope all are doing well with all of you as well um the only thing i wanted to talk tonight uh talk about tonight was the choice of virtual versus hybrid from the perspective of a student and um the main question that is being addressed is if the benefit of going in person and going hybrid outweighs the risk now obviously the first thing to consider is that everyone's individual situation is different some people have grandparents living at home where the risk is a lot higher but also do students want to go to school if each classroom is only two to four other students and the teacher has to teach to her laptop because the vast majority of students are still virtual and um it's sometimes perceived as sitting and staring at your screen at your desk at home to going and sitting and staring at your screen at your desk in a classroom now obviously this is um one side of this situation and some students cherish the opportunity to go outside consistently and go to a learning environment and of course provide some much appreciated company to the teachers who have to go every day um but some students don't want to wake up earlier two out of every four days and you know it depends what like each weight each side has a different weight and um i think one of the more important things is that or at least i personally believe that we will see or we're more likely to see an eventual mass switch to hybrid as opposed to a gradual trickling in of students switching to in person and i think it's because the decision is largely based um on what your peers are doing right you don't want to go to school if some of the kids that you know that are in your class aren't going if you're not doing what all your friends are doing why would you take that risk and go for it so um of course everyone's situation is different but uh since it's so strongly based on what your peers are doing i think that eventually we'll see a mass switch as opposed to everyone trickling in and uh dr vlaskey touched on this but the winter concerts uh put forth by the choir and the orchestra and the band it's amazing to see how talented the students are and how smoothly they're able to adapt despite the situations um one of the biggest things over the summer was everyone was like how am i going to play my instrument if i can't even you know sit in the band and you know we can't even fit more than 10 people in the room and it's great to see that it's so like well done now and the production of the video was great and yeah those were the only two things that i wanted to bring up tonight thank you thank you again as always we appreciate you taking the time to come and let us know what's going on with the students at the high school this brings us to committee reports information items and for the good of the cause of the board i just wanted to simply start out by um also echoing like tony just said the performance by our students shown in the video early tonight was amazing your passion for the arts your commitment to what you um decided to get involved in is inspiring the production was terrific but just seeing your faces and the smiles and the passion with which you were singing thank you for sharing that with us greatly appreciate it and now uh anyone any member uh board committee report information item for the good of the cause jeff thank you president backer uh speaking on behalf of the finance committee meeting which was held on january 19th uh that was our first meeting of this year my first meeting is a chair of this committee and i am encouraged uh by uh the folks that are involved some of the comments that were made just a fast overview we've uh beginning to lay out some of the financial uh opportunities that are being faced with now within the district and uh many of which are very good others are going to be need to be worked through and i appreciate the work that mr giuliani has done in presenting some of the data crystal clear makes it very uh easy to uh really assess what's going on uh from a topical standpoint uh we did discuss some of the enrollment in state state aid enterprise revenue which of course has changed drastically as a result of the covet 19 virus along with the educators health plan classroom availability and if i it was one takeaway from this is that i'm encouraged that we have our eye on the future on to brighter times and we as a district are absolutely going to be prepared to uh springboard out of this virus to a strong i expect a very vital district so i appreciate everything thank you that's my time thank you jeff good report any other members liwu yes thanks susannah last thursday of january 14th i attended ebef monthly meeting as everyone knows that the pandemic is caused and is still causing huge trouble for everyone and every organization so ebef so the primary fund rising event such as the pi dinner and the celebrity dancing of activity may not be held on time so you know uh still jack and his entire ebef team are working very hard to provide our school district with all kind of funding and supporting so if anyone in east brunswick community if you know any foundation private or public foundation is willing to help please contact jeff contact that organization please bring any financial resource to the ebef which eventually will benefit our school this school district and benefit our children so please do whatever you can to help ebf help our children thank you lee very important to know thank you for bringing that up any other board members wishing to speak susanna um just wanted to report that the um east brunswick human relations council will be holding a um facebook event on february 9th on tuesday at 7 30 pm celebrating black history month and i'm really excited about that program i'm participating on that planning committee a lot of just really wonderful um businesses and artists and dancers will be featured so if you can sign on at that time it will be um live with pre-recorded sessions and we also have contributions from our own very own students from east brunswick schools so very much looking forward to seeing that but it also be recorded so if you miss it you can always go go on facebook follow east brunswick human relations council and you can access the the recording after the fact thank you thank you susanna for bringing that to us for to there for bringing that to our attention any other board members barbara i i just wanted to mention uh we had a parent and i appreciate parents coming to speak to the board um and i definitely it's to advocate for your child i have kids you know in the district and my sister has kids in the district but i just want you to know that i've never known dr valesky to act out of fear um that's not his way in fact he's very data driven and i have not always agreed on everything uh related to covet all the time exactly and we all have different views but i have to say he's been very thorough data-driven the entire administration and the the characterization of us floundering i have our teachers are excellent our administrators are excellent so i want you to know we hear you but just remember that these are people who are working very hard in very tough circumstances i just lost my father to covert and it's not easy and i'd rather be cautious and save lives so thank you barbara that was beautifully beautifully put i think you spoke for all of us thank you so much anyone else wishing to bring up anything at the good of the cause seeing none we do have a need for a closed session the board of education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for discussion in a public meeting those matters we intend to discuss are those items listed in tonight's agenda the length of the closed session is estimated to be one hour after which the public meeting of the board shall reconvene and action will not be taken may i please have a motion to go into closed session second by jeff is there any discussion all those in favor aye aye opposed abstain motion carries thank you for joining us tonight stay safe board members please leave the meeting and log into closed session you

this is based on current hybrid numbers my numbers could increase dramatically since most of my classes 25 plus students rostered if numbers remain consistent with our hybrid schedule and we bring both groups back the number of students in person will average around 15 to 17. there is no way to configure my room to social distance if the number is over 12.

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so we're just over a million dollars in the in the medical benefits reserve fund um because we're crossing and we've crossed into january and now we're in the new um high deductible hsa plan year you know we are hoping that those claims subside and so we won't erode the medical benefits reserve any further we'll have to wait and see if the if the fund continues to erode at the same pace that it's been eroding you know this year you know we will run out of reserve in i don't anticipate that happening but obviously i don't have a crystal ball and i don't know and so if we did that we would certainly you know use whatever available operating budget we have and and of course talk to the town council i have spoken to um the town manager about having a meeting jointly with uh the the town and the board of ed to talk about our claims and our reserves because the town is experiencing the same you know high claims so their reserve is being you know depleted as well and you know i'll finalize with sean when when we'll give the town council an update on this so it's just it's a cautionary note um at this point again we still have 970 000 you know in the reserve so that's the highlights of the finance and the medical benefits report i'll stop there because i know everybody's had enough medical benefits talk this week right i i i can never get enough i'm sorry actually this year it's been such a uh complete dictionary surprise uh but that being said i'm sorry mr grippel this is your section i'll let you uh moderate very quickly i can't let it go if you haven't had enough you can go back and watch hours two and three from the other night that's uh i certainly invite you to do that i was just gonna say that actually everyone's welcome to watch a three-hour meeting last night i watched that one too uh uh tim you had a question yeah thank you i i just heard something i i hadn't heard it before then you mentioned that the town is experiencing similarly high claims i'm just curious is it is it the height the high claims are similar but is there any sort of pattern that you can see in a larger like group of people where things are going awry that might be able to improve things no i can't say that tim and that's because you know i haven't delved into the detail on on the town side but you know we'll get together and and talk it through you know i i think it i can't say you know what we do know is that a pandemic and covid related expenses are not high so it's some other extraordinary items that are occurring i don't know if it's occurring everywhere but it certainly seems to be occurring you know here on both the town and the board of vet side you know if people are are you know doing things differently because of the pandemic you know that may be a force but it's really don't know at this point we'll get into the details you know and as the rest of the year tracks we'll you know we'll have some more insight from cigna because we do get you know reports from them you know more analysis reports they typically come at the end of the year but we'll request it sooner than that so we could see is there some kind of underlying trend that predominating what's happening in our claims okay thank you and i know you would uh i think this got touched on on tuesday but just to revisit it for here um the what i for but for lack of a better term there's discretionary accounts like supplies and materials they're not urgent you push them off till the end of the year a lot of these things replacing staplers and whatnot you're you were you were in your are you are at 40 right now right and it for the foreseeable future say for the next month or so you're looking at staying there i am just because of where we are with medical benefits exactly if it weren't for that i would say you know certainly we probably would have raised it to 60 this month but we're going to hold at 40 until i see january claims and you know hopefully we've seen some you know but you know a lower claim month and then we could decide from there but yes for the foreseeable future we'll keep it at 40 just so that we have that cushion if we need it yeah i just i mean i just really uh i understand if we do need to go to the council and i could support that but i definitely want to do everything we can to rein in our spending on our side um before we go ask them for anything so thank you that's that's all thanks adam faith you had a question yes um thanks adam um this just came to mind and i guess i just couldn't get enough benefits the other night so i'm gonna keep it going um when you go to cigna you know the the big concern with kovid has been the delayed screenings um and delayed care um my concern is that as that we may continue to see these high rates as people start to get diagnoses that and begin to receive treatment for this delayed care um that everyone has been talking about since the pandemic started could you ask cigna about that if they're trying to track that if they have any indication of how that might be that might affect claims going forward yes yes i can and i what it'll you know i i know what the analysis showed you know as we ended last year you know it was there was nothing extraordinary through december other than you know where we typically see a large portion of our claims that are not just cancer and those types of things it's diabetes and it's and it's hypertension type claims so what cigna would show is is any of that changing as you know a percentage of total claims okay i'm just thinking that surely their um projections have to be looking at that and trying to estimate what that's what effect that's going to have and if they have any insight it might help us as we're looking at that budget i'm sure thanks tony you got a question i think vintage just answered that i was just kind of curious uh the reporting that comes back from cigna on the the claims analysis i assume in there is um you know claims with icd and healthcare procedure code information so i'm i'm hoping that's what's in there at least that way you don't know if there are disease classification situations or certain certain healthcare procedures but i think you just you just answer the questions may not so much be cancer oncology or um infectious diseases per se but uh hypertension and diabetes i i just i just wonder if that's just correlated with the whole cova situation although our teacher is not all home so they are mobile and in the schools for the most part but i just wonder if that's having an effect on our eyes on that but i guess uh some analysis if we ever figure that out be good to know yeah for you know what i can do for um our upcoming meeting tuesday night is just show the summary that cigna gave us for the year-end report for that you know for the year that or the 12 months ended december 31st of 20 just so you got a sense as to you know what are the you know what are the highest dollar categories of claims from last year you know again i yeah right your information overload but there's certainly a lot of interest here and it's a it's a large line item in our budget so you know the more we know the more comfortable you'll feel with approving the uh the request or or changing it however it goes thanks ben that was it yeah thank you are there any other questions seeing none i conclude the finance committee report thank you thanks adam thank you vincent up next is the planning committee uh andrew thank you all right i am going to present my screen hopefully you got it yes everyone's good i can't see you so just okay thank you catherine um okay thank you uh mr chairman so back on january 11th we had a planning committee meeting where vin presented to us the request for both the 21 to 22 calendar year for capital projects as well as the year total i'm gonna just take a few minutes some of you were there but for the folks who are home or those board members who haven't seen it i'm gonna go through and then let you know how the conversation developed um so overall district-wide we have about 500 000 in window replacements um paving roofing sidewalk and masonry another 1.1 million cafeteria improvements 350 000 hvac improvements district-wide 1.2 million interior building improvements at 925 000 laboratories district wide 250 000 flooring and ceiling replacements another 100 thousand and then lighting and electrical improvements at 480 000 and then 200 000 for the removal of a semi-used or never used press box over at the athletic complex at cheshire high school so the request for the 21 22 school year is 5.2 million dollars um the conversation went back and forth vin went from there and just explained what schools were going to be touched with the different improvements the committee came to the conclusion that we asked vin to go back and take a look to see what is actually necessary immediately necessary for this year as we move forward with school modernization um and you know we've all been going through this i think we all understand that we are almost at to a point where we're going to be starting to hone in on some final decisions with school modernization and it made the most sense to go back take a deeper look at what is absolutely necessary for this year before we move forward with anything as we come up with our final plan for that um since our meeting we actually received some communication from vin today that we're going to have another meeting on i believe if it works for everybody on the 28th at 6 00 p.m with a revised proposal um which is going to take the 5.2 number and bring it down to about 2.6 with some other projects that have been identified as being crucial to be taken care of um in the next year or so um what will not change though is up to the 26 the next five years is that the total project values will stay the same as we continue to look at the school modernization so i'm going to stop sharing my screen because i can't see anybody does that work yeah am i back all right good okay so um with that i know i just kind of threw that out there quick does anybody have any specific questions for vin or for myself uh andrew when do you uh what what day you're looking for kind of planning committee meeting this month or uh yeah we're looking at it on the 28th next thursday what is that next thursday thursday so hour before our budget meeting all right got it thank you andrew yep and there's vin's already sent out some details i have not had a chance to look at him we just received him a little bit before this meeting um as to what the most pressing needs are for uh i'm assuming the high school's uh walking cooler is in there but i'm not exactly sure yet yeah well the yeah the biggest one is the dodd roof and the high school roof and well i mean the details in there i could spill the whole bean tonight but you probably don't want to do that no we'll wait for the meaning but the planning committee has to evaluate it first tim you have a question you muted thank you i was just looking at our schedule and this one next next thursday the meeting is scheduled as ritual uh no sorry tbd virtual versus in person do we have any sense on that right now of what we're thinking i don't know how long ago that was that was uh two weeks ago i still eating let me just point out the the meeting for people who are watching the meeting i'm talking about is in case it wasn't said the public information so chatting with you your feedback on the budget that's why i'm just asking about that one different from any other meeting that's very cool was a couple minutes ago i was going to look into if we had a mobile broadcasting solution where we could have public comment come in through the tv like we did a past four meetings last year but we could we can definitely code this later uh in the meeting if mike's not ready to talk about it or jeff you might know yeah i think that i need to connect connect with mike on that tuesday so uh let's connect with mike and then we'll get that information out to the board in the public as soon as possible thanks thanks thanks for reminding us about that anything else that concludes my presentation for pre uh for planning seeing as there are none uh we are going to move on to policy uh mr gripple thank you mr chair um let's see uh for policy we had our last policy meeting on january 5th um where we again uh reviewed uh uh title ix um mrs halland uh presented some excellent findings as she went through the policy um and we had a decent discussion on it and after um discussing a lot of the what we found were problems in many questions and um i guess uh questionable language and vague law that uh we decided we voted to uh to table the policy until we received further clarification from washington uh which it sounded like even from today that there's going to be changes to title ix so i'm guessing that uh we'll be receiving clarification in the coming weeks if to see if we need to do anything if any other subcommittee member has any comment on that i think i kind of summed it up there let's see uh moving on um oh yeah go ahead no i just wanted to clarify that you know the policy we we have been talking about putting into place of formal policy but the district is already you know doing what it has to do to comply with the um was it the final rule or whatever so i don't want people to think that you know we're not we're already doing what we have to do this is just a question of getting a policy you know on the books um because that's also required by the law so i just wanted to clarify that right yeah the the law is the law and it's in effect and if the uh problems occur we roughly have a framework in place to deal with that um okay uh moving on uh so that the next two bylaws that we visited were about electronic attendance of meetings by board members one of which is completely fueled by the governor's executive orders and the other one was um uh something to take us beyond the time when uh the governor's executive orders expire um in in both cases again we decided to table both of these by-laws one of which was because since the governor expressly gives us permission to meet like we are this evening there was no need to have a a new bylaw in place to just have it rescinded after the fact so we felt it was there was not necessary to do that and i believe according to the minutes there were still many questions as to the necessity of um having electronic uh uh meeting meeting attendance by board members uh going forward after the fact so we decided to table that as well uh and then that concluded our meeting so essentially we we tabled everything that we were looking at and came to no conclusions except to table are there any questions uh no questions lacana thank thank you i know the policy committee uh is one of the hardest working committees we have on the board there's always a policy revision or several in the works i know this one was uh just seemed like it was rushed to us from a number of sources so thank you for uh and i know catherine spent a lot of time reviewing the language so thank you for going through that i i remain hopeful about it mr cardona's in washington maybe he'll uh uh help clean us up and make it uh something very tangible and equitable for for everyone but uh to your point catherine we are already meeting the title nine uh requirements so uh there's no jeopardy there but we'll make sure we're proven with this policy so thanks again team uh any other questions on policy see seen as there are none ah my favorite topic school modernization committee update um andrew and faith uh i i know we have a lot to talk about on that so and yeah i have faith in the brain i was trying to see if you're gonna ask a question earlier flipped andrew and ann uh if you guys want to give a quick summary or or as thorough as you need to what's happening with smc you want me to start and you want to go why don't you start and i'll add the communications stuff because i've been eating on the survey great all right um before i'm gonna share my screen i'm gonna show the matrix as presented last night um if i could share my screen again um but before i do that i just wanted to remind everyone of the timeline that we're that we're looking to to follow here um so school monetization committee is going to have the recommended plan to the town council and the board of education by march 1st the reason for the march 1st deadline is to get it to referendum for june 30th whatever the first phase of the plan is going to be um and if we don't meet the june 30th submission deadline then we will miss the funding application for this coming year and we'll have to wait a full another year in order to submit the plan to the state of connecticut um so there's been some questions about you know things seem to be going pretty fast or maybe not fast enough for some people but as we put together the plan um our goal is to get it our goal is to get it to us and to the town council by march 1st um so that's that's i'm going to start with that and then secondly there's been a lot of talk about different phases of the project um again i don't know where i fall yet on everything but i just want to throw out there about starting with high school as the first project um i've got a lot of questions about that and it was one of the topics last night so we heard from the chair um jen bates about the high school and why that would not be the first project first of all we all 13 members on the committee all used a scoring matrix which i had shared here previously about how to rank all and we ranked all the different options the high school as the first project was the last selected option by the school monetization committee that's number one number two is that based on the capacity studies or the enrollment studies com um completed by mylon and mcbroom the most immediate need now is that we are running out of space within the elementary schools as we heard in the superintendent's um presentation the other evening um so even if we approve a project now we're not going to actually be in that building until 2024 and effectively we would be out of space we're starting to run out of space next year in the elementary school levels so that's the second reason the third reason is is that when the state reviews the project and the phasing of the project um they're going to look at the enrollment study and collier's is fearful that if they do see that they are going to question why we're not starting with an elementary school if we move forward with the high school first um so there's three reasons why they're not we're not starting with the high school um there might be others i mean we have plenty of space at the high school according to the enrollment based on the square footage of that building um so again if the state's going to be reviewing what project would be the first project to move forward with they would definitely have questions as to why it would be cheshire high school so anybody have any questions about that part of it adam thank you i was in the middle of typing question um yeah so uh so just to be clear um and i had actually i had sent an email to uh to uh den bait and uh uh both chucks i guess uh today um on the question that you had uh or that i think that you kind of answered already was that whether or not um the state would even reimburse uh for a new high school because it was so far out of the realm even though you might be able to say that you could if you move all the buildings that theoretically you could address the population surge at the elementary level as far as the committee is concerned that is most likely not a viable option from the state point of view correct okay thanks that's all i wanted to know yeah i mean and and chuck you know chuck had pointed out chuck from collier's is that you know we really run the risk of if we did move forward with cheshire high school the state might not reimburse us um and so then that's that's a real that's a real concern for uh for what it's worth i i'm pretty confident uh chuck isn't a definitive answer uh on that i think by the next snc meeting but they so the high school did come up last night a few times uh the smc and i just want to end up returning back to andrew so when the committee scored all the options and there were i think more than a dozen 12 out of 13 committee members did not put the high school anywhere near the top in fact they fell out of the whole list of top five or six for a number of reasons uh but uh andrew and anna i know you've been in a lot more options committee meetings than i have but if the high school were theoretically done first um we'd have to start next year uh figure three or four year before school is complete new high school goes online and we're hit with the element of the enrollment that they're not prepared for right because high school doesn't solve for that step one right if you renovate the old high school as a new middle school um i don't know how that solves for the elementary woman either right because there was a discussion about doing a high school and using the old high school as a new middle school which would be way too much space you know if you put in hummuston and the board of offices but then we still hit with the elementary moment um so it's almost like we would have to do the high school and some other elementary school at the same time and that was one of the options i believe seven or or or eight that had uh but i never scored near the top of the list either so i i um i know there was more to it but i i think uh i hope on the 27th with a little more detail on that but i just wanna put that out there i know we're not just trying to solve for enrollment but there's a lot more of these moon pieces that that's what i want to say tim thanks andrew so everything here is predicated on i shouldn't say everything a large part of what we're doing is predicated on increasing enrollment and i'm just wondering if baked into that enrollment is the assumption of a higher increased rate of housing turnover in the next five to ten years based on lower than expected sales in the past 10 years so i'm just wondering if do we have do we know what the basis of that assumption is it's entirely possible you know people move out in large numbers but i'm just wondering what's the what's the basis of it did did anybody do like a survey you know a sampling of homeowners and say are you thinking about moving out in the next five years type of thing because this is i mean this the enrollment number is a really big deal so i just wanna and and i can ex i can i totally understand where it's coming from but i just wanna know if there's more meat to it than an assumption a hunch that somebody has um i can jump in there andrew if you're there who's there jeff so um i think that the numbers are predicated on the work of two do two different demographers first most recently is my loan in mcbroom um this is what they do they they study birth rates um housing trends labor markets and [Music] very analytically i mean is far from go through uh that data to project future enrollments and uh so they they have a lot of experience with that they want to lead firms in connecticut we also had a similar study done then i it was on the tip of my tongue the company that did it uh was the perk part of the perkins basement yeah ergonomics was a couple of years ago they did a similar study that showed projections like this as well so at least you know in my mind that urban urbanomics study is a couple of years ago four years ago really has been more validated by another firm saying the same thing um in this this updated study uh i know there have been some questions about that you know ben and i have reached out to milon and mcgroom uh certainly i i think you asked the question about the number of births in and which we don't have the answer to yet but i know we've reached out to them to try and get that information we certainly provide more as part of our budget meetings or a future board meeting too thank you with regard to the urbanomics that was done three years ago 2017.

the meeting streaming live sign is up okay guys we're live we are live all right let me send this out to uh samantha the meeting streaming live sign is up okay guys we're live we are live [Music] thanks huh somebody has the live stream on in the background and we're hearing feedback big time hello hey joe d how's everything how's everybody good joe good to see you happy new year happy new year [Music] for those of you who've just joined us we are live we're just waiting for the link to go out and for those of you who just joined us uh eric mountain could not be with us tonight jeff horn is filling in at the last minute uh we are very confident he'll do a good job but if we do have any technical difficulties we'll just be patient i thought you could say just blame him [Laughter] blame the superintendent that's the easiest thing to do um could jeff reset my password for board docs i emailed eric earlier today but um he didn't get back to me but he was out of office already that's a very good question jeff do you have access to that i do not okay okay i'll just um it's okay i read it from the public version i'll just follow along from that version okay i was gonna say i don't think i can i think he's the only one hey dane it's jim um i had trouble also what happened i've you put in forgot password and then asked if you remember your previous password um when they ask for that it it gets it up you can try okay i'll give it a shot thanks yeah it was really weird good evening everyone it was really weird mine wasn't working until literally like maybe i was calling eric i didn't know he was out it just worked randomly for me it wasn't i i typed in the same password 30 times it wasn't working eventually okay thanks yeah i'll keep trying jeff if you see derelict gutierrez please let her in she's our board attorney okay [Music] hi everybody hey frank hi frank we are live how is everybody very good good i got well i gotta make everybody laugh then i gotta i got a special mask for uh christmas so i went into school today and i wear my mask i love that by the way the cheshire cat yeah so the small kids go your smile is too scary so my sixth grader today goes you need to brush your teeth [Laughter] jeff please let chelsea spell in that's our board attorney okay once again for those who just joining us on the dais mr mountain could not be with us tonight mr horn's filling in at the last minute okay we're very confident in his abilities but if we do have any technical difficulties we'll just we'll figure it out thank you can anybody confirm for me that the live stream is working i see it working and just remember if you do have the live stream on in the background please have that muted [Music] we're missing any board members looks like everyone's here we just are waiting for renee and sherry it looks like it's a fall house today mike i think renee and sherry are just um watching the live stream i don't know that they're participating oh oh okay i think i think that's right okay uh derelice i don't see the release abdullah is here if you change your view you can see everybody i did oh and i see her at the bottom i'm here when i speak does it light up the yellow box oh there you are okay now hello how are you well thanks and you i'm okay thank you yeah so jeff the only other person would be a chris langheart a slang heart okay i'll keep my eyes open there's i don't see that name at this point jeff were you able to type into the waiting room to leave a message uh i figured that out what what did you want me to say again sorry just to remind people that if if they just want to watch the meeting they can tune into the live stream via the link that went out that's on our website the really only reason for anybody to be in the waiting room is if they're part of the meeting or they were going to participate in public comment later on gotcha i'll send that out now thank you jeff you're welcome danny we're going to run through the entire presentation and then there'll be questions after not not during the presentation right uh that's what that's what i i would i would request from from the board members unless there's a you know a simple easy clarification question if somebody has um but will certainly leave time for questions and answers okay however you want to do it come okay we could be open okay and joe once we start rodney will share the presentation on his screen i will introduce it and then i'll introduce you to take over okay sounds good you're gonna give an intro in terms of the need i'll give an intro yeah great i don't see kevin dwyer i just texted him i just see him come in now there we go is there a rene janowitz is that someone that goes in there yes we can let renee in renee janowitz okay this is kevin i'm gonna go on mute if you if you need me thanks kevin uh mr who see anyone else or or dr robertos anyone else we're waiting for otherwise we will start mr smith we are ready to go very good welcome everyone to the regular board of education meeting thursday january 21st 2021 if we could have a um fall please rise and we'll have our 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 thank you everyone mr uc roll call mr abba drabo here mr awad here miss bassford here miss beltran here mr canova here mr daley here miss danny here mr casper here mr smith here leave a quorum thank you mr casper would you read our uh mission statement please okay now i'm off me here we go 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 a democratic society in an ever-changing world thank you the open public meetings act 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 interests 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 clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations the meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with our policy zero one six eight okay we'll move on to uh adoption of minutes of uh december the third song moved so many bites bassford second by mr casper any discussion roll call mr abby drabo yes mr wad yes miss bassford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes miss danny yes mr casper yes mr smith yes okay uh adoption of the uh minutes of the january seventh uh meeting the motion by ms basford second by mr casper any discussion uh i have an amendment mr smith yes mr vice president abu drabo um i was going through the minutes i noticed just for records purposes um when it came to voting for third round for president i did not uh i don't think that's mining that should be on there i think it was for us who mr awad who is the one who voted for you uh mr russia do you see that correction i'll i'll clarify and correct it if it's incorrect thank you mr um president through you to mr um uh mr awad um he voted on the december third minutes he should abstain he wasn't present at our meeting as a board member i mean technically he could vote yes just because he could uh he could agree with that agree to them after reading he recommended it to you all right any other discussion on january 7th seeing non-motion i mean uh roco yeah an issue i'm sorry let me have an issue with the minutes yeah uh i'd like to have the uh minutes adjusted to know that i um withdrew my uh uh didn't accept the nomination that was made that's not in the minutes okay mister i can make that change of course yep thank you any other changes or discussion seeing none rockwell mr avadrabo oh i said yes mr owad yeah miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes for those that it's included miss danny yes mr casper yes with the amendments mr smith yes uh communication and announcements we have none uh first reading of policy uh policy number zero one five five under board committees do i have a motion i don't think we need an option yeah um yeah mr daley is correct for first reading we just read it uh would someone like to read this uh board meetings the board of education authorizes the creation of committees of board members charged to conduct studies make recommendations to the board and act in advisory capacity committees committees are not authorized to take action on behalf of the board an ad hoc committee may be created and charged at any time by the president or by a majority of the board members president voting president shall appoint members to any committee so created and charged members shall serve until the committee is discharged the ad hoc committee will be automatically discharged upon submission by the ad hoc committee of its final report to the board committee shall consist of no more than four board members one of whom shall be the president vice president or designee who shall serve as an ex-officio member on all board committees the board president shall apport appoint a rotational committee member who shall serve as the fourth uh committee member and the president's absent the president may apport one or more interested board members to serve as a rotational committee board member the board reserves the right to meet and work as a committee of the whole in informational discussion and exploratory sessions no official actions shall be taken at these meetings unless so advertised a chairperson shall be appointed by the president committee meetings may be called at any time by the committee chairperson or when meeting is requested by a majority of the members of the committee committee meetings shall not be open to the public except that except that a majority of the committee or the chairperson may open the meeting to the public or invite persons whose knowledge or expertise may be useful to the committee with the involvement and facilitation of the superintendent okay presentations and reports uh dr robertosi would you like to take this thank you uh mr president um at this time i'd like to ask rodney rodney if you could put the presentation up and share your screen and then i will introduce our presentation tonight perfect can everybody see the screen yes that's great great well good evening commissioners administration members of the community uh those of us joining via live stream tonight uh this is an incredibly important presentation uh which will impact the future of the city of clifton for decades to come our plans for a bond proposal had to take a backseat to covid a year ago our plan was to have a referendum vote in september of 2020.

so go to the next slide rounding so your auditorium upgrades we've done a few of these already through your capital budget we would include in the referendum uh school three the middle school uh at the christopher columbus and also woodrow wilson if you go to the next slide uh these are some photographs of the uh the existing facility and then if you um go to the next slide this is an example this is basically a 3d model of similar uh where you replace the flooring the seating uh you paint the walls and you put in new ceilings and lighting you can get a very dramatic different effect of a state-of-the-art auditorium now here as i mentioned you would do this the seats new seats uh flooring wall lighting and ceilings with acoustical uh grade material to enhance the acoustics of the of the facility so you also have that has been included in the referendum is the toilet room upgrades and and some of them are original to the building so again 17 is in is in good you know is in good shape so we've we've looked at all of them and the primary reason for this is um one is for uh efficiency but the other one is for ada americans with disability access uh to the to the each toilet room um we call them group toilets because there's more than one toilet in a room uh if you go to the next one these are some examples of the conditions many of the facilities do not meet ada based on the fixtures and these aren't the worst toilets but you could start to see the age and the wear just from the normal use of the facilities the next slide is after you um basically do the gutting them out with ada compliant fixtures um very efficient use of materials and what's important too is that these materials are extremely durable and very easily maintained that's a key thing um for because you want these to last another 100 years but also in the renovation is the lighting and also the ventilation and many of the bathrooms you have you don't have ventilation or a very minimal ventilation because years ago all they did was exhaust but you want to increase that like you're doing with the rest of the building you want to provide the proper air changes ventilation and supply so that would also be included in the renovation of the uh of the toilet facilities the um the other components um that's included is the um expansion at the stadium uh for toilets and also your uh weight room so these these are photographs of the existing conditions in your existing space now this is common we as your superintendent mentioned we do a tremendous amount of school work in the state of new jersey and as programs develop over the years they have older buildings they use every square foot of the building for particular uses and they find very innovative ways to repurpose spaces and that's normal um is it the most desirable uh no uh it's not but um you have someone i'm sorry someone will pick that up um so if you go to the next slide rodney this is the plan for the expansion so the plan to the to the left shows that the track that was redone several years ago the beige area shows the renovation to the um men's and women's toilet which will be similar to the other photos that i showed you and to the to the upper uh right you you have your weight room and the blue is the expansion so we're expanding the weight room and renovating it okay so the next slide shows what that facility would look like this was a very simple addition similar to yours renovated the existing very simple construction but just the use of materials to give a bright safe airy place that you could use for weight training for your sports uh facilities so that's what uh the new project would look like the um the last uh scope of work would be the new artificial turf field um at uh woodrow wilson this is a this is a photograph of your existing grass field uh which has limitations because of the extensive use these fields just wear out so obviously when you provide artificial turf field you can use them constantly so you get more utilization from the fields okay uh the next photo shows basically the scope this is the property um you see the baseball diamond the infield outfield would be artificial turf and also fitting in a modified soccer field also artificial turf now included in the scope of work uh would be your um the bleachers the the dugout benches and also a new small field house the field house would include toilets some storage and and place for concessions uh so the next photo shows um the upper right shows your your stadium turf field whether it's baseball soccer it's the same but the lower left would show the type of field house that would be planned a very simple structure that would house the elements that i talked about and then throughout the district um there's also security cameras upgrades uh equipment um and upgraded technology infrastructure and that would be uh incorporated at all the schools uh in addition to the uh overall costing of the project is any elements that must be demolished or removed prior to the work that that's being done so the um based on our experience in schools and working uh with a lot of contractors uh and our engineers um we looked at um each of the elements and provided a developed a matrix for the number and the type and the intensity of the renovation and developed a total project cost now the the project cost includes not only the hard construction cost but it also includes all of the fees bonding legal fees [Music] construction management fees all of the elements that you need to do this uh it also includes a contingency uh which is proper planning for any unforeseen conditions that may occur especially when you're dealing with buildings of this age so all of those costs based on our years of experience have been incorporated into the overall cost and these elements are required by the state department of education so your total project cost which what we call the referendum cost is 60 168 million dollars and change right and that that's a big number but it's it's um it's interesting all of the elements that we now what we have to do is we have to provide our schematic plans to the state department of education for approval prior to the district going out for a referendum now they look at these costs and they look at the scope of work um i i have to say that [Music] as submitted 95 and a half percent of your projects were what they call eligible for funding okay so the state department of education agrees with you that virtually everything you're doing here is eligible for funding on their formula so that gives you some assurance that you're just not doing a lot of things that wouldn't be necessary in department of education's eyes okay now what's what's important to know is that the state um gives you debt service um and that's equivalent to approximately a third of the cost so in effect it's an annual appropriation but over the life of this it would be like receiving 54 million dollars almost 55 million dollars a third the state department of education the state of new jersey will pay a third of this overall project cost where if you did these as you have been doing it over the years when you replace a boiler or replace a rooftop unit you're paying for 100 of it through your capital your annual capital budget okay now that is a lot of money sounds like a lot of money um but based on um a 25-year bond um at the current uh bond rate um in a and based on the average assessed home this would be two hundred and three dollars a year or approximately seventeen dollars a month and bond council can discuss that in line or you know in addition to this um so those are the those are the costs and those are the um the state aid which is extremely important um we received what's called a preliminary eligible cost from the state and they did not include two elements at uh woodrow wilson uh and the in the stadium project we went back to the state your superintendent wrote a letter and we argued the point that this is educational and they gave us back some of the elements which increased it from 95 and a half to approximately 98 eligible so virtually everything is eligible in this in this program which is important for your community to know that the state agrees with you saying that all of these things are needed within your district um now timeline next slide now we have submitted all the applications to the state we have received as i mentioned the preliminary eligible cost they came back and revised it the board accepted it and they sent back your final eligible costs which means you are okay to go out for your referendum this was planned a little earlier uh but with covered everything got pushed back and we're at the point now uh where the next time we could do a referendum is in is in april so i just want to go over very quickly the timeline because that's that's important uh with a successful referendum this april there's a period of time where we have to do the actual construction documents for bidding so we anticipate based on the overall scope of what we have to do that we would be able to bid this uh in december of the end of december january of 22 uh with an award um in approximately in january right we would need based on the scope of work and the phasing we would need two almost two full years um to incorporate it where you would have everything completed in our estimation in september of 23 you would have this work completed now that doesn't mean that nothing is completed until that time this project would be phased and it would be designed and phased and sequenced with the understanding that these are occupied buildings and safety is the utmost importance during construction so in the documents not only is it the hardware and the specs and the equipment and everything else but it instructs the contractor very specifically when he can access buildings um where he can work where he can't work where he has to do something in the morning and come back in the afternoon or this or that or evening so it's spelled out very logistically so that is a proper and safe environment for your students and if it inconveniences the contractor that's that's the way it is and it needs to be incorporated in the plans so they can price it so be assured that that these things are looked at we've also included in the scope of work a separate independent construction management firm for fees involved in this um that they would be involved not only with us on the site but they're there every day um there's someone on on the site while every time there's a contractor on site so that that gives another layer of uh supervision and guidance uh for for for the district so although you see these long timelines we may finish toilets and you use them we may be finishing classrooms with the new unit ventilators and then you just occupy them typically you get a swing space you give up three classrooms they do the work and then those students come back the next three classrooms you find an alternate location they get done and then so it cycles so they daisy chain it and ultimately by the end of uh by september of 23 you should have everything completed so please don't feel that everything is you know in a big uproar there are components that get worked on over time thank you um mr dekara for that uh very thorough presentation before we open it up for comments and questions i have to reiterate the importance of the state aid for this proposal every single one of these projects needs to be done now we can do that out of our annual budget it'll take us 20 years or we can do it through a referendum [Music] where the state is going to pick up a third of the funding the state is going to give us 55 million dollars towards these projects and we have been very careful with the school district's budget long before i got here in july 2019 this board has been very conservative with raising the citizens of clifton's taxes last year uh this board and my administration proposed a zero percent tax increase we later were cut 5.3 million dollars in state aid we had an opportunity to come back and raise taxes and this board did not want to do that the year prior to me coming i believe the taxes were raised point zero eight percent so the point is the bond referendum opens up a door to a new form of income for clifton it will allow us to do projects by september of 2023 that otherwise would take upwards of 20 years or maybe not get done at all new state aid is going to cover one-third of these costs which are all important for safety efficiency and modernization every single one of these projects if we pay for them out of our annual budget we pay a hundred percent but if we use a referendum and a bond to pay for them they get done faster and we pay only two thirds so as i said a year ago this board was about to take action to put this bond proposal on the ballot kova delayed that but there's light at the end of the tunnel meanwhile our buildings are getting older now we have a full plan for educating the people of clifton about before the vote on april 20th we want people to understand this referendum we want people to understand why a referendum we want people to understand the the financial aspects of a referendum and why it's such a good deal for the city of clifton the process started with research and consideration it got delayed by covert and now we're picking up that timeline with a board vote tonight to resume the process we do impis and anticipate a public forum in the first week of march and there will be a lot of other literature and information on our website beginning tomorrow for anybody who has any questions about this referendum i encourage you to please go to our website there will also be a a place on our website for you to ask questions that will be replied directly to you with the appropriate answer so at this time i'm going to turn the meeting back over to mr smith mr president and if the board members have any questions for either our architects our bond council uh our engineers also here or any other questions for me or the administration thank you okay board members are there any questions or comments we'll uh we could start um at the uh uh mr awad we'll start uh with you if you have any questions or comments and we'll just work our way around thank you mr joseph that was a wonderful presentation it was very you know inflation you know it looks really great and hopefully if this referendum does get passed it can improve the quality of education for our students especially our facilities i just had a couple of questions uh for the air duct systems that um you if you know does uh move forward um i know you're talking about the hepa filters and the murph filters um was there ever a chance of you know i have a little mechanical background you know some systems they use um what do you call them like aerologic and honeywell and stuff use like those uv lightings for uh like a filtering to kill you know bacterias and they kind of propose quality there was that ever an option to put into the uh the air duct systems like the roof uh top units and for them and the second question was for the gymnasiums and like the bigger uh rooms i know we're using a rooftop system uh for heating and air conditioning uh will those units have some type of humidifier or added humidity to the air because sometimes central air uh when it comes to heat is very dry and you know maybe some kids in our districts have uh certain health conditions or that would kind of uh be affected by from that extremely dry air like bloody noses dry skin or etc stuff like that i was just curious you know you know if these renovations do include those and those are just my two buttons yeah the uh the rooftops would have uh would control the humidity uh and it's also related to the proper size of the equipment uh if it's if it's too too large as an example if there's too much tonnage if you're familiar with mechanical systems and it cools the air too fast it won't take the humidity out of it so you'll get very humid spaces so it's the proper design of the tonnage and there is humidification in it in the opposite direction in terms of the uv lighting our engineer can kind of add to this but um we did look at it but you know there are potential problems if if one of the uvs break uh there's there's mercury in that you don't want to have a mercury uh release in a school um we uh we specifically did not include it um in that there are other ways to to provide filtration and that those are the ones we selected and that that's primarily the reason why we didn't use that i don't know if you want to add anything kevin um the only thing i would add is that joe is correct you know we look at systems for of various reasons you know obviously cost function and you know long-term maintenance um uv lights need replacing periodically uh they're they're usually nine thousand hours there's eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours in a year so you're gonna be replacing those every year joe uh the the use of safety measures are very stringent with uvs we evaluated the bipolar ionization systems and we like those because not only do they also help the filtration they actually put the positive and negative ions into the occupied spaces as opposed to uv you have to get the air drawn through the hvac system to kill the viruses and you know the bipolar they have documented tests that has actually rendered the kovid 19 inoperable so there is information on that online okay mr wodzick good thank you very much okay uh miss bassford next any questions um i'd just like to know if the superintendent can answer this well because of this people in the community that are have questions and they want to know when they're going to be able to weigh in and are you going to have any open public forums for the residents to be able to speak about um their concerns absolutely uh mrs basford um so the first thing citizens are going to be anyone with questions can go to our website to see the faqs uh they certainly can attend a board meeting uh and to learn more information but we will also have definitely uh during the first week in march a public forum where we'll review all this and answer any questions and i would venture to assume we'll do that more than we'll do that more than one time plus there will be literature sent out um via social media via blackboard um and i believe there will be a a mailing so we're going to try to get the word out uh as extensively as we possibly can and also on the website somebody will be able to just type in a question via email and get a response within a reasonable amount of time so we'll we'll advertise all of that thank you um miss beltran no i think every question i've had has been answered in the previous sessions including this one thank you thank you uh miss uh danny sorry i'm having things with hitting the mute um no thank you um all my questions are answered thank you mr daley uh yes thank you um uh i don't have any questions because i've been through this very thoroughly but i do like to speak a little bit to the public here on this issue um as the superintendent has said we need to do these things the schools and as mr de caro said schools are not falling apart but we have very old systems here 60 70 years old the universe been holding together you know they need to be redone they're old they're inefficient so uh on a broader scale this work needs to be done it isn't like oh there's luxury if we don't use the referendum this is the best deal this district can possibly get in moving these improvements forward to do it in an alternative we're going to have to take it directly out of the taxpayers these these things need to be done and if you do this piece meal the economies of buying a piece meal every year things go up we can settle the entire project rather quickly at uh reasonable prices which are out there now also the interest rate besides the one that's a little bit bigger than one-third of the money that we'll get from the state and we do not get any other funding from the state unless we do a referendum so if we win lone wolfed it you're paying the whole freight here and it's going to be more expensive because of the individualistic of doing the projects separately and the interest rate let me talk about that um it's it's i think our bond council will tell you it's going to be like in a low two percent um it may be even lower uh i'll give you an example um my son just bought a house as an individual and his interest rate is 2.37 that's not a tax accept rate that that is a taxable rate so when we go out and i'm sure because we have we have an excellent rating here the the financing is going to be highly favorable and it's not going to get any better than it is right now um you see that as the federal reserve and everything are keeping the rates virtually at zero at the federal rate so i expect to have a rate around two maybe we might be surprised and be under 2 so the savings to the tax pay payer in doing these projects is going to be incredible you do not have a better opportunity than right now to do this some people some people will also talk about well the air conditioner is luxury and if you listen to mr de caro's presentation we're replacing these ventilators because they are they've passed way past their useful life when you put do the hva when they do the air conditioning component it's part of that you're not doing a whole separate uh it's not like the air conditioning is separate it's incorporated into this so you have an economy of purchase here in terms of getting a unit that does both functions now on the on the operational i don't have an exact number but we're going to do windows we'll be replacing energy efficient water heaters the whole nine yards we've already started this stuff and we've been doing it through our capital reserve fund the capital reserve fund is nowhere big enough to attack the entire district those operational savings will also be significant so you not only save on our capital purchase but we'll be able to control our uh operation and maintenance dollars a lot better so those will be uh benefits in our school budget uh i've been on the board i've been on every budget since 2009 our overalls as the superintendent says our overall tax increase over those years have been under two percent and recently we've been uh down under one percent and even a zero for last year um that's because we had increased state aid but that's only for our operations we're going to continue to see that but that's going to end soon because uh it's i think we top out in another five years we're supposed to be all get what we're entitled to over the next five years so you don't have a better option than this if you pass it up it's going to cost you a lot more money in your taxes so i think we need to take advantage of this i'm a taxpayer and my hacks are going up but i look at it as an investment it's an investment in your city that's going to pay dividends both from the education and the fiscal standpoint and i'll leave my comments alone for that right now thank you mr kenoma my my alphabet skills are not too good here i'm sorry i uh i went to d before i hit c i'm sorry not a problem uh i do have a few questions um based on the covid changes uh i know you presented the bathrooms which we know we definitely need to change is there any way we could ha is that set up for a touchless bathroom i know some bathrooms are where you can there's like double doors where you walk in so you don't have to open any door handles or you don't have to touch anything in the bathroom is that set up in this fashion for this project we can put power activated doors in you do have to touch a pad uh because other other than that you have a sensor and the doors will be opening and closing all the time uh so you can put power activated uh doors on it uh and when you walk up to a faucet and put your hands under it uh they can turn on so it's just a matter of specifying that fixture sometimes in schools that can be uh troublesome because kids play with it but it can be done yes okay and you showed two different unit ventilators one was the horizontal one was the vertical and and i know i i i assume the vertical is really more space saving than anything else but does it flow the same does it have the same airflow does it turn over the air in the room the same both of them yeah it does um it has the same airflow on it it's slightly different because one is from a low point of view uh the other one uh blows the air from the top and it actually pulls in the return air from the bottom the re we like that unit a lot basically because it does save space in the room um but it's not um it's not acceptable in in some situations uh because the louver is much higher so it's typically put into a window so where it can work we would put that in but where it would um kind of you know upset the architecture or the elevations or you would have to cut a big hole um we would use the regular uh horizontal ones so that vertical unit does that do the inverse between winter winter and summer months where it's going to pump the ac out the top and then the heat at the bottom no no no the air flow is the same but it works but it heats and cools and there's a heat pump element in it as well and uh i know you showed the timeline of installs is there any way that we could pull the uni ventilators to the front of that oh yeah well what's going to happen um is that um if you if you think of your you know a whole corridor of classrooms we're not going to shut down a whole wing we're going to get a because you're not going to start this right at the summer uh you're going to be starting while school's in place so and we've done a lot of these and what happens is you're going to utilize a space whether it's a gym or whether it's a cafeteria or auditorium and you're going to pull out as many classrooms as you can let's say you can afford to have three classrooms vacant for three days or four days you're going to do the work on those three classrooms from start to finish and then those children will go back into that classroom right and then you're going to take the next three and do that and then the next three and the next three so you're gonna daisy chain we will group those into wings so what will happen you'll get three done three dome three done in three weeks you'll have maybe half the wing done and in a month you'll have the whole wing done and that's how you will then finish the job it'll follow through the rest of it and then you'll you'll keep occupying the building as you do the work so that's unless you can say joe i'm going to take this half of the building and move it or put it over here and you and the contractor has free reign to do it he'll get it done a lot faster but that's impractical so it will be done and over the course you may have some schools finished before others just because of the size but the overall timeline will take you know the two the two school years okay depending on depending on the work depending on the school i'm sorry depending on the school you might be able to do more than three classrooms at a time maybe just as an example but but during the um during the design we will work very closely with your superintendent and the principals to go through the logistics and come up with a overall master plan on scheduling and that'll be incorporated into the into the specifications and the contractor has to conform to those elements okay and the other thing was the air conditioners now they help with mold issues as well i know we had issues in previous summers where we had mold in certain buildings and certain schools if we if we run those air conditioners at a lower temperature obviously that's going to help with our mold issues correct well if you if you have mold you have to remove it what it does is it it it it takes out the uh the humidity in the air so when when designed and run properly um it will it will absorb it'll take out the uh the moisture if it's oversized it'll cool the air down before the moisture comes out and you have to run the unit longer so it's a it's a element of balancing the new control systems and the units so that they run properly in the right sequence but yes when you have air conditioning and heating um you will you eliminate the uh potential for for mold unless there's other elements involved leaks or something else somewhere in the building okay and then just to piggyback off of what uh mr delhi said um you know this is something we definitely have to do we've been talking about it for a long time and we all know that right now the the rates to borrow money are very low and based on this money if you take 55 million dollars and you divided by the 25 years of this that service before you come up with 2.2 million dollars so that's 2.2 million additional dollars we're going to have in our district over the next 25 years that's a lot of money that's a whole lot of money you can't pass up a deal like that you're never going to see something like this again and these are things that we would have to do anyway no matter what we're going to have to redo the bathrooms we're going to talk obviously about universal leaders now you know we with coven with whatever else is coming in the future we have to future improve our schools and make them safe for people to go i think this is a no-brainer there's also a bill out there now it talks about giving funding back for for ventilators and doing things around around ventilation and the good part about that bill is it also allows for at the moment it allows for if you've done something prior to that signing they're going to give you the money for it so uh for me this is a no-brainer let's get on this now let's get these vendors in now let's get them locked and loaded for the uh for the dates before the rest of the schools go after them and let's just get this done it's something we've been talking about for a very long time i think it's now's the time now's the time to shrink thank you mr kanova mr casper uh all of my questions have been answered thank you thank you vice president abu drabo thank you mr smith president smith um i saw in the chat box i believe miss passport had a question and mr white had a question but um uh i was interested actually mr white's question which was how loud are these uh ventilators in the classrooms mr takara they meet all the standards for uh decibel rating uh the uh with the universe the horizontal unit ventilators the condenser is on the roof uh so you have a you have a velocity you have a slight noise in the in the air moving through the the vents in the uh the vertical ones the condenser is in the unit itself but it has a cabinet with four inches of sound acoustical insulation uh and uh they're they're when they first came out they were relatively noisy uh they're in probably the fifth generation uh and they they are they're very quiet uh and if you if anybody if any board member wants to actually see them uh and hear them uh we have several schools that have been incorporated in in the area uh that you could take a look at or at least call the superintendent or the business administrator and ask them how they uh how they like it uh but absolutely that's that's an important element uh and they wouldn't get approvals for those systems if it reached a certain decibel level for for classrooms and what's the power usage um on these type of machines um i mean i'm assuming you're in 2021 but i don't want to assume that these would be eco-friendly and we talk about gold green between our between our board members in this district and moving forward in 2021 um what's the power usage on these kevin do you have uh do you have that information now um no but um you know like a typical classroom would have probably a four ton unit um we would usually specify a conventional two so it's not going to be running at full capacity all the time the earlier conversation joe had was with the variable refrigerant flow there are some technologies that you can group a number of the unit ventilators together and they uh it's exactly what uh what you can call it in first variable refrigerant flow they can match the load much uh closer so they those are seer rated higher than you know your conventional um air conditioners like in your house the fan the fan itself modulates so it's just not one speed you know when it's only needing a certain draw it it reduces and uh volume and then it increases so that saves energy as well okay thank you um and to the public um and my board members can can say this i i was on the fence about this and you know i asked my questions and we've had discussions in the past and i see it i see where the numbers are i see where the percentages are it is time to strike i mean some as somebody who went to this district as many others on this board as many of you and the public who have gone to school here imagine how bad the bathrooms were how certain aspects were when you were there now think 10 15 20 30 years later what do you tell kids who are in first grade second grade third grade who are going to be in the high school in upcoming years you know seven eight years now are you gonna say sorry we had the opportunity we're not doing it but at the same time we don't just look at the classrooms clifton has we've always complained in clifton that kids leave the district that they go to tech they go to other places the ones who have money and put money into their districts and not you know forget about taking out bonds or referendums we have the opportunity to have a third paid for us with low interest and the reason i i led with that is because when i think about education i think about education in the classroom and on the field now this is not my way to say hey don't forget athletics but you know a lot of a lot of students drive as teens and you know being young and and having working families is sports sports keeps them busy whether it's hockey football baseball soccer softball whatever it may be lacrosse and in order to keep these kids in our district and to keep them engaged and interested in sports they have to do well in the classroom so i fully believe that athletics and classroom go hand in hand so why am i saying this because many of you and i'm going to assume this because i've heard this in the past say well we only focus about athletics in this district not about education well this is our chance to do both you know when i played football in the district that locker room was atrocious it was disgusting i don't even want to imagine what it looks like now i would love superintendent roberto to see what that locker room looks like today because from those pictures that we've seen from mr dakira as a parent i wouldn't want my kids stepping in because that's just a lawsuit ready to happen so if a weight falls on somebody and we got to make a little more you know a little more avail to students to be able to practice and excel not only mentally but physically as well in the weight room and on the field so i i definitely see where this is going mr dicaro i appreciate the whole presentation um and for answering my questions in the past as well as you dr robert tells yourself i'm definitely a favor and i appreciate it mr smith may i just piggyback on that comment please okay thank you i agree with everything uh that mr agrable just said regarding athletics but it it is more than that because when we talk about the field renovation at woodrow all of our students will use that right we're going to use that for phys ed they're going to use that for field day activities in addition because it's a turf field it can be used all year round and it can be used by the community can be used by the clifton recreation department there's going to be a soccer field and a baseball field there's going to be toilets where we have visitors and guests that come to games they have to go into the school building to utilize the restroom which is a security issue um and as for the uh the weight room don't forget the weight room expansion also includes an upgrade to all of the toilets at the stadium and those of you have been to the stadium and have seen what those look like we're just we're repurposing that whole space and it's going to be so that's something you know say you know community toilets but it is something that the entire community will use so it's really not just about student athletes it certainly will benefit student athletes but these are things that that will impact the the whole community so i just wanted to to add on to that but i do agree with everything you said and i'm sorry it's mr mr president smith since we didn't move on yet can i just throw one more thing in um because there's in to to jump on the dr robert josie's uh coattail he mentioned her over at woodrow dr roberto can you tell us why we're putting in turf and what's wrong with the woodrow field oh gosh when i first took a tour of the district and uh mr malayhi our athletic director took me to the varsity baseball field i really thought he was joking i i couldn't believe that that was the field that our students uh utilized it was in such disrepair it was to me embarrassing to me it was really embarrassing and more than embarrassing it was unsafe uh what the turf field does it it it allows universal use uh all year round with the exception of snow and even when it does snow there's there's a way to remove snow from turf fields but it allows it allows more use right it allows the the community to use it allows our sports teams to use it allows phys ed classes to use it allows to have um field day activities out there so i think that's in that's that's an important piece of this it's not just for one group of people and have we had multiple flooding issues there that delayed sports games and just made the render the field useless yeah that's one of the reasons for the the the flip of the field um when the uh when the architects looked at it it's it's going to be better because a light rain there has postponed uh events and games and um so yeah listen to to me this is a this is a win-win for the entire community thank you uh miss bassford you had uh another question yeah um while we're upgrading some things in the classrooms one thing that drives me crazy has driven me crazy and i have addressed with the facility committee for years is that we do not have classrooms when they the janitors are cleaning up at night they're not sensor driven the lighting mechanism is and it drives me crazy when you're driving down colfax avenue and you see uh clifton high dr uh lit up like luna park for the younger people that don't know what i'm talking about google it luna park was a very bright um park uh during the turn of the century when they got lights lighting in and i'm old so i could say that but my worry is about if we're gonna if we're gonna worry about stuff like that why can't we go energy efficient with the change of of a light bulb a switch i don't know how how um um cost effective that will be or how expensive it would be but if we're starting to do some upgrades and if we could squeeze that in that would be i've been bob that's been bothering me for years because i don't like we we have them at work you walk in a room lights go on lights go off it's and it saves money on our bills and you know we do pay very costly bills for uh different things so i'd like to see that my other question is uh people were all asking me today i was getting phone calls prior to the meeting what other conditions going to be in the classroom when the air conditioners that unit is turned on and we have like a 9 500 degree day will it be comfortable that's what i want to ask because now we don't have that opportunity to have uh um air conditioning and to give the students a learnable atmosphere so uh mr uh through you mr superintendent to uh joe de cara is will it be a comfortable setting for our students once those units are installed that's my question thank you oh absolutely i mean what happens is the uh the size how you size the air conditioning unit in any location whether it's in your gyms or whether it's an individual classroom are going to be based on the square footage the volume the height of the ceiling and also the number of occupants because the occupants also produce heat um in in that and more importantly is the air changes the number of students require a certain amount of air changes so based on that that period of time and the amount of air that's moving you have to then size both the heating coil uh and also the air conditioning uh and that's you've heard the engineer mentioned tonnage you have a two ton unit four ton unit and typically a 750 square foot room with 24 students in it will require anywhere between three and a half to four tons so that those are sized and that has the capacity to bring to maintain the temperature now if you have a 103 degree day outside will it be warmer than 73 degrees potentially but it's not going to be 90 degrees just like your house you know central air so it'll be it'll be comfortable based on temperature and also humidity okay so my my question then would be to the superintendent is that one when um the occupancy for the rooms uh be that's a key factor because ever you know with uh living beings we take up a lot of space and and my father was an hvac guy for his whole life my brother is too so i know everything about tonnage i know about how i take temperature differentials so are we going to give the um are we going to make sure that that information is given to the architecture that has already been supplied to them on the occupancy of each room because i'm really because we do tend at the high school to have bigger classroom sizes and that's where my concern would be to make sure that it's comfortable for the students there as well yeah mrs basford i and mr dicaro correct me if i'm wrong but i believe that all goes into calculations when you did the preliminary studies but then when you actually do the construction plans that's something that you in that you look at right absolutely yeah that's that's the driving force thank you mrs bassford another important thing to add to what you're saying is forget the you know 103 degree day on and that might happen in may or june or september um having new heating ventilation and ac in buildings allows us to expand opportunities in the summer and we we also know that when we return to in-person instruction and when life gets back to what we consider some sense of normalcy we're going to want to do some ketchup and we're going to want to run summer programs and we're going to want to expand after school thing so you know having the new hvac is going to help educationally and academically well that that would that was my point because um mr abu dhabi said about the sports and that we focus on the sports but this overall with changing these systems will impact every single person that stepped foot now building it's not only the students it's the staff it's the teachers it's every single person and that they will be able to learn in a better environment that's the most important part to me because you all know when those rooms get too hot you're in a setting you cannot think and it's just it's it's horrible condition so i'm very happy and then i'm supporting this as well but those are the questions that i was getting today from a lot of people uh mr wad we'll just uh do a couple more questions here and we'll move on mr wad thank you uh mr um couple questions i know that we're as we go through these renovations and everything uh do these renovations also include for example like the framing in the windows because i know a lot of our schools are extremely old and you know uh insulation like these windows you know they're probably worn and torn and you know just tossing in brand new air conditioning and heating systems sometimes you know these old uh not energy efficient windows from 50 60 plus years ago they're not really up to code and because you know as we try to go green and clifton and we want to move forward with all the renovations in general do these include you know the windows uh when it comes to our plumbing our lighting and everything are they eco-friendly like led lights for example in the classrooms uh those all take into consideration when we're doing these uh renovations uh no the lighting is not uh the window replacement was not included uh there's you can you can weather strip them but but in terms of the overall scope that was discussed and decided on there was no window replacement or lighting at this time there are other programs you can use for lighting uh retrofit that can be done independently as mr uh uc just said uh you know this referendum is is just some key areas that we feel that that needs to be upgraded but that doesn't mean the district stops uh taking care of our buildings uh we've been upgrading windows in in our buildings for for years uh christopher columbus was done last year um almost every uh school had some type of window uh change over the past 10 years so you know it's not just a referendum that's going to deal with this we're still going to do our normal maintenance on buildings you have to it's just that's an excellent point that i was going to to also share just last year we did the brand new windows at christopher columbus a referendum allows us to use our money that we have in capital reserve for other projects like windows like addressing the lighting issues that mrs basford brought up and i don't want to veer off here but mr dicaro at some point we can talk about um you know a plan to do the lighting issues because there are rebates and grants and other things with solar that you could kind of do out there that's not for tonight but but what mr smith is saying he's right it doesn't stop the work of what our facility committee does all the time there's a plan to replace windows going two three four years in advance and so um this referendum though we believe i believe fixes the critical needs in our district right now uh mr daley i just had a question he'd like to know uh kevin if you could tell us what the average energy rating of the new hva units would be uh yeah new jersey has ashrae 90.1 is our energy code and we have to follow the strict guidelines for instance anything lower than 6500 h's is approximately five tons that the minimum sear is 14 seer for that and then there's so many other uh you know programs uh not programs pages of every piece of equipment we have to meet those requirements uh you know rooftops uh energy recovery units they're they're all in yeah i would say the rooftops are a lower seer um but uh you know that that's what we have to meet the minimum thank you uh mr canon the last question and then i'll just make my mind short and we will move on um so i just have a question a statement so the question i had is are there air tests that we take after installations to ensure we we uh comply with those standards there there are balancing reports that are done after after systems like this uh balancing company comes in uh and they they measure the uh cfm rate uh so yes there's an independent testing lab that that confirms that you meet the cfm rating and the air volume changes in the units okay and and the other the other comment i had um i always look to try and have students involved um and especially when there's a way to do some sort of professional development given like something on their resume i was wondering if we have design students would they be able to have some input into like the color or the layout the setup or something in in the school so that they could say you know i i designed that bathroom or i designed that whatever that is the color the layout if that's something we could possibly look into that's a great point we've done that in other districts um we get students involved whether engineering or architecture or interiors we show them what we do and we we give them design charrettes um to get them involved absolutely and we we also do programs too um during the construction i mean some people look at the construction as as a big headache but in schools we look at it as an opportunity and we will do programs uh hopefully everybody's back in school at some point in time uh we can do we can do discussions and and uh show students what we do how we do it get them involved almost like a mentoring program rodney watkins did mentoring program for four years over in t-neck exactly that element so we would you know me i love to talk so we we'd love to be involved with your students uh any way we can so i love that idea i love that idea can one of those templates be a picture of dr robert tosie on the wall somewhere when you walk in he already put that in the specs okay i uh uh i had some questions but i'm gonna move this along uh we spent a lot of time on this i think tonight dr robertosi wanted to make this an introductory period there are gonna be many more questions from the board many more questions through facilities many more questions from the public when we have open forums we just wanted to get this open presentation out to you to show you where this referendum is going and i know board members will have other questions after tonight and you'll be able to address those uh in the process um i just i just have to make a comment about the uh well first i want to ask you the the elevator at columbus is just for the security vestibule there's we're not we're not no no it gains access it gains access to the other floors it's just how we have access we put we put it there right that was my that was my question absolutely yes um just an example uh of why we don't like to get into situations where we don't keep up with our facilities and the the field that woodrow is a prime example when i was on the board back in the board put money into um that field surprisingly enough new drainage system went in um the whole setup of the field was put in and it was supposed to be upgraded along the years and i guess with tax keeping tax increases low and things got put behind and behind well as dr roberto said now you're left at uh 2021 with what you see up at woodrow wilson and we as a town deserve better than that our kids deserve better than that our community deserves better than that dr robitosi hit it on the nose when when other teens came to that field they laughed they actually laughed i was there numerous times when they laughed and said this possibly can't be the varsity field and clifton deserves better than that we we are a town that cares about our facilities we care about our kids we care about education we can't let that happen folks we can't let that happen again so there'll be many more opportunities to ask questions and i thank the board for their questions and i thank um uh joe and i thank uh kevin for uh for being here and uh answering all the questions and uh we'll be seeing a lot more of you so thank you very much our pleasure thank you uh thank our bond council uh mr smith although we didn't we didn't have any questions for them tonight there there will be some in the future i'm sure of that absolutely our pleasure thank you [Music] um i know you guys would love to to stay for the rest of the meeting you're more than welcome but to leave this is a great opportunity to cut out so thank you for coming tonight thank you thank you thanks thank you uh dr robitazi would you like to address um yes sir you thank you mr president um at this time we're going to move into a discussion and two short presentations on return to in-person instruction and covet 19 in the clifton community so at this time it really is my great honor and i i can't tell you how appreciative i am that um clifton's health officer john beagle has joined us tonight and someone who i've grown very very fond of and we've spent a lot of time on zoom meetings over the last year uh lael helwani who is the health uh health and health educator for the clifton board of health i asked them to join us tonight without hesitation uh they said yes and lael is going to just give the board uh in the community who's watching a brief overview of covet 19 in clifton what the status is and what the numbers look like and then i'm going to go into a very brief four slide presentation on what the plans are for a return to in-person instruction uh eventually so leal if i can i'll turn it over to you if you could share your screen all right can everybody see that yes okay great one second trying to share my screen but yeah there we go okay okay um so good evening everybody uh as dr robert tosie said my name is lael helwani and i am the health educator for the clifton health department um i actually just want to start by thanking dr robert tozie for well and the board of education as well for allowing us to come and speak about the current situation with covenanting in the city of clifton um so i have put together a couple of slides that sort of gives you a sense of where we're at as many of you know we do put out a press release in case information updates twice a week tuesdays and fridays i'll get into that a little bit later in the presentation but the next couple of slides are a snapshot of what the numbers have looked like over the last month uh so how did we do the last month um unfortunately we have had a total of 1457 additional cases and we took the data and we broke it down by age group i did highlight the 0 to 19 age group being that that's probably what we are most concerned with and you can see how it compares to the other age groups so i want to highlight something and it's that the 0 to 19 age group actually did have the second highest number of cases in the last month and it's really not too far from the 30 to age group which did have the most cases we're really just talking about a seven case difference as you see in that note in the bottom this does include ten cases that were in the system that were listed as having an unknown age um and the reason for that was because it wasn't immediately clear on the lab results um they weren't properly entered into the system and so we're still in the process of obtaining that information so 10 were left unknown and of course as we have that information we'll we'll update this um so this slide is just kind of a visual of what i just showed you again you can see that 0 to 19 age group is not too far off from the 30 to 39 age group which to me is kind of telling um so going back a month you know the 252 cases may not sound like a huge deal but as one of my colleagues mentioned uh you know in a conference earlier uh you have to think about the ripple effect 252 that's the total number of cases that we've had among school age you know school-age children um but you have to think about how many individuals were considered close contacts of these individuals how many individuals were quarantined and then how many went on to become a positive case and the cycle may continue all over again so it's just something to think about you know the ripple effect of this all right so this slide is just showing the percentage breakdown for these age groups over the last month so in maroon that's the 0-19 age group which comprised of about 17 percent of cases which is kind of a sizable piece of the pie you know that's about 100 sorry that's about one in six cases and then again you can see how it compares to the other age groups all right so this next slide is just showing you the age breakdown by week um and again you can compare it to the other age groups there's nothing too noteworthy here but you can see a bit of a spike the week of january 4th which we kind of anticipated after the holidays and you kind of see it across some of these other age groups but other than that it has remained steady in terms of the number of cases involving this age group per week all right and then you can also see that the week of uh january 18th that you know that's this week we're leaving as tbd uh again for those of you that follow the press release and the case information reports that the health department puts out we typically do it tuesdays and fridays so by tomorrow we'll have a more complete picture all right and then again this is just another visual of what i just talked about all right in the blue is the 0 to 19 age group all right you can compare it across the different age groups and you see that big spike the week of january 4th all right and then for this slide um we essentially got a count of the number of daycare or boys and girls club related incidents so we've had about 20 cases that involved a student or a faculty member at a daycare or the boys and girls club eight of these cases involved a student while the other 12 involved a faculty member again it may not sound like a huge deal on the surface but you have to look at the ripple effect as i mentioned before this led to a total of 189 students that were quarantined and 58 total faculty members that were quarantined and again you have to ask yourself how many of these close contacts went on to contract the virus all right so that's all i have with the slides but just to kind of wrap things up i would ask that everyone try to keep the data in mind you know the numbers do not lie um i do wish we were in a better place uh but it seems like we have some ways to go at least you know according to the data even with a vaccine out there the cases have not gone away we need to continue to be responsible we need to continue with the mask wearing the social distancing practicing good hand washing you know it's funny because about this time last year i was in some of the schools doing hand washing education for the students using the glitter bug curriculum i don't know if you're familiar with it um and i definitely miss those days i wish we were back you know at those days um but i sort of think you know whether that's stuck with them throughout the pandemic you know the inf you know the information they got from the hand washing uh curriculum um just because it gives them a good visual of the importance of hand washing and then just to give you an overview of overall numbers the latest numbers as of tuesday uh we had a total of 7742 cases and very sadly um a total of 193 deaths and you know to us these are not just statistics we have gotten to know these individuals over the last 10 months we've heard their stories as we try to get information about their situations and their stories stick with us you know they resonate with us and i can tell you that some of the stories that i've heard over the last couple months you know involving individuals as young as a few months old and as old as a hundred they have impacted me and they've impacted my colleagues uh who have made these calls and continue to make these calls um and so sincerely on behalf of all of us at the health department our hearts do go out to everyone who has been afflicted with the virus those who are suffering the consequences of the virus and those who have lost a loved one and you know we would just urge you to keep being responsible uh keep staying strong and please just keep all of this information uh in mind thank you leo thank you so much um for that data and for your impassioned plea you really are fantastic and you've been such a great asset to our school district um even before this but even more so now during the pandemic so i would just ask leia if you and mr beagle can stay on i'm gonna um do a brief presentation and then we're gonna open it up to any questions uh from from the board so i'm gonna share my screen now stand by okay can everybody see my screen okay great so on november 4th um i made what i still consider to be one of the most difficult decisions i've made as a superintendent i made a decision to return all of our schools to virtual instruction and knowing then it was not going to be a popular decision with some of our stakeholders i i know i know that and i made that decision because i felt it was in the best interest of the safety of our students and staff so everything i do is under this one clifton guiding principle that we make decisions based on ensuring the health and safety of our students and staff so every decision i make will do that when we close down november 4th i said we would re-evaluate conditions in mid-january so here we are and for the last two weeks um my executive team and i have been meeting with the clifton health department and we've been reviewing the data one thing right let me go back one thing that and maybe it was because of pressure from superintendents who wanted to open schools but the new jersey department of health did revise the guidelines for when to close schools so what you see here on the screen is a couple changes that the highlighted areas are changes so the department of health has changed the amount of days that a student or staff member has to be excluded from school from 14 to 10 days except in a region where the level is orange so the region that clifton is in we're in orange so if you are a close contact um you still have to be quarantined for 14 days but the big thing and i point your direction to to the red circle when we opened up october 12th within a week i had to close two schools and then during that next week i had to close another three schools and and one of the primary reasons for that is this guidance here that you see uh two or more cases are identified within 14 days in a school that occur across across multiple classrooms and are not linked to exposures outside the school setting and a clear connection between the cases cannot be easily identified so anytime we had two cases in a school that were not connected the guidance previously said school should close that guidance has since been changed to recommendations for whether school closure is indicated will be based on investigation by the local health department so the good news there is when we returned in person instruction it's no longer two cases that will shut us down um it would it would need to be more than that or at the very least the discussion reviewing the data with the health department and making a decision on whether the school should be closed so this is the key chart and this is where this is the chart that really helps me make a decision on whether we can return in-person instruction so if i could draw your attention to the november 8th here the week of november 8th that's when we closed down okay we opened up october 12th right around here and the cases were there was still cases in clifton but i felt and the clifton health department felt and my executive team felt that we could handle we could open up schools and we could handle it based on those numbers november 4th comes along and we see the number of cases keeps rising keeps rising so i shut down schools right here and as anticipated the numbers kept going up and up and up and up now remember when i closed schools on november 4th i had to shut down five or maybe six schools already at that point and when we would have returned from after that november break more than half of our schools would have been closed based on the number of cases so here we are now mid-january this is last week's data which is higher than when we closed in march much higher than we reopened october 12th much higher than i closed on november 4th and this week's data which is incomplete that's this gray bar this gray bar only consists of data from saturday sunday and monday so we're missing a full four days of data and i think we can reasonably expect that this bar is going to reach close to or exceed last week's data so what does that mean for me this is the key piece of information in addition to that chart that makes me realize we cannot return to in-person instruction yet if you look at the number of cases in school-aged children there were 252 cases within the last 30 days when we opened school october 12 one of the data points that we looked at was the number of cases the month prior to that date at that time it was 51 cases so let me say that again october 12th we opened school the month previous we look and there were 51 cases among school-aged children we felt that was a reasonable number that we could open up school and we can do it safely without impacting everyone ladies and gentlemen this number is now for the last month five times that amount five times the amount of cases in school-age children so you could say well half of those students are virtual anyway okay maybe that's still going to give us 125 cases and let's say 25 of those maybe aren't in our schools if we had a hundred cases in our school in a month we we couldn't stay open the impact that would have what what ms helwani talked about that ripple effect of how many people would be quarantined you have to multiply that by at least 10 people for every positive case there's at least 10 people that it affects either the students in that classroom and the adults that they come in contact with and that's a conservative number so a hundred cases impacts a thousand students and employees and impacts their family and that's my concern so here's what my here's what my thinking is on the district status at this time the good news is ladies and gentlemen we're in process of coordinating with the clifton health department for a mass vaccination of clifton staff the sooner that happens the more um it will be able to facilitate a return to in-person instruction problem is i was hoping and reasonably expecting that this was something that could be done in february as many of you may have learned just last week governor murphy changed the vaccination priorities so teachers um were supposed to be in that second tier of people who were eligible to receive the vaccine and while they're still in that tier the governor took a whole population of people um and move them forward those people who have underlying health conditions and i believe those people over age 65 and mr beagle correct me if i'm wrong so i believe you know a teacher should have been included with the first responders the police officers and firefighters are out there every day if if the governor truly wanted schools closed uh schools opened he would have put teachers into that first tier but i understand that people with uh underlying conditions the virus can impact them more so i i can't argue with that but i just wish that teachers would have been included in that first uh that first phase so the case trajectory in clifton is going in the wrong direction when we close on november 4th in the letter that i sent to the community i specifically said to return to in-person learning the local data will need to demonstrate a clear and lasting decrease in covet 19 cases a clear and lasting decrease the data has not shown that in fact the data has shown a clear and lasting increase in cases so at this time ladies and gentlemen of the board my recommendation um in consultation with the clifton health department and my executive team but i also want your input tonight is that we keep our schools virtual we reevaluate the health data on march 1st and again if we see that clear and lasting decrease then we reopen and i think from this point on it's got to be a month-to-month uh peak at the data and once we see that clear and lasting decrease then we can reopen schools i want to be clear no one wants these schools open more than me but i can't sleep at night if i'm putting if i feel like i'm putting my staff and my kids in danger and i just don't feel it's safe enough yet so it is my hope that this board will support my recommendation and my decision even if you may disagree i just think it's in the best interest of everybody right now to postpone one of the concerns with being in a virtual environment is that our students need support so at this time i'm going to ask mrs kusalevich to discuss some of the supports we've put in place and are going to put in place in the future to support our students who are both remote and hybrid mrs kusalevich thank you dr robert tozie i too echo your sentiments that i would love to have our students back as quickly as possible as safely as possible that being said there is some benefit to being fully remote because we are consistent with our instruction classes aren't being popcorn opened and closed and teachers are able to make progress with our students however virtual instruction works very well for many of our students and other students do it need additional support so i'd like to just give you a quick overview on this agenda at this um this meeting there's a list of teachers being appointed um to offer additional online after school programs both for remediation and to add extra hours of support for our ap classes our students even though we're remote are still receiving their basic skills um support and we have skills classes for our upper grade students we have online adaptive math support multiple programs that adjust and modulate based on a student's needs and we have the same with our reading libraries we have online online leveled reading libraries that allow students to work at their level and push themselves forward increasing their reading levels at their own pace meeting their specific needs may have the next slide please in addition to these um remote and hybrid supports that we have going now we have plans for the spring and summer to address learning loss may i have the next slide please we are already planning a saturday remediation program either online or in person depending on what the situation will be at the time another thing that we have in this agenda is a resolution applying for a grant to address student learning loss and we are putting plans into place for a new district-wide summer program to address that learning loss this is over and above our existing title one summer remedial program which will be planned for this coming summer as well as our title three english language learner program and of course the extended school year for eligible special needs students so as you can see the district continues to work to provide additional support to our students to get through this difficult time and if i can just turn this over to mr gingaro now for a moment thank you very much ms kusalevich to begin i would be remiss if i did not once again publicly recognize and thank alex road the entire pomptonian team and members of our transportation department for their ongoing efforts in providing meals to one clifton learning community to date over one million combinedist and lunch meals have been served to students and families in our community meal distribution program will continue to be available our three distribution sites uh both chs and school 17 need to be open from 1 30 to 2 30 and meals at ccms will be offered from 10 o'clock to 11 30 a.m however there is one caveat to the program this uh for the next several months so please be advised that due to the use of the entire clifton high school campus by the the clifton health department as a coveted vaccination site we will only we will be unable to continue with the meal distribution program at chs on wednesdays only as such every monday at chs pomptonian will provide students for the four-day meal package covering days monday through thursday and again with a three-day meal package on friday as per usual to cover the weekends all other sites will continue to remain the same we will continue to communicate information specific to the changes and updates of the meal distribution program through our district web page from email blasts and via our social media platforms and please be reminded above all that all of our clifton students are eligible for free meals for the duration of the 2021 clifton school year could we move over to the next slide please dr roberto and and finally our final slide as this part of the presentation is specific to technology support as always if you or your student need tech technology access for remote learning please notify your students building administrator or teacher at any time you can also directly contact our tech team via email at techsupport cliftonschools.net or by phone at student with your 973-779-5357 and our concerns at this time i would like to turn the presentation back over to dr robertosi to close out this portion of the meeting thank you mr jingaro i also want to take a moment to recognize our district supervisor of nursing who's joined us tonight uh vicki beck who's been an integral part of of this team and who has led um as in 19 of our district nurses who are volunteering to um vaccinate at the clifton high school vaccination site on wednesdays uh so big shout out to our nurses and to vicki beck who've been volunteering thank you it's our pleasure well you know it's times like these and a national emergency where people really come together so uh mr beagle is there anything you want to share before i open it up to questions from the board members of course of course i i do want to echo i want to thank you um the whole board of education for our partnership with this vaccination venture we have we have completed three vaccine um dates and we have a thousand vaccines to individuals um i can't thank vicky and her staff i mean the nursing staff wonderful right in there with you know the cold weather you know it's funny because a lot of people say when i said the first time that opened the windows in the cold right in the wintertime you know we take that seriously and we have performed we're probably one of the only health departments around doing the vaccinations outside because i feel um you know we talked about you were talking about ventilation prior to this and it's a large concern for the staff and for the individuals that wait so that's why you know we practice what we preach and when we're doing it outside a little windy up there and if you do notice we are um our tent is going in our uh i call that the mega tent or circus tent will be installed and they're not drilling for oil they're drilling to make it a safe place for our nurses and our people that are getting vaccinated i also want to thank mr doctor and his staff they've been amazing as well working well together and all the departments all the divisions of the the city and we just the partnership is unbelievable and that we have not had one complaint since we started so kudos but like you said our goal is to get vaccines into people and we had some disturbing news that this week that we were only getting 300 doses for next week and that's concern we're gonna when we get going we're probably going to do seven to eight hundred sorry vicky uh maybe 800 in a day and if we could do that on a wednesday and some saturdays i think we could really make a difference so we're working diligently diligently to get those vaccines into people and you know for the public look at our website cliftonnj.org for updates and it's really important to register for swift911 those are the phone calls that we will be making uh reverse calls just for any updates regarding vaccines and vaccine distribution and i just want to say how proud i am to work with lea allen's and the other individuals in the health department because they're rock stars they're really our rock stars and we just you know we laugh crying everything together but and i have to say i support your decision i think it's the right decision in public health we base our information on data and science and what lael presented tonight is is clifton it's not the county it's not the state it's not the country it's not the world it's the city of clifton so again i support your decision and we will always work together and make it safe for the staff the students and for everyone and anyone that comes into the city of clifton so thank you thanks so much uh mr beagle mr smith at this time uh be happy to answer any questions from uh our commissioners either to me or for the the city and to the health department uh any any questions again we'll go uh we'll go in order uh if everyone could just uh ask their questions at uh one time and then we could mr smith uh just so you know they can if if you wanted to they can raise their hands if they wanted to ask a question if that's easier either either way anyone with any questions uh vice president abu dhabi uh thank you president smith through you to the superintendent and his administration um so i'm becoming questions um that grant that miss kuslov stated is that a cost share is that or is that 100 and is that from the state or federal junior you know the details on that unfortunately that is a competitive grant it is state through e-wag but it is competitive um i have high hopes that we will receive it but if we do not i'm also working uh with mr uchi to work out through the budget um our proposal um through movement and adjustments in our curricular areas to still be able to run this absent of the grant we need to do more intensive support that is locally funded so that we can address every one of our schools because right now the only summer programs that we do have are for our title 1 schools and our ell or special needs populations we want to be able to address all of the students who have who exhibit learning loss based on our assessments um with our benchmarks and our reading leveling of our students so the reason why i say or federal um [Music] i i know you said you're you're pretty confident or you're [Music] more than hopeful that we'll receive it um dr robert tells you we want to reach out through the legislative committee being the chair uh reach out to our state legislators and ask for letters of support um and kind of at least have our 34th district representation weigh in on this i don't think it could hurt okay can we talk later and set up through mr smith president smith you know my next question is through you um dr administration so if wednesday we can't do the food um um [Music] handouts should i say our dissemination of the food at the high school because of the vaccinations i'm not jabbing at the health office i appreciate everything they do uh can we reach out to city hall and see if we can utilize um a building on cedaw property like a program swap what we've done uh mr abe drabo is in well first of all on wednesday the other two locations are open so 17 is open as is columbus so anybody can go there but also on monday um they're giving food for the week so instead of giving two meals they're giving four days worth of food uh to the families that come okay which i understand but let's let's play devil's advocate if i may let's look at 17 in columbus is on the east side for four days of food we don't know how big certain folks fridges are um so we don't know if they're even able to do that that high school location may be a um a big reliant location for for many people on the other side of clifton so that's why i'm asking this i just want to make sure i i absolutely hear what you're saying i i don't think it's it's been an issue certainly there's been no issues that have been brought to my attention so i think we're solving a problem that doesn't exist okay no that's fine i just i i just want to think this through uh and then working backwards i want to thank miss beck and uh mr beagle of course leia she doesn't she does most of the work anyway um for everything you guys are doing and it's it's phenomenal it's great my mother-in-law who who is in the healthcare profession actually went to take her shot and she said it was seemingly very simple um to go through the process and she wanted me to tell you thank you okay are there any other board members have a question mr canova yeah so so i have a few things um as you know i i support the school's opening um if if you look at news articles if you look at things going on around they all say that at this age um kids thankfully aren't necessarily affected by it by covet if they do get a case of it it's not severe we've seen no deaths in clifton in those age groups not that death is the the only ticker we should be looking at obviously we want to look at long-term effects etc but everything i've read i haven't seen anything saying otherwise um economics parents especially single parents that are in this situation have multiple kids they can't work or if they do work again like i said at another meeting they may be putting someone in charge who's an older student so you may have someone who's 12 watching someone who's eight let's say is that the best situation i don't know probably not um spread within schools we've said spread within schools has been zero when we did open we didn't have any spread matter of fact when you compared it to the spread outside the schools there's more so if anything i would say maybe this data is misleading and saying that this is data when kids are home because when they're in school i think we're going to see otherwise and we don't have much data on it but when we did have the data it was showing that in school spread was less now you have biden calling for schools to reopen he has his 100 day plan he's saying he wants schools to reopen murphy pushing for the same thing many people in politics pushing for the same thing not that i think politics again is the ticker to look at but then you have a school like little foes who's fully open it remains fully open sports that are running in clifton but yeah we're saying we can't open schools so i don't understand some of that um before we're giving the parents the choice we know we have special needs students we have students that have specific learning needs and outcomes we know we have issues with with students on laptops and we're still not opening schools so i think i think in that report while the data is accurate i think the data we're missing is what about the increased mental issues and suicides what about the additional uptake we're seeing in uh in our flags and even our own security systems and flags for for kids who are chatting with each other and talking about things that they shouldn't be or what about um even the lunch programs what about parents who are working and again going back to that situation where an older child is watching a younger one they can't get out to go pick up that school lunch and then maybe they don't want to walk from where they are because we're not hosting it at every school i know that when kids were going to school we were giving them lunches every kid was getting lunch to go home with whether they wanted it or not so there you're you're absolutely taking care of the kids and if they didn't want it maybe the parents were eating who knows we're in an economic economic time now this you know that's never taken place maybe the parents need that food i don't know um the other the other thing that could be happening is they may be putting these kids in daycares if not in daycares they may be putting them with elders elders we know are higher at risk we know their higher debts there and deaths is the one we want to move away from so if we could keep kids together even if they do spread to each other not as big of an impact if we're they're spreading it to grandma or grandpa or or their aunt and uncle that are they happening or watching them or people who are you know maybe unemployed at the time we're taking these kids in to watch them i'm sure there's there's daycares going on right now i'm sure there's all that kind of stuff going on that we're not really seeing because we're not there to see it or to to get data on it but i'm sure a lot of these things are going on we did see that in that list you have a thousand students who have who have uh a positive case one thing that it was either the who or cdc came out with a day or two ago they said that their test looks at 40 cycles in amplification and they said that's too sensitive and they're realizing that there's many false positives with that um and if they did have it they're immune to it so those thousand students are actually now immune to getting it again they are immune for a certain amount of time whether that's six months whether that's indefinite whether that's a year it's yet to be seen um but we are seeing that as well so i would go back to we're putting this on the parents we're putting on this on the kids we're saying do you want to come back in this is a choice for you to make i don't think we should be making that decision because we don't know their home we don't know exactly what's going on in their lives and i think honestly this is a disservice by us not going back to school it's a huge disservice mr canova you there was a lot that you said there but i just want to address a few things and then if anybody from the health department or my team wants to chime in they certainly can um i hear you i hear everything you're saying but a couple points that i think need to be corrected first of all you can't compare little falls to clifton it's like comparing apples and oranges the social economics the number of parents who who are it's just it's just two different worlds the number of cases in both places are two different worlds but having said that you all you mentioned was students right i didn't hear anything about our staff and i got to worry about our staff too so we do have a number of staff that had pre-existing conditions that were able to work remotely for the year but we still have other staff members who we weren't allowed we didn't have the opportunity to give them that accommodation and until it's safe for everybody right how can i justify closing down schools uh november 4th for a certain amount of cases and then opening them up three months later when there's five times as many cases it just doesn't make sense and maybe the virus isn't being spread in schools we only had a three week window to test that out we don't know that for sure i don't i i believe that the schools were relatively safe but as lael discussed earlier it's that ripple right effect hundred cases causes a thousand or more people to have to quarantine for 14 days and bring that home so you talk about the economic impact of that also when that's unexpected at least now parents know that they're going to be remote until at least march first so i think that gives some semblance of of a plan that they can work for and and as for the special needs students and and other in early childhood and other students that are more um you know at risk or maybe learning less that that that is an issue and when it's safe to phase those students back in that will be part of the plan we do have a plan in place to phase those students back in but that's not something i would consider until we see a clear and lasting decrease in the numbers um and that's just how i feel now listen i respect every single one of these board members and if it was nine zero nine board members telling me danny you're crazy you gotta open up schools i think i would still tell you that i'm not gonna not yet is that john is there anything that you want to add just a few things so um you know you spoke about children being sick um you know we don't get into the specifics but i can guarantee you there were children in the hospital with severe symptoms and again i can't i'm not liberty to speak about it so do we wait for one person or child to get really sick and possibly pass away i don't think we want to do that i don't think we want to take that chance i don't think anybody wants to take that chance and i know there's a risk in everything that we do the other thing is vaccines i totally agree it's great to say we need to you know get vaccines to people but our governor changed the rules a little for us which made it a lot more difficult for us to vaccinate the teachers and with that you know with the vaccine being there here um but not for us to give it to uh the individuals that i mean everybody wants to be first in line right everybody thinks they should be first in line and i'm not going to say who i think should be first in line or but i really think that the chief teachers if we really want to get children back to school we need to vaccinate the teachers so when i order 300 doses and i receive 100 doses to me it's good to talk that we want to get vaccines to people but give us the vaccines to give to the people so i'm not going to go on but i really you know and i agree there we know as public health professionals we know mental health issues for children and for adults i mean a lot of people are suffering this so i i don't just you know discount that at all but i think with the numbers you know whether somebody's sometimes they're asymptomatic but sometimes they go to the hospital and thankfully we've had no deaths at younger ages but that can change tonight as we've learned with this pandemic more than anything is we could talk about something right now we get off the zoo meaning and that can change so that's that's all i have to say so based on what you said then why are we allowing sports to be continued that's so so that's a good point that's not john's decision that's something that um very honestly i i wrestled with and here's what i concluded and you can tell me i'm wrong and maybe i am school you can still do remotely right some people would argue it's not as good i agree but you can still do education remotely sports obviously you can't so that's one second it's a smaller group of people [Music] with strict protocols and safety precautions with staff members who [Music] are volunteering to be there not mandated to be there and third and probably this goes to your point about mental health sports help kids right it helps them be more grounded helps them be more healthy and so i'm weighing all these things and i've asked myself how do how do i allow sports and not open schools i've wrestled with that but those other factors kind of outweighed it and i thought well i think we could do it safely and guess what one week into it our girls basketball team is quarantined and that could happen again but it's a it's a small number of people and again you can tell me i'm wrong and like i said maybe i am but that's kind of how i feel i feel like we've taken away so much from kids already um i didn't also want to take that away miss bassford yes thank you uh president smith uh first i want to thank john beagle and uh uh leal for their assistance during a very dark time in my life on december 14th i was uh tested positive and it was just a going for a routine surgery checkup i tested positive and thanks to john he he took me off the edge i was so upset not knowing what i had to do i had a quarantine in my basement okay i have family members that have high uh men uh risk of health issues what what did that cause it caused me to be in my basement for two weeks by myself no tv so i got a lot of computer work done but i can understand and my worry is and joe i want you to hear me out on this we have a lot of people that live in small apartments that we have multiple families living in these small apartment units i was lucky that i could uh quarantine away from everybody i really was i was lucky that i could get away from my family and stay away from them my i am worried about the mental health uh um um part of it because i think we're gonna see the lasting effects of that for years to come uh people are stressed out and everything and i understand that so um what personally i feel that until the numbers go down i agree with you dr robituzzi but um my also worry is that we've had several parents come on these meetings and express needs for their children having issues so i i don't know what we are doing to to um to um handle that um because you everybody knows i like to advocate for special needs i'm really concerned about that so i want to know if we have put other mechanisms janina touched on it briefly that we put that mechanism in place but my worry is that um how do we ensure the safety of the staff okay because it's i don't know i had no symptoms i had absolutely no symptoms and here i was walking around working my side job working at work going to work i shut my department down right i had a test negative twice i went for three tests just to make sure that i was it was all all right before i even went back into the society but being a house quarantining with people there's a food issue there's bathing issues there's separation issues and and i just see we have a lot of students our clientele in certain areas and certain homes that don't have the luxury to quarantine the way that i had to do i was lucky nobody else in my house got it i i don't know what happened it could have been a false negative i false positive i don't understand that but that's another issue that i have to worry about and i have to worry about the adult population as of teachers if if we would have if the governor would have changed the um the classification and put the teachers in that first frontline group and we had the vaccinations to give it to it then this would be a totally different conversation but then the other issue is what about the teachers that don't want to vaccinate we're going to have to face that as well and they still don't feel comfortable coming back so there's a lot of different moving parts here that i agree with you danny and i support you on this because quarantining two weeks alone it was not a fun time for me mrs basford on the vaccination issue um my philosophy is pretty simple uh it's not something that we would mandate or that i think we even could mandate but once our staff has the ability to get a vaccine whether they choose to or not then it's to me very very safe to come back now i was hoping that was going to be able to happen within the next couple weeks but you heard from mr beagle about the number of doses that are available and the fact that teachers aren't even eligible yet so yeah i don't think we're going to be able to make teachers get it but once it's available for them i think it's safe to say we're we're open for business you know still wearing masks still social distancing i think i don't think you're gonna see that go away uh any time soon okay so my other question too is that the the the president biden just reversed uh just um did an executive order about any federally funded federal federal um properties that um have to uh wear masks being that we get federal funding that that require that everybody has to wear a mess regardless at a meeting and everything like that when they're on our property that's my other question too i i completely zoned out on what your question was were you asking about wearing masks on school property i'm so sorry i said president biden yesterday signed an executive order talking about uh federal properties happening to have wear masks we get federal funding for our students we get a lot of aid in federal funding so with that being said because we're receiving funding does that make us required to keep that um everybody wearing masks regardless what we're doing on our on our locations as well um [Music] i don't know but i don't know that it matters because it's in our policy that you have to wear a mask so our policy is is good enough to cover that um ms speck did you want to add something to uh miss bassford i saw your hand up no okay um obviously this is mr awad you were next yes i just wanted to piggy back off for mr nova and uh dr robert uh you know uh first and foremost uh leon mr beagle thank you for all the hard work you guys have done for our city you know you guys are the heroes here yeah you and your teams you guys are doing great work and you're continuing to do great work and i applaud you guys for everything you're doing uh i just want to pick you back off this whole conversation i it's i don't understand return to school it's a priority for many fans and i respect that but with the climate that we're in i support you know our superintendent's decision not to i just find it difficult for you to rock my head we would want our staff and our students to go back to school that we're all seeing what we're all here on the board and you know the guests that are partisan are sitting on a zoom meeting but nobody ever mentioned why wouldn't we leave my example if it's really that safe by example when we go back why are we just gonna ask our staff and our students to ourselves that's the only comment i have to say if it's that safe and that's more of a decision to go back to school we should be the first as you know to lead by example as the leaders in our community and the ones that our decision making about our students our staff you know health and safety if you know anything is going to be real first when the climate is safe we should be the first ones but if we know the climate is not safe for certain you know uh groups within our district then we should just you know continue to listen to the science and the data you know the health department and you know working with our superintendent to make it smarter to say it for the majority and honestly for the whole not for just you know certain you know fast sex and that's the only comment i have to say uh before we send anybody back into school we should leave by example and go back to ourselves have some meetings and if it's not safe for us okay uh miss beltran you are up next i just had one question everyone else pretty much covered another question that i had um danny do we are sorry mr robertosi um do we have any sort of long-term thought if these numbers don't go down like if this just becomes part of our society i'm sure the government at that point will make a decision on lowering the expectations but you know it's seeming to be we're social distancing we're wearing masks we're sanitizing we're doing everything that we weren't doing in march yet our numbers are not going down and maybe mr beagle can have some more insight into this um but it just seems like we're already doing everything that we possibly could and then it's just not helping us in any way uh miss belgian that's a good question i think for me [Music] once everybody has the opportunity to be vaccinated at least teachers i think once once everyone has that opportunity whether they choose to or not um then that i think it's fair to say we're we're open for business and again i don't know when masks go away and when social distancing and all that other stuff goes away but as far as i'm concerned concerned vaccination is a real good start i just want to add not everybody's doing the right thing you know when we christmas holidays or any holiday new year's the contact tracing that we have done we have found that people attended a holiday party and you know i think one party nine out of ten people were sick two of the individuals were hospitalized and we heard that repetitively so i think a lot of people are doing the right thing but definitely not everybody is doing the right thing and it's prevalent because of those numbers right if of course anything can happen but if you are wearing your mask properly and how many times were here and work oh i just was eating with the person for a half hour and that's how that spread and that's what happens we let our guard down you work with some people you put you eat lunch with them and um that's what that's how it spreads and the same thing with family uh just because you're related it might be a brother might be a sister if you're going to that person's house and you're eating and you're you know partying with those individuals it you know it spreads that's the community spread and then they go to work and they spread it to those workers and that's what we have seen and that's why our numbers are still high and unfortunately it's across the um the whole country i'm sorry oh sure of course um so the other issue is you know when people do test positive not everybody sticks to the full uh you know isolation period um even if they are not showing symptoms you know it's a 10-day isolation period but some people don't necessarily stick to that and then the other thing is close contacts uh some people um either refuse to disclose their close contacts we're seeing a lot of that um you know with with our case investigations um or some people refuse to admit that they are a close contact you know they're feeling fine and they go about their daily activities so that may also be contributing to the numbers being where they're at uh miss danny you were up next yes i just want to say that um i support you um dr rotozi as an educator working um and you know i do know that when you go back there's a lot of issues and of course you know ideally um best situation would be to have students in the building and education to be that way but um unfortunately yes it might not spread through contact within the school but you have individuals that come into the school and then as a result you have staff quarantining you have students quarantining and then eventually you just don't have enough substitutes to cover the staff and you have to close and i mean i i would think that you know if i had a child in the district and i had to work around that schedule you know to know that okay we're open for two weeks now we're gonna go in we might be closed i mean i in my opinion i can't see that being um positive in terms of the social emotional well-being for students for staff i mean you know you talk about you know kids have to have a regimen and consistency yeah it would be nice it would be nice if you know class would start 7 45 and 3 you know and then they go to their sports and do whatever but i mean it's not what it is and so at least i do think that um in the remote setting at least there's some consistency and i just personally find that um you know you kind of have more time believe it or not in the remote setting because there is in this passing time when you have this hybrid model i mean again it's um i'm i'm in it you know and i'm and we just opened up um and you know i the hybrid it's it's it's um it's not like your children are there and and they're learning i mean ever everybody is still going on to the meet and you're you've got students in the classroom which is a little distracting because they're coming in and the students on the meet aren't coming in at the same time yet and they're late and then you have to pause i mean we have to stop like 10 minutes before and they have to clean the desks and yeah they clean their desks and they have to clean so then you have to jump off the meet with the other students so i mean it's it's just not an ideal situation and you know again i mean i think to put um you know my personal opinion is again like it was stated here that um you know if teachers are there at the forefront and they're so essential they should have been in that first group and you know to not saying again that again in the perfect world yes uh in person learning the best but this in person learning this the hybrid is just it's it's not the same it's um so for the safety of all i think right now you know with the numbers being so high and again i mean you can't con compare i think you know fair lawn or or um you know any of these districts or fairfields or whatever you can't compare to clifton i mean clifton the the numbers are huge and there might be parents who say yes okay we're going to put our students into school because you know in a sense uh we need to work and they need to be somewhere but then if in a few days there's a shutdown what does that parent do now the parent has to scramble to get someone so at least i feel like there's consistency for everybody across the board you know for students for their emotional well-being that okay this is it virtually this is how we're doing it numbers are high for staff um you know i know that it's frustrating for some staff members to have to quarantine then away from their family for 12 days um and you know and then you know you have just um parents as well who all of a sudden now because there was an outbreak they have to worry for two weeks what are they going to do with daycare and scramble and then we might be open for three days and then it might happen again i mean who is that good for you know so i mean i just want to say that you know um dr robertosi it's a you know difficult call but you know you obviously um know how this is and you've been an educator and and you can see that um you know this whole thing again ideally in an ideal world it would be nice if everybody was in the classroom and things were as normal but it's not so trying i think the consistency of at least staying in the remote while it's like this because it would be back and forth back and forth makes sense and that's all i have to say thank you vice president abu dhabi you were next thank you mr smith superintendent no matter what you do it's your fault so it doesn't matter not gonna ball listen joe i i i get it i want my kids out of this house because they drive me freaking nuts every morning and i want them out of here until three o'clock and not wait till noon and i i can't do a dorm thing especially my younger son but let's be realistic somebody by initials jb from the health office became my personal doctor for the past three weeks okay i was tested positive everybody else in my house was not i said what the heck i called him right away and i said hey just letting you know what do i do he did nobody got the results yet i said no outside my house i got tested i'm positive no symptoms everybody around me in the house is not quarantine all right fine got a second test i'm negative got a third test i'm negative what happens if a lot of the latter two tests were false tests and the first one was not now my kids are in this house no symptoms asymptomatic they contract it they go to school and then who knows what really is gonna happen so nobody knows what's going on with these tests nobody knows what this thing is capable of and yet nobody wants to believe it i'm not saying that lock these kids up in the house because then i'll move out and they can stay in this house but at the end of the day i'm not going to put others outside this house in harm's way when i came to control what's happening in my own house and we're trying to keep safe with gloves and hand sanitizer and masks in the whole works because we got false positive tests out of three tests i don't know which one is yet which one's right or not but yeah i still quarantined for 10 days because jb told me i had to and i did anyway because you know it's we don't know what this thing's capable of the best thing to do is as we always mentioned the ceo of our district from the advanced the advisement of our health officer in this city not little falls not param it's not process park not canada not california not oklahoma this city is saying that we should keep our kids at home for now am i gonna have people saying what the hell are you talking about in a few hours or tomorrow because you make no sense no because at the end of the day i don't care it's not up to us and you know what danny kudos to you if nine of us say yes opening school's up i love that answer that you gave because you know what that shows you don't cater to anybody on this board it's not a bad thing you took the advisement of the specialists in our city i'm not knocking anybody down who wants open schools back up joe i'm with you a hundred percent i want these kids back in school it's not helping them mentally it's killing them it's draining especially at the elementary school level but at the end of the day you gotta pick what's worse then being bored and setting him back by ear or god forbid putting them or anybody else in a place we don't want them to be that's why that's how we have to look at it and i rather than taking my cat throne or get thrown across the room and in between class breaks which no i'm not i don't support rather than god forbid i have to rush to them or somebody else to the doctor or hospital thanks danny mr casper you were next dr robert terese thank you for keeping the schools closed and thank you um with all your help from the health department because uh when it hits home it's very hard and everyone knows me i like to be out and about so you know me when it hits hard it it it's really tough so um i even had a family member in the hospital myself so i know how bad this can be and um if i were to go back into school myself and affect my students i don't know what i would have done either uh we had just gone back this week after being virtual for two weeks and we already have two cases in my school and i have yet to be notified to see if i have the quarantine so um so it's it's a tough decision but it's it's a good decision for now until we see our numbers going down thank you any other board members with question or comment see none dr roberto i just want to ask you to clarify um i know your stance is um about the vaccinations would that be both vaccinations because obviously having just the one wouldn't correct yes absolutely mr smith it's actually more than that it's the first vaccination four weeks later second vaccination and then two weeks after that and john correct me if i'm wrong that's when you're kind of fully immunized so you're talking about a six week six weeks from the day where you get vaccinated correct um miss beck did you want to add to that yes just just to be clear we keep we hear teachers teachers teachers we're talking about vaccinating our entire staff not just teachers everybody's in contact with our students and with each other very very good point thank you you're absolutely correct um mr beagle uh lyall and miss beck i i can't emphasize enough um if anyone in the city has not seen the operation that clifton runs and vaccinations um [Music] it's top-notch um john you and your staff have just done a fantastic job uh doing the best that you can and it is so organized um it is so laid out nicely and at the end of the day um you won't find trash around our property they clean everything up and it's just a top-notch operation and i am hoping and praying that our teachers our staff and the residents of clifton very soon get an opportunity to drive their car into that new circus tent and get their vaccine so i just wanted to thank you for all that you're doing for the city uh please extend it to your staff and i know uh dr robertosi uh cannot say enough about um your help and um ms beck maybe i'm speaking editor and correct me if i'm wrong but most if not all your nurses volunteer your time is that correct correct so we spend four days a week calling parents following up on cases and one day a week trying to make a difference and get rid of this virus and out in sub-zero temperatures so uh please extend the thanks to your entire uh nursing staff for uh caring enough about clifton and um doing what's right so thank you tremendously uh mr smith mr smith if i may this board should be commended because there wasn't when i recommended to the board that we allow this mass vaccination clinic not one person objected everyone knew that this was important for our community and just for the greater good and and also allowing the nurses to do this on wednesdays the board had to allow that to happen i know there are other districts where that would not happen i know there are other districts where they don't have the relationship with the health department where they're going to be able to utilize a school so this board should be commended for you know having some vision and uh and know that you know you're appreciated too what you do matters thank you muted mr smith very good point you know we have to remember we are one clifton school district the taxpayers students everyone we are one clifton and and we can work together to make this thing um go away or get better so um i know uh mr beagle would much rather have the entire town vaccinated in the next uh two weeks um unfortunately that's not going to happen and we just have to hold out a little bit longer and i i think it's disgraceful and i hope um that when our legislative committee meets that the governor and the legislature know how disgusting it is that teachers and our staff uh were put down uh lower in a list um they're darn important people and they should not have been put down on on that list so um i hope that we emphasize how upset we are and something like that should not ever happen again so that's all i have uh if there's nothing else from uh administration and uh the uh health department uh we thank you so very much for attending our meeting tonight um leal i can see in the background you're still in the office um ten o'clock at night i know she wants to go home so um we thank you tremendously for the time and dedication that you've helped us out tremendously by answering our questions so thank you all thank you guys thank you very much thank you we don't let leia go home hey jb if you if you end up actually do uh drill oil in the east wing parking lot just remember it's hours oh sorry sorry it's superintendents all right okay thank you if you you'd like to stay for the rest of the meeting you're more than welcome but i think you want to go home so um it's up to the superintendent what he wants us to do go home and go to sleep okay you say so i'm halfway there okay thank you both have a good night guys stay safe thank you apparently we still have an agenda to get to yes we do um okay next on our agenda is uh board committee reports and uh we should not have any as of yet oh you do i'm sorry i don't see anything on my agenda but very sad i'm sorry it's there sorry i didn't scroll down my bad okay go ahead mr casper okay this is from december 7th from the passaic county school board association the meeting was called the order by sixth at 6 35 by miss judas judith basford president of the passaic county school board association uh mr dan sinclair our immediate past president talked about how successful virtual workshop turned out the njsva put together the workshop in a short amount of time and had 6 000 attendees with 140 exhibitors and over 100 presenters mr sinclair explained that in our next delegate assembly we will be voting on our new njsba officers the term will run from 2021 to 2023 and the positions include president vice president for legislation and first vice president miss basford also talked about the nominating committee she will be appointing two members herself and has asked for any other volunteers who would like to be on the committee chris jones our njsba legislative advocate provided an update for us the legislation is trying to encourage smaller districts to regionalize but as it is completely voluntary these districts are looking for help in uh feasibility studies there are some districts that are not seeing the savings of chapter 44 fact-finding is currently going on and the legislature is looking into cleaning up chapter 44.

i'd like to call this meeting to order will the secretary please call the role angelo here this is true here mr sismar here here here this is locks here this is rhys here mr winston here here we have a quaran please rise to salute the flag [Music] 19 health emergency and in order for the board of education to conduct its business this board meeting is being held via video conference and stream live on youtube on the district website in addition members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password you see before you on the screen upon joining the meeting your participation will be muted to ensure there is no disruption to the business being conducted by the board of education the new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice 7 to attend meetings of public bodies in accordance with the provisions of this act the east brunswick board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published at the board of education offices written notice was also provided to the sentinel the newark star ledger the home news tribune and the municipal clerk of east brunswick all board of education meetings with the exception of executive session discussions our videotape related broadcast individuals who speak at the board's public meeting should be aware of these videotaping rules good evening everyone we're going to start off tonight as we always do with our superintendent's report dr valesky thank you president becker good evening everyone tonight i want to start by addressing the community directly even before last march 18th when we initially left our schools because of the ensuing pandemic the ebps organization had been committed to transparency so each of you has as much information as we can possibly give you i'm not exaggerating when i tell you that planning over this past year has been one half day at a time because information changes so quickly i have heard from some of you about your concerns with my decision and recommendation to postpone our restart of hybrid instruction until february 4th when we are faced with a decision of this magnitude we begin by assembling a variety of stakeholders in the district as we try to vet every possible option and forecasted outcome every option is considered and weighed against the most recent coveted transmission data we have as well as the health situations we are encountering in our own school district and i know we often get compared to other surrounding districts but comparison is often difficult because each district has unique circumstances and challenges one solution does not work for every school district just as i know every one of my decisions does not work for everyone in our school community but i remain committed to make the best decisions for the entire school community i try to communicate changes as soon as i accurately can but i know sometimes from your perspective it doesn't feel that way and i don't discount that some of you are frustrated and even angry i want to reassure you that we continue to plan a return to hybrid instruction that is as safe as it can be for every student every staff member and all the families in east brunswick for our return to face-to-face instruction to work whatever the date i'm asking every family to be transparent with us as well if we all follow published health guidelines report report close contacts and illnesses and most importantly stay out of school if anyone in the family is presumed or diagnosed as a positive code then our shared commitment to safety is elevated keeping ourselves and everyone around us safe is the only way we can successfully pull off the monumental task of returning our schools to full operation so another reminder the learning model form for churchill junior high school and east brunswick high school is currently available through parent access the form will close at 3 pm tomorrow that's friday january 22nd if you do not submit the form your child will continue with remote learning instruction i'm going to say that one more time if you do not submit the form and you don't need to if you want to remain in remote your child will continue in the remote learning instruction the hammershow middle school churchill junior high school in east brunswick high school music departments released a virtual winter concert series in december in january all performances were created by the staff and students of the various ensembles even though students were not able to perform together this year in the manner of a traditional concert they still were able to create beautiful music as heard in these truly emotional video productions all concert performances can be found at ebnet.org slash arts education and tonight we would like to highlight a clip of the east brunswick high school honors concert choir performing an arrangement of a gospel song entitled a city called heaven and this selection is a traditional sorrow song one that would be sung to cultivate a sense of hope through music and that's something we all need right now this performance features solos by seniors julian a day and zoe ascension i know you will enjoy it and it's coming it is [Music] oh oh sometimes i just don't know which way [Music] my wow sometimes i just don't know which way of a city [Music] oh that was wonderful you know i'm constantly impressed by the talent that we have in east brunswick and and even during the pandemic and being physically separated from one another our students still manage to impress and inspire um so i'm so proud of them i know their families are too as well as all the administrators uh michelle degrossa dr bolli everybody that's involved in the program that has cultivated these young young people and their talents so so thank you much to all those administrators um president becker if i could i would like to also offer a resolution of appreciation for school board recognition month absolutely thank you very much so resolution of appreciation school board recognition month january 2021 my where has the year gone whereas the new jersey school boards association has declared january 2021 to be school boards recognition month a time that all residents might acknowledge the contributions made by our local school board members and whereas the east brunswick board of education is one of more than 581 local school boards in new jersey that sets policies and overseas operations for public school districts and whereas the east brunswick board of education embraces for all students the goals reflected in the district motto of excellence in academics athletics and the arts and whereas the east brunswick board of education helps determine community goals for the education of approximately 8 200 children in preschool through 12th grade and whereas the east brunswick board of education members receive no compensation for their services yet are committed and active advocates for public school students and as board members collectively work with administrators teachers and parents for the good of east brunswick public schools and public education in general and whereas the east brunswick board of education provides accountability to the public communicates the needs of the school district to the public and conveys to school administrators the public's expectations for the schools and whereas the east brunswick board of education can take pride in its schools which rank among the best in new jersey and nationally in indicators such as high school graduation rates class size college entrance exam participation in advanced placement offerings and test scores now therefore be resolved that we join community statewide in observing january as school board recognition month and express our gratitude and appreciation to vicki becker laurie lacks mark carangelo susannah chu mark sismar heather guass lee wuhang barbara reese and jeffrey winston collectively the east brunswick board of education further unwavering service to the student staff and of course the greater east brunswick community thank you to all of you for all that you do thank you dr valesky and certificates are going to be coming to you via u.s mail after all the christmas packages are delivered for 2020 or 2021.

go ahead okay great uh welcome everybody uh to our regular school board meeting on january 21st and could you do a roll call for me please karen anderson present tammy hines here john long here craig meyer here metal camp here greg o'connor lisa schumacher great we have a quorum we're going to go ahead and move ahead item two on the agenda is public comments and uh courtney would you you need to state your your full name and then you have three minutes to address the board so whenever you're ready thank you tim giggin uh a chs oddly social studies american history teacher thanks again right now in my history class i'm teaching the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s i'm not equating that movement with what i'm doing tonight but i can't look my students in the eye and discuss civil rights knowing that i didn't reach out to you tonight this is not something i'm comfortable with but i feel compelled so here i am and i thank each of you for listening i am speaking as a former president of the columbia education association and a teacher at chs for the past 25 years my views tonight are my own and i speak for no one i'm not representing ca at this time although i will tell you i think i can speak for 72 percent of the high school teachers i appreciate all the work each of you have done in the last nine months i know it has not been easy we must find some common ground i know of no teacher who does not want things to return to normal as soon as possible no one likes the current situation and while we all want what is best for our students we must recognize that our district consists of four very different schools all with different needs what works at parkview chs and the others may not work at the other schools we must also recognize that we may have very different views on what is best for students and staff and we may even disagree on the severity of the pandemic it is my hope that the board is taking into consideration science and not making emotionally based decisions if we cannot trust science what can we trust my room at columbia high school is 23 by 21 feet this is the student's desk area i'm not counting the front of the room where i tend to teach from behind my self-purchase shower garden yeah a shower curtain in a classroom who would have thought if we bring back both groups of students my in-class numbers will go from a low of 10 students to a high of 23.

if one student gets coveted in my class it will mean at least three other students must quarantine and it could be as many as eight i believe my numbers are fairly typical at chs frankly the social distancing that is taking place right now in the boardroom will not be possible in most classes at chs think about what i just said each of you right now can social distance yet teachers and students cannot the optics of this are not lost on chs teachers based on a survey of chs teachers on january 13th 72 percent of high school teachers want the current hybrid policy to continue i would be happy to email you the results and the comments made from both sides 28 are basically for a return to normal since when do we cater to 228 percent what kind of message does this send i ask have you surveyed all the parents of the district not just the ones you see socially or the ones who call you or you run into at the store right now 71 out of 149 of my students and their families opt for room i'm not sure a majority of parents agree with bringing all students back but admittedly neither you nor i know because there has not been a survey in a recent board meeting november i believe board members said paraphrasing high school students are not quarantining they hang out in groups of up to 20 every night at the legion tim we need a tim i'm paraphrasing tim we need we need yeah we need to we need to wrap this up really yeah okay thank you thank you thank you tim another uh yeah okay great thank you [Music] hello miss clayton yeah this is uh dr pistelli at the board meeting i have you down there wanting to address the board this evening okay i'm going to give it to you and we have um you have to state your name for the record please and then if you would uh limit your comments to three minutes okay thank you my name is kerry clayton i am a parent community member and i have had the honor of teaching at chs since 2012.

[Music] cheerleaders so let's get these masks along to start the second quarter right [Applause] three-point basketball [Music] [Applause] oh that was on number five hallie randall at the line for the panthers number 22 megan vogel shooting two wow oh [Applause] basket [Applause] oh megan fogle of the live hall on jennings county she'll be shooting too olympian's number 20 beside track back and forwards [Music] please i know [Applause] oh that was on the panthers olivia elmore we gotta bounce olympia basketball [Music] [Applause] foul 15 hydrogen county basketball [Music] [Applause] also virginia's county number 23 olivia no more [Applause] oh [Applause] traveling population panthers basketball [Music] [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh rainbow [Music] we also have a substitution for the panthers 13 mackenzie mayor also for the olympians number 12 victoria chuna this three through one in violation second quarter at halftime two corolla season olympians 24 richie's county panthers eight join bartholomew consolidated school corporation's team as a substitute teacher or a bus driver bcsc will help you become a substitute teacher by covering the cost of your background check sub license and offer a hundred and forty dollars a day as a bus driver you will be offered full benefits retirement contribution match and pension 183 days of work per year guaranteed first shift hours and a potential thirty thousand dollars a year if eight hours are worked the best part of both of these positions no weekend or evening hours work on bcsc's school schedule and make a difference in the lives of students every day to show your interest in becoming a substitute teacher or a bus driver fill out the form labeled become a substitute teacher or bus driver at bcseschools.org 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 for tonight's game basketball is about third quarter [Applause] basket number three [Applause] [Music] basketball [Music] hello [Music] [Applause] oh [Applause] basketball [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the panthers substitution 33 ronna lucas now with for the olympians [Applause] the olympia basketball substitution card james county number thirty-one playing aggression [Music] oh the olympians county everything basketball [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] substitution number five still a bill slaughter for the fan thirties also for the olympians 21 brielle stevens [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] 21 real stephen's at the line shooting two [Applause] wow [Applause] the olympia basketball [Music] [Applause] money oh county basketball thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] county basketball substitution olympia elemore out for the panthers [Applause] um there you go [Applause] substitution for the panthers randall [Applause] wow olympian [Applause] foreign that was on columbus east number 20 messiah track the out of bounds jesus county [Music] basketball [Applause] [Music] what was knocked out by the olympians james county basketball [Music] time out columbus needs to be a 30 second timeout [Applause] [Music] basketball out of the timeout and now ladies and gentlemen i'd like to introduce your columbus seats jv cheerleaders tia brown kaylee fields jasmine fisher samantha hellwood cadence pitcher lily smith maggie weisner zoe plummer and brinley reimer your head coach for your olympians katie martin ladies and gentlemen your columbus eats tv cheerleaders number two zoe eisen also number 22 to make it vogel back in for the panthers also for the olympians number 20 messiah track packet [Applause] out of ours [Applause] [Music] good [Music] that was on number five how they randall uh [Applause] oh [Applause] substitution for the olympians number 12 victoria chewinon also number five stella mill spa back in for the panthers [Applause] [Music] [Applause] uh [Applause] traveling violation eugenics county basketball [Music] still a little small [Applause] [Music] [Applause] olympians knockout balance by the olympians county [Applause] basketball [Music] basketball [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] basketball [Applause] [Music] substitution number 14 leah richie [Applause] wow you wanted one wow all right [Applause] family traveling violation olympia basketball uh [Applause] shooting one and one for the olympians 25 alexis carson back in for the panthers 20 beside track back in for the olympians [Applause] uh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] basketball the line shooting to the panthers [Applause] substitution 21 back before [Music] [Applause] olympia basketball [Applause] substitution number 20 beside a trap back in florida [Music] i was on 22 megan vogel 31 hardly gained the lie shooting 101.

stick around we have our friends varsity contest here shortly should be a good one 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 team 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 a 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 good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the bcsc live stream here on the youtube channel as you can see in your top right screen we are about eight minutes and 20 seconds away from this hhc championship matchup here tonight in the orange pit once again we want to thank you guys for tuning in for you those that watch the jv game our jv team did pick up the win over the panthers congratulations to our jv team before we jump into tonight's broadcast we want to give a special thank you to our sponsors columbus auto group and forced construction for sponsoring these videos without your support these live streams would not be happening and we also want to thank you guys for tuning in if you please would like and subscribe to the youtube channel so you'll be notified for all of the home meets or tournament matchups we shall do later on in the season but most importantly let's take a look at these jenning county panthers the panthers are coming in tonight's matchup with a record of 11 and 5 and 3-1 in the hhc which ranks them third in conference play their only conference loss was to bedford and other notable losses were to east central pike salem and brownstown central looking on the winning side for the panthers some big wins were over some really good teams such as whiteland lawrenceburg scottsburg rushville and shelbyville the panthers are led by a freshman julian woodard who is averaging just over 16 points per game and 11.4 rebounds the other standout player for the panthers is senior addison kintz who is averaging 14.2 points per game 3.6 rebounds 3.2 assists and 2.2 steals a well-rounded player for the panthers as a team the genius county panthers enters tonight's championship game averaging 59 points excuse me 57.9 points per game 28.4 rebounds 13.6 assists 8.8 steals and 2 blocks this game has a lot on the line tonight can the panthers come away with the road victory here in the orange pits now we will transition over to your home team the columbus east olympians they are looking to become conference champs for the first time since 2008 and the first time going undefeated in conference since 2006 it has been a long time since the hhc trophy has been claimed here at east for girls basketball the standings for the hhc are your ladyos are at the top with a record of 6-0 bedford is sitting in second jennings county in third and to round out the conference is madison seymour jeffersonville new albany and floyd central so there you have it your hhc standings coming in tonight's matchup the radios are on a four game winning streaks and have picked up big conference wins over those four games with those teams being madison seymour bedford and new albany the lady o's are led by senior guard corrine gravy who is averaging 17 points per game five rebounds 4.6 assists and 3.9 steals other big time players for the lady o's are sophomores sage stahl and gabby dean as a team the olympians are averaging just over 60 points per game 33 rebounds 14 assists nine steals and six blocks can we see this 2020 2021 radios make east history with the winning the outright hhc championship for the first time in 14 years we're just minutes away from tip off so don't go away join bartholomew consolidated school corporation's team as a substitute teacher or a bus driver bcsc will help you become a substitute teacher by covering the cost of your background check sub license and offer a hundred and forty dollars a day as a bus driver you will be offered full benefits retirement contribution match and pension 183 days of work per year guaranteed first shift hours and a potential thirty thousand dollars a year if eight hours are worked the best part of both of these positions no weekend or evening hours work on bcsc's school schedule and make a difference in the lives of students every day to show your interest in becoming a substitute teacher or a bus driver fill out the form they will become a substitute teacher or bus driver at bcse schools.org [Music] welcome back to the live stream here on youtube we are about three minutes and 15 seconds away from tip-off as you can see the student section there i'm sure all these students would love to be here tonight cheering on your ladies as many of these students can witness some history being made as i just mentioned a few minutes ago since 2006 it's been since the girls basketball team has won the outright hhc championships if the olympians were to lose it would be a three-way split between bedford's genius county and the olympians so the olympians have a lot at stake here tonight as well for genius county once again we want to thank you guys for tuning in to all of the live streams throughout the whole entire season whether it's been football [Music] in the fall and swimming gymnastics and basketball boys and girls we want to thank you guys for sticking to it all and we are very pleased and proud to be able to bring you all of these live streams this year with all these crazy times going on here tonight so two minutes till tip off we will take another short break and we will hear a word from our sponsor columbus auto group 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 percent committed to making sure you leave in the right vehicle not the one that pays them the most from sales to service from online team 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] a few seconds away here and i will turn it back down to our pa announcer dennis pierce for the national anthem and the starting lineups and welcome to the orange pit here on the campus of columbus east high school and the home of olympian basketball as this evening we proudly present a hoosier hills conference match-up between the olympians of columbus east and the visiting panthers of jennings county high school and our ladies and gentlemen at this time we ask that you please stand the privilege of this game is 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 like gentlemen removing their caps and everyone standing in attention placing their hands over their hearts as we proudly play our national anthem [Music] so [Music] thank you and now i introduce your starters partner visitors to see me the change county panthers and forward a six-foot freshman double zero two-handed wooden guard a five-seven senior number five addison kent guard a 5-4 [Music] [Applause] junior number 14 cali thompson [Music] and it forward a 5 9 junior number 33 lily ernst your head coach for your panthers christy zigler and that is your james county panthers all right fans you know what to do it's time to put on your feet let's introduce [Applause] and forward a six-foot sophomore number leah bachmann and forward a six-foot sophomore number safe stall at center a 6-4 sophomore number 32 gambit and it guard a 5-7 junior number two your career for your olympians danny brown assistant coach willie hughes and that is your columbus east olympians so there we have it ladies and gentlemen our national anthem and our starting lineups now we are seconds away from tip off here tonight for the hhc championship game here at columbus east high school looks like double zero and dean are doing the tip off for each of the respective teams here tonight the freshman wardor is coming in averaging 11.4 rebounds and 16.3 assists as for gabby dean comes in average an eight point two points per game and seven point six rebounds so here we go folks we are awaiting the whistle and the tip and we are going to be underway here tonight and columbus east high school and we are underway and the olympians win the tip as grin gravy passes it off to stahl down low inside to gabardine she spins inside dribbles and shoots it off the mark and rebounded by wooder up to kent and 14. thompson has it and off the mark and rebounded by sage stall and she's driving down the right side of the court the energy has been very energy i want to say has been very upped upbeat as the jv team picked up the win you could tell this team has very high expectations in winning this game as maylie roberts shot is off the mark and the panthers are going to push it down the court and sewing by sage stahl she comes in with just over one point steals a game excuse me 1.6 deals a game and i turn over there by the olympians coming up on seven seven minutes and 10 seconds in the first quarter [Applause] the olympians are playing their 2-3 zone they have a lot of the basketball year and they get it to the baseline out to kent she's going to dribble inside kick it back out to number 11 and that is off the mark and corinne gravy with the full court pass to sage on the right block up and good and we have our first points of tonight's contest belongs to the olympians sage stall for two let's see if the olympians can keep the great defensive pressure going but a great job there by jennings county and won by woodard will put her at the line 4-1 sage stall picks up the team's first her first comes in shooting 73 percent at the free-throw line and that shot is up and good gives her three points on the night great job there by the panthers to get the shot up and to draw the foul and convert see if the olympians can answer back in the corner to maybe roberts for three and good melee roberts with a big shot bailey roberts comes in shooting 41 percent from beyond the arc fantastic shot there with 609 remaining and it looked like gabby dean got a piece of it but kept alive by the panthers woodard has it back out for a three for the panthers off the mark and an offensive rebound once again keeps the possession alive for the panthers the olympians fall back into that zone see if the panthers can break it like they did and stolen by gravi one-on-one fast break and she short floater there and off the mark corinne gravy comes in with just under four steals a game and she got one there early thompson turns the ball over sage staltz two on two fast break for the olympians euro step up and no good for sage stall with 5 25 remaining here looks like genius county is going to slow the pace down of the game i think the fast place game is in favor of the olympians maybe jennings county wants to slow it down maybe the panthers are a slow paced basketball team as kent looks at a three but passes it and no good there [Applause] woodard has it down low a great pass for the three for the panthers and good [Applause] brook maury 4-3 from the corner great looking shot there and gives them a one point lead as sage dribbles and spins and gets it to grivey to bachmann she's down low up and good the assist goes shakur and gravy but two points for leah bachman bachmann comes in averaging just under nine points per game and corinne gravy averaging 4.6 assists and blocked by gabby dean who is averaging quite a bit of blocks here and up to bachmann on the left block up and good great pass and great transition offense for the olympians there bachmann with four points here tonight so far three-point lead coming up on four minutes here just in the first quarter [Music] olympians still in that zone and corn gravy steals it and she's gonna take it herself up and good and a timeout taken by the panthers [Applause] your olympians lead 11-6 and we will take a short break after a 30-second timeout taken by jennings county alrighty welcome back we are coming back after a timeout taken by jennings county after olympians got two quick steals and two quick easy points off this turnovers be panther basketball here with 351 remaining here in the first quarter looks like number 31 will be taken out for the panthers and they will get it into addison kent the senior and down low to water kent looks at a three but hesitates and will dribble to her right and kintz will get it back here the olympians still in that 2-3 zone 18-foot jump shot is off the mark and a fight for the ball and rebounded by sage stall corn gravy looks to push them off the court gets it to melee roberts and back to gravie [Applause] bailey has three points here so far see if she can add more to her stack column inside to bachmann back out to gravie she looks to attack melee has it down low to gabby dean she's trying to be strong back door cut to save stall wide open and good a great find there by gabby dean and sage stahl has four points in tonight's contest still in that zone look gets it inside bachmann with great help defense there kent 43 up and good addison kent with three points she comes in shooting 31 percent from beyond the arc see if the olympians can answer back here as gabby dean shoots that one in great defense there by woodard the freshman let's see if the panthers can get something to go here again in the corner is another three but blocked by sage stall rebounded by dean up to corinne gravy she's going to take it and misses it but rebounded by sage and gold sage stall with six first quarter points coming up on two minutes here in the first quarter 15-9 is our score in favor of the home team the lady o's see if the panthers can get a shot to fall here gets it inside the water looks like more of a man zone look concept here for the olympians gets it down low to woodard she shoots and good [Applause] gives her five points so far here tonight as she had the and one early in the first quarter as corinne gravy down low to gabby dean she spins and takes the dribble and short on her shots and rebounded by water and kitts will bring the ball down the courts here as olympians will fall back into the zone [Applause] 106 remaining here in the first quarter lead belongs to the olympians woodard kicks it out for panther three up and no good and rebounded by bachmann bachmann comes in with averaging 6.4 rebounds a game and she's going to take herself off the mark an offensive rebound by gabby dean and gets that one stripped out of her hands but sage stalls right there to keep it alive and stolen there by addison kent she's going to dribble to her right and down low to number 33 up and good and one for number 1 excuse me 33 gabby dean picks up the foul ernst is at the line for one and we'll have albany spear check in and caitlyn crothers also checks in for the olympians with 36.1 seconds remaining here in the first quarter the olympians now have two team fouls to the panthers zero as lily gets that free throw to fall and she converts on the n1 bachmann with the long jump shot in and out and rebounded there by lily and addison will slow it down here coming up on 20 seconds here just in the first quarter back and forth ball game is our score excuse me our score is 15 to 14 back and forth ball game scoring wise has been the concept here tonight looks like the panthers are going to hold it for one last shot as you can see with two seconds a three-point shot up and off the mark and rebounded by gravy so there we have it our first quarter the olympians lead by 1 15 to 14 and let's take a break and let's watch and listen to our columbus east cheerleaders [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] and then we have it our columbus east cheerleaders we want to thank you guys for tuning in tonight's live stream i'm shirley miss and my partner zach pierce who is normally sitting next to me he is back off to ball state so running camera tonight is kai stenham a big thank you to him and i am malachi parks doing play-by-play here tonight it will be panther basketball to start the second quarter it was a back and forth ball game in the first quarter it should be like that the remainder of the game so we should be in store for a good one here tonight the olympians remaining in that zone gives it into water and back out for a three looks like she took too many steps before dribbling there and a turnover by the panthers olympian basketball bachmann will take it out and give it into gravie she uses the screen set by bachmann looked at the pick and roll there but didn't not go for it and gravity will get it back as spear will cut through and bachmann down low and back to sage stall almost a turnover there but keeps it alive bachmann picks her dribble up down low to sage and a jump ball great job there by the panthers get the jump call olympian basketball after the jump ball possession error will be turned to the panthers so the next one the panthers will get and a wide open bachmann great find there and a great out of bounds play there by the olympians bachmann has six points here tonight coming up on seven minutes and 10 seconds in the second quarter as the free throw jump shot is off the mark and rebounded by the panther that is woodard gets it down low to number 33 lily ernest [Applause] a great job there by the panthers and caitlyn crothers gets the points here in the second quarter she comes in averaging a well-respected 3.3 points per game and 2.5 rebounds coming off the bench as woodard has it down low and fires the shot up and off the mark and rebounded by bachmann as albany will bring the ball down she's going to stop and fire the three up and good albany spiel four three a great shot there in genius county answers back with their own three addison kent 4-3 as well [Applause] that gives her six points both of them coming from beyond the arc 31 for the panthers kennem mashuno picks up her first teams first corinne gravy is at the line shooting 83 percent 66 of 80 on the season as that one is up and good as number 11 brooke will check in for number 14 thompson and gabadine will check in for caitlyn crothers gabby dean is scoreless here tonight i'm sure she's looking to change that one as grabby is at the line for her second free throw and it is up and good gives corn gravy four points six minutes on the clock 24-19 is our score and bachmann gets a hand on the pass but panthers are able to keep it alive as woodard has it on the right corner as addison looks to fire a three but we are going to have an offensive foul committed by woodard will be her first team second bachmann once again will take it out and give it into gravie 5 45 remaining here gravity uses a screen by sage stahl and she's going to take it herself and great job there by the panthers to block that one addison's going to bring the ball down gets it in the middle jump stop and right idea just off the hands it's going to be genius county basketball i thought it went off the hands of the panther but the refs call it genius county basketball right there there excuse me right idea by addison with 5 34 remaining gets it inside and blocked by albany bachmann up to gravy she's all alone on the right block up and good corinne gravy [Applause] four quick points for corinne gravy coming off the free throws and the layup and great job there by the panthers to get a shot in on the zone but woodard could not get the shot to fall up court to sage stall a risky pass and will be tipped out of bounds by the panthers 508 remaining olympian basketball corinne gravy is going to take the ball out here and gets it into gabby dean gravy's going to drive baseline fine so wide open bachmann fourth jump shot up and good great vine there by corinne gravy and a great shot there by gabby dean gives her eight points on the night so far gets it inside woodard's gonna drive baseline and kick it out to the three and kintz will get it back looks at a three pump fakes gets inside jump stops and gives it to a wide open teammate for baseline jump shot up and good kena mashuno with her first points of tonight's contest and sage will drive baseline off the mark offensive rebound by gabby dean fires that shot and off the mark and hustling his olympians tried to save it but stolen by woodard and the panthers kent's going to dribble it down and off the mark kept alive by the panthers woodard will fire that one up and off the mark and a strong rebound bachmann had it in her hands the ref said it was going to be east basketball but pointed the wrong way now we are back to where we are coach brown was gonna give the earful to the ref but olympian basketball with 355 remaining here in the second quarter corinne grabber is going to bring the ball down as she will be doing most of tonight's match-up gets it to albany albany has three points here tonight's coming off of a big three-point shot at the top of the key gets it inside to gabadine great pass to bachmann up and good and one for leah bachman assist from gabby dean [Applause] brockman comes in shooting 76 on the free throw line six points just here in the second quarter looking at seven and she gets that one to fall [Applause] the olympians are up to a double-digit lead here in the second quarter 325 coming up on the scoreboard gets it into the middle of the zone maury kicks it out uh panthers cannot get the three-point shot to fall corinne gravy picks up her dribble a bad idea there by gravy and stolen by the panthers and that is thompson for [Applause] two her first points of the night comes off of a big turn over there cuts the lead back down to single digits and gabby dean great post move and she gets in the scoring column back to a 10-point lead for the olympians 2 45 remaining here in the first half of this basketball game off the hands of the olympian will be jenny's county basketball melee roberts will check back in for the olympians albany will check checkout jillian excuse me we'll check back in the freshman and number 33 lily ernst as well as addison fires up a quick three off the mark and olympian basketball with 233 remaining here in the second quarter looks like addison is going to pick gravy up full courts and great defense there by the panthers but off the hands of the panther will be olympian basketball [Applause] as the olympians will take a timeout maybe to draw up something to beat a short man press the panthers brought out to him so 232 remaining here in the second quarter the olympians lead is 10 points after the timeout taken by the olympians let's see what each team will come out after the timeouts see if the panthers will stick with the press and it looks like they are going to do so maybe change the pace of the game here and give the olympian some confusion looks like they're gonna double team gravie and gets it into sage stall bachmann will dribble down the courts and pull it back out to set up the offense as gravi will eventually get the ball here to sage stahl with 220 remaining here in the second quarter as gabby dean passes it to gravie uses the screen step back three and off the mark and rebounded by woodard and it's going to be over the back foul committed by gabby dean great box up there by woodard [Music] she picks up her second foul team's third all evened up with three team fouls for each team here tonight coming up on two minutes two minutes here in the second quarter gets it inside to order she takes the easy jump shot up and nothing but nets gives her seven points she is the leading scorer for this panther basketball team and she's doing her fair share here tonight bachmann kicks it out to sage stall pump fakes dribbles right as gravie has it in the right wing back down to gabby dean and she spins to her right off the market and she gets her own rebound and throws it up and a turnover committed by the olympians number 14 thompson is going to dribble kick it out to addison she fires a three nothing but net [Applause] addison kintz scored all three point baskets here gives her nine points the panthers have cut into this lead here [Applause] late in the second quarter as gravity passes the two sage stall back to gravity she's going to attack inside and great defense there by the panthers no foul call there as addison's going to bring the ball down the court she stops fires a three up and good someone is getting red hot from beyond the arc gives her four three pointers just in the first half and cuts the lead from 10 down to two with 33 seconds remaining and the panther fans are up and loud and cheering on their feet can the olympians get a basket here as bachmann's going to dribble and travel violation great job by the panthers so far they have all the momentum here late in the second quarter looks like caitlyn crothers is going to check in for gabby dean with 22.4 seconds remaining here in the second quarter the olympians were up 10 here in the second quarter but the panthers have done a great job i'm sure they're going to hold it for one last shot to cut the lead excuse me to tie the ball game or take the lead big possession for each team here in this ball game as woodard takes the 12 foot jump shot up and good that's her second times shooting that shot and getting it to fall gives her nine points as well gravy fires it up and good grin driving with the buzzer beater gives the olympians a three-point lead going into halftime great job by each team here in the second quarter so there we have it our first half is in the books the olympians lead by three due to corinthians gravies long buzzer beater so we will take a short break and we will be back with the halftime report join bartholomew consolidated school corporation's team as a substitute teacher or a bus driver bcsc will help you become a substitute teacher by covering the cost of your background check sub license and offer a hundred and forty dollars a day as a bus driver you will be offered full benefits retirement contribution match and pension 183 days of work per year guaranteed first shift hours and a potential thirty thousand dollars a year if eight hours are worked the best part of both of these positions no weekend or evening hours work on bcsc's school schedule and make a difference in the lives of students every day to show your interest in becoming a substitute teacher or a bus driver fill out the form labeled become a substitute teacher or bus driver at bcseschools.org [Music] do welcome back to the bcsc live stream we are live at columbus east high school what a very eventful first half we had on our hands here in the orange pit back and forth ball game the olympians had the lead up to ten at one point in the second quarter the panthers battled their way back to get it within two well they actually tied the ball game excuse me and to end the second quarter corinne gravy hit a long three-point basket at the buzzer as time expired going into halftime scoring wise for the panthers the freshman water has nine points and she comes in averaging 11.4 excuse me 16.3 points per game addison kent hit four first half threes giving her 12 points brooke number 11 has three points thompson number 14 has two points kina mashuno has two points as well and lenny lilly ernstus has five points and that is your scoring for the visitors the jennings county panthers scoring wise for your home team the olympians corinne gravy has nine points sage stahl had six first quarter points but did not score in the second quarter bachmann leads the way so far with 11 first half points four in the first half excuse me four in the first quarter and seven in the second quarter and gabby dean has two points and maybe roberts has three and caitlyn crothers has two as well so i'm sure it's going to be the same way here in the second half once again we want to thank you guys for all tuning in quite a bit of people watching on this big game for each of these teams here tonight whether if you're cheering on the panthers or your home team the olympians we want to thank you guys for all tuning in to this hhc championship matchup one team's looking to win conference for the first time since 2008 and that is your home team the olympians and the panthers routinely win conference at the girls basketball level so i'm sure they're looking to repeat their efforts have like they do many years once again it is a three-point ballgame scores 36-33 in favor of the olympians just want to thank you guys for bearing with me here normally i have a partner zach pierce but he is like i mentioned earlier off to college so i'm having to produce announce and keep stats as well and try to keep the score up to date so if i'm a little slow that is why so i just want to thank you guys for being with me here so we are underneath a minute here and so we are underway with the second half we should be in store for a good one this is the conference championship game if genius county were to win it would be a three-way split with the olympians the panthers and the bedford stars jenny's county basketball will have the ball to start the first quarter once again we want to give a big shout out to our jv team as they picked up the win over the panthers as well start the second half are the starters for the olympians gravy roberts bachmann and dean and stahl so olympian will be on defense here the panthers will be going right to left and the olympians will be going left to right as the olympians start off in their zone as they have all season long and a quick three taken by the panthers off the mark but rebounded by addison thompson was the one to shoot the three kent's 4-3 she was red-hot in the first half could not get that one to fall baseline jump shot woodard is off the mark and another offensive rebound by the panthers and we're gonna have a jump ball three offensive rebounds there early for the panthers but a jump ball so it will be olympian basketball with 7 27 remaining here in the third quarter looks like they're going to double corinne gravy but sage stahl runs down and gets it and looks like she's going to dribble the ball picks up her dribble and finally gets it to grivey once again the olympians are going left to right on your screen karen gravity down low to bachmann and fires up the shot off the mark gets her own rebound and stays with it and gets the shot to fall leah bachmann with 13 points leading a scorer here tonight she comes in averaging just under nine points great pass inside to woodard and she gets the two-point basket to fall as well back and forth ball game early on in the second half gives woodard 11 points she's in double figures here tonight for the panthers karen gravy crosses over gets inside picks the dribble up down low to gabby dean and gets it to bachmann above the free-throw line back to gravity she dribbles to her left in the corner roberts for three and shorts and rebounded by the panthers they have the numbers here and a great move there by number 14.

okay good evening everyone welcome to wow january 21st our journey 21st board of ed business meeting it's actually one of one of our it's our first business meeting since the uh the new year uh before we get into it mr zenski have a roll call for quorum please sure mr grippo here miss hallon here miss ham here ms harrigan here mr martelly here mr paragini here and mr white mr chairman of a quorum thank you carol uh i ask that we stand for the pledge of allegiance once uh jeffer vin has the flag up on the screen 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 good evening everyone good evening that may be watching welcome to our meeting this evening uh we have a lot to cover uh since uh the end of last year we had our superintendent's uh board uh 2021 2022 board of operating budget presentation last week uh hopefully folks will tune in for that uh but this is our first actual business meeting of the new year so happy new year to everyone once again uh before we get into the business section of the meeting we actually have a student representative report by lucy and joshua so lucy and joshua whenever you're ready the mic is all yours thank you um so first we're going to start with athletics the winter sports season started this past tuesday so that was really exciting the state has approved participation for the following sports boys and girls basketball boys and girls ice hockey boys swimming and boys and girls alpine skiing unfortunately indoor track programs can only hold practices and there are currently no con contests but they will reevaluate that in march cheerleading can participate as a sideline cheer only and competitive cheerleading and wrestling have not been approved for any competitions they can only run conditioning programs the competition season for those winter sports that have been approved will begin on february 8th so we look forward to cheering on our rams then uh last meeting we told you all that the peer health education classes in the national honor society were running a food drive so that was finished right after our meeting actually on january 19th and we just got word that the groups donated 5063 pounds of items on behalf of cheshire high school and the cheshire community which i believe is a record yeah that's awesome and the other event that we talked about was the holiday drive-thru that also happened on december 19th uh it was run by best buddies along with many other chs clubs and sports teams that volunteered um so basically all participants that went through got holiday goodies and they also got an optional picture with santa in total we had 326 cars come through and through donations we raised over 900 dollars we we received hundreds of non-perishable food items for the local food pantry and also hundreds of books for the local rereads bookstore and lastly the spring musical cast at chs has started rehearsals and they're planning to have a performance in some way we don't exactly know how that's going to be yet but it will be the musical little woman so we're looking forward to that and that's all we have thank you lucy and joshua any questions from our board members speechless you left us speechless awesome great work tonight well thanks for being here we love seeing you i love seeing you happy faces uh won't keep you any longer longer so you're welcome to stay but if you need to log off and do some homework uh it's perfectly acceptable so thank you guys thanks for being here again we'll see you at our next business meeting good night thank you uh up next is audience uh dr sone do we have any audience correspondence yet um the only audience correspondence we had actually was budget related so we'll hold that for tuesday's meeting great thank you uh moving on we have reports of standing committees starting with curriculum uh miss ham which i can give an update sure would um first of all i just want to correct the agenda it um should read that the meeting was um january 11th not the 15th of 2021 um it was a concise meeting uh we had two three four informational items um first the uh cheshire curriculum commit uh council gave an overview of the um music executive summary and the key items in the report included experiences for students in the elementary middle and high school relative to the national music standards um we received an update on a video audio link um that unfortunately was not functioning that night and um it they really are remarkable uh the program is remarkable at both the um at the uh well all grades um these are pretty much a talented a big bunch of talented kids which is really nice and committed teachers secondly we heard from um the library executive [Music] summary and um the key points there were that um the uh the faculty of the the staff are aligning the new curriculum and assessment to the 2018 american association of librarian standards um which are more rigorous and um perhaps more in line with what we do what we're doing in our program than the state standards um so [Music] the um the staff is continuing to seek opportunities for librarians to collaborate with one another and with classroom teachers and finding meaningful ways to integrate the library and core class skills and work then kevin hanlon presented the annual report for the grade six otis lenin school ability test also known as the old sats and the results show similar performances to previous years and then finally mr hanlon reported on the test administration of the las links which is the state assessment for english learners and the test has four parts which are listening speaking reading and writing and this year the administration is from january 4th 2021 to march 31st 2021 um and the administration of the assessment this year includes procedures for assessing students who are remote learners um which presents an interesting challenge so that was the gist of the meeting um we have one are there any questions i should ask seeing none um we have one um action item and that is an approval of textbooks um the title is the college accounting a practical approach to 14th uh it is the 14th edition of that book so um do i hear a motion to approve the textbook so moved okay do i hear any discussion of the motion oh do i hear a second so sorry catherine second thank you do i hear any discussion uh mr white hi faith yeah i'm just curious uh so you mentioned the 14th edition of the accounting book yes if we if we're moving from like one addition up to the next edition are we voting on that just to be clear right it's a motion that we must vote on we are voting on a textbook okay yes same text new edition basically new edition yes okay all right thank you okay um all those in favor aye all is opposed it carries um that's the end of my report at the curriculum committee awesome faith that was nice and concise thank you uh for reference uh we did receive the links to the music videos from uh marlena's cooner that we couldn't see during the actual meeting uh if those are available to you by the public uh if not already i would definitely recommend putting up on the website or to our youtube channel they're great to watch and it's definitely uh uplifting and enlightening to see our kids uh perform um those songs so thank you for sharing that mr cooner and marlene for giving us that detail uh that means said we're going to move on to finance uh lots of finance activities happening so mr grippel would you like to give us an update um yes thank you mr chairman um we had a finance committee meeting on uh january 19th which was just a few days ago um it was uh it went ran a lot longer than i thought it would um but uh i think we went till 10 o'clock i believe uh in which where we had a spirited conversation about the medical benefit trust fund and a bunch of other uh very uh incredible uh subjects um and i will um if you would like to see the detail of that it should be on our youtube channel on cheshire public schools uh to see the entire three hour budget meeting for part one of i believe three or or two possibly three we'll see how it goes um and uh so now i'll hand the report over to mr maciana thank you mr grippone good evening everyone the what i'll do is i'll report on the finance report as of december 31st which the board members have in their package and i'll summarize here you know because really we're we're at the six month mark and the good news is this the uh report is no worse than it was in november so we're holding steady the this year's budget is 74 million 593 926 we've encumbered 83.6 of that budget which is which is fairly normal for this point in the year we do expect to meet our budget despite some challenges that we have this year especially related to the pandemic and that's assuming that we we received the 706 000 in coronavirus relief funds from the state which has been approved and we'll probably do our submission next week um and we also have 200 000 available in the unexpended education funds account which was rolled over from last year's budget so i i think we're looking pretty good i did report um you know back in november we had a lengthy discussion about food service and we're you know working to mitigate the loss in food service which the board of ed budget has to make up and that that's holding so you know even though we'll have to make up the deficit that's all factored into the report that i've provided so you know the the things that we typically are concerned about in our budget at this time of the year you know have to do with special education costs uh going above budget and those are holding very steady this year so you know we hope that continues um you know and i'll talk now about the medical benefits report might swing back to the finance report here in a minute but we did provide in the package the medical benefits update through december which we did speak about when we had our finance committee earlier this week but the claims for the month of december were a million thirty three thousand six sixty four so for the first six months of this year our medical claims average is a little over a million dollars per month you know that's well above the 300 excuse me well above the 800 000 that was expected in claims and so our trust fund balance has decreased from the start of the year of 2.8 million down to 970 000.

so do we have has anybody looked at it just cross-referenced what they projected to what we've actually seen in the last three years to see if it was a good prediction it it was pretty solid the the one variable that you know to be fair is kovid the yeah you know it's kind of a wild and you know what they say past performance doesn't you know guarantee future results that move it is really the one that throws the wild card into that could i get a copy of that at the enrollment from the urbanomics absolutely and i basically i just want to see the enrollment numbers and just compare the two of them and see that how close they are thank you and yeah i mean you're concerned your concern is is shared for sure and do you think it makes sense would the board like to have malone and mcbroom come to a meeting and just kind of discuss is that something that we could do tony and have them come and just discuss the enrollment study because this whole thing is predicated i know that i'm basing my decision based on the fact that the wants and the needs the need that's coming is the elementary school we need more elementary school space i mean i would love to have a brand new high school but at the same time you know we're gonna run out of room the elementary school level so um i think it does make sense that milan mcbroom really come and talk about it with us yeah i don't have an issue at all uh with that i mean i i would work through work with through uh jen and chuck because that was paid for through smc budget and because of their time uh no it it does come up and it's it's very hard um you know to look at the bottom i'm gonna spend hopefully spend on moving our school infrastructure forward and the enrollment study is right behind it i just want to you know uh i've gone through this once already with uh catherine ann the uh studies done in 1617 were pretty solid um you know we knew back then we're gonna have an issue uh you know here we are uh again going through the process and again the enrollments come up and uh you know we're past the point of no no return either we're gonna do something before it sits in 25 or or not and we're gonna have a big problem so so for me it's not a hunch it's not a guess it's uh it is based on studies uh it seems to correlate with nasdaq as well so you know but i definitely want to hear my loans with dollars and quite frankly with covid and you know with tim's question on housing even breakfast last year let's see if there's anything new they they i'm able to add you know it's a few months into the year so yeah i'd be happy to reach out to jenna if you unless you want to do that andrew uh but uh if we just fit it in let's do it sure okay i mean and also i mean just the cheshire herald today there's another 16 lot subdivision going through land use approvals on marion road so that and then the one on whis that's another that's 24 lots so that's two subdivisions that weren't even taken into the account when this was done by milanic broom back a couple months ago so is that mckinley yeah it may take some time to have that presentation scheduled and what i can do is share with you the video from when mylon and mcbroom gave their presentation the winter early maybe late fall of 2020 it seems like it was 1978 that they gave that presentation and i think we just all have a different perspective of processing additional information through the school modernization committee that we may see it with different eyes when we go back and look at it again so i'll share that with you so that you have it if you want to check it out but in the meantime it certainly fair to talk to we can talk to chuck and jen about you know new questions are generated let's let's put it out on the table okay members have similar questions so they maybe will do something for both both groups yeah adam yeah i just wanted to concur with jeff um for the most part with the uh with even with my last question on the high school um with the exception of that one actually um 99 of my questions have been answered by going back and looking at the smc meetings um the population one is actually one that i hadn't watched yet again so um i think was that the one we attended maybe not that maybe it's one before that anyhow um it was at highland yeah that was when we attended you were there okay so so we actually got to sit through that entire presentation as well um but uh jeff yeah i would appreciate even just the the date of the presentation so that we could just go look it up and i'll i'll probably watch it again too so uh thank you so adam uh you said by going back and watching missing videos meetings 95 percent of your questions are more or less answered 98 yeah uh if jenna's watching she's probably doing cartwheels because uh it takes a lot of time right those meetings are three hours but yeah you'll you'll find it if you good to hear there's a lot of good material there it's worth the watch thanks sorry andrew back i think catherine had her hand up in the comments as well catherine thanks ian um so i just before we get into this are you andrew going to go through the rest of you do you have a whole presentation to make too much have this presentation that i have the spreadsheet that was presented last night yeah so why don't we let you do that and then maybe you know ask all our questions after because i i may have some questions that you're going to answer in the context of all right here well here we go okay just he practiced prior to the meeting and why are you going to do that you probably did i did i totally did man's not lying i absolutely did all right can everyone see this yeah uh yeah sorta yes you want me to zoom in a little bit can you zoom in a little yeah yeah let me just let me just drag this over here some of us have over 50 eyes oh by the way i did 40 documents to the board members last night yeah you did and i should have printed it out but okay is that good yes okay perfect okay so one a we're calling scenario one is one a renault which is the median score is 73.13 that's the score that was given by those on the smc that ranked all the different options so the phase one the construction logistics of phase one is to build a new k-6 elementary school move darcy pre-k to highland move darcy k to do little move hummus and boe to lease space which would result in the closing of darcy chapman and hummuston so then we'd have to redistrict to balance the elementary enrollment across the town phase two would be to renovate doolittle and norton and we say renovate renovate is the term meaning that basically a gut rehab of the entire building all building systems hvac et cetera potentially some smaller additions phase three would be to renovate dodd and highland and phase four would be to do a full renovation of cheshire high school the pro of option 1a reno is it'll immediately address the elementary enrollment and it'll eliminate planned cip projects at hummuston and chapman the reason why that is in there is to show the cost savings for the projects that are currently in the five-year plan for homestead and chapman school because chapman would come offline in this option con is that it would consolidate only darcy chapman replaced with new elementary school and hummingston is replaced with lease space meaning that we have we're only losing one building district-wide the renovation of all other schools will be done while occupied which leads to longer construction times student safety concerns and poor learning environment and the phase depends to achieve modernization of multiple schools so the discussion on this phase and and you could jump in here at any time too is is that um it's going to be difficult this phase does not create any swing space whereas if we start with the middle school as the first project we would have that swing space with dodd so here we would be shuffling the students around or renovating in place or doing bursts of work during school vacations and um during winter break which um our concerns were allayed in terms of many schools are renovated with the students in there the construction companies that we hire will know how to do that but it does add cost because you can't do it as fast right the other uh con that came out of me last night was um when we graded uh these scenarios uh back in december uh there were more than four phases there were essentially almost one phase per school and uh to try to touch as many schools and students as possible uh they moved basically bundled darcy hummuston chapman you know all in the same phase one and some of the feedback that came out with me last night was a great idea but that seems like an awful lot of ongoing simultaneous projects and schools that could be a pretty big disruption um just like when the community felt comfortable um splitting it back out but by and large that's why i came up last night too all right i'm gonna go on i can't see you guys if anybody has a question just uh kind of shout out if you don't mind um so phase 1a cip so the difference with this one um is that this would focus on capital improvement projects so phase one would be virtually the same we would be building a new k-6 elementary school and just for folks that are watching and and here tonight big part of the discussion was where is the school going to be we don't know where this new school is going to be um this is going to be a 700 student 100 square foot new elementary school to be located um somewhere in the north end of town um with the site to be determined as we solidify what the final option is going to be but the big difference with this phase is that capital improvements will be done at doolittle highlands norton and dodd in a sequence to be determined and then renovations to the high school um so you're not going to be having a gut renovation of the schools as in phase as in the first option so this option would be capital improvement projects um so again it has the same benefits addresses elementary enrollment in phase one um and it will address planned cip projects at humminson and chapman will be taken off of the the table but it is seeing that one of the goals is to modernize the schools and so the one of the discussions is that cip cap improvement projects at the schools will adjust the physical needs but it will not necessarily achieve modernization of the of the learning spaces as we will be doing renovation projects versus doing a full renovation of the spaces does that make sense yes okay i'm gonna go on to 2a renault so this this a lot of discussion around this one last night so the phase one would be to build a new sixth through eight middle school which would also include the board of education office space not the alternative high school we built a new k-5 elementary school on the chapman site and then we would demolish the old chapman once that building is brought online darcy pre-k would be moved to highland darcy kindergarten would be moved to doolittle the board of education offices would go to the new middle school that's redundant um we closed darcy and dodd if phase two is approved we've moved hummus in high school to lease space or dodd if phase two is approved and we'd close hummuston phase two would be a moving of do little k through five students to dodd renovate do little move two little students back to doolittle move norton k through five students to dodd renovate noren and move norton students back to norton phase three would be to move highland pre-k through five students to dodd renovate highland move highland students back to highland where am i complete capital improvement problems that nora and i move students back where am i phase three give me one second here move highland pre-k5 students to dodd complete cap improvements at highland so you guys could read that but basically what this is doing is is that we're building a new 68 middle school building a new k-5 elementary school on the chapman site and then dot is basically becoming a new um a new school building for okay pre-k through five students in the phase three of the project they thoroughly confuse everybody oh andrew batman moves to god um yeah no so you're talking about a new middle school a new elementary school and then renovations i i was interpreting that as being that dodd access swing space correct while those renovations are happening but i didn't but where does it end up being a elementary school school it's actually closed it's close to phase three if you look at that at the end of phase it's a temporary elementary school it's temporary elementary school while the renovations are right like so swing space right yeah yeah okay fine that's i understand that now sorry but the big the big issue with this um scenario is that we would be building a six through eight middle school and building a new chapman school at the same time in the same phase and the same in the same pay in the earliest phase at the same and then the renovations there's a couple of renovations that are going on at the same time as well in the next the renovations come later later no i know but it looks like you're renovating two schools at one time yes yes in phase two and phase three okay and there's a price tag with that too which i think some of the concerns last night even both other options you know could turn off voters you know in that very first referendum but i got one more detail on the financials on the 27th and that's the thing is we don't know exactly like i had asked the question as to what 2a would cost um so just so the the new the new chapman school that would be built on the property would be would be about a 350 student school um currently there's 331 students in that building um but townshare would be 125 million for the new middle school 33 million for the elementary school for about 160 million dollar project so the phase one that would initially go to voters would be 160 million project is there you know a property for chapman is there a property for for the middle school at this time no and andrew kriffin wrong the cost of land is not included in that estimate for middle school correct that assumes building on town owned property i would also add for all all of the three scenarios that we're considering that rolling high school is the very last phase in each of them without renovating the high school by the time we get to it could actually be building a new high school we'll we'll have a few years to make those decisions yeah as the time figures kick off in these plans um you know depending what happens between now and three four five seven years from now a renovate could be a new new school and things could change so it's it's fluid good point anne thank you i'm gonna go to 2b reno so the phase one is going to be build a new 78 middle school with boe included build a new k-4 school on the chapman site and demo the old chapman once that's open move all 78 students to the new middle school move boe offices to the new middle school move all five to six students to dodd move darcy pre-k to highland move darcy k to do little and move alternate high school to leave space and close darcy and hummingston phase two of that project would be to renovate doolittle and norton phase three would be renovated on highland and phase four would be to renovate the high school i thought we took this well that this option so 2b renault was taken off the table last night as well as option five agreed as well as and also option five was also erased which was renovating all the schools that's it so that's where we are okay i actually i think uh tim you're gonna ask a question before that last update oh thank you yeah so this i don't know if it's a question just a comment that um you know for me personally living in the south end of town um but also in terms of building support uh across across the town for doing anything i just have to caution on uh using property in the north end of towns the elementary school i think makes total sense but i think there would i think there'd be a lot of hesitation in supporting like a new middle school or high school in the north end of town because we don't have a property listed right now but i think it would be really difficult just because then you know 9th graders 10th graders they're not driving themselves you're going to have parents driving from the south end up to the north end i think they're going to be questioning it like dot and i'm just saying not in terms of these not in terms of the projects but the location does matter and i'm just i'm just throwing that out there as as are you talking about tim are you talking about the new elementary school the no the new elementary school makes total sense but if it was like a new dodd or a new middle school i think having something up like on the southington line would probably create a lot of reservation and building support among people living in the south end of town just because of the commute to go pick up your kids after after they do sports the bus one thing um but if you're going to pick them up i think that just makes it a little more difficult to cross that bar and gain the support for it that's all well the the thing about the high school is the high school actually could be you could build a new high school on the proper high school property while high schoolers are still in high school and then move them into the new building and demolish the old building but that like i just said earlier that's so far down the road in terms of what we're going to do with the high school yeah no it's just that the dot is dot a new middle school is listed and the larger pieces of property in town generally are in the north end and i think anybody who's going to spend you know vote to spend 160 million dollars is going to say where there's got and i don't mean to complicate it i'm just putting that out there so there really are three options that we're putting out for for three phase one options that we're putting out and we just had um finalize the survey we're putting out a survey also just to communicate with uh the public about these options for phase one only because that's the part that would be going to uh referendum and so the three parts are the new k-6 elementary school somewhere in the north end of town that takes over takes chapman offline and the other two options are built into the one which is the phase one doing the middle school and the uh chapman in school together or just doing the new middle school and pushing the um the uh new chapman school to a later phase phase two and then catherine and faith thank you um so at the end of the meeting last night i think it was near the end um chuck net i believe started discussing started discussing an idea about um building a new school on the norton property um because that's actually the one of the best pieces of land that we have where you could then build the k through six big enough to also shut down the old norton so that we would be able to consolidate norton chapman darcy and hummuston it but i don't know if it was in reference to also building a new middle school as well and so but the idea of of using that land i thought sounded good because it's an actually really good piece of land and norton is i think was built in 1957 if i recall as a alma mater um so i i wasn't sure if that was uh anything that's and and if that was an idea would the school have to go beyond 700 would have to be more like a 900 uh student school you know i'm just i was i don't know if he it didn't seem like he flushed it out too much but i thought it was an interesting idea at least i can answer that actually it was in conjunction with doing a new middle school it probably would be phase two if we didn't do the phase of uh building a new chapman school on the chapman site because it would also consolidate chapman school but it would be a six through eight middle school so that you could then put the students from the chapman school also into elementary school it would be a lot of redistricting clearly and um but no it wouldn't be bigger than 700.

due to circumstances covid and others we decided it wouldn't be a good time but the calendar has kept driving forward and here we are a year later facing the same needs for our schools and facing a two and a half year timeline to meet those needs now finally we see some light at the end of the tunnel we can see the potential for covid to be under control and we need need to return to our plans for some very important improvement projects that lost year now means we're looking at 2024 before we have solved our critical needs involving security efficiency and cost savings so some of these needs that will be discussed tonight in this presentation are security entrances and vestibules at all of our schools modernized bathrooms some of our bathrooms are original to our 100 year old buildings brand new heating ventilation and air conditioning systems throughout the entire district new boilers that keep our schools warm many are beyond their useful life and are very inefficient renovations to our middle school auditoriums and other co-curricular facilities these are key pieces of the clifton experience and a source of town pride and accessibility too many of our bathrooms don't meet ada standards the four levels of christopher columbus middle school do not meet ada standards the athletic facilities at woodrow wilson middle school do not meet ada standards so the administration and the board of education went into this planning process with consideration of the entire clifton community what do our students need to learn what do our facilities need to be safe modern and financially efficient and what kind of school quality does our community want this proposal is about one clifton with all of its parts working together the cara rubino architects has been very helpful as we evaluated the needs at all of our buildings the firm works with more than 50 public school districts in new jersey at this time i want to introduce joe de cara to tell us more about the comprehensive proposal to solve clifton's most pressing needs and to do that most importantly by capturing the most state funding possible at the conclusion of the presentation we will have time for as many questions as the board members have and of course there will be time for public comment before a formal vote is taken on the resolution tonight to approve the referendum joe i'm going to turn it over to you at this time okay thank you very much i also have rodney watkins who's our senior project manager in the firm we also have available kevin dwyer who is our senior mechanical engineer that we use quite often on school projects and we have representation from mcmanum in scotland your bond council and also phoenix advisors to go over any other cost numbers and the bond issue we've as dr robertosi mentioned we've we've been involved with the clifton board of ed as architect of record for approximately 10 years and in that time we've done probably probably about 70 successful projects so we know your facilities very well during that course and time we we've done various studies for the district feasibility and condition reports that over the years have identified many of the items that your superintendent mentioned that are in need of of replacement and repair they're extensive but that does not mean that the district has not maintained your facilities they've done an excellent job as indicated some of your schools are about 100 years old they would not have lasted this long if they were not maintained so so when you see the the extent of the improvements uh please do not feel that that this district this district has not maintained the facilities in an excellent manner sometimes things just outlive their normal life structure so we go to the next slide i would like to just go over a general overview of the types of projects that are being planned for the upcoming referendum there are hvac upgrades those are heating ventilating and also includes air conditioning and this is generally been established for air quality in addition to that you have several boilers that are in need of a replacement basically due to their age all important security entrances throughout the facility auditorium upgrades the toilet upgrades a weight room expansion at the stadium and toilets and new artificial turf field at woodrow wilson middle school in addition to that there's district-wide technology and security that would be incorporated into the overall referendum next slide please rodney so basically we're we're touching all of this school facilities for hvac upgrades um with the exception of school 17 um which basically um is your newest school was built i believe 2004 and the facility the mechanical system is is okay there compared to the other ones we are though also addressing certain uh additional um upgrades to the filtration system in the mechanical system which i'll get into in a little more detail uh we're also doing work at the board office with boilers so if we go to the next slide we've we did an extensive analysis of every school and i'm not going to show every school in this presentation but i wanted to give an example of the due diligence and the matrix that was prepared to identify the need and identify the various solutions in trying to be in an extremely cost-effective manner and also one that would get you eligible for any potential state aid that the state of new jersey would provide uh your community so as you can see from this floor plan there are there are two basic areas one is you have classrooms that have windows in them um and you have a certain type of mechanical system that is incorporated to that based on the type of structure this is and then you have the larger spaces like your gyms uh your auditoriums and those have different types of mechanical systems which are known as rooftop units they're big boxes on the on the roof and they provide heating and ventilation within those okay if you go to the next slide rodney um this just shows uh school five and if you go to the next one um this happens to be the middle school so you also have incorporated in this what's called the uh the bms controls those are your building management systems which is your control system for your all your mechanical systems and in the past you have a thermostat and they're not programmable all of the new systems that would be incorporated at every facility would have individual control systems that are controlled you can control them online somewhere your facility director can use them they can be programmed to come on and off at any time desired uh run for a certain time and have ultimate control of the systems to also afford exceptional efficiency in its operation so those elements have also been included into the scope and the costing of all the projects next slide rodney so go go back one rodney you know just so what i'd like to do is talk about uh the the typical classroom setup which is the beige areas and those are your now you can go to the next slide so these are these are examples of your typical um classroom with windows on the outside whether they're small big doesn't matter and there's two types of systems that we looked at for the replacement um one is and they're both known um generically as unit ventilators and you can have one and you're familiar with some of them if you've been in your rooms there's a horizontal unit ventilator and it sits against the outside wall and if you walk around your building you see louvers below the windows that's where fresh air comes in and mixes with a heating element basically all you have now is a heating element that's heated either through your steam boilers or your hot water boilers and there's a maximum of air that moves through the building in these classrooms that come in heated and then gets exhausted the other type is a vertical unit ventilator and it sits in the corner of the room and you can see the the image on the upper right it tends to take less room but there's a larger opening louver that can be installed now you may have noticed that we've um completed not too long ago some science room renovations and in those facilities you have both unit ventilators horizontal and you also have some replacements on the vertical units okay so if we go to the next slide um the unit ventilator uh the the horizontal one um for cooling now in many cases when you're going to replace your unit ventilators or hv heating and ventilating system it's prudent to include the dx coils and the cooling elements so you can increase the air quality that you're trying to gain by providing proper cooling um this is not a luxury anymore this is a necessity every school building we designed today has air conditioning in it and a majority of districts have been chipping away at increasing their air quality and providing air conditioning in various ways in their existing facilities so now with the advent of very highly efficient systems you would have the heating system the horizontal unit ventilator and then on the roof you would have a split condenser and there are various types and depending on the building and the system we would design the specific condenser that is appropriate for uh that facility but basically the condenser would be on on the roof with refrigerant lines going to the unit ventilator plus the heating elements hot water or steam to that unit ventilator similar in concept to the system you have but new state-of-the-art equipment that would run those systems and those will be tied into individual thermostats in each room which is required by by code for schools and you can control that with some flexibility next slide shows the vertical um unit ventilator and in this system the condenser is in the unit itself so you don't have any rooftop units you can't put these in every uh room because of the architecture of your building uh and the way the louvres are in the windows we do not as architects and as you know members of your community you don't want to degrade the architecture of your buildings uh you have some very nice structures they're old um but well-designed uh and we want to respect the language of the buildings and we want to make sure that when we put any new louvers in it doesn't look like it was just added on later and looks looks terrible so so it's very important to incorporate it into the existing language of the design of the buildings next slide rodney now the other type of mechanical unit that we're looking at providing is the uh rooftop units and those serve the large spaces your gymnasiums uh your auditoriums and cafeterias uh these systems are quite large depending on the size of the room they are supported on your steel structure and they are basically ducted through the space providing the supply air conditioned there and also have the exhaust system within it now at this at this point um pre we started this as your superintendent mentioned um pre-coded uh we started working on this i believe it was around october of um and normally based on the state-of-the-art codes the code compliant the uh ashrae would require a filtration system of what's called a mirv 8 and that would be both in the unit ventilators and also the rooftop units so now we're post covered and we're in the middle of it ashrae has changed those requirements and have made recommendations uh that the merv filtration system should be increased to a 13 level now we can with the manufacturers uh providing the equipment for the unit ventilators we can reach and obtain filtration using merv 13 on those facil on those areas those applications um anything above that the motor sizes um for the unit ventilators are not capable of overcoming the static pressure of the filters but this meets the recommendation of ashrae in the state of new jersey post covet issues now on the rooftop units the manufacturers have been adjusting uh their systems and there's a uh the ductwork that would go into this has a chamber that you can include a hepa filter and the hepa filters are far superior to the merv filters uh it takes out smaller and smaller particles so we were able to um through the you know discussing it with the various manufacturers as these units would be specified new we would increase the capacity or the horsepower of the motors and the drives uh to accommodate that resistance that you would have in pulling the air through those merv filters and those would have to be changed on the on the uh schedule that the manufacturer recommends and there are pre-filters before it so you can kind of keep the hepa filters as clean as possible so there's a lot of different techniques and uses that we can do there so the so the important thing is um post culvert we are able to increase the recommend the recommended merv filtration to 13 on the majority of all your classrooms and we are able to increase that on the rooftop units to use to utilize hepa filters it is more expensive but when we develop the cost we also as we explained a while ago we have contingencies that we can utilize to absorb some of these additional figures um so so that is where we're planning on the two major types of units that would accommodate about 90 98 of your uh your individual areas the next slide is is something else that has been used a lot in the last eight months in school districts to also increase the i'll call it the efficiency um or effectiveness effectiveness is probably a better word of your filtration system and it's and it's called needlepoint bipolar ionization okay um i'm not a scientist um but basically all that is is that it it um charges the particles in the air and it occurs in nature where you have um flowing air and waterfalls things like that the the particles and the airs get either negatively or positively charged and this does that um in in the unit or in the classroom and what happens is as an example with the phil the filters certain things will go through the filter and some larger elements dust particles other things will get stuck on the filter so let's take virus viruses they're very small if their gets charged as as a positive and it will connect to something that's negative so it could connect to dust or a larger particle so the particles get bigger and then what happens is with your merv 13 or your hepa filter it gets blocked out to a degree nothing is 100 but it increases the effectiveness of the filter we would we would include these in the new unit ventilators as the design and as it's specified so there's very little increase in cost if you were going to retrofit existing there would be a cost but when you do it as an order and as part of the process we don't believe at this point there would be any substantial increase in the overall cost and it would be another element to increase the air quality uh for your facilities and we we believe in working with our uh energy consultant and our mechanical engineer this would be a proven thing to add uh at this particular time uh and there's no need to go back to the state for any any approvals this is this would be all incorporated okay now one important element is that um do not confuse the ionization this bipolar ionization with um ozone right ozone was kind of looked at years ago but ozone is not good for you this is not ozone at all so please if you've heard things about ozone and health issues you're correct um this is not that at all it's a completely different system um so before someone says oh this is not right we're not sure uh it's a completely different uh completely different animal okay this is ionization not not ozone and this system has to comply with what uh one of the testing of ul uh 2928 uh which further describes the function and the uh and the safety protocols of it okay so next next slide um is the uh the boiler upgrades so we're we're replacing boilers at school 2 3 12 15 the middle the two middle schools the high school and the administration building now you you have steam boilers and you also have hot water boilers uh so we we went through uh and we if you go to the next slide rodney um to the the photo to your um to the left is a i believe this one is at the high school and this says you know as you can see it's been maintained very well i mean i could show you pictures of other school districts you know everything's rusted out you know terrible shape but it has it has exceeded its life expectancy um and it's time to to prudently plan for the replacement what you don't want to do is have a boiler failure in the middle of the winter and then you're replacing it on an emergency basis which will cost you twice as much to replace so to the to the right is what the new state-of-the-art systems look like if you're going to replace a big we we call we call the one on the the left locomotives because they're almost as big and the newer ones are smaller and they're multiple you may have five of the smaller units to replace one of the bigger ones and they cycle one goes on when you need more the next one goes on and then when they fire again they alternate so it gives it gives a longer life to the new units and they're extremely extremely efficient in terms of energy usage right so i'm not showing every school but this is generally what what is being uh planned to be replaced the security entrances uh again recent years is very very very important we are as you can see from the list we're identifying basically all your facilities what's missing is school 17 school 17 has a a secure vestibule in the design already and you also have security at the at the board office uh so we're we're planning on putting security entrances if you go to the next slide um we're just gonna show a few of them there's there's two ways to do the security and we've we've kind of explored um practically every possibility in terms of the locations where you want to enter the schools in some cases the the um the design is simple you have enough room in in your vestibule now where we can do minor modifications and provide the contact and the door controls in some cases we have to put exterior additions those exterior conditions can be simple like a vestibule or they're a little more complicated because of the the building itself and the architecture and the respect of how the building would look so in this one we're showing um you know exterior vestibule that um you have a portico already if you go to the next slide um we're basically in filling that and put in ada access because part of some of this is also to provide ada access to the new secure vestibules if you go to the next one again this is uh very difficult uh to put in um because we have the existing column the colonnaded in the front uh if you go to the next slide um we prepared a 3d model where the ramp would come in and we place the new vestibule mimicking the window structure and the rhythm of the building within that overall portico without changing too much of the facade the next the next few slides show different areas this is at christopher columbus middle school the access is very limited uh and we would have to place a vestibule with a multiple stop elevator to gain access and this would be the security point to get into the building and these are some of the other ones at school eight as an example you have the existing lobby that can be uh used uh without building an addition and then at the top and the back you can see the various locations for this secured vestibule so we just wanted to show you not every school that was designed but show you the examination and the due diligence just to show that we've we've uh looked at every stone in terms of how best to uh place these uh elements both in terms of aesthetics but also more importantly uh the cos the most cost effective manner in maintaining your your needs and this one is relatively easy it's within the existing vestibule at school 14.

there is currently a task force being put together to review the funding formula kathy halawa passaic county field service rep has congratulated our board members who are finishing their terms she also talked about reorganization which is coming up with it occurred this month new board members as well as votes for president and vice president of the boards can be sworn in virtually she announced that there was a training for new board members roles responsibilities and resources which was held on december 15th from 7 to 8 30.

this is based on current hybrid numbers my numbers could increase dramatically since most of my classes 25 plus students rostered if numbers remain consistent with our hybrid schedule and we bring both groups back the number of students in person will average around 15 to 17. there is no way to configure my room to social distance if the number is over 12.

i am speaking today on behalf of myself and many of my fellow teachers who did not feel comfortable speaking to you this evening the first thing i would like to say is that the teachers at chs care so deeply about our students and their education we love our students and have spent the year mourning all of their losses with them indeed they are our losses as well we would like to have graduation watch our athletes compete in spring sports enjoy a live band and choir concert see a theater production but bringing everyone back at the same time puts all of us in jeopardy which is why i am here this evening fighting for what is right and safe for chm i have one of the largest rooms in the building and currently in our hybrid plan i am able to safely seat all of my students six feet apart however if my classes were full there was no way i could safely face my students and therefore the risk of cogan19 exposure to my students and myself will increase people may argue that we haven't seen a spread in our schools i believe this is due to the fact that at the high school we have been able to do our best with social distancing our students and keeping numbers of individuals low think about this the rooms you're currently sitting in and social resistance is four times the size of many classrooms at chs why is it not okay to have the meeting open through the public attendance but people keep on insisting on adding more young adults into our building we are not okay we feel as though our professionalism and expertise as educators is not being taken into consideration while the board plans for the future of our careers and the education of our young adults in this community this despite such disregard we do everything we can to make sure our students are okay even when we are not okay we are exhausted our teachers at chs have been working harder than ever to produce high quality virtual and personal person learning in person learning the limited technology resources available our students are not receiving a lower education if anything their recipients have some impressive virtual adaptations of traditional teaching methods and we do everything we can to make sure our students are learning even when we are exhausted we are frustrated that science and safety is not being considered from discussing the future a recent survey of chs future shows that 72.5 of teachers do not feel it is safe to increase the number of students in the building at this time covet 19 numbers are increasing new strengths are spreading and we still do not know when vaccinations will be available to our teachers and we will continue to do everything in our power to keep our kids safe even when we are frustrated i ask that you vote tonight to keep our high school plan as it is now hybrid with half days and add friday mornings as synchronous remote learning this will increase face-to-face construction time from 16.6 hours to 20.8 hours a week while also ensuring time for teachers to plan student-centered lessons that are virtually compatible and reach out to our fully remote learning students decisions should be made based on the safety for all not the ones of some thank you thank you right well do we have anybody else okay great um on to uh item three correspondence can you send something around there's a note card going around that's right great on to items four and five the consent agenda do you want to address that for us uh sure um i want to bring up some things we do have a resignation of an eagle view health care provider and we've got the um employment i don't know if i got added to the most recent agenda of kelly christian who's going to be the eagle view health care provider now um this just in we got an email this evening marla bloom camp who is the nurse at the middle school she has resigned and so we're going to be having to fill that position as well um i also have two network technicians as we've gone to one to one with the computers we are replacing um ron with two technicians and they will be plenty busy we also have the two uh third grade and second grade remote instructions so we currently have all of our remote instructions in those are pretty much the highlights of what we have um the vacancies sign language interpreter special education teacher and the music teacher based on retirements um and departures and there's one more thing um tammy hines has been subbing for us she does have a check in the consent agenda and so she'll be voting abstention i believe we could we could pull her check out basically the um board members are allowed to receive compensation for work done they cannot make more than two thousand dollars in a fiscal year and no paycheck can be over a thousand dollars and currently i believe you've worked six days correct volunteering yeah yeah but right now um an abstention from tammy's not anything other than she's got to check in there for herself because she's been subbing what if she wanted a board member yes any other questions on the consent agenda seeing none i'd entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented motion by greg meyer and a second bye a second by greg o'connor did you do a roll call vote for me please karen anderson yes tammy hines john long craig meyer scott middle camp yes greg o'connor hi lisa schumacher yes motion carries on to item six communications reports and presentations uh the enrollment that was in your packet had a little mistake in it we have revised enrollment on in front of you on to the principal's report we got mr reeves hello good evening uh first i want to talk about was to get graduation and graduation date approved tonight thinking about what will be like in may i'm in business probably having to try to do it outside again and so a little bit of a different proposal would be saturday may 15th at 1pm i know we normally do sundays and the thinking is in case we have a rain out we could do the backup day of sunday at 1pm and that way it would be out there and they would know the dates i'm afraid if we do a sunday and there's a rain out and we have to push it back a week keeping the chairs and everything that we had out there could be a problem so i know we normally do sundays and i just think for this year to try to play it safe to move to the saturday with the sunday as the backup so i'm proposing then that for you tonight to to approve the may 15th and then i would have the parents know also that the 16th would then be the planned backup i've talked to some neighboring schools and uh they're going to follow suit and do a saturday sunday as well our times won't our times will not conflict so that that seems to work out so that's something that i i think is on the agenda to approve later uh mr gagan spoke to us earlier he's up the school because he had a scholar bowl match so we do have something a sport going on with an activity going on we have scholar bowl and it's really pretty incredible the coaches at the school the kids are at their house individual houses the other teams are at their houses and the questions are read and everyone's just answering in through through buzzers they have it through a phone after they have their house to keep the matches going and things are changing quickly through health department and ihsa so different sports might be starting here days weeks as things have been loosened by the governor finally what i have for you is registration students tomorrow will get registration packets shared with them to start thinking about their classes for next year starting that process of choosing courses and getting the master schedule built so uh keep it rolling on with our normal perceived procedures and stuff and that's all i have to know i didn't have any questions about graduation i meant to do that i'll just say on graduation having it outside um that's something that uh former board member ron longhounds talked about many many times why don't we have it outside why don't we have it outside so i can imagine he'll be watching over us orientation night where they came over they come over we're going to offer it through a video and share it with the parents so they can get the same presentation yeah the students might not be walking the building but we'll do that over the summer if we're allowed to at that time but we will still trying to do a different more personalized touch the counselors will still meet with the 8th graders they're going to have individual google meet sessions with each counselor we've worked it out with ms langeng at the middle school to help supervise those instead of them going over they normally go over and meet with eighth graders individually to talk about classes for the high school we'll be doing that through some some google meets but we'll also still have an evening event where we share the video with parents to try to still give them that same experience thank you all right thank you mr reeves dr castelli assistant superintendent kind of reporter uh a new role that we have that you approved the revolt teachers that we have hired so we've officially got our three teachers on board uh kim and the principals uh mr dugan and ms becker are working on onboarding them just like we would with our regular teachers they have joined their teams so they have been spending time observing the teachers in the classroom observing how they're doing the remote lessons and have also some of them started to help create those to get used to the tools and to start rolling something out um so we feel like when in february we move towards that that they'll be fully ready to take on that curriculum they will be meeting with those grade levels just like if they had a classroom of 28 so they're planning and everything will take place on those half day fridays that we will hopefully still have um moving forward they will spend time collaborating as well so the curriculum that the students have been getting and the students who are in person will remain consistent and the same um mrs anderson when i was uh speaking to her earlier it's kind of like an example you can acquit it if we had somebody leaving on maternity leave and we knew that and we had a sub we would be bringing them in having them shadow teaching them all the things and then they would be taking over um the uh remote teachers will be taking grades they will be scheduling google meets to meet with their kids they will do full group and small depending on how many kids are in there and there the schools are going to send out a meet the teacher presentation much like we did at the beginning of the year when you have open houses just in general to meet the teachers and that will be coming out on the 10th and they're going to explain all the procedures and they're gonna talk about what it's gonna you know look like um and just some information about themselves so the kids who are fully remote should be getting to know those teachers and seeing them so it won't be like a brand new you know situation for them and um so we have scenarios laid out too for those kiddos that we've had to isolate for a classroom what that's going to look like and so we kind of outlined all those duties but i'm very impressed with how our remote tutors have just hung in and jumped right on board some of them would have more experience with being a real teacher than others but all of them are very eager to start working on their tickets and pe art all the specials will be given to the fullerene students as well so we will be getting our full curriculum awesome great thank you courtney on to superintendent's report all right um foia one of those things i always update you on we did get a foia was the quarterly i call it the quarterly smart procure foia we do those for that company and we responded in a timely fashion the facility subcommittee we haven't met for a while but we will be meeting in february the architects have our bid specs for our summer work coming coming ready to be presented and we're going to review it before it goes out to hit the streets for construction workers to look at it and we've been busy meeting with this return to school committees and we've got that on the agenda today about getting the kids back in every day the goal is to have them back in all day all kids by fourth quarter we want to start next year as normal normal as possible speaking of next year as mr reeves has already pointed out we're starting registrations we're starting to look at the budgets we're starting to discuss goals for next year and so as we finish out this year we are starting to set the stage as to what we're going to be doing for next year staffing etc and so you'll see more information about that coming down the pipes but that's pretty much all i have great thank you on to item seven items for action uh item a approved date and time for graduation mr reeves talked about that for a few moments set up to hold graduation on may 15th at 1pm understand that sunday may 16th at 1 pm would be the alternate is there any questions or comments from the board on those dates seeing none i'd entertain a motion to hold graduation on may 15th at 1 p.m and understand that sunday may 16th at 1 pm would be the alternate some move motion motion by karen anderson and second by john long could you do a roll call for me please tammy hines yes john long yes greg meyer scott middle camp yes greg o'connor hi lisa schumacher yes karen anderson yes okay motion carries on to item b approve the second reading and adoption of board policies issue 106.

number five stella hillsbot back and forth [Applause] time out columbus eats be a 30-second timeout [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] uh jennings county substitution number 21 morel stevens also virginia county 14 molina ricci [Applause] [Music] never thought how they ran off shooting two before you olympians messiah trapped back here for the olympians still a little small back before the panthers [Music] [Applause] [Music] too oh [Applause] foreign [Applause] 22 vegan vocals timeout will be a full timeout columbus east full time lady gresham also china leslie in for the panthers [Music] [Applause] olympians 25 turner dances also number 12 [Music] victoria basket number 22 brooklyn roblox [Applause] [Music] [Applause] 38 your james county painters 23.

thompson gives her four points and a one point ball game and tipped but falls in the hands of sage she does the euro step and great defense there by woodard and she's gonna dribble the ball down the court and pass it to addison coming up on six minutes here one point ball game inside down low to the panther is up and good that is lily gives her seven points and the panthers are figuring out this 2-3 zone with 5 49 remaining here looks like we have albany spear check in for maylie roberts looks like the panthers are going to pick up [Applause] a press here as queen gravy fights her way through and they're going to fall back to their half court defense maury picks up grivy and gives it to albany at the top of the key up high to bachmann down low shot is up and good she has had the hot hand so far for the olympians and off the mark and rebounded by gabby dean albany dribbles down the left-hand side of the court goes middle and fires up the shot and draws the foul and she'll be at the line for two albany comes in shooting 50 at the free throw line she is six for 12 on the season number three spear number 33 picks up her first teams first as well here in the second half as albany gets that shot to fall she is at four points here tonight looking at her second free throw and good she goes two for two gives her five points in tonight's contest corinne gravy looks to give the panther some pressure here thompson has it and gravity switches off to her gets it down low to what a great pass and stolen by albany and up to gravity in great hands there by number 14 but sadly will get the call the foul called on her that is thompson callie thompson picks up her first team second with 502 remaining here in the third quarter bachmann takes the ball out and gets it into albany one focus i've seen from the panthers they do not want to let corinne gravy get the ball they are face guarding her awfully a lot but she gets the ball there and hands it back off to grabby [Applause] up high to gabby dean draws the double team and gets the foul called on her she was double teams [Music] charlie barrow picks up her first team's third to the olympians zero team fouls with 4 42 remaining here gravy takes the ball out and throws it up high to gabby dean and inside the sage fires up the shot and off the mark and rebounded by you know who woodard for the panthers and what a great move and fires up the shot hits back iron and good back down to a one point ball game [Music] with 4 15 coming up in the third quarter corinne gravy down low to gabby dean she spins inside and off the mark gets her own rebound and on the floor foul woodard picks up i believe her third excuse me her second team's fourth foul with 4 11 remaining 31.

so we're just over a million dollars in the in the medical benefits reserve fund um because we're crossing and we've crossed into january and now we're in the new um high deductible hsa plan year you know we are hoping that those claims subside and so we won't erode the medical benefits reserve any further we'll have to wait and see if the if the fund continues to erode at the same pace that it's been eroding you know this year you know we will run out of reserve in i don't anticipate that happening but obviously i don't have a crystal ball and i don't know and so if we did that we would certainly you know use whatever available operating budget we have and and of course talk to the town council i have spoken to um the town manager about having a meeting jointly with uh the the town and the board of ed to talk about our claims and our reserves because the town is experiencing the same you know high claims so their reserve is being you know depleted as well and you know i'll finalize with sean when when we'll give the town council an update on this so it's just it's a cautionary note um at this point again we still have 970 000 you know in the reserve so that's the highlights of the finance and the medical benefits report i'll stop there because i know everybody's had enough medical benefits talk this week right i i i can never get enough i'm sorry actually this year it's been such a uh complete dictionary surprise uh but that being said i'm sorry mr grippel this is your section i'll let you uh moderate very quickly i can't let it go if you haven't had enough you can go back and watch hours two and three from the other night that's uh i certainly invite you to do that i was just gonna say that actually everyone's welcome to watch a three-hour meeting last night i watched that one too uh uh tim you had a question yeah thank you i i just heard something i i hadn't heard it before then you mentioned that the town is experiencing similarly high claims i'm just curious is it is it the height the high claims are similar but is there any sort of pattern that you can see in a larger like group of people where things are going awry that might be able to improve things no i can't say that tim and that's because you know i haven't delved into the detail on on the town side but you know we'll get together and and talk it through you know i i think it i can't say you know what we do know is that a pandemic and covid related expenses are not high so it's some other extraordinary items that are occurring i don't know if it's occurring everywhere but it certainly seems to be occurring you know here on both the town and the board of vet side you know if people are are you know doing things differently because of the pandemic you know that may be a force but it's really don't know at this point we'll get into the details you know and as the rest of the year tracks we'll you know we'll have some more insight from cigna because we do get you know reports from them you know more analysis reports they typically come at the end of the year but we'll request it sooner than that so we could see is there some kind of underlying trend that predominating what's happening in our claims okay thank you and i know you would uh i think this got touched on on tuesday but just to revisit it for here um the what i for but for lack of a better term there's discretionary accounts like supplies and materials they're not urgent you push them off till the end of the year a lot of these things replacing staplers and whatnot you're you were you were in your are you are at 40 right now right and it for the foreseeable future say for the next month or so you're looking at staying there i am just because of where we are with medical benefits exactly if it weren't for that i would say you know certainly we probably would have raised it to 60 this month but we're going to hold at 40 until i see january claims and you know hopefully we've seen some you know but you know a lower claim month and then we could decide from there but yes for the foreseeable future we'll keep it at 40 just so that we have that cushion if we need it yeah i just i mean i just really uh i understand if we do need to go to the council and i could support that but i definitely want to do everything we can to rein in our spending on our side um before we go ask them for anything so thank you that's that's all thanks adam faith you had a question yes um thanks adam um this just came to mind and i guess i just couldn't get enough benefits the other night so i'm gonna keep it going um when you go to cigna you know the the big concern with kovid has been the delayed screenings um and delayed care um my concern is that as that we may continue to see these high rates as people start to get diagnoses that and begin to receive treatment for this delayed care um that everyone has been talking about since the pandemic started could you ask cigna about that if they're trying to track that if they have any indication of how that might be that might affect claims going forward yes yes i can and i what it'll you know i i know what the analysis showed you know as we ended last year you know it was there was nothing extraordinary through december other than you know where we typically see a large portion of our claims that are not just cancer and those types of things it's diabetes and it's and it's hypertension type claims so what cigna would show is is any of that changing as you know a percentage of total claims okay i'm just thinking that surely their um projections have to be looking at that and trying to estimate what that's what effect that's going to have and if they have any insight it might help us as we're looking at that budget i'm sure thanks tony you got a question i think vintage just answered that i was just kind of curious uh the reporting that comes back from cigna on the the claims analysis i assume in there is um you know claims with icd and healthcare procedure code information so i'm i'm hoping that's what's in there at least that way you don't know if there are disease classification situations or certain certain healthcare procedures but i think you just you just answer the questions may not so much be cancer oncology or um infectious diseases per se but uh hypertension and diabetes i i just i just wonder if that's just correlated with the whole cova situation although our teacher is not all home so they are mobile and in the schools for the most part but i just wonder if that's having an effect on our eyes on that but i guess uh some analysis if we ever figure that out be good to know yeah for you know what i can do for um our upcoming meeting tuesday night is just show the summary that cigna gave us for the year-end report for that you know for the year that or the 12 months ended december 31st of 20 just so you got a sense as to you know what are the you know what are the highest dollar categories of claims from last year you know again i yeah right your information overload but there's certainly a lot of interest here and it's a it's a large line item in our budget so you know the more we know the more comfortable you'll feel with approving the uh the request or or changing it however it goes thanks ben that was it yeah thank you are there any other questions seeing none i conclude the finance committee report thank you thanks adam thank you vincent up next is the planning committee uh andrew thank you all right i am going to present my screen hopefully you got it yes everyone's good i can't see you so just okay thank you catherine um okay thank you uh mr chairman so back on january 11th we had a planning committee meeting where vin presented to us the request for both the 21 to 22 calendar year for capital projects as well as the year total i'm gonna just take a few minutes some of you were there but for the folks who are home or those board members who haven't seen it i'm gonna go through and then let you know how the conversation developed um so overall district-wide we have about 500 000 in window replacements um paving roofing sidewalk and masonry another 1.1 million cafeteria improvements 350 000 hvac improvements district-wide 1.2 million interior building improvements at 925 000 laboratories district wide 250 000 flooring and ceiling replacements another 100 thousand and then lighting and electrical improvements at 480 000 and then 200 000 for the removal of a semi-used or never used press box over at the athletic complex at cheshire high school so the request for the 21 22 school year is 5.2 million dollars um the conversation went back and forth vin went from there and just explained what schools were going to be touched with the different improvements the committee came to the conclusion that we asked vin to go back and take a look to see what is actually necessary immediately necessary for this year as we move forward with school modernization um and you know we've all been going through this i think we all understand that we are almost at to a point where we're going to be starting to hone in on some final decisions with school modernization and it made the most sense to go back take a deeper look at what is absolutely necessary for this year before we move forward with anything as we come up with our final plan for that um since our meeting we actually received some communication from vin today that we're going to have another meeting on i believe if it works for everybody on the 28th at 6 00 p.m with a revised proposal um which is going to take the 5.2 number and bring it down to about 2.6 with some other projects that have been identified as being crucial to be taken care of um in the next year or so um what will not change though is up to the 26 the next five years is that the total project values will stay the same as we continue to look at the school modernization so i'm going to stop sharing my screen because i can't see anybody does that work yeah am i back all right good okay so um with that i know i just kind of threw that out there quick does anybody have any specific questions for vin or for myself uh andrew when do you uh what what day you're looking for kind of planning committee meeting this month or uh yeah we're looking at it on the 28th next thursday what is that next thursday thursday so hour before our budget meeting all right got it thank you andrew yep and there's vin's already sent out some details i have not had a chance to look at him we just received him a little bit before this meeting um as to what the most pressing needs are for uh i'm assuming the high school's uh walking cooler is in there but i'm not exactly sure yet yeah well the yeah the biggest one is the dodd roof and the high school roof and well i mean the details in there i could spill the whole bean tonight but you probably don't want to do that no we'll wait for the meaning but the planning committee has to evaluate it first tim you have a question you muted thank you i was just looking at our schedule and this one next next thursday the meeting is scheduled as ritual uh no sorry tbd virtual versus in person do we have any sense on that right now of what we're thinking i don't know how long ago that was that was uh two weeks ago i still eating let me just point out the the meeting for people who are watching the meeting i'm talking about is in case it wasn't said the public information so chatting with you your feedback on the budget that's why i'm just asking about that one different from any other meeting that's very cool was a couple minutes ago i was going to look into if we had a mobile broadcasting solution where we could have public comment come in through the tv like we did a past four meetings last year but we could we can definitely code this later uh in the meeting if mike's not ready to talk about it or jeff you might know yeah i think that i need to connect connect with mike on that tuesday so uh let's connect with mike and then we'll get that information out to the board in the public as soon as possible thanks thanks thanks for reminding us about that anything else that concludes my presentation for pre uh for planning seeing as there are none uh we are going to move on to policy uh mr gripple thank you mr chair um let's see uh for policy we had our last policy meeting on january 5th um where we again uh reviewed uh uh title ix um mrs halland uh presented some excellent findings as she went through the policy um and we had a decent discussion on it and after um discussing a lot of the what we found were problems in many questions and um i guess uh questionable language and vague law that uh we decided we voted to uh to table the policy until we received further clarification from washington uh which it sounded like even from today that there's going to be changes to title ix so i'm guessing that uh we'll be receiving clarification in the coming weeks if to see if we need to do anything if any other subcommittee member has any comment on that i think i kind of summed it up there let's see uh moving on um oh yeah go ahead no i just wanted to clarify that you know the policy we we have been talking about putting into place of formal policy but the district is already you know doing what it has to do to comply with the um was it the final rule or whatever so i don't want people to think that you know we're not we're already doing what we have to do this is just a question of getting a policy you know on the books um because that's also required by the law so i just wanted to clarify that right yeah the the law is the law and it's in effect and if the uh problems occur we roughly have a framework in place to deal with that um okay uh moving on uh so that the next two bylaws that we visited were about electronic attendance of meetings by board members one of which is completely fueled by the governor's executive orders and the other one was um uh something to take us beyond the time when uh the governor's executive orders expire um in in both cases again we decided to table both of these by-laws one of which was because since the governor expressly gives us permission to meet like we are this evening there was no need to have a a new bylaw in place to just have it rescinded after the fact so we felt it was there was not necessary to do that and i believe according to the minutes there were still many questions as to the necessity of um having electronic uh uh meeting meeting attendance by board members uh going forward after the fact so we decided to table that as well uh and then that concluded our meeting so essentially we we tabled everything that we were looking at and came to no conclusions except to table are there any questions uh no questions lacana thank thank you i know the policy committee uh is one of the hardest working committees we have on the board there's always a policy revision or several in the works i know this one was uh just seemed like it was rushed to us from a number of sources so thank you for uh and i know catherine spent a lot of time reviewing the language so thank you for going through that i i remain hopeful about it mr cardona's in washington maybe he'll uh uh help clean us up and make it uh something very tangible and equitable for for everyone but uh to your point catherine we are already meeting the title nine uh requirements so uh there's no jeopardy there but we'll make sure we're proven with this policy so thanks again team uh any other questions on policy see seen as there are none ah my favorite topic school modernization committee update um andrew and faith uh i i know we have a lot to talk about on that so and yeah i have faith in the brain i was trying to see if you're gonna ask a question earlier flipped andrew and ann uh if you guys want to give a quick summary or or as thorough as you need to what's happening with smc you want me to start and you want to go why don't you start and i'll add the communications stuff because i've been eating on the survey great all right um before i'm gonna share my screen i'm gonna show the matrix as presented last night um if i could share my screen again um but before i do that i just wanted to remind everyone of the timeline that we're that we're looking to to follow here um so school monetization committee is going to have the recommended plan to the town council and the board of education by march 1st the reason for the march 1st deadline is to get it to referendum for june 30th whatever the first phase of the plan is going to be um and if we don't meet the june 30th submission deadline then we will miss the funding application for this coming year and we'll have to wait a full another year in order to submit the plan to the state of connecticut um so there's been some questions about you know things seem to be going pretty fast or maybe not fast enough for some people but as we put together the plan um our goal is to get it our goal is to get it to us and to the town council by march 1st um so that's that's i'm going to start with that and then secondly there's been a lot of talk about different phases of the project um again i don't know where i fall yet on everything but i just want to throw out there about starting with high school as the first project um i've got a lot of questions about that and it was one of the topics last night so we heard from the chair um jen bates about the high school and why that would not be the first project first of all we all 13 members on the committee all used a scoring matrix which i had shared here previously about how to rank all and we ranked all the different options the high school as the first project was the last selected option by the school monetization committee that's number one number two is that based on the capacity studies or the enrollment studies com um completed by mylon and mcbroom the most immediate need now is that we are running out of space within the elementary schools as we heard in the superintendent's um presentation the other evening um so even if we approve a project now we're not going to actually be in that building until 2024 and effectively we would be out of space we're starting to run out of space next year in the elementary school levels so that's the second reason the third reason is is that when the state reviews the project and the phasing of the project um they're going to look at the enrollment study and collier's is fearful that if they do see that they are going to question why we're not starting with an elementary school if we move forward with the high school first um so there's three reasons why they're not we're not starting with the high school um there might be others i mean we have plenty of space at the high school according to the enrollment based on the square footage of that building um so again if the state's going to be reviewing what project would be the first project to move forward with they would definitely have questions as to why it would be cheshire high school so anybody have any questions about that part of it adam thank you i was in the middle of typing question um yeah so uh so just to be clear um and i had actually i had sent an email to uh to uh den bait and uh uh both chucks i guess uh today um on the question that you had uh or that i think that you kind of answered already was that whether or not um the state would even reimburse uh for a new high school because it was so far out of the realm even though you might be able to say that you could if you move all the buildings that theoretically you could address the population surge at the elementary level as far as the committee is concerned that is most likely not a viable option from the state point of view correct okay thanks that's all i wanted to know yeah i mean and and chuck you know chuck had pointed out chuck from collier's is that you know we really run the risk of if we did move forward with cheshire high school the state might not reimburse us um and so then that's that's a real that's a real concern for uh for what it's worth i i'm pretty confident uh chuck isn't a definitive answer uh on that i think by the next snc meeting but they so the high school did come up last night a few times uh the smc and i just want to end up returning back to andrew so when the committee scored all the options and there were i think more than a dozen 12 out of 13 committee members did not put the high school anywhere near the top in fact they fell out of the whole list of top five or six for a number of reasons uh but uh andrew and anna i know you've been in a lot more options committee meetings than i have but if the high school were theoretically done first um we'd have to start next year uh figure three or four year before school is complete new high school goes online and we're hit with the element of the enrollment that they're not prepared for right because high school doesn't solve for that step one right if you renovate the old high school as a new middle school um i don't know how that solves for the elementary woman either right because there was a discussion about doing a high school and using the old high school as a new middle school which would be way too much space you know if you put in hummuston and the board of offices but then we still hit with the elementary moment um so it's almost like we would have to do the high school and some other elementary school at the same time and that was one of the options i believe seven or or or eight that had uh but i never scored near the top of the list either so i i um i know there was more to it but i i think uh i hope on the 27th with a little more detail on that but i just wanna put that out there i know we're not just trying to solve for enrollment but there's a lot more of these moon pieces that that's what i want to say tim thanks andrew so everything here is predicated on i shouldn't say everything a large part of what we're doing is predicated on increasing enrollment and i'm just wondering if baked into that enrollment is the assumption of a higher increased rate of housing turnover in the next five to ten years based on lower than expected sales in the past 10 years so i'm just wondering if do we have do we know what the basis of that assumption is it's entirely possible you know people move out in large numbers but i'm just wondering what's the what's the basis of it did did anybody do like a survey you know a sampling of homeowners and say are you thinking about moving out in the next five years type of thing because this is i mean this the enrollment number is a really big deal so i just wanna and and i can ex i can i totally understand where it's coming from but i just wanna know if there's more meat to it than an assumption a hunch that somebody has um i can jump in there andrew if you're there who's there jeff so um i think that the numbers are predicated on the work of two do two different demographers first most recently is my loan in mcbroom um this is what they do they they study birth rates um housing trends labor markets and [Music] very analytically i mean is far from go through uh that data to project future enrollments and uh so they they have a lot of experience with that they want to lead firms in connecticut we also had a similar study done then i it was on the tip of my tongue the company that did it uh was the perk part of the perkins basement yeah ergonomics was a couple of years ago they did a similar study that showed projections like this as well so at least you know in my mind that urban urbanomics study is a couple of years ago four years ago really has been more validated by another firm saying the same thing um in this this updated study uh i know there have been some questions about that you know ben and i have reached out to milon and mcgroom uh certainly i i think you asked the question about the number of births in and which we don't have the answer to yet but i know we've reached out to them to try and get that information we certainly provide more as part of our budget meetings or a future board meeting too thank you with regard to the urbanomics that was done three years ago 2017.

it would leave us with three elementary schools three elementary schools total and a new middle and a six through eight middle school sorry so it's the assumption of the k through five building eight through six correct okay thanks thanks adam uh catherine and then faith um i'm not even sure uh so the the options that will go out to the community in this survey are just the first thing that will go to referendum so it's either a sixth grade middle school standalone project or a six through eight middle school and a new elementary school you chat together yes yeah but it doesn't matter but or well it does because chapman's a pretty small school so right so i'm trying to get my wrap my arms around what it is that the community is going to be like sort of pining on so that that would be a new middle school in new elementary school smaller one and then the third one is is just a new elementary school a large er elementary school on the north side of town yes i think you've gotten middle school i think you've got it um without it but but the the balance of the phases will not necessarily be put out there for for any sort of public uh reaction which is fine i'm just trying to understand if people are going to feel like they have enough information to weigh in on one of these three options um but i mean i guess if if the goal is to just start getting a sense of community interest in you know okay which direction do you think makes the most sense then that's fine i just you know it'll be interesting to see what comes back i think catherine i don't really have a question i just wanted to say the the the goal of the survey is to get that back the first couple weeks of march so they're trying to formulate right and so we're trying to form what the questions are going to be so the whole phased we we won't be there yet but if you're coming to the board of ed in the town council by march 1st because the survey needs to start they need x amount of they have to finalize it by the 26th in order to have results in by march 1st the 26th of january yeah okay okay the survey needs to be finalized within the next couple days in order out to get the results back for march but that will give the committee enough time to absorb the results and come to the board and the town council with whatever the final idea is final plan i'm i'm sorry you don't know no it's it it's a it's a good it's a good question i mean the survey the survey results are going to come later than smc oops informing my town it's that's alive okay but that's okay um let me talk just briefly about the survey um we have we did finalize it just this evening prior to this meeting and um but then it needs to go to the to the whole it was just a communication subcommittee that um finalized it with the um tomorrow i think tomorrow it will be sent to all of um the school modernization committee members so that our next wednesday meeting we can approve it um and then that's what gets started so the survey is done by telephone and it's it's pretty involved and it gives the three scenarios uh for phase one and it shows um monthly dollar amounts that your tax taxes would increase um on an average home to cars and that's all stated in the service so it's a phone survey that's going to get 400 responses and then in addition to that it will it will go out on the internet and um people can can fill out the survey but that's not going to be what's analyzed the 400 phone calls uh part of the survey are what will be analyzed that's what they've determined but we will get additional information because we're anticipating that quite a few people will um if they don't get called uh we'll want to see what the what information is there and in that way we also just get we'll be able to get a lot of information out to people about the project thank you ian uh before i turn out of faith once and on something so uh yes was last night um just for expediency uh ssc members will be able to see the survey and if we have any feedback we're going to send it to rich jen and chuck we'll collect and quality and by the 27th i think rich in a committee we'll have some answers for those questions so i would definitely think that the only uh and i'll send this feedback to the group as well but my concern is if the survey just focused on the first phase and does not talk about the entire plan it's it might um at least if there's references to the entire plan so folks can see the end-to-end journey of each phase and the reason why i say that is i've noticed on some of the emails that snc members got in some of the um posts on the forums that uh again not every to file the meetings uh or find the information even though it is out there on the town website thought that starring shortsighted or starting with elementary school shortstated that um starting with um the high school not starting it wasn't short-sighted but they're not seeing that picture that shows a starting point and that everything is accounted for but then again i can understand the survey calls if you're calling them with a total 400 million dollar uh spend over 10 years they're probably less inclined been down that path before so uh but nonetheless confident that reference but definitely before that survey it should be uh it should be very interesting so thank you man faith you've been waiting you had a question i i i'm with catherine i'm trying to wrap my head around it but i think i'm there and i trust you know we we formed the committee or the town form the committee um of intelligent thoughtful people so i'm i'm putting my trust in everybody and then getting the job done um so um [Music] i my only suggestion would be um you know and again over a 30-year amateurization i'm not sure how much land would actually impact um the cost but but i know it was raised last night i think by matt bowman that um we should have an idea even some estimate of what the cost of the land is going to be and what it's going to add to the project and and so i i guess i am a little concerned with the survey going out and giving one cost um and then having that big price tag tossed in there so you know i don't as you said ian you've got the the survey ready to go but that is a concern um and um just um i i don't know i i i trust you guys i think [Laughter] what the survey really does is puts out three three different levels of okay and it's to get just some idea of the appetite of whether people would be able to support uh that project that phase one project at if this were the um the effect to your tax monthly tax rate okay with the understanding anyway that's okay but with the understanding that there has to be a two and a three in there somewhere that there are three phases to the all of these building projects and they um you know again each one will be approved each subsequent phase will be approved but it's understood that there is a package so as tony said they need to understand the full scope and and um but anyway i'm like i said again i don't know if i it's not even a question it's just more ruminations of an old lady but i think it will be very helpful to the board when uh you get received a survey yeah i agree which will be next week tony i i i think jen said last night we'll be able to see uh discuss the survey at smc 27.

so go to the next slide rounding so your auditorium upgrades we've done a few of these already through your capital budget we would include in the referendum uh school three the middle school uh at the christopher columbus and also woodrow wilson if you go to the next slide uh these are some photographs of the uh the existing facility and then if you um go to the next slide this is an example this is basically a 3d model of similar uh where you replace the flooring the seating uh you paint the walls and you put in new ceilings and lighting you can get a very dramatic different effect of a state-of-the-art auditorium now here as i mentioned you would do this the seats new seats uh flooring wall lighting and ceilings with acoustical uh grade material to enhance the acoustics of the of the facility so you also have that has been included in the referendum is the toilet room upgrades and and some of them are original to the building so again 17 is in is in good you know is in good shape so we've we've looked at all of them and the primary reason for this is um one is for uh efficiency but the other one is for ada americans with disability access uh to the to the each toilet room um we call them group toilets because there's more than one toilet in a room uh if you go to the next one these are some examples of the conditions many of the facilities do not meet ada based on the fixtures and these aren't the worst toilets but you could start to see the age and the wear just from the normal use of the facilities the next slide is after you um basically do the gutting them out with ada compliant fixtures um very efficient use of materials and what's important too is that these materials are extremely durable and very easily maintained that's a key thing um for because you want these to last another 100 years but also in the renovation is the lighting and also the ventilation and many of the bathrooms you have you don't have ventilation or a very minimal ventilation because years ago all they did was exhaust but you want to increase that like you're doing with the rest of the building you want to provide the proper air changes ventilation and supply so that would also be included in the renovation of the uh of the toilet facilities the um the other components um that's included is the um expansion at the stadium uh for toilets and also your uh weight room so these these are photographs of the existing conditions in your existing space now this is common we as your superintendent mentioned we do a tremendous amount of school work in the state of new jersey and as programs develop over the years they have older buildings they use every square foot of the building for particular uses and they find very innovative ways to repurpose spaces and that's normal um is it the most desirable uh no uh it's not but um you have someone i'm sorry someone will pick that up um so if you go to the next slide rodney this is the plan for the expansion so the plan to the to the left shows that the track that was redone several years ago the beige area shows the renovation to the um men's and women's toilet which will be similar to the other photos that i showed you and to the to the upper uh right you you have your weight room and the blue is the expansion so we're expanding the weight room and renovating it okay so the next slide shows what that facility would look like this was a very simple addition similar to yours renovated the existing very simple construction but just the use of materials to give a bright safe airy place that you could use for weight training for your sports uh facilities so that's what uh the new project would look like the um the last uh scope of work would be the new artificial turf field um at uh woodrow wilson this is a this is a photograph of your existing grass field uh which has limitations because of the extensive use these fields just wear out so obviously when you provide artificial turf field you can use them constantly so you get more utilization from the fields okay uh the next photo shows basically the scope this is the property um you see the baseball diamond the infield outfield would be artificial turf and also fitting in a modified soccer field also artificial turf now included in the scope of work uh would be your um the bleachers the the dugout benches and also a new small field house the field house would include toilets some storage and and place for concessions uh so the next photo shows um the upper right shows your your stadium turf field whether it's baseball soccer it's the same but the lower left would show the type of field house that would be planned a very simple structure that would house the elements that i talked about and then throughout the district um there's also security cameras upgrades uh equipment um and upgraded technology infrastructure and that would be uh incorporated at all the schools uh in addition to the uh overall costing of the project is any elements that must be demolished or removed prior to the work that that's being done so the um based on our experience in schools and working uh with a lot of contractors uh and our engineers um we looked at um each of the elements and provided a developed a matrix for the number and the type and the intensity of the renovation and developed a total project cost now the the project cost includes not only the hard construction cost but it also includes all of the fees bonding legal fees [Music] construction management fees all of the elements that you need to do this uh it also includes a contingency uh which is proper planning for any unforeseen conditions that may occur especially when you're dealing with buildings of this age so all of those costs based on our years of experience have been incorporated into the overall cost and these elements are required by the state department of education so your total project cost which what we call the referendum cost is 60 168 million dollars and change right and that that's a big number but it's it's um it's interesting all of the elements that we now what we have to do is we have to provide our schematic plans to the state department of education for approval prior to the district going out for a referendum now they look at these costs and they look at the scope of work um i i have to say that [Music] as submitted 95 and a half percent of your projects were what they call eligible for funding okay so the state department of education agrees with you that virtually everything you're doing here is eligible for funding on their formula so that gives you some assurance that you're just not doing a lot of things that wouldn't be necessary in department of education's eyes okay now what's what's important to know is that the state um gives you debt service um and that's equivalent to approximately a third of the cost so in effect it's an annual appropriation but over the life of this it would be like receiving 54 million dollars almost 55 million dollars a third the state department of education the state of new jersey will pay a third of this overall project cost where if you did these as you have been doing it over the years when you replace a boiler or replace a rooftop unit you're paying for 100 of it through your capital your annual capital budget okay now that is a lot of money sounds like a lot of money um but based on um a 25-year bond um at the current uh bond rate um in a and based on the average assessed home this would be two hundred and three dollars a year or approximately seventeen dollars a month and bond council can discuss that in line or you know in addition to this um so those are the those are the costs and those are the um the state aid which is extremely important um we received what's called a preliminary eligible cost from the state and they did not include two elements at uh woodrow wilson uh and the in the stadium project we went back to the state your superintendent wrote a letter and we argued the point that this is educational and they gave us back some of the elements which increased it from 95 and a half to approximately 98 eligible so virtually everything is eligible in this in this program which is important for your community to know that the state agrees with you saying that all of these things are needed within your district um now timeline next slide now we have submitted all the applications to the state we have received as i mentioned the preliminary eligible cost they came back and revised it the board accepted it and they sent back your final eligible costs which means you are okay to go out for your referendum this was planned a little earlier uh but with covered everything got pushed back and we're at the point now uh where the next time we could do a referendum is in is in april so i just want to go over very quickly the timeline because that's that's important uh with a successful referendum this april there's a period of time where we have to do the actual construction documents for bidding so we anticipate based on the overall scope of what we have to do that we would be able to bid this uh in december of the end of december january of 22 uh with an award um in approximately in january right we would need based on the scope of work and the phasing we would need two almost two full years um to incorporate it where you would have everything completed in our estimation in september of 23 you would have this work completed now that doesn't mean that nothing is completed until that time this project would be phased and it would be designed and phased and sequenced with the understanding that these are occupied buildings and safety is the utmost importance during construction so in the documents not only is it the hardware and the specs and the equipment and everything else but it instructs the contractor very specifically when he can access buildings um where he can work where he can't work where he has to do something in the morning and come back in the afternoon or this or that or evening so it's spelled out very logistically so that is a proper and safe environment for your students and if it inconveniences the contractor that's that's the way it is and it needs to be incorporated in the plans so they can price it so be assured that that these things are looked at we've also included in the scope of work a separate independent construction management firm for fees involved in this um that they would be involved not only with us on the site but they're there every day um there's someone on on the site while every time there's a contractor on site so that that gives another layer of uh supervision and guidance uh for for for the district so although you see these long timelines we may finish toilets and you use them we may be finishing classrooms with the new unit ventilators and then you just occupy them typically you get a swing space you give up three classrooms they do the work and then those students come back the next three classrooms you find an alternate location they get done and then so it cycles so they daisy chain it and ultimately by the end of uh by september of 23 you should have everything completed so please don't feel that everything is you know in a big uproar there are components that get worked on over time thank you um mr dekara for that uh very thorough presentation before we open it up for comments and questions i have to reiterate the importance of the state aid for this proposal every single one of these projects needs to be done now we can do that out of our annual budget it'll take us 20 years or we can do it through a referendum [Music] where the state is going to pick up a third of the funding the state is going to give us 55 million dollars towards these projects and we have been very careful with the school district's budget long before i got here in july 2019 this board has been very conservative with raising the citizens of clifton's taxes last year uh this board and my administration proposed a zero percent tax increase we later were cut 5.3 million dollars in state aid we had an opportunity to come back and raise taxes and this board did not want to do that the year prior to me coming i believe the taxes were raised point zero eight percent so the point is the bond referendum opens up a door to a new form of income for clifton it will allow us to do projects by september of 2023 that otherwise would take upwards of 20 years or maybe not get done at all new state aid is going to cover one-third of these costs which are all important for safety efficiency and modernization every single one of these projects if we pay for them out of our annual budget we pay a hundred percent but if we use a referendum and a bond to pay for them they get done faster and we pay only two thirds so as i said a year ago this board was about to take action to put this bond proposal on the ballot kova delayed that but there's light at the end of the tunnel meanwhile our buildings are getting older now we have a full plan for educating the people of clifton about before the vote on april 20th we want people to understand this referendum we want people to understand why a referendum we want people to understand the the financial aspects of a referendum and why it's such a good deal for the city of clifton the process started with research and consideration it got delayed by covert and now we're picking up that timeline with a board vote tonight to resume the process we do impis and anticipate a public forum in the first week of march and there will be a lot of other literature and information on our website beginning tomorrow for anybody who has any questions about this referendum i encourage you to please go to our website there will also be a a place on our website for you to ask questions that will be replied directly to you with the appropriate answer so at this time i'm going to turn the meeting back over to mr smith mr president and if the board members have any questions for either our architects our bond council uh our engineers also here or any other questions for me or the administration thank you okay board members are there any questions or comments we'll uh we could start um at the uh uh mr awad we'll start uh with you if you have any questions or comments and we'll just work our way around thank you mr joseph that was a wonderful presentation it was very you know inflation you know it looks really great and hopefully if this referendum does get passed it can improve the quality of education for our students especially our facilities i just had a couple of questions uh for the air duct systems that um you if you know does uh move forward um i know you're talking about the hepa filters and the murph filters um was there ever a chance of you know i have a little mechanical background you know some systems they use um what do you call them like aerologic and honeywell and stuff use like those uv lightings for uh like a filtering to kill you know bacterias and they kind of propose quality there was that ever an option to put into the uh the air duct systems like the roof uh top units and for them and the second question was for the gymnasiums and like the bigger uh rooms i know we're using a rooftop system uh for heating and air conditioning uh will those units have some type of humidifier or added humidity to the air because sometimes central air uh when it comes to heat is very dry and you know maybe some kids in our districts have uh certain health conditions or that would kind of uh be affected by from that extremely dry air like bloody noses dry skin or etc stuff like that i was just curious you know you know if these renovations do include those and those are just my two buttons yeah the uh the rooftops would have uh would control the humidity uh and it's also related to the proper size of the equipment uh if it's if it's too too large as an example if there's too much tonnage if you're familiar with mechanical systems and it cools the air too fast it won't take the humidity out of it so you'll get very humid spaces so it's the proper design of the tonnage and there is humidification in it in the opposite direction in terms of the uv lighting our engineer can kind of add to this but um we did look at it but you know there are potential problems if if one of the uvs break uh there's there's mercury in that you don't want to have a mercury uh release in a school um we uh we specifically did not include it um in that there are other ways to to provide filtration and that those are the ones we selected and that that's primarily the reason why we didn't use that i don't know if you want to add anything kevin um the only thing i would add is that joe is correct you know we look at systems for of various reasons you know obviously cost function and you know long-term maintenance um uv lights need replacing periodically uh they're they're usually nine thousand hours there's eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours in a year so you're gonna be replacing those every year joe uh the the use of safety measures are very stringent with uvs we evaluated the bipolar ionization systems and we like those because not only do they also help the filtration they actually put the positive and negative ions into the occupied spaces as opposed to uv you have to get the air drawn through the hvac system to kill the viruses and you know the bipolar they have documented tests that has actually rendered the kovid 19 inoperable so there is information on that online okay mr wodzick good thank you very much okay uh miss bassford next any questions um i'd just like to know if the superintendent can answer this well because of this people in the community that are have questions and they want to know when they're going to be able to weigh in and are you going to have any open public forums for the residents to be able to speak about um their concerns absolutely uh mrs basford um so the first thing citizens are going to be anyone with questions can go to our website to see the faqs uh they certainly can attend a board meeting uh and to learn more information but we will also have definitely uh during the first week in march a public forum where we'll review all this and answer any questions and i would venture to assume we'll do that more than we'll do that more than one time plus there will be literature sent out um via social media via blackboard um and i believe there will be a a mailing so we're going to try to get the word out uh as extensively as we possibly can and also on the website somebody will be able to just type in a question via email and get a response within a reasonable amount of time so we'll we'll advertise all of that thank you um miss beltran no i think every question i've had has been answered in the previous sessions including this one thank you thank you uh miss uh danny sorry i'm having things with hitting the mute um no thank you um all my questions are answered thank you mr daley uh yes thank you um uh i don't have any questions because i've been through this very thoroughly but i do like to speak a little bit to the public here on this issue um as the superintendent has said we need to do these things the schools and as mr de caro said schools are not falling apart but we have very old systems here 60 70 years old the universe been holding together you know they need to be redone they're old they're inefficient so uh on a broader scale this work needs to be done it isn't like oh there's luxury if we don't use the referendum this is the best deal this district can possibly get in moving these improvements forward to do it in an alternative we're going to have to take it directly out of the taxpayers these these things need to be done and if you do this piece meal the economies of buying a piece meal every year things go up we can settle the entire project rather quickly at uh reasonable prices which are out there now also the interest rate besides the one that's a little bit bigger than one-third of the money that we'll get from the state and we do not get any other funding from the state unless we do a referendum so if we win lone wolfed it you're paying the whole freight here and it's going to be more expensive because of the individualistic of doing the projects separately and the interest rate let me talk about that um it's it's i think our bond council will tell you it's going to be like in a low two percent um it may be even lower uh i'll give you an example um my son just bought a house as an individual and his interest rate is 2.37 that's not a tax accept rate that that is a taxable rate so when we go out and i'm sure because we have we have an excellent rating here the the financing is going to be highly favorable and it's not going to get any better than it is right now um you see that as the federal reserve and everything are keeping the rates virtually at zero at the federal rate so i expect to have a rate around two maybe we might be surprised and be under 2 so the savings to the tax pay payer in doing these projects is going to be incredible you do not have a better opportunity than right now to do this some people some people will also talk about well the air conditioner is luxury and if you listen to mr de caro's presentation we're replacing these ventilators because they are they've passed way past their useful life when you put do the hva when they do the air conditioning component it's part of that you're not doing a whole separate uh it's not like the air conditioning is separate it's incorporated into this so you have an economy of purchase here in terms of getting a unit that does both functions now on the on the operational i don't have an exact number but we're going to do windows we'll be replacing energy efficient water heaters the whole nine yards we've already started this stuff and we've been doing it through our capital reserve fund the capital reserve fund is nowhere big enough to attack the entire district those operational savings will also be significant so you not only save on our capital purchase but we'll be able to control our uh operation and maintenance dollars a lot better so those will be uh benefits in our school budget uh i've been on the board i've been on every budget since 2009 our overalls as the superintendent says our overall tax increase over those years have been under two percent and recently we've been uh down under one percent and even a zero for last year um that's because we had increased state aid but that's only for our operations we're going to continue to see that but that's going to end soon because uh it's i think we top out in another five years we're supposed to be all get what we're entitled to over the next five years so you don't have a better option than this if you pass it up it's going to cost you a lot more money in your taxes so i think we need to take advantage of this i'm a taxpayer and my hacks are going up but i look at it as an investment it's an investment in your city that's going to pay dividends both from the education and the fiscal standpoint and i'll leave my comments alone for that right now thank you mr kenoma my my alphabet skills are not too good here i'm sorry i uh i went to d before i hit c i'm sorry not a problem uh i do have a few questions um based on the covid changes uh i know you presented the bathrooms which we know we definitely need to change is there any way we could ha is that set up for a touchless bathroom i know some bathrooms are where you can there's like double doors where you walk in so you don't have to open any door handles or you don't have to touch anything in the bathroom is that set up in this fashion for this project we can put power activated doors in you do have to touch a pad uh because other other than that you have a sensor and the doors will be opening and closing all the time uh so you can put power activated uh doors on it uh and when you walk up to a faucet and put your hands under it uh they can turn on so it's just a matter of specifying that fixture sometimes in schools that can be uh troublesome because kids play with it but it can be done yes okay and you showed two different unit ventilators one was the horizontal one was the vertical and and i know i i i assume the vertical is really more space saving than anything else but does it flow the same does it have the same airflow does it turn over the air in the room the same both of them yeah it does um it has the same airflow on it it's slightly different because one is from a low point of view uh the other one uh blows the air from the top and it actually pulls in the return air from the bottom the re we like that unit a lot basically because it does save space in the room um but it's not um it's not acceptable in in some situations uh because the louver is much higher so it's typically put into a window so where it can work we would put that in but where it would um kind of you know upset the architecture or the elevations or you would have to cut a big hole um we would use the regular uh horizontal ones so that vertical unit does that do the inverse between winter winter and summer months where it's going to pump the ac out the top and then the heat at the bottom no no no the air flow is the same but it works but it heats and cools and there's a heat pump element in it as well and uh i know you showed the timeline of installs is there any way that we could pull the uni ventilators to the front of that oh yeah well what's going to happen um is that um if you if you think of your you know a whole corridor of classrooms we're not going to shut down a whole wing we're going to get a because you're not going to start this right at the summer uh you're going to be starting while school's in place so and we've done a lot of these and what happens is you're going to utilize a space whether it's a gym or whether it's a cafeteria or auditorium and you're going to pull out as many classrooms as you can let's say you can afford to have three classrooms vacant for three days or four days you're going to do the work on those three classrooms from start to finish and then those children will go back into that classroom right and then you're going to take the next three and do that and then the next three and the next three so you're gonna daisy chain we will group those into wings so what will happen you'll get three done three dome three done in three weeks you'll have maybe half the wing done and in a month you'll have the whole wing done and that's how you will then finish the job it'll follow through the rest of it and then you'll you'll keep occupying the building as you do the work so that's unless you can say joe i'm going to take this half of the building and move it or put it over here and you and the contractor has free reign to do it he'll get it done a lot faster but that's impractical so it will be done and over the course you may have some schools finished before others just because of the size but the overall timeline will take you know the two the two school years okay depending on depending on the work depending on the school i'm sorry depending on the school you might be able to do more than three classrooms at a time maybe just as an example but but during the um during the design we will work very closely with your superintendent and the principals to go through the logistics and come up with a overall master plan on scheduling and that'll be incorporated into the into the specifications and the contractor has to conform to those elements okay and the other thing was the air conditioners now they help with mold issues as well i know we had issues in previous summers where we had mold in certain buildings and certain schools if we if we run those air conditioners at a lower temperature obviously that's going to help with our mold issues correct well if you if you have mold you have to remove it what it does is it it it it takes out the uh the humidity in the air so when when designed and run properly um it will it will absorb it'll take out the uh the moisture if it's oversized it'll cool the air down before the moisture comes out and you have to run the unit longer so it's a it's a element of balancing the new control systems and the units so that they run properly in the right sequence but yes when you have air conditioning and heating um you will you eliminate the uh potential for for mold unless there's other elements involved leaks or something else somewhere in the building okay and then just to piggyback off of what uh mr delhi said um you know this is something we definitely have to do we've been talking about it for a long time and we all know that right now the the rates to borrow money are very low and based on this money if you take 55 million dollars and you divided by the 25 years of this that service before you come up with 2.2 million dollars so that's 2.2 million additional dollars we're going to have in our district over the next 25 years that's a lot of money that's a whole lot of money you can't pass up a deal like that you're never going to see something like this again and these are things that we would have to do anyway no matter what we're going to have to redo the bathrooms we're going to talk obviously about universal leaders now you know we with coven with whatever else is coming in the future we have to future improve our schools and make them safe for people to go i think this is a no-brainer there's also a bill out there now it talks about giving funding back for for ventilators and doing things around around ventilation and the good part about that bill is it also allows for at the moment it allows for if you've done something prior to that signing they're going to give you the money for it so uh for me this is a no-brainer let's get on this now let's get these vendors in now let's get them locked and loaded for the uh for the dates before the rest of the schools go after them and let's just get this done it's something we've been talking about for a very long time i think it's now's the time now's the time to shrink thank you mr kanova mr casper uh all of my questions have been answered thank you thank you vice president abu drabo thank you mr smith president smith um i saw in the chat box i believe miss passport had a question and mr white had a question but um uh i was interested actually mr white's question which was how loud are these uh ventilators in the classrooms mr takara they meet all the standards for uh decibel rating uh the uh with the universe the horizontal unit ventilators the condenser is on the roof uh so you have a you have a velocity you have a slight noise in the in the air moving through the the vents in the uh the vertical ones the condenser is in the unit itself but it has a cabinet with four inches of sound acoustical insulation uh and uh they're they're when they first came out they were relatively noisy uh they're in probably the fifth generation uh and they they are they're very quiet uh and if you if anybody if any board member wants to actually see them uh and hear them uh we have several schools that have been incorporated in in the area uh that you could take a look at or at least call the superintendent or the business administrator and ask them how they uh how they like it uh but absolutely that's that's an important element uh and they wouldn't get approvals for those systems if it reached a certain decibel level for for classrooms and what's the power usage um on these type of machines um i mean i'm assuming you're in 2021 but i don't want to assume that these would be eco-friendly and we talk about gold green between our between our board members in this district and moving forward in 2021 um what's the power usage on these kevin do you have uh do you have that information now um no but um you know like a typical classroom would have probably a four ton unit um we would usually specify a conventional two so it's not going to be running at full capacity all the time the earlier conversation joe had was with the variable refrigerant flow there are some technologies that you can group a number of the unit ventilators together and they uh it's exactly what uh what you can call it in first variable refrigerant flow they can match the load much uh closer so they those are seer rated higher than you know your conventional um air conditioners like in your house the fan the fan itself modulates so it's just not one speed you know when it's only needing a certain draw it it reduces and uh volume and then it increases so that saves energy as well okay thank you um and to the public um and my board members can can say this i i was on the fence about this and you know i asked my questions and we've had discussions in the past and i see it i see where the numbers are i see where the percentages are it is time to strike i mean some as somebody who went to this district as many others on this board as many of you and the public who have gone to school here imagine how bad the bathrooms were how certain aspects were when you were there now think 10 15 20 30 years later what do you tell kids who are in first grade second grade third grade who are going to be in the high school in upcoming years you know seven eight years now are you gonna say sorry we had the opportunity we're not doing it but at the same time we don't just look at the classrooms clifton has we've always complained in clifton that kids leave the district that they go to tech they go to other places the ones who have money and put money into their districts and not you know forget about taking out bonds or referendums we have the opportunity to have a third paid for us with low interest and the reason i i led with that is because when i think about education i think about education in the classroom and on the field now this is not my way to say hey don't forget athletics but you know a lot of a lot of students drive as teens and you know being young and and having working families is sports sports keeps them busy whether it's hockey football baseball soccer softball whatever it may be lacrosse and in order to keep these kids in our district and to keep them engaged and interested in sports they have to do well in the classroom so i fully believe that athletics and classroom go hand in hand so why am i saying this because many of you and i'm going to assume this because i've heard this in the past say well we only focus about athletics in this district not about education well this is our chance to do both you know when i played football in the district that locker room was atrocious it was disgusting i don't even want to imagine what it looks like now i would love superintendent roberto to see what that locker room looks like today because from those pictures that we've seen from mr dakira as a parent i wouldn't want my kids stepping in because that's just a lawsuit ready to happen so if a weight falls on somebody and we got to make a little more you know a little more avail to students to be able to practice and excel not only mentally but physically as well in the weight room and on the field so i i definitely see where this is going mr dicaro i appreciate the whole presentation um and for answering my questions in the past as well as you dr robert tells yourself i'm definitely a favor and i appreciate it mr smith may i just piggyback on that comment please okay thank you i agree with everything uh that mr agrable just said regarding athletics but it it is more than that because when we talk about the field renovation at woodrow all of our students will use that right we're going to use that for phys ed they're going to use that for field day activities in addition because it's a turf field it can be used all year round and it can be used by the community can be used by the clifton recreation department there's going to be a soccer field and a baseball field there's going to be toilets where we have visitors and guests that come to games they have to go into the school building to utilize the restroom which is a security issue um and as for the uh the weight room don't forget the weight room expansion also includes an upgrade to all of the toilets at the stadium and those of you have been to the stadium and have seen what those look like we're just we're repurposing that whole space and it's going to be so that's something you know say you know community toilets but it is something that the entire community will use so it's really not just about student athletes it certainly will benefit student athletes but these are things that that will impact the the whole community so i just wanted to to add on to that but i do agree with everything you said and i'm sorry it's mr mr president smith since we didn't move on yet can i just throw one more thing in um because there's in to to jump on the dr robert josie's uh coattail he mentioned her over at woodrow dr roberto can you tell us why we're putting in turf and what's wrong with the woodrow field oh gosh when i first took a tour of the district and uh mr malayhi our athletic director took me to the varsity baseball field i really thought he was joking i i couldn't believe that that was the field that our students uh utilized it was in such disrepair it was to me embarrassing to me it was really embarrassing and more than embarrassing it was unsafe uh what the turf field does it it it allows universal use uh all year round with the exception of snow and even when it does snow there's there's a way to remove snow from turf fields but it allows it allows more use right it allows the the community to use it allows our sports teams to use it allows phys ed classes to use it allows to have um field day activities out there so i think that's in that's that's an important piece of this it's not just for one group of people and have we had multiple flooding issues there that delayed sports games and just made the render the field useless yeah that's one of the reasons for the the the flip of the field um when the uh when the architects looked at it it's it's going to be better because a light rain there has postponed uh events and games and um so yeah listen to to me this is a this is a win-win for the entire community thank you uh miss bassford you had uh another question yeah um while we're upgrading some things in the classrooms one thing that drives me crazy has driven me crazy and i have addressed with the facility committee for years is that we do not have classrooms when they the janitors are cleaning up at night they're not sensor driven the lighting mechanism is and it drives me crazy when you're driving down colfax avenue and you see uh clifton high dr uh lit up like luna park for the younger people that don't know what i'm talking about google it luna park was a very bright um park uh during the turn of the century when they got lights lighting in and i'm old so i could say that but my worry is about if we're gonna if we're gonna worry about stuff like that why can't we go energy efficient with the change of of a light bulb a switch i don't know how how um um cost effective that will be or how expensive it would be but if we're starting to do some upgrades and if we could squeeze that in that would be i've been bob that's been bothering me for years because i don't like we we have them at work you walk in a room lights go on lights go off it's and it saves money on our bills and you know we do pay very costly bills for uh different things so i'd like to see that my other question is uh people were all asking me today i was getting phone calls prior to the meeting what other conditions going to be in the classroom when the air conditioners that unit is turned on and we have like a 9 500 degree day will it be comfortable that's what i want to ask because now we don't have that opportunity to have uh um air conditioning and to give the students a learnable atmosphere so uh mr uh through you mr superintendent to uh joe de cara is will it be a comfortable setting for our students once those units are installed that's my question thank you oh absolutely i mean what happens is the uh the size how you size the air conditioning unit in any location whether it's in your gyms or whether it's an individual classroom are going to be based on the square footage the volume the height of the ceiling and also the number of occupants because the occupants also produce heat um in in that and more importantly is the air changes the number of students require a certain amount of air changes so based on that that period of time and the amount of air that's moving you have to then size both the heating coil uh and also the air conditioning uh and that's you've heard the engineer mentioned tonnage you have a two ton unit four ton unit and typically a 750 square foot room with 24 students in it will require anywhere between three and a half to four tons so that those are sized and that has the capacity to bring to maintain the temperature now if you have a 103 degree day outside will it be warmer than 73 degrees potentially but it's not going to be 90 degrees just like your house you know central air so it'll be it'll be comfortable based on temperature and also humidity okay so my my question then would be to the superintendent is that one when um the occupancy for the rooms uh be that's a key factor because ever you know with uh living beings we take up a lot of space and and my father was an hvac guy for his whole life my brother is too so i know everything about tonnage i know about how i take temperature differentials so are we going to give the um are we going to make sure that that information is given to the architecture that has already been supplied to them on the occupancy of each room because i'm really because we do tend at the high school to have bigger classroom sizes and that's where my concern would be to make sure that it's comfortable for the students there as well yeah mrs basford i and mr dicaro correct me if i'm wrong but i believe that all goes into calculations when you did the preliminary studies but then when you actually do the construction plans that's something that you in that you look at right absolutely yeah that's that's the driving force thank you mrs bassford another important thing to add to what you're saying is forget the you know 103 degree day on and that might happen in may or june or september um having new heating ventilation and ac in buildings allows us to expand opportunities in the summer and we we also know that when we return to in-person instruction and when life gets back to what we consider some sense of normalcy we're going to want to do some ketchup and we're going to want to run summer programs and we're going to want to expand after school thing so you know having the new hvac is going to help educationally and academically well that that would that was my point because um mr abu dhabi said about the sports and that we focus on the sports but this overall with changing these systems will impact every single person that stepped foot now building it's not only the students it's the staff it's the teachers it's every single person and that they will be able to learn in a better environment that's the most important part to me because you all know when those rooms get too hot you're in a setting you cannot think and it's just it's it's horrible condition so i'm very happy and then i'm supporting this as well but those are the questions that i was getting today from a lot of people uh mr wad we'll just uh do a couple more questions here and we'll move on mr wad thank you uh mr um couple questions i know that we're as we go through these renovations and everything uh do these renovations also include for example like the framing in the windows because i know a lot of our schools are extremely old and you know uh insulation like these windows you know they're probably worn and torn and you know just tossing in brand new air conditioning and heating systems sometimes you know these old uh not energy efficient windows from 50 60 plus years ago they're not really up to code and because you know as we try to go green and clifton and we want to move forward with all the renovations in general do these include you know the windows uh when it comes to our plumbing our lighting and everything are they eco-friendly like led lights for example in the classrooms uh those all take into consideration when we're doing these uh renovations uh no the lighting is not uh the window replacement was not included uh there's you can you can weather strip them but but in terms of the overall scope that was discussed and decided on there was no window replacement or lighting at this time there are other programs you can use for lighting uh retrofit that can be done independently as mr uh uc just said uh you know this referendum is is just some key areas that we feel that that needs to be upgraded but that doesn't mean the district stops uh taking care of our buildings uh we've been upgrading windows in in our buildings for for years uh christopher columbus was done last year um almost every uh school had some type of window uh change over the past 10 years so you know it's not just a referendum that's going to deal with this we're still going to do our normal maintenance on buildings you have to it's just that's an excellent point that i was going to to also share just last year we did the brand new windows at christopher columbus a referendum allows us to use our money that we have in capital reserve for other projects like windows like addressing the lighting issues that mrs basford brought up and i don't want to veer off here but mr dicaro at some point we can talk about um you know a plan to do the lighting issues because there are rebates and grants and other things with solar that you could kind of do out there that's not for tonight but but what mr smith is saying he's right it doesn't stop the work of what our facility committee does all the time there's a plan to replace windows going two three four years in advance and so um this referendum though we believe i believe fixes the critical needs in our district right now uh mr daley i just had a question he'd like to know uh kevin if you could tell us what the average energy rating of the new hva units would be uh yeah new jersey has ashrae 90.1 is our energy code and we have to follow the strict guidelines for instance anything lower than 6500 h's is approximately five tons that the minimum sear is 14 seer for that and then there's so many other uh you know programs uh not programs pages of every piece of equipment we have to meet those requirements uh you know rooftops uh energy recovery units they're they're all in yeah i would say the rooftops are a lower seer um but uh you know that that's what we have to meet the minimum thank you uh mr canon the last question and then i'll just make my mind short and we will move on um so i just have a question a statement so the question i had is are there air tests that we take after installations to ensure we we uh comply with those standards there there are balancing reports that are done after after systems like this uh balancing company comes in uh and they they measure the uh cfm rate uh so yes there's an independent testing lab that that confirms that you meet the cfm rating and the air volume changes in the units okay and and the other the other comment i had um i always look to try and have students involved um and especially when there's a way to do some sort of professional development given like something on their resume i was wondering if we have design students would they be able to have some input into like the color or the layout the setup or something in in the school so that they could say you know i i designed that bathroom or i designed that whatever that is the color the layout if that's something we could possibly look into that's a great point we've done that in other districts um we get students involved whether engineering or architecture or interiors we show them what we do and we we give them design charrettes um to get them involved absolutely and we we also do programs too um during the construction i mean some people look at the construction as as a big headache but in schools we look at it as an opportunity and we will do programs uh hopefully everybody's back in school at some point in time uh we can do we can do discussions and and uh show students what we do how we do it get them involved almost like a mentoring program rodney watkins did mentoring program for four years over in t-neck exactly that element so we would you know me i love to talk so we we'd love to be involved with your students uh any way we can so i love that idea i love that idea can one of those templates be a picture of dr robert tosie on the wall somewhere when you walk in he already put that in the specs okay i uh uh i had some questions but i'm gonna move this along uh we spent a lot of time on this i think tonight dr robertosi wanted to make this an introductory period there are gonna be many more questions from the board many more questions through facilities many more questions from the public when we have open forums we just wanted to get this open presentation out to you to show you where this referendum is going and i know board members will have other questions after tonight and you'll be able to address those uh in the process um i just i just have to make a comment about the uh well first i want to ask you the the elevator at columbus is just for the security vestibule there's we're not we're not no no it gains access it gains access to the other floors it's just how we have access we put we put it there right that was my that was my question absolutely yes um just an example uh of why we don't like to get into situations where we don't keep up with our facilities and the the field that woodrow is a prime example when i was on the board back in the board put money into um that field surprisingly enough new drainage system went in um the whole setup of the field was put in and it was supposed to be upgraded along the years and i guess with tax keeping tax increases low and things got put behind and behind well as dr roberto said now you're left at uh 2021 with what you see up at woodrow wilson and we as a town deserve better than that our kids deserve better than that our community deserves better than that dr robitosi hit it on the nose when when other teens came to that field they laughed they actually laughed i was there numerous times when they laughed and said this possibly can't be the varsity field and clifton deserves better than that we we are a town that cares about our facilities we care about our kids we care about education we can't let that happen folks we can't let that happen again so there'll be many more opportunities to ask questions and i thank the board for their questions and i thank um uh joe and i thank uh kevin for uh for being here and uh answering all the questions and uh we'll be seeing a lot more of you so thank you very much our pleasure thank you uh thank our bond council uh mr smith although we didn't we didn't have any questions for them tonight there there will be some in the future i'm sure of that absolutely our pleasure thank you [Music] um i know you guys would love to to stay for the rest of the meeting you're more than welcome but to leave this is a great opportunity to cut out so thank you for coming tonight thank you thank you thanks thank you uh dr robitazi would you like to address um yes sir you thank you mr president um at this time we're going to move into a discussion and two short presentations on return to in-person instruction and covet 19 in the clifton community so at this time it really is my great honor and i i can't tell you how appreciative i am that um clifton's health officer john beagle has joined us tonight and someone who i've grown very very fond of and we've spent a lot of time on zoom meetings over the last year uh lael helwani who is the health uh health and health educator for the clifton board of health i asked them to join us tonight without hesitation uh they said yes and lael is going to just give the board uh in the community who's watching a brief overview of covet 19 in clifton what the status is and what the numbers look like and then i'm going to go into a very brief four slide presentation on what the plans are for a return to in-person instruction uh eventually so leal if i can i'll turn it over to you if you could share your screen all right can everybody see that yes okay great one second trying to share my screen but yeah there we go okay okay um so good evening everybody uh as dr robert tosie said my name is lael helwani and i am the health educator for the clifton health department um i actually just want to start by thanking dr robert tozie for well and the board of education as well for allowing us to come and speak about the current situation with covenanting in the city of clifton um so i have put together a couple of slides that sort of gives you a sense of where we're at as many of you know we do put out a press release in case information updates twice a week tuesdays and fridays i'll get into that a little bit later in the presentation but the next couple of slides are a snapshot of what the numbers have looked like over the last month uh so how did we do the last month um unfortunately we have had a total of 1457 additional cases and we took the data and we broke it down by age group i did highlight the 0 to 19 age group being that that's probably what we are most concerned with and you can see how it compares to the other age groups so i want to highlight something and it's that the 0 to 19 age group actually did have the second highest number of cases in the last month and it's really not too far from the 30 to age group which did have the most cases we're really just talking about a seven case difference as you see in that note in the bottom this does include ten cases that were in the system that were listed as having an unknown age um and the reason for that was because it wasn't immediately clear on the lab results um they weren't properly entered into the system and so we're still in the process of obtaining that information so 10 were left unknown and of course as we have that information we'll we'll update this um so this slide is just kind of a visual of what i just showed you again you can see that 0 to 19 age group is not too far off from the 30 to 39 age group which to me is kind of telling um so going back a month you know the 252 cases may not sound like a huge deal but as one of my colleagues mentioned uh you know in a conference earlier uh you have to think about the ripple effect 252 that's the total number of cases that we've had among school age you know school-age children um but you have to think about how many individuals were considered close contacts of these individuals how many individuals were quarantined and then how many went on to become a positive case and the cycle may continue all over again so it's just something to think about you know the ripple effect of this all right so this slide is just showing the percentage breakdown for these age groups over the last month so in maroon that's the 0-19 age group which comprised of about 17 percent of cases which is kind of a sizable piece of the pie you know that's about 100 sorry that's about one in six cases and then again you can see how it compares to the other age groups all right so this next slide is just showing you the age breakdown by week um and again you can compare it to the other age groups there's nothing too noteworthy here but you can see a bit of a spike the week of january 4th which we kind of anticipated after the holidays and you kind of see it across some of these other age groups but other than that it has remained steady in terms of the number of cases involving this age group per week all right and then you can also see that the week of uh january 18th that you know that's this week we're leaving as tbd uh again for those of you that follow the press release and the case information reports that the health department puts out we typically do it tuesdays and fridays so by tomorrow we'll have a more complete picture all right and then again this is just another visual of what i just talked about all right in the blue is the 0 to 19 age group all right you can compare it across the different age groups and you see that big spike the week of january 4th all right and then for this slide um we essentially got a count of the number of daycare or boys and girls club related incidents so we've had about 20 cases that involved a student or a faculty member at a daycare or the boys and girls club eight of these cases involved a student while the other 12 involved a faculty member again it may not sound like a huge deal on the surface but you have to look at the ripple effect as i mentioned before this led to a total of 189 students that were quarantined and 58 total faculty members that were quarantined and again you have to ask yourself how many of these close contacts went on to contract the virus all right so that's all i have with the slides but just to kind of wrap things up i would ask that everyone try to keep the data in mind you know the numbers do not lie um i do wish we were in a better place uh but it seems like we have some ways to go at least you know according to the data even with a vaccine out there the cases have not gone away we need to continue to be responsible we need to continue with the mask wearing the social distancing practicing good hand washing you know it's funny because about this time last year i was in some of the schools doing hand washing education for the students using the glitter bug curriculum i don't know if you're familiar with it um and i definitely miss those days i wish we were back you know at those days um but i sort of think you know whether that's stuck with them throughout the pandemic you know the inf you know the information they got from the hand washing uh curriculum um just because it gives them a good visual of the importance of hand washing and then just to give you an overview of overall numbers the latest numbers as of tuesday uh we had a total of 7742 cases and very sadly um a total of 193 deaths and you know to us these are not just statistics we have gotten to know these individuals over the last 10 months we've heard their stories as we try to get information about their situations and their stories stick with us you know they resonate with us and i can tell you that some of the stories that i've heard over the last couple months you know involving individuals as young as a few months old and as old as a hundred they have impacted me and they've impacted my colleagues uh who have made these calls and continue to make these calls um and so sincerely on behalf of all of us at the health department our hearts do go out to everyone who has been afflicted with the virus those who are suffering the consequences of the virus and those who have lost a loved one and you know we would just urge you to keep being responsible uh keep staying strong and please just keep all of this information uh in mind thank you leo thank you so much um for that data and for your impassioned plea you really are fantastic and you've been such a great asset to our school district um even before this but even more so now during the pandemic so i would just ask leia if you and mr beagle can stay on i'm gonna um do a brief presentation and then we're gonna open it up to any questions uh from from the board so i'm gonna share my screen now stand by okay can everybody see my screen okay great so on november 4th um i made what i still consider to be one of the most difficult decisions i've made as a superintendent i made a decision to return all of our schools to virtual instruction and knowing then it was not going to be a popular decision with some of our stakeholders i i know i know that and i made that decision because i felt it was in the best interest of the safety of our students and staff so everything i do is under this one clifton guiding principle that we make decisions based on ensuring the health and safety of our students and staff so every decision i make will do that when we close down november 4th i said we would re-evaluate conditions in mid-january so here we are and for the last two weeks um my executive team and i have been meeting with the clifton health department and we've been reviewing the data one thing right let me go back one thing that and maybe it was because of pressure from superintendents who wanted to open schools but the new jersey department of health did revise the guidelines for when to close schools so what you see here on the screen is a couple changes that the highlighted areas are changes so the department of health has changed the amount of days that a student or staff member has to be excluded from school from 14 to 10 days except in a region where the level is orange so the region that clifton is in we're in orange so if you are a close contact um you still have to be quarantined for 14 days but the big thing and i point your direction to to the red circle when we opened up october 12th within a week i had to close two schools and then during that next week i had to close another three schools and and one of the primary reasons for that is this guidance here that you see uh two or more cases are identified within 14 days in a school that occur across across multiple classrooms and are not linked to exposures outside the school setting and a clear connection between the cases cannot be easily identified so anytime we had two cases in a school that were not connected the guidance previously said school should close that guidance has since been changed to recommendations for whether school closure is indicated will be based on investigation by the local health department so the good news there is when we returned in person instruction it's no longer two cases that will shut us down um it would it would need to be more than that or at the very least the discussion reviewing the data with the health department and making a decision on whether the school should be closed so this is the key chart and this is where this is the chart that really helps me make a decision on whether we can return in-person instruction so if i could draw your attention to the november 8th here the week of november 8th that's when we closed down okay we opened up october 12th right around here and the cases were there was still cases in clifton but i felt and the clifton health department felt and my executive team felt that we could handle we could open up schools and we could handle it based on those numbers november 4th comes along and we see the number of cases keeps rising keeps rising so i shut down schools right here and as anticipated the numbers kept going up and up and up and up now remember when i closed schools on november 4th i had to shut down five or maybe six schools already at that point and when we would have returned from after that november break more than half of our schools would have been closed based on the number of cases so here we are now mid-january this is last week's data which is higher than when we closed in march much higher than we reopened october 12th much higher than i closed on november 4th and this week's data which is incomplete that's this gray bar this gray bar only consists of data from saturday sunday and monday so we're missing a full four days of data and i think we can reasonably expect that this bar is going to reach close to or exceed last week's data so what does that mean for me this is the key piece of information in addition to that chart that makes me realize we cannot return to in-person instruction yet if you look at the number of cases in school-aged children there were 252 cases within the last 30 days when we opened school october 12 one of the data points that we looked at was the number of cases the month prior to that date at that time it was 51 cases so let me say that again october 12th we opened school the month previous we look and there were 51 cases among school-aged children we felt that was a reasonable number that we could open up school and we can do it safely without impacting everyone ladies and gentlemen this number is now for the last month five times that amount five times the amount of cases in school-age children so you could say well half of those students are virtual anyway okay maybe that's still going to give us 125 cases and let's say 25 of those maybe aren't in our schools if we had a hundred cases in our school in a month we we couldn't stay open the impact that would have what what ms helwani talked about that ripple effect of how many people would be quarantined you have to multiply that by at least 10 people for every positive case there's at least 10 people that it affects either the students in that classroom and the adults that they come in contact with and that's a conservative number so a hundred cases impacts a thousand students and employees and impacts their family and that's my concern so here's what my here's what my thinking is on the district status at this time the good news is ladies and gentlemen we're in process of coordinating with the clifton health department for a mass vaccination of clifton staff the sooner that happens the more um it will be able to facilitate a return to in-person instruction problem is i was hoping and reasonably expecting that this was something that could be done in february as many of you may have learned just last week governor murphy changed the vaccination priorities so teachers um were supposed to be in that second tier of people who were eligible to receive the vaccine and while they're still in that tier the governor took a whole population of people um and move them forward those people who have underlying health conditions and i believe those people over age 65 and mr beagle correct me if i'm wrong so i believe you know a teacher should have been included with the first responders the police officers and firefighters are out there every day if if the governor truly wanted schools closed uh schools opened he would have put teachers into that first tier but i understand that people with uh underlying conditions the virus can impact them more so i i can't argue with that but i just wish that teachers would have been included in that first uh that first phase so the case trajectory in clifton is going in the wrong direction when we close on november 4th in the letter that i sent to the community i specifically said to return to in-person learning the local data will need to demonstrate a clear and lasting decrease in covet 19 cases a clear and lasting decrease the data has not shown that in fact the data has shown a clear and lasting increase in cases so at this time ladies and gentlemen of the board my recommendation um in consultation with the clifton health department and my executive team but i also want your input tonight is that we keep our schools virtual we reevaluate the health data on march 1st and again if we see that clear and lasting decrease then we reopen and i think from this point on it's got to be a month-to-month uh peak at the data and once we see that clear and lasting decrease then we can reopen schools i want to be clear no one wants these schools open more than me but i can't sleep at night if i'm putting if i feel like i'm putting my staff and my kids in danger and i just don't feel it's safe enough yet so it is my hope that this board will support my recommendation and my decision even if you may disagree i just think it's in the best interest of everybody right now to postpone one of the concerns with being in a virtual environment is that our students need support so at this time i'm going to ask mrs kusalevich to discuss some of the supports we've put in place and are going to put in place in the future to support our students who are both remote and hybrid mrs kusalevich thank you dr robert tozie i too echo your sentiments that i would love to have our students back as quickly as possible as safely as possible that being said there is some benefit to being fully remote because we are consistent with our instruction classes aren't being popcorn opened and closed and teachers are able to make progress with our students however virtual instruction works very well for many of our students and other students do it need additional support so i'd like to just give you a quick overview on this agenda at this um this meeting there's a list of teachers being appointed um to offer additional online after school programs both for remediation and to add extra hours of support for our ap classes our students even though we're remote are still receiving their basic skills um support and we have skills classes for our upper grade students we have online adaptive math support multiple programs that adjust and modulate based on a student's needs and we have the same with our reading libraries we have online online leveled reading libraries that allow students to work at their level and push themselves forward increasing their reading levels at their own pace meeting their specific needs may have the next slide please in addition to these um remote and hybrid supports that we have going now we have plans for the spring and summer to address learning loss may i have the next slide please we are already planning a saturday remediation program either online or in person depending on what the situation will be at the time another thing that we have in this agenda is a resolution applying for a grant to address student learning loss and we are putting plans into place for a new district-wide summer program to address that learning loss this is over and above our existing title one summer remedial program which will be planned for this coming summer as well as our title three english language learner program and of course the extended school year for eligible special needs students so as you can see the district continues to work to provide additional support to our students to get through this difficult time and if i can just turn this over to mr gingaro now for a moment thank you very much ms kusalevich to begin i would be remiss if i did not once again publicly recognize and thank alex road the entire pomptonian team and members of our transportation department for their ongoing efforts in providing meals to one clifton learning community to date over one million combinedist and lunch meals have been served to students and families in our community meal distribution program will continue to be available our three distribution sites uh both chs and school 17 need to be open from 1 30 to 2 30 and meals at ccms will be offered from 10 o'clock to 11 30 a.m however there is one caveat to the program this uh for the next several months so please be advised that due to the use of the entire clifton high school campus by the the clifton health department as a coveted vaccination site we will only we will be unable to continue with the meal distribution program at chs on wednesdays only as such every monday at chs pomptonian will provide students for the four-day meal package covering days monday through thursday and again with a three-day meal package on friday as per usual to cover the weekends all other sites will continue to remain the same we will continue to communicate information specific to the changes and updates of the meal distribution program through our district web page from email blasts and via our social media platforms and please be reminded above all that all of our clifton students are eligible for free meals for the duration of the 2021 clifton school year could we move over to the next slide please dr roberto and and finally our final slide as this part of the presentation is specific to technology support as always if you or your student need tech technology access for remote learning please notify your students building administrator or teacher at any time you can also directly contact our tech team via email at techsupport cliftonschools.net or by phone at student with your 973-779-5357 and our concerns at this time i would like to turn the presentation back over to dr robertosi to close out this portion of the meeting thank you mr jingaro i also want to take a moment to recognize our district supervisor of nursing who's joined us tonight uh vicki beck who's been an integral part of of this team and who has led um as in 19 of our district nurses who are volunteering to um vaccinate at the clifton high school vaccination site on wednesdays uh so big shout out to our nurses and to vicki beck who've been volunteering thank you it's our pleasure well you know it's times like these and a national emergency where people really come together so uh mr beagle is there anything you want to share before i open it up to questions from the board members of course of course i i do want to echo i want to thank you um the whole board of education for our partnership with this vaccination venture we have we have completed three vaccine um dates and we have a thousand vaccines to individuals um i can't thank vicky and her staff i mean the nursing staff wonderful right in there with you know the cold weather you know it's funny because a lot of people say when i said the first time that opened the windows in the cold right in the wintertime you know we take that seriously and we have performed we're probably one of the only health departments around doing the vaccinations outside because i feel um you know we talked about you were talking about ventilation prior to this and it's a large concern for the staff and for the individuals that wait so that's why you know we practice what we preach and when we're doing it outside a little windy up there and if you do notice we are um our tent is going in our uh i call that the mega tent or circus tent will be installed and they're not drilling for oil they're drilling to make it a safe place for our nurses and our people that are getting vaccinated i also want to thank mr doctor and his staff they've been amazing as well working well together and all the departments all the divisions of the the city and we just the partnership is unbelievable and that we have not had one complaint since we started so kudos but like you said our goal is to get vaccines into people and we had some disturbing news that this week that we were only getting 300 doses for next week and that's concern we're gonna when we get going we're probably going to do seven to eight hundred sorry vicky uh maybe 800 in a day and if we could do that on a wednesday and some saturdays i think we could really make a difference so we're working diligently diligently to get those vaccines into people and you know for the public look at our website cliftonnj.org for updates and it's really important to register for swift911 those are the phone calls that we will be making uh reverse calls just for any updates regarding vaccines and vaccine distribution and i just want to say how proud i am to work with lea allen's and the other individuals in the health department because they're rock stars they're really our rock stars and we just you know we laugh crying everything together but and i have to say i support your decision i think it's the right decision in public health we base our information on data and science and what lael presented tonight is is clifton it's not the county it's not the state it's not the country it's not the world it's the city of clifton so again i support your decision and we will always work together and make it safe for the staff the students and for everyone and anyone that comes into the city of clifton so thank you thanks so much uh mr beagle mr smith at this time uh be happy to answer any questions from uh our commissioners either to me or for the the city and to the health department uh any any questions again we'll go uh we'll go in order uh if everyone could just uh ask their questions at uh one time and then we could mr smith uh just so you know they can if if you wanted to they can raise their hands if they wanted to ask a question if that's easier either either way anyone with any questions uh vice president abu dhabi uh thank you president smith through you to the superintendent and his administration um so i'm becoming questions um that grant that miss kuslov stated is that a cost share is that or is that 100 and is that from the state or federal junior you know the details on that unfortunately that is a competitive grant it is state through e-wag but it is competitive um i have high hopes that we will receive it but if we do not i'm also working uh with mr uchi to work out through the budget um our proposal um through movement and adjustments in our curricular areas to still be able to run this absent of the grant we need to do more intensive support that is locally funded so that we can address every one of our schools because right now the only summer programs that we do have are for our title 1 schools and our ell or special needs populations we want to be able to address all of the students who have who exhibit learning loss based on our assessments um with our benchmarks and our reading leveling of our students so the reason why i say or federal um [Music] i i know you said you're you're pretty confident or you're [Music] more than hopeful that we'll receive it um dr robert tells you we want to reach out through the legislative committee being the chair uh reach out to our state legislators and ask for letters of support um and kind of at least have our 34th district representation weigh in on this i don't think it could hurt okay can we talk later and set up through mr smith president smith you know my next question is through you um dr administration so if wednesday we can't do the food um um [Music] handouts should i say our dissemination of the food at the high school because of the vaccinations i'm not jabbing at the health office i appreciate everything they do uh can we reach out to city hall and see if we can utilize um a building on cedaw property like a program swap what we've done uh mr abe drabo is in well first of all on wednesday the other two locations are open so 17 is open as is columbus so anybody can go there but also on monday um they're giving food for the week so instead of giving two meals they're giving four days worth of food uh to the families that come okay which i understand but let's let's play devil's advocate if i may let's look at 17 in columbus is on the east side for four days of food we don't know how big certain folks fridges are um so we don't know if they're even able to do that that high school location may be a um a big reliant location for for many people on the other side of clifton so that's why i'm asking this i just want to make sure i i absolutely hear what you're saying i i don't think it's it's been an issue certainly there's been no issues that have been brought to my attention so i think we're solving a problem that doesn't exist okay no that's fine i just i i just want to think this through uh and then working backwards i want to thank miss beck and uh mr beagle of course leia she doesn't she does most of the work anyway um for everything you guys are doing and it's it's phenomenal it's great my mother-in-law who who is in the healthcare profession actually went to take her shot and she said it was seemingly very simple um to go through the process and she wanted me to tell you thank you okay are there any other board members have a question mr canova yeah so so i have a few things um as you know i i support the school's opening um if if you look at news articles if you look at things going on around they all say that at this age um kids thankfully aren't necessarily affected by it by covet if they do get a case of it it's not severe we've seen no deaths in clifton in those age groups not that death is the the only ticker we should be looking at obviously we want to look at long-term effects etc but everything i've read i haven't seen anything saying otherwise um economics parents especially single parents that are in this situation have multiple kids they can't work or if they do work again like i said at another meeting they may be putting someone in charge who's an older student so you may have someone who's 12 watching someone who's eight let's say is that the best situation i don't know probably not um spread within schools we've said spread within schools has been zero when we did open we didn't have any spread matter of fact when you compared it to the spread outside the schools there's more so if anything i would say maybe this data is misleading and saying that this is data when kids are home because when they're in school i think we're going to see otherwise and we don't have much data on it but when we did have the data it was showing that in school spread was less now you have biden calling for schools to reopen he has his 100 day plan he's saying he wants schools to reopen murphy pushing for the same thing many people in politics pushing for the same thing not that i think politics again is the ticker to look at but then you have a school like little foes who's fully open it remains fully open sports that are running in clifton but yeah we're saying we can't open schools so i don't understand some of that um before we're giving the parents the choice we know we have special needs students we have students that have specific learning needs and outcomes we know we have issues with with students on laptops and we're still not opening schools so i think i think in that report while the data is accurate i think the data we're missing is what about the increased mental issues and suicides what about the additional uptake we're seeing in uh in our flags and even our own security systems and flags for for kids who are chatting with each other and talking about things that they shouldn't be or what about um even the lunch programs what about parents who are working and again going back to that situation where an older child is watching a younger one they can't get out to go pick up that school lunch and then maybe they don't want to walk from where they are because we're not hosting it at every school i know that when kids were going to school we were giving them lunches every kid was getting lunch to go home with whether they wanted it or not so there you're you're absolutely taking care of the kids and if they didn't want it maybe the parents were eating who knows we're in an economic economic time now this you know that's never taken place maybe the parents need that food i don't know um the other the other thing that could be happening is they may be putting these kids in daycares if not in daycares they may be putting them with elders elders we know are higher at risk we know their higher debts there and deaths is the one we want to move away from so if we could keep kids together even if they do spread to each other not as big of an impact if we're they're spreading it to grandma or grandpa or or their aunt and uncle that are they happening or watching them or people who are you know maybe unemployed at the time we're taking these kids in to watch them i'm sure there's there's daycares going on right now i'm sure there's all that kind of stuff going on that we're not really seeing because we're not there to see it or to to get data on it but i'm sure a lot of these things are going on we did see that in that list you have a thousand students who have who have uh a positive case one thing that it was either the who or cdc came out with a day or two ago they said that their test looks at 40 cycles in amplification and they said that's too sensitive and they're realizing that there's many false positives with that um and if they did have it they're immune to it so those thousand students are actually now immune to getting it again they are immune for a certain amount of time whether that's six months whether that's indefinite whether that's a year it's yet to be seen um but we are seeing that as well so i would go back to we're putting this on the parents we're putting on this on the kids we're saying do you want to come back in this is a choice for you to make i don't think we should be making that decision because we don't know their home we don't know exactly what's going on in their lives and i think honestly this is a disservice by us not going back to school it's a huge disservice mr canova you there was a lot that you said there but i just want to address a few things and then if anybody from the health department or my team wants to chime in they certainly can um i hear you i hear everything you're saying but a couple points that i think need to be corrected first of all you can't compare little falls to clifton it's like comparing apples and oranges the social economics the number of parents who who are it's just it's just two different worlds the number of cases in both places are two different worlds but having said that you all you mentioned was students right i didn't hear anything about our staff and i got to worry about our staff too so we do have a number of staff that had pre-existing conditions that were able to work remotely for the year but we still have other staff members who we weren't allowed we didn't have the opportunity to give them that accommodation and until it's safe for everybody right how can i justify closing down schools uh november 4th for a certain amount of cases and then opening them up three months later when there's five times as many cases it just doesn't make sense and maybe the virus isn't being spread in schools we only had a three week window to test that out we don't know that for sure i don't i i believe that the schools were relatively safe but as lael discussed earlier it's that ripple right effect hundred cases causes a thousand or more people to have to quarantine for 14 days and bring that home so you talk about the economic impact of that also when that's unexpected at least now parents know that they're going to be remote until at least march first so i think that gives some semblance of of a plan that they can work for and and as for the special needs students and and other in early childhood and other students that are more um you know at risk or maybe learning less that that that is an issue and when it's safe to phase those students back in that will be part of the plan we do have a plan in place to phase those students back in but that's not something i would consider until we see a clear and lasting decrease in the numbers um and that's just how i feel now listen i respect every single one of these board members and if it was nine zero nine board members telling me danny you're crazy you gotta open up schools i think i would still tell you that i'm not gonna not yet is that john is there anything that you want to add just a few things so um you know you spoke about children being sick um you know we don't get into the specifics but i can guarantee you there were children in the hospital with severe symptoms and again i can't i'm not liberty to speak about it so do we wait for one person or child to get really sick and possibly pass away i don't think we want to do that i don't think we want to take that chance i don't think anybody wants to take that chance and i know there's a risk in everything that we do the other thing is vaccines i totally agree it's great to say we need to you know get vaccines to people but our governor changed the rules a little for us which made it a lot more difficult for us to vaccinate the teachers and with that you know with the vaccine being there here um but not for us to give it to uh the individuals that i mean everybody wants to be first in line right everybody thinks they should be first in line and i'm not going to say who i think should be first in line or but i really think that the chief teachers if we really want to get children back to school we need to vaccinate the teachers so when i order 300 doses and i receive 100 doses to me it's good to talk that we want to get vaccines to people but give us the vaccines to give to the people so i'm not going to go on but i really you know and i agree there we know as public health professionals we know mental health issues for children and for adults i mean a lot of people are suffering this so i i don't just you know discount that at all but i think with the numbers you know whether somebody's sometimes they're asymptomatic but sometimes they go to the hospital and thankfully we've had no deaths at younger ages but that can change tonight as we've learned with this pandemic more than anything is we could talk about something right now we get off the zoo meaning and that can change so that's that's all i have to say so based on what you said then why are we allowing sports to be continued that's so so that's a good point that's not john's decision that's something that um very honestly i i wrestled with and here's what i concluded and you can tell me i'm wrong and maybe i am school you can still do remotely right some people would argue it's not as good i agree but you can still do education remotely sports obviously you can't so that's one second it's a smaller group of people [Music] with strict protocols and safety precautions with staff members who [Music] are volunteering to be there not mandated to be there and third and probably this goes to your point about mental health sports help kids right it helps them be more grounded helps them be more healthy and so i'm weighing all these things and i've asked myself how do how do i allow sports and not open schools i've wrestled with that but those other factors kind of outweighed it and i thought well i think we could do it safely and guess what one week into it our girls basketball team is quarantined and that could happen again but it's a it's a small number of people and again you can tell me i'm wrong and like i said maybe i am but that's kind of how i feel i feel like we've taken away so much from kids already um i didn't also want to take that away miss bassford yes thank you uh president smith uh first i want to thank john beagle and uh uh leal for their assistance during a very dark time in my life on december 14th i was uh tested positive and it was just a going for a routine surgery checkup i tested positive and thanks to john he he took me off the edge i was so upset not knowing what i had to do i had a quarantine in my basement okay i have family members that have high uh men uh risk of health issues what what did that cause it caused me to be in my basement for two weeks by myself no tv so i got a lot of computer work done but i can understand and my worry is and joe i want you to hear me out on this we have a lot of people that live in small apartments that we have multiple families living in these small apartment units i was lucky that i could uh quarantine away from everybody i really was i was lucky that i could get away from my family and stay away from them my i am worried about the mental health uh um um part of it because i think we're gonna see the lasting effects of that for years to come uh people are stressed out and everything and i understand that so um what personally i feel that until the numbers go down i agree with you dr robituzzi but um my also worry is that we've had several parents come on these meetings and express needs for their children having issues so i i don't know what we are doing to to um to um handle that um because you everybody knows i like to advocate for special needs i'm really concerned about that so i want to know if we have put other mechanisms janina touched on it briefly that we put that mechanism in place but my worry is that um how do we ensure the safety of the staff okay because it's i don't know i had no symptoms i had absolutely no symptoms and here i was walking around working my side job working at work going to work i shut my department down right i had a test negative twice i went for three tests just to make sure that i was it was all all right before i even went back into the society but being a house quarantining with people there's a food issue there's bathing issues there's separation issues and and i just see we have a lot of students our clientele in certain areas and certain homes that don't have the luxury to quarantine the way that i had to do i was lucky nobody else in my house got it i i don't know what happened it could have been a false negative i false positive i don't understand that but that's another issue that i have to worry about and i have to worry about the adult population as of teachers if if we would have if the governor would have changed the um the classification and put the teachers in that first frontline group and we had the vaccinations to give it to it then this would be a totally different conversation but then the other issue is what about the teachers that don't want to vaccinate we're going to have to face that as well and they still don't feel comfortable coming back so there's a lot of different moving parts here that i agree with you danny and i support you on this because quarantining two weeks alone it was not a fun time for me mrs basford on the vaccination issue um my philosophy is pretty simple uh it's not something that we would mandate or that i think we even could mandate but once our staff has the ability to get a vaccine whether they choose to or not then it's to me very very safe to come back now i was hoping that was going to be able to happen within the next couple weeks but you heard from mr beagle about the number of doses that are available and the fact that teachers aren't even eligible yet so yeah i don't think we're going to be able to make teachers get it but once it's available for them i think it's safe to say we're we're open for business you know still wearing masks still social distancing i think i don't think you're gonna see that go away uh any time soon okay so my other question too is that the the the president biden just reversed uh just um did an executive order about any federally funded federal federal um properties that um have to uh wear masks being that we get federal funding that that require that everybody has to wear a mess regardless at a meeting and everything like that when they're on our property that's my other question too i i completely zoned out on what your question was were you asking about wearing masks on school property i'm so sorry i said president biden yesterday signed an executive order talking about uh federal properties happening to have wear masks we get federal funding for our students we get a lot of aid in federal funding so with that being said because we're receiving funding does that make us required to keep that um everybody wearing masks regardless what we're doing on our on our locations as well um [Music] i don't know but i don't know that it matters because it's in our policy that you have to wear a mask so our policy is is good enough to cover that um ms speck did you want to add something to uh miss bassford i saw your hand up no okay um obviously this is mr awad you were next yes i just wanted to piggy back off for mr nova and uh dr robert uh you know uh first and foremost uh leon mr beagle thank you for all the hard work you guys have done for our city you know you guys are the heroes here yeah you and your teams you guys are doing great work and you're continuing to do great work and i applaud you guys for everything you're doing uh i just want to pick you back off this whole conversation i it's i don't understand return to school it's a priority for many fans and i respect that but with the climate that we're in i support you know our superintendent's decision not to i just find it difficult for you to rock my head we would want our staff and our students to go back to school that we're all seeing what we're all here on the board and you know the guests that are partisan are sitting on a zoom meeting but nobody ever mentioned why wouldn't we leave my example if it's really that safe by example when we go back why are we just gonna ask our staff and our students to ourselves that's the only comment i have to say if it's that safe and that's more of a decision to go back to school we should be the first as you know to lead by example as the leaders in our community and the ones that our decision making about our students our staff you know health and safety if you know anything is going to be real first when the climate is safe we should be the first ones but if we know the climate is not safe for certain you know uh groups within our district then we should just you know continue to listen to the science and the data you know the health department and you know working with our superintendent to make it smarter to say it for the majority and honestly for the whole not for just you know certain you know fast sex and that's the only comment i have to say uh before we send anybody back into school we should leave by example and go back to ourselves have some meetings and if it's not safe for us okay uh miss beltran you are up next i just had one question everyone else pretty much covered another question that i had um danny do we are sorry mr robertosi um do we have any sort of long-term thought if these numbers don't go down like if this just becomes part of our society i'm sure the government at that point will make a decision on lowering the expectations but you know it's seeming to be we're social distancing we're wearing masks we're sanitizing we're doing everything that we weren't doing in march yet our numbers are not going down and maybe mr beagle can have some more insight into this um but it just seems like we're already doing everything that we possibly could and then it's just not helping us in any way uh miss belgian that's a good question i think for me [Music] once everybody has the opportunity to be vaccinated at least teachers i think once once everyone has that opportunity whether they choose to or not um then that i think it's fair to say we're we're open for business and again i don't know when masks go away and when social distancing and all that other stuff goes away but as far as i'm concerned concerned vaccination is a real good start i just want to add not everybody's doing the right thing you know when we christmas holidays or any holiday new year's the contact tracing that we have done we have found that people attended a holiday party and you know i think one party nine out of ten people were sick two of the individuals were hospitalized and we heard that repetitively so i think a lot of people are doing the right thing but definitely not everybody is doing the right thing and it's prevalent because of those numbers right if of course anything can happen but if you are wearing your mask properly and how many times were here and work oh i just was eating with the person for a half hour and that's how that spread and that's what happens we let our guard down you work with some people you put you eat lunch with them and um that's what that's how it spreads and the same thing with family uh just because you're related it might be a brother might be a sister if you're going to that person's house and you're eating and you're you know partying with those individuals it you know it spreads that's the community spread and then they go to work and they spread it to those workers and that's what we have seen and that's why our numbers are still high and unfortunately it's across the um the whole country i'm sorry oh sure of course um so the other issue is you know when people do test positive not everybody sticks to the full uh you know isolation period um even if they are not showing symptoms you know it's a 10-day isolation period but some people don't necessarily stick to that and then the other thing is close contacts uh some people um either refuse to disclose their close contacts we're seeing a lot of that um you know with with our case investigations um or some people refuse to admit that they are a close contact you know they're feeling fine and they go about their daily activities so that may also be contributing to the numbers being where they're at uh miss danny you were up next yes i just want to say that um i support you um dr rotozi as an educator working um and you know i do know that when you go back there's a lot of issues and of course you know ideally um best situation would be to have students in the building and education to be that way but um unfortunately yes it might not spread through contact within the school but you have individuals that come into the school and then as a result you have staff quarantining you have students quarantining and then eventually you just don't have enough substitutes to cover the staff and you have to close and i mean i i would think that you know if i had a child in the district and i had to work around that schedule you know to know that okay we're open for two weeks now we're gonna go in we might be closed i mean i in my opinion i can't see that being um positive in terms of the social emotional well-being for students for staff i mean you know you talk about you know kids have to have a regimen and consistency yeah it would be nice it would be nice if you know class would start 7 45 and 3 you know and then they go to their sports and do whatever but i mean it's not what it is and so at least i do think that um in the remote setting at least there's some consistency and i just personally find that um you know you kind of have more time believe it or not in the remote setting because there is in this passing time when you have this hybrid model i mean again it's um i'm i'm in it you know and i'm and we just opened up um and you know i the hybrid it's it's it's um it's not like your children are there and and they're learning i mean ever everybody is still going on to the meet and you're you've got students in the classroom which is a little distracting because they're coming in and the students on the meet aren't coming in at the same time yet and they're late and then you have to pause i mean we have to stop like 10 minutes before and they have to clean the desks and yeah they clean their desks and they have to clean so then you have to jump off the meet with the other students so i mean it's it's just not an ideal situation and you know again i mean i think to put um you know my personal opinion is again like it was stated here that um you know if teachers are there at the forefront and they're so essential they should have been in that first group and you know to not saying again that again in the perfect world yes uh in person learning the best but this in person learning this the hybrid is just it's it's not the same it's um so for the safety of all i think right now you know with the numbers being so high and again i mean you can't con compare i think you know fair lawn or or um you know any of these districts or fairfields or whatever you can't compare to clifton i mean clifton the the numbers are huge and there might be parents who say yes okay we're going to put our students into school because you know in a sense uh we need to work and they need to be somewhere but then if in a few days there's a shutdown what does that parent do now the parent has to scramble to get someone so at least i feel like there's consistency for everybody across the board you know for students for their emotional well-being that okay this is it virtually this is how we're doing it numbers are high for staff um you know i know that it's frustrating for some staff members to have to quarantine then away from their family for 12 days um and you know and then you know you have just um parents as well who all of a sudden now because there was an outbreak they have to worry for two weeks what are they going to do with daycare and scramble and then we might be open for three days and then it might happen again i mean who is that good for you know so i mean i just want to say that you know um dr robertosi it's a you know difficult call but you know you obviously um know how this is and you've been an educator and and you can see that um you know this whole thing again ideally in an ideal world it would be nice if everybody was in the classroom and things were as normal but it's not so trying i think the consistency of at least staying in the remote while it's like this because it would be back and forth back and forth makes sense and that's all i have to say thank you vice president abu dhabi you were next thank you mr smith superintendent no matter what you do it's your fault so it doesn't matter not gonna ball listen joe i i i get it i want my kids out of this house because they drive me freaking nuts every morning and i want them out of here until three o'clock and not wait till noon and i i can't do a dorm thing especially my younger son but let's be realistic somebody by initials jb from the health office became my personal doctor for the past three weeks okay i was tested positive everybody else in my house was not i said what the heck i called him right away and i said hey just letting you know what do i do he did nobody got the results yet i said no outside my house i got tested i'm positive no symptoms everybody around me in the house is not quarantine all right fine got a second test i'm negative got a third test i'm negative what happens if a lot of the latter two tests were false tests and the first one was not now my kids are in this house no symptoms asymptomatic they contract it they go to school and then who knows what really is gonna happen so nobody knows what's going on with these tests nobody knows what this thing is capable of and yet nobody wants to believe it i'm not saying that lock these kids up in the house because then i'll move out and they can stay in this house but at the end of the day i'm not going to put others outside this house in harm's way when i came to control what's happening in my own house and we're trying to keep safe with gloves and hand sanitizer and masks in the whole works because we got false positive tests out of three tests i don't know which one is yet which one's right or not but yeah i still quarantined for 10 days because jb told me i had to and i did anyway because you know it's we don't know what this thing's capable of the best thing to do is as we always mentioned the ceo of our district from the advanced the advisement of our health officer in this city not little falls not param it's not process park not canada not california not oklahoma this city is saying that we should keep our kids at home for now am i gonna have people saying what the hell are you talking about in a few hours or tomorrow because you make no sense no because at the end of the day i don't care it's not up to us and you know what danny kudos to you if nine of us say yes opening school's up i love that answer that you gave because you know what that shows you don't cater to anybody on this board it's not a bad thing you took the advisement of the specialists in our city i'm not knocking anybody down who wants open schools back up joe i'm with you a hundred percent i want these kids back in school it's not helping them mentally it's killing them it's draining especially at the elementary school level but at the end of the day you gotta pick what's worse then being bored and setting him back by ear or god forbid putting them or anybody else in a place we don't want them to be that's why that's how we have to look at it and i rather than taking my cat throne or get thrown across the room and in between class breaks which no i'm not i don't support rather than god forbid i have to rush to them or somebody else to the doctor or hospital thanks danny mr casper you were next dr robert terese thank you for keeping the schools closed and thank you um with all your help from the health department because uh when it hits home it's very hard and everyone knows me i like to be out and about so you know me when it hits hard it it it's really tough so um i even had a family member in the hospital myself so i know how bad this can be and um if i were to go back into school myself and affect my students i don't know what i would have done either uh we had just gone back this week after being virtual for two weeks and we already have two cases in my school and i have yet to be notified to see if i have the quarantine so um so it's it's a tough decision but it's it's a good decision for now until we see our numbers going down thank you any other board members with question or comment see none dr roberto i just want to ask you to clarify um i know your stance is um about the vaccinations would that be both vaccinations because obviously having just the one wouldn't correct yes absolutely mr smith it's actually more than that it's the first vaccination four weeks later second vaccination and then two weeks after that and john correct me if i'm wrong that's when you're kind of fully immunized so you're talking about a six week six weeks from the day where you get vaccinated correct um miss beck did you want to add to that yes just just to be clear we keep we hear teachers teachers teachers we're talking about vaccinating our entire staff not just teachers everybody's in contact with our students and with each other very very good point thank you you're absolutely correct um mr beagle uh lyall and miss beck i i can't emphasize enough um if anyone in the city has not seen the operation that clifton runs and vaccinations um [Music] it's top-notch um john you and your staff have just done a fantastic job uh doing the best that you can and it is so organized um it is so laid out nicely and at the end of the day um you won't find trash around our property they clean everything up and it's just a top-notch operation and i am hoping and praying that our teachers our staff and the residents of clifton very soon get an opportunity to drive their car into that new circus tent and get their vaccine so i just wanted to thank you for all that you're doing for the city uh please extend it to your staff and i know uh dr robertosi uh cannot say enough about um your help and um ms beck maybe i'm speaking editor and correct me if i'm wrong but most if not all your nurses volunteer your time is that correct correct so we spend four days a week calling parents following up on cases and one day a week trying to make a difference and get rid of this virus and out in sub-zero temperatures so uh please extend the thanks to your entire uh nursing staff for uh caring enough about clifton and um doing what's right so thank you tremendously uh mr smith mr smith if i may this board should be commended because there wasn't when i recommended to the board that we allow this mass vaccination clinic not one person objected everyone knew that this was important for our community and just for the greater good and and also allowing the nurses to do this on wednesdays the board had to allow that to happen i know there are other districts where that would not happen i know there are other districts where they don't have the relationship with the health department where they're going to be able to utilize a school so this board should be commended for you know having some vision and uh and know that you know you're appreciated too what you do matters thank you muted mr smith very good point you know we have to remember we are one clifton school district the taxpayers students everyone we are one clifton and and we can work together to make this thing um go away or get better so um i know uh mr beagle would much rather have the entire town vaccinated in the next uh two weeks um unfortunately that's not going to happen and we just have to hold out a little bit longer and i i think it's disgraceful and i hope um that when our legislative committee meets that the governor and the legislature know how disgusting it is that teachers and our staff uh were put down uh lower in a list um they're darn important people and they should not have been put down on on that list so um i hope that we emphasize how upset we are and something like that should not ever happen again so that's all i have uh if there's nothing else from uh administration and uh the uh health department uh we thank you so very much for attending our meeting tonight um leal i can see in the background you're still in the office um ten o'clock at night i know she wants to go home so um we thank you tremendously for the time and dedication that you've helped us out tremendously by answering our questions so thank you all thank you guys thank you very much thank you we don't let leia go home hey jb if you if you end up actually do uh drill oil in the east wing parking lot just remember it's hours oh sorry sorry it's superintendents all right okay thank you if you you'd like to stay for the rest of the meeting you're more than welcome but i think you want to go home so um it's up to the superintendent what he wants us to do go home and go to sleep okay you say so i'm halfway there okay thank you both have a good night guys stay safe thank you apparently we still have an agenda to get to yes we do um okay next on our agenda is uh board committee reports and uh we should not have any as of yet oh you do i'm sorry i don't see anything on my agenda but very sad i'm sorry it's there sorry i didn't scroll down my bad okay go ahead mr casper okay this is from december 7th from the passaic county school board association the meeting was called the order by sixth at 6 35 by miss judas judith basford president of the passaic county school board association uh mr dan sinclair our immediate past president talked about how successful virtual workshop turned out the njsva put together the workshop in a short amount of time and had 6 000 attendees with 140 exhibitors and over 100 presenters mr sinclair explained that in our next delegate assembly we will be voting on our new njsba officers the term will run from 2021 to 2023 and the positions include president vice president for legislation and first vice president miss basford also talked about the nominating committee she will be appointing two members herself and has asked for any other volunteers who would like to be on the committee chris jones our njsba legislative advocate provided an update for us the legislation is trying to encourage smaller districts to regionalize but as it is completely voluntary these districts are looking for help in uh feasibility studies there are some districts that are not seeing the savings of chapter 44 fact-finding is currently going on and the legislature is looking into cleaning up chapter 44.

ray penny announced three levels of awards at our meeting vincent harrington from patterson has obtained a new board member uh dr rachel calpeezy from little falls has obtained a certified board member and nancy schwartz from pompton lakes has obtained certified board leader jason della from brown and brown associates prevented on the new health care benefits reform law chapter 44 was passed unanimously by both the house and the senate the biggest slice of the pie is the health benefit plan at 37 percent uh districts that have the sehbp it eliminates all medical plans other than direct 10 and 15 as of january 1st of this year the new jersey educators health plan which took effect as of and the garden state health plan will take effect as of july 1st of 2021 non-schb districts can keep locally bargained plans but must offer equivalent plans to the uh the educators health plan as well as the garden state health plan um the nj ehp will roughly save a person forty seven hundred dollars or half of their contribution new hires as of 7 120 or later must be enrolled in that new plan for seven years pre-medical retirees will also be enrolled in the same plan um the savings incurred should be made uh it is suggested that the current savings should be made to future tax levy pay uh payments chapter seven uh section seven of that law uh should save 300 million dollars over three years if it doesn't the new plan team will reconvene to make changes to the law the districts can save uh the projected uh savings then there are certain things in the new plan such as pain management services have been capped such as acupuncture at chiropractic at 35 and physical uh physical training at 52 dollars um out of network provider reimbursement is uh two hundred percent of what medicare would allow which is called reasonable and customary uh let's see i don't to bore you too much more uh the net spendable dollars will depend on your paycheck rehol withholdings which ranges from 20 to 35 percent the chapter 44 cleanup bill caps contributions for employees who earn more than 125 000 at the same rate of those who are earning under uh they were waiting on the governor to sign it uh there will be new updates for the garden state health plan which starts uh july 1st of 2021 and the garden state health plan offers new jersey only provider networks and payroll deductions that are even lower than the new jersey educators health plan uh if that's all i have on this one is there any questions yeah mr uh mr president yes mr daley make sure i'm i'm not muted here no you're not mr daley you're up okay good um uh i saw miss castro i mean it missed wasn't from mr casper it was from the health the insurance company um i've had preliminary talks with mr uc and um uh we we're going to get into that very shortly our our health benefits costs for next year um right now we believe it's going to require an increase in our allocation of funds into the healthcare plan because the difference between the drop in chapter 78 and and that and the savings that's projected it does not match up and it looks like it's going to be a negative number we don't have that but i've raised that issue with mr yusi and he is concerned as well uh so as soon as we have that information which hopefully you'll be shortly uh we'll we'll spread that to the board even before we do a budget so but we're looking preliminarily that our health care costs will increase and not decrease uh as a result of this plan thank you any other questions seeing none we have policy miss bassford would you like to yes and uh thank you uh president smith i also want to um address something that happened earlier and i want to go through you to the superintendent when i questioned the fact that um and this has nothing to do mr awad i was trying to protect your interest a board member was not present when the original meeting occurred i'm very concerned that he should have abstained i had to go back in my book for robert's rules of order the board must the board member must be president as to witness to verify the meeting minutes are correct not just reading them for of the document so he should have abstained so you're incorrect mr usee uh and um i just wanted to make that because that's our our um bylaws do uh cover us that if we're not it doesn't state in the bylaw because i have the bylaws up here and i i research them during the presentation um and we are covered under robert's rules of order and that is a robert rules of order uh technique so i just want everybody to be careful that when you're not present at a meeting you shouldn't be voting on the minutes because you're not witness to them and um i didn't see you on the zoom i don't know if you were watching the zoom but they were verbatim so you really should uh take error on the side of caution okay so the policy committee um met um on december 8th 2002.

if one student gets coveted in my class it will mean at least three other students must quarantine and it could be as many as eight i believe my numbers are fairly typical at chs frankly the social distancing that is taking place right now in the boardroom will not be possible in most classes at chs think about what i just said each of you right now can social distance yet teachers and students cannot the optics of this are not lost on chs teachers based on a survey of chs teachers on january 13th 72 percent of high school teachers want the current hybrid policy to continue i would be happy to email you the results and the comments made from both sides 28 are basically for a return to normal since when do we cater to 228 percent what kind of message does this send i ask have you surveyed all the parents of the district not just the ones you see socially or the ones who call you or you run into at the store right now 71 out of 149 of my students and their families opt for room i'm not sure a majority of parents agree with bringing all students back but admittedly neither you nor i know because there has not been a survey in a recent board meeting november i believe board members said paraphrasing high school students are not quarantining they hang out in groups of up to 20 every night at the legion tim we need a tim i'm paraphrasing tim we need we need yeah we need to we need to wrap this up really yeah okay thank you thank you thank you tim another uh yeah okay great thank you [Music] hello miss clayton yeah this is uh dr pistelli at the board meeting i have you down there wanting to address the board this evening okay i'm going to give it to you and we have um you have to state your name for the record please and then if you would uh limit your comments to three minutes okay thank you my name is kerry clayton i am a parent community member and i have had the honor of teaching at chs since 2012.

the board policies are there are there any questions from the board members for the second reading of these board policies seeing none i'd entertain a motion to approve the second reading of the board policies issues 106 as presented motion by tammy hines second bye second by lisa schumacher you do uh vote for me please john long yes greg meyer yes scott middle camp yes greg o'connor lisa schumacher karen anderson yes tammy hines yes great motion carries on to the return to school plan do you want to talk through that uh with us certainly we've um as i've said many many times we're at a fork in the road and on one path you could go in all day k12 but to do that you'd be adding in a lunch and you don't want to keep the classes as hybrid the other way is to go all in um with six to 12 and to do that you'd be at a half a day and so what we're proposing is that right now k5 is all in half a day uh monday through friday and we're gonna be all in eight to three with friday being the eighth 12 30 day so everybody's you know it's going to be monday through thursday 8-3 friday 8-12 30 for the k-5 6 12 we are currently hybrid half a day and so what we're changing is to all in for half a day 8 to 12 30 and that'd be monday through friday as i said earlier the goal is to move fourth quarter all in all day we're going to need to get lunches by that time we should have all of our vaccines done vaccinations should be complete and we'll have a better idea of how our contact racing is going and how many people are coming back and whatnot um miss heinz and mr myers were on the return to school committees as was uh mr reeves and dr costelli there's pros and cons both sides none of the plans are making anybody thrilled i've had people tell me we're moving too fast i've had people tell me we're moving too slow the recommendation right now is to go all in k five to three with friday being eight to twelve thirty six twelve all in eight to twelve thirty and this the proposed start date is when that would be the day after president's day which i believe is february 16th okay did you talk to john yes he is he is he he thinks this is great he says it's time for them to all come in he still stands by there's been no transmissions at the schools and um he's at the point now where he's saying whatever you need to do to be able to get those kids back in we're ready to get them back in so i say mr wagner was pleased to hear of our plans so by going all in six to 12 for half days we are not going to have social distancing correct and that's not an issue as we're going to have to quarantine people and you're going to see people getting quarantined there are i mean people are going to um continue to contract this virus right now the the expectation is is that you control you quarantine the close contacts um it's it's frustrating because the kids that are being quarantined they're not seeing them get sick so why are we quarantining them because we're told we have to so you will have people still going to remote through this process but um i believe that the step we're at right now all in is the right choice did you um do the survey how many are going to be remote for the next quarter but we did not do this no how many high school kids are remote right now um they are our school with the largest amount um but it's really hard to say how many are going to be coming back with the all in i'd have to say freshmen and sophomores are going to be returning juniors and seniors maybe not so much yeah i'd say my biggest concern for any group right now is our senior class and making sure that they are all going to be ready to graduate and able to graduate um i think that the phone calls and stuff that i've heard when we've got kids at the top of the class they're still at the top of the class and there's not a big concern for them i'm still worried about the ones at the middle to the bottom and i'm afraid a lot of those are our remote kids and i certainly would hope that the parents are emphasizing to the kids that going to school is their job and that they have to be there whether it's online or in person or whatever i do have concerns about having that many remote but and having them all back in i still i still am a kind of like the the hybrid all day because that would if we're not concerned about the social distancing i don't see the issues with the launch as much yeah that was discussed and and um i don't want to say consensus but i think that that what was communicated to me through a lot of the various parents is that they want their children to attend school every day and they're the hybrid is is causing a lot of them to struggle and so um there's pros and cons to going either way i mean it makes sense to go either way that's what's so vexing about this problem um i'll just say i haven't had a phone call that says i want my kids all in um the ones the phone calls i've had are go hybrid they like the hybrid they like having half the kids there at a time because um then they've only got half as many that would be in contact and they could have the social distancing um i just would have a question if we're going all in what are we doing to take care of our teachers and our staff i mean we've talked about teachers behind shower curtains um and i've got instances of more than than one plexiglas what are we doing to protect our staff i uh more than one plexiglas uh barrier and the health department said that that would not be suffice unless it was a box so i don't think that that is you know in terms of removing from the isolation right so i don't think that adding more is really going to solve the issue they would have to be isolated of course maybe it's reducing the likelihood of some kind percentage-wise of dumb contract you know contracting it um so yes but then the socially you know emotional part obviously for our teachers is is something that we look at every year but definitely this year and um we actually today uh had a brainstorming session uh of trying to put some meaningful things into place um to try to provide some opportunities should somebody wish to to partake so hopefully we'll get those rolled out as well the other thing is you know you have the benefit of being able to look at other differences and there's districts ahead of us and there's districts still behind us we're kind of in the middle and moving forward um but the health department has made it quite clear they're not the transmission from student to teacher is really not occurring in the schools because the teachers are staying the six feet away and that's the key thing is is that you know you need to wear your masks and you need to stay at least six feet away from the group um for the teachers to be not quarantined but as far as the quarantining that's different than actually getting sick and they're not seeing the transmissions in schools is what i would and i find it very sad that 72 percent of our high school teachers do not want to come back or want the kids all back in when we have the younger grades those teachers are close to the kids side by side doing activities helping them with stuff and i i just i find that very sad for our district that 72 percent of our high school teachers don't want the kids back in all all the time yeah and i think that both of the teachers though said it they want them back and they just want them back in safely and so it is frustrating that we are all so divided and and you see it in the covid you see it in the politics you see it just in the world in general and it's and it's frustrating because um there is there is division i i i wish i knew how to unify people but you know when it comes to kobe there are a lot of people that have feelings about it and i can't do anything about that i wish i could on the health department website today i was reading that so starting monday the vaccinations they're going to be moving to phase 1b starting on monday which is like residents that are 65 and over plus frontline essential workers which would be our teachers yeah when i talked to mr wagner this week he's doing the 80 year olds now he's dropping down to 75. once he gets through those he'll he'll open it up for the teachers and we're ahead of schedule according to the website today yeah he believes that if the vaccines keep coming in the rate that they are we're expected to get the vaccines the first week of february and uh we've been talking about whether or not we'll take a snow day and let everybody go and get them done or if we can get it scheduled for the afternoon so that you know when 12 30 hits they can go to the fairgrounds and get them vaccinated we want everybody vaccinated and i'm excited to see the vaccines i don't want to say that it's going to be the first week of february because i don't want to jinx it um but right now if the according to mr wagner if the vaccines keep coming in the way that they are the teachers are next is there an option for an on-site vaccinations that you do have health care workers in the buildings yeah no not yet we would have to go to him and i guess he they used to come out and do the flu shots i'm not quite sure what the procedure is different than this versus the others but uh what yeah it's probably the tracking yeah or the temperature in the handling storage i spent a lot of time listening to both sides of this argument and i've tried my best to keep an open mind um seems to me the primary concern of not returning is unable with inability to social distance but in my experience that the kids aren't social distancing outside of school they're choosing to get together they're obviously not wearing masks i think if even if they didn't social distance and we're masked i think they'd be safer in school than they are the general public and i think it's important to keep in mind we're not requiring anybody to come back to school if somebody is scared if they have somebody at home that they don't want to get exposure to they'll have the option of remote learning so we're not forcing anybody we're making we're providing a choice is all we're doing we're not forcing anybody to do anything well you mean the students students correct right any other comments or questions on the plan and just one more thing to add in terms of the all kids back in the parents that have been calling me have really expressed the need to get their kids in just to get them moving in the morning not walk down you know with a blanket wrapped around them on their remote day but to actually get up get ready get dressed be productive and i guess it's basically their emotional well-being as well you know and i forgot we during our committee meeting i brought this up and there is a study that i brought up i think a million or two ago and it's about productivity on people and basically it says that when when you get up just think of all of us on the weekends we get lazy if you don't get up and get moving you tend to coast a little bit longer when it's a work day you get up you take a shower you get ready and you're working that's human nature and kids are the same way i think if we we need to get them up get them engaged and then they can they can carry that over into the afternoon instead of vice versa is the afternoon uh remote learning or are they just going half days no they will have uh office hours and they will be doing remote learning and they will be doing some prep the kids will not have instruction time specifically laid out in the afternoon there will be office hours if the kids need help they can get it remotely through those office hours and the teachers also need planning time and you know they are getting a double burden with remote learning so they do need some prep time to handle both jobs any other questions or comments on the plan seeing none i'd entertain a motion to entertain a motion to have the students on february 16th return to school every day with k through fifth grade attending monday through thursday 8-3 and friday 8 to 12 30 and 6 through 12th grade 6th through 12th grade attending monday through 3rd monday through friday 8 to 12 30.

stick around we have our friends varsity contest here shortly should be a good one 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 team 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 a 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 good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the bcsc live stream here on the youtube channel as you can see in your top right screen we are about eight minutes and 20 seconds away from this hhc championship matchup here tonight in the orange pit once again we want to thank you guys for tuning in for you those that watch the jv game our jv team did pick up the win over the panthers congratulations to our jv team before we jump into tonight's broadcast we want to give a special thank you to our sponsors columbus auto group and forced construction for sponsoring these videos without your support these live streams would not be happening and we also want to thank you guys for tuning in if you please would like and subscribe to the youtube channel so you'll be notified for all of the home meets or tournament matchups we shall do later on in the season but most importantly let's take a look at these jenning county panthers the panthers are coming in tonight's matchup with a record of 11 and 5 and 3-1 in the hhc which ranks them third in conference play their only conference loss was to bedford and other notable losses were to east central pike salem and brownstown central looking on the winning side for the panthers some big wins were over some really good teams such as whiteland lawrenceburg scottsburg rushville and shelbyville the panthers are led by a freshman julian woodard who is averaging just over 16 points per game and 11.4 rebounds the other standout player for the panthers is senior addison kintz who is averaging 14.2 points per game 3.6 rebounds 3.2 assists and 2.2 steals a well-rounded player for the panthers as a team the genius county panthers enters tonight's championship game averaging 59 points excuse me 57.9 points per game 28.4 rebounds 13.6 assists 8.8 steals and 2 blocks this game has a lot on the line tonight can the panthers come away with the road victory here in the orange pits now we will transition over to your home team the columbus east olympians they are looking to become conference champs for the first time since 2008 and the first time going undefeated in conference since 2006 it has been a long time since the hhc trophy has been claimed here at east for girls basketball the standings for the hhc are your ladyos are at the top with a record of 6-0 bedford is sitting in second jennings county in third and to round out the conference is madison seymour jeffersonville new albany and floyd central so there you have it your hhc standings coming in tonight's matchup the radios are on a four game winning streaks and have picked up big conference wins over those four games with those teams being madison seymour bedford and new albany the lady o's are led by senior guard corrine gravy who is averaging 17 points per game five rebounds 4.6 assists and 3.9 steals other big time players for the lady o's are sophomores sage stahl and gabby dean as a team the olympians are averaging just over 60 points per game 33 rebounds 14 assists nine steals and six blocks can we see this 2020 2021 radios make east history with the winning the outright hhc championship for the first time in 14 years we're just minutes away from tip off so don't go away join bartholomew consolidated school corporation's team as a substitute teacher or a bus driver bcsc will help you become a substitute teacher by covering the cost of your background check sub license and offer a hundred and forty dollars a day as a bus driver you will be offered full benefits retirement contribution match and pension 183 days of work per year guaranteed first shift hours and a potential thirty thousand dollars a year if eight hours are worked the best part of both of these positions no weekend or evening hours work on bcsc's school schedule and make a difference in the lives of students every day to show your interest in becoming a substitute teacher or a bus driver fill out the form they will become a substitute teacher or bus driver at bcse schools.org [Music] welcome back to the live stream here on youtube we are about three minutes and 15 seconds away from tip-off as you can see the student section there i'm sure all these students would love to be here tonight cheering on your ladies as many of these students can witness some history being made as i just mentioned a few minutes ago since 2006 it's been since the girls basketball team has won the outright hhc championships if the olympians were to lose it would be a three-way split between bedford's genius county and the olympians so the olympians have a lot at stake here tonight as well for genius county once again we want to thank you guys for tuning in to all of the live streams throughout the whole entire season whether it's been football [Music] in the fall and swimming gymnastics and basketball boys and girls we want to thank you guys for sticking to it all and we are very pleased and proud to be able to bring you all of these live streams this year with all these crazy times going on here tonight so two minutes till tip off we will take another short break and we will hear a word from our sponsor columbus auto group 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 percent committed to making sure you leave in the right vehicle not the one that pays them the most from sales to service from online team 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] a few seconds away here and i will turn it back down to our pa announcer dennis pierce for the national anthem and the starting lineups and welcome to the orange pit here on the campus of columbus east high school and the home of olympian basketball as this evening we proudly present a hoosier hills conference match-up between the olympians of columbus east and the visiting panthers of jennings county high school and our ladies and gentlemen at this time we ask that you please stand the privilege of this game is 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 like gentlemen removing their caps and everyone standing in attention placing their hands over their hearts as we proudly play our national anthem [Music] so [Music] thank you and now i introduce your starters partner visitors to see me the change county panthers and forward a six-foot freshman double zero two-handed wooden guard a five-seven senior number five addison kent guard a 5-4 [Music] [Applause] junior number 14 cali thompson [Music] and it forward a 5 9 junior number 33 lily ernst your head coach for your panthers christy zigler and that is your james county panthers all right fans you know what to do it's time to put on your feet let's introduce [Applause] and forward a six-foot sophomore number leah bachmann and forward a six-foot sophomore number safe stall at center a 6-4 sophomore number 32 gambit and it guard a 5-7 junior number two your career for your olympians danny brown assistant coach willie hughes and that is your columbus east olympians so there we have it ladies and gentlemen our national anthem and our starting lineups now we are seconds away from tip off here tonight for the hhc championship game here at columbus east high school looks like double zero and dean are doing the tip off for each of the respective teams here tonight the freshman wardor is coming in averaging 11.4 rebounds and 16.3 assists as for gabby dean comes in average an eight point two points per game and seven point six rebounds so here we go folks we are awaiting the whistle and the tip and we are going to be underway here tonight and columbus east high school and we are underway and the olympians win the tip as grin gravy passes it off to stahl down low inside to gabardine she spins inside dribbles and shoots it off the mark and rebounded by wooder up to kent and 14. thompson has it and off the mark and rebounded by sage stall and she's driving down the right side of the court the energy has been very energy i want to say has been very upped upbeat as the jv team picked up the win you could tell this team has very high expectations in winning this game as maylie roberts shot is off the mark and the panthers are going to push it down the court and sewing by sage stahl she comes in with just over one point steals a game excuse me 1.6 deals a game and i turn over there by the olympians coming up on seven seven minutes and 10 seconds in the first quarter [Applause] the olympians are playing their 2-3 zone they have a lot of the basketball year and they get it to the baseline out to kent she's going to dribble inside kick it back out to number 11 and that is off the mark and corinne gravy with the full court pass to sage on the right block up and good and we have our first points of tonight's contest belongs to the olympians sage stall for two let's see if the olympians can keep the great defensive pressure going but a great job there by jennings county and won by woodard will put her at the line 4-1 sage stall picks up the team's first her first comes in shooting 73 percent at the free-throw line and that shot is up and good gives her three points on the night great job there by the panthers to get the shot up and to draw the foul and convert see if the olympians can answer back in the corner to maybe roberts for three and good melee roberts with a big shot bailey roberts comes in shooting 41 percent from beyond the arc fantastic shot there with 609 remaining and it looked like gabby dean got a piece of it but kept alive by the panthers woodard has it back out for a three for the panthers off the mark and an offensive rebound once again keeps the possession alive for the panthers the olympians fall back into that zone see if the panthers can break it like they did and stolen by gravi one-on-one fast break and she short floater there and off the mark corinne gravy comes in with just under four steals a game and she got one there early thompson turns the ball over sage staltz two on two fast break for the olympians euro step up and no good for sage stall with 5 25 remaining here looks like genius county is going to slow the pace down of the game i think the fast place game is in favor of the olympians maybe jennings county wants to slow it down maybe the panthers are a slow paced basketball team as kent looks at a three but passes it and no good there [Applause] woodard has it down low a great pass for the three for the panthers and good [Applause] brook maury 4-3 from the corner great looking shot there and gives them a one point lead as sage dribbles and spins and gets it to grivey to bachmann she's down low up and good the assist goes shakur and gravy but two points for leah bachman bachmann comes in averaging just under nine points per game and corinne gravy averaging 4.6 assists and blocked by gabby dean who is averaging quite a bit of blocks here and up to bachmann on the left block up and good great pass and great transition offense for the olympians there bachmann with four points here tonight so far three-point lead coming up on four minutes here just in the first quarter [Music] olympians still in that zone and corn gravy steals it and she's gonna take it herself up and good and a timeout taken by the panthers [Applause] your olympians lead 11-6 and we will take a short break after a 30-second timeout taken by jennings county alrighty welcome back we are coming back after a timeout taken by jennings county after olympians got two quick steals and two quick easy points off this turnovers be panther basketball here with 351 remaining here in the first quarter looks like number 31 will be taken out for the panthers and they will get it into addison kent the senior and down low to water kent looks at a three but hesitates and will dribble to her right and kintz will get it back here the olympians still in that 2-3 zone 18-foot jump shot is off the mark and a fight for the ball and rebounded by sage stall corn gravy looks to push them off the court gets it to melee roberts and back to gravie [Applause] bailey has three points here so far see if she can add more to her stack column inside to bachmann back out to gravie she looks to attack melee has it down low to gabby dean she's trying to be strong back door cut to save stall wide open and good a great find there by gabby dean and sage stahl has four points in tonight's contest still in that zone look gets it inside bachmann with great help defense there kent 43 up and good addison kent with three points she comes in shooting 31 percent from beyond the arc see if the olympians can answer back here as gabby dean shoots that one in great defense there by woodard the freshman let's see if the panthers can get something to go here again in the corner is another three but blocked by sage stall rebounded by dean up to corinne gravy she's going to take it and misses it but rebounded by sage and gold sage stall with six first quarter points coming up on two minutes here in the first quarter 15-9 is our score in favor of the home team the lady o's see if the panthers can get a shot to fall here gets it inside the water looks like more of a man zone look concept here for the olympians gets it down low to woodard she shoots and good [Applause] gives her five points so far here tonight as she had the and one early in the first quarter as corinne gravy down low to gabby dean she spins and takes the dribble and short on her shots and rebounded by water and kitts will bring the ball down the courts here as olympians will fall back into the zone [Applause] 106 remaining here in the first quarter lead belongs to the olympians woodard kicks it out for panther three up and no good and rebounded by bachmann bachmann comes in with averaging 6.4 rebounds a game and she's going to take herself off the mark an offensive rebound by gabby dean and gets that one stripped out of her hands but sage stalls right there to keep it alive and stolen there by addison kent she's going to dribble to her right and down low to number 33 up and good and one for number 1 excuse me 33 gabby dean picks up the foul ernst is at the line for one and we'll have albany spear check in and caitlyn crothers also checks in for the olympians with 36.1 seconds remaining here in the first quarter the olympians now have two team fouls to the panthers zero as lily gets that free throw to fall and she converts on the n1 bachmann with the long jump shot in and out and rebounded there by lily and addison will slow it down here coming up on 20 seconds here just in the first quarter back and forth ball game is our score excuse me our score is 15 to 14 back and forth ball game scoring wise has been the concept here tonight looks like the panthers are going to hold it for one last shot as you can see with two seconds a three-point shot up and off the mark and rebounded by gravy so there we have it our first quarter the olympians lead by 1 15 to 14 and let's take a break and let's watch and listen to our columbus east cheerleaders [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] and then we have it our columbus east cheerleaders we want to thank you guys for tuning in tonight's live stream i'm shirley miss and my partner zach pierce who is normally sitting next to me he is back off to ball state so running camera tonight is kai stenham a big thank you to him and i am malachi parks doing play-by-play here tonight it will be panther basketball to start the second quarter it was a back and forth ball game in the first quarter it should be like that the remainder of the game so we should be in store for a good one here tonight the olympians remaining in that zone gives it into water and back out for a three looks like she took too many steps before dribbling there and a turnover by the panthers olympian basketball bachmann will take it out and give it into gravie she uses the screen set by bachmann looked at the pick and roll there but didn't not go for it and gravity will get it back as spear will cut through and bachmann down low and back to sage stall almost a turnover there but keeps it alive bachmann picks her dribble up down low to sage and a jump ball great job there by the panthers get the jump call olympian basketball after the jump ball possession error will be turned to the panthers so the next one the panthers will get and a wide open bachmann great find there and a great out of bounds play there by the olympians bachmann has six points here tonight coming up on seven minutes and 10 seconds in the second quarter as the free throw jump shot is off the mark and rebounded by the panther that is woodard gets it down low to number 33 lily ernest [Applause] a great job there by the panthers and caitlyn crothers gets the points here in the second quarter she comes in averaging a well-respected 3.3 points per game and 2.5 rebounds coming off the bench as woodard has it down low and fires the shot up and off the mark and rebounded by bachmann as albany will bring the ball down she's going to stop and fire the three up and good albany spiel four three a great shot there in genius county answers back with their own three addison kent 4-3 as well [Applause] that gives her six points both of them coming from beyond the arc 31 for the panthers kennem mashuno picks up her first teams first corinne gravy is at the line shooting 83 percent 66 of 80 on the season as that one is up and good as number 11 brooke will check in for number 14 thompson and gabadine will check in for caitlyn crothers gabby dean is scoreless here tonight i'm sure she's looking to change that one as grabby is at the line for her second free throw and it is up and good gives corn gravy four points six minutes on the clock 24-19 is our score and bachmann gets a hand on the pass but panthers are able to keep it alive as woodard has it on the right corner as addison looks to fire a three but we are going to have an offensive foul committed by woodard will be her first team second bachmann once again will take it out and give it into gravie 5 45 remaining here gravity uses a screen by sage stahl and she's going to take it herself and great job there by the panthers to block that one addison's going to bring the ball down gets it in the middle jump stop and right idea just off the hands it's going to be genius county basketball i thought it went off the hands of the panther but the refs call it genius county basketball right there there excuse me right idea by addison with 5 34 remaining gets it inside and blocked by albany bachmann up to gravy she's all alone on the right block up and good corinne gravy [Applause] four quick points for corinne gravy coming off the free throws and the layup and great job there by the panthers to get a shot in on the zone but woodard could not get the shot to fall up court to sage stall a risky pass and will be tipped out of bounds by the panthers 508 remaining olympian basketball corinne gravy is going to take the ball out here and gets it into gabby dean gravy's going to drive baseline fine so wide open bachmann fourth jump shot up and good great vine there by corinne gravy and a great shot there by gabby dean gives her eight points on the night so far gets it inside woodard's gonna drive baseline and kick it out to the three and kintz will get it back looks at a three pump fakes gets inside jump stops and gives it to a wide open teammate for baseline jump shot up and good kena mashuno with her first points of tonight's contest and sage will drive baseline off the mark offensive rebound by gabby dean fires that shot and off the mark and hustling his olympians tried to save it but stolen by woodard and the panthers kent's going to dribble it down and off the mark kept alive by the panthers woodard will fire that one up and off the mark and a strong rebound bachmann had it in her hands the ref said it was going to be east basketball but pointed the wrong way now we are back to where we are coach brown was gonna give the earful to the ref but olympian basketball with 355 remaining here in the second quarter corinne grabber is going to bring the ball down as she will be doing most of tonight's match-up gets it to albany albany has three points here tonight's coming off of a big three-point shot at the top of the key gets it inside to gabadine great pass to bachmann up and good and one for leah bachman assist from gabby dean [Applause] brockman comes in shooting 76 on the free throw line six points just here in the second quarter looking at seven and she gets that one to fall [Applause] the olympians are up to a double-digit lead here in the second quarter 325 coming up on the scoreboard gets it into the middle of the zone maury kicks it out uh panthers cannot get the three-point shot to fall corinne gravy picks up her dribble a bad idea there by gravy and stolen by the panthers and that is thompson for [Applause] two her first points of the night comes off of a big turn over there cuts the lead back down to single digits and gabby dean great post move and she gets in the scoring column back to a 10-point lead for the olympians 2 45 remaining here in the first half of this basketball game off the hands of the olympian will be jenny's county basketball melee roberts will check back in for the olympians albany will check checkout jillian excuse me we'll check back in the freshman and number 33 lily ernst as well as addison fires up a quick three off the mark and olympian basketball with 233 remaining here in the second quarter looks like addison is going to pick gravy up full courts and great defense there by the panthers but off the hands of the panther will be olympian basketball [Applause] as the olympians will take a timeout maybe to draw up something to beat a short man press the panthers brought out to him so 232 remaining here in the second quarter the olympians lead is 10 points after the timeout taken by the olympians let's see what each team will come out after the timeouts see if the panthers will stick with the press and it looks like they are going to do so maybe change the pace of the game here and give the olympian some confusion looks like they're gonna double team gravie and gets it into sage stall bachmann will dribble down the courts and pull it back out to set up the offense as gravi will eventually get the ball here to sage stahl with 220 remaining here in the second quarter as gabby dean passes it to gravie uses the screen step back three and off the mark and rebounded by woodard and it's going to be over the back foul committed by gabby dean great box up there by woodard [Music] she picks up her second foul team's third all evened up with three team fouls for each team here tonight coming up on two minutes two minutes here in the second quarter gets it inside to order she takes the easy jump shot up and nothing but nets gives her seven points she is the leading scorer for this panther basketball team and she's doing her fair share here tonight bachmann kicks it out to sage stall pump fakes dribbles right as gravie has it in the right wing back down to gabby dean and she spins to her right off the market and she gets her own rebound and throws it up and a turnover committed by the olympians number 14 thompson is going to dribble kick it out to addison she fires a three nothing but net [Applause] addison kintz scored all three point baskets here gives her nine points the panthers have cut into this lead here [Applause] late in the second quarter as gravity passes the two sage stall back to gravity she's going to attack inside and great defense there by the panthers no foul call there as addison's going to bring the ball down the court she stops fires a three up and good someone is getting red hot from beyond the arc gives her four three pointers just in the first half and cuts the lead from 10 down to two with 33 seconds remaining and the panther fans are up and loud and cheering on their feet can the olympians get a basket here as bachmann's going to dribble and travel violation great job by the panthers so far they have all the momentum here late in the second quarter looks like caitlyn crothers is going to check in for gabby dean with 22.4 seconds remaining here in the second quarter the olympians were up 10 here in the second quarter but the panthers have done a great job i'm sure they're going to hold it for one last shot to cut the lead excuse me to tie the ball game or take the lead big possession for each team here in this ball game as woodard takes the 12 foot jump shot up and good that's her second times shooting that shot and getting it to fall gives her nine points as well gravy fires it up and good grin driving with the buzzer beater gives the olympians a three-point lead going into halftime great job by each team here in the second quarter so there we have it our first half is in the books the olympians lead by three due to corinthians gravies long buzzer beater so we will take a short break and we will be back with the halftime report join bartholomew consolidated school corporation's team as a substitute teacher or a bus driver bcsc will help you become a substitute teacher by covering the cost of your background check sub license and offer a hundred and forty dollars a day as a bus driver you will be offered full benefits retirement contribution match and pension 183 days of work per year guaranteed first shift hours and a potential thirty thousand dollars a year if eight hours are worked the best part of both of these positions no weekend or evening hours work on bcsc's school schedule and make a difference in the lives of students every day to show your interest in becoming a substitute teacher or a bus driver fill out the form labeled become a substitute teacher or bus driver at bcseschools.org [Music] do welcome back to the bcsc live stream we are live at columbus east high school what a very eventful first half we had on our hands here in the orange pit back and forth ball game the olympians had the lead up to ten at one point in the second quarter the panthers battled their way back to get it within two well they actually tied the ball game excuse me and to end the second quarter corinne gravy hit a long three-point basket at the buzzer as time expired going into halftime scoring wise for the panthers the freshman water has nine points and she comes in averaging 11.4 excuse me 16.3 points per game addison kent hit four first half threes giving her 12 points brooke number 11 has three points thompson number 14 has two points kina mashuno has two points as well and lenny lilly ernstus has five points and that is your scoring for the visitors the jennings county panthers scoring wise for your home team the olympians corinne gravy has nine points sage stahl had six first quarter points but did not score in the second quarter bachmann leads the way so far with 11 first half points four in the first half excuse me four in the first quarter and seven in the second quarter and gabby dean has two points and maybe roberts has three and caitlyn crothers has two as well so i'm sure it's going to be the same way here in the second half once again we want to thank you guys for all tuning in quite a bit of people watching on this big game for each of these teams here tonight whether if you're cheering on the panthers or your home team the olympians we want to thank you guys for all tuning in to this hhc championship matchup one team's looking to win conference for the first time since 2008 and that is your home team the olympians and the panthers routinely win conference at the girls basketball level so i'm sure they're looking to repeat their efforts have like they do many years once again it is a three-point ballgame scores 36-33 in favor of the olympians just want to thank you guys for bearing with me here normally i have a partner zach pierce but he is like i mentioned earlier off to college so i'm having to produce announce and keep stats as well and try to keep the score up to date so if i'm a little slow that is why so i just want to thank you guys for being with me here so we are underneath a minute here and so we are underway with the second half we should be in store for a good one this is the conference championship game if genius county were to win it would be a three-way split with the olympians the panthers and the bedford stars jenny's county basketball will have the ball to start the first quarter once again we want to give a big shout out to our jv team as they picked up the win over the panthers as well start the second half are the starters for the olympians gravy roberts bachmann and dean and stahl so olympian will be on defense here the panthers will be going right to left and the olympians will be going left to right as the olympians start off in their zone as they have all season long and a quick three taken by the panthers off the mark but rebounded by addison thompson was the one to shoot the three kent's 4-3 she was red-hot in the first half could not get that one to fall baseline jump shot woodard is off the mark and another offensive rebound by the panthers and we're gonna have a jump ball three offensive rebounds there early for the panthers but a jump ball so it will be olympian basketball with 7 27 remaining here in the third quarter looks like they're going to double corinne gravy but sage stahl runs down and gets it and looks like she's going to dribble the ball picks up her dribble and finally gets it to grivey once again the olympians are going left to right on your screen karen gravity down low to bachmann and fires up the shot off the mark gets her own rebound and stays with it and gets the shot to fall leah bachmann with 13 points leading a scorer here tonight she comes in averaging just under nine points great pass inside to woodard and she gets the two-point basket to fall as well back and forth ball game early on in the second half gives woodard 11 points she's in double figures here tonight for the panthers karen gravy crosses over gets inside picks the dribble up down low to gabby dean and gets it to bachmann above the free-throw line back to gravity she dribbles to her left in the corner roberts for three and shorts and rebounded by the panthers they have the numbers here and a great move there by number 14.

kenny checks in and lily ernst checks in for the panthers bachmann gets it up and good the red hots leah bachmann will be at the line for one free throw comes in shooting once again a 76 percent at the line she had an n1 as well in the second quarter she's looking to repeat her efforts here in the third and short did not get that one to fall and we're gonna have a foul committed by the olympians albany spear will pick up the foul her first team's first 408 remaining here three-point ball game in favor of the olympians the oh still in their zone and a travel violation committed by the panthers bachmann will take the ball out and gravy throws it up court to albany down the left-hand side she slows it down and at the top of the key to bachmann she dribbles to her right hands it off to sage down low to bachmann she spins inside woodard strips it away but the olympians keep it alive back to bachmann dribbles inside back to melee excuse me albany sage spins and cannot get that one to fall on a great box out by woodard and she keeps that one alive kent up to thompson up and off the mark but draws a foul she'll be at the line for two thompson comes in shooting 79 percent at the free throw line so she'll be at the line for two excuse me the refs called that one on the floor so thompson will not be at the line for two 325 remaining here in the third quarter addison takes the ball out and gives it to thompson tree dribbles left down low to mishuno addison fires up the three and short and a strong rebound there by grivy as she has two defenders on her you can really tell the panthers are doing their best to stop her tonight as sage dribbles and will travel turnover committed by the olympians 306 remaining here in the third quarter jennings county basketball once again three-point ball game in favor of the olympians kenz has not scored so far who hit four three-pointers as woodard gets the shot to fall she's been red hot here in the second half cuts the lead down to one as albany will draw the foul meschino picks up the foul her forwards team sixth foul one foul away from being in the bonus officials time out clock kept running after the whistle so they were going to put 242 back on the clock 15 points for woodard here who comes in averaging 16.3 points per game i'm sure she's gonna surpass her average see if the olympians could get something to fall gabby dean muscle way up and good [Applause] gabby dean gives her four points and woodard fires up the shot but off the mark panthers looking for a foul sage stall up to albany spear takes a long jump shot and off the mark and kept a lie by corinne gravy with the offensive rebound across to albany bachmann inside and blocked by woodard but she will draw the foul panthers fans not happy that is a i don't know call there even as an olympian fan that call was questionable with 202 remaining here bachmann is at the line 4-2 she is one for two here tonight and good bachmann gets the first one to fall and misses that one so 50 on the night from the free throw line for bachmann under two minutes here in favor of the olympians bachmann steals the ball and she's going to dribble it down and a travel violation committed by the olympians great hustle there by the panthers to get back on defense and cause the travel violation and the turnover committed by the olympians 142 remaining here as addison looks to fire a three could not get it tries to draw the foul but off the mark great idea could not get the fall though and out of bounds and great hustle there by the panther that is number five addison kent who tried to save it but will be out of bounds olympian basketball but we're gonna have a timeout taken by the panthers a 30-second timeout with 127 remaining here in the third quarter once again 127 remaining here in the third quarter leah bachmann leads olympians with 18 points here tonight she's been doing a fantastic job inside and mid-range jump shots here tonight after the timeout taken by jeans county will be olympian basketball bachmann's going to take the ball out here [Music] and gets it into gravity that's one of the few times i've seen gravity be able to get the ball in that easily as stall passes it up top to bachmann up high to gabby dean and up and good [Music] bachmann almost gets the steal in it's going to be olympian basketball great play there by bachmann gets the olympians fan on their feet olivia elmore checks in number 20.