um so uh we're we're we want to get back into a regular normal uh athletic year i think that's the biggest thing that we're looking forward to i know our coaches and athletes are as well and you know we're again good here to all of the covet protocols that are going to be adjusted uh and we will follow suit and we will do everything that we can you know to keep our athletes out there you can go on to the next one and just that you know i kind of alluded to it earlier but you know we want that normal fall athletic season there's nothing like watching our teams in the fall uh it's a great time of year it's probably the best weather of the year uh and get a lot of people out and one thing i have to say we got a little taste of that a couple days ago you know our our campus was jumping we had a lot of home events going on it was kind of great to see that it was awesome to see all the people out uh awesome to see our athletes playing and participating it was fantastic and it felt like it felt like normal and i think that's you know what we're all looking forward to uh one last thing i'd like to end with um you know our upper and our upper uh admin team from our upper admin you know they've been wonderful with me and just uh helping me out our our high school team and our churchill team also they're awesome excellent educators involved there and i am so happy to be able to work with all these people day in and day out it's it's been a great experience for me in my first three or four weeks here and i really look forward to being here and you know seeing more of our athletics and more of what our school has to offer our our student athletes thank you very much for this i really appreciate it thank you thank you frank thank you so much for coming and talking and giving everybody not just the board but everybody who's watching a chance to get to know you you have a lot of current and former sport parents on this board we all but we all have a passion for athletics and like everyone else in our community we have a passion for our children that's a great word passion is an awesome word to use well it's it's a great word to use with athletics because it also involves sportsmanship which we're we're so proud of in this district i also would be remiss if i didn't take a minute to thank someone um in september we were presented with a very unique situation we needed an interim athletic director um we didn't really have time to train anyone so it had to be someone who could hit the ground running and oh yeah during a pandemic uh with lots of restrictions and upsets to the usual rules regulations and seasons and just like in the comics there was one man who came to mind um and that was um knop or frank knoppenberger's people know it yes i was mr frank knappenberger uh our former uh athletic director and supervisor of health and phys ed for the district agreed to come out of retirement and be our interim director and you checked off all the boxes frank and then some once again thanks for bleeding green thanks for being there you did an awesome job and i'm sure that you're going to continue to work with frank to help make his transition even easier and smoother and we thank you dr velasquez did you want to add anything no i want to concur with you president becker and on you know behalf of all the administrators extend just extreme appreciation to mr knoppenberger for coming out of retirement coming back to east brunswick he did it like like you mentioned at a critical time with covid protocols uh and you know frank just brings such a wealth of knowledge with nj siaa rules regulations and and the protocols that were being put in place uh he did a phenomenal job and we were able to pull off seasons for the athletes and i mentioned that to the athletes of the signing day that you know we were we were a school district that had a season we had all of our seasons and we had some we had some things we had to resolve we had some quarantines we had to do but they weren't significant and we were able to deal with them and i i really want to express my appreciation to our athletes too who took it upon themselves to treat themselves and their fellow athletes with such care and i think that contributed to our success so and i i look forward to mr malta and his leadership and that like i said it was evident at the signing day ceremony the other day so i look forward to many many great years with mr malta thank you i appreciate it and just to piggyback on that you know uh frank knoppenberger has been a a wealth of knowledge for me and he's been a great person to you know throw things off of and talk to about this position who who better than him and uh you know he and cristiano have been a great help to me in these early few weeks of just getting acclimated to the position because i think they they both did such a fantastic job and uh they're going to be a tough act to follow but i'm going to do my best that's part of the challenge so i want to thank them i have to give a shout out to christian ozzo too because when christian houser did double duty he assumed a new position at the high school as an assistant principal but he still had his feet in a couple of camps the same time and he demonstrated the excellence that we've come to expect in east brunswick so thanks to him too and the phenomenal job that he did during his tenure as the supervisor of athletics yeah chris sorry i didn't mean to leave you out forgive me um you did do the double duty and you continue to contribute so much to our district and to our kids so we're just lucky to have you in any capacity and i believe we now have a second presentation dr valeski yes president becker we have an update for the boarding community on diversity and equity initiative that we kicked off with effective school solutions and leading that for the district is dr figueroa who is going who's our assistant superintendent for student services and who will deliver the presentation hey good evening everyone tonight i'd like to update you on the work that we've been doing with effective school solutions on further building a foundation of racial literacy and cultural inclusion this fall we contracted with effective school solutions which i'll say ess because it's a lot easier to say to help us with our efforts to further our work with racial literacy and cultural diversity we realize the importance of having an outside organization come in to look at what we were doing in these important areas over the past five months ess has conducted 11 focus groups surveyed stakeholders gathered data that we can use to build a sustainable culture of improvement in that time ess has also provided 18 professional learning sessions for staff administration across the district so in phase one in the summary what we have done already the needs assessment we've created an action plan and as i mentioned before racial literacy and cultural sensitivity professional development for administrators teachers and support staff for the needs assessment basically how we collected the data school visits we had six different schools that we that ess visited looked at climate and inclusivity focus groups there were 11 various groups each one about an hour session long district-wide climate survey we had over 600 responses to that survey which is very good terms of the data collection there's several components that were included such as student discipline employee demography and grade level required course materials questions related to curriculum and this slide is consistent with the work we have planned to do elementary families said 74 percent books in my school show different races hammer shoulder 63 percent believe that curriculum materials used are culturally inclusive and reflect diverse races and ethnicities the high school and churchill 60 believe materials were culturally inclusive parents 53 percent believe that materials were culturally inclusive and diverse and staff 56 staff believed the curriculum materials were inclusive and diverse next slide please so if we look at our culture of racial inclusivity um we scored very well in the green areas and some of the top yellow areas areas like families are part of events students of all backgrounds socialize and work together school rules are applied fairly in most cases though these two on the bottom right one clear rules against racial insensitivity was only 71.38 and students in my class schools respect each other's racial and ethnic differences 68.83 okay if we can look at the disciplinary history by subgroup you can see that it's 2016-2017 through the 2019 220 season data on suspensions black and hispanic students have represented about 35 to 45 percent of the suspension days while representing about 12 percent of the student population okay so let's take a look at the breakdown racial breakdown of staff and students our asian staff are only six percent 33 percent of our students of asian background so there's a big disparity there hispanic staff five percent seven percent students black students at three percent i'm sorry black staff at three percent and students at five percent so we've made some improvements but we definitely need to continue to look at that in terms of staff diversity disproportionality and restorative justice restorative justice is something dr vanilla had previously started at the high school uh restorative justice focuses on identifying motivation impact of action alternative behaviors with a focus on educating and building empathy so it's more therapy versus punishment well let's take a look at some emerging insights um main which is our main focus for us in terms of work we can do first i'd like to acknowledge that we have staff that genuinely care about all of our students that was clear throughout the data staff diversity we're working with ess on possible recommendations to expand our staff search pool to recruit more quality individuals of diverse backgrounds opportunities to make curriculum more culturally sensitive i know dr bowley and her team are looking at curriculum assessment updates uh that address multiple ethnic and racial viewpoints and this this work takes time also opportunities to improve cultural racial inclusivity we plan on working directly with ess to improve respect for racial differences more clear rules about being racially unkind to improve staff ability to address an acceptance and inclusivity of all students opportunities for holistic discipline approach ess can help us work on further focus of restorative justice and finally on this this particular emerging insights opportunities for more educator readiness to handle those racial conversations and incidents ess can help us better support staff and administration uh in adding to their toolkit in terms of how to manage these discussions effectively okay so key recommendations continue the professional learning capacity building um also key recommendation of expanding staff diversity uh create more culturally sensitive uh curriculum and assessment continuous thought of justice prepare staff to better be better equipped to handle culturally sensitive discussions and topics and that's the the plan for us at this point moving forward through next year we also plan next year to eventually get parents and families more involved as we focus on the following year as well i also want to thank dr volesky and the board of education for all of your support in this work thank you lou any uh comments questions from board members thank you uh again lou it's it's always very um exciting but also so important to hear what we're doing to promote um being inclusive being tolerant our children about basic kindness and respect not just for each other but for themselves i think that being in a continual state of improvement and looking to put forward new initiatives it's absolutely the way to go investing in professional development is absolutely the way to go i know our teachers our users were before but something i used in conjunction with this district all the time passionate about promoting tolerance justice respect so really really very glad to see all this mark one i believe you had your hand up thank you yes i i think i'm gonna take some time to uh look at this that was the first time we got to look at the items on that survey um but being in the schools for five years working there being a former student i'm very proud of our staff in the schools and you know i wanted to thank them thank dr figueroa and everybody involved in this so thank you to the staff anyone else susanna yeah i just want to echo that um thank you for for this initiative and the work and um you know and and really taking uh taking the time to to have a objective you know third-party view to come in and look at it move forward it's an important topic that's top of the news all the time and you know it's it's uh you know the children are our future and you know i know that's a cliche we overuse it but they really are and anything we can do to help move forward the culture of uh inclusion is is definitely a great step forward thank you okay next on our agenda is the good of the cause for the public members of the public may provide comments at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password you see before you on the screen in order to be recognized use the chat feature select the zoom meeting host then enter and send your name to the host you will be recognized to speak when your name is called individuals will be invited to speak in the order in which we have received your request participants are limited to three minutes duration and again i want to reiterate what we said at the top of the meeting this is the time for the public to come talk to the board please do not mistake us being quiet and attentive as anything other than that we listen and hear everything you say we do not view this as a forum for discussion for question and answer we view this as a time for you to be able to speak any questions any follow-ups will be handled by dr volesky and his team so joe is there anyone wishing to speak to the board actually bernie's controlling that bernie there was no one in the queue at this time okay uh seeing none i close the public portion moving on we have several resolutions of appreciation laurie would you please give us the honor of reading the first one resolution of appreciation administrative professions day professionals day whereas administrative professionals are partners in the education of our students and whereas administrative professionals play a major role in creating an environment that is conducive to learning in our schools and whereas administrative professionals provide valuable services to our students faculty staff parents and other members of the community and whereas administrative professionals are essential to the efficient effective operation of the schools and whereas administrative professionals facilitate important communication between the school's parents and other members of the community and whereas administrative professionals helped to maintain the excellent reputation of the district now therefore be it resolved that the east brunswick board of education proclaims wednesday april 24 first 2021 as administrative professionals day in the district and expresses appreciation to our administrative professionals for the dedication and commitment to our students and our schools may please have a motion for this resolution move by barbara second second by lee wu is there any discussion all those in favor aye aye opposed abstain motion carries our next resolution resolution of doctor of appreciation i'm going to ask dr valesky to please read thank you president becker resolution of appreciation faculty staff appreciation week whereas all members of the faculty staff contribute to the excellence of the school district and whereas all members of the faculty and staff are partners in the education of our students and whereas all members of the faculty and staff play an essential role in creating a welcoming and secure learning atmosphere in which all students are able to achieve at the fullest extent and whereas the dedication and commitment of all members of the faculty and staff are directly related to the outstanding accomplishments of our students and whereas there is no greater legacy than the sound education of our that our students receive now they're therefore being resolved that the east brunswick board of education proclaims may 3rd through may 7 2021 as faculty staff appreciation week and commends all members of the faculty and support staff for the time and effort they devote to our students so moved move by heather second by barbara is there any discussion uh i think laurie uh that was lori lori i'm sorry and did you wish to say something yes you know i just wanted to say this is when i get to put my parent hat on this is one of my favorite weeks of the year because our staff is so wonderful and having been a student in the district and a parent in the district and a board member in the district um this is the best week for me because no matter what school i'm in i get to have all the other parents and the students come together and really show their appreciation and especially when you look at what we've been through with the pandemic and it's affected families in so many different ways the one thing that has never changed is that when you say to the parents in this district please come out and show your appreciation for your staff and your kids teachers they all are there and generous and willing to give and so unbelievably thankful and it's just a beautiful thing to see so this is this is they're all wonderful resolutions and i appreciate our nurses i appreciate our administrative um assistance but i just have to say um not to play favorites because i appreciate everyone but as i said this is something that really i think brings the district together and the parents and it's just a great week so and i have fun planning it so gloria i think you brought up a really good point i remember when i was pta president um always having trouble getting parents enough parent volunteers to fully staff any given event we were going to do except for the staff appreciation uh in our case i it was breakfast um they they couldn't get to me fast enough offering to volunteer so um says a lot about the people the parents in our district but also the faculty and staff they want to do it and i'll tell you it's funny when i first took over years ago it was a day and i started in the different schools i was in making it a week long and we did something different and parents do and and not to embarrass barbara but i was talking to barbara about hammer shoulder and what i was doing this week and how excited i was even with the uh covid um you know restrictions and barbara turns around says hey well i gave to to centra that's uh to to churchill she said i'd love to to donate i love the staff at hammershow so you know that's the thing parents are so unbelievable i'm barbara's such a generous person i didn't mean to embarrass you but her kids are long past hammer commercial so it was just a nice thing to see but i think that's what our staff does it inspires the generosity and the real true appreciation from our parents thanks barb was there another hand up heather i just wanted to express my greatest appreciation to the staff and to the teachers um this year has been unlike any other and i do think that perception of what happens inside well inside the classroom wherever the classroom may be but perception of what happens inside the classroom this year has swung so many times you know you see people teachers and staff are our heroes and then it's you know strong feelings in other directions about what should happen in that frustration with the pandemic and i think despite swings and frustrations and huge wins that the teachers and the staff have just always provided such an excellent level of education and support for the kids i think it hasn't mattered where the classroom was if it's you know on on teams or if it's in the classroom or on the field the support for the students has been consistently above and beyond what anyone could hope for and i know the teachers have worked more hours this year than any other year in their career the paraprofessionals everyone is just seems to be working round the clock and i am deeply appreciative for what they're doing for the health of the community as well as the education of the kids thank you was there anyone else mark sismar yeah most of it was said by the others so i won't repeat that um thank you very much and you know just note from september the staff came back into the schools it's important to get the kids in the schools and the hybrid training is is very difficult on the staff i've heard from many staff members and they they answered the call they came in the buildings and they did the job and very proud of them and this this has to be the toughest year on record for a teacher by far for what they've done in the classrooms and they continue to do so thank you very much from the bottom of my heart anyone else and we have one more resolution that i believe laurie is going to read about national school nurse day before you do that you just didn't say all in favor oh sorry all in favor aye aye opposed abstain motion carries thanks joe lori well i will read this resolution but i have to correct myself i realized something what makes the second resolution so important is that it encompasses all three so i just realized that i don't have to apologize to the nurses or the administrative professionals because the beauty of staff appreciation is it's everybody right there you go even dr valesky even dr volesky especially dr valesky so with that being said um where is east brunswick public schools team of nurses positively impact the health and safety of the students and staff and whereas our school nurses play an essential role in creating a welcoming and secure learning atmosphere in which our stude all students are able to achieve to the fullest extent and whereas the dedication and commitment of all east brunswick school nurses played a vital role during the covet 19 pandemic having been instrumental in keeping students and staff safe now therefore be it resolved that the east brunswick board of education proclaims may 12 2021 as national school nurses day and commends all east brunswick school nurses for their extraordinary time and effort they devote to our students and staff i please have a motion for this resolution so moved mu by lee will second second jeff second by jeff for any discussion leewoo so i concur all my fellow board members that i want to give my special appreciation to our school nurses our society is changing so fast our student is changing on daily basis our schoolnotes are facing challenges dynamically changing every day so they have to deal with our students health confidential and they care about them on the daily basis i really appreciate thank you dr boleski and then barbara president becker i just simply want to say very quickly the administrative professionals the faculty staff the nurses my success wouldn't be possible without them that i just simply um a representation of the district these are the people that come to work every day do the work and the resolutions have lots of nice words in them but i've got to tell you the actions are so powerful and that's what i saw when we returned to school on monday and we saw just happy staff welcoming students back our nurses walking around making sure students were safe and you know in every single day i'm supported by two ladies in my office who you begin to understand what the relationship is when they can tell you this is what i think you would say because they could already anticipate how you're going to behave so i appreciate everyone so much so thank you barbara i believe you had your hand up i i just wanted to echo uh what we have said but thank you to everyone from our teachers our nurses and our administrative professionals and everyone involved with the schools and especially the nurses uh you know um they really have they've been put in a position with with the pandemic that they i'm sure none of them have ever imagined and really we thank you all for for all your dedication very well said anyone else okay moving on to our board agenda can i please yes susan you wanted to say something no i don't we have to say i to this last oh boy i'm sorry folks my problem is i'm looking at my ipad for one thing my laptop for another and the phone for another so i keep forgetting where i am in the agenda thank you for everyone for keeping me on track all those in favor giving you a real challenge tonight joe okay okay now for our board of education items can i please have a motion to combine items one through six move by laurie second by leewoo is there any discussion mark mark one yes on item number four the policies policy zero one five two board officers i wanna hear from the curriculu the uh policy committee i made a suggestion and it was tabled a few meetings ago because it doesn't include any opportunity for candidates to make a statement or for candidates to take direct questions from board members in a public meeting and i guess my question is for all for all four people that were at the policy meeting why is that not part of the policy for our election process susanna uh yeah uh so so it was um brought to the policy committee it was discussed um there was not a consensus to make an additional change to it so we moved it forward um you know in the version that you see it um we also took into account uh some information we we received from from matt um i don't know matt if you want to jump in and and you know discuss you know the feedback from what other districts are doing as we talked about so what i did for the for the board is i went and did a search of the various districts we represent as well as other districts i didn't see that in any policy i looked at the model policies for school boards and strauss esme i spoke to school boards and well it's not illegal to put that in there it's unusual um and i would say that it's not i haven't seen that in any other policy in the state one might exist school boards did say it's not illegal to have that but it is quite uncommon um i also spoke to strauss esme the person i know there and they said that they've never seen that done either so i gave i provided that information to the policy committee when they asked me for that can i ask a question uh to uh mr kobe regarding that please jeff oh jeff you're so frozen okay yes no my voice is here uh mr kilby in in your research and going back to that is it also uh not typical that more than one candidate uh is uh trying to secure that position therefore leaving really no necessary reason uh to have any type of presentation made to the efficacy of that particular candidate mr winston i i didn't i wouldn't be able to discern that from looking at a board policy i can tell you in my travels around the state i've been at many boards where there's contested um i don't call it elections but contested appointment for the position of board president i mean typically what happens is as you know there's no second required there's a just a nomination and very often the person or the individual who makes the nomination for a particular candidate says why he or she is nominating that person to be the president and serving on the board similar to what you guys did uh earlier this year um when there's not a contested election clearly you're right you wouldn't need to have any type of of statement but even you know i'm not able to discern whether or not you know a given board has its policy because they've had contested elections or not what i can just tell you is that i did not see anything in there where there were statements made or you know minor speeches made by people running for the board um one of the board positions that's not to say that somebody nominating somebody just as you guys did like this earlier this year uh can make a statement on behalf of of the person that you're nominating and that is that is typical okay you can't tell who can't see you that's okay i i understand that's i was trying to get in quickly so i'm under if i'm understanding this correctly the hesitancy of including this is simply based on the reason that i've checked with we've checked with other districts and they simply are not doing it is that is that our position are you tell are you asking me mr winston yeah yeah yeah i i don't i don't mean i don't make the call i don't make the calls on what the board wants to do with its policies i just provide legal guidance as i said including that is not illegal i'm sorry bad feedback including that is not illegal i just did a search of other policies around the state that i could come across uh on just going on websites and going to school boards etc and i didn't see any policy that had that type of language in it again it's not illegal to have it but i was just i was just providing i was asked to provide what do other districts do that's the information i provided susanna [Music] yeah i was just going to add to address the question the policy uh committee members who um who were in attendance discussed it took took that into consideration certainly that it wasn't the only consideration um and determined that uh the the policy would be better served um as it was and and you know and that's you know that's where we ended up mark yeah i have two things to say on that one there will be a candidate statement because the way we do it now when someone nominates someone they do make a statement what's simply going to occur is the candidate will nominate themselves and we'll make a statement whether or not our policy has it in there because that's past practice the other part of this is if a candidate for president or vice president of this board is reluctant to take questions from other board members in a public setting that gives me concern we should be more open with these things we should do it in front of the public we serve the public so to not have a candidate statement to not take questions from board members and someone wants to be a president or vice president of this board that gives me great concern that's why i brought it up that's why i suggested it i think we need to be more open with the public vicky when it's my turn jeff let me meet you okay let me just see is there anybody did i miss somebody's hand okay jeff go ahead uh to miss true um i understand that was the position of the policy committee and i'm happy to hear that it was debated can you please uh provide give me a little bit more color on this what is the hesitancy of doing this what was the pushback to feel that it did not need to be included during that policy meeting what was the objection certainly um taking into consideration that um you know a policy is something that we want to make sure is something that lives on it's you know consistency across the state that was one consideration it wasn't the only one um board members run right you're you're not just placed into a position so everyone knows what the board member stands for so it just didn't seem necessary to add that um you know that that step and add something that nobody else has done uh so you know i'll i'll leave it at that there were other board members if anybody wants to comment but um that you know that was the view of the policy committee anyone else yeah just on that and i appreciate the answer so really i was i was i was closer to right i guess i addressed the question to the wrong person uh when i asked mr jayakovi but your first your first response was that's not the way anybody else is doing it in the state uh in spite of the issues that we've had hold on hold on in spite of the issues that we've had on this board in the most recent election the the first thing you stated was that's not the way anybody else is doing in the state is that really the reason why so if you're done um that was a consideration as i said the members in attendance who took the time to you know be members of the committee thank you very much um discussed it and did not feel it was necessary to make the change it was a consensus view um i was at the meeting that night and um from what i recall from the meeting there was a sentiment that um by the time a person's name is put forward into nomination that um there wasn't a need for a q a session that the person nominating them could do a job stating their position or as mark just said someone can nominate themselves he's absolutely correct and make a statement but we didn't feel that we wanted to turn this into a forum for a debate if you will and that there was an opportunity i see your handmark and that there was an opportunity for the person nominating to make points about why the person they were nominating would be a good leader and or as you did say mark and it was an excellent point one can nominate themselves and make a statement absolutely and we did not feel it was a matter of not wanting to be transparent and not wanting to face the public uh and that somebody running for the board is looking to dodge look uh somebody interested in being a board leader was looking to dodge questions and answers from their fellow board members i i do feel that we we did want to know how is this being handled by other boards what is considered good practice best practice and so we were very interested in mass conclusion that he was not aware of any other boy that had this as a part of their policy so it was an aspect of it mark now i you had your hand up again maybe mr carangelo can go first okay thank you guys so my position being that i came in during my first meeting to vote for a president i would have appreciated uh knowing kind of beforehand who was running and then when we got to the meeting uh you know what you know person a running put their name in a hat and then they made a little statement and they might ask a question um and i'm i'm glad i voted for who i did you know but um you know because i think vicky does a fantastic job so i'm happy i you know and then um you know person b so judging from me coming in uh i would have been more i don't know inclined to go with what jeff and mark are saying not because of any other reason but the timing i was a new board member my first meeting was you know boom vote for president i was like oh my god what do i do you know but uh now i see i made the right choice though uh just because other boards do it doesn't mean that this type of situation where someone comes in first day boom the first thing i gotta do is vote for president was a little scared you know because i don't know if i should make the right choice the wrong choice so having a statement and maybe b asking multiple people questions would have helped guide me to my answer so i'm just an individual case that probably happens maybe once every 10 years who knows but that is a reason to have a statement and maybe ask some questions no actually mark any new board member their first meeting would be that meeting in january now since we changed around elections from april to november the board reorganizes in january which is the first meeting for any new board member so any new board member would absolutely be in that same situation since then i think it's appropriate to allow the new board member an opportunity to you know hear what the candidate is saying that way they can make a you know a good uh you know estimate of why they would want to you know vote for that person for president because it's super important i mean you do a great job so you know i just wanted to throw my experience because i was a new board member and i think that's what maybe mark is just trying to say is maybe new board members need a little more you know listening to candidates thank you mark appreciate that viewpoint heather oh i just wanted to say having been in the same situation mark you know earlier but the same situation i felt that that came across in the nomination speeches the people that were nominating the people that were running had a great deal to say about the board career and the achievements of the people they were nominating and their perspective on what they had to offer which i thought was a solid way to do it if only because i think people are less likely to speak to their own strengths as much as somebody who cares to take the time to think it through and nominate them so i felt that i was given that information in fact more than i had even expected in the nomination speeches they were there and i felt confident with what i was doing although at that point in time it was a different election but um but there was a lot of information provided just in a different way heather thank you i i understand and i appreciate that and uh helping me through but um and asking a question of a potential uh president would be appropriate as well and i know that you know someone nominating would say some you know beautiful stuff it's warranted but asking a question from another board member might still be appropriate is there any other discussion mark yeah you know again i agree with mr crangelo on any given year you could have three new board members coming in on the election process that's just the way it rolls so you'd have three new members coming in relying on one statement made by another person it's kind of thin um and i i do like to ask people questions in public and that's not taking a shot at anybody or anything but listen when you're in a public meeting we we have the open public meetings act and if somebody wants to be a leader on this board as the president or vice president i think they should answer questions from board members only i know if you opened it up you know it would be impossible to control with you know hundreds of people possibly but when we go to get elected the east project education association gives us a forum there's questions and answers we hear people in real time answer questions you want to be the leader on this board you want to be the leader on any any type of board i think that type of person that wants to be that leader should have to answer questions in a public setting that's my opinion and i don't see why it would be a bad thing i've heard nothing to the contrary that'll be a bad thing to add that to our policy mark did you want to separate this out this policy and have a separate vote taken on it or do you do you want me to move on with calling for a motion for all the policies uh can we separate uh yeah we separate out 152 can i make a motion to separate out the vote for 150 there is a motion on the table to separate uh 152 is there a second don't move jeff angelo second okay one one second um all those in favor i opposed obscene okay motion carries so first i want to go back to the original motion which is for all items on the board of ed agenda one through six with the exception of policy number zero one five two under item number four can i please have a motion move by laurie second by second second by susanna is there any discussion yes i have a question on one particular policy well about another policy okay um mark angelo had actually raised his hand first thank you so uh 2624 is the program uh a grading system and i see that it says uh revised um a plus 98 to 100.
do i have a motion for that motion by miss ryan do i have a second oh miss fleming thank you i'm sorry about that miss fleming with a second uh any questions or comments miss ryan yeah i just have a quick um comment for the board um as you'll see in 12-2 their second reading that we approved last board meeting and at 12 1 our new ones that aren't but most of them all of them are mandated so there really wasn't much discussion that needed to be had so please take a look at those and if you have any questions contact me or any other member of the policy committee thank you thank you ms ryan any questions or comments miss noel i'm sorry being in the environmental field the lead testing is that are they making that less often or more often whoever can answer that on the policy i had read it a few weeks ago i thought they were requiring it less often i guess you can you can answer that privately mr mr dante the last time that we tested uh december 2016.
it was 50.3 and 49.7 the people are commenting are evenly split so there's not consensus i know that we talk to people who are like-minded and that that tends to make us think that that everyone thinks the way we do but it's there's division in the community we're not going to please everybody i recognize that so then i went to the the state numbers um and i picked a few dates and i'll tell you why i picked them i started in march of 2020 because at that point we were on spring break and we determined because of the concern of a possible outbreak to not return to school so i felt like that was a pertinent date to compare to where we are i then looked at july of because that was the last time when we had a discussion that we approved a mitigation plan and i'll remind you that we approved to follow metrics not knowing what the metrics were those metrics have changed since they were issued in august at least four times by by the way the state communicates them four times that i could track and then i looked at the peak numbers for each of the following metrics so if i just look at the positivity rate i'll just use a couple of examples but we could go through several in march 2020 the positivity rate that according to the arizona department of health service services website was 9.1 percent today it's 4.2 or 4.2 at its peak it was 24.4 in other words when we quit meeting when we quit school at spring break of 2020 it has the rate is 53.8 percent lower today than it was then when we look at our discussion in last july it was at 10 we've fallen 58 percent if i look at the peak we fall in 82.8 percent you know if i look at the real purpose behind all the mitigation strategies as communicated originally and repeatedly even though the public message has perhaps changed was to enable our health care system to react to this we knew that people were going to get it could we enable the health care system to react so as i looked at hospitalization um hospitalization in march 2020 there it was 311 during that week the current week it's 235.
so between those two which total uh about a half a million dollars that helped buoy the um net difference between higher claims offset by these stop-loss reimbursements and rebates so in essence the bottom line is that our reserve fund balance actually increased in march by two hundred twenty eight thousand seven ninety five so as we ended march the reserve balance stands at one million two hundred twenty five thousand six forty two certainly better we we did hit a low of about nine hundred thousand dollars a couple of months ago so it's looking a little better it's not at the two months or better that we'd like for it to be but um you know it it is a better position that we're in overall for the year our claims are averaging about a million nine thousand per month you know that's versus eight hundred thousand dollars expected you know we we believe it's an anomaly year that's what our benefits consultant and cigna you know are reporting um and we hope that you know this will normal normalize for next year you know our reserve balance you know is lower than we need it to be we need to increase the contribution rate for next year that's what's been proposed in the budget so overall even though claims were up the the rebate and the reimbursements helped buoy the reserve balance this month and that's the medical benefits report uh well you know firstly uh you know since we've been in remote for what i don't know i guess eight months or something like because we did meet in the summer for a few times but the the luxury of you sharing your screen and uh instead i have to actually pull up the report luckily i brought my computer to you know to to view it while while you give your presentation um so it looks like um if because the the the money the uh stop loss and the uh and the prescription rebate those are one-time infusions correct at least for for this year the we won't see any additional prescription rebates this year we may see some additional stop-loss reimbursements and uh and it looks like so let's say we we continued on the the million-dollar track again uh it looks like we would have enough fun uh reserve balance to carry us through june at the very least if we go over 225 000 a month that looks like we'll be okay through june until our next budget is uh enshrined i guess right if that happens and we get no stop-loss reimbursements we'll be painfully close to zero in reserves right i hope you're wrong right yeah i know it would be bad i'm just saying we wouldn't be zero right yeah go claims are ahead on average a million dollars a little bit you know the reserve is really way closer to just a lot you know a little bit more than a month so yeah our experience is not unusual based on what the insurance company is saying well the claims the anomaly and claims we know this happens every few years you just get one of those years where you the claims exceed the actuarial expectation um but it's not just cheshire it's not expected to continue to next year you know next year the the consultants are telling us that they expect claims to be about 900 thousand so from an actuarial basis what and i know we've talked about this a lot in the last few months and during the budget presentation what's driving our high claims this year is a lot of claims above the 25 000 threshold more than we've seen you know last year at this same time so it's you know the bad words but the luck of the draw with the claims in some years and that's what's happened to us and again by the way it's not covered directly driving those claims so as of last as of last month february not march the of the 25 000 claims there was one covert claim that was over 25 000 and it was about thirty thousand dollars um can you just remind me of what we budgeted for the medical benefits contribution in our next year's budget nine hundred thousand per month we did so we're matching what the actuaries are saying hopefully is expected for next year oh god willing yeah okay thank you you're welcome um just looking at the you guys uh you gave an analysis uh for the um during our meeting with the town council showing that was the 21 22 or the 2021 claims i think that's what it was right um and they seem to be somewhat age-related at least in my layman point of view i guess um so so i guess my question is so when we gave our uh our uh retirement handshake last was that last year i think it was was there were there any stipulations about um extended medical coverage in those in that agreement no there wasn't okay well there goes that theory so again i have no answer for anything we were not shaking hands during it either threshold how does the how does the carrier come to that arrive at that they they say that's what the average claim should be and anything over gun no no it was just to when you look at large claims that's just a starting threshold 25 000 and above you could have done 50 000 and above there would be less i guess but what is the formula for the 25 000 and is it a realistic formula i mean because i don't know what i mean medical inflation is running at what rate i'm just one uh i'm with them i'm trying to figure it out per year so is 25 000 a realistic threshold well it we're comparing claims above 25 000 last year to this year so the what we've seen is compared to last year we have more claims above the 25 000 threshold and more total dollars in claims above the 25 000 threshold so it's really for comparison purposes i don't know that there's any magic in looking at 25 000.
right yeah on your screen right okay so it's uh the area that's in red on the first line so i agree with john we need to have intent but i think we need to be careful in what the language is especially in the ordinance and i'd like to see less detail in the ordinance and more supporting documents that could be used for educational purposes and and i'd suggest that um we have some great consultants with that came and talked to us tonight too yeah from wild ones and then the rain garden group and others that we can test out you know the the direction that we go with this i hope um i would hope that you all would consider that um i see chris has a comment so it seems like we're talking about a number of different things here 316 refers to vegetation on private property and i see no business of the city on private property unless there's a view line problem or unless there are noxious weeds and one tends to get noxious weeds if one just lets the european grasses and weeds grow rather than having an intended or tended landscape with our native plants for example um one of the problems was when housing was being repossessed a little over a decade ago banks would repossess property and not maintain it at all of course not and so this ordinance was used to require the bank to maintain the yard because it negatively reflected on the neighborhood okay i think that's a really different issue than what we do in the right-of-way oh absolutely yes but that's that's why one of the reasons is here well it needs work okay yeah i agree so right away um this is some of the most inhospitable planting territory we have it is highly compacted soil it's often fill soil it's full of salt it gets snow piled up three feet deep in the winter it has trees many of which have serious roots along in the soil which makes it almost impenetrable [Music] apart from view lines safety view lines at corners and curves i agree with shannon 36 inches is quite adequate to do a native planting that works i don't i don't think we need to allow 42 inches there ever maybe an occasional flower but and not rain gardens that's really complicated as shannon says not to speak of highly compacted soils that don't perk so i it seems to me the most important part of this is view lines on curves and corners and that might extend into private property which means 316 needs some works work on curves and corners um i um i've often said that one cannot just quit mowing in our our european dominated flora environment we get weed grasses and we get european weeds some of which are very noxious like canned thistle an intended landscape a tender landscape has to mean not our invasive exotic weeds it also i think means at least your goal should say no woody plants in the street lawn except limbed up trees um most of them either need serious pruning which tends to get out of hand or they get out of hand and block views um [Music] this is such a complicated issue i i but i think you really need to separate private property from the right-of-way and keep heights and in the right-of-way low and make sure the landscape there really makes sense from the standpoint of ecology i had one client who had managed her front yard for decades as a knee-high kind of woodland prairie and and she'd manage the street lawn that way this was on a cul-de-sac where there was absolutely no issue about view lines safety view lines neighbor complained when some nice flowers got up about mid calf or just below the knee last spring before last the city zoning official came out and ordered my client to cut it down i'm i i've always been offended about the way this city works with its zoning enforcement it issues an order to respond to a complaint before it even investigates the complaint with the person complained against and then in this case which that didn't happen but in this case she might have learned that these were native plants and well within the height restrictions of the city and didn't need to be cut down despite the fact the neighbor complained um judges wouldn't be much better if someone goes to court and sues judges aren't going to know really need our zoning enforcement people to be first of all uh easier on their orders they need to look before the leap and maybe a bit more educated and not just in this area um so there's a lot of stuff involved in dealing with these street lawns and um and neighbors and complaints and all of these things that are behind this discussion 36 inches is high enough tended or untended or planned or or um authentic ecosystem elements or something needs to be fit in there that makes the things that get planted in street lawns not including woody plants except limbed up trees work and be defensible and uh um somehow make the job for the city easier at the same time safer for people the issue about blocking of views on private property at corners and curves that's a tough one anything else crust think i know there's a lot there this is difficult but i'm beginning to understand why we're talking about it and thank you kathy for being here and explaining some of the background i i i've been welcome i don't know if people can see this very well probably not but it's actually a diagram of a sight distance triangle that used to be part of the ordinance until it was taken out and i found it very helpful because people could understand it and if we can't put it in the ordinance we need to have it in the training material so i'll i'll have this to share at the next meeting we have other diagrams in the ubc okay yeah i i don't know it just the problem is that it varies from street to street in terms of um the the um in terms of uh the speed limit so site triangles change based on how fast the street is so it's not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing but i think it's one of those things that they're i don't know it feels like just having some simple something to be able to get the point across um to people but it does change if it's a 45 mile an hour street than if it's a 25 mile an hour but the our ordinance refers to the ashtow green book which isn't available uh for download unless you spend about 200 or you go to city hall and ask to borrow it so it would be good i think to have at least some guidelines yep i agree does the green book have diagrams in it that work at every speed limit every 10 miles an hour or whatever as i remember has multiple diagrams shannon probably is more familiar with it and it has formulas for all the different speed limits and there's just different conditions so um but i don't know it seems like there's got to be some simple way to get the point across and and address 80 of the situations you know i mean so i kind of like i'm sorry i was just going to say there's there's not a lot of 45 mile an hour streets that we have that have residential driveways coming off of them you know very few so i was just going to say that if we take a neighborhood approach people know their neighborhoods and can analyze and if we do get that kind of coordination that would be a great thing it's big but it would be really good and i think that people could then help each other solve the problems even if we had them for the most common speed limits for neighborhoods which would be like yeah most of them is 25 but if you live in a busier street you know most of them are up to 35.
maybe heather could answer the bet better because she's a teacher in school and then c plus is 76.79 um can someone explain to me why the plus is 86 because i would assume that an a plus would be a hundred like a plus would be a hundred um my suggestion to uh make uh a plus 99 to 100 and at b plus you know those numbers you know an 86 isn't a plus it's kind of middle so maybe someone can explain to me why these numbers they are um dr valensky joyce uh i'd like dr bully to respond right so um the only proposed revision to this policy is at the beginning the red line there removing the letter grades from the fourth and fifth grade standards based report card um the rest of the policy has been unchanged um this policy you know has been long-standing in the district and you know this grading system is what has been in place um okay so my question is why is what is the justification for a b plus at 86 and a c plus at 76 i would think that uh 70 you know 7 78 i mean not like a little higher would get them at plus am i making sense or in my office no you're making sense um the 98 you know because think about it a plus is 98 to 100 and then b plus is 86 so that's two points that are different 86 87.88 my suggestion of my thought i don't you know i'm not saying i need to change policy or whatever but reading through i would think that an 88 or 89 is more of a plus to me personally i'm going to say in 89 it's plus 88 isn't a plus i'm sorry mr angelo i didn't mean to interrupt you it's okay i jumped in too fast president becker yes um may i recommend that that i have dr bully's team research uh mr carangelo's questions uh and we return to another board meeting with some answers to the correct questions he's answer he's asking so you want to also um take this policy um out of the motion victor dr boley do you concur we can certainly look at at what mr crandall is mentioning i do know that these calculate into students gpa scores and are aligned with college board um i'm certainly willing to engage in a further conversation with you so what we'll do is we'll do that and we'll re-communicate with the entire board i'll do that in writing prior to the board meeting okay matt um why an 86 is a b plus that's considered uh even if it's college i mean i own a school and 86 is not a b plus in arsenal so mrs becker let me just say one before you guys go on right now is this the grading policy that you're presently utilizing 86 is a b plus yes so i my suggestion would be that you guys passed this resolution because if you try to change it now you could adversely affect children's gpas generally when you make changes like this this would be for incoming um freshmen or something like that you've got to be very careful because you don't want to change mid-year you would you could actually change people's rankings and everything in 86 which is kind of the middle um you know there's a plus yeah a lot of times mr mr crunch a lot of times they do this because some of the courses you know if you're taking an ap course and you get 86 they're so rigorous or honors course but i don't know if that's the reasoning but i was actually involved in federal litigation over a policy uh dealing with weighting of grades and stuff so just be very very cautious my suggestion is if this has been your current practice you should maintain it study it and then if you're going to implement a change you have to do it holistically so it doesn't affect any of the current students who've been relying on this policy in the past i think it's an excellent point mr jacoby i i wasn't suggesting that we changed the policy i was just suggesting that we give you know we provide answers before the okay or took action uh another another option would be to pass the changes that are being recommended here and then take a separate look at what mr carangelo was mentioning and provide a comprehensive answer i'm not suggesting what mr crandall is saying is incorrect it might be very correct but i think what you want to probably do is just make sure you have the policy in place and then you guys can study you can always revise the policy in the future and if you guys want to have you know 88 be a b-plus you can do that but you got to look to make sure it's not going to adversely affect any of the current students right and remember again um mark you're you're bringing up some very good points but again um as with any policy we would need five board members to agree to um change it so i want to change it i'm just thinking you would like you would like to have the administration consider reconfiguration and provide you with some justification for the current grade distribution uh i'm not saying i want to reconfigure i want answers as to why the b plus and because if you think about it 98 to 100 is you know pretty high but in 86 you know 76 is a c plus whether it's a hard class or not hard class so now we're going to say well you know an easier class c plus is still 76 i need i just don't understand that in my mind i would say a c plus is a 79 not a 76.
which was for uh the school year of that's when we started it was completed in june of 2017. it goes by completion date yeah they just changed the law now and we're getting ready to start testing again this summer okay great thank you thank you any other question mr lanzalata thank you uh very regulation 5330 the administration of medical medical cannabis is that also mandated by the state of new jersey okay thank you any other questions or comments all right let's go to roll call mrs cappello yes this is everhart yes mr fizzakira yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs knoll yes mr lanzalotta yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes mission carries thank you all right this point we're going to go into committee reports i know two committees have spoken already are there any other uh committees that wish to split the report mr lanzalata from the community outreach committee first like to thank dan morton and the rest of the morrilton business association for welcoming dr smith to speak about the current events that are going on in the eastern public school school district the topics that were discussed was are reopening updates middle school sports budgetary issues due to the state budget cuts and coveid bus advertising opportunities for companies in town and that was followed up by a question and answer session by dr smith thank you thanks again uh to the marlton business association for welcoming us to a lunch um and you know just the opportunity to speak appreciate it thank you mr lancelata anybody else ah miss ryan okay um yves sham education foundation um it's a great organization to support they're going to be having their annual golf outing in june and i'd like to thank the pto and pta presidents and organizations for sponsoring a whole um which in turn raises money for the district so thank you for all of your support yes ryan what is the date for that i have some people that i want to tell about the the golf outing okay well you can 12 there's i believe june i believe it's june 12th but i don't have my phone with me which has my calendar so june 11th it is it is thank you anybody else all right let's move past committee reports we're going to head to old business there is no old business moving into item 15 new business there is no new business i'm not missing anything am i okay good all right at this point in time we're going to go to open public comment for any items of interest this meeting will now be open to the public referencing any items of interest however if your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we'd ask you to see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person i will do my best to politely remind you of those three minutes also please state your name very clearly and your address very clearly and lastly uh please speak to to us as the board and we'll do our best uh to uh to answer any questions that you may have if anyone like to come up and speak please please come on uh good evening ed beck i'm at 5 548 justice drive so a couple weeks ago i sent emails and a couple phone calls to the state legislators as requested i received a call back from a couple of the legislators senator sweeney's office as well as congressman kim's office so i have a couple questions uh related to what they had discussed but before i get to the questions a couple comments um my wife sue has been a power professional for about 17 years with the district she's with the rice school in the preschool autism program so i have a firsthand look every day to the impact that she brings to the students and just two basic thoughts that i have with respect to the budget cuts there are two areas one is the quality education and the other has to do with the humanity aspect of it so with respect to the quality of education i could see from a consistency standpoint how that's going to be impacted cutting the hours of the power professionals to part-time is really going to impact the consistency of what the students learn every day their interaction with the students is going to suffer and that's going to go against what is being preached as the budget cuts being because of quality to improve the quality well that goes against what's actually going to happen the second has to do with the humanity aspect paraprofessionals are already one of the lowest paid groups within the district so it's unconscionable to me how we could turn around and essentially cut their compensation in half okay i i see firsthand the value that they bring so i asked the board for the for the may 6 vote to really reconsider the cuts as they pertain to cutting the hours and the benefits of the power professionals on those two grounds equality and humanity so now with respect to some of the the calls i received back so someone from senator sweeney uh called us back laid out very clearly s2 spent a lot of time um he mentioned that he had been speaking with some folks on the board and there was some additional state aid that could be available for districts that are suffering with s2 because of covid so my question is have those discussions been occurring and what's the status of those discussions and then secondly second question in talking with someone from congressman kim's office they mentioned that there was more latitude in the spending of the relief aid that's coming to the districts as opposed to the original covet aid so i believe the district is earmarked for about 900 to 959 000.
if i look at last july when we voted on this mitigation plan it was 1293 that peak it was 3679 in the week in the peak week again comparing to those three dates since march 2020 we followed we've fallen 24.4 percent looking at the peak we fall in 93.6 percent looking at our discussion last july we've fallen 81.8 percent death rates have similar falls the point of our mitigation strategy was to do exactly this to make it so that our health care system could handle the crisis based on the health care numbers today on the both the county numbers and the state numbers our hospitalization rates are the lowest they've been going back to march 2020 we're under that we have less hospitalization than we did in march 2020 when this wasn't there were no face masks there were no crisis it was a preventative measure if i look at deaths they didn't have march numbers uh for a whole week so i picked the early april numbers as close as i could we had 97 deaths this year we had 65 deaths at the peak we had 1067.
we just have you know and and those claims are typically you know if you remember some of the things that were presented during the budget workshops i know it's a it's a while ago but you know cancer claims claims from surgery claims related to um you know bone you know joint hip spine um childbirth you know some of the the claims you know are relatively high as well as you know claims related to heart and and uh vascular issues you know so you lumped in there are all the surgeries and people getting you know sick not just you know typical doctor visits and prescriptions are there any other questions um do you have any other i don't think you have any other presentations i have nothing more um mr chair that concludes the finance committee report thank you assuming there's no other questions from board members on that portion and we'll move on to personnel mr white uh sure the person i met a week ago or so april 7th um yeah exactly we were in executive session discussing uh the superintendent's annual review and his contract i'm not going to get into any details there the one other topic um that just so people are aware uh succession planning just in very general terms not getting into a lot of specifics or anything but it is something that um is on the board's radar you know people leave jeff could leave at any time and just to be aware and have an idea that there is succession planning in place within the cheshire public schools and that is all i'm going to say about the personnel meeting great awesome do you want me to move on to the motions yeah let's do anything else report out um so the motions jeff i'm i know i've got them here somewhere these are just to confirm these are these are basically boilerplate recurring every year yeah okay yeah this is kind of a promo uh forma move that we do every spring um in the budget process we have to notify uh people if they're going to be non-renewed before may 1st and so at the last business meeting before that we will typically non-renew teachers to protect insulate ourselves from a significant budget situation our teachers you know recognize it's still an anxiety producing event for teachers to to think that your job may be in jeopardy uh we hold off as late as we can unfortunately this year the budget process at the town council level got pushed back a month due to covid so there's a little bit more waiting but all this does is provide us real security that whatever money we have we will be able to extend appropriate contracts and not be left in the lurch um so uh our people know this and this is like i said kind of a pro forma thing okay and with regard to so this has to do directly with the union and correct me if i'm wrong here state statute state statute okay um basically the first three or four years of the union membership are you you don't have tenure until you've been you've completed 40 successful months as a teacher that's four years if you have tenure in another school system and you then move to cheshire you have 20 months before you acquire tenure however this is grounded in seniority and so you could have had 10 years someplace else or whatever if you you know we're tonight non-renewing all first and second year teacher contracts with the strong conviction that we will be retaining these people once the budget is passed but again this is an insurance policy in case the budget goes really sideways between now and then okay thank you moved that the cheshire board of edge so this is non-renewal of interim contract teachers moved that the cheshire board of education pursuant to connecticut general statute 10-151 authorizes the superintendent to non-renew the teacher contracts of all certified professional employees certified serving under an interim contract subject to connecticut general statutes 10151 at the end of the 2020 2021 school year it's their second and seconds any discussion jeff this might be a silly question but can you explain the definition of interim we hire some teachers um if for example a teacher takes a year-long medical leave [Music] we might hire a teacher on a one-year interim contract to be clear we have this motion to leave no room of doubt that that contract ends at the end of this year okay thank you sure seeing as uh there's not a discussion the the motion is that the cheshire board education pursuant to general statute 10-151 authorizes superintendent to non-renewed teacher contracts of all certified professional employees serving under an interim contract subject to connected general statutes 10-151 at the end of a 2020-2021 school square all those in favor please raise your hands it's unanimous thank you second motion non-renewal of non-tenured teachers moved that the cheshire board of education pursuant to connecticut general statute 10151 authorized the superintendent to non-renew the teacher contracts of all non-tenured certified professional employees that are in the first and second year under contract for the cheshire public schools subject to connecticut general statutes 10151 at the end of the 2020 2021 school year and further to authorize the superintendent to communicate written notice of such non-renewal to the affected teachers is there a second miss harrigan seconds any discussion as soon as there is none the motion is the cheshire board of education pursuant to connecticut general statute 10-151 authorized superintendent to nominate the teacher contracts of all non-tenure certified professional employees that are in the first and second year under contract for cheshire public schools subject to connecticut state connecticut general statutes 10-151 at the end of 2021 school year and further to authorize the superintendent to communicate written notice of such non-renewal to the affected teachers all those in favor it's unanimous motion passes thank you tim that concludes the personnel report policy i think it's back to you mr thank you mr chair um on april 7th the policy committee met um we reviewed um policy uh number 6159 instruction individualized education program special education program um we needed to um make a change to the policy um because the law changed well i'll just let's see all students with disabilities who have not yet who have not yet turned 22 years of age who have not received a regular high school diploma diploma remain eligible for special education services under the individuals with disabilities of education act up until their 22nd birthday previously the exit age of the students was 21 so we we changed that language to which is in italics here students receiving special education services under the individuals with disabilities act remain eligible for such services up until their 22nd birthday or until they graduate from high school with a regular high school diploma whichever comes first the adult student or his her parent guardian will be asked by the district if the student wishes to receive the special education and related services outline in their individualized education program iep until they turn 22 years of age or they graduate with a regular high school diploma whichever comes first the policy committee moved unanimously to move policy 6159 for a first reading the second part we had we had reviewed um previously or we had moved for a first reading um the policy numbers i'm about to speak about and we moved them off for a second reading uh those were policies number uh 3170 300 33 26.1 and 3541.45 um these all may had changes for uh positional titles uh relating to the chief operational officer or other um positions that had antiquated uh titles for them uh that was uh passed unanimously uh 3-0 um finally uh we discussed um again as we we said uh earlier uh discussed about the the audit of the student activities account and the uh the policy that's related to it um and that dr solon would um uh pull the actual policy so that we could uh begin review uh because it's a fairly lengthy policy to see where we can highlight um areas of concern um specifically uh well any antiquated internal controls or references to uh gasby and we will be taking a look at that in the future um and that's uh we and we adjourned at 7 pm and that is the end of the policy committee report are there any questions seeing none that concludes the policy report thank you adam moving onwards uh school matters is a committee update andrew or andorian so uh our last meeting was back on march 17th while many of you might have been celebrating st patrick's day we basically were at a working meeting where as we finalized our proposal to the town council a vote was also made at that meeting 7-3 vote to forward the option six which is the two new elementary schools as the preferred option with the secondary option option 2a for the new 638 middle school um during the meeting we put together the the packet read through all the different verbiages i'd go to the town council and that report was finalized on april 1st there was a joint meeting between the school monetization committee board of education and town council back on april 4th where the plan was presented and gone through which we were all at um so now we're to the next phase which is what the next steps are going to be um we have discussion with superintendent as well as with chairman peregini about that um so what we'd like to do is set a policy or i'm sorry a planning committee meeting of the whole next week to dig into the proposals now that we've all had a chance to digest the full 68 page report and go through and figure out what our next steps are for the project we haven't received as far as i know any communication from the town council it's by way of questions or input on that but what we do know um is that now it's time to open up to public and start soliciting and holding forms and getting some public input on the different scenarios and then figure out what our next step is because we have a deadline of november if we're going to be forwarding a project to referendum yeah i think we uh okay can i add uh sorry i'm trying to chew gum and talk at the same time i can't mute you i don't know where to put it but all seriousness uh and i know that the song i think vincent had a discussion with collier's a little bit on next steps and a few boards would do i think one of the things we talked about at the planning committee meeting is something that was uh not settled in smc which is land right so that's gonna be a huge factor on these options so i think we can talk a little bit more about ideas for that next meeting but uh no i and i haven't seen anything from town council not because they're not interested in similar just because the budget process and workshops so i know in talking chairman or a couple weeks ago after that presentation there's something digging into it now well but um you know certainly looking to the board of ed dr sullin his team on what we all feel is the best uh way for trust public schools during a weight on the financial side so while the referendum would be november um i think we have until august to get something ready for our friend so before we know it that will be here i mean it's already may and it'll be july before we know it so we just want to make sure we have ample time to get public feedback as well and but the i'm pretty excited about how this shakes out so it's actually a very positive thing so i do want to thank the modernization committee uh because we haven't had a board meeting since the presentation to the town council for all their hard work both you know past and present members it's been a long 18th month journey for some of us six years but we're getting there so that's it that's all i want to say andrew great that's all i have thank you uh thank you andrew as far as understanding committees there there are noticing i'm sorry tim yeah please so just a comment a little comment any question the first comment i just hope that um keeping in mind the august deadline my hope is that chapman which is in each of these two proposals is not just linked automatically to norton and dodd because if norton or dodd end up in some sort of discussion about land i i don't think that chapman necessarily needs to be slow walked because of that i think it could be two separate they're obviously related but it could be two separate discussions at the same time and then the second question i have you mentioned forums before are we thinking about having any forums with public input yes okay i miss that if you said it okay so what i want to do is work with vin so just get set that up for next week okay awesome so we could have this discussion and figure out what the next steps are going to be cool all right thank you because tonight uh to reach out to me and ask some questions about hey can we engage the public somehow maybe a in a very socially distant safe manner because as much as we you know some not us but as much as folks think things are getting back to normal not not quite um i did share that with dr sullen earlier this week and he was looking at some ideas but yeah we we definitely want to engage the community and i think this information is out there and we can discuss it and as that specs are materialized we need that feedback so in person maybe made the high school maybe a dot outside in our tents whatever i know jeff is looking at what's worth i would just add that a very strong recommendation by the state yeah that we um elicit response from the community so since the proposal you know the school modernizations um recommendation is is now out there you know it's been reported on is there any public feedback that's coming in just out of curiosity has anybody i don't even know where they would i don't know where to go yeah i think that speaks to the fact that we had um we had a facebook page and we had all that communication out there but but who owns that can can the board of ed then continue with no i just didn't know if if you were starting if anyone was starting to i haven't received anything i need to answer the question directly nothing electronically i i i'm sure we know folks that have reached out to us just curious but no i keep checking my inbox every day on number items but i'm not seeing anything i i've gone through the facebook groups now and then you know i i don't spend so much time it's interesting well i i hope in the i would think positive tony as marlene would say uh negative twenty i forget what she's oh tony downer right that's would say yes you know that there's not enough information out there but you know this goes back to the fall of 2019 that these meetings been happening and publicized and talked about there's videos out there i would hope you know there's so much information that all questions are answered and we're not hearing but i'm sure there's what bothers me is there's i don't say silence but there's we're not hearing much right so i noticed very good or bad i think this is post-saturation yeah there's a lot of information right that's true and it may be that we just have to have a an event like a forum and then people actually will show i'm just i find it curious that there is so much not happening yet so yeah i guess we'll figure that out i'm enjoying it a senior who was quite clear that he was not happy about the direction of spending and he said thank you tim you're not on the council anymore i'll take it to the council but it's not really it's not really our role to a certain extent i wouldn't be surprised if people are reaching out to the council rather than us in terms of the financial side of it yeah i was thinking you know like the two different options not so much the financial but yeah are people expressing any sort of preference for whatever so well he also he also mentioned that he's beginning to organize seniors so i don't know if they're just putting that out there i would i would say catherine i have heard from you know my my regulars yeah i mean there's one there is a letter to the editor um today okay just about bonding in general in the community yeah from bartlett just yeah just the last point and i'll mention again next week but i think everybody understand it which is uh the meetings for the public i think it's important for us to make it comfortable for the public so we're here tonight adam you had the discussion before i got here about being comfortable with you know no masks but we really need to try to make that effort to make it comfortable for the public to participate agreed i listen i expect you know once we uh shake out the options and where it comes out of the board event in terms of the you know the impact of the school district and what it means for students and how these facilities would look like and design all that and by time town council does a financial analysis i expect to be a lot of public input yes so i hope sorry andrews any other questions from organization if not we'll move on there's no other standing committees uh we do have uh approval of minutes from our board of education meaning hell business meeting held on march 18th we do have the meeting minutes in our pack it or someone like to make a motion i saw your hand go up first man i think is there a second fake seconds uh i have no changes didn't have any changes to those minutes i should ask that earlier as soon as there's no discussion the motion is that cheshire bro education approved the minutes of the board of education meeting held march 18th 2021 all those in favor it is unanimous thank you correspondence miss ms fabiani do we have any correspondents this evening thank you mr chair you're very welcome thank you i have no i'm sorry we actually have super the long awaited superintendent's report much anticipated i know i i've actually had withdrawals not hearing this for a few weeks i'm serious there's a lot of good stuff happening i know we got a great presentation coming up so i hope folks are watching it's a very detailed update yeah i i have a presentation that we follow have been following lately as part of our typical format um we did have uh two resignations and uh two retirements for this year as part of the personnel update uh we had you know teachers just moving on um but uh in like i said the two retirements and this is about the time of year where we start to think about retirements and what sort of budget impact does that have uh now here's the list that i had so yeah we had that already for this year i would anticipate not many more uh retirements because as adam alluded to earlier we had an early retirement uh incentive last year so most people that were close took that and sent incentive we did have one very special retirement just recently and i has been to talk a little bit about our food services director madeleine dyker has been with us for 18 years and we threw a wonderful surprise party for her last night i say we and i really mean eileen menkes and the rest of the food service team through a wonderful surprise party for her last night in the cafeteria and i thought to myself you know i am tired of making school lunches for two boys i can't imagine how many school lunches she's made over 18 years for all the kids that live in this community so a special debt of gratitude to her and uh vin can add any of his own thoughts and introduce our our replacement well i have a question for you jeff are we going to include madeleine when we do the annual retirement yes okay so i don't want to exhaust all the points that i have about madeleine but madeline you know was hired in in november of 2003 so by the time she retires at the end of june she'll be uh 17 and a half years of service with the cheshire public schools she's done an outstanding job i know many of you you know have if you've been on the board longer you've seen madeleine in front of the board several times but you're well aware that she managed through the pandemic the grab and go program uh as well as got us through this entire school year um which was a very tough year you know not only to try and serve students and serve remote students but also manage the finances and the department and the staffing a lot of challenges and she did an excellent job this year so you know we're certainly going to miss madeline um she is a cheshire resident she was able to sell her house very very quickly basically over a weekend um and and the people that are buying her house the um you know one of the owners is is pregnant and so she wanted to be in on may first so madeline basically has to skedaddle so she'll be working remotely um you know with they they have a small cabin upstate her and her husband jim so from what i understand it's it's not winterized but fortunately it's not winter so they're gonna get by until they they find a permanent home they have two children that you know live in the maryland and philadelphia area so they're trying to find you know a place that kind of fits between their two children so um we will elaborate more on on madeleine's retirement at the next at the meeting when we do that which i suppose is is it next month are we doing that june 3rd intro 3rd um but with that i did want to let you know a little bit about the person that we hired to replace madeleine who has already started because we anticipate you know that we need a healthy transition because there is a lot to you know food service and the person we hired after a um an interview process which by the way we posted the position we had 12 applicants we narrowed it down to seven who we interviewed we had three really strong candidates which i was very happy to see and the person that we selected her name is erica biagetti she is currently or was the food service director in the guilford public schools for seven years she was unanimously selected by this committee by the way erica has a bachelor of science in food service management from johnson and wales prior to serving in guilford where she served for seven years she was the assistant director for food service in the milford public schools and prior to that she worked at the omni hotel in catering sales and she also has management experience with olive garden chain so she's got very very diverse background um she is a very very strong believer in the importance of school nutrition for students and also interestingly she's currently serving as the president of the school nutrition association of connecticut you know and and just like in casbo or caps you have a rotation you don't start as president you start working the officer position so she's been extremely active with snack she's an excellent spokesperson she's an excellent fit with the manager group you know that i have none of my managers if you know any of them are shy um erica is not shy she um is very bubbly a lot of personality and i think she uh she'll do an outstanding job so you'll get to meet her probably um at next month's meeting we do have some recommendations that are coming forward you know related to food service so you know we'll hopefully be able to have her you know join us for that so all the board members can meet her but erica is on board she's already started her training she's um doing a very very good job picking up where madeline's going to be leaving off thank you thanks and so i'm going to try and kick this into a little bit of high gear uh i know surveys prior policy or anything that involves students like this i notify the board we were just notified by dph that they run an annual ser on that annual the regular survey called every smile counts it's a little more than a survey they identify random schools through connecticut hyland's been identified they're seeking to come to the school next year and give a an exam to kindergartners and third graders where it's a very cursory exam by a hygienist and they collect height and weight information certainly more information would go out to families before we ever execute that but i just wanted to make the board aware a quick covet overview i'm not going to spend a ton of time on this because it's very much what we've done the last couple of months with updated numbers so you're pretty familiar with the format we know we talk about mitigation strategies community spread etc and all those uh variables are important currently the way it looks uh what we had a significant uptake uptick in covid positive students at chs over the april break unfortunately there were two social gatherings that occurred very early in the break actually one of them was the friday before the break where with a positive individual in the variant there was significant spread so it as of today we have 17 positive students and 61 students quarantined as a result at cheshire high school but you can see across the rest of the district we're in very good shape with very few uh positive students or staff uh and so we're we're doing pretty well uh reflected as well as our remote learning population we had 25.28 percent of our student population was remote on january 27th uh today that excuse me i want to touch on the emotional impact i did already again uh in the previous meeting and maybe even already today in this meeting talk about the fact that we have about 700 kids and when you look back at that 25 percent that's more than a thousand students remote back in january as of today we have 740 students remote our principals and and the mental health staff in each building have been aggressively contacting families encouraging students to come back you can see there's very positive very small positive and we don't see transmission in the buildings it's a safe time for our students to come back it's a good time to reacclimate them so that we can shrink that group that we need to work with over the summer to make them feel comfortable so we went from uh 25 now to almost 18 percent and what's more interesting here is that at the high school we had 366 remotes back in january right now we have 412.
and so even if we had diagrams for those three scenarios of 25 30 and 35 you know maybe that would go to you know 97 percent of all the different places that we have in ann arbor thanks um whose hand i thought i saw another hand um i see john and stephen yeah john mursky josh could you go up to page one and the goals i'd like us to consider whether or not in light of the last goal focus on education of the community we can include a statement under goals that says something to the effect that we are trying to promote a new aesthetic when it comes to both extensions and private properties and what i mean by that i'm thinking uh and i think the advertisements still run but they ran all the time when i was a kid this aesthetic that the scots company tried to promote of a perfect green monoculture supported entirely by chemicals as the the desirable aesthetic and admittedly i fell for that in the past and i think what we want to say is in the town of ann arbor we want to promote a new aesthetic that does all of these things that are reflected in the goals and say there's a new we want to see beautiful in a different light than what is portrayed to us on television by the scots company and by by others and maybe we can include that in there and i'd like to also plant a seed that i've thrown out before and i don't remember the context i know rita and i have talked about it and that is with regards to 316 on private property there are still in ann arbor areas where there's very very large sections of turf grass and i'm just going to call off some that i think are examples uh and this is a part of town i know better than say the west side so i'll use some on on the east and northeast side like glacier hills like concordia like the lutheran city next door like pittsfield village like some several of our schools in some of the corners apartment complexes condo complexes where there are just huge swaths of turf grass and you know some of those some of those are necessary and nice for kids to play and things like that but it just seems to me that it would make sense if we can through the education in the community and through this new aesthetic get people to appreciate that uh natural habitat what like we've been talking about the whole evening is really something that we desire in in ann arbor at least we value it equally put it that way um to the old aesthetic and i think in the past what we're talking about here has been uh let's say undervalued by the vast majority of sort of traditional property owners and homeowners so that's my thought i like it steve um yeah so um i have um a few comments but uh or suggestions but uh so josh could you turn it back to the second set of pages the 316.
so are you comfortable leaving this on the agenda for approval tonight with the understanding that um your concerns and questions will absolutely be addressed of course okay so um i think there was another question before we vote on um the motion freighters one through six jeff yes president becker thank you uh i'm just um it's more out of curiosity unusual change under number six recall a board member pursuant uh 1927a what what was the importance of removing the word regular meeting and what does that change so uh if i may mrs becker on that point please respond i'll respond to that so mr winston um that came from um uh commissioner decisions that came from the department of education uh the removal of the word regular uh gives the impression that um uh from that the um absence from special board meetings for example don't count and that's not the case all board meetings count for purposes of determining absence and so the word regular gets removed it's any board meeting including including committee and a committee meeting no a committee meeting is not a board meeting a board meeting is only one that has been duly advertised and consists of a quorum of the board it's yeah it doesn't it doesn't include committee meetings jeff good enough i was just curious thank you okay so i believe um where we last slept our heroine she was asking for um a motion to combine items one through six and and joe please remind me do we have a motion in a second for that yes okay so we we're going to be doing a roll call vote on items one through six with the exception of policy zero one five two under number four okay will the secretary please call the roll mr car angelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs gloss yes mr hung yes mrs lax yes sorry mrs reese yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries and now may i please have a motion for revising policy 0152 board officers to reflect the recommendation by second by mark is is there any discussion just can you just can you read it back exactly what did you just say in terms of well okay so what i believe would happen now is that if a majority of the board decide they would like to incorporate mark's suggestion it would then go back to the policy committee for exact wording matt am i correct and then it would be presented for first reading and second reading like any policy actually right now the policy that's before you you would need to have a motion and a second and if somebody wanted to make an amendment to it you could do that or if there's a motion on this policy to amend it you could consider it that way this policy said right now the policy that you have on the agenda is the possibility to vote on okay so what we're doing make a motion to amend that policy and send it back to policy committee you need to have a motion to amend the policy so we're going to go ahead and vote on the policy as is or or alternatively if somebody wants to make a motion to amend the policy and send it back down to the policy committee you can do that i'd like to make that motion right if i if i may before you can make the motion you have to have the policy as it stands on you know up as a motion so you need a first and a second on that first and then you commit discussion and then after that discussion you can amend that the motion that's on the floor with the precise wording that you wish to have amended i don't know if we're going to have the precise wording bernie i mean wouldn't it i think you don't need to do that you can you have to have a motion in a second on the floor for the current policy if somebody wants to make an amendment to include the language that mark lisberger suggested and refer back to the policy committee there would be a vote on the amendment that fails and you go to the full the original motion [Music] okay so i'm asking for a motion on the policy as presented correct matt correct can i please have a motion so moved moved by susannah second by heather is there any discussion with glory that moved was that lori or susanna it was me she kept using us tonight heather i'm i'm sorry guys i the heather's box keeps lighting up sorry um i think i don't know if jeff is muted or not i'm getting a ton of feedback it's really really hard to follow but i think he's the only one not muted so maybe it's him i'm muted i'm muted and now i'm unmuted jeff if you can mute your phone it keeps on popping up saying it's you yeah it's your phone jeff okay so now matt where are we now there's a motion a second on the floor and now it's open for discussion so somebody can make a motion to amend the emotion on the floor and refer back to the policy committee based on what mr sismar had suggested about having statements by the various candidates okay but then what are we voting on the the original one or the amendment it's just like a motion to table vicky when somebody makes a motion to amend you would then first vote on the motion to amend okay if it passes it goes back if it fails then you vote on the other one got it okay so mark thank you i make a motion to amend policy 0152 to include a statement by the candidate if they choose to do so and a question and answer period for members of the board only to ask questions of potential candidates and for to be referred back to the policy committee correct and pleased to be referred back to the policy committee for their review now we need to have a second on mr sismar's motion and once that's done you then took a roll call jeff seconded right jeff yes okay now there'll be a roll call on the amendment to the policy okay so we're now going to have a roll call vote on whether yes or no this policy should be amended to reflect mark's suggestion and be sent back to policy committee for language will the secretary please call the role mr carl angelo yes mrs chu no mr sismar yes mrs gloss no mr holland no this is lex yeah this is rhys no mr winston yes president pecker no motion carries i'm sorry so now we're back now you go to the you go back to the original motion so you need to have a roll call in the original motion to adopt the policy as presented in the agenda this evening right what he said okay motion in seconds right jeff please call the roll uh joe no problem mr angelo no this is true yes mr sismar no mr squaws yes mr hong yes mrs lax yeah mrs reese yes mr winston no president baker becker say you call me the wrong name i call you it's one of those nights man yes now can i say motion carries yes okay thank you all thank you all for that discussion okay now where are we is it still thursday okay yes we are up to curriculum we have one item on tonight's curriculum agenda can i please have a motion for that don't move second by susanna is there any discussion all those in favor opposed obscene motion carries the item on our facility agenda has been tabled to the next board meeting that brings us up to finance financial services can i please have a motion to combine items one through four no move move by lorry second second by leewoo is there any discussion this is a roll call though will the secretary please call the roll mr carangelo yes mrs choo yes mr sisma yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes mrs lex mrs reese yes mr winston yeah he's no longer here okay i know he keeps going in and out to try and get the drink if he rejoins president becker he can then just record his vote on this one mr winston indicated he was going to be leaving the meeting early okay okay uh president becker yes motion carries we have one item on our human resources agenda tonight can i please have a motion for that item move by laurie anybody second by mark two is there any discussion will the secretary please call the wrong mr corangelo yes this is true yes mr sismar yes mr cross yes mr hung yes mrs lex mrs reese yes president becker yes motion carries on our student services agenda we have three items tonight i'd like to combine items one and three can i please have a motion for that i'll move move by laurie second by barbara is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr corrie hello yes this is true yes mr sismar yes mr squash yes mr holland yes this is lex mrs rhys yes president becker yes motion carries we have one item on our transportation agenda can i please have a motion for that item move by laurie hold on hold on sorry just let me catch up okay you're okay okay second fight second by mark ii is there any discussion all those in favor opposed obscene motion carries committee reports information items and for the good of the cause of the board i believe our student representative lou you said was going to be with us tonight tony good evening how are you i'm doing very well president becker i hope everyone is doing well as well did you have a good spring break and holiday yes yes i did uh i actually was able to go and visit my sister who's in cleveland right now and she's at med school so i was able to get that done in spring break and then come back quarantine and then come back to school so oh great it's a visiting family is always wonderful so what do you got for us yeah i just wanted to say it's probably the most exciting time to be a student right now i think as the student the student experience has been throughout the year consistently rising but this week there's been a spike and it's not just because of the five-day schedule and you get to see your peers and socialize in the hallways with people that you haven't seen in over a year but it's also because of excitement for some events that are on the horizon and i think some of the students who kind of treated this week as an experiment to see whether they were willing to come on and wake up every morning for the next few weeks and the remainder of the quarter i think that they had an overwhelmingly positive experience so the retainment on the people who signed up to be in person i think should be uh pretty good so and this is just a testament to you know the diligent effort put in by the staff and the teachers and uh everyone that made this possible so that way the students can have this nice normal or at least slightly normal experience um it's an especially exciting time for seniors as we uh are kind of cementing our decisions as to where we're going next year uh and i have a little quick little update for you guys but i'll be attending the university of illinois at urbana-champaign to study computer engineering so i know you guys have been tracking my progress and i just wanted to share that with you wonderful news congratulations thank you president becker uh i'm excited and all of the students that know where they're going are excited especially to show off their new school pride uh on the senior decision day which will be may 3rd so that's another thing for seniors to look forward to and then uh we have another series of events coming up one of them is uh that the national honor society is hosting a combo drive this saturday where uh students and staff can drop off either donate donations of diapers baby wipes and formula for the central jersey diaper bank and any various snacks and bottles of water for elijah's promise and also next month uh in mid-may to or early may of mid-may uh if you remember last year we had the mcfoods battle of the classes food drive which was i think like one of the first few big events or at least community gatherings that we had in quarantine where we received i think over 25 000 pounds of food so uh we're doing it again this year in mid-may and uh hopefully it's even better than you know the exceptional result that we got last year and uh that like i said that's happening in mid-may so i just wanted to plug those two events as you know uh good events that really can bring the community together and i also a lot of other people have shouted out but the fact that athletics is continuing and not only just continuing but succeeding like the gymnastics team and the girls volleyball team so you know it's a great time to be a student it's an exciting time to be a student and i'm just i'm just like i said giant spike in the happiness and i'm just happy to be a part of the ride thank you that was such a nice uplifting upbeat report greatly we appreciate it hope the rest of senior year continues to be a positive thank you any information items for the good of the cause of the board lori i think you had your hand up i did although i hate following tony because it was so exciting um on a not as happy note um i did notice that ruth chang is retiring and we always lose good people to retirement when it's their time um and this is another one of those where it's going to be especially big shoes to fill she has done so much for our world language program she is one of the most passionate dynamic people i have ever met and um i'm a little heartbroken right now i'm thrilled for her and her family but um i just wanted to say i hope we can get her back in virtually in here at some point um before she goes but uh what a loss for the district what an incredible incredible woman and she's done so much so thank you ruth susannah did you have your hand up uh yes uh and just to echo what uh you know miss lax uh just just mentioned i i don't know there's anybody with more energy and enthusiasm uh for for her position and her role um so we are going to miss her dearly she's she's brought uh forward you know so many so many new ideas and new programs to us and uh certainly wish her well in retirement so i was very sad to see that in the uh in the gender packet uh for tonight's meeting um i also just wanted to mention uh human relations council held on april 20th a um a facebook live event which is available now um in in the recording an event called building bridges combating anti-asian racism and we had a wonderful panel who shared their expertise with us and we also had wonderful representation from our students from ebhs including the asian club and others and um i encourage you to watch it uh and especially you know when you hear the voice of the youth and it really gives us um you know pot gives that gives us reason for optimism so uh you know just want to thank the kids and all the uh the panelists and the participants in the event that night um i also want to piggyback on what lori and susanna just said about ruth ruth is the kind of person who walks into a room and literally lights up the room um her passion is unequaled it's impossible to be around her and not become passionate about um well everything having to do with school but especially languages ruth i i wish i remembered enough of my high school and college french to be able to say what i want to say to you in um in french but the only word that comes to mind is um say that one yeah mercy baku and um one illustration of ruth and her personality and how she motivates people when the first time she came to the curriculum meeting to talk about uh the addition of mandarin to the foreign language curriculum she literally came with a bag of the little cutie mandarin oranges and as she talked about this exciting class she wanted to introduce she walked around the room giving us all the mandarins i know it sounds it may lose something in the translation but that's ruth whether it's giving out mandarins or figuring out ways to engage kids um we all are sorry to see her go but we wish her luck every year we big goodbye to veterans in our district um who adds so much who bring so much to what is the character of our district and they all deserve our gratitude anyone else any other information items seeing none we do have a need for closed session whereas the board of education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for discussion in a public meeting and the board of education intends to discuss matters as follows those items 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 in action will not be taken can i please have a motion to go into closed session second second by liwu is there any discussion all those in favor aye opposed abstain motion carries good night stay safe thanks for joining us board members please log out and log into closed session congratulations tony you
so i'm wondering could any of that money directly or indirectly be used to help to to save the power professional hours and their benefits um mr beck first i just want to say thank you for your advocacy with our state officials as far as uh the state funding cuts that we're going through um in fact i think it's your advocacy and the advocacy of thousands of other people that is prompting someone from uh senator sweeney's office to to mention something about additional aid um that's promising nothing's been released publicly about about that possibility but i we will certainly be looking to see um i wouldn't be surprised if they are talking looking in that direction because of all the advocacy because there really has been a flood of emails phone calls um social media posts relating to again it's really a not a complicated ask but the state funding reduction sequence was developed long before anybody thought corona was something other than a beer you know and and uh and now we are in a position where they're insisting on moving forward with these state funding reductions even though we're in a pandemic that's been the one ask you know so so i'm glad that they mentioned that to me that means that they're continuing to think about the ramifications of insisting on cuts that were developed for a world that doesn't exist and we will definitely be looking for information they might be releasing about that um as to your other question uh about the um from congressman kim's office so the uh what will happen is the uh department of education in new jersey will release sort of the official guidelines for how that money can be used that hasn't been released yet once once it is though we will certainly be looking for as many ways to use that as possible including for uh staff and benefits that that's definitely uh something we want to take into consideration what those ben what those uh funds could be used for and like you said it's about 923 thousand dollars from that chronovirus relief the sr2 money which is the first round of relief that school districts have received the parameters for that are stricter that can't really go towards benefits but the um but the chronovirus relief there may be some daylight there for us yeah do we know the timeline of when those guidelines are going to be brought down will it be before the budget we don't know the timeline for that yeah will will any of that be taken into consideration though with respect to the budget layout for may 6th or it um it just without having in hand the specific guidelines it's hard to do that you know um so we'll we'll see you know what what comes out okay um mr beck uh very quickly um thank you for uh calling our legislators thank you for calling the governors and senators and whoever else wants to listen and and if i could just say very quickly i hope that you're not the only one and if you could tell people to keep calling all week you know every day twice a day three times a day the only way we're going to get some stuff done is if they know that we are in a cro a severe crisis if they don't know about the crisis that we're facing right now they won't do anything about it so we try your advocacy yeah we we try for sure and i i call often yeah uh with that in fact the day that i got the phone call uh your name was mentioned specifically that he had gotten off the phone with you earlier that morning so thank you absolutely thank you thank you [Applause] good evening i'm karen enoch three wood thrush trail east medford i'd like to begin by posing a question to the teachers and paraprofessionals in the room tonight why did you choose this career most of us in this line of work will all have a similar answer for the children and for the positive impact that we can have on their lives it certainly isn't for the money but the reality of the situation is money does play a role and tonight's meeting is a testament to that my name is karen enoch i am one of the powers that will be affected by the elimination of health care benefits and i am speaking tonight because i refuse to allow my 20 years of service to be reduced to a dollar amount on a spreadsheet before i step down from this microphone i would like you to hear my story i entered this profession as someone who dreamed of making a difference and along the way i found a family and a place of belonging at marlton middle school but now now i stand before you as a very disheartened employee after dedicating more than a third of my life to serving this district and its children i had hoped that i would be able to work my remaining years at mms and retire with lifetime benefits but given the proposed health care removal i am forced to reconsider my position to the board please understand i am not asking for your sympathy no rather i am asking you to remember my face when you cast your vote next month i am here to remind you that your decision impacts much more than just a bottom line the proposed budget will ultimately force the hands of 56 passionate and dedicated employees to seek alternative work because the salaried pay without benefits is below the reasonable means to live and provide i am not unsympathetic to your dilemma i understand that you are facing a problem and pulling our benefits may appear to be the simplest and most efficient solution but i want to issue a word of warning the choice you are about to make will have consequences you are showing the district that when push comes to shove your loyalty does not lie with your employees and that the years of service sacrifice and dedication does not have the power to outweigh the bottom line and who is going to suffer from this the teachers who have come to rely on their powers and the children who benefit from the additional support and also the consistency from employees who feel valued that are compensated enough to stick around long term yes working with the functional budget is a necessity for us all however i wonder if there may be an alternative that does not include the destruction of loyalty morale and the livelihood of 56 individuals who have dedicated a lifetime of service to the children of this district and so i ask you now have you truly exhausted all other options is there really no alternative that would allow the few of us left to keep the benefits that you promised us when we were first hired i am asking you today as an educator a mother a member of this district and on behalf of the present and future children of our education system please do not pass this proposed budget thank you for your time thank you hi lucia millington um i'm back um i don't know how to follow that really um but i just wanted to reiterate that this is really um really devastating to to those that it affects you know the school district that that i'm part of that i work for that i pay taxes to and that i care so deeply for um is now really affecting my life and the life of my colleagues by stripping our benefits i know you all are in a difficult spot it's been a rough year for all of us but to top that off with being told in the midst of a pandemic that you're losing your benefits and your pays being cut in half is is just truly devastating so um thank you for your service but please please reconsider [Applause] hi my name is rebecca depersia i'm at 7 sandwood drive i'm coming to you as a concerned parent my family and i just moved to the district about four months ago and we moved here specifically for the school district my son attends jaggard and is autistic my daughter attends mes as far as my son every therapist every neurologist every doctor that he's ever been to has suggested for my family to move to marlton because of the school district because of the support that he would get so my husband i took a leap of faith and we are here and we absolutely love it i can see a huge difference in my son he now loves school it used to be an absolute torture to get him to go to school but now in the short four months his um teacher his para has been amazing and um not to discredit his teacher because she's amazing but his para has made all the difference in the world he adores her he comes home from school every day talking about her talking about the relationship that they've built and how special it is and how much he has helped her and how much they get along and just she's everything to him she and and she missed a few days um during the school year and he was so upset he was concerned about her he and then when she came back he was so happy to see her um even during spring break he didn't want to miss school because he didn't want to miss seeing his para um i just want you to know that from a parent standpoint this is huge your eve sham reputation is huge because of your school district because of your paras and if that goes away if you take away their health benefits and they find employment elsewhere it is going to absolutely change the dynamic of the school district and it's going to hurt my child both my kids but mainly my son and i think it's going to really damage the reputation of the district and all these therapists and doctors that i've met through the years that have recommended eve sham district thank you for your time thank you hi my name is melissa mercer i live at five darien drive in cherry hill and i've been a speech therapist at jaggard school for 20 years i just wanted to get up again and plead with the board to reconsider their decision to take away the power benefits wonderful that we have a parent come out and stand up there are many many parents in this district that feel the same way that they came here for the special education services that they thought they were going to get and whose students will be in not the same situation with the decisions that are being made i just want to say that the jagger students and all the students in eve sham will be negatively affected by the decision to take away paris benefits i'm begging you to find another way i think that we need more information about the rescue act i think we need to look into being part of the pilot study we don't have to agree to be the pilot but we can be part of the study and spread out our debt and i think hearing from the board that you are actively looking for other ways will go a long way towards making the staff feel that they are valued thank you good evening debbie van curan i'm the etea president and i'm speaking on behalf of the etea leadership we just wanted to say that we appreciate our recent meeting to discuss ideas to help alleviate the budget shortfall we were hoping to have some more concrete information from you before the meeting this evening we look forward to further discussion in a timely manner and we are requesting that the finance committee be prudent in communicating with etea we feel that this conversation needs to happen before the special board of education meeting on may 6 when you will be taking a vote to strip our powers of their hours which will result in them losing their eligibility for health benefits dr smith has previously stated that there are 67 paras that are eligible for benefits he has said that the average benefit package cost about 25 000 this comes out to 1.675 million in actuality 11 of our paras have never taken benefits and have already opted out for next year we feel that the number being presented is inflated the actual number is 51 powers at 25 000 equals 1.275 with the idea that we have been throwing around in meetings and the ideas that have been given and the federal funding that you have received and will receive the board should be able to cover the 1.275 million according to the us department of education fact sheet which was just released yesterday money can be used to continue to employ existing school staff this evening i would also like to speak on behalf of the educators and i would like to speak as an educator i would like to talk about the guidance counselor position that has been cut here at macy schools the last bullet of that document that i told you that was released yesterday on page two it says that the money can be used to provide mental health services and supports including through the implementation of evidence-based full-service community schools and the hiring of counselors here are just some of the responsibilities of our building counselors they welcome new families they teach lessons at every grade level they work closely with teachers to provide support and intervention to academically struggling students to bridge gaps before a formal intervention needs to be initiated they organize facilitate and support the irs process they plan and implement a variety of in-house pd they see students and groups for regular counseling they supervise and train staff for standardized testing there's kindergarten registration incoming sixth graders transitioning eighth graders to cherokee high school attendance compliance hib and climate teams defense paperwork et cetera et cetera et cetera demacy's school is a unique k-8 school i've worked here since they opened in 93.
so compared to the peak we've decreased ninety four percent ninety three point nine percent we've we've done exactly what our intention is so my question is now that we have vaccinations if we haven't if we had these same kind of achievements in a classroom and we said wow we improved by 94 in a semester's time period that's the peak we'd be celebrating so what is our assessment what is our evaluation criteria for saying success and when do we move forward i that that's the problem with the metrics nobody has told us when it ends and the few times that they had it they had oh three green metrics and it moves but they've changed how they measure those metrics they've eliminated one of them they changed and no longer say oh there's not a master and there isn't a mask they keep changing it so none of us know when we end um and i guess i just i i look at it and say at some time we have to celebrate the success and move forward and i'm i'm concerned i know that kova is real my father died from covet in december i recognize it's real um but at some point if if our criteria is zero chance of getting it then we're still wearing masks from the 1918 flu pandemic so it can't be zero what is it we've got to have an alternative it can't just be when the numbers go up or the numbers go down we've got to have some criteria so that's my basis i believe that we've hit hit the objective of what we did um and and i'm ready to move forward and so thus i could say more but i've spoken too long already so thus i put out my my proposed uh motion thank you mr carr ma just to weigh in my confusion is that uh while what you have said and and what you have articulated is is right on target we still have information that keeps being reported daily that young people now school age young people are susceptible to the virus more than thought before even though those numbers are not large and that the uk variant is something that we have not experienced yet in its full bloom so that's a concern for me i'm also concerned that a little confused not concerned you mentioned the date in june if your motion is accepted and approved then what we're doing in terms of face coverings and mitigation strategies expires in june or am i no no my reference to the june expiration was our previous motion made last july last july we put an expiration on that policy for june 30 at the end of the school year right and and in your mind does that still exist absolutely it was discussed and three of us commented on that during that discussion so i think it was well understood so if i interpret that then that would lead me to conclude that the mitigation strategies we have in place at this point would expire in june and therefore there is no need to have this discussion well if if we if we want to just let them expire in june that that would be accurate um let me ask a question because my understanding of number five is the change is that face coverings will be recommended and encouraged um that would change the way our our masking is now because right now we are requiring masks is it your intention to move it so that masks are encouraged and recommended but not required i i believe that that's the motion that i that i read i just want to understand clearly uh you said number three well number three still encourages them uh the the difference between number three number five is it puts it out at the future date sorry i was looking at the wrong option like so number five frankly would be similar to what mesa did today okay i'm sorry i i numbered them by presence so i was looking at the wrong number so um just one moment any additional discussion yes yes with all due respect mr carr i could never even come close to spouting the numbers that you do and i know i i i know what you do and i know that you absolutely have done the research and all of that on everything that you're said tonight in all in all sincerity to you however um we are still in a pandemic we are still dealing with issues that we don't you know yes we've gone down yes we've gone up yes we you know everything you said i think is correct but the bottom line on it is is that this cdc is still saying that no matter how many people are vaccinated that they're still recommending that we get that we keep the masking and even people that are fully vaccinated need to still be very careful and so you know i i think two or three people said there was 25 or 26 more days of school left and i know there's a number of students that have come back with the with the understanding that we were going to have the mitigation strategies in place i don't understand why we can't make masks for 25 more days i mean that to me is an absolute you know it's we can do that and then we can look at whatever happens after may 31st or may whatever and i feel very strongly about that and i and you know i respect all of the things that you just said but you know we can do this we can do the things that we need to do for all the children and i mean i can tell you right now i don't like wearing a mask you know i don't like it at all but i do it because i want to be safe and i want the people that i am around to be safe um dr sanchez i would like to make my my apologies that i had been confused about which one was your motion my concern is and i and i looked at what mesa did today i think that's confusing and um i i appreciate your statistics and information but just when i hear what you're talking about i don't want to bed in the hospital i want people to be safe from the virus and i just want to read a statement from the maricopa county department of health for services that they put out and it says maricopa county department of public health has released guidance for schools to prevent transmission of covid19 this guidance is in alignment with cdc recommendations one of the essential elements to reduce transmission of sars covid ii in schools is the universal and correct use of masks per cdc ncd ph encourages all schools to require consistent and correct use of well-fitting face masks with proper filtration by all students teachers and staff to prevent transmission of coven 19.
we're going in the wrong direction and the reason is i think that first of all there was a lot of concern raised by the number of positives that occurred over the break and the concern is not necessarily interestingly for becoming sick the concern is that i'm going to be quarantined and missed the ap exam there's an in-person ap exam the in-person ap exam start not this upcoming monday but the monday after i believe with ap gov and if you miss that exam you have to take a different version a month later and so yeah i see andrew's eyes pop out of his head nobody wants to do that so we're seeing a lot of folks quarantined to avoid you know just going remote to avoid being quarantined so you can take the test understandable but so it kind of gives a skewed number here when we look at that i think in reality it'd be even lower than that um so the remote learners that we had in january um the other thing i want to point out there is in january our total enrollment was 4114.
and while he's doing that i just want to say that you know in terms of neighborhood education my neighborhood at least has a lot of block parties at least before covet and i think block parties are known by the city city staff knows where they are and when they are and that this is an opportunity to try to get volunteers or city staff out there to just talk to the people that are out there at the block party okay so i would just suggest that as a neighborhood outreach um actually and i'll hire you steve as a black party crasher i've done it before there's there's usually good food and beer on my bike yeah on my bike um so and then by i only have two more comments one is with 316.
asking just two guidance counselors to cover all of these responsibilities especially during a pandemic is not what is best for kids the counselors serve the whole community and require them to have daily connections and build relationships with the teachers the parents and the students the mental health of the dimaces students is important enough to continue to have three counselors to cover our k-8 community dr smith i am asking and urging you to reinstate that third guidance counselor here at temac board of ed members i thank you for listening this evening the etea looks forward to hearing from you in the next 13 days to put an end to all of this stress and anxiety that we've all endured over this past school year that has been brought to our members thank you so much hi my name is mary meadwell i am a second grade teacher at bieler elementary school i'm here because i've been following along with what's happening with sweeney's office and some of the legislature that's going on and i think you know some of what's going on there is a cause of our problems some of the information i have is that there's 2.7 billion dollars that's coming from the federal government that's supposed to help with through american rescue that 2.4 of that is supposed to go to our districts and that of course in new jersey we're going to use the formula to divvy up that money so you know where eve shams stands there but um that it's not really supposed to supplant any of the money that we've already received from the state um and that really that the um only stipulation that i can see comes with that is that the stakeholders are engaged like us teachers paraprofessionals who are engaged every day with the children be a part of the process and how that money is spent so i guess the only thing i ask this board is that you just wait until you get that hopefully that's good news and positive news and that you guys before you make any decisions on the budget i know you have to make some decisions but before you do what you have planned to do to the paraprofessionals that you think about it and just wait and see what happens with the um the relief money thank you very much [Music] hi tracy brown from marlton middle school when i was hired here almost 20 years ago we were honestly one of the lowest starting salaries in the area and you know i talked to a lot of people and a lot of people told me what a great district this this was and and how much of a family atmosphere it was and there's been a lot of ups and downs over the years and some of you on the board have seen me many many many times over the years i looked back at emails way back to even from miss millington in my building asking for our help back in 2013 over this whole para debacle some of these powers were hired the same year i was or around that time and we were all made promises i've been fortunate the promises aren't being stripped from me but that family feeling is not really here right now and some of these family members are in my building not just the whole district but like 10 of these 55 people are in my building i i've been working with them not necessarily in my classroom but in the building mms has so many specialized programs the powers are the backbone in our building i i honestly can't imagine what a day would look like our administrators are already running around with coverage half the time if they just called out for one day this district could potentially just fall apart if every power didn't show up i mean they are really a backbone and there are family members and i'm really really surprised that it's come to this again like we have fought this battle so many times and we're here again and some of you know some of you don't i was on a school board for six and a half years i i know you have tough decisions to make this is a lot of money dr smith is new i know it is the job of the superintendent to figure this out and a lot of times it does come down to dollar and cents some of you were on the board when we when a promise was made i i can't can't believe that these 56 women are going through this again there was a promise on the table and we as educators have something called past practice so even if it's not written in our contract once it happens a couple times a couple years it's almost as good as being written in the contract unfortunately the paris can't go to arbitration and fight this the way we can but some of you were on the board some of you sat at that table and you know the promise was made it's it's just so sad i mean i literally came into this district with so many promises being made and such a family atmosphere and it is tearing us all apart again no one wants to fight i i want us to all just be happy and be in it for the kids like we all are but there's just so much turmoil and so much sadness and it's really disheartening every single day to see people sad in our buildings and truly our schools will not be the same the turnover will be just horrendous i don't know if you have stats on that maybe you should look into it because every time i turn around there's a new power the turnover will be just horrible for the sake of the children because i can guarantee you almost all of the 55 ladies will be out if they're if their benefits are gone and again i i just i can't believe some of you made this promise and you know you know it was a promise so if there is anything you can do to make this not happen i implore you to look at your other options before that may 6th meeting to bring each and back to where it needs to be for all of us thank you for your consideration can i can i ask you a question i i want to ask you a question because i'm i'm a little confused on on the on the promise i i i don't i don't recollect this at all i might not have been at this i know i was not at this table was this in in 2013 2010 when was this there have been so many years and that's why i didn't use names because i did not i don't yeah i didn't want to call specific people out um because i'm not 100 sure i wasn't at that table i've been at many negotiations tables and things over the year that was not a table i was at i'm sure there are many people within district or past supervisors or administrators that could corroborate the promise and the promise was that we were going to grandfather essentially that's the term that was used grandfather in those people who had already been hired with benefits and from that date going forward the contract and agreement was any para hired after that date whatever that magical date was someone in here knows sorry not to address them someone knows the date whatever that magical date was going forward all powers would be hired at what's the magical number 5.75 something like that whatever the magic number is so that they wouldn't get benefits so everybody after that date came to the district that was the promise made to them you can get hired for this many hours at this hourly pay you're not getting benefits welcome to the family that's your promise but the other people were i think the expression is grandfathered in truly they made that promise i was not at that table i don't want to speak to who was at the table but it was truly a promise and it was it was it was spoken word like i i i'm asking this because i i'm and i'm being incredibly sincere about this the first time i heard about this was when it was brought up a public session probably a couple meetings ago and i i zero recollection of this but there was also about three years i was off the board in between so it could have happened in that point um but it was like a was it a it was a conversation piece is that what wasn't a written agreement it was a conversation piece or again you don't you don't know because i don't want to give false information i don't really try to stick to the facts and i don't want to spa this has been a long long time but whatever the date was that we started hiring cars at 5.75 whenever that magical year was i believe around 2013 someone in here knows whatever year it is so whatever that magical year was we've never hired a power with benefits since okay but the 55 ladies or whatever the magical number is 67 but 11 say no whatever the magical numbers are they were told here you are and guess what some of them were literally hired my year i can't imagine now fast forward 15 years later somebody tells me oh by the way you're not going to get your benefits anymore by the way you're not going to get your pension anymore i i just i can't fathom that our district is doing this we've never done stuff like that i just wanted to excuse me joe i think janet kimmenhauer was the one that got up at a couple meetings ago he did it and i think if you want to get more information i would reach out to her or regina spitaleri or john scavelli because it was even before my time or russ's time when we were on the board but we were told that that was something that came up in conversation and so i think that they're the people that you need to reach out to i just yeah i just want a clarification because i only like like i said i only heard that and it was you're right it was janet and i had only heard that before so i just wanted the clarification i appreciate that thank you very much i apologize if those of you tenured on the board were not at that table i wrongly assumed that some of you are at that table there's there's very few of us left i know i know but some of us have been around a long time in different levels so that's why i didn't want to use names because i don't know those facts that's perfectly okay i appreciate all of your consideration and i think that again it's just an important piece that i'm not sure is like fully understood and i think that that's a big deal to break a promise as huge as that like we're talking 15 years ago or 10 years ago i mean some of these people have been around a long time and now to just strip it away i'm in you're 21.
further i did go look at the cdc at cdc.gov i didn't copy the whole thing but it says when you wear a mask you protect others as well as yourself masks work work best when everyone wears one and i i think we've made it this far it's only a few more weeks i personally i understand that it's really hard it's been a long long year my concern is that we're this close to the finish line let's not let's not mess it up we have ap tests coming we have graduation coming i think we all want to get to that point at the end of the year where we can have an in-person graduation even if it's socially distanced and people are masked that at least two people can come and watch that senior walk across the stage i think that's really important to our entire community wherever you stand on wearing a mask or not wearing a mask i did want to point out that i did look at the historical data today too um uh although the the um maricopa county health hasn't put this number up yet um the number that was up for today was 67.58 cases per hundred thousand but looking at the historical data um you know it's a a week or two in lag time so there was one more um i think it ends the 15th of april which is 84.73 cases per hundred thousand if there has been a jump from 67 to 84 i find that concerning i would rather be careful that we end the school year well and that we end it safely than risk and outbreak and i'll i'll just say when i was reading the emails i um i read lots of reasons you know people gave reasons why to keep a mask or why not to keep a mask and i wrote some of those down if i can find the right page sorry i took notes from a conference as well so um here it is so the reasons not to wear a mask parental choice heat rash claustrophobia and a manacer preschool those were some of the reasons not to wear a mask here were some of the reasons people gave for keeping the mask mandate work to keep covet and other illnesses down no one under 16 can get vaccinated yet graduation ap and end of year tests masks are normal now you know kids have been wearing them all year it's not a huge change to just keep wearing them district liable of an outbreak because of not following cdc guidelines children not comfortable attending school the only safe way to sing in choir is with the mask on also we've had fewer cases of flu colds and strap this year because people have worn their masks so um i would really like to see us adopt a motion where we at least get through the end of the school year with the mass mandate in place and not make that optional additional commentary ms wood yes please thank you i think all of us have made huge sacrifices i don't know that anybody recognizes the other person's sacrifice that has been in place this year and it's i've appreciated everybody's sacrifice i'm amazed and thankful as a community that we've done all that we've done um as we've tried in the beginning and what i thought we were trying to do was to flatten the curve that's what they told us that's what we've been trying to do we have done that and i appreciate everybody's work on that and i especially appreciate our teachers and the staff for everything they've done each day to come to school and to to find creative ways to teach our children and then to come amongst all the concerns that they've had to be there for our kids to be constant i really really appreciate you very much i appreciate our principals and administrators for their dedicated efforts this has been a difficult year and you've worked hard i'm thankful to our families and students for diligence and flexibility that we've all been able to have the education that we've had and it's been a community effort and i'm grateful i think i continue to ask yes they keep saying let's look at the science let's look at the cdci lines and i'm saying how in the world do those apply to arizona where we've had vaccinations the way that we have i need to start seeing some adjustments with vaccinations or those those are to me incomplete so again that's one of the things i'm looking at i'm looking at the state i'm looking at the cdc guidelines constantly i'm looking at the state numbers the county numbers our school numbers and those are all things that are important to me i'm i'm also wondering and i also want to make the point that yes it is an ask to continue to ask masks it is an ask it's not without a cost to many people it's been really hard maybe it hasn't for some people it's been worth the sacrifice so they've been okay with that and i'm glad for others it has been an ask it has been stressful on children i know both ways but i'm just saying don't act like it's not an ask for 27 more days it is it is we're asking so please acknowledge that don't don't just say we've done it for this long it's that easy and there's no cost there is a cost so and we got a lot of emails about that and you mentioned some of the some of the reasons so i just wanted to bring that up as well i i think if not now when the governor when we agreed to what we've agreed to by a governor's executive executive order and now that is changed and released if not now then when um i am not willing to go past this school year in any shape or form with the mitigation strategies unless there's a huge change and then we would come back and do what we do which is already known by everybody that we do that but i would i don't want to see this at all past the end of the school year at the latest to i would prefer sooner miss wood by end of the school year are you including summer school in that no i'm saying may 28th and i think people one of the things that people have said is they didn't have a chance to make a choice um for the next couple weeks but summer school if we knew right now that summer school would be similar to what chandler's doing without mass in place similar to what mesa is doing so much what queen creek's done without masking place then people could make a decision both teachers and students for summer school that they could go online if they needed to or come in person knowing that that would be the expectation that's my those are some of my thoughts thank you miss wood anyone else seeing none you have a motion in front of you it is ostensibly motion number three and then i'm sorry it's motion number five isn't it it's number three number three number one number three read recommended and encouraged okay are the by words in there go ahead mr carter you you've read it you're clear okay so and it would be immediately yes i understand his motion okay okay that's right i'm sorry i had to get on the right page so are we ready to vote if we're ready to vote your option obviously is to vote for or vote against and so we have motion on the table mr carr has moved and it's been seconded miss wood was a second yes this wood was the second we've had discussion can i before we spoke can i just ask one question to clarify sure so with this motion people could wear a mask if they wished but it will not be required exactly except for at events where it is for example aia is still requiring them uh okay choir con or choir festivals might require i mean whatever associations if there's another governing association that requires them we would adhere to that all right i just want to make sure i understand correctly before i vote okay we want to understand the motion okay we will vote all those in favor of the motion as you understand it and as it's been stated please signify by saying aye aye those opposed nay motion fails three two is there an additional motion well i i can put my uh motion option two back on the table as written and i'll read it again so that everyone can understand which one i'm putting forward the governing board here by directs or authorize the district superintendent or his delegates to update face covering regulation related to the district's coven 19 mitigation plan as follows in adherence with cdc and adhes guidelines the current face covering requirements shall remain in place until may twenty eighth twenty twenty one is there a second no second to that motion oh second thank you miss wood there's a second is there additional discussion well i i guess i would have a question um go ahead if if there is something that we can do to make this motion more acceptable to others i'm happy to entertain that um someone's hungry just just if i can clarify this is leaving our existing policy in place through the end of the school year yes so for the public i believe we all understand this our current policy does not require masks if people are outside that's right children who go out to research you're at recess if you're at pe if you are in passing periods and outside um you you if you're in the parking lot uh that that's our current policy and that continues that so i'm not sure about the passing period yes i don't think i think passing is not that's that's not what we've told the high schools if they're outside now remember two of our high schools are basically inside anyway highland is almost entirely inside gilbert is essentially with with a few exceptions inside understood passing periods if the passing is outside is outdoors correct if they're outdoors i think it more reads that they're on gps property okay and if they're in physical activity then they can remove their mass so recess pe those types of things now do kids take them off in passing periods when they're outside or pull them down i guarantee you that they do well and and that's consistent with the cdc and adhs which says that they should have breaks right it is i mean it specifically says that in those in the guidelines that they should have breaks if if we don't let them take them off outside in passing periods then unless they're in a pe class there is no chance for a break yeah you're correct there is no severe enforcement if they are outdoors additional comments questions concerns if you wanted to explicitly add that then you know just so there's no question about it i would recommend that well and i'm not sure we need to because you have the authority to amend that regulation if if that's what's understood any additional comment miss wood yes i guess i just also wanted to bring up that we had many comments from students who would leave if the masks were were take if the mask was changed and there's no mask we had many comments from many students who would leave if the masks aren't changed and aren't taken off so at this point it's it is difficult to try and balance and understand i meet needs and i we want to i want our students here i want our teachers here i want our teachers and students here in the best way that we can and there's just completely different feelings of what is acceptable at this point for each person and and it's been that way for the whole year and so i'm trying to be respectful of that as well but i wanted to mention that both ways so with this one there will be fallout just as there would from whatever so i think it's really really this is what i feel is unfortunate it is that whether he intended to or not the governor making that change has divided our community again we're all here trying to figure out what the best thing is and and i understand it's it's hard on both sides i mean i i do understand that having to wear a mask is an ask i just feel like those who have children who are whose health may be more at risk if they if they got covered i i just hope we could all be understanding and be a good neighbor and do the best we can to get through the end of this without any more division and be understanding and so that's why i'm asking for the mass until the end of school because we do have children in our schools who are at a higher risk and i understand that it's hard for everyone but i just want to be very mindful of those who who um are dealing with additional challenges yes can i point out that the one positive aspect of that particular motion that has just been presented to you is an end date so and that was a compromise on my part just one other concern as well as we talk about an end date or talk about we've only talked about the effects of covet on children and families for a whole year there are other things that we used to talk about that are still there that we need to talk about that we've just not been able to focus on because this has been the only thing there are many other challenges and issues and i know we know this i just am bringing this up again to remind us there's other things that we're going to need to and we need to start addressing as well and covet is one of them but there's other things as well so that's also in my mind thank you miss woodson no question that this pandemic has been all-consuming any additional questions mister i i have a question for dr mccord um if we do the end date of may 31st may 28th excuse me 28th um do we have options for for children who for summer school that would want to do it online yeah we do have secondary summer school online uh jason are we having elementary online i don't believe some but not so so there's limited so so there's an opportunity for our students who may not want not feel comfortable going back to in person after may 28th correct that they would be still able to get summer school classes again that is more more more robust at the secondary level not as much the elementary but there are some options but it's probably more important for robust at the secondary level am i right on that yeah yeah credit wise definitely right okay a couple questions if i may um first of all i do appreciate that that this motion clarifies the expiration uh as i said the previous motion that's currently in place that this would essentially update did have an expiration but i think we had all lost sight of that because it's been so long but this puts it out there clearly um it does send a message about our intent for fall and i and again it's an intent look obviously if if we're surprised and i don't believe the numbers will go here and the numbers go off the roof we're going to see health directives and executive orders and we can't guarantee anything but the intent of this board for fall is to not require masks i think that message is sent a couple of questions um evit has rescinded their mask policy they're now completely optional and i bring up eva specifically because we partner with them if kids are going to and from evit do they ride our buses do they ride evit buses they ride our buses so on our buses they would still be required because to wear the mask because it's gps property correct and then when they get to evit they would be able to remove their mask okay i would i would highlight that in a sense our mask policy has been perhaps in writing the most liberal if you will in the east valley in the fact that none of the other east valleys districts up until this week have had exceptions for even outdoors i i would agree with that that that's my understanding from talking with multiple board members and i believe you've conveyed that to me from your conversations with superintendents um that that would be changing a little bit we wouldn't be the strictest and we wouldn't be the most liberal either as for these last for this last month if assuming this motion passes um last question we've stated that outdoors with space you don't have to wear a mask but in the conversation we talked about graduation and requiring masks are we not spacing the kids on the football field are they not six feet apart students will be spaced out it'll be difficult to space people out to that degree in the stands so so will students being spaced out be allowed to remove their masks during graduation well currently no that was not the intent okay well and that's what i'm asking because the policy as we've clarified tonight would say would indicate yes because they're outside and they're spaced well and i i think when they're going up and they're getting their diplomas they they tend to bunch up a little bit and then they're walking through the line so our intent was to make sure that they were messed up the entire time and i think and i'm asking this so that it's clear because it's it's go this question is is going to come up given the earlier conversation and i think in fairness at one work study session where we discussed the springtime awards and options and celebrations that would be coming up that there were committees at each of those schools who were organizing and setting the conditions and the protocols for each of those and i don't think their protocols would be necessarily superseded by what we do here tonight and i think we need to clarify that yes this action coming after that conversation would imply that if we're not clarifying that i agree do do we need to add that to the motion i don't think so i just think it needs to be in in the directions from the schools to the families and the students you know that we just want him to be sweating sweating it out out there huh yeah yes it wouldn't be graduation if sweat wasn't involved well and i think that's one of my greatest concerns with this whole thing is that i want us to be able to have a graduation this year more than anything and i don't want to do anything to jeopardize that and i think just to clarify that if this motion is approved that those special recognition ceremonies that would occur the spring will have their own separate and distinct protocols for their operation on that evening is that everyone's understanding it's mine it is clear now so that is in the minutes any additional discussion okay seeing none then we will vote you are looking ostensibly at option number two uh with adherence with cdc and adhs guidelines that current face covering requirements shall remain in place until may 28 2021.
today it's 4136 from january 29th um so madeline sold their house and 22 people moved in and 22 kids moved in it was really it's quite a house so but the reality is i mean we have a lot of you know people are moving in and tony and i were talking about this earlier today dodd in dc i know mike presented the curriculum committee meeting but just to update the community we are seeking to do i can't guarantee that it'll be available but we're working on uh covid screening pcr testing people before they go we've connected with hartford healthcare and we're working now with yale to see what we can do to get testing available to students the interesting thing is testing is becoming a little less available by may they're anticipating cutting back testing because they're just not giving as many as they have been and so uh that's a unique uh situation we will expect people to self-quarantine until departure on wednesday the 26th we have reduced occupancy on the buses they all have murph 13 filters uh 35 occupants to a bus even though they're 55 seats option to room in pairs other rather than fours uh additional hotel rooms for isolation if needed if somebody's symptomatic we would place them in their own room until the parent can pick them up predominantly outdoor sites in the interior itinerary so people are you know we're visiting mostly outdoor venues uh with the consideration of smithsonian's opening now i ran this trip when there were eight full buses of kids going you know you'd have almost 400 kids showing up at venues and it was like an instant flash mob um and we are now breaking the trip up into like several eight almost singular buses and they're kind of doing their own thing because we have to spread people out differently and it's going to be different but yeah it'll be really fun with your bus midday and evening cleanings of the bus and then socially distant dining or eating and shifts or outdoor dining so we're very conscientious about maintaining the same safe environment that we have in the school setting to the greatest extent possible under the new conditions and giving our kids a really great experience that i know many of them look forward to from the time they're in fifth grade uh our vaccination progress i never miss an opportunity to shout out chespercott maura and her entire team there have been instrumental in uh providing vaccinations for our school community more than 500 cps staff members were vaccinated i appreciate the patience and flexibility of our parents to make that happen during school days it's allowed us to now you know be very confident that we can safely close out the air and not have to quarantine many teachers and that's a positive thing to help make our community safer and healthier we have a scheduled student vaccination clinic on wednesday april 28th we have over 100 students signed up already that we'll offer right at cheshire high school again thanks to maura and our team again a special another special shout out this time to jack kasner uh the fire chief and our maintenance team because they've been running the clinics out of the cheshire pool jack and rich clavette and they teamed together we're moving all of the items out of the pool over to cheshire high first of all you know shawn and the team here at the town have been really good john gallick about being flexible using that pool space it was really awesome you know they're they're looking to get back to normal too so we're transitioning uh some clinics over to cheshire high school to give them a little bit of relief but also to provide easier access for our students um so cheshire high moving forward where are we uh i i want to reiterate that a lot of districts you know have been going half days with kids or whatever we as of monday we'll have any child who wants to be there four days a week full day we'll have that access um wednesdays we are retaining for remote learning uh because we you know there's just significant value we find in having all the kids on the same platform in addition we our students our peer health educators run wednesday special programming for all the students in the building uh we call it wellness wednesday and they they design and run the programming it's really beneficial for our kids and they get a lot out of it so we're excited to continue to move forward i also shifting years beyond kovid have distributed a book called the strategy playbook for educational leaders principles and processes it is as exciting as it sounds and um it is a very you know it's an easy read but uh as we've talked about before this year we had planned on revamping our strategic plan kovid had other ideas so in the summer i look forward to kind of you know if we can balance it with the work that we're doing with school modernization get together with the board and start to talk about some of that long-term planning marlene kevin uh and robin and kerry and i have all been involved in really doing some some heavy lifting about setting a our new destination it may be the same destination but it might look different and we're we're trying to uh work through that so that we can work with the board and then the broader community about is this the right path for our community so we're uh excited about that work maybe we need to get out more often but uh it is kind of cool so news and other notes the notes will make sense as i go through this but uh ocr we've talked here about title ix regulations and um in my personal opinion i don't believe that the revised title ix regulations had done enough to protect kids uh to be honest with you it's added a lot of bureaucracy but didn't really protect kids i think it in some cases may have exposed students in a in a negative way and the ocr has heard that feedback and they're revamping it is our policy committee chair i gave adam an article a little earlier that talks about some of the things that they're trying to do and some listening tours i want to commend chs football wrestling cheerleading they were part of a group that included our central office team in a polar plunge back in february the community in cheshire along with the community in southern southington raised 92 000 for summer camps that's insanity you know and you know kudos to our our teams that participated in that steve trafone according that along with coordinating that along with kelly len she plays a very important role in the ymca chs math team had its highest ever finish in their state meet at fifth it was really exciting for those kids and they're off to compete in the new england championships we'll keep you updated i am really excited about this next one we have been nominated to participate in the 2022 national memorial day parade in washington d.c uh it's really cool uh getting goosebumps talking about it because you know our our band kids put in so much and you know for for those students over the last year or so that band has been dramatically impacted by covid19 and limited and so i'm so excited for marching band to start next year and for our students to have this incredible opportunity on a national stage to perform for america and represent cheshire so we we've surveyed the band members and ninety percent of them said oh i'm definitely in no doubt about it another ten percent said i'm probably in and that's that's parents actually so with the students you know they're bouncing off the walls about it so i'm really excited for them and excited for us and can't wait to be a part of that in 2022.
you know when i read this about uh this language about obstructing or blocking the sidewalk or the street must be trimmed in order to allow eight feet of clearance for streets and sidewalks it's not it's kind of ambiguous to me you know where you count the eight feet like where does that calculation start and end you know so it used to be the surface of the roadway and it's eight feet of vertical clearance i know staff recommended the word vertical be added yep oh okay so we're just we're just talking about eight vertical feet yes on the street but how far back from the sidewalk do you go just to the edge of the sidewalk it used to be six inches from the edge of the sidewalk uh that's no longer in our ordinance and i don't know maybe shannon knows if that's in the green book i don't know that it is and i definitely agree with eight feet of vertical appearance because i thought that i i was thinking the same thing that steve was thinking like how are you managing that um and but i know that it is in the code that you like if you're planting street trees that you have to have eight foot clear you know for the until you have the first few branches but i think that um there also is code i know that says that um anything around of um a fire hydrant has to have six inches uh no no higher than six inches in height with a a radius of six feet around the whole thing so just in terms of you know how this would work that's just good information to have in general i don't remember if there's anything about in terms of the orange book like where what where you know um that there's a thing with height in there i can't remember okay and my last comment is that in terms of the enforcement i mean i think three days there's nothing in here that i saw about issuing a warning first nothing about a warning and uh and then and then it says the city can uh come in with at least three days prior notice to commencing the work and then billing the property owner three days is not a lot of time somebody can be out of town on vacation and uh and just fine and just find out about this so i think you know it seems like just too short a time you know without a warning and then you know at least a week or two so you can make sure that people have at least had their chance if they're on vacation and they come back and and find it or that have notice is put up on their front door or something you know i've been asserting that it's not just sending a order it's contacting the homeowner or property owner and saying what's going on that's we you've had a complaint against you what are you doing why are you doing it what's your thinking yeah exactly what's going on before order gets issued it's more than just you know giving more time it's entering a dialogue with people before you come down on them with police power yeah order is into that okay i'm done so um i subscribe to john's complained about such large areas of grass that is not recreational so is there a way for us to um this doesn't have to be solved tonight but i would like to know a way to do outreach to those large landowners landowners of large properties that is currently turf grass i feel like that's a definitely an issue but it does need to be understood those are those are mode every week and in many cases you know there's chemicals applied and it's just seems crazy but unless you factor in where the cost the environmental cost the true costs of those actions grass is the cheapest thing to do for property owners it's not just a cliche that plays out it's also the least expensive to install the least without factoring in the true environmental cost the least expensive thing to maintain i i i think we're all learning that doesn't make sense anymore i hope we are yeah but um i i can talk to the sustainability office because i'm wondering if it would make sense to have a goal of like eliminating 10 of our turf grass by a certain time and then actually uh estimating what the cost is of having that turf grass and what the savings would be to the environment okay i know you'd like that john if we do the true accounting it's measurable it's achievable yeah well i see an unintended consequence potential here because um california decades ago people just replaced their turf grass with astroturf plastic is not necessarily a better answer but no we have we have at least one example of that in town and it's frightful we should remember that when this ordinance is when this is rewritten that astroturf is not okay i'm writing that down uh any other comments the pollinator group is taking front and center in the lead on getting rid of turf grass and i'm very excited thank you very much rita okay and uh leslie has her hand up oh good leslie you're muted leslie okay um yeah i would say you know when you get to the education part you know one of the things that i found successful with the rain garden program is you know this give this you know show the pictures of you know some of these that you've seen around the neighborhood you know of these successful ones um and also mention things that really you know like you mentioned the invasives you know most of us recognize well some of us recognize that buckthorn for example buckthorn seedlings canada thistle and a lot of these other things in some cases that people think are native that really aren't and you know so make sure that kind of is in there i mean obviously treating it very positively but also putting in there no this doesn't this isn't the native stuff um and but i think the education also has to kind of include you know the parts about maybe not specifically saying when rain gardens make sense or when you know a desert type landscape makes sense but you know that's that that needs to be in there too those kind of options and because you know i've seen i have seen a few like shannon said there aren't very many some really well done rain gardens and people do have the conditions for those but like i've got you know three rain guards in my yard if i had a better stronger back i'd put more in but that extension i cannot do that it is southern exposure big fat sycamore and dry so you know the whole condition part two has to really be included when you start when you start talking education and that you're giving those suggestions great well done thanks very much yeah thank you this is really really helpful um so you can tell that there's going to be some significant work here um but i think it's going to be worth it um i want to just mention that i also attended a webinar this week that was um based in toronto that was phenomenal and when i got the the video the recording of it i want to pass it around to you all because it talked about biophilic approach to um their city and that was that sounds really really vital is the way i would say it and it's based on um to some extent some some native traditions which i think will you'll all find very interesting um so anyway that's yet to come um so i i thank you all um oh leslie did you have another thing you wanted to say is your hands up and okay thank you um all right i think um i appreciate this and um i'm ready to turn it back to you steve all right thanks for you doing kathy so um next item on the agenda is e-business and there is no new business um so we pass on to reports from committees um natural features um we're still working on [Music] the amendments of ubc which has become really significant actually um um the core of it is trying to protect the native forest fragments of the city and there really are three levels of those one our native forest fragment natural areas most of those are on our parks and are being cared for by the nature various preservation program if they're not on our parts they should be the second are typically younger native forest fragments that can be identified in i think best in that in the 1960 aerial photos to the extent they cover the city um the reason for that time is that it precedes the invasion of ann arbor by invasive exotics which blurred the ability to see [Music] these features which have been undeveloped so far and there aren't many the third level of native forest fragment are areas of the city with those second growth native trees that have been developed mostly with housing under them otherwise they would have been utterly destroyed and most of those where the trees have survived were developed prior to the arrival of four wheel drive lifts and vehicles parking all over the property and trenching all over the property and things that fundamentally destroyed trees in the vicinity of houses there are neighborhoods on the old west side for example with 36 inch oak trees six feet from the house perfectly happy if that house was built today they'd be gone um so viewing those three levels and saying that those are core areas for expressing sustainability on outward into the neighborhoods they're in for doing what we need to do to regenerate those trees which generally is not happening especially in the developed portions for using them as anchors or guiding posts uh in the neighborhoods where they exist to increase the sustainability of our landscape the recognition that um these trees are what were here before europeans came here and they came back on properties that were not farmed or otherwise had their soil turned so that the seed stuck and the soil was destroyed and weren't developed roads and paving and housing and buildings we have this treasure source to build on so the amendments that udc that we're trying to do is really inventing a um something more than we had in the early 1990s an understanding of a basis on upon which we can build a base of sustainability a base of ecological restoration work across the city and do so with an outreach program that reaches out to neighborhoods i think two sets of neighborhoods one set has an 84s fragment one set was farmland and needs a different kind of restoration effort but where we reach out to um [Music] try to gain more sustainability based on on the ecosystems that were here in 1824 okay we're trying to reflect that in the amendments and we're getting close okay great chris thank you um um pollinators gabby i think is planning to talk gabby i don't see her she seems to have dropped off i think she did okay well um i'll just say that um we have met we've been kind of moving through our pollinator allies talking with them and kind of compiling lists of of the groups that we feel are active and contributing to pollinators in the city and um our ex-commissioner carrie slavic has been putting together some information that we're hoping to submit to nab to update the pollinator website and appreciate that support um so that's really primarily where we're going i will say that one one other group that we're going to be talking with soon that lily and i are going to talk with is some the the city golf course staff that maintain the monarchs and the rough um properties um because i think we can learn a lot from them as to how they deal with large spaces and i know that becky you certainly have that experience and shannon as well but um it's just another perspective that i think might be helpful so that's where we are okay and uh i think we'll be looking at all the notes that i took from this meeting tonight um and trying to get some things back to you soon all right oh shannon has her hand up yeah just a thought that occurred to me rita while you're here and while becky is here um that i think would be interesting is to to to pilot um some alternative kind of clover lawn types i know that there's some interesting kind of micro clovers and people are using white clover as some lawns and i think that it would be interesting to have some places in the city where we're testing this to see what it looks like on city land people can go and visit it and see what it looks like and um it's something that kids can still run around on and things like that um these are like their real thing in these two i know like uh one of my employees used to um work in the arm and she used to go walk barefoot there once in a while and got stung several times going through the clover lawn thing too and so that's a real thing also you know it's um but i just think it would be so many people don't use the lawn for recreation then i think it would be kind of cool to have the city try that in a few places and it just seems like we could use one of our city parks or one of the you know something where it gets mowed too and people can just see what it looks like and have the city test it out because it's one thing to kind of find these things on the internet and it's another thing to actually test it here here's what the seed mix is here's where you can find it this is what it really takes to put it together and i just think that it's great for people for like on our website or whatever to say go to this part to see the next product and see what it looks like that is just less vague about well you could try this or this and you're kind of not really sure if it's going to work and i just think it would be an interesting partnership um between your committee and some of nap's work and the in the parks work to be able to promote some of these things and just evaluate them see see how they work see how they hold up see what they do so i know there used to be one in the botanical gardens there were like four different grass types and the traditional turf grass that that was available i don't know if that's still installed or not yeah i don't know i think it'd be neat to put it in a place where people really use it yeah you know i mean not just a little square somewhere but like a section of west park where people are walking on it and their dogs running on it and you know what i mean i think it would be um interesting to try that so yeah while you two are both in the room yeah thank you okay um so we moved to solid waste um i'll just say that uh recent conversations with city staff uh the city staff is busy um extending contracts and developing rfps for the downtown alleys problem to try to solve that and also the um you know still working on the murph development for the c d ordinance work uh the city staff is uh is becoming a full co-partner with me in trying to develop this ordinance and gather data and move this project forward which i i very much welcomed you know that's very important to buy in is getting the staff involved in a leadership role as co-leaders for this um lisa do you want to say anything about the zero waste work three yeah first i want to um thank john mursky because you have turned my procrastination into a virtue in fact i have not yet peel the leaves out of my garden has now made me a star so [Laughter] the zero waste working group is so busy so we have one subgroup that's working on a definition of zero waste and that's floating the idea of setting a zero waste goal with a timeline we have another subgroup that is working that is researching reusable carryout containers reusable food containers and there's a couple of different ways of of establishing these programs one is each individual restaurant does its own thing that's okay but the fact is is that people don't eat out at the same restaurant every single night and so to my mind the better approach is if you get a network of restaurants together and they get the reusable stuff from the same place and you can bring your reusable thing back to any restaurant that's part of this network it means that the reusable plastic gets more use because it's all polypropylene whichever way you go it's polypro and that does not recycle but if you you can use it up to a thousand times so how do you get those thousand uses not going every single time to the same place so we're looking at this there are a couple of restaurants that are interested in doing this i'm not sure which model they have in mind we're hoping to catch them early so we can steer them towards the way that might make more sense um so that's another then there's another subgroup and that group uh is is uh sean callaward and me and jenny patosky and we are working up a grant a next cycle grant to produce metrics for a circular economy so it's they're very there's very little operationalizable measures of approaching circular economy and most of the measures that we have for tracking our progress on solid waste tracks diversion from the landfill so it tracks end of life it doesn't track what we're doing to reduce waste at the start of the process and design it out of the process and reduce consumption and all of that so we are working um on a grant for next cycle or there are other places we can try that and then finally there's a subgroup of sustainability ambassadors who are working on composting and food waste so that is lots of stuff going on and many meetings on my calendar and also jenny patosti's calendar who is just amazing so sorry i muted myself sorry uh well thank you thanks lisa um so let's move on to the planet the other commissions planning commission shannon um really the most pertinent thing in terms of uh crossover is the um the tc1 zoning the transportation oriented zoning and we've continued to work on that it's getting very close at this point and so i think the council's uh what was it june i think that it was supposed to come in front of them and i think we're gonna you know hit our target but um it's just continuing to be fine tuned we continue to get uh more feedback from the community and the general idea is kind of make it more broad if you can and so that's essentially i think what from the time that it has started uh where it was just one area to now like multiple areas and now it's not even naming specific zones it's more like a little bit more generalized and then also um the uh gis department created this really cool tool so that you can see what the setbacks mean for some of these different areas and uh it's it has a it's kind of full steam ahead and um and just getting more and more refined so um and i know people that are um thinking about you know doing development under it and so it's it's interesting to see see it going so we'll see we'll see how it goes but that's i think that's pretty much it though in terms of things that really lisa any uh other ideas you would have yeah okay well well thanks shannon yeah that's great news um so let's see uh parks is not here like apple's not here uh energy two highlights from the energy commission in our last meeting um the first was we had a presentation on the green belt which i sent to all of you because i thought it might be of interest the key takeaway there we were interested in terms of what types of opportunities there might be in terms of renewable energy generation but also biosequestration in terms of renewable energy generation there is a limitation that buildings and structures must be less than two percent of the property and there's another problem with generation and that is a generation someone is not allowed to generate energy and transmit it across the property line uh unless that's in concert with dte so it makes it difficult for someone to do it on their own they basically can't because they're not going to be using that much on their property and if they do more than that then they have to coordinate with dte and uh if they wanted to do more on their property then the two percent is the limitation the other thing that we talked about is planned updates to the energy code and those will be decided this year and what the process is going to be how to influence it and the highlight there is that there's probably going to be an increase in the base efficiency right now michigan is operating on a 2013 code and there's been two revisions since then and we're hoping that the new the newest revision will be form the baseline and those revisions are done every three years and the other option that we're hoping will come through is an appendix that municipalities can adopt that would allow us to mandate what's called the zero code uh and i won't get into a lot of details but it basically is what it sounds like is that you're you're basically targeting uh net zero with as much as what you can do on the property and then requiring that offsets or sinks be bought off the property to get to net zero and one last thing i just saw becky drop off i was gonna tell her i was admiring the photo the posters behind her the whole evening so that's all thanks steve okay thanks john so um let's move on to uh council um is there a report from council kathy lisa um i have something on the golden plume that i've been working on that i guess is council related i think everyone knows that it was determined that a dual process was feasible and allowed by epa the concurrence letter from the governor's office was sent on april 12th it was actually sent by lisa clarke who's the director of eagle um and that's something that we've been working on for probably for years um i'd like to thank ryan stanton from mlive he wrote what i would call a very assertive letter on friday april 9th and the concurrence letter was sent out on monday morning also congresswoman debbie dingo was meeting with the governor on monday morning visiting uh vaccination clinics so a number of things happened that i think just created this tipping point to get the letter sent so that's really great and then i've also been attending meetings with the attorneys because the other part of the dual process is a hearing before judge connors in early in early may and so there was a meeting today with the attorneys along with uh representatives from the ag's office and eagle in preparation of that hearing and hopefully that's not confidential who was actually in in the meeting today but that's just common sense that that people are all working together to be better prepared for the hearing great okay um lisa yeah i guess i could mention um two things one is that we approved a consented a consent agenda item to uh spend a hundred thousand dollars on bike lane year-round maintenance um and the other is that we had the first reading for the um site plan or rezoning and i think i'm not sure if it's site plan approval or just rezoning for uh shannon can correct me for the valhalla development project which would go in um by uh uh well it's across from a dentist's office that's how i think but it's approximate to the michigan golf course um never pioneer across from pioneer yep and that as you probably know um uh will be an all-electric apartment and condo development so i think that's of interest to environmental commission and i think that's about it for that last meeting okay great well thank you thank you both um so in terms of the chair report i just um had three things to say and that is that uh today governor whitmer announced that state facilities are going to go to 100 renewable energy by 2025 collaborating with the lansing board of water and life dte and consumers to make that happen um yesterday the house budget committee looked at the eagle eagle's budget now the subcommittee that's responsible for eagle's budget and uh they recommended uh reducing it by 25 and then by revisiting it quarterly and suppose the justification was that because of kova they're not sure how much money they'll have for evil so the governor's remarked on this so anybody out there who's concerned about it i have a video of the half hour session that was recorded of course and uh i'm willing to share that with anybody so they can see what happened it was rejected on a total party line vote and um the the key the only key thing here is that sri fanodar he's the uh vice chairman of that committee and he proposed um four amendments that would have improved the the situation with eagle in terms of actually freeing up money that has is related more to bond proposals and uh federal money that's available that was rejected by the uh you know by a party line vote as well so um we'll see how this shapes up but this is going to make it very difficult for eaglet to do any environmental cleanup um for mi green waters pfas and several other things so this is very important so we should watch this issue and weigh in with our state representatives on this and the third thing is that uh i noticed that uh there's a today there was a it was published in uh m live under giuliana lumage's byline today in m live there is an article about the dte and ann arbor's osi department came to an agreement about the voluntary green pricing that dte offers so you can look for that mlive article again it's under the byline of julianna lumage l-u-m-a-j it was published today online around noon so um those are the only things i i wish to report at this time so um if there's no questions um we'll follow on to report from staff josh um let's see kind of following up on that the energy thread a few things that we're working on on the city we have uh one megawatt of solar so on-site solar uh an rfp that went out so i'm currently working on uh basically wrapping that up we're in the selection process and and so we'll hopefully have a selected solar installer here shortly on top of that we also have two rounds so we did one round already of energy audits on existing uh city buildings most of those being parks and rec so kind of smaller buildings uh with the eye not only towards uh kind of energy efficiency improvements we could do across those buildings but also electrification um so looking at uh you know one of the one of the sites that kind of stands out in my mind is uh the senior center it has um you know electric baseboard heating along with kind of a traditional uh natural gas furnace and so a few kind of competing systems all in one building and i think it's a prime location for uh for a heat pump air-to-air exchange heat pump and a place that we're hoping uh you know if we go ahead and put a heat pump in we can also make it a kind of a you know almost like a um a pilot case for the community members to come and see what a heat pump's all about so i think there's always that opportunity to get the community engaged especially with equipment that they might not be as familiar with um so we're hoping to do all that so i guess uh yeah just to keep it brief those are some of the high level things we're working on on the city josh may i ask something real quick sure there's going to be a workshop i think is what is being called regarding heat pumps on may 12th at 7 pm is that right yes and missy told me yesterday that 150 people have signed up for that that is correct yeah uh so if you're interested or you know someone who's interested in learning more about heat pumps and how you might be able to consider that in your near term or mid to long term plans i encourage you to sign up for that yeah we have we've gotten local contractors so it was very hard early on to find contractors who specifically could install heat pumps but i think as time has gone on and i think you know the demand is really especially with these kind of events these community events i think the demand is is really building in the city and so i think it's really helping to bring people out you know contractors would normally not look necessarily at heat pumps that might be a little bit more complicated out of the realm of their expertise uh have really come out uh in in force and so we're happy with uh yeah that kind of uh those contractors meeting with with the with our community members great well thank you josh the next item on the agenda are action items and i have two uh one is that uh um on the uh rain gardener information uh well we were talking about putting information on the city's rain garden website we're updating that information and uh the second one was um is that kathy and rita are going to lead this group and further develop and lead a group and further develop the chapter 40 discussion and come up with a proposal hopefully very soon they'll return to the full commission with this with a concrete proposal that we can discuss um are there any other action items i might have missed no i don't hear anything so uh items for the next agenda i think the natural features working group is going to manage the uh presentation i want to thank rita and her associates for the pollinators work group manage the presentations and the agenda for this meeting and i'm looking forward to the natural features work group doing a similar job for our may may 25th meeting so um let's see the next uh i don't are there any other items that people would like to propose for our next meeting no i don't hear anything so uh the next item on the agenda is uh the next scheduled meeting which i believe is may 25th i better see no it is may 27th may 27th thursday the fourth thursday is may 27th so that's our next scheduled meeting um we'll see you all there this uh so we'll move on to the next public commentary um public comment this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-877-853-5247 and enter meeting id 997-3412-6347 city staff will uh this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that will raise their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established josh do we have anybody on the line yet i don't see anyone yet okay well i don't um is there anybody on the line now i think yep no one no one yet so i think we're good okay then i think uh we've passed our 30 seconds here so let's i call this meeting adjourned at 9 48. thanks everybody you
some of them are in your 20 you're 21. so close and now what it's just really it's really disappointing so please please reconsider before that may 6th meeting anything you can do thank you very much i appreciate that hi my name is nicole green i live at 1625 old marlton pike i am a therapist within the district i'm also a parent who has four children that have either gone through or are currently in our district i'm speaking tonight to ask you to vote no to the elimination of the benefits of many of our hard-working paraprofessionals i could point out how unbelievably hard our pairs work to support the children of this community or discuss the hours and years that they have put in with the promise and expectation of benefits when they retire but i'm going to talk instead about who this decision will impact the most which is our children with special needs i would ask that before you vote in eliminating our pair of benefits you would travel benefits within the district we have both employed within our district we have paraprofessionals who do hold benefits and paraprofessionals who do not hold benefits while we have excellent paraprofessionals in each of these camps there is one important difference most of us who work in the district already know that the turnover rate of paraprofessionals who do not receive benefits is much higher than the turnover rate of our paraprofessionals who do receive benefits the reality is that we lose many of our paraprofessionals specifically the ones who do not receive benefits every year in our district these paraprofessionals have a hard demanding and at times exhausting job for a limited salary and no benefits although they love the children of our district many of these paraprofessionals are forced to seek jobs elsewhere where they can make the same amount of money and also receive much needed benefits our paraprofessionals who currently maintain benefits and are the they are the constants of our special needs program in eve sham township i couldn't personally do my job without all of these paraprofessionals their turnover rates are lower because they like all of us choose to work through those hard days those difficult months those sometimes tough years for job perks such as benefits this is the reality benefits do matter our children with special needs often can't speak for themselves they can't tell you that they struggle with change and need to see the same faces week after week and month after month they can't tell you how important it is for staff to support them in very specific ways in order to help them to learn and to avoid a meltdown as you can imagine this takes hours of intensive paraprofessional training which is then solidified with years of experience so what i i would like to ask what those numbers are what are the turnover rates of our paraprofessionals who have benefits as opposed to our paraprofessionals who don't i would also encourage the members of this board to know the answer to this question before making this important decision i do understand that we're in a precarious position in terms of budget and that had hard choices have to be made but we can't make this decision at the expense of our children with special needs i ask you to look for another way thank you thank you just taking a quick scroll around is there anyone else who'd like to speak oh good okay georgia terry reside in the woodlands development i'd like to acknowledge that lenny lenape people who are the traditional landowners that this school stands on and that you are meeting on today the land is part of the ancient homeland and traditional territory and i recognize the continuing connection to land water and culture i pay my respect to the lenny lenape peoples past present and emerging and their continuing presence in the homeland and throughout the lenope diaspora evening i just want to say thank you to the board for the time that you give um volunteering to sit on the board i also um would like to say that i would love to see your meetings open with a very similar land acknowledgement given that you are education i was here last on february 25th to introduce the diversity and equal opportunity network widely known as dion we seek to encourage and increase diversity inclusion and equity within schools and assist other school districts with their efforts as well as our community in 2021 statistics show that the school body is made up of 22 non-white students um and also in 2021 and i also acknowledge it last meeting that i was at the first person of color who sits on your board being a niche i would also love to see some more representation true representation of our community on a positive note dion launched a their first annual book drive yesterday for those who are unaware um dion is collecting books that are inclusive and represent diversity and equity and we will be donating those to all of the schools in eshen township school district yesterday at our kickoff launch thank you to anish and jeff from the board who attended to support us i want to thank you dr smith for also attending and speaking um for our live stream the event and um this is magoolikoo i'm not sure he's here today thank you also for attending um we have had a massive outpour already we've all raised 500 worth of cash and um gift cards for for this contribution um towards books we are also wanted to just let everyone know that the the location for a drop-off is at the eastern township municipal building and we also have created a wish list on amazon the list was created by dion um members who are all professionals made up of resident students alumni um and the general community of eastern township it's quite in-depth and it's been heavily researched to benefit all of our children so we really encourage everyone to check out our amazon wishlist you can buy directly from the wishlist and have it shipped to us or if you would like to support your own bookstore retailer you are welcome to purchase that and drop it off into the donation bin um and we also i will leave a bunch of um these this is our flyer i guess i just i'm showing you because you will be seeing this plastered all over eastern township boards more shopping centers everywhere you can because we really love to get the word out and i also believe that it's going to be in the school newsletters thank you real quick real quick uh a couple things real quick uh first of all thank you for the invite i i appreciate the invite i'm sorry i was not able to make it i wasn't on the notice i couldn't get there that's okay um but i do look forward to to others like this i wanted to clarify because anish and i had talked about this um there was a there was an african-american minister who served on the board of education here in the mid-1980s i did not know that my father served on the board of education in the late 1980s here and he reminded me because he was watching on on on live stream i'll have to get more information on that to let you know about that that would be really nice yeah absolutely but i i know um after everything was said my my dad actually in a funny little story he called me up he goes you know anisha's not the first and i was like what so i would like to acknowledge anisha's being the second person given that this town it has been around for a very long time absolutely my my dad is my dad is quite the school board historian so i i i refer back to him on a lot of those things so he schooled me basically in that conversation because i was just frankly unaware i mean i was five so but he uh he he he reminded me of that i'm gonna get a little bit more information and anything i can provide you i'll let you know cool thank you any time may i say something yes what's your permission yes when is the end of the book drive so it runs through to the 21st of june and we will be providing um the board and schools more information as an event is planned and prepared for i guess an official handover the the significance of the 21st of june is actually in national indigenous day and we are hoping to hold this event at savage field which recently has been recognized as an indigenous burial ground yes okay dr smith you summarized in an email and i believe you indicated you're going to communicate all this to the families in a friday letter that's such a good lead-in because yes actually tomorrow tomorrow's email going out that's perfect and and uh thank you so much for coming and sharing it here because you know it's one more forum where we can get the message out there are so many just so well-crafted details i'm glad we got to talk about the june 21st indigenous people's day connection and just um so we're very excited we're so thankful for the work um with this book drive and to see what comes of it and to continue to talk about it as we move forward and so uh thank you thank you so much thank you we um appreciate the ongoing relationship as well thanks thank you good evening my name is susan beck i live at 548 justice drive and i'm my message is pretty short here um i would just like to remind you as everybody has said the children of the district will suffer for many years to come if this budget is passed i implore you please reconsider i would also ask you to remember that we did what was expected of all of us the paris coming back in september during covid giving everything we had wearing many hats doing many jobs every day in addition to our own and i would ask you to just do the same thing for us and save our benefits thank you [Music] i'm going to close this portion of the meeting nobody else right i just want to i didn't be preemptive on that okay i'm going to close this portion of the meeting uh and head into board announcements are there any board announcements cantham all right my name's have been mentioned too many times i'll try and make this quick um all right um so first of all i want to thank dan morton and the martin business association for hosting uh for hosting dr smith and i for a luncheon last week um when you hear the terms marlton business association you would assume it's a a group about making money but um the first thing that that came to my mind was both community and philanthropy they they were chomping at the bid for different opportunities to get involved in both our district and then there were some mrc opportunities as well that were being discussed so uh thanks to dan and the entire martin business association i look forward to that relationship ongoing um the other update was uh the dion book drive um i think the the dion book drive is is wonderful um thanks to timothy tori and the rest of the dion membership for hosting us yesterday um at the kickoff event um i look forward to the continued partnership and i think it's wonderful that a group that's supposed to be focused on curriculum is helping us uh create books that that obviously helps with our pocketbook as well um thank you anybody else all right so that's funny yes um justin dr smith excuse me do you think it would be um essential to share with the uh meeting tonight in the public that deadline that we spoke about the may 6th versus when it has to be approved and sent so that it might be a better understanding as to why a couple questions that were asked won't fit in the timeline thank you miss plumbing yeah i'd be glad to talk about that so um we are we are running up against the deadline of may 7th is the deadline when we have to have had our public final budget approval so that there isn't an option to push that meeting back at all essentially so and miss filming thank you for that question thank you miss fleming can i add one quick thing i know this probably is overstepping my bounds but when the email came out yesterday about the kickoff for the dion book drive at the library yesterday it got me thinking especially tonight when she said the amazon wishlist i'm just thinking curriculum one book one school how about something along that vein just some just throwing it out there i see a curriculum committee curriculum committee just to suggest thank you mr anybody else i'm losing it today all right that being said um we have no executive second executive session at this point in a motion to adjourn a motion merged by miss ryan seconded by ms snow all in favor [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you