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she always goes above and beyond for her students finding time to work with the children to meet their individual needs she also does this for parents always makes time for parents her caring and compassionate nature provides a pleasant environment in her classroom which enables her students students to thrive every day hey just by seeing you and seeing the smile on your face i know that the children in your classroom feel very welcome and very happy when they're with you so oh i love being with them i know you do and you know what that's what makes you a great uh great teacher so congratulations thank you so much and the educational service professional of the year from school nine dawn elias dawn are you with us tonight okay moving on to school 11. the teacher of the year from school 11 jennifer angelilo miss angelilo are you with us tonight yes i am hi dr robertosi how are you i don't see you where are you i'm right here oh am i the only one that doesn't see her you gotta push the arrow doctor oh the arrow the arrow okay thank you hi miss angelilo [Music] miss angelillo is an inspirational visionary educator that is always ready to help her students colleagues and the administration she routinely makes sound collaborative decisions that positively impact the lives of her students ms angelilo effectively models all the positive attributes one looks for in an educator school 11 is proud and fortunate to have her as a member of our faculty congratulations ms angelo thank you so much for this honor and congratulations thank you thank you and the educational service professional from school 11 is diana cicadas diane are you with us tonight okay moving on to school 12.
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i know one of the things that the council stated is that you know they're hopeful that claims will come in lower than the 900 000 and so we won't be eroding the two and a half million that will be starting in the medical benefits preserved and if it doesn't i think everybody board a bad town council administration realizes that we may be having this conversation as we prepare for budget next year right so that we'll have to fund up to meet the uh the claim rate and you know again it's on us that this seems to be an annual discussion and how do we navigate this and um it's a it's a blessing and a curse to have a inflated account there and you know you want to take from that but should you and so you know ben sean jim and i are still working on you know what might be an adequate move forward proposal for for both sides of the street to handle that account because it's a slippery slope the medical benefits true but the but if and we're gonna have a discussion on this i've already guessed there but somehow policy is passed to that the account it wouldn't matter because his claims are completely going over the budget year over year right it doesn't matter unless you're buying i don't know people should touch that calendar right yeah yeah if you're under budgeting you're in trouble but you know one of the reasons i can't get slipped too is because our iranian budget is never fun with what we have support so yeah fair enough guys um so a couple months ago tim mentioned we self-insured honestly tim said what what would the benefit or the uh down the pitfall be of working with a broker or just you know buying the product as opposed to self-insurance i mean are we going to face the same thing just we're just going to get hammered on premiums and that's that's the risk you run when you're when you're fully insured right so instead of being self-insured and having a reserve you're fully insured you get billed for a premium it's guaranteed the issue is though every year of renewal you're subject to the whatever they come up whatever the market is at the time so if you're with anthem or cigna you um you will have to accept what that renewal rate is right and you know we were fully insured on our blue cross which is the which was the hmo plan um and when we went self-insured with that you know the savings just on the board of red side was about a half a million dollars a year so you know the nice thing about fully insured is your premiums are set you know what they are for the year and that's what you budget the problem is you're subject to the whim of the of the market and the renewal and sometimes you know 20 to 25 renewal is not that uncommon i i think the the best way to describe where we are even with the increase that we haven't put up this year which is a significant increase if you look at the average over the last five years because we reduced our budget for three years even with this large increase our average increase is about three and a half percent per year okay which is a little bit better than the medical inflation rate so it hasn't been bad we've lived off the reserve healthy reserve balance we've had for several years now we just have to adjust but i think we're running overall as an average we've been doing just fine all right but it's a good question i mean it's it's a dilemma that you know a lot of communities you know do face i think we have the tougher year than most communities and hopefully next year because kind of back to so in the instructional expense account we made a proposal to reduce staff training by ten thousand dollars that in spite of that reduction um we're still doing better than expended in 1920 we think that's a safe budget number to come in at and you know in that bounce forward proposal a lot of the money federal money we're spending is focused on pd so we felt like that was a safe place to go other items in here are places that you know we felt like we could make reductions and still be all right again you know buoyed in part by federal resources but instructional supply was a recommended reduction of 23 166.
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the teacher of the year from school 12 miss yahara [Music] how are you good thank you i usually only see you on twitter and social media ms caraballo has been a teacher at school 12 for over eight years she is a driven organized teacher who develops inspiring relationships with her students mrs caraballo has a wonderful rapport with her students and peers and i could attest to that ms carl just from the couple times i've been in your classroom it's just you're just so enthusiastic and just the kids love you they just love you her ability to connect with her students and her talent at teaching simple concepts as well as more advanced topics are both truly superior mrs caraballo accomplishes all these tasks with great initiative and with a positive attitude mrs caraballo congratulations and keep smiling thank you thank you and the educational service professional of the year uh miss wendy scradato nurse scrudado wendy are you with us hi wendy wendy's one of our outstanding nurses in the district and has been a nurse at school 12 for over 22 years that was all at school 12 wendy wonderful nurse wendy consistently accomplishes the multitude of tasks assigned to her in a timely manner she brings commitment and enthusiasm to her varied responsibilities this is evident in her interactions with staff and students from all different backgrounds in our school she's a dedicated individual who has an immense capability of dealing with emergencies with sensitivity plan and professionalism even with all the uncertainties that this year has brought to the work environment nurse wendy is always willing to answer any questions and ease staff students and parents stress including that of my own wendy when we've had to talk a few times this year about certain issues in the district and you were always good at taking me down a little so thank you on behalf of the entire district congratulations mrs nurse scrudato thank you everybody thank you moving on to school 13 the teacher of the year magdalena voitillo is voiceless where are you with us yes hi with the pronunciation did i do good you did great all right i practiced mrs roytello is a natural leader and continual contributor to school and district level initiatives she's a valued leader on the pbsis team and her role as the pbsis data specialist has provided opportunities for her to dig in deep with the collection and analysis of school level data this year she created a paraprofessional handbook that has been shared with every paraprofessional in the district and has been adopted by the special education department that's really great ms voytillo blended her love of technology with her love of math to create a k-8 math website that has been utilized by all our staff as an excellent resource and tool for teaching math whether hybrid in person or remote mrs voytillo manages and monitors school 13's google calendar and ensures that meetings and other events are scheduled and shared with all participants mrs voitila also worked in the summer to create and disseminate a new code of combat used by all students and administrators during the time of covet 19.
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the [Music] textbook software account 22 500 but again you know these these uh numbers are coming in okay these are these are shaving fractions off of that those accounts um and you know speaking of again the the reductions uh down at near the bottom line 730 replacement equipment that's an area that tends to get hammered uh over the years is like tony was saying when the budget doesn't come in we tend to turn to these places but this still represents an almost a 19 increase in those lines even with those reductions of 6250 out of each of those lines so out of that uh instructional expense account we're reducing 68 000 out of an account that was four and a half million so i think we're still in a solid place to maintain any questions on that the next item is support services the 20 000 reduction at the top out of rentals and leases is for the multi-function printers or copy machines that we have we were able to make contract savings there of 20 000 and then the next one the next several lines are areas where we just made subtle reductions in the the budget uh three three thousand basically for the communications and travels and conferences again you know with federal money they do support communications and professional development office supply line forty five hundred dollars the transportation supply seventeen five any any special comment there have been on that or the capital equipment of the 25 000 um yeah i mean with transportation supply that's basically the diesel fuel gasoline for the buses so you know you can see we um you know had some reasonable prices you know back in 1920 and even in 2021 we know a few prices are going up and i think you know that we've got enough you know budgeted that that we should be okay even if the price of fuel increases and then capital equipment we purchased quite quite a bit of computer technology this year right um and we made some of the purchases we need for over the summer already so reducing that 25 000 still gives us a budget of about 300 000 for technology purchases which is just adding just one inadequate next year so i was comfortable reducing that one so i mean again out of a seven million dollar rough number support services budget we're making 73 000 reductions there and then maintenance and operations um it's exciting to think that we're not making as substantial reductions as we typically do there we know that uh the needs in maintenance and operations are are substantial so we you know are excited to look at our maintenance supply line uh and see that even with the reduction or the 25 increase and that's that's not going to cover years of reductions but it'll help us to ensure that we we have adequate maintenance supplies particularly coming off the pandemic and then maintenance building repair reduction of 93 000 there but it still represents a 90 increase in that line um to kind of get us to where we were in 1920 and then same same ballpark um are there i mean before we i guess closed that uh line of maintenance and operations has a 107 046 reduction the cumulative reduction being the 1.486 million that the town council had reduced so i think even with that 1.486 we're we're really well poised with this and the bounce forward plan to be in a good place to support our kids and staff in the 21-22 school year i'm going to throw a wrinkle at you i said tony i hate to do this at the 11th hour i know but i love it so we we have a little bit of a wrinkle in the sense that our beloved uh school community relations uh rock star kelly lens will be retiring and you know the timing of that i mean you don't begrudge kelly but the the timing of that is um interesting from a dif a variety different perspectives i think first and foremost i think about transitioning and hopefully next spring putting forth a referendum and somebody to manage community relations is pretty critical i think for us as a school system and community and marlene and vin and i uh put our heads together there there were certain things that kelly did she she has a very niche sort of job she does a little bit from here and a little that [Music] it's not always easy to find somebody that fits the diverse skill sets there so we looked at what kelly was doing we looked at the needs that we feel are evolving for our school system and have a proposal in terms of a position and how we would would cover that oh is it popping up on the other side there might yeah okay that's what the issue is i got it there we go so um i kind of have two things i'm going to throw at you here the first is the um family and community engagement coordinator which is a an evolution of kelly's position and what you see here in the green are things that kelly was directly responsible for in order to pay for this we would be using you know kelly's salary to cover these things she was responsible for adult education part of the issue there is she's not a certified administrator and marlene would have to go several nights a year to evaluate teachers in the program so the new person would be responsible for that evaluation process grant the grant management what we've been exploring over the last several years and working with the stadon is more of a collaborative partnership with wallingford who has a larger adult ed population and so we're working on some reciprocity there which helps lower our costs and increase service opportunities for people in our community so they'd be responsible for adult adult education including the enrichment program that we offer which is fairly successful they would also oversee student teachers and interns we take on a number of student teachers and interns i'll tell you and you know i know marlene would would testify that as an administrator having an intern is so incredibly valuable in the sense that you have that one person in the building all year and they know your kids they know your staff they and they sub all over the building they do student teach oftentimes for like a 10 week period you lose that but there's a real positive trade off there we pay colleges for interns it's really a wash in terms of substitute costs but again there's such a value to having the same person every day committed to your building this person this new position would screen all those people we screen those applicants to us and we hire and assign them to buildings based on you know what we know of them and this this would be an administrative role they coordinate kelly coordinates school business partnership meetings as well as a lot of intern placements things like this so there's that community liaison piece that this person would facilitate as i mentioned you know we looked at what the needs are and how they're evolving for our school system and where we think we can do better one of those is with a liaison to open choice next year we took on more students for open choice for a variety of reasons and to have a contact a person on our end responsible so for example if a open choice student needs special education support we can build that back to new haven but it's hard for you know different administrators to be responsible for that to have one contact person we think that'll be way more efficient and helpful not to mention the fact that we want one pivot person if there's an open choice issue to be able to connect with either its new haven or the parent can connect with this person or the principal can connect with this person who knows the 43 students that we have in district k-12 open choice students our ell account english language learner account has evolved since 1617 we had 38 ell students this year it's actually over 80 the october first count was 75 so that number has in essence doubled over the course of a few years and it is a growing population we with early intervention you know when when the kids are younger i should say and we have intensive supports in place and these students speak a variety of languages year do mandarin spanish you know you name it and we provide that in intervention and ultimately they test out so the student is no longer identified as an el student however their family didn't learn english necessarily at the same rate you know or still need supports so we're chasing down translators we're supporting those families so that they can engage in our school system as well this person would coordinate that effort for the you know growing number of el students we have we you know would basically reserve the right to have this person evaluate other teachers outside of adult ed is necessary based on their background we i'm going to skip one for a second manage summer school would be part of this as well for the 12-month administrative position right now we pay an administrator a summer school management stipend that's existed since before i i came to cheshire they provided summer school special ed summer school and other enrichment programs and credit recovery programs for the high school right now as i said we're paying a stipend we would just make that part of this person's responsibilities [Music] they would serve in some regard as a title ix capacity and i know adam and the you know the policy committee we've talked about title ix and the evolving nature of that for some time you know we went through the girls hockey situation somebody to just oversee now obviously that wasn't a violation of title ix you know that question came up but adam would attest to the fact that the title nine under the last president and the trump administration revamped title nine and it became really unwieldy and almost like a court of law for a school system and i you know for us as a little bit bigger school system i think we could probably figure it out in a small system i don't know how you would even begin to think about even learn the lines exactly yeah so that was a gold standard yeah yeah exactly so right now the um office of civil rights is reviewing title ix again and there may be changes to that again so we haven't made real significant shifts in policy we have to follow the law but we've kind of waited we're waiting out like where is this going to settle this person would help support that the other thing that we would like this person to do you know again they're dealing with a lot of community connections already school business partnership our el population is integrate as the same program of parent involvement and engagement and so you know marlene and i the principals would still be very involved with the it's not like this person is going to run every pto meeting not at all we'd still be very involved in that process but they'd be seeking different ways for us to connect with parents in the community and i think as i mentioned you know at the outset with our efforts towards school modernization that will be really important you know faith and i were having this conversation the other day uh you know we've talked about um you know andrew and i and i think probably at some point to talk to all of you about how do we engage broader community to make sure they understand what work is going on in the school system what the needs of the school system are and that they're they're partners with us so that was the proposal in terms of the position it would be a 12-month administrative position paying on the scale for step one 100 to 000.
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she's in a tremendous asset to school 13 and by the sounds of all those things magdalena you are a tremendous asset to the district thank you and congratulations thank you dr robertosi thank you everyone the educational service professional from school 13 is miss stephanie hague miss hager are you with us tonight okay moving on to school 14 the teacher of the year ms dana yodice hello hi dana how are you how are you i'm good how are you miss yo dyches face enthusiastic and caring first grade teacher during remote learning she assisted district supervisors interested in transitioning different components of our curriculum to the virtual platform in addition she works with the entire school 14 staff to help them become more comfortable with the switch to online learning she always helps with extracurricular programs and is ultra responsive and caring when working with her students and parents she is professional organized and a true teacher leader school 14 is lucky to have her as part of their family and dana i received a couple emails this year from parents specifically praising you and i have to tell you that why that's such a big deal normally when the superintendent gets an email from a parent most of the time it's not something good right so for a parent to go out of their way to email the superintendent to tell them great things about their child's teacher says a lot about you and what you do so congratulations this is a well-deserved award um and you deserve it congrats dana thank you very much the educational service professional of the year from school 14 miss kristen checky kristen are you here yeah i'm here oh there you are hi kristen hi kristen is a dedicated and hard-working speech therapist at school 14.
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the elementary ap right now that's the level one and that position um makes 126 now starting so it's slightly below on the scale where our assistant elementary assistant and uh special supervisors are um and they would receive 100 of the tsa tax sheltered annuity which is next year 500 men how would we pay for that well we appropriate money from kelly lenz's salary to pay for the majority of it that's 60 000 there we received an eighth teacher retirement um and so there's a forty thousand dollar pickup there the summer school stipend that we're paying right now is eight thousand dollars and we wouldn't do that anymore and so we picked that eight thousand dollars up for a hundred and eight thousand dollars so in essence you know the position is paid for out of our current operating budget as it stands today um and we just feel with kelly leaving the needs not going away all these needs are still here and we're getting what kelly was doing and then some and we just feel like you know now is a good time to do that the with kelly the her total compensation is one seventy first excuse me is seventy four thousand dollars but she won't be retiring on july first so we didn't factor the entire 74 000 in next year that won't be forty thousand dollars it'll be closer to thirty five thousand with the step difference from the teacher retirement but you'll pick up the money from kelly's retirement so over time it is sustainable and what i had said to tony you brought up a good question about you know we have math interventionists we've added we've added some administrative positions through the bonds forward money and i think it'll be incumbent upon us two to three years out to look at what has been the most high leverage of these interventions that we have these changes what's been really valuable and do we need to make adjustments at that time but you know again i think with kelly and what she provides to us in terms of those community connections rolling into school modernization in addition to all these other things it's pretty important to move in this direction and they wanted to throw it out for discussion um well i'll open with i'll play devil's advocate since uh anne isn't here tonight um playing the role of devil's advocate there is a list of positions um and other things that you wanted to do or a wish list right yeah um so does this position represent the number one need for our district you know i think security consultant you know that position is important but not as important as this right now the other positions that i thought and continue to believe are important are things that we funded in our bounds forward plan and how we're using the federal grant money to do that matt supported cheshire high school and god middle school being primary among them so the the long winded answer was what you just said the short answer is yes i think that this is um because i can't overstate the importance of community engagement over the next year beyond in the next couple of years not to mention it's good practice every day but when we're considering the referendum it's i think fairly critical not to mention the doubling of el students the um you know the adult somebody has to do that uh summer school i'm already paying for i just roll it in here right you know so yeah i think this is pretty pretty critical it required an additional additional education or additional certification that um uh kelly did not have or this is your you were taking another position that you're molding it into this position yeah so so kelly didn't have she doesn't have a teaching certificate certification let alone uh administrator certification she is teaching active is it active but not being an administrator she can't evaluate staff you need to have an o92 certification to do that so this position would have that to be able to to be able to evaluate those those staff members to teach in adult education additionally based on the background we didn't want to commit to evaluating like a certain department or anything like that until we hired somebody and were clearly aware of what their professional background was to determine is there a place where they would potentially evaluate other staff as well andrew i think the salary is great but is it smart to be putting is it better to do like a 70 000 year position a 40 000 year position taking out the community piece and the educational oversight review piece that this person has to do to me it just seems like it's a how is this person going to do all the summer school dealing with all the students teacher reviews and do the community outreach case like is there enough time so yeah i understand that there's compensation is good but isn't the time to do all the work that's not safe in my opinion yes because a lot of this is um you know timely to different points in the year there are certain things that are going to be really heavy during parent conference time and when students are registering and coming in there's going to be another time during spring conferences there's going to be throughout the year some of that open choice those those meetings are once a month that you would go to and then it would be sort of coordinating with principles so i i think there's an ebb and flow to it that when you look at it all each and every day it's really by the calendar and the summer school piece will be heavier in the spring and then you know the execution of it during the summer so i i think it's well i think it's well balanced i think what we did in in looking at this too was to talk to like rob and carrie who's run the summer school and make sure that she takes a look and sees it and got that feedback talked to kevin knowing when some of the el things happen so my office will continue to run that but this will be the connection is interesting between the adult ed and the el family because a lot of the families who are taking our english as a second language class in adult ed are the parents of our students who are in so that would be a likely person to do both because they're seeing those people at night at the adult ed classes so those natural connections are there those are the things that can't really be seen that where the people are and how it happens are really linked so that's that was my my thought on will they have it will there be administrative support kelly currently has some administrative support through uh the um other thing that you know is funny i kind of laughed when you brought up that question because it was the first thing that another one of our administrators asked today looking at that like and then we we you know took a step back and said okay let's take a look at this and we consider what a typical administrator in our district manages it's that wildly diverse and you know you know everything from transportation discipline ppt's uh maintenance and lunch and all these variety of things that you have to know uh something about and be able to do well and then oh yeah academics right so uh in this role there are a diversity of skills but we felt like they are definitely as is marlene said paced out well enough that you know it even actually gives you a little bit more of a this is my focus time in the same way as a principal though you know you know spring is pptc you know annual transition you know just that's what we do you know things are kind of scheduled like that in the school life same cycle every year so when you start to explain it though especially next year um spring is going to be crazy because that's when the referendum is so i'm beginning that it kind of almost concerns me more and i'm wondering i mean if you're going to do this and i'm with andrew i'm just amazed at the level of work that this person does but then it would i'm just wondering if someone if we like brought the salary down to a lower level and then perhaps i don't know kelly would want to help with under a contract basis or something to at least do the communications to get the get the referee get us through the referendum because that's going to be crazy and i don't good point i think that's a really good point i don't think that this person is going to have soul for it it's still going to be jeff and jeff pointed to me and vinnie running a lot a lot of that with your support this person will not be in isolation doing that but running some behind the scenes oh at school business partnership and when i was at the economic development meeting and with those connections yeah the natural referendum process is mainly on the town council so it's not like this person is going to be sending up all that stuff but the potential community engagements between now and next spring next spring or that point where we have to go silent in 60 days yeah so as much as it's april you gotta back it up 60 days to february between you know six-month window when the school starts and pre-referendum um helping us set up the forms that people have been getting you know reaching out different groups that kind of thing but i'm thinking before that so would this person be able to help get our website updated finally i don't think so um because that's a little bit of a niche skill you know thankfully carol has that capacity and our tech people have that capacity they're working on that and one reason i asked that is i know carol's morning cable over this past year wasn't home but it's not just the school monetization i worry about communication already i'm hearing from parents about the surf material diversity and inclusion things that we're doing and i think should be clearly important for cps and board make sure parents are educated on what that means for kids so right when you start seeing latino african american studies this fall it's shown to be the price of parents what that is until now no one's really paying attention to curriculum meetings or marlene's presentations on that so uh and so i think coordinating some of those discussions on top of all the other communication we're going to get from our monetization um so i like the idea i i i was certainly the more help i can't really quantify it i think you could use more help here i kind of see two people myself in fact everything else but yeah we you know this is a it requires board approval to create a new position and by that it's like it's not hiring another ia which we have is that position exists we don't have this position um so it would require the board approval but that doesn't have to be tonight i think it was important to me to have the conversation tonight and you know i want to make sure that questions are answered if we can improve this in a couple of weeks down the road if that's what we want to do but i think it's the dialogue tonight is helpful and productive and i'm certainly not adverse to taking a little bit more time with ben marlene our admin tank team kelly to take another look and you know check the different angles on this and come back to it are there any other districts that have a position like this that we could look at no unfortunately no um it's it's really kind of unique and it's an amalgamation of a few different positions into one and part of our thinking is that you know for um you know we want to make sure that we have somebody who's demonstrated history of professional capacity and education somebody that's highly articulate with great people skills that you know it can be very flexible that's well spoken and is a competent writer and that you know we think that somebody with the variety of skills there uh would would command a little bit of a higher price but you know what we're going to go back i want to go back and look at it again and reconsider because we have considered a two two position scenario but i you know i as my gears are turning more and talking to you i want to just i don't want to pull the trigger and potentially regret it so let's let me just double check all right with the team but it's important to get this conversation out there because all those things that we're identifying are holes we need to fill and i think you know what we've demonstrated over you know the last number of years is that you know what we can be creative and that we have talent you know we find talented people that fit the great spots for us and it helps us be very successful and you know i consider hiring to probably be one of the most important things that we do right at the very top where people organization i just saying to marlene the other day that you know i happen to notice on food network this guy talked about what we bring in we do the best ingredients but we don't have that you know it's not like it's not easy we're not just going to bring in the best math textbook and we're going to get great results you know we're a people driven business and we have to bring in the best people to get the best results and that's where that's where we want to make sure that this is designed that we can get the best person to get the results we need still financial planning all right uh yeah so i got here at 7 30 when the other 60 seconds to recap sure uh what i'm hearing you say is you want a new position communications yeah communications you know family and community engagement okay okay then follow me to me um you want a 12-month duration it's uh 12 months yeah a person is retiring kelly lindsay yeah do you have anyone in-house who you would think about doing this and it could be multiple people i'm not saying that there is somebody who you've already decided or anything like that no we haven't decided on anyone is there anyone in house who would be even more than one person who would be probably okay so that's just so you understand me that's critical to me because i think in terms of communication there's a million conversations and when it's a 12 month durational to hit the ground running in that particular situation particularly what tony was talking about with the cert the dei the school modernization these things are going to be happening quickly and it's going to take you need to be up to speed really really quickly if we're talking about like in august or september higher right but it's not to say that someone outside cps would be unable to do it right but it'd be a massive lift and if somebody was in-house who had those relationships at least some of them and the knowledge the institutional knowledge that would make a difference to me right i'm not asking anymore just so you understand where i'm coming from no no no it's definitely a helpful perspective it sounds like it you know this position's created they may get someone again depending on your search making someone internally a current loan path right like something they can move into right for that position you know with others or something outside so it's yeah so you know we'll we'll kind of table that part there's one other thing i wanted to talk to you about and that's going to be very difficult for me to grab from the other screen see will be there no there we go you're watching them on a little monitor yeah so it's hard to pull off that little monitor i can't see it from here but anyway um aces the area cooperative educational services through which we work with has a program and i may have shared it months ago i know i at least talked to tony about it several months ago [Music] called teacher residency program it's something that is now occurring statewide and the gist of the program is that local communities local school systems identify an individual of color working in their system non-certified and that they aces works with the school system draws that individual into a cohort group so they're having classes at night working with education professors working with each other under the supervision of a mentor in the cheshire public schools to earn their elementary teacher certification after that year they then are you know beholden to the district for two additional years it cost sixty five thousand dollars to engage somebody in this program for the year however there's grant money became available which knocked it down to 59 000 and the state legislature is currently examining funding that could knock it down further the worst case is that it's a 59 000 commitment the best case is it's free the the state covers it we have and i think this is why it's critical our staff population is 97 percent white non-hispanic our student demographic is 78 white there is a wild disparity there that we have aggressively for years tried to recruit people of color that certainly has been hampered by the pandemic the last couple of years where you're not having in-person recruiting fairs and things like that we publicize carol asks me every like quarter hey you know are we gonna do these same advertisements and yes we do and um sometimes you know they they do bear fruit and you know i know that we've already hired an african-american female for this year it's exciting and we want to continue to hire diverse faces obviously i just mentioned talent is one of the most important things that we do and in this case if we can grow our own talent in you know with a diverse audience that i think is really valuable for our kids in our community so um i mentioned earlier that we brought in more open choice students to cheshire high school i brought in agreed to bring in five additional students we had 16 that number is now 21 and that's critical for a few reasons first of all um we are given a stipend for every student we bring in of three thousand dollars that's one piece when you reach like every 10 students that you bring in there's a extra amount of money funded in the grant for those students so there's a an economic significant economic benefit the other thing that i think is more important is that as it stood with 16 students they pick up in new haven the first bus pickup is at 5 30 am can you imagine being 14 years old and getting on the bus at 5 30 am am to go to high school now our kids do that because they really want to go to cheshire high school you must really want to go to cheshire high school when you're 14 you get up at five in the morning to get on the bus to go to high school so by adding the additional students aces agreed to be able to provide two buses the first pickup now is 6 15 instead of 5 30 a.m which is a significant benefit for our kids so for all those reasons we thought it was important to add those additional students that also allows us additional grant revenue to be able to pay for a student or a somebody who works in our school system already to be trained as a teacher now first and foremost that person has to be of the caliber of individual that we would want them in front of our kids as a teacher anyway and we believe we have that and part of the delay at this is really funding i wasn't sure funding wise how it would work how we would make it work and then it was essential for us to you know be very comfortable that whoever we do put forward is somebody that we would hire and feel really good about and i think we're there in both those cases this person is is serves in the capacity is like an intern as well instead of hiring another intern we dedicate that fifteen thousand dollars here between that the open choice grant money it becomes a wash for us to be able to provide it and we guarantee that we'll have another teacher of color working in our schools next year at least the next two years so for me i you know we spent a lot of time looking at this and exploring it we just felt it was powerful we you know for our commitment to diversity equity and inclusion it um we are adding a talented educator and we're doing it you know without additional impact of the operating budget you know so there were all wins for us as far as i was concerned and this isn't a new position it doesn't necessarily require board approval but i thought it was important to discuss with you and you know seek any feedback wasn't the show yeah that uh you know indicate interest but don't commit because i think at the time it was like 150 right now there was it was more expensive at the time and they've reduced costs the grant monies have picked up then it may again may ultimately be free can you walk with yourself a second ago i heard you say there's no impact to the operating budget on this but then you also said it cost a thousand dollars or possibly less right but it sounds to me like there might be an impact in the operating budget so when we factored the when we created the operating budget we weren't factoring in additional revenue from open choice grant money which we've since gained i think you said that was that the six thousand dollars out of 65 000 no that was a grant to aces for everybody who participates but we received open additional open choice grant money as a result of taking on five additional students yeah and hitting uh bonus uh money because of the fact that we break 40 as a district we you know we have 43 now we also have more than 20 at cheshire high school those come with additional funding so that's six thousand dollars no that's forty five thousand dollars that work so i think what i know where you are so i know so so without this the worst case scenario would have been fifty nine thousand dollars right or budget with the scrap money there is no third one right with the additional money i mean we may be getting this money and the state picks it up and now we have just an additional you know 45 60 000 which would be great right at my price range but all so this is a choice because that open choice grant money even if it's even if it's uh i mean presumably could be spent on anything associated with open choice right so there could be some sort of other program that was used so this is directing the money to this correct because we also already have an additional 90 000 plus dedicated to ias and other supports that we do so this is for the 40 or so students yeah right yeah okay so there is a choice being made here it's not like this is necessarily at no cost it's if we applied this grant money correct then it would be no cost right and the recommendation is to apply that great money toward this position correct okay i get that um could you just run me through again so in my mind like theoretically what could happen is you know somebody uh graduated high school do four years of college in theory you could come become a teacher at that point do you need the fifth year or six year degree i don't think so because that's part of that right so to enter this program you need to have a college diploma okay so they're on the same footing there and this that person that they're already working in our school system this as a non-certified position but like i'm sorry but the diploma doesn't have to be an education right they don't have an education so they have a four-year degree and they're probably working in the sea in cps right now correct okay and then to turn them into a teacher they would have to get another 30 credits or something it could be college is it is it like a standard aacsb accredited no so what you're doing here is it's the same basically the same program that the state of connecticut runs alternate route to certification okay except it's more intensive in school-based full-year because a lot of the alternate routes of certification stuff is classroom based on saturday and hartford kind of thing and then you you do an internship or a student teaching assignment for 10 weeks in school and they you know prank out certified teachers that right in this case it's a full year-long internship in the building [Music] that hopefully you know they will be assigned to host the program so a teacher would normally have a degree in teaching education of some sort and what you're saying is the the kid who graduated you know with their four-year degree in poli sci right whatever it is they come into the alternate route to educate so i i mean that idea in general i love i i mean i think it's valuable to go to a formal education for anything we true but i also think the an informal education uh like an apprenticeship i also think that's extremely valuable too so in general this the idea of doing this program i i like it it's kind of both you know i mean this person in order anybody who enters this program has that formal education like you said it could be polycyclin yeah and then they have the benefit of a full-year apprenticeship in our school system which i love because you know without sounding too hokey there's a way we do things in cheshire and the level of expectations we have that you may not get through a different program someplace else to the description well i'll facetime that job so when candidate is known as the program will they be able to teach yes so they'll go out and get certification and right so they'll be issued a certification for k through 6.
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she is an integral member of the pbsis team and serves it as the building representative for the clifton education association she's a strong advocate for her students and has embraced the virtual learning experience turning it turning it into a positive way to provide support to her students and their families she always assists with organizing extracurricular activities and she is respected by everyone who has the pleasure of working with her mrs checky is a leader at school 14 and is someone all staff members look to for guidance and advice school 14 is lucky to have her congratulations miss checky thank you so much thank you moving on to school 15 only a few more schools left the teacher of the year from school 15 miss jill fedorcheck hi ms fedorcheck how are you good thank you hello everyone jill has been an educator in the clifton public schools for 16 years she serves as the 5th grade lead teacher in doing so she willingly models best practices and mentors her grade level colleagues joe also serves on the school safety committee and the pbsis committee a universal team both committees are instrumental in the climate and culture of the school mrs fedorcheck takes pride in serving as the advisor for the safety patrol program mr dorche congratulations on this outstanding honor thank you very much the educational service professional of the year is miss diane zucchino hi [Music] diane mrs aquino is a phenomenal school nurse she is actively engaged in the school 15 community and community at large she's a valuable member of the inrs team and school safety committee mrs aquino not only ensures the safety of the students and staff of school 15 she has also been on the front line fighting covid she works alongside all the amazing nurses at the clifton coveted vaccination site and diane do you know uh what milestone we hit recently with how many vaccinations we did in clifton do you know that number off the top of your head oh my gosh now you're putting me on the spot no i don't mean to put you on the spot i know vicki beck will remember i'll ask her later but just unbelievable the fact that um what our nurses did and what you did above and beyond what you normally do as a school nurse in this unbelievable year so thank you an honor that is well deserved congratulations to you thank you very much and moving on to school 16 the educator of the year miss antoinette jacobus hi tony hi how are you i'm good mrs jacopas has been teaching in the clifton public schools for 23 years she spent most of her career teaching first grade and has made a significant impact on students educational journeys currently she serves the students of school 16 as a basic skills instructor and continues to impact many students lives in grades k through 5.
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so just so i'm thinking the opposite side because it is so i think this is a great program i'm ecstatic that it can pay for itself concerns me is as far back as i got on the board in 2009 even back then it's always been difficult to find diverse workforce it's not just it's everywhere in the country right you serve on the uh right with southern southern yeah community looking for ways to do that so my concern is it's highly competitive it's becoming a mortgage kind of fight the candidates what happens when the candidate goes to this program gets certified and needs cheshire they're required to work for us for two years next question yeah they're locked into us for two years did you familiar with this no you mentioned it oh attention and we guarantee the full-time job when the program is done but right what if the st what if they don't measure what it what if they don't measure up i mean they you come to the end of the year program at the end of the year and you say and it's like if the person fails out yeah or [Music] so the whole thing hinges on them getting certified and you know we have a role to play in approving that process but they could get certified but the the dynamic may be wrong because if we if we don't feel that they're you know performing at the level you know required to achieve certification then they wouldn't receive the certification and then you know i can't hire somebody who's not certified so we have a lot of control over the process faith which is what i like i was just saying i like that i mentioned that component specifically you know in terms of certification but you know this is somebody who's going to be trained under our wing with a talented teacher who works in our school system for the course of a year actually longer because the program starts soon i mean this may be a moot point if i can't line up the individual from our district to that summer program i'd really like to do it but if i don't now my problem becomes where do i spend the additional money that i have left over i mean so this is a good problem to have right like i don't see us losing in that deal um and the best case scenario is i we just created a teacher of color to join our school system in two years like we've just you know built that that capacity for that person to be successful for us and that's awesome if i could just i think we just created a great teacher and i don't know i get a little i just think we have to our goal is to create absolutely i understand the the disparity there but at the end of the day i just your point is whether we want our map um so in terms of the classroom how does this work i mean again so i'm going back to just how i envision this which is uh students are doing a four-year degree and they get there they get a teaching internship so they're in the class on a daily basis there is the classroom teacher uh i have elementary in my mind it is elementary it is strictly elementary right now okay so in the elementary classes you may very well have more than one adult in classroom ias or interviewing assistants so this is one of the people who could be in the classroom a normal student would a normal four-year elementary education uh degree student would be coming in for what a few months usually an internship is for the year and part of that and that ten there's ten weeks of a student teaching experience where they're teaching students by themselves yeah during that 10 weeks they're teaching by themselves oh without a classroom okay so the mentorship is provided the instruction is provided in the classroom the mentorship is provided and then you know there's a gradual release of responsibility we would say so you're passing it on so they have to ride the bike without the training wheels for 10 weeks the support is there you know mom or dad's running behind the bike going all right you got you got this yep and then at the end of that you know that you've demonstrated that you can do that on your own so just at a very high level in the general situation here what happens to the classroom teacher for those 10 weeks the classroom teacher will plan with that teacher and is is right there is watching observing in the back of the class oh so the classroom teacher's still in the classroom but the student teacher is leading right right okay so this is basically the same concept yeah okay all right so there's no real change to the classroom per se i mean the way every the way instruction is delivered right okay yeah i mean yeah i said see when i got on the board plumbers electrician's apprenticeships i think that they're fantastic yeah i mean i think something like this sounds like it could be good because i'm not convinced that every 18 year old who enters who's fortunate enough to go to college is making decisions that necessarily they're going to agree with four years later right i think this is a good i think this is a great alternate route to education based on what you're saying yeah this is a premise at eight o'clock and everybody is over on our fan screen we're supposed to be fine um but venturing into a board of businessmen after so um so as far as this is for tonight uh does the finance committee need to pass a motion for the billboard to consider they do and it's the line items oh what do you know and this is uh this is the sample this isn't in it is it this is what you said this afternoon okay um so seeing that um we did not make any changes to the suggested uh changes that we came into the meeting with um i move that the finance committee recommend to the full board of education the following reductions to their proposed 2021-20 2022 budget totaling 1 million 486 000 as follows certified salaries reduction of 280 000 employee benefits reduction of 956 993 instructional expense production of 68 166 dollars support services reduction seventy three thousand three hundred ninety five dollars i have three ninety five on the motion excel does that sometimes running error so it's uh operations and expense and operations and maintenance 107 446 for a total reduction of 1 million 486 thousand dollars do i have a second do we have any discussion fake hearing none i call for a vote all those in favor is unanimous for those presents thank you finance committee um seeing there is no other items on our agenda a uh call for a motion to adjourn all in favor unanimous available is present we it actually should be five now that i'm looking at it because they're on the spreadsheet no i've been gonna find an extra dollar yeah i'm just throwing it out of my pocket did you see that lucy episode where she threw the director's call to meeting the order this would be the board of education special business meeting mr josky we have uh call to order this from oklahoma here helen thank you carol uh since we do have more members we're going to say the pledge class we stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all so thank you welcome everyone again and for those of you watching probably wondering why we're starting our meeting at 8-10 it's only because the finance committee ran over great discussion there that will be on video we have one really one agenda item uh which is discussion and possible action regarding the 2021 2022 board education budget um one that the finance committee just passed to the full board [Music] uh moved that the uh cheshire board of education approved a budget for the fiscal year 2021-22 of 77 million 1052 as appropriated by the cheshire county council further the board of education reduces its 2021-22 budget recommendation by 1 million 486 000 as follows certified salaries 280 000 uh non-certified salaries uh no adjustment uh employee benefits nine nine hundred fifty six thousand nine hundred ninety three dollars the structural expense sixty eight thousand one hundred six 166 support services is a five or six five seventy three thousand three hundred ninety five dollars operations and maintenance one hundred seven thousand four hundred forty six dollars for a total adjustment of total reduction of one million four hundred eighty six thousand dollars it's very second mr martelly seconds uh discussion [Music] yeah yeah jeff could you run everyone through it yeah we work well whatever you have sorry actually adam i apologize i'm sorry i wasn't sure where we were going i just want i just think the publication here yeah i don't want to get into a vote but while going through the entire last presentation people walk us through yeah that's because i think what folks are going to hear is there's a reduction of 1.46 million wow that's a big reduction but sure that's not really what's happening sure i'm gonna actually defer to ben we'll have to have him walk us through this thank you so i i will i'll do this at the at the top line and then if there's a question we can go through it so board of education has six major line items so the one million four hundred eighty six thousand dollars being reduced from the certified salary line it's 280 that's made up of seven teacher retirements that occurred after the board's budget was prepared and approved that um at seven teachers at forty thousand that's two hundred eighty thousand um there is no change to the non-certified salary line under the total employee benefits there's a few changes here that offset each other medical benefits being the largest the recommendation is a million dollar reduction from the medical benefits line plus an additional thirty seven thousand five hundred forty two dollars that's savings from the stop loss insurance actual renewal versus what was estimated is an actual increase that's required for the pension retirement line of 130 549.
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this recognition is well deserved and we are happy to have mrs jacobus as a member of the school 16 family congratulations mrs jacobus thank you so much thank you and the educational support professional of the year from school 16 is miss natalie king hi how are you hi natalie how are you good thank you mrs king has been teaching in our school district for nine years as a speech and language therapist her professionalism and kindness resonates with all students and staff that she works with she works diligently to ensure that students language and articulation needs are met with success her students all love attending speech class and visiting with mrs king both of these recipients tonight have worked hard to achieve this recognition especially during this past year and a half during the pandemic their efforts are to be commended and are most certainly appreciated congratulations mrs king thank you for all you do thank you so much and moving on to our last elementary school school 17 the teacher of the year mrs jennifer patetto hi hi jennifer how did i do with your last name is that correct perfect all right thank you mr potato is an educator that shows her dedication and commitment to the school her students and the community each and every day miss potato works tirelessly to maximize her students learning with her skillful and compassionate teaching son she individualizes both instruction and behavioral supports to give learners an excellent experience in her behavioral disabilities classroom her love of education is both unwavering and admirable that's pretty nice congratulations mrs potato thank you for all you do thank you and the educational service professional of the year from school 17 is miss lauren armenti hello miss armenti lauren armenti is an educational professional that shows her exceptional practices to the staff and students of our district each and every day she's a sought after expert in student crisis management and she brings experience and sensitivity to every situation how important that is she is highly respected by all of her colleagues and is regarded as an irreplaceable member of the special services department the staff students and parents all feel comfortable with mrs armenti and know that she is there for them as a support her genuine care for the well-being of everyone within our school community is felt throughout the school and her knowledge and advice are welcomed and appreciated on a daily basis her dedication and commitment are both unwavering and admirable congratulations to you ms armenti thank you so much thank you moving on to our middle schools the teacher of the year from christopher columbus middle school is ms sharon schwartz hi mr schwartz how are you doing great thank you mr schwartz is an exceptionally skilled dedicated and passionate educator at ccms she serves as the english department head as well as academic team leader she's a member of the school in need of improvement committee and regularly contributes ideas for the betterment of the school ms schwartz is always looking for ways to elevate situations from good to great she believes that teachers must be life learners and that they should continue to strive to incorporate new tools and strategies into their lesson to boost their students development as such she attends dynamic professional development workshops in a consistent manner and turn keys the information to her colleagues this past year she served as a cooperating teacher and has mentored several student teachers in her years at christopher columbus as a result of her constant leadership and active participation she has the respect and admiration of the entire school community congratulations mrs schwartz thank you very much it's such an honor to teach in clifton thank you the educational service professional of the year from christopher columbus is miss kimberly to stefano hi good evening hi kimberly how are you good how are you mrs destefano has been an integral part of both of us both our school community and our coordinated response to the pandemic as a language arts coach mrs destefano has developed relationships with staff designed to improve their instruction and engagement with students she runs professional development sessions to increase staff literacy of distance learning resources such as cami and google suite these sessions take a tremendous amount of planning but have had an incredible impact on the ability of our staff to meaningfully engage our students she's an active participant in our school community in all ways she works with all staff so they can properly recognize positive behaviors from our students even throughout distance learning she plays a key role in our school improvement panel as well as the development and implementation of our annual school improvement plan mrs stefano congratulations to you on this honor thank you so much it's quite an honor moving on to woodrow wilson middle school teacher of the year my man mr mark vajica how are you mr bajica has been a sixth grade social studies teacher at woodrow wilson middle school for the past eight years mr bajica is not only a dynamic and creative classroom teacher but a leader in the building he runs various clubs and has been a team facilitator he's an original universal team member and one of the driving forces behind the school's pbsis program mr bajica truly is all in and i will tell you this i've been in mr bajica's classroom a couple times and from the first moment i walked in his classroom i knew he's what i call a kid magnet our students love him they love being in his class he keeps them engaged and they know he loves them mr bajica you are incredible congratulations on this well-deserved honor very proud of you thank you so much i appreciate your kind words thank you the educational service professional of the year from woodrow is miss anna ovales hello anna anna did i pronounce your last name correctly ovalis yes that's good miss lovalis has been working within our district as a one-to-one aide or classroom assistant for the past several years she's a highly motivated individual who helps her students find success in light of all their struggles she treats each student with respect and always tries to find a way to reach each child and make them feel special and confident in their abilities regardless of any limitations that they might have that's wonderful anna congratulations to you and keep up the great work thank you so much for the honor [Music] and moving on to our flagship clifton high school the clifton high school teacher of the year is mr michael rogers mr rogers are you with us tonight there he is good evening mr rogers has been a vital member of the faculty at clifton high school for 16 years he exemplifies what it means to be a great educator of not just school content but of life he works tireless tirelessly to impact all his students he makes lessons exciting yet relevant to students of all different races and backgrounds the success he has in the classroom can be seen in the excitement which revolves around those classes to have students wanting to take specific academic courses just because mr rogers is teaching the course is a testament to the excitement he begin he brings to learning when the capital riots occurred mr rogers was a kind of teacher who opened up a google meet at 8pm at night to all of his students and their families to provide an open forum to discuss the historic occurrence that they were observing that in and of itself says all i need to hear mr rogers is the advisor to the career academy that meets with each of the academy students to discuss what they're looking for in life where they want to go and he advises them on the best path to achieve those goals is also an outstanding coach that spends time before and after practice working with an athlete to help them reach a new level of success he's also a person who sit down with one of his athletes and counsel them when an aspect of their life may be spiraling out of control he leads by example he leads with conviction he leads with purpose all while not having an actual leadership role in the school he takes it upon himself to make an impact on all those around him even when he does not have to mr rogers congratulations to you on this uh very well earned award thank you so much dr robertosi um miss cheryl pinch jack from school eight arrived late but she's here if you would like yes thank you mr smith for getting it to my attention i would happily like to recognize cheryl panchak hi cheryl hi sheryl i'm gonna say nice things about you now okay i'm ready miss panchak has worked for the clifton public schools for over 20 years as a third grade teacher she uses her technology knowledge to incorporate a high degree of vitality and pedagogy her many contributions beyond the regular curriculum are exemplary she is continuously developing and improving her teaching skills she embraces any opportunity for professional development and has strong leadership skills she sets high standards for her students but ensures that she gives them the tools to succeed and reach those goals students are motivated and intellectually stimulated in her classroom and her successful teaching techniques are reflected in her students academic development she has a passion for teaching and turns mistakes into teachable moments in her classroom her classes are never boring she uses a plethora of methods to keep the children interested and engaged congratulations school eight teacher of the year ms cheryl panchak thank you so much thank you cheryl and the educational service professional of the year from clifton high school ms susan shemly so are you here i'm here hi doctor hi sue how are you good how are you demonstrates accountability and maintains professionalism and all that she does she consistently adheres the timelines maintains confidentiality upholds proper documentation and follow-up she mentors new staff completes all of her assigned duties both thoroughly and in a timely manner by going above and beyond she shows a great deal of empathy for our students in addition to providing many of the students on her caseload with individual therapy her students can frequent frequently be found seeking out her guidance and support outside of their regular um meetings no matter what mrs shamley is working on she will always find the time to help a student in need she's a steadfast advocate for her students and helps to give them a voice when they need it most she has a distinct knack for recognizing what our students need academically socially and emotionally and advocates on their behalf to make sure it is provided to them ms shamley our students need somebody like you in their life congratulations on this award thank you so much and last but not least each year the clifton education association um selects a an educator of the year and this year i am proud to recognize as the 2021 educator of the year for the entire clifton public schools uh miss alexandra wisnowski alexandra are you here there you are hello i just see the top of your head alexandra hello there you are uh mrs winnowski is a special education teacher at school five alexandra has been a dedicated and caring educator in clifton for 12 years she engages in an impressive amount of professional development yearly well exceeding the minimum required hours she serves on the skip committee pbsis reopening committee school safety committee the stakeholders committee and as co-chair of the character education and school spirit committee in addition she created character education lessons for each month of the year which have been implemented throughout the school the um the lessons are used by the staff at school five it includes suggested picture books which incorporate the monthly skill google slide lessons along with an activity for the class to complete together alexandra truly embodies the qualities of a dedicated teacher she continues to push herself to learn new teaching techniques in order to meet the needs of her students she effortless effortlessly meets the needs of the various student levels in her class and challenges them to reach their potential she encourages students to take an active role in their learning thus having a student-led classroom she works hard to make sure her students know they are loved and valued that's the most important thing she works hard to make sure her students know they are loved and valued and she is also more than willing to share her knowledge with colleagues and works as a team player with her grandmother alexandra congratulations on being the clifton education association educator of the year thank you so much it's a huge honor thank you so much thank you so much congratulations to all of the uh recipients tonight again you'll be getting a nice certificate from the clifton board of education and also a certificate from the governor in the state of new jersey mr smith that concludes um the recognition thank you uh dr robertosi and uh congratulations to all the uh recipients um we are all so very proud of you and uh the work that you do for clifton students so congratulations to all uh if the award recipients would like to um to leave um that will make it a little bit easier for us to see who is here for the pub portion so you're welcome to stay in the waiting room uh if you wish um but you're free to to sign off as well so thank you for coming okay let's move on all right we have our board uh committee report uh mr smith i apologize we do have a presentation also oh i'm sorry no problem should be right under where the recognition was the arp extra safe return to school is that what we're doing yes sir okay i'm sorry um so we have the arp essers safe return to in-person instruction plan uh we have here tonight um miss genina kuzalevich mr mark ginarro and miss vicki beck um to discuss this so janine i will turn it over to you thank you so much president smith um commissioners ladies and gentlemen it's a pleasure to be here again um to present uh mr jingaro ms beck and i are going to be presenting uh the first draft of the arp plan which will then be posted it's actually already posted on our district website uh for public comment between now and june 23rd so that we can get input from the community for submission of our initial draft on june 24th with the expectation that this plan will be continually revised as guidance evolves and changes from now through the school year opening and over the next two years of this funding i'm going to share my screen if you can just give me one second please and present ms beck if you could just nod that you see the presentation on the screen thank you so much good evening um community members uh this is our initial draft of our 2021 2022 clifton safe return to in-person instruction plan this plan for a safe return to in-person instruction and continuity of service is pursuant to the federal american rescue plan act section 2001 following guidance from the covid19 public health recommendations for local health departments for k-12 schools and last year's clifton restart and recovery plan as well as department of education guidance plan leverages elementary and secondary school relief funds or arp esser funds to help us fully reopen safely sustain the safe operations of our schools and address the impacts of the covid19 pandemic on our students please note that this information is subject to change as guidance continues to evolve just this week we have had two or three changes um that being said the one major piece that assists us with this plan is all the work that was done last year last year's cliff clifton restart and recovery plan had hundreds of stakeholders dozens of committees and the groundwork for that is the basis for this plan mr gingaro thanks janina uh good evening everybody uh just to piggyback on what genina was sharing approximately one year ago what began with 35 phase one reopening committee members met to discuss the potential school reopening and what that would look like by the end of this entire planning process a total of 381 members of the one clifton reopening committee comprised of commissioners from the board of education members from central administration city officials building level administration supervisor staff collective bargaining groups parents coaches community members and most importantly our students came together to formulate a plan to address the most the multiple facets that are associated with the reopening of schools at that time we had four pillar committees that were developed focusing on the following areas pillar one was uh focused on health and safety and cleanliness pillar two led by our assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction uh focused on just that curriculum format and instruction pillar number three spearheaded by our assistant superintendent of schools mr tisian focused on operations and governance and finally pillar number four spearheaded by our business administrator mr mike usee in finance each of those above noted pillar committees was further broken down into subcommittees to discuss what we consider to be the critical areas of consideration including athletics security the student code of conduct facilities and transportation social emotional learning pbsis transportation remote learning in-person instruction wrap-around programs such as mine in motion in the boys and girls club and food service although the njdui gave us four guiding principles to follow it was this committee's belief that when making any and all decisions we would follow the one clifton guiding principle and that is that all decisions were made keeping the health and safety of our students and staff at the forefront today as we develop the reopening plans for next school year using last year's plan as that foundation this same philosophy holds true health and safety first at this time i'd like to turn the presentation over to our supervisor of nurses mrs vicki beck to share how we plan to maintain health and safety in the upcoming school year thank you mr tragero the district will maintain communication with local state health authorities expectations have been set for staff students and parents on hand washing techniques proper hygiene use of face coverings as mandated indoor and outdoor and vaccine considerations daily coveted 19 screening forms for students and staff we'll probably continue contact tracing isolation quarantine is all done per health department guidance next set thank you protocols for daily entrance hand disinfecting and use of face coverings are posted in main entrance areas mandatory daily symptoms screening must be conducted at home prior to coming to school 9 through 12 daily screening will be completed via a google form with a daily email receipt sent to the high school student accounts pre-k through 12 through 8 daily screening will be completed in the parent portal which is real time staff students and parents will complete a digital screening checklist prior to leaving their homes indicating the absence of symptoms the digital screening includes a daily history of exposure assessment indicating whether or not the child has been in contact with anyone that tested positive for covet 19.
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again we prepared our budget on an estimate when we have the actuarial final numbers we need to increase our pension line by 130 nine and then we have a reduction in unemployment compensation we had budgeted a hundred thousand dollars but what happened subsequent to the development of the budget is the state started providing the credits that that they needed to for the unemployment additional benefits that were received so we were able to reduce the hundred thousand down to 50 000 for next year so that total is 956 000 net production and employee benefits under instructional expense we you know did a couple of things um first we had a 10 000 reduction in professional development um but because we have essar funding and we'll be able to provide training out of that we feel that that's a reasonable reduction and then we took a five percent line item reduction on instructional supplied textbooks replacement and new equipment all very manageable you know within this the scope of the budget so instructional expense comes down 68 166.
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the digital screener will continue to include updated travel considerations following the new jersey department of health guidance staffs students in pre-k through 12 and all approved visitors by appointment only must wear masks in school including classrooms outside on school property entrance to the building hallways and shared areas next slide please use of face coverings will continue as mandated we've all seen the news we've all read the articles indoor and outdoor masks are still mandated for public school for schools vaccine considerations we will be following the njdoh guidance related to vaccinated people students wearing masks in the schools plastic shields are secured on desks and tables as well as plastic barriers and offices classrooms and common areas are equipped with hand sanitizing disinfecting stations all nurses and staff in isolation areas are provided with ppe including disposable gowns appropriate masks face shields and gloves per applicable guidance next please vaccination efforts um the district has coordinated efforts to provide vaccinations to educators staff students if eligible we all know that um our 12 12 to 16 year olds are eligible for vaccines um clifton public schools continues to work collaboratively with the clifton health department to date we have given we have vaccinated people at the clifton health department vaccination center these vaccinations were done in cooperation with the health department i am very proud to say that clifton public school nurses gave those shots um the vaccination outreach reach programs will continue throughout the summer and beyond if necessary right now we are collaborating with hackensack meridian health we sent a lot of uh we got a call from hackensack and said you want us to give give your staff shots and we got we got vaccinations for our staff very early on in the process hackensack meridian health is now coming to the high school on for the next two weeks to finish up the 12 to 16 year olds that have requested vaccinations clifton public school will also collaborate with local local medical facilities to publicize vaccination clinics throughout the county vaccine vaccination documentation may be requested pending updated new jersey department of health guidance the guidance is not out there yet for us we do not track vaccinations at this point in time we are waiting for the state to allow us to do that ms beck thank you so very much for that very detailed health and safety um plan please know ladies and gentlemen that this is an evolving plan based on current department of health guidance and other guidance which we must follow there have been some exceptions for except for extensive heat and other exceptions that may come and this guidance will be changing but at this time we must follow the current written guidance as directed we know it will evolve over the next coming weeks and months mr gingaro if i can please um have uh turn this back over to you please absolutely uh when it comes to meals in the meal distribution program as always i need to publicly thank and recognize uh alex rosenberg and the entire pomptonian team for their ongoing efforts to provide meals to the clifton learning community today approximately 1.9 million meals have been served to our students and families so alex and team thank you and keep up the good work as junior just said as guidance changes we need to be prepared for multiple meal time scenarios while we're preparing for many options we will follow whatever the most current guidance is come september currently in accordance with the new jersey department of health recommendations specific to social distancing barriers and alternative meal create locations will be designated as schools uh have to determine what based on their facilities and their availability what is appropriate for each school site uh the breakfast program and the uh breakfast program sorry and breakfast after the bell will continue to be made available in all of our schools come september the grab and go process that meal system will still be available as per applicable guidelines uh specifically the department of agriculture and to help help help facilitate all these the initiatives for the meal program additional staff members will be utilized to monitor the expanded meal locations across campuses next slide please janina specific to the summer meal food distribution program the grab and go process will continue to be made available at our three satellite sites clifton high school ccms and school number 17 beginning on july 5th mondays wednesdays and fridays we are currently using those three sites with the exception of chs on wednesdays as vicki beck john beagle and company still continue to utilize the east wing parking lot as a vaccination site but come july 5th the meal distribution program will be made available on all three days at all three sites at those same times 10 o'clock to 11 30.
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support services again primarily here what we did is we took some of our smaller lifeline items reduced them by five percent the two big things in here that i'll mention one is the rentals and leases we were able to save twenty thousand dollars for next year on our multifunction printer contracts so that's a that's a go forward reduction we'll keep and then we reduce technology purchases under capital equipment by twenty five thousand dollars we purchased quite a bit of uh technology equipment this year um including some urine purchases that will be prepping over the summer so we feel that's a safe product darkness still will leave us about 300 000 technology purchases for next year which is perfectly adequate and then that totals a 73 396 dollar decrease in support services and the last category maintenance and operations you know we reduced the building repairs and maintenance supply by a total of 107 446 dollars but i will point out that we're still increasing uh building repairs by about nine percent and maintenance supply by 25 000 so we're just reducing the amount of the increase but we feel that we certainly can can make do with the funds that are being allocated for operations and maintenance so all told that's how you get to the one million four hundred eighty six thousand dollar reduction we are required to make um vin did you mention the infusion that we're going to be getting i did not thank you so for medical benefits even though we're reducing the the operating budget by a million dollars in the contributions we'll be making to the medical benefit the town council did allocate 1.5 million dollars that doesn't affect the operating budget it's being contributed directly to the medical benefits reserve fund so that to the extent we have claims that exceed the operating budget those will be paid out of the medical benefits preserved we have roughly a million dollars in the reserve now you know assuming the next two months claims come in line with budget we'll have 1 million plus the 1.5 million dollars so we'll have roughly 2.5 million in the medical benefits reserved as we start the 21 22 budget year you know which we certainly hope is out of it but it's uh it's certainly a healthy reserve to start the year with the the point i'm sorry the point of going back to the point yeah i made earlier last meeting was there superintendent's original budget proposing that port central to town budgeted uh multiple claims rate of nine hundred thousand dollars okay with the induction of 1.486 million in the fact that 1.5 minutes going directly to reserve fund our monthly contribution drops to 8.25 so if claims are still running above 25 it will be eating against medical defense funds so this is shoring it up but it's not it's address pointer is not padding it so we love to see where we are you know next year every year if the fund's coming down a lot or stabilizing but i think this is a great uh great first step but the the point is we're not necessarily looking i love that everybody's getting the numbers and the language down pretty well so when i retire i feel good right over there which is not intentional i'm too young let's see how this one goes so been the seven retirements um at 40 000 for retirement um are we replacing how many of these teachers are we replacing and is that our savings and the difference between the retirement salary and the new higher salary exactly right yeah okay yeah we're replacing them all that's just the net savings from top step too all right i just wanna oh yeah so i'm gonna so uh just for the viewing public we got this this afternoon uh i plan to support it i do it one point though and this isn't really for discussion purposes it's just to highlight it the email that we got from jack fester like a week or two ago i'm thinking of it as we're looking at equipment and the data privacy is a real concern for me and i don't know what the answer is it's way bigger than anything that we solve in this room um but it is it is a real concern i am a big believer in privacy and i know technology is changing you know we're going to have the ai implanted in us and maybe in a few years i have no idea the world's changing but uh to try to just be mindful of it and to try to minimize it as much as minimize the risk of data theft as much as possible just to have that in mind where we can yeah that's a that reminds me so the town we still have the technology instead of committing yeah well you know damning there in a few years i wonder if it makes maybe 10 months to volunteer next year but they're still taking a border representation it might be nice to have someone else we could use a board member right we didn't mean actually um a couple months back preparing for the operating and capital budget so what is this is the technology study group yeah this was back a number of years uh you mean the council or like state community you know uh 12 town council i really established it a long time ago cheshire yeah anyway that group was vinegar a huge part i still are i know that was started to find the cto at the time apex and i know that group this goes back as far back as python harris was on there there's the carol's daughter he's still the chair yeah so you know they look at technology just across the town funding et cetera i no one knowing steve i'm sure he's always got security on top of his mind but with all the recent cyber attacks and it's very sensitive to me because i on the hook at the regional heart authority for all these um breaches and so nothing we have anymore it's been in fact just this past week we've gotten us several i won't call executive orders but from binance office to shore certain things to on security uh as a mandate so maybe this kind of focus on here for now that we have a i'm confident we have a protected system but you know maybe that's the group to help us put some emphasis on hey i would like to think i would like to be confident that the truth is it's one way but it was it's just i mean the stories that i've read like in the past week is they don't bother going after banks at this point because they really do have some security so now they're going after the ferry to martha's vineyard just to attack it it might be for fun or it might be for you know ransom i i don't know i didn't read all the stories but they're going after what they consider to be low risk my guess is when you're talking about most municipal or county budgets around the country most of them are probably you know tight wasn't it last year like stupid stuff like i you know they sent out an email from me that says you know please click here for the vacation information and it's you know not really from me and people aren't supposed to open it it's not legitimately from my email but you see and the fact that we're moving to more and more um e-textbooks and everything where they have to have codes and it's not even just fishing that i'm wearing it's the mining that's going on and i don't know i'm with you but there there has to be someone out there looking at this you know more than duck.go you know in terms of you know protecting the privacy especially of the kids i mean um it and they they're sending ducks almost as they put in their codes and my opinion is uh they're and i'm not gonna be off top this is related beyond i was gonna mention this start a school year but you know maybe through policy in other areas we'll look at data privacy because it's a bigger issue but i think a lot of this especially in the private sector like for example most companies um you know large workforces we'll send out the test email focused on those uh right and most some folks do fall for it because they don't know any better but there's also dovetail behind that there's a proactive training program where once a year employee is required to take an online safety date privacy course it's 40 minutes or less and they're gonna take a test if you don't pass you can go through it again so it's reinforcing it and i don't know if there's anything similar for that we can do for students we already do oh we do it for your staff man how about this you caught me there right now i i i but not just for our students but for parents yeah and i think to me there's a way to look at education resources around that um but then again i also go back to the security management position and i get something that can help with this in the future too but they're concerned those are things outside of control even if it's not one of our platforms it's you know students i will say our tech director is just sort of random when it comes to this topic and so mike does a great job being ahead of the curve for our industry i would say you know not for banking but you know for education i think we're ahead of the curve with a lot of that stuff but there's always substantial room for improvement and it's always evolving because you close one door and somebody tries to open three others you know can you say you happen to know or then maybe you would know i mean has mike had to like fight back oh yeah we have intrusions all the time we get reports on intrusion efforts okay um it happens it was a few years ago yeah i mean so the protection is in all different places and i'm not the expert here but sure you know we get our internet service from the mechanic and education network so they they have stop gap measures to prevent these intrusion attempts from russia and china you get reports there's attempted denial of service attacks those are all blocked at the cnn level at the cem level as information gets into you know into passed out firewall there's protections there so things like email the amount of email that actually comes through is something like two to three percent all the rest of it is just filtered out it's it's garbage oh literally just spam wow or or it could be spam or it could actually be the email that is may have some type of a you know virus or malware that's embedded in it so that gets screened out and then you know just to top line at the last layer of defense is the employees you know and or the students although the students you know they're on different network you know so they can't you know students can't access any of the internal systems like pow school or a financial system but you know employee training password changes which we do require those that's the human element you know which is critically important to try and make sure that employees in particular you know know if they receive an email that's got a link on it that doesn't look right you don't click it so it's just a combination of factors and that's not even touching you know what you're bringing up which is student data privacy which right you know we are compliant with the state's requirements what's scary about that is to be compliant with state requirements and the state is probably no better off than you know i mean it's government and there's no offense to government but it's going to be behind the curve in terms of the people when google wants to exchange hey we'll give you all these freebies and we'll just make it all happen i have to wonder is that data getting taken and i don't expect you have the answer way bigger than us but i just want to highlight that too it's not just the hacking it's also i don't know if people realize but you don't use any google apps for the google devices you're into that traffic so again if you're not using google chrome or uh chromebooks or products you think you're okay but google is still tracking you on the internet but believe it or not yeah and thrice teams and things like that so but that aside you know it's education you know our students are so in some cases younger they already don't understand this but maybe there's a way there's things that control when you're on a network it's the things that we can't control when they're not on our network or at home or devices that are successful to and i just wanted there's a way to create awareness around that for them and parents and guardians because you know that's you know that's if you say this but it's like summit we're creating awareness around the program platform and you know how things are protected on the network and people's browsing history or the example that came up there that's stuff that folks didn't realize yeah we do bring in you know special presentations scott driscoll is very popular internet safety speaks to our kids on a regular basis as well as parents and then we do have some basic education around these things but um more formal education is probably helpful i guess you're raising this because you know but the technology of mine did go up not only down 25 000 and that's that's hardware purchases whether it's desktops with chromebooks those types of audio systems in the rooms those are anyway i guess on that no that's a good did our chromebooks fare well that as has the analysis been done as do we have enough for replacements for whatever we will the collection is is occurring i guess this week already occurred in a lot of cases yeah so um yeah the chromebooks actually if your question is are they holding up well yeah yeah they actually are holding up well we have some issues with some of the tablet devices for the younger grades for the first graders but um was that is that kids or parents good questions they were bringing them back and forth from home because you never knew if someone was going to need to quarantine or not so they they did a lot of traveling which in a typical year sure i mean as a general statement i think you know the students have been very responsible at all great levels because you know when they were bringing their devices home bringing them back so we have a yeah and we have a really good internal group that you know we buy spare parts and we repair the chrome the chromebooks if there's damage to the keyboard or the screen's in-house so saves us quite a bit of money so we're still going to shape that as far as yes yes also for just for safety i don't know i don't know about fourth grade but in first grade the tablets come with like a pretty robust strong rubber case for it so when the three-year-old sibling crafted threat has no idea what they're doing it still works afterwards is that experience uh is that experience oh i don't know if myself on the budget i just want to i apologize i'm just not used to seeing a 3.2 3 increase on an operating budget and and uh in dr solin's budget presentation uh the slides i think between 2016 and 2020 the average increase was 1.7 so i while you guys were talking and later talking back to the budget book and since 2009 since i got an award this 3.23 is the third largest increase i've seen and the largest i've seen in the last five years now that's high levels impressive even though one 1.46 million dollars is taken away and i know we're making up for lost ground for mass budget that's a pretty meaningful increase absolutely our needs are greater than ever and thankfully the resources are greater than ever yeah and then and so i know you mentioned what they said last meeting jeff that uh you know the statue is going to meet the needs of our kids as well but i just want to call that out because that is a significant number absolutely especially with um some things that came up after the budget was submitted regarding the uh the actuary increase in our entire contributions and retirements that this is very meaningful i think we're feeling great about going into next year yeah i just want to thank the town council and uh i wish hannah and catherine here goes i don't think they've seen it three point two three percent yeah probably never been out here so i do want to thank the town council for um all the work on this i know we're not the only area of the budget it's been a difficult year but uh thank you this is very helpful yeah it does any other comments sing some other comment the uh the motion on the table is move that the cheshire board education approve a budget for the fiscal year 2021 22 of 77 million 1052 dollars as appropriate by the cheshire town council further the board education reduces 20 21 22 budget recommendations by 1 million 486 000 as follows certified salaries 208 000.935 salary zero employee benefits 956 thousand nine ninety three construction expense sixty thousand one sixty six support services seventy thousand seventy thousand three ninety six ninety five seventy thousand three ninety five operations and maintenance one hundred and seven thousand four sixty six for a total reduction of one million four hundred and eighty six thousand dollars all those in favor please raise your hand it is unanimous by foreign thank you forward thank you everyone for working through this and staying procedure as you move forward there's less meetings if you actually enjoy your summer and only a lot of work to do but thank you for helping us get here we're on to the next stuff so we don't have any other business but i just want to ask if there's any public q a since there is that i'm not surprised it's a nice night tonight um i have no other business so i is there a motion to adjourn okay second andrew's second all favored louisiana's means adjourned thank you
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next slide please janina moving on to transportation as always the district will continue to provide transportation to and from school for eligible students one caveat this year comes with the purchasing of additional buses to help facilitate social distancing and alleviate crowdedness on the buses a huge shout out as always goes to liz nick our supervising coordinator for transportation for all of your hard work and keeping our students safe on the buses masks will be required for all students our bus drivers and our bus aides special accommodations are always made available for students with ieps and 504s for air ventilation our bus windows will continue to remain open of course weather permitting just to ensure air circulation throughout the bus buses are always sanitized and cleaned between routes and disinfected each night we've incorporated the same bus loading and exiting procedures where we load from the front and back and back front to exit and as always we continue to try to have assigned seating so we're not mixing pods and cohorts and we tried to the best of our ability to seat siblings and family members on the same bus or in the same seats rather at this time i'd like to pass this presentation over back to janina to talk about the continuity of instruction thank you so much mr gingaro so the number one piece of the continuity of instruction is that everything that we are doing and planning and any guidance that we need to follow to make this happen is to return to full day full-time five-day per week instruction for all students similar to our pre-pandemic schedules but right now in classrooms we have guidance that lets us be three feet apart at three feet apart we can accommodate every single child back some classes might have to be shifted or split to make that happen but we are working with every school every building every grade span so that we can ensure a return to full day full time five-day per week in-person instruction for all students to ensure that our students are successful we have been adjusting pacing and curriculum this year and we will continue to adjust pacing in curriculum for september individualized instruction will be expanded with schedule modifications programmatic changes and additional staff to provide both that student instructional support as well as ensure that we're adhering to guidelines pursuant to the expiration of portions of the executive order 175 remote learning is rescinded as of july 1st so remote options will not be available we will be in person now we will also have home instruction and simultaneous synchronous options available for students who have to quarantine or might otherwise need to be put on home instruction remote learning in those situations will be possible but only if it meets the quarantining and the home instruction guidelines for instructional acceleration we have had many parents sign up for summer programs across the district this summer and in the summer of 2022 we are going to be offering programs across the district that include our title 1 summer school for our title 1 schools title 3 for our english language learners summer accelerated academic student support for all non-title one schools as well as the high school our special needs extended school year program has been expanded as has a new covid19 learning loss program for those special needs students who don't qualify for esy and we've expanded the jumpstart program in the coming school year there will be a new before school elementary tutoring program available at every elementary school across the district and we will have after school in person and virtual options available once we get closer to winter time we will also begin saturday support programs this pandemic has been difficult on everyone this has i've been lately calling it we're almost through the worst year ever but that worst year ever was helped along and our students were helped along by many of these whole child supports that we're going to leverage as we transition back to full-time in-person learning the biggest one of those is the pbsis multi-tiered system of support at this time all schools have completed the training for universal prevention tiers we are expanding tier two smaller group interventions and we have increased support staff to provide those individualized tier three interventions we're going to continue to implement our social emotional learning programs including nurtured heart trauma-informed compassionate classroom mindfulness and virtual calming resources for staff and students additional counselors are being provided so that each elementary school will have at least one full-time counselor and counseling support has been expanded pre-k through 12 not only with additional staff but with contracted services we're expanding our special education programs returning to more normalized extracurricular offerings at the same time we're going to leverage the technology and remote learning best practices that we have learned while a lot of this was incredibly challenging and difficult everyone rose to the occasion so well and there were many lessons that we learned where technology can be helpful and useful and we hope to keep those best practices in place mr gingaro thanks again geneva moving forward to our wrap-around services if you're driving down colfax ave you will see a sign that says bingo is back at the boys and girls club so will before and after care however we're still not sure exactly what that will look like at this time we are working collaboratively with bob foster and the boys and girls club to see what we can offer specific to before and after care programs always follow it following and based on available guidance we will continue to keep all stakeholders appraised of the situation as that guidance does evolve our minds and motions program will continue to be made available for our students at schools 4 12 and 17.
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if anybody has specific questions about that minds in motion program please do not hesitate to reach out to any of the principals mrs rosetti at school 4 mrs kenning at school 12 and mrs gorsky at school and as always regardless of the program for wraparound services our health and safety guidelines will always be in full effect in place which require social distancing between groups to some degree and masking health and safety protocols will always be in place as mandated moving forward one more time to miss kusalevich to speak about our funding so the this plan leverages heavily on the arp american rescue plan esser funding the sr funding in order to implement this plan is allowing us to add additional staff to support counseling nursing and instruction it provides additional stipends to provide appropriate coverage to school entry exit recess and meal times additional buses to alleviate crowded routes extensive window and door replacements to enhance school ventilation air scrubbers for every classroom and shared space in the district the purchase of health safety and cleaning supplies and exploring additional space as needed this plan is already posted on the district website under our covet 19 information there's a public comment response form and that is on the website right where you click to see um covid19 if you go to our website you'll see the plan there you will see this presentation there and you will also access the public comment form we urge everyone to please take a look this is a much more simplified plan than the plan um that was written last summer but it's thanks to that guidance that we're able to have this kind of high level summary so i would like to thank each and every one of you for your attention and your understanding that this plan will continue to evolve the health and safety regulations and guidance has been changing daily some of what we hear and see in the newspapers does not necessarily accurately reflect the exact guidance we must follow but we know it has been changing it will continue to change and we're going to stay abreast of it to ensure that when we reopen full-time five days a week in person for all students in september we will be using the most updated requirements at that time thank you so much janina mark vicki thank you so very much for that very thorough presentation and i know you said it several times but i have to reiterate what we plan for today of what september will look like will most likely change could change as early as tomorrow but what i can promise the clifton public school community is that we want to be back to as close to normal as possible in september as much as you do and and that's what we will do [Music] while following the directives and the guidance of the new jersey department of health and the new jersey department of education so we thank you for bearing with us as these things develop and change but as they do we will keep you abreast of what's going on mr smith that concludes the presentation unless commissioners have any questions questions learning questions [Music] mr casper i'm excuse me mister it's got mr casper's name over mr um it's here [Music] all right um so the only question i had was yeah um the only question i had was around lunch during that because i know that we still have that three foot before the students are pretty tight are they gonna be taking lunch back to the class if we're doing a full day is that how we're operating anyone from the committee can answer that question i know that's an evolving situation lunch is very much an evolving situation there are many options that will vary by school as guidance evolves right now none of our cafeterias can fit our students at six feet and most of them can't get our students at three feet so we will have to have alternate eating locations that will vary by school they could be classrooms hallways cafeteria auditoriums we have to see what it's going to look like at the time right now i think mr smith is frozen but we're getting feedback from his volume mr mountain could you uh mute mr oh he he must have heard me no that's all thank you yes uh um to youth to the superintendent i have to address it because it's been coming to me all week what are we going to do about masks now uh because uh there are some parents that are not happy with the mask i just got a text message from someone so i'm asking that sure i'd be happy to address that so ms bestford part of the problem is um that the governor on monday surprised everyone and and once again wasn't very clear but let me read for you the guidance that we received from the new jersey department of education i'm going to read it to you verbatim masking protocols outlined in executive order number 175 remain in place the order includes an exception to masking requirements outdoors during periods of extreme heat additionally the order includes an exception to masking protocols in situations where wearing a mask would inhibit an individual's health please be advised that the governor has clarified that this indoor masking exception could reasonably be applied to situations in which a district determines at its discretion and based on its assessment of the individual circumstances that a period of extreme heat warrants students and staff to remove their masks while indoors to protect individual health as always unvaccinated individuals are strongly encouraged to continue wearing masks while participating in activities that include sustained contact with others or when in a crowded setting so that is the guidance that we are filing that comes the following that comes directly from the new jersey department of education the which says extreme heat indoors you can remove a mask outdoors you can remove a mask i've sent that out and my community noticed the problem is you see these headlines all over that such and such school district has eliminated masks right then you read the article and it doesn't actually say they eliminated masks right the the the title of the article doesn't say the whole thing and then for the districts that have to me that's a direct violation of what the department of education and department of health has told us and what the governor has said i cannot and i refuse to intentionally violate an executive order from the governor so until that changes we'll continue to follow those governor's orders the fact of the matter is if it's hot in school we're taking the kids masks off and outside we're not requiring them but at this point we are not prepared to say no masks at all thank you you're very welcome mrs beck was that pretty accurate what i stated thank you and dr robert tells you you did send something out i think it was yesterday two days ago just saying that right correct um but but since then you know i have received a couple parent emails saying well you know such and such district has eliminated masks and whether or not that's true i can't really speak for what other school districts do um i just know that this board and i we would never intentionally do something to you know violate the law the law are the health of our children correct mr smith can i say something um thank you um as an educator i think that um you know that obviously that would be a violation i agree with you uh dr arbitozi and i think what's happened in a lot of these districts um from what i you know can gather from friends that i know in other districts is that um the guidance was not as clear and so a lot of the districts just said okay that's it you know it's optional and now they're sort of backtracking on it and it's almost like you know you open pandora's box you can't get you know pandora so to say back in the box so um you know i think it's really good that you you know didn't go jumping because that's what i'm sort of hearing from is that these other districts are saying that you know oh it's not you know um it's not optional that it's still and it's just if it's really um hot or something you know it's it it has certain parameters and i think that that's um wasn't really spelled out and now i guess because of this letter that you know went out it really detailed it more and now i think these superintendents are saying oh wait a minute i think we jumped the gun just wanna so miss danny i think you nailed it i think you nailed it that's exactly what happened in a lot of places uh but let me say this and my last comment on this unless i'm asked a question we're hoping in september i'm hoping i shouldn't say i'm hoping that there's no mask in september but we still don't know what that's going to look like um we'll continue to follow um the guidance that we receive so thank you any other members have a question okay we're gonna move on there's no other questions would you uh [Music] i'm gonna reboot my computer uh sure president smith uh mr casper state county board school association beanie all right are miss bassett i'm sorry um these are submitted by mr uh casper so yeah would you please thank you okay all right so we had our uh pacific county school board meeting on may 24th um ms basford uh called the meeting to order at 6 40 with the flag saloon a resolution was written to record in the memoriam of mr who recently passed away and was a board member for 46 years mr bruce young updated us on the 8th grade dialogue an unsung heroes program run through the njsba they were run virtually this year and can be viewed uh they were be able they were um we were able to view them at the end of may but which is uh the the videos were run virtually this year and they were eight what am i trying to say here they were run virtually this year and can be viewed by the end of the month which was last month miss schwartz from the njsba board of directors announced that workshop 2021 is once again virtual this year registration for school boards has started and remains at 900 dollars for 25 members online professional development is up and running for teachers and board members as well there are no deuce increases for the 12th straight year this year mr daniel sinclair provided a report for the nominating committee for the 2021-2023 passaic county school board officers so the nominations came from the committee mr charge and mr charles carabello from the bloomfield board of education was nominated as the president myself nominated for the second vice president for legislation a nomination from the floor came from short nominating marianne capersi for first vice president and she is from the passaic county the passaic board of education the it was voted by unanimous acclamation so we have mr carabello as president ms ms kapersi as first vice president and myself as second vice president for legislation keisha drakeford introduced herself to the association she is currently our passaic county interim superintendent chris jones our legislative advocate has updated us on new laws in the works two acts from president biden are coming down the pike which which are the american jobs plan which has a green element our buildings to become carbon neutral schools and purchasing electric buses as well as the american families plan which is the universal preschool and the expansion of free community college ms cathy hello updated the members on two matters that evening our superintendent evaluations are due by july 1st and the federal government would like our school boards to approve our re-entry re-entry plans by then a few words were provided by mr carabello miss kazan and miss basford during that evening ray penny the director of member engagement presented a new board member award to miss forest isa from the held in from haldon and mr vincent arrington from patterson he also presented certified board member awards to miss lucidian and myself and miss lucia de nova from north hilton the meeting was adjourned by mr charles caraballo at 8pm does anybody miss password do you have anything to add it's just uh uh it's a changing of the guard meeting uh out with the all i become immediate past president so it's all good so it was very emotional for me so thank you frank for taking over i had a hard time getting through that meeting because we had to do the memoriam from john van dammel and he he's a good friend so i was having a hard time holding the meeting down he was uh he's gonna be surely missed so uh condolences to his family thank you frank questions cancer mr smith i don't think anybody heard you you broke out go to mr daley this is daily dream finance and the minutes from the may 25th please please sure thank you very much um finance committee was held on june 1st very much uh board members president was uh mr canola miss beltran mr smith myself administration it was uh miss dr robertosi uh mr tejan mr uc and mr thomasevich other attendings were um heather lisperner financial advisor for state county improvement authority and nicole fox executive director of the state county improvement authority um proposal and surplus analysis mr unc provided the committee with an analysis of the projected year-end surplus to use to be committed to the committee to increase the unassigned fund balance to the four percent maximum that is currently allowed by statute and transfer uh 750 000 to maintenance reserve and the remaining access to capital reserve with no access the media agrees with us to use his recommendation and a resolution will be presented to full board on the june 10th meeting uh item two speaker of three funds mr uc informed the committee of the district's allocation of the arp ser iii in the amount of 23 million 80 aprs for three grand application is due by november 24th 2021 mr uniform committee that the district is uh required to submit a safe return plan template to the state by june 24 2021 i'm free option for the referendum through the second improvement authority ms liz bauer and miss fox provided the committee and administration um the option to finance a referendum to the passaic county improvement authority uh mr liz bauer committee administration that the estimated uh pica bonds would be based on a higher rating than the current rating of the district which results in a lower interest rate than through a competitive sale however there are some additional costs of the insurance of of insurance by financing through the bond funds administration will provide a say county improvement authority with an amortization maturity schedule ia buttons everybody has any questions i'll be happy to introduce them this is daily cnn may 25th okay okay we're ready uh the board of education personnel committee minutes of late 2001 meeting personal commit uh committee began at 403 pm attendees where uh poor president smith myself board commissioner student fast food and data beltran administrators president with dr danny robertosi uh dr um making all the current supervisors are currently 12th month other than the high school uh and the k-12 social studies supervisor with the three retirement of miss campbell as supervisor the salary differential will cover the cost for these positions the kid kidney recommended the board approved making all supervisors district-wide 12-month positions update job descriptions which were previously discussed in the residence committee the questions are foreign [Music] information on how these positions will assist the department will uh be recommended to place job descriptions on the june 10th board meeting for dr roberto the committee regarding retro pay for the affiliate unclassified staff once the cea contract is ready for ratified this will only leave the unaffiliated staff as not having had an increase the affiliate staff uh represent represents many of those who have been present and working physically on a daily basis throughout the pandemic dr robert tosey recommended a 2.5 uh a retro for the unaffiliated and underclass unclassified staff [Music] recommends the board of approval uh on that particular note uh these individuals did not receive any uh increase in their salary during the past year dr robertos discussed the rate of our substitute nurse his misspec nursing supervisor has advised dr rotozi that in order to attract sub nurses we would need to increase the pay so uh to 250 dollars per day for 120 dollars per day uh we are currently the committee recommends approving the daily rate for substitutes of 250 at the beginning of june 10 2001.
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in addition discussions were then how um were then held on raising substitute rates across the board for all types of thrombitosis roswell research surveys in comparable districts and we report back to the committee for the discussion prior to final recommendation to the board meeting was adjourned at five pieces um on the discussion why the discussion on the substitute is that our rates are low and it's getting more than some other districts raising their so in order to be good and actually get some substitutes uh on board um these these were why the rates were discussed and why they've been adjusted accordingly anybody has questions you'd be happy to ask any questions i don't know if you can hear me but uh mr d is terrible broken up i don't really understand what he was saying everyone else get that break up i heard him thank you judy um i'm just going to make a suggestion with anybody using the chromebooks turn your camera off when you speak you know make it more powerful thank you is that better anybody have any questions on the finance or the personnel committee no mr abu drabo uh you want to take what's next uh nexus policy minute news password thank you i was on a county meeting and i used the chromebook and we figured it out after about 10 minutes okay so uh good evening everyone policy minutes from june 9th which was yesterday we met at 503 attendees was board president jim smith myself board members joe konova and dana beltran from the administration was dr danny robertson mr louise ross and other attendees were nil sendal and jamie principe we had two guests at their at they're going for um some kind of um certification so they joined us to participate and watch how the policy committee actually functions um the committee discussed by law zero one six seven public participation in a board meeting the bylaw dealing with in-person participation was suspended during the remote meetings it was decided to have the board review about the speaking time limits that um contained in the bylaw and discuss whether to change uh the same upon reinstatement of the bylaw once meetings are in person the committee reviewed bylaw 0164 about legal search services to ensure that procedures are followed regarding board members uh contract contacting the board attorney um the committee discussed board by law zero one five five point one four member participation at meeting public an executive session using electronic devices a discussion was held regarding incorporating some language from the remote policy into viola zero one five five point one some of the policies to be reviewed include zero one six zero one six four point six remote public board meetings during a declared emergency and policy three two no excuse me nine three two two uh conduct of remote meetings after a review of the bylaw and policy it is it is next meeting the committee will recommend any changes to the board discussion was held on board member responses to emails and other correspondence and or communications from the public the board attorney will um be consulted regarding the preparation of a prepared and unified response to such inquiries from the public the meeting was adjourned at 5 35 pm respectfully uh submitted by mr ross who wrote the minutes any questions yes i do actually um from any of those that you've listed whether it is the code of conduct for remote or the way devices are used during meetings was is does any of that cover about policy about how board of ed members take questions from the public during meetings um no we didn't discuss that okay can somehow some way we put that in there because i think that falls under a remote and that falls under how we deal with with uh criteria during meetings if anybody has anything to add before we have our next meeting we're usually the second wednesday of the month at five o'clock so if anybody has anything just send it on and we'll discuss it thank you anybody else all right what's going on who do we have mr pinova had a question mr kanoa sorry so so just to add to that um i don't know if we should have a discussion now um but i like the fact that we're able to get out to a larger crowd of people and they're able to participate in our meetings so i know we talked about you know going hybrid or going in person and we're going to do a remote but i would really like to look at i don't know if it's in technology and or policy but i really like to look at a way to continue that outreach to those people because i feel like we've got so much more participation right now and i would just hate to bring it back to just a closed session and then nobody comes what you're going to use so then we can change it all right we could do that and and now when i ask um those two uh attendees that were invited i know that jamie is doing her masters in education uh i think she's a home school association parent as well uh are those parents that are those that are sorry attendees that we invited are they asked to sit in mr dr robertosi can you answer that please yes uh mr abedrabo those uh both were invited by me they're both doing internships for their um administrative certificate um so they remind my guests no no it's fine i was just curious because obviously i think it'd be also nice to let other people in our in our city who are doing the same thing this way i just want to make it transparent to them that that it's something that can be done uh if anybody is interested so which is great we certainly certainly do that for our own staff um mrs principe um is known by me as an hsa president and a very active parent in our district and she asked if she could complete it so i was happy to happy to help her no she's good people i think she's teaching i forget what this she teaches in it was actually really good for them to see how the the it functions the committee and they were kind of amazed over all the things we were discussing so it was nice for other people to see that how the committee works okay anyone else all right seeing none um mr canova i believe technology is next okay technology committee met june 8th board members present were mr smith myself miss beltran administration dr robertosi ms kusilevich mr teigen mustuchi miss depotto and mr mountain guest presenter we had was mr rolfing from board docs meeting time went from 405 to 512.
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of discussion number one ford docs mr raffling provided a refresher training for all in attendance that included a site overview and functionality tour he explained the difference between what is visible to the board commissioners administration and what the public has access to mr ruffling walked through the process of how our meeting will be conducted once board of ed returns to in-person meetings with mystic with mr uchi starting and running the meeting while board members join and vote online with the scoreboard displaying results mr ruffling explained board doc's current road map and informed us a major update is being designed and they hope to have everything online by the end of the year he discussed with the board members how they can submit for their input for product improvements several were discussed as discussed such as better notifications for annotations and better clarifications for new content or revisions mr mountain will share contact information with everyone to arrange a follow-up discussion the training session ended with mr offline providers suggested specific to clifton as to how we can be using the site more effectively how we can organize our content for easier access to commissioners administrators and public item two chromebooks the committee and administration discussed chromebook devices sizes and screen capability for future purchases mr mountain stated that the technology department will purchase smaller numbers of various model sizes capabilities this summer for trials in the new school year the results of those trials will be brought back to the committee in the fall item three board docs revisited the committee administration discussed takeaways from the training held earlier in the meeting several opportunities for enhanced use will be discussed with the full board including posting and tracking district goals referendum goals and status and cleaning up the events section of the site lastly more in-depth training for administrators will be scheduled to hopefully streamline the process of converting to agenda to the meeting minutes uh mr kanova i guess i'm assuming you're done so uh question for you what does technology do um in terms of our to use super territory what do we do with for example monitors that either are obsolete or we no longer use and then i'll give you an example yes that'll be a question for uh for dr robertosi each year we uh and actually money mike might be able to answer when we do it but each year we put stuff out um uh surplus equipment right mike what is that called it's called the obsolete list and it's just put out there it's advertised and anybody companies individuals anybody can um bid on it you could bid a penny if you wanted anyone could bid anything and then anything that's still left over gets recycled okay i ask only because there are um jim smith president smith and i um you know visiting various schools with the superintendent and we noticed one of them today the school eleven um there was a garbage can of monitors that were in there um [Music] just was curious because i saw them today so i just want to make sure we don't you know if they're if they're still good to use but we don't use them and we don't use them in our classes and i just didn't want to throw them to waste i mean they're potentially broken but i would have to ask the iot team thank you mr president you have a question mr daley uh it's between observation um tonight is typical what we've been experiencing on zoom meetings that um everybody seems to be breaking up at some point in time when they're speaking but i notice when we do our committee meetings we use google meets and during those meetings i've never experienced any breakups that we have during the zoom so uh either the technology committee or mr mountain can look into this because this is not the first time and we'd like the public to hear us we spend this time in in the public view and that's the only time we do the public dossiers and uh we should have a little bit better uh communications or or understanding of what we're talking about here and when it breaks up it's very difficult for both for us and the public to understand but that's an observation i've just had both in this meeting and prior meetings and when we even have our negotiation meetings and other meetings um i don't think i've experienced the breakup that we get when we have using the zoom so if we can look into that i would appreciate it yeah that that's that's a fantastic point mr daly um i agree with you committee meetings never seem to be a problem so mr mountain uh maybe you could either get in touch with the zoom people and find out what's going on um you know some people think it's a chromebook issue um but um either way we got to get it corrected and this was one of the problems that we were having at the high school as well um so maybe we should try the google avenue next meeting and see if it's any better so um mr mountain are you there can you uh look into those matters sure i can look into that no problem thank you so we apologize to the public um we're doing the best that we can to uh make sure that we get uh all this working and fixed and be able to communicate with you is the best that we can so we thank you for your cooperation and thank you also channel 77 was down it's back up so they had some technical issues also so maybe something's going on with the uh with the eclipse this morning or something i don't know um anyhow let's move on to uh last is uh facilities uh miss beltran okay i hope everyone can hear me we can okay um so facilities met on june 7th we actually met in person at the old board room uh the people who are there were dr robertosi uh martin garrow mike lucy eric mountain marcion he was the only one virtual um eric thomas eddie maldonado and michael mcconney uh basically what we talked about is our plans to renovate the boardroom to make it better um better use of the facility so that we can um use it not only for the board meeting but also for as a a meeting room for the staff that operate out of the admin building we talked about many different options uh the best way is to do a minimal cost to seat the most people to make the most use of the space and the best part about it is we might be able to use s or funds to pay for some of the renovations as we will be creating more space so that we can better social distance if we continue to need to have better ventilation new air conditioning and things like that um the second thing that we talked about was that we're going to um proceed with renting our facilities um to churches and community groups so we'll be able to bring in some income from that as well as service the community by supplying them with a space to meet i mean that's all we talked about we met from four to five fifteen sorry about my dog barking any questions of uh facilities i i tried to give a little uh quick blurb to all of you about that uh meeting thank you miss beltran no problem mr smith there's also a report for policy just to give you a heads up oh didn't mr we missed that up mr alberta okay for i mean for residency security i'm sorry oh okay uh go ahead mr wad uh the committee met on june 1st at 4 00 p.m on a google meet platform uh present at the meeting was uh committee chair which is me president smith commissioner konova commissioner casper superintendent robert jose uh mr marc gianguero vincent constantino and nancy foster the committee discussed moving forward with the positions specific to the head thumbnail investigator and security assistant an additional full-time domicile investigator excuse me the job descriptions were presented to the personnel committee and will be voted on this evening the committee also discussed the potential of conducting re-registration for certain grades for the upcoming school year the meeting was adjourned at 4 30 p.m and that is all thank you mr awad are you kidding me thank you mr awad is there any questions for mr awad no questions everyone hear me okay let's move on all right next is our public recognition this portion of the meeting is open to the residents and non-residents of clifton for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to or directly related to the operation of the clifton public schools district residents and non-residents are requested if in person to sign the register provided for this purpose all speakers are asked to state their names municipality and subject matter before speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by a member of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and the response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate your questions may or may not be answered by board members the board asked that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged and will not be responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of the state of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will be liable for any comments made by members of the public should consider their comments in light of legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for all of their comments okay mr mountain uh yes mr rubin is in and then a couple of other public speakers okay uh matt uh max uh nice to see you max uh i know this is uh your last uh meeting with us yeah yeah it is well you're more than welcome to uh join us over the summer um or whatever but uh we are truly going to uh to miss you um you have been so uh helpful to this board this district to this town to your fellow students um you have a tremendous and bright future ahead of you and uh we just want to thank you and uh wish you all the very best so thank you max and the floor is yours thank you so much for those kind words mr smith um i have a few announcements and then i have a little closing speech prepared um first i just want to mention uh the spring musical is tomorrow um that it's friday june 11th which is tomorrow at 6 30 pm and it's also the second date and the last date is saturday june 12th at 6 30 p.m and it looks like those are the two dates if it rains on one of those days then the new date or the rain date would be sunday june 13th at 1pm all this weekend but right now we're looking at tomorrow and saturday at 6 30.
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um tickets will be available at the entrance gate for a cash donation um it's going to be on the chs upper fields next to the soccer field and the tennis courts um in the same field that was used for the band concert the choir concert and the film festival it's a bring your own chair event um because it's going to be on the field you can bring your own chair and also snacks and water will be available for one dollar each um so yeah that's the spring musical also if any of you need to get your car washed or you just want to show up and support the mustang marching band uh the clifton high school mustang band car wash is uh yeah the car wash is on saturday uh june 12th from 8 a.m to 12 30 p.m and it's in the lower uh parking lot it's next to the north wing but also uh right next to the band room so i think i think people just call it the lower band lot that parking lot there's going to be the student run uh car wash so i would definitely come out and help support the band it's um saturday uh june 12th from 8 am to 12 30 pm um also the sophomore class student council is having a fundraiser at smashburger it's my personal favorite fast food uh restaurant i don't even know if it's considered fast food but it is uh you should really try their smash tops they're particularly amazing if you go there and support the sophomore class um there's a flyer that was posted around um and you can show the flyer to the cashier um if any of you want fire um you can it's probably posted on social media but if you can't find the flyer you can always email me and i can my email is i'll even put it in the chat actually so if any of you need the flyer because you'd have to show that to the cashier as you go in uh for smashburger to support the sophomore class um i just left my email in the chat in case any of you want to save that and ask me for the flyer um and yeah it's june 16th which is a wednesday i believe from 11am to 9pm and the address is it's the one on route 3 yeah 700 route 3 west clifton new jersey um and again if any of you need the flyer um i put my email in the chat next i wanted to give a shout out the phoenix the clifton high school phoenix literary and art magazine was just posted on the chs website under about chs it's one of the tabs at the top um the magazine is actually it's a whole website that was made it's really well designed by everyone who created it and there's a lot of great artwork and a lot of great poems made by students and even some from staff on a bunch of different themes um i checked it out a little while ago and yeah there's some really awesome stuff in there so i would definitely recommend uh looking at that to see what some of our high school students and teachers are doing creatively it's the phoenix literary and art magazine under the about chs tab of the clifton high school website and to find it you just go down the tab and it says the phoenix magazine 2021 edition my last announcement before i get to my little closing speech is uh this is the last week to register for classes for the high school so if you haven't already for ninth through 11th graders who are going into 10 through 12th grade next year um you should email your guidance counselor if you haven't already scheduled your classes if you're a parent i would ask your child if they have finished scheduling and if not you should remind them that they should email their guidance counselor as soon as possible to figure out their schedule if they haven't already all right and those are all of my announcements but since this might actually be the last uh student rep speech i do so i did prepare like a little closing i know that the student council elections are tomorrow so there's going to be a new senior representative elected tomorrow and i'm gonna try talking to them and i'm giving them some advice for the next board of ed meetings so that they're ready and hopefully the next board of ed meeting will be the first speech of the new rep um that doesn't mean i'm gone forever i'll probably still come back every now and then uh but because this might be my last speech i wanted to just uh talk a little bit about you know you know myself and how this district just helps me and just um and and just to like really show my appreciation for you guys so you know i come to all these meetings i speak i give you updates i shout out people um but a lot of you don't really know you know my personal story so at the beginning of my junior year i was going through a really hard time and um i was involved in a lot of stuff from for school and i was trying my best to mask you know how i was feeling but it i was like in a really bad place mentally and i ended up getting diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and i still have it today i still struggle with it sometimes it's part of the reason i'm always trying to organize everything so well um and you know when i was going through that really hard time what i found really special was just that you know my family really stepped it was really supportive and they got me the help i needed and it seems like you know my friends and even some of the staff you know throughout this time you know they still they still showed their appreciation for me and i just got a lot of help and you know grow you know growing up and i i've had bad experiences with with um even some it's okay i'm okay um anyway what i'm trying to say is that because of the help i got from people you know it gave me some faith you know that people can be generally really awesome if you if you let them if you give them the opportunity to help you they'll do a really good job you know given the right person and with this board of and with this board of people you know you guys have all shown your true colors these years you're constantly supporting us and just making decisions only with our interests in mind not for yourself and you know when i was going through that big struggle and and i was finding help you know with people who i didn't even i didn't even know before who just stepped in because they wanted to help me you know it just showed that people can be really special if you let them and you guys are all really special because every single day you know you sacrifice your time to help us and give us the best education possible and you along with everyone else every adult your student who's helped me in my life you know i thank you so much because i wouldn't be sitting here today if i didn't have if i wasn't afraid to ask for help you know for anyone out there who's afraid you know to be ashamed because you think that there's something wrong with you it's like there's nothing to be ashamed about everyone has something that's wrong with them and you should never be ashamed to ask for help and that's something that i still have to learn you know i try to do everything on my own but we can't always do that that's why we have a board because as wonderful as our teachers and administration are they can't do everything on their own we need some sort of backbone and that's why we have the board because everyone needs help now and then and i got the help i needed and now this year i've made it my mission to try to help other people and i i hope that i did that um and yeah that's that's it um thank you guys all so much for um you know going on this journey with us throughout this crazy year and i hope to see you all in the future max uh thank you so very much if um you would uh if you have nothing to do if you would stick around uh um maybe uh board members would like to uh make comments in their comments uh but um again uh on behalf of the entire board uh we thank you for all that you've done and uh those that did not get to see your movie clip um really uh you did a phenomenal job in explaining your disorder um and i learned a lot from it and uh i hope others will get to see it uh it was so well done so well prepared and um for you to take the time to get that message out uh i thought that was something really special so uh thank you again and for all that you did for the district for uh school and uh yourself so we wish you all the very best and as i said uh maybe some other board members will make some comments um you know what why don't we do it now does that any other board members instead of having max wait around if you like to make some comments uh i'll just do that right now if that's okay i would like to yes and then vice president abu dravo um max i i would like to say um thank you very much um you know for your speech there um for saying you know that we're special you know i i think you're very special um coming out and and speaking about something so personal to you um but i think that's very important because i think that so many people struggle with so many things and they and they think that they're alone and you know you saying something and being you know such a um you know you're you're young and you're you're saying that you know what this is something that you reach out to people and that people could be special and they can show you how great they can be if you um you know share with them something that you're going through and i just i think that that is um again uh something really beyond your years of you coming out and and and saying something like that and you know i had um really fought for uh there to be a student representative on the board an instrumental net and like you really embody everything that i had you know hoped that this position would be um and i just wanted to say that i'm so happy that at the awards night i was actually able to shake your hand and congratulate you um you know it was obviously this will be your last time and you know i don't know if i'll get a chance to actually against and be there and and congratulate you and i just wanted to say so much more but it just wasn't that it didn't afford that opportunity um and you know i wish you the best of luck um in your future endeavors and i do hope you know to see you uh at some other point again uh in the future even doing great things and which i'm sure that you will so um thank you for putting a you know a face to um things that people are struggling with thank you very much and thank you for all your service to the board thank you so much uh vice president abu drabo you were next max max max um thank you thank you for all you've done i mean listen it's easy to say students come and go um you definitely have put your footprint um you have set the bar for what it is to be a student rep and this is i don't think any of us here on the board we're saying it's just two horns and this is it's this is i think all genuine i'm gonna say for on everybody's behalf what somebody may take as a weakness you have shown it's a strength right some people have things and they see no i don't want to bring it out because people already say xyz or whatever you have shown it to be a strength and you persevere and you excel and you move forward and that takes courage not only courage to do that but courageous speak up because you know what you have done throughout the year in your time in general as a student um as an underclassmen and going into your senior year i i applaud you you can see this from the four years how much you've cared about the school how much you've cared about the district but more importantly what i've noticed is the feedback of the student body and you have definitely and defined the term representative so as ms dania said i applaud you i applaud your four years i applaud your college years i upload your professional years and everything that you are able to set moving forward the only thing that you can do to hurt yourself is to lower any standards higher those standards and keep reaching them every single year you succeed and hit something that's another goal go after it and that's for every student and i was going to actually do this from under new business but uh mr smith through youtube to the superintendent can we start a new tradition uh some sort of resolution for our student reps that we get that they get to take away as remembering their time spent as a student rep that we can probably pass and all of us have our signatures on it this way you know the some users like to frame them and put them on their walls maybe take it to college with them and remind them what they've done for those four years and what they can do for the next four to 40 years thanks max thank you so much mr abhijabo uh miss basford you're next and mr casper thank you um max you said it yourself going through that big struggle it showed that people um can really be great and care about you you said that yourself those were your words i wrote them down um sometimes in life people get labeled with that a deficit that they feel define them sometimes that deficit is really your strength sometimes that deficit is really your strength and that people do not realize the struggle every day it is to just get up and be you this is something very personal to me about deficit some people live deficit every minute of the day i want to say this to max it takes a brave person to speak about their deficit and to be honest about what they are going through and you are very blessed to have the support at home and in this school that helped you get through this time this deficit will never leave you it will be your strength trust me it'll be some of the best defining moments of your existence you will look at it now as a deficit but later in life you will look at the blessing trust me i know the adhd does not go away it does not go away so you are extremely blessed to have the support and the help do not forget the help that you got those people will live in your heart and your memory for the rest of your life and you will find other people in life that will help you later on you have been extremely passionate about mental illness and i appreciate that you've talked about it every meeting you bring it up i i really am so proud of you i hope you never stop helping others because you will you will bring that forward because the deficit that people have labeled that with or that label or whatever you want to call it will make you shine going forward so good luck to you max i expect to see great things coming back from you you will be on one of our wall of fame somewhere i would end up with max this is only just beginning good luck to you thank you so much mrs basford mr casper max thank you so much for everything that you've done in the four years that i've been on the board you have been one of the most active representatives that we've had and thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for everything that you did and i know you're going to be you're going to make it and you're going to do great things and hopefully you can be on with us one of these days so don't forget to come back and um whatever we can do to help you just make sure you know you have us as well all right thank you for everything thank you so much mr casper uh mr daily then mr canova congratulations and all the best with the rest of your career um history teaches us that many many people with challenges have been the most successful so um i say that as a word words of encouragement um i'd love to have a cough you can't do that until you graduate because because of our ethics things but uh it's it's always good to sit down and talk to somebody especially as talented and as driven and as committed and and that's the word i'd like to use most committed to what you do is really something special um i won't belabor the points but i wish you all the best and you're surely a shining light out for for not only for your fellow students but for us who have watched you over the year um it's it's been absolute pleasure and a joy for us to see you in action and we're all very very proud of you so all the best team thank you mr daley mr canova so max um i just want to say it was really a pleasure having you in the meetings to provide us the update from the student perspective and uh looking at your videos i especially love your uh your chris farley presentation i thought that was great but um seriously thank you for sharing your story because uh you know in a world with with social media um and it looks like there's this perception that everyone goes through the world without a struggle and that's not that's not real life right i'm here to tell you that that's not really what happens when you look on social media and you go through those those posts that's not real that's a moment in time and everyone has their own internal struggle and it's difficult to talk about it it really takes courage to speak about your personal story but i feel it's important and i hope there are kids that heard you tonight and parents that urge you tonight and i hope it resonates with someone and they realize that there's someone to reach out to when they're not knowing they're not alone um and you know overcoming challenges makes you stronger and i think that you show that i'm proud of you for speaking today and i just want to thank you for all you do and i i know you have a bright future ahead of you and i wish you the best thank you so much mr kanova okay anyone else mr smith mr awad max reuben i may have been a new board member and i never really got the chance to personally get to speak to you but uh i would definitely love to say that before i was a board member i used to always tune in as a citizen and watch watching your positive energy that you bring from the student body giving a voice for sometimes you know voiceless your motivation your courage and your heart the amount of time and effort and energy you put as a student that many students sometimes you know kind of you know side eye uh personally it's students like you that i'm so blessed to have in the district that motivated me to run motivated me as you know a millennial seeing that you know i want to torch handed to me and one day i want to hand a torch to a student like you a future and honestly a current you know city leader you're a rising star your sky's the limit enjoy your college years but not too much fun you know you are building you know for the future and honestly i really hope to see you in a seat with us one day because it's people like you that i'm blessed and i'm really really happy to say that i'm a commission in the board of education in clifton and hopefully we have many students like you you are a motivation not just to the students to us commissioners because you give us you know the fire to continue uh fighting for the students and what you did especially for the referendum you're leaving a touch for many many generations to come especially for someone that's not going to be here to see these motivations but it just shows what kind of character you are and it's a true testament to your parents that they raised a fine young man and they should be extremely proud of you keep your chin up keep on going and we hope to see you soon thank you very much max thank you so much mr awad anyone else okay thank you again max um all right let's uh move on to um could i say one last thing before i go sure thank you so much for all your kind words i'm i i'm really really happy to be here um i have a fellow student in here chloe who also i i feel like she deserves some credit she also does an amazing job i'm spreading out information and she deserves some things too and she's probably going to speak later but i just wanted to i saw her in the meeting i just wanted to recognize her thank you max all right and thank you so much have a great weekend everyone and hey if you're not doing anything the next two days come to the spring musical okay we'll move on uh mr uh brunsiak uh you're next thank you president smith this is mark brunsiak 20 holly street thank you president smith vice president alvadravo dr robert tosie uh for allowing me to speak tonight i want to commend everybody that i saw at the memorial day parade it was a wonderful celebration and as much as i disagree with policy with with a lot of views on here it was a wonderful it was wonderful to see you all there mr awad i believe i saw as well and i just want to commend you all to everybody was holding up signs on all those soldiers who got killed in action for this country so i want to commend everybody on that uh also i want to congratulate dr robert tozie on his contract renewal for the next five years and uh i i hope we have some we have success with this district uh but it's very frustrating to me very frustrated to a lot of parents that you describe the policies set forth and all the time that was spent tonight and then how you also say what could change in the next few months on the guidance on the guidance that even sounds anti-science when i saw everybody at that beautiful memorial day parade none of us had face masks on and rightfully so we were outside i assume all of us were vaccinated and i mean it just drives me nuts i i hear the benny hill theme song when i when i watch some of these when i watch some of these uh you know presentations they're talking about all these safety precautions and everything when you walk down the street if anybody could just walk down to the nearest pharmacy i mean they are advertising that they have vaccines available and there are vaccines out there for for parents who want to get their kids a vaccine for as young as 12 years old and now you're saying that there still isn't an option for the high school there was no contingency plan in place for the high school to to get parents an option to send their kids to school five days a week but when you go to home depot when you go to the grocery store you see plenty of people without their mass on over there you can even go to any houses of worship plenty of people over there that have the option of wearing the mask but we can't even get an option and and there is such an excess of vaccines over here now promoting to get the vaccine and there still is no option people already talking about you know getting some visibility down the line regarding face coverings but there's not even an option to to go in person five days a week for for the kids in the high school who are all eligible for the vaccine i'm assuming unless there are some advanced learners there that are under the uh they're under age 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
but here we are i mean we can't we haven't even had a board meeting we haven't even had a board meeting in person in months so i don't i guess there's still a technology issue at the high school at the administrative building wherever the case may be and it's over a year now this lockdown and this is a condition that a lot of people have failed in so this is what i'm asking i come every every time the board meeting is on i'm asking everybody give parents an option and it still doesn't exist it still doesn't exist so here we are and so i'm hoping things change fast and one thing i don't hear i don't hear anybody pushing back from the guidance from the state not one person i've heard on this panel ever push back at this point it kind of seems anti-science as far as i'm aware of all of us on this panel are vaccinated fully vaccinated yet we still don't have an option for all the other students that are fully vaccinated their parents don't have an option to send their kids into school even though there's excessive vaccine take you less than five minutes you could sign up and you can register to schedule for a vaccine right on your phone on your computer right probably on your google uh whatever your google ipad or whatever you can do so that's what i want to you know i just want to let everybody know that and this is where we're at so i hope we have continued guidance updates or i hope that somebody or some people on this board could push back and be more pro-science about it what is the whole point of getting vaccinated if we can't get back to normal thank you for allowing me to speak tonight and god bless america have a good night everybody thank you mr brunciack next we have a phone caller phone number ending in 0043 hello uh phone caller uh phone number ending in you have the floor next okay we'll come back um mr smith you froze if you hear us uh miss stephanie langer is up next mr mountain i was going to ask you who's next miss ahead thank you so much and thank you for welcoming me back i came here with a question that i was going to ask very directly and i'm trying to find the most gentle way to do it but why aren't these board meetings in person yet it was something that i was discussed for back in march and i thought we were getting the ball rolling on that and i'm just really curious what happened with that and i think that's still an important topic but i have something else that i think is very relevant to a lot of what i've heard tonight that i'd like to acknowledge and share i've been listening to a lot of podcasts by brene brown and if you've never heard of her before i hope you will take five minutes to go and read a little bit about her one of her recent podcasts was about the difference between armored leadership and daring leadership and she believes that leading with vulnerability is one of the most courageous things you can do and max reuben when you spoke tonight you did exactly that in sharing your story and i noticed that it really resonated with and i saw a lot of leadership come out in our board in their responses to him so i'm wondering if there is a way that we can set up some kind of community forum or restructure board meetings in a way that will continue to grow those kinds of authentic vulnerable and courageous conversations one of the other podcasts i heard her speak about recently was doing a meeting makeover with an expert in gathering people with intention by the name of priya parker and as you were talking tonight i heard you talk about when you do return to in-person board meetings trying to keep a forum like this to allow more community engagement i wonder if it isn't worth taking some time and listening to those podcasts to see if when you do come back in person if it can turn into this beautiful opportunity to restructure and continue to foster the engagement with truly daring leadership along the way thank you so much for your time and have a good night thank you segment thank you mr doctor all right there you go no i didn't know it was gone uh next we have um miss uh popowicz donna hi um i come to you tonight as a member of the board of trustees of saint peter's haven um saint peters haven has been supporting our community for 35 years through nutrition shelter and empowerment everyone experiences tough tops our mission is to provide supplemental nutrition through our food pantry short-term housing through our transitional family shelters and resources and support to help our community members maintain a sense of dignity during difficult situations we sponsor health clinics job postings and provide veteran services some of our initiatives we have a school supply backpack drive coming up over the summer we provide holiday gifts warm coats and hats to those in need and turkey dinners and fixings at thanksgiving on september 17th of this year we will be celebrating our 35th anniversary of the haven with a galler and an open air tent at the brownstone it has a full menu from appetizers to dessert and music is being provided by our local group swing man and the misfit nuts and i'm hoping that we can maybe see everyone there if you have a night it would be it seems like it's going to be a beautiful evening for reservations you can go to our website saintpetershaven.org check out our facebook page or if you need to you can call 973 so thank you everyone for all your support in the past and we're looking forward to seeing everyone with us on september 17th at our 35th anniversary gala thank you miss papawich next we have uh chloe popowicz hello my name is clay poplish after years of speaking before this phone this is the last time i will speak as a student in less than two weeks the class of 2021 would be graduating i just wanted to express thanks to the clifton school system without the education various extracurricular activities and numerous teachers i wouldn't be where i am today through my time in clifton district studying in kindergarten with mr libra and continuing through my senior year i have found many teachers who are exceptional in these past 14 years i was able to excel in academics and leadership and was able to initiate change under the tutelage of staff who encouraged me to the bet to be the best i can i want to thank dr robotozi for the scholarship in helping me to fund my future endeavors at tcnj as an economics major and a social justice minor and i want to thank the staff who helped me become the person you see here today thank you chloe thank you as well uh we thank you for uh all that you have done for the clifton school system being part of committees that you were asked to be on um you're a very remarkable person all the scholarships that you received the other night was just uh absolutely amazing you worked very hard you're going to do some wonderful things in life and we wish you all the very best in in your endeavors thank you all right next we have uh mr uh ray robertello is he here he just left so the next up is the phone caller okay phone caller ending in 4971 you're next phone caller 4971 you're next hello hello yes you're next hi i'm sorry about that um can you all hear me yes we can okay ray robertello on woodlawn avenue in clifton new jersey i'm here tonight to let everyone know that clifton will be raising a pride flag if it were not for the pandemic this would have been our sixth annual um it will be the fifth or the sixth depending on how you want to look at that the event will be saturday june 19th at 11 am right in front of city hall and the pride flag symbolizes so many things much more than i can cover in my five-minute allotment here but it's really about expressing confidence self-respect solidarity and it's a celebration of progress towards equality for lgbtq people um over the last five to six decades and when you stop and think about that it's really not a long time it's happened within my lifetime um here we have always had a list of wonderful speakers i am really pleased to share that dr robertosi has agreed to be a speaker at this year's event that is also important for lots of reasons um primarily in my opinion it sends a message to the district it sends it sends a big message to the community excuse me and and most importantly i think it sends a message to our students or youth who might be struggling with who they are um it sends uh the same message to students who or young folks who may be living in households that are not accepting of them and that can be an incredibly difficult thing um and the comments that i'm about to offer were always part of my notes but given max's comments this evening they are even more relevant so in the spirit of pride month for the young folks that are listening tonight i offer you this number one never let anyone define who you are number two always be true to yourself those two messages are especially important to lgbtq youth as they come of age but frankly it's really good advice to give to any young person coming of age and and max wait i don't know if you're going to hear this or if you're listening but what you did tonight was so incredibly brave um it it it shows leadership beyond your years i hope you realize that and when when we don't let others define us and when we are true to ourselves we reach our full potential as human beings and max i think that you are on your way to doing that with what you did this evening so please i invite you all to join us june 19th 11 a.m in front of city hall come out and celebrate diversity come out and celebrate the gay straight alliance who will be there come out and support dr robertosi i thank you all for your time bye-bye thank you very much mr robitello next we have a phone number ending in 3944 phone number ending in three nine four four you're up next hello can you hear me can you hear me yes we can hear you hi um my name is al dubois clifton um 62 elm wheel drive can you hear me yes we can hear you go ahead all right so um yeah a couple of other speakers have already stated a few things about the um procedures that you're going to go ahead with with that new game plan for next year on face masks and lockdowns and other draconian methods of keeping us in this world that i don't know how you can continually do that clifton seems to be one of the strictest maybe in the entire nation on keeping individuals under draconian type lockdowns um our library you can't even get in i wasn't able to get in most of the year had to go to other libraries in the area and they're beautiful i mean they let you in they let you do things they're a little strict they were a little overboard hopefully they're all lightening up now but the school system is unbelievable that you're still worrying about face masks and other issues when there's 99.9 percent uh young people don't get sick so why you're worried about this stuff is beyond me and i don't hear anybody or anybody from the board of ed they seem to sit there and just stare into space um speaking out on other methods i mean i'm very surprised years ago we had people on on the board of ed and on council that would actually speak and you have a variety of opinions and ideas that would develop there are so many other ways of handling this and other school districts are fighting it all throughout the state of new jersey throughout south jersey north jersey and here in clifton we're just following along our kids suffered the other day which was monday in the classrooms with hot my son had a headache he was the only one in the classroom well everybody sit home working from home playing from home getting their full salary from home with their benefits and their lifetime security we have kids in school who are struggling and some teachers and yet they couldn't take the mask off they were told no and now you wrote up new directors that are uh yeah you could take it off and only based on if we we agree like the um regime the ones that are in charge agree to let it off each individual child should that should be up to them whether they want to wear a mask or not wear a mask um you know there's some i mean there are laws here that we're violating and everybody seems to just be looking the other way for some reason although some parts of the state are starting to finally open up but it's getting tough i mean we have major problems in this country and do we worry about washing your hands and face masks and fill out a form in the morning and let me take your temperature that's really violation of rights and it's going to hurt us more if this continues and what i heard earlier about those that thing you have on the website which i'm going to go try to see um and review really seems very draconian so i hope some board members can start to wake up and get out of their comfort zone and start to speak out i know there's some good ones but maybe they're all shot too from this planned scam democrat and they just don't realize that you gotta look outside this box and realize take the mask off breathe the air there's nothing there you're not gonna get sick it's over um you know the invasion of the body snatches is here it has some people but just wake up it's time to wake up now thank you take care bye-bye okay uh last uh i see we have a phone caller ending in zero zero four three still here phone call okay that one's gone um uh next we have someone ahmad the name ahmad no is that a no that's not a caller right is that a caller mr smith that may be uh mr honda uh who wants to speak later right that's right he hated more more like being the kathleen things but the only other caller i'm seeing is miss obama oh yeah well i yeah i had her next but i just want to make sure there was nobody else left before okay so next and last uh but not least uh miss gloria llama good evening to all i hope everybody is doing well tonight i can't believe we made it it's the end of the school year and i for one i am very happy this has definitely been a very difficult year but first i want to reach out and thank our students they have worked very hard they've overcome so many obstacles they have learned so many new skills that will carry them on both inside and outside of school second i want to thank the community the families for your participation in the pride and fast events that we held it was it was so great to see so many kids and families participate over the school year and it was a virtual participation they made pizzas they decorated pumpkins they had trivia and they did they had such a great time and i'm really very thankful that we are taking part in the pride and the and the fast events and also the latino institute was a great success so this year coming up if everything works out we'll have it in person like we were going to the previous year third i want to thank the staff for overcoming so many personal and professional obstacles during this very difficult year you all have stepped up and have gone above and beyond what we do during a normal year you the effort that you have made and the outstanding work you have accomplished for your students has not gone unnoticed fourth i want to thank the outstanding communication that has been developed with the administration principles vice principal supervisors during this year the collaboration has opened many lines of communication which has improved our interpersonal relationships lastly i want to thank central administration dr robertosi and the board of ed for the collaborative work between us we have worked hard to make positive changes in the district through this difficult year we have found many ways to protect the health and safety of our kids our community and our staff remember a kid's learning environment is a staff's working environment i want to wish everybody a relaxing summer because i know you all deserve it thank you again and have a great evening thank you mr lama and it was uh great to see you today uh okay mr um mountain that's anyone else that's it motion seeing no one uh motion close session second by vice president abu drabo okay let's [Music] and my computer went down there okay next we have uh un unfinished business seeing none there all right next we'll move on to part b uh education administration we have ea one expression of uh condolences uh mr uh vice president abu drabba would you uh be kind enough to read that one please yes we'll have a motion on that my pleasure thank you whereas on june 26 2018 the community noted with sorrow the passing of dr robert valente and whereas dr valente has served the clifton board of education the children of clifton faithfully in consciousness for over 30 years as principal school 15 school 16 and christopher columbus middle school now therefore be a result that this resolution be forwarded to his bereaved family to serve as an expression of the great regard in which dr valente was held by the board of ed the administration employees and pupils of the clifton public schools and being further resolved that the contest contents of this resolution be noted in their entirety in the official minutes of the clifton board of education for future generations to peruse dated june 10 2021 okay do i have a motion to approve that please motion second play mr abhijava second by mr awad discussion seeing non-vocal mr wad yes this past yes mrs beltran yes mr canova mr daley yes miss danny yes mr casper yes mr abedraba absolutely mr smith yes right next we have ea2 recipients of the 2021 governor's educator of the year award ea 3 recognition of the 2021 educator of the year ea for 25 years of service and retirements ea 5 recipients of the 2020-21 clifton excellence in education award ea six second reading of policy ea 7 job descriptions ea aid attendance report ea 9 adoption of curriculum and textbook revisions ea 10 academic affiliation agreement between hackensack meridian school of medicine and the clifton school district ea 11 non-public nursing services agreement ea 12 submission of the 20 21 22 district mentoring plan ea 13 law enforcement agreement a14 clifton high school football team to central new york ea15 out of district placements do i have a motion for the group motion danny second i couldn't see who's seconded second second by vice president abu drabo discussion seeing none roll call erwan yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canola yes mr yes mr casper yes mr abba drabo yeah mr smith yes motion scary okay uh next we have uh part c personnel we have p1 resignations p2 retirements p3 leave of absence p4 maternity leave of absence p5 amendment leave of absence p6 amendment of maternity leave of absence uh p7 amendment of appointments p8 2021-22 home instruction p9 appointment of mender mentors p10 appointments for the 2021 federally and locally funded summer projects ea 11 appointments for 2021 summer projects ea 12 appointments for summer technology staff development programs ea 13 additional appointments 2021 pbsis team members p-14 additional staff support p-15 additional appointments for minds in motion 21st century grand summer program ea 16 additional staffing for special education extended school year program and coveted learning support pa 17 additional appointments for middle school summer academic program pa 18 additional appointments of nurses for summer school programs p19 additional appointments for anto gillingham workshop p20 additional 2021 student academic accelerated summer support p21 additional appointments to the integrated summer enrichment experience program p22 additional appointments 2021 pbsis team members p23 additional staffing for summer programs p24 additional appointments for special education summer testing and meetings p25 additional appointments of secretaries for summer school programs p 26 change in employment status p27 coaching appointments p28 expedite credentials p29 reappointment supervisor televised televised board of education meetings and district cable channel manager p30 reappointment of safety patrol p-31 reappointment affirmative action p 32 reappointment of anti-billion bullying coordinator p 33 reappointment 504 coordinator b34 reappointment of equipment manager p35 reappointment of football photographer p 36 reappointment of supervisory administrative personnel p-37 reappointments of translators p-38 approval of assistant superintendent of schools employment contract e39 approval of assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction employment contract p 40 approval of business administrator board secretary employment contract p 41 amendment of the 2021 salaries for non-affiliate personnel p 42 20 21 22 salaries for non-affiliate personnel p-43 district workshops p-44 conquer math workshops p 45 field observation placements p-46 student teacher practicum field observation placements p-47 conference request p-48 reappointment of substitutes p-49 substitutes appointments and p50 personnel appointments okay um i have a request for uh p excuse me yeah p 39 through p no p 38 39 and 40 for executive session so we would be approving uh the rest of them uh in the group so i moved so moved by mr casper second second by miss basford discussion mr smith you were lagging can you repeat it all over again yeah okay [Laughter] roll call mr spencer is mr daley are you i got a question or an observation on our orton gillingham uh is that program also be able to buy our essa funds or not gillingham program are we can we use sr funds to fund that the reason why i'm asking of course i know it takes a commitment by staff to go through the program because it's not a an overnight course and uh i was thinking if we could use those funds to possibly if the if there was enough candidates to spend that um it doesn't sound over related to me but we could look into it okay yeah that's for the superintendent too but thank you okay continue with the vote okay mr awad i believe he said yes mr ashford yes miss beltran yeah mr canova yes mr daley miss danny yes mr casper yes mr abedrabo yes mr smith yes okay next we have uh finance and facilities oh boy there are yeah there's 57 resolutions mr smith you could say f1 through f56 yeah i i i is it okay if i don't read those tools no no go ahead please though actually mr smith before we do that normally when we have personnel such as principals we let them speak i know we have our two new principles now can we give them the stage [Music] mr smith uh tonight the board um upon my recommendation uh appointed two new principals and one new supervisor um mr ahmad hamda at woodrow wilson middle school new principal mr andy jager um as the principal of school number nine and ms aaron jager is a supervisor of math so we'd ask i know they want to come on and thank uh sure uh we'll start with uh miss uh miss aaron yeager because uh ladies go first erin you gotta unmute yourself good evening everyone thank you mr smith i would just like to take this time to thank all of you for this great opportunity to assume the role as the supervisor of mathematics and business at clifton high school as a product of the clifton public schools and a graduate of clifton high school i'm honored and excited to have such an impact on our students my experiences working here in clifton over the past 12 years in a variety of roles have provided me with a unique perspective on how to best support our students and staff i look forward to working with our teachers at the high school in providing our students with the best educational experiences possible as they prepare for their world and adventures ahead a special thank you goes out to the miss amuda she's the k to eighth mathematics supervisor and the administration teachers and staff at christopher columbus and woodrow wilson middle school for supporting me throughout the years and to the entire board of education at clifton community thank you thank you very much and congratulations okay next our new principal of our uh uh wonderful middle school uh woodrow wilson middle school mr honda good evening everyone i just want to take a moment to thank dr robertosi ms kuzalevich mr teigen and the entire board of education for appointing me as the new principal of woodrow wilson middle school it's truly an honor i'm extremely humbled to have been provided this opportunity and i'm grateful for my time at clifton high school the staff and students at chs are second to none and i'm so proud of all the positive work that we've done there as a team i'm looking forward to working collaboratively with everyone at woodrow wilson middle school to bring the best educational experience possible for all of our students i'm excited to meet the famously notable staff parents and most importantly students of the woodrow wilson middle school community i'm ready for the challenges that lie ahead my goal is to always keep our students and staff's best interests at the forefront of all decisions i thank you again for this opportunity and i'm looking forward to the road ahead thank you mr honda congratulations and now our new principle of school number nine um uh uh honor to introduce uh mr andrew jayer good evening and thank you president smith vice president abu drabo commissioners of the board of education dr robert tosie mr tisian and mr levich four years ago i had a wonderful opportunity to accept the position of vice principal of clifton high school i stood before many of you and the public and told you my story of a journey of a thousand steps leading to the next chapter of my professional life i'm here not now to only thank you for this exciting appointment of principal school online but to provide you with an update of my journey although my original appointment was for the high school vice principal i found myself a few short months later transitioning to the role of a vice principal at christopher columbus middle school although my time as the vp was short i could honestly say that every chance i had i found it a great day to be a mustang and provided a pulse that our students staff and colleagues could feed off of after receiving notification now to be transferred to cc i was devastated to leave a building that i called home for 18 years of my life 14 as an employee and four as a student yet excited for the next challenge upon my arrival christopher columbus a wise man said to me welcome to the best kept secret of clifton school district feeling very nervous i thought that my colleague was just trying to make me feel better i'm here before you to tell you that it should be no secret of what a magical place christopher columbus is from the mystique and aura of the building itself but most importantly the staff students and families that provide the true heartbeat of our school i'm truly a better administrator and person for having worked with the most talented students teachers and administration i'd be completely remiss if i did not andy you cut out there andy i don't know if you could hear hear me but you cut out about 15 seconds ago yeah i told you i thought it was mean and i guess it's him maybe that was a sign students and families of clifton i feel that i am the epitome of the clifton dream i have been a school dolphin a champion christopher columbus and a mustang at clifton high school school nine it's time to let the dogs out thank you thanks andy and congratulations unfortunately we didn't get to hear all of what you said you cut out a little bit but uh we got the gist of it then uh we thank you for your commitment and congratulations to all of you on your your new endeavors it's uh truly a great day to be a mustang so congratulations thank you all okay now let's move on to d um finance and facilities um i'm not going to read the 50 some odd of them so uh we'll just say uh f1 through f57 motion motion by miss basford second what is that mr awad uh discussion nope seeing none in roll call i'm sorry yes mr abaddra yes mr smith yes okay uh let's go to oh okay uh it's now a time for a board member comments uh miss bassford you're first today okay so um thank you to all the speakers that came out um i just wanna uh just really quickly i was at the parade too i was wearing a mask um i'm personally not comfortable yet for my own health and safety i have a couple things going on so when the doctor tells me to wear the mask i wear the mask when he tells me to stop i will stop so that's just me it's personal it's personal to some people um we work for the superintendent uh we we work with the superintendent when the superintendent runs the buildings we do not micromanage that that's not our purge you as board members so i just want to say that so um coming up is graduation on the 22nd we have a really great day uh coming up um so i found this wonderful thing from um jean mature from the heart and this is to the classes 2021 as the class of 2021 ventures out to find their way in the world it seems appropriate and timely to share with them some advice so we have all learned lessons in the past year and uh and a half and i hope we're all open to new wisdoms so please indulge me as i share this from this woman that wrote it it's no particular order be kind each day we may um may have hundreds of opportunities to be kind or not please choose choose kindness every time it's okay to say no sometimes it's necessary to say no when it comes to friends quality is much better than quantity keep your good friends close always always your good friends close say yes to life and the opportunity it brings today the world is your oyster it is open to you as you go through life your options will naturally narrow so say yes now while you can and enjoy it along the way uh learn what your colors are um what colors suit you the best and which do not trust me on this something as simple as a color can make you shine inside and out never stop learning just because you graduated high school does not mean your education is finished education should be lifelong pursuit learn more about things that interest you read for the pleasure of reading it will fill your mind and fill your soul believe in something it is said that if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything practice gratitude there is so much more to be thankful for than to complain about recognizing that one is the key to happiness be prepared it is not just a boy scout motto show up both physically and mentally it can be said 90 of your life is just showing up you will use math in real life really don't forget where you came from and for the children of clifton don't forget clifton if you become successful please on the contrary to popular belief you can always go home show respect respect may be earned but starts from the premise that everyone deserves respect then let them prove otherwise respect property respect yourself respect others respect the lord it is the fabric that keeps us civilized respect yourself and others will follow suit don't say that don't save the special things for a special occasion i learned this the hard way life is a special occasion we have a nice clothes use that nice pocketbook take it out of the box unwrap it use it while you have it now drink the good wine of legal age of course speak the kindness or hold or hold your tongue once spoken you can never take back your words apologize often and forgive always forgiveness does not mean approving another's bad behavior but it releases you from it do it now put it off surround yourself with meaningful things to you that make you happy people colors books quilt souvenirs be generous to yourself and others do it quietly but be generous to um give to a course whenever you can it could be your church a charity or a friend and this is really important as early as you can sign up for matching 401k plans and contribute to the maximum you can you won't miss the money now and you will really pay off later trust me on this one really trust me on this one always be kind especially to yourself we can often uh be our own worst enemy be negative self-talk and us before we can even get going don't be your own worst critic be your own best cheerleader and lastly and certainly not least go forth and prosper be your best self just be your very best congratulations to the class of 2021.
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i'll see you on graduation good night thank you miss basford miss beltran okay um mine's gonna be way less profound and shorter um so i want to say thank you to all the speakers that have come out tonight um i can i continue to uh really enjoy all the different um opinions that we keep getting calling in and i hope we can figure out a way so that people can continue to call in rather than having to sit with us in whatever room we wind up in for hours and hours um i'd say congrats to the graduating seniors i'll see you guys at graduation as well as prom and hopefully project graduation as well and i hope everyone has a safe and fun summer and i'm really looking forward to seeing everyone back in person in september i think it's going to be not only a benefit for the students but the parents the teachers ourselves we all need human interaction and i'm looking forward to everyone getting back to that and that's all i have thank you thank you miss beltran mr kanova all right good evening everyone so first of all congrats to all the teachers and educators and honorees tonight it's great to see our teachers and staff in our meetings and even better to hear all the great things said about them uh strong staff and teachers to make clifton an excellent place for our kids so congratulations keep on keep up the good work mr casper congrats on your role the county i know you'll have clifton's best interest at heart um chloe so i remember when we were sitting in the audience waiting to speak at public comment and i know you've been a student voice for years bringing the issues to the board and advocating for what's right and at the honoree event the other night i heard all the scholarships and honors that you received which is really truly amazing and you know you're just an example of what a student can be if they put their all behind what they do so i just want to give you congratulations to stu student best um also congratulations to our new appointments i know you're going to continue to help to keep our students on track and get them to graduation so i was glad to hear we'll be back next year in person you know the students do this deserve a normal schooling experience and i understand the frustrations on the opening plan but it was made based on the laws that exist today so my opinion is as we get closer to opening you can almost guarantee it changes many times um so i would just say hold tight uh i do i do share some of the the same sentiment you have uh with some of these things but just in the last week it changed twice so we're very far away from september i think a lot of this is going to change as new guidance comes out and new uh developments to read but most of all tonight i want to give congratulations to our superintendent on his new contract which is well deserved i think personally we're lucky to have such a great person at the helm to steer us in the right direction um just a couple of compliment accomplishments i know that that he had where was the improved communications of the district are one-to-one initiative with laptops which really turned out to be something that was truly needed in the dire situation here getting through kovid and a referendum to improve our schools right so these are just a couple of things and they're not easy projects to work with but you know working on them with you it really felt like they were and i know you're going to continue to serve our students well and move us in a positive direction and i really can't wait to see we have for the next five years so that's all for my comments thank you thank you mr kenova mr daley thank you mr president um and i'll be brief as well um first of all i'd like to again uh repeat our congratulations to alexander ski and uh and to mr jager miss uh ahmad and and mr um and mr jaeger for their friends uh also max um again we spoke to you about our appreciation and admiration for what you've done on behalf of the students and behalf of the district and lastly again the congratulations to our superintendent on its contract renewal and i'll see you at the prom and at graduation have a great evening thank you mr daily uh miss danny yes thank you um first uh i'd like to say congratulations to the teachers and service paraprofessionals of the year recipients um congratulations to the 2021 clifton education association educator of the year thank you to thank you for all um that you do and for the clifton school district and obviously being recognized for that um congratulations also to the 20 20 21 clifton excellence in education awards recipients i'd like to also say congratulations to the new administrative appointees um congratulations dr robert tosi you know doing a great job i have been in education for a very long time coming up to 20 years and have seen many superintendents and i have to say that um you are exemplary and you really um show what a good leader should be doing for school you care about clifton as if you lived in clifton and that's very important um i'd like to say congratulations to the class of 2021 um see you at graduation um thank you to all the speakers who spoke it's important to again um have your voice heard uh to chloe thank you you've always spoke um and brought up issues and made light of issues that sometimes uh were difficult issues so uh thank you very much just a little thank you there to you um and i want to say to the clifton school district employees whoever you are um from janitorial services to the administrators to teachers to just whoever um thank you for this year because as an educator i know that this year was very challenging it was very difficult and um you know just thank you um to the students thank you for you know holding it you know hanging in there and you know we're at the home stretch we're almost there um and finally just um in closing want to say um because i i know we won't seize you know happy father's day um i have to give a shout out to you know my dad he's my biggest supporter um he's you know brags about me constantly so dad you know happy father's day to you and um also you know to the love of my life john cole i want to say you're a great wonderful dad to your children and you know have a happy also fourth of july because won't see you till then and you know just as summer comes along to the graduating class enjoy summer be safe and any of the fathers here also i know there's a few of you so happy father's day to you too as well um but my dad stanley qualique rules okay thank you very much stone mahima i knew you would say something i lo i love your dad you kidding me thank you uh miss danny uh mr casper thank you mr president i'm going to take this time quickly to congratulate everybody we've gone we've gotten through a year where it was very crazy but we all made it and it goes to show that it goes to show how hard our staff has worked with all of our award recipients this evening ms wisnowski congratulations it was great working with you when i was at school number five and coming in to read to your class on read across america i see how hard you work so it's a well-deserved an award for you i'd like to also congratulate all of our students from our students of the month for this month to our award recipients at the high school awards night last week to our national junior honor society recipients on tuesday i'd like to congratulate you on all of your hard work and keep on going forward and i look forward to seeing all of our graduates on the 22nd so that means we only have eight school days left so hang in there everybody and uh happy father's day to all of the fathers out there i hope you all have a great evening thank you thank you um mr casper and next we have uh mr awad thank you president smith i'll keep my comments shortly i i would love to congratulate to the administrative appointees um if i'm not mistaken uh mr hamda you might be the first palestinian american in state history to be a principal of a school but most likely maybe the first palestinian principal in clifton that's an accomplishment congratulations to you and your family to all the teachers with their awards tonight highly appreciative and thank you very much for all that you do for our students and to the graduating class very excited to see you guys at graduation and i know that problems are on the corner lots of fun stay safe enjoy uh make memories and to superintendent uh robert tosie congratulations on your contract uh something for you and your family well deserved all the hard work you have been absolutely phenomenal from the moment i met you and i was elected you have been nothing but resourceful helpful so kind and just a big brother um and to my board members uh sometimes we may disagree and we do have bumps on the road here and there but and at the end of the day i do know that you know this board has a lot of genuine kind loving people and uh we're just one big family families have disagreements we might not agree with everything that we do or say but i must say that we do have an amazing board with such kind-hearted people and it's an honor always to serve with everyone here and looking forward to the future thank you thank you mr awad uh vice president abhijava president smith thank you very much um first i want to give my prayers with our maple and friends uh if anybody heard as they had a shooting incident um over at their at their sports field so i know they had one death and one critical injury so i'm sure our clifton prayers and mustang prayers are with them um to all our teachers who were not just honored tonight uh but all our teachers throughout the district it's been a very very hard year from kindergarten to 12th and going from in school to remote to back in school was difficult and i think from this side of the table we understand that um so i for one want to thank you um while other teachers were honored tonight i congratulate you but i also want to thank all our teachers across the board um in the district and congratulations to mrs wisniewski you will represent clifton well and you'll represent what clifton is all about and what our teachers are all about so what your success is all our success um so go get em to our two new principals and supervisor uh congratulations i'm excited about our two new principles they are um two individuals who um a are young so hopefully they'll be around for a long time that they won't be another healey by leaving us and you two have big shoes to fill in healy shoes and orlando's yeah i'm still i'm still sour about healy keep laughing danny you know two great men two great individuals hopefully we get more within the district to come up to not even be as good as them but even better because they do set the standards and they're great they're great individuals and we don't get individuals or we don't have individuals like that in the district without a great leader someone who you know i will always give my recommendation to and at the end of the day if he says no then it's his it's his ship he runs it his ship he runs it um but we can always have a respectful conversation a respectful um disagreements as well but that's what that's what respect for each other is and danny i truly appreciate you um you're a great individual great father great leader and you know you have a great administration from both marks to genena to your office to everybody in school sex and administration builder uh they're all phenomenal great leadership from your end and i'm looking forward to the next five years if i'm here we'll see what happens uh it's up to the residents max max max i wasn't done with you because you did something that i admire at the end and what that is max you showed true leadership the one thing i hate is when leaders or quote-unquote leaders um tend to take the goodness that people give them and when they don't recognize the people they worked alongside with the one thing you did is you stopped and came back and said it's not just about me i noticed chloe was on here and i want to give chloe as well the recognition that always catches my eye because that's what true leadership is it's the web of leadership that you lead within not from the front not from the back and max you definitely preach what you say unlike others who preach who don't preach what they say about true leadership unfortunately a lot of them are older but you know but max you are an individual that's coming up you're an individual that has a lot of lot of potential and the ceiling is only as high as you think it is so continue and chloe chloe since i've been on the board you've been phenomenal you stood up for gender rights for for equality for all for voter registration i mean you say it you think it you did it and i applaud you chloe um you're also an inspiration to all um [Music] you've also showed that what one person can do anybody else can do if not the same but better so i applaud you as well um we have a great district guys to our to our city we have a phenomenal district i respect all our board members if i agree or disagree with you um everybody brings something to the table we show it as one collaborative we have great teachers we have great students um and it showed the other night of the multiple awards that people were receiving um as they closed the stage or as they crossed the stage some people even crossed the stage and the speaker wasn't even done mentioning their awards yet and that shows what the capabilities of our students have and are are in this district um and for somebody who grew up in this district i you put me to shame first of all because i've i could have done better um but i'm proud that what we have today so i want to thank you all have a great night and you have one week left continue to work hard thanks thank you mr uh avajavo um congrats to all the award recipients tonight um just shows you the uh the dedication and the devotion that our staff our teachers um have to our students and uh it truly is appreciated and uh uh so great to see so many uh receiving their awards tonight thank you to all the retirees uh so many people in the district uh going around meeting people uh today at school eleven we met a custodian that's been a custodian for what did they say 32 years we have people in our district who are very dedicated very loyal to clifton and work many many long hard years and at some point they they feel it's time to leave and uh while we don't like to see any anyone go uh we know that uh better days and things are ahead of them and we wish them all the best and um i i don't like single singling anyone out because everyone all of our retirees are so so important but there's just a few people that that i know uh that are i've known for a long time um first is mr tony orlando uh who's retiring from school nine uh mr orlando's been uh he was a student here in clifton and then came back and was a teacher and administrator and he's come back numerous times to help us in clifton and we truly appreciate all that he's done over the years for our school system trainer tom um tom catala in uh uh it is one of our trainers um i believe it was 30 some odd years ago that he was hired um and uh anyone in the sports program everyone knows trainer tom and uh he's done a fantastic job for all of our athletes and uh has been a not only helped them physically but has truly been a good mentor to them and a good person and i i wish him well and um a good friend friend to uh mr casper uh mrs bender uh retiring from school five uh i believe miss bender is here for over 30 years um done a tremendous job and we wish her well in her retirement uh that she can get some rest and enjoy her days ahead um and uh so i and miss ziegler carmella ziegler who i grew up with um from uh now i'm going to be stuck i can't remember what school she's at 15.
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