I [music] want to find my way to you. You my love. [music] There's so many people who say that they won when they will. [music] I could use some motivation, but [music] I know how I feel. Faster than you like. [music][singing] Nasty [music] faster than you like. [music][singing] I want [music] to find my way to you. I want to find [music] my way to you. I don't need a reason [music] to say what I want when it's real. If I see [music] you acting patient, you never know your [music] me faster than you like. [music] So faster than [music] no, [music] no, [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [ music] [music] [music] [music] [bell] [music] Sve, live. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music ] [music] Hallelujah.
He is very jovial. He is incredibly helpful. He is always willing to give a tour and he is very diligent about his academic work. You will see on his transcript that early on he had some struggles but took full advantage of the support that is available at Newk. He asks for help. He offers help. He has played football at Anderson High School. We are happy um that he is going to remain a senior at New Tech next year. He is really part of a core group that really has established what new tech is about in terms of the collaboration, the communication, the critical thinking. He is a great mentor to our younger students. And um one of the things that Mr. Lewis shared is that Ryan is consistent and works hard to make sure that he is engaged with assignments, projects, and works in his class.
If everyone could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Ready, begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for Thank you. At this time, I'm going to ask um uh superintendent to please uh Greg Blake to please present the reports and awards. So, we do have uh some fabulous people getting recognized here tonight. Andrew Maul, are you There you are. Third row back, Andrew Maul. Uh good afternoon, everyone. And on behalf of the Altadena family, I would like to express our sincere gratitude Good afternoon, everyone. And on behalf of the Altadena family, I would like to express our sincere gratitude uh for the continued support of our resilient students and amazing staff. Um I'm privileged to recognize an educator who has made significant contributions to the Altadena campus, specifically Ferndale High School, in just a 5-year period.
>> all the duties of the office according to the best of my ability. >> So help me God. >> So help me. >> All right. WELCOME TO THE BOARD. I KNOW. WE PUT YOU TO WORK RIGHT AWAY. >> I was like, "Oh, he's gonna just swing it." >> I would never remember all that. So, kudos to you. >> All right. >> So, now we're going to do roll. Um, uh, Mr. Davis >> here, >> Miss Helmo here, >> Miss Allen >> here, >> Mr. Phillips >> here, >> Mr. Golden >> here, >> Miss Juliano >> here, >> Miss Row >> here, >> Miss Orientto >> here, >> Mr. Bman, I messed it up, Mr. Big, that's what we're rolling with. That's it, Mr. B. >> Um, all right. Approval of minutes. Can I please have a motion and a second to approve the minutes from the April 23rd and May 7th, 2026 meetings?
Uh there are two items on that agenda. I believe we are going to start with the um governor's teachings of the year. >> Okay, Dr. Hey, good evening everybody. Um, it's a proud moment as a superintendent. I've got the opportunity to stand before everybody to celebrate your teacher of the year and your traditional uh service person of the year. And tonight, I'm excited to do that. There is no more important work happening here in this district than what takes place in our classrooms every single day. And tonight, we have the privilege of recognizing the very best among us. Teaching isn't a job. It's a call back. It asks you to show up. It asks uh show up fully every day for children who are still trying to figure out who they are, trying to figure out where they're going to go with their lives and what they're going to do.
Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Madam Secretary, a roll call, please. >> Here. >> Oh, Jesus. >> Miss Sahai? Mr. In Cacace? Mr. Januzzi? >> Here. >> Mr. Minas? Miss Musson? Mr. Balmer? Mr. Zupko? >> Here. >> We have a quorum tonight. >> Thank you very much. Uh skipping President's comments for tonight other than to say I am as excited as everyone here is for the end of the school year. Glad we got our NJ SLA testing out of the way and congratulations to each of our building administrators and teachers who contributed to that and good luck to everybody for the last few weeks keeping it together before we get to summer [laughter] vacation. Dr. Freeman, over to you. >> All right, good evening everybody and welcome to our May board meeting. We have roughly 3 weeks left to school. You can count the days.
>> Thank you. >> It's a little less than that. >> Um and that's that's pretty much it. You know, I work on some stuff about their tax lev and stuff like that, but did anybody have any questions about about that? We talked about it because we were aware of these numbers already. >> Did they like say anything about the disparity with enrollment dropping? >> They're they're scheduled to do their there's concern about what's going to happen moving forward about um the demographics. They're due for their demographics by um next year, you were saying. Um the biggest as with everybody the biggest issue has been the increase in healthcare premiums this going into next year. I think that's been a statewide thing. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Have one question. So um my understanding from a couple years ago was that we are paying the interest on the fieldhouse or we're contributing to the interest on the fieldhouse.
Martini, Mrs. Broco, Mrs. Calibri, couple supervisors and teachers uh for welcoming the team from the state as well as Bergen County. And I think I speak for everyone when I say that they are welcome anytime. Big thank you to the fourth grade parents at school number four for attending a parent information night last week at school number six. Big thank you to Mr. Vagna for helping uh present uh the school to the families who uh are now going from fourth grade at school 4 over to fifth grade over at school 6. So I think it was a great evening where we were able to show off and display uh our brand new gym, cafeteria, classrooms, and I think the kids who were in attendance were extremely excited about the new opportunity for them over at school number six. I wanted to recognize Lori Lavine uh for being rec for um being chosen as the Bergen County School Counselor Association's kindergarten through 8th grade school counselor of the year.
The song was originally written in and has been recorded by many different artists. During During the Cuban Revolution, the song became popular and was used to share the importance of democracy. >> [applause] >> Latin music uses many different percussion instruments and may have you feeling like you want to get up and dance. This piece also uses call and response, which is when a singer or group plays a or sings a musical question and other and another singer, instrument, or group answers back with a musical response. It creates a musical conversation and helps makes the music exciting and fun. >> [applause] [music] [applause] >> As the weather gets warmer, more and more insects come out of hibernation and buzz, crawl, and fly around. Whether you love them or hate them, bugs are important to our ecosystem to help pollinate crops and plants for us to eat.
>> [music] [music] >> Good evening families, faculty, staff, board members, and honored guests. My name is Kirsty Allen and I have the privilege of serving as the principal of our school and your host for tonight's celebration. Tonight is not just a ceremony. It's a milestone. We are gathered here to honor the hard work, growth, and achievements of our young people who are ready to take their next big step, high school.
Like good boys don't play with bad girls. Good boys stay away from them bad girls. Them bad girls. Yeah, the good ones just can't get me high. So I fall for one of these bad girls. You bad girl, but she do me so good. Friends call me a dummy. She taking all my money, but I make it rain like 24/7. If it mean a little time with you, break my heart, leave me hurt, the next one just going to do me worse. So if they all no good, I'll just be bad with you. Cuz my mother told me as a child, boy, don't play around with fire cuz you might just end up getting burned. And I know the wicked never. So I always try my best, but there's some lessons hard for me to learn. Like good boys don't play with bad girls. Good boys stay away from them bad girls.
Yeah. Better move out the way cuz I'm coming [music] with hard hits. My head is as hard as a brick, but I'm harder than it is. You better move. You might get knocked out. [music] Knock out. You better move. You might get knocked out. Knock out. You better move. You might get knocked out. Knock out. You better [music] move. You might get knocked out. Knock out. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Yeah. Heat. Heat. >> [music] [music] >> Hey. [music] Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. [music] Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. >> [music] >> Hey, heat. Hey. Heat. Hallelujah. [music] Hey, hey, hey. Heat. >> [music] >> Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. >> [music] [music] >> Come on. Hey. >> [music] [music] >> Welcome to forever, man. Let's go. Let's go. [music] Go. This forever. No surrender. Yeah. You know that this right here forever and there will be no surrender.
I won't talk about myself in violence. Ever since you [music] Sh. [music] Sh. >> [music] [music] >> Yeah. [music] Yeah. [music] Have you seen >> [music] >> Heat. Heat. >> [music] [music] >> Heat. [music] Hey, Heat. I feel Hey, [music] hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. >> [music] >> Hey, hey, hey. Hey, [music] hey, hey, hey, hey, [music] hey. Hey, hey. [music] I even [music] [singing] [music] Don't be [music] perfect. FL [music] that [music] is an [music] foreign. [music] [singing] >> [music] [music] >> We [music] don't me. Don't be happy. Yeah. [music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [music] Heat. [music] Heat. [music] Heat. Heat. N. [music] Heat. [music] Heat. [music] Heat. Heat. >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. There's [music] [music] can get what you want. Superstar. [music] She's like an assassin fashion. What's about to happen? You ready? Let's [music] turn up magazine. Yeah. I just got my dreams.
Uh We didn't get to the second level where parents had to come and get them. I didn't We didn't have any of that. Kids had to find us and bring them up to the office and get I just said put it in my drawer and come back and get it. And I don't even touch [clears throat] them. I said just Stick it in there. Yeah, put it in there. I don't touch your phone. I don't want to touch it. Uh The reason Now, we had the choice to just not let them have them here at all. But I didn't do that because sporting events we leave right after school. Sometimes we have to leave before school and I I want the kids to be able to have their devices traveling. So, um so they're allowed to have them, but when they're here they have to be powered off and put away outside.
Um, and I think that that's what's been shown in the last uh few things we've asked the community to support. Um and while I believe the need for the uh for the override I I share Chief Rossi's concern on how divisive it is um for our entire community. And I I just want to make sure that people understand that what makes Ashland's great is the people, your neighbors. Um, and to remember that doesn't matter how they voted. If they voted differently than you, they're not ignorant. They're not misinformed. They're your neighbors, and and that's what we need to focus on and and make sure we're doing. Uh I also want to acknowledge that in the last few weeks there's been a lot of nega- negativity. Uh some of which was directed at our municipal leaders and municipal departments. Uh I want to apologize for the silence uh on that, but uh understand that we had to be laser-focused on what the job at hand was, and to engage in that would have been a distraction and proba- possibly compromise our ability to uh get what we need done.
>> She'll get Mia French to begin followed by Abby Johnson and Brooker. I tell you what I am excited to see too besides Neo in the circle. I'm excited to see Lexi Merlooney playing shortstop. Lexi hasn't played a ton of innings this year in the field. She has battled some injuries. Um, Lexi is is uh is no secret, she's one of my all-time favorite kids. I I've always appreciated her. I I had the the privilege of coaching Lexi a little bit in the summers when I coached some of these girls. She just is a high energy, high positivity, always energizer rabbit kind of kid. So, we'll see what she can do today getting the start at shortstop. So, it's great to see her out there. >> So, Mia French will lead it off. She's played in 14 games this year. a 261 batting average at the top of the lineup.
That's what they've done. And, uh, looks like we have a gift basket for the parents as well here. So, they're doing it right here in the softball program. They make sure these kids get sent off in style. Uh, Taylor Couch even got a message from her parents played over the speaker, which is pretty cool. Wishing her the best. Yep. While your softball career may be coming to a close, we are so excited >> Maddie That's a fantastic addition to to a senior day. It really is. What a nice What a nice gesture on behalf of the coaching staff. I know Pam Curtis put a lot of thought and effort into making sure that these girls got sent out in style. She You know, it's when you talk about high school athletics, um the importance of good people on the coaching staff is you can't say that enough, right?
But, but they do not have a lot of strikeouts as a team. And I I didn't even realize that walk-to-strikeout ratio. That's pretty impressive. But, what I was looking at the other day with this team that I thought was was was quite a stat is that when you check out their their team contact percentage, obviously, that's sort of an advanced statistic that that folks, you know, look at. But, as a team, they're up over 86% contact percentage. And that to me is pretty impressive as a group and and [music] you know when when you look at the the girls on the squad, Ava Vendetti is up over 95%. Nico's at 94%. Rebecca Kriegsman, who I always talk about just being [music] a tough out who always makes contact, is at 93%. Butermann, 93%. Ruby, 91%. These girls [music] are not striking out a lot. They're not cuz they're not swinging at bad pitches and and that's and that's why they're also uh getting walked.
We give them food, we don't give them time to eat it. I sat in on the Chartwells meeting last week for the second time. They're great. What they do for our schools is incredible. And I learned some things. Their foods fall into five categories. Our kids have to take three items for Chartwells to get reimbursed. So, the kids have to take food. Now, what they do is they offer, they don't serve, they don't put five things on the plate. They say, "What would you like?" So, the kids have to take at least three. Whether they take three or five, Chartwells gets paid the same. It would be really nice if our kids have the time to take five and eat all that food given that we know the kids who get free and reduced lunch, this may be their only sufficient meal throughout the day.
Okay. For the salaries, we have a favorable ending balance and I triple checked with our payroll department just to make sure the incumbrances have been entered into the system as of April 30th. So next week when she comes back, she's again going to rerun the encumbrances. So if we've made any changes to the system when we present May that's going to be reflected in that. Okay. Can we go down a little further? Okay. So we show 6.9 as a favorable balance in salaries for our employee benefits which also includes social security, health, dental, life, long-term disability, workers comp and unemployment. Um I will be making next week uh the May activity actual activities. So the numbers we have here reflect April activity for Sigma that we have received meaning invoices and the money um that they withdraw from us for the claims. Um, you know, if we could go to professional services under technology services, we have our one-time items that were being purchased this year only.