Reader

now back to your announcements forms to purchase patches for your letter jacket are available in athletic office any athlete wanting to purchase patches needs to turn in a completed form along with payment to mrs rignet in the athletic office by april 1st any questions see mrs rigby in the afternoons please follow greensburg safety on instagram to stay safe today in your community not a bradley with the lunch i'm bradley with the lunch there's baked spaghetti steamed broccoli bread sticks with cheese sauce now back to your announcements the cincinnati reds ticket vouchers are here students with a 3.75 gpa or higher during any quarter of the first semester 2021 2022 qualified if you're if you're not sure you're qualified check your name on the list posted by the front office mrs soldier will start delivering these vouchers to classrooms after spring break or stop by the guidance office now the vouchers will tell you how to order your two free tickets all ticket orders are subject to availability so make sure to order your tickets as soon as possible freshman t-shirt orders are now available orders will be taken until wednesday april 6th order forms are in the main office with mrs tacovi mrs peters or the health room see mrs aments or one of your class officers for more information now to bradley with the sports i'm bradley with sports tomorrow there's a baseball skirmish and rising sun is six o'clock now back to your announcements have a great day and be sure to follow us on twitter snapchat and instagram at gths pirates and be sure to listen to gtv radio on live

i believe there was eight in total and of those projects we we've always followed the rules because we've had to and those rules are the enrollment studies suggest how many seats we would be reimbursed for i shared with the commissioner that we understand those rules and understand those restrictions but we showed the slide that we've showed the board and the committee that we have outpaced the enrollment in the state of connecticut and when you compare us against all the other districts in the state of connecticut we continue to grow as other districts remain flat or have decreased in enrollment also shared with the commissioner not that she's not aware shared with the commissioner that we have a number of schools blue ribbon schools a number of schools of distinction and that an investment in us is a wise one also shared with the commissioner we we need to relax that rule about enrollment studies um and an enrollment study suggested as space 4 000.

is before we start tonight's meeting i invite you to participate and pledge allegiance as you said i pledge of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with literacy and justice and with that we start this meeting at 6 31 um do i have any modifications to the agenda no no modifications okay with that um do i have a recognition of visitors or comments from the audience of anything not already on the agenda does it look like it okay we do not have any presentation we do not have any discussion but we do have the approval of public session units from march 3rd 2022.

this is a replacement for dawn van uh do you have a motion to accept the consent agenda items as presenting beginning with the separation of nancy garman at the end of the school year and ending with the appointment of carol and michelle fox as custodian any discussion i would like to correct i believe i pronounced her name wrong it's um this is a replacement for don van weiser right yeah we will uh miss both germans that want to say something about brian brian i met brian when my oldest daughter was playing basketball before i was on the school board met brian with some questions about coaching stefan he impressed me so much with his professionalism um respectful and just being organized in the position and he's he's been like that in each position that he's had with us since i've been on the board and for 32 years it's just commendable he's done a great job yeah everyone's saying that we're not going to let him go but we have to so we wish him well and um i know they're going on to better things and with that roll call carol yes amy yes vicky and steve yes christian carries brook superintendent's report uh it was great to see all of our students and staff back at it this week hope everyone enjoyed relaxing spring break we are in the home stretch for the 21 22 school year and we'll continue to work hard and finish stronger than ever i first i want to thank brown county rotary club for taking the time to come and read to our sweet kindergartners across all three elementary buildings they have volunteered their personal time to spend a few minutes with the most precious of tiny humans um and share books with them that they and their parents are going to treasure forever um just so glad that we can have our community back into our buildings to share those moments and these experiences with our kids and our staff i want to thank board from my whole heart everything that i have for being able to support our professional development opportunities um specifically in dallas when we attended the niet national conference it was humbling and an incredible honor to be able to help celebrate our high school team as they got to go up on stage in front of 1200 educators from across the nation to accept that national founders finalist award they're one of only five schools in the entire country and only one of two high schools um and just to give you a little bit of um a factoid here about it the the other high school that did win they were from arkansas very small rural um community and in high school um much like ours and um they have been nominated as a finalist a few different times and this is their 13th year um with niet in that endeavor so um we're in year two i think two three so um it felt pretty good for us to be up there um it was great to be able to see that that team so thank you for supporting professional development opportunities for us i wanted to congratulate and thank mr bruner the coaches of all of our student athletes for their hard week dirt hard work during the winter season um last night we got to celebrate with our winter awards banquet in person in the auditorium the first time we've been able to do that in two years so it felt really good to have people in the auditorium it is always an honor to celebrate those athletes at the close of a season i personally was able to award the following students with the superintendent's award for girls basketball it was katy tipton boys basketball it was josh miller wrestling with summer rummage and cheer with summer ramek the superintendent award is for the students that have earned the highest gpa within their sport so again congratulations to all of the athletes i wanted to give you a few dates to remember across the district on march 29th at 6 pm our high school is holding a very important 9th grade orientation parent meeting this will be about the programs of study that we're offering for our students for the next year they had to reschedule the blood drive that was originally held at the high school because of we canceled school because of weather so they've rescheduled that for monday april 11th and then my goodness kindergarten roundup is right around the corner and we will have roundup at each of our elementary buildings it's scheduled for tuesday april 19th from 4 to 6 pm and we will send out some reminders about that and then finally our coven 19 data our county is at um level blue for positive cases in our district from february 17 through today march 24th a total of three positive cases that would be two staff members and one student we have had zero for the last few weeks so yes our symptomatic percentages um don't go above 2.5 in any building so we are looking pretty good with that thank you you're welcome okay we have the motion accepted claims as presented that's something second thank you any discussion on claims carol yes amy yes vicky thank you very much yes

good morning i'm kate and i'm elijah with your morning announcements for march 24th upcoming school events are march 30th is immunization clinic for at 8 o'clock for juniors april 4th is the academic ceremony at 6 30 pm and april 15th is good friday no school now to bradley with the weather i'm bradley with weather today is a low 40 with a high of 52 tomorrow's a low of 37 with a high 48. saturday's low of 30 with a high of 39.

here ladies cooper here lauren daley here joe dasilva here bridget guertin here catherine hodgson here albert yourself here louisa uh here participation the board welcomes public participation and asks that speakers please send their comments to three minutes speakers may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the danbury public school system before the board meeting those pushing to address the board of education the board in public session are to sign up on the public participation sheet complete with their name address and phone number and topic they wish to speak up okay so um our first public uh speaker is mario bronzius so i'm here tonight to talk about the danbury high school field trip to broadway in new york city um this instinct came to my attention about three and a half weeks ago when my son was extremely excited that this was happening it's a great thumbs up wonderful you're going to like no problem on the next day he came home absolutely heartbroken um he was told that you could only go if you could show a vaccine kobe 19 vaccine card that's not possible that campaign so i said let me investigate let's find out what's going on um and in that time i reached out to the teacher i hadn't heard from the teacher so i reached out to the building principal and i followed up with that email and the building principal responded that you know buses have been reserved and that the buses have been scheduled to entice the three of the reserves so they have to move off the trip i said no that can't be so i reached out to the superintendent and at that time i expressed in great detail and outlines my concerns with this type of venue for kids where we are segregating out vaccinated versus unvaccinated students in our public system so at that time i was informed that other parents have reached out and they're looking forward to these types of opportunities i couldn't help but to wonder do they know what caveat that comes from because it was a shock to my conscience when i found out that danbury high school was going to segregate students and in the eyes of the students this work may not be appropriate in the eyes of the students as far as the family member punish children for not getting the code 19 vaccine and reward those for getting them um you know i continued to do research and i said well what what deems the trip you know appropriate so i looked into it and you know i know that teachers have to request trips and their needs are reviewed and i know that part of that request um is that the trip offers the opportunity to participate in the field trip shall be shall be available to all students in particular classroom program um you know on the permission slip it states you know seats will only be reserved once we have received a completed permission for a lot of full payment and a copy of vaccination at which time my son was asking for an entire classroom where his vaccination card was when he did his permissions took and had to say he didn't have one you know i've just gone through everything you're looking at federal laws as you know ferpa going through the you know safeguards shall be established by the school you know to protect families privacy invasion and privacy this trip is an invasion of privacy on students um the the goals outlined by our superintendent you know include developing family partnerships a framework there's no framework here this is a blatant feeling of segregation some you know this for some not for others um you know i've been through the mission statement and we say the words over and over again and i'm proud of that we say the words partnership of community inclusive culture empowers all students and that word all is used constantly i've highlighted everything where i find these words all students equitable respectful and none of it says you know and i looked at the portrait of a graduate i know that's a program that we're really moving forward with and i'm very proud of that the portrait of the graduate looks very much like the children i'm raising in my house i think that these are wonderful wonderfully outlined you're over three minutes okay so i will close with that i have copies of everything here it's nothing new to you but this is a call to action i think it's very scary that we haven't learned from past segregation and we don't want this precedent in our community it's wrong and i think we need to cancel for this new venue a baby that offers it for all kids your third year has broadway for commerce and the two offerings football without skating in our lives thank you for hearing me out thank you madeline ross hi i'm here to speak about the lack of magnificent choices the lack of programs that we have for middle school and beyond for children who have sensory issues and more on the autism spectrum so children are parents parents can um ask for the lottery you know sign your children up to the lottery from west side school which is smaller than rogers park in broadview unfortunately it's days and it is a better better place for children who have sensory issues to be taught i think we need to take a look at how these programs are wrong meaning children like i have a fifth grader now has major sensory issues i think we need to take a look at children like him who really need a smaller setting and be able to be to learn and to function throughout the day instead of saying okay we're just gonna have a lot if there's let's say 150 kids that this school is open to there can't be so many children like my son where it's going to really affect the numbers of the other children who can choose to go to that school it's sad that danbury has tools for children like him but they're not utilizing them so i really would like someone to look into us moving forward into utilizing different schools and different tools that we have to help accommodate children like my son because the school that he's at has done an amazing job and he is in one of the larger elementary schools in danbury and he's wrong he was non-verbal and he talks he's able to communicate he's able to advocate for himself when he feels safe and going from it's a transition for any child but even you know roger spark has 1050 students give or take westside academy has 750 it may not seem a lot to someone like you or someone like him just those 300 kids is it's a huge difference it's like him going from having you know instead of habitat going to denver in high school right you know it's like that's that's day and night just those 300 students not having them there in the hallways in the classroom in the school is huge for someone like my son so i really encourage you all to look at programming for next year and how we can make it better for the children who need it it should be need-based and then after that it should be a choice thank you very much for your time good evening the mission of the greater danbury in the mission of the naacp is to ensure political social and economic equity of all people and to eliminate racial hatred and discrimination i am here as a president of the local chapter of the greater danbury in naacp i am here to raise concern regarding the selection of a board member replacement to fill a vacancy position several weeks ago we believe that the vacancy or the feeling of that vacancy was not done in an equitable manner on the surface it appears to be racial discrimination or could be a play in this unanimous decision at the board then you have few opportunities to practice or follow your policies that you said higher than this action you fail to meet the understanding of affirmative action which you yourself are state in your policy or you fail to even go and celebrate the spirit of that policy some will tell us that the volunteer board does not meet the legal standard of the affirmative action policy however in this limited occasion or situation that you have the chance to give life to the policy and you do it over the last weeks i'm sure some or all of you have rationalized your decision in some way these rationalizations were not valid for reasons as dr beverly tatum speaks who is an expert on racism and education and president emeritus of spelman university that some this model of racism allows us to make decisions that others must address this mod of racism in our opinion was done here instead of finding excuses of rationalizing you're making this decision of this choice most of the most qualified persons of this situation you were clouded by that smile according to dr taylor marginalized people do not have benefits uh from the perks of privilege marginalized people depend on the rules or the guidelines but when we follow rules no matter how fair we see they are and and people are privileged or not privileged trying decide to change them or rationalize their choice to adjust their wanted outcomes or adjust their politics or their comfort level we must override that policy the spirit of the policy by entailing that smile of isms and you thought and hope that maybe no one would notice or at least at this time no one would call your attention to it but the stench of your vote is left looming in the fresh air of our reality i can only hope that you do something to clear that air at that smog that stench has been operated and and seeing that doing this decision you did not select the candidate of color but she was over commonly qualified to fit that position just so you know if you could if you could um conclude your statement or over the three minutes okay well so as i'll be quick as um miss germany and i sit on the panel a couple of weeks ago celebrating mary anderson's birthday she and i want to know this the kind of racism that was in the smog as it relates to mrs um anderson uh shirley chisholm once said that voices many different voices are needed at the table so that the table can be able to rationalize justice and make firm decisions your actions deny the community and the children again very that valuable voice thank you wes johnson all right good evening to the superintendent to the board chair and to the board members my father would always say we're always communicating something the question is what is it i am here this evening to express my support of superintendent boston and the danbury public school system i am also here to express a few concerns as a resident and a tax paying citizen with a child in the district's high school i am concerned with the lack of diversity represented on this board and when presented with an opportunity to address it with a more than capable and qualified former educator i believe we truly missed an opportunity i'm also concerned with a school district that is reported to be over 60 minority by some reports and disproportionately and a disproportionate lack of representation by teachers of i am concerned with the apparent and obviously overcrowded high school and while we can celebrate the new school that is to be developed i am not sure the purpose of that school will solve the problem as a full-time diversity equity and inclusion officer with another public school within our state i would like to strongly recommend that equity and inclusion become a commitment from this war in the form of a written resolution with community involvement a commitment to training in this area with these areas by the board members themselves the school administrators the teachers and the veterans i'd like to suggest that there are resources in our state like kate ed advance eden the equity diversity inclusion network out of hartford and the re center out of harford as well and if the board of dead would like support in this effort as a resident and that's it on my list who signed up to speak is there anyone else who did not sign up who would like to speak moving on to the consent calendar tomorrow would you read the motion please i make a motion that the board of education approved and it's on the consent calendar exhibits 22-35-22-37 as recommended now finance committee meeting minutes that was like item 29 22-38 added to those minutes that's the finance report oh the finance the report itself yes is it not included in the minutes the minutes i got on this email or it's not included in the package okay on the second page it's an action item to be voted on for acceptance but i was hoping to get that document into the minutes as well of the finances yes perhaps we should do it as a friendly amendment to the consent council so a motion to amend the minutes that's you may have made a motion to amend the minutes so move by second seconded by joe um all those in favor signify by saying hi any opposed okay so back to our original motion that was moved and seconded on the consent calendar all those in favor please signify by saying hi any opposed motion carries [Music] so that brings us to our student representatives good evening members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center first ace will be administrating the 11th s.a.t the 11th grade s.a.t tomorrow march 24th kyle chocola will be served serving as the sap administrator the 9th and 10th graders will be heading to the white memorial preservation center initiative connecticut richard law of the 11th graders recently skt and the 12th graders will be joining both the danbury and the waterbury mountains of java community college on march 18th ace environmental science students went to bennett memorial for our new method to volunteer with the hba by obtaining over a hundred plans in repairing his own on april 7th daniel esposito english 1 and 2 students will have the opportunity to participate in a poetry hike at st rock hills hospital in washington ct students will walk in nature and transcendental quotes in their pockets and will write poetry inspired by the survival on april 13th environmental science students will be visiting the normal aquarium with a science teacher class ace would like to celebrate our two wins through the february ace of spades for hard work dominic president dylan good ace could also like to recognize the february east partnership recipients genesis industrial and dominic perez the a staff is awarded the february students of the month to senior entree leon and other and freshman elvis sudan for their outstanding efforts in academic achievement lastly we would like to publicly recognize our two recipients of the superintendent's award kristen bolani and nicole whiskey thank you for helping us to share what's going on with our ac only down on 26th lucas avenue stay safe and remain strong everyone thank you so much thank you feel free to stay but you're welcome to leave as well action items action name a um al would you make the motion please yes that the board of education accepted the january and february 2022 financial reports in accordance with exhibit 22-38 motion's been made is there a second segmented by joe all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed and one extension motion carries action letter b um louisa would you like to read thank you motion that the board of education authorizes the chairperson of the board of education and the superintendent of schools to approve the final plans specifications and cost estimate for phase 3 data technology and phase 4 playground equipment and surfacing of ellsworth avenue school and board of education district registration projects and sign the scg-042 forms for submission to the state of connecticut office of school construction grants and review for approval in accordance with 22-39 motion made segmented by kate um just in for discussion i sat on the city building committee meeting yesterday with rich gelbert so this is just to wrap up phase three and four of the elf avenue edition uh phase three is the data and technology piece of that project um it's within budget about 67 000 for the school side and 12 000 for the boe administration administration side that includes smart boards tech switches tv displays wireless access access points and all that good stuff our i.t department was included in that work and then phase four is the playground equipment and resurfacing so i don't know if you if you remember ellsworth had pretty rough grassy area out in the back so now it will be a concrete with a rubber coating over it which is what they've been asking for for years so it's nice to finally to finally have that happening for them it was specifically designed for the grade levels there and that's also within a budget about 286 thousand and dr mead and principal durkin were also involved in the design of that just so you know any other discussion on that okay all those in favor please signify by saying hi and you opposed any extensions and it's motion carries action letter c lauren would you do that please i make a motion that the board of education appoint board member louise of britain and dr michael sealing chief of strategy and operations to the school building committee in accordance with 22-40 second it's been moved segmented by bridgette any discussion there i will say i learned just recently that typically that is the board of ed spot for that includes the chair of the facilities committee which i didn't realize i've been on that committee as long as i've been on the board um so over four years now and it previously was kathy molinaro and i serving as well as courtney was on that so um mike selig will fill barney's place and lisa and i will serve on the committee the same committee that met just yesterday so and then this will go to the city council and the city council will vote 22-40 is a two-year-old resolution i i don't care this is no problem with the motion we should we should make these appointments is this just an example of the building community just for reference yes this this will be updated and then sent to the city council i fit it's where i figured but i just want to clarify thank you sorry it's only documentation any other discussion or questions all those in favor please signify by saying any opposed abstentions it's unanimous motion carries action letter d um michelle would you like to read sure i make a motion that the board of education accept the letters of resignation dated march 16 2022 from board member katherine hudson in accordance with 22-41 page 43 emotions is there a second seconded by gladys any discussion we vote notice that we get together catherine thank you so much for serving thank you i'm excited um this wasn't your first rodeo of parental involvement so thank you for your your time and your involvement and volunteerism appreciate it it's been a pleasure thank you okay there's a motion on the floor all those in favor please signify by saying aye [Music] it's unanimous motion carries uh superintendents report mr wallston i'll turn it to you thank you thank you and good evening everyone so i first i'd like to start with ken i'd like to start with just reverse the water and talk about the commission of education commissioner charlene russell tucker visited the danbury community yesterday came in for a visit at danbury high school for the board members and the community members who are not aware originally my understanding is commissioner tucker was invited to the danbury to danbury high school to observe in person our struggles with overcrowding this invitation was extended by one of our representatives in town and it sounds like one day she accepted the invitation and then quickly re-rally to set up a day for the visit that day was yesterday tuesday we had quite frankly an amazing time the commissioner was appreciative of quite frankly rolling out the red carpet in the busy hallways of danbury high school she appreciated the all the hard work that is in the vision in danbury public schools with our new career academy they were requests to as follow-ups to our curriculum department and inquiries about the danbury academies and the continuum so the state has already has additional eyes on us because they're very happy about what's going on in denver public schools just more about the visit itself we i team and i looked at this as an opportunity as we talk about opportunities to partner not only with parents teachers community but as i shared with the commissioner yesterday we need our partnership as well and one of our board members is the disorder share his frustration and i shared that yesterday in your absence sir i know you can't always get out of work for these kind of meetings but but i shared our reality antonio shared all the projects since 2014.

maybe that they need to give us some flexibility at 13 1400 i suggested yesterday perhaps that's not fair to our taxpayers perhaps that's not fair to the taxpayers in the state of connecticut particularly when we have danbury public schools continues to exceed these projections and we need to perhaps look at this a little differently and so we followed up with a letter to her today and didn't put an ask in the letter today but made it pretty clear i think yesterday that um and ask is coming in the meantime um very happy about i think we demonstrated well that we are a team here in danbury from the board members and i really appreciate your support yesterday for the board members that were able to make it and demonstrate the support of our delegation members who were able to demonstrate their support and of course the mayor and city officials were able to demonstrate their support i think we presented well to the commissioner kind of unified as one and i think there will be some opportunity for us moving forward as we make a case to relax some of these rules specifically for danbury we can't really worry about all the other districts but i think we've had we demonstrated enough we've demonstrated several times and i and i walked the commissioner through we built the school we need the modules we built the school we needed models we built the school we needed modules modules and i'm to to the point that one of the parents made earlier we we will build danbury career academy and i'm not sure we may not need something else whether that's with the high school in middle school not too long just the way the rules are written right now with all that said i was in it so it was kind of hard for me to assess the day but i can only tell you i did hear from members from the state they were very happy about the visit very encouraged about the things the great things that are going on in danbury so again i just want to thank the board and the city of danbury and of course my team for all the hard work and more more good news to come i just wanted to provide that update and last but not least i can't i can't finish this without thanking principal donovan who got a call friday night because i received a call friday late afternoon um that the commission is coming right which is always great but of course we're all scrambling and then it's then the commission's coming on tuesday click have a good weekend and but he was ready as always and he was a great great host yesterday so i just wanted to publicly thank him his team and his teachers as well next on the list i'd like to provide an update regarding the strategic plan and during the 2018-19 school year dr sal charged my office dr cassinero kelly trucius and others carol wander kim thompson at the time joe martino with revisiting the strategic plan and some of the board members might recall we had a we went through a process in which we revised the vision statement and mission statement and we had that proved through the board we came back and gave a glimpse of the strategic kind of the direction of the plan and we didn't expert approval but essentially asked for approval for the direction for us to continue we did and at that time we were looking for approval in the fall we thought it was best to wait for the new board in november and then of course the duke board doesn't start november they started january so that we thought maybe we wait until the newborn got settled and then march came and and so the strategic plan kind of sat very pretty paperwork i mean this is not to say a lot of the strategies and action steps in that plan we cannot continue to move forward with that work but now on the opposite end of the pandemic looking back at some of those strategies and actually steps some of them are native some of those boxes are checked so as an example one of them was one-to-one device for every child in the district and that was a goal aspiration that was only a year and a half two years ago and we decided it's very important now that we revisit that plan in light of the pandemic so the team and i are looking to starting tomorrow we'll have a moderator lead strategic planning effort for the next two days thursday and friday and i would like to also share with the board because i'm asking for your help and input in this process for the new board members you may not be aware we had considerable feedback to inform the initial plan that that feedback included students hundreds of students quite frankly in person and through and through survey that feedback included teachers whether in person in visiting staff meetings or insert through survey eliciting feedback and then also our community getting out in different corners of the community in person or and or by a survey and getting feedback that feedback informed some of the bigger buckets in terms of what we should focus on and then went back to the experts to identify the action steps so given the community input we don't think it's necessary to go the same comprehensive approach but we will push out a letter to the community reminding them of their input previously and any recommendations that we have for additions to the plan we will walk the community through that via survey and so i just want to take an opportunity to walk the board through and then where i would love if you can be part of this process and please get in the way and i'll walk you through that and then and so in march which is thursday and friday i'll be working with the cabinet in a retreat which will be moderated by someone from the center of school change and then next month we will look to have all of the action steps completed because tomorrow thursday and friday we do not expect to finish the entire plan however the goals and the strategies we do intend to have that completed and then we'll push it back to the experts carrier kelly kim to go back to their respective departments to complete the actual steps in may we will look to get feedback from admin council which is all my administrators in the district we will meet with them in person and then find a way to elicit feedback probably in a survey so it'd be easy to calibrate all of the feedback and then we will find a way or need to find a way these are some of the things we need to talk about tomorrow whether that's a survey but i just want to make sure we engage the staff in some way and get their feedback as well any adjustments that we make over the next two days fast forwarding to june typically i'm so hoping we don't have any surprises with the weather our last day for staff will be june 20th and typically we have a day or two for administrators to kind of wrap up in closing activities as their respective schools and then we would have them for professional development with the cabinet to close out so i'm hoping that's going to be june 23rd or 4th at wednesday or thursday the following week is june 27th with the admin i'm hoping to with the moderator so we'll have 40 50 people in a room with cabinet and i with the moderator be an opportunity for admin council to see themselves in a strategic plan within their own sphere of influence how they can help us realize our goals district-wide what this means for their respective school improvement plans what this means for department plans across the district and how we can create synergy between all these plans and and help us realize our hopes from additional perspective last but not least the week of june 27th through the board chair would like i'm hoping that we can find some dates when the board might be available for our own training or professional development i have been able to secure a moderator to work with us not only to review the plan but also to review your draft board goals that you've worked on previously and work with the moderator to see how those plans can complement the strategic plan and also talk about a strategy about the development for my goals for 22-23 and so i'm hoping to that we can find synergy amongst all of them and the board will kind of perhaps after not sure how many hours two three hours probably at least a half day we would need and so hopefully we can find a good time and going into that meeting we can kind of think through some goals for the meeting for that day so i just wanted to share that with you i'm going to hand out a copy for you and i'll make sure that it was make sure that we'll also put this in the minutes as well because we didn't get this pretty copy available until after this was done so i'm sorry about the delay but i do have a visual for everyone so that they can see what this looks like and then last but not least i'll hand this out as cara is making her way to the presentation in the curriculum committee dr castamero provided an update an academic update and i backed dr casamaro to provide that same update with perhaps a couple of new i don't know anything new you'll always have something great for us and uh pam our reading supervisor has also agreed to join us this evening so this would be a great opportunity for entire community um to see the academic updates in addition to the full board thank you dr casamiro and thank you pam walter so while kelly gets me squared away over there um again i just wanted to introduce hannah dawn piano is our k-popular supervisor she works tirelessly out of the crc which is the curriculum resource center office which is right across the street from hebrew book we call it we were from anna's metal building across the street and that's where my office is as well and so a few we determine dates for our curriculum committee to meet for the remainder of the year and happily we met last week was elected the chair of the curriculum okay well we can get started and you can catch up this is great [Music] we went through the same presentation and so that's also available online if anybody wants to see it maybe not so much so just a brief summary of what we talked about in that meeting was really about a little bit of a deeper understanding about the elementary literacy program alignment that the state is trying to coalesce in the right to read legislation and so the overarching goals that the state has set out with this legislation and it's actually good legislation um is to systematize reading and processing medicaid to really guarantee and ensure that um students really get offered a good foundation making sure that our kids are getting better so part of that is the uh the coordination of professional development the alignment of that to teacher preparation programs in the same making sure that we're preparing our new teachers coming out to the workforce ready to go um in the past we have talked many times that many of our teachers really do struggle with foundational literacy um and we struggle to catch up with professional development time to do that so this is a great effort across the state to begin to make those alignments um their legislation is encouraging based on the science and reading to improve reading outcomes for all students and the nearly five reading programs that are selected must be evidence-based they must focus on competencies moral language anemic awareness phonics fluency vocabulary rapid automatic name or lettering fluency and reading comprehension and so there's a timeline that that has been laid out by the state for this uh so last july they established uh the center for literacy research and being success that would be the state of connecticut and at that point um our group got together and said let's start to be proactive and start to look at some of the um top programs that we know that exist out there ones that have had some ratings that have generated some good research reports and to try to get ahead of the curve a little bit and that list gets posted so that we are really familiar with all the programs because once alice gets posted every state every uh school district is going to be scrambling to do the same thing so we started that that work in camps here tonight to talk a little bit about a couple of the programs that we started to that we think will be on the list um two of the larger ones um but by this july uh that list will be posted and then dandruff will start to make that selection um and then we'll develop the plan to roll out based on the training needs of that particular program over the course of next year and we will make a purchase um there's a possibility that our current foundational program the being reader program is on the list we're just not sure what that's going to be but we're going to be practicing here anyways and then july 2023 there'll be a statewide reading plan that's coordinated for all um each district has to set out to implement that reading curriculum for k-3 and then 2024 there's more of a review process and evaluation that'll take place and i'm sure there'll be some adjustments in their finances from that point and so i will let pam talk a little bit about core knowledge and our core these are two programs that our group has been studying we've had their folks in and we should tell you a little bit about what she likes about youtube so these are two hypothetical we've got maybe on the list we'll know more the committee is actually meeting tomorrow the literacy research panel committee and the agenda says that they're going to begin to discuss the review process tomorrow so i plan to tune in and see what they say about what their you know goals are for that work so two programs that we've kind of begun doing some initial reviews around what is the amplifies core knowledge program which is a program that is k8 and it has elements across many different domains and different topics it does you know it has history topics it has science topics it's literacy topics um it's pretty broad-based in that way it has a two-pronged approach so one arm of the program is the foundational skills and the other arm of the program is more of like the literacy you know research reading you know part of that program a piece of that program in the initial review is that the foundational element of that program is a whole class model so that that is one area that we need to think a little bit about in terms of implementation the other program that we're looking at is our core which is from the american reading company they also like core knowledge have a two-pronged approach to their literacy program with one arm being the foundational skills the other are being the more the rest of the literacy practices than the other armed with that program their foundational skills program is assessment based not the other one is not an assessment piece but i mean it's not a whole class model so the students would take a business assessment and it would it would say which foundational skills they are in need of and then where to start in the program in relationship to those skills so they're outlined they're a little bit different in that way another difference between the two is cornellage has many topics across the brain our core has four kind of major you know more major modules that have different elements within them so for example each grade has a literacy module a research informational text module an argument module an argument advocacy module and then they're more literature-based so it goes into them each of those different components are there and kids spend a little bit more time more deeply in each of the topics so they might have the other there are advantages and disadvantages which in both programs um it could be proven sure at this point to say you like x over y or you have things we need to see what ends up on that list but it behooves us to kind of get our feelers out there in terms of what we think would meet the needs of our kids as we're looking so these are two can you feel free to hear that yes so we also talked in the best initial investigations as well as in talking with the representatives from the companies one of the things that we're trying to look at is some kind of cross-hatching between the literacy programs and what happens in science and social studies and so topically foreknowledge has many places where they would topically kind of address ngss as does our core i would say of the two it's our kind of initial review our core is a little bit more aligned with the standards and not just the topics if that makes sense like not just the content but also some of the standards that exist in those other domains although neither of them are science or social studies programs there are places where there would be some opportunities for overlap and deeper study in some of those topics and that is a lens through which we're also you know looking at each of these programs so we're looking at that lens for the lenses like teacher usability in terms of materials like how organized they are and how much professional decision making exists within the programs because no one program or model is going to meet the needs of all kids in the absence of the teacher right so the teacher needs to be making professional judgments so that's a factor that we're considering as we look at each of these you know models in terms of our initial review uh just real quick is art core also a k-8 program yes yes sure okay one of them is legislations are k3 but we want to make sure that if we're looking at something that they're the ability to roll up if we like the program and to make sure that that alignment is solid and great especially considering that was actually to follow by that question you just kind of touched on it it does make sense to carry it beyond i mean we're statutorily required to do a k3 but rolling it through 4 5 at minimum keeps us from having to switch curricula in the middle of elementary school right it does and and also you know having you know we are very much focused on on the standards um about the financial literacy components but also the standard so the standards are consistent across right so and those spiral of their grades and so the programs any program that we select is really a program and not necessarily the standards right we select a program that helps teachers to teach those standards and provide appropriate and robust resources and accessible resources so we have a lot of second language learners um are there several resources or models that are here that are more accessible for our population of students as that's good for all students um you know the advantages of having something that connects with ngss science is a priority as well for us right now we're trying to roll that out and really prevent life in this district get kids excited about stem and science and coding robotics so that when they get to the academies they have some facility with making those decisions for themselves and seeing themselves in goals that they may not have considered before so that starts really at the elementary level and getting kids excited about that so we're looking for the nexus between um all of those things and selecting the the perfect resource but really the skill comes within the training of the teachers on standards based reading and um so that's you know and that's something to do regardless of the program that we get to help with those give them the right resources for them so um and again you know these are these are kind of the the end of of the scale and looking at these programs these are programs that we've looked at in the past um that we you know we should have afforded at some point you know we're at a unique opportunity right now we may have a little additional funding that we haven't had in the past to get those so we are going to look at some of the more premier programs that have been out there that we also think will make the less uh you know we won't know and so that was disposed but we're pretty confident that these two at least will be announced okay and so we also talked in our curriculum a little bit about an update other portion of the graduate so there's been some exciting work happening in the background with a core team that has been working really hard on creating a continuum of outcomes that describe the that describe uh really what we mean at a grade level by what it looks like to be an advocate a collaborator a communicator an innovator or a learner what does that look like as a sixth grader these are really difficult things to to have conversations around because they're not so cut and thrived there are a lot of conversation they're nuanced in many ways and so um creating descriptors around those has been very challenging work but very rich work that has generated a lot of discussions uh in our school system just recently we engaged our uh administrators and conversations around oriented to this new framework this is just a draft and it is very much under construction um so i'm not publishing it anywhere i did allow our you know have our our curriculum committee get first cracking looking at happy to share that with the door because it's under construction it hasn't been changed anymore since the last time we looked at it um i want to make sure that there you know any hard copies out there to confuse anybody just yet but i didn't want folks to understand that there's a lot of work happening in the background um and then our teachers had an opportunity to take a look at this uh just this past tuesday and it's a lot um and if you were in our curriculum meeting or you watched that some of the commentaries like wow this is dense this is a lot of work um you know how do we get our brains around so it's really a mindset shift in thinking about all the things that are super important but are the most difficult to measure and that's where we're at with this so just uh very quickly i went through the categories here but as kelly's pointing out we have the descriptor the attributes on the left there are descriptions and definitions about what we mean by that so very much a narrative just overall about what we're saying is important about those categories and then kelly's going to click on the achievement indicators there so rather than talking about performance as a 1 a two a three or a four we are talking about students exploring progressing achieving or consciously pursuing and so it's really encouraging along a continuum of aspirational attributes where we want students to go out so really forcing the conversation and reflection on these items um and just a quick example and maybe i should have done this earlier but if you look at the collaborator i just use this as an example and you narrow this broad very dense continuum down you just look at the achieving problem we're to say what do we want from our from our students with regards to being a collaborator and you i cannot see that here's a double click on mine very quickly um we really start to make this very large continuum a little bit smaller and a little bit more personalized because very achievable on the collaborator continuum for achieving if we were to say what the goal is is that a student is respectful towards others and actively practices empathy with collaborating as part of the team that's doable you can have a conversation with students about that a student engages in dialogue around topical knowledge so whatever content they're in with their team members and can articulate ideas and present action items related to the tasks that help to keep others focused right you can have conversations with students about that students consistently demonstrate the behavior that encourages trust by acting with integrity accountability and keeping all team members best interests in mind i can't think of some greater conversations to have with your students when they're working together as a team and so these are the types of things very difficult to measure but great to reflect on particularly as a team member when working on projects in school and so when you look at the whole thing it's quite overwhelming but if you just focus in on that achieving problem it really gives you a sense of what we're trying to get to so i won't go too much further into that um but just to give you a little snapshot about the types of things that we're working on that will be encouraging our students over the next couple of years and then the last items we talked about kind of exciting about really developing some parent-facing curriculum overviews and resources so that our parents can really see what's going on a little bit more of a transparent fashion we've been on the moon a little bit bringing in new curriculum and programs we have more to go but we're hoping as soon as that process settles a little bit we'll provide some more robust parental facing documents and resources so that parents can support their children at all along with the curriculum and and you know keep everybody informed about the right things that are happening in school so they'll be work for next year we're hoping to build that into the new website that's coming so we're looking at content design templates that will fit and integrate best into that environment questions from board members before i move on thank you for the presentation um thank you to the young lady pan uh that was so graciously assisted me in some things to tonight and when she opened her mouth and i said oh she's got to be one of our own and she is one of our own and thank you pam for your nice words as i was coming up to step we are all sitting around this table because we care about education and we know that our teachers within our school system everyone working to make every child that's in our school system be the best that they can be and i just want to say i thank you for the presentation that that we haven't done we're going to get done and knowing that our children are going to get the best education that they can here in danville we have great teachers over the years in my 30 years sitting on this board i've seen them come and go but they were all very interested in education so i just want to applaud everyone for their hard work and i certainly appreciate it so i just wanted to add that i will be asking the board secretary cara pompano to reach out to the board as a follow-up regarding the retreat idea for board members with some concrete dates uh from the moderator and some potential objectives for meetings in future implementation that'll or not um did you want to speak to the calendar we have two drafts um under information absolutely thank you for that and so i would like to share with the board in the packet this evening the community should also receive this when we push out the board agenda on friday two versions of a calendar that we would like the board to consider and take action on one that they feel like is better suited for the district both and some of the highlights to consider one is typical of what we've done in terms of early release days which provides professional development staff development opportunities for staff practice school and the second option there are six half day options which still provide staff development opportunities for our teachers staff back to school but we're hoping perhaps this might be less disruptive for families and quite frankly we think it will be more productive and efficient for us as educators i've asked dr c lee in his capacity as strategy and operations to put together a survey for our families and to schedule a meeting with the community relations committee to make the committee aware of the results of the survey and i'm hoping by trying this approach we can try this for one year and then if this is something that the community is very interested in we're actually get back to our two-year cycle of calendars and perhaps possibly start baking in this approach moving forward but it's something the team and i have been talking about for a couple of years while dr sal was here as well of course during the pandemic was not the time to talk about two-hour release days i mean half day releases just for the football but we just and some of them and i'll ask dr cassidy to help me on this but we are challenged now um in the one-hour release days of our challenge for us meeting with our staff we have early schools late schools we have to wait until everyone is in the room before we can start pd wait a minute the early school staff is leaving this the late school staff is still in the room by contract and it's not the most effective way to try to do this work and we also acknowledge the fact that we have 10 days of disruption for families and yes there would be a longer opportunity for a longer time for child care but less time to have to arrange for child care so we're hoping our families this is something they're interested in option two but we want to confirm uh through server so we just wanted to make the board aware and that's why you see two options in front of you for information we will push on a server you get feedback and hopefully the board will consider taking action oh that's really important thank you thank you so in the in both calendars and by the way our principals our teachers last year um really advocated strongly for this and it frankly it was not the time it was a great idea it was not the time and for those of you who had children in the system remember what it was like to drop your babies off at school as kindergarteners remember the struggle it was to release them and let them go to the teacher it's it's a challenge for the kids it's a challenge for the teachers it's a challenge for the parents particularly for parents who need that attention after they leave that classroom part of our challenge is there are a lot of things going on in the schools at first week in school as we all know and what we have what i have learned from a lot of our neighboring school districts cabinet providing feedback for me kevin a lot of districts are or part of their strategy is to have a transition to first week and so our kindergarten students in other districts they will assess students that first week they will get students connected to kind of what the expectations are in school it may be an opportunity for students to get on the bus just to go through the protocols and getting on and off the bus we may not be driving them home but just as a protocol the students know what have an idea what the expectations are they meet their teacher for the first time with mom or dad or their family member and so our idea would be for the first day of school the teacher would have an appointment perhaps with five families so one family would come in with their child we would walk them through what the expectations are it would be the teacher for the first time the child will know where they're sitting in the classroom they don't know where the restroom is they'll they'll walk around the school and that might be an hour and then the next child will come in and then we will get through five and then after two or three days we would have it's two days right thank you and then after three days we would have gone through the entire class list and then the next day in an hour plan would be friday would be the first full day of school for all the students then the following week which is actually the day after memorial labor day thank you jim labor day it will be a full day of kindergarten for all the students but what we learned the hard way particularly this year is that having our kindergarten students there on day one particularly for our families who couldn't even get into the school but it's a challenge for our families for our parents it's really challenging most importantly for our kids and the majority of our students who are left behind when their parents leave the kids are crying in the classroom for that first week um and this is why this is the first week of school with all the chaos that exists and i'm not talking about chaos like as if it's unorganized but it's just it's the first week of school and we feel strongly that it's not necessarily the best interest of our five-year-olds who are starting school the first week so in both calendars we've actually proposed that we have this kind of transition we understand it would be an adjustment for some of our families particularly if they've had kids in the school system before in danbury this is not something that we've done but we we strongly recommend it there is typically a requirement for 180 days for students we have we don't have the same requirements for the board is aware for kindergarten students so we do have flexibility in that result so just wanted to make you aware there may be some questions about that so they understand we appreciate that um but we kind of put it in both calendars because we feel like it's really the best interest of our kids and our families but certainly if the board is preferred not to it to be in either calendar we can also make that next possible yes with mike with karen take me black version number two i i'm strongly recommending and hoping this is the one for would prefer and so i'm just trying to highlight trying to be as subjective as i can but it's really hard well it's being as objective as i could be certain you are our lead educational profession and i would leave this up to you again after you have you have the schedule of your choice well i appreciate that so and we will be back with the calendar really soon and you'll um the outcome of the survey absolutely um and asked mike um through the community delicious committee to work with kate and make sure we can talk to the results thank you are there any questions for board members about the calendar i just have one it's kind of a crazy question december 23rd is a half day for students but i noticed offices are closed that day how's that gonna work that sounds like a typo okay december 23rd it's a half day for kids and it says offices close on december 23rd the day before christmas walk okay um and so that might be why that's the problem is the holidays on the weekend okay but i'll definitely follow up to make sure okay that may be why okay i think that's actually the day the state takes the holiday is december 23rd they would okay we're a while inside of that friday or that monday yeah and lauren thank you for bringing up the 23rd she just triggered another reminder for me except this is november reminding me okay and that is in both calendars we've actually played in november 23rd the last couple of years november 23rd has been a half day for us we've learned and it's very clear that wednesday before thanksgiving i know we will have to make the day up somewhere else but this day is just in the best interest of everyone yes give everyone the opportunity to make plans with their family whether they're traveling hosting grocery shopping getting ready for thanksgiving and so instead of a half day um recommended and put in green on the twenty third of the day okay and office is closed as well okay so thank you for saying the twenty thirds and definitely everything also one thing that does come up sometimes and they don't protect that's usually a board meeting night two seconds wednesday so i don't know don't usually don't usually meet the third week the holidays wednesday that's right okay [Music] any other questions or comments about the uh calendar the kindergarten idea sounds great but it sounds like a really good idea how can anybody just be really happy yeah yeah it sounds like a great idea and it's apparent i like cowboy number two thank you moving on to board chair persons report i don't have much except to remind to remind you that um next week on march 30th we have our workshop with cave here in person um i like to say attendance is critical it's a roles and responsibilities workshop um it doesn't for me it doesn't make sense if we have like one or two board members missing it's you know it's important that we're all here for that but in the meantime um just you know gentle reminder um you know to obtain the floor to be recognized by the chair whether that be a regular committee uh regular meeting or a committee meeting um i you know we're not we're very casual here and i i prefer that um and we're all very simple and respectful but just i just like to keep it that way so that we can have you know more of a casual casual conversation i think it's more effective in communication but um and just to be considerate of how many times we obtained before and also speaking to the media traditionally um this board has left it to the chair to act as the spokesperson for the board when you know the news times calls or whatever um you don't have to talk to the news tax you can say you can defer to the board which is what you know i used to do when sitting up you know on the side of the table um and then committee minutes i know like um we're losing our secretary um but um just if you could bring uh your mind remind uh that the committee chair uh assigns the uh no keeper for the community um and that minutes um should be filed within um seven days after the after the meeting um for any votes it's within 48 hours after the meeting um after the votes take place so there's just some reminders but i mean i feel silly kind of saying it to you all because we're all very very respectful and i appreciate that um any other board communications or comments updates uh madam chair uh i would just like to uh reschedule the superintendent evaluation committee that scheduled for uh i think it's monday i did my days next time the 28 something because there's a hearing down at city hall concerning the career academy and the money and how it's going to be on the valley and i think that's very important for us to be there to support that sure so i don't have a date yet okay but it will be within another week or so okay yeah if that's in line with your thinking to to reschedule sounds good thank you any other communications questions comments updates okay uh we have an executive session lauren did you make a motion and make a motion that the board of education can be in an executive session to present the agreement with upscu danbury voe secretary's i.t employees local unit 94 with action in public session my second emotion moved by lawrence seconded by gladys section

do i have a motion second a discussion roll needed items i have the recommendation to approve the retirement notice of amy gordon effective at the conclusion of the 21-22 school year do i have a motion to accept the recommendation for retirement of miss amy gordon this school year with reluctance i will move i know amy is uh certainly one of our most celebrated teachers to approve and do i have a second carol yes amy yes vicky and steve yes mr kerry next i have the recommendation to approve the retirement notice of karen hedrick effective at the conclusion of the 21-22 school year i do have a motion to approve the retirement notice of miss karen hendrick for this school year actually second a second any discussion and also go forward welcome carol yes amy yes vicky yes steve yes nation carrie next i have the recommendation to approve the retirement notice of wilma allender effective at the conclusion of the 21-22 school year this includes a request for viva bridge do you have a motion to accept the recommendation for the retirement note of miss wilman allender at the conclusion of this school year including the request for the depot bridge second okay any discussion with that go forth and have a wonderful life miss wilma uh carol yes amy yes vicky yes steve yes please you guys what i had the recommendation to approve christy reitzman daddy harman david phelps kelly brunner and emily tracy to attend the innovation summit in san diego california april 3rd through the 6th do you have a motion to approve the trip to san diego uh for the innovation summit of christie wright debbie harmon david phelps kelly brunner and emily tracy but they're not taking me and i'm really upset remember that doing the motion second any discussion all right coco carol yes amy yes vicky yeah steve yes of course okay next is consent agenda items i have the separation of brown county middle school master teacher mitzi garman effective at the conclusion of the 21-22 school year through the appointment of sportica elementary school custodian carolyn michelle fox 12.25 cents per hour full-time with benefits 240 days per year effective march 17 2022.

i believe there was eight in total and of those projects we we've always followed the rules because we've had to and those rules are the enrollment studies suggest how many seats we would be reimbursed for i shared with the commissioner that we understand those rules and understand those restrictions but we showed the slide that we've showed the board and the committee that we have outpaced the enrollment in the state of connecticut and when you compare us against all the other districts in the state of connecticut we continue to grow as other districts remain flat or have decreased in enrollment also shared with the commissioner not that she's not aware shared with the commissioner that we have a number of schools blue ribbon schools a number of schools of distinction and that an investment in us is a wise one also shared with the commissioner we we need to relax that rule about enrollment studies um and an enrollment study suggested as space 4 000.

knowing where we work well excuse me knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals that's the land um thanks caitlin would you like to initiate the roll call sure uh commissioner needham commissioner needham uh councilmember dish president commissioner graham i'm here sorry councilmember griswold here commissioner kylie work here chairperson brown president indiana harbor vice chairperson mitchell president in ann arbor commissioner vandenbroe here commissioner oriol commissioner oreo commissioner zane here in the number [Music] commissioner gibb randall erin ann arbor commissioner marston i'm here in another commissioner gruber commissioner nedrich president commissioner juneau here in ann arbor all right we have a quorum all right thank you galen um so the next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda are there any um let's see other um is there a motion to accept it um kathy um is there a second shannon um or uh or chris um um any any discussion the floor is open for discussion uh here at cnn no request for discussion so all who approve the agenda as submitted please raise your hand or say hi hi hi um any um any uh um any no votes i see and hear none any abstentions i see and hear none so the agenda as as submitted is approved unanimously but we'll follow well next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes of our february meeting um let's see uh um do i have a motion to um rita um do i have a second um um oh we're open for discussion just a quick correction um in our last minutes and i apologize for um not noting this earlier but um commissioner juno was not present so we should just add that to the to the minutes minor modification say that again commissioner who commissioner juno okay and i think it's just not noted she wasn't on the legend star for last month right well sorry about that um so that's a minor that seems like a friendly amendment uh minor modification um um while he are with all who approve of the minutes as amended uh raise your hands or say aye aye um any um any no votes any abstentions uh the minutes of february meeting are approved with um with that one modification that either juno will be uh will be registered as uh absent from a meeting so um okay the next item on the agenda is public commentary this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-00 or [Music] 877-853-53 i mean 5247 and enter meeting id five 989-2851 one six three seven this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that will raise their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and meet any television and or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established so while we're waiting i guess um michael cost has his presentation and he can control it um so we should probably give him i'll allow him to share his screen during his presentation on gail would you like me to do that now um let's wait until the public commentary period is finished but you will need to you will need to submit a pdf copy of your presentation um to galen hardy after the meeting as soon after the meeting is possible so we can post it on legistar so a brief introduction of michael if i can do that while we're waiting uh well let's see uh 30 seconds we're almost up here so let's uh conclude the public commentary period galen is anybody on the line okay well that's this ends the first public commentary period the next next period will be near the end of the meeting so uh the next opportunity to give public commentary so um yes um okay let's uh okay go ahead chris so michael cost is a botanist and um a long time employee of one of my favorite organizations in michigan called the michigan natural features inventory was begun in the 1970s to been initially funded by the nature conservancy although housed in the department of natural resources in lansing to do inventory work of the natural features of michigan and um they have been extraordinarily successful among the many things they had to figure out were the natural or native plant communities of the state from top to bottom michael you'll have to tell us how many there are but dozens and some of them are quite rare he co-authored this book a guide to the natural communities of michigan along with a couple of other members of the natural features inventory and [Music] he currently serves as a a curator of the native plants of the matthy botanical gardens and nichols arboretum he's a consultant in private business and i invited him to come speak to you about native forest fragments which is something called out 20 years ago and our um [Music] natural features amendments to our city code but with which we've done very little since um it's high priority of the natural features committee to do a lot more about them in our city michael okay so um thanks for that introduction chris can everybody hear me okay says okay the host has disabled screen sharing so um so i just need to share my screen so if you can give me uh make me a co-host that's usually how it works so that i can share my screen there we go thank you okay so um so yes i serve as an associate curator at the botanical gardens and nicholas arboretum and uh i teach in the school of environment and sustainability of course on ecology and botany and um as chris mentioned a lot of the work i'll be talking about today a lot of the stuff is is in a series of publications i've got uh 80 some odd publications uh five books on the natural communities of michigan with my co-authors um this in the upper i think it's your upper left hand corner you'll see this is a 300 page publication that's downloadable describing the the net each of the natural communities and um one of the other key things that i've done in my career is i've done a lot of workshops professional for professionals so contracted with the dnr for about 15 years running workshops for them on biodiversity and various aspects of land management so we work my office for 15 years was housed in the wildlife department working for the nature conservancy and tnc i mean and msu but housed uh with the biologists in the dnr the other agency we worked really close with again doing workshops with for their staff was the department of environmental quality um and also doing workshops for wetland consultants so that's what i my career has been essentially advising on land management and biodiversity conservation trying to understand what we have out there what's important to protect of everything that's out there where do we focus so that's what michigan natural features does that's what i did for many years and i continue to do that work today as well as teach so so uh let me move on so to start with i want to take a look at the state of michigan at least at lower peninsula and focus your attention on a couple different things one is that these lighter colored areas in the north are savannah types or barons types mixed with pine and oak and this line between the dark the greek various colors of green which are uh mainly sugar maple and sometimes mixed with hemlock and white pine that this is a shifting shifting mosaic depending on the fire frequency uh historically and in southern michigan we have these oak hickory forests in the brighter pink and oak savannahs in several shades of this this tan color along with mixed oak forest and this darker green so and that line between savannah and prairie was constantly shifting depending on the abundant how frequent fire was and fire really was dependent on the abundance of you know the populations of native americans certainly there were lots of lightning strikes and obviously there were no roads to put them out no plowed field to put them out so when the fires moved then with the wind they moved for a long long distances but um as we all know there was a 95 reduction in the population of native americans following de soto entering florida in the 1500s and swept across both the north america and south america um and so the population's fluctuating with that this shifting mosaic this line of forest versus prairie or savannah as we zoom into washington county this is that same map and what this is ann arbor and what you see is the mixed oak forest a white oak black oak forest predominantly surrounded by an oak hickory forest but bordered again by this oak barons these are oak barons these are oak openings so um historically documented in the uh about 18 18 maybe 30s to 1857 um and during that time 1837 day about 1857 the state was laid out so populations of native americans were much reduced and there was probably an over representation of forest as compared to what it would have been even a hundred years earlier um and certainly several hundred years earlier because the the uh diseases and then the wars um and persecution that a native american suffered under during this time so i wanted to read you a couple of historical quotes that are taken out of kim chapman's thesis um one of the early ecologists at a michigan natural features inventory where i served as an ecologist and the lead ecologist for uh for 15 years so the road in the roads and the openings and planes offer offer to the traveler a variety of routes with the choice of diverging at pleasure the scattered oak oaks leave leaving sufficient space between for the passage of horses and carriages while the prairie is one of wide unbounded highway where no obstacle is present for pursuing whichever course curiosity may direct written in 1840 in july of the same year and um i think that says 1831 or 51 i can't i have a little my screen sharing is in front of that simon mills made the journey in a lumber wagon drawn by horses through the unbroken wilderness from ann arbor to gull prairie near richmond kalamazoo going this journey was through the oak openings they did not find one half mile of timbered land on the whole route so this term oak openings was used in place of we typically use the word oak savannah today scattered grassland with scattered oaks or uh small groves of oak trees and scattered oaks in a grassland opening in a prairie opening um but historically that term oak openings was used in the surveyor notes and um in the past and that's what we've chosen to call it in our classification of natural communities so here's another one that's where the conversion of open prayer of open prairie to forest was well underway by when hubbard described the landscape near pontiac as it as it appeared during his earlier 1837 expedition with douglas houghton through michigan through michigan's new territory the surrounding country seemed to our eyes far enough removed from the gloomy morass surrounding detroit which while the imagination had depicted it 20 years before it appeared to me the most beautiful sun ever shone upon it was of the character then beginning to be classed as openings characterized by gravelly soil and a sparse growth of oaks and hickories i speak in the past tense because though the rural beauty of the country is still unrivaled little remains of the original character of the openings this is a result partly of the progress of cultivation and partly of the thick growth of small timber that has covered all the uncultivated portions since the annual fires have ceased which kept down the underbrush crush so by 1837 uh the land had changed uh quite a bit to be dominated by trees there's another one we left detroit on a railroad our road lay among the openings much of the way and we found them undergoing the changes which are in incident of the passage of civilized man as the periodical fires had ceased had now ceased for many years underbrush was growing in lieu of the natural grass and insomnia much as these groves are less attractive than formerly but one easily comprehends the reason and i'm going to show you in the next couple uh what he's talking about what cooper in 1884 is talking about in 1881 while recalling prairie ronde and gordnet both in southwest kalamazoo county brown utilizes early in march the rank growth of last year's grass dried by the sun and wind was set on fire and the whole prairie burned over leaving it bare and black as midnight then in a few days came the beautiful flowers covering the whole prairie is one uniform color first the blue violet then purple flocks and this succeeded by some other color and in july and august a tall yellow flower the name of which i do not know mixed profusely with the tall grass gave yellow as the predominating color there's another one 1884 describing the openings of kalamazoo county the annual fires burnt up the underground underwood decayed trees vegetation and debris in the openings leaving them clear of obstructions you could see through the trees in any direction save where the irregularity of the surface intervened for miles around you and you could walk ride or horseback or drive in a wagon wherever you pleased in this woods as freely as you could in a neat and beautiful park here in 1892 glidden describes southern michigan's oak forest in the following passage or the origin of uh these forests after the best job of breaking plowing a live grub or okra with an an okra a live oak rub would be left upon every square rod of ground there is nothing to compare with this pioneer grub for 50 years or more its yearly growth had been burned off and had sprouted again in the spring the enlargement at the surface about the tap root increased with each year's growth of sprouts until the cap was formed a foot or more in width like an underground toadstool although not so regular in shape the whole under surface of this cap was filled with dormant buds that awoke in activity at once when the standing ones were cut or were burned away nature reasserted itself when the annual burning had ceased and the fittest stem survived and became the tree or young oak and as we see them today while the cap has rotted away so those are you can see especially in those last four or so quotes you can really get a sense of the importance of fire and shaping the landscape here is a map i produced uh back uh or many years ago now looking at the fire dependent ecosystems grouping all those savannahs and prairies and all the associated open wetlands where fires moved across those and kept them open as well grouping those all together to get a look at like how much land was fire dependent and what you can see is a big portion of southern michigan where fires moved this was the prairie peninsula moving in from across illinois indiana into michigan moving across uh these these fire dependent this fire dependent landscape into these oak systems and oak grubs some of you you know these but um i've had the pleasure of trying to remove some of those some of these and they're tough this is a a grub that re-sprouted following burning so you can see the blackened soil and the small little leaves these are shoots that were burned burned off um and they could be massive but so but they re-sprout uh when when released from fire um they just re-sprout and that's a lot of what our forests are today our force uh today many of those these forests were historically oak savannahs of some form uh that quickly converted to prairie by the 1880s uh where were prairie and fires fire um and we use fire uh for many reasons land managers use fire to maintain biodiversity because it contributes at multiple levels so fire was historically critically important it still is critically important that hasn't changed so it's it's one of the tools we really uh that's you know land managers have to rely on and it does amazing things because it releases the nutrients that are stored in the dried plant materials nitrogen phosphorus potassium calcium magnesium these are all key nutrients that plants need to grow and as it releases those it increases the uh and studies have been shown that the plants and burned areas contain more of those nutrients and in doing so they end up with higher rates of uh we have higher seedling establishment because the duff has been cleared off and there's not competition greater seedling establishment greater sea germination establishment greater flowering greater seed set greater biomass and these openings create habitat for species that need opening so the savannah is the prairie so the fire certainly does that and helps structure the ecosystems in ways that shapes their pattern on your shapes their arrangement on a landscape in other words you have a series of open wetlands typically next to uh these oak systems these oak barons oak forest um and in northern michigan it's the same thing but with poor friends and bogs next to pine barrens and oak pine barrens and pine forests so one of the so you've heard me mention oaks several times and their importance and they are they're critically important there's no doubt that they are keystone species in other words species that have a dish disproportionately greater effect on the abundance and distribution and diversity of other species so oaks are just critically important they support more caterpillar species than any other plants be than any other genus in north america the genus quercus and in ann arbor oaks support over 450 species of caterpillars at least that's what we've counted so far i have a feeling it's gonna it's it'll it that'll increase over time as we learn more so it's more than any other species in the mid-atlantic region they've documented on white oak over 550 caterpillar species that's why i'm thinking it's probably even greater than 450.

girls varsity flag football has their first ever scrimmage game on monday the 28th at the clifton stadium at 6. update on the upcoming batman tournament the date has officially been changed to saturday the 26th this event will be held at the clifton high school gymnasium at 4pm to answer this event sca will be selling tickets at the front of the gym students are two dollars and adults three dollars to enter come and join us and watch this event with your families speaking of of school spirit sca has been doing a great job lifting school spirit sca conduct conducted in the month of march school spirit month called mustang march madness each week held a different event the first event was disney day it was a day to wear anything disney related this event also supported the spring musical beauty and the beast the second event was sports jersey day where everyone wore the sports jersey the third event was st patrick's day where everyone wore green and the last event is tomorrow crayola day where each class has a college housing for them to wear students participating in these events will earn pbsis points and earning these points will help their class class reach the lead whichever class has the most points will win a prize at the end we have also been doing penny wars this also helps students earn points for their class all the money that is raised from the penny wars will be donated to saint peter havens this has been a successful way to lift school spirits thank you tiffany thank you so much we appreciate that information appreciate you being here and you don't have to stay if you don't wish please you could exit right there if you wish thanks again okay now the superintendent's report dr robertosi thank you mr president good evening commissioners members of the public our faculty and staff and those watching on our live stream it's a beautiful thursday night in march spring is upon us doesn't feel like it tonight but i'm happy to hear when tiffany talks about all the spring sports starting that's an exciting exciting thing for me that means i could get out of my harley a little bit more means i could get some spring games i could get the sun radiating off my head and it just makes everybody feel a little bit better about life mr brunsiak you know what i'm talking about had the opportunity uh last night and last wednesday night to attend our district all city concerts and i know several of our commissioners were there it was a packed house for both concerts and i sat there in awe of the talent of the students that we have in this district not to mention the great faculty and staff that work with these students to hone those talents but i you know i sit there and i listen i'm really amazed that our children have that talent and they have that opportunity and mr leschwitz said it best last night he said he meets with directors of fine and performing arts from throughout the state and they're amazed when they hear about the things that we do here in clifton with our fine and performing arts department specifically the amount of numbers and the things we're able to do with these kids so congratulations to all of our students who were selected to be in the all-city uh concerts you have made us all proud you you should be very proud of yourselves too uh keeping in line with the fine and performing arts i also had the pleasure a couple weeks ago of seeing beauty and the beast the sunday matinee with with my children and for those of you who saw it i think you would agree with me that it was you know very similar to sitting in an off-broadway show it was that good our students showcase their talent their acting their singing um the pit the orchestra played beautifully and it was really really like a show like i would have paid you know a lot of money to see and so um just so grateful to all of the uh people who volunteered their time to make it happen uh because even the ones we pay we don't pay enough for all the work they put in so uh and congratulations to all the students you should be very very proud of yourselves for amazing performances along that line next week woodrow wilson middle school will be hosting annie junior next wednesday night the 30th and the 31st both at 7 pm so if you have a chance come out and see our middle school students i'd like to publicly congratulate mr john o'reilly who is a social studies teacher at clifton high school and he was just recently selected yesterday as the educator of the year in clifton by the clifton education association a great honor and an honor that to put it in perspective we have 1400 certificated staff now not all of those people are classroom teachers but you don't have to be a classroom teacher to be the educator of the year so out of 1400 or so certificated staff members mr o'reilly was selected as the educator of the year truly great honor and and i know that it's well earned i know that it's warranted because the first time i ever heard mr o'reilly's name it came out of students mouths i was meeting with some students and we're talking about some of the great things at clifton high school and they started talking about their favorite teachers and the best teachers and one thing i think all the adults here in the room know the kids will tell you the truth the kids know who the best teachers are and they talked about how mr o'reilly makes history fun how he um how he loves them and cares about them that's all i needed to hear i'm a huge fan of mr o'reilly congratulations and i'll share one story that mr honda shared yesterday when we there was a little surprise ceremony and he was brought down he thought he was coming to a faculty meeting he was brought down and his wife and his mom were there and uh his whole social studies department was there and they surprised them and mr honda told this story um back in october or november i was at one of our football games and i ran into a parent who wanted to talk to me and introduced me her heart to his daughter who was in eighth grade and said you know i really want my daughter to go to clifton high school my daughter's thinking about going to pcti and you know here i am i'm trying to convince one parent at a time so i'm investing time with this parent saying no you don't want to do that and i'm explaining all the reasons why clifton high school will have so much many more opportunities for your child and so i said you know what we're going to do in the spring i want your daughter to come up to clifton high school and spend a day and i guarantee you at the end of that day she's going to tell you she wants to go to clifton high school and mr hamdu is telling this story yesterday and he says so we did this two days ago at the end of the day the young lady sees mr honda and she says i'm coming to clifton high school and i hope mr o'reilly is my teacher so mr o'reilly may have and it wasn't single-handedly it was the great experience she had but mr o'reilly left an impact on this students this will impact her life forever in in one lesson in one day whatever he did she said i'm coming to clifton high school and i hope i have mr o'reilly as my teacher so which leads me to even the bigger point that's a program that we're going to expand we're going to call it a [Music] day in the life of clifton high school or some sort of mentoring program where we're going to give our 8th graders an opportunity to spend a day at clifton high school and we think that those students who you know listen you student wants to go to pcti because they're going into a vocational program they want to be a welder they want to be a carpenter god bless them that's great we need those people we need plumbers we need carpenters we need people who are skilled with their hands i have no problem with that that's what vocational schools are for god bless go with my blessing but those students who are going for other reasons maybe they think the academics are better maybe they think the campus is prettier maybe they think clifton high school is too big i want to give them an opportunity to spend a day at clifton high school just give us a chance to show you that this is where you want to go so we'll be planning that we'll be coordinating that and that is something i will bring to this board when we have fully fleshed out all the details and work that out but i think that's going to be a really really good thing for the future a brief referendum update and please understand i i give these updates for the commissioners who are not in every facilities meeting um and don't know everything that's going on because you don't see construction trucks at every school but there's a lot that's going on behind the scenes so the first shovel in the ground is coming real soon but since the appointment of our construction manager in december we've been having weekly meetings where we discuss all the plans we visit the schools and you know our schools are old many of our schools are old and there's a lot of work that has to be done prior to the referendum work especially specifically with asbestos removal the prep ranges from scoping asbestos removal logistical coordination of where the construction companies are going to place their trailers how many trailers they're going to place which projects are going to be done in what order all these logistical things are being coordinated now because once it starts we don't want anything to happen that's going to compromise the health and safety of our students and staff so all those things are being planned out now since our last board meeting we've continued to meet with our team bid one project one is going out in days and that's the high school the high school in and of itself is one bid project the grouping of package two is complete and package three will be complete in the next coming days every classroom in the district is getting a new unit ventilator are those things that are in the corner that blow out air that's my technical expertise i was a history teacher i used to sit on the unit ventilator to get a little breeze when i was sweating i saw the attorney got a little nervous there it's okay miss gutierrez the installation of those unit ventilators uh is anticipated to commence um may of 2023 and that all the equipment will be operational by october 1st 2023.

now back to your announcements forms to purchase patches for your letter jacket are available in the athletic office any athlete wanting to purchase patches needs to turn in a completed form along with payment to mrs rigney in the athletic office by april 1st any questions see mrs rigby in the afternoons please follow greensburg safety on instagram to stay up to date in your community now to kylie with the lunch i'm kylie with the lunch today we have grilled cheese green beans tomato soup and a chocolate chip cookie now back to your announcements cincinnati red ticket vouchers are here students with a 3.5 gpa or higher during the any quarter of the first semester 2022-2023 if you are not sure you qualify check for your name on the list posted by the front office mrs soldier will start delivering these vouchers to classrooms after spring break or stop by the guidance office now the vouchers will tell you how to order your two free tickets all ticket orders are subject to availability so make sure to order your tickets asap freshman t-shirt orders are now available orders will be taken until wednesday april 6th war farms are in the main office with mrs colby miss peters or the health room see mrs mintz for or one of your class officers for more information now to carmen with the sports hi i'm carmen with the sports today there is a varsity baseball scrimmage at rising sun at 5 30. the varsity softball game at whiteland has been canceled and good luck to luke schuman tyler benninger amari jackson elizabeth mitchell and matthew stewart at the inside track state meet today now back to the announcements have a great day and be sure to follow us on twitter snapchat instagram at gchspires also be sure to listen to gtvreadyonlive365.com

Uh we do that from elementary to high school and every year the spelling bee fundraising goes directly back into funding many grants for teachers to improve learning in Dartmouth. And the next grant cycle will open on the 1st of April. So, I have some quick thank yous and some introductions before we get started. I want to thank my fellow Dartmouth Education Foundation Advisory Council members. Rachel Cherrier, uh, if you could just wave, Dr. Rambala, Dr. Shannon Jenkins, Dr. Carol Kapotus, Chris Pereira, Christina Rebello, Enid Silva, Dr. Janna Souza, Mary Wait, uh, who's a little bit ill tonight, Meredith Wilkinson, Dr. Steven Witzig and I just cannot uh be introducing our board u without introducing the founding board member John Bogard who is here tonight competing on a spelling B team. Uh so I want to thank our flight sponsors and team sponsors and all the donors tonight.

so um let's see i would like to call this meeting uh to order at 7 00 p.m on march 24th uh welcome to the march 24th 2022 electronic meeting of the environmental commission this meeting is in accordance with executive orders from the governor to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the covet 19 virus we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id 989-2851-1637 again this is meeting id number nine eight nine two eight five one one six three seven this information is also available on the published agenda and the public notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 18 t channel 999 and online at www.a2gov.org watch ctn so um galen would you please uh read the land heritage statement and then do the roll call sure all right um i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including ottawa ojibwe bordeaux and wyandotte peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the united states on lands obtained generally and unconscionable ways from indigenous peoples the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807.

so um acorns also provide critical food sources for over 100 vertebrate species and thousands of species utilize oak tree the oak uh you know like the stems of the oak trees the leaves the snags the course woody debris the wood cavities litter and oaks are critical so oaks are critical for maintaining biodiversity uh here you see a chickadee and to like many songbirds about 95 percent of birds are insectivorous they require um in north america i think it's 96 percent of birds are insectivorous except for the um if you exclude the uh seabirds then then 96 of the remaining birds are insectivorous and they require they require insects to raise their young and the majority of what they feed their young are these caterpillars from butterfly and moths so uh just to raise uh a clutch of eggs can require require six hundred six thousand to nine thousand caterpillars over that 21 day period and they continue to feed their young caterpillars for 21 days following fledging when they leave the nest so i'm going to be using the term biodiversity quite a bit i just want to make sure we're we're all um we all understand what that term means so it's refers to the variety of life on earth at all its levels from genes to ecosystems as well as the ecological processes that support it so i know a lot of times we use the term biodiversity you mean species diversity and that's fine it does mean species diversity but it also means ecosystem diversity it means the different types and arrangements of ecosystems the ecological processes that support that as well as the life within those those communities within those natural communities within those ecosystems the uh quote one of my favorite quotes in ecology is by aldo leopold and he he said the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts and that's that's as true then as when he wrote it as it is today and i think we'll always be in ecology if we're going to manage land if we're going to take responsibility for a set of lands um be it a city a state or the nation we really need to keep all the parts so here you see a kestrel feeding its young a hawk moth and below is a hawk moth uh pollinating or drawing nectar from a a thistle a native thistle cerseum discolor that grows in our prairies and savannas in the ecosystem we need all of this we cannot have these kestrels if they don't have food and in this case hawk moths need plants so they're all critical we can't have any one of those and just like most systems uh whether it's your body or um ecosystems it's often the smallest things the littlest critters like eo wilson said you know it's that that beware of these little guys because they the insects because they really run the show at the end of the day if you have a dysfunction in yourself your mitochondria don't don't work you're you're in big big trouble right the smaller the equals the smaller the critter when that goes out it affects everything up up the trophic level so the insects are critically important uh not just to the birds but to the rest of the rest of the ecosystem and where the insects get their food from the plants so so while it all matters each one of these clogs of the wheel each one of these pieces is critically important to keep okay so the earth is experiencing massive losses in biodiversity as you're well aware uh there's been precipitous declines across taxa from vertebrates and invertebrates uh at durzo coin defaulination meaning uh and he and the term anthropocene is widely used today so in other words worked presently in the geologic uh period of the holocene but it's been reclassified renamed by many people as anthropocene in other words human beings are having the biggest effect on the planet right now uh and the defaultizations meaning we're losing species uh like crazy plants there's many citations i could listed insects birds mammals fish amphibians reptiles all suffering great declines right now and what you're looking at this this cool picture here is a various species of goldenrod and many insects uh goldenrod support 135 species of caterpillars uh in other words from moths and butterflies and hundreds of pollinators in the ann arbor area including many specialists that are entirely dependent on goldenrod pollen and nectar so the causes of biodiversity loss the primary cause is habitat loss for example michigan we've lost over 50 percent of our wetlands that's on average you can see it very statewide um invasive species are another uh major reason for habitat loss over exploitation disease pollution pesticides overpopulation which obviously relates to habitat loss and some of these others and um probably more recently maybe going back even a hundred years now but um is climate change and certainly coming to our head uh and uh speeding up so so biodiversity loss is a front and center and those who manage the lands are responsible for that have to keep this in mind because you're stewarding so many species and it's so critically important here we look at forest change in michigan and you can see from acres from that that circa 1800 vegetation map to uh current and this this is about 10 years old now actually it's more about 20 years old to be honest with you so then there has been a continuous loss during that time but we've lost about 68 of our upland forest historically in southern michigan over 75 percent of our beet sugar maple forest about 66 percent of our oak hickory forest and when we get into the the savannahs in grasslands we've lost uh over 99 percent of those so uh from historic levels so we've we've seen a lot of change and that change comes with some serious costs and some serious responsibilities force fragmentation is is something i want to talk a little bit about so what this refers to and it could be habitat for so fragmentation is often phrased as habitat fragmentation and in forest systems we call it forest fragmentation and what it involves is breaking a contiguous block of forest into smaller parcels or contiguous block of natural habitat into small parcels and this occurs incrementally typically in other words just like you see in that first picture up on top you know it doesn't happen uh overnight it usually happens slow and steadily and the losses uh the impacts are cumulative you might start with a subdivision and then you know build another segment to the subdivision then another one pretty soon we have a vast area with just these fragments of forest so this is a forest fragment here's a forest fragment here's another forest fragment and then this picture the forest are gone uh you have grasslands or lawns uh where what's what's left of that of the of once was forest so the the uh so before i address the downside of forest fragmentation i want to want to talk about why there's a few reasons why they're important first of all they provide ecosystem services for example they produce oxygen they reduce air pollution and greenhouse gases they sequester carbon slow global warming reduce urban temperatures prevent soil erosion reduce runoff and water pollution promote water infiltration recharge groundwater stores and i could go on so all of these things are critically important and we we take every one of these for granted you know the her urban heat island effect well um in other words it's warmer if you go to the countryside you put a temperature probe in a city and one at the same latitude in a rural area well it's always warmer in the city because there's the urban heat island effect right well guess what your forest fragments help reduce that and they generate oxygen and reduce air pollution and sequester carbon in other words when they take in through photosynthesis they take in those carbon atoms and put them into the trunk and there's this there was this um when i went to school and i'm guessing it's probably still taught today but it's false the idea that small trees uh sequester more carbon they take up more carbon they grow quicker well that's been debunked uh it's been pretty bunked uh in medici meta-analysis it's been debunked in individual studies by people who engineers who know how to measure using very accurate measurements of tree rings and um the bigger trees actually grow faster in terms of the amount of wood they put on they they um well a small tree might grow from one inch to 10 inches in a short period of time the big tree it doesn't it just takes us a millimeter of growth or so and you write up all those millimeters over a meter wide tree over a 40 inch diameter tree you've got a lot more area than small trees so large trees are critically important so even though they might be perceived as not growing quickly they're actually they're actually growing they're actually they're actually putting on more bulk each year more bulk than smoke trees so they're critically important to protect um and i know uh many of you are like me when you see an oak go down you know it just feels so bad when you see one of these big old trees and we just have to remember that just because you're 80 doesn't mean and the tree's 80 doesn't mean the tree is old just because you might be feeling old the tree isn't old trees are indeterminate growth as long as they don't get knocked down by wind or some disease they can live they can live they can live hundreds of years and that's really exciting for us because it means the trees so that's great news because it means the trees are for us today they're going to be doing their job if they're protected they're going to continue to do the job of sequestering carbon reducing producing oxygen which we breathe reducing air pollution and those forests allow those roots allow that water to go back into the ground and not run off and pollute our waterways but allow it to infiltrate so another benefit of force fragments uh these forest fragments uh which uh ann arbor has uh so blessed with are is increased human human well-being so they reduce stress they reduce our heart rate our blood pressure they bolster mental health reduce crime rates and violence they promote healing promote physical activity promote social interaction make cities more livable and um that makes cities more beautiful and it was interesting that day chris called me to ask if i would be willing to to come and talk to you guys um i was driving back from the arboretum to the botanical gardens and as i'm taking the route you know for uh it's kind of back way around to get across the city i was i was as i often am marveling and just amazed at how beautiful ann arbor is and how the forests really make the city like was thinking god these forests this is amazing what a place and in my thinking that it was i knew i made the logical jump to you know this isn't by accident this wasn't by accident that you have these forests here today i lived in lansing uh area before coming here and before that chicago and milwaukee so i know what it's like to live in large urban areas that lack forests and it's a whole different feel i hardly ever came to ann arbor until i started working at the uh botanical gardens and arboretum in in 2014.

[Music] i'd like to call the regular scheduled meeting of the clinton board of education for march 24th 2022 to order if you would all please rise for a salute to our flag followed by a brief moment in silence 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 to for all if you kindly remember our brothers and sisters in ukraine uh that they come that this war could come to a peaceful end thank you roll call mr russia yes mr abedrabo mr awad here miss basford here miss beltran here mr canova here dr danny here mr paris here vice president daley here president smith here we have a quorum our mission statement mr paris the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world our open public meetings act in new jersey up in public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent-teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight okay we'll go to the adoption of minutes of the meeting of march 3rd 2022 motion and mr daley seconded by mr awad discussion seeing none roll call mr up mr abadraba mr awad miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr kenova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes motion carries okay we now have our superintendent's report dr robertosi okay i'm sorry yep that's okay sorry we'll do the uh student uh representative tonight we have tiffany with us thank you tiffany at this time i'll be discussing chs sports spring sports girls varsity lacrosse has had a scrimmage game today at the clifton high school field boys varsity lacrosse has a scrimmage game on saturday the 26th at the clifton high school field at 10 in the morning boys varsity baseball has a scrimmage game tomorrow at four at rutherford boys varsity tennis has a scrimmage game on monday the 28th at union city at four outdoor track has a scrimmage game on saturday the 26th at the clifton stadium at nine in the morning boys varsity volleyball has a scrimmage game on monday the 28th at the clifton high school gymnasium at 4 15.

so the plan is october 1st 2023 every classroom in the district has that new unit ventilator new hvac systems installed the plan is no more than three classrooms at a time in one building because we'll need the opportunity to move a classroom so children will be displaced from their classroom for a few days at a time maybe in the auditorium maybe in the cafeteria but um that's only during school time during the summer we can do as many classes as we can so there's only so much you can do in two months over the summer and it's actually one month because a lot of our schools have summer programs um and then the technology update we have all of our device counts and cabling plans have been finalized the equipment's been ordered the network switches the clocks the strobes the pa systems have all been ordered the cameras are being programmed off-site the server hardware and the related equipment have begun to ship and all of our in-house electrical work is being addressed by our electricians our in-house electricians and the camera cabling all the cabling that needs to be done in the ceiling and the walls will be done over spring break so that you can expect to see that up and running real soon and then finally tonight ladies and gentlemen i just want to touch on the budget tonight there is a resolution on the agenda approving the submission of the 2022-23 preliminary budget to the county office and i want to be clear and the commissioners i want you please to understand this this is a vote tonight so that mr uc can send the budget to the county for technical review to make sure the accounts are correct the money is where it is and for educational compliance on may 5th we will have what's known as our public budget hearing that's required by law there will be a formal presentation there will be a public hearing where members of the public before you vote to approve it can come up and speak on that budget so tonight you're just voting so that mike can send the budget to the county but having said that i want to give you a little bit of background of where we are with that budget the administration and the finance committee had a meeting on march 15th the administration presented a budget where in an ideal world we wanted to gain a lot more positions than we have positions that have been lost in the past positions that we should have had had this district been funded to its full capacity all the years we've been underfunded specifically during the 2009-2010 school year where 137 staff members am i is that the right number do you remember 49 and then 21.

good morning i'm grayson and i'm bryson with your morning announcements for march 24th upcoming school events march 30 immunization clinic eight o'clock for juniors april 4th academic ceremony at 6 30 p.m april 15th good friday no school now to kylie with the weather i'm kylie with the weather today is a high of 45 and a low of 38. saturday is a high of 40 with a low of 30 and sunday is a high of 40 with a low of 24.

[Applause] [Music] Good evening everyone. Everyone, thank you so much for being here tonight. I'm Laura Stone and I am chair of the Dartmouth Education Foundation. We were last together for a bee in the fall of 2019. So, we're so happy to be back together in person after the impact of COVID. The Dartmouth Educ Education Foundation was established in 2007 to help supplement teaching, learning, and innovation. And at a time when Dartmouth was facing education budget cuts, a group of parents and community members founded the organization to put resources back into the classroom. So it's been about 15 years and we're really proud of what we have been able to fund in Dartmouth. The DEF is an endowed fund of the community foundation, the Southeastern uh community foundation, and we appreciate the support that they lend to us. So, in September of this past year, we awarded nearly $12,000 to teachers in the Dartmouth public schools, many of whom are uh uh going to go come on stage tonight or be represented.

You can read all about them and their amazing uh support of our work uh in your program. flights are sponsored, our teams are sponsored, and we're very, very grateful for that. Um, I want to also uh acknowledge that the poster and some of the donations are also noted on the poster as you walk out tonight. So, you can um be sure to check that out as well. And then, of course, I want to thank Dartmouth High School for hosting us tonight. So, I know that Dr. Bonnie Gford, our superintendent, is on a team. if she could raise her hand. And also, uh, Mike Martin is here, who is assistant principal of Dartmouth High School and has been amazing helping us get ready tonight. So, we are very grateful for the hosting and our ability to be here, uh, and and have this site to do this work.

knowing where we work well excuse me knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals that's the land um thanks caitlin would you like to initiate the roll call sure uh commissioner needham commissioner needham uh councilmember dish president commissioner graham i'm here sorry councilmember griswold here commissioner kylie work here chairperson brown president indiana harbor vice chairperson mitchell president in ann arbor commissioner vandenbroe here commissioner oriol commissioner oreo commissioner zane here in the number [Music] commissioner gibb randall erin ann arbor commissioner marston i'm here in another commissioner gruber commissioner nedrich president commissioner juneau here in ann arbor all right we have a quorum all right thank you galen um so the next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda are there any um let's see other um is there a motion to accept it um kathy um is there a second shannon um or uh or chris um um any any discussion the floor is open for discussion uh here at cnn no request for discussion so all who approve the agenda as submitted please raise your hand or say hi hi hi um any um any uh um any no votes i see and hear none any abstentions i see and hear none so the agenda as as submitted is approved unanimously but we'll follow well next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes of our february meeting um let's see uh um do i have a motion to um rita um do i have a second um um oh we're open for discussion just a quick correction um in our last minutes and i apologize for um not noting this earlier but um commissioner juno was not present so we should just add that to the to the minutes minor modification say that again commissioner who commissioner juno okay and i think it's just not noted she wasn't on the legend star for last month right well sorry about that um so that's a minor that seems like a friendly amendment uh minor modification um um while he are with all who approve of the minutes as amended uh raise your hands or say aye aye um any um any no votes any abstentions uh the minutes of february meeting are approved with um with that one modification that either juno will be uh will be registered as uh absent from a meeting so um okay the next item on the agenda is public commentary this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-00 or [Music] 877-853-53 i mean 5247 and enter meeting id five 989-2851 one six three seven this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that will raise their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and meet any television and or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established so while we're waiting i guess um michael cost has his presentation and he can control it um so we should probably give him i'll allow him to share his screen during his presentation on gail would you like me to do that now um let's wait until the public commentary period is finished but you will need to you will need to submit a pdf copy of your presentation um to galen hardy after the meeting as soon after the meeting is possible so we can post it on legistar so a brief introduction of michael if i can do that while we're waiting uh well let's see uh 30 seconds we're almost up here so let's uh conclude the public commentary period galen is anybody on the line okay well that's this ends the first public commentary period the next next period will be near the end of the meeting so uh the next opportunity to give public commentary so um yes um okay let's uh okay go ahead chris so michael cost is a botanist and um a long time employee of one of my favorite organizations in michigan called the michigan natural features inventory was begun in the 1970s to been initially funded by the nature conservancy although housed in the department of natural resources in lansing to do inventory work of the natural features of michigan and um they have been extraordinarily successful among the many things they had to figure out were the natural or native plant communities of the state from top to bottom michael you'll have to tell us how many there are but dozens and some of them are quite rare he co-authored this book a guide to the natural communities of michigan along with a couple of other members of the natural features inventory and [Music] he currently serves as a a curator of the native plants of the matthy botanical gardens and nichols arboretum he's a consultant in private business and i invited him to come speak to you about native forest fragments which is something called out 20 years ago and our um [Music] natural features amendments to our city code but with which we've done very little since um it's high priority of the natural features committee to do a lot more about them in our city michael okay so um thanks for that introduction chris can everybody hear me okay says okay the host has disabled screen sharing so um so i just need to share my screen so if you can give me uh make me a co-host that's usually how it works so that i can share my screen there we go thank you okay so um so yes i serve as an associate curator at the botanical gardens and nicholas arboretum and uh i teach in the school of environment and sustainability of course on ecology and botany and um as chris mentioned a lot of the work i'll be talking about today a lot of the stuff is is in a series of publications i've got uh 80 some odd publications uh five books on the natural communities of michigan with my co-authors um this in the upper i think it's your upper left hand corner you'll see this is a 300 page publication that's downloadable describing the the net each of the natural communities and um one of the other key things that i've done in my career is i've done a lot of workshops professional for professionals so contracted with the dnr for about 15 years running workshops for them on biodiversity and various aspects of land management so we work my office for 15 years was housed in the wildlife department working for the nature conservancy and tnc i mean and msu but housed uh with the biologists in the dnr the other agency we worked really close with again doing workshops with for their staff was the department of environmental quality um and also doing workshops for wetland consultants so that's what i my career has been essentially advising on land management and biodiversity conservation trying to understand what we have out there what's important to protect of everything that's out there where do we focus so that's what michigan natural features does that's what i did for many years and i continue to do that work today as well as teach so so uh let me move on so to start with i want to take a look at the state of michigan at least at lower peninsula and focus your attention on a couple different things one is that these lighter colored areas in the north are savannah types or barons types mixed with pine and oak and this line between the dark the greek various colors of green which are uh mainly sugar maple and sometimes mixed with hemlock and white pine that this is a shifting shifting mosaic depending on the fire frequency uh historically and in southern michigan we have these oak hickory forests in the brighter pink and oak savannahs in several shades of this this tan color along with mixed oak forest and this darker green so and that line between savannah and prairie was constantly shifting depending on the abundant how frequent fire was and fire really was dependent on the abundance of you know the populations of native americans certainly there were lots of lightning strikes and obviously there were no roads to put them out no plowed field to put them out so when the fires moved then with the wind they moved for a long long distances but um as we all know there was a 95 reduction in the population of native americans following de soto entering florida in the 1500s and swept across both the north america and south america um and so the population's fluctuating with that this shifting mosaic this line of forest versus prairie or savannah as we zoom into washington county this is that same map and what this is ann arbor and what you see is the mixed oak forest a white oak black oak forest predominantly surrounded by an oak hickory forest but bordered again by this oak barons these are oak barons these are oak openings so um historically documented in the uh about 18 18 maybe 30s to 1857 um and during that time 1837 day about 1857 the state was laid out so populations of native americans were much reduced and there was probably an over representation of forest as compared to what it would have been even a hundred years earlier um and certainly several hundred years earlier because the the uh diseases and then the wars um and persecution that a native american suffered under during this time so i wanted to read you a couple of historical quotes that are taken out of kim chapman's thesis um one of the early ecologists at a michigan natural features inventory where i served as an ecologist and the lead ecologist for uh for 15 years so the road in the roads and the openings and planes offer offer to the traveler a variety of routes with the choice of diverging at pleasure the scattered oak oaks leave leaving sufficient space between for the passage of horses and carriages while the prairie is one of wide unbounded highway where no obstacle is present for pursuing whichever course curiosity may direct written in 1840 in july of the same year and um i think that says 1831 or 51 i can't i have a little my screen sharing is in front of that simon mills made the journey in a lumber wagon drawn by horses through the unbroken wilderness from ann arbor to gull prairie near richmond kalamazoo going this journey was through the oak openings they did not find one half mile of timbered land on the whole route so this term oak openings was used in place of we typically use the word oak savannah today scattered grassland with scattered oaks or uh small groves of oak trees and scattered oaks in a grassland opening in a prairie opening um but historically that term oak openings was used in the surveyor notes and um in the past and that's what we've chosen to call it in our classification of natural communities so here's another one that's where the conversion of open prayer of open prairie to forest was well underway by when hubbard described the landscape near pontiac as it as it appeared during his earlier 1837 expedition with douglas houghton through michigan through michigan's new territory the surrounding country seemed to our eyes far enough removed from the gloomy morass surrounding detroit which while the imagination had depicted it 20 years before it appeared to me the most beautiful sun ever shone upon it was of the character then beginning to be classed as openings characterized by gravelly soil and a sparse growth of oaks and hickories i speak in the past tense because though the rural beauty of the country is still unrivaled little remains of the original character of the openings this is a result partly of the progress of cultivation and partly of the thick growth of small timber that has covered all the uncultivated portions since the annual fires have ceased which kept down the underbrush crush so by 1837 uh the land had changed uh quite a bit to be dominated by trees there's another one we left detroit on a railroad our road lay among the openings much of the way and we found them undergoing the changes which are in incident of the passage of civilized man as the periodical fires had ceased had now ceased for many years underbrush was growing in lieu of the natural grass and insomnia much as these groves are less attractive than formerly but one easily comprehends the reason and i'm going to show you in the next couple uh what he's talking about what cooper in 1884 is talking about in 1881 while recalling prairie ronde and gordnet both in southwest kalamazoo county brown utilizes early in march the rank growth of last year's grass dried by the sun and wind was set on fire and the whole prairie burned over leaving it bare and black as midnight then in a few days came the beautiful flowers covering the whole prairie is one uniform color first the blue violet then purple flocks and this succeeded by some other color and in july and august a tall yellow flower the name of which i do not know mixed profusely with the tall grass gave yellow as the predominating color there's another one 1884 describing the openings of kalamazoo county the annual fires burnt up the underground underwood decayed trees vegetation and debris in the openings leaving them clear of obstructions you could see through the trees in any direction save where the irregularity of the surface intervened for miles around you and you could walk ride or horseback or drive in a wagon wherever you pleased in this woods as freely as you could in a neat and beautiful park here in 1892 glidden describes southern michigan's oak forest in the following passage or the origin of uh these forests after the best job of breaking plowing a live grub or okra with an an okra a live oak rub would be left upon every square rod of ground there is nothing to compare with this pioneer grub for 50 years or more its yearly growth had been burned off and had sprouted again in the spring the enlargement at the surface about the tap root increased with each year's growth of sprouts until the cap was formed a foot or more in width like an underground toadstool although not so regular in shape the whole under surface of this cap was filled with dormant buds that awoke in activity at once when the standing ones were cut or were burned away nature reasserted itself when the annual burning had ceased and the fittest stem survived and became the tree or young oak and as we see them today while the cap has rotted away so those are you can see especially in those last four or so quotes you can really get a sense of the importance of fire and shaping the landscape here is a map i produced uh back uh or many years ago now looking at the fire dependent ecosystems grouping all those savannahs and prairies and all the associated open wetlands where fires moved across those and kept them open as well grouping those all together to get a look at like how much land was fire dependent and what you can see is a big portion of southern michigan where fires moved this was the prairie peninsula moving in from across illinois indiana into michigan moving across uh these these fire dependent this fire dependent landscape into these oak systems and oak grubs some of you you know these but um i've had the pleasure of trying to remove some of those some of these and they're tough this is a a grub that re-sprouted following burning so you can see the blackened soil and the small little leaves these are shoots that were burned burned off um and they could be massive but so but they re-sprout uh when when released from fire um they just re-sprout and that's a lot of what our forests are today our force uh today many of those these forests were historically oak savannahs of some form uh that quickly converted to prairie by the 1880s uh where were prairie and fires fire um and we use fire uh for many reasons land managers use fire to maintain biodiversity because it contributes at multiple levels so fire was historically critically important it still is critically important that hasn't changed so it's it's one of the tools we really uh that's you know land managers have to rely on and it does amazing things because it releases the nutrients that are stored in the dried plant materials nitrogen phosphorus potassium calcium magnesium these are all key nutrients that plants need to grow and as it releases those it increases the uh and studies have been shown that the plants and burned areas contain more of those nutrients and in doing so they end up with higher rates of uh we have higher seedling establishment because the duff has been cleared off and there's not competition greater seedling establishment greater sea germination establishment greater flowering greater seed set greater biomass and these openings create habitat for species that need opening so the savannah is the prairie so the fire certainly does that and helps structure the ecosystems in ways that shapes their pattern on your shapes their arrangement on a landscape in other words you have a series of open wetlands typically next to uh these oak systems these oak barons oak forest um and in northern michigan it's the same thing but with poor friends and bogs next to pine barrens and oak pine barrens and pine forests so one of the so you've heard me mention oaks several times and their importance and they are they're critically important there's no doubt that they are keystone species in other words species that have a dish disproportionately greater effect on the abundance and distribution and diversity of other species so oaks are just critically important they support more caterpillar species than any other plants be than any other genus in north america the genus quercus and in ann arbor oaks support over 450 species of caterpillars at least that's what we've counted so far i have a feeling it's gonna it's it'll it that'll increase over time as we learn more so it's more than any other species in the mid-atlantic region they've documented on white oak over 550 caterpillar species that's why i'm thinking it's probably even greater than 450.

and uh and i was i just was amazed then and i continue to be amazed at the amount of forest the feel of the city is completely different than an urban area even though you know there's a lot of people living in ann arbor it's a small city but it's it's lots of people it doesn't feel like it feels it's just fantastic and all of these aspects here are what uh these forest fragments are promoting they're promoting human well-being the connections that we have you go for a hike you're more likely to say hi to someone during the hike than you are walking down a city street for sure right um so so they're critically important and they serve as reservoirs of biodiversity so so they provide habitat for plants fungi like in mosses animals soil microbes and many others and this is a picture of the nichols arboretum in 2009 now i know exactly where this picture was taken and it doesn't look anything like this today the trees are still there but the trilliums are gone and i never would believe in a million years that this is nichols arboretum if i didn't know the person who took this i've worked with that guy uh it's the whole time i've been here jeff blocky and uh you know there's no way i would like you would have to really convince me like this this is the real deal yes this believe it or not this is the uh this was the arboretum it just blows me away because it's all it's really hard to find a trillium uh an adult trollium and flower uh today in that same forest so forest fragmentation so what does this mean again breaking contiguous lots of forest forest into small parcels and again that the impacts are cumulative in other words it's one at a time but to add up to something bigger one plus one plus one plus one you know it really impacts and it's actually kind of exponential in its impacts so forest fragments uh result in increased what ecologists call edge effects so along the edges of these forests are really different environments than in the interior of the forest and if it's a really small forest block it's all edge it doesn't have any interior so there's differences in climatic differences from the edge to the interior uh increased invasive species increased edge numbers like edge species like deer increase rates of songbird nest parasitism like cow birds increased levels of measle predators and other like raccoons increased songbird nest failure due due to egg and nestling predation by mesopredators and other edge species increased wind throw and and all a lot of this results in loss species loss so just loss of a species from a woodlot dude possibly because it's the species home range is bigger than the woodlot or because a habitat specific habitat requirements let's say a salamander that requires a vernal pool or or a coarse frog that requires a vernal pool and let's say that forest has one but that portion of the vernal pool is lost well then those species can't exist there and as i'm as at this time of year as i move around my neighborhood and elsewhere and i hear these frogs calling from these little little ponds you know i just hope and pray that those those ponds those vernal pools will still be there in the future and somebody won't come build a house on it or or do or build a garage or expand or whatever it might be uh and those those vernal pools will still be able to be maintained um the other fact the other loss of species is just simply these at the edge species as illustrated up above all right mentioned up above with nest parasitism deer and raccoons and other species they just they impact they detrimentally impact species and cause uh species lost in these remaining in these remaining forest fragments so they're it's critically important to protect them and when possible to create ways or our connections between them so in um eo wilson and macarthur's uh island biogeography theory they published this in 67 and it really really kind of launched a huge area of research and the forest fragmentation was part of that all of that stuff i mentioned there's lots of studies on each of that and um it was really spurred originally by by macarthur and wilson in their island biogeography paper so so the take home message here is that these isolated forest fragments or any habitat fragment if they're not connected through to a bigger core area if they're not connected to a big area through a corridor or something they will lose species so the more isolated they are the more species they'll just simply lose species in other words something will happen to that sound that that species of salamander over time and boom it's gone if it can't replace itself the corridors allow them to be replaced so and this was looking at islands and then in other words islands next to a mainland are farther apart of really isolated islands and that's where the theory was developed it's been tested and tested both in islands and still being tested on islands i just went to a talk last week about it in the islands off of greece but it's also looked at as forest fragments so the smaller isolated preserves will lose species over time and it's not because somebody did something or well maybe but it just this is the process it was predicted and it's what we see it's what we see based on observations um some hurricane comes through and that species and you know species is lost and if it's isolated and can't colonize no one brings it there then it's lost and the reason i bring this up is this is critically important just understand there's a theory when you're managing force fragments so there's a series of conservation design principles conservation reserve design principles that's well established in the field of conservation biology and and i just want to highlight a couple of them one is the bigger preserves the bigger the better it's better to have a bigger preserve than a bunch of small preserves and if you're going to have a sponge bunch of small preserves it's better that they're closer together so that species can move between them and if possible it's even better if you can have some type of greenway some type of connectivity between these preserves that makes a huge difference in build a species ability to migrate and it and it helps then if a species does blink out in one preserve it helps a nut that same species from another preserve recolonized the other thing is reserve shape areas that long linear corridors are fine when they're connecting larger core preserves but as a preserve itself it tends to be all edge and so those edge effects tend to be more pronounced in long linear strips than in strips that are uh round in shape would be the best square but a bigger with they have some core areas and lastly but not least buffer zones in other words having some type of natural area got a forest if it's got some natural land next to it it's much better than if it's just a hard edge of a subdivision or worse you know shopping center or something where there's just no uh habitat parking lots so um at least most uh at least in ann arbor the you've got so many trees that uh that the suburb the uh you know residential where there's a high amount of trees at least better better certainly much better than um you know some big shopping mall next to next to one of these natural areas so one of the things we deal with is invasive plants and i'm sure you know many of you or all of you know lots about invasive plants and the detrimental impact on ecosystems but what you might not be quite aware of or maybe not as processed and thought long and hard about is native plants and why they're so critical well native plants co-evolve with native animal with a native animal species with fungi and other taxa and this process happened over millions of years and so they provide these species with the critical food and habitat consequently most species rely on native plants for their survival and that native plants make up the foundation of local food webs and structural structure local ecosystems and many pollinators evolve to specialize on a single plant genus or family it's bumble bee pollinating hera uh a zigzag golden rodgers a forest very common forest herb um in in our natural areas in ann arbor a forest in an arbor and golden they support over 135 caterpillar species and hundreds of pollinators in ann arbor including many specialists that that are dependent entirely on goldenrod pollen and nectar so they're they're uh this is just one goldenrod is a genus gina saladegal there's you know maybe maybe about eight to a dozen species of saladago in the ann arbor area and they uh they're just so important these native plants the invasive plants so for example purple loose stripe purple loose stripes invaded in an invasive plant uh came over in 1800s it's a wetland plant and they've documented in europe and asia about 114 different species and that's from the 1980s it's probably more now that that uh that live on the planet that use the plant and 14 of those are host specific in other words they live their whole life on that purple loose stripe we've only found three species in north america that feed on three species so consequently um that species invades wetlands it grows really fast and it just takes over wetlands luckily luckily for us there's some long-term research and they found some some um brought over in they tested insects from europe and asia and found three beetles that are host specific that don't migrate to other plants and uh so they're european species insects but they don't move on to our to our native species they specialize and spend their time on purple new strength and that has been a successful uh introduction of those species as a biological control agent but if you look at native plants you'll see there if you look closely their leaves are often full of full of holes or they have some fungus on them you look at a native a non-native plant a honeysuckle a buckthorn and they're like perfect like nobody's touching it no wonder so they've left these invasive plants they've left their predators they left their their pathogens at home they came here they're happy as all get out and they grow like crazy and expand like crazy and while the native plants are dealing with this burden this burden of 135 different species of caterpillars that are feeding on it my god how does it exist at all well it it's this is a a battle that's been going on evolutionarily from literally millions of years and and it results in the insects changing their body shape to fit the flowers and the flowers trying to attract different species or protect themselves through chemical means but it's a battle that's going to continue going on it really has created this diversity where the invasive plants are it's like they can go hog wild here and at the expense of our natives another keystone species that's impacting our our woodlands are deer so deer in high numbers really act as keystone species in that they disproportionately impact other species and they do this through competition for limited resources like acorns nuts and wildflowers they are alt and altering habitat features that determine the distribution of other other species so they really can change a forest uh by eliminating seedlings of some species opening up completely changing the understory yeah i'm sure you've all seen these browse lines reducing or eliminating our basis plants and these have cascading effects in other words it propagates through the ecosystems it propagates through the soils plants insects birds amphibians mammals and other other organisms ground nesting species uh this is i mentioned i showed you this forest this is a another picture from the same spot back in 2009 and this is that forest today you can see a few trilliums here at the base of this tree this one here there's a couple here and there's a log here with a few of them and uh other than that this is one of jacqueline corteau's uh deer exclosures that she installed it's one meter square deer exclosures so a huge difference uh just massive crazy difference in in the forest like i said i would not ever think that that was uh from the same site so deer are browsing common trillium at levels that prevent it from reproducing and uh that prevent it from being able to support pollinators and what's really fascinating is if you look at this plot you can see a couple trillions like here's one here's one here's one they're not in flower but there's a few there but what you don't see are all these little stems and jacqueline is an expert on looking at dear brothers because she did her dissertation her phd dissertation uh on this in the at the george yes george reserve in washington county and um so she's really been doing this for 20 some or more years looking at uh dear brows versus small mammal brows and so on and so forth and uh i just think it's crazy that that all of these trilliums are here but they're not here in other words they can't support pollinators they're not going to live forever you can't keep taking off the leaves of a plant and expect its roots to live forever right the roots are recharged through the fakes through the folded process of photosynthesis generating those those sugars that then feed the roots so um so uh this could it recover probably over time but over a long period of time it can recover and uh this this was amazing to me so this is jacqueline's work at the arboretum and she's looking at fencing trillium versus unfenced trillium and in three years in three years it went from two percent to forty five percent and there's this cutoff of thirty percent that's been used in the literature if it if a species flowering is browsed to a level that's less than 30 percent it really starts to decline it's not sustainable and if it's over 30 it's sustainable so that's what's been postulated in several studies so um you can see that in three years it was able to rebound which is super super encouraging that uh there's the if if we could reduce deer densities if the land managers in ann arbor i think that's you guys those who are responsible for the health of our forests whoever that is who's responsible for the health of our forest if we can reduce deer densities we may be able to recover the wildflowers and uh chris introduced me as a botanist and and i thank him for that because i i don't think of myself as a botanist i think of myself as an ecologist and uh who would love to be a good botanist and um and uh but i know that i am a good botanist because that when i'm out with others you know i typically know more plants than than most people because that that's what i've used to interpret the landscape it's how how i if i see a plant i can tell you what the soil type is often i can tell you the ph of the soil if i see particular groups of plants i know what the soil is doing and that's what i mean when i say ecology my focus is on ecology the plants are indicator species to me and so i move around in the ann arbor area and what i see and it's not just ann arbor you know i don't mean to single out an arbor it's much of southern michigan is force that are just decimated just decimated by over browsing and if i you know i did surveys for rare plants for 15 years and i know right where to find if i see a big pile brush pile blow down a tree fall over that's where i know i could find uh certain rare species because that's the only place they're left because they're browsed out everywhere and it's just amazing it's not just in our deer abundance is just rocketed it over the last couple decades so the case of the missing oak seedlings so browse levels on oak seedlings over 10 to 15 percent uh result in reproductive failure for oaks in other words the oaks can't regenerate uh when there's a certain level of brows and this is this is uh this is data collected by jacqueline corteau again and you can see that 15 line there the 10 to 15 uh line of deer brows and look at the levels of deer brows it's it's unsustainable and what does that mean well it means some songbirds like the eastern bluebird that rely on caterpillars to raise their youngs well where do they get those caterpillars oaks support the most caterpillars of any other species and high deer densities inhibit oak regeneration through repeated and concentrated browsing she was looking at oaks that the seedlings could browse over and over again over a four or five year period and eventually they just they just died they just couldn't handle that uh the case of the missing wildflowers songbirds like the great crested flycatcher depend on being able to afford six thousand to nine thousand caterpillars to raise their young as adults as adults moths and butterflies feed on the nectar of wildflowers and high deer densities drastically reduce the number of native wildflowers negatively impacting insects and birds so here you see number of zigzag golden rod i showed you goldenrod support 135 species of the the critters that this guy this great crested flycatcher and 96 percent of the other birds in north america require look at this offense versus unfriends yes we can yes we can yes we can recover our force yes we can but we can't do it without reducing dirt instances because look at look at this like there's wiped out so so if you're responsible for managing block of forest if you're a habitat then you need to take into consideration all the species i love deer don't get me wrong i love deer i mean my heart smiles when i see deer but i my heart also smiles when i see butterflies and caterpillars and birds and mammals and we need we need all these critters we just can't have one dominating the whole sh whole um the whole forest so willow flycatcher is another species look at this pollinators again fenced versus unfenced this is incredibly good news this is incredibly good news if we can reduce deer densities we can increase the number of wildflowers we can increase the number of wildflowers and in doing so we can provide habitat for the insects and food for the insects and thereby provide food for the birds who require them so the case of the missing pollinators and the case of the missing songbirds so i mentioned earlier we've had precipitous declines in insects precipitous declines in birds amphibians reptiles mammals across the globe we're in an area a time that's called the sixth greatest extinction the sixth greatest mass extinction event uh on earth so so i know that's a huge issue and you know tropical rainforest and everywhere comes into play but we can do it we can in our own backyard and the case of the missing songbirds well we have about 95 percent of north american birds rely on a diet of insects to feed their young insects feed and shelter on native herbaceous woody plants only the native plants can provide insects with the food and habitat they need to survive the invasive plants cannot do that only the native plants do that high deer densities reduce the abundance and diversity of flowering plants and thereby reduce populations of insects and bird populations decline as their insect prey becomes scarce so in concluding force fragments in an arbor uh in force fragments in an arbor forest are an invaluable resource for all of life preventing further forest fragmentation and forest loss will reap dividends for generations to come maintaining biodiversity and forest fragments requires active management we cannot be passive because if we're passive the island uh the island biogeography theory predicts and is borne out through through lots and lots of research that will lose species which is simply if we just put a fence around it we'll lose species so it requires active management invasive species control it requires uh prescribed fire it requires uh managing our deer herd and maintaining oaks is critically important because they sustain wildlife and to do so will require reducing deer densities to allow the oak seedlings to grow above the reach of the deer so reducing dirt densities also is also required to allow populations of native plants to rebound and re resume their functional role of providing critical food and habitat resources to the animal community so i want to thank you for your time and i'm happy to engage in conversation if anybody would like to well thank you mr cost um we only have about four minutes for questions um to keep on schedule so um um please um okay so chris your hand up is and then lisa dish okay i i'm curious uh if the speaker ever had a chance to uh have a conversation with tanya hilgendorff who's the ceo of the local humane society and if you haven't i wonder what we'd have to do to get the two of you together because she has mounted a huge campaign against any kind of durer management uh i do not know who she is um this first time i've heard her name i'd be happy to engage in a conversation with her it might be interesting thank you thanks chris lisa uh thank you so much for this excellent excellent presentation so um i think you do a wonderful job um explaining to us how jacqueline corteau's studies help us understand the damage that deer are doing and the and the effects that exclosure have on forest health and biodiversity you so you've given us lots of evidence that deer are clearly dense deer populations are clearly a causal factor but is it possible to quantify what counts as high levels yeah yeah you know um a lot of studies it's it's actually really a low number of deer like seven per square mile i mean it's really it's really small anything over that i'm not an expert on and i used to have those numbers better at my fingertips and i i should have considered looking that up again but my memory was seven to f less than 15 number 15 deer per square ml and so they that was in the literature it was like seven and then the dnr was like no it's got to be higher uh so it's it's really a small number and you think about what if we were all like trying to live off the land all you and me and all the rest of us on this call and you know like deer would be great right you'd love to have a uh have some deer or meat right there wouldn't be a lot of deer and there were a lot of people here the populations of north america were like excuse me really really high uh native before desoto and 95 imagine being in new york city and reducing the population by 95 percent that's that's what we saw that's what we saw when when you know these indian wars were happening there were way more people previously if you have sites for any of the research that offers those numbers um i'd be interested and numbers of the deer density yeah because yeah that's one thing that we debate and we're hopeful to have scholarly sites for that thank you so much okay thanks rita you're up next thank you um michael i just want to say that i appreciate very much your description of the carbon sequestration of large trees that was probably the best description i've heard of of what that means how how it happens um so just thanks oh good good yeah there's a great podcast on that with with the guy who's an engineer he goes through like really detailed how he figured it out it was really amazing yeah okay right are there any more questions well chris graham has his hand up it's hiding behind a flower thank you michael uh it's not just about deer though our native forest fragments are a um spectacular um component let's call them or um our good fortune is that we had some steep slopes in ann arbor we had places that were wet we we had a lot of microclimates and some of those were fairly large areas we had farmers who left their back five or ten acres on plowed and on change to farms we have a collection of native forest fragments in ann arbor that are really extensive and really quite special but they're still fragments and as michael says we really have to manage them we have been managing the best ones on our parks we've paid precious little attention to the rest of them and i hope our committee can be bringing to you some changes to the code of the city to do a better job thank you chris um any other comments questions all right well thank you again mr costa this is very enlightening it's going to be a great help to us as we you know try to make try to improve the natural features in town and try to connect uh you know wildlife corridors as well right and do proper deer management great do i have galen's i don't know if i have galen's email address he wanted me to send the talk to him i'll give it to you michael say that again i'll get it to you oh craig great thank you chris all right thank you chris and thank you all for the opportunity to speak with you and uh wish you all the best of luck uh our force depend on on your your ability to to manage them so thank you for doing what you do it's it's a pleasure to be associated with you guys and uh ann arbor it's just an incredibly beautiful city and it's it's not by accident uh it's it's by direct thoughtful people like yourselves taking time to to do what you do so thank you thank you for all your hard work all right take care bye-bye okay uh so let's move on the next item on the agenda is unfinished business so there's the resolution to begin discussion of the um housing resolution that was discussed last month um let's see kathy would you like to lead this discussion uh yes thank you um the resolution that posted to the agenda was approved by the energy commission on march 8th and i would just like to um introduce this that even though there are quite a few whereas clauses the resolution seems to have grown considerably as more people look at it the purpose of the resolution is really just to provide a policy direction and to ask elected leaders to provide some direction really to provide policy leadership to staff members who have been discussing these topics with very limited results for many years when i talked to a planning staff they have many ideas of where housing could be located on transit corridors in northeast ann arbor but even though the university of michigan staff and the ann arbor city staff meet quarterly there there hasn't been um really direction or incentive to do this and so i believe there's considerable frustration among city staff uh frustration among the students at the university of michigan um and i can give you a couple of personal examples um i'm chair of the friends of the michigan league and the custodians that are full-time that work at the michigan league some of them drive in from detroit and that is a major hardship in my opinion uh and it's it's actually a social justice issue um that that people have to drive that far and the other thing is i was in the hospital for a just a minor procedure a couple of weeks ago and so i was asking the staff and the nurses where they live and then one of them said well where do you live and i said oh i live about two miles away and she looked at me and she said you must be very rich so i thought that statement sort of summed up how many of the staff at the university of michigan feel that you'd have to be very rich to live here and so how can we change that dynamic and provide more housing and the i can repeat some of what's in the resolution but if you've looked at it it's pretty obvious that this is consistent with our a20 goals it's consistent with the university of michigan sustainability goals and so i would appreciate support for this and i understand if um commissioners who are employed at the university of michigan if they feel some hesitancy to move forward because of a conflict with their employment um that's fine um i i know that this is going to be a difficult ask but i think that it is the right direction to take and i believe that it will be possible in the long run ufm is entering a new land planning phase uh one of the regents ron weiser is the owner of mckinley property mckinley provides affordable housing in other communities and so this this is something that mckinley is already familiar with um and i i think that's about it for right now if if other people want to comment i'll try to summarize at the end oh other than i would like to remove the fifth whereas clause which men mentions 118 private companies have been launched by u of m uh we don't know how many jobs have been created and this resolution is scheduled to go to the economic development corporation and so if they want to add back some information about that that would be fine and also the fourth resolve clause uh which mentions our lobbyists we just need to strike the name of the lobbyist as we change lobbyists and it's probably better not to have a specific company reference in this document anyway okay um thank you kathy um a few things there are two resolutions actually posted here for our consideration there's the workforce housing resolution that we discussed last month but there's another one which is environmental commission endorsement um i'm not sure um i'm not sure uh how well you would like to proceed on this because one refers to the other um oh galen could you um allow me to share my screen and i can put up the uh i can put up the resolution for for people to look at while we're having a discussion okay and then the second resolution i would defer to rita mitchell to to lead any discussion on that that's really a formality and an option if we want to be that formal to have a resolution in support of the environmental commissions i mean the energy commissions version of the resolution okay um let's see um john well let's um john you have your hand up and then rita sure thanks i appreciate all the work that's gone into this i know several folks have been working hard on this um as i kind of read through where this is at right now a couple of things kind of stand out to me that i would find it difficult to support that moving this forward um but perhaps you know if we can make if it's there's a possibility to make some you know revisions to it i'll just share my ideas i find the the res the resolved clauses to be very the ones about workforce housing to be very clear so those i'm fine with those i'm struggling with the title where we say 2000 units based on what data what analysis i know it's aspirational but i i think that is problematic so if it's possible to rename it that we're going to be to match the the resolve clauses that we're going to resolve to begin discussions with u of m for net zero affordable sustainable workforce housing i think that's great just for clarification so just strike the 2 000 units it's just to to match what's in the resolve causes is the recommendation we're we're going to start a conversation with u of m we're asking you know like you have in the the resolve clauses asking the city administrator to move it forward i to me that's how i i i would approach this and then the the question i have about the resolve clauses though is the adding in of the student issue to me that's that's an important issue too but it's it's i don't really see it connected to the workforce housing and i think that maybe you know adds more to you know what we're trying to accomplish here um then you know then then would be helpful so my suggestion would be just to focus on starting the conversation with work on workforce housing between you know the university and the city um i think that would be fine i i definitely agree that the scope of this resolution has grown and it needs to be pulled back um and i wasn't thinking so much about dorms i was thinking about housing for graduate students many of them are also already employees of the university and then would qualify for this workforce housing due to their employment so uh that would be fine with me i don't know how other people feel um arita you have your hand up yes sorry um i just wanted to explain the second resolution i put it together just to give us something for process because it seemed to me that the main resolution stands on its own and this gave us an opportunity to excuse me to either support it or not so it's just there as a possible administrative process thing we don't have to use it depends on how the group wants to go okay um let's see um anne marson you have your hand up hey yes um in reading through this i'm not i'm not um terribly familiar with the issue however it wasn't clear to me what exactly it is we're asking of the university other than entering into discussions uh i'm wondering like when you say you know you know 2 000 units of housing here um and i know we're maybe perhaps uncomfortable with that precise of a number um but i i mean are we asking the university to develop this themselves or to provide land or like what's the scope of what we're asking the university it would be all of those options and in this resolution even though it has become it's grown to become quite prescriptive the purpose of the resolution was to simply start a discussion among elected leaders at the university of michigan the regions and the city council as well as county elected officials our state leaders and our federal leaders as interested um does that answer the question i mean it was really to provide policy direction because the feedback that i've had from staff is is that they meet they they know of many uh areas of land that that would be ideal for workforce housing but it's i don't want to say anything negative about the university of michigan but the university of michigan is a huge organization that is very protective of its um its traditions and it's very difficult for uh the university to change direction in any way and so just the uh the concept of providing workforce housing in itself is is significant so i think we should ask for the the least amount but it is about having a discussion i yeah i just i guess what it wasn't clear about that was that the city staff feels like they they've they see potential except that what is it the university owns that land that they feel like would be ideal for workforce housing um some of it is owned by the university and so it would require cooperation with the university there is other land along plymouth road that will probably be developed you know private land once we have a transit corridor along plymouth road that would provide that type of of housing i see i see thank you okay um any other questions at this point then i think would be proper for us to entertain friendly amendments or suggested amendments and uh but i'm i'm unclear about how to proceed with which uh with which resolution i think uh it's important that uh we've already discussed this one that i have displayed and the energy commission has already discussed it and approved it and i understand that the planning commission has discussed it but that they have not uh they have chosen not to endorse it um they have mostly because it's not um it's not part of their um not card and it's not on their plate right now and they have many other issues to deal with so my impression and let me know if i'm wrong shannon is that the planning commission will get engaged as soon as like there's some kind of uh rubric or framework that's ongoing um uh that presents something tangible that you can deal with i'm shannon hear the floor yeah and and lisa please feel free to jump into here because you were part of that discussion as well um shannon you're super hard to hear for me okay sorry is this any better let me check my audio settings is this better yes okay sorry about that um so lisa please feel free to jump into because you were part of this discussion as well um uh we we have a very ambitious set of uh a work plan in front of us that i think that we were hesitant to because we really kind of taking this apart and um and and looking at it deeply we know would take several iterations of like meetings and things like that and we're kind of moving on some other things right now that we didn't want to derail for things that we felt like we actually have um we we are certain that we have influence over like parking standards and and tc1 zoning and things like that that we absolutely have jurisdiction over and this is something that i though i personally feel like it would be awesome if this this were to to happen um there's a certain amount we just don't know you know if if they'll engage it takes two to tango right um and so i don't think it was born out of we don't support this as much as we're already trucking in a different direction where we know we have influence and we didn't want to kind of get off of that of that train to be able to take this on um so that that's more i would say my impression of kind of where the group was going with it um and there certainly has been a lot of um work i think that energy commission especially has really poured a lot into this and this has morphed significantly you know since when it first came out so i think that there's been and they've incorporated you know the feedback that we had our who whoever it was you know from the the times that we've had before so it really is i feel like great that it's getting close for sure um i i am i i hope it goes somewhere excuses what i would say but you have to try right you know i mean so just kind of ringing our hands and saying you know it's never going to work is i think it's important that that um that we try um but uh so and and it could be that there are other influences and that there's just kind of a tipping point for all kinds of things that may make this um have a more receptive time than other times you know in the past and it is just astounding how much the university owns in our city right you know along some of these very important um corridors so um yeah so i don't i don't think it's like this is a bad idea as much as for planning commission as much as that we feel like we have a slam dunk on some of the things that we have in front of us where we know we have jurisdiction that this one is uh it's it's totally supported in in the comprehensive plan like almost all the things that are in here are just you know you're referencing the a20 plan and all these other things but it is all through the comprehensive plan too in terms of the different things that you're talking about here so it's absolutely supported by many planning documents that we already have too you know so that also is important i think as well so lisa anything from you that you remember beyond that okay okay kathy you have your hand up um yes i i have mentioned this to a a few regents and maybe they were just being polite but no one has said this is a bad idea this is not workable uh there are ways to do this where there would be no uh cash flow impact for the university of michigan initially and there might actually be a positive cash flow uh over time if this is if the development is done uh by private companies on a 99 year lease of university land then we would get property taxes from the building just not from the land um i did mention it to the former president i realized he's not here right now but his comment back was sounds like a win-win-win so um i know that's not communicated down to staff at this point but if we could continue those conversations and we used to have annual dinners with the regions and because of kobit we haven't done that and hopefully we will be able to uh spring or summer and at that point this resolution then could uh be shared with them uh lunia is not here tonight but she has been working on a press release showing uh support from the graduate students and central student government i know that john mursky also is talking to um some other leaders at the university of michigan so um i know this is being televised but i i want to say this is definitely a hard sell i realize that uh but i think it will if we can get enough people moving in the same direction the university of michigan is entering their planning process uh we just have to remove as many obstacles as possible and make this sort of the easiest road to walk down um yeah that seems hopeful to me and then the other thing i think that is also important is some of their north campus housing is really starting to age out at this moment you know and so they have to make decisions about things and yeah who knows this could be coming at a good time that may have been different ten years ago or something like that too so okay yeah i agree and there is a statement in here about protecting the uh the trees i don't know what exactly what the term was um something recommended by rita you know so that yes it's that high quality natural features if you could go up just a an inch or so so we would take that into consideration another thing that um that was brought to my attention is we really need a statement about ada compliant buildings as a whereas clause and so i was going to ask the um that that goes without saying kathy that's just like you can't build anything without that anyway so you think so oh no i know single yeah there's no way i'll get me that's your job oh okay it was it was just a feeling that with all these whereas clauses maybe that should be mentioned but if it's it's bound by law you know there's you have to do it anyway it can't hurt just to have you know more people as part of it but yeah that has to be done no matter what okay and does that law require a certain percentage of units um it's more getting being able to get to places and things like that but certain percentage that's a good question i'm not sure and that it may be worth asking um you know that that group to see i don't know again i feel like what this probably should be is more about beginning the dialogue than getting too prescriptive you know about things okay um thanks okay i mean my take on this is that the whereas clauses are good and that they outline different discussion points that are worth consideration on when these discussions begin to happen and um you know and uh i think that we're in the in the uh as well the resolve clauses here um seem to be compatible with everything that's been discussed so i don't have any personal problem with this myself so rita you have your hand up i just want to point out that with respect to the natural features it fits really well with what michael coast told us today about the um the edges the forest fragments it's like those are the kind of places that i had in mind when we were um discussing this last time that to preserve those components yeah that should also be a discussion point you know um as this says this conversation involves you know with the university um and wetlands is another area that we really don't need to mention because it is a state law okay all right kathy um so let's see um please raise your hand now if you'd like to have any more preliminary preliminary discussion about this resolution um i don't see any right now so um i think we should all remind ourselves that we shouldn't let the uh the perfect be the enemy of the good and uh it's a very timely uh it's very timely for us to be presenting this resolution to council because um of course the university leadership is not in place yet the new university leadership and this is an opportunity to to get get this on the ground floor for consideration especially because this is a long time social problem here in ann arbor uh social and infrastructure problem with all the new jobs that were created by the university principally and all the people that have to commute long distances in here and and and this could only help uh both the city's some carbon neutrality goals and universities as well so i think this is something this is a long-standing problem that's been recognized by many people in the community that we need to do whatever we can to make sure that debbie dingle doesn't have to get involved eventually like she had to for the yellow and plume so um so that's what i have to say right now and i guess um what we need what we should do is um entertain motions for friendly amendments um john keller just mentioned a few so if he would just repeat those and we can get those written down do you have a floor yep so sure uh let me just pull it back up so what i'm suggesting is the title uh just say resolution to begin discussions with the university of michigan for net zero affordable sustainable workforce housing okay um uh do i have uh what do you have any other amendments to propose john well i'm kind of deferring a bit to kathy here because i don't want to okay i think the student piece is is kind of beyond scope yeah yeah okay well let's um well yes exactly so we were discussing that as well so do i have a motion to accept that for a moment uh john's already do i have a second cat kathy our sec has seconded um if you accept this amendment raise your hand or say aye hi are there any uh no's i hear and see none any abstentions i hear in cnn so those amendments are passed unanimously are there any other friendly amendments that are proposed john do you want to remove on additional student and so it's just employee residential units yes in the title okay so we we'd be striking additional student and yeah i think it should just end at sustainable workforce housing whether it's on campus or not i mean that's again i'll i don't want to take it too far afield but that that's my opinion okay i'm not capable of modifying this copy but i have displayed so galen would you keep track of that um young women you have your hand up yeah yeah i just have a question uh what's the reason for striking out the additional student part again sorry i missed it i just think for me the topic of workforce housing is is kind of big enough is is focused enough and that when we bring in student housing that's a whole other issue in terms of student enrollment and and i don't think talking about workforce housing and addressing student housing and enrollment at the university it's to me it's it's gonna pull the it's gonna dilute the conversation yeah but like i think like below in the body paragraphs you talk about how like another campus enrollment has increased a lot over the past and that just means like brought in the student conversation here though how what's the connection to workforce housing though from that no i'm just talking about like um somewhere else in body paragraph yeah it's the third one down yeah it's on the screen now i mean are we saying that increasing student enrollment is pushing workers out of because students can um are willing to pay more for off-campus housing and that would then create more competition and possibly push lower paid staff out but i'm i'm willing to to have this resolution focus on employees given that many grad students are also employees do you agree with that yep yes okay does that clarify for you young young man yeah i guess so okay i just want to say we can always come back and address that issue and i really think that having that uh student initiated resolution that we then support would make more sense you know if we just focus on workforce at this point all righty because as a student like over the past couple of months it was a bit challenging for me to find affordable housing too for next year so like looking at this i think like building affordable housing for students will be also really important that was a point oh okay i i totally agree with you and i'm willing to start working on that as soon as this one passes and again i really think it should be student initiated though yeah that seems prudent to me as well um and it and i think john had a very good idea to separate these two issues because it could just um they could just you could complicate the discussion of warfare workforce housing tremendously um so um any other comments on this shannon you have your hand up a ball back um okay i guess there's um no more comments so with those friendly amendments do i have a motion to to vote on this as uh as amended rita raised her hand um i guess that's a that's the motion do i have a second kathy seconded um all right well let's proceed to a vote um see i gotta stop sharing here so i can see everybody all right so um who uh let's see all those who agree with accepting this resolution as amended um uh please raise your hand or say i i don't see or hear any nays any abstentions i don't see any so that's it the resolution passes unanimously so thank you everybody i know it's a complicated issue but uh it's good to get this ball rolling as soon as possible um and um so what about the second resolution that was attached here entitled um environmental commission endorsement um that seems to be uh seems to be moved at this point i think it is yeah just an issue of my own thinking things through it's okay to set it aside so do you want to do you want to advance a motion to uh um to table it at least or wrong agenda i think i would just remove it from the agenda i don't feel i mean unless the group thinks that's necessary so okay i think we did what need we needed to okay we should still vote on it so do i have a second now kathy's seconding this um um all who agree to uh to eliminate consideration of this uh resolution raise your hand say hi any uh any uh nays here in cnn any abstentions here in c9 so that that passes unanimously we will not be considering this resolution at any time in the future then so the next item on the agenda is reports from committees other commissions council and chairs so let's start off with uh um with uh the natural features working through we meet tomorrow at noon uh anyone wants a zoom link that doesn't have one we can get you one among other things on the agenda are looking at some of the first sections of amendments to the code updating natural features um a key thing on in that group is a revised and updated landmark and heritage tree list much more comprehensive um we'll also be looking chapter 40 which um uh has been um kind of a muddled and old ordnance uh often amended um but a hot button at the moment because of people wanting to replace turf grass on their sidewalk buffer strips with other plantings and so what are the limits and guidelines for doing that so it's a it's a right-of-way ordinance and what can happen and what shouldn't happen there so there'll be discussion of that uh tomorrow as well twelve o'clock to two o'clock okay thank you uh thank you chris um it's about pollinators um thanks we um pollinator worker first off did review the chapter 40.

girls varsity flag football has their first ever scrimmage game on monday the 28th at the clifton stadium at 6. update on the upcoming batman tournament the date has officially been changed to saturday the 26th this event will be held at the clifton high school gymnasium at 4pm to answer this event sca will be selling tickets at the front of the gym students are two dollars and adults three dollars to enter come and join us and watch this event with your families speaking of of school spirit sca has been doing a great job lifting school spirit sca conduct conducted in the month of march school spirit month called mustang march madness each week held a different event the first event was disney day it was a day to wear anything disney related this event also supported the spring musical beauty and the beast the second event was sports jersey day where everyone wore the sports jersey the third event was st patrick's day where everyone wore green and the last event is tomorrow crayola day where each class has a college housing for them to wear students participating in these events will earn pbsis points and earning these points will help their class class reach the lead whichever class has the most points will win a prize at the end we have also been doing penny wars this also helps students earn points for their class all the money that is raised from the penny wars will be donated to saint peter havens this has been a successful way to lift school spirits thank you tiffany thank you so much we appreciate that information appreciate you being here and you don't have to stay if you don't wish please you could exit right there if you wish thanks again okay now the superintendent's report dr robertosi thank you mr president good evening commissioners members of the public our faculty and staff and those watching on our live stream it's a beautiful thursday night in march spring is upon us doesn't feel like it tonight but i'm happy to hear when tiffany talks about all the spring sports starting that's an exciting exciting thing for me that means i could get out of my harley a little bit more means i could get some spring games i could get the sun radiating off my head and it just makes everybody feel a little bit better about life mr brunsiak you know what i'm talking about had the opportunity uh last night and last wednesday night to attend our district all city concerts and i know several of our commissioners were there it was a packed house for both concerts and i sat there in awe of the talent of the students that we have in this district not to mention the great faculty and staff that work with these students to hone those talents but i you know i sit there and i listen i'm really amazed that our children have that talent and they have that opportunity and mr leschwitz said it best last night he said he meets with directors of fine and performing arts from throughout the state and they're amazed when they hear about the things that we do here in clifton with our fine and performing arts department specifically the amount of numbers and the things we're able to do with these kids so congratulations to all of our students who were selected to be in the all-city uh concerts you have made us all proud you you should be very proud of yourselves too uh keeping in line with the fine and performing arts i also had the pleasure a couple weeks ago of seeing beauty and the beast the sunday matinee with with my children and for those of you who saw it i think you would agree with me that it was you know very similar to sitting in an off-broadway show it was that good our students showcase their talent their acting their singing um the pit the orchestra played beautifully and it was really really like a show like i would have paid you know a lot of money to see and so um just so grateful to all of the uh people who volunteered their time to make it happen uh because even the ones we pay we don't pay enough for all the work they put in so uh and congratulations to all the students you should be very very proud of yourselves for amazing performances along that line next week woodrow wilson middle school will be hosting annie junior next wednesday night the 30th and the 31st both at 7 pm so if you have a chance come out and see our middle school students i'd like to publicly congratulate mr john o'reilly who is a social studies teacher at clifton high school and he was just recently selected yesterday as the educator of the year in clifton by the clifton education association a great honor and an honor that to put it in perspective we have 1400 certificated staff now not all of those people are classroom teachers but you don't have to be a classroom teacher to be the educator of the year so out of 1400 or so certificated staff members mr o'reilly was selected as the educator of the year truly great honor and and i know that it's well earned i know that it's warranted because the first time i ever heard mr o'reilly's name it came out of students mouths i was meeting with some students and we're talking about some of the great things at clifton high school and they started talking about their favorite teachers and the best teachers and one thing i think all the adults here in the room know the kids will tell you the truth the kids know who the best teachers are and they talked about how mr o'reilly makes history fun how he um how he loves them and cares about them that's all i needed to hear i'm a huge fan of mr o'reilly congratulations and i'll share one story that mr honda shared yesterday when we there was a little surprise ceremony and he was brought down he thought he was coming to a faculty meeting he was brought down and his wife and his mom were there and uh his whole social studies department was there and they surprised them and mr honda told this story um back in october or november i was at one of our football games and i ran into a parent who wanted to talk to me and introduced me her heart to his daughter who was in eighth grade and said you know i really want my daughter to go to clifton high school my daughter's thinking about going to pcti and you know here i am i'm trying to convince one parent at a time so i'm investing time with this parent saying no you don't want to do that and i'm explaining all the reasons why clifton high school will have so much many more opportunities for your child and so i said you know what we're going to do in the spring i want your daughter to come up to clifton high school and spend a day and i guarantee you at the end of that day she's going to tell you she wants to go to clifton high school and mr hamdu is telling this story yesterday and he says so we did this two days ago at the end of the day the young lady sees mr honda and she says i'm coming to clifton high school and i hope mr o'reilly is my teacher so mr o'reilly may have and it wasn't single-handedly it was the great experience she had but mr o'reilly left an impact on this students this will impact her life forever in in one lesson in one day whatever he did she said i'm coming to clifton high school and i hope i have mr o'reilly as my teacher so which leads me to even the bigger point that's a program that we're going to expand we're going to call it a [Music] day in the life of clifton high school or some sort of mentoring program where we're going to give our 8th graders an opportunity to spend a day at clifton high school and we think that those students who you know listen you student wants to go to pcti because they're going into a vocational program they want to be a welder they want to be a carpenter god bless them that's great we need those people we need plumbers we need carpenters we need people who are skilled with their hands i have no problem with that that's what vocational schools are for god bless go with my blessing but those students who are going for other reasons maybe they think the academics are better maybe they think the campus is prettier maybe they think clifton high school is too big i want to give them an opportunity to spend a day at clifton high school just give us a chance to show you that this is where you want to go so we'll be planning that we'll be coordinating that and that is something i will bring to this board when we have fully fleshed out all the details and work that out but i think that's going to be a really really good thing for the future a brief referendum update and please understand i i give these updates for the commissioners who are not in every facilities meeting um and don't know everything that's going on because you don't see construction trucks at every school but there's a lot that's going on behind the scenes so the first shovel in the ground is coming real soon but since the appointment of our construction manager in december we've been having weekly meetings where we discuss all the plans we visit the schools and you know our schools are old many of our schools are old and there's a lot of work that has to be done prior to the referendum work especially specifically with asbestos removal the prep ranges from scoping asbestos removal logistical coordination of where the construction companies are going to place their trailers how many trailers they're going to place which projects are going to be done in what order all these logistical things are being coordinated now because once it starts we don't want anything to happen that's going to compromise the health and safety of our students and staff so all those things are being planned out now since our last board meeting we've continued to meet with our team bid one project one is going out in days and that's the high school the high school in and of itself is one bid project the grouping of package two is complete and package three will be complete in the next coming days every classroom in the district is getting a new unit ventilator are those things that are in the corner that blow out air that's my technical expertise i was a history teacher i used to sit on the unit ventilator to get a little breeze when i was sweating i saw the attorney got a little nervous there it's okay miss gutierrez the installation of those unit ventilators uh is anticipated to commence um may of 2023 and that all the equipment will be operational by october 1st 2023.

49 and then 21 staff members were um released due to budget cuts the district still hasn't recovered from that um and the goal was to to keep us in line with districts that are more more in line with districts similar to us in the state when we look at staff member to student ratios administrator to staff ratios and things like that we are below the average meaning we have less administrators per teacher we have less teachers per student and the big reason for that is because this district was unfairly underfunded for decades and it it wasn't this board of education it wasn't any past board of education that made that happen it was the state of new jersey directly dealing with state aid but thankfully we are finally getting the state aid that we have deserved for many years and although we are not expecting to be fully funded until next year we did get an additional 12 million dollars in state aid this year which was music to my ears until our business administrator showed me where that money had to go and so anyway we presented a budget to the finance committee that called for a tax increase and the finance committee with all due respect said to the administration we really don't want to do that we don't want to raise taxes um no matter how little it will cost we don't think it's a good time to be raising taxes um we don't disagree that you need these positions and these members can speak for themselves but it's just not the time to raise taxes so the the committee charged the administration with presenting a zero percent budget excuse me and i want to be clear i respect the board of education's role in the budget process board of education does three major things three very very important things one they hire a superintendent you did well you wanna make sure you're still paying attention two you hold the purse strings now you tell me zero percent i present zero percent and three you make policy and policy dictates everything else we do so we went back we balanced the budget and the resolution that's on the agenda tonight is a zero percent tax levy increase and what that means without getting into the details that you'll get we'll get into in the public presentation on may 5th is that it's a status quo budget with the exception of we are able to have the ability to fund six new positions for the district which we are going to put towards security we're going to hire six new security positions for our secondary schools next year the district is set to become fully funded and you know what upsets me is that you know i thought when we saw the numbers we're getting 12 million this year i'm like oh don't we're good we're going to be able to get these positions that we should have always had without raising taxes but i asked mr mr uchi because i've had people say to me well danny how come you can't do these things you're getting 12 million dollars so i asked mr usee to provide to to prepare a quick one-slide uh demonstration of where that extra 12 million dollars is going because i think the board really needs to see this mike sure dr armpit perfect yeah it's pretty small but um yeah so as dr robertosi said this is extremely brief and it's it is simplified but it's it's that way so it could be easily you know comprehended and uh just to put it out there without going into the full budget when we go into that on the public hearing on may 5th so we had a state aid increase of 12 million 756 000 so you ask like where on the top like off the top going from the 2122 budget to the 2223 budget where does that go if no other revenues are increased in the district which the main revenues obviously of our district are is the state aid and tax levy so right off the top we have to budget what the state tells us to budget when it comes to the projected enrollment of charter school um so that number that two and a half million is an increase from current year until next year and that's coupled with their projected enrollment and also the increase in state aid does go has a piece in the charter school realm as well because they are public schools um the pcti votec budget actually did have a small decrease very minor decrease ood means out of district out of district private schools which is all special education tuition-based private schools that had a large increase um 1.6 million and that and they are state-certified rates as well it's not it's not something the district negotiates with a a private school they're state certified through the child's iep and they they they tell us they have to go to that school which because it's the best learning environment and then the tuition is state certified next salary increases for 22.23 so this year a lot of our collective bargaining contracts were up and we settled all our contracts so to give just the raises from this year going to next year it's about four million dollars for the staff next now this is still being negotiated but at current time from now until we vote on the final budget we're projecting a health benefit increase which is our medical our health i'm sorry our medical our dental our prescription um and any other um things that come along with that increase of about four million dollars so where you see we got 12 million dollars if no other revenue sources increased our bottom line appropriation increase is about is over 12 million dollars so we're showing about 600 000 of um money we could budget elsewhere and we decided as administration to try to build that security team we're looking for does that do a pretty good idea that's exactly what uh thank you uh miss ducey i just wanted the board and the public to see that because i don't want people think well you know you got 12 million dollars and you're you're you're asking for more so i just wanted people to to understand that now and and i want to be clear we're not in the predicate predicament we're in because of anything this board has done or anything a previous board has done we are in this predicament because our district was underfunded in the state formula by the state of new jersey for many many years and we're finally getting to where we should have been for decades of funding decades of funding and it's just a shame because it's just what would have been had we been funded fully all those years and this board has been very fiscally conservative and the public should know that my two years as a superintendent this board introduced two zero percent budgets the year before i came was a point eight percent increase so this board is very conscientious of the taxpayers we understand new jersey has the highest property tax rates in the country and we understand that most of that goes to your local schools so i just wanted to make sure that the discussion that was had in um committee also got out to the board there will probably be minutes from that meeting that will be read and then perhaps if there's any questions we should do that before the vote on the preliminary budget and that concludes my report mr president thank you thank you dr rubitozzi uh just have a few announcements again there's many things that are coming up in the district um so um i'm asking everyone to please uh look on our internet on our web page uh to the peach jar and you'll see uh flyers that have been submitted from just about every school that are having some type of fundraiser going on um i did like i did want to make note of a scholarship that's available seniors planning to attend college and major in education the grants are available online on the clifton schools district website under community and the scholarship is in the name of a past board member who i had the opportunity to work with the marie haycomb scholarship for future educators it was established in 2009 by the clifton education foundation and the family of marielle haycom in her memory marie hakem dedicated her entire life to the field of education a scholarship in the amount of one thousand dollars will be applied towards tuition awarded to a graduating senior from clifton high school this scholarship is supported by the income family and anyone else interested in making a donation towards the scholarship would be appreciated the scholarship is administered by the foundation so clifton seniors the scholarship is out there and available to you so please take advantage of it if you're going to college and majoring in education so again please check our website uh for many many events going on from athletics to the arts um tricky trays and uh bless you and many other things happening so please go out and support our schools many of them are having fundraisers so we ask that you all if you can to take one of the uh the fundraisers that's available and see if you could support that school we appreciate that very much thank you okay we have first reading of policy uh see we have by excuse me policy trying to read it here policy i don't see a number on this anyone know the number of this one two that can't be our number yeah two four you know it's just two four one five oh five mr smith you want me to read him out yeah we don't have to read the the whole thing but i just want the if you read the policy numbers and yeah uh policy 2415.05 student surveys analysis evaluations examinations one 24314 uh prevention and treatment of sports related concussions two six two two student assessment three two three three political activities five four six zero high school graduation five five four one anti-hazing joint of use of facilities eight four six five bias crimes and bias related acts 9560 administration of school surveys and zero one six seven public participation in board meetings okay next we have uh bylaw zero one uh six seven mr canova you wanna do that one too oh you did simply six seven okay because one was a one was listed as a bylaw that's why i wanted to separate them okay we have no presentations uh to report and we'll go to is there a discussion of uh policies in the first reading right not our first reading usually not okay all right uh board committee reports uh we'll start with uh policy mr abhijava policy committee meeting began at 2 40 p.m excuse me the attendees were president jim smith myself dr lucy danny administrators president dr danny roberts-ozzy and mr ross also the board attorney gutierrez was in attendance the committee recommends adoption of the following policies as per stress as may number 12415.05 student surveys analysis evaluations examinations testing or treatment which is mandated but it was revised number two 243.14 prevention and treatment of sports related concussions and head injuries mandated also was revised number three 2622 student assessment also mandated but revised uh number four three two three three political activities revised eight four six five biased crimes and bias related acts also mandated and revised 9560 administration of schools surveys mandated as well revised the committee recommends adoption the following and mandated policies with the stated changes 5460 high school graduation the credits for graduation in section 8.1 a pages 1 and 2 have been inserted in the policy the census attendance requirements as indicated in policy regulation 5200 has been inserted in section 8.1 point d on page five the optional section on the state seal of by literacy in section d on pages 13 to 15 shall be included in the policy section d point 3 on page 14 shall be amended to indicate that the board of education shall pay the cost of related assessments and transcript signias number two five five four one anti-anti-hazing excuse me is mandated and new the first paragraph shall be amended to indicate that the policy applies to the high school middle schools and elementary schools number three 7540 joint use of facilities it was revised the policy will further be amended to indicate that it applies to the local governing body and the body of county commissioners to the county the committee discussed bylaw zero 167 public participation and board meeting and makes the following recommendations change the word periods to period in paragraph four insert the following language at the end of the second sentence of paragraph four and providing the person's face is visible during their address to the board the second to last sentence of paragraph four shall be changed to read indivisible individuals shall limit the remarks to five minutes on any general matter pertinent to the district number four the words or district security shall be inserted in the rules section of the policy at four point d after law enforcement officers the committee then discussed policy 8860 in regards to memorials there are no recommendations to the board at this time a possible bylaw regarding board member communication with the superintendent of schools and the board secretary slash business administrator was discussed with no recommendation to the board at this time the meeting was adjourned at 4 10 pm but respectfully submitted by mr ross any questions i have one yes misspelled john um for the bylaws zero one six seven we had a lengthy um discussion over multiple meetings that we were going to allow phone call-ins which we do currently allow phone call-ins um with this policy changing too and providing the person's faces visible during their address we're no longer going to be allowing phone call-ins so i'm not sure if the whole board is aware because we did have many rounds of discussion on this day is that we were going to allow phone call in mr president yes if i remember the pilot that that conversation it was uh to the fact that we have to allow people don't we there's some kind of fcc rule or federal rule we had a really long conversation that day about this can um you have to allow people to call in yes we can also require that they have it doesn't have to be just a call and we can require that if it's on remote that there'll be a face so what's the difference between a remote uh being on the computer and a phone call because the phone call you can't put your face on it mr president if i may well i'm speaking not if you're not yes if it's a regular phone call right smartphone you can access um right zoom or whatever some people don't know how to use that technology to do that as well but we um i thought there was a ruling about that i'm not aware of a ruling that requires that it has to be a phone that a phone call has to be permitted so this is a this is legally allowed to tell people they have to show their face so how do you know if they have a smartphone versus a flip phone i don't well that's what i'm saying mr president if i may to answer his password's question yes so i think if i remember correctly the discussion was that anybody can utilize a phone call to call in use their five minutes under a unknown name alias or anything else that they can say but yet come back in here and use another five minutes to talk further if we're gonna say that five minutes should be used in total for an individual or for a resident or for whomever would like to speak at the podium the only way to hold accountability for anybody would be to show their face so this way we know who they are and not fall under a alias name and then come in here and again continue speaking because that would not be fair for the rest of the citizens and the residents that um either are calling in via a zoom with their photo or their video and then coming to the dais so it just holds in accountability for everybody but i mean nobody's prohibiting anybody from not calling in um and again we don't know if there's a flip phone or a smartphone but unfortunately these are the times that we have to come through because there's going to be a problem where and we've gone through in the past where somebody calls in under an unknown alias and did not want to give the information if somebody's got to sign their name and put their address in the book at the dais they should do likewise and there should be a mandate that they do the same as well anyone else madam through you mr president to the attorney i thought that they would they don't have to give their name or their city what is the ruling on that because we we talked about this in to nauseum they do have the person that's speaking doesn't have to give their name right they don't have to give their address okay it's not required and remote access is not required either as long as there is no no longer a public health emergency right but we're granting that because of people with disabilities so what if we have an elderly senior that has a flip phone and that's the only access they have so that's why we we allowed that because we wanted to give access to all you know it's uh accountability is a very big word and it's a harsh word to use because when you have people that don't have access to things how do you how do you know how are you going to differentiate between a flip phone and a small phone i want to know who won i think that this is a question for the board i'm not opposed to no i don't have just the voice that's something that the board wanted to that was the discussion i had um one other question um when we discussed this originally we said that if there was a problem then we would consider removing the uh phone portion which we have not had a problem we barely even have had caller in so like in my view i don't feel like at this point it's worth limiting it because we haven't had an issue the issue that uh mr abuja was talking about was two years ago and it was you know one caller we're very lucky that we haven't had herds of people in our room attacking us but other boards had so i really feel that our public is much more respectful of our process and we don't really need to be limiting them since they've all been behaving themselves mr president yes mr genova so since they have to give their name whether it be on a phone call on a zoom or in person wouldn't that be the way that you tie back somebody to to not have an extra five minutes because um you know in sighting with with with miss vassar and miss belgran i i personally know seniors that do not have computers and do not have smart smart uh devices and i know they have called into a city council meeting so given that why would we restrict it when nothing's ever happened that's been bad we haven't seen anything as as miss beltran said we said that this was going to be a pilot we're going to take a look at it and then reevaluate later i haven't seen anybody really even call in let alone say anything bad on a call so i'm not sure why we're visiting this policy now and making a modification when there's in my eyes no need to if anything we're just limiting now the amount of people that are allowed to they're going to be able to speak if if they choose to someone wants to call in about you know dr robert tosie speaking about how there's a possible zero percent tax increase and if they say they want more more positions and something i don't know but they should have the ability to say that and if they're not here you know we go back back again to what we said originally their parents at home they may have their student on the device at home they're watching the meeting but that student's doing classwork and they would want to call we have it listed on our website from it literally says the number to call so i'm not sure why we're limiting anything at this point okay we'll move on to uh technology uh mr canova so i would i would actually this time make a motion to pull this this line in the revision i'll second that motion so this is first reading right so what what are you asking to change it well first of all the policy we're in the minutes now so we'd have to go back to the policy and we can we can get it changed then are you requesting that it go back to policy are you just requesting that it be changed i mean the rest of the the policy i'm fine with i just want to pull the uh the item number three okay so item number three can go back to policy and review it okay so three back to policy please so that's policy 0167 just so that we're great to be a vote on that no first reading right okay technology excuse me mr president um i didn't get i i think there's something going on because i'm not getting agendas is there a problem with the genders being because we're supposed to get them before meetings start uh or meetings meet there haven't been many meetings that's the problem but these there was three of these me there was three committee reports on this agenda and i didn't get any i think i got one for technology i think that was it so uh we we did i got crucified for one missing one so i'm going to ask that if we're going to comply that compliance be level and fair across the board and that it not be selective to certain committees have to do it and certain committees don't it should be fair across the board thank you okay technology mr kanova technology committee minutes march 8th uh myself mr daley mr paris mr dr robert tosi mr gengaro and mr mountain for president 505-541 first item new boardroom commissioners and admin commented in the new board meeting room that looks great and the scene the screens and other technology work well commissioners commented the quality of the video stream to youtube is perfect but channel 77 and 40 is not as good optimum is running new fiber lines for the board of ed building uplink which should rectify this issue for future meetings it was noted that the auditors presenting via zoom had difficulty hearing the commissioners an additional microphone will be set up for future meetings two device pilot several different commercial books were recently tested to compare brands and sizes and other features touchscreen capability as was discussed and if future budgets allow all new staff and student chromebooks will include this capacity moving forward larger screen models will be available as needed but the 11 inch devices will continue to be standard issue as keyboard size is the same for each model item three board docs all board members all board event suggestion suggestions have been forwarded to board docs development team and they thanked us for the input the district is still exploring the possibility of an additional feedback meeting between board docs and board of ed commissioners item four testing updates access testing for ell students is currently in full swing utilizing student chromebooks start strong assessments were administered this past past fall also on student chromebooks with no major issues this was the first state test without the use of proctor cash and all systems performed well new jersey gpa testing will begin on march 14th and jsla will be conducted in late april for high school students and in may for k through 8 students referendum security projects mr mountain provide an update on security projects phase one of the camera upgrade is moving nicely in walkthroughs our planning are underway for phase two equipment and cabling for the clock strobes and pa system will be up upgrades will be ordered soon as well when in wi-fi upgrades mr mountain noted that several network projects are ongoing behind the scenes when equipment network storage and wi-fi equipment are being upgraded continuously to maintain a modern infrastructure while minimizing downtime for staff and students mr mountain also provided a brief overview for the federal e-rate program and explained reimbursement eligibility for certain services and equipment purchases any questions nope thank you next we have finance vice president daily thank you mr president um finance committee met on march 15 uh president uh where mr aberdravo mr canover miss beltran and myself uh on the administration dr robert tosi mr guerrero mr yusi mr shahida um and mr doctor uh meetings started at 4 15 and and ended at 6 25 items discussed was the 20 20 22 23 budget items of under that category was the charter school increases there was a significant increase of state regulated charter schools tuition and basically that went to one group of charter schools that didn't go to all the charter schools that went to the stake arts and sciences and their related schools second item was a pcti budget there was a slight decrease in the tuition for pcti may also add um we we got 12 billion and they got an increase of what 30 i believe it was 30 million dollars just saying private school budgets a special ed out of district placements uh there was this a significant increase in the tuition for most of the district's special education and private school placements and this is uh obviously dictated by the state we don't control that they regulate those prices capital reserve the committee discussed how much money was in the capital reserve and the administration discussed possible uses for this money for our schools next time charter schools tuition referenced above in the state uh regulated uh is a director from the state and that is based on a per pupil cost and the estimated enrollment if the projections are not met by the charter school a surplus in that account a line can be as seen in next year's budget in other words we have to budget for it if it's if we don't use that money that gets put boosted over and helps us it's actually in in a way a surplus or a credit uh to our final year budget private school tuition for special education schools is state certified as i just noted health insurance committee discussed the increase in medical premiums a very fair renewal increase was given the business office though through the broker negotiated with aetna and reduced the initial proposed increase the broker will continue to work on health benefits in increases until the final budget in may just so the public knows how that works uh they're they the insurance company gives us a projected premium uh our broker negotiates that um most mostly in a down which never negotiates up for us negotiates it down it's really based on claims from the prior year and those claims they have a margin uh of i believe it's a little about 85 is that it mike for for what we projected for next yeah in other words if the claims are million dollars another 13 percent of stuff was added on by the insurance company as a cushion so you know they're not they don't budget zero based on claims right real quick so they look at what our claims were so what aetna had to pay out on our behalf so what we pay aetna every month isn't what they are making because they have to pay claims out so our ratio was pretty good this year i think it was 86 which means 86 cents on every dollar is being paid to a doctor or a hospital which is pretty good but we do we had a high claimance and other things but not to get into the week so how this may change before we get the final budget is that uh the claims are looked at for another about month month and a half and if they've been reduced we can get a further increase in that final number if anybody has any questions i'll be happy to answer them mr daily just for the public i'm sorry mr president through youtube mr daley uh just for the public knows what has been attributed to the slight in the decrease in tuition from bcdi uh it could be the large amount of uh state aid it's it's a little ironic i'll expound on that a little bit it's a little ironic that we have to pay that tuition and yet we get state aid and technically a portion of our state aid goes into the tuition we pay there so they get not only their state aid but they get a piece of our state aid uh when we send uh the tuition bill goes up there is it fair also to say that there's a contribution from the residency committee finding people who don't live in the city but attend the school under a different address and they found that yeah that that would work when we no longer have to pay the tuition for that student to go to pcti so that's x off the account and we get that credit back thank you unfortunately unlike the charter schools we have to wait another year the way that the state has this cycle to get our credit back it's not the next year it's the following year why don't ask me but that's what happens thank you i just wanted the public to understand that thank you mr president um through you to mr daley i think maybe that the next delegates assembly the clifton board of education can write a resolution stating our concerns about the funding to charter schools and that bring up the conversation because the legislative committee for the state of new jersey is starting to get on board with this and there's other districts that are having the same issue so i think that may be a way to get the attention of some people if you bring it to the d.a and then school boards can use that to uh to advocate for us as well because they are not up to the same standards as us they don't have to you know um we are we are held to a higher standard they can do whatever they want they don't have to have people that are certified teaching their children and uh if we're gonna fund it they should be held accountable the same as a district is so that was we one thing that i would like to see in a resolution i would love to sit with you and maybe go over this all right mr president through you uh as everybody knows has been known meanwhile uh i'm in total agreement with that and uh i've done lots of research in the past so i'd be happy to partner with you and anybody else on the board to draft a loose resolution and i think it's being discussed at the at the county level on the same issue the other districts in the in the county uh are also having discussions about this issue and mr president through youtube mr daley and miss basford i agree with ms passport on that excuse me um and i believe also we discussed it at our last last legislative committee meeting with our legislators as well uh in depth as well as our county commissioners of all of our concerns um with funding from the county level um as well as the state level yes mr president um they'll cut off a resolution down to the state is april six so we'll have to probably we won't have enough time to draft something uh for this da we'll have to wait to the 401 uh that gives us some time to actually get it together it you know and then you have to present it to the sub because i'm on the sub resolution committee it comes to us on the six and we vote whether we move it forward or it gets dropped well let's let's um to you again mr president i i think we could get some kind of a draft going in within the next 30 days and then we can collectively partner with whoever else we have to do to uh tighten it up okay so just uh do you understand that i said on the sub-resolution committee if clifton does submit a resolution i have to step off that discussion and when they're finished with it i can get back on i have to abstain because i'm impartial but also to the superintendent and uh president smith i also recommend uh legislative chair that we do give our legislators a heads up that we're doing this so they don't feel like they're blindsided since we have in our corner yeah absolutely and mr president three to mr daily and actually i think just for the public for the knowledge um a two percent increase of tax is a little over two million dollars and the charter schools as you saw the projected is two million dollars so had this been a flat year that we didn't get additional aid we literally would have had to go out to the taxpayers to fund a charter school so i want everybody to realize that what that really means mr smith yes um is this an appropriate time to talk about the preliminary budget at all or wait before we yeah no no just uh just under the minutes of finance you have any questions of that okay seeing none we'll move on to 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 and or directly related to the operation of the clifton public school 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 members 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 it be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or afflicted in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments uh residents that are calling in uh please you state your name and municipality and subject matter as well and we'll start with um mr mountain anyone i thought we know we usually do a call-in first yep there are two sorry mr mountain i gave you the wrong that's okay give me the wrong information uh nurse robin oh i gotta switch it if you can hear us it's your turn to speak you have five minutes nurse robin are you there and the other caller is listed as cell city's iphone all right why don't we move to cell city so mr mr president for next time can i just make it a suggestion that we do in person first because we're on a delay anyway so they may not even know at home until the call and whatnot it's a minor delay it says connecting to audio what that means is that they are seeing a screen right now that says how would you like to join with your computer or phone and they're not responding leave this open or i'm sorry yeah we'll in the meantime we'll go to in person and if they come into the chair we'll uh we'll recognize him afterwards all right anyone here wishing to address the board i'm sorry is there a way to mute the people who are there this way they don't talk while in person thanks so is this muted in the in the room mark brunsiak holly street clifton good evening everyone i know we're approaching the fourth marking period spring is here i also know that the curriculum is being finalized for the next school year with this being said in 2020 while millions of children's lives were destroyed by remote learning the groomers at the new jersey department of education updated their learning standards and they need to be implemented with the 2022 2023 school year so among these standards which i'm about to describe exactly from the department of education on their website that this is supposed to be taught to our children by the end of fifth grade that's right our children by the end of fifth grade in comprehensive health and physical education 2.1 personal and mental health by the end of eight grade five among them explain the human sexual development and role of hormones example romantic and sexual feelings masturbation mood swings and timing of pubertal onset this is not at woodrow wilson not at christopher columbus now i know that none of you work for the state department of education although i hope that someone on this board at least send an email about these new standards my questions to you does anyone on this board think it's okay for a grown man to discuss these learning standards that i just described with the 9 10 or 11 year old girl does anyone in the cea i believe i saw someone from the cea tonight or any other members of the njea think it's okay to discuss these learning standards with girls 11 years old or younger in any other setting this person would have to register as a sex offender in fact the u.s department of justice states that sexual grooming occurs in numerous settings among them in institutional settings such as schools moreover that behaviors of these groomers include discussing sexually explicit information under the guise of education were parents ever notified about these changes to the learning standards and if not why not what recourse do parents have to remove these despicable standards and how does anyone involved in these standards still have a job with the department of education and hasn't yet been investigated by the department of justice based on what they describe as as groomers thank you for your time and god bless america [Music] hi good evening gary analic uh i'm on where am i rolling hills road clifton new jersey i'm gonna tell you something now you cannot be it unless you see it let me say it again to you you cannot be it unless you see it now we have something going on at clifton high school now that has not happened there since 2006 we have a championship football team always a championship soccer team championship at um uh what do you call academic uh debate team champion always the arts or championships we have superiority going on at clifton high school that is beyond measure i propose to you tonight in that we get these kids these these champion kids down to the elementary schools so the elementary school kids can see it and be it i think that the kids who are on the football team can go before a school at an assembly and say this is what i did and this is how i did it and a seven and eight eight-year-old kid can see that i could be like this kid that these kids you know we give him an award and we say thank you very much they now need to go to be an example because these kids and i just mentioned a few i mean we have a couple of really championship runners at the high school right now and they are championship runners state championship runners and they're also keeping up their academic standards and they need our kids cannot learn this when they enter high school they need to learn this in the fourth in the fifth and the sixth grade our middle school kids need to know the quality of kids that are at clifton high school before they go to clifton high school what i'm saying is you cannot be it unless you see it and i propose that we show it to these kids that we take these kids out of the high school because these are the best that clifton has and show it to these kids you know in a day of uh you know everything's on online let these kids be the real example of what life is about in academia or whatever i'm going to move on to say our sophomores in high school at that early age we need to reach out to kids who are in college who graduated from clifton high school and talk to these kids about what it's like to apply to and go to college because when they enter their junior year it's too late they're making decisions already so they need to know not from a person who is pushing their own personal college but from the kids who they know from the high school and let's get these kids and i'm sure all these kids would not mind talking let these kids let these sophomore kids know what it's like to apply and go to college bring back kids who have entered the military and let them talk to them about the advantages and disadvantages of going to going into the military and so on and so forth i know we have the academic dinner every year and it's a wonderful dinner and it has changed many people's career minds but i'm telling you that's too late that has to start the the the type of thinking to become an academic or anything in life has to start as you know i'm preaching to the choir has to start early so all i'm saying tonight is i'm coming up to you and saying you cannot be it unless you see it and let's get these kids down there and show our kids the potential they have how they have to be so dedicated to do that let them let them give them examples of the dedication they had and maybe it'll impress these kids to move on to greater things in life because these kids need to see it in order to be it thank you good evening tom whittles president clifton against substance abuse i missed the last meeting but i do want to start by saying i'm happy the board is going to fund project graduation something that i've advocated for for many years 100k i think is a little excessive but that's a conversation for a different day uh what concerns me about all of this now is that there are social media posts floating around asking people to donate to project graduation cash money drop off cash and envelopes to the high school office that's a slippery slope folks think about what happened last year when mr abu drabble stole bracelets now we're going to start delivering cash money to the high school that's a slippery slope number one it puts you know how do you audit it how do you track it and it will certainly hurt people donating because people don't want to donate cash they want to write checks they want to have a record of what they donated asking people through social media to donate cash it's just silly it's not trackable certainly not audible how do you order it how do you know who delivered what how do you know who got the envelopes how do you know who took the envelopes where'd the envelopes go something for you folks are trying to figure out uh at the last meeting i i did well i did watch it i did watch it on the on the live feed on the zoom and uh mr robert dravo spent a lot of time talking about project graduation i guess he's trying to make himself look good play the victim but i just want everybody on this board to know that on march 1st i received a letter from the state department of ethics mr aberdrabbo's case the ethics board has found probable cause and has now moved this case to the attorney general's office they've assigned it and it is going to go before the office of administrative law for a hearing so what mr abu drabba did last year has now been accepted by the board of ethics down in trenton i had the letter and it's namely the alleged violation of njsa 18a colon 12-24 prohibited acts on behalf of the commission please open a file on this contested case and assign an administrative law judge for a hearing everybody that was involved that night at project graduation will be subpoenaed we will have a hearing and we will get to the bottom of whether mr abu drabble should continue to serve on this board or not thank you good evening i hope everybody's doing well my name is lori lallam and i'm the president of the cea there's a couple of things that i want to bring up one the importance of hiring more custodians now i believe they get 15 for a sub rate when you can go to costco and get 30 plus benefits so the people my reps in the district have brought this to me and they said that they're concerned about the cleanliness of the building while they understand that the custodian department is short staffed and we're not here to throw anybody under the bus we're looking out for the kids and for the staff but our buildings are not cleaned we need more custodians the custodians here are working very hard but the schools they're not filling the sanitizer they're not cleaning the boards sweeping the floors the only thing that gets done is our garbage is emptied and that's about it the faculty bathroom is very disgusting the floor is dirty the sink is dirty the supplies are only restocked when we call the office and request it we ran out of toilet paper last friday and during period one on monday there was still no toilet paper the only faculty bathroom aside from the basement is the one on the second floor and there's a lot of teachers at the ccms and they're still using one bathroom besides bathrooms i feel like the buildings as a whole is dirty the walls are dirty the new rubber stair grips are dirty and already are breaking down it just looks bad i feel that the morale is low in the district because the lack of cleanliness and to no fault of the custodians and i want that to be understood but they need more people there is some something that is kind of degrading about being a professional and having to use a dirty bathroom i am sure there are no corporate executive offices with filthy bathrooms for them so that's one thing i really want the board to understand the importance of hiring more people now the other thing has to do with the taxes i contacted the educational law center so whether districts like it or not tax increases are good for the students said david sierra executive director of the educational law center any new money collected through tax hikes will help prevent cuts to staff or academic programs that would loom after reduction in state aid you've got to do something to make sure the resources in the schools don't get cut sierra also cautioned the districts aren't necessarily to blame for not taxing enough in 2009 the state set targets for how much every district should be raising in local tax revenue leaving some districts with a huge gap between their goal and their actual tax revenue is an issue when lawmakers later implement two percent limit on school taxes it became impossible for some districts to reach their target local revenue by not budgeting to the cap now the board of ed is creating a situation where in the near future the district is going to have to ask the taxpayers of clifton to dramatically increase taxes in order to be able to fund schools this is not a position that the people of clifton will like being placed into but the board of end members need to understand how important it is right now in the district there are 30 positions that are still aren't filled there are 12 resignations there are seven retirees there are lack of staff members here in the district and we really need your support and we're looking for it so think about raising the tax don't keep it at zero percent because who knows what's going to happen down the future and down the road thank you very much anyone else wish to address the board all right we'll go back to uh they've both left oh they both left okay motion to close we got a motion to close am i mr abu dravo okay we'll go to um unfinished business any unfinished business does she want me to wait okay so we'll go to uh education administration we have ea one through ea seven i'm so moved so boom might be star second second by mr awad discussion seeing none roll call mr abedrabo yes mr awad yes miss pastor miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes i'm staying on b1 vice president daley yes president smith yes moshe's carry all right next we have um personnel we have uh p1 through p24 so moved so will my mr abu drabo second second by mr awad do you want me to wait yeah uh discussion we're pulling one from here right i'm not sure um i think it was number two one chief miss passport you want it pulled on anything or you oh no just a second i think when miss bassford and i spoke i think as long as we can have the discussion and executive session later uh on that topic under negotiations that she would that she was okay with it but she's here she can speak first i can speak for myself um i'm not opposed to the positions um this is ties into the budget actually um that um i talked to you dr obatozzi about maintaining our talent and uh i'm seeing and hearing from people in the community that we're losing some of our talent because we're not being fair so that's what i wanted to talk about the rest of the board and i did i did send an email to uh both the president the vice president i cc'd you as well because i won't cc the whole board because it's not appropriate creates a meeting so um i just wanna i just wanna um talk about that about retaining talent and i want to talk about that before we actually submit the budget yes just to be clear because i don't i want to because bespoke can speak eloquently by herself but there's two things you said that i want to clarify when you're talking about losing talent and being fair we're talking about one specific group of people and that is nurses and it's not that the district isn't being fair although some may think that there is and we'll discuss i can't talk about the numbers too much but i can talk in generalities that there is a major shortage of nurses in the state in the country and the basic law of supply and demand is when supply is low what happens the prices prices go up and so yeah when we are lucky to find a nurse that we can that i can recommend to the board to hire they can demand a higher salary today and the unfortunate thing is we have some amazing nurses that currently work in our district that maybe were hired at a time when there wasn't a shortage of nurses maybe their heart were hired on step one and it is unfair to them and i don't and i can understand it when they see somebody who's hired five years later than them who's going to be making as much or in many cases more than them i get it but there are a lot of issues involved in trying to correct that there are of course contractual issues there are union issues there are all sorts of things so there are some things i do want to discuss in executive later under negotiations [Music] and the board and the public should know we are trying to rectify it but it's not something we could wave a magic wand and fix today um so i just wanted to make a clarification thank you if i could just simply add that the administration has been working with the clinton education start again uh what i just wanted to add is that the administration make it clear that the clinton education association has been working with the superintendent has been in discussing this so it's uh there's cooperation as as usual all right roll call please mr abbey drabo yes mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran uh yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes all right next we have finance and facilities we have f1 through f12 so moved so much mr abhijava i'd like to have some discussion on this yeah uh second by mr rawad discussion mr paris thank you um just pertaining to the preliminary budget and thank you dr robertosi for the the overview and thank you to uh my colleagues on the committee i knew so maybe bear with me a moment but what struck me when i went through this rather voluminous preliminary budget was the fact that i believe the last three years there have been zero increases from the taxpayer side now this is a i'm sure a very unpopular topic that i'm about to raise here but it just draws some concern to me uh going forward and especially in light of what mrs basford just said about uh changing demand and salaries for for replacements uh what ms lallama pointed to as far as the need for some more custodians also the fact that since 09 and 010 it looks like we've lost by necessity to have to cut the budget we've lost instructional people i'm concerned about people that touch the students and although we have uh we certainly have fiscal responsibility but we also have responsibility to our students into our educational system here in town i'm just concerned that going into this this next year we have inflation rates now eight percent primarily just common goods don't even mention fuel at this point we're not making any provisions to get back to this even remotely to this table of organization we had in the past um i mean if administration tells me this is not impactful positions we don't need them they're not really necessary for the commute for the school system i i would understand that but it just seems that we might be on a bit of a dangerous trajectory here that we don't consider any kind of changes especially when it comes to improving instructional staff and making up some of the deficits that have been created in the past i remember when this first decrease came to to clifton it was many years ago when i after i first bought my home and a knock came on my door and one of the state assemblymen were there and looking for for my vote and this was the same state assemblyman who had a year earlier abstained from voting in the state senate and cost our district at the time which was i guess getting close to 30 years ago 11 million dollars you represented our district i said i'm surprised you're at my door any explanation as why you did i said i thought i would never vote for you ever again and he said well it was a moment of honesty from a politician i was kind of pulled in the back room by the governor and the powers to be and said you know do this for us because if you abstain our new formula will pass you really won't feel the effects of it because you've got a ways to go to get reelected and so he abstained from voting even though in this district that he represented it cost us 11 million dollars in our school system and since then i think we've been playing catch-up for many many many years so again i know it's not a popular thing to do i know it's something that many people are against any kind of tax changes whatsoever but if we really need um and the purpose of of the refunding formula is to get us back to where we've been and get us actually even more resources than before i think it's something we should maybe reconsider in this age in this preliminary budget i'd also like to point out that i this data i found online so far out of the 16 communities of passaic county clifton had the lowest per pupil spending of any of them and in the state of other than sorry i have to correct myself prospect park was lower but they have one school one k-8 school that's their entire district and the state average is over twenty two thousand dollars currently per per head per student which we are well below as well um so again i just would like to get some discussion on that um are we really planning here for the future are we really bolstering our our capabilities our instructional capabilities for students in in clifton or are we just kind of treading water at this point because what mr uchi presented showed that really we're just kind of keeping up with costs at this point spell john mr pilot um so all this was discussed in the meeting and jim daley can speak more to us his uh committee and i was only a guest in it um but the issue was that we went out for the referendum this year if we hadn't gone out for the referendum we would have probably been more open to accepting all of the increases that the school district was looking for the problem being if we were to accept everything that was needed and also of the referendum we were looking at a double taxation this year increase so it would have been hitting the public twice in the same exact year for an increase versus you know next year considering it when when the referendum has already been on the books for one year so that was really the consideration that went into it i understand that things are needed now and inflation and everything you know i truly understand everything that and i was actually one of the only people that were for spending a little bit onto the security side of it and not holding firm on the zero percent but you have to consider that we did hit this public for the referendum this year um and without that we probably would have gone for a tax increase at least that was what i took from the meeting uh thank you thank you miss beltran i can see that point of view the referendum passed by two-thirds majority though so the the taxpayers the voters in clifton supported that recognizing the need which is really separate from instructional this is this is purely facilities and infrastructure needs that we've had and that because we've neglected them over maybe not neglected but they've aged okay and they've gotten to the point where we had to replace them over the years a big part of the reason we've got to this point is kind of the budget situations we've had in the past and being able to maintain those systems and replace them so i kind of i'm my concern is more on what's touching the student side what's the instructional side um what we might be short short changing ourselves on at this point and also uh for some fiscal sanity for the future i mean are we really planning um for the growth needs that we have uh again i just i that's my concern trending water at this point and are we setting ourselves up for maybe uh a board a year or two from now having to look at substantial increases um because we're we're really kind of just towing the line at this point mr president if i may mm-hmm yes mr jonathan mr daley mr daley oh um so going on around miss beltran um i was also you know we were both discussing about while the majority says zero percent you know i agree with miss beltran about zero percent and plus security uh at least going to security because we've been talking about that for quite a while but the public is hurting right now the economy is you know i'm gonna say is in shambles and you know looking on the east at the east side of town many families are working really two jobs one parent one parent being at home and for us and i'm gonna say at the district i'm gonna choose my words very carefully because i got reamed out um i use the words dangled bait in front of residents to get them to vote for the referendum right i'm certain people didn't like that but that's how i felt and for us to do that to say hey vote for this and i'll give you this nice shiny neon pen i gave that to you you know vote for it right that's it's unfortunately that's how i feel what happened because in the past couple of years when we haven't gone to zero percent there were some board members who said zero percent it's going to catch up to us and it's catching up to us and i agree with you on that but sometimes when you have people and you dangled a zero percent in front of people to get them to vote for a referendum and as miss beltran mentioned i agree with her double taxing residents who are struggling to make meets end who can't even keep on their you know their lights on because this is the month of when pcg should sends out their shutoff lights because people are so back behind and i've seen a lot of that in my day-to-day job now and where people are struggling and for us to go to them it's easy for you know we live in two side towns here in clifton one who's capable but still some are struggling and the other side of town who people are really struggling and they're going in deeper and honestly you know i lived on this i tell most of my life and i've seen my parents for them you know for us whatever that 30 bucks or whatever it may be for the year to them that's a make or break for them that's a make or break for what they're going to feed their kids if they can keep on their pc g but if their water bills can get shut off if they're even going to stay in their house for rent to me i can't live with that you know unless you give me 15 20 people 10 people up at the podium say no go go go go first of all i'm going to see what side of town they're from because that to me is important that to analyze where we're going to go and how we're going to move forward but they're already getting hit for an increase per household think about what 177 dollars per household at an average uh you know because that's from the referendum i'm willing to look at security because we've been talking that for a long time and it's definitely needed because we need to secure our kids and our and our administrators and our faculty and our teachers that's a that's a we have to have a really deep down search and rough discussion if you know while some of us can afford it others can't and that's what frightens me while i know what you mean about you know supply our district are the best academic person i'm with you 100 on that but we got to fight our battles on that do we wait till next year let's get through this year you know it's like any of us who are looking they're looking at our bills in our house what are we gonna what are we gonna spend on what are we gonna say what are we going to pay next month what are we going to let go and and you know let that balance move over to so that's just that's just my two cents on it president smith yeah thank you mr president um and thank you for your comments mr paris um obviously i think this is my 13th or 14th budget i forget so it's um when i got on this board um administration didn't tell me too much about the budget and a couple years into it i found about the formula and how we were being shortchanged and administration never said a word to me that we were underfunded so when you make me curious i get into it so i found out that we were 50 million dollars shorted every year the taxpayers of the city of clifton the state has this great formula and what you should be paying what you should not taxpayers were overpaying their fair share for not years decades decades in this town because the way it was funded a number of years ago the formula that was in place but was never funded or addressed started to things changed in trenton so now we were starting to get our money next year will be the last year that we could expect that increase and i've also spoken to administration and my other colleagues i said and and joe and i has had this discussion many times the year after the things are are going to be tight you're going to have to do something but i can't for the life of me because this is responsibility that goes all the way ask the taxpayers when they've paid decades of over-funding our school for what they should have been paying for and they've getting a bit of a break here especially it's tough times but we're always going to have tough times we're not general motors we're not a bank we're not here we have a very fixed income more so than individuals uh in terms of school boards all government agencies are do that at least the local government agencies you're fixed to a certain amount of money and you have to adapt yourself that's how you you should go without but you need to be creative and you need to be smart about how you spend your money as well but at this point in time and last year's the next last year that we're going to see a boost in that state aid and then it's going to be flat and you do have to adjust that when we negotiated our contracts we discussed that amongst the negotiation committee and that okay we can afford these things and there was a trade-off and we got all the contracts balanced this took year years to do to get and i think i applaud uh our bargaining groups we worked hand in glove we didn't get everything we wanted they didn't get everything but i think we came to a fair and we were very considerate um and i'll i'll bring out one particular bargaining unit when we negotiated with the secretaries we negotiated a deal but we we saw the board and then recognized that the base salary was way below what it should be after we finished the negotiation we added more money onto that contract with it didn't need their permission to add more money so the bottom salaries would come up we did the best we could so the board recognizes um that we need to be fair to employees and and i've always said the union negotiates for them but there are employees they're not the union's employees and we have a responsibility there to provide as best we can we don't have unlimited resources the best we can but if you really really want to look at what the problem here it's not a case of the taxpayers of clifton need to pay more we have issues like tax abatements which don't out of tax abatements in the state of new jersey which is unaddressed by the state legislature all goes to the municipality except for two percent go to the county it cuts out education so when they move it's not like they get a big break the tax abatement but all the money goes to the municipality that's out of control we pay more the citizens of clifton pay more in the tax levy to support education than the city of jersey city that's outrageous so then we talk about our charter schools and pcti you want to look at budget increases you want to see where our budget increases that's where the bulk of the budget increases come and it robs our students and the taxpayers that that is so out of whack and the state's giving them carp launch for the most part they're starting to pull back a little bit on on charter schools but not nearly enough so we need to hammer that end too we just can't say oh they're not doing anything and taxpayers it's all on you i'm very mindful of the balance we need to to have here you do need to have good education but we also have limited resources and we need to fight much harder to get our fair share on the expense side that's so you just can't look at the revenue you have to look at the expenses and i'll be happy to go over this is i could go on for hours about this but if you saw over the what the last five years what the impact of these charter schools and pcti has on the budget it's ridiculous so um i will i've always fought for that and uh when mr cadoba was on the other side of the podium he was barking about that so we kind of joined forces and uh but it's it's eye-opening when you really look where the money comes from and where it goes to and and there's both sides of that ledger so uh i think the administration does an excellent job we have a reputation doing a hell of a lot more than other districts with less money um and i won't go into who does what but um we need to fight much harder and make our legislators understand that these ridiculous amounts of money that we have to pay for and i just brought out previously with the pcti issue they got close to 30 million whatever they got that they i know they got more than us a lot more than us and we're still paying the tuition over there so the whole thing about how the state handles county vote techs and county magnet schools needs to be addressed that affects us more than what we can raise from the taxpayers here so um and i think uh mr abdullah miss beltran said we went to do that we had the [Music] referendum and we got 12 million i don't know how in god's good conscience i could ask to pay taxpayers for another dime after you've got 12 million dollars and regardless of our needs i don't know how you go and ask somebody for a penny more after they passed a referendum and we got 12 million dollars more in our revenue so i've always looked at our budget especially when we're getting the increases the taxpayers need a break they deserve it they were overpaying for decades and they don't need to over and will be as fair with our with the administration and getting our edu kids educated which our school district does a tremendous job and i applaud everybody who's involved with that but we have to be you can't rob peter to pay paul here either so that's my personal philosophy and i've worked very hard on these budgets over the years and um and i can give you a chart before i was on the board i think for the previous 10 years it was up like 40 uh over over a 10-year period it was ridiculous amount of money and we flatten it out and we still have we don't have everything we need i perfectly understand that but you know you you really really have to balance it especially when we look at the history of what the taxpayers in this city have had to pay for mr rawad was next yes president smith thank you um i just wanted to share something i read and actually have family in the neighboring town next to us their board of education is actually increasing double digits in a time where people honestly are struggling to even get food into their homes something i witnessed one day coming home from work late night wife sends me a text message the baby needs formula i'm a costco guy i like to buy my formula there but i ended up having having to go to walgreens on uh main ave no i'm going in you know rang the button waiting for the lady to open the you know little shelf to give me the formula and my eyes looking at the register i see a mom um after discussing with her because she was struggling to pay you know she just had like a box of you know cereal milk and i think that like the edmonds cookies or whatever they were and it honestly broke my heart that she had her phone out and she was literally taking the prices from what she saw on the aisle was adding up staring at her debit card kind of you could tell she was nervous is her card going to decline or is it not going to decline and i you know thankfully i'm blessed enough to afford that i offered to pay and we stepped outside i just had a discussion with her you know when you can do a good deed i don't like to mention it but you know because we're on this topic i do want to mention it she was saying that literally her and her husband working two jobs obviously you know the jobs are not high paying jobs with the way gas prices are the way i think you know inflation's hitting just left and right honestly like as a person that's able to sustain my living i'm barely keeping up and i have a little one in the house i can speak on i can say majority of the city's probably living paycheck to paycheck at this moment a lot of people are struggling a lot of people don't know what's you know they're living day-to-day bases you don't know what the future is going to come you see many families struggling and look our neighboring town is doubling their taxes and this is an area that's not really you know a well-off wealthy area those people are going to take the hit dramatically thankfully you know i spoke to mr daley many times about the budget the man's a human calculator he knows how to quench his numbers he always has the answers and luckily we were blessed to pass the bond referendum you know the largest in state history that's going to have a positive effect on this district for decades to come we're finally bringing our district into like modern times the way our buildings the bathroom the plumbing a to z everything in there so obviously when the bottom referendum passed inflation was slowly increasing we didn't know it was going to get this bad fast forward look where we are now just to fill up your your car with gas you need a hundred bucks you go to the grocery store you grab two three items you're hitting a couple hundred dollars right there and for someone for anyone that's living on minimum wage or above minimum wage we just got to do the basic math a couple thousand dollars a month just to pay your rent to pay your bsng bill just to get a couple items in the house their paycheck is gone and for us to go knocking on the door saying hey we need a couple hundred more dollars i think that you know for us we have to be have a little empathy but i understand where you're coming from our district does need certain things obviously we are sure on certain aspects but as of now i think we just need to take in consideration where we are as a community and obviously plant like you said we have to plan for the future and i know mike mr shahada the whole business administration they understand you know it's it's very difficult when it comes to specifically finances there's never enough money life in general is always going to get more expensive it's just the way it is sadly that's how new jersey is by the time you know i know many people that got a pay raise they were excited about the pay raise but after inflation it's actually a paid cut in a way you're getting that two three percent pay raise you're excited about but inflation was uh eight almost ten percent now you're technically making less money and on top of that everything got more expensive and god knows what's going to happen you know our state our economy the way it is it's not looking too good right now and we just could only pray for the best and hopefully you know we head into the right direction soon because i don't know how long people can really take this okay who's next mr doctor danny then miss bassford before you speak thank you because i really value this discussion it's really really important and i thank you i just want to make sure that we understand what we're talking about so i just want to ask mr uc if he could tell us we we're throwing around numbers like what is a tax increase so mike what is a one percent tax increase what does that mean to the average person in clifton what's and then obviously we can calculate from there two percent three percent could you just explain what those numbers are sure to go really quick if that's okay um so our tax levy is 134 million dollars one point on that is approximately um 1.3 million so about like two 2.7 million is two percent um from the tax assessor's office a tax point is approximately five hundred fifty thousand dollars the average house in clifton from the tax assessor is a hundred seventy seven thousand five hundred so a one percent um tax levy increase on the average assessed house would be just short of forty three dollars or 350 a month two percent's 85 dollars or seven dollars a month and you can just go from there back up say that one more time because people were missing that say one more time sure tax increase sure yeah a tax increase on the average assessed household from the tax assessor's office one percent would be 43 a year 350 a month a two percent tax levy increase is eighty five dollars annual or seven dollars and change a month thank you and thank you mr smith dr danny okay well i just want to say first of all um we passed the largest referendum and you know just because someone did give you that money you know the taxpayers did approve that it's not like well great here's my wallet and i'm just going to keep giving you out money i work in education i know a lot of people that are educators a lot of people that are administrators and yes there are things that are needed there's the wish list you know if you had all the money in the world there's the things that um you want you need i've been in education for 20 years i've seen a lot of waste of money of taxpayer dollars and i think that you know i mean i'm just to say i think in tight times like this districts have to get creative you know maybe again um you know we've we did one thing right that the board does we hired a great superintendent and now i'm sure he's going to use those great powers that he has and think creatively out of the box you know what because tough times call for those people to stand up and say you know what listen you know maybe we need to get creative we need to think about it the city is you know toying around from what i understand increasing the taxes on that side then you have the referendum and then we increase it okay 44 dollars whatever but you know what you don't ever see oh you know what we're going to decrease your taxes never happens just goes up and up and up and i get it but you know what that doesn't mean that that's the way it has to be because somebody once said people said on the board just because it has it was like this doesn't mean it has to be you know what maybe it's time that the taxpayers who've been paying so much and there are a lot of older people who said yes we understand the structures and we'll pass the referendum we need this to get done yes okay but you know they're living on a fixed income and you know you can't expect to say well you know it's a 44 more and it's this and it's 44 and more and then 44 next year and 44 after and then that and and again i mean it's time to start thinking outside the box um it's interesting and i'm just going to say this not that this would happen here but in japan and just because it was brought up they have one custodian per school one one custodian you know what he cleans the bathroom and he replaces the little towel now i'm not i'm saying but you go into the schools it is immaculate and i know that parents probably wouldn't go for it like cleaning but there's nothing even to clean all this is is like dust they take a little rag at 2 30 they wet it and it's like literally like a machine it moved students move the desk to one side the other students just go along with their little rags then the other students move the desk back and they go and the school is meticulously clean i used to hold a detention and i used to have kids if they wanted to get out earlier they had to erase the desks with any graffiti that was on there you want to know something at the cleanest most spotless room because in terms of desk because the other kids police the kids don't you dare right on that desk because i'll be erasing that and that means i have to stay longer i mean i'm not saying there has to be some phys but maybe you know let's get out let's those kids in japan they had pride for that school there wasn't a rapper there wasn't anything there because they had i'm not saying that that would maybe work here but you know let's get creative maybe you know again we could do something we can a club can start up something about you know i know that a lot of times kids go oh the janitors will pick that up you know well that's why we have them here you know think out of the box tough times call for thinking out of the box and we've always i don't know people on this board a lot of times have said oh it's good to think out of the box let's not just do things the way we always did things i mean joe you know you started to fight a rally and you know what i mean look it got us somewhere so you know we need to start thinking out of the box i mean like you said uh mr daley and miss basford about you know um these schools and the amount of money and charter schools being held to i mean let's think out of the box you know let's be the leaders on that because we can't just keep saying well we need to do and believe me i'm the first one for education but we have a really good education that we provide our students here in clifton there are districts in the state of new jersey that get money thrown at them and they're not they're not good so throwing money is not necessarily let's let's think about this if money needs to go they're fine but again i can't in good conscience right now to have the largest referendum in the past to turn around and say well your taxes will go up on the city side have this referendum thank you very much and here you go a little bonus factor 44 dollars a month or seven dollars a month no like i'm sorry i can't um and that's all thank you you were next yes thank you um so um i have questions about the security personnel that you were referencing on that chart um i'm just going to ask going forward if we ever get a try i couldn't see it um it was all blurry i couldn't see over there i can't see i can't really see so if you could like maybe email us an addendum and we could pull it up on the on the screen that would be helpful because i can't reference it right now and i don't want to put it up there now what are these um positions going to be who are they going to be uh what what are the criteria that's one thing um second lucy speaking to your point maybe it's time that we sit down and sharpen the pencil uh um alan um we're people are hurting um where we work we haven't gotten a raise in three years no match to the 401k a lot of things they they cut everything out i think that maybe we have to go back to the drawing board and start cutting it um we all get phone calls from people i i emailed the president the vice president and uh the superintendent about something i heard and i was upset about it and it's anybody in this room that works in a position and if somebody was to come in earlier you know later than them and be paid more it's hurtful to those people that have been working so hard for us from years and to go back to what these people have done in the last year and and volunteered and did things in our district for our children and our own family members of employees it's hurtful and that's why i wanted to bring it to the attention of the board because there has to be a way we find money for everything here we found money for this beautiful facility right we're finding money for project graduation we're finding this money so why can't we find the money that we need for other things too as well i i think that's where the issue is i'm you know i don't sit on finance i've never been given the opportunity to do that i've never been sitting sit on a lot of different committees um so i would just like to um think that there is something we can do we have we have people in this community that want to donate their time to us we can call them in at certain times just to ask them their expertise on little things but i i'm just i'm i'm having a hard time alan with you as well because i'm i'm afraid i'm afraid we're going to be sucking swamp water in a year if we don't raise it i'm really i'm leaning that way too and uh you know it's i'm hearing four percent lucy on the other side this is what i'm hearing i couldn't make the um the uh budget meeting i wanted to go see it but it's i work on some saturdays so i do extra detail for some people that i help at work and i couldn't get there i wanted to listen to it and it's not televised so we can't we can't hear what's going on that side of the street affects this side of the street this side of the street that's that side street we're basically all one it comes together in one pot so i think that maybe we have to we have to sit back and and you know submit the budget because it has to be due tonight yes it's it's got to go tonight yes it does have to be voted on tonight however between now and may 5th right if the board has a revelation and tells me we want you to cut it five percent or we want to give raise taxes five percent we will be able to do that before may 5th so tonight i do really need you to vote to say yes that mr uzi can submit it but come may 5th we can make changes so my recommendation is because everybody is so passionate about this subject and i know you guys don't like to have special meetings but maybe we need to have a board special meeting about the budget and really dig into it and it has to be in public but maybe that's where everybody can go home get their ideas come back here and have input and maybe we can find a way i you know i i don't want to put any more stress on staff as it is now but i'd like to see maybe we can come up with some other alternatives and i still want my questions answered about the the security i'm i'm not on the committee i just heard that there was going to be six people i just saw that slide tonight so i just like a little bit more information so i can make an informed decision based on what you're telling me thank you okay uh roll call in the group mr abu drabo finance yes uh yes but i'm standing on f10 and f12 mr awad yes miss basford yes and abstain on 10.

Uh we do that from elementary to high school and every year the spelling bee fundraising goes directly back into funding many grants for teachers to improve learning in Dartmouth. And the next grant cycle will open on the 1st of April. So, I have some quick thank yous and some introductions before we get started. I want to thank my fellow Dartmouth Education Foundation Advisory Council members. Rachel Cherrier, uh, if you could just wave, Dr. Rambala, Dr. Shannon Jenkins, Dr. Carol Kapotus, Chris Pereira, Christina Rebello, Enid Silva, Dr. Janna Souza, Mary Wait, uh, who's a little bit ill tonight, Meredith Wilkinson, Dr. Steven Witzig and I just cannot uh be introducing our board u without introducing the founding board member John Bogard who is here tonight competing on a spelling B team. Uh so I want to thank our flight sponsors and team sponsors and all the donors tonight.

So, we will be awarding prizes again this year. If you came just for the prizes, they will be back. Um, and if you didn't receive a ticket or a piece small scrap of paper as you were uh coming in, we still have some Dartmouth High School or Dartmouth Middle School Honor Society volunteers collecting them and they're in here. It's not too late. If you didn't do that, you can still do it now and anyone can put their name in. Um, so be sure you do that. At the very end of the night, you have to be present to win the prize. We will be awarding two Bruins tickets. So, I hope you'll stick around for that. And um I want to also acknowledge uh our judges tonight. So we have three judges. Starting on the end, we have um David Titlebomb who is a member of the Dartmouth Select Board.

so um acorns also provide critical food sources for over 100 vertebrate species and thousands of species utilize oak tree the oak uh you know like the stems of the oak trees the leaves the snags the course woody debris the wood cavities litter and oaks are critical so oaks are critical for maintaining biodiversity uh here you see a chickadee and to like many songbirds about 95 percent of birds are insectivorous they require um in north america i think it's 96 percent of birds are insectivorous except for the um if you exclude the uh seabirds then then 96 of the remaining birds are insectivorous and they require they require insects to raise their young and the majority of what they feed their young are these caterpillars from butterfly and moths so uh just to raise uh a clutch of eggs can require require six hundred six thousand to nine thousand caterpillars over that 21 day period and they continue to feed their young caterpillars for 21 days following fledging when they leave the nest so i'm going to be using the term biodiversity quite a bit i just want to make sure we're we're all um we all understand what that term means so it's refers to the variety of life on earth at all its levels from genes to ecosystems as well as the ecological processes that support it so i know a lot of times we use the term biodiversity you mean species diversity and that's fine it does mean species diversity but it also means ecosystem diversity it means the different types and arrangements of ecosystems the ecological processes that support that as well as the life within those those communities within those natural communities within those ecosystems the uh quote one of my favorite quotes in ecology is by aldo leopold and he he said the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts and that's that's as true then as when he wrote it as it is today and i think we'll always be in ecology if we're going to manage land if we're going to take responsibility for a set of lands um be it a city a state or the nation we really need to keep all the parts so here you see a kestrel feeding its young a hawk moth and below is a hawk moth uh pollinating or drawing nectar from a a thistle a native thistle cerseum discolor that grows in our prairies and savannas in the ecosystem we need all of this we cannot have these kestrels if they don't have food and in this case hawk moths need plants so they're all critical we can't have any one of those and just like most systems uh whether it's your body or um ecosystems it's often the smallest things the littlest critters like eo wilson said you know it's that that beware of these little guys because they the insects because they really run the show at the end of the day if you have a dysfunction in yourself your mitochondria don't don't work you're you're in big big trouble right the smaller the equals the smaller the critter when that goes out it affects everything up up the trophic level so the insects are critically important uh not just to the birds but to the rest of the rest of the ecosystem and where the insects get their food from the plants so so while it all matters each one of these clogs of the wheel each one of these pieces is critically important to keep okay so the earth is experiencing massive losses in biodiversity as you're well aware uh there's been precipitous declines across taxa from vertebrates and invertebrates uh at durzo coin defaulination meaning uh and he and the term anthropocene is widely used today so in other words worked presently in the geologic uh period of the holocene but it's been reclassified renamed by many people as anthropocene in other words human beings are having the biggest effect on the planet right now uh and the defaultizations meaning we're losing species uh like crazy plants there's many citations i could listed insects birds mammals fish amphibians reptiles all suffering great declines right now and what you're looking at this this cool picture here is a various species of goldenrod and many insects uh goldenrod support 135 species of caterpillars uh in other words from moths and butterflies and hundreds of pollinators in the ann arbor area including many specialists that are entirely dependent on goldenrod pollen and nectar so the causes of biodiversity loss the primary cause is habitat loss for example michigan we've lost over 50 percent of our wetlands that's on average you can see it very statewide um invasive species are another uh major reason for habitat loss over exploitation disease pollution pesticides overpopulation which obviously relates to habitat loss and some of these others and um probably more recently maybe going back even a hundred years now but um is climate change and certainly coming to our head uh and uh speeding up so so biodiversity loss is a front and center and those who manage the lands are responsible for that have to keep this in mind because you're stewarding so many species and it's so critically important here we look at forest change in michigan and you can see from acres from that that circa 1800 vegetation map to uh current and this this is about 10 years old now actually it's more about 20 years old to be honest with you so then there has been a continuous loss during that time but we've lost about 68 of our upland forest historically in southern michigan over 75 percent of our beet sugar maple forest about 66 percent of our oak hickory forest and when we get into the the savannahs in grasslands we've lost uh over 99 percent of those so uh from historic levels so we've we've seen a lot of change and that change comes with some serious costs and some serious responsibilities force fragmentation is is something i want to talk a little bit about so what this refers to and it could be habitat for so fragmentation is often phrased as habitat fragmentation and in forest systems we call it forest fragmentation and what it involves is breaking a contiguous block of forest into smaller parcels or contiguous block of natural habitat into small parcels and this occurs incrementally typically in other words just like you see in that first picture up on top you know it doesn't happen uh overnight it usually happens slow and steadily and the losses uh the impacts are cumulative you might start with a subdivision and then you know build another segment to the subdivision then another one pretty soon we have a vast area with just these fragments of forest so this is a forest fragment here's a forest fragment here's another forest fragment and then this picture the forest are gone uh you have grasslands or lawns uh where what's what's left of that of the of once was forest so the the uh so before i address the downside of forest fragmentation i want to want to talk about why there's a few reasons why they're important first of all they provide ecosystem services for example they produce oxygen they reduce air pollution and greenhouse gases they sequester carbon slow global warming reduce urban temperatures prevent soil erosion reduce runoff and water pollution promote water infiltration recharge groundwater stores and i could go on so all of these things are critically important and we we take every one of these for granted you know the her urban heat island effect well um in other words it's warmer if you go to the countryside you put a temperature probe in a city and one at the same latitude in a rural area well it's always warmer in the city because there's the urban heat island effect right well guess what your forest fragments help reduce that and they generate oxygen and reduce air pollution and sequester carbon in other words when they take in through photosynthesis they take in those carbon atoms and put them into the trunk and there's this there was this um when i went to school and i'm guessing it's probably still taught today but it's false the idea that small trees uh sequester more carbon they take up more carbon they grow quicker well that's been debunked uh it's been pretty bunked uh in medici meta-analysis it's been debunked in individual studies by people who engineers who know how to measure using very accurate measurements of tree rings and um the bigger trees actually grow faster in terms of the amount of wood they put on they they um well a small tree might grow from one inch to 10 inches in a short period of time the big tree it doesn't it just takes us a millimeter of growth or so and you write up all those millimeters over a meter wide tree over a 40 inch diameter tree you've got a lot more area than small trees so large trees are critically important so even though they might be perceived as not growing quickly they're actually they're actually growing they're actually they're actually putting on more bulk each year more bulk than smoke trees so they're critically important to protect um and i know uh many of you are like me when you see an oak go down you know it just feels so bad when you see one of these big old trees and we just have to remember that just because you're 80 doesn't mean and the tree's 80 doesn't mean the tree is old just because you might be feeling old the tree isn't old trees are indeterminate growth as long as they don't get knocked down by wind or some disease they can live they can live they can live hundreds of years and that's really exciting for us because it means the trees so that's great news because it means the trees are for us today they're going to be doing their job if they're protected they're going to continue to do the job of sequestering carbon reducing producing oxygen which we breathe reducing air pollution and those forests allow those roots allow that water to go back into the ground and not run off and pollute our waterways but allow it to infiltrate so another benefit of force fragments uh these forest fragments uh which uh ann arbor has uh so blessed with are is increased human human well-being so they reduce stress they reduce our heart rate our blood pressure they bolster mental health reduce crime rates and violence they promote healing promote physical activity promote social interaction make cities more livable and um that makes cities more beautiful and it was interesting that day chris called me to ask if i would be willing to to come and talk to you guys um i was driving back from the arboretum to the botanical gardens and as i'm taking the route you know for uh it's kind of back way around to get across the city i was i was as i often am marveling and just amazed at how beautiful ann arbor is and how the forests really make the city like was thinking god these forests this is amazing what a place and in my thinking that it was i knew i made the logical jump to you know this isn't by accident this wasn't by accident that you have these forests here today i lived in lansing uh area before coming here and before that chicago and milwaukee so i know what it's like to live in large urban areas that lack forests and it's a whole different feel i hardly ever came to ann arbor until i started working at the uh botanical gardens and arboretum in in 2014.

and we also talked with a transportation engineer cynthia redinger of the city about the um height limits of plants and access to the right of way on sidewalks so um i feel that we are um up to date in terms of of her concerns um there may be some comments or or alterations of our recommendations based on transportation but i think that we have good guidelines that we can use as we move forward into the next thing that i want to talk about which is the webinar we had this tuesday evening on native plants and pollinators we had a great help from galen in getting this organized and getting it out to neighborhood associations and other groups our attendance our registration was something like 80 we had attendance of at least 40 i think close to that um live during the session um we had some great presenters um from the county master rain garden program katie whitachuck brad smith an art professor and dean from the art school presented about his prairie backyard that he had installed and it's beautiful we had a presentation from bob hauser of wild ones the national organization that supports native plants and one of our climate ambassadors matty reif presented on pollinators and the interactions of pollinators and native plants which you heard a lot of in michael koh's presentation tonight we are going to be offering some informal on-site consultations with people on doing some small plantings on their property which on their immediate property and on their lawn extension areas um if they want to we've had a few people respond already and we have provided a survey to those who attended the session and we're we're getting responses um so it was it was kind of fun uh and um yeah there's that's where we are okay thanks kathy you have your hand up um i want to thank rita and uh chapter 40 is something that i've been interested in for over two decades and i i feel that that rita is really changing it from enforcement to encouragement and education which is very important and one of my main issues is that is the sight distance triangle area so that's the the areata intersection and the reason is that people as are coming up to an intersection they tend to stop at the point where they can see down the street the street that's at 90 degrees and if they can't see until after the crosswalk or in the middle of the crosswalk that's where they stop and in some cases they haven't seen that pedestrian that's in the crosswalk or that's walking through there and so it's really important that we have good sight distance and we then enforce having people stop at the stop bar not halfway through the crosstalk so that's my soap box for tonight all right thanks kathy um so the next uh next up is the uh zero waste working group lisa i was looking at john okay okay john happy too yes um a lot of stuff going on and we're very fortunate to have a kind of uh excellent crew working with us on this so the core staff is myself lisa and jenny patoski of city staff but then we have two interns one working on metrics and another working on outreach they're doing excellent work uh already some interesting stuff coming out of the metrics literature review that the intern is doing there and helping us think about how to better capture things that we're already doing so thinking about just like recycling rather than just the metric tons or the pounds that we're collecting what is the value of the materials that we're collecting and how is that contributing more towards a circular economy than just how many pounds or how many tons of something and then we're also kind of really zeroing in on resiliency and equity as the other metrics that we really want to address and kind of approaching in this primarily through a municipal or a county level lens rather than what a lot of the metrics that companies are looking at so that's going well starting to capture some really neat stories from folks who are entrepreneurs and and kind of leading circular economy efforts and have been doing it kind of quietly on their own for decades and wanting to raise that up in the community and we're also working with ctn to produce some short videos about uh what's going on and then we've got a group of c students who really just kind of got through their first semester of putting their work together they'll really start more focused work later in the fall as a part of their year and a half project but we're hoping to keep a couple of them with us through the summer working on the liturgy review and maybe getting some publications or helping us kind of synthesize that work and also on the outreach efforts we also had our first meeting with the state through i2p3 the initiative that we were selected for um i think we're the only there's eight lisa eight ten different communities across the state that are involved in this we're the only one that's really focusing on circular economy but lots of folks are very interested in it so that'll be a platform for us to kind of share things and we've got our fingers crossed that monday we'll finally hear on the small met metrics grant that we submitted last fall it's been put forward for funding that would be ten thousand dollars uh to kind of add some more support to the work um but we don't know yet but we've been waiting since september for that so it's been a while um i think that's it lisa anything to add uh i guess the only thing that i would add is that um with input from numerous staff members um samuel mcmullen and i have decided that the zero waste definite you know the resolution to define zero waste and set goals etc etc will not go forward to city council we have heard loud and clear from staff that it's not helpful to have a resolution um directing them to do something that they're already doing and it's very much not helpful setting goals that they may not be able to make as most other cities have not been able to make their zero waste goals um so i know that a lot of time went into developing the white paper that supports that resolution and i hope that it doesn't feel like that time is wasted because i think people learn things from doing that no thank you it's uh it's remarkable progress thank you so much i'm looking forward to having you having this on the agenda for the main meeting when you're ready to present it to the full commission okay um so let's see and on my part i'll have to say um you know i haven't gotten anything done with the uh with construction and deconstruction uh um but i intend to get something started by may or june i want staff time when staff has more time to help out with it or to be engaged with it um but meanwhile i'm still recruiting people for the court core group and gathering some information and finding allies in other communities here in michigan um so let's see and um that's it for the communities and working groups so the next i'm on the agenda are other commissions on planning commission um update from shannon yeah we made some changes to the unified development code and some of which affected some landscaping things that have some some kind of indirect relationship to this one was on street trees actually and cleaning up some of that language in there and making it a little bit more realistic in terms of how how that's calculated and then also rejiggering how this street tree escrow fund works which was very complicated and sort of opaque and working that all into the into the unified development code in a more seamless way um so that was uh great to see some changes with that and making it easier um and uh we also focused a lot on what our coming work plan is and i kind of hinted at that before and the first thing we're really taking on um hard is uh is parking and um that relates to environmental commission too believe it or not because uh um we're hoping to transition from having parking minimums like you have to have this many parking spaces to parking maximums you can't do more than x amount of parking spaces and all of that um just gives people more it encourages people to have less parking less impervious surface um and to also encourage us to move forward towards um [Music] taking transit more you know getting out of our cars um and and biking and walking and taking transit more so um and then the tc1 zoning i think is going to continue to march down the line too um with uh and we don't know the order but the the zones on consideration are washenaw stadium and plymouth and then there's also talk of you know other potential areas but i would say that those are tc1 and [Music] and parking are the ones that are really coming down the pike and that we are very motivated to move on and we have been we've been doing we've been getting a lot of things um accomplished so i think we're on a roll with that stuff well that's great thank you shannon um so the next is parks advisory hi hey a lot of work been going on in the parks advisory commission um i think first and foremost we had two big retirements the director of parks and and natural areas very recently and so there's work going on to hire the replacements i know one appointment has been made already and that's remy long and i believe he's in the role of natural area preservation um there's going to be some work this summer on a park on the west side of ann arbor called churchill downs um it's partly kind of a natural it's a it's a city park but it's got um a lot of it's undeveloped currently there's going to be some work to accommodate um runoff i think from and um wetlands there's going to be kind of a pond a potentially ephemeral pond that's going to be constructed in there to hold storm water runoff um so there'll be some activity in that park that um will affect the natural area of it um we've done uh the parks departments uh continuously uh recently repaved a big section of the border to border trail that runs through the city uh we just had a presentation on putting a little more attention into the gifts and memorials program that the park has and that the parks department has and how we can make it um a few more options for people and different price points to allow more people to be involved in making donations that are meaningful to the park system which i think will be a really nice um addition an opportunity for people to get involved in in parks in other ways um beyond just hanging out in our beautiful city parks um and also a new subcommittee has been formed also uh that's geared towards a bike recreation within the city and i you know from the parks department standpoint we're more focused on recreational aspects of bicycling but a number of our trails do get used for things like commuting and so i think that does have some bearing on the environmental commission and so we're worth keeping an eye on great well thank you man that sounds great so uh next up is energy commission um edie you have the floor thank you um last meeting we first had a presentation of um solar at city facilities and an overview of design and economics um and with a few minor amendments we wanted to pass a resolution in support of the use of arpa american rescue plan funds to support solar um study projects and move forward with that in alignment of k20 goals there was also another overview of the green rental housing program um which encompasses occupant weatherization appliance efficiency efficiency pathways and efficiency disclosure measures um and i believe this month there have been two public opportunities for comment as osi speaks feedback on that program there was a first reading of a resolution to support this program and that will be considered at a future meeting and we also adopted the workforce housing resolution okay all right thank you edie so um next up is council um anybody uh care to uh present a council update kathy i can say that the um council is gonna vote on the state and eisenhower tc1 rezoning on april 4th so that's exciting um and uh council will also vote on the plans the initial plans not a site plan yet but the pud rezoning for um the y lot and that too is of interest to all of you because it's a it's housing on top literally on top of transit so um and uh not i'm not remembering anything else that's huge of environmental commission interest i don't know kathy do you remember does anything stick out to you no and i apologize yes okay yeah yeah yeah we voted on we voted to approve the city moving forward with um five short term steps one of which is already in process and one long-term step to transition to more locally sourced and plant-based food options not to take options away from anybody but um to recognize that you know right now if you want a plant-based food option in a city vending machine you're probably going to end up with potato chips which i suppose are plant-based in some respect but so um we can do better and it will be cheaper especially if we locally source it and so um that's where we voted on that and there's a beautiful set of recommendations that missy stultz dr stultz wrote up in response to a resolution that elizabeth nelson brought to council in september so that's a terrific project and i'm really happy to see that come to fruition okay thank you kathy and lisa so well let's see the next is the chairs report um so um i want to acknowledge that john caliworks been suggested made some good suggestions to me about how to better manage our meetings so that you know we can get our business done to expedite getting our business done and uh have the meetings um last for two hours about two hours or so so um one is that i think um i'm proposing that you know we we reserve about one hour generally for presentations and new business and then one hour for our generic items on our agenda which so far we've managed to do this today so i'm hoping we can to continue this to to be able to close out around nine o'clock in respect to everybody else's time and um and we should i just want to remind everybody to be mindful during the comment periods that keep your comments brief and to the point as much as possible and that we always have the option to table or refer an item back to a working group you know if we need to have a more extended discussion and uh before bringing it up for a resolution or an ordinance draft or something like that for vote by the full commission um i also want to say uh on another topic um i'm reviving i'm been really very happy to be to tell you that i think the water quality work group is going to be revived and you know we've got a lot of energy behind that and i've recruited a fair number of people so i'm going to schedule a water quality working group meeting sometime before april mid-april and so i will be sending out an announcement when i'm ready when i have the external people that are interested as well people from staff on both the county and city level and with the huron river watershed council so i expect these organizations will be participating in this work group as well so look for my my invitation to a working group meeting for a kickoff for that one um and then also i'd like to remind people that i'm we i've been trying to keep action points but uh what i've decided to do is um move it to the action item tracker so there is an action action item tracker that we've been using sporadically for the last couple of years so i'm going to try to migrate that to a shared google site so it makes it easier to share documents because i personally and many other people on this commission do not have licenses for microsoft word and so um i think having a shared google file system would be very useful to get our work done so i'm going to migrate what i have including the uh um including the action item tracker to google web page that will be shared to all members of the commission for both you and editing privileges okay and then it should be open to the public for reviewing so i'm gonna set that all up myself in the next couple of days um and then um and then i recently a few days ago maybe it was yesterday i got an email from um from the city staff person about our policy agenda yeah um one of the one of the required one of the items that our bylaws is that annually annually we're supposed to be proposing policy agendas to counsel uh this regards um suggestions for how to use the uh the paid lobbyist for the city um to good effect and so the last time we submitted one was in december 2020 which was for the uh we did not get um we're a bit disorganized this year and we did not get this notice it's expected on by march 31st we're supposed to get something to council and uh i've reviewed the last submission and it seems like uh that we did for 2021 and it looks like it's uh you know still germaine for 2022.

so the plan is october 1st 2023 every classroom in the district has that new unit ventilator new hvac systems installed the plan is no more than three classrooms at a time in one building because we'll need the opportunity to move a classroom so children will be displaced from their classroom for a few days at a time maybe in the auditorium maybe in the cafeteria but um that's only during school time during the summer we can do as many classes as we can so there's only so much you can do in two months over the summer and it's actually one month because a lot of our schools have summer programs um and then the technology update we have all of our device counts and cabling plans have been finalized the equipment's been ordered the network switches the clocks the strobes the pa systems have all been ordered the cameras are being programmed off-site the server hardware and the related equipment have begun to ship and all of our in-house electrical work is being addressed by our electricians our in-house electricians and the camera cabling all the cabling that needs to be done in the ceiling and the walls will be done over spring break so that you can expect to see that up and running real soon and then finally tonight ladies and gentlemen i just want to touch on the budget tonight there is a resolution on the agenda approving the submission of the 2022-23 preliminary budget to the county office and i want to be clear and the commissioners i want you please to understand this this is a vote tonight so that mr uc can send the budget to the county for technical review to make sure the accounts are correct the money is where it is and for educational compliance on may 5th we will have what's known as our public budget hearing that's required by law there will be a formal presentation there will be a public hearing where members of the public before you vote to approve it can come up and speak on that budget so tonight you're just voting so that mike can send the budget to the county but having said that i want to give you a little bit of background of where we are with that budget the administration and the finance committee had a meeting on march 15th the administration presented a budget where in an ideal world we wanted to gain a lot more positions than we have positions that have been lost in the past positions that we should have had had this district been funded to its full capacity all the years we've been underfunded specifically during the 2009-2010 school year where 137 staff members am i is that the right number do you remember 49 and then 21.

miss beltran yes mr konova yes i had a question about facilities facilities rentals over the summer i see that we have some listed there is that gonna affect anything we're doing with the referendum no are we working around that okay yes yes so yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes motion carries okay we'll now move on to uh board member comments should i do this right miss bashford you're first all right because i have to go to the bathroom again sorry happens when you get old um i just want to thank the children at school five they sent me this very lovely packet um of thank yous from back from dr seuss day i got it last week i just want to thank you very much it was so sweet i actually keep all this stuff i have uh i have like a big big trunk and i and i keep it because you know what when i retire from this job maybe these are the things that i'm going to look back on and these are the moments that i'm going to treasure the most and uh i thank the children and the teachers and the staff effort school 5 for that um i got this in my packet a couple of weeks ago and i forgot to highlight this from uh this is from christopher columbus and it's from i'm sorry the eighth grade of christopher columbus both of them and this is from the seventh grade and this is from the eighth grade these are calendar books from from ccms and i think it's such a great thing that i have i'm bringing one to work and i took it down off my wall but i get to look at the beautiful artwork that some of the children have have made for us we have a lot of talent here in this district and if you um you can peruse this anybody wants to you know hit me up on social media i'll share it with you but it's just gorgeous and i think i want to thank uh i think it's jeff labriola and the staff um that are on here all the children are recognized it's just wonderful i mean every year we get this and these are the perks of the job and i thank him so if somebody can convey my utmost thanks to the staff and the students for this beautiful artwork i just like look at this how talented is that like really come on right okay so there's another thing that um i do on a daily basis i get to talk to students about their finances for going to school and going to uh um to college um this time of year there's a lot of scholarships that go unclaimed a lot so um i was looking at the um the website because i was trying to find a date on of the academic awards and i saw the scholarship page popped up and i remember when i was a hsa mom and i was hearing these kids i don't want to write a paragraph i don't want to fill out an application to some people are a book right some people collect that money they can go away on a special trip that the school is offering them that they don't have the money at home it's money that you don't have to pay back so get down to your local guidance counselor they should be your new bff and and say what do you have available sometimes they're cultural sometimes they're civic sometimes it's because of the color of your eyes it's all different kind of scholarships that it's just maybe take sometimes nobody applies and you're the only one that writes a paragraph and you get awarded that money don't walk run to your nearest guidance your school counselor and get corrected on that all time and and get down there and get that money because it makes a difference in your household especially now with inflation and everybody having all this different um funding issues in their own homes and some people not getting any raises and things like that come on people get down there and get that money it's it's there for the taking there's there's so many different groups in clifton that actually fund the students i'm telling you uh i know my own children did it and it it afforded them to do a couple things on their own that they will always remember um that's probably all i have i just want to thank everybody for speaking another request that i have is um maybe an executive session we can have a little bit more information about the uh the curriculum that the one uh gentleman brought up i'd like to dig into that a little deeper and have a little discussion um because i'm i'm confused about a couple things and i have some concerns as well because basically um the phrase of uh grooming and um i'm it's not sitting right with me i'm a little i'm a little ups i'm a little um disturbed about it but i'd like to discuss that in executive session because i think does it have to be in executives i'm not sure we can talk about that in executive session and by the way grooming is not in the guidelines right that's why i was that's an interpretation that was made by the gentleman okay so maybe we can have that next meeting we can have some uh some guidance on that from somebody from the district to explain to us what the actual curriculum is and uh how it's being delivered and what is being actually you know maybe some samples of how it's being taught like because that word really it just it really it just bothered me so and and obviously that's not a question for me because i don't do curriculum um nor do i play a curriculum director on television but um you understand again i just wanted that to be clear that that word grooming was um is not what was in there no i and i understand that because you know it does get discussed on other levels it's just that there are people out there tonight listening to that and they're saying hey what are you teaching our kids and in other districts there are groups that show up and really hammer the boards on subjects like this as well so before it blossoms into the mushroom cloud can we clear that up as well that's my research if it's okay with mr smith i'd i'd like to ask our curriculum expert to address that tonight briefly she's ready she's always ready she's always ready she's the best she's the brightest she's one of the most brilliant people i've ever known in my entire life and i wouldn't put her on the spot if i didn't think she already knew um i will tell you this before mrs kusalevich speaks this is not um something that we didn't anticipate right this is something that's been talked about um at the state level um issues in the news other boards we do have a couple parent nights planned uh in may where we're going to have form so that we can explain what it really is and what it means for their for your children uh but having said that i think janina if you don't mind could you just give a brief overview of what the new standards are and how they relate to work excuse me mr dr robert as you can if those paranoids if we can attend like i won't sit with anybody because i really want to hear what i want to hear it at that level what the parents are hearing i want to hear what so i can so maybe if the conversation comes from a member of the community i can explain it eloquently like that because i don't want to touch it right now with the 10-foot public because i'm absolutely based on what i'm hearing tonight i think we'll need to do a presentation for the board okay thank you okay so these 2022 these 2020 standards which are being implemented in september of are a revision of the 2014 standards and while some of the changes do appear controversial particularly when you read the news articles or listen to newspapers the standards are still being presented in by our own teachers in a developmentally and age appropriate manner i think what makes people very nervous is that you have medically accurate terminology for biological processes as the forefront and core of this new curriculum medically accurate terminology is utilized but with topics that were already in the 2014 standards and the main goal is promoting health safety and prevention of diseases we will be having those two the first two um presentations in may which are being done by the rutgers university where a lot of this work has been done those will be virtual um there will be a town hall forum online where parents can ask their questions at the same time we are looking at something deeper should it be necessary uh when we get towards august into september our teachers themselves are being trained because this is not an indoctrination this is simply meant to be medically factual terminology utilized to promote health safety and the prevention of disease okay thank you mr canova you're next uh good evening first i just want to congratulate our teacher mr john o'reilly uh that was that was a great story that dr robert tosie shared we all have our teacher that you know made a difference in our life and the fact that he was able to impact not only a current our current clinton high students but also one that's you know up and coming i think that's an amazing feat i was at the strings concert yesterday my daughter participated in it so i'm a little biased and saying that you know it was great but uh i will also add that when she started last year it was during covet and everything was virtual so all the instrumentation was done virtual and then this year parts of it virtual and then you know opened um and just in those couple of years you know they did a great job and and you see all the students that they did an amazing job and to do that in a virtual environment i think is really telling as to how hard they work um and how how much the teachers really care about the kids and they really push them to do their best so that's a testament to the things that we do here um just want to talk for a second a little bit about budget and kind of about that that charter school um issue we were talking about earlier so as i said earlier a two percent increase would cover the the charter school um so if there was a flat budget that would mean that we would have to go out to the taxpayers this year in order to fund that there had been years in the past where we didn't have anything i was on the other side of that podium when i heard about the the issues and and you know worked with funding groups uh we we pulled out billboards and we had billboards around town we you know had marches and rallies and finally they started at least giving us the the funding that we deserve um so yes and that's an unfortunate part of our history that we've gone so many years being underfunded i would say you know maybe close to a billion dollars at this point you know it's been at least 15 years 50 000 or 50 million dollars but now it is moving in the other direction and now that we did receive 12 million dollars i know myself personally when i was talking about getting our referendum done 168 million dollars that i was saying by us doing that that means that the things that we would have had to do this year to fix those things and keep them operational we won't have to do so a lot of money that may have been budgeted for that we won't need so i know we're you know we're redoing all the bathrooms we're doing some auditoriums we're doing all these things all the money that you would have put towards fixing those things and maintaining them in their current condition for the 50-plus years that they've been there we don't have to do so i think there's a little bit of trade-off there um and and as everyone said you know i don't want to you know wait spend a lot of time on this but you know we are in a time right now where everyone's very pushed to the limit on many things on inflation on gas on and people are struggling so for me it's not a no it's a no for now i know these are the things that we need and we need to get there but i in my right mind i could never vote for that to happen at this moment so that's why you know i sided with with the rest of my colleagues um and one thing that our audience member said he said if if you can't see it you can't be it and that resonated with me because i have a lot of college students that come into college and they don't know what they want to do they have an undeclared field of study and i love that idea of showing kids earlier what what what is out there right they go into college and say i want to be a lawyer they'd study this and that and then it doesn't really work out and they change and they do something else until they find their their path the earlier we show them the path the better off they are so i think um dr roberto that's something that we that we could look into that'd be amazing thank you okay dr danny you're next um i'd like to say thank you to all of the speakers congratulations to mr o'reilly uh blessed ramadan though celebrating and um happy birthday to my daughter tara thank you uh next we have mr paris thank you uh congratulations to mr o'reilly for the educator of the year award um i also attended the all city concerts and uh like my colleagues was a fantastic evening they really showcased the talent we have here in clifton um also went to the the play the the pit crew the stage crew the actors the av crew it was just a phenomenal as dr roberto pointed out off-broadway kind of experience i also attended with my granddaughter the breakfast with belle which was one of the best deals on earth uh to be able to have a character breakfast which at disneyland probably would have cost you over a hundred dollars uh i think it cost us ten dollars uh and it was wonderful the act the they were in costume they were in enroll they're fantastic so we really enjoyed it and thank you to uh i believe the stepnesskeys really arranged a lot of that thank you to them um also to mr analytic who spoke earlier i think that's a fantastic idea to use some high school leaders whether they be academic uh or athletic or in the arts as some inspiration to elementary schools maybe that's something that can be done as uh some some um my thinking of auditorium uh presentations also the idea of the college alumni reaching out to to sophomores because there is a lot to be done that they don't realize and it gives them some real world and current experience of how to get into college what it's like and how to help make some of those decisions along the way as far as the the budget goes my inquiry was primarily motivated not from a lack of belief or empathy for the taxpayers i have family and taxpayers that are in similar situations with limited incomes it was really because i wasn't a party to the committee and i didn't see a lot of detail in the minutes and this is a rather large budget to digest and not having known what i don't i didn't know what we gave up i didn't know what the importance might have been of what was given up in this budget to maintain a zero percent increase um so i i appreciate my colleagues comments and their decisions but that was really the inquiry it was really to open that discussion uh and i appreciate your your input on that thank you mr abu jabo thank you mr president uh just bear with me because yep obviously i lost my voice um the things that have happened already uh the old city band old city stringers my colleagues have said were phenomenal i'm sorry to the band but i enjoy the strings a little more um because we i guess we don't get to see them that often uh the palestinian palestinian american community center wanted to give our thanks um to our board members who are attending our superintendent um a lot of our students were clifton students were a part of it um and you know it was great to see them within their own uh realm of clifton high school that you know obviously it's their home the district is their home um to showcase for the community what their their background their culture is all about mr o'reilly to me it's more than a congratulations educator of the year i've gotten to know you over uh the past year and a half or so two years during diversity committee which by the way we need a diversity committee um so we can have that um couple fundraisers coming up hca school eleven mr cupcakes fundraiser uh ends march 30th if you want to reach out to femina parham um couple if you're beefsteak fans and some sort of back normality uh baseball booster club may 21st uh over at the athenia post 7 pm you can reach out to rosa rogers on that the football booster club may 6 7 p.m boys and girls club you can reach out to linda cenary or lindsay sincu lacrosse booster club i believe just finalized last night april 22nd boys and girls club also you can reach out to luncineri or anybody else on the booster club um so talking about really speaking really quick about the east side of town and rough times um and just clifton in general assembly when brady timberlake um and dr robertosi i'm gonna connect you with one of her staff members um they'll be running a program for clifton residents for free produce produce and meat to residents that need it um they're shooting for next week to do that actually they just call me this morning try to connect them some organizations and i did in my own personal um civilian capacity um and i did so and they will be um contacting and partnershiping up with the boys and girls club with um executive director bob foster and as well as executive director ronnie mustafa from the palestine america community center since they're on the east side of lakeview ave and they serve not just the arab community but also the latino community their targets will be the east side of town and anyone that is impacted and is in need in the city of clifton dr robertson as i mentioned i'm going to try to connect you with um with one of the staff members she asked we consistently through the district i told that's not my capacity so i'll connect you via email tomorrow with her so you can handle that aspect um can i continue no okay uh as miss as she said no but dr danny almost said miss danny uh said happy ramadan so it's been a tradition past six years in clifton and i'm thankful to our diverse uh multifaceted community of city of clifton in supporting the the this is the sixth year doing a clifton annual ramadan lighting if anybody has seen it it's the fenus uh which is a lantern on city hall this year it's gonna be march 28th at 6 45 p.m city hall lawn this year um the islamic center for state county will be honoring 2022 muslims in service from education and many of them are clifton residents if not working clifton um from education to public safety to civil advocacy and various things to show the importance of how our clifton residents are um you know serving our community by community i don't mean the muslim community i mean the clifton at large community uh and then the last thing i have is well two things actually sorry um i noticed that we're not going to wrap it up i noticed that excuse me i noticed that um as a recommendation and a reminder for handicap accessibility uh ramps when people are um students are honored that we have some sort of accessibility for either parents or siblings somebody in their families it would be helpful and you know i'll wrap it up there thank you thank you mr awad i am not forgotten today i feel i feel special i love using president smith of course um i just wanted to congratulate um mr o'reilly um you know uh dr danny when you were telling us uh the story of how uh an educator affects a student in such a positive way it just brings me back i think the one teacher that stuck with me from this district i'm not sure if she's still in the district was mrs francisco she was my third grade teacher in school three she was this energetic italian-american woman she had beautiful red curls and you know she just had this energy and it was just so positive just i used i was so excited to go to school just to go to her class because every single day she would pull a surprise from where how when you never knew but you just knew that being in her class it was just going to be memories laughter she was such a great teacher honestly one of the most patient human beings i ever met so i do know how educators do have a positive impact um besides that uh yesterday was my first time going uh i was lucky enough to attend the all city strings concert i was honestly mind blown i just to see the elementary students perform first i i had a difficult time to believe those were elementary students because they sounded like professionals and working your way from the middle school to the high school was just in such crazy times it was so peaceful to listen to that you know that beautiful music that they put and honestly some of the music had nice speech and i was kind of bumping to it i was enjoying it i know they did a song from toy story and for some reason the movie was just playing in my head all night after that to the point where i think i'm going to go watch toy story tonight they did a phenomenal job to the staff to teachers you know i know they spent endless hours and they're trying to you know there's such a short period of time of practice the dedication i think i want my little one hopefully she allows it to probably play the violin um besides that you know just moments like that yesterday just you know having the community all back in the room just felt so weird from the past couple years but you know covered and quarantined just just having the community out just everybody having such a great time it was just positive vibes you know just seeing parents so proud of their children and smiling it kind of felt like we're going back to a normal state hopefully it stays like that we can attend many great events um to uh yeah that's pretty much it i love clifton i love all you guys that's pretty much it you guys have a good night thank you miss beltran okay so i'm just like to say that i'm really happy that we were able to have so many healthy discussions today as a board um we haven't really been able to do that as of late uh probably say for like the last year but tonight we had discussions over like three or four different things and we were all able to go around the room and we were respectful to each other no one shouted out a turn and everyone waited it was so i'm just really proud of everybody including myself that we all you know followed decorum and we were able to have discussions and nobody attacked mr paris even though he had a dissenting opinion uh we all like you know i'm saying historically you know it would have been a little bit more heated but it was like everyone kept their cool and had their own alkaloids i'm not sure accolades i'm not sure it's english second language issue with that word um so i'd also like to thank the speakers from the public for coming now we're starting to get a lot of speakers in the public that are coming to educate us on things that maybe we didn't know was happening like i wasn't aware that the um that uh state policy about sexual education was changing and it hasn't changed in 10 years i think janina said um so i think that was you know he's bringing things to a tension that we we wouldn't normally have been aware of and um to poor mr oozy one day i hope in my lifetime for you that will accept your budget because i know you do a lot of work and you bring it and you're so excited and you're like this is the budget and you come to the last slide and you're like and okay and you always like want to like close out the meeting but unfortunately every single time we just stare back at you like okay well that was a nice show so i don't know if it's gonna happen in my lifetime or your lifetime but i hope for your sake that you do because i know you put a lot of hours into presenting us a budget that's a dream and i hope one day that the economy is doing amazing and we're able to say yes the six percent tax increase is no problem rubber stamp um but until then i appreciate that you work with us when we staunchly say no um and i think that's all i have for tonight i do have something for new business um but that's all i have for board member comments thank you okay mr vice president daily thank you mr president um again first of all congratulations to mr o'reilly and i look forward to seeing him get his award at that's one of my along with graduation and some other things that's i try to attend that i don't think i've missed it unless there was a covid issue but i think i've gone to to your dinner which is always great it's it's a great time for everybody again the [Music] display by at the high school with the play and the uh city band the city orchestra was just phenomenal uh and uh it's it's really a testament to the staff we have here at the clifton board of education from the top to bottom they do such a good job with our students and uh there to be congratulated um we can't give bonuses that's against the law but you deserve we could do some accolades for you folks you do a great job and of course the talent is there and the kids you you as a teacher that's what you bring out you there's a lot of a lot of students have different everybody has something different to offer and what the magic of a teacher is is able to bring that out and i get that in space i absolutely understand that um again thank you to our student representative tiffany today and mr brunswick mr tiffany analick and uh good to see him back here i haven't seen him in a while but uh his his words were very well received by me um just very briefly on the budget um there are those in the public who say oh you ca you've had surpluses and you need to cut cut cut this through that anybody who tells you we need to because you've had a circle you you have to have a surplus to the budget you have to have a cushion that's bad budgeting if you budget to the penny so if something goes off off the rails you're done for it so um there is always a yin and yang and um you know that's our job to make sure you mr yusi doesn't get too enthusiastic about what he puts for it but i know it's it's a lot of hard work and it's a lot of effort and i've been through many of them but there's a balance and i i brought up the business about services because i know there's people in the public oh you got to cut to the penny cut that is ridiculous the administration might not get everything they want but that you folks know how to budget and and um and it's not just that's not a flaw in the process it's it's to be encouraged because that's what you need to do um we've gone up in our we're allowed to do surpluses now of four percent instead of two percent uh of course tech schools county schools were able to do uh six percent we're still not there but that gives us some question too and last item on security the administration is talking about some personnel however i want to remind everybody that in the referendum there's a big component of that referendum is security we all understand what our needs are here and that's why i went in whole hog on the big number you know go big or go home we needed to do it was the right opportunity we needed it was the right opportunity both from fiscally and what we what our needs were so uh i'm not i i far from turning deaf ear to what's needed in this district but there is a time and a way to do everything and there is a big component in in the security which was needed here in that referendum so with that everybody have a good night and leave it to you mr president thank you mr daley uh i think the concerts that the kids held are um were tremendous uh just to put that all together culminating with our wonderful uh mustang band at the first concert um you know it's so proud to see that that is the showcase of the newark northeast the showband um i don't think there's anyone any better than uh our our band and uh mr stefaneski does a great job but i really want to thank the the teachers led by our supervisor jason leshowitz and all the teachers that that were able to put those kids on performance and how great they were um it just was it really makes it worthwhile on being on this board and seeing a program that like that come out so well that you're proud of the programs that you back and you approve going into the budget just briefly um over the years and i can't sit here and and correct those mistakes um but whenever you go to a zero increase at some point that's going to catch up to you um and again knowing let's say we didn't get that increase from the from the state this year we'd be going out asking you for money just for the charter schools after you take that 12 million and you break it down we really only got another 3 million so while 3 million is better than none um but i you know i i kind of always relied on the people that do this day in and day out and rely on them to tell us hey this is what we need to have a thorough and efficient education um and then there's other stuffs that are the wish list the items that hey it'd be nice to have this in our classrooms but it's it's not going to hinder on having a thorough and efficient education um ms kusalevich tremendously explained to us that majority of the items in the budget for the increase are educational items they're educational teachers um esl so much in the educational in the in the um educational teaching area um that's being asked um so mr paris i too uh you know i rely on these people to tell us this is what we need to run an efficient school system and as long as that is not outrageous in its in its numbers um i rely on them and we we always say and we stand up here well we hired a superintendent to do a job and we we like respect his opinion when we hire people and when we do different moves and things like that but then when it comes to the budget we basically are saying well too bad you know we don't rely on you i got to think that this guy is not going to come forward and put a budget together that's going to hurt people and i have to rely on that mr lucy's a number guy again i don't think he's going to present to the board something that's outrageous that um that this board should not be uh looking into so i rely on these guys and at the time that they do not put forward that those type items to us then that's when i get concerned but right now i'm not concerned i think they have legitimate items and issues that maybe could have been corrected four or five budget budgets ago um but at some point when you go to a z you know first of all education is not cheap people it is not cheap and with we all know with a good educational system our property values increase the sales of your house has increased those are all things that you know about and nobody up here on this board wants to hit taxpayers um so we're kind of we're kind of in in a very difficult position we want to offer our kids the very best may not be the elite it may not be school districts that have everything but i think our kids should at least have some of the best our kids deserve that and the public told us that when they went out to the referendum that they believed in those things and again i'm not criticizing previous boards but had they done some of those things over the years we wouldn't have had to go out for 168 million dollar reform so we're coming back with catch up to things um renovating bathrooms that haven't been renovated in a hundred years i mean again if they had taken some bathrooms along the way we wouldn't have been here asking for all the bathrooms to be redone to all the bathrooms to be ada capable so i think this board has to really look hard here to rely on our experts to say this is what we need for a thorough and efficient education and see where that goes i understand people are hurting no one wants to put at any time sitting up here no board member would say yeah i love a tax increase hit him with more you know nobody here wants to do that but we're elected to represent you the people in putting the best possible thorough efficient education for your kids and that's what we have to do by by taking our oath of office so while we're going to look at this budget um while we ask the administration to go back and see where they can cut when i asked miss kusalevich that at the meeting she said you can't those things are those things are needed they should have been in they should have been in years ago they have to start getting implemented now so we have to look at that carefully and um well i know people are hurting um but i also know that this town very much supports education they told us that last year and i just hope that we could all be open-minded um and not just not think of that zero increase uh and rely on these experts to come to us uh because we all just said it we have one of the best superintendents if not the best superintendent and he would not be a best superintendent if he's coming to a board and asking them for outrageous things or outrageous increases that's how i feel um we should be supporting our uh our administrative staff and mr usi and mr shahada to your team for putting together this budget as um um mr paris said i mean it's a huge binder it is a huge budget so to be able to put something like that together your office did a lot of of work on it we appreciate that so i know the sport is going to do the best thing and the right thing and i hope the public will understand that we are going to work hard on this budget um and um miss password i like your idea that uh of of a meeting um but there is a meeting on may 5th but i'm not that's to approve it totally yes okay so may we i'll look at the calendar and we can set up a meeting if people have uh questions on the full budget to to go through that um mr o'reilly again thank you for your great accomplishments um it truly is an honor to have a teacher like you um and to the pack uh they had pac night on saturday and uh thank you very much for the uh the invite and allowing me to see all the great work that they do in their in their organization so thank you one thing i am a little shocked at or not happy about is mr lama when you came up and said the the schools aren't dirty um i've always credited clifton for having a hundred year plus schools and that our schools looked so great that our staff did a tremendous job and look making them look great i don't like when someone comes up to the microphone says our schools are dirty i don't like that and if that means we have to move people around or whatever our schools are not going to be dirty and i assure you that we will look into that that administration will surely look into that and uh schools are going to be clean so um on that note uh we'll move on to uh new business miss uh beltran you said you had an item ah yes i did have an item um so i'm not sure if any of the other board members have uh made this observation but our current committee system doesn't seem to be functioning as it used to um i did a brief count we've only had nine committee meetings in three months some people have only gone to one meeting so that doesn't really to me show the board that's working together with the administration uh to work on issues that are coming up it's it's almost impossible that there's been no personnel issues in three months uh or that there's only been one facilities meeting when we used to meet every two weeks there's been no diversity means been no athletics meeting there's been no personnel no transportation and the we just cancelled a residency meeting because they said there was nothing new to present which is fine and on within the right to say that there's nothing new to present but in the past there's always been these meetings so i'm just wondering if we're better off going to maybe to a committee of a whole so that we all get to participate in some of these discussions because there's some of us like i'm not sure if mr parris i think he might have only gone to one meeting three so he's gone to three meetings and some of us some of the other members have gone to all nine so it's just a little lopsided i think that some board members just because of where they're placed on committees have way more influence than other board members meanwhile we all have the same power so to speak um sorry i open it up to the board members to see if anyone else feels the same way um but i just know historically we used to have a lot more board meetings a lot more committee reports at each meeting yeah so if if you uh remember at the last uh i guess it was about a week ago or week and a half ago i asked everyone uh to submit um a date for their next meeting um and then i was presenting that to administration uh it wasn't it wasn't i think so many people try to accommodate everybody and with schedules and everything you're not going to accommodate everybody and there's plenty of board members that can fill in on committees so you just have to set a date um i think residency and security theirs is always the last week in the month right the last thursday so it's always that at that week and and they've been meeting cons consistently um the others i think they were waiting on dates and waiting for people to get back to them the chairs just have to set dates and that's what i asked uh with that email and if there weren't dates set we set them with administration so um i agree with you there haven't been a lot of meetings um i agree facilities used to meet at least once or twice um i i you know i've been getting comments that well there's nothing to discuss there's no me in a district this size there's nothing to discuss in the committee um not acceptable on my end so uh i've i've spoken to dr robitozzi on this um we will again be asking everyone to set a date um so let's say you want to meet on the second tuesday of every month and we're going to send that out education will meet on the second tuesday of every month this uh security and residency meets on the last thursday of the month so everyone knows that those are the set dates for those committing meetings and if by chance there is nothing to discuss an administration comes and needs to cancel that meeting we can discuss it at that time but at least that meeting is set and even if it's a meeting that lasts a half an hour i just cannot believe in a district this size that there's nothing to discuss on a monthly basis on certain topics yes just to make clear diversity hasn't met because it is run by the administration uh it's not a board it's a it's not a board run committee um it's actually run by the administration so we're waiting on dates from that and i believe mr smith you told me or was it you mr awad told me that athletic was canceled twice because the aed couldn't make it um so we got to figure our way around that as well while i give agree with ms beltran that we need to figure a better way that if an administrator can't make it that we have somebody in their place just like how if a board member can't make it somebody can replace as well but to say that we haven't had certain committee meetings i think it's not fair um to some board members and chairs when not to point fingers but the administration side hasn't been able to come to the table you know i wasn't blaming the board i'm just saying that you know if some people can go to five meetings and then other people have gone to maybe two i don't think that's necessarily fair just because of where we're assigned on committees i mean i was previously assigned to committees that met on a regular basis and now i've been put on committees that don't meet at all which is you know fine but i just feel my position as a board member has been diminished because i'm no longer on these committees um which you know is very upsetting to me that you know for no apparent reason i've been i've been uh replaced or removed so i just felt like if everyone was on all the committees maybe none of us would have this feeling uh especially if there isn't that much to present a committee of a whole meeting might only be like two hours long which is much shorter than our regular meetings that's just you know my opinion if the bulk of the meetings are going to be finance facilities and that's it um you know maybe if we had a committee of a whole it would be a two second presentation from athletics and a two second presentation from residency and then we could go on to the other the other groups that have more to present that's that was just what i was bringing up in new business mr daley yes thank you mr president um there's uh something to be said for and against a committee of the whole when i was president i set up a committee of the whole and basically what it was was one meeting of the month was in essence an agenda meeting uh which you discussed all the issues and then when you went to your regular meeting it was maybe an hour at the best and but just like we had that discussion about the budget today that's when those are you can get into the nitty-gritty details and hear information so uh and when i was a department head in union county i had at the agenda meeting i had to get up and say the department of economic development would have five items or whatever it is and explain what was going on to the entire freeholder board and it works but there's also something to be said for individual committees so i've always had an open mind technically the uh committee of the whole is still in the in the policy it never was changed but you know but you know i think that's something the board should discuss so because there is positive and negatives to both things mr president yes okay so for the person for so what i'm hearing from you and i'm and i'll speak for you and i speak for myself but what i'm hearing is you feel like you're not included that's basically the bottom line right because this is the parent this is parent judy coming out mama judy um dana that has been my life for the last 11 years i don't feel like i'm uh completely a part of this board never did okay i bounced off of policy and i'm going to tell the comm i'm going to tell the community why i was policy chair for about eight years i've never complained to anybody about being on policy i complained that when before dr roberto was here we never moved policies we had 45 or 40 something plus policies that we didn't move i don't know why but you know it was very difficult to work with people that don't but you know get along with you and they think that you have this ulterior motive to pass these policies but they were mandated by the state but we never moved them so unbeknownst to me dr will become tells you come in i have echo i don't know what's going on um he comes in and we get the policy book moved and everything right so i sit on policy and i am a nut but for compliance i really love it okay this year was placed under a certain board member that i do not i can't work with legally i can't work with him my own personal attorney has told me to stay away for obvious reasons okay and i into fairness of the committee i bounced off as much as i loved that work i gave it up for the for the good of the whole right now policies will change and i'll vote according to how i feel they're if they're good enough for the district because i don't look at it as it being a political policy i look at it how does it affect children how does it affect the staff how does it affect the taxpayers how does it affect this board as a whole that's how i pass policy where is it going to be good or bad for the district that's the bottom line okay i couldn't do it i pounced off of education for the same reason so i'm only on one committee i'm on an hsa committee he's not really a committee it's not the robotization committee so i can't set a date because it's i'm under his his leisure so i'm really not involved so i'm taking my time and i'm getting involved more with my state and my county my county um responsibilities and i'm i'm bringing the stuff back to the board like i did tonight county i would prefer com uh committee of the whole i always did because then i would feel like i'm involved in this this board i would feel like i am a part of this board in the decision-making process and that my voice would be heard i asked a question tonight about security i didn't get my answer so i'm gonna have to call the superintendent tomorrow and bother all right i have to make a decision on this budget based on their their their what they're telling me but i don't have the data to make the decision so that's i would prefer committee the whole i think maybe we should even just try it and give it a and give it a go and like the pilot for the people coming in on the tv if it doesn't work we ain't get president smith mr awad yeah i just want to make things clear i understand some board members may have personal issues or personal recommendations from lawyers but if we're able to sit in a room together with a meeting and all be cultural cordial or be respectful for the sake of our district because that's why we're here elected we're not here elected because and we're not going to harm the public because personal beef or personal issues or personal lawyers if we're able to be in a room together and have great discussions from last night i know all our committee meetings are virtual so i don't get how anybody could be uncomfortable being behind the screen i think it's just we can come up with excuses why we don't want to work with other people but at the same time we're only affecting the students and staff and i don't think the students and staff in our district really care what our personal beliefs or issues are with one another they care about getting results because at the end of the day it's the students that get affected and we need to keep that in mind we got to be bigger adults you know sometimes emotions get high totally understand it but all our committees even if we do an all committee that means we're all going to be present in a way so being able to attend that you can attend other committees for other issues it's sometimes we just got to take the higher road because it's for the students that's what we're here for we have the right intentions let's keep the ball going but to come up with any other excuses we're just affecting the students at the end of the day we just gotta always keep that sometimes you know me miss beltram might have disagreements but you know we discuss we talk you know we do our thing at the end of the day me and majority of the board members we always agree that students first district first how can we help our administration and let's keep that on the back of our mind mr smith i felt that the meetings would have been not appropriate for the for the staff to be sitting through argument after martin that's why i bounced off i'm being honest i i did that for a reason because i wanted the meetings to be productive in those committee meetings i'm going to sit there and argue i have a police report filed against me i have a cease and desist letter filed against me by these people would you want to sit in a room and discuss things with them i feel comfortable in the committee of the hole we're doing it now excuse me i'm speaking i have the floor i feel comfortable in this setting because we have an attorney here we have the superintendent here i have committee uh people here as well i feel more comfortable i won't feel comfortable the other way i'm allowed to say that i'm a 62 year old woman who don't feel comfortable being in a committee meeting with certain people what's wrong with that but we're virtual mrs besser so so i'm i'm going to interject if i may hear mr president um because i think that we're we're like going to a different path from the original question the original topic which ms beltran brought under new business which is that she would like the board to return to committee of the hall with all due respect to all of the different opinions so i think we should go back to that conversation so i make a motion that we go back to committee the whole 0-1-6-0 so excuse me one second i miss bastard i'm just taking a look to see because you'd have to yeah you have to have a resolution to go i think you'd have to go have a resolution to go back because there is a board policy or 160 i think you cited it already um to have a committee of the whole you don't i don't know how you went back to just board committees but i suspect that it was with a resolution so i think you need a resolution to go back to the committee of the whole and obviously a board vote a board vote but wouldn't a motion and a second and then discussion uh constitute the creation of a resolution so it would it would but it's a resolution that's not on the agenda so it's one of those if somebody objects then you'd have to have uh two-thirds of a vote of the whole board so just so that we're clear on what the process is mr president yes mr daley this is my suggestion to the board um just simply to go back i think we should sit down as a board and uh on a deliberative matter and i don't think we have the time or effort or energy to do it tonight and discuss just how that would work amongst ourselves like i said i kind of have a i had when i had it i had a kind of a hybrid it was a an agenda meeting and then there was a regular board meeting which we you know there was still a regular board meeting uh and you had sometimes the committees do play a role so i think we need to talk and hash that out and not just i'm not like i said i have a very open mind about the whole thing but i i think we need to have a little fuller discussion just how that would work and uh and if you're okay with that i'm okay with that jim but you have a board member you have two board members that's telling you quite honestly we're being honest right now with each other that we don't feel included that's that's that's a major red flag well i'm not i'm not just disagreeing with that i'm just saying how how do we get and if you're going to move you want to get just not in my opinion just jump on it you need to just think about and maybe shave around the edges and i i don't like i said i'm not totally against the idea and you know when i when i had the chair i did things a little bit differently but everybody every president does the things a little bit differently but i just want the board to everybody needs to understand how it's going to work and and fit in and how we transform into that so i think it takes a little bit more discussion about what the expectations would be and how it's set up and how it's run uh before you know so i'm i'm not against what you're asking for but i think we just need to have a whole fuller discussion a little bit more time where we can focus on that small question with this committee because i see where miss beltran's coming i don't disagree with you i think it's a good idea i never knew something like that could happen that there was a policy but would a would a committee like this be virtual or would it be in person and my second question is it'll be in person i don't care it would run just like this with no votes well just wrong with me just no votes okay i just don't i just don't see the difference where i'm saying if this committee was not to exist and for us to just be in other communities with other people virtually how that differentiates comfort levels but okay mr president uh there are a lot of boards that do committee the whole they do the one meeting they do they do their business meeting and then the next meeting in two weeks is um their work session uh it's very successful because everybody's involved in it everybody has input the work session meeting is very long it's lengthy but it's a designated board meeting it has to be because there's more than five so it has to be a public meeting right so the work session meeting is the same thing as the committee of the whole need and it's right it's a meeting that just like every other meeting there would be public advertising there's advertisement of it you have to have public comment um um and just just just that no action is taken the agenda is set for the next for the regular board meeting so what tends to happen i think somebody said it earlier committee of the whole meeting tends to be pretty long and then the regular board meeting is short okay so we'll put that on resolution for next meeting sure resolution on the next agenda okay okay so it's not going to committee yeah there's no what's the policy it's about policy oh that's true could go to policy yeah we'll go to policy first yeah but let's say a policy wants to look at it and re-revise it or whatever should go to committee first so no resolution yeah no right so until you hear from policy right so mr president um so i understand both sides i'm kind of in the middle on this um i would have questions like i know residency and security a lot of things we talk about isn't necessarily topics for for public consumption so i'd have a lot of questions around things like that or even in technology we talk about security cameras or there's there's always we could have executive okay any anything that is um confidential uh anything that involves students anything that involves personnel anything that involves um security those things there is an executive session and those would be discussed in executives small question um and i'm not advocating one way or the other just i'm just answering questions just uh just clarification maybe president smith or darlese uh if our committees are not public in general just a regular committee meetings that we have instead of having a separate date for a whole committee shouldn't we just do it in executive session have like every meeting and exactly that doesn't work like that oh you can't okay i'm sorry the reason why your committee meetings are not in public is because you don't have a quorum right it's less than a quorum as soon as you have five or more then it has to be in public so there may be some things that you're discussing in committees that you would be able to discuss in public but you don't because it's not a regular meeting it's it's there's not a core there are things that are discussed in certain committees that cannot be discussed in public personnel student issues etc those things you would discuss in executive session all right so we'll send this to policy and we'll come back to the board all right um motion for executive session uh we're going into executive session for uh personnel matters and uh contract matter action may or may not be taken um we estimate uh oh 20 minutes uh it's nothing bad we don't have a so uh between 30 and 45 minutes uh hopefully the board will be back hopefully back out motion to uh executive session by mr abigail seconded by mr awad any objection thank you okay we're good please yeah return from exactly here mr abdullah is here miss bassford miss beltran here mr canova here understanding left mr paris vice president daley president smith here we have a quorum okay the board met an executive session to discuss personnel matters and a contract matter we do have a resolution to present whenever you're so i guess ready have to do it twice so it's going to be 0.50 20 20.