there were a few with the 110 what i think there was one at 100 so we were in the bottom quartile where before we were probably in the middle third and so this is moving us back into the middle we are not at the top that's good to hear and as far as the pool of people i mean have we done any specific marketing to get them in here i know we're using um bsi esi thank you i could ask if dr polling has reached out with esi any additional i know they do some pushes some email pushes there's a lot of people that's registered not all of them are taking jobs at that time or they'll be going other places but i don't know if we do any specific specific marketing that you could address we did a job fair last week that was very successful and then we continue to push out through social media for hiring okay madam president member sourcing bill i would add that we last year had several subs on our list who were still a bit uncertain about returning uh to the classroom and so we are hopeful that um as things have returned quite normal this summer that our sub who have not subbed in the past will return to us and i know that that all districts are facing that issue the same issue but i was just curious if we were doing anything above and beyond but that's okay um one of the things that you had uh uh mentioned and i want to make sure that i heard it right you were on page nine and you were talking did i hear you say certified would equal to eight percent uh uh madam president pro 10 members of the board so the board previously in may approved a one percent increase if you look at the retention stipend went from three percent this the previous year to in september will be five percent so that's in that increase of two percent so now you're at three percent the board's providing four percent here is now seven and if you look at the dollars in the classroom site fund increase of a thousand on the average teacher is a little over it's one and a half a little more than one and a half percent so that's in excess of eight percent on their base pay increases now not all of its base pay because retention stipend is one time although it's been now two times in a row um and i may or may not have already budgeted in our sr funds for next year but um but yes the the net increase right now is approximately on their base pay now a lot of teachers pick up a lot of different other extra sections or coaching or other stipends that doesn't mean their total compensation will go up there but their base payable all right so there's three okay i'm just adding up some stuff so as far as the classified salary did they you know classified so how hourly and classified exempt are my people you know i love them so um i'm just curious does it equal more for them also um madame president pro 10 members of the board the classified hourly this pay is set this uh go around to seven percent the previous was six percent for classified and so that's a thirteen percent increase thank you that was what i was looking for yeah all right okay and uh the 2.0 officers excuse me security guards for each schools are over 2100 right yes 2100 um defined security guards madam president pro tem members of gunning board member soros inc bill these would be additional security guards to our current security guard staff at the school currently our ratios allow for four security guards per high school mr hicks and his department wrote for a grant that added a fifth to each high school whose sole purpose basically is to transport students to and from west bank for the program this would allow one additional security guard for schools above 2100 which would be valley vista high school and shadow ridge high school would be the two schools who would receive an additional security guard so they would fall under the job description of our current security guards and these folks have i hate to ask this right now what type of training madam president defines madam president member services will hesitate to answer that question a bit so as not to provide information tactically that we would not want to provide but i will tell you that they will be trained through a program that we have are finalizing with mr yeager our new safety coordinator and so he'll be working with them our security guards main roles are to be visible staff throughout the campus to provide opportunities for our staff for our high school students to be supervised in areas throughout the campus at lunch in between in between class periods they also handle such duties as escorting students to the office from the classrooms and those types of things i'll save this question through in another time thank you all right uh i think that was it for me regarding these i think that was it for me right now it may change madam madam president pro tem if i could just uh final comment i just want to thank the board for um considering this not acting on it yet but there are districts around the aggregate expenditure limit is still out there and there are districts that are holding all the additional funds they do not want to provide knowing that there could be a fight going forward with the legislature of allowing us to spend even though we will receive the money can we spend the money is a different thing and so i believe the right thing is to treat our employees and our staff and to provide them the funding if we something happens negatively within ael we will deal with it at that time and we will work with our legislators our legislators have provided a lot of funding and the expectation is it going to our staff so i appreciate the board's willingness to consider all these increases all right thank you and with that i will make a motion to approve the additional employee compensations based on the meet and confer process including adjustments to salary schedules and memorandum of understanding language to be consistent with iba recommendations i'll second yep motion carries thank you next we have item h2 dr dean madam president pro tem members of the governing board member of cabinet and our community mr hicks will very quickly discuss this item thank you very much madam president of pro tem members of the board acting superintendent dr dean colleagues and community members i don't have anything extra to add i will say i did add the rainbow report this year this meeting except i'm not going through it because as i noticed a gap that it goes from the 20 to 23 school year because i don't have the actuals from our afr for 22.
going way back to 2014 um that is after that year is the year that you chose as a as a board along with dr arkanov to make some changes to expand what had been our curriculum department into the teaching and learning department we added our instructional coaches um and i and certainly a lot of that's made the difference the working on having a guaranteed viable curriculum for our students so trying to just keep that steady line and and going lower we want to go lower but um the one thing on this chart is that's always confusing you want to be at the bottom of this chart now yes you do yes like the big spikes um yeah it needs to be more red not orange okay i'll i'll talk to the person who does this these these stripes in a grove red but we're really proud of the work our teachers are doing the hard work kids are putting in um despite all the obstacles right now in the last two years in front of us that um we're still able to maintain a great learning environment for our students so that just really leads me to any questions i want to thank you for how you support and i didn't put teaching and learning like my department i meant teaching and learning our teachers and support staff and our students in the learning in the building of course while that means my department is because we serve we serve all to help make this happen so i know that because of coving we had extra classes this summer right that was for more than just elementary kids or was it only elementary a lot of focus on elementary we didn't have much high school we had high school credit recovery a lot of global campus some of the last year in our middle school we had a program is a little more geared towards our students who had been disengaged during virtual and we didn't have that this year because we didn't have virtual students out in the virtual world and just did not have the the interest from i would say families i feel like they must have thought hey we're back in school and feel more caught up just assumed yeah in the elementary level yes we had a pretty robust elementary program um that marcy shawstack manages and coordinates a lot of that the data pieces and then amy clancy serves as one of our assistant principals um she manages that in real time then as it's happening um and that also includes all those students who don't pass i read three that that are required for some reason as well a lot of other students um that were able to come and get some more that had struggled and got some extra help to jump start them hopefully for the next grade level and then we just finished today was our last day of ready set k was able to visit a couple of classrooms um where we're serving up to 15 kids in a room teacher and a teacher's assistant and they're just working on foundational kids getting kids ready to play school right students that don't know how working on letters um and numbers um and a lot of those social skills that just are really important because if you don't have them you really start kindergarten at a disadvantage when you're not really sure what lineup means right or or what you do and don't do in school so great program we're able to fund that with our esther dollars we cannot do summer school for that um because they're not our students yet until august first so how did those students get i hate stay chosen but be part of the program um through our kindergarten screening program process and then we do some um we have some parents questions about just some general questions about things that you know how's your child able to do this or this or this and then we use both that affective and academic measure to see which kids need some support for kindergarten readiness good can you go back oh sure i don't i don't expect an answer to the question i'm about to ask but i want to pose the question so obviously in 2014 we were number 36 and the board and dr arkanov and at that time uh dr parker we the board made a conscious decision to invest in the teaching learning area and obviously that investment is paying off how do we get from 15 to one what's the investment i don't expect you to have that answer standing here but my challenge is what's the investment because obviously we're not afraid to make the investment and this shows us our investments paying off but i don't like getting beat by brownsburg and plainfield i will i will remind if you want to remind about brownsburg i will i will just say that when you focus wholeheartedly intently on on one thing and achieving that goal at all costs you can do it i have no doubt we can do that there is an opportunity costs that's plural to getting there and i know what all of you sitting up there really want for our kids and that exceptional well-rounded experience across whether that goes from the classroom to those ex those extracurriculars after school onto the sports fields the technology we embed in our in our everyday day-to-day teaching and learning i'm not sure i would have to come back with you about a lot of questions of which of these things might you want to give up to do that so i would love to crack the top ten i'd love to be lower down on that that um that chart closer to the axis i'm not i'm not hung up on one because i know that cost that would be i'm not sure you know keep keep claiming the ladder oh absolutely you know we've been pretty steady 14 15 through there so how do we get from the next in my mind the next bar down 10 to 15.
but part of the frank lautenberg amendments were that the epa had to select 10 legacy chemicals to study for their toxicities and so they they selected one for dioxane back in 2018 or so and published a report so that's finally initiated some regulatory action 114 dioxane it's a meaningful more meaningful regulation so um so this is something that is best done at the federal level um but again there's very little appetite for it in congress so where are these pfas point sources found i've mentioned this before that they're found in industrial sites um you know fire training sites mostly airports uh department of defense is a major polluter um we have uh three sites we have actually more than three sites here in michigan there's a worksmith air force base in moscow there are many sites in northern michigan unless they run grayling and the up um there is another site let's see where is it it's in the middle of the state here for example the cherry capital capital airport in traverse city was a training site that used pitfalls so that groundwater is contaminated and it's traveling under traverse city into traverse bay so point sources are wherever sewage sludge which was relabeled by the industry as biosolids have been applied um and uh especially the especially toxic ones or paper mill sludges which are shut down basically many family-owned farms in maine um because of widespread contamination because you know maine is a uh a state where there are a lot of where there's a lot of people processing a lot of paper mills and then wastewater treatment sludges with itp permits some the first breach in the wall here in michigan was um a farm which had used the biosolids that came from the wickson wastewater treatment plant it contaminated the you know the water in the heron river also um that bioselection that same wastewater treatment plant was applied to a farm in heartland michigan among others and you can measure high levels of pfas you know in the beef that came off that farm and that's an unfortunate situation because that farmer has been a great community partner he's been a great and generous community partner and uh of course this came out of the blue and has put him out of business so um and as i mentioned before it's wherever food packaging is included in compost so pure yard waste have far less pfas contamination anything that has food scraps in it or free packaging um this is true for all composts and all all fire solids that have been tested so far um and things like car washes and commercial laundries are also point sources of pfas contamination because i think there are some products that are used in car washes you know if you pay for the extra service you know for keeping your tire shiny and stuff like that that's probably pcos but it's hard to tell uh what has been used because the disclosure laws are just so weak here in the united states so here for example here is just a screenshot from the environmental working group which is an environmental engineer that's done a lot of work on pfas on consumer products i i've given their their hyperlinks um down at the last slide but as you can see there's a couple of states here that have been active just because the state is negative for pdfos doesn't mean that it isn't there it just means that they haven't tested for it so as you see colorado is tested for it because they know because they've had it because the uh because the military installation's there and also because fifa's compounds are used in fracking so fracking fluids contain a lot of fleethouse and so um it was recognized the state of colorado recognized um four years ago uh five years ago that they're they have widespread defense contamination so their state initiated a testing effort these purple dots here are dod sites because the uh because the dod was required to test for pfos contamination with ground wires by the federal government a few years ago k-state of california state of alabama because there was a 3m plant located in decatur alabama on the tennessee river that was a major manufacturer of um you can see along the ohio river here in kentucky as well in the state of new jersey for obvious reasons and new england states have done a lot of pbas testing in north carolina because of the gen x pollution in the cape fear river has initiated all state action but most of these other states there has been no federal action until the last two years and there's been no except for drd sites and there's been no state action whatsoever either even though there is widespread contamination several ngos like the sierra club have been testing drinking water in florida and it's very very high in pesos but the state will not uh will not recognize it the state will know actually um so this is just an example here if you look at this at any of these dots you can expand this map and uh click on any of these dots and this is what you'll come up with what i did is you see this is ann arbor down here and so i clicked on wix and the wixom site here and so you'll get this kind of information here on the left this little pop-up window shows up and it will give you the details it's contamination it's kind of the location some of the data and the sources so this is a really good database that a lot of people are using these days that's been funded by the environmental working group so you can go look up stuff there um another good source of information is safer states safer sage is a uh environmental ngo that uh that catalogs data on policies on what uh regulations for pcos have been done at different state levels um so you can it's a great place to look at if you want to see um if you want to see representative legislation on how to ban keep us in food packaging there's uh jeff irwin and uh yusuf ravi have introduced legislation for the past four years and our state legislature that those bills have gone nowhere in our state legislature for example but you can find all this information at this sacred states website [Music] and what are the threats here the health and budgets well the health threats again are they're long-term chronic exposures and they come through food packaging is easiest to get rid of meat and fish and dairy less so in vegetables i sort of put them in an order so um you know eating less meat fish and dairy will help you reduce your exposure to food there's not much you can do about that at this point um this stuff has to work its way through the system um it's all going to end up in the ocean anyway and packaging is something you can get rid of immediately so in water pfas is difficult to remove and it persists in sediments so the city's done a good job at getting rid of it more drinking water but as i mentioned some the technology they're using isn't so good for some of these smaller molecular weight legacy pfos um air is a health fat um about five percent on average of p-class exposure comes from inhalation both of volatile pfas like pfda which is one of the smaller um pfas compounds that have been made in large quantities on household dusts right now a lot of drapes and carpets and the furniture comes with their furniture pre-treated with peoples you know they're no they're not it's not necessary to disclose that until recently so the carpet industry in georgia for example has about that they will get pfas out of there out of carpets manufactured in that state that time there's plenty of legacy carpet out there so on the budget threats the regulation is coming and remediation is difficult it's too expensive for most most municipalities too expensive for even the federal government um you know so it's it's a basic situation where a small number of people have made some money on it but um they have offloaded the costs to everybody and the the external costs are going to be tremendous it's going to be it's going to be when i say it's difficult it's difficult both technically and monetarily it's going to be very hard to come up with the funding required to do a true remediation for everything outside of drinking water for drinking water treatment you have two technologies really have granulated activated carbon which the city is using and then you have reverse osmosis there is a large water treatment plant for brunswick county in north carolina that's building a reverse osmosis treatment plant and it's scaled to the same size as in orders so um they have a budget um it's under construction right now it'll be a few years before before there's enough data to make most engineers comfortable about what to expect with that investment but they've taken this they've taken on this challenge because of the um brunswick county is at the mouth of the for the river so they they know they have highly toxic gen x compounds and many of them um that's the only way to remediate those uh you can't remediate them through granular activated carbon through gac filters wastewater treatment is a far bigger challenge and it's mostly because wastewater is it starts out a lot um dirtier a lot dirtier than drinking water the same with compost the same with fire solids and landfill leachates so the regulatory laws and actions are inadequate it's too little and too late for most sites so the comprehensive solutions as i've mentioned before this is just a reiteration now we've got to get the federal government to define pfos um using a strict using a strict definition that uh that really uh that really treats the common property of all feedbacks which which is its persistence in the environment and in the body and eliminating all non-essential uses of pfas and reforming tosca so the last slide i have here are these key information sources you know most regulations in the united states come from recognized health risks to people so um the the atsdr um branch of the cdc they're responsible for uh for establishing health risks for chemicals and they pass their data they collect data and they pass on they don't have themselves any regulatory powers but they pass on their information to other agencies nihs which is centered in north carolina does a lot of research they don't really have any regulatory action powers you can look at there's a lot of these data that's publicly available that you can find on the toxic net here at the national library of medicine at this url you can look at the epa website this is the root gi epa website for fifos you can look up the fda again allows people's compounds to be used in food packaging so you can find out on this website what they do and not so much about what they're doing about it a good source of information is the itrc this interstate technology regulatory council some of the states have recognized that there's no adequate enforcement at the federal level so they're all sharing data and recommendations on this website um i saw you i saw i gave you a slide from safer states this is where you can find this information on fifos regulation um in different state at the state level um then there's some i attended a pfas conference in north carolina june 15th 17th and you'll find um you'll find uh some information on this website which is the latest publicly site where a special meeting dedicated to fifa's toxicity and regulation and uh this is was discussed and i can provide a pdf of the uh of the agenda for anybody who asks me the pdf hasn't been posted on the website yet um this is the imparts website that will tell you what the pfos response has been in michigan part of that website is that they show you they give you a map of fifa sites in michigan and investigation sites so you can look into that and the environmental ngos that are providing the best information here is the environmental working group at this url the silent spring institute which is located in newton massachusetts has done a lot of good work um the sierra club here has done a sludge in the garden report that can be found at this url and then there's this this app which you can find there are some apps in progress where you can um you can load download it onto your phone and you can look up different food and cosmetics and household products so speaking to the general question was addressed now but um again you need you can um this information there's no central clearinghouse for this like for this information but i'll do my best to try to assemble it into a into a form that uh where you can see it as it's updated because this there's a lot of work moving here a lot of work has started moving quickly so information can get can expire pretty quickly we're becoming complete now i'm joined uh it seems to me and you've mentioned this that really everything that we do our band-aid solutions unless we can um shepherd costco not something to me reach like red legislation in in the us so that new chemicals are only approved after they've been shown to not be harmful um do we as individuals have any [Music] possible influence in uh pushing that kind of legislation advancing it um promoting it with our our elected officials or is that just an unrealistic lift well no well our local officials are very aware of it very active and trying to push legislation through congress debbie dingle is the leader so as dan kildee and so is fred upton in the western part of the state it's a bipartisan issue but um you know so it tends to get some support from republicans but uh you know the major pushback is by the uh american chemistry council which is the trade group for the chemical industry and also the chambers of commerce so what can we do or what do you recommend we do um you need to contact your elected officials ours are already ours here in ann arbor are already well aware of this problem and they're very active so i would ask them i would ask them you know for example this some fifa's bill was been in that yusuf ravi and jeff ruin introduced four years ago hasn't gone anywhere because the republican leadership and the current legislature will not move it and it will not move it out of committee it will not even allow a public discussion about it so you know there needs to be a public discussion you know i think personally i think you know because states have not acted and the epa has limited authority um that we i think testing if we can fund testing if we can get people nationwide to test their water supplies for fifa's they can do it at eighty dollars there's a company that will do it for 80 bucks and uh um and that will at least make public raise public awareness and uh you know i think there's um you know it's one thing to show up as a constituent and say um i'm i'm concerned about peoples in my drinking water and you know it's one thing to just show up and say that it's another thing to show up with a piece of paper to say my drinking water is contaminated it's then how long has it been contaminated and i want to know why and i want to know what you're going to do about it so i think that's the bottom line because the authority has to come through congress so now that the executive branch does what it can but when there's a leadership change in the executive branch you can swing from hot to cold overnight um so kathy you have your hand up and then anne morrison yes i've attended two community hearings regarding pfas in fact steven were you at the one at washington community college yeah that um erin river watershed council sponsored yes back yeah i was there i think it was in november of 29 2020 or 2019.
he wouldn't have to sit through this either my nephew is young enough that he's going to sit through this no child should sit through this you're taking their innocence away from them if you promote this and you allow this to happen you're taking away their innocence they don't deserve it I didn't prepare anything tonight I wasn't coming down here speak but honestly I'd be wrong to sit there and listen to this and not say something all right it's your responsibility your responsibility to say yes or no to this and it's really your responsibility to say no to this curriculum leave the money on the table and let the kids keep their innocence I went through high school we learned about sex education in high school family life and grammar school and elementary school that's the way it should be family life not sex education in Graham Elementary School all right please don't do this to our children don't do this to everybody else's children are still going through this I implore you to please do the right thing thank you [Applause] anyone else wish to address the board good evening my name is Lori lalama and I'm the president of the Clifton Education Association I would like to respond to some of the things that were said tonight which has me quite upset as an educator for 38 years and also the president of the association I have full faith in our assistant superintendent of curriculum Janina kusilevic she has done a phenomenal job setting up reviews um nighttime uh PowerPoint presentations for families are teachers are one of the best prepared in the state of New Jersey New Jersey is the number one state in the nation for public education our teachers have Bachelors Masters and more professional development credits than any other profession out there our teachers continue to be highly trained they continue to work on professional development in all areas now according to the Southern Poverty Law Center which some people were discussing tonight is actually the family watch International which through this company or this extremist group was founded in 1999.
it jumps down to 21. so there's a little gap so you could look at it i will update it again when we do our afr and then we'll have the three successive years that you'll be able to see so and as we already mentioned everything that we put into this presentation has been embedded into the budget and i have nothing additional to say i didn't even notice that shame on me all right thank you do we have any questions all right i will move to approve the 2022-2023 revised expenditure budget motion carries next we will move to h3 dr dean madam president pro tem members of governing board members of cabinet and our community this evening we asked for approval in dysart's instructional time model per state statute the information has been provided to the governing board and our community through two public hearings in the last two board meetings all right do we have any questions all right with that i will make a motion to approve dysart's instructional time model for the 2022-2023 school year and give authority to the interim assistant superintendent for education services to submit the instructional time model plan to the arizona department of education second motion carries next we will move on to request for future agenda items i would like to request an information item on the supplemental materials list for instruction anyone else okay we will move to j item j1 i will motion that we adjourn the meeting somebody better not vote no today motion carries we are adjourned
you know how do we how do we get there and as a corporation where do we draw the line in the sand and say that's good enough we've achieved it because back to your point and i'm glad you're glad you brought it up because i figured you would there's a reason why brownsburg is where they are and it's not a knock and nora i commend you with your answer i like us i like who we are and i like the fact that we focus on well-rounded individuals because when the kids get out in society that's what they need and i'm glad to see that we're 15. yeah i'd like to be 14 next year and 12 the year after but i don't want to do that at the cost of other things that are important so in my opinion your answer knocked the question out of the park oh thanks nora nora on 2017 we were 11.
probably 2019 before covid so there is a lot of community interest um willow has a you know a super superfund site because of pfas and general motors seems to be quite proactive uh and the last thing i want to say is if you have city water the city is already testing it for pfas on a regular basis and reporting it monthly yep yeah the city is doing fine um so um you know we spent some uh 1.4 million dollars of our own money so that's another that brings up another point that uh the polluter pay laws have totally been um made ineffectual so i think it's important that the taxpayer not pay for this but the you know the industry that's made these compounds should pay for it everybody else is relatively innocent but then the seven companies that manufacture this they need to pay the bill for everybody because everybody else is just going to pass it um and your hand is up yeah i know there's a lot of focus on pfas and drinking water but i am kind of curious about and every time construction happens on a piece of property does it raise the level of like uh pfas that might be in the air um and is it something that should be like like for instance um a few a couple years ago at one of the ann arbor city parks um at leslie science and nature center we started a an effort to build a playground and in the course of that we did some testing of the um soil where they were going to place the playground and discover that there were a lot of uh industrial contaminants and so remediation effort had to take place and so i'm curious like is pfas something that an environmental company would test for um prior to construction and is there anything one can do about it um would ask for prior to construction yeah no there is no requirement there in fact in fact i'm working with a group which we're trying to privately fund some air monitors around some of these wolverine toxic sites near grand rapids um uh the uh impart program in the state has been doing some work on air and him you know on your uh um you know uh on air contamination from ethos and air distribution of pfas but uh as far as i know there is no legal requirement to do it and this eagle is not requiring um people to do it you know the basic fact is that almost none of these are declared as hazardous substances so until they're declared hazardous substances the regulatory agencies are assigned you know so ann you know your hand is still up yeah this is is it is the issue that um we just don't have the studies that would convince authorities that they are hazardous substances is there still work to be done and showing the link between pfas and specific um health problems well you know i've been look i look at the peer-reviewed scientific literature so that's that's inhibited by the amount of funding that's allocated to those kind of studies but that's where this information first shows up then it takes generally like a couple years for it to migrate into the uh into the press you know there are several local reporters that are very good on this topic now but it takes a couple of years for the media the general media to take up um these topics and then it takes a couple years after that for the regulatory agencies to take it up and then it takes um another almost a decade for the epa to deal with it because they have to go through their their whole rule making process so there's a significant to that you know you see just for pfos and pfoa it's taken 12 years since the epa you know talked to the manufacturers and uh the contamination of the ohio river was recognized you know so uh it could be a good um it takes a long time it takes a long time for the rulemaking uh to happen shannon um i'm just curious this is really piggybacks on anne's comment and i'm gonna hazard a guess here and i'm just curious what you think about it just because i work with construction sites all the time it seems to me that it would be more with like a brownfield kind of situation that you would really think about having higher levels of fast in the soil and that i know leslie science center had a very uh enthusiastic chemist that used to live there that dump stuff all over the place and so that doesn't seem like a very typical example to me of like construction and and you know digging around and i'm just wondering stephen if you have an opinion about something like that i mean i i can just tell you there's no way with every construction project that you would you have to do a phase one or phase two environmental report which would alert you to the fact that there was some sort of chemical something happening there that would then make the soil more risk but that generally if it if you kind of pass through those that it seems like it would be less likely that with any construction project you could be volatilizing this into the era in a significant way does that seem reasonable to you or not really yeah that's reasonable okay you know i i was just outlining the general procedure yeah yeah it's it's not likely to unless the chemicals have been disposed in a concentrated form right but you know how common it is not to know that that's right when you're a buyer of a property and there's no disclosure requirements and uh and you know and there's also um you know because there's a list of what you need to test for correct but if a chemical is not listed as a hazard that's right no requirement to test for it that's right right and so it wouldn't show up on a phase two report um because it's not one of the ones that they would actively i mean yeah okay let's see here is an example of chemicals that were made for 70 years over 70 years distributed widely in large quantities and for which they're still not listed as hazardous substances yeah um i have one more question and i'd forgive me if i kind of missed this in the in the way that you were presenting things at the end it seems like what you're saying is that our compost could be dangerous we're spending all kinds of energy trying to figure out how to get more people to compost how to get restaurants to compost like just what is your sense of that because like that's a big shift in terms of what many people are working on to try to make happen and i'm just wondering what you think about that yeah i mean the unfortunate thing is it's been circulating for decades it's everywhere so um the costs of fixing it are high the current levels are probably it could be an issue for the most vulnerable population you know which tend to be kids young kids under the age of five you know from conception until the age of five um it's hard to tell because there is no heart health data um and they're very hard to avoid i mean they're still these compounds are still in consumer products so what i tell people is you know what you can do what we can do is just stop putting fast food wrappers into our compost the food is another thing i mean the food itself is probably okay well there's nothing you can do about that um and you know you really to get a good compost or a good soil in mind when you need the nitrogen right um but we can at least get rid of the food packaging so so that's kind of the big message really it seems to me is like the the the fast food wrappers some of the food packaging that may contain these not so much the food itself i mean there's probably some level like you're saying a background in many things in terms of our food but you're advocating more for the food uh food container and food wrapper piece of it rather than compost just made with food am i right about that or that's that's correct you know okay because it's gonna be impossible to get rid of it's going to be impossible to you know to reduce it until we can ensure that people have to test for it yeah and not matter intentionally okay there just are no loss to that thank you so john 15 seconds could you make a presentation in a future meeting contrasting u.s taska versus european reach um because i think there's probably very very few people that understand the difference and unless we implement something like reach in the u.s we're constantly going to be playing catch-up um you know there's just there's just going to be all these new chemical compounds that are introduced and there's going to be no requirement on chemical companies to indicate what their toxicity is or what their other environmental impacts are or human impacts and we're constantly being kept being having to catch up whereas in europe you know bypassing reach legislation they haven't been set back into the dark ages um they're still able to have a thriving economy and i think it would be really important for people here to understand the difference between the two two regulatory approaches yeah absolutely no it doesn't have to be long i just you know 15 minutes 10 minutes just so people understand the difference yeah i know i've taken up uh over an hour here so uh it's okay we'll do rita you have your hand up and then we should move on um it seems to me um relating this to um shannon's question or comment that this might be an opportunity to um do some communication about the solid waste and inform people to avoid trying to compost wrappers of any kind well it'll end up in the trash and then it'll end up leaching out of the landfill eventually yeah i know i know i'm struggling with that myself there there are no good solutions anymore okay well uh why don't we move on i think uh i think i'm happy to answer anybody's question if they want to email me anything meanwhile um we have these information sources folks can look at so i'm going to stop sharing the screen here and uh let's move on to the next uh item on the agenda then um there's no unfinished business we have no new business uh so we have reports from committees other commissions council and chair let's start with uh planning all righty um two things one is uh we just got a presentation on a proposal called the village um which is over off of is basically kind of tucked into a corner of pontiac trail and duvarn is if you think of the corner being out it sort of folds its way through there 561 units 65 acres and um it's still in the kind of rezoning phase um but it's probably my guess is the last big piece of land that ann arbor has um in terms of uh development of this size um it also it's a site that has been uh it was a dump site parts of it for a lot of years it's not pristine by any stretch of the imagination in terms of its environmental history um there are some nice trees on it for sure um there were a lot of questions that we had and it's it's going to be coming back for rezoning when there's rezoning involved we have a little bit more power to ask and so i think every commissioner and all their comments really tried to hit home the idea of electrification with this project and they are going to come back with some they did had done some homework but um i are going to do some more homework with that so uh this feels like an opportunity um with this many homes this much energy being locked into that for so long i think because of the rezoning we're gonna see what we can do as planning commission which ordinarily that is not what we have any control over we can we can ask nicely try not to completely alienate them um but uh we can't there's no teeth but with the rezoning we have a little bit again sort of a sideways power coming in there to be able to do that so that's one to watch um as it relates to our a20 plans um and then we also had a a couple of we had a a public um hearing input session on the newest transit corridor development area which is going to be on stadium that's what we're looking at right now we got a lot of public comment we have continued to get public comment through emails um it's it's people are kind of all over the place there's some people that really don't want it there's some people that love it um it's been all over i would just say with this that um for me this is one of the few areas where we can map more closely to the h20 plan because of where this is located the whole idea of this kind of zoning is to be able to get housing on our transit corridors to make it easier for people to take transit instead of their car and that we have absolute jurisdiction over his planning commission so it's nice to actually work on something where we feel like okay we actually can do something about this so um it's it's because it's really like a planning move to be able to do this uh the zoning in this area in this way so um it's still in rough form in some ways i have a feeling there's going to be more discussion around what it looks like it may be a little bit different flavor than what i already got passed out at staten eisenhower but um it's definitely on the agenda and we're hearing a lot about it and for me it's really important um because it allows people to number one not have to live in jackson or south lyon or somewhere else and actually be able to live in ann arbor and so that you're getting rid of you know those emissions um that are traveling into town and then that you could lead a more car fleet car or a less car-oriented lifestyle by living in one of these um in one of these developments in these corridors so those are the two big things for me with that and um we're gonna kind of keep marching through in terms of some of the other areas as well but uh because of washington and a plymouth on the agenda as well but stadium is where we are right now so i think that's that's the those are the big things or because i think it's been two months because i had to chair the last commission so i couldn't i couldn't attend you are muted stephen i am my dog was the neighbor's dog is barking so uh john you have your hand up and then rita uh shannon is there any consideration with this rezoning to a transit corner of including any sustainability requirements for example yeah certain emissions per square foot targets or any other kinds of things along those lines all electric whatever the case may be we really don't at least what i've been told um is that we really don't have the power to do that like as a planning commission that we can't legislate people being all electric and and that's why i was bringing it up with the other project is that we kind of have some you know foothold because they're asking for something extra um and even then we can't legislate it really it's just kind of putting the pressure on them and so we as far as as far as the commission knows at this point i know we had a speaker that came and said i'm not so sure about this but from what we understand right now we don't have the power to make them do that so we're doing what we can which is locating the development in a transit corridor um but otherwise i've been told that that we don't have the power to do that so i think there's also some concern about like the we're also trying it's just it's such a balancing act right in terms of kind of cost and um and environmental considerations and everything too and i think we're trying to it's not true affordable housing um but we're trying to make it it's like land costs are less there things like that it's not like living downtown uh with some of the high-rises downtown um so um again it's mostly about the that we just really don't have the jurisdiction to do that um but i think there's also some portion of it which is let's try to make these something that people can build um and not have it be crazy expensive and that people could live there and um and be able to use transit from there i'll address that topic a little bit later when i give an update on energy commission so great go ahead reader shannon this isn't um necessarily an environmental commission item but maybe um in some of the developments that we've had there have been mixed use plans that haven't played out um meaning that the retail and and whatever hasn't happened that was designed is there any way to allow that because i'm worried about the businesses in those areas that are established and are really the reason for having the transit corridor right like stadium hardware it's like we want to make sure that lives and is available to the people that are in the potential so are to be living there let me make sure from understanding your question are you saying is there a threat to other businesses because we would have a retail com we're asking for mixed use and there would be a commercial level to it on the first floor is that what you're i'm i'm concerned that the history that i see in some places is that that the retail hasn't played out you know i think it's because the square footage is too expensive for a business to stay in particularly a smaller local business that the expense as exemplified by the george that's now going to be housing not not the proposed retail that the community really wanted that immediate community yeah so how does that play out it's really hard because so much of that is market driven and we have no control over that and so like you know we've all seen these empty storefronts even downtown like the one you know on here on the quarter in division in huron was empty for like four years or something before so you can say like we want retail on the first floor but frankly right now it's pretty tough in the retail world given amazon and you know all these other forces i it is something that we've talked about but i don't know that it's um totally there yet i i should check it to kind of see as to what does it mean if it's just all residential which is i think it's like a very real person possibility i think that like we wanted to have that vibrant mix at the first level and who wants to live like at the first level on stadium looking at you know all those kinds of things but um uh i know that there's been some talk about that but i i have to confess i don't feel like i know the minutia of what we really allow and not if like if you could do pure residential if you wanted to um or whether it's it's set on mixed use um it's a tough thing like we've heard from developers like you know i'd like it to be mixed use but i just don't have any confidence in in being able to fill it which is hard so anyway i know there's go ahead yeah well it's just that and then people will need to travel to get those goods and services right that's right that's why we wanted them there in the first place so if we were that's right i don't know what to do but you got to make you got a like they have to be viable too right i mean that's the thing it's it's really it's really hard and i think the other tricky thing is that we're we're managing the parking with the two and keeping it on the low end and in the kind of interim while we're shifting over to fewer cars and things like that is there enough parking for a current business to move in there are they going to block at that and say that's not enough for me i mean those are just all really tough questions i think around sort of where we are where we want to be and kind of how you get there it's not straightforward in my mind at all [Music] okay um let's move on to energy so uh our last meeting was devoted to three topics um one was a presentation by missy stoltz uh on a20 and i encourage you go to go into legistar and look at her presentation it's mostly focused on actions um and not so much on outcomes and when i talk about outcomes i'm talking about greenhouse gas emissions um the last inventory that was done is for 2020 and we all know 2020 because the pandemic was an anomaly and so were to some degree driving while looking in the rearview mirror um we are still waiting for some data from our osi is waiting for data from dte to be able to update the inventory to reflect 2021 um and it's expected that um that'll be available sometime in august or september so hopefully both of our commissions will get a report on that or at least you'll be able to access it from the energy commission site we got an update on the climate millage and i believe also a presentation was given to the environmental commission on that and or if not that certainly could be done and then the other thing is we passed a resolution um regarding the development that shannon talked about encouraging the planning commission and city council to work with a development developer to make that an all-electric um development so i've read the statute um and in the case of a request like like this where someone's requesting rezoning you shannon's absolutely right you cannot make um in a case like this rezoning contingent on for example a sustainability um requirement or something like that um so that's why um we we ask that just be encouraged and um we don't really have a real strong lever in this case um we don't have an august meeting but in september um just in correspondence in the last couple days i can tell you that um we plan on taking on the topic of affordability of housing versus sustainability of housing um brett has agreed to present um at our meeting and we're talking about the possibility mrs gonna explore it with maybe you shannon and brett about possibly combining a portion of our meetings to talk about this uh i've arranged for an architect and developer out of uh headquartered in philadelphia that has done a lot of work mostly in that area in new england but in other parts of the country to make a presentation they've done a number of projects um that are um passive house certified um several of which are also net zero um and those um on average actually there's a study done by the state of pennsylvania of 268 projects that went through a state agency um comparing traditional construction to passive house construction and passive house construction which by the way is a very very tight envelope essentially high insulation very well sealed doesn't necessarily have to be net zero meaning all electric but could be um passive house projects came in on average one or two percent below conventional construction so he's going to come in and talk about uh their experience there and the design approach and uh working with the team to to achieve those kinds of results but we feel that other than the paradigm and the experience here in the midwest and there certainly is a lack of experience but other than than that paradigm that there is absolutely the possibility of having affordable sustainable housing in ann arbor and the other thing to remember affordability is not just what i pay for my mortgage or for my rent um as shannon pointed out before it's also transportation costs but it's also my utility costs so if my utility costs are held way way down and i can build a very uh sustainable structure for the same cost then you're winning on on both ends of the equation so our hope is is that um we can uh stage a meeting where we can get not only commissioners attending but also maybe also people from the community housing commission even maybe the townships of solani ypsilanti has two big projects that i think they just um approved that are going to be natural gas-fired appliances uh and um some of you may know ken garber he's a regular speaker at both planning and energy commission meetings and at city council he did calculations that showed i think in the last two years the city has approved uh projects that are going to be gas fired so to speak for heating and hot water and the emissions that are going to be emitted because of that are going to completely offset all of the solar from the solarized project of all of the solar that's going on city buildings and about one-third of the solar that's going to be going up on the landfill so these large projects that where natural gas is going in for heating air for cooking for heating water are really setting us back on a20 and shannon is right the building and energy codes really restrict us i don't know about a case like creating a transit corridor if there's anything we can do but that's something we definitely need to look in uh look into because if we do transit quarters sell state plymouth um stadium washington and we have no control over whether or not those are going to be all electric or not then we're going to really we'll get limited benefit put it that way because if if they're not developed here they're probably going to be done somewhere else and those could be gas-fired as well so it's not like there's there's no benefit but we're not certainly not getting the full benefit of what we'd like to achieve so um that's an update from the energy commission and i mentioned this before the meeting was called to order um um ed juno is moving to washington dc um she had been our liaison and um i was the only person that raised their hand or was nominated to be liaison so you have me back i was liaison for i think almost three years um in a couple of years ago so glad to be back with all of you yeah you have to put on my questions and comments okay thanks all right so let's move on to parks parks advisory council hey we had a meeting last week we had a presentation from the council of the commons about their progress towards the the park in the center of the city um they're at the they're in the process of fundraising in order to be able to do an rfp um you know to figure out what we're going to actually do you know how we're going to actually develop that park space um i think they're about halfway through they're trying to remember what the sum of money was that they're trying to raise but it was um [Music] around maybe 200 000 i think in that in that ballpark and then we had a presentation uh once again um a follow-up presentation on um the new uh fire station that's going to be built so that the replacement fire station was going to be built um adjacent to shuffler park and its impact on the park so um with some follow about our our own leader mitchell i asked some very good questions about that so um i think that's that's about it this is a a short meeting well thanks ann so let's move on to uh committees um pollinators i was going to share briefly i'm aware of the time so i'm going to share um my screen we did a survey of our registered noma may participants and i wanted to share what we found with you all how mo no mo may 2022 went we had 438 people register uh we know that there were more than 438 people that participated but that's the number that registered and this is a map of those people that were willing to share their address so this doesn't include all 438 but it's around a 200 something that is represented in this map and we asked these folks to share about how much area they left on mode and on average folks left about 9 338 square feet in their private space unmode either for part or all of may and we estimated based on you know having at least 438 registered registered participants that we had about 94 acres very likely more than that but approximately 94 acres at least unmowed in all of ann arbor and then we asked participants essentially you know how did you feel what did you know what was your experience like did you have any issues et cetera and we had 86 people out of those 438 respond to our survey so that's about a 29 response rate i'm sorry out of the 230 ish that shared their emails um so overall people had a positive experience at least those that responded in the survey they thought it was an easy way for them to be part of this uh support of local biodiversity and pollinators they said things like they felt good about it they connected with nature and they really enjoyed being part of this larger community effort lots of people requested signage so this is something we're thinking about for next year we did have a sign available for them to print on the city website but people were looking for something more substantial that we're thinking about as we think about next year and then some people did express concerns about the city not participating and i know that this is a conversation that we've had with parks and we have a good response that we share with these folks uh we did have a webinar as well where we invited parks to kind of explain what their thinking was and and where to go with that but that was still something that folks expressed in the survey as well uh we had 88 say that they would like to participate next year with 11 saying that they might so a very large number of our respondents want to be this next year and 96 of folks said they want to learn more about removing some lawn and perhaps incorporating native plants into their landscape so um so we are going to continue the communication and the education with these folks particularly those that have said that they want to learn more hey bridget were we able to actually go back to those people and provide them with something we haven't yet but we we just got these results uh rita did we end the survey on sunday i think sunday so we will we do plan to do that um and then we just ask them what sort of issues they might have had and about 46 percent of folks that they did have a little bit of a hard time mowing at the end because the grass was pretty long so we we did try to um foresee this and gave some advice as to how they should think about mowing and um we'll keep that in mind for next year as well uh and then there were some people that were worried about ticks about a third of our respondents were worried about ticks and that's something that we had heard outside of the survey as well so we've got some information we did some research doug talamy has some good information out right now in response to this because other folks outside of ann arbor are talking about so we will share that in addition to our respondents and then there were a smaller number of people i think i was personally surprised at this number i thought it would be higher but about 12 percent of people said they were worried about their neighbors complaining or that their neighbors didn't complain um so mean we think that the signage would also be helpful for this point as well um mo two-thirds of our respondents waited the whole month to mow and then about 28 waited three weeks um so most people waiting at least three weeks left their mo their lawn unload and 56 this is a you know we don't have some um real empirical evidence as to whether or not we saw more pollinators but we did ask folks what they observed and about 56 said that they did see more pollinators and 30 said they saw about the same and i just want to sort of round out by saying we will reach out to these folks again we're going to continue our education and outreach and we're thinking about ways that we can continue having this conversation with folks so that we can increase local biodiversity and pollinators and we are thinking about normal may 23 and the best way to to approach that that looks very successful that's a first pass yeah so um let's see how about um zero waste john sure yeah a couple of quick updates uh we're continuing on many fronts with the project uh the map has become a very popular tool that we're continuing to refine i actually had the interesting stats shared by city staff that it is the most popular map on the city website even more popular than the marijuana map so we'll take that as a measure of success we've got a video that will be released soon just kind of introducing the topic of the circular economy and we've got two more uh in the in in the works uh we're meeting with the a20 collaborators and august 16th that'll be a large group probably about 60 folks to kind of talk through what we're doing and get their feedback on it and we're continuing with our pilot project with recycle ann arbor the ann arbor thrift shop and the and our library to kind of better understand their operations and how their work aligns with the circular economy uh we're gearing up with our project with the state through the uh i2p3 the intergovernmental initiatives for public-private partnerships there will be a big showcase sometime in early october where we'll be presenting there about our work and our kind of wrap-up project as part of that collaboration will be uh having them work with us to this is kind of more of a consulting opportunity uh having them work with us to develop a kind of marketing strategy where we can really promote the circular economy and all the resources we've put together um i'm thinking of something similar to the storm water management campaign that's been going on for a while that caught my attention at least so something like that and then i just wanted to put it out there to the commission be great if we could present and talk a little bit more about our work at maybe a fall meeting maybe september or october we've got a group of c students who would like to present about what they're doing as a part of this initiative too so a nice opportunity for them to kind of get before the commission and go a little bit deeper into the work that we're doing so i think that's it hey thanks john let's see uh natural features isn't here um bridget do you have your hand up i was just gonna say i might be part of the reason your map is so popular i really like that map and i i teach a union on the circular economy and so i i have my students go in and and look at it too so they're getting coming soon we're going to collapse the number of categories so it's a little bit easier and then each category will have a different icon so right now it's just different color circle dots but it'll be a little bit more user friendly and each business will be then linked to google maps where people can do public transit planning of how to get from location to location um using public transit cool i love it thanks thanks john so uh let's see uh council kathy um the u of m workforce housing proposal uh is scheduled to go before the county for a vote in september i've been talking to union leaders uh another opportunity is that if we could get funding from uh from the state we might be able to go all electric as well as solar panels and i've spoken to senator jeff irwin and he's interested in looking for funding so that we can be more sustainable than a normal building would be so uh that's going well uh chapter 40 which this commission passed is being evaluated by the legal department right now i had a meeting with the city attorney and assistant city attorney uh kevin mcdonald i'm told had a meeting with uh 10 other staff members so they're taking this very seriously however it's it's taking a while and what i was told is that the main focus of staff was on safety but we know that we also need to focus on how we can educate the public so it's not just a lawn and i think that the pollinator group showed that there is interest in doing that people want to know how they can replace their lawns with with pollinator plantings that are going to still be safe there is also going to be a meeting that missy stultz is sharing between a2 0 and vision 0 looking at conflict points and how we could possibly optimize the application of the two the last thing is more personal i was the first person on the scene of a relatively serious car crash at the corner of ann and division tuesday night i got there before the before ems and police and a contributing factor to that crash was a large bush on the southwest corner of that intersection and i'm i'm not going to get upset tonight but it is half a block from city hall and it's inexcusable that we have um sight distance issues that close to city hall and so we're looking at how can we be more proactive because we can't rely on the public to report all those sight distance problems just like we wouldn't wait for the public to say hey my water smells can you check it for toxic chemicals i mean we we do have to be proactive so um i guess that's it i can't think of anything else that the environmental commission has referred to council but uh given the time if anyone's interested in more details just give me a call or send me an email so thanks yeah thanks kathy yeah real quick for kathy and maybe shannon's interest and the general everybody else too i'm the workforce housing nonprofit that i'm affiliated with met for almost an hour and a half with ufo um cfo jeff chattis yesterday and um we made a pitch um that um could do a lot in terms of workforce housing on its properties presented specific sites talk more in general but um it was very clear to us that um chattis is most focused on housing along plymouth road and i i knew that um transit or trans oriented development or a transit quarter was potentially in discussion for for on that area and it sounds like um that would be they'd be willing to do that in concert with the city or at least in consultation with and and somehow compatible with that um we talked about other sites um on fuller and around the hospital they less seem less interested in that um but um that that's something and by the way um chad has indicated that he had met with um administ administrator dahony and they had discussed the the housing uh but he didn't go on any details of what was in that preliminary discussion so um that's something that at some point it seems to me the city is going to want to talk with u of m um both are doing comprehensive um master planning um um calls it campus planning but plymouth road seems to be a real opportunity john was it uh workforce housing as well as student housing along plymouth road they were not committal they asked a bunch of questions about how they could do that um how they said that the university would definitely ever sell the property that would not um ever be something they would consider but they would consider it sounds like a lease and doing mixed income mixed um type of people and not just all u of m students or not just all potentially u of m employees they seemed open at least to that oh okay that's great news and we pointed to them to talk to some developers that have experienced in that type of work okay and and that would mean if they maintained ownership of the land that it would not go through the city for zoning or the city building department uh which would probably speed up the process correct i hate to say that about reality that there would be a 99 lease and that you know if the university wanted to it could get income from that um if they didn't want income then that would increase the affordability obviously of of those units so i mean we talked about both of those options you know maybe we can talk about those offline i just wanted to mention that we had that meeting oh okay thanks that's really great news yeah that's excellent news um so let's see so let's move on to the chairs report i only have two things to relate the first thing is just today i got a an email from chris vanmenbach he wants to resign from the commission as of now for personal reasons and so we i'd like to i think we could we need to recruit another uh adult member um we also have a youth commissioner that's open but we have a very good candidate uh unfortunately she doesn't turn 16 until october first so uh i need to discuss this with uh you know city uh um i gotta discuss this about um nominating her and um having maybe cedar before october 1st but without voting privileges until her october meeting but she's a student pioneer and she's very dedicated to environmental issues so um and then the other thing is that i'm a part of a group that's planning another trash talk tour you know we had one last year it's being scheduled for september 18th so i'm going to be leading the bicycle parade so we're going to recruit like up to maybe 30 people to go on the entire route to bicycles you know we're basically visiting different places uh like allen school the murph the landfill um you know the we care center some of the businesses along south industrial and then um we're going to rendezvous common cycle and do some sites downtown and that kiwanis exchange place out on jackson road but i'll uh i'll keep everybody informed of that um that's scheduled for september 18th which most importantly is not a football day not a home football game so let's see so uh next report from staff feeling um i have nothing to report at this time okay so any items suggested for next agenda i think we will have some solid waste stuff to discuss at the next agenda so if you have any please forward them to me um before we before we schedule in a week or two um so our next scheduled meeting is august 25th it's the fourth thursday of the month so this uh begins the second opportunity for public commentary so this is our second opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 [Music] and enter meeting id 989-2851-1637 [Music] this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised 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 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 sorry is there anybody on the line now dylan there is no one on the line for public commentary okay we'll wait another 20 seconds or so meanwhile i want to apologize for taking up more time for my presentation when i thought i would but you know it's a complicated topic and uh so i will i will come up with some policy recommendations and some recommendations about safe products to buy [Music] but you know most of the most of the authority uh lies in congress and the state legislature as is correct for the constitution is there anybody on the line yet um uh there's no one on the line okay well thank you so this ends the second public commentary period and so i um i adjourn this meeting at 9 16 pm thanks everybody hi thank you you
in Gilbert Arizona by a woman called Sharon Slater and she touts herself as a extremist against the lgbtq plus community so this should not be listened to because we have students in this District we have Educators and staff members in this District that are part of this community and it should be all love and love has no label and this should be understood by this community so the teacher shortage part is not due to this curriculum it is due by treat by being treated unfairly in the news started by Chris Christie it's also had to do with salaries with being treated as unprofessionals so the teacher shortage has nothing to do with this curriculum so I want to thank the board for listening and I want them to understand that if they have any questions please reach out thank you [Applause] good evening my name is Fernando lobello um I'm actually a new company to Clifton this kind of hurts me because stop how I quote um I see this as a problem with the curriculum with a hypersexualizing the children to do things that they shouldn't be doing at the age of five six seven years old um you know I I um I see this as a spiritual warfare mental Warfare and physical Warfare spiritual because you're going to take the spirit out of these kids of who they are who they're supposed to be you know if if the boy goes up to be a boy then it should be fine the girl goes up to be a girl that should be fine we are here to be to nurture our good kids to grow up to be the people they're supposed to be and we're supposed to give them love give them the the nutrients that they need to grow to become the people they're supposed to be if you take away that spirit then they're not going to become who they're supposed to be if you take mentally they're not going to know who they are if you're teaching this at five six seven year olds by the time they hit 12 13 they're going to be so confused they're gonna they're not gonna have any a word for them because it's no longer be transgender or non-binary or anything like that it's going to be something totally different way out of our league and in the the physical part there are people who are transgender who are or uh alternative Lifestyles and they wish they never uh did anything to themselves in which they never had surgeries or anything like that we should not be endorsing it we should be trying to get them to be the proper with the way God made us to be whether they whether they believe it or not whether they want to believe it or not they like it or not we are we're supposed to try to help kids not make it worse you know it um in all you know uh administrations in all departments they always say Safety First I don't see Safety First here I don't see uh I don't see whether we're trying to make safer for the kids to grow to become good human beings they become council members like you guys to become um good Community people in the in the community if we don't have good Community we don't have a good Society then Society will go down and that's going to be a shame and you don't want it to bring put it as it started here don't let it start here let's try to make a good effort and try to do it for something that's good for our kids and for you know not just because I have I have a son I have a five-year-old I don't want him doing learning stuff that should not be learning you know I'm sure there's a lot of parents and a lot of people who feel the same they may not know what to do and this is and it's really wrong you know to teach them these things so please I I implore you to really consider not going through with this curriculum so um with the uh with the content and the hypersexualizing of these kids nowadays they have many many years to grow up and to realize what they want to be in life but let them do it at the older it's not a young age thank you [Applause] hello bored everybody how's everybody doing uh nabil's then click New Jersey majority of my life um I grew up in Clifton I graduated from Clifton schools I got married in Clifton have three kids in Clifton schools for the past nine years and I'm having a really hard time grasping the thought of why I stayed in Clifton for this long when stuff like this comes up and it's unsettling because I don't understand it and it's something that I've I'm gonna be 38 years old and I've lived in Clifton for a majority of my life for a reason you know it you look around the room it's a Melting Pot in here and it's not based on what gender you are what transgenderism you are what color you are what religion you are it's based on respect it's based on we respecting each other and to be honest with you I follow the Islamic faith so when I send my kids out to school every single morning we teach them the most important thing is have respect for every race every religion it does not matter who it is you are going to school for one thing and that's academic education that's it so for me and my wife when we sit up at night thinking to ourselves oh man what are our kids going to learn tomorrow that is outside the realm of academic welfare and well-being it does not make sense to me I don't want to have to worry about my kids going to school and learning about how to masturbate or is this fish a female or a male it doesn't make sense to me and I don't think it makes sense to majority of the people in this room and majority of people in Clifton and respect to the woman who was speaking before that is perfectly fine if you identify as blue green orange black white it does not matter as long as there is a mutual respect which is what I teach my kids and in my household and following my Islamic faith is when you have respect for them the people around you does not matter everything else is gray everything else is smoke but when it comes to education I send my kids to Clifton schools and I'm comfortable sending them to Clifton schools because and I'll shout them out School number three they have one of the most amazing teachers Christopher Columbus I had my reservations about my kid going to Christopher Columbus he's coming he's on the Dean's List he does obviously what he learns and how his Drive is is important but there's Educators who are doing it so when my son comes home and says Dad I need help with this project about gay pride I don't know what to do I don't know how to answer these questions of course I'm going to email the teacher and to be honest with you the email that I sent to the teacher respectfully and replied from her respectfully saying hey I'm sorry this is a part of the NJ Core Curriculum I will give him an alternative project about respect and I'll give him ample time to complete the assignment I don't know how to answer my kid when he asked me these kind of questions I don't and it's it's important that we all ask ourselves that question is are our kids going to school to learn or are they going to school to find out who they might become or who they think they are that's something that a parent and their child should discuss not a teacher and child should be discussing give them the tools let them build a house not tell them hey this is how the house has to look like or this is what you should look like thank you [Applause] Mr Rose Miss Beltran needs to be let back in Keith Bashford Clifton New Jersey I like to uh first of all agree with nobil what he's saying about respect after Mrs lamanna got up here and spoke what she felt about the sexual education stuff I couldn't see but a person in the back got a boohoo to a well you know what that's not respect she has a right to own opinion okay I've been at these board means many years and I always believe in respect I may not agree but there's respect in everything next subject we're going to touch on is what Steve Goldberg what he's been saying I'm going to tell you a little story most of these people in this audience know me my family and what we're about we don't discriminate against everybody's equal to us I'm going to go back to 9 11 2001.
and correct me if i'm wrong when did we see a change in testing do we see a change in the testing in that time frame as well so the the change to ilearn happened in 2019 but in 20 between i think it was 16 and the the indiana state standards changed and they were embedding some of the new questions with the old questions and it was a confusing couple of years i was i was in the building um no i was just out of the building but there was a lot going on at that time and what you'll see when tests change a lot of times the schools that have a lot of students with with certain types of demographics take less of a hit and so your ranking will pop up um other schools need more time to adapt and readjust to the test and their teaching and then they'll start to get there too but they it's almost like you have to recalibrate your data to get to that point and so that that's pretty typical when they make changes in the test so is any board we're going to say we want everything so yeah of course you do that's what all we all say is parents too right we want it all um but the opportunities we give to students you know and this is just right three through eight and i think of the great things at the high school and i don't want that that percentage of kids passing english and math to to indicate what is really going on with our high school that's so unfair to the students who are working hard the teachers providing great opportunities and the um administrators who are constantly trying to bring new things because pretty phenomenal place with a lot of opportunity one test score doesn't measure how successful a student will be correct so clearly you can see a lot of those kids as eleventh graders were passing were passing the whatever test it was when they were in middle school so okay hopefully you like this report i can just keep adding new data to it every year and we can just talk about the new stuff so if there's any changes you want or any additional information in the future i'm happy i second mr hubbard's comment to make us red yeah okay at the very minimum that change will be cinegro red next on the agenda excuse me the next one agenda would be public comments and i do not believe we have any this evening so we'll move on to consent agenda items any questions or anything for emotion mr president and i move we approve the consent agenda as presented a second motion has been made as seconded to approve the consent agenda items all in favor say aye aye is anyone opposed passes or else thank you i'd i'd like to take just a quick minute and have mr signer introduce someone to you that you just approved this evening for quite some time she's been at north cove for the last several years she's bought a third grade fourth grade um just took a huge loss for her instructional coach but you know that's what you do with your building leaders and we now have an assistant from school there she's going to continue to do wonderful things for both north grove and the center grove community great wow [Applause] what year did you graduate yeah yeah i thought you were going to see you recognize her at graduation [Laughter] actually [Laughter] and i were there they were there we were there yes we were so was i congratulations the first class that you were there that was my first one it was my second class yes but i do remember handing you yuri absolutely well yeah i'm sure he does now i want to see the picture i just want to congratulations yeah the thing is i'm older than you are mr alexander i know you are i got you all right next on the agenda is 7.1 a pre-school meal price um thank you okay thank you mr hubbard uh this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the school meal prices for the 22-23 school year and dr long will present you with some information thank you as you know the the usda has dropped the ability for the schools to provide free lunches and breakfast for all of our students this year so we have to go back to charging students that are that aren't eligible for a free or reduced lunch shannon's done a nice job of trying to keep prices as low as possible while also facing up to 40 percent increase in in products and goods from our vendors so tonight we're recommending the the prices that you see in front of you which is a small 20 cent for meals increase we aren't changing the adults because if you remember back in the spring we were forced to change those ahead of time so we we did those back in early spring we raised the adult prices for our breakfast and lunches so we don't have to do those already or again for this year thank you bill although i'm not a big fan of raising the prices um i do understand how economics works and and i know shane has done a great job so just to see it only go up that small amount it's pretty pretty uh pretty wonderful to be honest with you so please pass up thanks i will she's done a nice job you need a motion if there's no more questions i'll move that we approve the school meal prices for the 2022 2020 through 23 school year as presented fall second motion's been made and seconded to approve the school bill prices for 2022-2023 all in favor say aye aye anyone opposed motion passes four to zero thank you next set biz for center gold middle school so this evening i'm recommending that the board accept the bids for center grove middle school north project and dr long will provide you with some additional information thank you tonight we have with us jim goalie he's a familiar face we probably need to get him a chair up here when we do these things but jim's with aecom hunt and i want to say that because of the shortage of materials and the long length lead times that we have they've done a really nice job and this is a little bit different for us how we've approved different sets of bid packets because we're trying to time up when we're going to get other materials in to time it up all together so they've done a really nice job tonight we're recommending approval of the bids for the following bid packets for the following packages listed below including alternate one music instrument casework by winger corporation so you can see that i'm not going to read them i usually do unless you want me to read them for the to enter them into the record but you can see them there the dollar amount that we're approving or that we're asking for approval both aecom and cso d scoped with the low bidders and they recommend approving these bids as well should we expect another bid package for this project this is it for middle school north when we do middle school central we had already done bid packet 4 for steel and bid pack at five for roofing uh at a previous board meeting and that was part of our let's get this stuff ordered because of the materials hard to get or there's a long lead time so we had already approved those uh so these are the last for middle school north thanks for the reminder okay um you said four and five sevens missing also we uh combined six and seven electrical and technology and lighting uh that's with um pain so it's all part of the it's right yeah it says in there sorry i should have i pointed that out electrical technology and number seven now that's all right i should have pointed that one out because it's a little different than the rest of them and thanks for minding about the purchasing some of the stuff earlier because i i forgot that yeah thank you and we're still within uh within budget we are you know and um you know more kudos to huh on these bids i think we were within about five thousand dollars of of hunt's estimates so that that's like the closest if we're on prices right we'd win this the showcase showdown um for being that close but they're they're really honing in on these costs and that's not easy to do because they're going up they're going down they're they're hard to get so um chris ruck at aecom hunt did a really nice job with this big pack and we were pretty pleased and it was five thousand dollars under the estimate so so mr goalie did you buy a lottery ticket [Laughter] it might have been a good day really is the steel here by the way but if he wins a mega mega millions he's buying the whole project we may have to talk about i move that we approve and accept the bids for center grove middle school north as presented second motion to mate is seconded to accept the bids for center gold middle school north all in favor say aye aye aye anyone opposed motion passes accepting the bids for the center grove middle school central it's the early childhood center and um i'm sorry it is the early uh civil and foundation yes i'm sorry it scared me for a minute yeah i thought i wrote something wrong yeah so i'm recommending approval of that this evening and dr long will provide you with some additional information thank you this is one where you'll see just a few bid packets we did accept a combination bid packet one and bid packet two for site work and foundations we're recommending approval from rl turner for a million 485 000 uh bid pack and four for the structural steel and roofing uh also those are the longer lead times and um we will be coming back later for with other bids for um middle school central did these come within uh the budget they were within budget um not five thousand dollars he was well it was some of this the the drawing is is not as complete as we had for middle school north so the estimates were varied a little bit more allowing for some fluctuations any other questions so both these projects are going to go on parallel a little bit apart we're planning to start middle school central no sorry north sooner and then middle school central a little bit later probably we hope still early this fall for for uh uh north and then later this fall for central somewhere around um north should be done in about a year and central is probably going to take a couple of years i can't remember what we have jim any other questions mr president i move that we approve and accept the biz for center grove middle school central early civil foundation as presented second the most has been made a second to accept the bids for center grove middle school central all in favor say aye aye is anyone opposed motion passes thank you all right so next uh 7.4 approve of the 22 23 student handbook revisions and i'm i'm recommending that the board approve those tonight and dr nelson will provide you with some informational information my first presentation yep here we go so [Laughter] we do bring you tonight recommendation for approval of the 2022-2023 student handbooks for elementary middle and high school first off i want to thank everyone who was involved in this process we had administrators parents students and association members this is a process that we start back in late winter and carry it through until now to make sure that we do have student needs that are in place across the board there's not as many changes as what we've seen in the past but i'm going to highlight some things that we've done to make it more fluid k through 12.
I remember I happen to be with my wife at school five she was a HSA president and at that time we only probably had maybe four or five Arabic families in our school when 9 11 happened that day everybody was frantic people didn't know what to do the next day my wife went to the school and we had some women up there from the Arabic community they got a hold of my wife because they knew as president the HSA he said Mrs bastard we need your help we're afraid to send our kids to school we're afraid to come up here now so my wife being the person she is you said you don't have to be afraid because I'm with you is there any problems you let me know and she stood there with these people shoulder to shoulder to show the other people in our school it's not your fault so people who did it therefore not you personally and everything these people are still around if anybody don't want to believe my story they still keep in touch with my wife on Facebook and that and do you know from my wife doing this courageous thing and doing the right thing this group of people have became the best supporters of school number five the best supporters it's about getting along together and doing things right these schools we never have problems in never had problems who's who what group you belong to because you're a different nationality or some never had this problem foreign it's starting again from the Deus up here everybody on this day is every commissioner is responsible for this school system and what goes on and what goes on with your board members and everything else these kids should be able to go to the schools and feel no different than nobody else and if they're learning from other people wrong behavior and how to act we have a problem we had a we have a problem I have 37 seconds and I just want to say please like people ask you to consider about the sexual education stuff think about this too where we're going to go we start off one way the wrong way we're going to keep on going the wrong way in these schools thank you for your time [Applause] is it yeah thank you thank you yeah I just pushed it thank you very good okay anyone else wish to address we're okay thank you um you guys want to propose a curriculum to our students I don't know if you're aware but um my little girl's in fifth grade going into six fortunately for the first time we were lucky she had covid because she missed the sex education with the boys on menstrual menstruation and her period her friends came over and they were saying how awful it was for two weeks the boys made fun of the girls about their periods about menstruation they showed pictures I mean what are we doing when I was in fourth grade the girls were separated from the boys and they had time to digest it you guys didn't even give them time to digest this as little girls why are we doing this and you guys want to propose a new curriculum I don't trust I don't trust it when I don't trust what's going on now [Applause] anyone else wish to address the board hello um hello Al Dubois Clifton I've been coming for about four or five months now straight mostly not against this board personally but what's trying to be mandated by the state constantly I started about a year ago with the uh draconi and face masks and the vaccination nonsense and spoke at a few meetings but again was told the state mandate State mandate we follow State dictates okay that has slowed down a little bit but might start up in the future again now we got to listen to this curriculum it's obvious there's a lot of people here that really care about what's going on um but it's hard for you leaders to sometimes do the right thing uh I wish there was a way of reflecting with all of yous without coming here publicly to do it where we can share and talk and open up dialogue and narrow it down to some main points and then go from there um I've asked the last meeting I was here I asked Miss basford and Mr Daly who both stated that there's no transparency publicly and that there's a lack of public trust to call me so we can discuss this further I don't get a call so I elect people to sit here and I'm asking you publicly to call me so I can learn more about what you guys made the statement on and I don't get no callback okay thank you Dr Robert Tosi you do respond all the time and I'm grateful for that however um I'm still waiting for the calendar and I'm concerned about the calendar because there's no Christian holidays all were taken out there are other religious holidays which is good but everything that relates to Christianity is gone and that's a problem because what we're talking about here is really God out of the picture I mean ever since they took prayer out of public schools we have no guidelines with the Ten Commandments to guide us how do you direct anyone it's whatever comes your mission statement is totally horrible and communistic read it I've told you now for the past three meetings that's why you have problems in an ever-changing world well of course you're going to have every whim that comes in in an ever-changing world look at it reflect on it there's nothing there of God absolutes or anything that's solid you can't build a community or anything without a guideline and for all of us here we can be guided by The Ten Commandments and then from there move forward this book I've asked Dr robitosi if I can go in the library to review all your books and that's what I would like to do Mr robotosi because there's books in there that are probably very again I don't want to put no blame so let's get the blame thing off we're not blaming anybody here things happen you can't watch everything but you have somebody with a different perspective come in to see something and say hey these books are a little bit too much to the left too much to the right let's review them and go forward so let's I'm not blaming anyone here please I know you're being mandated although that resolution you adopted excluded a lot of people in the community because when you adopt something that's only dealing with sexuality it's not dealing with anything with human being and soul and dignity it's dealing with a person's uh sexuality and whatever their dysphoria is that excludes other people who want to live differently everyone who spoke here tonight I can't say anything better they were all wonderful so what I've asked is look at that mission statement let's get some kind of guidelines back and take action let's have some meetings I'm looking for transparency Mr Daley Miss basford call me elected officials don't call nobody I like to speak to you on the side so I don't have to come up here publicly all the time to discuss these issues um finally I went through the high school and um there was some kids working from the Passaic County summer Workforce program and it was beautiful and it's it was so touching to watch them painting fixing signs and they're working throughout the summer so I just want to commend and I'm going to say to teach his name because I saw the one teacher there might be others so I'm not excluding anyone but Mr Culligan that is doing a great job with these kids and they work so peacefully and together it was amazing I like to just uh thank you for that and thank you for the time [Applause] my dear friends not to take too long my good companion brought me here I have to just say one thing it's clear I think some of you may have to tune your ears to my accent I'm from Sri Lanka 57 72 my age is 72 was a teacher for 45 years principle for 25 years handled more than 40 000 boys and girls and when the teachers were rather reluctant to teach sexuality I used to take up the matters but after 14 years of a child when the child is 14 years I took the subjects to give the sacredness of sexuality is not to just play the fool or to satisfy emotions or curiosity of anyone I'm just trying to take the Pulse of the situation since my brother told me I'm free to talk if there's anything I'm from Sri Lanka is really far east so therefore I would say very frankly let us not many words let us as Jesus said let the children come to me and he touched him bless them embrace them today we can't do it with the children with the situation as such but I'm not afraid you're not afraid even in America when the parents bring they say father I have carried few children I'm not afraid of it but the point is in this hello world honored or with the audience I would give the message to say take the growth of the child and learn the psychology of the child not to stir unwanted areas of the children mishandling things and the parents should be educated very much I myself did not know even after my becoming a priest how a girl is coming up to age and this and that we knew certain matters but still for all but mind you the age for sex education I would say my father is so so here she would be Beyond 12 13 14.
so it's easier on our parents and students and staff to have similar language throughout all three handbooks the first one is health services there was change in that language for mrs norman our director of health services to match the community health network community health worker health network nurses now have access to skyward for parent information and there are illness guidelines in that section the biggest change to all three handbooks was our attendance policies and i'd like to thank lori myers damon cox and jenny harlis with our johnson county juvenile community corrections as there was change in attendance rules at the local county and state level this year so looking at those handbook changes the county guidelines from johnson county probation moves the 10 day excessive absences now to 15 days that did go and change our letters that we'll be sending home some of our secondary schools we're sending letters home at 4 6 7 10 and 15.
not at the youngest age not that we are covering anything children will ask anything from the parents when they don't understand finally I don't know whether it's a joke or something I was talking to a mother who had two boys who are maybe about 18 19 in America American lady she said for maybe to play the fool of me father I did not know my blood was turning into milk maybe he was trying to pull my leg but the simple if it is true that may be that they were so clueless it's from the beginning we know how we allow the mother and things like that back again my conclusion is I'm supposed to ask my brother said say a prayer more than that my message is think seriously of the time the child can understand and get the things properly organized as hydrothering that books may be sent the making the child stir in certain matters talking about masturbation after all all the sins are being given Saint Paul gives Jesus gives everything these are not curiosity every word so thank you very much I hope back again think about the age of the child who can gather the things can be God bless you father thank you can we just have your name for the record father foreign [Applause] hey see no one else to address the board we'll make a motion to close it uh Mr Roberto second by Mr award will now open up to anyone who's virtual do we have anyone virtually it's a good thing I think it's a good picture of me I'm gonna address this in my superintendent's report please so if you want to go right into this muted we can do that first let's just huh it's muted it's muted you need to probably unmute your computer microphone man wait are you muted if you can unmute yes now we can hear you yes go ahead ma'am you can address the board now good ma'am you could address the board now I think she just wanted to say hi you could do you have something you'd like to address the board with you have something to say okay is there something you'd like to address with the board now you your time is now okay go ahead at seven o'clock oh okay ma'am this is this is a Board of Education meeting this is a you have a personal matter if you could call the uh the Board of Education tomorrow and we they could address that for you or if you want to give us your name we'll have somebody call you what's your name Yvonne and and your last name did you spell that can you spell that please okay we'll we'll uh look your phone number up and we'll have somebody from the board call you tomorrow I don't know you want to give that over the line we'll look your number up and we'll call you okay thank you good night foreign 26.
it now makes it fluid k through 12. a warning letter will be sent home at seven days for unexcused absences warning letter 2 will be sent home at 10 and excuse absences and then the official referral letter would be sent home at 15 days in order for that absence to be excused the school will need documentation and presented to the school within 15 days where there were sometimes we would allow 100 days later that we could receive an excuse so we did per probation they would like to see that at 15 days the documentation also needs to come from someone that is not directly related to the student we've had some requests for outside telehealth counseling and doctor's appointments for students due to hipaa and ferpa requirements those will not be allowed to occur and again these are outside appointments on school property it is it is a violation plus we want the parents to be involved in that how um outside health appointment the certificate of income and incapacity as a corporation we will work with families um on these and these are school-based implemented this year students and families are covered by doctor's notes under excuse absences so the sea of eye is not always needed and center grove middle school north and middle school central they're going to start taking attendance every period where it was only twice a day that they would take attendance and this is due to student safety just to ensure that we know where students are at and they're reporting to their classes each period with the middle schools we aligned both of them this year our middle school deans and administrators took a look at the student address expectations and those were revisited for the focus on self-expression as long as it meets the expectations listed a lot of that had to do with just the shortness of the shirt or what was placed on the shirt we also added to the middle school canvas and that was additional language due to the use of the online learning platform that is being used in the classrooms and at the high school we're moving away from the attendance hotline now all attendance will be reported through skyward which will eliminate that line streamlining the process the dress code policy was clarified and elaborated on and now electronic devices should be put away unless individual teachers explicitly authorize the use of such equipment to enhance the learning environment so again the big changes k through 12 were attendance and a lot of the health services and then minor changes throughout the middle school and high school handbooks any questions they're not even getting yep thank you any other questions that's boys and girls because the boys are wearing the short props again all those are back in style good i'm glad to hear that you can break them out of the back get them out of the back of the closet [Laughter] i want to see one tomorrow morning tomorrow morning please any other questions mr president i move that we approve the 2022-2023 student handbook revisions as presented second motion has been made executives approve the 2022-23 student handbook revisions all in favor say aye aye anyone opposed motion passes thank you very much and now uh announcements dr arkanov thank you mr hubbard um just a reminder that we have the executive session next meeting will be at 6 p.m i'd like to suggest a location change i believe we'll be able to have that here at the esc in our new in our new space is that correct yeah fingers crossed yeah sure okay we're only a text away will be done by next wednesday as long as you publish notice bridge we will do where you tell us today so we'll we'll um we'll advertise that in the esc if that changes we can advertise that differently and then the regular board meeting will be right here seven o'clock same day august 18th and then finally just a reminder that the back to school bash is from seven to nine for staff members at malo run next not this friday but next friday august 5th we are up to um how many attendants almost 1300.
I think you should come back to iPad 26 yeah they're still connecting foreign M can you hear us Aaron M all right we're gonna have to move on is that Jennifer you're in the public comment yes yes we can you may address the board now you're ready go ahead foreign dressing in school I think that's very appropriate I think that kids sometimes don't confide in parents as much as they would like to and I think it's great that you guys are trying to address that I think more of a concern for me and I don't know if it's appropriate to bring it up now is um the school safety and just thinking about the yuvave shooting um like what are we doing about like the locks in the classrooms and then also has there any has there been any thought around having not a uniform but like a t-shirt to identify kids Maybe by by grade or by school I think um I visited Woodrow Wilson uh this summer um and there's a lot of children just coming into the school and I was a parent I was standing outside but it's hard to identify right who's a bystander and who's a child I think those are my concerns right now for children that's it thank you guys okay thank you thank you gadir Hamden you're in the public portion of the Board of Ed meeting gadir Hamden yes okay you can you're five minutes to adjust the board did you want to participate in public comment I did please okay you're you're you can start okay ma'am go ahead you can adjust the board [Music] yes hi I'm I'm here to address the the new curriculum yes go ahead yeah so I've been going to Clifton Public Schools you know I went there my whole life my kids are in Clifton Public Schools I have one in high school one in Middle School two in Special Needs Elementary and this new curriculum is just you know it's it's scary all around to even consider my every kid learns differently I can't imagine sending my kids to school and having them having to learn about gender identity I mean nothing against anybody or their beliefs or what they choose to do I just don't want it forced onto my children and the way they think this is should be a personal matter between parents and their children and not in public schools I send my kids to school to get educated and you know to do academically I want them to learn to read write socialize but these public these these personal matters should remain personal and everyone should choose to teach their children their own beliefs in their own home I wouldn't force my beliefs onto other children I'm also a paraprofessional and public in Clifton schools and I would never teach my students my personal beliefs or what I think they should or shouldn't become I'm just there to teach them academically what they should do and that's that's basically all we're asking so that's that's that's the gist of it okay thank you very much thank you I'll try this uh one more time Aaron M you're in the public portion of the Clifton Board of Ed meeting can you hear us Aaron Aaron M can you hear us let's try Aaron M M okay that looks like it okay motion to close uh virtual motion by Mr abadravo second by Mr Canova okay uh I'm gonna move Mr Smith can you just explain to the public um okay I'm sorry what'd you want me to explain can you explain to the public why we cannot address directly during public repetition so they understand so they don't take us disrespect so uh um as we stated in the beginning of the meeting um Board of Education meetings are not a time uh for back and forth conversation um you can address the board the board can take notes and if they wish to address the public they can do so um under their comments or at another time but just so you understand there's no back and forth uh conversations with the audience while the board is conducting their meeting so everyone understands that I now like the superintendent to give his report that Mike uh help out with some questions Dr robitosi good evening Commissioners and members of the community and public here tonight normally I do my report a little later but I felt it was important to address some of the things that were said tonight and also I'm going to turn it over to our curriculum expert Miss kusilevich shortly to to address some of the things that were said tonight first and foremost thank you for being here if you have a concern if you have an issue this is where you should be and I thank you for bringing your concerns here however I want to clarify some things because there was a lot of things said tonight that are just simply not true not accurate okay first the word curriculum has been said over and over again to be clear the state of New Jersey sets learning standards the district The Local District chooses the curriculum meaning it's our choice of how we teach the standards so there's no new curriculum right the state of New Jersey has adopted some new standards by the way most of which would have been around for almost 10 years so the curriculum is not changing there's nothing that's being adopted by this board but there's a lot of misinformation out there ladies and gentlemen I had a parent email me the other day and said why are you teaching second graders about anal sex we're not that's not happening in second grade children are learning about feelings and sharing and caring for others and learning about how to call 9-1-1 and nutrition and healthy foods and self-care and hygiene we have done three parent nights virtually to explain the changes to the standards and how Clifton is going to Implement them those are all located on our website on our YouTube Channel please go back and look at those just from hearing what I heard tonight we're going to have three more we're going to have as many more as we need so that we can have it back and forth because tonight is not the night to have a back and forth to address some of the specific things that came up but at a parent form if you have a specific question we'll be happy to answer that so I'm not sure what you're reading or what you're seeing or what you're hearing but a lot of the stuff out there please please look at the source and if you're not sure please reach out to us and we will give you the correct answer I'm going to ask Miss kusilevich to go into a little more detail about what we're doing with the new standards in Clifton because I want to ease your minds I'm a father of four children and if you think I would do anything um to to harm children educationally physically emotionally or Implement any kind of curriculum uh any kind of standard that would harm children that's just certainly not what what we're about and our teachers you've met our teachers those of you who are parents and said your kids have been through the through the district talk to the teachers and say so what's going on are you going to be teaching this I read this are you going to be teaching talk to the teachers they're on the front line they're going to tell you so miss Goose levage would you please just take a minute to explain a little more in depth about what we're doing here in Clifton please absolutely Dr arbitosi thank you so much um my apologies before about the sound that came out of my computer it's because I actually went to make sure that those presentations which include some of the videos that we're going to be using in our instruction are posted on our website and they were in fact there and what you heard was the beginning of the Thomas the Tank Engine uh YouTube on fighting gender stereotypes meaning that boys and girls can both grow up to be anything they want to grow up to be not pushing any kind of agenda um among the things that we just um spoke about and what we've been hearing there are a lot of misconceptions out on social media in the news and that were also mentioned tonight Wheaton Clifton will not be using the controversial lessons that have been floating around the community we've seen them in different stores the lessons that were presented by organization called advocates for youth which is also known as rights respect and responsibility or the related amaze.org videos we are not going to be using those in our instruction we also do not have the book It's Perfectly Normal that was shared tonight nor do we have books like it in our media centers and I know this um because we just recently had a a public request for the listings of all the books in our libraries and that book and books similar to that topic are not in our libraries all Clifton lessons related to the Comprehensive Health and Fitness education curriculum are being locally developed to be age and developmentally appropriate our teachers are currently receiving training on the standards and have been working throughout the summer to develop these lessons please know that our teachers are professionals and many of them are parents themselves our primary goal is the physical and mental health and safety of our students disease prevention and fostering respect for ourselves and others as well as understanding and acceptance of those other than ourselves the teaching of explicit sexuality in primary grades is completely not appropriate it is not part of the standards and it's not what is being taught in Clifton the topics that were mentioned tonight begin in eighth grade and any lesson on Comp incomprehensive Health and phys Ed that relates to human sexuality must by law begin with the promotion of abstinence teaching abstinence first is a New Jersey state mandate what's taught in kindergarten is about respect and tolerance and accepting your friends our goal is health and safety not morality it's not pushing different versions of morality and we refer all of our students to their trusted adults at home if you look on our district website you'll see the presentation that was made at the board of education on 519 May 19th there are also links under the academic sanction under the health and physical education curriculum that show the three public forums they were virtual that were done in May at the next board meeting in August I will be going through topic by topic the entire Comprehensive Health and physical education pacing guide in order from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade um we will be doing additional parent information sessions just like Dr Robert tosy said I think he was joking that it's as a result of tonight because we were already planning on doing these additional sessions um for families in the fall and if that's not enough parents can always opt out the opt out for all any of these lessons is going to be clearly posted on the website when school begins and it also will be posted in the teacher's Google Classroom just before they teach the lessons so let's say a parent missed it in September they see the lesson is coming up and they can send in the opt out at that point our goal is health safety disease prevention and making sure that our children are taught in an age and developmentally appropriate manner thank you Miss kusilevich so again at our next board meeting on August 25th Janina is going to read from kindergarten lesson one to 12th grade end of year lesson in health the pacing guide which is exactly what it sounds like it's it's how the teachers Pace the lesson and what's to be taught in addition I would please strongly encourage you to take a look at the videos that are already on our website and please attend the parent sessions we have in September and I really do mean it thank you for coming out thank you for um you know being involved and wanting to know what what's going on you should be we don't have enough of this um I just want to make sure that you know the truth you know exactly what it is we're doing and then if you still say you know what that's not for my kid no problem we respect that we respect that parents have the right to direct the educational upbringing of their children but please remember we have a lot of students that for for for many of them the only trusted adult or the only um place they have to get a good meal or to to feel loved is at school not all of our uh children have the best um circumstances right so we have to you know try to do what's best for all our kids so I I really do I thank you and um and I hope that you will attend those sessions in the future and in our next board meeting uh continuing on with the superintendent's report um Mr Smith if I may uh Mr Dubois I was in my report tonight I was discussing the calendar of which you brought up and in our email exchange back and forth um I wanted to express that you know building the the district calendar has gotten more difficult each year as more holidays are added depending on the year which religious holidays fall on on which day of the week and we're mandated to get 180 days of school and we try to add a couple extra for snow days um this past June we did not have schools closed to observe Juneteenth of which I had a small number of parents reach out with concerns about that but if you'll remember that calendar was created more than two years ago which was before Juneteenth became a recognized holiday so in order to address um some of the issues that come up Mr Dubois brings up some very good points and the one specifically I remember at one of the board meetings he mentioned you know what why isn't Veterans Day on even if you're in school that day why isn't Veterans Day listed on the calendar and I think that's a very very good point so to that end uh it's I want to engage with a number of community members stakeholders board members and really take a look at our district calendar to see how we can revise it if necessary or how we could make it more um inclusive we never want anybody to feel that they're being left out so sometime before the school year starts I've asked Mr Dubois to be a at the meeting if you have anybody in the community that wants to be a part of this calendar meeting it'll probably be virtual in person and virtual so that everybody can make it uh I just want everyone to understand some of the challenges that we have for for example this upcoming school year we only have one snow day built in because getting 108 to 80 Days in the way the calendar Falls it's it's really tough next year I believe the state is going to change the rule of of using a snow day as a virtual I believe we're going to be able to do that that hasn't happened yet but I do anticipate that that's going to happen uh so you know I'm less worried about having to make up snow days at the end of the year if we could go virtual so anyway all those things will be talked about and I'll be in touch and I will update you I want to share some good news and congratulate our finance uh our business office uh for the second year in a row uh we have received asbo's international certificate of excellence and financial reporting as Bo is the state Association of business officials and we've received an international award uh certificate of excellence and financial reporting which is based on our comprehensive financial report and that's a testament to Mr UC who's not here tonight Mr shahada or assistant VA and our entire business department dealing with a 200 plus million dollar a year budget and to receive a certificate of excellence is really really well done so congratulations and finally um just want to give a an update on our referendum projects as mentioned at a previous meeting package one has been approved and is underway that includes all of the projects at Clifton High School the asbestos removal at Clifton High School is ongoing it is set to finish on August 19th and on that day the other contractors will be in to put in the new equipment simultaneously we're doing asbestos removal at school four we just completed School 11.
almost 1300 between staff and and their and their children so looking forward to it it's always fun to include retirees or no only active employees active yeah okay yes yeah and again that's just for employees that is it sir any uh board member comments before we adjourn i have nothing tonight thank you all's been kind of quiet on the redevelopment commission front so the only thing i have is is there is the all-school reunion is this saturday night which is open to everyone but it does tend to be kind of 80s and 90s people at monkey ducks because the owner of mikey ducks is the central graduate okay i will update you guys on c9 our project is coming along just fine we're in the same kind of problems we're having to order things a lot ahead of time and things like that so um seems like every meeting we're approving purchases of different items and stuff so anyway that's moving along is still on schedule and like to thank everybody for coming and like specifically thank the boy scout back there i didn't see you but thank you for coming young man media adjourned
the air sampling came back fine and trailers were delivered for the construction company to work out of at the high school so if you see those trailers at the high school that's for the construction companies as you know we pulled our Stadium project and our our stadium and athletic field projects from the bid package so that we can bid them separately we will be having a bid opening on August 3rd lowest qualified bidder will be approved by the board if everything goes well and goes through legal at our August 25th meeting and work will start on that the very next day or within a couple days of our next board meeting the professionals tell me that the Woodrow Wilson Varsity Field will be ready by next spring the field house might not be but the field itself will be ready and the weight room construction will take place during the fall will not interfere with the football season and once these projects commence we're going to have a ceremonial groundbreaking where all of the Commissioners will be invited time and date will be announced in the near future so if anybody has before I conclude my report if any of the Commissioners have any questions about anything I said tonight anything that was mentioned publicly I'd be happy to to answer them because I know sometimes you don't get a chance to to talk about these things and for the public we don't have um we have committee meetings but the board is only together in in all all nine board members and the administration are only together at these public board meetings we're actually not allowed to meet unless it's a publicly advertised board meeting to talk about some of these things so we meet in committees and then we get to the board meeting where we can talk so if you have any questions about anything tonight please please ask now Dr robertosie I'm Mr President if I may yes Mr Jones and Dr Roberto's you mentioned that um I'm going to take myself as an example this is an hypothetical question um you mentioned that if a parent has an issue with the curriculum that's fine so let's say I am Jane Smith Joe Smith Jim Smith whomever no pun intended uh and I have a student who I don't want them to take part of it what are my options we will the there there will be an opt-out form so you don't have to if a parent objects to one particular lesson you don't want you're probably not going to want to opt your child out of the entire curriculum for example like I said we teach fire you know as part of Health curriculum we teach fire safety you know we'll be in school when the firemen come in and and do fire safety that's part of the health curriculum um so anything that might be deemed controversial the the opt-out form will be readily available on the website teachers will have it posted in their Google meets for all of our parents that have children in school now they're pretty well aware of the Google meets and how that works it'll be readily available it's not going to be a secret and they can opt out of one particular lesson on one particular day if they choose it's very simply a matter of handing in a form to their child's teacher they could write a note to their child's teacher so will this form be available first day of school or can parents take a look at it prior so this way they can get familiarize with the form and understand what the process is it will be available prior to the first day of school any other questions from the days I have one yes password I um what is the penalty if Clifton chooses not to apply the standards what is the financial and what is the state penalty we don't know there there is it has been said that it's possible the state could withhold state aid I don't know that that's ever been done or if they would actually follow through with that the most realistic consequence would simply be a low score on our Cusack evaluation Cusack is how the New Jersey Department of Education evaluates school districts and a low score would mean you'd have to be on an action plan and show how you're going to improve I think that's the more realistic consequence I don't know about the withholding of state aid but that threat is out there one other question do you know of any other districts that are withholding or not implementing the standards um in your circle of superintendent um colleagues I have heard that there are some um boards that have adopted resolutions to teach this the old standards not the newly adopted standards and the old standards from 2014 yeah uh the newsstanders there's only a there's there's just a few small differences and I guess they're just eliminating those now what will what will the consequences be for those districts I don't know the truth is this if I really felt and this Administration felt that these standards were really bad for kids I'll take the consequences I just don't I just don't think they they are what people think they are and I think that we have to do a better job of letting people know what what what really is going to be taught and when we do that I think I I think most reasonable people will come to the conclusion that oh well this isn't this isn't what I thought Maybe I'm Wrong I Don't Know uh prison Smith yes um Dr Robert tells you know I've stated many times how I strongly am against the new curriculum it's just me as a father just how I was brought up I was raised how I feel about what our children should and shouldn't be taught I'm not you know me I'm never shy to kind of speak my opinion and backlash could happen regardless but I'm totally against it and I saw an article I believe I shared it with you I might have not that Governor Murphy's education department is from the New Jersey education report on their website Governor Murphy's education department announces districts will be penalized for not following the new sex education standards for me is you know I know these new standards might not be for everybody some people agree some people disagree but knowing and being raised in the United States I always know that you know we have our freedoms it's a give and take you know I mean not everything you want happens but I feel like with this certain subject is they're shoving it down everybody's throats and there's no conversation allowed to happen so basically you're gonna have to teach these kids this and if you don't we're going to pull the money what many people in the public don't know is yes we are Commissioners On The Board of Ed but we do have to abide by the state we are funded by the state we're funded by the federal government but when you have a governor and when you have an Administration that's basically saying it's kind of like a dictatorship sadly basically this is what's going to happen and you're going to be penalized if you don't follow through so where's the Democracy aspect in this and we have a large district with you know like one of the gentlemen said it's a Melting Pot a lot of people are worried for me is where's the red line going to be drawn this is just step one what else is going to come through down the pipeline for us is we have up top forms that might be able that might be fine now but in a couple months what happens if they announce that that's not allowed everybody has to do it and the Uproar happens and sadly it we're the ones that are going to be kind of you know outcasted and shunned when I always tell you know I was speaking with a couple of members in the public is you know the fight you could bring it to us but you also got to take it to Trenton for us is where we stand where can we draw the red line if we're technically forced upon it okay is there anyone else from the days that has questions from the superintendent's report that's where we're at now if you want to make comments you'll do that under your your personal comments but so just questions to the superintendent seeing none will move on uh next we have our um recognition of our pbsis um winners and um our district coordinator Miss Paula ragoza will uh present those now there's no film this time okay hello good evening wow what a what what an evening we've had um thank you thank you as always um Mr pres Mr President Smith vice president Mr Daly uh commissioners of the board sent Dr robertozzi and Central Administration thank you as always for affording us the opportunity to showcase what our schools are doing um with the multi-tiered system of of supports pbsis so tonight I want to bring to you something really excited that happened um this summer we have uh some summer programs right we have um we have in particular three summer programs that organically began using pbsis this includes the Jumpstart program Title One and title III summer programs now they are uh they occur at school 12 School 17 and there's there are two small groups that have students at the boys and girls club right and the total enrollment is about 232 students and the summer program service students pre-k through fifth grade very brief briefly I want to talk about what they do it's not my air of expertise but I just want to give you a backdrop on it so the Jumpstart program is um was developed for print pre-kinder some uh students to help them develop and refine their Readiness skills for schools for kindergarten titles one entitled three summer programs were designed to continue the development of reading language arts and Mathematics skills during the summer months you know so we can prevent that summer slide the programs run 8 30 in the morning till 12 noon and we are very fortunate to have small group settings with ESL and bilingual classes and support so what um these lovely folks did um was they took what was happening during the school year in their respective buildings being led by principal Joanna juareba she's the administrator for these particular programs and the coordinators that you see on the screen is Fitzpatrick Miss Rodriguez Miss fusitola fusotola and Ms caravallo what they did was they taught students the behavior expectations and what they wanted to see throughout the program then they developed their own Clifton cash and rewarded students positive praise statements thank you so much for coming in today as you've seen throughout the whole school year all of our instructional buildings partake in this but our folks are naturally doing this now in the summer programs which are amazing one of the one of the things that happens as you know at the end is that students can put in for Raffles and staff get rewarded as well here's the really cool thing besides these amazing students who um some of the amazing students who won prizes this is all happening organically which means all of our staff and all of our students are developing these positive relationships so that learning becomes more accessible so that that aspect of the school and instructional buildings being seen as a community Source holds true uh tonight we are joined by the by the lovely administrator and the coordinators of the programs and we will uh in a moment recognize them and I'll ask Dr robotozzi and president Smith to help me hand the certificates but more importantly I I just want to thank them uh because you see all of the hard work that goes in during the year and they just real they it's really absorbing into their day-to-day practices like hey this is good practice for our kids and the kids um when you ask them I know um Mrs kusilevich went in and she was able to see this if you ask the kids we see attendance increase over over the summer and we see kids saying or we hear kids rather saying hey this is really really nice and I like coming to my program day to day because I get recognized by my teachers so thank you so much um you happen to all be ladies here tonight um gentlemen if you will do me the honor we'll start recognizing folks um first up um Mrs warbeck [Applause] Mrs Fitzpatrick [Applause] Mrs Rodriguez foreign [Applause] hold on we got it thank you [Applause] I'm cutting this way uh Miss uh Miss ragoza uh you always do such a tremendous job of of congratulating other people uh for the great job that they do in their schools but if it was not for you and your leadership and encouragement to those people this would not be the success that it is so we truly thank you for all the hard work that you put into this program all right we'll now move on to adoption of the minutes of June 23rd meeting so I moved by Mr abidrabo second by Mr Awad discussion seeing non-roll call Mr Roberto yes Mr Awad yes Miss basford yes Miss Beltran yes Mr Canova yes Dr Danny yes Mr Paris yes vice president Daley yes president Smith yes motion carries okay uh I'm gonna skip over mine uh first reading of policy uh we have uh zero one five five point one board member participation at board meetings public and executive session using electronic device zero one six nine point oh one electronic communication among board members use of District issued paperless equipment zero one seven four Legal Services okay is there any discussion on those that Mr President yes Mr canola um so on basically one of the policies is um has the same sort of language about electronic devices then another one about access to board attorneys so let me start with the attorney so here it's saying that if any board member wishes to speak to the attorney first we must go through now the board president does that then mean the president has the ability to say yes or no or is this something that's just a formality for record keeping I don't know who the question is too but uh I have never not afford as my role as president I've never not afforded anyone to speak to the uh I'm not saying so I don't know I say you have I'm saying the way this policy is set up is if someone came to the board president and asked to speak the attorney is there a possibility for the board president to then say no are you sure oh miss Beltran is here um so in short the answer to that is yes the intention of that so that policy arose out of um uh regulations that were passed a number of years ago um fiscal accountability regulations and the intention is to um maintain a low cost of legal services so that every board member isn't just not only every board member but every board member every school principal every person that's in the district is calling the board attorney without without any sort of control the fiscal regulation the fiscal accountability regulations also speak to um sort of in passing to situations where the answer to something might be some kind of a simple answer that somebody in the administration like somebody in the superintendent the superintendent's office might have an answer to it or or maybe the business office so I would imagine that in a situation like that like some kind of a question that I'm trying to think of something really easy like when is the budget what's the deadline for submitting the budget to the accounting office or something like that that might be something that the board president could say listen don't don't call the board attorney call the business office they'll have the answer um but as a general rule the board pres it's really just to maintain some kind of order um so that legal costs don't Skyrocket um so my only concern with with adding this verbiage is then that one person can have the power to tell somebody no and if there's some sort of an issue there you know obviously we've seen things this year where people have cast different legal battles between each other so I don't want that to be any part of any policy I'd rather have everybody's we're we're nine members here and we all have the same access to everything that each other have and this gives power to one specific person so me personally I don't like this here so just just so we're clear the board policy that as it exists before you before it gets changed it before the proposed revision already although it doesn't say specifically that the person has to call the board member calls the board president it already includes language in there that there is a a mechanism a procedure yeah yeah there's a procedure so that my my interpretation of that is for logging purposes they mentioned like the board attorney I mean the uh the uh ba so I understand that piece of it logging it absolutely that should happen but I don't want to again we're nine members I want to keep everything even playing field I don't want you know personal grudges to get in the way and I'm not saying they are I'm just saying I don't want to set up policy in which could allow something like that and I'm getting one way or the other I'm just simply telling you what what was there what proposed so me personally I would I would say let's kick this back to policy but I mean we're just a discussion right now so I don't know if anybody else wants to chime in on this one anyone else I do um I think I agree with you Mr Conover about this um to leave the policy the way it was whenever I need to speak to the attorney I emailed this um the president um I had a I couldn't get a hold of him and so I went to the board um secretary what secretary sent it to him and then I still waited but um I I just think that there should be a mechanism because I'm going to say this and people don't understand that it says it retail that if we could we go to the president we can't get the president we go to the vice president we can't get the vice president then we're allowed to go back to the uh ba there may be an issue that somebody has on this day is with both the president or the vice president and they just want to go to the ba to go right directly to the um to the attorney so I would rather prefer to leave the language alone and this way it it I I'll see what the the issue is president Smith if I may yes Mr abdom thank you the issue is that there there needs to be order the board president is the board president because he needs to keep order or she not necessarily he um if the process and procedure is already being board president vice president then the ba then we need to make sure for future boards they understand what the processes organizations and procedures are and in order to do that we need a policy because if all nine of us left tomorrow then the next nine come on we need to leave a a handbook of a policy of a regulation or something so people understand how to pick up and move forward pick up that flag and move forward so it's not about grudges Joe it's not about anything else it's more about order it's more about no keeping bookkeeping and making sure that the procedures are are put on paper and as Ms basser said it's exactly what what she said which is president vice president and then back to the ba so it's exactly what she said but this but this time it's it's written down so I don't see what it is to kick back if that's what the discussion is happening and the written or the written I don't want to say argument the written policy is supporting the verbiage that board members are saying on this tonight but if you look at the verbiases being added that's that is what we're saying exactly so what what is there to kick back the policy that's what I'm trying to say but this is the time you're you're leaving what she just stated is the new language is being put in without that that's not in there listen at the end of the day Joe the board president is the board president the board president if the board President says no he or she that's something that we all got to take up because the board President should shouldn't be saying no unless you know it's something that in-house can answer we all agree on that right okay okay so if we all agree on that part and instead of spending money and having to at least rack up the bills no offense that we need to you don't we need to make sure that we can answer those questions in-house and if the boy President says well I checked with Administration I checked around I checked the finance I checked with Uchi and shahada there's nothing go ahead that's not saying no that's just making sure that we have all our books in order at home so that my kids tell me I want to go I want to go buy something I'm going to say no talk to my wife check with my kids make sure everybody's good there's nothing all right go ahead go buy it I can understand that but that's not what this says if you want to say any board members wishes to speak the attorney must first ask the president who will then research and ask XYZ and then come back to them and say if they have information but if they don't then pass them along then do that but that's not what this says but that's what it's intended actually that's the intention but that's not what it says which is why I think that at least needs to be rewarded and kicked back to policy because what you just said is not what this says well actually it minutes ago that yes the president would with this verbiage here could then veto this person's request to the attorney but again that's what we that's what we vote for the board president for to make sure that we keep order that I think you're misunderstanding I think you're in the misunderstanding the position of the board president they're not here to to be a dictatorship of one individual and be the gatekeeper for something that's not that's not the intention no but we're a unit of nine here so five really decides where we go with things Christmas Mr Daley you you were yeah yes um next suggestion on on the issue that about informing the um board president and the succession um and I think the board attorney outlined it exactly what the purpose is here is so things don't get crazy in terms of hours upon hours of board members eating up the attorney's bills so there's there's some kind of control I don't I don't think there's ever been an issue as long as I've been on this board almost 14 years of that happening so maybe if you wanted to tweak the language and have the that the board member would advise the board president of contacting there so there is a kind of a paper trail of sorts that that okay uh if Joe wants to talk to the board attorney he writes an email or whatever text or whatever to the board president maybe even a copy to the um to the board secretary and you know advising them that he's going to need to talk to the board attorney so it becomes less it serves the purpose of kind of looking at it and but it's it's not like and and I've never seen Richard Smith and I certainly during my tenure as president I never denied anybody either so isn't a case that we've had a history of that but I understand why uh as as the board attorney has said that the purpose was so things don't get crazy with members spending a ton of time talking to the board attorney so if you did an advisory things so there is a paper trail of sorts but there's not necessarily an edict that you know if you might have somebody here that's that's not here presently that would that's going to say no to you no to everybody else that that's not the right thing either so maybe you could look at putting in more and that the board president is advised of the board member and wants to talk to the board president so there is a kind of a paper trail on the other two issues I I do have uh an issue it's it's really kind of Draconian the language about uh devices um I don't know I mean we should certainly shouldn't be you could say in that that policy that board members shouldn't be texting other board members during the board meeting that is absolutely proper but um we all use our devices we may have a family member or somebody contacting us like my daughter just tried to call me that I didn't answer but um and and I use this phone regularly you know my my board emails on this and things like that and I if I call the board this is this is my only device to call anybody I don't have a home phone so I use it so I do use my personal phone do board business which is proper you know whether it's a phone call or a text but to say that you know you should have this on on the thing I mean it's a little Draconian to me um I I think it the policy should say that board members shouldn't be texting each other during the board meeting because that that violates the open public meetings or the essence of it I would say and depending on the text message yeah I mean if you know somebody says happy birthday at some of you but I mean in the general course of things one board member shouldn't be texting another about board business during a board meeting it's I I that's what I see or anything from the public or anybody from the public that's the whole point okay board business shouldn't be conducted correct on personal devices correct during a board meeting to parachute next yes I um back to the um the legal uh approval process and I know that both Mr Smith Mr Daley haven't been any issues with with approving that but I think Mr canova's concern is that you know there could be just a denial maybe there could could be something written in the policy as to an appeal process so it's not one denial that you'd have to go you can get you have an alternate route to also go and have your requests considered it so I I was listening just to kind of go back to where I was listening Mr daily was saying instead of having or you find instead of having received permission it would say a board attorney or contact the board attorney must first must first ask and advise the Boe president to speak the attorney instead of instead of ask for permission does that take away the The Angst of of you know the word no or the possibility yeah so if it all depends on what the intention is the intention just to to understand what the question is and then advise them accordingly if so then that's what you write into this policy so for clarity the current policy what it says pretty much pulled from the accountability the fiscal account but accountability regulations is that the Board of Education authorizes the establishment of the following procedures to guide such solicitation of legal advice one the designated contact person or persons shall ensure that contracted legal counsel is not contacted unnecessarily for management decisions or readily available information contained in District materials such as board policies administrative regulations or guidance available through professional Source materials and that's what I spoke to before if it's a question about you know that Mr Uzi can answer easily you would go to him two all requests for legal advice shall be made to the designated contact persons in writing and shall be maintained on file ended in the district offices the designated contact person shall determine whether the request warrants legal advice is necessary that's already in the policy that you currently have um and then it goes on about forwarding the information putting it on a log Etc and the thing with the log is really it only applies to school districts with legal costs that exceed 130 percent of the Statewide average per pupil amount should should establish the procedures outlined below and if not established provide evidence such procedures would not result in a reduction of costs I am I've been informed by Mr UC that uh Clifton's legal costs don't come anywhere near 130 percent of the Statewide average for people amount but that's just letting you know what's already in existence um so there's already a mechanism where it's a request that by the very fact that it's a request it can be it implies that it can be denied otherwise it wouldn't be called a request Mr President yes I have an issue with allowing text messages for requests we can't control that if you have an email that that can be controlled so um I think that would be better off um that's one of the reasons why the committee um previous committee put um that it should be in writing we we didn't want the text messages going back and forth to either the the president or the attorney as well so that was one thing um regards to um I think the policy should be left alone and it's fine the way it is in regards to the devices being used on the Deus um and that you need a medical advice is that legal to request that so let me look at the policy the way it's been proposed um [Music] board meetings only during board meetings only District issued electronic devices will be allowed to be used on the days by board members non-district just non-district distributed electronic devices shall not be allowed to be used on the days by board members unless their use is necessary for medical or emergency situations non-sanctioned devices shall include but not be limited to non-district issued cell phones iPads or similar tablets and laptops computers [Music] um I don't think that there's anything I don't think that it's illegal for there to be a policy that says that um electronic devices can't be used um I don't I also don't think that there's anything that would require a board I don't think a board member could be required to provide a medical certification for the use of an electronic device okay because um but but just let me just finish that point though really quickly I don't think that that's what this policy is asking it's just saying unless their use is necessary for medical or emergency situations I don't think that it I can't see that a board would be required would be able to ask the board member I want to see the other policy talks about submitting a medical letter the other one about the devices and here's his here's the thing that I'm a little concerned about because some of us use our phones to monitor our blood sugar or our heart rate um or um I adjust my my my assist well this is an assistive technology device yes exactly okay so if you were to exclude me from using that you would be violating my civil rights through the office of civil rights correct agreed thank you that's all I wanted to know I have family members that use not use uh cell phones for all kinds of medical assisted devices yes Dr Danny um so in in regards to um the you know the the chain of command for you know the designated person I mean I I'm I think that that's fine um I I think that if there an issue arises uh Mr Canova like I could see the concerns um then that's where you know again we just look it up but you know we we put its policy and we you know because there's I think you know again as it stated before with that designated person I mean I think it's good to have that one person I mean if we want to change it to vice president or whatever I mean I you know I wouldn't care who it is I mean it's good to have like something that it's you know present or vice president that it goes into command and good to have like one person obviously designated that you go to so this way it sort of keeps everything together rather than well I went to this one and then that one wasn't there and that you know so I think um you know what um Mr Roberto said for the sake of like um keeping it you know together um and like some sort of sense of order I I think it's good for clarity um the part with the electronic devices I mean I I don't think you know um I keep my password on there so every time that the you know computer shuts down I'm like oh my God what's my password again you know because I changed it all the time so you know I I don't think that it you know that would really be um you know necessary I mean you know maybe if you have like three four laptops I mean computer I mean that might start becoming you know some sort of you know issue or something um but I I don't think we're really like abusing the cell phones and again I mean if there was some emergency or something I would want to know you know something going on in the house my grandson or something so you know but the other one I I think is is fine but I'm not too keen on the the whole cell phone thing I mean I I don't think we'll really like you know sitting there abusing it um that's just me thank you Mr President yes Miss Belcher um my other thing too about the cell phone um policy is how would that be enforced because I know that we're not allowed to punish fellow board members we've run into other incidences in the past where board members have acted out of line and we weren't able to do anything so what would really be the mechanism of you know even enforcing such a policy don't do it I there is really is no there is no mechanism if if you're if the policy gets adopted and and you're using the cell phone then it would be a request to stop doing that because there's a board policy I presumably depending on the extent of not complying with the policy um possibly I suppose that there could be some kind of an Ethics complaint that the board members not adhering to board policies um I don't know I I don't have a black and white answer for that that's not not something that we haven't seen it that there is a concern if there are cell phones being used for conversations that are outside of the hearing of the public yes that's true um the legal um uh that not so much because you know any email that comes to me is really for the most part attorney-client privilege so the text message would also be but what you're I think really what you're pointing to is in order for there really to be a record would be to use the email you know I don't disagree with that but what what what could the consequence be you know there a board can't impose a consequence on on a fellow board member as we've known before we've learned that in the past so that's not the issue um I I just don't I don't think because charges have been brought to myself about using my cell phone Amadeus and I you and um the person was actually watching the video um I use oticon uh apparatus it's it's the application for the hearing aids that I have to use and I had to disclose that I wore hearing aids because the person tried to embarrass me but um the long and the short of it is it took a while because it I have it up right now I have it up to two because I can't hear you and um when Mr Brunswick blows on the the mic he blows my ears right out of proportion because I got a wizard so I gotta adjust it the night that I had um the issue my my left hearing which is my deaf ear completely deaf ear I could not get this thing connected to it I had to go on the back and and take the uh the battery out to adjust it and I was having a lot of problems so it was told that I was doing this so I'm really opposed to this because as Joe would say next month or next year we're all gone what kind of thing are you going to say to people is that you cannot use assistive technology device to have access to a meeting this brings me access so I can hear what everybody says that's against my civil rights and anybody else if you were to do this to check your blood sugar or whatever it is that you do it violates your civil rights and I become very very very fluent on civil rights laws right now this last call agreed and again I'm not I'm not advocating one way for or the other it's as long as everybody as long as the law is followed but what the board the board policy I keep having to switch to the other one the board the proposed board policy absolutely permits it's an exception that you can use it for medical or emergency situations my question to you is that in in the other policy it talks about giving a medical note to the president so yeah it talks about giving so if the if the president has again a medical excuse he gives the note to himself I'm not sure which policy you're talking about it's the other one there's two of them I only see three here I'm sorry I'm not sure what you're looking I might public and executive sessions no we have what yeah so we had one zero one oh I see I see Zero I see I'm sorry because I I was from what I've learned in the last I don't have to do nobody has to disclose anything to anyone you go for a job you don't have to disclose that you have a disability or anything like that I had a disclose which was very humiliating to me because I I'm 62 I have to wear hearing aids I didn't want to admit to that but I'm let I'm from covet I'm deaf in my left ear it happened I guess fever I don't know what happened but I I completely lost my hearing in this ear and here it is to prove to all he is now I can't hear and one thing I can hear this idea that side it's like wearing a headphone and all of a sudden the sound goes out on one ear can't hear nothing but I just I just don't see this necessary I I think that um we're all adults we're all professionals we know what we need to do I just think this is like like Dana said what is the what are the consequences if we were allowed to sanction board members we would have taken Reigns a long time ago to do that so I don't see what the necessary verbiage of this is I'm not going to support it either Mr President yes Mr knob uh the only thing I'll add to that is um with my job I'm on the call 24 7.
I have an employee that works in Taiwan he works on our upgrades he monitors our system after hours there are times when I'll get a text message if something's down and I'll send it to somebody and say hey take a look at this happens between meetings sometimes between public comment I'll look at my phone and just make sure I'm not getting anything with my wife Etc I know Dana couldn't get in she texted me something I got to it after Danny had got to it these are just there's I think after covid what happened was people realize there's a work-life balance I checked this thing when I'm in personal time for for work things for uh for work and for board event and then when I'm here there are some personal things I come across we all have it I think it's just woven into the fabric of Life at this point so to put as Jim would say a Draconian policy like this to me I'm not really for it okay uh so you have a suggestion to move the one back to policy to reword um so what's that 0155.1 Joe was that the one you suggest to go back to policy yes no it's one seven four oh yes a one seven four no yeah legal services and I'll second that right yeah so wait wait because we're talking about yeah Joe just now you were talking about the use of the cell phone yeah so the use of this the any the policies that address the use of the cell phone is oh 169.01 and no one one five five one one yes so you want those to go back to committee first we're talking about this one first we're talking about Legal Services okay fine I just want to be sure where I am Google services all right so zero one seven four we'll go back to committee and then the other two I would just make a motion to say cancel it well let's go for a second reading anyway this is the first reading correct it doesn't have to go to second we just cancel it now I think we we yeah we figured this out last time that's actually that's actually a second reading of policy if you want to take a look I'm on this road I'm right here so there is a motion to you're making a motion to not have this go to Second reading that's correct Mrs policy zero one six nine and one five five right yep all one one five four one five five okay you have a motion by Mr Canova and a second by Miss basford correct okay any other discussion scene not roll call this is the pool now this one is to deny zero one five five and zero one six nine Mr object no Mr Awad no Miss basford yes Miss Beltran yes Mr Canova yes Dr Danny yes Mr Paris yes vice president Daley yes president Smith no motion carries right zero one seven four is uh sent back to committee all right now Mr President yes the policy committee would always have the opportunity if they wanted to rework that to noting the common absolutely correct okay we'll now move on to um board committee reports I don't see any on mine is that correct no we know we have the president I know why don't I see him online I'll click on content or scroll you go anymore so Mr President there's one I don't see on here and that is the uh the Personnel committee were we supposed to see those meeting minutes until here under the executive content excuse me Mr President uh Joe we had two SNL meetings and they haven't the minutes have not been presented shared with the committee I thought they were uploaded I'm not sure I'll take responsibility for that I could probably upload it now but I don't think we were reading those anywhere for you to read right yes in the committee we had asked that the board get they get it so they if they had a question to ask you what was going on and we wanted it to be a confidential just like the um residents and security is confidential we asked for the board to be shared with them so yesterday it was sent to the committee it didn't go to the whole board but I'll share with the whole board right now yeah I think we discussed two in committee um possibly having like a scaled down version just saying we discussed hiring lunch AIDS we discussed hiring bus aides like what things like that not into detail of um any sort of riceable conversation but just uh I mean I think the one we could get their Lisa's opinion but I think the one that we drafted and sent yesterday is that you know vanilla that might be able to be read but I would want to release to read it first there um I don't think you should be reading any Personnel committee who reports the public a blanket that's the legal advice that's what I would go we use we asked for the board to be um because you wanted to be able to read them yourselves right well we we have one on here that's confidential we have one for security and and um um residency it says confidential on it we get that but the public doesn't get it yeah so why can't the rest of the board get the uh the the Personnel media minutes um if I'm on a committee game is on a committee gyms work right that's what we were asking for oh no I thought I don't know we won a memorial we want to document and memorialize that we actually met in case there we ever have to go back to saying when did we have a person on me when did we just speak about this got it no I I for a second there I thought you guys were creating somebody was creating some kind of a nope and that's when I said no the whole board was I said that fast enough didn't I try transparency yes for you all to have it in like you have executive content that's fine all right so um we'll do uh residency and security courses Paris yep thank you Mr Smith uh The Residency and security committee met on Wednesday June 22nd 4 pm in attendance where Dr Robert tozzi Mr gingaro Mr doctor Mr Constantino Mr Fieldhouse from the board myself Miss Beltran Mr Daley and Mr Smith agenda items included uh resident under residency Mr doctor gave us an update on residency investigations he explained that regular residency investigations will be continuing and all new registrations will be verified by our domicile investigators during the course of the school year an update on registration within real time he also explained that the Registration Department is hoping to roll out the updated real-time registration portal by July 1st but it will likely not occur until August 1st under security Mr gingero uh updated us on monthly security drills Mr Constantino explained the May and June school security drills maze drills consisted of a cold and bomb threat June security drill was the choice of the building administrator he shared with the committee that the drills that he observed in May and June were completed properly an update on school security Personnel interviews Mr gigaro shared the first round of interviews for school security Personnel positions had occurred and six candidates were offered positions these positions and candidates accepting jobs are listed on the June 23rd board agenda all candidates will receive school safety specialist training prior to the start of the school year additional discussion included the district's communication with the Clifton police department and the police department's visibility in schools specialist services offered I informed the committee of a security specialist who would like to share his knowledge with us concerning the district's security and Mr gengaro agreed to reach out and speak with him concerning a school's Security administrator position Mr gingero explained that the job description was finalized for the position and would be on the June 25th 23rd board agenda the job title was yet to be confirmed with the superintendent concerning alert training Mr gengaro explained that alert training requested was requested by the police department myself and Mr Daley inquired as to the perception of security at our schools and I shared some safety concerns that I had received from the school nine parent in relation to parking traffic and signage issues Mr giguero explained that the concerns would be looked into and handled by the appropriate people and coordinated with Clifton PD thank you okay any questions to Mr Paris all right seeing none we'll move on uh policy would be next Mr Robot thank you president Smith uh minutes of the July 5th policy meeting policy meeting begin at 5 305 PM attendees are myself Dr Danny uh administrators were Mark and Gerald Lewis Ross and also president was the attorney to release Gutierrez from AGL the committee reviewed by by law zero one seven four Legal Services the committee recommends the following language be inserted after the second paragraph before the third paragraph any board member who wishes to speak or to contact the board attorney must first and ask and first receive permission to speak to the attorney from the Board of Education president the board member May request permission by contacting the board president via email phone communication or text message the board member is unable to reach the board president via the above methods then the board member may contact the board vice president via the same communication methods to request said permission if they are unable to reach the board president or board the vice president they should then contact the superintendent or designee in his or her absence followed by the business administrator or designee in his or her absence meeting was adjourned 314 PM respectively submitted Lou Ross the July 11th meeting the July 11th policy meeting began at 308 PM attendees were president Smith myself and as well as uh Dr Danny Dr Danny Roberts excuse me um Mark gingero Lou Ross and principals hamda Gaba and also Yeager also president was Julius Gutierrez from egl committee reviewed the following policies won 5511 dress code the principles of the middle schools and the high schools briefed the committee on the review of the current dress code and advised that the policy has currently exists is sufficient fair and adequate they further advised that they will disseminate clear expectations to the students regarding the dress code prior to the commencement of school year they will further compare the dress policy regulations in the handbook for discrepancies for informational purposes discussion was held regarding a possible policy pertaining to administrate serving as athletic coaches or volunteering on the coaching staff no recommended action at this time number three the committee discussed the use of personal electronic technology by board members while on the days during meetings the committee recommends the following language be added to both bylaw 155.1 board member participation at board meetings public and executive session using electronic device and bylaw 169.01 electronic communication among board members use of issued paperless equipment during board meetings only districts issued electronic devices will be allowed to be used on the days by board members non-district distributed electronic devices shall not be allowed to be used on the days by board members unless there is use is necessary for medical or emergency situations non-sanctioned devices shall include but not limited to non-district issue cell phones iPads or similar tablets and laptops computers this language shall be inserted prior to the last sentence of the first paragraph to the section entitled electronic communication among board members and bylaw 155.1 and prior to the last sentence of the paragraph of bylaw 169.01 number four the committee next discussed board member Communications the board president and superintendent Administration will present proposals at the next meeting regarding a system of communication between board members the board president and superintendent number five the committee will discuss at its next meeting if it will propose any challenge changes excuse me to policy 7435 7435 alcoholic beverages on school premises and 7436 drug-free workplace number six discussion was held regarding a mental health policy and the committee will send discussion of the matter to the education committee the meeting was adjourned at 4 21 PM respectfully submitted Lou Ross any questions to Mr abajabo I have a question yes um it's a little bit more of um I guess like for it's for you um Mr President um why was there only two board members present at this meeting I know in the past um we invite people if like someone can't make it um you know if someone is an app center et cetera there's seven of us you know that that could possibly attend um so I just wasn't sure if there was a reason why it was only you and faheem in this meeting what else was on it I don't know it just says you and Fahim so I was you know if it's gonna it should be at least three I would think it was the go ahead sorry I was going to join but I had a medical emergency last second and I reached out to you if you don't remember so I hopped on but I left immediately the moment I hopped on because something occurred so I should have been there yeah because in the past it used to be three and then the board president on most committees so I don't know I know we might have had someone leave this committee so I don't know if we can appoint somebody else to be on it um for the remainder of the term right did Mr Daley has been filling in all already okay it was Lucy Daly myself and you we have our three plus board member he uh for us for us was filling for I said I want daily um but then the moment happened and I popped out there was a miscommunication on who was gonna hop out and who's gonna take over I think that's what occurred so then I wound up just being two yeah because I feel like there's a lot of beefy things discussed you know and it shouldn't it it might not be too unfortunately there was miscommunication who was gonna jump in who was gonna and then ended up just both not showing up and that was like literally last minute and well in the future I'm always available great I can plug my earpiece in at any time most times you know I am uh luckily as the benefit of owning your own business so if you ever need me to jump into a meeting since I am only on I think two committees um I'm more than able to hop on Mr President yes Mr on the issue about uh supervisories being on coaching Athletics or as in a as a volunteer uh there's no stipend about however the question because this uh this uh when my first year on the board was there was a very controversial issue about that um so the the real question that was raised is that a supervisor or um or somebody of the similar stature their responsibilities go further so and usually uh with the teacher you know we have teachers who are coachers uh coaches and get a stipend but their obligations to to teach in the student ends at certain period of time which allows them to coach so there was always a strict line that if a supervisor or a similar position uh want to do it it's a conflict that they're getting so they certainly wouldn't get a stipend so if if somebody wants to help out and not get a stipend and do that after their duties are legally completed by the contract I don't have an issue with that so I don't know where the conversation went with that you know it's brief and that's fine it's minutes but I just want to ask the question you know what was the tenor of the conversation so there was a discussion about a supervisor at the time I won't mention whom uh who wanted to coach correct not important who wanted the coach but the question is the question became where do we stop where where does it end where does it become where you know coaching come comes priority over teaching or comes priority over over Administration or it becomes or being a supervisor or director so the question was um where does it stop and where do we stop where do we start so the best thing we got was it was was to discuss and say you know what let's just leave that alone because that's a A can that we wouldn't be able to close yeah that would be in line with the but I would just correct I did right correct thank you I just don't know where it was going and I thank you for filling that in yeah no no of course okay next we have uh Food Service Transportation Miss Belgium my first minutes of the year I'm so excited okay um so we met on July 19th president was myself Mr Paris um Mr abadrabo um president from the administration was um mark and jarrow um Ahmed Elizabeth Nick and Alex Rosenberg the first thing we discussed was a school 13 kitchen this is being funded by the cafeteria Surplus which has to be spent on Cafe related expenses only not local or cap Reserve uh by compliance we can't roll large surpluses forever currently we are rolling large surpluses uh surpluses must be spent on upgrading the cafe and can only bank so much Surplus year to year um so this is kind of like a we need to spend it on something situation other food options we explored and we're options were exploding were too costly for the district there are options on the menu that address dietary and Allergy restrictions there is a menu attached I'm not sure if it's going to be attached on the website um it will be okay so there is event a menu that is now for Halal vegan options um there are also other options that are naturally occurring but this is going to be a menu That's specific to those two dietary restrictions um comptonian is going to go back and explore some other options that we discussed in the meeting uh we talked about the free and paid option as of now all lunches are not free for this year so we implore everybody to fill out the forms once they are sent them on the student portal um everyone should should fill it out even if you think you don't apply um you should fill it out because it only helps the district because the more participation we get the more likely we are to get Federal funding uh to have free and reduced uh continue as a program uh the next topic of discussion was the transportation we are currently looking for bus marking um the bus depot needs to fit six new 54 passenger buses coming in October um we're looking for plots of land in Clifton to accommodate new buses so if anybody has any plots of land feel free to reach out to the superintendent um we talked about the electric buses unfortunately we would not uh granted the the grant to get the electric buses which has kind of led to our um overpopulation of buses because we needed to keep buses um in order to be able to remove them from the road um how the grant works is you have to actually destroy a bus um you have to like put a something in the like a hole in the engine something like that so that it cannot be used you're not allowed to sell them um so we kind of holding these buses that are kicking up parking spots um in the hopes that we are granted the grant for the electric buses the next round other items have disgusted we talked about the extended school year the esy program and we talked about out of District contracts for the for the extended school year program any questions yeah Mr President yes Mr Canova so is his I'm sorry this is here that uh some options were explored and were too costly for the districts what types of options was that um it was mainly halal meat um so we were exploring options of bringing in halal meat um as an option and pomptonian indicated that it was too costly we need to it was needs to be a state that was like a dollar fifty I think a meal there was um I might know the numbers more than me so our federal reimbursement is about 413 that pomptonian gets and the meals that pump Tony was looking at was a little over six bucks so we would be in a deficit if we went with that option I also trying to um figure out the demand so we talked about possibly issuing a survey to students that are choosing the whole meals um I brought up that there are such things as hot dogs um you know things that are lower cost and that could be an option as well as pre-made meals that I know exist out there not that the kids might want to eat them but I know there are halal meat microwavable meals um so it was more of a discussion to to go forward but this year there will be a vegan Halal menu being offered to the kids so this and this came from the last food and trans committee uh last year when the principal was school three was um was the one who came in and actually requested that a menu be put forward in this District in the district as this much another option too I was thinking about after they didn't pop up the meeting that day is kosher kosher is also another substitute for Halal that's also another option that I think would be good across the the board for many students uh yeah correct good well because they have a mixture they have a separation of dairy yeah yeah the Jewish faith has a separation of uh Dairy and meats but um the kosher can be eaten by uh anybody does the Halal that's that's my fault it's cousin um but yeah and that was prompted from school three your home base piggyback on that um going down to the free and paid option I know we talked to the legislators and we had our committee meeting about that um is there anything that we could do I mean me personally I feel like lunch should just be a part of we pay tax and then they're footing the bill now just continue doing that like I think that's so much easier for everyone um it creates an inclusive environment for everyone there's no one being shunned with these cheese sandwiches and all these other issues we had we know the demographics of the children throughout the state I think it's just something we should do um and I would I would like to move something forward and draw some attention to hey we should be continuing to do this and make some sort of movement but I don't know where to go can can we recommend and there was a discussion from last time Dr Roberts Ozzy is it possible to draft a letter from your end to the state legislators and and maybe even for us as a board to sign on to something um and send to our legislators and say listen it's about time we talk about free food Universal free food across the board I think that's how we move it and then that's how we discuss it at our next board meeting as a follow-up to the letter at the end of the day we need to start pending stuff I mean you know we need to send a message that listen they're on our side we all know this they're on our team and we need to make sure that we get our point across so I agree with you on that job there is no hope that they will extend it for this year especially with everything that's going on because they did extend it for the summer so but it was a very last minute switch so we're hope we're you know kind of hopeful that they'll extended for this year given the economic environment so we'll see what happens but definitely writing a letter I think will be if nothing else a little squeaky wheel but if I'm not mistaken usually the funds that go into the summer are surpluses or excess from the previous school year or not in the school you're moving forward right or is that no I might think it's just higher ed that's the way it works okay all right um I have a question in regards to the SE program um and actually more for Miss kusilevic I'm sorry just so I'm sorry just so we can clarify Mr Canova so are we sending a letter from the district um you want to make a resolution why not do both both okay so yeah like one of those long resolutions or like this so by says you like unscroll it like this we're in favor of um having uh paid lunches for all um so let's have a motion and getting other boards decided to that as well I mean that's a big part of it too is really not just coming from one group uh I want to motion that Joe Joe brought it up so Josie sure I don't care uh my motion that we have a resolution as well as um have our our superintendent look into sending some sort of a letter second Emotion by Mr canovas I can buy Mr Roberto any other discussion roll call please Mr Roberto absolutely yes Mr Awad yes Ms bassford yes Miss Beltran yes Mr Canova yes Dr Danny yes Mr Paris yes vice president Daley yes president Smith yes motion carries [Music] Mr President yes I have a quick question for the um food committee um prices are very volatile now uh extremely and and it's hard to set a program like we'd like to have this when things are going up and down like on a weekly basis and Dana might know more because this is her this is our business um and I saw a report the other day where cattle in particular is the farmers are cutting back of course they can't can't afford the transportation they can't get the Grain and so on and so forth so that would seem economically that that's that price of beef is going to go up was was that raised or pomptonian raised anything about that I know actually the um they said that they're the economy of scale that they purchased at that they were you know they were okay to to absorb the costs okay so the consumer side is seeing I mean the restaurants are seeing it as well yeah the but the consumer side is seeing much higher price raises whereas the restaurant side are still able to buy you know the generic brand so like you know what they're using in the back is different maybe than what they were using in the past but you can still I think okay if they're stable to maintain their costs I just felt you'd give us that yeah definitely in the as we go along it you know it might be a conversation that we have with pomptonian it didn't come up and this meeting but you know if we do have a future meeting you know I'll definitely make sure to bring that up Mr Robert I'm sorry you you were speaking and I cut you off yeah that's okay agent for beauty um so uh I I've been wanting to kind of plug this in and figure I figure out how but since SC was was mentioned here um for the added for the extended school year program do we know how the scn CLS program was going on this summer I know it's a title one and other programs were discussed um earlier before Ms kusilevic and I noticed because mrtola is here and I've heard great things about um SC and CLS and you know it it it's it's a great program that that's needed in our district and I think it doesn't get the Kudos that it actually deserves so um just because levage I appreciate everything you've done as well as your staff as Mr Rotolo as well and if there's anything you want to share with the public please feel free but we will be doing a comprehensive presentation um probably in the first September meeting um going over all of our summer programs numbers of students successes pictures um but the CLS and esy program were phenomenal this year um Ms Rotolo working together with Bahia abidrabo um Elaine pick and Richard Rando ran two great programs CLS is only here because of Esser funding esy is the program that we typically have we did have several hundred students in those programs but there were many other summer programs going on as well but the esy and CLS served our special needs population thank you okay moving along um unfinished business is there any unfinished business no okay we'll move along to uh education Administration uh we have uh ea1 through EA 18.
hi Mr abadravo second Mr rawad discussion seen on Roll Call yes Mr what yes Miss basford yes Miss Beltran yes yes Mr Cordova yes Dr Danny yes Mr Paris yes vice president Daley yes president Smith yes motion carries next we have Personnel we have uh P1 through p50 so I moved to Boom by Mr Robert second by Mr rawad discussion seeing none roll call excuse me oops sorry um I you need to pull uh 5 11 and in the back room they're um administrative leaves I would like I don't know anything I can't vote on it because I don't know any the details um uh I know we had previously asked and I sent an email to the superintendent that when any person I'll get um a um an increase we put the prior amount in the resolution as well what it was from what it goes to so we can see if what the what the uh percentage rate is so to say there's a couple of um I have no problem with the raises being proposed to three of the individuals on this um on this resolution but I'd like to see what it was and what it's from because I have to go back to last years and I have to look it up it just takes more time so it would just be for housekeeping purposes can we please do that as well and I would like to pull number 50 in back room for discussion hiring of about you know 40 people so I don't want to separate it out because I want to do this in an appropriate way so I am asking to do it in one shot so unless you want me to pull just the one I I can do whatever you like but I just figured it was I'm just I don't think it's fair to 50 people to pull it for executive if you want to discuss one person okay um hold on I gotta go into my computer I'll give you the initials because I can't count with this thing here um ffk the president superintendent I've made a recommendation I stand by these recommendations I have nothing to offer an executive session except that these are my recommendations um they're not employees so they don't need to be talked about an executive um so be happy to discuss it in public or I'd be happy to um you know you're talking about the appointment I'm talking about I'm talking about the item number 50 Personnel appointments okay but uh five and eleven should be an executive um 45 I have a question about 45.
um are there any costs associated with this or is this um I've never seen this before so is this like a blanket kind of resolution uh do we have anybody that's traveling in are there associated costs that go to this I believe this is the same resolution this password that we put on every year I don't these are the local um no there's no cost to these anything that has a cost would have to be a separate resolution all right so p p uh five and eleven um are for uh executive and uh we have a separate vote my separate vote on um unemploy a potential employee Frank Casper anyone else right so we'll do the group minus 5 11. and um Frank Casper from 30. 50. not from 50 sorry 30 50. thank you guys real cool please Mr Robert yes with the abstaining on p25 and P38 Mr Awad yes Ms Bradford yes with the one being pulled yes Beltran yeah we don't have anything being pulled oh just a separate vote five and eleven have been pulled already right and I want I want a separate vote on Frank Casper I thought I made myself all right number 50.
right okay uh Ms Beltran I'm sorry yeah yeah Mr Canova yeah 45. Dr Danny yes Mr Paris yes I'm standing on 39 40 and 46. 39 40 and 46 abstain 39 39 40 46 thank you very much vice president Daley just to be clear are we voting on pulling or the whole all all the items except 5 11 and uh Frank Hasbro number 50.