8-15-22 Denville NJ BOE Board Meeting

001hey good evening everybody and thank you for joining us we are going to get started with our agenda here um and we're going to pick up the pledge of allegiance please rise [Music] all right thank you everyone for joining us our next item on the agenda special presentation on october 10th we are going to have our 2021 2022 district hiv that's harassment intimidation and bullying self-raiding presentation um this evening we are going to have dr kalla's presentation on the new jersey comprehensive physical education health standards and denville's pre-k three public school curriculum revisions uh dr pellis is just finishing up with the parent presentation next door and coming over here so in the meantime we're gonna get started with the remainder of our agenda and as soon as she comes in we'll jump over to

002the presentation so with that i'll turn it over to dr forte for any superintendent's comments thank you today the governor signed eo 302 which basically repeals executive order 253 which means that we no longer have to test unvaccinated staff the cdc guidance guidelines have changed dramatically and we will run the schools as close to normal as possible in the school year there will be information coming out very soon our staff convocation for the board members is august 31st you'll get you'll you will get a an invitation this week and uh just a reminder our back-to-school nights are set to be in person we have overviews on september 14th valley view on september 15 and lakeview on september 21. and that's the superintendent's comments for this evening thank you dr excuse me dr forte uh with

003dr carl's not here yet we'll skip assistant superintendent's comments and we'll move on to the business administrator comments democracy yes i do the new jersey school board association uh sent a resolution a sample resolution in reference to the health insurance the state of insurance increases uh for the calendar year 2023 and they are asking the legislators and other parties to approve this resolution uh rejecting the increase and revisiting it so on tonight's agenda there's a resolution to vote on this um preliminary increases and after that i'll set those resolutions with a letter to the legislator governor murphy and other administrators thank you mrs and just for clarification what do we have budgeted for an increase and what is the projected increase for the state health benefit plan in the last two years there has been

004a decrease in health insurance and therefore we decreased for the for six months january through june about five percent increase this state is projecting an increase from the 2023 school year of about 15 to in health insurance thank you mrs growski and um just for clarification for the public we have um several years ago moved to the state health benefit plan uh to help diversify the risk basically as opposed to denville solely having our population of employees within our benefit plan the state health benefit plan allows you to kind of have a larger pool many other districts within the state have gone in that direction and it has been beneficial for the last several years unfortunately um it seems like there's been some back and forth on um be coming to the table to discuss

005some changes to the plan and the ability to uh leverage the uh existing number of districts within the uh state health benefit plan so to be determined on kind of the future with kind of where that goes but we are obviously within that and hopeful to minimize the uh the financial impact so thank you for putting that uh resolution together and um let's see [Music] what i'm going to do is i'm going to open up our first open public discussion sorry i'm thinking about how to kind of proceed without uh dr collins here yet oh there she is i'll give you a second to get started what we'll do is we're going to open our first open public discussion uh session um i'll ask that if you have any questions specific to dr cullis's uh

006presentation i'll open another public comment section after that so please if you have those questions let's hold off on those until after she speaks but if you have any other questions i ask that you come forward uh so i'm going to open our first public comment section at 7 38 pm this portion of the meeting is open to any individuals for the purpose of adjusting resolutions on this agenda or matters that they find important to the board of education is governed by board policy zero one six seven prior to making comment members of the public are required to state their names addresses and subject matter of the comment comments are limited to three minutes per person no participant may speak more than once on the same topic until all others who wish to speak on

007that topic have been heard comments made by the public by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board or district administration any response that is provided will be made at the end of the public comment period after all comments have been heard the board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals and speaking students employee has passed specific legal rights afforded to them by the laws of new jersey therefore comments regarding specific students and employees will not be responded to by the board the board there is no responsibility nor will be liable for the comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of their legal rights of those affected or identified in

008their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible or liable for their comments all comments questions or inquiries shall be directed to the board president anybody would like to make any comments they can come up to the table and please state your name and address to the record and sign in on the sheet hi i'm uh uh i was wondering in regards to this tax increase uh for social benefits at the board um uh is this increase a cause of something being added or is it just uh more money for the same problem yeah it's a it's a good question and i could probably address a little bit of it and certainly demaris if you have anything to add i'll allow you to add or any other board members so the state employee health

009benefit plan is basically the plan that our employees that opt-in are given the health benefit plan there's no change to the the benefits that the participants are getting the difference is basically that the insurance company is claiming that the claims have been significantly higher therefore to recruit their costs they are asking for some increases is that correct mars that is accurate yes there's no change to the health benefits benefits and the plan the same plans that we had in the previous years is the same as they have a new one this coming year called gordon state plan however the benefits is not it has not changed however in the but mr anderson explained they're claiming that we had higher than usual claims in the past years appreciate it it's been a little bit of a

010roller coaster with kind of benefit costs i think for probably 15 plus years in the district where it's been really high that we've been able to stabilize it and then kind of back to uh increases here so this is something we haven't seen recently and obviously above our budget so something we're paying a lot of attention to considering the cost of the benefits so thank you for your question good evening thank you for allowing me to speak on the same topic i'm also in the state health benefits plan so i'm going to lose money starting january there was an article in bloomberg dated june 21st 2022 that new jersey backs down from the 34 million dollar fight with health insurer dealing with horizon blue cross blue shield um apparently blue cross blue shield charged the

011state an additional 34 million dollars it was not providing the service and there was a meeting between the executives of blue cross blue shield as well as leaders of our government and governor murphy was not invited to this meeting and he barged in and started praising all the executives of the horizon blue cross blue shield and pretty much was rubbing the shoulders of the lobbyists for either blue cross blue shield telling him how much he loves this guy with that being said i think we all need to band together and demand a forensic audit on horizon blue cross blue shield and really see what they're really doing with all this money and maybe look into seeing what government officials have stock in a rising blue cross blue shield thank you for your comments appreciated and

012certainly i can speak from our local level i think it's uh important obviously our costs are important to the district but also kind of the benefits we provide to our employees so appreciate your comments and we'll start to look into it thank you any other comments from the public all right seeing no additional comments i'm going to close our first global public comment section at 7 44 pm i'm gonna come back to our agenda and jump up to a special presentation and turn the microphone over to dr collis to talk about our new jersey comprehensive physical education health standards and our our school's curriculum revisions um so [Music] if you can't see it and then so before our meeting we had a q a at six o'clock which is very nice and i just shared

013with them that in this process it's just been so great to be part of denville because we went through some you know sensitive topics and some great questions all done and such a respectful and civilized way that we can have conversations and i think that's just really unique to general that no matter what's going on in other states or other parts of the country or you know parts of the state here or the department of education that we're able to come together and look at what is best for denver and that's really how our presentation went earlier but how curriculum has even come together we've been talking about this i think we've been fielding questions for probably at least two years and then really started discussing starting in march that this presentation was going to

014happen in august and then advertising so i had many conversations with community members and with some of the parents that are in the audience tonight uh about this so it's been it's been a really great process a great team of educators that worked on this together we developed a purpose we just wanted to come with a starting point of apply what's our why why are we teaching family life at all i came up with four areas any of the standards the state standards or the state standards the substandards had to fall within one of these four or we did not limit our curriculum we wanted to make sure that the way that we were interpreting the standard was the way that was appropriate for denver and number one was to keep our students physically and

015emotionally safe so if that was a topic that needed to be covered to make sure that everyone felt physically and emotionally safe that it was included to help students make informed and healthy decisions to make everyone feel included and welcome in our schools and then of course to respect themselves and others it was a long process uh i won't read up all of these bullets but we really went through revising uh looking at the revised state standards and looking at our own curriculum and cross-referencing to figure out what it is we want to put in we actually took out a lot of more information than we actually put in so there was a lot of changes and i think what people have known for the denver sex education program but we did remove some things

016that we felt either they were too low of level and move them up or we added a few items that were new standards we reviewed a lot of resource materials whether they were videos or texts just to be able to select one that we felt was a page appropriate oh that sounds better okay so seventh grade is really a study of anatomy in general so they cover like digestive system respiratory system and specifically reproductive system so that's the first time that they really go into detail about all of the parts of the body and the life cycle from birth to elderly and they also go over the human fetal growth cycle so we'll talk a lot about reproduction except for all of the parts and what's actually happening with the fetus and how it develops

017so that's incident and then finally in eighth grade is where really cover sexual activity so in that in that grade we talk about abstinence physical social and emotional consequences consent although consent is scattered through all of these because we do put a great emphasis on consent even if it's on the playground and other kids putting their hands on each other as they're pushing each other in a game we want to make sure that we're keeping our hands off others and that can what consent is prevention sexually transmitted infections and stds right so those are the same and that they can be transmitted through sexual activity one of the things our health teachers informed us is the biggest misconception in middle school is that trans diseases can only be transmitted through intercourse and that is not

018true so we make sure that that is something that they are aware of that they are not putting themselves in risk at risk so what has changed so many of the things like i said we have taken out but we have moved things to different grade levels so originally the reproductive system was covered in third and fourth grade but we did find that to be very difficult concept for them to understand so we move that to seventh grade the the only thing exception is that we do use medically accurate terms for our basic external parts for kids when they learn their healthy bodies so when they're learning their arms and their legs and their face and their five senses and so forth we do use the medically accurate terms of penis and vagina we don't

019make up names for those parts for that in fourth grade again that was the change we took out the puberty and reproductive system part and move that up to seventh grade but we kept in puberty with no introduction of reproduction at that point fifth grade it used to have uh sexually sexual behavior abstinence and stis again we felt that for denver that that could be pushed up to uh eighth grade where we could be a little bit more where they were developmentally and also where their interests lie like things that they need to be addressing for their safety okay again in fifth grade so there is it currently has the fertilization the relationship between intercourse pregnancy was in third and fourth we now have that briefly mentioned in fifth grade because that is a standard

020that they just need to know that there is a connection like this is not going to you know playing or shaking someone's hand is not going to lead to pregnancy but we just mentioned what the fertilization is between a man a male and a female and that and it's called intercourse that's where we leave it differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity in seventh grade so those terms are covered it's mostly under gender stereotypes and the difference between orientation and identity and i'll share those definitions with you um those things actually have been in our curriculum since 2006 so i know that there's been a lot of discussion about gender and in terms of tran being transgendered or those that might be looking at different pronouns and so forth this really has been in here

021for a long time 15 years and it's more about what we see at the younger levels for sure where students you know they're playing football on the on the playground and they say that a girl can't play because she's a girl and we have to then have the conversation that anybody can play any of the sports girls can play sports boys can play sports or if a boy chooses to wear his hair long and some of the other kids are saying oh he he has hair like a girl because it's long and then we have to address the fact that anyone can wear in their expression their gender expression can be multiple ways they can wear any color they want they can wear their hair you can have jewelry those types of things so that's

022really where that fits in and that happens k to two it also comes back up at fifth grade in terms of enduring puberty that students start to do a lot more of their own selection so in k to two for the most part even up to probably third or fourth grade their parents are picking their clothes so it's not that common that the kids are really choosing those things but once they hit puberty or in that adolescent time they really are making their own choices and we want them to be others to be accepting of the choices that they make right so if they choose to wear their hair long or short or wear a girl wearing a voice what steamed boys t-shirt you know we want to make sure that that is the case

023we do let them know what the difference in those definitions is because they do actually ask a lot of questions about that uh in seventh grade it's we've moved it for being just a whole study of human anatomy not just puberty and reproduction we've moved puberty down and reproduction up in that okay a few of our recently asked questions so these are ones that i've been you know people have emailed me or come to board meetings and ask so i want to make sure that those are addressed by second grade students are expected to know the medically accurate names for their body parts including genitals and how it's introduced so as i mentioned we cover all of the external anatomy and then we use the medically accurate parts for their genitals how is reproduction defined

024in first grade what is meant by gender expression and gender stereotypes and what are the definitions for gender expression sexual orientation and gender identity i'm going to lump those together and here are the definitions so reproduction we say it's the process by which new organisms for the younger ones we say living things create offspring right they're produced from their parents or their parent that's what reproduction is for sexual orientation we just say that's the um emotional romantic or sexual attraction to other people and we it doesn't uh go up through eighth grade we don't go into a lot of i mean there's a variety of sexual orientations but we that's not really covered up through eighth grade gender identity one's perception of self and then gender expression how their external experience of one's gender identity

025right how you free behavior clothing your characteristics your voice and so forth so we do you give those them those definitions so as they ask questions we provide them with an accurate answer these are this is what it means are you going to ask my child to share their pronouns we do not ask students to share their pronouns we don't ask them to write it down or ask them the first day what do you want us to call you however if students come to us and ask us to that they want to go by another name or by a pronoun we are respectful of that decision up to this point any of those decisions have involved the families and we're very supportive of the families that are making those decisions and we work with the

026families and there are a lot of what-ifs that we could ask however we really haven't encountered um their any opposition again denville's a special place they have felt like they could come to us and ask for our support if this was a situation within their family but just as in any respect if you if someone were to ask you to call them by a different name or a different surname or anything like that if they ask you to do that it's respectful to to honor that i gave the examples in the q a if someone for you know their name is christine and they want to go by chris and they keep telling you they want to go by chris but you continue to call him christine it's not very respectful and the same is

027true if you know if you you want to go by ms and not misses and that you keep telling someone and they don't respect it i mean that's we try to be respectful of what the kids need this doesn't happen it hasn't happened in the elementary as far as them asking us but in the middle school we certainly have children who have decided to go by their middle name their nickname a different name and we're respectful by eighth grade students are supposed to define ways that stis can be transmitted and how is this taught i know the question has come up and the line is actually the standard that has come up repeatedly is to um about uh oral anal and vaginal sex that's the line in the standard how we've interpreted it it does

028fit under under stis and how we explain it is that stis can be transmitted when any bodily fluids are shared and that's that is the extent of that so we want to make sure that our middle schoolers are understanding it's not a it's not a how-to we don't go into detail about what those things are but we certainly talk about it we don't want the misconception to continue they think they're safe and they're not so we do let them know that anytime sexual activity is occurring that diseases could be transmitted can i review the materials prior to the lessons absolutely the videos that we have on the draft curriculum those are the only videos that we show we do not show anything that has not been port approved so you can google some of those

029videos you can find on youtube but you can come into the office anytime just contact the school the health teacher anyone and they will show you the video they are copyrighted so we cannot put them on our website uh for anybody to see because it is it's a purchased we purchase it however you can watch it's not we don't hide it anyone can come and see that same with any of the lessons or textbooks if you're a middle school parent you can see the whole health textbook every student has it in their google classroom so just go on google classroom and you can read the book you can see all of the pages i outlined in the draft document exactly which chapters and even even which lessons we're using number eight was can i opt

030my child out of these lessons and the answer is absolutely yes the state allows for two areas for students to opt out dissection and sex education so any of these lessons i would not say first grade because i don't really think that that falls into sex education however fourth grade all the way through eight what you absolutely can and those lessons are so limited it's very easy to do so in fourth grade they see the video it's about 20 minutes it's a 40 minute period they answer a few questions the next day they come back they answer some more questions if there were any more questions sometimes it's only one day and then it's done so it's not difficult for the student to opt out and they go do something else during those times it's

031not like they're missing they're not graded or quizzes or tests they're not missing a lot of content it's just specifically those lessons that they miss at the beginning of the year you're going to get information but you certainly can opt out at any point during the year for parental involvement and oversight i have had some great conversations and i had a lot of questions about how our parents you know where are parents rights being included and i want to make sure that it's very clear of how we're going to be respecting those parental rights and in a few of these things we're going to make even clearer so parents will receive notification in grades four through eight regarding the family life curriculum at the beginning of the year or whatever quarter that they have health

032in the middle school you actually assign off right you do a check off in those documents whether or not you want to participate or not but it is in september and we realize there's a lot of documents in there that you're agreeing to when you do that you are signing for them to participate however if you want and later in the year you could always choose not to and i will send a reminder one week before the instruction to remind you this is coming up next week except for the middle school because it's whenever they have health the elementary school is always around spring break i'll give you the one week notice if you've changed your mind you don't you do not no longer want to participate or you want to go look at the

033video that week that's a great time to get a hold of us the health teachers will be available to discuss any of the resources materials they do this anytime you can email them call them anytime however specifically at october and and probably again in the march uh for the elementary school the conferences they have a table set up you're welcome to walk into the gym ask them any question you want they may even have the video running on a loop if you'd like to go in and watch it at the conferences parents can review it anytime on the website so it will be posted once it's approved and again the health teachers nurses anyone just contact them it's a simple email come in watch the video and any and view any of the materials you're

034welcome to do that at any time we will have clear instructions on how to opt out so when i do that review i'll just make sure it's when i send that reminder it's really clear of if you do not want your child to participate how you opt out and then something new this year uh you do have parental permission that you're checking off just like you're checking off whether or not they can have their pictures taken uh whether or not they can use the chromebook you're taking you also have an option of whether or not they can check out young adult books from valley view we don't have a large collection most of our fiction is middle-aged fiction although we do have some in the young adults so you as a family can make a

035decision whether or not you want them to be able to check out those books i mean um you know we'll ask a good question in the last presentation but just a brief description so middle age books a middle uh age fiction have younger characters because students like to read about older characters they do not like to choose books of characters that are younger than themselves so they're always going to be reading up so characters that are younger than so 13 and below would be under middle ages where 14 and 8 if the characters are 14 and 18 they're up in the young adult books uh middle age books cannot have any kissing or anything like that they can only go as far as saying someone has a crush on someone but they cannot have any

036um discussion of that and there can no not be any curse words young adults books can have they don't all have it but they're allowed to have with the classification they may have the a word or s-word or something like that they're allowed to have that they're allowed to have mild violence they're allowed to have kissing um they're they are not allowed to have any eroticism so any sexual activity like that but that just gives you an idea of the difference because you know we do have 14 and even some 15 year olds in middle school that are starting to read more mature books however if your family decides it's not for you just check off no and you won't be able to check those books out open it up i guess i guess you

037can wait for that do you want to wait mr anderson wait for that i guess that's it that's the end of my presentation so i would open it up if anybody wants to ask any questions thank you dr carlos i appreciate the work that you and the team have put into updating this curriculum as well as the presentation this evening and earlier for the parents also um first i'll open it up to any questions from the board um that being said for the public obviously the board has been able to review this for either in committee or prior so there may not be questions but certainly i did want to offer it if anybody did have questions or comments and just for the clarification of the public because i think this was mentioned prior to

038us going in public session uh mr kim is on vacation this evening unfortunately and uh mr cass was unable to make the meeting this evening he did call me and uh sent his regards so just wanted to note that there are two board members that are missing here um dr calls i did have one question for you i guess two questions really um when i read the state standards um there were quite a few references in there that i would guess consider in my personal opinion questionable um so just for clarification those are not included in our curriculum is that correct there are terms that are in parentheses that are not included we decided that those were not appropriate for what we were wanted to write i mean one of the terms was masturbation we

039decided not to include that in um our puberty it's not in the video at all uh it didn't really fit for what the scope that we were going to um the three types of sexual activity we didn't we chose not to do the definitions necessarily of those as much as talk about the exchange of body fluids as far as ways of getting pregnant our interpretation is that there are many ways to create families and what i said in the meeting before is we've probably got more conversation more questions about surrogacy than we ever have because the kardashians are big news these days so the kids know what those things are and they might ask but for the most part it has this that things have not come up on a typical year so those are

040not in there if it is not written in the document we did not use those terms so we were trying to be very transparent we did not want anyone to think we were trying to hide any terms at all if it's not on there we're not we're not using those terms thank you and then just for clarification for those that may be either in the here in the public uh or watching the video or watching it on youtube later can you just tell us how to get to that curriculum document if somebody is interested in it so if you go on but right now it's broken out as family life however this is really a bigger piece of the whole entire comprehensive health curriculum so you're going to need to go into the health document

041go on the website says curriculum instruction and then go to the health uh to the health curriculum click on it and then you'd have to find the units themselves but when we send out the reminder i'm going to just include the link on this so that we could just cut to the chase and not have to go through you know curriculum documents can be several hundred pages long and this we cut down to what do we have less than 10 i don't know we did cut it a lot because i felt like things were redundant things were not being taught in different great like it just was too many things in um there was too much in there that there's no way in 40 in 80 minutes total you would ever cover them in substance

042so there is a link right on the home page too too right so make it makes it a little easier if you want to look on the home website www.denville.org scroll down a little bit you'll see draft health curriculum yes we're the draft for right now eventually once we approve it it will go tucked back in but i will send that thank you dr coles and then just finally wanted to make a comment to thank you and the staff that put this together i know been talking to you for the last several months um there has been a tremendous amount of feedback from the community that you've taken you've taken feedback from the board you've taken feedback most probably importantly from the staff members that teach this on an annual basis and what they hear

043from students what they believe in and i think that's the most important piece because like you talked about this is a curriculum for denville and that feedback is from denville teachers they're sitting with denville students every day and listening to the questions that they bring up about these specific topics so um i appreciate you putting the emphasis on kind of customizing this curriculum specifically for our students and and even in that kind of streamlining it the things that that the staff members and you felt like were important so thank you for that i appreciate it you are welcome and i as i keep mentioning the dental is a special place and we are asking i mean you do put your trust in your teachers and i feel like we've earned that trust i don't think

044we've had any issues with our staff in our sex education program and when they have shared things with kids i feel like they have absolutely stayed within the scope of what we've said this is the scope and respectfully said that they need to either talk to a parent or trusted adult if it goes beyond that scope i do and it is an ask and we want to respect our parents and we ask from them in return that they trust that we will respect their their parental rights as well thank you anybody else with the board i'm just going to yeah if you don't mind i just want to not a question but a comment um i definitely want to commend dr cullis and everyone for putting the curriculum together um i've been on the board

045eight years going on nine i've been on the uh imp committee most of that time so i've approved math curriculum social studies various curriculum i can tell you and i just want to kind of you know give some comfort to the public that this particular curriculum this particular year we spent way more time getting into the details of it we wanted to understand it completely i know the other members of the imp committee watched all the videos from beginning to end had questions about them so um you know i want to give you comfort that at the board level we took this very seriously um and you know that of course was telegraphed by how seriously the administration took it so um you know again you may not agree with everything that's in there you

046may not agree with our decisions but i do want to give you some comfort that we've taken this very seriously we've taken this responsibility very seriously and we've spent you know what i think is a significant amount of time thinking about it talking about it making a decision about it that's it thank you mr cappello anybody else on the board laura just asking dr collins to make a clarification um you stated that um for the public you stated that it will be accessible on the website um and can you just talk about how the how they can access the videos again and that they won't be accessible on the website yes you just need to email either their health teacher they can email the principal counselor you know pe teacher any of those people the

047nurse anybody that they email and contact can easily get you access i mean you may have you have to comment some of them are on youtube they're really grainy but i do see them on you on youtube uh but you just have to ask and it can come in any time and view it absolutely you all will get re-educated on something those of you that stayed we did preview the puberty video uh for at least about 20 minutes of it um earlier thank you dr colas it looks like there's no more additional questions or comments from the board so with that i'll open to our second open public comments section i'll ask that comments are specific about dr cullis's presentation any questions or comments once again um same rules as before i think we have

048the same individuals in the room so i'm not going to read the paragraph but please be respectful and uh if you come up please uh state your name and address to the record as well as sign in on the sheet and i will open up our second public comment section at 8 17 p.m and just a reminder that we restrict comments to three minutes just to keep our meeting moving along so it asks that you're respectful of that thank you good evening donna marie cizinski 64 pier please thank you that presentation was great um it really did clarify a lot for me put my mind at ease and the video is really not that big of a deal i thought it was pretty benign but the one thing that i wanted to ask and clarify

049and i know you had talked about this in the presentation but the gender identity the definition is a person personal conception of oneself as male or female or rarely both or neither so us as parents we just want to know that if our child comes to us and they say you know mom i feel like a girl trapped at a boy's body or whatever right that it's really coming from them and not a new fad or something that's being you know pushed on them um that's my concern i mean if my child came to me and said that you know i would ask what you know my questions to find out you know if that was the case if it was a bad thing or if it was real because i take that seriously i

050have many you know gay and lesbian friends family members i have a trans friend i i don't judge a person by who they are um but at the same time i want to make sure it's really something going on the other issue was parental rights and thank you all for mentioning that because i think that's what we're all here for right um if our a child wanted to switch genders is that something that's going to be thrown under the rug and hid from us i think it's a little bit young in eighth grade but i'm not sure because a lot of this talk is before the onset of puberty um so that's another concern would it ever be hidden from a parent and i think that is all i thank you i mean as i

051mentioned earlier it's we don't want to be that first line we don't we want to support what decisions you're making in your home which is often why we you know if we go beyond the scope that our teachers say you need to talk to your parent um about that we have not had the situation where some child or was hiding anything the students that have come to us it came through the parent um we have not seen that here again i think it's a trust factor with the community that those parents that have come to us we've been able to support the things that they are going through i can't see any of those teachers especially those nine that are that are teaching it ever wanting to impose any of their own beliefs whatever they

052may be i think it really is a matter of if if a student went to a counselor or someone and talked about that they're really struggling our counselors are really good about bringing in the parenting i think this is something that we want to talk about as a family because i don't think anybody as a school we don't want to take that on either as some you know we're not their parent we want to work with you because when they're with us at school we want to support the feelings that they have but you're the one that will be deal you and your medical professionals are really the ones that are going to be dealing with that that isn't anything that that falls under the scope of school you know the things that we can

053do to support is that we can have those private bathrooms which we have we have single bathrooms but they are not for any particular student anybody who does not want to change in front of others for a variety of reasons there's many reasons a middle schooler doesn't want to go change in the locker room many can use those private singles and that's what we can provide i mean that's like the biggest thing that we can provide for them and any support for the parents if they come to us for resources our counselors have lots of resources here are people that can do that but we are we don't we do not employ any um pediatricians or medical staff in that role and therefore we will not usurp that role i think you can be confident

054with that um i really do trust those people and we are asking maybe it's a big ask i hope not but you are there is a degree of trust when you send your children to us every day you know that we will do what's right by them and i hope that we fulfill that every day i do appreciate all those questions some of you been coming all year and i appreciate it you think it didn't matter but it really did we heard a lot of voices and uh it makes a difference right thank you anybody else have any questions or comments they can come on up to the microphone no you're fine with the signature just state your name and record address the record again please i'm william champleon i live on cedar lake uh

055so i want this is a clarification question right so starting from seventh to eighth grade i was harassed for being bisexual me and my friends i've seen my peers being thrown slurs at and i it makes denville honestly unsafe for these kinds of hateful actions to occur and not to be taught against so i also went to a review this sounds very similar to the same curriculum i had i want to clarify is it going to be the exact same basically the exact same curriculum that i went through just actually teaching about love and respect for your fellow human being oops i think that is the big difference i think that when you went through as far as the content it's pretty much the same puberty you know that activity prevention is the same but

056our huge change has been on the character development for all reasons you know i think that we did not talk about diverse families in the past and now we make sure that we include all types of families so that when we have our family discussion there's a lot of different types of families and we have every type in denville and we want to make sure everybody's included and that is a you know that's a safety concern and that was all in our minds your issue is on our minds we want to make sure that our students in middle school can walk down the hall safely and not feel um ostracized ridiculed bullied you know that that is something that is really important and that's that number one feeling safe so i would love to continue

057the conversation with you uh because you're at the high school you know what things are happening there and i certainly that's where our kids are going and the opportunities that they provide at the high school i know they have i think they changed the name now but they have like the gay straight alliance and other opportunities that our kids could join um once they get up to the high school [Music] and dr collins just to add on to that i think um this what you're talking about in the health curriculum is carried throughout the curriculum and it's carried throughout the day when we talk about character development schools of character it's just a it's a theme that we're really trying to work and do better i would say we're there's an opportunity for us to

058continue to get better but it's something that's a focus of the board of focus of the administration and we need feedback from the community on is it working what else do we need to do um certainly from an ex inclusivity perspective so i appreciate the comment and certainly as dr calls mentioned welcome the opportunity to speak to anybody from the public who has those questions those concerns that feedback is it working is it not working we know we can always strive to get better this is not we're not done we're not perfect hopefully what we're doing is making a difference and making it better and hopefully we can continue to do that so appreciate them so yes absolutely acceptance and you know inviting and accepting environment is what kids need to thrive and that's what

059we're going for that's throughout everything the sec the the sex education content is not in any other subject but the health so you don't have to worry if you opt out those two days it's just those two days it won't pop up in another area any other questions or comments from the public [Music] please seth johnson uh 49 lakeland drive in denville i just i like hearing that there's still more room to evolve because i heard you say that some terms were purposefully left out of the curriculum and i think the lgbtq plus terms and understanding who people are is important to educate i don't know at what age but and that that's where i leave it to you all to decide where that starts and it's not just in my opinion what you learn

060it you want to learn a lot at home but sometimes parents leave things out uh accidentally or not and and i think every kid should be able to learn about who they are when that when they're confused and so i think that's an important thing as as these things evolve thanks for the great presentation and all the work all of you are doing thank you mr johnson and i would say you know when you were speaking right before you said it i thought what's the right age right and and that's really the you hit the nail on the head um i i don't know the answer to that directly and i think it changes pretty quickly um the terms change really quickly right and and i even catch myself you know not understanding or knowing

061some of them and really want to understand it um and i think that um that's where the feedback from the teachers has been really important right because they're in front of these kids every day they spend probably more time with my kids during the school year than i do let's face it and they're seeing it and hearing it and understand it so i think the feedback from the teachers and that was when dr coles talked to me about her process and she talked to me about the feedback from the teachers that was when it kind of hit home to me that okay we're doing the right thing we're going down the right road um because i don't have the answer to that or know it but hopefully our teachers do and that may change and

062if it does i think we need to evolve to what we think is appropriate for for our town and and and the opinion on what terms to say and not to say if you asked a hundred people you'd get a lot of different answers and i'm sensitive and i i don't know always what i feel comfortable with and what i feel comfortable with probably changes so i think we need to continue to evolve and if there's feedback from the community on what they think is appropriate if it's too far if it's not far enough then and let us know and hopefully we can adapt as we move forward so thank you for your comment any other questions or comments all right come on please yeah please good lord do you have something i just wanted

063to mention that i'm not sure you know when public comment is over if people are gonna leave but um we are gonna vote on the goals for next year and how that ties in with this conversation you just push that button while you're talking sorry that way it's not caught on video too thank you sorry about that no problem good evening danielle clarzio from pleasant valley road um i just just had a simple question and you were very helpful with answering my most of my questions over there so i appreciate it and thank you for going in detail about the curriculum i'm wondering if is it going to be shared besides this 18 80 80 minutes presentation that's going to be done are they going to be shared if other curriculums are being changed like

064in science social studies that's a very good question and certainly dr calls can i get a journal do you mean in terms of like or is this content infused or do you mean something totally separately like teaching basically um what's covered in social studies in general that wasn't covered before or science that's going to be new for children when it was years ago for instance sure we're on a five-year cycle so every year we have some new presentation of some curriculum so right now k-5 is getting an upgrade on their social studies they got a new book and so uh the topics moved around a little bit um that's the one that will be new the math the others have not changed for next year so the science the math the ela that's all the

065same and the only other one is the civics in seventh and eighth grade it now just it's exactly the same except that it has to be taught in a semester like it has to be two quarters in a row in sequence so it's like the last quarter of seventh grade in the first quarter of eighth grade i mean that's the only difference but it's not any new material it's just when it's what time of year but there aren't there aren't any others we've already made all of the changes for other things at this point and do they get communicated with parents when they are we do a board presentation presentation yes every year we do a board presentation of any new adopted curriculum and then that goes on the website but anytime if you have

066a question about any of that because they're huge documents just call ask your teacher to specify like the grade level what do they do in math in this grade level or science or whatever or you can call me and they can certainly go into it just from a process standpoint as dr carlos mentions it's on a cycle that cycle is actually listed on our website if you go under instruction accusing your curriculum and instruction that cycle is listed when they go through the curriculum change dr collis works with the staff to recommend the changes they're then presented to the instruction program committee on the board they're presented to the entire board and it is voted on at the board of education meeting and then it is posted on our website so any of the curriculums

067can be pro posted here you could probably get lost for a day just spending time digging into the website on all that's there but i would say if there's something particular you're looking for then please go in there and look and if you can't if you don't want to get lost for a day pick up the phone and call and just ask a specific question they'll be happy to answer whatever it is you have a question on it it is evolving quickly and it does it it evolves quickly as and we want to make sure that we're ahead of the game instead of being dated material that might not be appropriate so we're always kind of looking to to update and change curriculum as needed alison de silva 12 morris avenue um at the presentation

068earlier i asked about the change from seventh grade to fifth grade discussing sexual orientation gender identity and gender expression and you um described how topics under those terms come into play like boys who like to wear pink or also like to wear play with trucks boys with long hair girls with short hair but under your draft it says skills so students will be able to define sexual orientation gender identity and gender expression so you told me we wouldn't be drilling in definitions but the skills clearly say that the students should be able to find them so i'm just kind of curious to which one is it well um that we do not grade them on those but i mean you could say explain understand state any of those things they are presented with those definitions

069and so the skill is that they're aware of those definitions there should be able to know the difference between those two i mean there's not a quiz on it i don't think we drill it like i said it's an 80-minute session on that so no i understand but to find putting definitions and labels and talking about scenarios to 10 year olds are very different things i mean fifth graders are mostly 10 year olds i i don't except for the scenarios that i gave you is there another scenario that you're concerned about i'm not i'm not concerned with the scenarios i just don't like the labels like that woman was talking about her daughter who cut her hair short and everyone assumed that her gender expression was a boy i think the labels are confusing to

070the kids right they're they're applying them they're trying to do the right thing but i think sometimes when they're too young for these terms it's more confusing to them that's just my opinion okay thank you dr carlos uh in the presentation you have a a slide on the definitions do we go much beyond what you've shown in the definition slide on the it is those definitions yes i mean the scenarios that come up as i like i shared earlier those come up whether we define them or not i mean those those do come up but the the new standard the new state standard is that those terms are understood what those terms are i mean that's that is a state standard thomas cizinski again i just wanted to share a real life experience that i

071have permission to share um just as i would never want a child who identifies as you know gay trans lesbian to be picked on harassed and that's why i kept asking for it to be more like an iep my daughter was being called a trans boy it was never addressed i did bring this up to the board meeting i never got any information on what was going on with this report it was reported properly um but she was being called to transboy and many of her friends in her friends group were being called different horrible names and they would bark at them they were just absolutely obnoxious and it had been dealt with but again i didn't get the report on the hip like i'm supposed to get like the notification um i don't want

072to see any kid get harassed like that i was a tomboy i'm still a tomboy okay i like to play with trucks um so i don't think it's fair to ever put that label on a girl saying you can only play with dolls you can't play with trucks you can't play football you can't play this sport but at the same time i think we have to have compassion for both sides and understand that you know even some of these kids that identify as she said because i asked her i said well how do you feel about that and she goes i told him i'm a straight girl and the boy just would not stop you know and it's something that we all got to kind of put our heads together and try to figure out

073how we can get this to not be a division mechanism because that's where i'm seeing it going i'm actually seeing people hating more on gays and lesbians and people that are bisexual because of all of this it's very it's almost disappointing so i just wanted to kind of throw that out again you know that we gotta i think it's very important to really pay attention to the kids that are getting picked on in the groups that are getting picked on so thank you that that is incredibly important and i i think we try to encompass those both perspectives within that curriculum i mean i completely understand what's going on in society i see all the same videos and articles and clips and things as everyone and they see kids are seeing this a lot i

074mean i think that the amount that we see it in the curriculum compared to what we're actually seeing in the world on tv and media and so forth they do see it a lot so it all has to come under that character development i don't know if we can um legislate it out of the curriculum because it's not really in the curriculum but it's working on that character development of being inclusive and accepting i mean that's where we're putting the emphasis it's not so much on this because it's not in there but the kids are still i mean even if it's not in the curriculum they hear it other places and they bring it out in those situations and that's what we're trying to alleviate right because everyone should feel safe and included and not

075worry what someone's going to say to them that's the big message and regarding your comment about the hiv would you be okay with me giving you a call tomorrow i just want to make sure that everything you're supposed to get you have anybody else have any comments or questions please come on up hello again i'm william champley i live on sierra lake uh and this is a question kind of regarding the last uh question uh i'm not obviously a teacher and i'm not a professional in this field so i do want to ask if kids are taught to love and accept everyone regardless of gender or sexual orientation do you think kids are going to be harassed exactly as and i am sorry that you had to deal with that uh i do you think

076that that situation that type of situation will actually decrease if we teach about love and acceptance because kids will go on with the message of love and acceptance i mean that is i think that's going to help i mean certainly it's only one piece uh we have very you know involved parents that came out tonight but it's not 1600 families here tonight so those things are happening at in the community and at home i mean it's just a message that has to be everywhere and it's it or it's the societal message that's going on right now is not it's not always acceptance and it's you know we're battling that as well but that's the message we just have to keep going over if there's anything that you know we're drilling is we try to drill

077that daily like you know the lakeview paws like there's so many things that we're trying to do to get that be the message is being accepting more than any of this or any of the terms or anything else it's more about or whatever because it doesn't matter if we use those three terms or something else they could say blue hair they could say anything and be cruel um this just happens to be one aspect that someone could be unaccepting so just to clarify am i allowed to ask you clarification question please thank you uh just to clarify what you're saying is that if we teach kids in a responsible manner uh to learn against hate uh because i do believe that hate is taught you know not just in schools but also social media internet

078uh are you saying that if we take actions to prevent that kind of hate and for the schools to step in and say hey you know that's not always the case that would actually help students like me and students like your daughter absolutely thank you yes absolutely i mean i think just the awareness making it more and more of awareness you know that things are said in the hallway that um we just we all try to put a bigger ear you know open a bigger ear to hear what what we're hearing in the hallways and put it into it thank you so much i appreciate it and just to add to that i think um dr collis has made a few comments about denville and the community and i think that that's where the community

079comes in there's the schools and what we can do but we've often extended beyond that to the community to the police department to the township and working together to understand what are the needs of the students right i mean they they see it outside of the schools um we can help within the schools but there are a lot of influences in a lot of different directions and if if we can if we can talk about um inclusivity and um and all of that from a very young age i think that that is really where we begin with and that's what we can start so if we can make that change we're a small part and hopefully others kind of come along with us with that journey like dr khaled said i think we work really

080closely to build an a close-knit relationship between the parents and the community and the schools and hopefully we can kind of continue to build that any other questions or comments about the presentation seeing none i'm going to close our public comments section at 8 44 p.m we're gonna move on to the remainder of our agenda i do want to make a note that i know many of you came for this presentation you're more than welcome to stick around and stay as as mrs wagner mentioned we are voting on our district goals and i'm just going to read those goals because our next part of the agenda is having dr cullis uh give her comments so i'll give her a second to get uh get herself situated but i'll just read those goals because i think

081they are important in this conversation goal number one is to create a new multi-year strategic plan our strategic plan is a five-year plan that we had put together um previously and comes up on expiration at the end of this year so we have a a multi-year strategic plan that we'll be putting together again um net goal number two is to increase achievement for all students with a focus on grade three through eight math this is a goal we have every single year focusing on a specific area uh within our curriculum that we think um based upon the data we see and the feedback from dr cullis and her team as to where we need to focus number three goal number three is to foster inclusive and welcoming school environments and that's kind of i think

082fits into what we're talking about this evening goal number four is to increase resilience by focusing on mental health and wellness i think goal number three and four fit pretty closely in together and we recognize that coming out of covid and a lot of other things changing in our uh greater society that we recognize the need for mental health and wellness so i think it speaks volumes for the board and this is all feedback that we go through we went through a meeting to talk about the goals that two of our goals are really about the environment that we create within the schools and not just student academic achievement of course academic achievement is important to us we want to make sure we give every opportunity for our students to succeed but also we recognize

083that they succeed better when they are in a welcoming environment and uh when we can make sure that they've got the support from a mental health and wellness perspective so just wanted to point out those goals and thank you mrs wagner for noting that and with that hopefully doctor calls they gave you a few seconds to get caught up and i will turn it back over to you for assistant superintendent comments our numbers uh so we are really close to where the demographer uh actually said i think we're at uh one we got some more today 183 i think is about where we're at for our kindergarten so anybody out there still hasn't registered i was like getting them every day we're getting pretty close guys or three weeks away you make sure you want

084to get that classroom so go anyone who knows any kindergartners need to register please do so and this concludes the assistant superintendent's report thank you dr collis and what dr carlos refers to from a demography perspective is our we have we have constantly go through a process of understanding where our enrollment's gonna be in the future um it is really important to us because there is a chance at some point that we outgrow the current schools we're in as you guys know or may or may not know the previous saint mary's school which is across the street was um is currently under a lease from with the board of education for us to use for additional space um and uh there's always the potential that we need additional space so we look at birth rates

085we look at housing developments we look at a tremendous amount of information our demographer this year and mr kim is not here but he advocated for us to really invest in a demographer that is pretty much world renowned um he actually does the new york city board of education just to give you an idea um and he did a phenomenal job giving us a presentation and we'll continue to work with him as we move forward i would predict and understand kind of where our enrollments are going to be and what that means from a building usage perspective so a little bit different than the conversation we just had but certainly important to the board as we uh look to the future so dr callus you know how that 183 compares to last year sorry to

086put you on the spot yeah that's right it's about the same so we went through a big dip right so we were at two years ago we graduated 248th graders and we brought in uh 150 so that was a huge dip and then we went all the way down to 135 which is our lowest grade and is now going to be in sixth grade but after that we're back up at 180 pretty much consistently 180 to 190. so right now i said 182 as of today and i think the demographer said 184 was predicted so we're pretty close and we'll see who comes in the next couple of days but that puts our class sizes about between 18 and 20. thank you there's got to be one more out there i'm sure all right we're

087going to move on to our agenda for old business action to be taken mr capello do you mind moving us through old business i would be happy to if there are no objections under old business i'd like to move items a b and c i am a is the reports from july of 2022 treasurer of school monies and void secretary b are our district goals which you just read uh and c is our minutes from our work regular and executive session meeting of july 18th thank you mr cappello and dr rooney joshua for second any questions comments on old business seeing none roll call please mr cappello yes mrs wagner yes dr aruna de tassin yes dr moore yes mr anderson yes and we're going to move on to new business action to be taken

088mrs wagner would you mind moving us through personnel please certainly under personnel if there are no objections i would like to move items one through ten um outlining number one is recent hires retirements replacements and education for our teachers second thank you mrs wagner mr cappello any questions comments i just want to call out item oh one of our teachers at riverview christine malkinsky uh moving across the guide for the ba so congratulations to her thank you mr capello any other questions comments a lot of personnel over the summer obviously seeing none roll call please mr capello yes mrs wagner yes dr aruna de tessen yes dr moore yes mr anderson yes and moving on to instruction program mr capello please uh i'd be happy to uh if there are no objections under instruction program

089i would like to move items one through five uh these include um actually yeah staining on that one but the new jersey school board attendance for some board members in october we also are approving the discard of old curriculum as listed we are approving an intern from keene university we're approving the family life units k-8 discussed earlier tonight and finally we are approving some mentor-mentee relationships for the 22-23 school year second thank you mr cappello mrs wagner mr anderson is that okay if we postpone on number one letter a because we're not going to have a quorum for this that's exactly what i was going to ask you thank you for reading my mind really friendly amendment is it okay i'm fine with that okay so we will uh strike item number one and hold

090off on that just for clarification of the public so several of the board members here will be attending uh that workshop therefore they'll abstain on that we will not have a quorum to vote on it so we have time to wait since the meeting is not until october any other questions comments seeing none roll call please mr cappello yes mrs wagner yes dr abu yes dr moore yes mr anderson yes and dr moore would you mind moving us through policy revisions please yeah i'd like to move uh for approval the following resolutions under policy revisions student publications two are going to be abolished website accessibility is new student journalism is new every student succeeds act has been revised the professional responsibilities two have been revised p and r 3720 and care of school property p

091r 5513 have been revised second thank you dr moore and mrs wagner those were all for first reading any questions comments on those policies or regulations seeing non-roll call please mr cappello yes mrs wagner yes dr abu nadassen yes dr moore yes mr anderson yes and mr kim is not here media would you mind moving us to finance if there are no objections i'd like to move uh following items finance the one through seven the first item being uh funds for the expenses and uh the others being mostly expenses regarding various items for school from maintenance plans to contracts for the district where data warehouse systems so on and yeah so effect more i'd second and i'd just like to ask um with your permission mr anderson if we could read um item number four

092in the record absolutely would you thank you for volunteering i i i offer i offered i offered i offered to split that with mrs wagner if she'd be okay with that okay so item number four be it resolve that the board approves the following resolution regarding the proposed increases to the school employee health benefits program whereas the school employees health benefits program schvp governed by njsa 52 colon 14-17.46 offers medical prescription drug and dental coverage to participating school district employees retirees and eligible dependents and whereas all sehbp plans are self-funded meaning that the money paid out for benefits comes directly from an sehbp fund supplied by participating local employers and member premiums and whereas the division of pension and benefits is responsible for the daily administration activities of the sehbp the school employees health benefits

093commission is the executive organization responsible for overseeing the schvp and whereas the school of employees health benefits commission comprised of state officials union representatives and a representative of the new jersey school board association annually considers the calendar year premium levels for the local education employees group of the sehbp based on recommendations found in the rate setting recommendation analysis of the local education employees group and whereas the employees health benefits plan design committee has the responsibility for the authority over the various plans and components of the plans including for medical benefits prescription benefits dental vision and other health care benefits offered and administered by the schvp and whereas sorry existing laws requires three members of the school's employees health benefits plan design committee to be appointed by the governor as representatives of public employers i.e local

094school districts whose employees are enrolled in the program but currently all such representatives are state level appointees whereas the recommended rate changes for medical and prescription drug coverage for the active 2023 local education employer group is 15.1 percent which includes a 15.3 percent increase for active employees enrolled in new jersey direct 1015 and a 14.9 increase for active employees enrolled in new jersey educators health plan and jehp and whereas such proposed exorbitant rate increases will fall upon the local property taxpayer as well as school employees at a time where there is record inflation and whereas since employees enrolled in the njehp pay a percentage of salary towards their health benefits per pl 2020 c 44 commonly referred to as chapter 44. any increase in nj ehp premiums will fall almost entirely upon local boards of

095education placing a severe strain on their budgets and whereas the proposed premium increase for most active employees will take thousands more out of their paychecks annually and lead to huge huge costs for local school districts that will translate into higher property tax bills for struggling families and now therefore be it resolved by the board denville board of education in the county of morris call upon the school employees health benefits commission to reconsider the rate increase and strike a rate increase that is appropriate in the current economic conditions and be it further resolved that the denville board of education in the county of morris urged the legislature to adopt legislation expanding the composition of the school employees health benefits commission and the school employees health benefits plan design committee to include additional representatives from local school

096district management and be it further resolved that the denville board of education in the county of morris urged the legislature and executive branch to examine the impact that chapter 44 has had on school district budgets and to adopt legislation that will reverse any of its negative consequences and provide relief to those districts and be it further resolve that a copy of this resolution be forwarded to governor murphy state treasurer senator president scuttari assembly speaker coughlin senator anthony bucco assemblyman brian burgin assemblywoman aura k dunn morris county school business officials and the new jersey school boards association thank you mrs wagner mr cappello i i do actually think and i apologize i didn't catch this before i think we need to make one change to the assembly representation based upon the new districts is that correct

097that assembly i believe that it's not until two 2023. okay perfect thank you we're not reading that again i tried thank you mrs wagner for clarifying and thank you for both of you for reading it in i think it's important that everybody understands kind of where the board falls on this and um our opinion and we we often just for background do not put resolutions out there that don't have much to them but this is really important to us their eighty-five percent of our budget is salaries and benefits so benefits going up fifteen percent is detrimental to the taxpayers and detrimental to our staff because that fifteen percent is coming on their side too so they pay into a portion we pay a portion so it is really um extremely difficult in this time and

098we've focused as a board to minimize the tax impact packed on the taxpayers well unfortunately if this continues we would have to potentially next year go for a larger tax increase where we went to a very minimal increase this year um in an effort to help taxpayers knowing the impact that uh the economy is having on everybody so i appreciate you both for reading it and i appreciate that uh mrs gorowski and the finance committee has found it important to put this resolution together any other questions or comments yeah i did good thank you i did want to call out number seven um we received a donation recently video services from township resident jay mccullough his uh company is papa j enterprises um he recently put a video together for us it included the mayor

099the chief of police chief perna dr forte myself and actually another a couple of other police officers to really talk about school security he donated that completely free and if i told you the amount of time he put into this i stepped in here to to do my recording i thought it was going to be like on an iphone well he had lights and cameras and he had an assistant with him it was unbelievable i mean i think he's severely under valuing the estimate it would be i think it would be way more than six thousand dollars to put this video together it was multiple locations and many many people involved and i also wanted to thank um our vice principal over at lakeview mr scala who helps with our security he helped herd the

100cats so to say of all of us getting the video put together so i appreciate his work and i appreciate the donation significantly and hopefully we'll have that video out very soon right dr forte very soon before the school year any other questions or comments i've got one quick one and dr carlos i apologize i know we've been asking you to speak a lot tonight but very briefly um link it number number three um can you just give the benefit of the public just a little bit of background i know link it's been a tremendous resource for us in terms of analyzing student data can you give a little bit of background on what that with these new modules kind of you know what that where that kind of will take us in terms of

101what we'll be able to do so right now we use we've been using linkit recently to do our benchmark assessments we collect a lot of our in-house data instead of us putting it on excel spreadsheets they house it for us and they also analyze it all so they can go in and take the njsla scores all the school benchmarks the reading levels and everything and give us a picture to give every teacher a snapshot of every student before they even come in so we have an idea of everything they did the year before that's really helpful in addition they're also going to be able to help with which students need interventions on even which specific standards so we use that for offering basic skills reading support math support anything like that so that's where that

102that data really comes from we keep adding to their they've been very receptive because i keep adding to their their their list of things so we take a lot of the other things that we collect like our cogats any kind of information we can have surveys from the parents so we ask k1 and 2 for the parents to fill out for gifted and talented this year we asked them to fill out the surveys so that we can incorporate that into our identification process all of that they put together so we have as much information whether it's a counselor needs to pull the data a teacher a psychologist intervention team anybody can pull that information anytime and have a good idea of where that student is and i think it's just it's just filling those gaps

103right so that no one's really getting lost and we're closing on in on what it is that students really need to work on rather than everybody doing their own thing like every every personnel kind of collecting their own data and not actually putting it together and making use of it so that's what this does and uh we first used it uh was funded with a federal grant but it is really a useful program we've gotten rid of all the other things and put it all under link it now all the other data collections so great thank you any other questions or comments seeing none roll call please mr cappello yes mrs wagner yes dr abu nadassen dr moore yes mr anderson yes and mr cass is not here mrs wagner would you mind moving us

104through operations please certainly if there are no objections i would like to move under operations item one and two under transportation 1.1 is um the sale of a school bus and there's two school buses i'm sorry there's two school buses under item 1.1 and under item 2.1 we are approving the attached proposal for construction at riverview second thank you mrs wagner mr cappello any questions comments and just for clarification of the public the two school buses we are have out for bid and receive bids on to sell have aged out of the fleet in accordance with new jersey department of transit so they are unusable to the district and therefore put out for public bid for those that are interested and this is the second time it was alphabet we did not get any bidders

105the first time yes since the uh state has a dot restriction the value of a school bus after its usable lifespan is is unfortunately fairly low but thank you for getting something bitter at some cost so we appreciate it we in the past actually have done we had some that were in pretty rough shape that we've actually donated to the police department or should be the fire department to do exercises on so we've been creative in the past on how we can utilize those either some small funds we can gather or use for the uh the township or whatever any other questions comments seeing non-roll call please mr cappello yes mrs wagner yes dr aruna de tasmi yes dr moore yes mr anderson yes and we're going to move on to go to the cause

106i'll combine committee report correspondence and discussion items anybody have anything before we move on to board meeting highlights so yeah just one one item um you know we've talked about it a couple of times so we removed the ability for the public to submit comments or questions remotely because you know we had a concern about not being able to verify who's necessarily asking the question or making a comment which i again i think is totally fine the question i guess becomes is there a way to bring that back in a post-code world i think it makes a ton of sense for people to be able to interact with us virtually in some capacity so um i know we talked about bringing that through committees i don't think the committees have i know the committees that

107laura and i and uh cliff aren't having we haven't had that discussion yet i don't know yeah thanks dino and laura for bringing it up so just for clarification we've gone through since covid a few different iterations of how we've done our meetings um obviously we immediately went completely virtual uh during the covid pandemic we then once we came back into chambers for in-person meetings we have done let's see google meet where we had the ability for folks to provide comments back live we then went to youtube for a little while to try out a different technology we had some challenges there we switched back over to google meet and uh it's pretty challenging to have individuals kind of speak up in a virtual environment at certain times whether we can hear them not hear

108them from a technology standpoint what not certainly not impossible and i agree that there's an ability for us should be an ability for us to look into this the final way we did it was and we still to this day do stream our meetings live on google meet we then take that recording and post it onto our youtube channel so there's multiple ways either live or later that individuals of the public can view the meeting the one thing they can't do is from a virtual setting interact with us to provide feedback we had the ability at one point for them to email questions um as dino said there was some concerns from a ability to verify the individual provided the correct information as to who they were or just created an email address we did

109not have an issue that we know of but we certainly can think of a few different ways where that could be problematic so we wanted to make sure that um we are interacting in the most accessible way consistently so one of the things we said instead of just making a decision as to what to do we should run it through committees so um dr forte can we add that to the committee the two committee agendas to talk about i know we've been busy over the summer but this is certainly something we want to take some action on and figure out a plan moving forward yeah sure we can definitely do that you're right we did we were bogged down with a few other things but we don't mind putting that on each committee perfect thank

110you and if anybody from the board or the public has you know kind of feedback on how we can do that or ways that would be better to interact please let us know we're constantly looking for ways to interact with the public get the information out there in different formats so we appreciate any feedback you might have anybody have anything else for the good of cause just to add to what you said having said that we love seeing more people here and anytime you can come over of course weather permitting you know really appreciate it completely agree any other good of the cause all right uh board meeting highlights dr forte did you have any you wanted to put together you always have a list i have three that i put together dr cole is

111his curriculum presentation and the document district goals and the donation of the video services perfect anybody have anything else good the next one i have i put on here too we'd like to wrap up this right now if we could um because the marriage needs to get on you know advertising us so we would like to decide on using riverview's all-purpose room for the strategic plan so the board meetings those three dates november 14 28 and 12 would be at riverview not here we need a large space um miss peterson from new jersey school boards recommends something a little different than we did the last time she she recommends a large enough room to have the breakout sessions within the room rather than go into other rooms she feels like the like there's a um

112a more there's more energy when the when the when everyone's in the same room i've done it twice one time like that with everyone in the same room and one time the breakout i i think i see what you say i think it's a good point so um are we all good with riverview and then doing that large group there and at this point we do not have a plan for any type of a virtual other than it'll be recorded whatever way we do our board meetings would be the same way that people could view it virtually but it wouldn't be like a virtual zoom meeting or anything that where people could zoom into everybody on board with those okay great thank you yep be with me there's a chance i'm out of town on

113the 12th for personal equipment but um that's fine it's not a big deal anything else for the good of the cause once going twice okay we'll move on to our next section agenda which is our open public comment section this is our second public comment section same uh same rules and uh and protocol applies limited to three minutes if you have any questions or comments this is for anything to do with the board all statements or questions or inquiries or directed to the board president if you'd like to make a comment please come up and state your name and address for the record i'm going to open our second public comment section at 9 14 pm [Music] good evening again thank you for allowing me to speak i apologize for not mentioning my name earlier

114but it's michael massenduno 47 claremont avenue in denville i just want to thank the board for passing that resolution fighting against the 24 increase that's what it sounds like it's not going it's going to be not 15 um if you could maybe pass another resolution to ask for a forensic audit on the billing what uh horizon blue cross blue shield does because it seems like they are the only health insurance in the state of new jersey used to be new jersey direct 10 15 and 20 in aetna but they beat up aetna and as far as uh sending it out to the legislators i deal with craig coughlin where i work in the 19th district he really doesn't care he's more about making his money being a lawyer i mean he went from 1.8 million

115in public accounts to now up to uh 6.8 million so we know where his mindset is but we need to put pressure on assemblyman bergen assemblywoman don and senator bucco thank you for your comments and we'll certainly look into it thank you any other public comments i'm going to close our second public comment section at 9 16 p.m dr forte we do not have a need for a second executive is that correct we do not motion to agera thank you mr capello and mrs wagner all in favor hi hi hi all right we are adjourned at 9 16 pm thank you for joining us