6-13-22 Denville NJ BOE Board Meeting

001with the open public meetings act notice that this meeting was provided to the daily record and of the star ledger of morris county has been delivered to the township clerk and has been posted on the bulletin board of the board of education office and at each of the school buildings in the district roll call please mr cappello here mrs wagner here mr cass here mr kim here dr abu nadassen here dr moore here mr anderson here uh we do not have a need for executive session so move to the pledge of allegiance please stand all right well welcome and thank you everyone for coming this is the largest audience we have had in years literally so thank you very much for coming to some really exciting presentations and awards tonight so without any further ado

002i am going to going to uh turn it over to dr forte you going to take for the valley view we'll start with the girls soccer championship i'm going to call mr englishman our vice principal and athletic director at valley view good evening um before we begin i'd like to thank the board of education dr forte dr cullis for their continued support of value athletics the 2021 school year was very successful in terms of our athletics program after two plus years of shortened cancelled or redesigned sports programs this year was marked by a return to a full athletic schedule including both intramural and interscholastic competition additionally this was the first season in which we made use of the newly renovated ar spinola athletic fields which are now some of the finest middle school athletic fields

003in the area this year valley view offered our students the opportunity to participate in intramural soccer and volleyball and we hosted a club volleyball tournament additionally we fielded varsity teams in boys and girls soccer cross country cheerleading boys and girls basketball wrestling softball and baseball all told approximately 200 students participated in athletics the boys and girls basketball teams as well as the softball team all advanced to the tournament finals a cross-country runner placed in the top five of the championship race and the wrestling team had three students earned second place finishes in the county championships however the greatest achievement this past season belongs to both the soccer teams [Applause] both teams won the greater morris county group three championship the boys finished the season with a 9 2 and 3 record outscoring their opponents 49-18

004the girls completed the 2021 campaign by scoring 60 goals and allowing only eight they finished with a final record of 16-1 both teams represented our community well we are very proud of their accomplishments at this time i'd like to introduce the coaches for the boys mr sean plum and for the girls mr bob king i don't know what you know bob will probably say the same thing it wasn't us i want to say something first though go ahead mr englishman said that we were 16 and one um we were actually 17 and one we really got to talk about that because we played the boys at our end of the year party and we beat them too you guys played us tough i got to give that to you you know we didn't have too

005many close games so thank you you know yeah we had trouble with those pk's but seriously for the boys side especially it was a pleasure to to coach this team um they worked really hard you know we talked about from day one that that was our goal was winning the championship and they they just did not let that come you know they made sure that that was going to happen so uh very proud of them uh worked really hard sometimes so hard i i had to slow them down a little bit and practice every once while just so they didn't hurt each other you know but no they worked really hard really proud of them and it was a great season so they should be very proud of themselves [Music] [Applause] and as for the

006girls i don't know if you can tell by a record but this is a very special group um the thing that i think about most when it comes to them is their dedication all right because every single day we'll have practice you know probably tuesday through thursday we'd have pride or tuesday through friday practice or a game um i would leave that game or practice you know probably around five six o'clock go pick up my daughter and then go to either zeke or mars catholic and just sit and watch her practice well every single time i got there i'm tired at this point every single time i got there these girls are out there practicing as well you know so their dedication was excellent they're a great group to coach and their success is you

007know impressive definitely [Applause] charles first first [Applause] you want me to announce your names just line up here so we can get a come picture girls all right um we do have a few that aren't here i know we have a few that are currently at practice so i'm just going to read names off the roster if uh if i say your name just raise your hand oh we all have nicknames too so i'm going to say them as well uh michaela money mace anderson [Applause] juliana jam master critchley [Applause] terry the croatian sensation sango [Applause] tatiana the pesky squirrel sewell tessa shoeless simone daniela dmac mcnally [Applause] liftoff lucia nash maria zoomed zumas rihanna rattlesnake mcnally stone cold sophia arias duvall moonwalk maggie krasnomowitz jillian stumbles pullman nutmeg megan ferrand yogabs gabby bellissi emma

008the disser durman warrior wendy graziani and two cool caleb burrell [Applause] yes [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] all right boys why don't you come on up all right well thank you that was uh exciting that was one of our first times that we've been able to bring students back in person for congratulations so very exciting and uh not uh right behind that is probably one of my uh most exciting times of the year presentation of our 2022 denville public schools denville education foundation persons of the year awards these were something that we brought about we have incredible staff incredible students and an incredible community here in denville and uh we felt it was important that we we called out some people who really supported our schools uh in special ways so without any further ado

009i'll turn it over to dr forte that was great having the kids here great to see a packed house we haven't had that in a while like mr anderson said so this is our fifth year doing the persons of the year award we basically have a pretty loose criteria it's just people there's three categories a student staff member and a community member who have gone above and beyond for the students of denville pre-k eight schools that's the only criteria that you'd have you had to have gone above and beyond what you normally do in your current role for for our students and um it's nice that we're having a fifth year last year we had a big showing two for this so we're gonna we're gonna move on to the presentation i'm gonna call up

010uh mr barnish if you wouldn't mind coming up mr barnish is the president of the education foundation of denville i'm sorry i know you changed it denville education foundation i always think of it as foundation of demo but denville education foundation and he's going to present the award this these awards are sponsored by our foundation of denville and they're also sponsored by the combined ptas of our schools each winner receives a plaque and two hundred dollars in gift cards to either local businesses or different things so uh we'll have mr varnish discuss the community member of the year thank you dr forte for those who don't know my name is jeff barnish i am the president of the formerly known as foundation denville now known as the denville education foundation just a brief history well

011very briefly it's a good segue into to the winner um of this year's community member of the year um it was in not this boardroom where the board used to meet in 2008 where was the board meeting at that time so and feel free to someone can can yell out and correct me if i have any of these facts wrong because i think it's important that we all understand to to truly grasp the the task that was at hand and what what was done because of it the the budget did not pass and um so some concerned community members parents of children um collaborated got together and um they decided they needed to do something about it so what they did was they took the steps and it was it was it was complicated um

012there was multiple steps it took a lot of time a lot of meeting a lot of organization and they put together a foundation which was basically a way of raising money in our for our school to come up with a shortfall from the budget so the foundation is sort of based on the fact that you know we're we enhance the education experience for our kids and it was i wish those kids were still here just because they've all been beneficiaries of the close to 500 000 that the foundation has raised in the last 14 years and um you know listen i got roped into i mean i happily stepped up when the need was around to be involved and it's been very fulfilling i had huge shoes to fill and um you know there's a

013lot that goes into it there there's engaging the community there's engaging the um administration and the faculty to to find out what are the needs out there and um the the community member of the year judy ingram did a great job in doing that and victor her husband victor they they're really the they started the foundation sorry victor knuckle but you know judy i was i was much involved with judy so you know from the bottom of my heart and and i know that tons of students and um parents for the the for starting this foundation all the good it's done we really appreciate it and we like to present this award to you this year go ahead i'd like to present the award and a 200 gift card to sergio's to the ingrams [Applause]

014i don't know what to say i'm usually not speechless but i am today well one of the board members that started with me is actually here tonight and that's john paragian who challenged me every step of the way but also was a great mentor to me and my husband when we started this endeavor and i'm just happy that it's still going on because it's such a beneficial organization towards the kids and you know we always said it's all about the kids and i still believe that and still support the foundation 100 so thank you very much for this i'm truly honored thank you [Applause] okay we're going to call it the pta for the next one but i'm going to start off with this with the staff so this is for the staff member of

015the year again this goes to someone who has done has gone above and beyond for our students and this person has gone above and beyond for just not just k-8 students but for the town this is a fixture in the town um she means she means more to the town than people realize because some of the environmental initiatives she put forward are are tremendous like i said this before like i'm at home i can't even throw out a plastic bag or anything anymore like i hear her voice i'm about to rip it up and crumble it up even one of my kids or my wife i'm like what are you doing it goes in that thing lydia said it goes in there so lydia stiles is a middle school science teacher she was awarded the

016environmental educator of the year two years ago i believe and she was voted unanimously as the staff member of the year and unfortunately well fortunately too it's it's bittersweet it's a great opportunity for her it couldn't be better but um her family is going to relocate up into maine into an amazing part of the country of the state as a matter of fact when she was telling me where it was i don't know maine that well i was on google maps saying wow this looks pretty cool you see waves crashing against uh against rocks it was really an amazing spot so she she has a great opportunity to go up there for her family we're gonna miss her when the superintendent of the school district she's going to move on to called me or the

017principal i said the probably the best thing i can say about her is she's done things here that will last for 10 years without her here so so it's amazing the things she's done i know she knows how i feel about her because she had she had my son too twice and i know her as a superintendent also as a father which is a weird chance to do that but i'd like to call up lydia styles and mr anderson will give the reward and mrs styles is getting the award and a 200 td bank card and that was because she's moving and i have no idea what you would get somebody that lives in maine maybe bear repellent or something or but i didn't know what to do so we got a td bank card

018thank you so much and um i usually don't do a great job with the the thanks and appreciation shared both ways so this is kind of my big shot to say thank you and i'd probably just run around and like hug everybody as i'm saying thanks so to sandy dr forte the entire board my boss in the back um seth john um you know you can't be a fantastic staff person without having fantastic administration and people to support you so doesn't mean everybody says yes all the time right seth but it does mean it happens often enough that it keeps the motivation going and lets things things really work so thank you so much for this this genuinely truly means a lot i really appreciate it [Applause] is that tip and john come on up

019get a picture moments for pictures so yeah yeah it's not some stranger yeah come on up get a picture oh my god thank you susan would you mind getting a picture you gotta take the needle congratulations [Applause] lydia judy you want to do the same want to take a picture up here with your husband too come on up and jeff too and mike again and john john parisian come on john [Laughter] oh thank you [Applause] okay can i get the pta representative up here to give out the last award just you okay oh yeah come on up okay our last but definitely not least award for the year goes to our student of the year this was really fun for me because i got to go tell her that she was winning the award it

020was it was definitely the i'll be honest with the highlight of the last few years especially with all the craziness that's been going on but it was just it felt so good to just interact with the kids again and see like a smiley face um all too often and especially in my role i deal with all the problems that come up so the positive stuff like this just made my year this student was nominated by a few people as a lakeview student a fifth grader i went to give the award and i said a little bit about it i was i knew who she was so i was looking at her eyes while i was explaining who the war was going to and i said well this this person set up an anti-littering campaign and

021she placed these signs around because she wanted to make some change at lakeview she wanted to make sure that people were throwing away their trash and i could see her eyes and she's looking around like are they talking about me and i see her looking around so then when i announce her the first thing out of her mouth the first thing out of her mouth i see i see miss sardinopoli shaking her head was oh i have to give the credit to so and these three other people like that was an amazing it was amazing to watch that somebody so humble that wanted to just give the honor to somebody else right away then i got the chance to call her mom and tell her mom that that she was the award winner and just

022all super positive stuff so we have our our pta people up here to give the award to present the award and this award goes to amanda leskaro from lakeview come on up okay i talked to your mom about this so this is what we got you you have a 50 gift card to denville dairy you have so that's the unhealthy stuff and then we got you fifty dollars to pliable we know everybody likes that and then i got you um art class by mary shadbolt 100 gift card to that so you can pick whatever you want from her store and go uh do some art your mom said you're really big on art it's like your favorite thing that's why the signs were so nice right good job do you want to say anything good

023um so like dr forte said um i want to give thanks to my friends who actually helped me make this possible my friends julianna hall and oh my gosh and bridget eastman and there were a few other people involved and then i also want to thank my teachers mr largey and miss biazzi um who have really just been amazing and i just thank you i feel like so blessed i have no other way of saying this thank you all [Applause] so this goes on the wall in the board office it'll be there forever okay at least two more years because we have two more spots but we'll have to get another one but now it's on there was i write what i said first like you could tell by talking to after she said her

024little speech right that's that made my year you could see how that happened so um we could call up her parents or teacher principals come on up we'll get a picture okay congratulations thanks wow what a what an exciting and uh night to congratulate uh several people in our community these are not easy awards to give out in denville because there are so many qualified people that would qualify for any of these awards so congratulations to our three awardees well deserved thank you to the denville education foundation thank you to the combined ptas who supported it and thank you to the committee uh led by dr forte who uh evaluated the um awardees that were presented and made their decision so thank you very much to everybody and congratulations um once again i'm sure good

025steve yeah absolutely and then following this picture if if you'd like to leave you certainly can i'm sure amanda you have to get ready for school tomorrow we may have to do thank you congratulations and like i said if anybody would like to leave you can if you'd like to stick around we have a one more presentation tonight our communications consultant susan marinello and then we're going to move on with our agenda after that so busy meeting is it on is uh yeah for any of the board members uh the presentation is obviously up on the screen here as well as here dr forte also printed out some copies so if you'd like it i can grab them for you you can leave it open all right well susan the floor is yours thank you

026for coming and thank you for the work you've done so far we're excited to hear about it thank you we can go to the next slide i just want to say thank you so much for having me here uh this evening it's really exciting to see so many students in a room particularly after the last two years but they really those uh statistics it's why we i love education it's why we love working in school districts and i really do appreciate being here tonight so thank you i am i wanted to just start a little bit uh give you a little bit of information about who i am and i'm susan kahn over marinello um i've been in public relations and marketing and brand awareness and fundraising since 1980 and my um intensive work with

027school public relations and communications began in 2014 i was asked to create a position in monthly township public schools and um i just it's it's so fulfilling and so rewarding and one of the reasons for that is because if you don't have strong communications then people start to fill in with negative things and they were feeling that in that community and they knew that i had done a lot of work my my work in the schools with public relations began actually in the 1990s i was asked by the morris county park commission to create a brochure and it was to save turkey mountain and i said sure i can make a brochure but that's not what you need what you need is education and so i created a program called the turkey mountain square yard

028sale with a number of other people and we had lots of different elements we had all kinds of hikes up the mountain and all kinds of things that anybody could come and do but we also had an educational component where the students learned students in the area around that that park and um turkey mountain is part of the pyramid mountain park so many of you probably hiked there and we did wildlife what the wildlife is there we did the importance of that area on the watershed and we also talked with students about how important open space is for physical and mental health so that was way back in the 90s and then i was asked around the year 2000 to create a brochure for montfill township because they had a sole source aquifer one source

029of water and they wanted a brochure to tell people to conserve because they were running out of water and i said sure we can make a brochure but that's not what you need so we created the every drop counts program which won national awards and was in that particular town for about eight years but also went across the state of new jersey and in monthl township it reduced water usage by 16 million gallons a year despite a six percent increase in population so education works and i still meet students who were in kindergarten in those days who come out and tell me you know i think of you whenever i brush my teeth so it does matter so that's how i got into this particular niche and in terms of my logo i just want

030to let you know place at the table productions communications is about relationships and relationships to me is having a conversation and i like to sit at the table with people and just talk so all of your stakeholders all of the students all of the parents all of the community at large they are the people that we need to have a relationship with and communications is the way you develop that so so in november dr forte called me and he said could you come and do a communications audit and i i've heard a lot about dr forte actually and i knew a lot about denville because i had some nieces and nephews who grew up here and it's an exciting place to be so i was really thrilled for the phone call and initially we talked

031about what what his focus was for that audit and we decided to start with daily weekly and regularly scheduled communications tools the tools that you use on a regular basis and we wanted to evaluate the opportunities that elevate and consistently represent the mission the motto and the brand of the district both in messaging and logo while effectively communicating with all your stakeholders so in other words you talk about educate and power excel how do we put that out there with every single thing that we do and we also wanted to determine how the stakeholders respond to those tools and assess what's working and identify areas where we can improve so that's what we began in january and that initial review has been completed and this that's why i'm here today to talk a little bit

032about how we did that and what we have discovered so far so the daily weekly and ongoing communication tools um that we measured we looked at them for analytics using the data we looked at them for best practices in terms of content messaging format consistency and ease of use can a person find the information that you're trying to communicate and for me that's all marketing is communications is all marketing it's this is your brand you want to tell the community at large what it is you're doing and elevate that message with everything you do one of the things i didn't mention earlier is that i grew up in a family business so from the time i was about five years old i realized that every encounter you have with the community is an opportunity to

033put your message out there and basically promote your brand i learned it at a very early age but it is true that everybody who works in the district and everyone who has an interaction with each other and the students and the community at large has an opportunity to promote that educate empower and excel mission so the tools that we looked at those daily weekly and regularly scheduled tools for content messaging format consistency and ease of use are the district website in particular the landing page for the district as well as the landing page for each of the schools the friday folders the superintendent's scheduled communications and at the time that we were doing this the covet updates were a regular part of that and district blast emails and of course the social media that you

034use the youtube twitter and facebook feeds and we also in terms of looking at those it was my experience things that i've done best practices how you approach those kinds of things whether those uh whether each of those platforms was using the mission and the brand as part of their presentation and then we looked at how effective they were being and that came from measuring the data and i put all of this on a rubric but basically with the data we looked at how many clicks were recorded at various parts of the website how many people use the friday folders how many clicks through on the links provided in the superintendent scheduled communication and again for the email blast and of course what the engagement analysis is on youtube twitter and facebook and what we

035learned is that this district has a very strong commitment to clear communication which is so exciting for me because i'm all about communication i i really love it and it's fun to work with people who really love it too and i have to say that dr forte and kim novak and cindy costanza they are really dedicated to getting the message out there clearly efficiently and in the best possible way to help your stakeholders everybody in the community understand that we really care we really want to give them information so they understand that's really all anybody wants is to know that they can easily get information and understand what's happening and i i think it's important to think about what that means because in with the other thing that we did find is that there are

036some places where we can improve there are some places where consistency and messaging was not as strong as it could have been the format was a little blurred the branding was maybe dropped off here or there and the content wasn't quite as strong and sometimes the ease of use particularly on a website which happens in a lot of districts was was not intuitive and that's hard in a district that's hard and we're going to talk more about why that is later because websites are tough but overall things were strong and we could identify very specific places to to fix those or make improvements in that and it's important because day-to-day communications we know that's important we know in the last two years day-to-day communications have become elevated and we know too that if we build

037a really strong foundation on day-to-day communications then on the day when you have something extraordinary like the power goes out while you're in testing or you know a bus has a flat tire if we built the foundation then people can trust in those moments of extraordinary times where that they have some anxiety but this can help to alleviate their anxiety so um our next our next goal was to use those branding formats ease of use messaging content and apply it where we saw fit within the where we saw you know some moments of improvement in friday folders and all the other platforms and tools that we talked about and i again the website that's an ongoing thing we've identified some things we can fix we've made some changes but websites for districts are hard because

038there's so much that has to happen it's so much that has to be on that website and also because there's a lot of people who work on a website and because technology changes every six minutes so all of those things come together but again a really strong team of people who want to create the protocols fit fit the best practices into the platform that you have and find ways to keep moving that forward and moving the the communication progression so in on this slide here's one of the things that we did develop a protocol so the the picture on the left was the superintendent's message when we started and it's very clear if you read the words it's extremely clear however people don't tend to read they really have a hard time with it and

039they lose focus very quickly so we made some changes and the picture on the right gave us an opportunity to create flashier headlines and a way for people's eyes to move through and grab bits of information and that ability to grab information quickly allows them to understand more so rather than reading a big block of copy they have an opportunity to pick and choose and then they get drawn in and they see more and more as they look at the page now this is a big block of copy but we chose to keep this block of copy because in this particular instance something similar to this was on the website it defined what the school is and sometimes you do need to write what it is you're about you also need to write that on

040facebook and you need to write that on youtube so we made it consistent across all of those platforms so most people are never going to stop and read every word of this but if you go to any one of those platforms you're going to see a consistent message now this is another part of the website that we are working on and again it's a process the um if you if you have a series of things that you do on a regular basis and you put them on the website in chronological order then you you get um what happened in january what happened in february what happened in march what happened in april may and june if it's june and you're looking for your information and it's way down here you're scrolling scrolling scrolling so we

041inverted things wherever it made sense we're still in the process of working on that but now when you go if you look at the picture on the right you start with june and then you go backwards in the historical listing of those items and again this is another opportunity where we did that where we moved the newer the newer information to the top and you know again if you're looking at a budget you don't really care about 2019 you care about what's happening for 2022-2023 so it's those kinds of practices that are really important i'm not sure if we can get out onto the website for the district newsletter can we click on that thank you so um again a really strong group of communicators and what we did with this is we took the

042pieces that were working there was a piece on the website that was working that had the logo that had how you click through to the different schools in the calendar we took the vibrant information that the superintendent wanted to put out there and those links and then if you scroll down you'll see we divided the page so you have again that easy way for your eye to move through it so that there's headlines there's different blocks there's links throughout so that people start to react and interact with it rather than looking at a big block of copy and the email blasts were already really really strong the open rate the click-through rate but this has allowed people to navigate them easier ease of use thank you so the next steps again this first review was

043a lot of years of of you know experience on my part how is it to come to something what are the best practices me coming into your communications is someone from somewhere else how did that how did i react to those things because if i react to them similarly your community may be reacting to them but the next step is two surveys one for families one for staff and this will allow us to see truly how people are reacting it's not just analytics and data that's automatically accumulated by the website or by your social media or by the constant contact but this is people's chance to say this is how i respond to this so the survey results will help us identify how the community is using these tools these regularly scheduled communication tools and

044their expectations of those tools and also it will inform how we move forward with those tools we may find that a tool is really not working at all so if the goals here in the district are to get that information in a way similar to that we may have to find an adjustment altogether or we may be able to get rid of that and replace it with something else and then we'll also be able to understand what your constituents what your stakeholders are hoping for in communications and then we can set goals to try to meet their expectations and of course the survey results will also look at the website because again the website is really important it's one of the harder things in any district to keep current but if we know what people

045are going there for if we know what they expect from it we can try to set those goals as we look at those results we may also then have to take additional data steps we may have to interview some people we may have to do some more targeted surveys for example we may find that friday folders don't do exactly what we think they do and so we may then need to send out a survey just about how do you react to the friday folders so that we can just determine what needs to happen with that communication tool so the surveys are going to be quick they're very you know there's i think four or five questions in each one but they focus on two things the effectiveness of the district's various forms of communication tools

046those regularly scheduled tools and they focus on the website and i think we're two yeah there we go next one so once we have that information we can start to develop communication plans and i don't know if anybody is familiar with the communication plan but basically you identify an action or a goal so let's say that we do find that friday folders need some revamping we create a communications plan for the friday folder and we identify what the goals are and how to achieve it what actions should we take to achieve it each action is broken into steps deadlines are identified and someone is assigned to move that project forward it's really a very helpful tool because it creates accountability it creates a step-by-step process we can find it for almost anything let's say that

047we we get feedback that the messaging is unclear between the elementary school and the middle school you know for a parent who has children in both schools they may be looking for more consistency well then we can step back and look at how that messaging is going out what it is that they they've identified that the communities identified that they feel as a weakness and we can figure out the action plan to move that forward communication plans they strengthen consistency they strengthen communication techniques and again building that foundation making sure that every person across the district understands that importance that allows us to pivot easily when on the day when the lights go out and we're trying to figure out how to serve you know children lunch or whatever is happening at that moment and

048then um dr forte asked me to come on board for next year in addition to continuing with the communications he'd like me to work as the internal coordinator for the strategic plan and i really appreciate your vote of confidence in approving that so thank you um and i think that uh you know there's a bullet point of what that means you know to work with the district communicators to promote it etc the work that we've done so far and the work that we will continue to do as a result of the surveys will help to move that plan forward and will help to um communicate that plan to the community at large so this is a very good time for us to be working together on that because to me strategic plans are a lot

049about communication to me everything's about communication but that's me [Laughter] but you know to elevate that because in this district the strategic plan is not something you do and put on a shelf it's something that you implement into the curriculum and it's on the wall it's on the website it's part of the vernacular it's part of what what's being communicated to the students to the staff to the community at large so that is the work that we will endeavor to take on in the fall so in conclusion again access to clear and consistent messaging it's empowering and empowerment is right there in your mission and placing communications at the forefront of a district's priority it provides unique opportunities to connect with students to connect with families to connect with faculty and educators in a positive

050motivating and meaningful way and i think we saw how important that is today with those students um it's why we're in education it's why we we enjoy what we do and that foundation allows us to move forward it elevates our schools it elevates the motivation it elevates the enthusiasm and particularly in the last two years we've seen how important strong communication is it's always important but certainly when people are feeling insecure it's really important to strengthen that as much as you can and that community the community priority of communication it also strengthens engagement and it supports overall educational success questions well thank you ms marinello that was a really great overview and i appreciate a lot of things you said i think it's it hits on exactly what we've been talking about for a few

051years now on i feel like we've we have some great things to talk about in the district we've got a lot of information how do we get it out there in a way that's effectively communicated to the community so i appreciate the information and look forward to continuing to see um what we do moving forward um i'll open it up to any questions from the board if anybody has any questions go ahead uh just out of curiosity what's the criteria for ineffective so if uh you know uh under ease of use i mean is it like 80 you know 70 [Laughter] you know something's ineffective it it depends on how the the whole um the whole website is used to begin with in other words let's look at social media to begin with uh the

052audience that that comes to your social media feed is pretty small it's a small town with a small following but if you're if the percentage of the number of people who are liking something hits you know you start to look at everything that's there and you go oh you're getting 12 on a regular basis that's a lot for i mean there there are actual national movements that don't get 12 on a post so if you see that it shows that you're moving forward the same is true when you look at the analytics of the website if there's a spot that everybody goes to and you've got you know 100 hits in you know a 24-hour period well clearly that's working if you've got zero somewhere else it means you're either not getting them there or

053it's not of interest to them and then it's you have to evaluate where it falls in between so there is some [Music] it it the the determination is based on what the norm is for for the tool that we're looking at in this community it's not based on a national thing does that answer your question well sort of uh but just in terms of like the survey for example uh when when that goes out and uh and people are responding what's your tipping point to say hey you know the the community at large doesn't think that this is this is effective or worth it well it will depend on how many surveys we get back so that will be a percentage of the world at large then we have to determine how effective you know

054if that's really a true representation of your community if you have um you know when we send it out with the number of school number of students in the school and number of families in the school district then we have to compare you know if we get 10 surveys back we don't have enough to move forward so we have to look at the percentage to begin with so it depends on what the sample size is how we determine how relevant it is if we don't get that kind of engagement which i would find unusual in this district i would say it would happen in some districts but if we don't get enough engagement on that survey we'll have to take a different tact just as a follow-up when will the surveys be sent out when

055will you tab a lot tabulate and analyze the results and then when do you make that actionable um and that i'm going to turn to dr forte for so we have um it on the agenda tonight for approval by the board it's a parent survey empowering surveys get approved by the board after it's done it'll go out it'll go out tomorrow if it doesn't go out tomorrow wednesday and it'll be in the friday folder we'll push it pretty hard it's a little late in a year but i so we thought it would be better to get it out now right prior to prior to the uh the summer and we'd like to have the data by the fall so we were thinking about trying to get out now it maybe it might be something we

056want to consider to start the school year off with rather than do it right now we got to talk about that yeah well i think we'll discuss it tomorrow i think from my perspective at this moment i would like to see if if we think it can be effective going out now and um and see how it how it how people respond to it if they're just so busy thinking about going to the shore then you know this may not work but if we can continue to push it and push it on the social media sites and see how the responses are that would probably be the best way to start yep you mentioned about pushing the survey on the uh social media are you able to are we able to see click through on

057that because wouldn't that give us a little bit of an indication on effectiveness if you're getting click through on the social media for that yes another question um we have the standard ones how effective the website links are and what not is there something that the community would like to hear and is there an uh sort of a way for them to say hey i would like to see this particular information added in the website today we are only asking how effective what we are putting on the website is as opposed to what else would they like to there's an opportunity to say do you have suggestions do you have uh something you'd like to see included in communications okay that's an opportunity yes i just gave you the two main questions thank you uh

058just generally you started your presentation off by citing two examples where a client asked for something that they didn't really need or want or what what the end goal is so my question is is with us what is that um i haven't been asked to do anything here yet that i don't think is a strong next step and i think again that comes back to the strength of the communication team here i think dr forte and kim and cindy are very they're acutely aware of how important communications are and they very much want to put the strongest information in the strongest possible format out to the community so so far we haven't nobody said make a brochure when i know that's going to end up in the trash the reason i ask is because as

059a board we've struggled over the years to really try to find the message right like the website is come self-serve social media is push right text all of the various things we've tried with varying degrees of success so my question i guess to you is is what are we missing or what what haven't we thought of and is that part of going to be the process as you go through the order i think the communication plans are the most are the strongest and again we are currently looking at only the communication tools that you currently use on a regular regularly scheduled basis there's a lot more to communications you know when it comes to for example the students and the teams here tonight we can look at how we as a district talk about that

060you know where where would we push that out how would we let people know that that may be a whole different procedure that we want to put in place within the district determined by you know obviously everything takes time and manpower so is it possible to move those kinds of good news moments forward so that you have opportunities to push them out right away or within a certain period of time and who's going to handle those types of details that may be something we determine from the survey that may be something that we determine as we look to at how people respond to those regularly scheduled information communication procedures that we're putting out there we may feel because you you also have a chance to write those kinds of questions in that we need to

061take a different step and look at things we're not doing at all you know that's not maybe not and i'm not saying you are aren't doing that that's not what i've been asked to look at but if that's something that's a priority and a goal we can find a different way to move forward with that yeah as a follow-up if i may um yet um mr cappello i think is uh mentioning a great uh question in in the sense that are there best practices from other districts that we are currently not using that we maybe could employ yes yes and so i'm part of that is looking at how we do the newsletter what the content of that newsletter is initially it was to bring everything sort of in alignment and now once we hear

062what the district stakeholders are hoping for or looking for and then we start to drill down on what what is happening in our classrooms what is happening on our athletic fields that we want to make sure we get out and how are we going to do that because ultimately it comes down to what the kids are doing it's all about the kids the other thing that came to my mind is when do you know when you first asked that your first set of questions uh two topics that we could potentially be using that magic brochure that you have um is the five year strategic plan the new one that we're looking to hold with the community as well as the possible referendum if there is one after any long-range facility plan analysis that we have

063so that could be potential areas of where we need a communication plan for the public in the community absolutely for referendums you need a communications plan for everybody's note we are not talking about a referendum right now [Laughter] okay thankfully just just you know you mentioned it just letting you know it's that's how rumors start that's a good tool i want to thank you for the presentation it was very well done and certainly opened up my eyes to a lot of aspects i knew you thought of before one thing over the years when i've got on the website and you mentioned consistency across all platforms i think it's really important that we say the same thing in every place but i know how much time you spent going to the nooks and crannies of the

064website i don't go there that often probably look at the calendar and do email as well well some of the presentations and things are coming up for board event meetings but um we often had information the same information different spots on the website and it wasn't all the same and uh you know we talked about it i think it's been cleaned up to a degree but that would really be beneficial and also the the use of the ease of access to get the information you know i'm a big one and done guy and um you know sometimes you gotta go deep to find what you're looking for so i hope that comes up as we move forward with this process thank you and and it is something we've talked about a lot again websites in

065public schools are tough because there's so much that is required and because uh there's so many different you know it's a whole district that's one set of messages and then you've got three different buildings but we um we have talked about it and we're trying very hard to go through page by page it will take some combing out and it's a lot it is a lot of information but if you see things that you feel are not working it's helpful to help us because it's you know i can't dig i mean we're digging through a lot of pages so if something's glaring to you it may be glaring to someone else who's looking for that kind of information it's very helpful to know what that is yeah actually you said something which actually sparked something

066in my mind in the survey do you look at how parents are going to be consuming it the media you know the information and the reason i ask is sorry we could design a great desktop website but if 90 percent of our parents are looking out on a mobile device and the information is just not laid out properly i know that's a technical thing but how in the weeds do you kind of get there we get in the weeds we just looked at what the current provider for your website is offering in terms of those types of things and we've done some evaluation on what the templates are that are available that would could easily be applied because a whole website redesign is probably not something you need to do today you may need to

067do that in you know five years but today is probably not a good time for that but um what they have already available and how that would translate onto the mobile device we absolutely are looking at that right thanks yeah and i can give a just a not a specific example but generally i can tell you for instance during covid as you mentioned dr forte had sent out a lot of information right on a weekly basis but those were stored on our website in pdf form which was not searchable so i would remember there was a communication i can't remember it was two weeks ago or six weeks ago and i'm digging through pdf after pdf after pdf to try to find that one piece of information so the search ability i think on a

068website especially when people look and trying to look fast is something that i think if we have the ability to transition it into searchable format and i'm sure that's probably the website capabilities as well as how we store it and all of that may be uh something that's uh makes everybody's life a little bit easier yes and again they're um i think kim is looking into how to um how we can better put things on so that they're easier to find again this is the website is a it is a big project in and of itself and i don't want you to think that we are not paying attention to it but i also don't want you to think that those changes are right at the doorstep either because um there's the website is a

069really big part of this communication tool that needs a lot of care and tending to understand it completely but that's a good point yes any other questions from the board well thank you very much we appreciate it we look forward to continuing to hear reports on how we're doing and hear the survey results so thank you very much thank you i really appreciate being here and i just want to thank everybody who helped me uh with our presentation tonight so thank you thank you susan thank you all right for upcoming presentations that's our last presentation for this evening on june 27th our next meeting dr forte and dr carlos with charlene peterson from new jersey school board association we'll be doing our goal setting for 2022-2023 i will remind everyone that um i would ask

070everyone i should say to start the board members to think about goals that you have in mind um and if you think of them shoot them over to dr forte so he can start he does a great job with the administration on coming um what they think might be some really good goals but if you have something in your mind i think shoot it over to them ahead of time it always helps to be prepared for that shortens that meeting a little bit if we're coming in with some ideas um and then uh july 18th we will do our 2021 2022 full year hib and ssds presentations with that we'll move on to superintendent's comments dr forte okay so um with the last tragedy in texas the chief sergeant weldon and myself we we felt

071that it was important to get around the district so we um we set up meetings with all the faculty from each building on june 6th june 13th and with the transportation department on june 10th we went around and we talked with each with with each school's faculty and with the transportation department regarding just security and we wanted to just stress to everybody that this is everyone in the district's number one goal it's the number one goal of of the the board the administration the police the township everybody to keep students and staff safe and that if there are any things that they see and you know i also reminded everybody that we can't do it alone that everybody's in this together and they have to make sure they're keeping their eyes open and reporting anything

072that might not be up to speed so today was our last one and it seemed like it was well received by the staff our projects are moving forward the late glen hills ymca offered the staff an opportunity to use the facility for the rest of the year rest of the school year for wellness so basically the month of june and that was in in reaction to the events that unfolded in texas as well and they felt like it was something that they'd like to do for us and they offered it to our all of our employees for an opportunity to go there and take yoga or any of their other activities they have a couple reminders june 20th and 21st are early dismissals for all schools june 21st is the last day of school for

073riverview and valley view and june 22nd which is a half day is a lakeview only last day and this is because of the december power outage we have to make up one day at lakeview and that last day is june 22nd that's also an early dismissal our coveted numbers we did have a spike in covid in may and the numbers are coming back down now we have about 13 cases down from almost 70 in may so that's my report thank you dr forte uh dr coles assistant superintendent's comments sure wrapping up the school year a lot of very great activities going on every day we have different presentations different grade levels on field trips so depending on where your students are and where your children are you're seeing probably different academic things that are going

074on in the district the lv the lakeview lead graduation will be on june 20th at 9am this is an example and our summer programs are starting and that's all of them summer esy dalla and explorations all start june 27th at lakeview this year this concludes the assistant superintendent's report thank you dr kos mrs karowski any business administrative comments tonight for those of you who have not uh made the decision in reference to the new jersey school board association conference in october um if you are planning to attend please let me know as soon as possible so we can make reservations and um register you thank you mr krauske um before we move on to our open public discussion um i did want to make a quick comment and it's regards to the recent tragic events

075the school shooting in our country prepared a short statement and i'd like to start off with just a moment of silence for the 22 students and staff who passed away and the 18 that were injured thank you columbine high school sandy hook elementary school rob elementary school stoneman douglas high school santa fe high school red lake senior high school these are names that's of schools that we all know for the wrong reason not because they're national blue ribbon schools nor are they national schools of character we all know the names of these schools because they have been the locations of a disgusting trend in our country school shootings think about that for a second if i say the term school shooting everyone knows exactly what i'm referring to in fact wikipedia has a page titled

076quote list of school shootings in the united states by death toll that page lists 29 school shootings with four or more deaths the most recent mass school shooting is listed as the third deadliest on that wikipedia page that shooting took place in a town not too different from denville similar population suburban town and an elementary school with a similar enrollment to one of our elementary schools these stats get me sick to my stomach this has to end we need to find a way to stop this i'm not going down the politics route tonight but instead i'm doubling down on this board's dedication to keep our students safe this has and will continue to include the eight spokes of the school safety and security wheel that dr forte and former denville police chief chris wagner described

077in their article they published in 2018 those folks are one keeping school safety and security as the top priority of the school district two relationship and trust between the police and schools three communication four student and staff behavior and trust five facilities and technology six preparedness seven behavioral health and eight security personnel all spokes of the wheels must be strong as retired denville police chief chris wagner used to say quote we need to make our schools like castles not correctional facilities a castle is beautiful safe and secure it's not necessary to make our schools like prisons where students are not free to roam the hallways learn and have fun i thank the administration staff for their commitment to our student safety but i remind them to remain vigilant i reaffirmed this board of education's dedication

078to protecting our most precious assets our students with that i'm going to move on to our first open public comments section we had a slight change to the way we are administering our public comments this evening um all public comments will be uh brought in front of the board in person this evening we previously were accepting them via email we had some concerns about um about the identifying the personality or identifying the person via email as opposed to them being in public and making sure that we were not misspeaking or giving this information about someone so we wanted to make sure for everybody's privacy that we allowed the comments only to be in person certainly not to withhold comments we definitely want as many comments and we welcome comments to the board this portion of

079the meeting is open to any individuals for the purpose of addressing resolutions on this agenda or matters that they find important to the board of education and is governed by board policy zero one six seven prior to making a comment members of the public are required to state their names address and subject matter of the comment comments are limited to three minutes per person no participant may speak more than once on the same subject until all others who wish to speak on that topic have been heard comments made 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 comments section after all comments have been heard the board asked that members of the

080public be courteous and mindful to the rights of other individuals when speaking students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of new jersey therefore comments regarding specific students and employees will not be responded to by the board the board bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comment in light of these legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and beware that they legally may be held responsible and liable for their comments all statements comments questions inquiries shall be directed to the board president with that i'm going to open our first public comment section at 8 52 pm oh okay it is you guys got to stop switching that on us good evening my

081name is donna marie cizinski 64-pier place i want to thank you for what you said about the school shootings because that's definitely something that we all have to be very mindful of and it's about our kids period end of the day and i'm very grateful that denville schools has the level of security that we do so thank you because i know you guys all have a part of that the last meeting i send in garwood's resolution to the health curriculum this meeting i will read monacu's resolution i will also email all the board members with the board of ed meeting video and the resolution in writing if any member of the public wishes to review the meeting please email me at dmsk i 1973 gmail.com please put in montague or of ed video and subject

082it was a seven to zero vote and their lawyer agrees it's acceptable path forward so it's perfectly illegal to do this whereas the montague board of education has major reservations regarding some of the curriculum set forth by the new jersey student learning standards covered under the comprehensive health and physical education 2020 njslschpe which can be found here i'm not going to share the link right on the record whereas the montague school board refuses to approve curriculum and or instructional materials that would result in subject matters including but not limited to oral sex anal sex masturbation and gender identity being discussed with children at all grade levels whereas some of the curriculum set forth by the njsls is extreme age inappropriate and was adopted without consideration of parental rights in these sensitive subject matters that would

083directly affect children children's education and private lives whereas it is undisputed that generally speaking the state department of education does not mandate curriculum whereas it's also undisputed that the authority to approve instructional material is vested in the local boards of education whereas the montague school board intends to exercise its authority to approve instructional materials and that are current medically accurate developmentally and age-appropriate and developed and selected through meaningful and ongoing consult consultation with the school community including the parents therefore be it resolve the montague board of education of the shall not adopt any curriculum so forth by the new jersey student learning standards covered under the new comprehensive health and physical education 2020 njlschpe that is not developmentally and age appropriate or that would result in subject matters including but not limited to oral sex

084anal sex masturbation and gender identity being discussed with children at all grade levels i personally am requesting you to seriously consider this resolution and maybe creating something similar for our students we need to focus on helping any child struggling for whatever reason this isn't to pick and choose it's all the kids anybody struggling it should be done in a case by case basis and always include the parents i think it should be like an iep thank you have a great night everybody thank you mrs zinsky appreciate it um and just to update everyone on uh health curriculum and the uh process i know we've asked dr colas and dr forte to um kind of prioritize that through the review dr coles would you mind just talking a little bit about the timeline as far as

085when you expect to have the curriculum update for at least for the health curriculum particularly sure the curriculum will be ready in august i mean we're wrapping up the school year we're really busy trying to get everything done for the school year the staff have been selected to work on this it's been approved and we will start in the summer you know and then we'll work work on that thank you and once we have a product we'll present it you'll have plenty of time to come and look at it before it's approved by the board but i ask that people give us a chance to even write it um and then we can discuss i mean with that thank you dr kuhls appreciate it um so just do you think at the august meeting we'll

086probably do that presentation because we usually have what one july one august right not two so just from a timing perspective do you think the august meeting we do and the family life curriculum or the family life lessons usually happen in the spring so we're talking months from when it actually happens we also um we're talking about typically two or three days you know it's not it's very clear which days it's not that this would happen you know 50 days of the year they have like in the middle school has a quarter and they have to cover diseases um health cpr this family life they cover all of that in you know nine weeks so we're certainly not talking about a year-long class um but we will be working on it like i said this

087summer we have counselors health professionals pe teachers who administer the health and myself and the administrators so we will be working on that over the summer and then we'll give it an opportunity for the board and community to review it thank you dr carlos and i would just remind everybody in the public that it take a look at our current curriculum because i think it's a good starting point um our current curriculum is found going to the website curriculum and instruction from there you see several links actually linked for pretty much every subject one is physical education and health so from there you can view our existing curriculum that is uh that is approved and um and at least have a starting point from there the fair doctor calls yes and i just want to

088make a note to be really clear that those topics that were mentioned those are in the sample curriculum that the state puts out that is not the standard so we by law have to follow the standards but you get to choose how you uh what materials you develop what materials you purchase to support the standards so anything you see in parentheses on the sample curriculum are not required anything on the standards in parentheses are not required anything in the resources or sample curriculum which is called model curriculum but model meaning sample are not required so i know that if you go to all the lists of resources there are a lot of things and that's what i normally hear from and see but that's not what's required it's just those are just resources thank you

089dr collis appreciate it any other public comments seeing none i'm going site hold on thank you donna marie cizinski 64 peer please um from my understanding the reason why these resolutions are being put in place garwood and monica um montauk yeah whatever i'm sorry um they're doing this so teachers don't go above and beyond okay it's kind of putting a standard out there it's not just for you guys i mean obviously whoever is making the curriculum is going to be very mindful especially in denville i really believe denville we're going to be really mindful and respect everybody's boundaries however there are people that could take it above and that's why these resolutions are being put in place to respect everybody and make sure everybody's being respected so this way nobody crosses a line that might

090upset parents and might put a board in a bad position or a school district in a bad position that's why i keep recommending them thank you mrs and certainly as we talk about the presentation in the future we can certainly talk about kind of what the bounds are for our staff members and sure we have typical bounds that are followed and and monitored throughout the year so thank you though appreciate it any other public comments seeing none i'll close our first public comment section at 9 00 p.m we'll move on to our agenda mr cappello would you mind taking us through old business no action to be taken this evening i would be happy to um at the next meeting um we will be reviewing and voting on items a b and c a includes

091reports from may 2022 treasurer of school monies and board secretary b are education reports of student enrollment report of the health office of may 2022 and an hiv case vv 21-22-12 and finally minutes from our board meetings work session executive session a meeting of may 9th and our regular and executive session meeting of may 23rd take a second oh no action tonight mr cass any questions for old business for our next meeting mrs wagner would you mind with us through personal action to be taken this evening certainly if there are no objections i would like to move under a personnel items one a through you on the agenda and then i want to call your attention to the um addendum items still under one v through y as well as um two through eight on

092your agenda um under eight on the mean agenda a through d item e is on the addendum and nine and ten are also on the addendum second thank you mrs wagner mr cappello any questions comments actually i do have a question number 10 mr shimon as the head custodian is he going to re um be the head custodian for riverview then he's the he'll be the riverview head custodian for the remainder of this year starting today great thank you he's also the head custodian for next year that's already been approved any other questions comments seeing none roll call please mr cappello yes mrs wagner yes mr cass yes mr kim yes dr aruna de tassin yes dr moore yes mr anderson yes mr cappello would you mind moving us to instruction and program action to

093be taken this evening i would be happy to uh if there are no objections i would like to move items one and two under instruction and programming uh one includes workshop expenses for two staff members and b sorry number two is the uh we're approving the attached parent communication survey we spoke about earlier tonight second thank you mr cappello mr kim any questions comments seeing none roll call please mr cappello yes mrs wagner yes mr cass yes mr kim yes dr abu nadassen yes dr moore yes mr anderson yes mr kim would you my mother's do finance action to be taken sure um if there are no objections i move to approve section c finance number one which is to approve the pg chamber school to provide physical therapy and occupational therapy services for esy

094program summer 2022 at lakeview number two to prove the out of placement or out of district placements as listed in the agenda as well as number three on the addendum uh the second page of the addendum which is the submission of the idea application for the fiscal year 2023 and accepts the grant award for fiscal year 2023 for the amount of 200 374 996 dollars for basic public and twenty three thousand five hundred and eighty two dollars for preschool i'll second thank you mr kim and mr cass any questions on finance seeing non-roll call please mr cappello yes mrs wagner yes mr cass yes mr kim yes dr abu nadassen yes dr moore yes mr anderson yes uh under new business no action to be taken this evening mrs wagner would do my minister personnel

095please certainly at the next meeting myself or a fellow board member will be asking the board to approve items one a through i and then two through six uh which are include a resignations new hires and leads any questions on personnel for our next meeting for number five and six when is the latest that we can actually uh vote on this just curiously is it june 30. would it be june 30. yeah at the next meeting june 27th would be the absolute latest great thank you and just uh to note i think you i think we said this last meeting both of those contracts have been for mrs gorowsky as well as dr callus have been approved by the county i received a letter i know dr forte did also so yeah they were approved

096pending board approval so they're ready to go any other questions for personnel okay mr cappello would you mind moving us through instruction and program for our next meeting sure i'd be happy to i or someone else at the next meeting we'll be moving items one and two under instruction and program uh these include item a which is to attend a virtual workshop making the best of desmos to strengthen strengthen your math instruction and number two the board will be adopting revised reading and writing units of study k2 and reading units of study six eight written by teachers college reading and writing project thank you mr cappello any questions on instruction or program for our next meeting [Music] i just want to know that's our entire math department in the middle school including two people that

097are ones on maternity leave and one is on is new and they've all agreed to come this summer so jen worked hard to get everybody on board to go so we're excited about that excellent thank you it's great news dr moore would you mind moving us through policy revisions that we'll bring forth at our next meeting sure um either myself or someone else will move under policy revisions items one items one safety plan for health care settings record keeping for health care settings in school buildings title 1 revisions student intervention examination for cause maintenance and repair facilities and maintenance emergency and crisis situations cooperation with law enforcement agencies board member participants using electronics participation rather using electronics and student supervision after school dismissal any questions on policy yeah i just want to bring to the

098board's attention that the first two policies the first one is the actual abolishing an older policy so dot 14 and it will be replaced with dot 15 it looks like and for first reading as well thank you mr kim and i would point out i think probably good for everybody to take a look through the second to last policy that we have up for first reading which is board member participation using electronics just make sure you read through that and if you have any questions bring them to dr forte or bring them to the next meeting but it's first reading for that uh policy but i think it's important as we've had to use it obviously a few times and may need to use that in the future any other questions of policy seeing on

099finance mr kim would you want to move us through finance that we'll go through at our next meeting sure uh during the next meeting i myself or someone else will be motioning section d finance uh which includes a list of checks under number one that will be filled out number two will be the resolution regarding the capital reserve transfer uh which is not to exceed three million uh for the next fiscal year number three will be to will be the approval of the resolution for the maintenance reserve transfer not to exceed 1.5 million as well as the rest of the items listed in the agenda thank you mr kim any questions mr cash you have any questions on number six i had heard a uh a rumor i might have been on the news or

100you know i didn't really pay too much attention to it that they were changing the milk requirement that there was going to be i guess more choice than drinking skim milk and low fat milk there's three choices there so for those of you who haven't been here where i don't know at all the prior meetings there i just don't feel the federal government should be telling the parents what type of milk their kids should drink at school so uh i know if you've heard anything on that at all but obviously what we're seeing here is same as in the past so i will be i'll be voting though as usual the department of agriculture has not changed the guidelines as of um right now they still do not allow whole milk to be served in

101school districts so as of right now i did not read or heard anything different damaris out of curiosity that 44 cents per pint is that how do you have any ballpark figure is that more expensive than last year it is a lot more expensive than last year's about 20 cents more than last year yes excellent any other questions on finance any other good news all right mr cass operations for our next meeting if you wouldn't mind moving us through please certainly at the next meeting under operations we have items to move under transportation and building and grounds under transportation i'm going to ask the board to approve the use of district school buses by learner limited llc at an hourly rate of 70 per hour on the following dates and locations noted below under buildings

102and grounds we have under item 2.1 for jobs for the board to approve the first one is to approve the attached quotes with rfs commercial to renovate install new cabinetry and other miscellaneous items at the valley view middle school band room in the amount of forty two thousand five hundred thirty two dollars and eight sets and we'll be using maintenance reserve funds for that project the second one is for the board to approve with rfs commercial to remove and install new light fixtures with the fusion lenses at the valley middle school band room in the amount of thirteen thousand six hundred twenty six dollars and 91 cents again using maintenance reserve funds i also will mention too that we've done a number of lighting projects here at the schools and it was really impressive when

103you go walk into these classrooms and see these these new light fixtures they're more energy efficient and they really brighten up the uh the rooms item number three is to approve the attached quotes from rfs commercial to renovate install new country other missiles of valley view middle school art room and the amount of 64 thousand dollars twenty six cents again we're going to use maintenance reserve funds uh item four is to approve the attached quotes with rfs commercial to remove and install new knights fixtures with the fusion lenses at the valley view middle school art room and the amount of thirteen thousand six hundred twenty six dollars and ninety one cents maintenance reserve funds to be used again uh 2.2 is for the board to approve the submission of the anticipated facility request for the

104upcoming school year to the morris county superintendent of schools and we do not anticipate any applying for changes for the use of dual use for our our rooms at the school 2.3 is to approve the attached quote from rubberneck llc for the removal and replacement of the damaged rubber playground at lakeview school the amount of 140 and 80 cents item 2.4 is that the board approved cash from landscape management design for the landscaping services district wide and the amount of thirty eight thousand one hundred eighty dollars per rated for the upcoming school year and it's great to see that cashman is continuing to do our landscaping work they've just done a phenomenal job since they've been on board they've been besides doing a good job they're consistent and they remain in business not leaving us

105shorthanded at the middle of the year which happened a few years ago and we had to find people to take care of the landscaping maintenance thank you dr cass or excuse me mr cass any questions comments i just i just want to ask one quick question on the on the lighting projects the numbers seem pretty high for one room when i look through the quote it looks like seven 48 inch light fixtures um just trying to kind of figure out are we are we sure this is a good price for thirteen thousand dollars for one room i mean i know they're big rooms because they're the band room and the art rooms are not like regular small classrooms but it seems pretty expensive so i just want to make sure we're doing our due diligence

106so it's not just replacing the fixtures it's adding fixtures and that's also rewiring it so that they can be better controlled meaning like especially in the art room for example the teacher likes to have like dimmed lights things like that so we don't have the ability to do that now so it's it's more than just the fixtures it's it's a total rewiring and replacement and additional fixtures okay do you guys feel confident it's a good price and good value yeah we i personally was involved in the project and we had a state contacted contracted vendor come out and worked directly with the teachers to upgrade this so we really took a lot of what the teachers wanted and um the two rooms are they're pretty old and they're ready for some renovations we we've been

107doing it slowly if you recall we did the um the cooking room a few years back this year then you know the last few years we really spent a good amount of money rehashing revamping the field and now it's a little bit of you know upgrades to our art too so it's it's been kind of part of the process that we've been going through for the last eight years or so okay and then i'm just looking through the band room quote is that cabinetry is that why the freight is so expensive yeah this is cabinetry okay i thought that was for some reason i thought that was lighting for a second i was like 2 300 and shipping for lighting seems expensive but it's cabinetry so i guess that makes more sense okay thank you

108i need to make a correction the rate for the milk from for from last year to this year was nine cents not 20 cents okay still expensive i figured it was going up that was why i wasn't asking that i just wondering everything in the world is going up so thank you demars and thank you dr forte any other questions on uh operations okay seeing none we'll move on to go to the cause committee reports correspondence discussion items we've got uh board meeting highlights dr ford did you do i mean we've got uh got a bunch tonight so yeah the three the three presentations i thought those are highlights for today yep i think so too susan's working on um some some press release for today some pictures and we also had the reporter from

109the citizen here so there'll be some news about it excellent thank you uh discussion about strategic planning logistics so the dates i've told you guys a few times it's it's going to be the two meetings in this in in november then the meeting in um in december so what we'd like to do is a 6 30 to 7 30 public board meeting followed by the 7 30 um strategic planning session with it will be with susan and with charlene peterson and there's three sessions like that um does anybody have any kind of problem with any of those or you want to come up with a different way it was just what i thought was the best way because last time all the board members wanted to be present and for all the board members to

110be present and discussing board business it has to be considered an open meeting so i thought that we would open the meeting we won't close it we'll have to close the meeting after the strategic plan like we did the last time but they'll be you know we'll take care of our agenda and all the other stuff and then we'll move to the strategic planning for those for those three meetings so we would have to kind of condense to an hour though to to be able to start the strategic planning on our own because if you recall we had about 100 people at the last one and we're going to try to invite the public out again so if everybody feels confident that we'll move on that and demaris will make the changes in the uh

111the newspaper the website and the calendar and all those things with the meetings be here or uh because we did breakout sessions in the different classrooms last time so yeah we might have to move them to a um to a school so i'm not sure yet like this is probably not the best spot for it just there's not enough breakout space so maybe we'll move to riverview something like that so we'll we'll figure that out and then steve when you say uh 6 30 to 7 30 i think you said board meeting so we would have a full board meeting i don't think we did that last time i thought we scheduled it as a board meeting but really that was just to go through this we didn't do any business i believe we did

112have to do some business a few times because they'll be like hiv thing all the things that we have to do we'll have to do at the meeting but we'll do the best we can to keeping the agenda small that's not a real busy time of the year right there because there's personnel and things like that but um we will have to do some business so those will be our regular two november board meetings the two november one and the regular one in december so okay it's just the regular meetings the way i've chosen okay that that's that's okay with me that's perfectly fine i think we could move the agenda as a block whatever we need to do to expedite kind of going through the agendas and and obviously dr forte as we move

113into that i would say let's try to move anything into october or later december january time frame anything that doesn't need to be moved just so we keep the meetings as brief as possible yeah we won't do any other presentations one of them if you recall will be my presentation like an update of the status of the district but that'll be part of strategic planning as well any other feedback on that everybody else good with that generally okay sounds good anybody have anything else for the good of the cause [Music] i attended the community services fair i believe was called uh representing hub soccer and it was just a phenomenal experience for me and uh i'm sure for everybody else that was there um got to meet a lot of the special needs kids came

114with their parents talk to the parents about our challenger program in hub soccer but also talk to some of the other vendors about some of the other services they offer which unknown to me especially the ladies that ran that agility camp over the summer you know crossfit training and everything and i talked to them a little bit uh about exactly what they do with the kids and uh and there's an academic element too so we haven't done that for two years so i'm glad i was able to attend hopefully we won't have to put that aside again going forward thank you mr cass any other good of the cause how do you know yeah i noticed did we drop off that discussion about what we're going to do uh leading up to uh school boards

115it looks like it dropped off so i just wanna i don't wanna lose track of it maybe we can make that decision soon yeah what i mean let's let's make the decision tonight um how do you guys feel uh first of all i guess general question who plans on going to school boards want to go three four five are you okay so any opinion on how you wanna handle that meeting reschedule or i guess the options are dr four day right reschedule or have the meeting and we can leave afterwards or leave the next day so those are the kind of options yeah i mean i don't mind leaving after i probably do that just get in the car and drive so i don't if you're driving that's fine i'll jump in okay that's fine

116saves on gas too oh no you're buying i'll buy coffee who else is going hold on [Laughter] any anybody else everybody good with uh having the meeting that night and then leave either that night or the following day good okay we're good then on that decision thank you do you know james you had something i had a few things uh first i wanted to congratulate mrs jaffee on her successful trep's night i was able to be part of that and it's just truly amazing to see all the um the students come up with uh great items that that they were able to sell and uh and experience the whole entrepreneurial experience um i also wanted to give some highlights from the finance committee uh the lfrp has been delayed so hopefully we'll have it by

117the end of this week on friday the 17th um but also wanted to commend um uh damaris garowski for another grant that she was able to get uh this time she was able to get the fema application or she filed a fema application for additional covert related uh funding and she was able to get the district another 134 thousand dollars so thank you mrs grosski for that she also volunteered that if anyone knows of any more uh grants that just pass it her way she'll she'll definitely work on it so uh and finally i also wanted to commend um miss stacy greenhiggin apparently there were bus inspections done for looks like the middle of may and the inspectors who were there really commended both the transportation department and on how well the the buses were

118maintained but also uh uh commended stacy on an amazing job of keeping the records well organized the driver's driver's licenses and the medical binders and everything else so you know we rarely or i feel um they often get overlooked so i wanted to commend uh miss greenhagen for the phenomenal job that she's been doing over there as well thank you for pointing that out mr kim all those great things and thanks damaris and thanks to stacey for all the work she's doing appreciate it and uh i had a quick question is there details about the graduation uh as well um where it is and is it going to be at the high school or it's indoors at the morris knolls auditorium it's on friday the 17th the rest of the the exact time i know

119i put in your uh report look at there but i think it's 6 7 00 pm 7 o'clock if anybody has any special uh requests you can send me an email asap and i'll see what we can do so we just tell you if we want to be present as well or yeah if anybody wants to be present and if anybody wants to help hand out the certificates um just shoot me an email i'll get it over to mr corman it would be great if you could do it by tomorrow though because he's starting to make the plans and everything it's this friday thanks and just for any board members who haven't been there it's a it's a great opportunity to be there but also it's pretty quick so don't expect to be there for

120like an hour it's probably 30 minutes yeah there's ac in there now yeah yeah well that doesn't mean we have to go any slower yeah i think it'll be 33 minutes they speed read through the names so it's good any other questions or any sorry anything else for the good of the cause okay we're going to move on to our second open public comments section this portion of the meeting is open to any individuals for the purpose of addressing 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 a comment members of the public are required to state their names addresses and subject of the matter subject matter of the comment excuse me comments are limited to three

121minutes per person no participant may speak more than once on the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic have been heard comments made by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board of 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 asked members of the public to be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals and speaking students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of new jersey therefore comments regarding specific students and employees will not be responded to by the board the board bears no responsibility nor will be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public

122should consider their comments in light of the legal mat legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally held responsible and liable for their comments all statements questions and inquiries shall be directed to the board president i'm going to open our second board public comments section at 9 29 pm seeing no one come forward i'll close our second public comment section 9 29 p.m dr forte i believe we have a need for executive is that correct yes we do we will not be taking any action after um executive mr capela would do my moments to executive sure i moved to a convenient executive session in accordance with section 8 of the open public meetings act the purpose of this closed session will be to discuss student and

123personnel matters student and personnel matters uh minutes of the session will be made available to the public when the need for confidentiality no longer exists second thank you mr crow mr camel in favor hi any nays nope any abstentions we are in executive session at 9 30 pm