June 16, 2026 – Regular Meeting

001Good evening everyone. In accordance with the open public meeting act NJSA 10 col4-6 adequate notification of this meeting has been provided by advertising in the record and the chronicle posting notice in the board of education administration building and filing notice with the city clerk to ensure accessibility interpretive services are available upon request. Please submit your written request at least 24 hours prior to the board meeting to the acting school business administrator, Linda Agostra at El Aastra at hackinacschools.org. I hereby call to order the regular meeting on Tuesday, June 16th, 2026 in the Hackinac High School Media Center at >> 6:16 p.m. Miss Aasha, can you please do a roll call? >> Miss Alustin Balaputra, >> present. Miss Amar Hamza. >> Mr. Carol absent. >> Miss Gilmore >> here. >> Mr. Jones. >> Miss Pringle >>

002pres. >> Mr. Stein >> here. >> Vice President Martin >> present. >> President Harris >> present. >> We have a quorum. >> Thank you. Please stand for the flag salute. Please remain standing for a moment of silence as we have lost our athletic director just about a month ago. Thank you. >> Please be seated. And my apologies. It was for um Gord and Scooter Whitey. Thank you. >> Okay. Good evening everyone. Thank you. We have a full house this evening. Very nice to see everyone here tonight. We are going to begin our agenda with our student um presentations which is the presentation of the New Jersey state seal of biiteracy recipients of 2026. And our presenters are our presenter is Marcela Monlua who is at the director of multilingual and world language education. Welcome Good

003evening students, families, community members, faculty, administrators. >> I'm so sorry for one second. Technical difficulties. Test test. test. Good evening everyone, students, families, community members, faculty, administrators, Hackinac Board of Education President, Mrs. Jennifer Harris, and school board trustees. Thank you for allowing us this opportunity once a year to acknowledge the recipients of the New Jersey State Seal of Biteracy in the Hackinac public schools. We have a presentation for you. Thank you. As you can see, the New Jersey State Seal of Biteracy is an award given by the New Jersey Department of Education in recognition of students who have attained proficiency in at least one language in addition to English by high school graduation. This honor is designated on a student's high school diploma and identifies graduates who have prioritized the study of other languages and

004cultures. We have chat GPT, Gemini, Claude and others. But the OG large language model is the human brain. The entity that invented writing and invented reading and developed over 30,000 languages throughout history. There's a beauty and a joy and an amplitude that learning a new language gives us. Learning and reaching a level of proficiency in a in a new language is a gift you give your present and your future self. It is hard one. It takes commitment and agency. Today we are acknowledging our Hackinac High School Comets that have put in that effort and have achieved the state seal. Please take a look at all those 157 names up there and let's all give them a round of applause for this accomplishment. Before we call out the names of students that are here with us

005tonight, I would like to acknowledge that the results of this magnitude would not have been possible without the hard work and vision of our former supervisor of multilingual and world language education, Mrs. Angelina Martinez. This was her vision and all the behind the scenes work of our department administrative assistant, Mrs. Jarita Alcantara Salah. I appreciate you so much. Finally, let us acknowledge the educators at the forefront of this work. Our dedicated AP Italian and AP Spanish teachers, Mrs. Karellia Teada and Mrs. Marquez Aponte, who couldn't make it because they're at an AP institute this week, as well as the rest of our world language department teachers who supported our students in their language learning journey. This evening, we honor the students. Yes, our team. This evening, as we honor the students we are about to

006call up, and those who are celebrating with us at home tonight, couldn't be here with us. I hope we will be inspired by them to continue to expand ourselves culturally and linguistically. I see a lot of you on Dualingo. That makes me so happy. And we want to become like them, like you, cultural ambassadors to the world. As students come up, they're going to receive their state seal of biiteracy certificates and then our own Hackinac certificate. They're going to receive their graduation cord, which I hope they wear proudly um this month. and they're going to receive a medal that has hacken sack on the back and the language they um achieve the seal. So here they are. Simon Agir, come up please. Loose Almanser Garcia, Jean Alvarez. Oh, there she is. Hey, Liz. Guadalupe, Antonio,

007Miley, Abila, Briana Campo, Christopher Phelis, Beverly Flores, Stephanie Gos, Tiana Gomez, Alexa Gada. Oh, there's Sienna. Aisha Gutierrez power rate. Thank you. Marielro and jelly Tomas men. Kellya, Zadeie Lopez, Jamie Mansella, Ashley Martinez. Gerily Miranda, Shayla Molina Jan Carlo. Another Hillary Peralta. Samuel Perez, Kayen Reyes. Abigail Sabando. This is a good problem to have, right? Natalie Sukushana Anderson Torres. There he is. Jocelyn better. Do we see ch? So at this time I'd like to highlight two students who have earned two seals of biiteracy for both Spanish and Italian. So in order to highlight this achievement, we'd like to present them with the global seal of biiteracy certificate alongside their New York State seal of biitery biiteracy certificate. Salom arave and Abraham Har. Okay. Uh, did I did I call everyone who came? Okay. Hillary Graciano

008Cruz. A lot more than we were expecting. Britney Lema, Dylan Durang, we're four rows. We're going to be a fourth row team. Paulinaas, John Idro. Henry Na. Marilexi. Next year we'll have it at Madison Square Garden. I'm glad you came. Dariel is yellow. Two more. And here's Simon Ag and Joselyn Vera. So, we'd like to take a picture of them. Any ideas how we might be able to do this? >> Yeah. We're going to have to >> make a you all around. >> Oh, yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. All the way around. >> No, no, no. You No, no. You stand back there and they Go down. Okay. Let's turn off. Now be before we move before we move um I've missed to do our hacksac alma mater. Raise your hand if you know your alma

009mater. Oh, I know more people should know that. All right, so we are going to sing our hack alma mater before you guys um go back to your seats. I don't think you can hear me through here. Hold on. Here's this one. Okay, my apologies. Uh so we're going to sing our hackac alma mater. Um I hope you guys can all help us out in in singing this. And then I'd ask if you guys can just stay for just a little bit. We do have some refreshments for you and we do have just one more um presentation to do and then you guys are free to go. Okay. Um so I will leave this um up to Trusty Stein. Yes, let's stand please. Trusty Stein on your mark. >> On my mark. Oh hack and

010sakama for thee we raise a golden blue and strive to lift our banner high in each and everything we do and when we bring up to thy alt football field and track many hearts and voice in phase of >> go comments you all you may be seated thank you. Congratulations. So, at this time, we're going to continue with our student report from Zoe Gonzalez. Good evening. HHS held its annual prom last week at the West Mount Country Club. Over 400 students attended the event and a great time was had by all. Several pictures from the pawn prom were posted at northj jersey.com. This week we are having our annual senior sports award banquet at the Fiesta. The event will be the event will take place on Wednesday, June 17th at 700 p.m. This event honors

011all senior athletes and awards several scholarships to our senior athletes. Lastly, HHS graduation will take place on Tuesday, June 23rd at 10:00 a.m. weather permitting. The graduation ceremon ceremony will take place on the Tom Delator field. Thank you. >> Thank you, Zoe. And this is so that everyone understands, this is also Zoe's last um board meeting and we want to thank her for her service. And Zoe will be going to Remopal College in the fall. Congratulations. Wish you all the best of luck. And we'll be seeing you at graduation, Zoe. Thank you. Um, we do have one more presentation. Thank you. Okay. So, I do have an announcement to make. So, for to Okay. So, we do have an announcement to make. So for this board meeting um for June, we do have two board

012members who are concluding their term of service at this board meeting and we wanted to take this moment to recognize their service to our district. Um so I will start off first with the recognition of trustee Shiovani Pringle. Tonight we recognize Trustee Shiovani Pringle as she concludes her service on the Hackinack Board of Education after three years of dedicated service to our students, staff, and community. From the moment she joined the board, Shiovani was eager to learn and serve our district, eventually stepping forward to serve as the chairperson of curriculum and policy committee. While she may not have always been the first person to speak, everyone listened to what she had to say. when she did. Over the years, she has blossomed into a strong advocate for all students, ensuring that every decision she made

013was done was done through the lens of what would best serve all children and families. Her calm presence, thoughtful approach, and compassion have made her a respected colleague. While this may be her final regular board meeting at our district, we are grateful that she will continue celebrating with us through the remainder of the month for our end of the year student activities. Although her next journey may take her out of Hackinack, we know her comic connection will remain strong and we hope she knows she will always have a place here. On behalf of the Hackinack Board of Education, administration, staff, students, and the entire Hackinac community. Thank you. Trusty Pringle for your leadership, your insight, children of this district. We wish you continued success and happiness and all that lies ahead. Right. Yeah. Oh my

014god. I wasn't expecting all of that. I thought I was just going to say my little speech. Um to my fellow trustees, dedicated educators, and the wonderful community of Hackett. It has been one of my greatest privileges of my life to deser to serve on this board with heavy heart. Now you know I am stepping down as trustee as I will be relocating to assist my oldest daughter with my grandchildren due to health issues. Just know that that my deep love and commitment to our students and to our schools will always remain. Serving this district has shown me firsthand the resilience of our students and the incredible heart of this town. Thank you for trusting me with your voice, your concerns, and your hopes for our children. Why I why I will no longer um

015be seated at the table. I will continue cheering for Comet Pride and supporting our schools from afar and through prayer. Thank you all so much and I wish and pray for the very best to this board and to the families of Hackinac. Thank you. That's my baby girl. Thank you. Okay, next we have the recognition of Trustee Mark Stein. Tonight we honor Trustee Mark Stein as he concludes an extraordinary chapter of public service dedicated to the students, families, and residents of Hackinac. His commitment to our community spans nearly three decades, including 16 years of distinguished service on the Hackinack City Council from 1989 to 2005 and nearly 13 years on the Hackinack Board of Education, serving from 2009 to 2018 and again from 2024 to the present. as the longest serving board member. Oops, sorry.

016Phone call got in. I don't know how that happened. As the longest serving board member, Mark has provided leadership, wisdom, and continuity through some of the district's most significant moments. He served with distinction as both board president and vice president, always bringing a steady hand, a patient perspective, and unwavering belief in quality public education. What I will miss most about Trusty Stein, however, is not just his experience, but his personality. He has a way of lightening the mood with a joke at just the right moment, reminding us that even during difficult discussions, there was room for laughter and humanity. His sense of humor paired with his thoughtful guidance helped build relationships and foster collaboration among board members. Trusty Stein also never missed an opportunity to share his love for music and the arts. Whether advocating

017for arts education or reminiscing about his younger days, he often reminded us of his memories as a comet, including the time when he played in a band. If you can picture it, imagine Trusty Stein with long hair and a guitar. That creative spirit and appreciation for the arts have remained with him throughout his service and have influenced his belief in providing a well-rounded education for every student. Mark's wisdom, institutional knowledge, patience, and dedication have been invaluable assets to this board. He has mentored countless board members, provided a historical perspective when it was needed most, and never lost sight of the importance of service to students and the community. On behalf of the Hackasak Board of Education and the entire school community, we extend our deepest gratit Mark Stein for more than 13 years of service,

018leadership, friendship, and dedication. While his service on the board is coming to an end, we know his connection to Hackinack and our Comet community will continue. Trusty Stein, thank you for the wisdom, humor, and heart you brought to this board. We wish you all the best in this next chapter, and look forward to seeing you at our board meetings, even if it's from the other side of the day. As you continue to be a valued member of the Hackinasai community, just remember you'll have three minutes on the microphone. We present to you this flag trust New York Stein. >> Thank you. I thought this would be a lot easier, but it's not. Tonight I have not prepared a PowerPoint presentation nor are these prepared comments. There comes a time when you look in the mirror

019and you realize that you have accomplished all that you have set out to do as a school district. It is difficult and with a heavy heart that it now is the time to resign as a school trustee, knowing that I will be handing off to very qualified trustees, knowing that they will carry on this district in the in the direction it deserves to be. Let me be clear. This decision is not because of the financial crisis that we find ourselves under that was created by previous administrations and boards. Let me reassure you that my stepping down is not because of this financial situation. I would like to thank the Hackinack community for the trust you have placed in me. four terms, consecutive terms, 16 years at is as a city councilman and deputy mayor and

020four terms, 12 years as a school trustee. It is disservice to the community that I did not take lightly. to this board. I must say I realize we have had a difficult time this past year, but it is reassuring that there are no personal agendas, that we have all worked hard for what is right for the staff, our community, and most importantly, our children. is nice to see. Oops, time to change the page. That we have grown together as a family knowing that we will do and it will take some time but in the end we will succeed to reach a common goal. This is not to do with the board leadership. To Jennifer, you have had this board moving in the right direction. I thank you for your leadership and guidance. To my running

021mates of three years ago, my brother from another mother, Kenny Martin, to Shivani. I told her way back when when I first got to meet her, when we are elected, see how the kids played together in the sandbox and you will grow as a trustee. I have learned that in order to make appropriate decisions at time I need to those trustees help me succeed. It would take much time to name all the people behind me. However, you are there. You know who you are. There is one person I need to call out. She has been a close confidant. I have known her for more than 50 years. She has been a close advisor and she guided me to become the elected official that I have become. Her name is Lynn Hurowitz and to her I

022am truly appreciative of the guidance throughout the years. Being an only child, she is who I refer to as my adopted sister. Thank you, Lynn. I love you. Last but not least, my family. My mother was a 1940s graduate of Hackinack High School. Due to her teachers, she would become a registered nurse and would be uh ultimately the head of the maternity ward at Hackinac Hospital. I graduated from the Hackinack High School class of 1966 and through the guidance of my teachers, I would earn degrees in journalism and public relations from the University of Oklahoma. I could not not be more proud of my children. My son Sha's goal was to attend the United States Naval Academy. He and his wife Nina, a technology teacher, have raised two wonderful girls, Rachel and Maya. Few weeks

023ago, Shawn retired from the Navy and is now looking forward to the next chapter in his professional life. My daughter Michelle, a 2001 graduate of HHS, was a teacher here for a number of years. Her teachers guided her into the teaching profession, earning a degree in secondary math education from York College of Pennsylvania. She has earned a BA, two master's degrees in math, and administrative certification. She and her husband Mike, a secondary ed history teacher, are raising my third granddaughter, Aurora. This is not the end of my chapter here in Hackinack. I will continue to live here and be a part of this great community. Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to serve you. I'm truly appreciate. Thank you. Okay. Um, thank you all for for waiting at this time. We do have

024refreshments here for those that um are here this evening and would like to have some. And we are going to go into our executive session. Be it resolved that the Hackinac Board of Education determines it necessary to meet an executive session on Tuesday, June 16th, 2026 to discuss legal personnel, student related matters, HIV reports, negotiations, and other confidential matters. and be it further resolved that these matters will be made public when the need for confidentiality no longer exists. Can I have a motion to go to executive? >> A motion. >> Motion by trustee Pringle. Second by trustee Stein. All those in favor say I. >> Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? Thank you all. It is 7:00. If you can give us between 8:15 um to come back um back to the public and refreshments are now

025open. Thank you all. All right, good evening everyone. We are back. Can I have a motion to reopen to the public session, please? A motion. Motion by Trusty Pringle, second by Trusty Gilmore. All those in favor say I. I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? Thank you. Okay, so moving on to our agenda. We're still on the first page and on to our board president remarks. Um, I do have a remark to say this evening. The Hagasc board of education is pleased to share an update regarding the Early Childhood Developmental Center, which is also known as ECDC. Following productive discussions with church leadership, the district and church have reached an agreement allowing ECDC to remain in its current location through June 30th of 2027, at which time the lease will conclude. This timeline provides the district with

026the necessary time to thoughtfully plan for a smooth transition of students and staff to future locations. This agreement is particularly significant because the district first entered into a lease with ECDC in 2013 with the understanding that the location will serve as a temporary home for our early childhood students. What was intended to be short-term solution ultimately became a long-term arrangement spanning more than a decade. During that time, the district invested millions of taxpayer dollars into this facility to support the educational needs of our youngest learners. Today, we are finally able to establish a clear path toward the conclusion of this longstanding agreement and begin planning for the next chapter of early childhood education in Hackinac. Equally important, the agreement delivers significant savings for taxpayers, including a 50% reduction in rent, saving more than $337,000. A

027reduction in utility costs from 90% to 50% saving an estimated $30,000. reduced responsibility for major building repairs, including roof and plumbing projects that will now be largely covered by the church. The elimination of mandatory custodial overtime costs is also in this agreement. Families and staff can be assured that this additional year ensures stability for the 2627 school year while also allowing the district time to develop a comprehensive transition plan. By June 2027, the district will have a clear and supported plan in place for students, families, and staff moving forward. As we have previously stated, the board and administration are committed to identifying additional costs savings opportunities whenever possible. This renegotiation of our ECDC lease has resulted in at least $400,000 in additional savings and ensures that we provide a responsible transition for our preschool classes,

028bringing our prek students back to our schools as was always intended. We appreciate the collaboration, the collaborative spirit of this agreement and remain committed to both student success and responsible fiscal management. We will continue to keep our ECDC families and staff and community informed as planning progresses. Onto our second update. So, if you tuned in earlier, we recognized that for this meeting will be the end of Trusty Pringle and Trustee Stein's term, the board has 65 days to fill this vacancy and so that the public is aware um I'm sorry um so the board has 65 days to fill the vacancy and so so the public is aware to be a look on the lookout for interview dates. Okay, so that means that we are filling in two position, two seats and those dates will

029be coming um at a later date. All right, so that is the end of my remarks. We're going to move on to the second page of our agenda and onto our presentations and business reports. So, we will start off with the presentation of the official 2425 school self- assessment for determining grades under the anti-bullying bill of rights act. The presenters are Heather Coleman who is our anti-bullying specialist, Nicole Adams, principal of Fairmont School, and Ralph Dana, who is our school safety coordinator. Thank you. >> Good evening. Thank you, President Harris. Board of Trustees. Hello. So, um, Miss Coleman and Mr. Donna and myself, we're going to go over the student safety, uh, midyear report, and Miss Coleman is going to present the HIP final rates report, and Mr. Donna will um, complete some security and

030safety updates to share with you this evening. So I'm going to start off with the SSDS mind year report. So this the first two slides are comparative slides. Um we report this data um in two different parts of the school year. September to December is the first reporting period and that's the midyear report. So what we wanted to show you tonight is comparative slides from um last school year and then this school year. So, our enrollment um as the superintendent goes over and reviews every board meeting is a little over 5,000 students. So, if you look at the totals from last year and from this year, you can see that the total incidents under SSDs and those leading to other removals. Um, those are any incidents that don't fall within the SSDs categories but lead

031to students being removed for at least half of their instructional program. So as you can see under these category totals for SSDs and for those um incidents highlighted under incidents that lead to student removal and hip alleged that's less than 1% of our student um population and our reporting period from September to December of 2025 this school year shows a reduction of um incidents being reported specifically Under um weapons, we're down seven incidents. Under SSDs totals, we are down 10 incidents. Under other incidents leading to removal, we are showing a decrease in five incidents. And we are also showing a decrease in HIP allegations as well, showing a decrease of six um incidents. So, as a district, this is something that we should be very proud of. This is um the real work of the

032teachers, the counselors, the power educators, our CST members, our school monitors, and our administrators working really hard and collaborating with our families and our young people to help them to make positive decisions. This is the result of consistent check-ins with our students. Um you can go to the next slide. uh specifically highlighted in our programs in the trainings that we complete for our staff um on updates with HIP, but also on programming recognition ceremonies for our young people and encouraging them. Um so I really really am proud and pleased with the work that's been done in all of the schools really because it really is a testament to how students are showing up as the best version of themselves. And as I highlighted in the previous slide, there's a significant decrease in the number of

033incidents. Um, and that is reflective of the hard work of all of the folks in the building. So, I will now turn it over to Miss Coleman to present the approved HIP grades. Um, thank you. Um so this is uh the state of New Jersey mandates that each school must annually conduct a self- assessment consisting of eight categories of questions uh commonly collectively known as HIV grades. The scores are are averaged across the district to come up with a district average. Out of 78 point possible points we received a score of 71. The district already presented these scores in October of 2025 to the board of education as we're required to do so. Tonight, we are merely presenting the final scores received by the state and approved by the state as well as notifying everyone

034that these scores are available on our district website under the HIP tab uh where you can also access previous year's scores. The scores each year are then used to uh drive uh interventions, programs, and strategies around HIV as well as culture and climate for the following school year. One item that must be noted, there's an asterisk in one of the categories. When the high school submitted their data to the state last year, um the inadvertently the preliminary determination box was not checked off. Um so when it received the final score we need to note to the board of education that um we do in fact use the preliminary determination when conducting HIP investigations. So in the 2024 2025 school year there were 11 high school cases that were outside of the definitions of HIV and

035handled in different ways. Um and these numbers are also reflective on each of our board um agendas as well. So just to note that as well. So thank you. Um and Mr. Dana is going to present the safety data. Thank Miss Coleman. Next slide. Oh, it's not clicking. Okay, it's not clicking. All right. So, I'll go ahead with the update until we uh get Oh, there we go. Okay. So, uh some of these um updates are going to be known to you because they were approved by this very board. Uh Hackin Sack High School alarm system. Uh for instance, the previous system need replacement in certain areas. Again, without getting into specifics, uh an upgrade was done, it was installed, we did a first phase and it was done in such a way that uh

036if and when the time comes where we need to build off of that, then it it it'll work. It'll have cohesiveness where we can just continue to do that. Um but right now everything's working fine with it. Uh, next, Jackson A. Earlier in the year, uh, a few of the staff members expressed concern during dismissal that, you know, when they're letting students out, it's kind of easy for someone, if they wanted to to slide right in, uh, you know, in in the crowd. So, uh, an easy solution for that. We had a larger project that was originally planned, but we realized that we had the capacity to fix the foyer where we can just put push bars on it and we turned it into a secure foyer, you know, commonly known as a man trap.

037It's working out very well. They've had it for the whole year and we haven't had too many complaints about it. You know, everyone's pretty happy. Um, not thank you yet, but this the security team at Parker, uh, there's another slide. Uh, they were also busy. Uh, one of the key things that have been identified is the numbering system uh, with exterior doors. That's the photo all the way to the left. And, uh, middle one also where we, uh, put numbers around the school. We numbered it using the best practices from Department of Ed New Jersey and school safety. And now there's a giant uh, poster size number around every door. Dr. Galliano was very uh, quick to to give the support behind that. We got it going really quick. Uh, next, let me see. Critical

038reference guide. That's uh the CRG mapping. We're required to have mapping for all schools. We update that every year and it's a solid update to do because it may it forces you and the team at every school to get eyes on exactly what's going on in the school, any changes physically, uh, moving certain items in the school that should be marked on a map. And uh then we in turn provide that with law enforcement. So again this is all required stuff but it forces you to continuously look at your buildings which is a good thing. Go next slide. There we go. Uh behavioral threat assessment management teams. All schools have them. The respective teams have been updated. We will continue to update them with any staffing changes that there may be to make sure we're

039still in compliance. risk and vulnerability assessments have already been completed at the largest schools. Fair Mounts most recently has been done. Hillers uh right in the middle of that one and I anticipate being done with the rest of them by June maybe into July a little bit. We are required to do these once a year and again that's just another aspect where everyone gets eyes on from the administrators to teachers, custodians and the security team. So uh it's really good because it's an all hands approach. everyone sees what's going on. Security drilling, we will be in compliance very shortly. Drills are getting done, all the required ones. We anticipate having our July uh June 30th report to the county prosecutors. There will be no issues with that. Uh just wrapping up this final week. After

040school events, the major thing we've had was uh the varsity basketball playoff run that we had was a great run. Um we had because of the the size of the event we had a lot of spectators there that normally we don't get for regular games. It was uh very well welcomed but we did have an afteraction review because we recognize there are things we can do better. One of the key takeaways was uh looking at the you know the the clothing what any kind of clothing items or writing on clothing that students may have. And uh you know our goal is to just have people wearing proper attire making everything as safe as we can be. And then lastly, uh we're looking at and we have looked at how we would do after school events

041or events where others are using our facilities and we came up some criteria with that to uh to hold them accountable and make sure that our buildings are being used in a secure and safe fashion and not at our expense. So that's uh pretty much it for now. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions? Anyone from the board? All right. Excellent. Moving on to our re-imagining presentation and our presenters are our acting superintendent, Andrea Oats Parchment, along with the central office administrators. Good evening everyone. We are excited to begin to share with the public our plans for the upcoming school year. I'm very happy and pleased that we had a team. We have a team which we have defined as the re-imagining team. 14 staff members and one lead teacher who

042is here tonight with us, uh, Laura Martin. Anyone else from our re-imagining team and this team was wonderful. We met and we received input from this team about what was important to present to the public. And this will be ongoing as we stated or I stated a few months ago that we would have a plan about how 2026 2027 would look going forward. And so we are beginning to share parts of that plan. We thought it was best to give you smaller portions. And tonight we wanted to really zoom in with our most important clients and that is our parents and our students. So it's more geared toward information that they would want and some information that the public would want. So we will talk about enrollment and staffing, district administration for the upcoming school

043year, our instructional programs from the multilingual department curriculum, our curriculum and instruction in general, our special education update, school safety, and a timeline for what to expect from now until September. So, I am going to hand this over to our team and uh they will present. But I really want to give a round of applause to our reimagining team and the administrators who also sit on the team. Uh without them, we could not be successful. We have met two times and we have our next meeting uh next week. So, thank you very much and we'll get started. Good evening everybody. Um and I'm going to get started with an overview of our enrollment, the why, why we are all here, our students. and enrollment is a driver of many things including staffing needs as well

044as our state aid. So I'd like you to keep that in mind. And so as we move forward, we're looking back 1819 through present. So we have a a wide overview of the the years behind us and to where we are today. So for the 18/19 school year, we had a total student enrollment, that means the number of students we serviced in district in Hackinack public schools was at 5,795 students. That enrollment started going down and if you remember um Maywood students uh started leaving the high school. Why? because um Maywood at the time uh moved to um another district. So we lost one of our sending unfortunately we lost one of our sending districts. The following year our enrollment went down and as you could see I'm not going to read each of those

045numbers to you but it continued to go down. By 2021 2022 we were at 5,338 students. That's well over 400 students or the equivalent of a full elementary school approximately. In the 2223 school year, enrollment continued going down 5,219. The following year, it went up. So, we went up over 50 students. We were up to 5,31 students. And as you can see, we are currently this year, as of today, our superintendence report today includes student enrollment that shows 5,046 students currently being serviced in our schools and district. The projections for next year are at 4,926. Again, those are just projections. We are actually hoping for the opposite and hoping that our enrollment stays steady. So the key takeaways between 1819 and today our enrollment has decreased approximately 15%. How does this impact student teacher ratios?

046In 2018-19 we had a student teacher ratio of about 13 and a half 13 students to one teacher just about 13.5. The following year in 201920 that teacher student ratio went down to 12.8 students for one teacher. And that pretty much stayed, if you could see our bars across, pretty steady. 2021, 21,22, 2223. In 2324, it was at 12.1 students to one teacher. In the 2425 school year, that went down below 12 to 11.9. And again, our staffing remained pretty consistent because enrollment was decreasing. Last year, I'm sorry, this current school year. So, last year we had 11.9 students to one teacher. This year, the average 11.4 4 to1 teacher. And by the way, this student teacher ratio and the data I'm sharing with you um was taken from our New Jersey um schools report

047card from the state report due to the current budget deficit and the riffs that we've had unfortunately um to make for next year. the project with the projected enrollment and the staffing that we currently have as approved for next year we are in our student toteer ratio is 12.8 to one teacher. So the key takeaway in all of this, we had pretty much maintained a trend toward a lower studenttoteer ratio even moving into the 2627 school year as compared to 18/19. So in addition to teachers, let's look at our administrator student ratio. In 2018-19, our administrator student to administrator ratio was 170.4. That's 170 students to one administrator. In the 1920 school year, it went up slightly and but otherwise it stayed pretty much the same. In 2122, it went up. If you recall from

048our previous slide, enrollment had started to come down. This came up because in the 21-22 school year, at that time, the superintendent restructured our administrative structure and eliminated some assistant principal positions, making um assistant principles shared at the elementary level, which caused that spike. When those assistant principles came back into our administrative structure for the 223 school year, the ratio there is 149.1 students to an administrator. And as you can see, it stayed steady for two years. It fell in 2425 to 139 students to an administrator. And that is because we added additional positions in the school year to our administrative structure, bringing the student administrator ratio this year to 129.4 students to one administrator. Again, that's also impacted by our lower enrollment. I shared with you that just the agenda you have before you

049today shows an enrollment total student enrollment of 5,046 students. The May 2025 student enrollment was 5,290. You don't have that in front of you. It was last year's agenda, May agenda. So that enrollment alone impacts this where our studentto administrator ratio comes down to 129 students to one administrator because we have less students for next year. Again due to riffs and the restructuring we are going back up to 164.3 students to one administrator. However, the key takeaway, this ratio is still slightly lower than it was in 2018-19. So, let's look at our elementary enrollment specifically and where we are over the years. Back in 2018-19, we had an elementary total enrollment and you see the schools there colors if you're interested. Starting Fairmont at the top with the darker blue. FS for Fairmont School. Uh

050Fanny Meyer Hiller, sorry, with the darker blue. FS is Fairmont School. Coming down to the lighter shade to Jackson. And the lightest shade represented on there is now K. Parker. The total enrollment across our elementary schools in 201819 was 257 students. This year it's 1,833 students. And the difference is back in 2018-19 we didn't have prek classes like the prek classes we have now including additional special ed classes at at our elementary schools. Looking across from left to right the total enrollment at the elementary level today stands at 1,833 students. Key takeaway, the difference is 11% fewer students this year. Now, we're going to look at programmatically. What does this look like in special education? In 2018-19 school year, we had a total of 490 students with IEPs. Today we have 5,700 uh 5,000 579

051sorry 579. So of the 5,046 students 5,79 are special ed and the breakdown at each elementary school as you can see at Fanny Meyer Hillers that's 26% of their student population. At Fairmont School, that's 32%. At Jackson, that's 36%. At Anelk, it is 34%. So, student enrollment in our special ed programs has grown by an average of 2% over the years. Jackson has the highest percentage with 36% and uh Banny Meyer Hiller's the lowest at 26%. And a lot of that has to do with the programs available at those schools and the students attending the program that's most appropriate for their needs. And finally, a look at our multilingual enrollment at the elementary level. In 2018-19, we had a total population of 323 multilingual learners at the elementary level. This year it is currently at

052493. The breakdown by each elementary school is shown and I'm not going to read that. The highlight really is in that key takeaway. The enrollment has grown an average of just over 5 and a half% over the last eight years. and um with Jackson Avenue having the highest percentage of multilingual, Fairmont having the lowest. But an important note highlighted at the bottom with the asterisks is that during the 2024 school year, uh we started multilingual testing at the prek level. And prior to that, the state only required testing or mandated testing starting in kindergarten, which also impacted the enrollment percentages. Thank you. I'm going to pass this on to my colleague, Miss Diaz. Yes. Good evening everyone, board members, members of the public that are here with us. Uh we're going to talk to you

053a little bit about our district administrators that we have uh for what we what we're going to have for the 2627 school year. So in our central office administration, we have our acting superintendent, Miss Oats Parchment. Uh our assistant superintendent will be Rosemary Marks. Uh in our buildings and grounds department, our assistant director, uh Chuck Fields. In our business office, we are joined by our new interim uh BA, Dr. Dennis. And Miss Lindy Tagastro will be continuing her role as the assistant business administrator. Human resources, little old me. I'll be uh there with you guys for for next year. Uh Mr. Dana will continue in his role as the school safety coordinator and uh Mr. Blender will continue as the deputy director of technology. Our district district directors and supervisors in curriculum instruction. Uh Mr.

054Nookski is going to be heading our um curriculum instruction department and joined by Mr. Hassan, supervisor of math, Mr. Delbecio as supervisor science and CTE and Miss Rosa Pukio as uh supervisor of uh ELA. Additionally, um, Miss Monloa will continue in her role as our director of multilingual and world language education and our special services team will be headed up by Mr. Premittton and uh, the supervisor of special services, Miss Bader. At our building and our building levels, of course, we have our program uh, ECDC. Uh, Miss Petran Wall will continue in her role as a director. Miss Saran Sinat will be joining as a supervisor, not joining, but continuing her role as supervisor at Fairmount. Miss Adams will continue as the principal. Uh, new 42627 is we're going to have shared elementary assistant principles.

055So, Miss Service will be returning to her position as an assistant principal effective August 1st. And uh, she will be sharing that role, which we'll get to the next slide when we get to to Jackson Avenue. Not the next slide but the next bullet over Jackson Avenue and Hillers. Dr. Sodto will continue in her role as a principal at Hillers and similarly will be sharing um assistant principal role with Miss Madden who will be shared with Nelly K. Parker. Uh Jackson a principal is uh currently vacant well not currently vacant but will be vacant effective um July 1st. Miss Petron, there's a recommendation for her to continue in acting role for the month of July on this evening's agenda and we anticipate on having a recommendation from uh Superintendent Parchment for the July meeting for

056someone who's going to be fulfilling that role. Uh Miss Service, as I mentioned earlier, she'll be shared with um Fairmont Jackson effective on August the 1st. And uh Dr. Galliano will be at Nelly K. Parker and will be joined by Miss uh Miss Madden as an assistant principal and those are esteemed district administrators at the elementary level. At the middle school and high school, Dr. Dorsey Whiting will continue at the middle school. Joining her will be Mr. Johnson and Miss Morell in their assistant principal roles. And at the high school, Mr. Montasano will continue as principal and joined by Mr. King and Miss Patty Lozano as assistant principles. And then we will go I don't I can't see Chris. Well, there he is. We'll go on to to the next area and we'll be joining

057by a director of our world education program, Miss CLA. >> Good evening. uh for the 26 27 school year uh we will continue uh placing multilingual students, identifying them, placing them. We do a lot of that work in the summer, but it's continuous throughout the school year. We screen them. We communicate to to parents about their um options for programs for their students. And then we use access scores that are coming on Thursday to advise assistant principles at the elementaryaries and school counselors at the middle school and high school um where to place multilingual students. our ESL program um will continue to invest in the curriculum that we purchased uh which is Vista Higher Learning Sale Soore and Connect um at the elementary levels which uh bridges all the levels from newcomer to um level

058we to level four. At the middle school the programs are called get ready, get reading and bridges. They're very rigorous programs. And at the high school, Get Ready is the newcomer program and Engage is that um rigorous ESL program that really does mirror the ELA um curriculum along with the other WEDA um disciplines of math, science, social studies, and ELA. Um in the elementary, ESL continues to be a pullout program for sheltered students. So, uh, and for all multilingual, they every, um, has 40 minutes of daily mandated ESL instruction. At the middle school and high school, it's a core class, so it is a period. Um, and some students at the high school will continue to have highintensity ESL, which is two periods of ESL. This year we will be um we will offer bilingual

059ELA and those students will not have that second period of ELA. Um in March 2027 we'll have the the access test for English language proficiency which again sets the ball rolling again in terms of placement and it kind of gives us our numbers. We have projected numbers but uh the access gives us our actual numbers that'll be this coming the the by the end of the week we'll have that in terms of bilingual education full-time bilingual education that is um at the elementary level full-time programs uh we have seen a reduction in enrollment you saw an increase in multilingual enrollment but this slide is about full-time bilingual the language instructional program specifically and those numbers are reduced. So our department like all the other departments was affected um by the the riffs and reductions in

060in staffing. So at MA and we looked at numbers and at Fanny Meyer Hillers, our bilingual program will continue to be single grade in kindergarten one and two but will be a combined grade in grades three four um as enrollment warrants those numbers. At Parker we will have single grade kindergarten but mixed grades one and two and three and four. So, similar to what we had uh 3 to four years ago, um 21 in 2021 is when up until 2021, we had mixed grades in this district. We're going back to that um for next year. At Jackson Avenue, our kindergarten kindergarten program continues to be single grade. One and two will be mixed grade and grades three and four will be mixed grade. And at Fair Mount, we continue to have ESL programming with um

061not the bilingual program there. Again, the full-time bilingual uh language instruction educational program in middle and high. We have a full bilingual program. Um so we offer bilingual ELA, math, social studies, and science. at the high school will have bilingual ELA uh for the first time in many years that I know of. will be offering bilingual ELA and will be in 100% full compliance at the high school for what the state calls the gold standard of bilingual programming which is a full-time bilingual program with four core subjects for world language. So the elementary uh was affected our elementary world language program students will work with self-paced learning units during one marking period of library media center similar to what they did this year except that this year we will no longer have a dedicated world

062language teacher at the elementary level will be like several other districts in the state that have self-paced learning units at elementary. It was not our wish. It was um just a another consequence of of the crisis that we're undergoing. Um in the middle school, uh we did have a reduction in staff, but we still will continue um with the same exact programming as before. We'll just have higher class sizes um like everyone else. will still continue to offer Spanish grades 5 through 8, heritage Spanish in grades 5 through 8, and will introduce French and Italian in grades seven and 8. This year, students will have world language either day one or day two for the full year. So, two semesters, but um alternating days for the full year. high school, we did have a a

063reduction in programs due to low enrollment. So if the class there was a request for a particular class but it was only five students, we could not offer the class or in one case it was seven students, we didn't offer the class and we did have therefore a reduction in staffing. Um, we still continue to offer Spanish 1 through 4, including honors, uh, 2 to 4. We are offering heritage Spanish 1 through three, AP Spanish language, French 1 through three, and Italian one to 1 through three. Um, as everyone knows, as a reminder, one year of high school world language is mandatory and it's a graduation requirement. Beyond that, students um you know that want to take more language do so and it's looked on favorably in their um college applications. Continuing in world language,

064we in our instructional resources, we are going to look to Vista Higher Learning um and exploring perhaps other less costly. Vista Higher Learning offers a very high product but at a very high price. Um we are purchasing little py for KN1 which is developmentally highly developmentally appropriate and mango. Um we continue to support student teachers uh with classroom supplies from our local budget. Uh we will fund the seal of biliteracy testing licenses which you know have high payoff for our students and the supplies for the ceremony and we sponsor French, Italian and Spanish membership and supplies for their honor societies. We hope to be able to provide funding for our AP summer institutes um as we've done in the past and um with Vista Higher Learning, we can purchase and some of their contracts come

065with some of their products come with some free professional development. Um that's all I have. Thank you so much. Hi everyone. Good evening. Hi. Um I'm here to talk about curriculum and instruction. So what you'll see here and on the next slide is a little bit redundant. It's actually the same thing that we had talked about when we were presenting the budget. We are very fortunate that no changes have been made to core instructional programming um due to the the crisis due to the fiscal crisis. So core instruction is being maintained. Um what we have here as a committee we decided to just review with everyone what we will be funding for the upcoming school year. Um, so just as a reminder, we are for our instructional resources at the K4 level. HMH, we're continuing

066our final year of our three-year contract. Cursive handwriting will be um infused into grades three and four. We have our universal early literacy screener. We are looking to make a switch. So, we will be um we'll be looking at that decision sometime soon in the very near future. Tomorrow, we're meeting as a committee. um Wilson reading Foundations and Funhub. We will be continuing with that. And then science resources. Um from a curriculum development standpoint, it's a very going to be a very very busy summer for us. There has been tons of curriculum writing um postings that have gone up. But here's just a a glimpse of the major projects that we will be undertaking this summer at the K4 level. So all of science K through 12 will be rewritten because we have new standards.

067The K4th health curriculum will be rewritten because now our classroom teachers will be teaching that. Um grades three and four um again we're doing our cursive handwriting mandate. We're follow we have to follow that. So that'll be infused and we have to make some some upgrades there. And K through four media we will be writing a curriculum and our g our K through 5 gifted and talented actually K through8 gifted and talented program will be revamped as well. From a PD standpoint, um these are the things that we will be engaging in over the course of the next school year. We are going to of course once we receive title funds and if we receive title title 2 funds, we will be leaning into that to fund the majority of our PD initiatives for the

068upcoming school year. It is important to note that we did receive a $200,000 impact grant from the state of New Jersey from the Department of Education to um fund our quest for highly um highly qual highqualified instructional materials in the area of literacy instruction. Um, so that will impact our K through 5 world. And we are looking to pilot high-quality instructional materials for literacy and begin our literacy initiative starting next year as we look to um, as our contract with HMH comes to an end. Um, and that's just a standard operating procedure that most districts go through. We just have the benefit of having now $200,000 to fund that. Um, purchasing and PD and the pilot itself, which is a lovely, lovely thing. for grades 5 through 12. Again, this is what we will be

069embarking on and for next year. Again, like I said, HMH is coming to uh coming to an end, but we still have one last year. Cursive handwriting is in grade 5 as well because it is a three through five mandate. Um we're looking to switch universal skills screeners, so we are looking into that. We are going to be purchasing highinterest decodable texts for our for our students in ELA and then of course consuming um um replenishing all consumable materials again curriculum uh science ELA and grade five for the handwriting mandate and then um various projects for math visual performing arts um and as to be determined for PD again we are going to be um leaning into title two funds when they come in and if they come in but our AP P leadership workshops

070and summer institutes have or we have already have funds allocated to that and um the supervisor teams have have come up with you know various PD activities focused on evidence-based literacy practices open sed and ambitious science teaching and of course New Jersey Amastad Commission offers a multitude of free um workshops for teachers as well and that's it for curriculum instruction um before we go to our next presentation. And I'll wait for Chris to to um pull that up. I do need a motion to extend the meeting past 10:00. Motion by Trusty Stein and a second. >> Second by Trusty Pringle. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? Thank you. Okay, next presentation. Good evening. >> Good evening. >> Darius Peton, uh, director of special services. There we go. So,

071tonight we're going to talk about uh just to provide clarity on a few areas starting with our new partnership with the jointer. what that means and uh our shared vision. We'll talk about paraprofessional staffing for next year. We'll talk a little bit about the the current par uh professional workforce also. Then we'll talk about IEP services for students and also just f special education class sizes as we move forward for the 26 27th school year. So, first uh a lot of in in prior meetings I think a lot of uh a lot of the talk was about us going that South and Jones uh is a vendor. They're actually not a vendor. They're their own educational association and we are partnering with them and it's a great partnership also because their superintendent uh Dr. Cuchar

072is actually the 2026 Bergen County Superintendent of the Year. So now we're going to partner with uh Miss Parchment and myself sit on the boards at the joint. So now we have two superintendent if you think of it that way to service our students in the services. So I'll sit on there uh their special ed director's board and Miss Parchment will sit on the superintendent board. Uh the joint itself is a special education school district. So with a partnership there are certain perks uh and priority seating. we can take advantage of with them. Uh they have campuses. Uh another benefit is both of our sending districts are part of the joint trip. So there'll be some savings there and also some joint some shared services with transportation. We've been using a joint trip for transportation

073uh for the last three school years, but now we're just expanding that. uh all of their services, the related services as you know uh we'll be sharing through the joint specialized classroom programs uh ESY programming they'll be able to fully staff us and like I said we uh we already use them for transportation. So here's just some of the benefits. The cost effective services they they're fully staffed as a district. They also have uh professional development for our staff that we share the cost among uh 19 other school districts. They they're experienced at doing this work. So they have 30 plus uh years of experience doing it. Um continuity of care with these services. Everything in the students IEP, there's no change. We're not amending IEPs because of this or anything of that nature. their

074mission aligned with with our uh mission and vision of LRE, the least restrictive environment. So, we're aligned there. Um, and then myself and the superintendent, we get to sit on their board. So we got 19 other districts to collaborate with with services ideas and do. So another thing that uh we talked about was the the difference from moving the staff members to full-time to part-time paraprofessionals. Um so basically the difference is the work schedule not not uh services to children. So, we haven't had to amend IEPs and things of that nature of how much how many minutes per day you're with a PAR professional. The difference uh in the workday is approximately 20 minutes per day, but that's not contact time with children. uh some people call them fun facts but just so people are

075aware twothirds of our par professionals that were currently working with children for the last three years were part-time par professionals right so we're looking at the the other third of the staff is that we move from full-time to part-time uh so we already have schedules for part-time par profofessionals there's a smooth implementation because a large amount of them are already in our schools So the infrastructure, the scheduling, how we supervise them, all of that will remain. So a big uh a lot something I get emails about and questions at CPAG. So we've made due to the shortfall, we've made no IEP adjustment. All the services and IEPs will be provided next school year the same way they were this year and all the parental rights are protected. So the the parents still have every right

076to file or do anything they normally would. Um there's no action to be taken because we're not amending IEPs in any gross nature. We're not reduction of minutes. We're not reducing par profofessional staff. We're not asking the county for any waiverss. I don't want to steal my next slide, but all of our class sizes and self-contained classes and our ratios are fully compliant. We haven't asked for any uh case loads to go up for case managers because there's less less of them. But for the students in actual or self-contained classes, they're all under the state uh code maximum. So in summary, uh you just reminder the Southberg and Georgia is not a vendor. They're our partner uh and we sit on their boards. uh twothirds of the par profofessionals were already part-time. Just want to

077just reiterate to the parents, we're in full compliance with all of the class size regulations and codes. We have not reached out to anyone for a waiver to increase class sizes or ratios at all. Um and no IEPs are I'm happy to announce actually that we we haven't had to make any adjustments due to this short. Good evening, >> good night, whatever you want to look at. Um, quickly, this is pretty much just a um, encore, I guess, of my previous presentation, but just to kind of reemphasize, we haven't changed anything as far as our athletic uh, outlook goes for 2026 2027. Uh, again, we were targeted with, you know, looking at some of our expenditures to see where we can kind of bridge the gap a little bit to kind of um, you know,

078uh, help with the shortfall, the budgetary shortfall. But our process was to be as equitable as possible and to have as limited uh impact on children as we could. Um, one of the things we really looked at, you know, for each sport was just the overall enrollment. Uh, for instance, football hasn't had a freshman program in the past couple years and yet they still had freshman coaches. So, it was kind of an easy reduction there. Um, a lot of teams that we even play don't have freshman program. So, what we did was we just they call it Fashmores now. So, it's freshman and sophomores. They got to play against ninth and tth graders. Um, and again, talking to the coaches, all the coaches, they were great. Um, but again, in particular, I'll mention coach Russell

079because he said he may have enough freshman for a full freshman program, but he said we'll just pull double duty. You know, some of our JB coaches will coach the freshman uh that we have. Again, women's soccer was kind of in the same situation in all three levels. They've only had 27 participants, so we reduced them a coach as well. And then the same kind of principle for um women's tennis as well. Basketball, it was pretty much the same. Now, some of the programs such as men's basketball has three full levels. They actually make cuts at all three levels. So, uh we didn't think it was prudent to kind of cut a coach there, but we did cut the varsity assistant. So, there only be one varsity assistant, but usually the way the games go,

080it's four o'clock, 5:30, and 7. The JB coach sits with the varsity coach at the next game. So that kind of doesn't really impact uh Coach Taylor too much. Um but women's basketball again 15 total participants in the program. We're looking to obviously grow that, but as of right now it looks like, you know, it's going to be kind of continuous for next year. So they didn't have a freshman program and they barely had a JV program. So we're kind of just monitoring that as well. Uh and then again couple other sports just to mention swimming. We are combined with Tene. So they actually provide a coach as well. So it's kind of you know it kind of worked out in our favor where we could reduce a coach. uh and still help you know

081maintain the integrity of the program there. Uh spring was pretty much the same as well. Uh baseball softball don't have freshman programs. They haven't for the past couple years. Uh in talking to some of the coaches, they may have baseball in particular may have enough for a freshman team, but we'll kind of cross that bridge when we come to it. Uh and again, the fortunate part is it is a spring sport, so we have some time to kind of look at the numbers there. And then spring track, uh they're going to reduce by one, but they still have a lot of participants. So they still have five assistants and the head coach. So um you know kind of worked out that way as well. The unfortunate thing is we did eliminate golf or shel golf

082I would say for a year. We're looking at some other opportunities for some of our kids especially underassman. I think there's four underassman that remain. Um so we're looking for some opportunities to kind of get them you know the exposure and just the opportunity to play golf uh at the high school level. And that was again this kind of our goal at the end of this and I told all the coaches and they were wonderful to work with again it's not the easiest news to say hey your budget's going to be cut and also I'm going to we're going to be taking a coach away. Um but our goal is to obviously maintain the integrity of the programs and eventually build them back to full strength and that's our priority. Thank you. Ralph Dana, school

083safety coordinator. Hello again. So, u first and foremost, we're not going to dive too deeply into the specifics of how we run security within district. It's just not we're going to do that. Um, go with the next slide, please. Oh, I got to click. Hang on. You got me. All right. Thank you, Chris. So, uh, SRO, school resource source officers. Yeah, they'll be in district next year. We're going to have them, uh, you know, from time to time you may see a different SRO in the school, the students, but for the most part, it's going to be the same and there's going to be coverage throughout the district. Uh, if you look a little lower, Hackin Sack PD, FD support, that's 1,000% true. even uh that we have the SRO's the regular guys from the

084police department patrol you know they they show up on our drills um it's not required they show up on all the drills but they they do a wonderful job fire department I've seen them at a tremendous amount of our fire drills um the lead program that's uh taught by the school threat assessment and crime prevention bureau of hack police department um law enforcement against uh drugs and violence program. They're going to be teaching that in curriculum with uh third and fifth graders. Go back to the updated security teams. We have one at every school and it's again a multi- disciplined team comprised of multiple staff members, you know, all different types of roles. So, we get everyone's input and we tailor that to each school to their needs. uh a little lower safety and security

085plans. Something that we do every year again without going specifics. We update these. We tailor them to each school. It's required. Um it's the playbook, so to speak. Myself and the other administrators, we meet up with the team. We go over things. uh and very coordinated regarding the drills with the the assistant principles that will be floating or uh that will be with multiple schools to try to come up with the coverage for the drills that we're going to I'll take more of that responsibility on so they can concentrate more on uh the work that they need to do. That's about it. Thank you. Thank you. Uh now I want to end with uh this slide just sharing the expectations timeline and expectations for the next few months. So important information handout. As I said

086before, our team uh our reimagining team of facilitators and our lead facilitator came up with a wonderful idea to have a one-page handout for our parents and parents will receive that handout on or before June 30th. And what will be included in that one-page handout? You find out specific information about the principal and assistant principal assignments, number of teachers assigned, student enrollment numbers, programming details, and then school specific information uh that the principles and the program director would want to share. And you will have each parent, all of our parents will have a meeting in person. We have many of the dates already established where uh the principles and the program director will go over information about that one pager. So July 21st we have Jackson parent meeting. July 22nd Fairmont parent meeting and there's

087a board of education meeting but that might be changed. And July 23rd high school parent meeting. July 27th Parker parent meeting pillars and middle school meetings will be determined and you will receive information from the principles. Um district administrators will continue to plan meetings throughout the summer because we know there are a lot of changes and we will be working collaboratively together. And we also have access placement testing. For August, we have a board of education meeting on August 25th. ECDC will have their parentformational meeting and not in July. Fifth grade orientation at Hackinasack Middle School. The date is to be determined, but these are the things that will happen in August. Freshman orientation at Hackinack High School, kindergarten orientation, and student schedules distributed to all families or through Genesis. And to kick off the

088school year for 2026 2027, first day of school for students is before Labor Day. And you see the back to school nights listed. September 4th, ECDC. September 15th, elementary schools. September 16th, middle school. September 17th, high school. And our board of education meeting. And our marking period report cards will be issued to families and in September. So, I want to again uh just thank everyone all of the team for presenting and I know I'm putting her on the spot and I asked her to just say a few words because um our facilitator Laura Martin has uh really been inspirational. She's kept us together. uh this team is going to continue to not just do presentations but also to give us input on some of the areas where we know we need to address. So that

089that's twofold for the team. But I I just want to give her opportunity because she has worked tirelessly and she's like our right hand. So just say a few words. I caught her off guard. So, >> this one few board meetings I wasn't planning at speaking at. Now I got a couple things. Um, so yeah, my name is Laura Morgan. Um, I've been elected the team lead for this committee. Um, I want to start by acknowledging the fabulous people who are on that committee. Um, it is 14 other teachers and myself and I shouldn't say teachers. I really should say they represent a a true cross-section of our district. They come from all the different buildings. They aren't just teachers, their child study team, their counselors, but they just we represent everybody. And it's not

090just people too who are employees. A number of us on the committee are also family members, parents, um graduates. So we have a a really fabulous uh cross-section of our community represented in the room where we're talking. Um beyond that, as Miss Parson alluded to, we really have a twofold um goal for the committee. One is to make sure that we are improving communication and sharing with you all the plans that are being generated as we speak um for the district for the coming year. And then the second prong of that is also to um work collaboratively to troubleshoot issues that we foresee potentially becoming an issue next year. Um those the the 15 of us live in our buildings. We know them intimately. Um we know our students intimately. And so we want to

091make sure that anything that we foresee as potentially being an issue, we try to catch it early. um proposed solutions to it early so that way you know we hit the ground running in September and hopefully things go relatively smoothly. Um in terms of dissemination of information, what we decided as a committee um over the past couple weeks was to focus our energies tonight on the macro level presentation um to talk about the different elements that were going to affect multiple if not all buildings. So that was the presentation that was shared tonight. things like athletics and special education, bilingual, these are things that affect mo, you know, again most if not all of the district. Um we decided again as a committee to do more microlevel um sharing of information at sort of the

092building level over the next few weeks. So so before hopefully the end of the school year, if not the end of this month, um families will get more targeted information directly about the buildings that their children are attending. Um we felt that was an effective way of sharing that. We advocated for building level meetings. Um we did this during COVID when we had the reopening of schools and that was effective for parents to find out information about how that was going to look. So this is kind of another inflection point in our our district's history here. So it's another opportunity for us to get people into our buildings or potentially do webinars um so we can have it online digitally um so people again can learn what their schools are going to look like next

093year. Um we wanted to provide a timeline of some expected dates. Um because one of the things that we have noticed that the community feels a little lost in terms of the communication and when they can expect to hear things from from all of us. Um and so having that timeline we hope will assuage some you know anxieties among our population here about when they can hope to hear about certain elements of of this plan that's coming out. Um, and I think the last thing I wanted to stress is that, you know, for the last several months, we've focused so heavily on the deficit lens of what was happening in this district. We focused a lot on what we were losing. And I don't want to underplay how incredibly important that is, right? We are

094losing so much. We're losing nominal staff. We're losing programs. It's not great, right? It's really not ideal. um we were making such tremendous gains in things like the staff to student ratio where you know we all know that smaller class sizes, more connections with adults really does have a transformative impact on kids educations. Um but we wanted to come tonight and over the next few months focusing on an asset lens trying to talk about what we do still have and what we do still offer stressing that yes there's going to be change but there's a lot that's going to stay the same. Um and hopefully over the next few years as we dig ourselves out of this current situation um you know we can reclaim so some of those things that we've lost and get

095back to those students staff ratios to get back those athletic programs to bring back Spanish at the you know elementary level um to do these things in a strategic way and that's also a little part of this plan going forward as well. So, um, big shout out to our team. Yay. If you're watching, thank you for being amazing. Um, and thank you to all our central office staff for presenting tonight. And yeah, I talked a lot. I'm sorry. >> Any questions? Any questions? Great. >> Yeah. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> See, she wasn't prepared, but she's wanted. >> She was, but she was prepared. >> So, thank you. I hope you are better informed and that's all we have. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Uh do we have Yes. Uh does

096the board have any questions for the reimagining team? >> Uh f first I just want to thank everyone. Um it's very clear that you guys have put in a lot of thought um for this information for the planning process. Um and I think it is really so very helpful. Um, one just basic question. Just wondering if all of these wonderful um, presentations will at some point be available in Spanish. >> Yes. And thank you. >> Okay. >> And also, I thought you were going to say, are they going to be available on >> online? Online. Oh, thank you. >> Which um, this is Laura Martin and Mr. Blender. >> Terrific. um have um are working together to have excellent >> a website just dedicated to reimagining. >> Excellent. We're working on that. >> Thank you.

097That that's going to be extremely helpful. And um I just uh had one other um question. Um this one for Mr. Dana um with regard to security. Obviously, we understand we can't get into details about security um just in terms of, you know, any safety risk, but I think there's been some uh concern and perhaps uh yeah, I I would say some concern um uh among the public. Um and if you could just confirm for us that there will be safety and security coverage at each one of our school buildings. Um, I know that there's also often times, you know, a a lack of understanding of, you know, what, um, our security staff look, you know, look like that, you know, some are considered school resource officers, some areos or school law enforcement officers. Just

098wondering if you could, um, provide that confirmation for folks. >> Um, yeah, sure. So, um, for clarification, all all the officers are school resource officers. Uh, we do have, uh, some that are still current Hackinac police department officers. And then we have others that are, you know, officers that previously worked as, uh, in other jurisdictions or maybe even Hacksac, now they're retired and they're special law enforcement officer 3es. They're still all categorized SRO's. There will be PD coverage throughout all the schools. Wonderful. >> Thank you. Thank you so much. >> No problem. Um, first I want to say thank you so much for all the presentation. It really gives us a clearer starting to come into focus of how this is all going to play out. Um, one thing for me personally what I've experienced

099going from one school building to another. Um, I experienced something similar in another district where I was sent to another school because of staffing differences. There's no new teacher orientation when you're an existing employee in terms of where's the paper, where's the bathroom, how do you, you know, what are the climate and culture things that you need to know about the building where you're going. um if you're teaching a subject level or grade grade level or a subject different than what you know well um I know that these plans are in the works but in terms of some sort of one pager for the staff members that are moving and the support around that where it's not time consuming to to reduce the amount of time and effort that the staff member has to be

100ready on day one for students to give them some sort of infrastructure one pager to kind help them in that process. as well. I think that'd be very helpful. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions or comments from the board? >> Um I did have um another question uh just um I know we had covered this at the last meeting um during uh Mr. Montesano's um previous presentation, but um given the loss of some of our um athletics programs, you know, at at um the middle school, for example, just wondering if you can confirm the um relationship. Obviously, this is one of the benefits of of having a good relationship, working relationship with the city um and the recck department and and if those connections are are being made um so we can

101ensure um that that all of our students have access to um athletics programs. >> Yes, that connection will be made. What I really would prefer to do is wait until we have uh the new athletic director. Maybe we get some of the conversation started, but I think it would be good. >> We get some conversations. Thank you. >> Any other question? You have another one another one. I'm sorry. Um I'm just trying to, you know, go to the things that that folks had a lot of questions on. Um I really appreciate the great detail um that um that Darius that you and your team went into with regard to special services. I know there was a lot of there were a lot of questions around that. Um and just um kind of just wanted to

102highlight you know the benefit that um both both you um Andrea you know and and Darius you know will have those seats on those boards with the jointure. Um that gives us greater access to the folks that are that are making the the decisions. Um and just wondering if you can um highlight for parents um of our our special education students um I know we've referenced in a lot of meetings you know CPAC and what that is and and how you know parents can get involved. >> I will is Mr. Pimpton still here? I let him talk about CPAC and I think also the president is here but um he can talk about CPAC. I also wanted to in terms of um the South Bergen jointure uh we do want at some point Superintendent Cuchar

103to come he's willing to come and um just give a more indepth overview and I I think that would be helpful for all of us want to walk in front of the the camera so Uh the special ed parent group has been reestablished. Uh they've actually had a lot more meetings and communication. Uh maybe good thing one good thing that came out of this this shortfall was that they've gotten together. So the most recent meeting was the 29th and they had one in person at fair mile school where they had a presentation and I think they had two or three meetings between April and May. um they're deciding on leadership, but I think we have a president, but I'll let them announce uh the new structure. And I know I'm excited. One of the things

104they want to do is uh do presentations at back to school night to welcome families in and uh I know parent square could be kind of difficult sometimes, but they've been we've been sending out things and uh workshop via parent square. So, some of the the leadership of CPAC actually went to the joint had a community fair night. So, some of them went to that uh presentation to kind of hear firsthand what the judge is doing. >> Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. >> Any other questions or comments from the board? >> Took my thunder. >> Okay. Thank you. So, now we are going to move on to our agenda. Still on page two. I'm trying, guys. All right. So, we're going to the approval of the minutes. Be it resolved that the Hackasack

105Board of Education approves the special meeting minutes of May 6, 2026, regular meeting minutes of May 13, 2026, and the special meeting minutes of May 18th, 2026. Um, can I have a motion to approve the minutes? >> A motion. >> Motion by Trusty Pringle, second. Second by trustee Stein. All those in favor say I. I. Anyone opposed? >> Uh I oppose to special meeting minutes >> to all or to >> to the two special >> to >> I abstain. I'm sorry because I wasn't I wasn't present. >> Okay. So Trusty Carol abstains on the two special meeting minutes May 6th and May 18th. >> Yes. Okay. Anyone else? You have another one? >> Yes. >> Okay. Okay. Sorry. So, Miss Agashra, um, so she's a Yes. Yeah. So, it's just Trusty Carol. Um, okay. So,

106we did that that that. Okay, good. Um, all right. Moving on to our superintendence report. >> Good evening again. Uh, the enrollment report as of June 11th, we have th 5,46 students enrolled and said 96.7%. uh residency report. We had three cases reviewed, two were verified, one inhome visit unverified. Uh two parent parent provided updates and district proof of residency, we had zero students withdrawn for this period. On to harassment, intimidation, and bullying report. We had a total of 11 investigations. Two were founded, nine were unfounded and two are still pending. Uh and three there was there were um preliminary determinations of not HIV. I also want to just acknowledge our top 20 students, our seal of biiteracy recipients, and a special thank you to our student representative, uh, Zoe Gonzalez. And another shout out

107to our re-imagining team, which at some point I hope for them to come and attend a meeting so we can see who this dynamic group of people are. Uh plenty of moving up celebrations are happening this week and our preschool celebrations are happening. I was I had the privilege of attending uh the ECDC preschool celebration. It was just wonderful. If you want to brighten up your day, just go visit the preschool. It was a wonderful event. I want to thank uh Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Heather White Coleman, and Mr. Dana for your presentation tonight. I also want to acknowledge all of our retirees as well as our staff who will not be with us for the upcoming school year uh due to our budget deficit. And I just want to thank all of you for your

108service and I wish you all the best. I know that some districts have hired some of our staff who will not be with us and um they would be very pleased to have talented teachers and uh to join them. I do unfortunately want to read a statement about something that happened last month that I'm not happy about and many of us are not happy about. So I what I want to do is read a statement uh that went out to our Hackinack community and it went out on May 27th, 2026. And so I'm going to read the letter just as it went out. I am writing to you and the letter came from me. I am writing to you today regarding an incident. The letter came from me and our team. But I am writing

109to you today regarding an incident at Hackac Middle School that is both serious and deeply disappointing. This past Friday, racially offensive language, including SWAT stickers, the derogatory use of the n-word, and other hate speech, was discovered written in a thirdf flooror boy's bathroom at school. Let me be clear, this act of hatred is unacceptable and stands in direct opposition to the values of the Hackasac public schools community. We do not support, tolerate, or condone hatred or discrimination of any kind. We are deeply saddened that this occurred within one of our schools. The administration at Hackase Middle School has addressed this matter directly with students, emphasizing the seriousness of the incident as they shared this behavior does not reflect who we are as a school community. At Hackasac Middle School, we are guided by our vision

110of pride, passion, and purpose. Pride in who we are and how we treat one another. passion for fostering a safe, inclusive, and respectful environment and purpose in doing what is right, even when no one is watching. What occurred goes against all three of these principles. Words matter. They carry weight and have the power to harm individuals and fracture communities. There is no place in our schools for language or actions that demean, target, or hurt others. As a district, we remain firmly committed to ensuring that every student feels safe, respected, valued, and included. In response to this incident, an emergency staff meeting was convened to address the situation and plan next steps. In the coming weeks, staff will engage students in age appropriate discussions and activities to reinforce expectations, promote inclusivity, and ensure that all students

111understand the impact of their actions. We ask for your partnership and reinforcing these values at home and within our community. Together, we must stand united in rejecting hate and an end in upholding the principles of dignity, respect, and belonging for all. Sincerely, the entire administrative team of Hackin Sack Public Schools. And I'm going to end on a good note, and it ties into what I just read. In light of what I shared, I am pleased that we are confronting hatred and division. And one example of this was most recently last Friday with our gay straight alliance club who participated in the pride flag raising ceremony on Friday. So, our middle school students are setting the example. They've reaffirmed their commitment to making sure everyone despite our differences feel a sense of belonging. So, thank you

112to our great state uh our gay straight alliance and um I want to wish everyone an enjoyable summer break and wish all of you well, relaxation and peace. >> Thank you. Thank you for ending it with that too. Um, all right. So, now we're moving on to our public comment portion. Public participation shall be governed by the following rules. One, if in person, a participant must sign the sign-in sheet and be recognized by the presiding officer and must preface comments by an announcement of his or her name, municipality of residence, and group affiliation if applicable. Two, each statement made by a participant shall be limited to a threeminut duration during the public session. Three, all statements, questions or inquiries shall be directed to the presiding officer and any questions or inquiries directed by participant to

113another board member shall be redirected to the presiding officer who shall determine if such statement, question or inquiry shall be addressed by the presiding officer on behalf of the board or by the individual board member. And four, all board and or acting superintendent responses to questions or inquiries shall be held until the end of public participation. At this time, public comments will be open for anyone in person that would like to speak. >> Good evening. Good evening. It's a long night. Okay. Uh Donna West, employee and uh resident of Hackinson. I wanted to um congratulate um Trustee Bringing um and wish her well. Um I had her daughter, so uh it's kind of bittersweet, but I had her twice. >> Oh, Lord have mercy. Oh, okay. So, I really know her. and uh Trusty Stein,

114just wishing you all the best. Um enjoy that time with those grandchildren. Uh two quick things. I'm going to try to get it within there. Um I'm not sure what meeting it was. It was You guys have had so many meetings. Um but uh Trusty Jones spoke um and then I was stopped that week twice that week as a matter of fact and the comment that somebody made to me was that he was out of line um and made the board look bad or something. Right? So I said to the person, "Well, are they not allowed to have their own thoughts? Are they puppets?" And I guess I stand here to say I didn't vote for you to be puppets. Um, I've noticed it also with like uh trusty B uh Melanie Austin. I don't

115know how to say your last name. I'm sorry. But I notice sometimes that it seems like people have to be on script. And I really hope that that's not the case because then you're no better than the boards that you keep pointing fingers at. So, I just wanted to let you know that um that bothered me that the person said that to me um because it was a community person and I said to the person, I don't understand. Are these people supposed to not have their own thoughts and their own minds? Secondly, um, and I'm excited about the reimagining, but I I want us to think about because a friend of mine said this to me and it it really stuck with me because we're going back to this old model with the bilingual classes

116of combining them. And we did so well by moving away from that. And I understand the staff is we're we're losing staff. But she said something to me that stuck with me. And she said, "Do we do this with gened classes? Do we ever put three, four, one, two together? And is it because it's a population that, you know, the parents often don't speak up or why are we doing this to these students?" And now you're talking about a testing grade where that teacher by himself or herself is going to have to do two test grades, especially in 34. But I but the the part that I want to leave you with is do we do this in gen ed and we don't. So why one of our vulnerable populations besides our special ed population,

117our bilingual population or and it's a number that's growing in this district. Why would that be the group where we decide now that we need to combine classes? when I looked on this agenda and I see some people that are not going to be in classrooms with teach with students and if they have the CS we need we need to just reimagine maybe again because we are we are doubling up classes here for a population that doesn't need to be treated that way and we need to stop doing that. Thank you so much. Good evening. My name is Miss Roman. I have parents and I have kids in this in the system and you guys have seen me advocate in several occasions. Um to correct Mr. Peton, we've had the CPAC meeting because I brought

118it up in social media and made noise about it. We've had a meeting since I brought it up. I did not attend one of the meetings as I was coming back from vacation and I had to attend my job. Um there was a few things brought up in the CPAC meeting that parents requested and one of them is having CPAC be brought to the forefront on back to school night because those are one of the things that I did not see as a parent when I was going to back to school night and some parents are not aware of who is CPAC, what is CPAC, what do they mean, what are they here for. So in conclusion with that, I've been in connection with Mr. and Michelle to figure out how we can get parents

119a little bit more engaged in it instead of sending it through parent square. How about paper form? Unfortunately, we have a lot of parents that are not computer savvy. They're not savvies on parent square and some parents are bilingual or just Spanish speaking that don't understand English to go on to parents square to see what what's going on and do a sep. Um, I am the person that went to South Bird in Junction. I am the person that got all the flyers that are there. Um, no one else attended and I did post it on social media for parents to go and see for themselves who is South Injunction as well. I brought it up to Mr. Premittton's attention and also to everyone else on the CPAC team. over the summer, I will get together

120with um one of the colleagues in CPAC and I will hand over my my flyers that I've received because unfortunately we don't see that here in Bergen County and we have a lot of services that no one knows anything about and don't know where to go, what direction to go, how to do what with what kid, how to do what with the other kid, how to do a DDD. One thing that parent may not know that your IEP does go to college with you. It might be a different aim, but it goes to college with you and your DDD can also be part of your financial aid where you get some funds going towards your school. So, these are a lot of information that's being left out. I don't know if it's because it's Bergen

121County and no one wants to talk about it, but the services are there. It's just it needs to be it needs to be given and provided. Now I have a main question that's part to me because of my son. How many related services have been secured through South Bergen for 2026 2027? How much time is the power going to be in the classroom with the student? How many kids are going to be in each classroom? I have a kid with a 504 that has medical needs. I have another kid with an IEP that's that's going to need incl. These are my main concerns with my kids. I can't speak for everyone else. I don't speak your mind. So when will we have those numbers, those ideas of what's going to happen? Thank you. Anyone else

122in person that would like to speak? Reverend Davis, uh I just want to say congratulations both to uh Trusty Pringle and to Trusty Stein um for the work that you have done. We will miss you. Um this has been a tough year, but you have stuck it out. We're just proud of you. And uh Mark, I'll see you on the 27th because it'll be our 60th high school reunion. Anyone else in person that would like to speak? Okay, we're going to move to online. Hello. Yes, good evening. Good evening. My name is Lauren Alberta and I am a speech language pathologist in Hackinack Middle School for the next four days. As we continue to navigate the consequences of a $24 million budget deficit that has been repeatedly attributed to fiscal mismanagement, I have a few

123question regarding items on tonight's agenda. First, I am seeking clarification regarding the appointment of the district's Americans with Disabilities Act officer. My understanding is that there is currently active litigation alleging that the recommended individual denied ADA accommodations to a staff member. Given the critical role of the ADA officer in ensuring compliance with federal disability laws and protecting the rights of employees and community members, what due diligence was conducted before making this appointment? It is my hope that the board can assure staff and the public that the individual responsible for overseeing ADA compliance will be viewed as impartial and credible in light of these allegations. Second, throughout the reduction in force process, the administration repeatedly assured the public that Southberg and Joiner would be able to provide sufficient related services personnel to meet the needs of

124Hackinack students. However, agenda items C18 and C33 seek approval for two additional outside agencies at a combined cost of $800,000. If Southberg and Joiner was capable of meeting the district service needs, why are additional agencies now necessary? Mr. Person said tonight that they'll be able to fully staff us. I want to be clear, my concern is not about the educational opportunities SBJC can provide. My own family members attended SBJC schools and are succeeding in life. My concern is about the decision to use them to replace an entire department. Mr. Peton also stated that they are already providing services in our sending districts. However, I would like to point out that both South Hackinac and Rochelle Park employ their own district speech therapists. This said, does the approval of additional agencies indicate that the department's original

125projections regarding staffing and service delivery were inaccurate? There is a history of poor budgetary produ projections in the department of special ed as evidenced by a corrective action plan in 2023 for a 78% shortfall of the director's semi-projection for the 2122 school year. Most importantly, how does spending an additional $800,000 on an out on outside contractors demonstrate sound fiscal stewardship at a time when 11 tenure district related service providers lost their positions due to budget concerns. I also would like to say that it feels a little deceiving to make a big deal over the district having a representative on the SBJC board when every member district has a representative that sits on their board. Our students, families, staff, and taxpayers deserve transparency, accountability, and answers to some of these unanswered questions. I would like to

126thank the board for their ongoing dedication to educating themselves and seeking answers regarding the operations of the special education department. Thank you and have a good night. >> Hi, can you hear me? >> Hi, good evening. Hi, this is Halley Silverstone, a parent at Fairmount School. Uh, I just had a quick question. Uh we heard about the plans for security and safety tonight and I just wanted to confirm and maybe this is a silly question but uh when we say that when we hear that there will be coverage at each school uh whether it's an SLO or an SR or whatever the acronyms are for that um does coverage mean full day from drop off to pickup or does that mean like partial coverage? I just was curious. I know we don't know like a

127lot of the details of that, but I I just wanted to know whether or not that meant full coverage or partial coverage. That's it. Thanks so much. Okay, so at this time the public comment section is closed. Um, Miss Oats Parchman, did you want to just clarify about that last question for what does coverage mean in terms of the schools? I mean, I know it was kind of sounded like a car insurance uh, full coverage or partial, but but it's not like that. >> We will reach out to Miss Silverstein because once again, uh, there are certain things that we cannot mention about security and I don't want to jeopardize it. So, Miss Silverstein, I will have Mr. Sana and myself, we will reach out to you to clarify that. >> Yes. And it and

128it is also for the safety for the safety >> for the safety of our students at the moment. We can't disclose the details of >> that's why we were very vague. >> Okay. Thank you. Um All right. So, um I believe the other questions are more um personal questions that could be addressed um with the correct um directors. >> What? >> Yep. Turn. >> What Miss West uh brought up is it it is an equity issue and we will take into account the questions that she asked um >> and get back to her. Um >> Mrs. Roman in terms of the parent orientation night just to bring more exposure to um CPAC. I think that's a a wonderful idea and a lot of times we don't get a lot of information and the more information

129our parents have the better our students are. So, we will take into account uh the things that you brought up and this gives me a chance to say right now, Reverend Davis, you said congratulations to Trustee Mor and Trustee Shiovani. I didn't say congratulations and I wish you well on your new journey, but thank you for your service locally. >> Um Lauren Alberto, you you brought up several questions. We're going to have those questions and um they will be addressed. I think that's it. >> Thank you. Um I just want to add for the CPAG meeting again. I'm I'm excited that the ball is rolling for the CPAD committee. Um just one little recommendation. Uh when you do present for the back to school nights, um a pamphlet in Spanish and in English, just one

130same pamphlet would be amazing. It was very successful many many years ago when my son was in prek. Um, and you know, as you know, we have a a very large um, Hispanic population, so they will definitely benefit from that. Um, but very excited for the committee. Um, all righty. So, now we're going into our resolutions. Page three, folks. We're moving on. Okay. All right. So, um, for our resolutions, this part is our consent agenda, and I will have Trusty Amrahams introduce it. >> Thank you, Madame President. This one actually covers several pages in the agenda, so it'll get us moving. Um, so I would like to offer for consideration resolutions um under item number uh 11, the consent agenda, and those uh cover items number one through 26 of the consent agenda. >> Okay.

131Thank you. So I have a motion from Trusty Amrahamsa. Can I have a second? Second by Trusty Gilmore. Any discussion? >> Miss Aasha, can you please do a roll call? >> Miss Olson Balutra. >> Yes to all, but I have to abstain from 22. >> Miss Emma Hamza. >> Yes to all. >> Mr. Carol, >> I abstain >> on everything. >> To all. Miss Gilmore, >> yes to all. >> Mr. Jones is absent. Miss Crangle, >> yes to all. >> Mr. Stein, >> Vice President Martin, >> yes. >> President Harris, >> yes. >> Motion passes. >> Thank you. Moving on to our committee reports and resolutions. and we will start with personnel and the chair of personnel is Trusty Amraza. >> Thank you very much, President Harris. Um this is quite a large um uh

132list of resolutions for the personnel committee. Um, I do want to begin before um offering um personnel items for consideration uh with um a a motion to table resolution O numbers um 1 through six on the personnel agenda. >> Sure. Um so is there so there's a motion from trustee. Is there a second? >> Second by trustee Stein. Miss Aasha, can you please do a roll call for tableabling all numbers 1 through six? >> Yes. >> Miss Alman Valutra, >> yes. >> Miss Ahmed Hamza, >> yes. >> Mr. Carol, >> yes. >> Miss Gilmore, >> yes. >> Mr. Jones is absent. Miss Pringle. >> Yes. >> Mr. Stein. >> Yes. Vice President Martin. >> Yes. >> President Harris. >> Yes. >> Motion passes. >> Okay. Thank you. So item 01 through six is tabled. Okay.

133So now >> moving on to the rest. >> So um the personnel committee uh met last week um and we have items uh personnel items A through HH. Um there is also one walk-on resolution um for uh the appointment of in-house general counsel. Um I would if I could just like to highlight um two um or or three different items. Um, one of the, uh, personnel resolutions that I would actually like to read in full is personnel item L, which is a resolution for our beloved athletic director, Gordon Scooter Whiting, Jr. Um, and if I could, I would like to read out that resolution um, to commemorate his service. Um, whereas Gordon Scooter Whiting Jr. was born on December 18th, 1967 and passed away on May 15th, 2026, leaving behind a lasting legacy of service,

134leadership, mentorship, and dedication to the students and families of the Hackinack community. And whereas Mr. Whiting was a proud graduate of Hackinack High School, class of 1986, where he distinguished himself as an all-state and all league football athlete and developed a lifelong commitment to athletics, teamwork, and community service. And whereas after graduating from Wagner College, Mr. Whiting returned to his hometown and devoted his professional career to Hackinac public schools, serving with distinction as a teacher, dean of students, assistant principal, athletic director, coach, and mentor to countless students and colleagues. And whereas Mr. Whiting was widely recognized for his leadership of the Hackinack High School football program where he guided generations of student athletes and emphasized character, discipline, sportsmanship, and personal growth both on and off the field. And whereas Mr. Whiting was a strong advocate

135for students and a dedicated supporter of Hackinack Public Schools, always placing the needs of students and the school community at the forefront of his work and often reminded others of a phrase he truly lived by. Once a comet, always a comet. And whereas Mr. Whiting's impact extended far beyond athletics as he fostered meaningful relationships with students, staff, families, and community members, earning the respect and admiration of all who had the privilege of knowing him. And whereas the work, guidance, and example he provided throughout his life will continue to influence future generations and remain an enduring part of the culture and tradition of Hackinac public schools. And whereas Mr. Whiting leaves to cherish his memory his beloved wife Dr. Joy Dorsy Whiting, his children Curtis and Camille Whiting, his parents Gordon and Martha Whiting Senior, his

136grandmother Gertrude Gertrude Ogalry, and a host of relatives, friends, former students, athletes, colleagues, and community members. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Hackinac Board of Education hereby expresses its deepest sympathy and condolences to the Whiting family and joins the Hackinack community in mourning the loss of Gordon Scooter Whiting Jr. and be it further resolved that the Hackinack Board of Education recognizes and honors Mr. Whiting's many years of dedicated service to the students, staff, and families of Hackinac public schools and acknowledges the lasting impact he has made on the district and community. And be it further resolved that while Gordon Scooter Whiting Jr. may no longer walk among us, his example, his dedication to Hackinack, and his enduring belief that once a comet, always a comet, will continue to inspire generations of comets for years

137to come. And be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be presented to the Whiting family as a lasting expression of the gratitude, respect, and appreciation of the Hackinac Board of Education. Um I would also just like to highlight um two other uh resolutions um for the public. Um the first resolution is personnel item V um regarding the appointment of Dr. Dennis Ronapple as the interim school business administrator and board secretary. Um just a couple of comments about this. Um considering the enormous budgetary challenges uh that continue to impact our district, the board remains firm in its commitment to ensuring strong financial oversight of our budget. This means we must have strong qualified personnel in the business office to ensure that our assistant business administrator, Miss Aostra, has the support she needs. Um,

138and considering the vacancies in the business office, starting July 1, the board has made the decision to appoint Dr. Dennis to the position of interim business administrator. Dr. Dennis has more than 50 years of experience in school finance, including working with districts that are facing similar financial challenges. He also served as interim BA for the Hack for the Hackinack School District back in 2019. For these reasons, um we are pleased that he is being recommended for this position. Um and lastly, um I would like to just offer some comments um some clarification regarding regarding the walk-on resolution um for the appointment of in-house general counsel. Um, and I wanted to thank the business office um for um the detailed resolution that's been provided. Um, uh, this is a best practice uh, creative position. Um, as

139we previously highlighted upon the creation of this position, uh, last month and as stated by the board president, the board and administration will continue to look for ways to identify cost savings opportunities whenever possible. Because of the rising costs of our legal services, which have averaged um between $400,000 and $500,000 over the last few years, the creation of this in-house general counsel position provides the district with a savings of $200,000 when you look at the last few years. Um furthermore, it should be noted that the salary for this position has been adjusted to reflect the fact that this position will be the only general counsel for our district. um unlike uh other districts that have a team of in-house attorneys. Additionally, no legal secretary or parallegal support will be provided. Um lastly, it is important

140to note the distinction between this position and the position of legal specialist that was previously proposed by the prior board. The current position of in-house general counsel takes the place of our current vendor, our current law firm. while the former proposal for legal specialist was in addition to the district's designated law firm or legal counsel. So, we did want to make those clarifications. Um, lastly, I do want to take the opportunity on behalf of the district to thank our current law firm, Dotus, for the excellent legal services it has provided to our district um and the help that it provided um with regard to starting to get us on a path of reducing um some of our our legal expenses. Um, so with all of those things, um, I would like to offer for consideration

141these personnel items, um, A through HH with the exception of resolution O, as well as the walk-on resolution for the appointment of in-house general counsel. Okay, thank you. So, we have a motion from Trusty Abrahamsa. Is there a second? >> A second. Second by Trusty Pringle. Miss Aashra, can you please roll? Miss Alutra, >> yes to all. Miss Emson. >> Yes. To all Mr. Tyrell. >> Yes. But after abstaining from um the affirmative action equity co-officer our assistant I mean our um uh superintendent acting superintendent Andre O's parchment and also in 17 uh section 504 compliance officer Director of Special Services, Mr. Petan, and Title N Coordinator Assistant Superintendent, Mrs. Marks. also O2, 06, G2, C5, um, M, and Z. >> As in Mary. >> Yes. >> Miss Gilmore. Yes, >> Mr. Jones is absent.

142Miss Fel, >> yes. >> Mr. Stein, >> yes. >> Vice President Martin, >> yes. >> President Harris, >> yes. Motion pass. >> Thank you. Moving on to policy, guys. We're on page 36. >> Sometimes I feel like it doesn't end. Okay, so moving on to policy and the chair of policy is Trusty Trangle. Um I'd like to um for Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Um for policy um I'd like to motion first read for um P1230. Um P22000 um and the revision for Do I have to look at this? This is my last time. Stay out. >> I don't have to. Okay. All right. Um, moving on. Uh, policy 2260, policy 2411, policy 5460, policy 5461. Um, got some notes in the back. All right. Uh policy guides 6112, 6115.02, and 6311 all have

143minor revisions that were required by the monitors. However, regulations guide 6115.01 01 was completely rewritten to meet the monitoring monitoring requirement based on the OFAC audit policy guides 6112 6115.26311 and regulations guides 6115.01 are mandated by districts that receive federal funds and should be adopted by the board. These revisions are mandated Um, can I get a motion for first read policy? A motion. >> So, we have a motion from Trusty Pringle. Can I have a second? >> Second. >> So, second by Trustee Carol. Miss Aasha, can you please do a roll call? >> Miss Alustin Balutra? >> Yes. >> Miss Amza? >> Yes. >> Mr. Carol? >> Yes. >> Miss Gilmore? >> Yes. >> Mr. Jones's accent. Miss Pringle, >> yes. >> Mr. Stein, >> I. >> Vice President Martin, >> yes. >> President Harris,

144>> yes. >> Motion passes. >> Thank you. Okay. Moving on to curriculum and the chair of curriculum, Miss Trusty Pringle. Okay. Um, I'd like to motion um C1 to C40. However, I would like to highlight C7, C8, and C9. Um I'm gonna read this. Um something else was um a proposal with the soul source procurement for the prek kindergarten creative curriculum for the school year at all district preschool classes and district preschool classes at Bright Adventures Lightbridge Academy, the Bridget Seedling Early Learning Center. Um yeah that I don't think I don't want to read the rest of that but then six uh C8 um hackers board of education values and recognizes students achievement academic growth and personal excellence across all district and whereas the 180 award sponsored by Newton Mifflin Court recognize students who demonstrate

145exceptional growth and achieve and achievement in the read 180 and math 180 programs based on academic performance engagement program usage and personal development and whereas grade seven student uh student Claire Abera has been selected as a recipient of the 180 award for her outstanding growth and achievement in the read 180 program and Whereas Hackasac Middle School teacher Mary Maguire nominated Claire Abera in recognition of her dedication, progress, and commitment to learning. And whereas an executive representative from Hutton Milan Mifflin Park visited Hackasac Middle School on May 18th, 2026 to present Claire Aera with a certificate of recognition and to acknowledge Mary Maguire for her nomination of her student. And now therefore, be it resolved that the Hackinack Board of Education hereby recognizes and congratulates Claire Aira for being selected as 180 award recipient and commend

146her for her academic growth, perseverance, and achievement. um highlighting oh well be a further resolve that this resolution is presented as a sincere expression of our appreciation and congratulations from the Hacksac board of education and extends best wishes for continued success in her academic journey. Um, last but not least, D9, the hack effect board of education upon recommendation of the active superintendent of schools approves the agreement with Dr. Zimmerman in partnership with the Wild Ones New Jersey Gateway chapter for third grade student assembly and fourth grade tree planting ceremony at Jackson Avenue School on June 18th. There is no cost to the district. Um again, can I get a motion um for C1 trustee? >> So we have a motion from Trustee Pringle. Can I have a second? >> I'll second. >> Second by Trustee

147Arazza. Miss Aashra, can you please do a roll call? >> Miss Olson Balutra. >> Yes. need to abstain from C10, C17, C18, C33, and C34. >> Miss Emza, >> yes. >> Mr. Carol, >> yes, >> Miss Gilmore. >> Yes, >> Mr. Jones is absent. >> Miss Single, >> yes. >> Mr. Stein. >> Yes. >> Vice President Martin. >> Yes. >> President Harris. >> Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Moving on to finance and the chair for finance is Trusty Stein. >> Very simply, I'd like to offer uh resolutions D1 through D44. page 50. Okay. >> All right. So, we have a motion to the trusty sign. Is there a second? >> I'll second. Second by trustee. Miss Aasha, can you please do a roll call? >> Miss Alra. >> Oh, question. The transfers list hasn't changed

148since we we got it in um finance committee. Correct. >> I believe it was off by a few dollars when I when it was updated today. It was a short difference where transfer. >> Okay, >> it's moving. >> So yes to all abstain from D3. Yes, >> Mr. Taro. >> Yes, >> Miss Gilmore. >> Yes, >> Mr. Jones is absent. Miss Fel, >> yes. >> Mr. Stein, >> yes. >> Vice President Martin, >> yes. >> President Harris, yes. Okay, thank you. Okay, moving on to facilities and the chair facilities is uh vice president Martin. >> Yes, I like the motion E1 through E3 and highlight E2 and E3. The Hexac board of education upon recommendation of the acting superintendent of school and acting school business administrator board secretary approved the renewal lease agreement with St.

149Francis Church for continuing use of the building commonly known as the ECDC for the 226 227 school year. The material term of such renewal lease agreement are a monthly rent of 28,152.50 that's 50% decrease from the school year of 202526. B the board and landlord shall equally be responsible for all monthly utilities. Formerly, the board was responsible for 90% of monthly utilities. C. The board is responsible for the first $5,000 of any needed repairs. Formally, the board was responsible for the entire course of all repairs. And the board will no the board has no obligation to lease and or occupy the building after June 30th to 2020 2027. Now be it resolved the board board president is hereby authorized to excuse the renewal lease agreement with St. Francis Church for continuing use of the building

150commonly known as the ECDC for 2026 2027 school year and highlight also E3 being resolved at the Hackac Board of Education upon recommendation of the acting superintendent of schools and acting school b business administrator board secretary approve the statement of assure S OA for testing the reporting of lead in school drinking water and submission to the New Jersey Department of Education for the 2025 2026 school year. Again, I'd like to motion one through E1 through E3. >> Second. >> Okay. So, we have a motion from Trusty Martin and a second from Trusty Carol. Any discussion? Um, once again, I just want to highlight again E2 and the importance. And I also wanted to give a huge shout out to our board attorney and also to our acting superintendent for taking the lead on this and

151pushing for this renegotiation and allowing us to see this huge savings and where we can finally see ourselves out of ECDC and back into our home schools. So um shout out to to to you too. Um all right and any discussion? No. Okay. Masha, roll call, please. >> Miss Ala, >> yes. >> Miss Amza, >> yes. >> Mr. Carol, >> yes. >> Miss Gilmore, >> yes. >> Mr. Jones is absent. Miss Single, >> yes. >> Mr. Stein, >> yes. >> Vice President Martin, >> yes. >> President Harris, >> yes. >> Motion passes. >> Thank you. All right, moving on to community relations and the chair of community relations is Trustee Gilmore and she will also be presenting the survey results of the community relations committee. Um so trustee Gilmore along with um Assistant Superintendent Rosemary

152All right. Good evening everyone. >> Um so um we are super excited to to present uh the results of the community survey that went out on um May 22nd and it closed on June 6th. Um it was in many languages so there were opportunities for everyone to participate. Uh we even included um houses of worship with uh paper copies. Um I don't believe those results are included here because those have to be tallied separately but um we also partnered with the city to have the uh survey included in the uh newsletter. So we did um you know spread a wide net to try to gain as much feedback as possible and um the reason why we did the survey is that we wanted to give the community um an opportunity to be heard. Um after

153the budget passed uh we felt that it was urgent and important for us to understand how the community was feeling and just to listen to what their concerns were. But um I also want to just give a huge shout out to um there was a subcommittee formed within the community relations um committee uh to work on the survey and these uh women raised their hands and put in the work. They were definitely the spearheads of this survey um specifically Miss Shortridge. I just want to thank her for leading um this survey work along with Jessica Cruz, Vicky Cohen, Courtney Matus, and I also want to thank our acting superintendent, Andrea Oats, Parchment, for recommending that we utilize a service that we already pay for, Thought Exchange, which is who um did the survey and and

154the outputs, as well as assistant superintendent uh Rosemary Marks um for for helping uh integrate with uh thought exchange. So, I want to say that um we received 1,357 uh participants taking the survey, which was amazing considering that the survey went out um over the holiday weekend and um people really um took uh took the survey and we're so appreciative. And it basically means that the community wants to be heard essentially and they have um they have things to say and and they wanted to let us know. Um and that was the the purpose of the survey. Next slide. Um so we we heard from a cross-section of the community which included um high school students, parents, staff, residents, alumni, business owners, everyone um everyone that we could think of. We wanted we wanted their

155um their voices heard. and half of the half of the um respondents were students which was very encouraging um because they they wanted to have a say in how how the district moved forward um and you know so we we didn't get a onesided view of what was going on. We I think we got a holistic view of um you know how the how the community as a whole was feeling after coming out of um the budget def you know after getting the budget um passed. Um, next slide. So, we wanted to know just how how people felt or did they feel connected to the district. So, we got a 43% favorability score. Um, which some people might be like, oh, that's not good. But I look at it as an opportunity where we can

156improve, right? So, we want to improve that number um to have people more engaged. So we have a low number of people feeling very engaged. So we have an opportunity to increase that and and that's what the survey is going to identify how people want to receive communication and how they they want to be communicated to. Okay. Next slide. So one of the questions was really to get stakeholder input on the priorities and as trusty Gilmore just pointed out over 50% of the respondents were students but our respondents were really from representative of all our stakeholders across the district and the number one priority as you can see with these results is academic achievement and student success. followed by field trips and enrichment opportunities and school safety and security. Next slide. So, we're going to

157move forward and I'm tag teaming with Trusty Gilmore to go over the broad key themes of the response. Yes, this is All right. >> So, one of the key messages, as you can imagine, um after coming out of a $24 million deficit would be trust and transparency. People want to hear the information before it becomes a rumor. So, we are working with um our IT um director, Alex Splender, to try to get out um a newsletter or to build something where people can go and get the fact, not what's on social media, which is half of the truth most of the time. But that fuels a lot of rumors and a lot of frustration. So we want to, you know, try to get rid of that because we want to communicate with the community and

158we want to rebuild the trust of the community. Okay. And also um many many of the respondents um want it to be communicated in a more um I guess layman terms. So, you know, we that will be included in our communication strategy of how we want to communicate if if it's going to be a newsletter, is it going to be weekly, is it going to be bi-weekly? We have to figure that out. Um, but this was just a start just to understand what people were thinking and how they were feeling. So, this is just um a first step to gather information. Moving moving on to finances and operations. The number one priority was reducing non-essential spending with energy and efficiency facility improvements coming in second and a tie for third place reviewing vendor contracts and

159administrative restructuring. And what does that really mean in terms of what our stakeholders are looking for in terms of other funding opportunities? They're looking for us to outreach and look for partnerships with local businesses, colleges, um especially hospital uh partnerships um with um Hackinac Meridian right here in our back backyard. 54% are um looking for us to seek sponsorships for our athletic programs. Uh 53% for increased grants and 43% um to do more with our our own school facility rentals. Next slide. In terms of academics and student achievement, uh the student experience, academics and student achievement, um is one of the topics for future community sessions. Um athletics and extracurricular as well as district finances and operations ties for number two with communication and transparency. And again, one of the themes we keep seeing is,

160you know, communication and let us know, as Trusty Gilmer was saying, give us the information in advance. And so we know we need to work together working with the board. The district leadership team is looking to follow up on these priorities as well. And you have the other priorities listed there. Um and again in this slide though I'd like to also highlight the strength um stuff that they're looking for us to strengthen in the district. Um and that's on the right hand of the slide with expansion of student enrichment and career readiness opportunities expanding college hospital and business partnerships and increasing community involvement um opportunities as the top of the three. That still means safety, climate, and communication. And surprisingly enough, or maybe not, the preferred method of communication for 84% of our respondents is

161email. So, social media is up there, but you see the difference. 84 to 84% to 47% is a significant difference. Um, and so parents and stakeholders are looking for concrete information communicated via email. Um, and then safety and student well-being concerns on the right hand side. Uh, school safety ranked as the number three priority above financial transparency. um with those other sub bullet points, bullying in repeatedly um cited repeatedly in open responses, mental health and wellness cited in our open responses as well as requests for more or better security. Um and that was common across all the groups that responded as well as special communication um special education communication and responsiveness. Okay. So, even though um you know the community was not it wasn't just all positive thoughts but despite the challenges people still believe

162in three things. Our strengths are our diversity, our dedicated staff and the opportunities that we provide to students. Um, so in general, our community still believes in the Hackinack Public School District and they want to help and make a difference. They want um skin of the game. They want to be a part of the rebuilding of this district and we welcome that and this is something we should celebrate. Right. Um, and next slide please. And at the heart of the ser survey are four themes. uh financial stability, academic excellence, engaged community, and safe schools. Um these are fundamentals, right? They should not be that hard. Um and these can all be done together. They don't compete with each other. Um so that's achievable if we if we work together and that's what I hope um

163we will do moving forward. Okay, next slide. Um but now the survey the survey did not provide all of the answers. This was just the beginning and this is going to be the beginning of more outlook more um areas for us to focus on our transparency, communication, finance, staffing, safety and special education. This survey just helped us guide future discussions. So, um, we hope that people will want to participate in more surveys because we will be submitting a follow-up and, um, you know, the more information we get, the better we can, um, the better we can become. Um, and our community wants to be involved and that's a plus because um, I would have been concerned if we only had 100 respondents, but instead we had 1,300 people that took the time to to tell

164us how they feel and and you know, it's something for us to truly action on. And um you know we just want to thank everyone that took the time to take the survey, provide us with the information um and you know be on the lookout um for next steps. We want to have small um sessions where you know there could be a dialogue versus um just us talking and you know um we want to hear from you and we want you to get your answers in real time. So thank you to everyone who took the survey. Uh we really appreciate your feedback and um please if you have any questions reach out and u we look forward to hearing from you soon. Thank you. >> That was great. Thank you so much. Love the slides

165and all the information and um I I had the privilege of sitting at uh your committee >> your committee. Yeah, it was Friday. um on Friday and it's so nice to see that the members are very activated and engaged and they want they're trying to find different ways to engage the community, especially our businesses here in town. So, thank you for all your hard work. Um all right, so moving on. Um other committees, we don't have any at the moment. Uh new business, any new business? Okay. Um, moving on to our second public comment where individuals may address the board on agenda and school matters of community interest for one minute. Is there anyone in person that would like to speak? Okay, see that there are none. Is there anyone online that would like to

166speak? Okay, second public comment section is now closed. Moving on to board comments. We're on our last page. We're getting there. All right. Um, and I will start off with Trusty Cal. >> Oh, what? Um, first of all, I would like to thank Trustee Stein and Trusty Pringle for your service to this board in this district. Um, we're going to miss you guys and I wish you well. Um, I'd also like to thank the whole entire district for all your hard work and dedication to all the teachers and staff and um, just everyone. You are all appreciated. Um, acting superintendent, Miss Parchment, and your team, your presentations were were very informative and easy to follow. And I think um the community will be um pleased to be informed of everything. Um Trusty Gilmore, >> I

167want to commend you on your hard work with your um your survey. It was that that I think that's going to help us a lot. Yeah. >> Moving forward. I I really do. Um uh it's the end of the school year and um oh I want to say I went to um it's hard to I try to go to as many things as I can at the end of the year but I did go to uh the Fair Mount I think it was the World Cup multicultural um event at uh Sky Park. I tell you, being there, I wish everyone could have saw it. It makes you, it makes all what we do worth it. I saw students, family, teachers, um, all playing together, having a good time. Uh, even the the students against the

168parents in soccer, the parents kind of took it very seriously. They were they were still elementary kids, but they really wanted to win. Um, the food was great. I mean, I didn't have any because I'm kind of on a diet, but it looked it looked really good. But, um, yeah, I must say that was a a wonderful event. Um, also, uh, congratulations to all our students who are moving up. Um, congratulations to our high school students, top 20 uh, graduates, all our students who um, receive scholarships this year. Um, and to all our graduates, I wish you all continued success. And, uh, whatever path you choose, just, you know, whether it's college, trade school, working, um, just remember, you know, follow your dreams. you're you're all comments and um in the words of uh my

169brother Mr. Gordon Whiting Scooter um once a comment always a comment and um everyone just have a great summer and be safe. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um Trusty Amraza. >> Oh gosh, we covered a lot in this meeting tonight. It seems like enough for several meetings. Um, you know, I do um uh really want to um you know, thank the community for uh all of its support um for coming out um to honor the the giant of an athletic director um that that we lost. Um it's hard to believe that it's already been a month. Um there have been amazing tributes um not only you know by by our own school district um our own acting superintendent um many other staff who spoke at at um his services but also um wonderful recognition um

170by the city council uh tonight. Um and so that's been really amazing to see our community come together during times of adversity and times of loss. And I think that that really highlights a lot of what we've been through together um as a district this year. Um it's been really tough. It's um you know this June um you know there's this wonderful sense of of transition and and happiness for all of our students who are moving up um moving out moving on. Um but you know it's also been extremely difficult and you know I don't want to minimize um the loss that that everyone has felt um you know staff that that will no longer be with us. Um but I do want to just remind everyone that you know we do have this wonderful

171history of persevering during all of these times of adversity. Um, so, um, I'm looking forward to seeing all of the good things that will come, um, not only from our students, um, as they continue their education, um, but also from all of us. It's been really refreshing to hear all of the work that's been done in such a short amount of time by the reimagining um, committee. Um it it's been wonderful to see and hear from um staff from across the district, from our district leaders. A huge thank you um acting superintendent Parchment for all that you've done in putting this together to all of our um administrators. Um all of the presentations were really very thoughtful um and really informative and we look forward to continuing to get more information. Um thank you Trusty

172Gilmore um for again highlighting that the community they want to be part of the solution and they want more information. So we are going to listen and make sure that we get you that information. Um I do also um want to congratulate um and thank of two of um our colleagues um trustee sin. Um it's amazing to believe that you've put in 30 years of public service um to our city and there's really no way, you know, to thank you for all of that service. But you will be missed, Mark. You will be missed. Um >> I'm not dying. >> But you'll be missed here. But we expect to see you there. Uh and Siobhani, I hope you know, you know how much you will be missed um here, not only on the board, but

173in Hackinack. And so we hope that you will be coming back to visit us um many times. You have places to come visit. Um and in addition to all of our students who will be graduating, congratulations to our proud comment parents on the board. Um Trusty Carol. Um uh yes, Trusty Pringle, uh President Harris, for your graduates and wishing them all success, um along with the success of all of our students. Um again, a huge congratulations and thank you to Zoe Gonzalez for for um her service as our student rep. Um congratulations, Mr. Nunamacher, in your role, in your new role um as our in-house uh general counsel. Um and um again I I do want to um thank all of the trustees um for all of your dedication um your commitment um to our

174our president and vice president for for your leadership. Um and just wishing everyone um a very um refreshing, peaceful, relaxing summer. Um and also, you know, to end on a happy note, um really happy for all of this the the um blue and orange celebrations for the Knicks. >> Um and you know, really hope that everybody enjoys the World Cup. Um go team USA coming up again, their next game. And to all of the other countries that are represented by our very diverse district tonight, Austria will be playing here tonight at midnight. Uh Um yes, in a few minutes. Um and happy pride. So, thank you all very much. >> Thank you. Okay. Um Trusty Gilmore. >> Um I just wanted to to thank uh the Reimagine team. Um, I really really enjoyed um looking

175at what the future of Hackinack Public Schools is going to be like and I'm I'm so happy that um you have taken the time to think about it in a a reimagined way um despite um the budget deficit, but I know we will will come out um better and stronger. Um I also want to wish uh Mark and Siobhani um the best of luck. we will definitely miss you, but we will only be a phone call away. Um, also I'm looking forward to the athletic dinner tomorrow to celebrate our athletes. Um, congratulations to the top 20. Um, I was able to attend the dinner. It was amazing. And I'm looking forward to walking over the bridge one more time during graduation. Um, that is definitely a right of passage. Um, and just wishing everyone um,

176a wonderful summer and I'm wishing all of the educators that will not be with us next year. I wish you all the best, but you know, you will always have a home here in Hackinack. Um, so I wish everyone a happy summer and good night. Trusty Austin Valuch. First, I'd like to say to Trusty Pringle, it was great. It was an amazing time getting to know you. I will come visit and it was an honor to serve with you. To Trusty Stein also very much an honor to serve with you. I've known you a lot longer and you've been a member of my village for as long as I can remember and your service to this community is unparalleled and uh we thank you for that. Um I also want to say something to Assist

177superintendent Rosemary Marks and Miss Monloa. The world language department has always been pretty cutting edge in this district, but I know that there I can see the groundwork that the department has laid. I know Miss Marx started some of the initiatives and then Miss Marlo picked it up and and with her team ran with it. Um I'm hopelessly monilingual. I mean I but my time in district with the teachers that I had made me somewhat literate and when parents come to the mic to speak in Spanish I'm about 85% getting it. I'm I'm I'm I'm kind of there now. If I had to respond to them it's going to be in English. >> But so I'm going to I'm gonna name them. I'm going to shout out Miss Garcia, Miss Larice, Miss Bitterball, Miss Prifold,

178Miss Faroff, and Miss Manditto. despite their best efforts, they gave me things. I didn't get all of it. My sister, on the other hand, is completely biliterate in multiple languages and all of that she got from here in Hackac High School and Hackac Middle School um in the world language department and the cutting edge things that we've been doing for a while. But now you can physically see four rows of kids that have achieved something and we're moving in a direction of excellence that um is really really touching to see. So I want to thank you for the work that you that you've done in that area. Um welcome back to Dr. Dennis. I'm looking forward to working with you and welcome back to Jason Nunacher in a new situation. I think this is awesome.

179Um, Donna West talked about children of differences and what they deserve. And that really hit me as a parent and as an educator. Unfortunately, we're as a district, we're grappling with the difference between what our children deserve and what we can afford to give them. And that's painful. I think every student deserves to be in a class with just one grades worth of kids. And every student deserves to go to the school in their neighborhood instead of having to go across town because it's more coste effective and economies of scale require us to put programs in specific schools so that we can give them the best services we could possibly offer. But that doesn't mean that we can't stop striving toward whatever it is that we want them to have. And the board is committed

180to figuring out as many cost-saving strategies as we can, as evidence here tonight, to start to begin to restore as much of the things that we can afford um to give our children the best of of whatever it is we have to give them. Um I'm not okay with the idea of students not going on field trips. I'm not okay with the idea of for the first time since I mean with the exception of co in what 60 years that there wouldn't be sixth grade camp. So those are things that we're still we have not given up and we're still striving. I know superintendent Parman, our team, everybody's still striving toward giving our kids as much as we can afford. Um and I I think that's that's that that will continue to be said. Um,

181I also want to say thank you to Superintendent Parchment. Um, we've had some meetings recently where as long as I've known her, still like truly impressive. Truly impressive to see the level of reflection and and goal setting. reflection and goal setting and and striving and visioning that she's doing on behalf of the district and I've just been I didn't think I could be more improve but I definitely this is this better >> thank you >> test test um >> you pass >> thank you just impressed with the reflection and the striving that she is pushing us as a district and I I want to thank her for that. Um I think that's everything I wanted to say. Oh, tonight I parked on Comet Way when I go out to my car. It's going to be

182Gordon Scooter Whiting Way. Shout out to the city council for that. Really excited. Musty Pringle, why you looking away like I saw that? So, I've been anticipating this day in a good way, bad way. I didn't know how to feel about it, but I can't believe it's finally here. And then coming to the meeting this afternoon, I said, "Wow, Kenny, you remember it's like I was like, I have four weeks. I have six weeks. Like, I'm moving two months and I'm moving in a week. I'm going to miss you all so so much. Like, you have no idea." Um, I was in total shock. I thought I was going to get up there and just or actually sit here and just read my um farewell. So, the plaque I have I'mma put it next to

183my mug that I won with you guys pictures on it. Um, it's been an honor. Um, I'm going to miss all you. I'm going to miss the community. Um, Jerry Craig is not here, but I know that this is um recorded and people can go back to this. Um when I first came to Hackinack and I had no idea what I was going to do um until Ila started school. Jerry Craig um saved Leila in the summer cuz man she was very mischiefous in the house and I didn't know what I was going to do until I saw Camp Piggyback across the street and I walked up to Jerry Craig and I was like knocking on the door. I was like how much camp cost? you know, like I'm on disability right now. I don't

184know how much it cost and I don't get paid until next month. I just moved here. She said, "Bring her tomorrow. We'll make arrangements." And that's when I knew that Hacker Sack was a family oriented community. Not only did because I don't know if anybody know Mount Olive, they make food for the kids at camp and stuff. So once I realized that Leila was going in the morning to get grits, bacon, eggs, and all this other stuff, I started going there for breakfast, too. And they didn't they did not turn me down. Um so I just want to make sure that I acknowledge uh Jerry Craig. There's a few women um in this town before I've gotten on the board that impacted my life um a lot. Um, one of those people join Joy um,

185Dr. White on Monday. She was the second person I met um, in Hackinack when I went to register Ila for first grade. Um, so Ila started off at Hillis before she went to Nell K. Parker. Um, Donna West, uh, and I actually want to say Donna West, Reverend Burke, um, and Andrea Parchman have been very positive, encouraging women in my life. Um, and you guys, you probably don't even know it, but you know, I've told you this a long time ago. on a personal level, Donald or Reverend Burke stayed me spiritually. Um, and I will always appreciate that. Um, Reverend Jackson for baptizing my kids and I about eight years ago. um the community in the whole even to the people walking down Miss Shirley's house and watching Leila grow calling Ila into into the

186house and say give this rose to your mother for Mother's Day. Like this community is amazing and I'm going to miss that. I know where I'm going. I'm not going to get that because well not right away. My babies my grandbaby still got some growing to do. Um and hopefully the community will be as pleasant as Hagen said. Um I need to acknowledge uh Mark and Kenny. Um Mark um Mark is my jazz and light music in the car. and me and Mark and Jazz and every time we would be in the car riding to work, it would be um that's what Friends are for would come on and I would sing that song all the time. When the song came on and then there's a song he said, "You remember that song?" And I

187say, "I I heard it before, but I don't know the words." Um I'm going to miss those rides with you, Marth. And I love you so much. You know that Kenny, so I said this to Kenny cuz Kenny's like he's like big brother homeboy type, you know, it depends on the mood. Um, but with Kenny, what I'm going to miss the most, and I said this, um, any conference that I needed to go to, and I'm not saying the girls weren't available, I want to make that clear, is that when I first got on the board, I was so used to Kenny taking me introducing me to people because he said to me that after a while, it's not about who you know, it's about who knows you. So, he made sure that he took

188me in areas to introduce me to people to get familiar with um my community and I thank you for that. Um outside of that, I'm going to miss the rise because he was Batman is what I said and I was Robin but Robin with a Y and not >> and Pringles. I'm calling Pringles instead of Pringle. >> Um, so I have I know that I have two big brothers also for life. >> Um, and you two guys that really did make an impact. I never knew like without Jason Songs songs actually coming up to me to ask me to run. I would not know any of you guys. So it started off with with Jason Song. Um, so >> Oh, so he's to blame. Okay. Well, after that, that's when I met you and Kenny

189when they were at God's ask me to learn. Um, Reverend Davis left her already, but she knows how I how I feel about her. She's had um an impact on my life as well. Rosemary, um, I'm going to miss being at the conference. I got to know you at the conference in 2024, my first conference. Um, and that I think that's where our bonds came from, that one workshop class. Um, so I'm really going to miss you, Miss Story. Thank you for the candy. I'm going to miss um the candy. If you got extra bags, I want to take two with me. Okay. Um, Lvita, it's been a pleasure. You are such a sweetheart. Like, I've never met someone as pure as smart. Like the board, the office, glad to have you. Like, you're just

190a joy. Jason Nunacher, I'm going to miss my Gemini twin. Um, I'm I'm just gonna miss you all. Um, Mike is not here. I'm gonna miss the brewery. I'm gonna miss Mike. I'm like, I'm miss >> I know I should be staying at the board, but I mean, it is what it is. It's my last day. I have nothing to lose. >> Last meeting. Last meeting. Yes. On June 30th. June 30th is my I'm I'm done. Demetrius, thank you. You've been a joy. It's like another brother or whatever. This is the most I've ever talen since I've been on the board. Um, I miss everybody, the crew back there. Chris, you guys know I missed you guys. The police officers that show up here, everybody back there. Love you guys. Love everybody. I love you

191too, girl. I um So, thank you. Um, I really appreciate it. Been a joy and I'mma go out. This is me. This is my personality. This is who I am. So, I love you guys and um I'll see you at graduation. Thank you. Have a blessed night. >> Thank you. >> Uh Justy Stein, >> that's a hard to follow. Remember it was Oly Uberstein. Um, pardon me for using a uh naval comparison, but to our acting superintendent, thank you for writing the ship. May you have strong winds to move this district forward quickly. uh to your administrative staff you from a person on the outside although I'm kind of on the inside they have shown me and I think the public and I know the board what it's going to take especially by the presentation

192tonight of making the accomplishments that we need to make as a district. Lindida um for raising the flag of u strong heavy winds that um needed to be corrected. Thumbs up. Um, our president, I don't know who wrote the words for you tonight. Most of them were lies, but I I'll take it. I'll take it. And to my sisters and brothers on the board, um, it's wonderful. I went through a time where there was an agenda that wanted that done and another agenda that wanted this done. It's nice to have a board that knows what direction the wind is blowing back to the neighbor and to know that you are in favor of moving this direction of the board and the district in the right direction. So I know I can leave I'm not dying

193yet, but I can leave this board knowing that it is in great hands and will accomplish those things making the hard decisions that need to be done. So, thank you all. Hi, >> Vice President Markin. >> I had uh quite a bit to say here, but um I'm not going to I'm not going to say I'm not even going to read anything. >> Well, unfortunately, >> because I don't want to take the thunder of you two and and overtake uh what you guys had just >> thunder and lightning >> and lightning indeed. So on that note, but I I must always end at saying um to our audience, continue on coming to the mic. It's important to us. It's important to hear from you. And uh please if it's good or bad, we still want

194to hear it. It doesn't matter because it it it helped change our mind. Regardless what you say, it helped change our mind and we do listen. I'll leave on that note. Thank you. Okay. Um I'll be I'll be brief. Uh tomorrow is our sports banquet and um at the banquet the board will be presenting the resolution for Gordon Flutter Whiting uh to the family. Um just a quick note that our next board meeting for July, it was scheduled for the 22nd. It is now being moved for July 29th, which is also another Wednesday. It's just a week later. Um, again, amazing things have been going on in our district. We had the top 20, the seal of biiteracy. Um, you know, as a world language teacher, I know um the preparation that it takes to

195take these exams and how important and how difficult it is to show fluency and to show um that you are speaking not just at a novice level, but fully conversational is extremely difficult. um they always blow they blow me away whenever I see the amounts of students coming and every year there are more and more students and you know I give all the credit to their teachers um and to the students as well uh for studying and putting all in all that work in to make sure that they are bilingual in another in another language. Um, you know, we are here in June and sometimes when we start the school year, June seems so far away and and you keep saying, "I can't wait to graduate. I can't wait till June is here." We are

196literally less than a week away from graduation where some of our students are going to be going off starting their young adult lives. Um, some go to college, some might start work. Um, and some still might not know what they want to do, and that is okay. um because it's okay. You can always have some time. You don't have to go straight into into things. So, I look forward in celebrating our students um to our staff. Um you know, I hope that whatever journey you take this summer that it takes you into one that you want to do. Choose your own path. Um, and for those who are returning to take this time to really do things that you want to do. Um, I know a lot of us tend as teachers to work in

197the summer. Sometimes we have no choice but to work in the summer, but if you can use those weekends, use the month of August to like um some of my trusties like to say the word relax. um to relax. Whatever that relax looks like to you. Um yes, whatever that looks like to you. Um other than that, I listen um to Shiovani and Mark, love you both. Um we have been through a lot together and I know that this is not our goodbye here. Uh, we will definitely see you later and hopefully at the next meeting won't be as long as this one. I'm going to put the blame on you too that the meeting was long because of you guys. All right. Um, so other than that, I look forward to all those end

198of the year student activities that we will be attending. And with that, I would like to have a motion to adjourn the meeting. Motion by Trusty Stein and a second. I'm gonna I'm gonna second I just want to say one thing that I forgot to say, Kenny. I'm going to promise you that I will keep the H in hackers in comment. >> I promise you. And I second. >> All right. So, we have a second from Trusty Pringle. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? And meeting is adjourned at midnight 12:00 on the dot.