001thank you uh good evening tonight is the citizens advisory committee meeting it's March 11 2025 at 7 o'clock those present are Dr Layman Dr Chanley Miss Ratner Mrs Fabiano Mrs Ratner m whatever Miss Fabiano and Miss Alvarez and Mr moraldo and we have um our citizens and we have one of our students present this evening so we have we really have short agendas because we know that the agenda items bring up a lot of talk and a lot of questions and a lot of things like that so um you Mr morala sent you everybody the um information so I don't know where do you want to start about the uh overview about the letter for the legislators or how do you want to handle that whatever you want so I if it's okay with you
002Mr please um because the letter is a little bit more time sent and I know that we wanted to talk about tomorrow night at ate so uh just to remind everyone of where we're at for the letter the INF letter right that we've been working on for a while now but um we had met in January and prior to that I had received uh feedback uh from you know both most of the committee which has been wonderful and it's all it's all been a little bit different and and brought its own appeal so what I tried to do was assemble that feedback into a draft letter which we then had produced in January um since then miss Ratner um has sent over some feedback which I admittedly did not reconstruct into the letter but I
003also did receive some additional feedback from some members that either were not present at the January meeting or at some uh new thoughts since the January meeting um I don't want to spot but uh Miss baruda actually sent over multiple uh versions of the letter which I thought was really neat um speciically because you know when we think about purposes of this committee um you know we're all going to kind of go back to our own constituent constituency excuse me with our own kind of uh hierarchy of of needs right as it relates to the district appreciate how you took a different slant and did a lot and so I think that that would be nice to kind of share I printed some of those out as well to pass around um but for our
004purposes and I was just discussing with Miss rat it would be great that after tonight you it's like we just say like just take 15 more minutes or whatever budget time um then tonight over the next 12 hours I'll work with uh this you know the members of this committee and then lace try to reconstruct a new updated letter in time for tomorrow night okay but that works for and that's the one that we'll utilize well and when we met the other day just the a few of the committee members I mentioned we have to get this out and um so Mr moral has been very good that you know G having all the information M bratner our two groups seem to overlap in some areas he's more on the legislative end we're more trying
005to get everybody here to contact legislators on your own or with this letter that we're going to finalize tomorrow night because I I didn't want it to go past tonight but it's going to go past one more day and then then it's going to be excuse me thank you yesterday won't let us off the hook if it's not she sorry but that I'm I'm a time management person I and my children are all the same way and when I was on another board the meeting started at 7 we started at 700 I didn't care who was there so um unfortunately here we we have to wait for the wonderful people that are working taking the time to come here to our meetings and our students who are studying so that's the letter um you want
006to look now for a few minutes want to wait to the end what do you think is best you have it now you might as well so we have it now this this includes feedback have the original feedback sent from the members um this current letter that I just passed out has the feedback from uh at least one two three four five five members of the committee um it does not have the feedback M rner just uh and I I'll print out a couple those but if you guys want to read through it one more time and then um the individual letters now I have a suggestion actually Mr cero maybe if you wouldn't mind that's a good segue if you wouldn't mind going to District information Tab and then popping down to the advocacy
007second down from the red column and if the advocacy y so we just kind of refreshed this today and then as you scroll down the idea would be that we could take um keep going please um we could kind of take this letter and then scroll down just a bit more you could see we could pop it there um and then uh as a PDF or a doc and then what I was thinking if we kind of like to what Miss baruda did we could have maybe versions of the letters and you know again this isn't necessarily something we need to operationalize for tomorrow but we could then say you know I I could create a little area on the site where hey you're interested I know you know SP to school security um 21st
008Century Learning Equity all of really the the areas of our strategic plan that we de to be important we could have vergins of the letter that the public can then use as it lines up with their Val what do you think how many versions of the letter do we have actually that you would think that would be appropriate you know to post yeah I would think three I was saying three in order to M I'd love to see her remarks and and see if you know we can get three different versions one for parent right what maybe you know different age of of students or certain things but you know at least want that difference right yes yes would we have it as different options under the automated email form as well yeah so so
009that's the one thing and I mentioned in the email to to you guys today so and and admittedly and I don't know why I'm looking at we get that but I know Elliot had uh I'm sorry Mr Feldman our network operations director had had had suggested that through the use of job form um it gives us some flexibility to maybe where we could you know right now it's a very rudimentary form that that we have created to where you can type in your information and automate it to recipients of your choosing we think we could do a better version of that which may include and I'll talk to Tech about this maybe if you say I want my letter to be slanted toward security concerns versus eco-friendly concerns or you know whatever versions of letter
010we deem appropriate that's something we could look at instructing or we could just say um send this letter and click off you know that's the way we have it now is that we have our form letter and you can say who do you want to go to uh M Senator Greenstein or Mr D'Angelo or you know Mr goall or you want to go to the mayor whomever um so we could probably create something like that uh and and the idea would be we would you know when we created the toolkit the idea would be that this would be something that um our residents could go to to find what they need in order to Advocate appropriately and also the other night M Ratner brought up um the people on the which committees again miss Ratner
011oh so at the state level there's the Senate and the assembly have different committees so there's the Senate education committee um and they both have them right Senate and assembly both have an education committee but what is also going to be coming up which I think is on I think it's on our agenda talk later but there's the budget Appropriations Committee um which would be different people than are both of those communities we might have some overlap but it's different people that are essentially making the decisions that were sort of asking our legislators to advocate for um so I will just say like the other thing that I really love and I know we have people that work in different districts here and in different towns would be to find other districts like especially people
012in other legislative districts right like East Brunswick is technically a different legislative district um so it's South actually which is really weird when you think about it but um because one of the things we've heard from our legislators was that there have been time for they proposed legislation but they didn't have enough support because it didn't help other legislators in their districts um I don't really know if there's a way for us to tailor a letter that would be more generic to help with like particularly in this sense it would be more of like the funding formula than like individual budget appropriation almost like a Wii that when you speak You're incorporating more generalization about the funding formula rather than specifics in Monroe so maybe that's what our third letter is Right a Monroe specific
013for parent for nonparents and a generalized funding formula letter for which would be shorter and would direct and would you have one for seniors because that comes from a different perspective well the not the senior would be the not would be non parents I think you could tailor that to incorporate both the needs of nonparents who might be under 55 and over and people who are over that's true and of course we would always give them the option to to take our letter and modify like we did like that's why we had the PDF and do so I just want to say one thing Mr Mar I I personally I don't I I like one page say I don't I could go back because you know I don't think anybody's actually they're gonna look at
014the and they're gonna they're not going to flip it or it's too much to read and with so we can you know do the you know I think we need to condense and if anybody's looking at anything right now that you think can be condensed please raise your hand let us know I mean I could just do that thing so I would so what I'm handing out now is the is is the feedback that I did not build into the letter from Miss rner um which she she cleaned up some of the sorry you guys um she cleaned up some of the not up copies um I can get more but I was thinking for the sake of time maybe we just if everyone wants to maybe go through it want think shair and uh
015and anything that we want do anything glaring um but I'll do then after any other feedback that we can come up together uh this evening uh this uh when when I go home this evening and tomorrow morning I'll build this into the current uh draft that we have and then uh the lace committee and and our administrative team will have something ready for tomorrow night that we can present place okay um so uh we're at 723 Mr ping how much time you want to give to this um you said you wanted to give like 15 minutes to we've already gotten into it some another 10 yeah sure because the other committee comes in at eight Y and then I could just quickly show the new feature on the website featur on the website and then
016um if we have time we can talk about the kind of complete different what we want to talk about to be at time at the end about how we've been using the community feedback to build out some of our current programs and how we've been using the revenue from our Revenue generating programs to reinvest into curricular Evolutions I was going to go through that but we this is a little bit more time ctive so we'd like to get this yes so we'll see you in 10 minutes ohing I would think that would be the thing to do and then um yeah what if we turn off sound people can working so they know the meeting still occurring could you do that turn off the sound so that for about about 10 minutes so e e
017e is it the Appropriations Committee is it our legislators so they have to pass a bill legis the appro right so they they have the power to say okay Monroe is going to get 6% we were told that each legislator I don't know if it's legislators or a group of legislators like our we're in legislative district 13 is given the ability to ask for like a certain number of Appropriations I think it's either three each or three as a group um I did read that Appropriations were going to be very limited in this year's budget I don't know what limited means but I did hear that they were going to well Senator Greenstein told me that last year after the elections it was going to be limited this year the money she had given us
018money before and a million and then but she said and I went up to her someplace I saw her and she said don't expect because it's going to be very shortfall this year so I I mean just in my brain I'm thinking we have to go to the sword giving us the money and go right to that and ask them for it I mean you can ask them to change the the way that they give the money which is you know the formula we can ask them to change that but I think that seems like that's going to be slow I think we're beyond that I mean who can appropriate us this money as quickly as possible I think those are the people who should talk directly I think what we shared in that meeting
019with just like the the commissioner and Greenstein maybe we need to share with the other like the Appropriations Committee because we had the list of the other districts that had received you know $15 million $10 million for certain things like one time Appropriations there was couple districts there that got it multiple years in a row and say like you know while we're aware of like the budget constraints we still don't have this program and we need help um you know can you please provide for us what has been provided for these other districts um and explain like why we and could that be also as what Miss Jennifer said part of a of a than you oh yeah you do that the beam of the letter the chart to show which people got the money
020and we did not get it and and that to the letter to show the what other legislative districts are in our position that have different legislators that they can then you know we can all band together that are in our same boat and they can go to their respective legislators and maybe if 10 or 12 or whatever 20 legislators are bringing up that issue maybe that'll have more poll I think the the other districts that were affected are different than us because they always got we we get nothing you know we got $33,000 extra but we get our 12 million in change they have always gotten a um an exorbitant amount of money in comparison to us but then they got money taken away so when they were going this year and the last year
021their concern was you took money away from us so it's a little a little bit different because our concern is you didn't take it away from us because we never got it yeah we never got it we never got it so that's why we are really very unique we truly Mom know truly for that reason and that's what we try to constantly share but I do agree with you I think the boote is kind of gone on like the fun not to say you shouldn't leave a letter there anybody wants to write a letter right that should still be there but I think it should be like we need money this is what we needed for this is how much money other people got this is how much money we didn't get and this is
022how much money we hav in to get it so one shot that says 2008 this a m 2009 so maybe like two different chars the one thing also I've noticed that lerat get really nervous when you start talking about them putting in unfunded mandates right so if you like the governor and there have been legislators who have said they're going to mandate bu a kindergarten and I feel like there's five districts left in the state that don't have it right um I don't I have the chart of where they stand on it because some have done referendums and just don't have it yet or things like that I think two of the five I read it right but um maybe those are the districts that we reach can you you know work to find rations
023so that 100% of the school districts in New Jersey are able to offer full day kindergarten just like you are you know suggesting you want done throughout the state um I know Westfield is very very similar to us right had lost money Westfield is very similar in that they didn't get it either um and they don't have buing Kinder garden and there are different legisl it's interesting the way in the budget though in the budget the governor's budget it says that we mandating full day um but it's currently not a funded mandate that we are aware of right um however there was just a recent Facebook post that the governor put out saying that he will be incorporating into the budget mandate the full day kindergarten so giving us money will there be money I
024don't I mean I can I can pull up but like I can see the other side of that the district that funding it themselves saying Hey give us money you're giving them money why not us I think that's when we show how little money we've got that's where the charts come in to show that and I think um Senator goal who's from Mama right yeah he was not very vocal until most of the districts in his area lost a lot of money last year two years ago so now he's on a bandwagon and he spoke at middle sex County um school boards association meeting we had him last month and he said that anything that is being delegated to school districts if it's going to be mandated he will make sure that that District that's
025what he said girls would not support an unfunded would not support an unfunded mandate the other one is the um cell phone cell phone things where somebody brought up that you have to purchase P $30 and he he said the same thing he said I will not support an un unfunded mandated item so Senator boal continues and we continue to support him M seems like that county has also been short change too because he also did say though that he would support removing funding from districts that aren't giving kindergarten I don't know if that was just a shorted think they're saying oh you don't want to give it I'm sorry is he our senator UC Comm the okay I got yeah but yeah he's on the so he has he has a lot of PLL
026but remember you said it politically if you have a governor that's not up for re-election and he wants what he wants and he has the people to support him maybe goal would not send goal we don't know I'm just saying that could become an un an unfunded mandate that talk to us an unfund an unfunded mandate because he's on his way out and perhaps he that's what he decides to do what it says here is and I'm reading it verba from the governor's Facebook page say my proposed budget would bring full day kindergarten to every District investing in our kids and helping working parents a precious time and money so sounds fun to to me it sounds you it either way so I don't think that's we don't know where full day kindergarten is good
027it invests in the future of I don't read that now when I give the word budget that's money to me I don't know he prop I know he legis he can only it doesn't sound very concrete it sounds like something I know I know but it doesn't sound so there you go all right we have like another 15 minutes um can I just say for the letter we're going to focus on is there anything else beside H kindergarten that we really like I know there's a few infrastructure needs that are on here but I also think a lot of those are now going to be cover well there Still Remains infrastructure needs yeah okay other programmatic like like needs or strong requests from the community the bleach or well the bleaches we found out are
028appropriate and we have a proper sign off on them but we wanted to expand expand them because we don't have enough um I will let you know that we started the conversation about what full day kindergarten looks like for us it is 100% number one priority um we're hoping for September 2026 a priority nothing is written Stone people having these conversations with the principles having meetings what does it look like um but we still have you know as we go through the budget which is going to be discussed on Monday um presentation on Monday um a lot of things that Mr T will come we have to prioritize so as Dr Lane is saying I wouldn't say these things are not still a priority they are still a priority um because even though we are
029doing um the EA project which we discussed here earlier some gave some nice input I really you want you had G some comment on it there's all when not certain things are still not in there but do we want to just only make it about kindergarten that's decision for the committee and like you know how this is not POS but in China like they're very um like the AI is so advance that kindergarten are start they could code something oh my God because I know um the Governor partnered with Pon to do the NJ AI Hub and we could use that since that would bring a Bel to him like oh this is part of my goal is like to have if you start from a very early age incorporate some AI there for kindergarden
030and that that would help New Jersey build something that would be years to come magificent that we could be Advanced using his platform would very help us probably to um find that that that kindergarten having an AI or what something simple just or that anything that would bring a BT to him that would say oh yeah I think that this that's part of my goals maybe something to say yeah it would maybe turn the light bulb on and think for him to say as he's leaving I'm leaving legac I'm leaving my legacy that we're going to do that for this more in five hours sadly and then maybe we could show him this we'll do more in five hours this summer with kindergarten with AI then they will have the opportunity and school and our
031plan is to and and and the plan is to you know we use the summer programs to test out these Technologies but that's why we've always been so Centric on two to five and 2 to eight because it's just hard to you know we use some programs to test new curricular opportunities and then we just don't have the opportunity to install new programming and take and you would they ask R and Princeton a colle to help the students come in and they teach kids be Partnerships with rers and Princeton and and if they're coming in for any kind of maybe degree and they need to that's get involved with students in your in their area where they live like to get student teachers to come into the different uh districts we could possibly partner with
032people from we we did that at once from a high schoolers here we invited them to um the P Car Lab okay and they were the students that have to be involved with the university itself it's just the students that are welcome to have a and there's one of our students right there sh their head would love that that's going to be my other thought I know you wanted to get to the website I also just feel like this is so time sensitive because all the budget Appropriations hearings are happening within the next like two to three weeks and by the time we in May it's done so like I feel like maybe and it would be nice to have a letter that's from the student perspective yes um you know just and I don't
033know if there's maybe anything that you I don't want to put you on the slot but you've seen as a student that you feel like you would like to you know support iny in the district um but maybe that's what the third so maybe we utilize my next meeting are we just going to say this so may we utilize our next meeting in March dra because we have you know we have sixth grade starting at sixth grade and they all have stuff to say really good stuff it's really an incredible opportunity so maybe we utilize that because that's a week from now two weeks from now yeah and then we can get that done so at least we'll just get it done pennifer you work during the day that would be that would be a
034lovely a good meeting I'm not inviting everybody here to the lunch but I'm just saying you can her ideas would be wonderful to as a um you work for Princeton or what yes to come and talk to the students that day to get them you know time I mean I think whenever it's appropriate we would like to have you talk to them right I think that would be a great idea soending on AV okay that sounds wonderful we'll work with you Jim thank you very much anybody else have any questions about the letter that you'd like to interject before we move on to the last item I think we really shifted in Mor up midnight or tonight trying to fix because he's got a deadline of tomorrow night you can call me I'm I'll be
035up no no so as long as we just were committed to the Shi and focus more on budget Appropriations we're committed towards and putting some charts in there with data every and sure there are plenty data out there I I just I mean we'll have something yeah so the goal would to publish a a a letter uh uh soon and then maybe by the end of the week we could do a Blackboard again like alerting our our our network of okay the hearings yes how they can either submit uh testimony or show up right and we could attach the letter as a reference okay I think that's is everybody in agreement with that you think that's on a good road right there good thank you all and so the next we're going to hit the
036uh new changes to the website Mr morala Dr Raymond who's going to so uh we we have spent a lot of time uh this committee um focusing and appropriately s focusing on our advocacy efforts but you know we don't want to you know the committee was design just just for that uh you know some of the advisory that we wish to to get from the committee is on some of our more day-to-day and learning environment styles of things so we've installed the new website and um we're excited that uh if you see in the bottom right hand corner there there's a little Falcon head voting there and and one of the feedback that that we only not only got from this committee but the the public in general is that our website could be very
037uh difficult to navigate particular when you look for a simple answer um like what time does MIL Lake let out going to happen you in here um time hours open yeah so did it give you an answer no it's so we're still developing it really so um so our Tech sta is is actually mapping this but this is this is another um Evolution that we think is going to allow us to connect with more people in the community um in more readily available ways um it's not perfect but like for example very exting complex institutions or we have much information that we need to make available some of it is required by law some of it is is time sensitive and some of it is is calendar based and things like that so we know
038that you know even with the new website it still can be difficult so we think that this would be a nice way to um to to give our our users an opportunity to be a little bit more um efficient on our website um and you can see in the bottom right hand corner that's that job form that we were telling about so we think that this could be the platform that could develop some of our other solutions that we have discussed um so we would ask that you know the committee over there you know the course of the next couple weeks as we Le next um um meeting to periodically check that and try to test out the um the AI bot because it could it's only has effective as as we make it so
039we have to right you have to teach it and and and you know we were torturing Tex I asking some obscured questions earlier today is there like for example I put in where I find the school calendar and it says you can find the school calendar on the mon to school district website but then it says for more information go visit this link but the link takes me to the board ofed meeting yeah no it's not really done we're GNA probably turn this off after is there a way like if people like a committee to share that so what happens is if if there a question that it doesn't know an answer to it gets sent to our Tech staff who will then map it to its exact location um it also will learn as
040it goes through so the question more the frequent questions that it's asked they get routed again to our Tech staff so we can verify where some of the some of the routing is and things like if you ask it where how do I register my student in myd Township School District it brings you directly to the uh registration web page so the some of the questions we've already started to ask it's learning and or we've mapped it to um some of the some of the questions that we haven't thought of again they'll go directly to our Tech staff if we had somebody 247 to man this they actually can see when a question comes it's not answered they can take over over the chat and and engage with the person directly we're not having anybody
041man this 24 hours day um so that will not happen but uh we the point of the story is we will be able to see what questions are asked be notified when there's things that we don't know the it doesn't know the answer to we can steer them and map in the right direction so again as as this gets used it will be better better very curious I did see someone on social media they were just asking how do I find out what school my child belongs that would be a good question like you could like type in your address and it tells you what great or or it'll tell I think a better solution for that because it is there is some subtleties especially depends on individual programs and things like that my guess
042is we will probably map that to the registar phone number and email address and have them as the contact information you know what I mean yeah but I saw that question today so I was like oh that would be a good one for that there is a setting on our website that if I'm not mistaken that can with a that can translate our entire content hard question in Spanish ask I don't know the answer to that but I will that that I imagine all the the the open AI things that it would be able to that's a good point but thank you for bringing that the other thing that M rner brought up is that there are some still um there's still some deadlines on the site but we are also going to install report
043an issue report a problem so people say because we don't know we think that the website's update but every once in a while you get a little page here or there with information that's outdated but unless you have gone there by accident you're not going to know it's there so if someone sees it what is much oh yeah the website since we changed over and all the it's been they did they've been this was a very laborious test but but we we realized that we're only about 20% into it so any feedback that you can to us will take it particularly you know just we have a you know we we want this website to be appealing to to all stakeholders country uh for purposes of usefulness you understanding the Financial locations of the district
044and our operation the organization but also you know where we where we fall you know politically and some of the outcomes that we can't control and can yeah like the advocacy side things like that more question is this fible like like can it go like to speech or speech SE for people who are he's shaking his so so one of the one of the reasons for sunsetting the old final site uh platform was because it limited and those uh required now it's acceptabilities um I just can't speak for the functionality of that how work and how a user would put access that unfortunately before we close I just wanted to ask the people that are here is there anything else I know we bring to you a lot of different things that we'd like to
045see you help us with in this in the district is there anything that you particularly would like to see us investigate with the district that maybe you've experienced or you've seen um like Partnerships but um is there any Partnerships that we can join up with to help out the districts too that's another thing I think we should try to work on I know Mr moral that does have some we have a um we have a in the high school um Dr Higgins and I had a dedicated office for lack of better description that is uh assigned to create Partnerships just in the past couple years uh the high school has formed Partnerships with uh Rowan uh Mur County College um we're working on a working through an MOA with NJIT right now um but we
046are not limited to just academic institutions you know we've had locky Martin come up um other engineering firms but we are always looking command Network um for certificated non-certificated learning experiences um and uh that that is a function of our workplace learning program at the high school and we're it's been it's been one of the fastest grar programs us so we yeah we appreciate any feedback on any any items that you think um just let us know so we can investigate for you know meeting and give uh give you feedback on what we've actually Mr moral done who and Mr Feldman and Dr Layman have found to get you know to present so but otherwise we'd like you to just you know when this letter comes out tomorrow night um please you know look at
047it on the website send it out you know get it out to the legislators and just keep getting it out they keep seeing when R and R and R they're going to say you know something's going on that we need to help them so hopefully they'll get the idea if we're persistent enough they'll get the idea one more thing yeah yes um so we also have an email address so there are times when members of the community want to email the whole board and you would have to type in 10 individual email addresses we now have one email address that you can type in that will be sent to All 10 board members it's MTB OE monroe. k2. j. us now if you still only want to email individual board members you absolutely still have
048that option but if you would like to be able to contact the entire board or sh something with the entire board then the Mt booe at Monroe email address is a shorter simpler version to contact the entire board so you don't have to and that just includ our Jam rep well yes getting that Tak care of because I think that was something that we propos and we Mr moral that took care of before so okay thank you all for coming um we appreciate your time and uh Happy St Patrick's Day and I don't think we're going to meet till after East after Easter after the holidays Passover and Easter whatever holiday you celebrate may you and your family have wonderful times together and um we'll see you in April thank you very much you thank
049you