001uh, begin our, our meeting by having our student, student committee report. >> I hope everybody's doing well. For those who don't know me, my name is Garrett Kreger and I'm one of two of the senior boy reps. Unfortunately, my counterpart of Daisy Sang is unable to make it tonight. Um, however, this is our last report as senior boy reps. And I'm very honored to be here with the board and all of you. So, thank you for being here, especially this late. Um, usually I would begin with my report, uh, with a report on the current sports season. However, in light of the present year, >> Thank you. >> Um, far as music in the high school, uh, the final band, choir, and orchestra concerts have concluded with senior musicians being recognized at their respective concerts
002for their dedication to musical ensembles over the past four years, as well as their involvement in music extracurriculars. At the Tri-M music honor ceremony, uh, juniors and seniors were inducted and awarded senior chords and scholarships for their musical and academic excellence. Additionally, the Morristown theater program was awarded outstanding achievement by a student lighting technician, outstanding achievement by a student assistant musical director, and outstanding achievement by an acting ensemble in foundation in a foundational musical for their production of last year's, uh, Les Mis. This year, uh, the theater department has four nominations and one honorable mention for the upcoming Paper Mill Rising Star Awards on June 9th, so tomorrow night. For student government, student government is currently running the last spirit week in Peperell of the school year, uh, with themes for every day this week,
003uh, raising spirit points for each class, uh, a water balloon toss on Tuesday, the final day of the Luna, uh, soccer tournament on Wednesday, and a scavenger hunt on Thursday. There are plenty of opportunities for students to get involved leading up to the Peperell. The Pep Rally itself will be hosted in the main gym with new and returning games from previous years that will allow the crowd and the student body to get involved and influence their classes spirit spirit week points. With the Pep Rally being SGO's last large event of the year, we are also focused on organizing elections for future SGO and class officers as well as planning for next year's success. For clubs and the school environment, as graduation nears everything is kind of coming full circle. The National Honor Society held its
004senior awards ceremony on Wednesday, May 20th where senior members received their graduation cords and the junior class was honored as inductees. The National Math Honor Society held its ceremony on Monday, June 1st and other organizations such as the Social Studies Honor Society, the Art Honor Society and Girls in STEM also received their cords. School clubs including the Interact Club and TSA or Technology Student Association are hosting end-of-year parties for their members bringing students together one last time before summer break. The senior recognition and award ceremonies are being held on Wednesday, June 10th and seniors who have achieved high academic standing or received MEF scholarships will be honored honored for their hard work. Finally, all those speaking at graduation have finished revising their speeches and will start practicing their delivery in the coming days. With graduation
005less than 2 weeks away, everyone is determined to give it their all and have a memorable end to school year. Um just before I end, I would like to have some remarks in light of all the students of the senior class coming up to speak. Personally, I am a senior and I will be attending Carnegie Mellon this fall for mechanical engineering. Um and I would like to thank the board for everything they do but also the district. As a student who has done many things here, I've done almost every musical activity, rocketry club, I've taken CAD, woodshop, plenty of AP courses. I've seen really everything the school and the district has to offer. And without proper funding, without proper support and resources, you know, that wouldn't be possible. So, uh the board has a big
006hand in that and also the teachers, the the facilities, the faculty um really play such a large part in not only my education, but everyone you heard speak before um and all the underclassmen, everyone coming through the district. So, thank you so much for everything you do. Uh it's been an honor to be here for the past 2 years and speak every month. Uh it's been something I really look forward to. Um so, thank you and I know Daisy can't be here, but I extend my thanks to Daisy and the Cap News as well for trusting with this position. Um and thank you so much, everyone. It's been great. Congratulations, Karen. >> Congratulations. >> Is that Karen? >> Me, too. >> Good night. >> We had a good report. >> Yeah, one last thing. >>
007[laughter] >> I would like to say a couple of words. Um I know it's late and at night, but I have served on the Morris School Board with other colleagues for some time now. And after the 2020 pandemic was over, uh the board and administration re-examined what was important to do for the district moving forward. We stepped back and looked at our district to emerge with clarity. The referendum that will be placed on the ballot for the vote in September is part of of the result of this examination. We are clear on and certain on what needs to be done for the health, safety, and quality of life of our students and school community. Since this is our last board meeting for the 2025-26 school year, I would like to wish everyone a healthy and
008a restful summer. Thank you. Next, I'd like to have us Oh, I need to read the public comment portion. Um before we open the meeting to public comment, we wish to remind you that our meeting is now video recorded and publicly aired. While the board welcomes and encourage published public comment, we ask that you be respectful including in any comments you might make about staff. The board does not endorse any comments made by a speaker, nor will the board be held liable for any comments made by members of the public. The law prevents the board from speaking about specific students and about personnel matters. For this reason, the board will not answer any questions on these subjects. Finally, the board's policy limits each speaker to 3 minutes. We ask that you respect this policy and
009the time of our fellow community members by concluding our comments once you reach 3 minutes. Your comments once you reach 3 minutes. Public comment is open for an hour or until public comments are complete, whichever comes first. At this point, I would like to invite any members of the public to come forward and provide your full name and address. Wait time. Can I help you? Okay. All right. If none, uh we close the uh public comment uh section. And uh at this point we have uh we'll have some short board committee reports. I know this is not short. [laughter] Uh beginning with uh Linda for curriculum. >> So, uh hopefully you can hear me. I'm giving the report for uh Meredith Davison who is not here with us this evening. The curriculum meeting, of which
010I'm a member of the committee by the way, and was there. Um we heard some wonderful presentations during their last curriculum meeting um about a um package called uh LinkIt. LinkIt is a um uh student archive uh software that allows us to capture and utilize student achievement data in a much more efficient effective way. We're actually piloting this in our school district this year and we'll make a decision um depending on the success of the pilot whether to expand that um throughout the entire um uh school district, but it looks very promising and we would be really excited to be able to capture data, uh formulate reports and whatnot without having to go um ditch digging basically to pull data out from various sources. So, that was uh very encouraged by that presentation. We also
011had um some special presentations by um Diana Pinto Gomez um relative to special education and our bilingual and ESL um activities. For bilingual, uh she spoke about the uh new comprehensive curriculum, uh assessment and monitoring of student progress, professional development, family and community engagement, the enrollment numbers, which are decreasing by the way, and May uh May 15th of this year, it was 866, which is down significantly from where it's been in the past. On a special ed her um um material included compliance information, curricular enhancements, professional development, community engagement, uh CPAC parent workshops, enrollment numbers there as well, and some goals. So, uh those were very, very informative. In addition to that, we um of course reviewed our minutes, approved some field trips, um approved a virtual remote plan for delivery of education to students
012um from remote basis. That's We have to do that. Uh it's a it's a statutory requirement, even though we're not doing remote um learning right now. Uh but in the event that we need to, we have a plan for how we would do so. Um we spoke about some MEF grants, which I'll talk about later when I get to my finance report, so we won't do it twice. Uh looked at some summer programs, reviewed our nursing plan, and um took a look at the um dis- district assessment dates, um technology committees, and uh did a preview of the material you saw tonight from Sophia with the college and career outcomes. For our our um younger students, we looked at uh the sunrise sunset handbook and calendar, which was uh um was accepted without changes. Uh
013took a look at some future planning for Savvis, and uh reviewed from an informational standpoint the kindergarten screener. There's a teacher's manual, a parent letter, and a bunch of information that'll be available to uh parents of our younger students. And then um we will get um back on the agenda in a future meeting for some report requests and also some comments on the nursing plan, which was just for review, but we'll look at it in more detail going forward. So, if I may segue right into the finance meeting, um the finance meetings was I'm missing that page, uh not sure where it went. Yeah. Um okay, so we started with a transportation report um from our transportation folks and talked about the fact that we are actually purchasing for the first time a van, which
014will be used for smaller trips, and it will help us be more efficient and effective in terms of our transport for trips that require fewer seats. We also took delivery um of five 29-passenger buses that were delivered on May 28th, and we'll be selling two vehicles later this summer. We completed our statutory requirements to do spring of actuation drills. Those were completed in the spring of 2026. Uh we talked about some EESY and summer programming, basically doing bus routing for the coming school year. And uh talked about the number of bus trips that we did for our joint year agreements as well as our sports um trips for April and May. Um and I'm happy to say that we we keep our bus drivers busy. So, they're running around all the time. Um the joint
015year, by the way, which is on the agenda tonight under um is actually all the joint years under business matters 12, 13, and 14 for non-public Morris Plains in um Morris County Educational Services will be approving those going into next year. Um the our biggest agreement I think is with Morris Plains where we're providing their two and from school transportation. The value of that agreement is about $600,000. Additionally, we went through some facility updates. This is um over and above what we're talking about in the referendum. This is um uh work that we're funding locally. Uh we have underway the turf field at Frelinghuysen Middle School. The turf is currently in production with expected delivery on July 1. And after delivery, it's expected that it'll be installed in about 4 weeks. Uh I'm going to
016tell you they haven't been there. The progress of work is just astounding. They're going really, really fast and it looks great. The dugouts are on back order are expected in the fall. Um we have 11 projects planned for this summer to be overseen by our buildings and grounds staff. Again, this is uh separate from the referendum. This is the investment that we make normally on an annual basis for our buildings and grounds. Um and um they're all critical items that we want to get done this summer. Um we uh talked about a new state program that gives us uh it'll give us $7,000 for um reimbursement of replacement water fountains and lead filters. This is a new state program. This is uh motion nine. Oh, excuse me. We have motion nine and insurance renewal with
017um Horizon as well. We spoke last time we were together about the impact of the health care costs. Uh this is approving the existing agreement with Horizon which includes a 17% increase and we're talking actively about making some changes with that um possibly as early as August. Um which Anthony can talk about later he wants to. Um the talked about that already. We're opening bids for mobile internet devices. We provide those to students who don't have access to internet at their home. So, they have a hotspot that we the school gives them so they can continue their Chromebooks at home. Um we had to reject a bid for HVAC uh supplies because of a material defect in the bid, but we'll rebid that quickly. Um we also are doing lease purchase financing for some technology
018equipment, copiers, buildings and grounds vehicles, and so on. The bid opening for that occurred on May 29th. And we got a very attractive interest rate from TD Bank with that. Um the scoreboard for uh Filling High's interior field will be opened on June 11th, which is just a couple days away. And um we have um an RFP for community school expansion care. We had one response to that is being reviewed for possible approval in July. Um back to the grants that I mentioned earlier, we uh I have on motion four under educational matters, three grants from the Morris Educational Foundation, who have been excellent partners with us. One is $32,000 for cultural arts. One is about $7,000 for Woodland to bring um it's called learning to learning for life uh play for the um kindergarten
019students. And then there's a $3,000 grant for uh a FMS peer um leader program known as uh Falcon Flight Crew. So, thanks to the MEF for that. In addition, under business matters, motion six, seven, and eight, uh we have three more donations. Uh one from the Paulina Rosina Santoro Foundation. It's an annual donation that goes to Normandy Park Library, and the money is used to purchase books in Paulina Apollo's Excuse me, Paula's memory. Um we uh received uh $2,900 from the Rotary Club. Uh this was to thank us for providing uh assistance to their superhero half marathon. Um those that donation will go to the Morris High School Interact Club for the students' volunteer work. And finally, we had some costume supplies donated by Maureen Caruso. And as usual, we send a letter of thanks
020to every generous donor who offers assistance to the school district. Um we're amending the grant salaries for ESEA and PEA grant salaries. This is just moving money from one line item item to another. It's not really changing the money. It's just moving the money around. Um we have a a whole list of contract information in the agenda because we have to approve in advance of the beginning of the next school year all of our renewed uh contracts with the school, all the state contracts, and so on. So, I'm not going to go through all those, but they're um there's a laundry list of those. And then finally, you also see in the agenda a series of business reorganization motions and annual items that have to be taken care of including uh a motion for deposit
021into our capital and maintenance reserves. Um we discussed the bond referendum uh resolution, which uh is going to be uh approved this evening, one assumes. It also includes uh the um the question that will be um appearing on the September ballot uh as well as the interpretive statement. Um I believe that's in the agenda for you to read as well. And um we started something brand new, which is really fantastic. It's a gymnastics co-op with Randolph. This is the first time that we've co-op cooperatively had students from two schools participate in a joint team to do, in this case, gymnastics. That's motion 26 under business matters. And uh back to the healthcare thing, as I mentioned, we're we're looking at um we've talked to our team organization and the staff regarding uh potentially changing from
022Horizon to Cigna. Uh looks like that may go forward uh if approved, and it would be effective August 1st. So, that's all I have. Sorry, that wasn't short. >> Thank you. >> [laughter] >> No. >> Never short. >> Uh for human resources, uh the human resource committee met, and we discussed many uh openings that were that needed to be filled, and in including administrative positions, and in tonight's agenda, hopefully you will the board will approve them. Uh it was um uh it's a busy department at this time of the year, and but we are confident that we will have all positions filled for the start up of the new year. Uh and policy that >> Yes. Certainly. Um the policy committee last met on May 29th. I know you all can read your minutes. No
023questions have been brought to my attention. Items one and two under discussion have been tabled for the reasons listed in the um minutes. Item three, policy 6113 has been approved for first read, and then the very long list of policies for periodic district district review, unless otherwise noted in the minutes, have all been reviewed and approved for first read this evening. As As we reviewed our district and individual school counts reports, as well as the K-5 section counts. Next meeting is July 17th. Thank you. Um business matters. Uh Tina, would you kindly read um this statement? >> Sure. No, I don't think so. >> Okay. That's it. >> As a appointed representative of the Sending Morris Plains School District to the Morris School District Board of Education, I would like to clarify that my votes
024on tonight's business agenda items will will relate only to those items that are identified as applicable district-wide to grades pre-K to 12 or to high school grades 9 to 12. I am abstaining from voting on any agenda items pertaining solely to the elementary middle schools, grades pre-K to 8. >> Uh thank you. And Linda, will you kindly move a motion for e-session? >> Sure. Moving uh minutes motions one and two. >> I'll second. >> Is there any discussion? Then Anthony, please call the roll. >> Mrs. Agu? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Cole? >> Yes. >> Ms. Perry? >> Yes. >> Ms. Pilch? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Biota? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Wall? >> Yes. >> Ms. Murphy? >> Yes. >> Dr. Rodriguez? >> Yes. >> Moving policy motion one. >> I'll second. >> Any discussion? Then
025Anthony, please call the roll. >> Mrs. Agu? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Cole? >> Yes. >> Ms. Perry? >> Yes. >> Ms. Pilch? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Biota? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Wall? >> Yes. >> Ms. Murphy? >> Yes. >> Dr. Rodriguez? >> Yes. >> Moving educational matters motions one through six. >> I'll second. >> Any discussion? Then Anthony, please call the roll. >> Mrs. Agu? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Cole? >> Yes. >> Ms. Perry? >> Yes. >> Ms. Pilch? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Biota? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Wall? >> Yes. >> Miss Murphy >> Yes. >> Dr. Rodriguez >> Yes. Moving people services motions one and two. >> I'll second. >> Any discussion? If none, Anthony, please call the roll. >> Mrs. Ogun >> Recuse on one, yes to two. >> Mrs. Cole >> Recuse
026on one, yes on two. >> Miss Perry >> Yes. >> Miss Pilchak >> Yes. >> Mrs. Biola >> Yes. >> Mrs. Wall >> Yes. >> Miss Murphy >> Yes. >> Dr. Rodriguez >> Yes. Moving human resources motions one through 54. >> I'll second. >> Any discussion? If none, Anthony, call the roll. >> Mrs. Ogun >> Yes. >> Mrs. Cole >> Yes. >> Miss Perry >> Yes. >> Miss Pilchak >> Yes. >> Mrs. Biola >> Yes. >> Mrs. Wall >> Yes. >> Miss Murphy >> Yes. >> Dr. Rodriguez >> Yes. Moving business matters motions one through 42. >> I'll second. >> Any discussion? Then Anthony, please call the roll. >> Mrs. Ogun >> Yes. >> Mrs. Cole >> Yes. >> Miss Perry >> Recuse from 13, yes to the rest. >> Miss Pilchak >> Yes. >>
027Mrs. Biola >> Yes. >> Mrs. Wall >> Yes. >> Miss Murphy >> Yes. >> Dr. Rodriguez >> Yes. >> That concludes uh the business matters. And now uh any new business? >> Dr. Rodriguez >> Um I'd like to just follow up and thank you for the summary of the very busy spirit of HRs. And I'd also like to thank the board for considering all that work and uh passing the motion. And I'd like to be the first one to officially congratulate uh Mr. Cryley who you've just appointed to be our assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. >> I will keep it brief um you know it's late so I'm going to steal a line from Dr. Muchi uh she always says I didn't know places like the Morris School District and I can't agree with
028that sentiment more. Um when I came here 2 years ago it was not a decision that I took lightly. I spent over a decade in my previous district building a climate, a community watching students grow up, seeing the the good through families, seeing the bad times that they had to go through um and it was a hard decision to come here but it is one that I will never regret. So um I thank you so much for the the collaboration, uh the trust in me with this position and I look forward to working with all of you. So thank you very much. >> Congratulations. Any other uh new business today? If none, I'd like to a motion to adjourn. >> I'll make a motion to adjourn. >> I second that. >> All in favor? >>
029No hesitation. >> So good night everyone. >> Good night. >> Thank you everybody. >> Thank you Vinny.