Princeton Public Schools Board of Education Meeting 7/27/21

001it's a little cozy yeah really what's with that hi hello hi renee how are you i'm doing well how are you good hello elizabeth haven't seen you in a while how are you good how are you good thank you purpose hello to our friends from cpag hi kurt long time no see yep long time no see good to see everybody i'm going into the land of mute now it gets really hard to count people when we have this many in the panel we're waiting for dan yeah i see that uh yeah excuse me matt i need to have permission to record please there we go nine i think we're all here now matt are you ready that was [Music] just trying to give kurt authority to record but for some reason i always forget where

002that control is mine says it's recording it's recording live on the uh web but we usually have a backup uh hold on give me one second [Music] so uh my screen set shows that it's recording and i clicked a button uh asking me to consent so i believe we are recording it is recording live on the uh web we'll just go with the backup in case something goes wrong i can't find it this time i'll keep looking as we go let's let's open up okay ready welcome to this public meeting of the princeton board of education the board is an elected unpaid group of 10 citizens who set policy and make decisions on educational financial and personnel matters for the princeton public schools on behalf of all residents we are always pleased when members of

003the community attend our meetings the board and the school district operate under applicable new jersey laws and under regulations of the new jersey state board of education each meeting includes an opportunity for those attending to comment on items on the published agenda or other matters of interest to them the board reserves the right to limit the time allotted to public participation law limits discussion of individual personnel and confidential matters we desire that our meetings provide useful opportunities for communication between the board and the community so thank you for attending as required under the open plus me uh open public meeting act njsa 1046 at sequentia adequate notice was given for call on this meeting it was authorized by the board of education and forward it to the missile clerk the princeton packet in the times

004on january 6 2021 and distributed also to the schools and others on the standard distribution list the board reserves the right to enter into executive session during all meetings of the board of education board policy 2230 recording devices requires that we inform those attending this virtual zoom meeting that the proceedings are being recorded this meeting is not being live streamed public members who wish to make comment at the appropriate time as noted in the agenda or added by the presiding officer shall raise their hand quote unquote virtually at the bottom of the zoom screen once called upon the member of the public will be requested to unmute themselves by clicking the mute button at the bottom of the zoom screen the representative of the senate district is authorized to vote on such matters that affect

005sending district students or affect the governance of the prince of public schools as more specifically designated in njsa 18a 38.1 in the event this statute is amended the law shall take precedence over this bible sending district votes pertaining to personnel actions refer to high school central administration and district-wide staff only votes otherwise are considered abstentions thank you mr bolton would you please call the role i will beth barron here debbie bronfeld here dan dart here betsy baglio here ryan mcdonald president michelle tuck ponder president daphne kendall here susan cantor yeah gene durbin president we have a quorum thank you uh the first order on our agenda tonight is item d1 adoption of minutes for june 15 2021 our meeting could i have a motion please from gene ii brian thank you any discussion if not

006could we have a roll call for approval f baron yes evan brownfield yes dan dart yes bagley yes ryan mcdonald yes gel talk ponder daphne kendall yes susan cantor yes gene durbin yes motion passes thank you motion passed um the next item is the adoption of minutes for the june 29th 2021 meeting could i have a motion please gene second brian any discussion if no discussion could we have a vote on the minutes of june 29th left baron yes debbie brownfield yes and art yes etsy bagley yes ryan mcdonald yes michelle tuck ponder yes captain candle abstain susan canda gene durbin yes motion passes thank you that brings us to the president's report and i just want to welcome everyone to our monthly meeting for july and it's a big day for us because it

007is the first meeting where we are joined by dr carol kelly our new superintendent and so we want to give for a big warm welcome carol it's good to have you here with us thank you for coming all this way and we know you've been through a lot this month moving moving from chicago to new jersey and um settling in and i know you're doing your your listening tour and your your um your first 100 days and i'm sure you'll tell us a bit about that but we're very glad to have you and so just be very warmly welcomed by us um we're also going to have a big packed agenda tonight we've got some some really interesting reports that are going to come we're going to hear from our cpag we'll hear more about

008that later and we've got a lot of business um but we do like to start out with a bit of gratitude and so we've got two two parts of gratitude tonight um the first one i would ask um gene durbin do you have something for us i do um just a note of gratitude for our special ed pto now known as a special education parents advisory group or cpag for shining a thoughtful light on social emotional and educational wellness in the district thanks also goes to the leadership joanna canty weir julie cho ginny bryant and lindsay crews for their professionalism care and support for princeton public school students families and educators these four wonder women have dedicated countless hours meeting with district officials holding regular informational and listening sessions with parents and providing detailed communications

009about matters that impact all of our students especially those receiving special education services and their families we look forward to their presentation tonight and are so grateful for their service to and support of our school community thank you jean thanks to this epag ladies thank you very much we had one more quick one susan cantor i just like to take a few moments on behalf of the board and the entire princeton public school community to thank christina donovan for her tireless work on behalf of our students during her tenure here i personally saw how she and her team were there for some of our darkest days in our districts but how impactful she was with our students and their families and private conversations and meetings as well she preached resiliency and finding joy for students

010in their studies and after school passions and i know her colleagues thank her for her tireless efforts and collaboration and join all of us in wishing her the best in her future endeavors and we all know the district is better because of her contributions thank you christina thank you susan um and that brings us to uh the presentation by our cpa group uh they were just uh spoken about a bit by gene durbin but this is the special education parents advisory group of our district and we look forward to hearing what they have to say so take it away oh is it possible to share our screen or to have someone pull up the slides go ahead you're good oh perfect thanks so i can i can start while you're doing that so and thank

011you gene for those words i never thought i'd get teary at an introduction in a board meeting so that's great and thank you to the board and dr kelly for your partnership and collaboration not just tonight for our annual update but in meeting with us already and laying the foundation for a future partnership my name is jenny bryant i'm one of the co-presidents of the cpag the special education parent advisory group and i'm lindsay cruz the former co-president and an advisor also joining us tonight we have julie cho who's a previous co-president and the current secretary and joanna were the current co-president as the four cpag leaders here tonight we represent a pretty good cross-section of elementary middle and high school parents we've got a range of physical intellectual and other learning disabilities we have

012children in the district and one child who's being served out of the district we've got a parent of twins who has the unique opportunity to observe the similarities and differences between a general education and a special education student services and professionally we work in the law in finance and education we're involved in leadership and disability policy and other organizations both within new jersey and nationally so combined the four of us we've got a lot of bases covered tonight we wanted to discuss three things in our conversation and the first is to explain sort of what is a special education parent advisory group and to sort of ground us all in the collective our collective work to date and the second is to talk about where we are now as a district in serving the needs

013of all students and last to share our specific takeaways and calls to action from that recent um special education program review so first quick introduction special education parent advisory group a cpeg is a state mandated body that is created to provide input to the district on issues that concern students with disabilities so our executive board includes liaisons from every school in the district and also we have liaison rules for students for people who are out of district placements for the charter school and for other community groups so the cpac is open to all any resident or pps staff member with an interest in education anyone over 18 uh with or a parent or a student with an iep or a 504 can be members our mission is to engage educate and empower so those are

014our sort of buzzwords for the year right educate engage in power and we want to do that with our community of families and educators at pps this means that our work is to address systemic issues that affect students not individual students but sort of higher level systemic things and we do that by soliciting feedback from families of students with ieps and or 504 plans and then we provide input to the district on system level issues with the goal of improving policies and programs and services for the nearly one in five students who receive special education services or accommodations the the key ways that we do that is to engage educate and empower our members directly right we have um general cpag meetings we have annual events at the beginning of the year like a meet

015and greet we have a superintendent's roundtable uh board of education candidates tonight um we have a newsletter and a website to reach out to members the second way that we do this is to collaborate with the district leadership right we meet regularly with student services leadership we're part of the district-wide ptoc um the board of education and the cpeg liaisons and as much as we can we try to have one of our members attending the student achievement committee or equity committee meetings the third way that we uh get involved is to provide input to district decision makers so in the past a cpag member was sort of part of um included as part to hiring committees program reviews and other key policies and procedures just to represent the perspectives of special education families um we

016thought it would also be helpful because the shift to this more formal and cpeg structure is relatively recent so also just to talk about what is the benefit what can happen for kids when we do that and a recent example is that millville public schools in new jersey recently shared the impact of working with their cpeg and having this structure and a couple things that they were able to do based on parent input one was during covid they were able to bring related services to students with disabilities if they were unable to attend in person and they were also able to offer additional in-person related services to students with disabilities during virtual learning they also increased the benchmark data that they collected about kids to be able to identify students who needed targeted and intensive

017supports to inform instruction they provided additional academic tutoring and a really positive outcome of this work was also creating an enhanced transition program at the high school level that included additional certified community-based instructors job coaches and transportation for students to to work within that program and both millville and another district bridgeton also spoke about the collaboration between parents leading to providing spanish interpretation to their cpeg event so being able to reach more families in better ways and more accessible ways so with our transition to the structure the district will have full full access to the resources provided by an organization by the name of spam which provides training and support to all of the cpegs and is connected to the state and it also gives us a larger ability to connect with other districts in

018new jersey to learn with them as well so given all of this where we are where are we as a district when we think about how are we educating all kids um so it's a little bit late hopefully everyone's had dinner um we're gonna we're gonna ask you to imagine with us a little bit that you are planning a dinner party and you've got 10 people coming for dinner on wednesday and you're trying to figure out what to serve so you want something that most people like you want something convenient maybe something you can make ahead of time maybe you could keep it in the oven while you visit with the guests you pick lasagna who doesn't love lasagna it's tasty it's convenient it's easy to plan it's easy to shop for you can buy

019it in bulk and by the way you have your italian grandmother's recipe for lasagna it's the best lasagna ever so we want you to consider that this dinner party is a metaphor for how we think about and or end up serving kids in our district we in my own sorry we wait don't give up the lasagna right so we make really really really good lasagna in this district right we make blue ribbon lasagna it's really good people love our lasagna people move here to get more of our lasagna but we know from our special education families and what we've now heard in other places too like that equity audit like this special education program review like this most recent math review and other identity and equity-based parents group what we now know is that the

020lasagna is not enough so back to the dinner party let's look um we're making lasagna we've got the people coming next week right 10 people coming on wednesday i make this great italian grandmother meat lasagna who can't eat right the gluten-free people can't eat lactose intolerant no you can't eat but maybe you could just scrape off all the cheese um keto nope you can't eat vegan definitely not right we'll give you a salad we're probably gonna have a salad on the side um maybe you'll be okay if you just have the salad or um maybe you could just bring something for yourself so then we might say actually for the vegetarians we're actually going to make a vegetarian lasagna we're going to make a separate meal a small little vegetarian lasagna we'll make a special

021little lasagna just for you so if we only make lasagna for most people right for the majority of eaters in our um context in our metaphor the lasagna eaters would be um the average learner right so in this district that probably means the white middle-class neurotypical people they're the lasagna eaters so if we only make lasagna for the majority of eaters we got a few issues we've got um people that we don't even invite to come to the dinner party right we have people who can't eat anything at all or we're spending lots of time making like five different little meals right we've got the the vegetarian and the gluten-free and the keto and the whatever right we got five liter meals and then at the dinner party it's actually even worse than that um

022even if we made enough meals for everybody there's a chance that they won't want the little special meal that we made for them right they might say that vegetable lasagna looks fantastic i would like the vegetable lasagna but we only have a little bit of let vegetable lasagna right we've only got that for the vegetable vegetarians right if you're not a vegetarian you can't eat that because that's just for them that's a special meal so you know have you ever been on an airplane and you like that vegetarian meal over there you can't have it because you didn't sign up for the right the special diet you didn't sign up for that no no lasagna for you so instead of making a lasagna that only feeds 70 of the people the new approach would be

023what if we created a buffet where everyone could sit at the same table we are all kids not just the ones with the ieps but where all kids could get what they need and they want so going back to the dinner party what if you had a lasagna bar like with all the different ingredients so what if you have a buffet that included um you know the vegetable lasagna and the meat lasagna and then a whole bunch of other stuff right you have different proteins and different kind of vegetables and some cooked and some raw and some dairy and some carbs and you probably even have some desserts up there you have a buffet with all the options um the big buffet table everyone gets to get their food from the same table right everyone

024gets to get in the same line everyone gets to go to the same buffet and then you pick and choose what you want right maybe you had a huge lunch and you just want a little bit maybe you want to you had a bad day and you want to eat dessert first no one is left out no one has to go to a separate room everyone like no one's weird for being a vegan right that you got to go over there and you don't even get to sit at our table like you have the buffet and everyone gets to pick what they want so the better approach um the way we do this it's it's um consistent with what we say we want when we say we're talking about equity and excellence for all students

025right the better approach is to stop making lasagna but make a big buffet make the big buffet um in educational terms that's called universal design for learning or udl it's at the heart of many of the recommendations that we're going to talk about in this um in the special education program review but also showed up in the equity report um we're keeping the same when you make the buffet right you keep the same rigorous and ambitious goals under udl um you serve a healthful and filling meal but you intentionally provide many different ways to get there and you do it in a way that builds choice for people so um under udl you're proactively assuming and embracing the diverse needs of all learners right and then you intentionally build and plan for them rather than

026trying to sort of retrofit and make adjustments and corrections later right we know that when you have a dinner party guaranteed right someone's going to say i don't like mushrooms or i hate tomatoes or i've got a medical condition that says i can't even have one speck of that or else right we already know that you know it's coming um it's predictable so in the udl approach to a dinner party you'd solve for that first right make the thing that it makes it accessible for people you when you build and plan for them for the people then everyone can eat you're not just serving one meat lasagna because it's your grandmother's best recipe so i feel like i'm a big letdown because jenny is so uh i get the fun part she's she's she's fun

027but she's also great but um so what we wanted to just end with was talk specifically about our reflections and calls to actions from the most recent um program review and with this sort of lasagna metaphor in mind and at the risk of having too many metaphors i think we all know there's clear legal and academic risks if we don't address the findings in the particular review but what we wanted to address was just the bigger picture that what came out of this program review is really the canary in the coal mine for some systemic issues that we need to address in the issue in the um in the district that signals this need for a greater shift in culture systems and how we see and serve all kids not just kids with ieps um

028and if ever there was a time for that change it's now we've got opportunity and momentum we have a wealth of information in our equity audit and in our program review in our reopening plans we say we want to reimagine learning and dr kelly we can be more thrilled to have you leading the district now with your vision for educational equity and excellence and in addition to comments you've shared in your opening letter about dismantling the barriers built into our current system and really the collective vision that you all share and that we all share for an active culture of inclusion and anti-racism in our district so now is the time and where we need to go is not just to make a better lasagna we don't need to improve the recipe we need to

029think differently so what we thought we would do um is we know the program review was long it was 90 pages without the appendix and we as parents and professionals in the work are steeped in this language every day and still found it hard to go through and so while one of the things we're working on is a cpeg is to try and make like a plain language summary of what what is this report saying what we thought was a better use of time tonight was really to emphasize what are the more systemic findings that this that this program review pulls out that we would ask you all as an administration to sort of take in earnest from the report so for four key things the first is to create a share a culture of

030shared ownership and accountability the first thing the report mentioned and then 11 times thereafter in the report was a pervasive lack of clarity of ownership of accountability and a shared climate and culture across all manners of serving our kids and this is the foundation that lets everything else happen or creates barriers for all the other good intentions and good efforts to fail if we don't address this and we've seen this lack of a culture of shared ownership even in the response to the program review and comments that have followed out about it being a gen ed these are gen ed issues or these are special education issues and the initial response to the program review was in many ways emblematic of this culture there were four goals two identified as general education goals two identified

031as special education goals rather than collective goals and at first pass they're really a list of tasks versus a measurable outcome of what will be different for kids as a result of this how will we know if we made a difference versus completed the work the second real call to action is to address the lack of basic systems for equity so the report named the lack of a need to improve systems that are considered foundational in most districts so a multi-tiered system of supports is really what allows schools to intervene as early as possible with students who struggle and to include as many kids as possible in their least restrictive environment a good mts system is also focused on the whole child so a good mtss system talks about identification processes and tiers of intervention

032for not just academics but social social and emotional wellness and behavior the report named that we have some of this but there's still confusion across the board of what's in what tier and and and sort of who owns which piece the second thing the report named is that we don't have a formal positive behavior system something that's even more essential now more than ever as we have kids returning to school after navigating double pandemics and it's also something that's essential to helping address disproportionate discipline and then last the report name that there's no standard operating procedures for special education which can result in inconsistent services across schools even for students who may have the same profile and when we read this we can say this resonates with something a parent shared at one of our

033cpa events for those of you who are old enough to remember the video game the legend of zelda he said it's like the legend of zelda you have to ask the right question in just the right way to the right person at the right time and then this door opens and you learn about a service that is available to your child and the challenge is when we have a system like that it favors the well-connected families who are comfortable with and who also have the privilege and time and resources to advocate the third call to action is to really think um about going beyond tinkering and self-study and really invest holistically in this work if we believe in the findings of this program review then let's double down support it and invest in it so

034a critical reflection um of this was really about um there needing to be sort of additional capacity one of the things we heard in the solutions is over the course of two years we'll develop a workshop to address this particular issue and as parents collective parents and that like we have kids in schools today who can't afford to wait for two years for us to train teachers and then for that training to take hold and then for the impacts so if we do believe in this we've got to think beyond incremental change and homegrown solutions and give our teachers and our educators the support they need to really be able to implement this work a couple examples that the report cited was just some pervasive issues with the rigor and appropriateness of iep goals for

035all students this is something that we've been told for the last three years has been a focus for the student services team is developing and improving iep goals so that's three years that not all kids have had rigorous ambitious and appropriate goals in their ieps similarly the report highlighted the five years that pps was found to disproportionately identify hispanic students for special education there were funds appropriated to address this and what we understand to be the case is that those funds were used to um support a behaviorist and an interventionist to work with um schools to help them understand better the steps that need to happen in the referral process before we designate a student as eligible for an iep yet the report still cited issues with that referral process and while we're no longer

036designated under the state's identification system is disproportionate what we know from this report is we still have a high risk ratio for black and hispanic students so the report name that we have we are three times as likely to identify hispanic students for a specific learning disability than other students and we're two times as likely to identify hispanic students for a speech impairment over other students we're also two times as likely to do to identify black students for other health impairment specific learning disability and language impairment over other students we said this at the beginning but our kids don't have time for us to fix these things on the margin and we cannot ask busy people internally coming out of a pandemic and one of the most challenging years to home grow a solution what

037we would ask is if we are serious about kids and we are serious about equity then we need to find that fire in our belly and make the investment to fix it now that means bringing in professional support and expertise to help make the change faster and rooting that in the latest evidence and research we understand that the district chose not to pursue an opportunity to apply for a grant that would have provided three to five years of technical assistance leadership development and an inclusion facilitator to address many of the issues that were cited in the program review and moreover we would ask that when we try and solve things with professional development which we believe deeply deeply deeply in that we don't as a district always appear to think through the follow-through and coaching

038that needs to support that professional development or the structural systems that teachers need to be able to implement that change so an example of this might be co-teaching that was cited in the report if we do training of our teachers for how to effectively co-teach together that will only go so far unless we help principals create the structural changes to their schedules to allow those teachers to plan together and to be able to get feedback on that process and to create the culture and expectation that that's what we do here and then last but absolutely not least we just need to stop creating a system that is separate and an equal and look hard at the way we use and hold ourselves accountable to data and possibly the bias in our expectations so we currently

039based on the report include black and hispanic students with ieps in the general education classroom at a rate lower than other students despite the evidence showing the positive impact of inclusion on all kids achievement and while the report points out that a larger percentage of princeton students spend 80 or more of their day in gen ed compared to the state average you'd probably think like okay cool we're good we're at the state average but the context of that state average is that new jersey is the second lowest state in the country on rates of inclusion so we are average of the second lowest uh state the other thing the report cited is an average of 40 achievement gaps between students with disabilities and students without and so again while the report says that's about average

040for new jersey what we would ask you all as a body to consider is is hitting the state average our goal for all kids in the district because we also seem very proud that we are number the number one district in the state so is state average good enough for our general education kids as well or do we actually want to be number one in the state for all of our kids is our achievement gap at the state average sufficient let me pause there because i got to be sort of yeah i guess i drew the short story to be sort of debbie downer and i just want to name like we know this can be hard to hear and it is really hard as parents to live it but we are passionate about this

041because there are real kids our kids you with all of your kids impacted by this right now we also know we have really good people in this system with good desires but we need to change the system because it is not working so these actions really speak to those systemic issues and the sort of fundamental root causes that that cause challenges for our students and family every day and because these are the changes that set the table for us to be able to have that buffet um sorry yep nope that's okay so what we wanted to just talk about is we know we can do it and we are excited um and eager to partner with you all for anything we can do and so we wanted to talk a little bit but really just

042consider this the start of the dialogue of where can we go together and how can we work on this it's really three key areas communication action and partnership so on on our front from cpeg we'll do whatever is useful to try and create a public friendly sort of plain language term of the program review and help folks weigh in on that and just ask that we continue our transparency and communication back and forth with each other in terms of action and response we ask that the board and the administration really develop goals in response to this program review that both um leverage the i don't i'm sure people have heard of the smart goals framework but just really provide the rational rationale for why we're picking these things and then what will be different what

043will success look like so if co-teaching is one of the things that we want to focus on is the outcome not just that we did the training on co-teaching but we want to see more kids we want to see higher rates of inclusion in general education or we want to see more classes provide access via co-teaching to more students not just the required classes in the history so how can we frame this in terms of what's going to be different for kids as a result of this work and then in terms of partnership um we just first of all dr kelly we wanted to thank you and our board liaisons for just the willingness to meet and communicate on a regular basis and work on this together and for your commitment that you've already made

044to that and we will do our best to be good stewards in the equity and student achievement committees where we can be helpful and show up and then we just ask that we continue the voice of students with disabilities in hiring in program reviews as we think about reopening so with that we just want to thank you all um from the bottom of our heart for creating this space also dr kelly on your first meeting for letting us take the floor first we that was very gracious of you and we just appreciate you all and mickey and your team for your partnership thank you thanks if i can speak for a second i just want to thank you um and i really appreciate your thinking on the special ed program review we have not finished

045the goals the goals that we presented were draft goals so um your your thoughts and opinions and and thinking um we'll take back we haven't even had a chance to talk to dr kelly about the goals yet so um thank you for you know um thinking and thinking about switching them around a little bit so we'll take that into one consideration as we move forward so thank you for your partnership also it's it's been valuable and i'm so glad we've finally become a cpac thanks thank you um so are there are there any questions or comments or on the board to have now so i just wanted to say uh to uh lindsey and jenny thank you and joanna um very busy house here um i wanted to thank you for um taking the time

046you know they say if you want something done right give it to a busy person um you both uh work full-time you have kids and so that you took the time to um advocate for the 600 plus kids who are in special education in our system um i'm i as a parent i'm truly grateful for that so and to do it in such a professional way so thank you very much debbie yes i want to thank the four of you um i read the whole 90 pages or plus whatever and um i love how you broke it into kind of the sections and i love you know how you know you could put it in some categories that make really sense for us to attack and for us to work on and i'm really excited

047and um we would love you know for you to always come to our equity meetings they're the first monday or second monday at seven o'clock so please come um but you guys you know this is a lot of work and i know it's really heartfelt and you know very happy to support you guys going forward and thank you for the presentation thanks michelle um what debbie said but i want to add thank you for the concrete recommendations um i i love an action plan and i love when people you know well first of all the metaphor was fantastic and i i really like that a lot but i really appreciate an action plan you know you guys keep your nose to the grindstone you keep the pressure on us and you do great work and

048and i certainly appreciate it because every time you talk you educate me so thank you betsy and i'll just quickly i have not eaten so i'm starving um in a in a good way obviously we're just so lucky to be able to work with you and have you in our community and as michelle said you said exactly what i was going to say you know hold us keep us all accountable hold us all accountable and and we're all here to do the work with you um and for you on behalf of your kids so thanks again great okay thank you beth just two quick there i think there was a question about where the statistics are being presented we can answer we just we pulled them out of the report that is on the district

049web page under academics special education right so the full report can be found on this on the princeton public schools webpage and people can read it for themselves but your summary was very very helpful and i think there will be more summaries to come and as as mickey pointed out we we're just we just received it about a month ago and it's it's a work in progress and we have a lot in there to work on and it's a lot of useful data for dr kelly to to use as she plans going forward so uh with that i think we'll move on to the superintendent's report thank you good evening everyone how are you i am really excited to be here this evening my first official meeting as your new superintendent of princeton public schools

050i'm going to ask our extraordinaire board secretary if we could uh present my superintendence report have a quick presentation and i don't know matt maybe i'll just give you the cue like when we're we're ready so i'll let you know so the district's long legacy of academic excellence deep commitment as we have seen this evening already to helping each and every one of our students find their own pathway to success the diverse student body and core values of innovation and education are just a few of the reasons why this opportunity to be here this evening excites me as i stated in the introductory letter hopefully that all of you have seen i too am a mom of two sons so i know firsthand that every parent or guardian we want the very best for our

051children we want our children to thrive and feel a sense of belonging in the schools they attend we want our children to experience feelings of confidence and persistence with learning we want our children to feel known nurtured and valued in their learning setting no matter how young or how old your child may be so i sincerely believe that our schools can achieve that vision when it has the supporting necessary conditions to manifest belonging for every child that we have the opportunity and the blessing to serve and those supporting conditions i believe are instructional excellence an inclusive learning environment and creating places of learning for everyone our children as well as the adults to succeed and to thrive one individual a new superintendent cannot accomplish this alone thus i'm looking forward to partnering with each and

052every board member each and every family each and every staff member to accomplish this in the school years ahead together i believe and i want our collective legacy to reflect that we provided steadfast guidance and leadership towards helping princeton public schools actually achieve the mission for all students and that is preparing our students to lead lives of joy and purpose as knowledgeable creative and compassionate citizens of a global society and met i don't know if you could present the slideshow okay great and the next slide please that's in my first 100 days as your new superintendent my goal is to learn as much as i possibly can about who we are as a district today toward this goal i have begun to meet with many of you to listen to your lived experiences in princeton

053public schools next slide as i listen and as i learn from you we will together co-create our plan to build on the best of princeton further by listening and collaborating with each of you i believe that we can support all of our students together i firmly believe that our families and educators do have the best intentions which is a real critical foundation for building a school culture that is both welcoming and affirming for all and while many of our students are high achieving i believe with focused professional development for our educators and support for our students we can help all of our children achieve and thrive next slide so i have four objectives for my next 100 days and they are outlined by the following 90 of all of our parents are aware or very

054aware of our back to school details by september 1. another measurable objective that i have is for 65 percent of all internal and external stakeholders to understand the district's position on both equity and anti-racism by december 1. i'm striving for 75 percent of our parents and community groups to be involved in uh the campaign slogan that i've come up with is building on the best of princeton by december 1. and then my fourth measurable objective for my entry plan is to ensure that 75 of our internal stakeholders feel listened to heard and informed about what's happening in terms of our action planning by december 1. next slide my strategies and tactics for my entry planning really are under four umbrellas first is back to school planning we are hosting we had our first today rather

055i had my first opportunity to attend the district's health and safety task force meeting today so planning is underway for our looking ahead to the fall as i share it with the task force my goal is for all of our students to be in person monday through friday full time uh beginning on the first day of school so we are really planning uh to make that back to school as safe as possible for all of our students and all of our staff so i'm really pleased that we have not just a phenomenal task force that consists of our administrators but that we have partnerships with the school physician as well as public health officials here in town in addition to the tactics of hosting those task force meetings i will also be designing and working

056really hand in hand with our public information officer elizabeth collier to create a back to school digital campaign and i will be hosting many meet and greets to get the community and our families excited about our planning for uh back to school the second big strategy for me is uh continuing the needs assessment and setting our priorities for this upcoming school year along with our administrative team uh the entry planning interviews that i'm conducting as well as reviewing various documents my observations are allowing me to conduct the nice assessments and what i'm learning will be shared with the administrators when we have our two-day retreat in august so that we can co-create our goals or draft goals i should say for sy 22 which will eventually be shared with the board for uh approval and

057then from there we are going to be able to create a performance monitoring system for our leadership team uh by which i will be able to provide feedback and also provide coaching and support and also finally rather under priority setting the district has been accepted into the national equity projects a cohort called building equitable learning environment so we will have a design team that will be working with the national equity project and helping me to refine the priorities that we have set the third strategy in my entry planning process is engaging uh the community in the planning so i have been not only conducting the empathy interviews with all of our board members individually and administrators but i am planning to meet with various community leaders uh student focus groups and eventually with various staff

058members as well from there i want to have a regular cadence of advisory board meetings so that the community at large is engaged in our planning process and also engage in giving us feedback about the work that we are doing and then finally one of my key strategies for my entry plan is strengthening the structures and systems for internal communications i will be developing a schedule for a welcome tour once schools are reopened where i can go and visit each of the schools speaking with staff planning to hop in on various staff meetings and faculty meetings and also planning to use various uh communication vehicles to share our outcomes and what we're learning with our staff so that concludes my superintendent report next slide i will open it up to any questions are there any

059questions from the board staff now um thank you carol that was uh really um lovely to hear and see what you have planned for the next hundred days um with regard to back to school i was wondering um what your plan is um as far as informing the community about what a day is going to look like um are we going to be wearing masks and all that when do you think um how will that get out to the community uh so various forms of communication uh we are and actually uh on the agenda this evening is uh the consent agenda is approval of uh one of the the technical advisors that will be working hand-in-hand with myself and also with elizabeth uh keiki communication uh but we've begun to uh have uh as i

060said the health and safety task force meeting as i get nuggets that we uh firm up such as social distancing mass wearing uh how we're planning to uh handle lunch and things of that nature i'll be sharing that information with elizabeth we'll be sharing it out through a variety of mechanisms whether it's our webpage direct mailing to families tidbits via video pieces and things of that nature but we definitely and also the meet and greets we definitely want to make sure that individuals both the staff and also family feel very comfortable that we're keeping the health and safety of everyone at the forefront but at the same time having the goal that we really do want our students back in our schools um we are not trying to go back to normal as the quote

061says because normal never was for a lot of our students but we do want to have our students in place in the fall as long as we could do that safely thank you are there other questions for carol i don't know if we're supposed to take the questions beth from the chat box um so we've not talked about mandating uh yet um uh the vaccine for staff there may be some things for those staff and students that are vaccinated that they may have certain things in place for them but that information has not yet been ironed out as soon as we have that information we will definitely share and as you mentioned dr kelly you will be doing meet and greets in all of the different schools so parents will have an opportunity to ask

062you specific questions i know you're speaking to the ptoc later this week there's an event at the library uh that's hosting i think in a week or two yeah there are um there are many community um events that i will be uh attending and and i have to say i just really appreciate the board and uh the community the welcome has been so warm uh and just so uh lovely that i i really uh truly appreciate it um but some of some of the uh organizations that i have um may either make contact with or soon to make contact with uh cranberry superintendent i have in the next few days contacts with both the ymca the ywca the princeton parents of black children the jewish uh community uh relations council um garten uh cooperative diversity

063council whether witherspoon um saint presbyterian um the aapi group and the list just really goes on so uh everyone has been so accommodating to meeting with me and sharing their exp their lived experiences and that information is really helping to inform my agenda for the upcoming school year as well as helping you know when the team comes together uh helping us to co-construct what our collective action plan might be for for the district well i think we all do appreciate them the um methodical way that you are approaching uh you know your data collection and the fact that you had many of many of your strategies developed even before you arrived with us which we appreciate we know you had some very little precious time off between running your previous district and coming to us

064and moving here so we are grateful for all the work that you've already put into kind of in getting yourself rolling for the first 100 days and we again support you 100 percent and really want to do whatever we can to give you the space to get to know who we are and understand you know the needs of of princeton and and so so we look forward to our next steps together thank you thank you so much everyone um i think that brings us yes here's a give you a nice warm welcome thank you um i think that takes us next to the health and safety presentation great so that's me let me uh share my screen real quickly here again hold on one second a little technical difficulty with the slide show i don't

065want just give me one second uh just set me up uh dr kelly real quick it looks like when i when i shared your screen it overtook uh my presentation i'm just giving you one minute to pull it up here real quick so i'll be talking tonight about the health and safety referendum as soon as i find it again i had it here before and we'll have it again in a second as i'm sure uh so just to uh set up the process for those uh individuals who are watching this evening's board meeting uh what matt is about to share with you is a presentation regarding uh the upcoming um vote this evening that the board board is taking uh so one of the one of the things as and i know that i'm no

066longer an outsider but one of the things that i really appreciate about this process is how transparent it is and i really have not seen that in my this is my 10th year as a superintendent uh i've not seen that in other districts uh in terms of the the process and also matt probably will talk about that the way that the district is presenting this to the board and the community is also provides an opportunity for some efficiency in terms of the dollars that could be potentially uh recaptured um from the state uh so matt i will turn the floor over to you and you can take it away thank you so much dr kelly for the uh recovery there while i re-found the file pulled it up so the health and safety referendum so

067tonight princeton public schools uh or i'm sorry on january 25th princeton public schools will intend to ask the voters to approve a 17.5 million dollar referendum for necessary capital maintenance to replace and repair end-of-life systems and roofing the repairs will take place over the next two to four years this referendum is the fiscally responsible transparent way to perform this required work this is the first step in the process as detailed later on on pages eight and nine tonight we will ask the board to authorize submission of planned referendum projects to new jersey department of education the final dollars cannot go higher than this amount but they can go lower during the process the board would vote on the finalized dollars at the november 16th board meeting this is a fiscally responsible transparent way to perform

068this work because many districts over tax upfront and then put money in the bank for future piecemeal capital work which is not usually enough to adequately address the dollar needs hence districts are always scrambling why not be quote unquote up front and get up to 34 cents on every dollar spent we know our community when they understand this strategy will embrace it and help us move this forward what will it include new roofing that will be solar ready skylights gutters siding and fascia deteriorating masonry outdated rooftop hvac equipment this proposed referendum will would address crucial necessary capital items which affect the health and safety of our student and staff while receiving up to 34 cents on the dollar of principal and interest that we would pay to fund these repairs this money comes directly from

069the state of new jersey in the form of debt service aid this is the outline of the estimate of the dollars that we this is exactly the dollars we will be submitting to the new jersey doe as i previously stated uh we will be doing uh the roof replacements would be white ep epdm as i stutter or rubber roofs that are suitable for solar installations with proper racking systems which would not void the warranties on the roof we have obtained independent analysis of the 28 square foot pricing that spiesel used for the roof estimates and have found these estimates to be very conservative the above estimates contain a total of 35 percent contingency 25 built in into the pricing and then another additional 10 at the bottom this helps to combat inflationary pressures over the

070next few years as these projects are implemented this project also would include approximately 27 hvac units that are slated for replacement some of them are as much as uh 30 as many as 37 years old uh we did as you as you'll note as my uh astute board members and uh will note that we did add in a allotment for some work at the middle school and high school the thought process originally was that and still is that we will hope to accommodate this through energy savings programs psng is in the final final stages of rolling out a brand new energy incentive program that would fit our middle and high schools or if that doesn't work then a controlled ecip plan but if we don't include anything in here then we couldn't spend any referendum

071dollars on hvac work if the energy funds do not come through so we added back dollars here but you know the total dollar amount is the same as presented last week internally in committee so this is everyone's least favorite slide because it's confusing but i'll break it down for you nice and easily so this basic slide is a a snapshot of our debt so we we see here that in june 30th 2021 is the high point of our our debt service this forecast also is prospective um it includes uh bonding for 17.5 million dollars over 20 years which is typically what we do uh what you've done in this district i've only been here about two years now which is a conservative way to bond for capital um purposes many many districts use 30 years

072however 20 years is more conservative it's forecasting at the current 1.75 interest rate and it only includes a conservative 25 return on debt service aid as i stated we can get up to 34 back from the state of the principal and interest so you'd have to add on the interest that you'd spend to bond for the capital um items so in fiscal 23 as you can see the drop-off here and once again this is prospected so this includes bonding for the potential up to maximum of 17.5 million dollars so that that service would drop from the current six point let's say eight million dollars in fiscal 22 to three million one hundred thirty two thousand dollars in fiscal 23 once again including this debt we have current we have 4.4 3.4.43 million dollars of debt

073service rolling off the books um at the end of this year so in fiscal 23 and then another 781 000 would uh roll off for the next year if we did nothing in fiscal 2223 if we don't move forward with this proposal referendum our debt service would be 2.4 million dollars not this 3.13 million dollars our goal is to both meet the need for the students in our district through replacing capital infrastructure and increasing school capacities where necessary we will attempt this this is one of our main goals while increasing debt service no higher than our fiscal 2021 uh high watermark at the current financial assumptions we could issue additionally up to uh about 85 million dollars in debt beyond this 17.5 million dollars and we would be no higher than the june 30 2021

074capital debt service what is the cost of doing nothing the cost of repairs would be up to 30 percent higher without the reimbursement as i've stated numerous times already up to 34 cents on every dollar as the state likes to do it's technically 40 but it's an 85 percent probation of the 40 that's where we come up with the 34 this could potentially change at every time but it's been stagnant for at least the last 15 years that i'm aware of additionally if we do nothing there is the cause there is an ongoing risk of mold and structural damage as leaks continue at our schools and finally princeton public schools cannot move forward with solar installations um as we most of us are acutely aware here in princeton which uh is such a progressive community

075we haven't advanced with some of our energy work we are happily working on some led installs at all four schools and also using those energy savings to help replace some some outdated hvac equipment we get 80 cents on the dollar back in that program so the prior and ongoing installation of rooftop and in-class airedale hvac systems at the middle and elementary schools will also help to guard against mold the costs proposed for this referendum potential referendum are all the necessary for the health and safety of our students both our architect and financial advisor have advised us that we should receive very close to the full 34 of principal interest on these projects so uh solar erupts what does that mean well energy reduction in hopewell valley regional school district they have rooftop solar and multiple

076buildings as well as geothermal heating and cooling and naclam has saved as much as 30 percent of their energy usage in wall township they're claiming i'm sorry franklin township uh though they claim they have saved over 440 000 dollars in two years plainfield about two and a half million over the next 15 years we feel it is important that school districts and governments help to curb emissions of greenhouse gases in a fiscally responsible manner helping to lead society as a whole so this is the timeline of what it would look like so tonight uh on the agenda we're asking the board to uh submit to authorized submission to the department of education of these projects and the long-range facilities uh plan that needs to be amended periodically uh statutory it is statutory requirement um after

077that if authorized tonight our architect uh we have with us um tony katana he is the director of building in tech building technology at spiesel architectural group i'll introduce him when i'm done here and he can help answer any technical questions um after that we we expect to get our pec letter back within 90 days from the state of new jersey as most of our board members especially operations committee who is actively involved in everything is aware that the state has been backed up recently our early spring submissions were approved in the timely manner within the 90 days and usually those take a back seat to referendum submissions so we're hoping that the state has in fact hired back the necessary people to approve these important authorizations that come to them from school districts around

078the state so then uh there are some various time frames but the uh next important thing shouldn't have jumped here is november 16 2021 we need to have our finalized um we have to approve our preliminary eligible cost letter and have our finalized numbers and the board then would make a resolution to authorize both a specific uh i'm sorry the special election for the referendum and the specifics exact specifics and dollars of our bond proposal so that gives us a little less than um a little more than three months to do that and then that will lead up to our january 25th potential ref special election for referendum so one of the other important things so why we want to put this in a framework here this health and safety referendum is part of a

079larger review of our facility needs we are working on a complex and detailed analysis of all the major systems in this district that need to be replaced and the approximate time frame for them to be replaced as the district also determines additional facilities needs and requirements there will be additional proposals to address growing enrollment and and different word always gets me pedagogical needs the goal is to address these needs without raising the debt service capital tax levy from fiscal 2021 high levels which we spoke about on slide five the district and board committees will be analyzing the completed slr which started out as mylona mcbroom but there was a merger in there planning study and developed strategy to deal with forecasted enrollment growth in the district the district is in the process of implementing a

080detailed long-range planning framework for all capital maintenance replacement schedules in the district voting yes on january 25th 2022 will save taxpayers money in emergency repairs custodial overtime prevent and help prevent the loss of classroom space due to leaking roofs and problems associated with outdated equipment voting yes enables princeton public schools to receive reimbursement of up to 34 cents on every dollar on principal interest related to these repairs from the state of new jersey we will be taking the next three months to analyze in even more detail that planning for exactly which roofs need full replacement and which could possibly be effectively coated there are clear and definite economies of scale in doing solar power purchase agreements the initial submission to new jersey department of ed must be for high must be for a higher equal

081amount than totally planned we can always end up lower on november 16 but never higher tonight we are asking our board at resolution 03 to authorize submission of these planned projects to the new jersey department of education thank you for your time are there any questions from our board members i see daphna's hand um matt thank you so much that was um very thorough and uh i appreciate you know all the detail you put in there i have one question um so i was trying to figure out the difference um in debt service and and i'm sure my number is off but um i calculated that um this referendum would would uh yield a one point approximately 1.3 million in annual debt service is that correct uh no net that service is uh just under

082eight hundred thousand dollars a year so that service aid so this referendum would result in eight hundred thousand of debt service a year just under that correct net service i'm saying on our but like i'm just trying to make sure i understand right we take the 17 and a half million dollars if it was the phone now and we bought for that over 20 years um with the um uh we factored in one and three quarter percent interest and only 25 percent back from the state now we're probably going to get much much much closer to 34 um as these projects all qualify for uh that service aid so when you factor that in paying it back over the 20 years and then the 34 on the principal and interest of those bond payments all

083right so that's just under 800 000 a year okay thank you appreciate it let's see um okay um i'm sorry thank you very much um matt thanks so much for this it's really really helpful to have this information um so asking as a board member tonight's a big night because we're um voting to send this to the doe but as you said things can change it can't the number can't get higher but the plans could change and it's really november 16th that we vote as a board to put it on the ballot is that right that is correct for members of the community maybe are not able to attend this evening but just to learn more about it over the next few months will there be opportunities within the operations committee uh where people can

084come with questions or where should community members go if they have questions or suggestions perhaps they work in this field um i'm just wondering but before then we get to this november 16th 16th date well as you pointed out we do have um almost all our committees aside from personnel have an open section so um while we realize it's not always optimal for people that work uh we usually start at eight a.m for operations um so they're welcome to come and ask questions at any time we'll also be uh continuously updating the website with information elizabeth collier's been a blessing helping me to gather the data and consistently you know helping me to present it in a more effective manner debbie thank you um so unfortunately i'm going to be voting no tonight and i

085wanted to let everybody know why i'm concerned we're rushing into getting the paperwork done for this referendum and if it passes on january 25th 2022 then pps will be rushing around to find a contractor we might have to pay extra to get roofing supplies for work to be done summer of 2022. our last referendum which we approved in december of 2018 pps we had to overpay to expedite getting our hvacs so we could do summer work summer 2019. um several of our roofs were built in 2004 and still are under warranty and i would request that we work with our insurance company to see what is covered with the warranty and what we can maybe get back from them we also still have a lot of referendum work at phs and are in the middle

086of doing that and i worry about the bandwidth of the pps staff our outside architect construction manager in finishing the 2018 referendum before we start a new one i understand from all the presentations i've seen that little brooks roofs were the worst and if it was just little brook that we were voting on i would totally be approving it and moving forward that the board has also discussed a lot in student achievement about trying to start earlier in september for many many reasons or before labor day and trying to get our roofs done by you know for me doing this you know in january and doing everything so quick i just don't know if we'll be able to start earlier in september and so it's another year that we're kind of pushing that learning off

087so i just want to share the reasons why why i will be voting no tonight thank you debbie michelle yes thanks thanks a lot matt that was a great presentation um i i have a couple of questions one is in regard to a special election in january now to conduct an election is um there's a significant cost associated with it um a referendum election whenever they have to pull out voting machines whatever the case may be who bears that expense is it the district or is it the municipality or the county yes you're paying for that district okay we have to pay for that do you know how much it's going to cost i believe it costs around 35 000 uh the december election for the 2018 um the special election i should say for

088the 2018 referendum okay so you think it's going to be in the ballpark yes or something like that okay um so my second question has to do with access to information and and you've done a great job tonight but one of the things and and my colleagues know i raise this issue all the time is um i i want to make sure that people that everybody has the opportunity to hear about this and and and to to get behind it and and i'm i'm in favor of it i know roofs are prohibitively expensive i commend you on taking advantage of the money that we get back from the state um it is a health and safety issue and i think it also presents an opportunity for us to use solar so i'm all good with

089that but i want to know if we can have an information session in the evening for those parents or those taxpayers not just parents taxpayers who work during the day and who can't come to meetings at 8 o'clock in the morning or 11 o'clock in the morning where we consistently tend to have our meeting so for something like this when we're going to go to the public and ask them for their permission basically um to support us in this can we have a couple of information sessions whether it's on the weekend or in the evening to make it more accessible to a broader swath of taxpayers so they can understand what we're asking them to do yeah i would think that would be right uh in our wheelhouse you know i've been impressed since i've

090been here now um almost two years how transparent we are as i pointed out in the past most districts don't have open committee meetings um and as you point out accurately not everyone can make those at eight a.m so i would think that would be right in line with what we would want to do um this is also you know a transparent type of referendum as uh dr kelly uh quickly uh while i was trying to pull up the slides brought up this is a straightforward way that we're trying to get people to think about it there are always things we're going to have to replace you know down the line somewhere within the next seven to ten years we'll have major hvac work at the high school you know we have 17 year old

091equipment there so somewhere probably between 25 and 30 years but so there's always things and proper planning will help take advantage of the funds that are available to us not you know there aren't a lot of things available to a district like us but so it's an important step i think for the district to maintain its facilities and i think this is a direct a straightforward and uh fiscally responsible way to do this thank you michelle there are there are ways that you can also make sure that reach to the community is pretty wide we've done uh again with the support of kq teletown halls where we call and individuals like when it's almost like on demand they can listen to the presentation uh it's not as much two-way you know town hall but there

092are ways uh that uh working with elizabeth uh we can support with getting that word out great susan i see you have your hand up um mine um is a question for matt but i would also like to say that i i support us doing it and proactively planning so that we can do this work in the right way over the next uh five years so that uh we can work school by school to make sure we're doing the in the proper way for each school but my question is could you explain to the community a couple of other projects that aren't the roof replacements that you've included in there just very briefly so the community understands uh a couple of the other you know yeah so um a beautiful um masonry building um like

093the high school does take consistent upkeep um those uh so the tower let's start with the tower it's the pinnacle when you walk in the front door that tower above there has some deteriorating masonry that needs to be uh repaired we have a a very solid forensic structural engineer working on the design specs for that additionally the turrets most of them have leaks they need some fixing around the joints some re-pointing so there's always always maintenance work periodically then yet come up there additionally at two of our elementary schools we have outdated rotting siding um dr glaso you probably some of you may remember on him talking about sticking his finger through the actual sliding which is true because i saw him do it um so that needs to be replaced the skylights at johnson

094park have met their useful life they are in need of replacement those are the big ticket items and then the uh hvac i should say is also like i said we have um some rooftop units as old as 37 years um uh those consistently need to be replaced and so the whole idea is just being planning ahead and then coming up with periodic uh referendums where we can get back uh just about a third of that money from the state um we have some uh some gutters at one of the schools but i think i've hit on all the major points thanks matt dan okay i'm unmuted now thank you matt for that presentation and uh you know i do support obviously bringing our current buildings up to speed in terms of roofs and masonry

095and siding and all of those things are critically important but i also share debbie's concerns you know about rushing into something and i'm cognizant of the work that we have remaining on the high school as part of the current referendum so the um the questions i have is assuming that we're only approving tonight a submission to the state that's number one for a maximum amount of 17-5 and if they were delayed in their response and there's a 60-day delay built in uh there might be a possibility of having a referendum for example and i'll just pick out june because there's a primary election there that would save uh money and if we piggybacked onto that is that possible to do matt june is not possible um we would want to wait either to the uh

096september then june is not one of the dates so it's always we can always do one at the general election in november um and then it's september november uh december january and march are the five uh special election dates so it doesn't include the primary date in june it doesn't no good so my my last question is um you had said in the presentation two to four years which would imply that we would not be doing work next summer um so i just wanted a clarification on that well two years from now um no we would uh yeah i guess it would have been it when i was first putting this together yeah it's really would happen next summer so one to four years correct you really mean one to four years no definitely because

097little brook uh cp and parts of the high school roof are in dire need of work so but next time we could address the critical roofs like little brook and and postpone the other projects to other years particularly if we still have a lot of projects remaining on the current referendum is that correct yeah we couldn't do all the roofs in one year it would be we can't have students underneath in the buildings when the roofs are being replaced um and we do have uh as you all know a fair amount of summer programs um and just the scope of you know even if every roof did need to be replaced in one year yeah it would be too much and and not to mention that we wouldn't have any summer potentially summer programs at

098uh some of the schools so we should think about it this as a one to four year project correct thank you uh brian did you have your hand up i did but it was captured in that exchange by let me just add my support i think this is consistent with our commitment to strong and responsible stewardship of our facilities and finances and um this is doing the right thing in both cases and i also wanted to add my thanks um not just to matt but all of the other members of the staff like dave harding who've worked very hard over the past four five six months to do the assessments and put this all together so thank you thank you yeah i would just echo brian's thanks i know there's so much work behind this

099and you know we when we hired you matt and you came on board and then we brought on dave one of the things first things we asked you all to do was to start to really put together a very robust assessment and long-term facilities plan for us to catch up and to have a regular you know program for stewardship and so you guys have done a lot of work and i think this is a big you know first step and we really appreciate that you've done this in the middle of a pandemic while implementing the last referendum i mean there's been so many things going on so this is really really very helpful i see one more board member has a comment gene yes thanks very much thanks matt and the operations committee everyone dave

100for your hard work i don't want to beat a dead horse but i did just want to clarify that if we do this now it's at no additional cost to the taxpayers because we're using the benefit of the debt service that's rolling off correct so this is not an additional burden to the taxpayers it's keeping everything steady is that correct uh in our overall sense i i did tweak the language because um we did roll this out last week to the entire board in committee um which was a great idea from uh dr kelly and that way we had every uh you know so we could have open clear communications and you know without a full quorum the uh it essentially yes in total dollars yes but we felt like it was slightly misleading to

101say it won't cost you know anything because clearly i mean there is a cost to doing the work it's you know incrementally so we're underneath uh next year you know looks great from a um you know taxation for the for the debt service levy obviously with all that money rolling off and in fact many districts rush to to quickly go out and and try to come up with a lot of stuff to spend all that money i philosophically have a problem with that i mean if the need is there that's fine so i think a more incremental steady approach is is wiser um but so so you're not wrong and again just to clarify it's more money than we'd be spending if we did nothing it's less money than we're spending now given the debt

102service we currently have right correct okay is there any other questions i just had tony flash this uh tony katana has been working around heart real hard with dave and i over the last uh four to five months going around the school district i just wanted to show his face and uh he was here tonight in support and um i guess you guys didn't stump me bad enough to uh call on him earlier um not challenging any board members please but i just wanted to introduce noni hi tony welcome thank you for all your work on that it was a pleasure meeting everybody all right okay thanks all right um so i guess we're ready to move on with our continued business yeah um is this a it's not a consent on it's an action

103item so should we have the vote now or wait till community uh we're gonna have uh bat dan we're gonna have uh our community public comment first and then it'll be down in the business it will be an action item but we'll just hit it when we hit everything else and if i roll through it you guys will stop me right okay um so i think the next item is our public forum on agenda and non-agenda items we welcome members of the public residents of this community to speak to the board we ask that you keep your comments to three minutes that you announce your name and your address um and that we remind you that this is a uh we are in our business meeting of the of the princeton public schools and this

104is a a chance for us to hear public comment is not a q a so we will hear what you have to say and then we will continue on with our with our work and um to the extent there are questions posed that can be answered later we may be forthcoming with information but we will not be engaging in any sort of q a um so you can put your hand up in the screen by matt we'll tell you how to do that you go down in your participant box and raise your hand and we will be calling on you cecilia hodges hi cecilia you just have to unmute there you go um yes i wanted to say a word about a an issue that um it seems has been settled however i have been

105concerned about the issue concerning renaming of the middle school in princeton i simply wanted to say one or two things i note that in notes from their last meeting some of these points have been made it worries me that before the public or the popular vote was taken there was no announcement that the new name should be uh non-specific that along with the fact that ms shirley satterfield gained a wide margin in the popular vote makes me wonder why we didn't go down the path that the voice of the people led us to finally i think that had this decision been made to look again at the possibility of renaming in the name of miss setterfield we would have been able to inspire our students and community to think again about those in the past

106we might call them ancestors who have who worked hard to bring excellence and equity to princeton schools and it would have been an inspiration that we continue to have that goal which is reflected i think in the contributions of new setter field as an historian and an educator and public presence it distresses me that we did not take that tag thank you for listening thank you mia sax hi there i just lost my um oh dear i just lost my comments hold on okay can you hear me we can so um hi everyone i'm speaking in two capacities tonight um first as uh princeton council's liaison to the school board and a member of the council finance committee um and while i i can't speak for the entire council and how they might feel about

107the referendum i can certainly say that we've learned the lesson that deferred maintenance whether it's in new jersey transit or princeton public schools is always always more expensive in the long run we are also acutely aware that when it comes to our schools taxpayers benefit enormously when the town and the schools take a proactive approach to maintaining our facilities our school buildings house our children for a large proportion of their early lives and we need to get in the habit of taking care of them on a regular basis i am so thrilled to see this presentation tonight um i um deb i hear what you're saying uh and and i know that um i i can relate to concerns about um not wanting to pile on too much too soon and and and not be

108able to meet expectations but when we think about what happened with the mold in cp several years ago and i see what is on top here for mold prevention i don't see how it's possible to hold off um i the other capacity i'm speaking in tonight is as an alumna and founder of the phs alumni association and i can tell you that as alumni we care not just about the curriculum and the education but also about the infrastructure the buildings in which education is made possible um i can say that there would there would be many alumni who would be extremely upset if the tower um which is such a symbol for all of us of our education in princeton um were uh not to be maintained properly um i also want to say that

109as we all remember um possibly with some degree of trauma when the the larger referendum was voted down a number of years ago the community made clear to the school board that they wanted the board to focus on making do with what exists to shoring up the existing structures and what i see tonight is that you listen to the community and you um com you you followed through and you actually responded to what you heard from the community and it's encouraging and i just want to say thank you matt bolden thank you dave harding and bravo thank you to you all so i hope you i do hope you vote for this thank you mia thank you so much samaji so my hope i didn't butcher that uh you did but that's okay it's not

110used to it hi mike um i'm a uh i live at 4615 quail ridge drive um and um so i'm here to present uh a petition or i'd rather a letter that an open letter that's addressed to the princeton public schools board as well as the superintendents we've emailed it to you but i will also drop in this uh this chat here we've gotten um upwards of uh 70 signatures on this letter um and i believe others are going to speak about this effort as well so um the gist of the letter is that um we are very uh disappointed uh by the board's refusal to acknowledge the community's vote for shirley satterfield in the renaming of the of john witherspoon middle school um we know it is a fact that the board had manipulated

111the community poll and uh we believe that they showed lack of integrity in what was presented as a participatory and reparative process for the african-american community of princeton so we know that of the ten options presented for the renaming of the of the school um two of them were not named after people but there were also two uh options for living folks shirley satterfield and michelle obama and no invocation of this supposed rule that municipal buildings not be named after living people was announced at the time of this poll and the poll came and went with people voting with no invocation of this rule only when shirley satterfield was revealed to have had the plurality of votes um a clear plurality was this rule invoked and also the two non-specific options uh walnut lane middle

112school princeton community middle school combined into one generic uh non-specific option this was done retroactively and we are very disappointed so we urge you to reconsider this uh decision and we urge you to rename to honor uphold the results of the vote um which you said you would do and uh simply rename the middle school after shirley satterfield thank you luka mohammed hello good evening um can you hear me yes we can all right a little more butchering but we serve a god of forgiveness i'm reverend i'm the pastor with this boom street presbyterian church i live at 453 walnut lane uh in princeton uh i uh second of the words of brother harishi who just spoke and i speak on behalf of a group of faith leaders from across the city of princeton and

113who have constituents and members who are in princeton public schools and live in princeton communities speak tonight on behalf of reverend larissa quang obazia of the presbytery of central new jersey reverend darrell arms reverend dr darrell armstrong with shiloh baptist church reverend deborah blanks of mount pisca amy reverend charles boyer of great mount zion a and me mount zion and me and shiloh baptists are in trenton uh reverend belinda contreras byrd and princeton reverend dr dave davis of nassau presbyterian church in princeton reverend charles dixton of kingston presbyterian church in kingston reverend karen hernandez grandson of westminster presbyterian church in trenton and the princeton civil rights commission reverend paul jeans of trinity episcopal rep dean renee john of trinity cathedral episcopal church in trenton reverend james klotz of slackwood presbyterian church in lawrenceville tamisha mills

114and candace lovelace the moderator and vice moderator of the association of black seminarians at princeton theological seminary reverend lynn scales of nassau presbyterian church reverend gregory smith of calvary baptist church of hopewell anna stamborski of the anti-racist coalition a princeton theological seminary reverend mark taylor a princeton theological seminary norbert wetzel the princeton family institute uh the gender and sexuality association of seminarians at princeton theological seminary in kohunto a princeton theological seminary the episcopal anglican student fellowship at princeton seminary students for peace and justice and the lutheran group at princeton theological seminary and we'll simply say this we're deeply discouraged when we learn the decision to discount the indisputable choice made by the people of princeton attach a non-specific name to the middle school shirley satterfield received the highest number of votes 19.3 percent of the

115list of the final nine specific candidates to a process that was designed and managed by the board the people have spoken wisdom and clarity and is disingenuous to ignore the original call for racial justice that led to the name change as well as the clear choice of a living african-american woman and educated by the broader community by generically renaming our school princeton middle school we urge you to listen to the voice of the people of princeton honor the legacy of leadership in the african american community and vote to rename our local middle school shirley satterfield middle school this was emailed to each of the members of the of the board uh it was also emailed and we welcome dr carroll kelly as our new superintendent and we are excited uh to see her in this

116position of leadership and we pray that our actions will reflect what we know are our deepest commitments to justice that we have in this community thank you very much thank you will your bowers hello my name is uh dr leah m raider bowers i am a postdoctoral researcher at princeton university and i live on 43 lee avenue and i am in full support of um my friends hirishi and reverend lucata and the words that they just spoke um i just arrived here in january coming from a small white affluent town in sewickley and thought this town would be different but the actions taken by the school board to discount all of uh the votes that the people wanted which was to rename the middle school after shirley satterfield um just you know is a great

117disappointment i am right back where i am was in swiftly this is pernicious anti-racist behavior um sorry anti-black behavior uh directed to students who are just so excited to have a middle school named after such a living legend in shirley satterfield and i'm extremely disappointed and i hope that you reconsider and prove me wrong that you are not like other white affluent towns thank you thank you i see no other speakers at this time oh wanna celine fam i can hear me we can hi i'm celine femme i live at 86th street street um i'm also here to voice my support for the petition and just really really urge the board to directly address how the vote was manipulated and to take immediate action and not to just ignore or brush away the comments that

118are being made today and that have been made in previous board meetings it would just be really disappointing if this was brushed under the rug and i think this was a real opportunity to make amends for the racist history of um princeton schools in general um towards witherspoon jackson community and it was just a yeah it was a betrayal of that you know hand extended and yeah i just where the petition is continuing to be circulated and um we're just going to continue to press until we get an answer to this thank you miss fam we have no other speakers okay thank you to everyone who who uh spoke with us this evening um and as we've said in the past if you would like to have more information on the process that many people

119spoke about the renaming we encourage you to watch our meetings that are recorded on our website going back to last i don't know june of and there was a number of different forums and they are on our website and there's also a section on the website that gives the history and the process for renaming with that i think we can continue on uh with our agenda the next item is i1 harassment intimidation and bullying which is a consent item and for the consent agenda we will be moving through items and then we vote all at once at the end of the meeting if there are questions please stop me there's the hib report card there's a consent item and then we go to the committee reports uh committee highlights so first we have equity and

120is that um betsy this evening debbie actually debbie okay debbie thank you uh the equity committee met on monday july 12th at 7 pm we welcomed dr kelly to her first equity meeting we shared that the acknowledgement statement drafted by the equity committee passed a first read on 615 and is up for a second read tonight we want to thank the equity committee stephanie tidwell bob the full board barry and dr kelly for all their input discussion and time to help create this acknowledgement statement that will put be put before the board for approval this evening we will continue to discuss as a board with dr kelly where this statement will be posted and how it will be accessible to student staff and community members we then went into breakout rooms to discuss a proposed

121name change from equity committee to the diversity equity inclusion committee more discussion will take place with dr kelly and the committee before it will be presented to the full board we ended the meeting with a period for public comment our next meeting will be held monday august 9th from 7 to 8 30 pm on zoom we have uh open meeting we welcome everybody thank you thank you debbie i think any questions if not we'll go to operations and that's uh susan and brian uh hi i'll be presenting tonight uh we met on june 24th at 8 am we began in closed session um and then reconvened an open session at 9 00 a.m um we received an update from matt balding and dave parting on our current referendum projects went over the few checklists at

122at all the schools and discussed the timeline for phs which definitely has some continued challenges in terms of sustainability as we always discuss in every meeting as matt mentioned earlier he gave us progress on the led and the hvac that's being done in elementary schools we did learn of a grant that we had gotten from sustainable new jersey which will fund a project for electric lawn equipment and we heard of a phs chiller that had not been working for two years that dave was able to with his team get working again and we were prized that the pool work has begun at the middle school our next meeting where we will continue to discuss the referendum as matt said earlier is august 19th that's a thursday which is different from our usual wednesday meetings and

123it will begin at 8am so i hope any of the members of the public that have questions that's a great first time for them to engage with the operations committee and the administration thank you susan any questions if none we'll go to personnel and that's michelle tuck ponder hello wall um the july personnel meeting was scheduled for july 1st which happened to be dr kelly's first day at work and so we um decided that it was probably not the best idea for her to have to be at a personnel meeting at 9am on her first day in the office and so our next personnel meeting is scheduled for august 5th at 9 00 a.m and it is closed to the public um unfortunately but we will be reporting back then so no new reports thank

124you uh policy gene thanks um policy met um on uh june 25th with dr golosso and on july 16th with dr kelly a main topic in both meetings uh was the administration's recommendation this evening to switch service providers for our district policies from njsva to strauss esme the policy committee strongly supports this recommendation for several reasons charles esme is the state's premier provider of school policy services working with over 90 percent of new jersey school districts and they have a demonstrated ability to provide timely efficient and accurate policy updates using a comprehensive approach policy is all they do um dr kelly also has positive past experience with strauss esme the company dedicates more resources for policy manuals including updates and accompanying regulations than any other provider we've identified and they offer telephone support for district

125staff who regularly work with policies so the committee enthusiastically and unanimously recommends the switch to strauss esme as set forth in the resolution on tonight's agenda and our next meeting is august 20th at 7 30 am thanks thank you gene betsy thanks that's good quick question um is it a great deal of work to move back to the strauss estimate policy manual on ba you know on the part of you all the committee or of our staff they seem to have made it quite seamless with a timeline and they do the lion's share of the work staff does have to provide a list of materials to them but they do do the lion's share of work and then you know we have a nice digital policy manual that everyone can reference so um it could

126take anywhere from six weeks to a little longer depending on how soon we get the materials to them okay that's great we've had a positive experience in this district in the past as well so that's that's great no thanks all right student achievement daphna you're on mute okay thanks um so student achievement met on um last friday uh july 23rd um on the agenda for tonight is um approval for field trip for um children at the uh in the autism class at the high school to go uh bowling so the committee um approved that and recommended to be put on the agenda for tonight we also heard from a consultant this district has used on a math report the committee received the report which provided direction for next steps to plan a comprehensive review um

127that will uh recommend specific actions and work um and uh the sac committee will look forward to continuous updates on the work on that our next meeting is scheduled for august 13th but we may move that to move it closer to the board meeting thank you thank you daphna any questions and daphne do you have anything on negotiations or not nothing tonight no thank you okay thank you um that brings us to our equity statement and betsy and debbie are you going to handle that thank you very much as debbie stated in the in the notes from our equity meeting this is an acknowledgement statement that um we presented to the public last month and to the board um we have updated it very slightly instead of ensuring um equal treatment we have changed that

128language to equitable treatment it is up for approval by the board this evening we thought it would be important actually to read it out loud which is something we did not do previously um so i'll take the time to do that now it's a commitment to anti-racism equity and inclusion the princeton board of education acknowledges that systemic racism and bias have existed and continue to exist within our district we are committed to identifying and dismantling racism and all other systems that lead to disparate outcomes for our students and ensuring equitable treatment and access to academic social and emotional and extracurricular opportunities students staff and parents of all backgrounds cultures abilities and identities must be welcomed safe respected and included in our school community all of us have the responsibility to stand up and speak out

129against racism and bias wherever and whenever we find it and the board of education and the superintendent will lead all district stakeholders in effectuating an anti-racist and equitable environment the board will align resources and training for all stakeholders to support those who have been historically underserved and overlooked the board expects that district administrators will measure and evaluate the affected the effectiveness of all resources and programs to support systemic change in learning conditions that ensure students success and flourishing the princeton public schools is dedicated to being a district where fairness and equity prevail so that is our statement there are footnotes within the statement as well but this will be on our website but as debbie mentioned in the notes we will discuss as a board when and how and where this statement informs our work

130um and our district so we will work with dr kelly and um certainly update the public as well and i just noticed type this is supposed to be a second vote um matt maybe we it's not a discussion information so as uh very uh astute debbie i i was gonna point that out that so it wasn't voted on the first time it's not an official policy there was no vote taken that first time it was read the first time oh if um if someone wants to motion for a vote to you know acknowledge the statement or you know would this be then a first vote or a second what would be the first time it was voted you could do it i thought we did vote last time it's okay you can just do it

131first and second now whatever you'd like to call it oh you can do it okay make a motion motion for a thank you um and any discussion betsy on the second correct perhaps yes so what up so what does this vote what are we voting on i think we're are we voting to uh affirm the statement that we have been working on now collectively for several months i believe right yes correct with the equity committee as well as um several administrators and um and staff members and dr kelly even before she was was our superintendent she joined us as well and and we intend to put this statement up on our website it and may use it in other ways including potentially a basis for a further policy which would then have deliverables in it

132um but we are going to keep using it and and have it inform our work so um we could have a vote to affirm the statement as written and read that's baron yes etsy bagram yes debbie brownfield yes dan dart yes gene durbin yes susan cantor yes staff from kendall yes bryan mcdonald yes michelle tuck ponder you're on mute michelle she i think she can't unmute but she's doing a thumbs up and saying yes thank you yes that's unanimous so uh affirmation pass unanimously thank you again debbie and betsy for leading the work on this and um glad we we've got to this place um next is a consent item it is the um stos esme contract can i ask one question um will they because we brought this up a lot will they be

133able to change or is this a focus to change all the he she to they sorry gee actually we asked that question in committee and they don't even use he she and they they they have everything worded without pronouns okay even better okay how about that thank you this will obviously involve a transition again but we are really decided that it makes the most sense for the district to do it as painful as the previous transition was okay so that's a consent item and then we go through k1 a consent appointment of other district officials k2 appointment of treasurer l1 appointments l2 resignations and here i just yeah betsy go ahead go ahead you start well i was just going to note that mark shelley is leaving as uh the principal of riverside moving with

134his family to um another city and that we will miss him and appreciate his service of many years both through the riverside community and at high school as a social studies supervisor and a educator and i was i was going to note the same thing i just want to thank mark for the kindness and care he brought to the many roles he held here at pps um at phs and more recently at riverside so we wish him and his family all the very best and thank thank them for being a part of the community of the princeton public schools then we're onto l3 transfers reassignments l4 personnel items l5 athletic appointments l6 substitute reappointments l7 leaves of absence i have a question about the athletic appointments uh okay l5 yes sorry move that fast um

135so i'm just uh this this is the um appointment of coaches for the fall and i'm just con over the past two seasons we've um prorated the salary um to in case covid shut down sports as it did in the spring of 2020 and i'm just wondering um if we're not um if we should not be doing that for um the fall given you know the state of pandemic i had the same question that i sent to carol can we take that up at personnel we have to vote tonight we do true i would just like to say having uh kids participate in sports all summer and also in the school season um we did it well uh protocols were in place and if we're going to have a normal school year i would wholeheartedly

136endorse athletics moving forward you know masks if necessary but we've already done it in at least one sports season and so i would support you know moving ahead thanks i don't want to speak out a term but i also um thinking about this upcoming school year with the vaccines being available to individuals over 12 i think the seasons do look a little differently but we can certainly take it up in personnel if you'd like mike i don't know if you have any thoughts on that well we can take it up in personnel we'd have to decide what we want to do tonight but keep in mind this is not a unilateral decision that was made by the board uh this was a sidebar contract that we engaged with with pra they signed off on it

137the board then voted upon it so it would not be something unilaterally uh that the board would be able to do on its own so um just that out there are you sure we're contractually obligated to what you have presented is what you're saying well yeah you guys have collectively bargained um stipend rates and for the past two seasons two years or i guess at the end of the sorry just last year past three seasons uh we entered into sidebar agreements the board um voted on those sidebar agreements they were one year sidebar agreements because of covid and that's how we were able to do the 40 30 30. we never actually pay out the 40 30 30 um because we were able to um to run through our seasons but yes it is not

138something that the board can unilaterally do on its own you have a collectively bargained agreement you would need to bargain that with the association okay right and i'm i'm offered just to be clear i'm all for sports i'm just saying for you know our fiduciary responsibility is it conceivable that you know and i hope not but is it possible that the season isn't going to roll out as we hope and are we going to as we did in march 2020 um pay for um you know services that we that didn't happen and so that's my only concern that's a good question and that's a prospective question so for can i recommend that for tonight we approve what we're contractually obligated to do and then going forward after that's a very valid concern we can take

139it up in the personal committee and talk about how to proceed but once we approve it then we yeah we lose that but if the season doesn't proceed as as we expect it to we may be able to um make adjustments can i say that we voted on the spring sports in um and it doesn't say anything about a uh it just says athletic e-p-e-s stipend it doesn't say anything about a side bar because we were very frustrated carol just give you some background we were very frustrated with sports in the spring of and we really spoke with the athletic director and said how do we move forward so we did this 40 30 30. so in case sports because we had to pay everybody in the spring of 2020 but in case sports didn't

140happen it didn't happen we would pay them for what they did work and that was our big thing we will pay but we wanted to pay for what people actually worked but i didn't think i was in a sidebar are we getting it to uh too far into personnel here for a public i think we are and i would ask that we defer this conversation to the personnel committee yeah and i guess i also sent this to carl and mike earlier for this exact meeting to ask if we could do it so i don't understand well that question was uh asked and i thought it was answered again we're not uh going into uh this upcoming school year it's not march 2020 you know things are very different in terms of what we're anticipating for

141the upcoming school year uh as i stated previously there are other things if a sport which is highly unusual but nothing is 100 predictable these days but if something is canceled as i've stated previously there are other things outside of playing the sport that that coach and the team can do so i i think that was the prior response mike i don't know if you have anything else to say regarding the athletic appointments i i think as you look at it it's really just outlining [Music] the appointments of the coaches for those those um athletic events or the fall sports yeah it has everything on there for for the fall sports it does uh it does provide the full stipend for people um as far as spring sports from last year on march 30th this

142voted on the sidebar that was uh signed off by renee sporn one of the co-presidents so that's why we were able to do the 40 30 30 in the spring so again if the board was interested in doing the 40 30 30 i'm just you know it's not something we can do unilaterally because you have already engaged with them in a collectively bargained agreement at these costs so they would have to sign off on that as well um we can table this and we can remove it however we already have sports kind of rolling and going so we would have a decision um are there members of the board that would like to put this in a consent or take it out of the consent item so that we can vote on it tonight or

143can we leave it in the consent order there's a third option which is to table it for the august meeting which would give uh i'm not sure i think that's too late i think i just have to interrupt matt can you disable the chat please can i disable the chat yes not appropriate right away yes thank you remember it's only going to us it's totally inappropriate got it um okay athletic appointments mike is this something we need to do tonight in order to right you can't be pushed i mean we can we can remove it and bring it back uh what will happen um and the board has given me the authority to hire people in between board meetings our next board meeting isn't until august 24th so there'll probably be some consternation among the

144athletic department as well as as well as coaches because sports will start before that time but i mean could be done and can i ask a clarifying question i think dr kelly you mentioned um you know there are other things coaches can do in march of 2020 our students didn't have one-to-one devices for example and so if we had to god forbid pivot if if somehow we were instructed from us from the governor that sports were not happening is the expectation then if we approve these full stipends that there would be some kind of engagement with our students because that's what it is we all care about and we're looking for but the concern is just that you know as we had in the past um the concern about careful um carefully you know funding

145programs and looking out for the the taxpayers um funds right um and again i i do not have a crystal ball uh but i think in terms of the the expectations for the fall it's really highly unusual or highly um uh unanticipated that it will be the same situation as march 2020 given the you know the rate of vaccinations in this area and also as we look across the country and what is happening in terms of the sports programming uh so with with that in mind there are other things that are possible um from mentoring conversations to conversations you know uh via electronically uh that the similar number of hours in terms of the coaching uh might be um things that our coaches and trainers can do with the students uh so i i do

146think that that's more from an administrative standpoint of how to uh employ and use those personnel that are provided to us if for some reason the sports you know are are not taking place well i appreciate that i'm comfortable um voting on that now thank you okay are there any other members who want to separate this item out from a consent okay if not then we will continue we will leave it in the consent and we will continue to move through i believe we were on l eight student services l9 curriculum and instruction l10 sidebar priya l11 reappointments l12 annual approval evaluation model l 13 sidebar l 14 job description l 15 creation of new position l 16 6 period compensation l 17 payouts then we're on to m1 student field trips m2 grant application

147acceptance n1 professional services positions and two school nursing plan and three frontline technologies and four invo health care and five uh info health care again o1 financial reports o2 fire and evacuation drill 03 project submission to njdoe for review and approval uh that's an action item can i have a motion for this this is our resolution to submit the um referendum projects to the department of education i have a motion brian second jean any discussion if none then could we vote please death baron yes debbie bronfo no dan dart yes betsy bagley yes ryan mcdonald yes michelle tuck ponder yeah daphne candle yes susan cantor yes gene durbin yes motion passes wilson passes thank you item04 change order authorization vhs renovation 05 formal bid award hvac competitive contracting for kq for communications 07 travel and

148related expenses and then we come to the consent vote and can i have a motion please uh jean second michelle any discussion if none could we vote please that's barren yes debbie brownfield yes dan dart yes that's yes ryan mcdonald yes michelle tuck ponder yes daphne candle yes susan cantor yes gene durbin yes consent agenda passes thank you unanimous um that brings us to the last public comment section um again we ask that people state their name and address that you keep it to three minutes this is not a q a we will listen um we appreciate your your sharing with us your comments just raise your hand if you want to speak i don't see anyone okay if there are no comments then we are on to excuse me sorry harishi somayaji hi i

149spoke again i spoke earlier my name is somayaji i'm uh uh also a graduate student at princeton and uh live at 4615 quail ridge drive um so uh yeah i mean the the one the one thing i want to mention is that uh uh i'm not sure why chat was disabled but uh um i hope it was not in response to us uh many of many of many of us uh posting facts about what you know what uh the origins of our our efforts the fact of the matter is that we have watched the referenced um meetings of the of the school board and in fact the letter is a direct response to them so it's not an adequate response to say that you know you can simply find out you know watch those meetings

150to find out more it's a response to those meetings we have watched them we have found out all that could be found out and this is what we have to say so any response um and that response is is rather inadequate um the second thing i want to say is that uh you know often off this this can seem like a very very small issue and i can already sense many of the board rolling their eyes uh internally or externally at like why are these people making such a big stink about such a small insignificant issue but the fact of the matter is that it is because this is a rather small issue that the actions of the board are especially rather insidious and especially harmful this is how racism presents itself in an ostensibly

151perfect you know anti-racist environment like princeton many of you talk a big game about wanting to combat inequality and you know all of these things and there were some very good presentations um given today you know doing exactly that but you have a ways to go and the actions that were uh taken by the school board in response to the renaming uh kind of exemplify that um this is these types of um subtle uh rather insidious uh form demonstrations demonstrations of racism are are how it happens in these liberal uh bubbles so i just want i hope everybody can quote unquote uh sit with that um and really really look inward and and not simply brush off um the the efforts that people have made to bring this to your attention we wrote we did

152this the right way we wrote letters we got community uh petitions um you cannot simply ignore this by being like go watch the meetings i mean that's basically telling us to screw off ultimate disrespect so please recognize the actions of your fellow community members thank you um beth can i just ask um the speaker just implied or suggested that the chat was blocked because of the comments of about on the issue that he raised could you please clarify for him why the chat was blocked i'd be happy to do that michelle i was going to do that in our closing comments but some people posted some extremely inappropriate comments in our in our chats and not something that is appropriate in any context and could be considered racist or ageist or discriminatory and offensive to

153anyone so we are a public body we are a public board we are here to hear the cure the community um and we are open to that but when people start to put things in our chat that is uh offensive or hurtful or hateful we turn the chat off and if i could just add um since i'm the one who asked that it be turned off um it was against um you know employees of the district as a board member um we have a duty to protect um our our staff and so um it was um we wanted to also stop it before it went after some other people as well so um you know i'm a lawyer i take very uh seriously the right for free speech and uh the chat was not uh

154turned off lightly thank you um are there any other public comments i know thank you um so any closing comments of the board i want to thank everyone we had a lot of really um diverse important uh topics covered tonight and thank you for everyone for your attention and and thank you carol um for you know a good first meeting and preparing your team for for some really complicated matters that we had to get through and thanks to um to mickey and matt and and bob and um the other and mike and the other members of the staff and renee for joining us tonight um we appreciate your time and your patience and and uh hard work in the middle of the summer uh continuing full speed ahead as we always are in this district

155so um if anyone has anything else to add i think we're probably ready to adjourn so could i have a motion to adjourn please daphna second betsy all in favor meeting adjourned thank you very much good night bye guys