001all right it's going live all right you're live let me just make sure we are live I'm just making sure of audio I'm not sure all right we are good all right good evening everybody sleep all right good evening everybody [Music] was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have an advance notice up and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which time any business affecting your interest is discussed and actively in accordance with the provisions of this act and Board of Education policy zero one six two the board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be posted in the board office high school and mail or faxed to The Courier News clerk southbound Board of Education and any person who has requested individual notice pledge allegiance to the fire
002the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands a nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice Mr Garcia roll call please it's about here this casino yeah Lima here Mr minhas here says hi here Mr Bowmer here Mr Januzzi here board president you have a quorum president this evening thank you very much for my president's comments tonight I will try as always to be brief just want to say welcome back to all of our staff administrators who are joining us here tonight it's great to see you all great start to school year for my board of education members I want to thank you for enduring my absence last month and for some really great committee meetings earlier this week I know it takes a lot of time for us to get
003through all the materials but I was really impressed with the amount of positive updates that we had to receive and share and uh just how much progress is being made so thank you again for that um and that goes for our members who are both here and out here this evening so uh join unfortunately was under the weather report to share those for now I'm going to hand off to Dr Freeman thank you Mr President and good evening everyone and welcome back to our September board meeting we're very close to uh finishing our second full week of school um we had the exception of a few pickups that could be expected during opening days we had a very smooth opening I want to thank our administrative team our teachers our staff are making that possible
004because without them it wouldn't be and I'm looking forward to a very successful year tonight we don't have any future student awards we'll begin that next month and we're looking forward to it at this point we want to uh our student director board present so we can turn it over to sure yeah absolutely my report's kind of long today but I'll try to do it chronologically um this past summer uh sorry it was summer school most students finished and were able to recover their credits meanwhile many seniors came in for English and math before at least ccrf uh managed by blogs and some of the other teachers at the high security been offering my students help with their college applications and SATs and thoughts on it and all of that Financial stuff um along with
005this new school year there's been new special programs I've been interested in with rbcc these include Advanced Manufacturing mechanic one YouTube makeup design slash Artistry and Healthcare all of which are I've seen a lot of success so far uh the freshman orientation went well with guest speaker Nikki France is giving a speech about the tool tip for success which is designed to introduce middle and high school age students to ideas that can help them increase their skills in decision making conflict resolution positive coping skills in terms of our teams folks for and on sport uh boys soccer are currently at a 3-2 uh win-loss record in their next game is away against Manville tomorrow football hook up their first win last Friday against South River with sorry they also have two losses so far with
006their next game at home being against Voorhees on Friday we miss Casino um managing the football social media account girl to tell us is that a one win six losses for the next game girls volleyball is also at one six with their next game at home gets Burns the cross-country team has reportedly had an investment Beyond sectionals and Robotics are currently planning for a showcase at the Bridgewater Mall on September 30th and October 1st for people edges the college fair which is colleges from all over the state come to Bound Brook to Showcase and social students is on October 23rd same thing with the career fair for November 15. and in terms of the future Mr Ross is planning to meet with all 150 seniors to discuss our future plans and Mr Smith and I
007are currently developing an idea of professional development it's a great idea that's an awesome report thank you very much for sharing any questions from the members I was just asking if anybody has any questions it's great yes thank you very much that's going to be a tough report to follow I'll do my best hello everybody Okay so um school year 22-23 report on harassment intimidation and bullying vandalism and violence we'll start with HIV can everybody hear me okay so last year 22 23 are numbers were similar to the year before especially in investigations of those investigations we add about 11 more confirmed incidents of HIV than the year previous you guys remember 2021 was the year of the pandemic where we were not in school for the entire year so that's our totals school by
008school at the high school the numbers were very similar from the year before 21 investigations 12 confirmed a community investigations were down 31 to 26 but we had more confirmed cases of HIV than the year before 15 to 10. okay that's Smalley so both investigations and confirms went up a little bit from the year before and then I put Lafayette and LaMont Annex on the same because their numbers are so few we did have an investigation at Lafayette last year the first one in a few years but it came out to be not a confirmed case of HIV last year was our first year one last thing on hip with the Hipster program which did a good job of streamlining our process kept kept us on target with with deadlines and it allowed us to
009communicate building to building all the way up to Dr Freeman and to and to the board so that that was a good addition to the district okay now I'm going to move on to violence and vandalism at the high school we went down significantly from 49 the year before to 30 last year overall violence when it actually went down by 10. vandalism went down substances went down we eliminated weapons altogether last year it was a good year overall at the high school Community 26 incidents total a little more than the year previous 21. six incidents of violence same from the year before zero incidence of vandalism three incidents of substances up one from the year before weapons were doubled two from one and then the HIV also Community had 25 other incidents that led to
010student removal which is down from the air before okay Smalley had zero across the board last year and hit again Smalley had 15 total had five acts of violence which is the same as the year before one act of vandalism and then two other incidents that led to student immobile which is the same as the year before and then nothing again at Lamont Annex the same as the year before questions you're welcome anybody have any questions I have a I have a question about the student removal um it says other incidences but that is not including the vandalism correct incidents other than than what you saw above yes I don't know if you can answer it or I could I could try these are all the incidents that have been reported what's the estimated number
011of incidents set up dirt an average I could take a try I we we are required to report every incident of HIV violence Investments that's been reported I'm talking about those that are not because they haven't been reported to to either right that has not been reported up to the immunization you don't ever hear about it yeah that you'll never hear about so it's hard to quantify something that hasn't been reported or there may be any industry Norms on how those are estimated I know what you're saying great question overall the numbers look good what do you treat the improvement too especially Foundation that's huge and huge so uh Mr Smith and his administrative team did a great job last year with condensing study halls which allowed him to free up teachers from from look
012uh being in charge of a study hall class and instead he was able to put them in the hallways our student rep is is nodding specifically by the bathrooms right so in my opinion that went that went a long way the hallways were quieter you know it was great for our numbers in addition quiet hallways are great for teaching but you know of those 15 cases whichever are you seeing Trends in the violence and vandalism yeah and it's um I can only answer for for hibs because that's sorry that's my area that's my area I don't know about violence and vandalism um but hibs the um I would say the trend as uh you know as I've been reporting to you guys monthly is um you know the uh social media bullying and then we
013do have like that was nice here thank you you don't think that um and also you know what happens in the larger areas in in lunch in uh in gym class where it's harder to manage the the larger number of students interesting um actually it's not a question but more of a compliment to the entire team [Music] thank you um size of our district okay I am blown away at how professional all of our staff and every building administrator from Dr Friedman a little way down have been in dealing with issues and I I have to say working in the orange District myself you know we Face a lot of challenges I can't tell you you know if someone who doesn't work in education looks at the scholars they say oh my goodness on the
014look of the amount of children we have in the district and to only have you know less than 30. I'm looking at Community right now is there any instruments now one incident I want to commend principle and I I think I know that the court thanks you so thank you thank you um furthermore Miss High's question as far as trends go I just thought of another trend as far as how the principles deal with the hibs as well as the areas of violence and vandalism I think their approach with students is completely remediation based rather than punitive um it's we're getting less repeat offenses and that's something I've noticed too that there is this um just the mediation that the veterans counselors and often with the kids too and that's where it's going to make
015a difference and I have to tell you being in a different School District I saw the 77 I was like oh that's high for the high school so I thought and that was all combined so now with the breakdown it's like the numbers the lack of numbers are impressive yeah any other questions or comments all right thank you thank you thank you all right guys at this point we are up to committee meeting reports trying to tackle them in order if that's okay so the first one is Mr Dawson's report from education which I will read uh so like everybody else we met on Monday and uh our discussion really centered around for multilingual Learners ages 18 to 21. um this was a conversation that was led by Miss Heist Heist yeah you have trouble
016hearing me so we were thankful to have Mrs Griffin and Miss heisterman uh come and have a discussion with us regarding the best support for our multimedial Learners specifically ages 18 to 21. we do have some programming that we're currently offering as required up until the age of 21 but we've known for prior discussions that uh students that are coming into the district later in their educational careers they have a more difficult time and inquiring the information uh to really graduate so for the coming year of roughly 18 to 20 students have been identified as part of this population that may struggle to stay on Pace to graduate before uh the 18th age of 21 at which point we're outside the scope programming so they walked us through a few different options uh that they
017had considered uh and presented one from the path that they were intending to pursue that had to do with an alternative program that would make ESL construction available to them at different times outside the regular school day but with more structure and with more Focus to ultimately allow them to get through the program and attain their GED so the committee was strongly endorsing the program that was presented and we are hopeful that over time with a number of other supports that the team is finding that will be able to better serve this particular population and hopefully improve our overall performance in terms of graduation rates it was a very spirited discussion and I think that actually took us well beyond the 30 minutes of that is really all that we discussed during education foreign okay
018governance will be quick new policies which are both mandated by law so there's there's really nothing to discuss on our and there one of them has to do with the development of school threat assessment teams uh by districts um they're now mandating exactly how that has to be done but the other if you haven't heard is of all that was passed by the New Jersey legislature a couple of weeks ago stating how sick leave can be used they could change how people attention to I guess all public employees maybe can use sick leave you can now use it to care for sick family members like if your kids are sick you can use them to attend your kids conferences at school things like that so as I said at the meeting being a teacher the
019real only difference is that now teachers won't lie when they have to take care of their sick kids they can actually be honest about it because let's be real if my kids are sick I'm staying home and saying it to me also we don't have to do that anymore um the other thing that we very briefly discussed was how we plan to approach the Strategic plan which is up at the end of the school year Dr Freeman agreed to get us a couple of proposals one which will be from school boards there there are other companies that do it so we're going to get one from another company as well and see what each one has to offer and which way we also talk very briefly about our desire to get as many stakeholders from
020our school Community as possible involved in that strategic play and kind of hear from them what goals they'd like to see in there and what what they think we need to improve on so that we can put it into the plan so that was really all we talked about mostly as you said because education didn't run long so we tried to stay on schedule but luckily we didn't have any questions for me all right then next well done sir thank you you're on HR yeah and that's you again is it that's not me so join as report for the HR committee as with all of the the HR meetings we started by reviewing the open positions and transfers from within the district really just to go through the plans for the administration and to kind
021of affirm how our coverage was with the teaching and staff in general and how we're performing relative to the budget or any positions that needed to be involved with just uh in support of trying to fill our open positions we will be hosting a career fair in conjunction with ESS and we're going to do it here about program it should be mutually beneficial because it'll have the opportunity to either attract people into or from the Bound for a community that may be willing and able to help us in schools which is great and hopefully we can continue to find additional candidates we talked a little bit about the special education program in general how that is staffed what opportunities we might have to adjust how we're resource there in order to both better support community
022members or CST members and really fulfill the mission of that group which we know it's been under a lot of stress for the past few years so we got some positive news there um and the last discussion that we had had to do with the content supervisors So based on some uh work that was done over the summer uh we started to understand how much more work uh become the ability of the existence advisors so noting that we would need and potentially address any uh address anything from a drug perspective that may recruit over time just based on it and that is it for our HR related discussions questions thank you so operations I have let me Begin by saying I have not been to such a proactive complex operations held in a while I
023want to thank Mr Gorski tremendously explaining a lot of the intricacies that I'm going to try to go forward um Mr Gorski at any time if you feel that you need to chime in please I want to I wanted to service to the hard work that you've presented so about submitted we first started talking about Rod Grant applications Bound Brook submitted 14 broad Grant applications in the state totaling around 11 million 236 000. it appears that only the boiler Replacements were approved the bathroom there were bathroom Renovations roof roof upgrade costs security projects they were not one of the issues that was concerned that was raised by members was why some districts some similar districts greater than a 40 reimbursement Mr Orson can you explain that a little bit into the board so they understand
024that part yes thank you Mr zuku school districts reimbursement costs generally the average is about 40 but it's based on state aid percentage to your total revenues and downbrook was somewhere slightly above 60 and there were some districts that were similar to Bound Brook that got greater than 40 percent in person more in line with their state aid ratios but Bound Brook received 40 and we're we're basing this off of the general announcement that went out but we don't have the actual um letter again from the state or the preliminary eligible cost letters so we had invited the architect of record of Mr Richard to the operations committee meeting and he explained that we should be patient we should wait for the actual award to come in the mail on the state there's a chance
025that they could correct what's been previously reported and if not we we will certainly reach out and appeal on our behalf because the more the state reimburses us for the project obviously the less we'd have to um thank you sir appreciate that so that was the wrong part we also talked about the our the IRS response to notice of a priority or payroll tax penalty so Mr Gorski notified the committee that despite a thorough and well-ranked response requesting and Abandonment for new Clause of IRS penalty assessments improperly or late paid federal taxes going back to 20 20 through 2021 to 911 so and that through 2020 2021 after nine months of IRS time extensions that our request was denied Mr Gorski recommended to the committee to appeal enrolling with the assistance of the district's auditing
026firms tax tax attorney it's not cheap but I think I think that the uh the fee will be well worth it because um I think that the the abatement is something that we definitely need to apply and communicate another thing we talked about was a technical assistance infrastructure Services agreement from box 5 19. that was recommended by all the professionals assist in the district with a security incident for additional services that may be considered upgrades to the district server and Hiking infrastructure so the committee recommended the item report we also talked about purchasing manual to Student Activity manuals Mr Morris will presented to the committee significantly revised purchasing manuals [Music] we also talked about a quote for a change order for electrical wiring and swallowing we also talked about the New Jersey Department of Health
027and safety evaluation of school building checklists basically to our checklists were brought up to date Mr worskey presented a completed school facilities checklists for each building as required annually by the department we also had an issue Mr borski can you the acronym p-e-o-s-h it's an organization that deals with occupational health and safety for public employees and there was an anonymous complaint to pios about the temperatures in the district Athletic Field House and we had a surprise visit from a few ocean sector and overall he was very satisfying with Mr Molina and my responses but the state of New Jersey is now requiring a heat illness prevention plan from school district so we're one of the first that had to prepare such a plan and with the help of our occupational engineer Dr Richard Lynch we
028put together a plan that is feasible that we can actually accomplish that will better protect staff and students going forward thank you sir finally the last part of the meeting where he talked about a change order Mr Universal presented change order number seven pertaining to additional proposed work for RG the committee here for them to do all the work contained within the change order but very reluctantly recommended the item as an action item for tonight's consideration committee expressed their dissatisfaction with the number of change orders and the costs for this project and I say that the entire meeting that camped off a very interesting the uh uh other than that Mr President I don't have any other operation notes if anyone has any questions foreign [Music] additional work being done by the administration and I
029just want to give some kudos to the business team um and Mr Malika as well because they were able to cut that change order down from thirty thousand dollars to about fifteen thousand five hundred so um you know I think part of the discussion that we have regarding change orders was how some of these calls start to accumulate over time and there may be the need for us to go seek outside help or be a living Mercury I'm just thankful that we have a team that's willing to be able to well and just uh that's interested in how our so that was very appreciating and Dr Freeman excellent your team is Right On Target that way so we report appreciate that all right any other questions or comments on operations on the extracurricular Adam sure
030yeah our army wasn't quite as long I don't have as much of it what's kind of cool about these ad hocs is that we're learning a lot and things are progressive so it's it's more about getting to know what's going on and learning a little bit more about status Mr steel came and share the athletic coaches the people meeting their teams um both positive feedback and some negative feedback um I think it's it's great that we're able to take a look at this and really um kind of get an overall insight as to how things are going throughout the different sports organizations and figure out how we can collaborate and cross communicate um get coaches that are doing best practices in one area um you know helping other coaches that might be able to use
031that best practice we also talked a little bit about strength [Music] and we love our athletes across the board and looking into and work with that um I know when it comes to the athletic facilities space and size has been an issue in the district of working and organizing all out of the district on the fields in the space it's not always super seamless that we do have coaches like you know if we if we can communicate and collaborate as best we can right now that's the best approach and I think what we're seeing is the coaches at least in this fall season are doing a really good job of sharing the spaces but we can continue to look into other ways of other spaces that might be available down the road the other issue
032that came up was Transportation um you know we've got teams going to different locations playing in different schools we need transportation to get those athletes to those places so we'll look into different opportunities and options that we have with Transportation whether it's collaborating two teams with a bus route of some sort or getting more Transportation so more to come but we're learning a lot from the feedback organ excellent job and he said any questions releases [Music] for my part the only thing that I would add and I thought you did great because you summarized up kind of on the athletic side we've really coalesced around three ideas of things that the board and the administration really could be doing because they're endless relationship between our desire to grow the number of programs and the participation
033of the programs versus some of these constraints so you know as it pertains that things like facility limitations or Transportation those may be elements that you see in future board meetings we're likely creeping into our long-range planning as we go through that activity yeah really good discussion all right my position all right thank you actually they need every other month and the next meeting okay great thanks all right at this point we are up to item number five sure we are open to the public for agenda items only so in accordance with District policy 0167 that governs public participation board meetings members of the public will sign in at the podium or online provide their name address of group affiliation just noting that public participation is limited to three and five minutes in duration and
034no participant basically more than once in the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic if you have anyone from the audience I see no one brushes Tom when you have a chance to check online uh I always get this wrong agenda items first symptoms I always get it wrong uh I am seeing none online okay thank you so we are now up to item number six yeah so I'm gonna try and make one up on the Fly and say Mia was Board of Education approves the meeting minutes from our last public meeting this would have been we have a date okay very good so no minutes to avoid this evening all right so we have number six we move right to 7.1 clear results that the superintendent recommends for approval
035the resolutions as outlined in District Personnel resolutions 7.2 to 7.51 may I have a motion thank you Mr Bell the second second thank you Mr zumko any discussion uh questions item 7.15. okay so is it my understanding there's going to be two individuals taking this so Canada was care Workshop I had the same question it was actually workshops delivered by District Personnel but it was two different audiences and then um the other question is uh 719 the conference request I made a video right that's 2200 for the conference yes it is yes and that's just this is for personnel we have uh Samantha sort of organization she's going to get some additional training to reinforce what she does is she's acting at this point okay that's the cause but you can see it is it
036any other questions okay here one can we have a roll call please one of the Personnel action items tonight is the retirement of Mr miladoff so he served the district I.T director for about 15 years correctly and the approximate year that I've worked with Mr milanov and it's been my pleasure to get through some complex I.T issues we serve the business function of the district with the highest professionalism thank you [Applause] so you know we're going to ask you to come back yes this is up though yes it's been us um yes sorry thank you Miss hi yes Mr bomber yes yes motion passes thank you we are way um be resolved that the Bible report of Education approves the resolutions as outlined in District education resolutions it's 8.2 to 8.20 we have a motion
037thank you Mr Bowen a second any discussion about yes yes Mr Boomer yes yes thank you item 9.1 the result of the founder of the Board of Education proves the resolutions as outlined in rewarding action resolutions this is a 9.2 9 9.29 thank you may have a motion motion thank you second I'm gonna give it to Mr minhas any discussion uh yeah uh item 9.4 the nursing Services plan okay uh two questions it's to my understanding into my knowledge has not applied to schools and school nurses however FERPA does and I do see mention of workouts so is it just we're mentioning HEPA just because it's a commonly used now I'll tell you what this report that is put to the board approval each year so the standard standard uh exactly and then the other
038question is is um you know it's well put together a plan but I didn't see anything regarding uh the plan for special needs kids or disabled kids or anything okay so let me look in and I'll get back to you thank you Mr Ross any other questions uh yeah just uh before we get several donations a year this month um so thanks to everyone for those donations today we had at the Oak Tree project s um there's a third one as well yes supplies [Music] any other comments questions [Music] yes this casino yes yes uh yesterday um take it takes a little as high yes foreign uh and subject to the same stipulations and limitations so we have no questions for this evening's meeting we actually do not have any HIV cases to review so
039we don't have a need to go into detective session unless there is something so confidential that meets the requirements so at this point in Europe 16.1 I'm very interesting emotions