001all right good uh let me just do an audio check since i changed this completely um [Music] so at this moment in time um since we do not have a board president or vice president i need a nomination for attacking president for this evening i jegs second all in favor aye all right perfect yeah you're the acting president for this board meeting right here so we are now open to the public open public meeting statement the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which time any business affecting their interests is discussed and acted upon in accordance with this provision of this of this act and the board of education policy 0162 the board
002of education of the borough of bound brook has caused notice of this meeting to be posted in the battle in the board office and that van brook high school and mail or fax to the courier news foundry southbound report of education any person who's requested individual notice and paid the required fee and expect to believe and pledge things [Music] here we have a corner okay um since jay winston when you have those comments i happen to have a president no i have no president comments thank you for asking all right so um under superintendent's report we have a presentation from mr moore mile you ready hold on let's make sure we turn the camera hi everybody um this year's uh harassment intimidation bullying vandalism and violence report okay so our numbers this year were much
003lower than we have in past years uh the obvious reason for that is that we were remote for a good part of the year and we were uh hybrid for a good part of the year so we didn't have the students here uh in person um as we have had in the past um the numbers that the the um cases that we did have this year as you might imagine involved um bullying electronically um snapchat google messaging etc okay so the high school only had one confirmed case this year community again also only on one case swally only had seven investigations but had three confirmed cases so they were our leader in confirmed cases this year between lafayette and the annex we did not have any hiv no allegations no confirmed cases okay now moving
004on to violence and vandalism uh separate of hiv yet reported to the state are the same comprehensive report at the high school we had 10 incidents total they included five cases of substance use for substance possession three of which were vaping and you know we um we were able to detect a lot of that in the bathrooms with the new um the new halo sensors hey look i couldn't think of the word sensors that that we purchased next up and one case of weapon possession and all ten incidents happened from january through june okay community three uh vape possession um two incidents where students left the building without permission nothing is smally this year nothing in lafayette nothing at the ends that's it for my presentation any questions yeah what age group is in smalling
005that's uh four grades three four five and six because i mean not last year but the years before you know smallie has been like a hot button when did they when did they switch over right so 18 and 19 they it was the same grades that they're in there and then for 20 19 20. so they would have been pretty predominantly a four five six building we had a third right it just seems to be our hot sauce i just have one maybe procedural question is there any reason why substance abuse reduces violence or you know the other headings is that like a statewide other questions all right open to the public for agenda items only um so in accordance with district policy zero one zero one six seven participation board meetings members of the
006public must sign in at the podium or online providing their name address group affiliation if applicable please state your name address followed by your public participate participation agenda items only comments to the presiding officer of the meeting your public participation is limited three to five minutes in duration no participants may speak more than once on the same topic until all others have been heard do we have any questions for agenda items um there's no sign in sheet but it's patricia o'reilly 745 school house so i'm just asking about uh agenda 7.2 just wondering why there's an extra day um there's there's an extra we put in an extra snow day um this year just because of last year we actually ended up closing and had to add it back an extra day so that extra
007day if you don't use it we'll be giving back to our memorial day okay and then uh 9.2 about the uh new policies and regulations um i've asked this about other things um it's hard for me to find stuff on the website are we gonna get like once these are approved are we going to be able to find these on the website on the website somewhere yeah they all get updated into our policy part of the website underneath the board but the board tonight is going to be asked to approve a uh a contract with a communications firm to redesign the website and make it more user-friendly so there's actually under under the board of ed then you go to yeah oh okay all right that's all thanks thank you we do have one online
008it is from jackie beers regarding 6.9 item 6.9 will reduce kindergarten from eight teachers to seven teach with moving mrs arias from kindergarten to first grade i understand this is due to current numbers being low however please take into consideration the influx of students that occur between now and september we have been in this situation many times before i hire an eighth teacher at the last minute and sometimes after school has already begun i do not want to be in this situation again this year i'm asking for to consider leaving this cesarean position her current spot kindergarten allow us to have lower numbers so we can accommodate any new registry to follow cbc guidelines and give our youngest students the best educational setting to learn as always thank you for consideration well the facts are
009this currently inside the county uh kindergarten classrooms uh as we did a check on this is anywhere from 18 to 19 kids with no aids currently if we left eight teachers in our kindergarten we would be at 12 13 by removing one kindergarten teacher would be going to 14 15 and if i still cannot fill any spots i'm going to take another kindergarten teacher bring that number up to 17 put another kindergarten feature somewhere else because right now filling positions and making sure we have enough staff where we need them is our major concern okay any other agenda item comments seeing none [Music] personnel resolutions to high school resolve the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions has outlined the personal resolutions under district high school 5.2 through 5.10 can i get a motion motion motion
010mr battle there second second mrs morris discussion seeing none can have a roll call vote please martinez yes mars yes busan yes i'm sally yes but larry yes [Music] yes ocean passes okay dan i'd just like to congratulate the gentleman who got a spoiler license that's that's a big thing that helps out the district immensely it does um personal resolutions middle and elementary school resolve the superintendent recommends for approval following resolutions has outlined the personnel resolutions under middle and elementary school 6.2 through 6.12 can i get a motion motion miss martinez second second second mr battle there discussion martinez yes morris yes ocean taxes education resolutions district and high school resolved the bamboo board of education approves the resolutions has outlined that educational resolution within the district of high school seven point two through seven
011point four can i get a motion motion motion mr battle air second second second mrs morris discussion so there's five snow days or there's two yeah it's five there was there was a mistake made in the calendar and they decided to keep it for the five days because that's god forbid we have to go virtual last time we went virtual i had to actually um use the snow date to kind of get everything all situated for virtual so i decided to keep the fifth day in and if we don't use it we'll just give it back door and memorially we can extend it out a little bit there so the extra days because it only says online the extra days are the 31st and the 26th it doesn't say yeah that that's all getting admitted
012after this is working okay okay question on the teacher's handbook we put in the policies new policies i probably did not because they just they constantly they just changed they're so fluid and they keep changing that we keep sending updates i haven't even sent that letter to the staff yet i'm doing it this week just because um thursday i knew that this was coming um i got the heads up that this was coming out thursday so you know i want to wait until just the right you know where i think we're in the spot where if i give that information it's not going to change within 48 hours at the record there's no covet on i just searched the code but there isn't okay can you just confirm what day it is that changed yeah
013it was um did we add one to november it's um the second the first tuesday in november which is election day okay because what we did for election day is we're doing an online day initially we had that day off but we're actually going to do online since they gave us the ability to do that so we just kept that day in there as an extra snow day or anything like that any other questions so you're not going to get a role full vote please martinez yes mars yes yes what's the matter yes thomas yes by the ladder yes yes dan i'm sorry with the election day so we're allowed to do virtual yeah just on that day just on that [Music] and basically what what what they had told us was we could use
014that as a trial rover virtual to see if we had any internet problems any sort of issues whatsoever that we could um use that i don't want to say an experiment day but a day where you know we can get some feedback on how virtual is going if we have to make any adjustments to our plan moving forward because again as as things are going in the way we are going i i hope you're in school all year long but yeah you just don't know and that's just this year or that's like as far as i know that's just this year thank you okay education resolutions middle and elementary resolved that the boundary court of education approves the resolutions is outlined in educational resolutions under middle and elementary schools eight point two and eight point
015three can i get any motion motion motion miss morris second miss lusada discussion i'd just like to compliment the english the language art department on their books i thought this the selection is updating very nice that's something that i've as you know i've said every year that uh we we need to get more current books for these people and mitch album is an excellent writer abstain education approves the resolutions as outlined in policy resolutions under district and high school 9.2 can i get a motion motion motion mr vavalaire second mrs martinez discussion so i just had a question i think at our last meeting we talked about an opportunity between meetings for us to sit down and review variances from blast and that that's my fault because obviously i was on vacation um so if
016you want to table these until we have that meeting you're more than welcome to do that although i can tell you right now i have another stack of positives i mean that's what you're having to have to redo as well um i can tell you that in this stack of policies that you're reviewing there is nothing earth shattering changes um there is some abolishments of some old policies which is coming from estimated spouses to our policy company that updates our policies and things like that otherwise it's just straight forward um striking changes uh to keep up with you know current legislation as you know they make amendments and things like that so we're okay going forward all right yeah okay any other stuff can i get a roll vote martinez yes mars yes yes ocean
017taxes okay resolutions resolve the founding board of education approves the resolution of the outline of financial resolutions 10.2 through 10.8 can i get a motion motion motion ms mark second second second miss martinez discussion [Music] any other 10.8 yes sir um i guess i'm having a little bit of trouble with that one in particular because of the speed with which we brought it over and i guess the the website seems to be a very big farm in my side it comes up every year as something that just doesn't seem to communicate well it doesn't work well with our community we've had a number of issues with it and constantly being asked to suddenly somehow come up with that and come to the realization that in-house we just cannot do that at this point in time
018so i asked myself if i can go out and get a company to do that unfortunately she's not here to say yeah she want me to go through so i mean personal opinion i think the initiative is great i do agree with you the website could seem to be improved um for the this particular proposal were there any other bids solicited from other vendors um and what is the expected all-in cost for the contract because i noticed that the website was a separate carve out with additional costs associated with it correct i contacted three this seemed to be the best one fit our needs um is it typical for us to vote on a contract without knowing the full expected spend um as you see there's a monthly cost um and it all depends on
019how many months we use it so if we're only gonna use it for two months at six thousand dollars however if we're able to use it for ten months it's thirty thousand dollars so usually what we do is at this point we do that not to exceed costs and that's usually what we do at this point in time cost okay so my question is there's the consulting side of this monthly retainer that much again i understand the website work seems to be in addition to wherever that retainer is so that's the total cost correct and again the reason the reason i mentioned myself is the reason i want to do that because communication is the thing that keeps coming back to me so you know i didn't want i did you know in years past
020what we've done is we've just brought in technical people to do websites right and it just hasn't worked for us so what what i decided to do and talking with michelle was let's bring in a communication firm who will make sure that the website is communication friendly it's all-encompassing it does what we want it to do so um again i am not a pr specialist i'm not i don't say i'm a communications specialist um however i think at this point in time if we bring in somebody who's a specialist to oversee that to make sure that we get the exact product we want that it's much more a beneficial spending than some of the other things that you know we've done in the past and do you think that they would be able to advise
021us not only on structure but also copying content exactly what they're doing exactly what they're doing again that that's why when i talked to michelle it was more about not only doing reviewing the website but making sure it's a communication platform that hits the needs that the board wants to hit because right now every time we talk about the website and we talk about information getting out you know we have multiple multiple ways of doing it we're trying to make sure we hit all those multiple ways we're for whatever reason and again i'll take the blame for it you know it doesn't seem to be as successful as we think internally that it is so at this point in time you know i just said you know i'm not an expert in this i'm not
022going to say am but let's bring in an expert who can say hey you've been doing this pretty good or no you've been terrible at this and this is the way it needs to be done and they just think at this point in time after our discussions and our offline discussions um with members of the board and with michelle that this was the direction that we needed to go i appreciate it and you know my final comment would be i think it's uh refreshing to see that we're not only like you said going to get a review of what the website kind of does right from a structure and hyperlinks and accessibility perspective but also what information we're putting out there how usable and useful it is to the people that are going to the
023website so you know from that perspective and and i also think that you know one of the things that you know offline with multiple people on the board and i have spoken about is making sure that that and again i talk about format and making sure it's clean making sure it's presentable make sure it's readable make sure it's something that's easy to digest and because we have a wide range of constituents within the district at this point in time really i think that you know we need somebody who's a professional at that to make sure we're getting the messages that we need to get across from our website thank you well um i think it's great that we're bringing in uh expert to help out with this communication situation we've been trying to handle i'd
024love to see in the future a way to involve the students i know that that would be really difficult because you know all these other confidentiality things but i think in the long run if we can find a way to incorporate them you know pr communication things like that's their thing right so one of the things i liked about her was that she's done this before for other districts and then she has experience doing this with other districts as what you just said she does have experience with student content as well so i really thought that that her particular proposal met by means the best um with a couple of the other ones that i you know one was out of like ocean city new jersey another one was out of lake minnesota another one
025was out in new york city so when i contacted those you know they gave you the typical canned proposals can things that they would do and with laura it was more no i'm going to customize it to what your needs are i'm going to come in and have conversations with you guys i'm going to come in and talk to you and see and make sure that whatever we do is meeting the needs of the district i think that was a big difference between the four proposals that i looked at and that's the reason i wanted to kind of move quickly out of this so so that's me and talking michelle and i'm just moving as quickly as possible because i like to get things done i don't like things to just linger and sit around
026and not get done so you know we're going into a new school year we're coming out of covet hopefully we're not going back into a code that locked out um you know we have a number of issues that you know we're gonna have to deal with there's gonna be a number of communication items that are going to have to deal with with you know do new regulations on quarantining and all the other different items that are going to come along i just felt as though we needed to get this done so we get her in here so we can get this cleaned up as soon as possible hopefully you know have a workable communication system out to our parents and our staff and our stakeholders and everybody else that works and that's clean so you
027know to me it became a very much a priority to get done and to move without it okay any other discussion can i get a mobile vote please martinez yes mars yes busan yes what's the matter yes thomas ellie yes uh yes with an extension of check number [Applause] and januzzi yes ocean passes okay um other matters to come before the board of new business i just wanted to say um congratulations to mrs mary i think the students are going to be sad i know they really liked his classes i hope we get someone as engaging as him to replace him as a teacher but i think it's exciting for him to move on yeah i'm glad we were able to offer him this opportunity i know um speaking to jeff having a relationship for
028death you know he was applying it to other districts so keeping here to me is a win for us yeah because he has his ticket now right correct is there any general updates you can share regarding new guidance from the state on covet or any changes since the last meeting sure um obviously the governor came out today mandating that all teachers be vaccinated by october 18th i think it is or they have to submit a medical or religious exemption for that again or they can get tested twice a week or right where they can get close to testing twice a week now the testing twice a week um again this is the reason that i really don't want to get anything out so i have all the information um i asked and you gotta know
029this i've asked uh i put it for a testing machine for the difference um through the county um the last i checked was they have the machines they have the testing supplies and everything else i just haven't exceeded it yet i also haven't been told i'm definitely getting it either um because i think that makes it a lot easier for us if we have a machine here um obviously we have one machine for the district who probably could appear at the high school and do testing out of the high school nurse's office um you know that's you know i'm gonna try and find out if we're getting the machine this week because that kind of makes things a little bit easier for for the district when it comes to this um in terms of um
030quarantine and all the other stuff that's still relatively the same that really hasn't changed the big news though is mandatory vaccinations okay i apologize i thought there was an update from a department of education suggesting that it was okay to use virtual options for individuals or classes again no that is not the case jordan schiff is now the assistant commissioner for the department he's former superintendent hillsborough his memo to us was basically you know do your best but try to get kids don't wait for home instruction try to get kids their opportunity um for education as soon as possible um and again what we had said earlier still isn't the same which is um we're probably going to use a virtual home construction option we'll just start earlier obviously like day one day two um
031versus waiting until day five um but we're still not going to do simultaneous instruction again just going back and looking at the stress that that put on our teachers and our staff um i don't think at this point in time that that would be a good move for our staff for um moving forward especially if it's only you know one or two kids depending on classes the situations obviously it's a little different in the whole class if a teacher has to pardon then at that point the whole class will probably be unvirtual with the teacher but that's you know a different situation for you know different circumstances again these things are fluid um you know i've always tried to approach these things with some some level of common sense right by kids as well as
032trying to take our stand into consideration and try not to tax them out too much because obviously we attack our staff too much that creates another issue so um we're gonna try and keep that happens at least as we move forward and try to do great i think that makes sense you know just from prior conversations i think there was some amount of concern about waiting elapsed time for home instruction and then does this look more like a probability not a possibility how practical is home instruction when the individual is supposed to be quarantining anything right so i think the you know the state loosening that guideline giving because the other thing is you know obviously there's regulations that if we're out for three consecutive days for a snow emergency or a declaration of mercy
033or medical or health emergency we can go to an all virtual option after day three my hope is that they even lessen that up to give us the flexibility if we have to flip to the next day that we can right now we're still being told three days so we're really hoping that that even becomes a little bit of a you know what we're getting a little bit better at this you know going from in class that you know virtual option that they loosen that up for us a little bit as well damn i thought what he announced today was all teachers had to be vaccinated except for religious or medical no they don't i believe i believe i didn't get the actual you know again i heard i enjoyed that i mean like everybody
034else i haven't gotten to the official memo i'm sure i will get one either tonight or tomorrow um exactly i thought they had taken the i did want to opt out and just get tested i have a hard time thinking that they can do that again that's just me but again i i would have to wait for them official memo and then i would be able to tell you whether or not that other option is or is not for the um this week probably at the end of the week is basically just asking everybody to update their stuff and you know this is where we're at these are what we're being told hopefully i have a memo by the department by that time without mandatory vaccinations and things like that and we can get a
035better handle on our inside information and then you know kind of go from there because obviously we have to you know if we have 30 percent of our staff which i think the last time i checked about 30 percent didn't have a vaccination um you know coordinating you know testing twice a week for 30 people is going to take a little bit of an effort as well yeah because then we have to test them and then they have to be quarantined while they're testing right i'm not sure again i need the guidance because again i think in that situation that creates a very big hardship for us yeah and i also think that you know one of the things is we don't get the testing machine and again there's this question these are questions that
036i have that i would have we're not going to test who's going to do it you know i mean i have a litany of questions that will follow the only reason i'm not asking those questions or verizon with those questions is because i put it into a machine last i heard was from the uh county executive is that there are machines available to schools they're receiving supplies from schools for testing and they know that we're on them so my hope is that we get the machine soon and we get the test livestream and this way we can just do it internally so this way we can you know make sure it gets done in an expeditious manner versus you know people have to make appointments and then missing class time and things like that right
037earlier that i'll have to pay for it before classes well that's the next part about it we won't be paying anything because we're getting this right you know yeah but the flip side to it though is if we don't get the machine we don't get the supplies then it becomes who who's it up is it on the employer is it not the employee because they didn't get that i don't know that answers interesting right and [Music] it is all state employees so if you are anyone who works in a school district must it's not just teachers and it does say or undergo regular testing or it doesn't say that it does say that i'm on the philadelphia quiet right now and again while it's all well and fine yeah until i get an official memo
038no you're yeah i i i'm not going to say one way or another out of here yeah absolutely okay anything else for new business or other matters to come before the board is mr steele here today no he is not this is part of how false parts you started out last time i talked to everything yeah everything was going smoothly we are open to the public for discussion items yeah patricia o'reilly 745 school house money so i'm just asking a general question because i understand that um regardless of vaccination status all the students and teachers have to wear a mask correct start september okay um so i'm just wondering about um you know what you will do if there is any pushback from that like either from the students or the parents like say your
039students say oh i'm vaccinated like what's going to happen they will become they'll be sent home okay thank you hello lauren paxton president of the bbea um if we get that machine that you were talking about do you know which kind of machine is it is it the i do not okay do you know who will be uh in charge of it running it and taking the tests i do not thank you okay we have no questions online so at this moment in time we need to go executive um if everybody's okay with the hivs i'm gonna skip executive session and continue to move on all right so we are up to approval of hiv cases middle and elementary school resolved this battle board of education approves of resolutions that have find an approval of
040hiv resolutions under middle and elementary school this is 15.2 can i get any motion motion mr vada layer and the second by mrs martinez and well we'll discuss roll call martinez yes morris yes musamata so exactly president