April 28, 2022 Board Meeting

001meeting to order mary roll call please ms hafner here mr blandina miss gagliardi here miss parker here miss mccalla miss sieber here miss woolrod mr edwards will you please read the following the new jersey open public school law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acting upon in accordance with the provisions of this act brick township board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be posted on the administration office bulletin board the official district website and channel btv20 and sent to the asbury park press the bricktime star ledger and municipal clerk's office thank you i need a motion in a second please i'll make that motion second missy mr

002edwards whereas the brick township board of education has performed pursuant to applicable new jersey statutes whereas the board is charged with responsibility of performing all acts and doing all things consistent with the law and the rules of the state board of education necessary for the law fault and proper conduct equipment and maintenance of the public schools of public school property of the brick township school district and where section 7 of the open public's meeting act permits the exclusion of the public from meeting of the board in certain circumstances and whereas the board has determined that circumstances exist for such an executive session and whereas the board has found the action described below to be necessary and proper now therefore be resolved by the board on april 28th 2022 that the public shall be excluded from

003the discussion of an action on the executive session here on set forth the session will be approximately 30 minutes and the general nature of the substrate to be discussed is harassment intimidation and bullying reports twu negotiations bta and sas negotiations it is anticipated at this time that the above stated subject matter will be made public if and when it is deemed to be in the public interest to do so and need for confidentiality is no longer required by the board thank you mary miss heffner yes mr blandina yes ms gagliardi yes miss parker yes miss seibert yes we're going to call the meeting to order i need a motion and a second to return motion nicole a second mike mary miss hefner yes mr blandina yes yes miss parker yes miss sieber yes miss walrup

004yes rotc please rise for the presentation of the colors [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag into the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all please continue standing for a moment of silence for the recent passing of high school students in new jersey thank you face forward march thank you [Music] often often may appear to members of our audience at the board of education act with very little comment and in many cases a unanimous vote please understand that before a matter is placed on the agenda at a public meeting the administration has thoroughly reviewed the matter with the superintendent of schools discussed it in appropriate boe community committees and only then if the superintendent is satisfied that the matter

005is ready to be presented to the full board of education it is placed on the agenda for action at a public meeting board of education members are given advance notice to review the agenda and through the chair ask questions or voice concerns in rare instances when necessary matters are presented to the board of education for discussion at the same meeting that final action may be taken dr farrell presentations yes we do dr farrell this evening from the junior rotc we have cadet first lieutenant gianna ubitosa um is is our chief of staff and she's going to be presenting this evening welcome gian thank you [Applause] good evening members of the board my name is cadet first lieutenant gianna butosa i'm a third year jrotc cadet my job in jrotc is director of staff and i'd

006like to provide you with the jrotc minute for this month since the last time jtc has spoken with you we've had a few amazing events our cadets have participated in such as we've had several cadets support a flag retirement at the brick vfw on april 24th we help to properly retire over 2 500 worn and tattered us flags we have also been leading our high school and reciting the pledge of allegiance during the morning announcements at bmhs internally we have taken our semester two promotion tests and we are awaiting result notifi notification from the cadet group commander to see how many cadets got promoted this round we've also begun the process of kitty hawk inductions new members will be inducted on may 3rd cadets also took a survey on jobs they would like next year

007and our seniors as well as instructors will be looking through those some events we have coming up are we are hosting our first invitationals drill competition on may 7th 2022 longbridge and camden high school jrtc's have been invited to join us for some friendly competition as well as with the blood drive that is planned for april 11th of this year hosted at brick township high school this also marks the first blood drive we have had at bths in five years that is all for now and thank you for your time have a great evening [Applause] mr barresi would you like to introduce the student representatives from brick memorial high school please absolutely and our school spirit chair uh good evening everyone i'm tory nichol i'm school spirit and i'm maiza fradella the vice president um

008so as school spirit we'd like to begin with our spirit week that we had on the week of the 11th in preparation for spring break we had fandom day t-shirt day colorware wednesday and our staying spirit day we would like to thank miss reinhard from the gardens department for continuing our tradition of career day on april 14th we had over 300 visitors who spoke to our junior and senior classes about future career plans it was a great event and we thank everyone who spoke to students we had earth day meals painted by mrs harzer's art club so eight students and one graduate were invited to create six mobile murals inspired by nature and sustainability that are on display at the freehold mall tonight april 28 through sunday may 1st our bmhs mustang players will be

009performing their show mamma mia tickets can be purchased at the door it's gonna be five dollars for students and ten dollars for adults and they've already sold over a thousand tickets on pre-sale we wish them all the best of luck and we know it's going to be a great show ap testing will be from may 2nd to may 13th and as a pep rally for it we had a student faculty ice cream social today we know that everyone's going to do amazing and we wish everyone a good luck coming up on may 4th we'll be having the asvab testing and on may 7th we'll be having the sat test we continue to wish all students entering the military and those just taking the test the best of luck on these tests next is our junior

010prom it's going to be held on may 12th from 6 to 10 at jock's catering in middletown and we are wishing all of the juniors a safe and happy night on may 11th our bmhs band will be performing their annual spring band concert at 7 pm we want to thank mr penrod and mr bettis for what we know it's going to be an amazing show we have the nj sla testing coming up from may 16th to may 19th so good luck to all the 9th and 11th grade students who are taking that test and then every wednesday from now to the end of the school year after school madame schwester at mr hyland will be hosting a yoga class for the faculty and staff we are proud to announce that every one of our mustang

011athlete teams are having a good season this spring and we are on pace for postseason play we had a few milestones with our girls lacrosse program senior goalie abby fuchs broke our school record earlier in the month when she made her 387th career save also senior summer castiglione scored her 100th career goal our baseball and softball teams continue to compete for a south titles our boys lacrosse team is primed for a home seat in the short conference tournament and state playoffs our golf team recently finished 10th in the short conference tournament which plays to all of our ocean and monmouth county schools in which there are 48. our boys tennis team is currently six and two after a second sweep of our crosstown rivals the brick dragons today and we look to do some damage

012in the ocean county shore conference and the njsia tournament coming up and finally our track team continues to perform well and is ready to compete in the ocean county relays next week as always you can stay current with all of our athletic schedules and updated news by following us on twitter at bm staying sports and by checking out our weekly athletics and co-curricular newsletter the mustang weekly thank you all and have a good night dr ocasion would you like to introduce the student representatives from brick township high school please yes i'd love to two of our veteran presenters over here you know you'll love them kayla johnson and skylar for scoping for the student government oh okay we're so slow uh hey guys um i'm skylar i'm the president of sga i'm kayla oh this

013is loud i'm public relations of sga uh we hope everyone had an amazing spring break we are very happy to be back and we have a lot to share with you guys we're going to start off with march which ended off on a great note from march 21st to march 25th what sorry um vths participated in developmental disabilities awareness month hosted by our special services department the spirit week had a great turnout and many of our staff and students showed great support and all came together to celebrate this amazing month with our their peers we are getting excited for the upcoming junior prom and senior ball bids have been on sale over the past two weeks the junior prom will take place on thursday may 19th from 5 to 9 pm at pat's 30 acres

014in wall township and the senior ball is going to take place thursday june 2nd from 9 to 5 to 9 00 pm at jumping brook country club and we are looking forward to both events now for some club updates student government class elections are going to be taking place in may students will vote through our sga google classroom and we wish luck to all of our future student leaders the drama club performed in their spring play the wizard of oz on april 8th and 9th if you went through that on either night you were able to witness a fantastic performance thank you to all the families and friends who came to those nights and witnessed an immensely talented cast crew and orchestra and then while we are on top the topic of celebration we want

015to congratulate our bths stem academy team who made it to the regional state finals in the nj sba steam tank competition sponsored by the u.s army on march 31st the team created an innovative and unique invention known as the metamorphic chair which got first place on april 8th their winning design is the first ever district trophy one for the bths dragons in the stem steam tank challenge so huge congratulations to you guys keep up the great work in athletics on march the 31st bths staff and students congratulated mr penuska on his retirement we went to thank him for all that he has given to brooke high school and brick athletics and we wish you nothing but the best in the future we would also like to congratulate mallory pritchett and carlos gordillo who on march

01621st both achieved offshore banned honors being selected to perform in the upcoming offshore band concert that was held on april 2nd at neptune high school this is mallory's third year in achieving offshore band and carlos's second year achieving it so great job to the both of you we want to wish another congratulations to our region 7 and 10 tia champion indoor drum line and winter guard who performed on april 24th on april 1st numerous of our spring sports teams had their opening opening day season openers brickell's lacrosse had a great season opener with an 18-5 win against point beach it was a great start to the season so keep it up girls congratulations to the brick township high school varsity golf team for placing 3rd overall at the ocean county golf tournament at seaview bay

017course the team now moves on to compete at the short conference tournament in addition we want to send a huge congrats to senior derrick norwal for finishing first overall at the ocean county tournament at seaview bay course in galway new jersey on april 11th oh finally we would like to send a huge congratulations to our district teacher of the year miss carew people wrote very kind words in her congratulations post on our bths twitter page which is um at bths dragons uh one educator wrote miss carew is a generous compassionate patient teacher so thank you miss carew for being an amazing role model to the students at bths and congratulations again that's all we have for you guys so thank you wait a minute wait a minute that's not it skyler oh no ladies and

018gentlemen it is my honor to congratulate not only my partner in crime for these board meetings but also my best friend why am i gonna why am i getting teary-eyed okay for being awarded student of the month at brick township high school for the month of all april that's now we're done yeah thanks guys [Applause] thank you [Applause] we're going to go into the the major part of this evening's presentation our budget presentation so i say that because i know there are some students here that may want to egress to get there i know you want to give me well this is this is really interesting stuff guys but you have a lot of homework to do i swear it i mean we want to get a jump on our homework i know right yeah

019yeah all right thank you guys i think it's very interesting stuff so um similar to the last two years actually we're going to do a presentation on the budget which has a voiceover so we don't have to get up and back and up and back so um without further ado the 2223 uh budget presentation [Music] yes brick schools 22 23 budget presentation our central office administrative team has worked hard to help create a budget that is fiscally responsible and maintains programming while at the same time reallocating resources both human and capital to remediate elementary schools large class sizes and improve support services and facilities even though our student population is 75 percent gen ed our student population demographics have been changing over the last five years enrollment is static though projected to increase slightly special

020education students population has increased slightly over the last five years as well our percentage of economically disadvantaged student population has increased over the last five years our ell population has doubled in the last five years the cost to educate a student who is classified economically disadvantaged ell or at risk is greater than the average cost per pupil as our demographic numbers increase and change our revenue sources are decreasing brick township public schools continues to do more with less our revenue sources have decreased with a tax levy projected of only 0.8 percent for this upcoming 22-23 budget our budget is decreasing 1.4 percent as well as state aid continues to decrease as we move further our enrollment has been decreasing slightly over the years as and is presently static with a slight projected increase as i

021said previously to educate a classified economically disadvantaged ell or at-risk student is exponentially larger than our average cost per pupil these demographic student populations have increased over the years while our available revenue sources have decreased this is a no frills budget due to the continued negative impact of s2 and huge reduction in state aid it is fiscally responsible and allows us to reallocate resources to address equitable class sizes on the elementary level while improving facilities and support services some of the key factors that affect the budget are the reduction in state aid staffing continued maintaining of programs and services and maintenance of facilities as stated we are seeing the continued negative effect of the s2 funding cliff on our district salaries and benefits alone make up more than 80 percent of our budget and this

022increase is almost 4 million dollars per year it is worth reiterating that with a decrease of an additional 4.7 million in state aid and the ability to only increase our tax levy by the mandated two percent cap we began this 22-23 budget process with a six and a half million dollar shortfall in order to balance the budget which is state law we have utilized fund balance surplus and federal revenue sources along with increased grants again this is a budget that is fiscally responsible and maintains programming while reallocating resources to remediate elementary schools large class sizes and improve support services and facilities at the same time we believe that our major priority and the most important factor when we were looking at this budget was to minimize the negative effect of the lack of funding on

023class sizes specifically on the elementary level now ms mcnamara will talk about class sizes for the 22-23 budget thank you dr farrell good evening i'm susan mcnamara director of planning research and evaluation the team has worked diligently in this budget to reduce the impact that the loss of funding has had on class size with our primary focus at the elementary level the result is the average class sizes for the 2022 2023 school year in grades k through 1 we will have approximately 24 students per class and in grades 2 and 3 there will be approximately 24 students per class as well finally in grades 4 and 5 we will have approximately 26 students per class overall class sizes range from a low of 20 in the early elementary level to a high of 30 in

024the upper elementary level at the middle school level the class sizes will range from a low of 24 to a high of 30 in grade 6 through 8. specials encore subjects and pe health class size averages will vary depending upon the number of sections and available staff special education classes vary depending upon program and state regulated class sizes and at the high school level the average number of students per course object area will be around 23 however other courses depending upon course selection and number of sections available based on staffing could be higher or lower than the average it is important to note across the levels k through 12 the team has worked to staff each of our schools to provide for a positive educational experience in the best service to our students at this

025time i would like to introduce mrs hanson to speak about preschool and special education thank you miss mcnamara the special education department is excited for the upcoming school year where we will be addressing inclusion equity and access of our students with the following budget advancements we are focusing on providing teachers with the support that they need to increase the inclusivity of our special education students our new special education inclusion specialist will provide support to general education as well as special education teachers to support our students in the least restrictive environment the partnership between general education and special education will be strengthened throughout the next school year with this initiative each school year we work to identify areas where students require additional support and ensure that the money in our special education budget is being spent

026on supporting students where needed our behavioral supports have been widely utilized in special education and general education and more is needed in that area in this budget we have added another bcba and have devised a way to provide registered behavior technicians as district employees rather than using an agency this will ensure that all of our rbts are properly trained and our students are provided with a more consistent and district supervised staff we are very excited about welcoming another supervisor into our department this supervisor will join the two special services supervisors already in place our department is growing every year and our students have high levels of needs in the areas of academics behavior and social and emotional skills we have created programs and supports for our students that need a high level of oversight and

027management this additional supervisor will provide the ability to inspect what we expect and we have very high expectations in our department and in our district because our students deserve the very best that we are able to provide our staff will engage in professional development with a focus on equity and inclusion the special education and general education departments will be collaborating to provide teachers with professional development in this area our esy program will take place this summer from july 5th through august 11th the amount of time that a student attends is based upon their ieps but all students who are eligible for esy will also receive two extra hours per day this summer to address any compensatory education needs that resulted from covid19 additionally there will be a two-week enrichment program available to special education students

028which will be determined through the iep team for students still requiring additional compensatory ed from coven19 all sessions will be from eight to two additionally in this budget you will see money set aside to provide support to our special education students who participate in co-curricular activities we want to be sure that our students are provided support to access all aspects of our curriculum and to grow academically as well as socially and emotionally we are so very pleased to announce that our grant from the njdoe for the upcoming school year to provide full-day preschool to our three and four-year-olds in brick township has been approved for a total amount of five million three hundred and thirty-five thousand seven hundred and four dollars this will help us to further expand our program to one additional classroom and

029provide a more enriched learning environment with more materials we will be enhancing our science materials our classroom classroom libraries and our classroom furnishings we are so proud of our preschool program and are excited that it is continuing to grow each year to reach more and more of our preschool eligible children of brick township now i will introduce dr elise anderson the director of curriculum and instruction thank you mrs hansen this year the cni department piloted two new math programs at the middle school and high school levels after carefully evaluating both programs we will be looking to expand i ready classroom into grades six and seven as we see at the elementary level iready classroom mathematics has the tools and resources to pinpoint students learning gaps and get students back on track for grade level success

030their instructional approach directly aligns with the best practices that we as a district have been working toward as we look to provide a student-centered teacher-led environment that produces critical thinkers and real-world problem solvers for grade 8 and algebra 1 algebra 2 in geometry we have decided to adopt big ideas the new addition and online platform are even more strongly aligned with our district's research-based classroom strategies these include standards-based learning targets and formative assessments that assist teachers in tracking evidence of learning and helping students self-monitor their progress in preparation for the implementation of the new social studies standards an elementary and secondary committee was formed to evaluate social studies resources for the 22-23 school year at the elementary level we will be using social studies weekly which provides teachers with a thematically based online platform that

031aligns to the strands of civics and government geography economics and history the committee will also select two social studies programs to pilot in the 22-23 school year that will include inquiry-based activities of primary resources to meet the new state standards one program will be chosen for adoption for the 23-24 school year at the secondary level the social studies committee has piloted two textbooks for the middle schools and will be making a recommendation for a new adoption we will also be implementing a resource entitled the dbq project the documents based questions project will provide enrichment opportunities for students in grades 6 to 12 as they investigate primary documents and sources to develop high-level critical thinking skills and evidence-based writing strategies while supporting instruction of the social studies and ela standards in the area of english language

032arts at the elementary level we are in the process of conducting an extensive program evaluation and we'll be looking to pilot programs that address gaps in our current literacy program and that align to our district philosophy and needs of our students one of the programs that we will be piloting k to eight will be readers workshop units of study teachers in grades six to eight will be piloting one unit while one teacher in each grade level will pilot all three units in summary these are the curriculum initiatives in the budget for the cni department thank you dr anderson hello everyone i am bill kleisler the director of human resources i will take a moment to identify the overall position changes reflected in next year's budget as mentioned earlier class sizes are a driving factor in

033the placement of our staff members throughout the district the information on the slide identifies the movement of staff and resources to accommodate the district's priorities most positions or ftes will be repurposed into the new positions throughout the district overall the 2223 budget includes a net increase of approximately six ftes this net increase is primarily reflected in the addition of special education changes identified by mrs hanson and the addition of teacher aids and rbts and now i would like to turn the presentation over to mr edwards thank you mr chrysler for the 2022-2023 proposed budget overall expenditures will increase by 2.4 percent primarily due to the utilization of federal american rescue plan funds in the amount of 7.1 million for capital projects operating budget is also increasing by 3.9 percent which will be detailed later in

034this presentation so where will the money go instruction and benefits make up 61 percent of all expenditures up from fifty eight percent and twenty one twenty two debt service now only represents point four percent of the total expenditures down from one point two percent in the prior year all other areas remain relatively flat as compared to the prior year except out of district tuition which is now only 3.9 percent of the total as compared to 4.7 percent in the previous year as can be seen in this slide instructional costs make up 37 percent of the expenditures benefits utilize 24.2 percent and people support has a 12.6 percent share which between the three account for 73.8 of the total budget as was discussed earlier by dr farrell salary and benefits make up more than 80 of

035all the costs as noted previously out of district tuition is decreasing by 16.1 percent causing instruction to increase by 4.2 percent as more services are being offered in district and additional teachers are added at the elementary level to decrease class size debt service is reduced by 69.2 percent as another referendum was fully paid in 2021 2022. benefits increased by 11.2 percent as the pers obligation is now 16.9 percent and medical prescription and dental have a combined 9.5 increase because of the strains on the budget there are minimal equipment being replaced in the 2223 as detailed in this slide for technology special services facilities transportation and co-curriculars the board continued its safety plan for parking lots by including phase one at brick memorial high school for the summer of 2022 mid streams elementary school parking lot

036funded through the capital reserve funds and both emma haven's young elementary school and veterans memorial middle school hvac projects funded utilizing cares 2 and arp funds so where will the money come from tax levy supports the largest share of the budget as the state aid continues to decline state aid reductions under s2 continue to impact the district as seen in the state aid loss of 19 percent as indicated previously federal american rescue plan funds will be utilized in 2223 primarily for hvac projects this slide shows the specific reductions to state aid as the district does not qualify for equalization aid that aid category will reduce to zero over the 2023-24 and 2024-25 budget cycles as has been stated in the past brics schools does not have an expenditure problem we have a revenue problem brick

037schools continue to be under adequacy now by more than 9 million as compared to 6 million in the prior year the school funding reform act also known as sfra continues to be a problem for brick township board of education the sfra is how the state of new jersey determines state aid each district will receive the formula considers brick a wealthy district so that the amount of local chair continues to be below the new jersey department of education determination for brick by now almost 30 million dollars as mr edwards stated we do not have an expenditure problem we have a revenue problem so where do school taxes equate to in brick we are currently the second lowest in the county in average school taxes per dollar and percentage brick township public schools is lower than the

038state and county average in property taxes as a whole and school taxes we believe that we do more with less in brick township public schools than ever before and that's attributed to our amazing staff thank you great job team with that presentation we spent a lot of time over the last months starting in the fall with the process with administrators uh putting that budget together and i said each year it's kind of simple because we don't have much room with some of our revenue sources you know tax levy can only go up certain amounts and some things are required obviously by law to keep on the instructional side so thank you to our team thank you to administrators in a long ruling process thank you dr barrow okay i need a motion in a second

039for approval of minutes motion missing second michael any board discussion seen none mary miss hefner yes mr blandina yes miss gagliardi yes miss parker yes miss seaver yes miss walrup yes reports okay are we going to do it now or are we going to do it at the publix did you what we have it on it's part of your channel yeah public comments on agenda items so you can ask your questions then under the agenda yeah you can ask your questions and we know that you need to ask your questions prior to us voting on it okay we'll go into our reports i'm just going to keep my comments this evening brief because i know we want to get to the budget items and questions well tonight's focus is the budget and we have a

040lot to get through my comments will will briefly be addressing the new curriculum standards because i want to speak to some of the concerns parents have been sharing with the board and central administration through phone calls and emails dr farrell will also address in his comments the comprehensive health and physical education changes speculation and concern have risen in the wake of recent media coverage of resource documents made available in some other districts those resources are not mandated by the state of new jersey and are not required to be a part of any district's curriculum unfortunately there is misinformation out there i cannot answer or explain why or what other districts are doing nor what they post to their websites or what sample curriculum materials may or may not be used in other new jersey school

041districts i can however discuss brick township schools two weeks ago on april 13th the governor directed the new jersey department of education to review the standards and provide more clarification to districts on what they believe age-appropriate guidelines for students are we are expecting this explanation as well as any possible changes to the standards i'm being told that much of the guidelines are not mandated as they are only recommendations and implementing any said recommendations is at the direction of the local boards of education in other words as it pertains to brick township public schools at this board's discretion the new headlines have generic language on identifying gender roles and treating all people regardless of gender with respect bric already does this and will continue and will continue doing this when i was growing up my mother

042called it the golden rule under the guidance of our curriculum director dr anderson our district has continuously developed curricula that is age-appropriate and reflects the values of our community and we will continue to do so thus the board sees no need to make changes to our curriculum at this time finally as we await further clarification and or updates from new jersey department of education and the governor's office it is this board's hope that the njdoe will delay any changes and implementations mandated or recommended another year so district administration educators and parents can review ask questions and offer feedback i believe this will allow for better outcomes when everyone is better informed and we can ensure the age-appropriateness of these delicate very personal topics we are still dealing with challenges from covid we need to continue

043to focus our energy on the betterment of our children's educational outcomes we have overcome a lot together and the last few years a lot together in the over the last few years and we did it despite the noise going on around us respectful and supportive relationships among students staff parents and community members these supportive relationships are at the heart of our community brick is made up of people from diverse backgrounds we need to continue to work together and focus our energies on making decisions that fulfill the needs of our students staffs families and community members while aligning those needs with academic goals this is the only accomplished this is only accomplished by allowing decisions to be made at the local level now dr farrell will get back to the budget thank you miss walrus thank

044you last month the board of education approved the tentative 2223 budget which was reviewed and accepted by the executive county superintendent tonight the board will vote on the final budget we are mandated by state law to balance the budget every year additionally we have a state mandated 2 percent tax levy cap and this year we must manage the additional state aid reduction of 4.7 million the annual expenditures increase yearly by approximately 4 million just in salaries and benefits which is more than 80 percent of our budget so he started this budget process with a shortfall as has been the case in past years in order to balance the budget we utilize some surplus additional federal revenue sources and increased grants funding our central office administrative team worked diligently with building and department administration to help

045create a fiscally responsible budget that adheres to our student-centered vision statement tonight this 22-23 budget presentation illustrated how we will maintain programming while addressing district priorities we reallocated resources both human and capital so we can remediate elementary schools large class sizes improve support services and continue to address our infrastructure needs even though state aid continues to decrease our tax impact continues to be low 0.8 tax levy we continue to do more with less and for that i would like to both acknowledge and thank our amazing staff i just want to briefly touch on the new 2020 nj sls comprehensive health and physical education standards there's misinformation and misunderstanding as ms already have alluded to and many of for many of our concerned stakeholders so i'll try to explicate what i what is known at this

046point the new jersey department of education adopted new health and physical education standards in 2020. although the standards were supposed to be implemented in 2021 they've been delayed because of the pandemic there is discussion at the state level these standards may once again be delayed if new jersey school districts are required to implement the standards in 2022 this summer a committee of our own health and physical education teachers working with our health pe supervisors will review the changes to the standards they will select resources that will best meet the needs of our students and our community in addition this committee will create a parrot guide that will provide an overview of the family life curriculum and resources so parents will have the opportunity to choose whether they like their child to participate in these lessons

047if they are to be implemented this information will be provided through our parent portal to ensure that all parents and guardians can make an informed decision and we will communicate publicly at a board meeting parents you can opt your child out of any specific family life lessons you heard our two young ladies from brick high school talk about the steam tank college which i was actually able to to witness a few weeks ago was absolutely awesome and congratulations to our brick high school steam challenge winning teams we had a team called metamorphing chair it was this pretty cool chair that became a wheelchair and couch and and table and a solar powered retractable flag that went in they were chosen to compete in the 20 steam tank challenge finals in may so kudos to our

048student teams under the guidance miss jennifer lane and mr gary paxton and only our first year fantastic job one of our own mr brett novick osborneville elementary school social worker created what's called the brain bullies card game which is based on the book of the same name this 21st century counseling tool is an uno type game geared for students six and over the game aims to work with students to address ways of thinking that increase self-esteem communication skills emotional expression anger management and problem solving while decreasing anxiety and worrying utilizing everyday practical issues brain bully's card game teaches children with the support of a counselor therapist or parent to identify and challenge thought process that could contribute to emotional distress and form positive alternatives and adaptive solutions great job mr novick may 1st is principal's

049day i see many of our principals out here great leaders don't set out to be leaders they set out to make a difference brick schools is fortunate to have an amazing group of principals leading our educational communities their expertise caring and commitment to students parents staff and the community as a whole is extraordinary we commend all of our principals for their tireless work for the best services to all members of their learning communities and their continued work to make brick schools a great place to learn grow work and live happy principals day many of our principals out also next week the first week of may is designated as national teacher appreciation week so please take a moment during the week next week to thank a teacher thank you to all of our brick schools teachers

050your commitment to supporting student growth through cultivating each student's unique strengths and talents in an engaging safe and nurturing environment is greatly appreciated please join us at the may 12th i think it's may 12th early board meeting which will be held at brick township high school in the auditorium where we will be celebrating and honoring all of our building teachers of the year educational service professionals of the year as well as our brick district teacher of the year which you heard about before this evening also next week may 6th is national nurses day nurses is a work of heart brick schools has an awesome group of nurses with amazing heart and supporting our students staff and community please take a moment next week to also thank our nurses for all they do to keep us

051safe and well it has been said that unity is strength when there is teamwork and collaboration wonderful things can be achieved every board meeting i try to end my comments on a positive note that brings us together as a community i'm a huge abraham lincoln fan and we can all learn a lot about leadership and team building from our 16th president the book i'm currently reading it's written about how lincoln brought rivals together for a cause bigger than their individual agenda i could just imagine how hard this would be in normal times but imagine in times of crisis with a highly political environment how hard this would be lincoln tried to change our way of thinking in terms of sides or divisiveness or we could use lincoln today the world is not divided into two

052teams thinking in terms of winners losers right wrong my way your way is reductive and restrictive to solve today's problems or seize current opportunities we need to come together in order to solve an organization's issues address society's ills and collaborate in order to be successful let us continue to be reminded that coming together as a beginning keeping together as progress but working together is success thank you dr farrell um miss mcnamara can we start with you with curriculum instruction thank you mrs walrus the cni committee meeting was held on april 26th at 3 30 in attendance was dr anderson dr farrell mrs hanson mrs gagliardi mrs parker ms weiner ms panucci and ms lane the cni covered a number of items in particular the ones on the agenda this evening under travel and training we

053have several workshops a systems security certification course for a member of the tech department international society for technology and education conference for saint dominic staff a national association for school psychologist spring conference for one of our school psychologists and just words virtual training which is a wilson workshop for one of our reading specialists under grants we have a donor's choose grant for sensory safe zones at veterans memorial middle school and in clubs we are thrilled to announce that we have teachers who are willing to and have volunteered to be the advisors of three new clubs for next year the pickleball club the harry potter club and the surf club field trips include the bths band is going to music in the park in hershey pa and the brick memorial high school art class is going

054to the spring lake and mana squad to take photographs ms wayner and ms panucci provided an overview of the high school special education life skills and functional academics curriculum the transitional life skills and functional academics course is the study of daily law daily living skills that are necessary for independence the course and coinciding curriculum is organized into four units that is intended to ignite the curiosity among students to answer essential questions focused on living independently and leading a happy life the curriculum and pacing guides sets our educators up for success encourages differentiation integration of various content areas and the multi-sensory approach to learning it is designed to allow students to make connections between content areas and their lives ms lane provided an update on the district's sel goals she explained how our secondary sel teams

055are working together to help students develop the skills that support academic growth great self-efficacy gross mindset and a sense of belonging a committee of counselors administrators and teachers have also curated resources to foster increased student engagement and self-management at the elementary level school counselors have shared these lessons and resources with teachers and plcs ms lane highlighted all the impressive accomplishments of the stem science and visual and performing arts departments this marking period the cni department will be publishing the third marking period edition of the bridge the brick bridge this week the the cni department will be hosting a parent partnership session on the summer spark program in the coming weeks a blackboard announcement will be sent out with details the next cni committee meeting is june 9th 2022 at 3 30 p.m thank you ms

056mcnamara mr edwards facilities and finance thank you facilities committee met on april 13th items of discussion first was the district-wide energy management system that is being done under the energy savings improvement plan mr precory informed the committee that jersey state controls is working brick memorial high school they have ninety percent of the graphics interface complete ninety percent of the connectivity and road access is complete they're 100 percent complete with the new controllers and uvs and hv units at lake river middle school they're 90 percent complete with the wiring and infrastructure and warren h wolf they are 75 percent complete with the wiring and infrastructure and at veterans moore middle school 40 complete with the wiring and infrastructure uh next we inform the committee that the coordination is currently underway with spiesel neta and dco for

057the upgrades to uv work in the schools slated for hvac upgrades the solar powered purchase agreement was discussed mr record informed the committee that herbert's fill is 90 percent complete lanes mill elementary school is 90 percent complete township high school carports are 100 complete brick township high school roof is 40 complete transportation building is 100 complete osborneville is 20 percent complete trump point elementary school 20 complete and warren h wolf 20 complete finally under the energy savings improvement plan we discussed the boiler replacement and combined the empower plant at brick memorial high school informed the committee that we had a kickoff meeting with the contractor that's that work is scheduled to begin once school lets out in june next we discuss the closing out of the lanes mill elementary school parking lot improvements inform the

058committee that the contractor earl will be was than they were they were on site over spring break to conclude their punch list work which included rectifying the ponding issues in the parking lot and completing the fencing next we discussed the veterans moral elementary school 2004 roof um which is slated to be done this summer i informed the committee that the purchase order to tremco has been issued and the purchase order to njr to remove the solar panels and reinstall once the roof work is done next mr your from neta discussed the brickmore high school penthouse seeing the replacement of air handlers and replacement of the chiller the lake river middle school air conditioning the veterans moore middle school boiler replacement air conditioning emma haven's air conditioning veterans moore elementary school air conditioning he informed the

059committee that there were no bids received on these projects on the bid opening and that there is going to be have need to be discussing on how these projects will move forward into the summer of 2023 which is slated for our next facilities committee meeting drum point elementary school boiler replacement mr spiesel i'm sorry mr siegel from spiesel informed the committee that no bids were received and that they will need to be rebid the work to possibly have be done through the summer of 22 20 at 22 and 23. lake river middle school boiler plant emma havens boiler plant and midstream spoiler plant and lanes elementary school air conditioning uh mr repco architects and from the committee that a pre-construction meeting has taken place with the contractor for both all the jobs and that by

060bi-monthly progress meetings are scheduled this work is scheduled to begin in june when school lets out lanes elementary school boiler replacement mr replica spiesel architects informed the committee that the bids were received on april 12 and that they would be recommended for award which is on this evening's agenda for approval um [Music] i informed the committee that the contractor for the lanes mill elementary school i'm sorry for the yeah for the boiler projects the lake river middle school boiler projects the emma havens midstreams and the lanes air conditioner project the contractor has offered a 25 000 credit back on both of those which is on this evening's agenda in the form of a change order veterans memorial middle school roof 86 a6 area i informed the committee that the po has been issued to the

061roofing contractor to be done over the summer and that we are waiting on the proposal from njr to do the solar removal and reinstallation brick township high school roof 24 that po has been issued and for the roof replacement to be done over the summer veterans memorial middle school solar roof warranty work mr corey informed the committee that we are waiting for njr to provide us with a quote to remove the solar panel panels and reinstall after the warranty work is completed midstream's parking lot reconfiguration inform the committee the design review is concluded and is going out to bid the bid opening is scheduled for may 3rd with an anticipated award on may 12th rick moore high school lot reconfiguration informed the community that the project is still in underground engineering and design with the

062new lighting and electrical tie-ins midstream's elementary school air conditioning and osborneville elementary school informed the committee that we are still looking for a funding avenue to support these projects herbertsville elementary school and osborneville elementary school park and lot reconfigurations inform the committee that suburban engineering has agreed to go out and measure for clearance around herbertsville and osborneville to determine property lines for travel lanes and that we'll discuss this at a possible re-striping plan at an upcoming meeting that was our facilities meeting on that day and next we went to a finance committee first i had a discussion with our broke our broker from gallagher mr colombo was on the medical third party administration mr gallagher recommended that the board of education change third party administration from horizon blue cross blue shield to aetna effective july

0631 2022 which is on this evening's agenda for that recommendation next the committee discussed the 2223 budget which we had the presentation on earlier uh following item was laurelton school property and its auction which occurred yesterday and is on this evening's agenda for approval next we discuss the food service budget for 2223 and ms richardson's recommendations that the budget be considered without having free breakfast and lunch for all students as this time we do not know whether that's going to occur so the budget is based on the [Music] 2018-19 school year which is the last year that we actually had breakfast and lunch being paid for by students that is also on this evening's agenda for approval next is a was a discuss was a transportation transfer for the jointers and fuel as everyone i'm

064sure is experiencing we are saying as well fuel prices have increased drastically so we are going to need to transfer money into that expense account and finally we discussed uh the township's request to through a jointer do summerfest transportation this coming summer in which the township will be reimbursed 100 of the board of education's costs all we had thank you um mr claiser h oh miss hansen do you have i'm sorry that's okay we didn't um we didn't meet but you looked at me so i thought bennett had something nope nope we didn't meet this month mr kleisler do you have anything that you'd like to add um from hr before we move on to public comment just real briefly we do have a few openings that are still on our website if anyone's interested

065in applying but most of our vacancies are being filled great thank you thank you public comment this will be the first opportunity for public comment and will be for agenda items only the board invites thoughts and reactions on agenda items each participant is asked to give his or her name prior to making a statement all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer the board will not during the public portion of this meeting discuss matters involving employment appointment termination of employment negotiations terms and conditions of employee evaluation of the performance of promotion or disciplining of any specific or prospective or current employee and or student do we have any comments on agenda items yes john slooker knight 50 soviet court uh i have my lead i'm going to be latest so without that i still

066got a page and a half uh i know we always talk about how we have a a funding problem not any well guess what us seniors have the same exact thing we have a funding problem pension plans do not go up social security went up six percent would have won they have sent back to medicare and you're talking about hurting this i'm not in that situation yet but i'll get there just as fast as everybody else when we all have a funding problem so we got to work its best to get by what we have not keep adding to it two and a half percent two point four percent or two point two percent you know and then yes it's tough to get there but and then i say it says economically disadvantaged if anybody

067has too much money they can donate it to the school if unless they're economically disadvantaged like all the rest of us i think we're all economically disadvantaged so i find it hard to believe that works that way but okay my now on a budget because somehow i think we really should when you have a budget presentation we should almost do five minutes for the budget in five minutes for but since you're trying to squeeze five minutes into one it's tough how much is the projected class size and the growth is esl and how much is in special ed we're talking about having over five year period of growth of students or at least stable but i also hear that we're going to increase the amount of esl or what you don't know if you call

068it that yellow yeah level yeah okay and also special ed is going to increase but we're going to stay stable in the amount of students so wouldn't that mean we have less students in uh none over those two areas to be able to make it stable that would be my question so we're really reducing the amount of people is what it sounds like you know okay the next one [Music] when i was looking at the thing five year projection on the students ninth grade and twelfth grade brick memorial i'm just doing the two high schools brick memorial's ten percent or so higher in ninth grade in 12th grade but almost even in 10th and 11th it seems a little weird that it goes down up down you know wouldn't you think they'd be steady you

069know whether brick memorial might be higher if brick memorial is actually going to be growing which it looks like according to that are we going to redistrict again that was my question really but i had to state the fact in order to get there and the one that's actually on the agenda is this stipend is there a stipend for these mentors you have a mentor in there or some i guess in the human resources area something about mentors and i said i know we had mentors before you actually get a job not after you get the job i thought that was kind of weird but so do we have mentors i think we have a couple it says and do they get paid something and if they get paid why aren't they before the person

070gets hired not after they already get hired it almost makes it sound like a person's not completely qualified for the job if they need a mentor after they get the job and i guess we're not doing anything with uh this disinformation alert by the njea right it's not part of the i don't i know you guys talked about but i don't think that's the agenda not okay i didn't think so i wanted to make sure yeah okay now that's my questions thank you thank you thank you mr suluka um so let me start with class sizes what you were looking at was a regression analysis the last five years we're looking at a projection so what you saw were the class size of the enrollment for the last five years ell over the last five

071years has doubled english learners language the requirement for class sizes on ell and special education is very different than obviously gen ed or other class sizes i also want you to know as you said that the enrollment drop to the class size has dropped what we did was last year we had five uh grade levels that were 35 this year 34 35 36 and 37 in a class on average we reallocated to reduce those elementary class sizes so there's no elementary grade class size over 30 at this point enrollment changes enrollment static i think the projection's 40 students total across the board for next year so that was what i showed was from five years ago enrollment um economically disadvantaged which is our what they used to call poverty students but free and reduced lunch

072for title one our ell population and our classified students popular i showed that of our five year period with the cost per pupil and on the revenue you did mention i know because it's a budget you said um you know funding going up 2-4 i know i said this last year so i'm going to take advantage of it and say it again we are mandated to go out with two percent on the tax level no less no more no refund that's it that's it because we're under adequacy that's how it's affected so whatever our tax levy is we go out with two percent and we got to go balance the budget this year because the retirement of debt service which is a different bill for you of 1.2 percent nets out that the tax levy

073for you is point eight percent that's it we have we have no control up or down you know and and and it's hard as you know costs are going up inflation's over five percent we're going out for a revenue source of 0.8 um so it is tough so what we tried to do is reallocate some of the resources remember all the influx of um federal monies as we said last year when we got it we were only they they to use 20 for instructional classroom we use the 80 for hvac and infrastructure unlike some other districts locally that are relying on that federal money over the last years if you put that into operations you're going to have a problem and we still foresee problems obviously going down the road because we're losing uh state

074aid so that that's important uh to note that uh miss mcnamara the the mentors so what happens in the department of education world and industries when you get a new certification or a new job and you're in it for the first time whether it's a first year teacher first year superintendent for me nine years ago i had to have a mentor you have to get that for that certificate of eligibility to become a standard certificate a first-time administrator has a mentor first-time teachers have a mentor is stipends associated um with that can you add to that is there a cost associated with it yes the mentors do get paid um it's paid by the mentee paid by the person not by the district by the mentee the person being hired by the person that's going

075to utilize the mentor to get a standard certificate and it is a requirement under the new jersey department of education has been for a long time okay um any other mr finale a couple disclaimers first i agree with his comments if you've got a budget presentation there's a separate agenda item that should be a separate thing for question and answers not thrown in with the with the main body so i hope you're not doing your five minute clock uh first of all doing the town the township budget and the school budget within two days of each other is even tough for me so you will bear with me secondly whatever comments you have about taxes just remember we are the highest tax state in the country so you could be good but you're good in

076the bad state right tax wise so um what i did what i did and oh my disclaimer is all my numbers come off what you published in the newspaper last week all right so you don't get to tell me my numbers are wrong because this is what you publish now they might have changed a little bit but you can't tell me i'm wrong um just clarification so people understand that that point eight you talk about that's that sounds like a nice small number what is it in real dollars okay i'll tell you what it is in 2018-19 the tax levy was 1.7 million then it went to 1.11 million then it went to 1.13 and it went to 1.156 and this year went from 1.156 to 117.9 so in four years the tax levy has

077gone up 10.7 million dollars that sounds a lot more drastic and even the 2.3 that it went up point eight percent two point three million bucks what i did is i looked at all the numbers and the reason i use what i like this is because it has the last three years so you can look and say what happened where it was where went so what i did was i keyed in on the areas that had big swings as a percentage of what they were and that's what i'd like to talk about and get your input as to what happened how did you compensate for that some of it might have been answered some of it i might know the answer but i want to make sure so uh we heard debt service that's one

078of the items i have it it was 2 million then it was 1.9 million now this year was six hundred and one thousand dollars which is one third of what it was last year so uh did you cut that that budget or is that actually realistic of what the debt service went to that's what i'd like to know did you take money out because you didn't have it or that service is actually two-thirds lower than it was second of all uh employee benefits and we talked about this 29.8 million to 33.4 million to 35.3 million that's going up like 2 million 3 million a year employee benefits now you people negotiate employee benefits and you people negotiate salaries so whatever they are it's what you gave it's it it's not a it's not a thing

079that just happens i mean you make it sound like that sometimes well of course the benefits in the course of the salaries and what not go up every year they go up because you agree to them right and my problem is and i talked about this at the town council meeting what was mentioned before all i know everything went up all of our stuff goes up everything we all get up right what i don't like what's not fair it's not realistic is if i i have to pay for my things going up and then i turn around and i have to pay for all the things in the school that goes up too that's a double-edged sword i'm hoping and you can answer this question if the cost of medical benefits goes up in the

080school district did employees pay that or do you play that because if you pay it then i have to pay it twice i get double-edged sword and i being taxpayer when i'm saying that that just means taxpayer all right so a capital outlay and i think i know the answer to this but it's one of the big items we had 9.8 million then we had 12.2 million and then it's down to 1.6 million we can answer this right now i'm assuming it's because you got all that extra money to do that and now you're back to about normal is that right correct is 1.9 about what we normally spend on capital improvements okay and of course the cost per pupil has gone up every year right and this is a tricky one because it talks

081about employee benefits of the cost of salary all right so it was 38 percent then it went to 40 percent then it went to 42 this year that i think my memory serves me that's the highest it's ever been 42 right and the tricky part of that number is that percentage which goes up but that's also percent of a bigger number in other words as the salaries go up a percentage of 75 000 you know of 50 five thousand is not the same as fifty percent of a hundred thousand so that number's going up too what are you doing to control that and last but not least i just looked at title one and it appears that the monies that you're getting for title one title two title three and title four are all going

082down but if you're getting more special needs students and everything else why is that money going down is that is that another place that they're cutting now do you want my agenda items too or do you want to do the budget first we'll do that but let's take the budget first good that service is bonds and referendum from years ago we retired matter of fact this district i i want to say most districts in the state of new jersey have five to ten percent of their total budget right in debt um we are retiring that one over 1.2 million in debt that's off the books now that we owed is paid for this year i think there's 600 000 left for next year that'll be off the books in one more year we'll have almost

083zero debt now i know when you run a household i think that's great and all that but sometimes you know debt is not a bad thing especially when money was cheaper years ago for that so that's debt service retirement that's not we added debt we had no that was a bond that was probably voted on years ago that's coming off the books does not hit the taxpayer at all so that that's important to understand that before we get to employee benefits because i'll have mr edwards talk a little bit about that last year i think i said this to you our salaries in general comparatively across even the area monitors county are lower than most of them the percentage of benefits to salary when you say go up highers because the salaries are lower so

084if 30 percent is the benefits percentage of salary up in romson because cost of benefits are the same whether you're a teacher in russian or your teacher in brick if their salaries are higher the percentage of benefits is lower to them that doesn't mean they're paying less in benefits benefits there's an employee contribution under the state for all teachers now they pay a percentage for those benefits we try to shop unfortunately benefits as a whole even being self-insured in a partnership try to shop to get the best group and best projections for benefits i said before you know in inflation is over five maybe even higher percentage a lot of items went up but i'm going to say this again regardless what went up or what we cut in your your tax levy is going

085up 2 by law right now the last couple years until that's changed whether we cut or not it's going up 2 we can only take that tax levy i know you said it's gone up over eight years whatever it adds up to two percent or if they went out with bank cap to one year it can only go up by two percent after they utilize bank cap and we are mandated to do so because we're under adequacy so when you said i think it was 1.2 million on that think about this for a second on 160 million whatever our budget is right off whatever our budget is we go up 4 million roughly every year with salaries and benefits just to open the doors right off the bat we lost 4.7 million in state aid

086that we got last this year so that's 8.7 we can only go out on the tax levy for whatever 2.2 million on that the shortfall of 6.5 million we have to figure out i can't go ask you for more can't cut things and give you a refund i got to balance that budget with that a lot of costs have gone up tremendously with that not saying you know i i say this all the time mr fernelli for everybody a board of education the community and administration our district we all agree on the what right what we want to get to right the how is an administrative function right the what on this budget and i've been saying is very simple because we don't have much leeway your tax levy base is going up two percent

087regardless this year you get a debt service reduction of 1.2 percent so the cost to the taxpayer is 0.8 percent from whatever you paid last year that's it i don't know about anybody else but in these inflation times all our costs are going up over 5 and i'm telling you our costs are going up as well in the district way more than 0.8 so it becomes hard so then you got to make tough choices so i just wanted to do that the title monies and i'll get to the benefits the title monies that you alluded to don't affect the majority of the special ed money comes from idea extraordinary aid there's other these title monies come specifically for economically disadvantaged free induced laws those are different they're totally based on student population i'm looking at

088miss mcnamara for that on our title monies we're considered a title one district because so many schools represented by a percentage of economically disadvantaged students that are designated so therefore we get title money based on that they have a lot of restrictions whenever you get federal money especially title monies you can't i always use the words you can't supplant you can supplement but those monies have to be calculated sent in before you get it approved and then they come back and audit what it was spent on but that's different from special education those money but they're all going down they are but well some of them are going down at the end of the year like last year we got an increase in some some of the special ed monies have also increased for us

089the idea money which is special education money and our extraordinary aid i'm looking over to ms hanson last year we we actually got an increase in that money from the federal government so every year we get a target of what that is to balance the budget with it and it's not a science um you also so i i want mr edwards if you could just um just clarify a little more on the benefits so employees they have a percentage that they pay their benefits i know it's tiered based on their salary that they contribute to us now my question was if if the course of that particular coverage you get dental you get medical you get a prescription if that cost goes up they pay a percentage so yes their cost out of pocket goes

090up in two yeah their cost of that pocket goes up okay that was my question yeah i just want to make sure okay so you're going to ask agenda item questions now that was strictly budget yeah all right and i'll try to be quick yeah here you're fine and i'm laughing because i'll tell you later uh curriculum number two i know i'm old school but could somebody explain to me what this means there's a there's a grant application that says blah blah blah for students who need to modulate their sensory responses did somebody tell me what what that means right i mean like that's way out there okay uh that when we took care of oh just another one on the agenda item under under up under operations 11 where you had your little budget

091thing i tried to copy that and it's the only item on the agenda where i had to establish a google account to make a copy of that i don't know why that's the only item i don't think it's my computer but it's on there that they wouldn't let me copy it i don't know why um maybe it was a google doc that was placed in in case number i'm not i'm not a computer the way a phd from princeton who's a computer whiz so he keeps my computer pretty up to date i don't do it he doesn't uh under under item just again the question operations fight 14 yes yes this has to do with the food budget which is always one of my favorite topics um and i understand the free things and everything

092else if you look at that um it was going to turn a profit of 11 346 dollars which is always good if you can make a few bucks but then you add the equipment i guess that you're going to buy for the for the cafeterias and whatnot and that brings the total down to minus 138 000 you're going to lose on that the second part of that and i know you went mentioned back to 2018 but if you look at the last 11 years of the prices there that's that's that's on there and 11 years you you increase the price of lunches 20 cents and in 11 years you increase the prices of breakfast 15 cents in 11 years boy i'd love to be able to shop in that place all right so my question

093is i understand you need to buy equipment and everything else but if you need to buy equipment for the cafeterias or anything how about raising the prices of what you what you're selling i mean not not much but 15 cents or 20 cents in 11 years that seems to me like that's that's really crazy and number 16 uh there's there's a thing there about school security grant 481 000 from 2020 could you explain to me what that is and then number 23 if i read this report correctly and there's a lot of things on that's the green one it looks to me like you're projecting to go from 193 to 326 three-year-olds in preschool in one year that's 133 increase or 69 increase in in in three-year-olds i'm going to talk about student enrollment at

094the end of the meeting but that one got me like i thought we were at we didn't have any more people on the waiting list so where is that number coming from and why is it only affecting three-year-olds and not four-year-olds number 24. [Music] this this this was a test for me again okay i read number 24 and i read the first item on there and after i got done reading it i said why is brick township high school asking brick township for for permission to hold a picnic at the brick township high school and i read it again and i said that's what it says so something isn't right then when i opened up the next item it was another disclaimer for not holding the township accountable for anything that happens at brick beach

095three so i'm assuming that the first one is an error and it shouldn't be picnic being held at the high school it should be picnic held at brick beach 3 but that's not what it says and you know what happens when this happens i ask the question am i the only one that read this am i the only one that sees that ever okay two more quickies and i'm done uh we can scratch the laurelton one off so here's here's the thing here's the other one item 32 there's a knee rate agreement there and i read it a couple times and i know we're paying somebody a thousand dollars to put all the paperwork in and then whatever monies they get back you're paying them three percent and it all had to do with coved

096um i'm just curious as to what kind of money are you looking to get back at that is there is there an amount of money that you think you might get and last but not least and item 23 in employment we have two assistant principals promotions are they from inside the district or outside the district because it says you have to do a security check and whatnot so my question would be are the insider outside and then later on i'm going to talk about minority teachers and whatnot with a favorite discussion but when looking at this here's something else i think you need to look at in the future and i hope i don't offend anybody that's sitting here tonight right it just got promoted right now in the brick school district according to the

097report your report card is out by the way did you get to look at it we're going to talk about that at the end of the meeting right now in the big school district 78 percent of the teachers are female 22 percent of them are male that's that's what sofia reports i'm assuming those numbers are pretty accurate but when you look into the administration piece of it females make up less than 50 percent of administration and males make up more than 50 percent and for some reason the report card doesn't give exact numbers it just gives ranges of okay we're getting a little off the top yeah i'm talking so okay that's the last one so that's something you need to look at i think the fair and equitable why is uh not representative of

098what you have okay so i'm going to actually answer your curriculum question miss wass is an ot occupational therapist so i'm sure that uh goes to what she's doing in supporting our kids but you know that are coming to her and some of those children have sensory issues or get worked up and so she went and wrote a grant i'm just i just want to know what it is it she's an occupational therapist and she put a grant in to help the students that she's working with it's something that she felt she needed all right what is that exactly i'm just curious you want to get into further details yeah we do get money from this yeah good thing i mean i'm not questioning i just want to understand what it means okay so it

099was i don't know why this is so loud tonight trying to back up um um the center that she's creating she's creating a center for primarily our autism students in vms it's primarily for our students with autism and it is um an area where the students can go that she has different materials for them to use to help them self-regulate so she might have some clay that they can use i never complained about people i never complained about people getting grant money trust me i never never complained i just like to understand you have to remember when you put things on the agenda you got the public here some things that we just don't understand while move to be four-year-olds so it's really loud so they came here okay okay um so the three-year-olds are

100going to four-year-olds the four-year-olds are going to kindergarten so what happens then is that that opens up all those three-year-old spots we're not increasing by 133 year olds we're only increasing one class next year and it's 15 students all together three special education students and 12 general education students so some of them might be three year olds some of them might be four year olds but what you're reading in the grant is that because the four-year-olds are going to kindergarten you now have three-year-old spots open three-year-olds are going to four-year-olds if my memory serves me though there's there's two two things there what we have and what we expect and if you look at the four-year-olds that number didn't change from one year to the other it's the same amount of of four-year-olds 217 i

101think is the number if my memory serves me so what i'm looking at there is the four-year-old category from one year to the other did not change but the three-year-old category from one to the other changed by 133. okay um no that mr finale you're not reading it correctly it's it's fine the three-year-olds are going to four-year-olds this is a projection okay it's a projection of how many students we are anticipating so we have a certain number of three-year-olds that are going to four-year-olds and the four and the three-year-olds who told us that they're staying are moving into the four-year-old spot that's what you're seeing i i don't know how else to make you understand okay and i know what i read doctor on number 14 ops mr finale the food ser so food service

102budget you probably know is under what's called an enterprise account so there's a lot of restrictions what you can what you can raise what the equipment's used for there's also restrictions i believe under the department of agriculture for that is that a federal for the price restrictions on the cost so there's restrictions on what you can raise what you can't raise i would assume regardless of the number of lunches or enrollment that the equipment is probably just old i don't question you buying the equipment my question is funding it we i van i believe we've talked about this before so just refresh your memories that you've brought this up in the past our food service department has done a tremendous job especially during the last two years making money so we've made money in the

103department as dr farrell indicated it's an enterprise fund we're not allowed to make money in it not allowed so there's a surplus sitting there that we have to spend so she has to have a loss for the next few years in order to get rid of that surplus okay so you're using surplus using surplus is basically what i understand the conversation we had the one thing i've never seen before is the prices haven't changed in 11 years but dr farrell indicated we're capped at what we can charge the maximum that we're allowed to charge so and that's because the prices are subsidized by the federal and state department of agriculture and right now they're totally subsidized right is somewhere in the neighborhood of five dollars per child we're collecting from a paid lunch you know

104the the number you see there and then the rest of the subsidy okay okay dr farrell sure miss mcnamara can you just the school security grant again i know three of your questions i know you like because we're getting money there are grants and they're uh that we submitted for the school security grant school security grant had to be put back on to accept the grant award again it was a technical issue with the e-wig system at the state level is the best way i can explain it so we had to put it back on to approve the acceptance of the grant money so we can go back in and say at this board meeting we accepted it we corrected all the you know as a result of all the corrected issues and this way

105we can um reimburse get reimbursements on the money that was spent you've already spent it we've spent most of it i think the thing that caught my eye was is from 2020 so right it kind of got caught up in the pandemic i think that's the best way to explain it okay and the one more i know he has not the e-rate so first of all e-rate my experience has been is not that much money but we do submit every year you want to talk a little bit about our e-rate you know it's a little larger here than what i've been used to in the past in other districts but our e-rate um amount he was questioning what is that amount roughly i i don't know that off the top of my head all right

106mr edwards will look that up for you and the last item was number 23. uh yeah i think they're actually here um the two successful candidates for these particular positions are from the outside in this case they are from the outside okay thank you mr fernell thank you for giving me the time i'll be back a little later can't wait i know you can't any other mr fennell just answer his question on e rate so e rate uh is 80 000 in revenue hi my name is judy baker hi um i'm going to speak later but i just wanted to address one issue and i have questions regarding the budget in regard to the money that was given for coveted relief to each community each district and i'm not sure if it was eight million

107that you got i don't know the specifics uh this is only the second time i've been to the board of ed so i don't know if this has been discussed prior to this or not okay well what's your question my question is my questions are um what was the amount that you received how much of it was spent and what uh if there is money left over from it is it going to be uh used in a manner that's presentation of these new um agenda ideas of racial um critical race how about we just say how is it going to be yes how is it going to be used and particularly um you mentioned that there's going to be a life coach um what did you call it family life lessons let's see what was

108what did you call it tonight um that there was going to be a coach inclusion coach is going to be hired and i wondered if any of that money that was left over that was supposed to be spent for securing the safety of children during covid if it's going to be now spent towards these new agendas that are being set forth in this school district probably okay so over the past year we've been accepting federal monies sr1 sr2 there's a couple different names american rescue grant they do give a ton of restrictions in it they make sure you have to spend at least 20 percent in the classroom though a lot of other districts are using more than we said right here every time we're using all 80 percent of all that money and i

109want to say it's more than 8 million total and we've actually have already approved with this body over the last year asked almost all the schools to do the hvac and the air ventilators and put it into infrastructure because when you do put that in the classroom or into operations and some of them go over two years some go one year you're kind of kicking the can down the road right because if you're funding salaries or curriculum or something that you're not going to have that money in two three years you don't want to do that so this body the board of ed and administrator we all agreed that the fiscally responsible thing to do was only utilize the minimum they required us doing for the classroom instruction right and we even told those teachers

110like this past year that were hired kind of and said hey if you know the grants done in two years if those positions aren't there through retirement you may not have a job so that was how we utilize that you asked about an inclusion coach which is a great question because i'm excited about it has to do with special education primarily and working with the gen ed so we have a lot of what we call our inclusive classrooms that we have to have an inclusive environment for anybody that's classified with gen ed students and you have what's called co-teaching team teaching this inclusion codes like our other academic coaches which are on the teacher scale help actually do the lesson plan like demo lesson and modifications and accommodations that are required by law in a

111student's classified iep so that's where the money almost all of our money and i've said it from the get-go a year ago and we've if you go back to the board minutes you look at the approvals rest assured to this community because i know there's some other local districts and i don't want to put them by name but i'm i'm worried for them in two three years if they're using 40 50 percent of these federal monies to fund next year's budget what's going to happen uh we we really made an impetus to put it into our facilities and infrastructure and we've been talking about that like ad nauseam for over a year and i'm excited to share that with you okay thank you thank you any other yes um first i want to say congratulations

112on keeping the preschool because i think that is a great thing for this community and in the long run it is great because if kids have any issues you'll identify them and that keeps our special ed costs down so i want to say that and kudos on the steam tank and it's not only from the army but it's also from new jersey school board association and it's a great program and i'm glad to see i've been a a judge for that for since its inception and i'm very happy to see that brick finally is is in it i want to get back to the coach for the special ed coach and supervisor side of question because it went fast so is that only one coach for the whole district we can't find any money to

113somewhere to get no seriously because with learning loss that's been going on because because i know it's kind of like the opposite of what some people are saying but with the learning loss from kovid so and getting to your fact that you don't want to hire people because you don't know if you know you'll have it in the budget but with the learning loss i think even if it's just for one year it's definitely worth it for the students who need it and the supervisor for special ed what is that is that going to be like grade level like and that was it that's my question well so we have academic coaches both on gen ed's side as well with our curriculum and instruction department that push into the classroom especially with technology and help

114demo lessons and we have a i i think we have one already and specified this is an additional right we have two traditional code specific to do that was my question okay not just one one of the part of our strategic planning as it's it's evolving is really to address there's i don't say disconnect because that's a negative word but to really pump up the special education and gen ed inclusivity environment and that coach is going to help us along those lines as well by going in the classroom the supervisor we have two supervisors with special ed it's an additional one miss hanson and i have been talking about organizational structure you know a lot of people like to just do grade levels and i i always ask mrs hanson to kind of think outside

115the box here uh i'm not a big fan of just vertical you know because you know if you had a you know a product manager and you know you have a sales manager like in business there's way to think about organizational structure that's non-vertical meaning specific it could be by area so i wanted her to look at not only is it grade levels maybe it's by programming so maybe we're going to have a supervisor that's focused on the md or bd or autism programs any of those by certain grade levels and break it up so that's an addition uh to that and you know i want to give kudos to mrs hanson you know our special education budget and our pre-k budget it's like 30 percent of our budget but at the same time the

116revenue sources we realize in that budget like in pre-k and say 83 percent is paid for has really helped us out tremendously to offer those services so and it's a huge undertaking when you look at that budget that's probably that portion is probably larger than a lot of small you know k-8 districts by themselves just in that portion and they're very self-sufficient meaning as they add positions they're funding it within that special ed budget great thank you any yes uh mark vasquez 440 lot of court couple questions number one in this budget do we have any cuts on uh sports or any extra curriculum or activities no perfect okay number two we say we have a revenue problem have we officially or i saw one of the buses have marketing on them is that something

117that you guys are going to continue to move towards and as well as creating other marketing opportunities on your property as you have thousands of cars passing by every day on all the all the properties the other question i have is it was brought up that excuse me sorry just gonna get the notes here it was brought up that these uh family life lessons the parents will have the option to opt out couple things if the parent doesn't have the technology to absolutely that's actually that's that's not an agenda can you talk about that at the end sorry no no you're good no worries uh and then we have so much and then the cni was there a grant for safe zone in veterans memorial is that did i hear that correctly it was a

118donor's shoes okay perfect thank you that's all i have thank you thank you the bus advertise i know tom's river where i live um does the advertising we've been talking about and we've been talking about in strategic planning yeah you know some people are for it i don't know if the revenue sometimes uh but we are looking at alternative alternative ways and our business administrator canada but he's always asking for alternative ways uh for revenue it's been an ongoing conversation that we've been having in the executive um in the finance committee rather um and then covet hit and then we were trying to get the strategic planning going so we we kind of put that into the strategic planning and some of the things that we're talking about in those committees so we're hoping to

119have that done soon but it is something we are looking at not just on the buses but elsewhere within the district okay mr campbell well campbell 655 mark manager road on budget can i assume that your uh last year's and this year's budget with facility projects is about the same i don't want to mention any numbers okay you've done a nice job with the parking lots and you're about ready to wrap it up now we have to get back to the energy aspect of these buildings and whatnot we have four buildings that are completely done as far as windows go security windows energy we have six that are only half done what what agenda item are you referring to on this what's what am i doing what what agenda are you referring to an agenda

120item no i'm referring to if i'm playing the scene okay okay now maybe you can do brick this year at 1.6 mil at the same time this is a caveat you're getting into the boilers and all that stuff brick house three ceiling uh heating units that need to be replaced in the girls gym we replaced one in the boys we didn't have enough money to go any further they were the originals they don't expend any energy saving whatsoever okay all right that's it on the budget now the agenda you're finishing up with the parking lot over brick memorial i guess you got one one one more herbertsville something like that we have a phase two uh that we have to work on in brick memorial too okay do the community a favor would you expand

121one foot the entrance and the exit of this board of education parking lot out here i'm sick and tired of winning my tires it's ridiculous me too yeah okay i gotta line it up to almost get out of the damn place pardon me by french well i am with you on that one all right somebody screwed up you can't get a snow plow in there you gotta dance shovel it okay let's get back to the agenda that is the agenda okay now you got a bid tonight at six so it's almost seven hundred thousand for lanes mill for boilers are you going to be able to get them at this late date by the summer chances are pretty good most of the factories are going 10 to 12 weeks turnaround time it ain't gonna happen

122which gets me back to the gold standard at brick township high school we put in excellent boilers reasonable boilers we put in sophisticated unit ventilators adm now that should be the gold standard for the rest of the district but we're not getting mocks no we're getting more expensive stainless steel lavender and guess what we've studied both of them and the cheaper one does as well as the one that's three times as expensive i don't know where your architects were but they screwed up and it should be changed now i did i'm giving a sheet to the board why the aluminum exchangers are better than the stainless steel heat exchangers it's very eye opening but i'm going to give you a little caveat i don't know what you're getting for this 700 000 for lane's mill

123but i would like to know are you getting two boilers or you're getting three boilers if you're doing condensing you want three you don't want two okay all right i will continue this later can't wait um dr pharaoh thank you mr campbell um let me say first this district even prior to me this board our ba has done a great job over the years with budgeting and spending on facilities and infrastructure and growing that we're able to get a lot of federal revenue sources in over the last two years that we're utilizing just for all these infrastructure jobs like boilers and hva ac i i'm sorry to say mr campbell when you said boiler you kind of lost me i am not a handy guy that's above my pay grade so i usually pass those

124on but we do have experts we have two architectural ferns and everybody that knows the bid process these architects create the bids it goes out you have a gc they bid on it they have to meet certain specs you know when you talk aluminum stainless steel you know i just kind of pass the information through facilities to them but we do have experts on it you also asked about lanes mill boilers how many boilers are in that job mr edwards because that's that was a specific question two two in the lanes mill uh job for that and i know last month you also because i i spoke with you afterwards too you came last month as well what's actually spec as far as like brand or manufacturer that that's really not us you know that's

125part of the architects and like i said we utilize two different recommending without doing any research on it well i know i'm looking to correct that that's that's not true because the facilities committee actually had the architects both architects two different firms neta architectural and spiesel independently do an evaluation of using the same boilers that we have at brick high school or a different type of boiler we didn't even tell them what type of boiler both architects came back to the facilities committee with the recommendation of lock and fire boilers our own facilities director then came in after that to another facilities committee meeting and expressed to the board all of the problems that we have with the aluminum boilers at brick township high school and the additional costs and expenses that are associated with

126running those boilers it was based upon that information from two different sets of professionals who are licensed in the profession to spec out the boilers and our facilities director's recommendation that we went with the lock and fire boilers and the unit ventilators we spec airedale which is the same exact unit ventilator that is at bricktownship high school however as i said at a prior meeting we are we cannot spec a name we can't lock into a name brand the way the law is written is we can specify a name brand but we have to accept equal to or better so if a vendor comes in and we have airedale as our base spec comes in with a different type a honeywell or whatever and it meets the requirements then we have to go with that

127version we can't lock ourselves into a vendor it's illegal we can't suspect that we only will accept airedale unit ventilators we have to say that we'll take airedale or equivalent we already i understand because when we spec air dealer equivalent that contractor gave us airedale we're hoping that the contractor that we're hiring is going to give us airedale but we can't guarantee it because we have to by law except equivalent i'm not going to argue with you on that point or not that's up to the engineers to determine whether it is an equivalent if the contractor says that they believe the honeywell system is an equivalent and the engineer signs off on it then we got honeywell listen they got that mr campbell i want you i want to agree with the parking lot for

128a second because i want to go back to that because that's been changed years before i get here and i know i'm not the only one that has a hard time making that left turn out of this the parking lot but we have professionals involved thank you we have the professionals involved thank you for your opinion we're going to get back to the agenda miss mcnamara will you introduce curriculum and instruction yes thank you mrs wallrap the under curriculum instruction the superintendent recommends items one through eight i need a motion in a second motion daisy second michael uh board discussion seeing none mary miss hefner yes mr blandina yes ms gagliardi yes miss parker yes miss siebert yes miss woolrob yes mr edwards can you put your microphone on yes superintendent recommends items one through

12935. i need a motion in a second did you fix the one i talked about before you vote on it what one did you talk about oh um i remember now jim did you see did you look into number twenty i actually was having discussions with tom i'm not finding what the problem is i'm i must be missing something then because i've looked at it multiple times look at the sheet that says permission from the township and then look at the facilities location it lists the high school as the facilities not beach three but it says it could be red it could be red i looked at it twice it could be read either ways where these are the parties and it says name and location of the the name and the location of them

130and it has brick township high school as a party and then it has that but i i understand what you're saying i'm not disagreeing with you it's with the township because it's their beach but it could be looked at in another light but i agree with you the way it's worded um you could just glance on that because can we pull that for right now yeah i mean we this comes from the township so we'd have to get that yeah it comes from the township it's not our contract okay so we'll prove it subject to any language modifications do we need a motion for that okay okay mr edwards um superintendent recommends items one through we were interrupted so sorry okay so i need a motion in a second motion daisy second nicole board discussion

131seeing none mary miss hefner yes mr blandina yes except for um five id 1262. abstain on that everything else yes miss gagliardi obstine from number six yes to everything else is parker abstain from number six yes everything else is sieber yes miss full rep uh abstain from five uh id number eight nine two seven and yes to everything else mr chrysler thank you miss walrab under human resources the superintendent recommends uh items one through twenty six for approval i need a motion in a second i'm sorry sorry motion missy second michael any board discussion [Music] seeing none mary miss hefner yes mr blandina yes ms gagliardi yes miss parker yes miss seibert yeah miss wollara yes ms mcnamara would you like to introduce the new yes thank you mrs walrup the brick township public schools

132is pleased to have the following folks in the audience today who will be joining our team here at brick schools matthew lago is coming on board with our transportation department mr lago i believe you're in the audience could you stand [Laughter] [Music] no i said matthew matthew what what's your last name because jago i'm sorry i was given the wrong last name matthew could you please stand so we now know who you are and my apologies for mispronouncing the last name from emma havens young we have a new assistant principal mr ryan bartol and at brick township high school we have our new athletic director and assistant principal mr jay longo thank you mrs walrum welcome and congratulations yes welcome um congratulations and this will take us to the second public comment section um if

133you need to leave i know you had a issue this is the second opportunity for public comment each participant is asked to give his or her name prior to making a statement all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer comments shall be limited to five minutes and each speaker may only speak once the board will not during the public portion of this meeting discuss matters involving employment appointment termination of employment negotiations terms and conditions of employment the evaluation of the performance of promotion or disciplining of any specific or prospective or current employee and or students it was any um buddy for public comment if you want to come up okay john slucker950 silvercourt all i'm doing is going to be my letter which uh to superintendent thomas farrell stephanie will have and actually 75

134000 other people they did 4 10. sometimes i wonder if the rest of the world is crazy it's just me once again the state government leaders amaze me in what i consider the stupidest decisions not only made but even thought up by people who call himself educated i know the board and the superintendent are aware and hopefully appalled by the standards for our children created or at least followed by our state leadership sometime during the period we all were locked down in our homes the state government approved standards on sexual education for our children national sexuality education standards were quite quite quietly proposed and passed by the state hierarchy and their standards will start to take hold in the curriculum uh beginning in this coming september the new standards require the teaching of sexuality to

135all our students these standards are required to be taught to students from kindergarten through high school and i hope the administration vigorously finds a way to avoid subjecting our students to this nonsense when i was in grammar school and high school i learned about mathematics english history geography citizenship science cursive writing reading physical education and other scholarly subjects and they prepared me for college and adulthood today we have gotten away from so many many educational subjects that became useful in life and we have replaced them with items that were passed down originally from our parents and grandparents but now are forced to be taken over by bureaucrats the latest example are things like this sex education where bureaucrats believe they knew bet they know better than parents and students and score score never truly and

136scores never truly increase from the standards that we had 50 years ago i hope our administration's on the side of parents and students and although forced to require this latest catastrophe in our educational system they find a better way my suggestion is that any sex education class such as this national sexuality education standards require an opt-in rather than opt out but realizing that the state bureaucrats will probably not allow that i had some other ideas some of these ideas including a note home telling parents they can require the students to opt out and in instead be replaced with another worldwide subject like citizenship cursive writing or science and not just an opt-out where you're sitting in the study hall looking at each other with that i see also suggest that before a student is allowed

137to take the class all parents be given the study plan a link to watch the class before it is presented to the students the opt out option be sent home to parents at least one week in advance of teaching any of these standards i realize the administration knows fully what is required by the standards but to those parents who may not be aware let me give a quick example in september first graders could be taught could be taught they may have boy parts but feel like a girl or vice versa second graders can learn about gender identity and all should feel welcome regardless of their gender gender expression or sexual orientation second graders will be expected to understand being a boy or a girl does not mean you have those parts and they should be

138able to understand a whole bunch of sexual terms that i think i learned in high school they also can be taught about other things that lead to puberty in second grade they will begin to learn about transgenderizm gender identity from a teacher who is in reality someone the child only knew for a few months basically a stranger not a parent fifth graders in in reality third and fourth grade as well as well will learn that trusted adulting may include parents and they can talk to about relationships they'll be taught about different things that are prepared for reproduction how to distinguish between sex assigned at birth and gender identity and know the differences between transgender binary gender identity including stds hivs sixth and seventh graders will should be able to define lesbianism gay queer etc and

139be able to decide other sex terms they'll require a list of methods contraceptions without prescriptions or parents knowledge explain stds sexual explicit material and how other ways to avoid pregnancy there is undoubtedly much more but in the parents job not the teacher's job every parent should look up the national sexuality standards that the government of the state is following i know did i say john sluck in 950 soviet court and i know we got this thing which said this disinformation alert by the njea they drive me nuts my mother used to call stuff they would put out very political wishy-washy double speak stuff like this because it says we do not mandate we provide a blueprint stuff like that differentiate between gender identities in reality things should be done by the parents not by school

140schools teach me math english reading writing etc thank you sorry for running thank you mr speaker i i will say your email was the impetus for our beginning comments tonight you know i responded to your email because there's a lot of misconceptions so ms wallrob wanted to put him in her comments i wanted to put in my own you know right from the department of ed it's important to note the standards do not mandate a specific curriculum at all where you were taking from examples and where much of the examples in the state come from the national which the state does not um follow the the actual grade two recommendation which again this is board local control uh talks about uh gender role stereotypes the example they use can i give the example so here

141here's an example this is what they use so it's not mrs farrell goes to lowe's to buy stuff that needs to be done around the house miss dr farrell goes shopping clothes shopping so it's it's what they're trying to teach them is in your house dad might be the cook it doesn't mean that mom is the only one they're trying to break up the stereotypes that's all they're looking at what they're trying to do i just think things like that parents grandparents stuff like that not teachers who should be teaching medical again right there is an opt-out it is board policy we're waiting further guidance you know i keep saying that much of the information that's been out there has come from national stuff that's not happening in this district and that's just a fact

142so i want to share that really the example they do use was you know it's not just boys that are good in math and science that's something that you know trying to get it just open the doors so that you know that girls understand that they can be involved in things and boys understand that they can do things that you know it's a right to like sewing if you're a boy and it's all right to like football if you're a girl you know things like that that typically you know society or the the gender roles that we may look at for a boy or a girl it's just making sure that the children know that they can do the things they love just because you're a girl or a boy doesn't mean you can only

143wear one hat start out small and without parents involvement it gets stretched out and bigger and bigger an office and parents start to say we got a problem yeah well kind of late then you know it's time to take care of it now okay understand what you're saying do you have anything else there no okay any other yes all right try to make this quick all right as to that specifically if they if the the parent opts out or i'm sorry excuse me if the parent doesn't have the technology to opt out is there a paper form for them to do that okay yes we will and then if the student decides to opt out will there be any effect on their grade specifically yeah so this is an optional thing okay awesome and i

144mean can you give some a little bit of clarity maybe miss mcmurray for us um when you when the students opt out they don't just go and sit in a study hall no they're provided with an alternate um alternate instruction alternate assignments um we don't place them just good i forgot the other one so have a wonderful night and thank you thank you so you know and just real quick ms mcnamara it's my understanding that even if they decide they don't want to participate in a certain part may maybe it's reading material that was assigned to them to read there are other choices that they can they can make with the parents help so so and still participate so brick schools participates in in what we consider to be best practices choice is certainly part

145of that and when it comes to things like health and physical education particularly the health portion of our physical education classes excuse me um if a parent chooses not to have their child participate in certain lessons they can opt out we do send that notice home in advance and we send it home electronically we also send it home backpacked so either way and yes the student can opt out of not participating in the discussion in the classroom or not participating in the whole lesson or not becoming uh you know taking on the different resources that they may have to read so there's there's lots of different options we do believe in choice and we do believe in uh age appropriate thank you any yes we'll get to you we'll get to everybody how can i

146forget you mr finale yes thank you judy um there are alarming things going on in this country right now in our education so don't minimize that first of all there are many things that i could speak about and i'm going to start off by identifying some of the things that i'm concerned with gender identity issues such as the gender-bred person and the gender unicorn charts that show the human body and explicit names and locations of genitalia to kindergartners through third grade children the gingerbread man has now been transformed into teaching sexually explicit content to young content to young children our skin book and the abcs of equality which i will read another week are being taught and used in schools in new jersey the transgender student guidance for districts new jersey government it's a website

147says schools must accept a student's identified gender and new name without parental consent or notification where restrooms and locker rooms become a free-for-all regardless of the biological sex of the child scl the social emotional learning is a hidden agenda the dei diversity equity inclusion initiative that's another subject i could address parental rights are being taken away and education has become an atmosphere of inappropriate explicitly sexual books charts questions to students even in their math class school is now a place of stirring up gender identity confusion and pronoun name nonsense a place where transgender and grey agenda gay agenda has gotten a foothold and seemingly become the new subject being taught the hidden agenda behind all of this initiative in the schools is transform our children and our society into a moral declare history decay history

148is being erased and godly values are no longer even a consideration a society without these laws and rules will ultimately end up depleted of all sense of goodness and sound judgment and the government will continue to restrict and eliminate the fundamental rights of individuals parents in the society to practice religious pursuits as was witnessed in the equality act passed in 2019 but i'm here to point out remarks in an article made by our congressman chris smith regarding critical race theory but first when i attended my first board meeting last month i noticed the diversity sign on the wall and it made it was a red flag to me immediately that there was something going on in the agenda in this school when i saw that and then tonight when you spoke about the inclusion coach

149indeed in fact there are things going on in this school that parents need to know about republican chris smith has co-sponsor sponsored a legislation stop crt act to prohibit federal funds to those teaching that any race is inherently superior or inferior to another and that the us is fundamentally racist also that the declaration of independence or u.s constitute constitution are racist documents this legislation seeks to have parents and schools be in a collaborative relationship nationwide one which fosters greater transparency in the use of public funds while enhancing parental rights this bill would require parental consent in sharing student data data and permits parental feedback to school boards and teachers requiring parental consent for medical procedures exams etc further and most importantly the crt transparently transparency act will mandate elementary and secondary schools to publicly post

150their curriculum as a condition of federal funding parents have a right to know what is being taught in the classroom parents need to know what books and materials our young children are being taught with in the schools our young children the targets of this misleading and dangerous teaching indoctrination are not racist they're children our fundamental worth and value is not based on our va our race or our gender it is our god-given abilities to each and every individual to be who god says we are male or feel female black white or other if you mess with that through these horrendous new ideologies it is cause for alarm and a disgrace to the pressure precious innocence of childhood i would like to ask the board how and where crt scl dei are being taught in the

151book brick schools and our books are are there books that are available as resources regarding this and are the parents being notified of any of this teaching okay we require transparency when it comes to our youth okay thank you um if you were here a few months ago it came up a while ago about critical critical race theory is not taught in new jersey nor is it taught in this school now i'm going to talk about something i spoke a month ago about about the law and i'm going to read that poster because 32 percent of the students in brick township school are minority students non-white caucasian in this district mr fernelli even alluded to our teaching populations not near that diversity is the law we have hib statutes on hibs for students that are

152coming in front where they have distinguishing characteristics when we had a parent or someone up here a month or two ago that said we should know if those students if there's classified students in the class we should know as parents that's the law not only is it the right thing it's the law in public education we're a heterogeneous population that's the way it's supposed to be there's homogeneous populations in private schools and people have that right but here we have to abide by the law the inclusion coach as i said before is about special education students because the law says the least restrictive environment for any student with a disability to be with a gen ed student and that inclusion coach is to help teachers both a gen ed teacher and a special ed teacher

153work together to build accommodations and build an environment that is not only diverse that is appropriate and represents what is going on so that sign if you read it is actually something we can all listen to and learn from different individuals valuing each other regardless of skin intellect talents or years someone tell me what is wrong with that sign there is absolutely nothing wrong with that sign and we have laws that our attorney would tell you that backs that sign not only in the state of new jersey but in this you know in this country we have age discrimination no i'm sorry ma'am you're five minutes up i'm going to finish your time's done you can take a seat this country has laws and this state has laws when it comes to that age discrimination

154any discrimination from ida on disability they're all part of the law that's what diversity is about and teaching us to actually help our fellow human being and understand each other and work together and that's what our classrooms are building right now that inclusion coaches for special education students and to work with regular ed students and i'm gonna thank you any other yes sir good evening my name is matthew jago i live at 28 oakland road thompson river new jersey my 40 years of teaching mostly in preschool in kindergarten was in woodbridge township schools where i was raised and graduated high school i came because i felt in person it was very important that i wanted to share how moved i was today in my first day of training as a bus attendant and yes i

155told wyatt i understand he's a celebrity i told him that i would send a hello to you his mom and to thank you and i want to thank you all for how genuinely i was so touched to experience what was like on the other side of the fence i was not a teacher i was a bus attendant but it never came to be until i met a former preschool parent of a little girl i trenton uh as a four-year-old that's now attending the performing arts academy and this girl came over to me and she said to me mr matt you were the only one that said i was good and that you loved me but i'm i'm here standing here not because of who i was but because of these people that touched my lives

156that i did not know was mr chrysler it was the board member mrs seibert it was mrs ann marie it was mrs laurie and it was a supervisor uh what was her name cheryl i think it was cheryl so when i came back excuse me someone's speaking they were quiet for you oh i'm sorry no from the uh from the bus runs i just kept thanking everyone that i met and they said no you don't just say thank you and i said oh yes you do yes i do yes i do so i thank you and i know it's a new career for me and i know it's going to touch my heart every single minute that i'm there so thank you so much thank you and welcome yes ma'am allison monty 835 constitution drive

157brent swanson 2296 lanes mo road we just wanted to come up and introduce ourselves um we are cpag parents um so if you don't know what cpag is it's special education parent advisory group we brenda and i are co-chairs in the township we work with all parents and we just want to come here and let people know that we are here we have an email we do monthly virtual calls we have seminars we work great with mrs hanson over there so thank you um and stephanie mrs hanson has been great with communicating with us and we try and take a lot of the calls that she doesn't necessarily not that she doesn't need to hear them but we consolidate them we take the systemic issues um really find out what can we do to help

158that parent help that child whether it be go back to their teacher just give advice and coaching we both have children in brick with ieps or 504s so we're very passionate and we take it personal so when a parent comes to us um with it with an issue we you know we feel we know the pain and the struggle that it is not only to have a child with special needs but just to be a child growing up in this world today so we we um we have a sign-in we have flyers we also are working on getting more things translated in other languages um but with our calls we have a facebook page an instagram page a twitter gotta get better at that one um hoping that you spread the word because it has

159a great community like the third if you say 30 is special education we don't have no even half or a third of those families coming out and and we can help them we've also worked closely with span which is the statewide parented you know advocacy network and um were save us throughout the state we were both recognized and honored only eight people were chosen and you have two representatives out of brick that are advocating for special education children so we go and help parents with ieps um we don't work in our in brick we you know don't do that conflict eventually is conflict but we do go to other school districts and help them as well but we just wanted to you know see let you know see our faces know our names tell your

160friends or if you know someone that's struggling have them reach out because we are here to help and we we just want to continue and let other families and parents know that there is other help out there okay so thank you we're thrilled with the inclusion coach because we have children in this district who have struggled to feel like they are capable and they are just as good as the regular typical children in this district so that you're reaching out and and bridging that gap for the kids that work twice as hard to get half as far to let them know that they are able to be part of their typical peers means more than anything that's what inclusion means right thank you thank you those these two ladies are really rock stars i mean

161they they really have been amazing and and they do a lot of great work in the district with our families so they're wonderful thank you ladies mr campbell i'll get you next okay sorry now i know me too my name's linda streicharts and i really do appreciate i was part of five different school districts over 45 years teaching and tutoring starting out in san diego and orange county then burlington county middlesex county i know woodbridge very well and believe me i know the effort and especially your two faces when the two young ladies were up here in the beginning i know you care about the kids i saw the smiles on your face i know that you want everybody to do and reach their potential and there are concerns and i know you have the

162same concerns and i i love i wish i could verbatim read the letter that you wrote because we all have these same concerns now what happens when if you're not superintendent or vice principal or principal or teacher anymore because of these mandates from the national on down what happens it's a slippery slide and there are unfortunately words like diversity and it is an innocent poster but we get used to these terms diversity inclusion there's a whole different definition for all of these things and what happens is that you get used to one connotation and then you slip in and as we know in the last two years since before coveting all this sel and everything has come in a lot of definitions have changed and so you you first have to clarify what the definitions

163are i think when judy spoke we all agree the same thing and yes the poster here says all good words but unfortunately the word diversity has been so politicized that it means more than the sweet post or on the wall here and we all know that otherwise we've had our head under a rock so i do have a couple of questions in if the programs are so innocent and so age-appropriate why is there an option why would parents feel the need to opt out over 45 years of teaching 30 years in full-time ministry never ever did i have to have teach a class and i was elementary so i was in the upper grades nine through twelfth grades why in the world you know i never had a student have to opt out of a

164class and so my question is why would parents have to opt out if these lessons are so innocent also the preschool is going to follow the state requirements and i have a question on the transparency of what those requirements are and if the parents are again informed of what their kids are going to be teaching judy didn't have the time to share a book that is like beyond alarming that you can find in any library and especially school libraries now from the preschool age and as someone also that and i know you care about a child's heart soul and physical academic the whole child it's heartbreaking when you read these books and they're based on fiction they're based in theory they're not factual but yet they're being taught from a teacher or preschool teacher to

165a child and as we know we tell our children to respect adults so they look at any adult that's teaching them as an authority figure and what they're telling them is true so i know that we have to be extremely careful in what we teach our children another question i had was you said about you're going to follow your school philosophy well that should be disclosed and what is the school philosophy specifics one through whatever you know what is your philosophy because i see that we're excluding the majority of students to make room for possibly a minority of students i don't mean anything racial because in all this sel that is the umbrella for crt and what's the other initial the csc the comprehensive sexual education it's all under the umbrella of sel in a

166room like this we're all going to have different world views and different philosophies so i think it's very important that we know what your philosophies are and then the other question i had is again with preschool by any age who decides the age appropriateness thank you for your comments sure dr farrell i said this months ago over and over sel has been around since i was in school since i started teaching all of a sudden sel has a bad connotation social and emotional learning if you look at maslow's chart about the safety needs security every human being needs those to get you to get to self-actualization sel is about having a safe environment secure environment that has been around forever all of a sudden now we say sel is an agenda for something else the

167other thing is we don't it's not about philosophy as much as we're a public school district we have very very succinct laws and statutes that govern the school districts in new jersey are not governed by the federal government those title monies federal monies have things associated with that money but we're governed by the state of new jersey the governor oversees a commissioner department of education department of education through sets curriculum we have to follow those standards how and what resources we do the art of teaching has to do with this district so i i think that's one thing you you talked about opting out opting out has been around forever as well since i taught i also did not have a a lot of people opt out we don't have many students opt out here

168very very little i wanted to share that because it is the parents freedom of choice that they have the right to opt out and not that they have to opt out because i don't believe any of that i don't think they should i think we give a great education here but they have that right i had a student for religious reasons years ago another district that i was that opt out of a seventh grade sexual education in a health class that was mandated so um that is the parents right and that's important to know i i've got to ask mrs hanson if she wants to add but i don't know what pre-k requirements that i'm because i go to our pre-ks and i think we have the best pre-k in the state of new jersey

169we're we are educating more than 50 percent of our pre-k university call in brick township three and four-year-olds in an inclusive environment when i say that again that's because we have to educate the money from the state that are disabled our special ed population classified in a least restrictive environment the law with gen ed students we do that at eighty percent paid for uh by the state not on taxpayer money and we do it for a lot of three and four-year-olds which helps remediate costs as they get into third and fourth grade where if they're not on reading level those things are all but i don't know and i've been there a lot i see mrs goodfella i don't know of one inappropriate thing with whether it's sex ed or a book with that pre-k

170that i've ever seen so i don't know if you want to add to that at all mrs hansen but there's definitely not curriculum there's definitely not a standard if you look at the standards so i'm looking at national or districts that are showing the resources they particularly use certain books just look at the standard by the end of grade two the idea of gender role stereotypes are taught and they use the example it's not just boys that are good in math and science this is uh that's now we want to think that maybe because it happens in some other place it's happening here it is not happening here dr farrell right now we teach kindness and pre-k kindness um accepting one another things like that we're not we're not teaching right anything about any kind

171of sex education and pre-k i've had i've had two children go through the school system from preschool never once and they're i have an 11th grader and a 9th grader right now and i have a grandchild who has been through our preschool program preschool program and is currently in kindergarten in the district i have never once seen any of these things that you were talking about and both of my children that attended brick schools have gone through the sex education classes i have never been concerned about anything that's been taught so i honestly there may be issues that you're finding in other districts i don't see it here i don't see it here and i i just feel like you kind of want to fight and and there's nothing to fight about here we all

172agree we want the best for our children and this whole board agrees that parents should have a say and and have a clear understanding and have the right to ask at any time from their teachers exactly what is being taught in that classroom and get a syllabus the materials and if they see anything that they are uncomfortable with or do not want for religious reasons or otherwise they can talk to that teacher about changing that book that assignment opting out whatever we are not about that here and so but it's it's what happens i i you know i can't i can't i can't fight a battle that's not here i can't give you a solution that we're not facing right now all i can tell you is what you're saying is happening in other places

173and to be fearful of i'm not afraid right now that it's happening here i know what's going on here and i am very comfortable that we are not doing those things that you are talking about we are teaching respect we are teaching compassion we are teaching inclusion there you know we are teaching about that it's okay that um if you like the color black and somebody else likes the color purple just not everybody's the same and we're embracing that and we're letting our our kids help lead where they want to go with that so i just i don't see what you're talking about and i hear the news and all the noise too which is why i keep coming back to we got to focus on our kids and what's happening here what we can

174control and that's what we're doing and that's what our administrators are doing and that's what dr farrell's doing so while i appreciate your comments it's just not happening here so any other comments um i promise mr campbell yeah he's always the last he likes to wrap it up [Laughter] i had mr campbell i'm going to clear the air on something this outburst between mr edwards and myself it's predicated on when we got done with the boilers in brick township high school before they get fired up the facility manager was supposed to go to the factory tell the technicians they would come down and set it all up and train anybody that has to be trained but guess what the facility manager did nothing needless to say soon after the facility manager i guess went down

175the road anyway it is correct and in addition let's let's let him finish let me finish i can't let him stand at the microphone and speak inaccuracies his his opinion of the truth is not the truth and so i can't let him stand there and say that as if truth because he has no facts and then the guy that put the thing in decided he's going to get the thing started here's here's the real issue the real issue is you're upset that the aluminum boilers that while you were on the board part of the facilities committee the ones that you got the board you got the board to put into brick township high school has been a failure you're upset by that i'm not you're upset by that you do not like it you don't

176like it and that's why you're so upset by this you're not you keep coming up with the fact that you want us to put aluminum boilers in we told you we had two different firms evaluate the boilers they both came back independently with the lock and fire that we are putting in you're upset by that because it's not what you wanted it's not what you wanted you [Music] down in tennessee where they break these boilers and they make a lot of water heaters they were brought out by ello smith ello smith has other ideas let me explain something to you about a.o smith they have a plant in china if we're getting in any trouble because smith is deciding on oh are we going to just take the commercial boilers take them to china and

177make them cheaper and keep the hot water leaders domesticators and so forth in lebanon tennessee that's something you've got to keep in the back of your mind especially with the political natures that we had because you will not get the parts down the road because there's going to be a severe point cut so keep it in the back of your mind so we again mr campbell because while you're on the facilities committee we talked about yeah we're required we'll let him finish he has another okay sorry because i just want we're required to buy american that's correct right so your concern about china is not founded we're required to buy american if you want to buy in the future or get parts in the future if they make the move we're screwed because you have

178to buy american like you said understood thank you okay just keep it in the back of your mind and i'll tell you i told you sir [Music] okay thank you thank you mr campbell any other hello i'm joanne gilbert and i do appreciate what you spoke the letter that you read and i um hope well i which you are affirming that that is what's being done in the berkton schools but there is a root an underlying root that i think people are missing why this whole mess started and what's happening to our children and that's why i want to read this that i wrote okay i do a carrot i do care what god cares about all human beings family is very important to god that is why he created male and female to occupy

179the earth and he told them to be fruitful and increase in number fill the earth and subdue it and that's from genesis 1 36 they were sanctioned by god to reproduce and fill the earth with children when god created man he put chromosomes in them to identify them male 1 they have a xy chromosome and in the woman you will find it xx chromosome to identify uh them through their blood okay science has never discovered a homosexual gene this problem started centuries ago it has been passed down to this generations check out exodus 34 6 or numbers 14 18 and that will give you some information of of um how this started all right and i would like to ask the board to please check out the gay agenda blueprint it was posted on september

18014 2014 and it was published in 1987. this has been the agenda that has been working they've been working on this agenda for 60 years i did share it when i first came up here about the com the communist agenda okay in order to win the public gays must be cast as victims in need of protection this is an attempt to emotionally manipulate others with the motive of getting them to accept values they otherwise wouldn't agree with it is said that when we are exposed to anything repeatedly it becomes routine and normal what might shock someone eventually can become acceptable the lgbt agenda is to make homosexuals acceptable and to forge negative opinions on any who disagree the first order of business is desensitization of the american public concerning gay and gay rights today the

181gay community is no longer concerned victims considered victims in reality those in the gay movement have become aggressive challenges of additional values and biblical beliefs of many okay they have been working on stealing our children's identity but god says whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to fall away it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea that's matthew 18 6 teaching our children about how to perform sex acts and to examine themselves to make sure they are the sex they have been called is attacking their hearts minds and emotions causing confusion and undermining their identity who pays the price sex was ordained for marriage something to be exchanged in love and respect between man

182a man and a woman teaching our children to experiment their flesh with their emotions are challenged and allows them to be vulnerable to in the hands of the enemy how dare this godless movement pervert and undermine what god has created and this godless lifestyle is not being taught why are eight-year-olds wanting and getting sex changes why when you send your daughter to school she decides to be a boy in school and takes on a boy's name and identity why when the parents go to open house night they can't find their daughter's schoolwork and then find out that she has changed her identity to a boy in school and the teacher was not allowed to tell the parents this don't tell me this isn't undermining and manipulating the parents authority god created family they are two

183essential elements of family marriage thank you your time is up no more comments please take your seat praise god no that was just that was absolutely it's five minutes horrible the worst five minutes okay i asked the point the board attorney said that we have to allow the public comment for the full five minutes because so there was no way i could even though people got up and left found it offensive i can stop public comment so i apologize but there was really nothing i could do i just before my five minutes thought i'd just like to remind the board members here this is a public meeting and everything that is said in this meeting is a matter of public record so if you say something to him or she says something to her by

184rights i can say what'd you say to her because it's public record so just remind people right and i wouldn't i would never do that unless it really got no i know i know but you can tell people were upset and that's what right i got two things i want to cover first the superintendent brought up student demographics several times and uh that's one of my favorite topics of which somehow we never seem to agree on uh first one i'm going to read something for the superintendent you can tell me if you actually said this student enrollment dropped noticeably during the pandemic but has started to increase again superintendent tom farrell told the asbury park press our demographic study shows that enrollment is kind of static the next five years with a real slight uptick

185is is that pretty paraphrase what you said it's not misquoted okay first of all you mentioned the demographic study of which we've never seen now i can tell you in the past for all the years i've come in here every time there's been a demographic study we got a presentation on it i've been asking for that for two years we paid twenty 000 for that thing i haven't seen a damn thing so i'm hoping sometime in the future we get to see that all right secondly uh i don't know what that says but i'm going to give you a demographic study in the next 15 seconds that it took me about a half hour to do and i'm not going to charge 20 000 for it right a very simple way to look at what's

186going to happen in your schools if you look at what's in your high school which right now you have by the way the new performance report has unbelievable amount of information on it every time i look at that i pick up something else it ought to be mandatory reading for everybody in the school board but i don't think they read it but if you don't you should right now in high school you've got 2584 students according to that report in four years they're all going to be gone hopefully and oh by the way we'll get into the graduation rate later if you take grades five six seven and eight you've got twenty four hundred and eight students that's a decline of 176. now if nothing else happens high school is going to be gone they're

187going to be placed by grade five six and seven and eight and grade five six seven eight is going to be replaced by grade one two three four right now in grades one two three four you have 2273 students so in the next eight years if nothing drastic happens you're going to be down another 311 students okay my prediction and i'd be willing to bet that mine are better than yours right if we're both around we'll make a bet i mean those are the numbers that's what's going to happen they're going to move out and they're going to move in it's not going to be no matter how many kids you have in preschool isn't going to change the amount of kids in kindergarten in the first grade because the kids here are going to

188be here so you're going to continue to go down i've never once heard anybody up there say what i'm going to say right now although it's fact i have the numbers right here for for the student enrollment going back to all right and familiar 2003 which we had 11 604 students and this is a report the school put out that was the high eleven thousand six hundred and four students was the most we had in brick since that time every year it's gone down down every year it's gone down to where now we're talking about a little uptick you have 8 247 students of course the numbers change i keep asking which number are we using right now for for attendance i ask that every couple of months so i have the right number the

189number i'm using which is off the report was 8 247 students now if you did not have pre-k which only in the last couple years that number would be below 8 000. right so you went from eleven thousand get the number eight eleven thousand six hundred to under eight thousand right that's thirty six hundred students you've lost and the whole time here and it's always been down and that trend is going to continue to go down not because of anything you did but because everything that's changed people getting married later people moving out people having less children people having no children it's gonna it's gonna continue to go down i don't know why you keep thinking or saying it's gonna stabilize or go up a little bit i'd love to see the report that you're

190using to do that because i'll be willing to bet money on my numbers it's going to go down it's going to continue to go down nothing in the future right now is going to change that maybe something will not a lot of growth in brick okay that's it the other last thing i want to do is the school report card is down out and it's not my report card it's yours anybody looked at it yet anybody i looked at it briefly but we didn't have much time so can you we need to here's the things that i'd like you when you do the presentation to key in on because i know you do a presentation here's the things i like to key in on right first of all before i do that i have to

191keep mr blandina happy and have come up with something good all right that's good hi graduation rate 95 percent that's up again and it's way above state average that's a good thing unfortunately that's the only good thing i found um let's talk about the minority teacher thing that you mentioned it hasn't changed 2.4 percent still minorities mr finally we need to wrap you up because you hit your five minutes and i let you do the additional but we're trying to i'll be as quick as i can and if you want me to save that until a later time but there are things that you need to address one is the minority teacher thing which by the way you made a commitment and you didn't keep it you did not keep it you said you were

192going to do better and you didn't do better so there's some things we could control right we hired the best candidates i've said this a lot of times we are trying like the dickens we used to get a hundred applicants for a grade three position we get six we are working with mr chrysler with all these different organizations to diversify our pools candidates as well i can promise that i'm working on it you know the candidate pulls the canada pool and we hire the best candidates that's all i could say to and i'm not disagreeing with your numbers i've said that and it is important to us to do that sorry i i'll i'll hold the rest of this for another time except that one one thing i want to bring up one thing right

193and and it's a question it's a question first for the school board does anybody on the school board know how many bilingual teachers we have in brick anybody on the school board have an idea because this this was brought up by one of your new school board members did anybody like to take a guess ballpark come on help me out here but yeah we need to wrap it up the number according to the report is five you talk about all the ell students and everything else coming in more more hispanics 20 25 going up one or two percent of you you have five bilingual teachers in the school district thank you mr fernando but that's not what we're talking about so ell is up to a hundred it's double what it was five years ago

194that doesn't mean those teachers can't service ell it's not just hispanic we have mandarin arab we have a bunch of 24 different languages 24 different languages and that's been and the bilingual is separate from ell bilinguals all that's talked there and there's a lot of requirements on there on how you service those students in the classroom and what we said is that's got to be on the radar because if it's doubled in five years i just just two things just so everybody knows and and your your numbers aren't far off and and what i said is there is a slight uptick so here's we take from our genesis actual enrollment numbers right now what that means is if little tommy farrow's here and he has a seat but i go half day to vote tech

195vocational school that seats a student of brick townships on the school report card and others there's what's called halftime students i still have to hold that seat if they stop going to vocational school they come back here from an academy i have to hold that seat so on our roles for brick township students from 1920 to 2021 right that was where the pandemic had we went down 240 students went down from 2021 to 2122 after that we went up eight and then from 21 22 what we're predicting for next year is up about 40. just on what you said moving those it's called the cohort survival method just moving from grade to grade and looking at our three and four-year-olds in the pre-that's all it is so when i say it's slightly up yeah it's

196slightly up plus eight and plus 40. i'm not saying it's going up all that the demographic study which isn't really finalized is going to be presented to the strategic planning steering committee first we have brought some of those items in they take some numbers such as ell which is what came out of that how those numbers are changing and what side of town things like that so when i say there's a slight uptick there's a slight uptick i also said the word static static means kind of plateau so plus eight minus eight that's kind of static to me even plus 40 is kind of static to me it's not the decline that we had right when coveted that was a big hit in the years i've been here now you went back to 2001 and

1972003 you know schools were closed and repurposed since that in this district too i mean laurelton was closed i think in 2008. um has nothing to do with the population mr fennelly you give it we do this all the time you give a narrative i try to explain the narrative i'm like mr edwards you can't they can't say something that's not true no i'm i'm saying that in 2001 what you said the enrollment was we also had more schools to service them we closed the school with that that's what you do when enrollments drop we closed a school we also repurposed another school right with herbertsville so when we looked at enrollment that was 2001 20 years ago so when you look at a good regression analysis if you're a statistician like i think you

198are regression analysis usually don't go back more than five years and that's why i purposely did that and that's what cohort models do you go back five years you project out five years because anything else could be very different the average student starts kindergartens how old five years old that's where they take the birth records from so we're talking the same language in the sense when i say it's static and there's slight uptick there is that's all i said and that we had to use i'm not saying it's static i'm saying it's going down 300. you could say what you want but i have the numbers right now to move into next year we're projecting plus 40 for next year from this enrollment number from our genesis numbers the people that are on our roster

199on our rolls not from a new jersey report card that says i'm worth the half a student mr edwards is worth a half a student because we're part-time vocational because that's what the money follows so therefore we're one student we actually count as two on our rules so i want to just clarify some things it's not as as clear as people say and sometimes that narrative comes out is enrollment going down i said yeah it hasn't been going up increasingly we it dropped pretty bad during the covered years and i've said that and we're coming back and by the way the money does follow that and we need to do a better job even getting people back uh into our district students that were homeschooled and that's why we got to improve these services and

200really promote our school because that does follow the money so i i just wanted to add okay thank you mr fennelly we'll catch up on the rest of the stuff next next month thank you until we get the answers because there's a lot more a lot more i always offer thank you mr fernelli any other public comment yes sir thank you for your service doctor thank you i enjoyed your presentations i did do you are you with nick montenegro in his office tell nick i said hi my name is frank huber i want to answer a couple questions and give you an idea of what it was like of the issues that i dealt with as president of the board in this area years ago there was questions tommy jalanella was my assistant superintendent no

201tommy i as president of the board i made sure that the people in the township could call me at my house and i have that also amen that's it that's why you're there right i got a couple calls one from a woman whose son was being examined by the group of psychological people in the school because he seemed to be a problem and didn't know what to do with him and she called me in tears saying can you help me and as i questioned her i found out back in the day he was an orphan from a south american school who was in the middle of a civil war that they had adopted so when he ate at the school over at vet's middle he would take his food when the kids teased him because

202it was a language problem and he'd hide in the corner because he kept doing that they removed him and they started to say well he's a special education problem when i got the call i called a meeting with the team and sat down in fact it was over at herbertsville that's what it is and they had all these answers and i had all these views but they never considered the fact that young lad was suffering ptsd because he was an orphanage that was getting bombed and he had this fight to keep his food so sometimes there's more to it than even the professionals can grasp so now based on that i got a call about a problem with a book in the high school or junior high you know in high school that had was

203part of the sexual education program i asked the teacher or i asked the woman who was complaining about it about what book it was i got the name of the book and i went over to the high school and i asked the principal at the time who i had been in high school with because it was basically my class was teaching in bricks yeah this was back when he was back when i was born and he said we didn't have that book so then i went back to the board office and i contacted well you know phil in the castro he was a business right mrs pronte was his secretary and i asked mrs pronte this book can you find it in the you know the orders the purchase orders right she said yes she

204pulled up the purchase order i saw who purchased it i saw who signed for it so i knew it was in the district and i went back to the school but the word got back quickly enough that i had asked for the book and he had it for me when i asked for it at the table at that high school so i took it home i read it i talked well tom was ahead of me in high school but we knew each other pretty well i said tom this really is not a good book and it had some things in it that i really can't say here but it was very explicit on different sexual acts in the district in this health book for the school so uh i bought it up at the board

205meeting and of course you know sometimes you get a lot of hostility from back then over the whole place they'd come up and this woman i explained what was wrong she came up and she walked up to me and tried to swipe me behind well you're sitting over there and i said that's it that's when we had coffee in the back and i said we're taking a five-minute break and we all went back right but i left the book out on the table so and i told them about the area and i left it open to the page and i just waited in the back one of the ladies that was just yelling at me saying i was a liar went over and looked at the book she was the only one the place was

206packed right she went like this when she read that part next thing two other people came over and took a look so what i'm saying to you there is a possibility i'm not saying there is that some of your materials might be an objective or very job well i mean you said your kids went to school did you see their texts and read them i actually checked my kids uh are you talking about their did you check their phones i checked their phones and i actually do look at their textbooks and i also look at their library books they bring out what we're yeah because my wife's a teacher too but now they're doing a lot of online learning she's a she's a teacher over at ambassador christian academy so i mean i'm somewhat familiar

207with education and i understand and i appreciate your comments but as you you dealt with the situation when it was brought to your attention i'm not going to go looking for ghosts that don't exist if something inappropriate is brought to our attention we'll we'll deal with it this year i'm not saying there is a ghost i'm saying is if there's a potential parents should be able to get a copy of whatever textbook absolutely and we said we don't have an issue with that yeah because there is a i'm almost up you're done well i'm done i'll let you finish up your thoughts yes i appreciate it if we can my clothing thoughts it's a small statement but i think it has effective power in the process of education of our public schools is it not

208the principle that superintendent the staff the teachers shall not undermine and do not want to undermine the innocence of the children and i know you agree with that and i think and that statement we can all stand agreed tell nick i said hi don't forget thank you very much for your time i appreciate this doctor you're outstanding you are too right well thank you i make him look good all right um any other public comment seeing none any board comment melita i just want to thank everyone for coming out tonight um i just want to say as a board member i represent we represent all of the children here in brick township and i'm proud to say that our community is very diverse of all different families backgrounds learning abilities limitations you name it we

209have it here and i'm proud of that and as a board member i represent all of those children and all of those families while i personally might not believe a certain thing or follow certain cultural aspects or do things the same way that everyone does i respect all of our families here in brick i value all of our families here in bric and i think we need to just be mindful that yes we are going to disagree as families we're going to have different philosophies different ways of life but we need to respect one another and know that our words have power and our words can destroy or they can build i hope that we can use our words to build and lift one another up and to come together as a community until we

210are able to come together as a community and that means recognizing differences amongst all of us progress is going to be slow so i just encourage us to just be mindful of respecting or and being kind and knowing that as a community we are diverse and we just need to respect one another i didn't have anything written down but a lot happened here tonight and i just want all of our families to know that we represent all of you and i thank you for coming out what were you going to say doctor thank you malia sorry easy you sure oh mike sorry i couldn't see you i know this thing i can't look at you at any meeting we got to move it okay first of all i want to uh compliment everybody for coming

211out thank them for coming out but i want to congratulate the new hires here tonight some of them have big shoes to fill i know they'll them well and also i want to compliment on the budget i uh i've been involved with the process this year a little more and i want to complement the central administration and the administration for the job they do trying to craft a fiscally responsible budget uh that provides the needs for the citizens and the ability of the you know the the needs of the children and the financial uh ability of the citizens to pay in the township the taxpayers uh so thank you very much hopefully uh we have a uh get warmer weather now and we can begin uh the final phase for this school year and then

212begin thinking about the next school year and again compliments to the new hires and good luck thank you uh nicole i'll be brief i am going to talk for two people though miss parker wanted me to apologize for her early exit but she did have a few comments um she wanted to congratulate abby fuchs from brick memorials girls lacrosse on her record-breaking saves a compliment accomplishment she's known her since she was in second grade and she's a shining example of the type of student athlete we have here in brick she loves the addition of the surf clubs and wants to congratulate brick township on their production of wizard of oz shared nothing but rave reviews and especially love the incorporation of the fifth graders as the munchkins and hope it inspired the next generation of

213performing arts students for me thank you for coming out tonight but i do want to give a shout out on a personal note to lake riviera admins they were very welcoming of a group of us very worried parents coming into school today but it just speaks volumes to the employees we do have here and how awesome they can be for you know parents in general you know as we go into the next phase of life but thanks for coming thank you nicole um okay before i ever i'm sorry over here okay jim would you like i just i have this you know i calm down now and i have to apologize to the board in public and especially mr campbell he's left already i was hoping to do it before he left so i'll make

214sure i catch him you know my outburst i apologize for that it's not typically my style unless it's mr finnelli he's usually the only one that gets me going like that i have it you haven't i know my blood pressure got up i'm sorry i just wanted to apologize publicly to use that that's not my style and i afterwards felt terrible about it so i wanted to get that off just thank you wow jim i'm impressed i just wanted to real quick again i know that there are comments made tonight it is a public meeting people are allowed to speak within their five minutes and say what is on their mind and unless my attorney says that i can cut them off i cannot cut them off but i do you know there were some

215things that were very offensive to people not only in our audience or staff and on behalf of that i would like to apologize we never want our board meetings to become a um a place where anybody feels offended or but the importance of our boardrooms are also or or hurt are to share i just think some need to just remember that there are people on the other side of their comments um and they can be very hurtful and very damaging and there are other ways to make your point like you had sir um that cause a lot less um damage and hurt feelings so um i do want to apologize um for for that but um it is you know unfortunately what what it is at this point um the next board meeting is may

21612th um at brick township high school auditorium because we are going to be honoring all of our teachers of the year and our sports staff of the year support staff too correct yes okay i've been doing this for about seven years i thought it was supports theft um i need a motion and a second for adjournment i'll make that motion mike second nicole mary miss happiness yes mr blandina yes miss scagliardi yes miss uh miss seibert yeah miss walrum yeah