001march 18 2021 noticed in the coast star 74th the date time and place for the meetings similar notice has been placed in the town hall the brielle school website and the borough are kept being notified can you please call the role mr baker kimbrosio here this is [Music] mr walker [Music] of the october 22nd 2021 regular public meeting and the second dave thank you mr banker yes ambrosia yes [Music] yes so i'm going to ask you to join me up front and also coach d i don't think we haven't tried it [Music] before um i want to thank everyone for being here with us tonight and but most importantly tonight's board meeting is all about recognizing our voice soccer team and so i want to congratulate you as players your coach and all the hard
002work you put in to this season to go undefeated is a pretty high timeline and our boys soccer team and even our girls have all the other schools in the area always saying brielle is the team you have to be and when you're number one year after year it's really hard to say it because people come into our time or are you going to their town saying we have to keep our record up and the other team always wants to be the people who are number one this year as players i went to several of your games i have to say i was always impressed with your sportsmanship with your uh sportsmanship is the most important character on and off the field how you treated other players uh what referees would say to me or
003to your coach after a game those are the important things it's not about winning but going undefeated says a lot about them as players and you know you help spirit in our school kids look up to you because you wear your uniforms proudly on the day of the games and just to have a repeated season and that in the final games i thought were very tough those teams came in really wanting to win and you didn't let it happen and you didn't give up and you worked together as a team so i'm very very impressed with that i know your coach is going to say more but i'm very impressed with what you did as a team this night is about you but i also want to talk about the other teams in the fall
004i'll start with our cross-country team our girls took second place overall and our boys took third place over and they competed against a lot of group schools and they did so well our girls soccer team this year had a few ups and downs their first loss this season their coach ms cornham said to me we had 74 wins in a row it was their first loss after 74 wins people always wanted people that's team those girls came back and beat the undefeated team of same captains they were so happy to do that because you know that everyone wanted to be you so the girls soccer team had the same experience beat an undefeated team made it to the championship double overtime kind of ticket so don't get me started make penalty kicks and everybody knows
005what happened there our girls field hockey team went undefeated the whole season just like you undefeated they never lost and went into the championship game and with minutes left to go they lost but they still were the great sportsmanship just like you were and so you said a lot about our school your character your sportsmanship how you play on what the field how do you actually school matter so much and so boys i really want to thank you for a great season uh it really helped the spirit in our school but i'm very impressed with your character your leadership and what you did for our style program coach do you want to say thank you um first of all i just want to thank the administration and for working so hard to get athletics back
006on the field this was a big deal for all the students and for the town and all the kids in school just seeing the boys and the girls going out and competing and coming out and supporting your school spirit whatnot so that was a really great you can see um i want to thank my assistant volunteer assistant logan by danzo [Applause] turns out that logan i believe is the first game player to win a championship as a player and a coach about that and um to the parents everybody who's coming out all your support the whole season getting the voice to practice picking them up you guys are the heroes what the boys are doing get your children wrong signs to get them and making sure they have everything sorry i can't thank you know
007with all the communication and then of course the boys for their hard work and dedication throughout the year um one of the things that i pride myself on as a teacher or coach is to make sure that you are doing your homework you're not getting yourself in trouble you're following the rules that you have in school and you know student comes before halfway always and when you go to high school and one day maybe college you will also be able to carry those you know characteristics forward you know just to make sure that you could find them and that's that's the most important wins and losses but i do want to say one more thing that some of you might not know as the season is going on just how good these guys were and
008you have to be lucky you have to work hard all these things have to fall into place we told these guys we're always one spring angle away from the 500 season right so one of the things that they were able to accomplish they didn't really realize it for 650 minutes of soccer 13 games a trail of four minutes that's unbelievable so great job by you guys again and uh 8th graders good luck throughout the rest of the year do your homework in action and cemeteries and sixth graders uh see our tryouts in september right good job thank you [Laughter] [Music] and [Applause] no [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] dylan [Applause] liverpool [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] let's tell me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and there we go
009[Music] [Applause] [Music] had it on our website but congratulations boys were very proud of me and so um i'm so glad the parents came out and they really do a great job supporting our school and our programs you can stay for tonight's ordinary we should be done around 10 30. but some of you told me um that you might have some homework to do tonight so if you have some reading or math work to do okay [Applause] mhm [Music] there must be a lot of them [Music] um [Music] uh other than saying i think pretty much everybody knows the unfortunate set of circumstances that affected the thanksgiving football game between the men's school and fall has been resolved in the sense that conclusion will continue they also spoke about uh and also they said that
010there were 11 student athletes who had some members division 1 and 20 different schools on the way so having watched this tonight chris and i speak in regards to mrs jones concern regarding edi in the last meeting we didn't again get together but we're committed to review the compliance support uh professional development and make use of the research and the resources that miss love have and to continue to monitor it and for sure a formal meeting and a more complete report will be provided in december okay thank you kurt any questions for her okay uh joe go bins and grants nothing new to report thank you dave personally uh yes we have as you can see on the agenda we have many many policies on the agenda tonight um some for a second reading and
011we have many for um a first reading tonight so everyone has gotten the report and i think that we will probably be here you know until 10 o'clock what christmas said if i start to go and review all of the policies but i did want to discuss a few of them that i think that um faith you know warrant some attention um so as you can see when you look at the report many of the policies were on language changes minor reviews minor changes but some are more significant so for example on the first policy tonight is 2422 and this one is comprehensive health and physical education it's a mandated policy and uh this policy had a name change it used to be health and physical education and it's changed a lot so one of
012the one of the biggest changes is that the state has added six new statutes um and i'll just quickly go over them one is uh the first one is sexual abuse and assault awareness and prevention and education the second one is curriculum to include instruction on diversity and inclusion the third is incorporation of age appropriate instruction relative to consent for physical contact and sexual activity number four is health curriculum to include instruction on mental health uh five is information about new jersey's safe haven infant protection act included in public school curriculum that one actually is for high school level that doesn't apply to us the next one is number six uh confusion of african-american accomplishments into school curriculum um this we discussed uh during our meeting we had a lot of discussion around this um
013sean had some questions on regarding how this would be done and i won't speak for you sean but um and so um so and i just want to make it clear that this is a mandated policy when we get mandated policies it's a mandate from the state sometimes we can make some revisions to it modifications so that it can align with our school but it's a mandated policy and we approve the policy um what this policy is saying um it's we're approving that the state is telling us mandating us to include those six new statutes into the curriculum we're not approving a curriculum and we have this discussion we're not approving the curriculum and um that will come later the um all of these statues will be reviewed by the supervisor of curriculum and instruction
014and her team that usually starts about january where they take a look at it they take a look at the standards they start to unpack those standards and it's it's a long process it's a lot of work they take a look at recommended resources from the state and then they take a look at their own and when they work on this curriculum um they will find to decide what's best for our kids after school and then we have a meeting with curriculum and program we take a look at that curriculum because you know these are some sensitive topics you know anytime we're talking about um you know anything involving with um you know any kind of sexual abuse assault awareness those are really sensitive topics how are we going to teach that to a kindergarten
015child well there are ways um to be able um to to teach that um so i just wanted to sort of make that goodness can you expand a little bit on and maybe it's like you're just talking about that one bullet point that was about um conceptual consent is that what you talking about that's one of them that's one of them so um let me just yes so the the sexual princing and i found i actually got the law on this so we could get a clear understanding of what it means so um so the consent it requires age-appropriate instructions in grades 6-12 on the law and meaning of consent for physical contact and sexual activity that's part of the district's implementation of the new standards the instructions shall be designed to increase discussion and
016awareness that consent to require before physical contact or sexual activity as well as the social emotional and relational impact surrounding sexuality the right to say no to unwanted physical contact or sexual activity and the virtues of respecting the right of others to say no i i wanted to you you mentioned like my question i was kind of baked in there appropriate and you know those are the things that when our supervisor curriculum when this love sits with 13 they're going to be unpacking that stand and they'll and some are appropriate for middle school and others or not so um there are many ways of teaching them can i ask another question sure this is just the semantic sort of orthodontic radiations here so after every one of these there's either an m and r an
017n a new or an abolish what are those what are those all means so um so that's a good question so in is a mandated policy those are the policies they're mandated by the state and we we approve those um policies um and it doesn't mean that we don't question the policies because many times do so that we can get a better understanding of what the state is expecting us to do the r is a revised policy and that we have abolished the abolish policies are the ones that um there's no there's there's no longer any use for those policies for a lot of times what happens is the information of one policy is transferred over to another policy so they just abolish it um and then and nuke is it's a brand new yeah
018that's that's what that one is owners policing regulation are you seeing in front so the work that the team will be putting together to get the job into the classrooms for this school year or for next school year it will be for next school year they'll be working on that for next week now there are when it comes to number six the infusion of african-american accomplishments into school curriculum um for for comprehensive health and physical ed that will probably come in september of next year they'll go work on that however um because that is um that's already a mandate and that's been amanda and that's what i talked about last week that's been a mandate for years and so on and you know to say that our school is not compliant um but you know
019like um you know like we talked about last time i met with miss love and she is working on you know working on the infusion of african-american studies so that you should be seen this year does the new one conflict anyway but you mentioned the one that went placed in 2002 no it's not it doesn't complete yeah and you know what happened back in the department of education saw a need for it and in the beginning people were doing it but then after a while it really wasn't being done and many districts weren't compliant so then they had to then revise it um and so now once again you know they're they're reminding us that um we need to make sure that we're complying with this and so talking about infusing uh african-american contributions this
020so for example um and i you know there's been some talk about whether or not i'm advocating for um critical race theory and all of that stuff like that right some questions and emails about so i just want to clarify um to the community that i'm not advocating for critical race theory that's a whole separate thing and i have my opinions about that but i'm not discussing that today um we're not teaching that at the elementary school level um so for example one way that we would infuse african american history is that okay so november 14 we celebrate uh ruby bridges um it was she was six years old and it was in 1960 that she entered on the all-white school that was segregated it's supported by um officials and so what rumi bridges who's
021still alive which is awesome um one of the things that she's doing and there are some states that are um that have approved this it's called um ruby bridge's walk to school day and it was actually today so there were some states and they participated in this event where you know in order to honor um such a courageous american like her they all had that walk to school day which i think is an awesome thing and it's something that we can that's something that we could do you know next year look into doing something like that but there are lessons around ruby bridges and so this is a way that we're looking to infuse and incorporate and embed african-american history into our curriculum so i just wanted to share that example i thought that was
022going to share um all right so 24 so that's what's going on with this on this policy 24-22 um but you know i i did some research um because like i said that there are very there's sensitive topics that our kids are being taught and um a lot of this was came about because of the sexual sexual assaults and abuse that happened to our kids um that happened and it's been happening it's nothing new unfortunately it's been happening for a long time um to our teenagers boys and girls and so this you know this is in response to the to the issue of sexual assault is to teach our kids teach her kids to psychology teach her kids how to protect themselves and um so this is the basis for teaching our kids this um
023so okay any questions about that one or okay um so tonight i'm asking that we approved it for a first reading um unless anyone has any concerns about it and then we can work whatever it is you want to any questions you have about it we can discuss it and you know during committing and then we'll have next month during our board meeting for a second week i do want to discuss it and i would request that it gets submitted separately from the other policies and karen i don't know when the appropriate time to discuss it is any concerns that we can have with it but i am going to ask for it to be a separate tonight is just right now i don't have questions so much as statements to make about it you
024can make a statement about it okay so this is a very sensitive as the dollar said first of all look at the number of policies that came through there's a ton of work that the dollar's going to go through the last couple of weeks so thank you this is a lot in here there's a lot of good for sure i will say that it's very odd how the state has done this taking what was a health and physical education policy added comprehensive to it i think that has implications in terms of how this will be rolled out and i just wanted to dig a little deeper into a couple of things specifically number 19 and number 21 in this policy number 19 being sexual abuse and assault awareness which on the surface sounds like of
025course why would we not want to enable our kids with the tools they need to prevent that and number 21 the one that you asked about dr d rozio was consent to physical contact so i looked at the statues on these and it's true that they do say age appropriate and the first one the statute 8 18a3504a that talks about preschool through grade 12. and the other one being 1835 4.36 a which talks about kindergarten 2012 so even though some of these are restricted by grades these these statutes cover the entire school and i start to look into some of this and one of 18 a 35 4.36 a um talks about gender and sexual orientation as part of the curriculum and so these this is kind of a pattern that i'm noticing where the
026policy comes out there's a statute that's fairly vague and says department of education will follow up with guidance in terms of what this means in this case the guidance did come out in june and i think the board should consider the age-appropriateness of some of this guidance i'll make this available it's on the drd website you can look at it but for instance the way that they work this through in their standards that our curriculum will be considered they look at this these standards and it goes across a couple of different areas for the comprehensive health and physical education personal growth and development pregnancy and parenting emotional health social and sexual and they break it down by ages so here's what we expect you to have taught by the end of the second grade by
027the end of the fifth grade and by the end of the 12th grade so these are guidelines that the curriculum committee and our director are looking into as they look to put these policies in place so for instance a couple things i might think we might have some pause on by the end of the second grade students should be able to list medically accurate names for their body parts including their genitals by the end of the second grade they should be able to discuss the ways that people express their gender and look this is a sensitive topic for adults to discuss and now we're saying that by second grade we're going to be asking them to consider this in their curriculum i have a problem with that i think that's way too advanced topic for
028somebody in second grade talking about gender expression going on to the fifth grade i thought that we basically did reproduction in health in the middle school seems like an appropriate time but finance the fifth grade under this guidance they should be able to explain common human sexual development and the role of hormones by example romantic and sexual feelings masturbation mood swings and the timing of the onset of puberty they should be able to explain the relationship between sexual intercourse and human reproduction they should be able to talk about the differentiations between sexual orientation and gender identity and it goes on from there i think that there's a really important question here about whether these are topics that should be taught in school no doubt that we need to be able to enable our children to
029be able to say something inappropriate happens i want to be able to have them be able to report that and have a vocabulary but there's a role for the parents here for sure previously when we taught reproductive health it was understood that that's a conversation that parents might want to have with the children themselves parents were sent a notification that these topics were coming up in health class they were given the option to be able to opt out of those classes putting this in a comprehensive health and physical education white it's not clear that this is taught only at the sixth grade level it seems very likely that this is going to be woven into all parts that we're living i don't know how a parent that wants to be able to have these sensitive
030discussions with their children themselves can do that and have their kids in the school those are the concerns that i have there's a lot being crammed in here and i think that it takes that we should really consider this before we vote on it that's why that's great to be separated from the rest of the topic and i will be voting though on this thank you thank you for your opinions i appreciate your research into the topic um i feel that you saying that parents have to be notified you don't know that and you've never done that in the past any time the great health girls are wrong i've had two fifth graders and one right now we always get a notice at home here's the curriculum this is what's going to be taught boys
031are separated from girls and this is what's taught you have a right to say that i think if that ever changes yes parents need to be notified but it's not changed yet and it doesn't mandate in this policy that it will be changed um to be woven into um your english class first day and i think we have the ability to say that when they not be the curriculum writers of our school will have the ability to say where it's going to go in and if the policy committee and then the curriculum committee still want to keep it just at one class we can do that even though it says comprehensive right as long as you're comprehensive in what they are covering so um so parents will will and can be notified when these topics
032are discussed there's even in the middle school when they're talking about a certain book a note gets sent home different than that parents have the right to say no i don't want my child reading that book or these are these books in the classroom and they you want your child to have full reign and there's these topics you can say no i don't so we do give that and those notices do go home and i don't want that to change either can i make a comment as well the the specific reason i asked that question it was specifically because i wanted to make sure that this was older kids in middle school my concern is that and it's this has nothing to do with modality or for the policy itself but i also don't want
033there to be this trojan horsing of teaching something outside of you know if we put it under a different category we call it a part of hell outside of what we're normally under a health and sexuality course that my son did that so i know we get a permission slip for that we cannot get out of it but my concern is that if they start doing this to us where they're mandating policies that we have to include these other things and other topics that they're not gonna it's they're they're gonna try to make it so that parents are if it's part of the curriculum and can't opt out of math you cannot opt out of english i don't want to see that control taken away from this board because that's our role is to represent
034the the parents and and their control over what their children are being taught and and i you know i think myself and my our constituents the people that that voted us here i think would agree with that they still want to maintain control over these things and they don't want to be told um certain things that should be taught in school and certain things should be taught by parents or at least they should have the option of saying whether or not they want to be taught or not so you just looked into and then now this is only this one particular policy though this two point two point twenty four twenty 24-22 yes and again it's just her first reading and karen um i'll just add okay we're going to give a the group thing
035comes out and parents are given the davis point sorry talking about reproduction from that this week it's gonna happen is it fine that's good i also have a problem though with us putting this policy into place without knowing what our curriculum take on this from this guidance is so far it's like asking somebody it's like asking somebody a politician what's your what's your position on this and then saying i'll tell you after i'm elected right that's what you're saying vote this policy in trust back without knowing any type of feedback that they may have on the guidance that exists i don't think that's the case i think that that's why we have so many and that's why we have a review that they work on it and then we review it that's not just i
036disagree with you on that that's not the case on how the process works that's why we have this board in our different committees and the experts which is not me which is not you to work on the curriculum to write it and to meet the standards and that it's great appropriate standards for the students in this building we have to we have to trust the experts on that and that's without it without it now that and it's a shame because it's so it's so intrinsically misunderstood that we're not just educating these kids in math and science or meaning that's not what happens here and i wish it was from a second grade standpoint which i have i definitely want my kids to know what the topical means of every part is now that's just the
037difference in opinion but it goes to say that and i am having these discussions i have two and two two girls from boys and i definitely want the school to help me in these discussions now again it's simply a difference of opinion but in so far as the committee and how the court works uh that is happening there's no doubt that it's happening it's just a shame that we we're just not able to educate these kids when it comes to math reading and science so so much of this is part of a being of education and uh like i said i respect your opinion on the second grade i totally disagree with it and uh that that's where that's that's where it lies that's where it ends everybody on this board has the right to
038vote yes or no and i hope to god everybody on this board within their respective committee is doing your due diligence that is a matter of trust it's never going to change and some of these topics are so sensitive you say penis to a second grader which i have it does not go as easy as one plus one doesn't work i i think i just want to make sure there's transparency though i i i want to know that this is happening i don't want to just be told you know i'm approving a policy that i don't know what's in it that's that's my point and you know that's why you know we are transparent and when we get these policies we discuss them um we post them so that um everyone has the chance to
039read them and then we discuss them and so again and there's two readings and there's two reasons but that's the reason why we have the first reading if there's any changes then we have the second you know we have the second reading now again this policy it's not that we're approving a curriculum curriculum because we haven't seen the community yet yet you know the the state will give us a mandate ahead of time and then they give us time to work on it so uh we've been given this mandate and so we have until you know from now until on next september to work on this policy to work on these on this curriculum and um and that includes having the meetings having the curriculum meeting with the committee so that this can be discussed
040um and you know it has happened before i mean i remember and you know ted probably remember this you know and dennis where uh there were questions about certain books that were in a certain teacher's classroom and so parents were uh you know expressing concern about that so as a as a committee we sat down we looked at the books we read and discussed it and um and we made changes and then what came out of that was that whenever a student was going to be exposed to that material a letter was sent home in advance on letting the informing the parents and the parents have the the option to opt their kid out of the classroom that day and this is the same because it says in the policy that parents have the right
041that um and they will be notified this is all new this is new to all of us um this is new to you know the administration here that prior to this these six statutes it was just life on the life education class during health and the letter would go out um the letter still goes out letting us know if you would like to opt out of that you know your child out of that class so the same thing will happen with this now how the administration decides to do it because now we're talking about um embedding some of this material into different um coursework subjects so um so that they'll they'll figure figure out how they're willing to address them but again it's we're not approving a curriculum we're proving that the that the state
042has mandated this and that we will abide by what the state is saying and that um because we are a public school that we will have these subjects taught in the school if that makes sense so chris um in theory the consequence and when you lose points you will stay there okay so um the point that sean brought up is just my opinion because these people are expressing their opinions about passing this policy but not knowing what the curriculum you know the the people that mandated this policy it really becomes an opinion right so so in my opinion this subject matter is appropriate for a second place i feel that um for the first reading that we have to dive more into it and we should and that again it's not exactly it's mandating us
043that we need to put it somewhere in our curriculum what that is and what those standards are we don't know yet and that's what all that always is when it comes to curriculum even if you you know you compare it to that you know match working with the policies and state like what the standards are in your math curriculum we just prove the math curriculum that we're going to have a massive curriculum you know we don't go through and say oh well you have to teach the quadratic formula this way this way we don't do that as board members like we just follow the policies and say the state is mandating that this is going to be in our curriculum the experts now are going to deal with how that happens um that's that's how
044i feel the policy is read and that's how we move forward you have to trust the professionals the teachers who have been teaching for many years working on this that they know the best place to implement the standards that they're asking us to do and we've done that forever and and we're not going to work alone here in rio we belong to the model county consortium and so uh professionals from all around the county administrators and teachers alike will be working and discussing this as we move forward and unpack you know what is expected of us the policy we have to approve how we implement and how we set up our curriculum is something that you know takes months and months of work and it's not in isolation we will be working with other districts
045only in practice that's true and when you were talking about showing where you broke down on by grade two you'll be you should learn this by great that's done with boss such as every single subject on those the standards are broken down that way um so that when you're teaching on you know karen can speak to this you know when you're teaching you have to look at that standard by this you know by this age the child should know this by this you know time of the year they should know this and they break it down so that's every subject does that and so the work is going to take place and like i said it's a process and it's a lot of work but you're talking about you know we're fortunate to have this
046love but the years of experience that she has and her team it's going to take time for them to find what is appropriate to when you're talking about consent oh my goodness i mean these words are scary when you think about your young children um but i have faith in this team that they're going to come up with some resources that are not just age appropriate but also developmentally appropriate you know for our kids and the thing is that we'll be able to review it this board will be able to review that curriculum before that curriculum is taught and that's what we'll have the opportunity to be able to say oh you know maybe we can change this or and we can make some suggestions um so that's a great question about old mandate the
047state legislature passed they'll pass the law and said schools in new jersey will now do these things yes okay and that's the law correct yes okay so do we have any rules i'm not saying i'm not experiencing what sean said this is the thing i understand but what i'm saying is do we really have any room to maneuver here can we not adopt this policy so where we have room when it's a mandated policy we have to adopt that policy the the flexibility comes in during curriculum work when that team sits down and base that's where you have the flexibility to say you know what for average school our kids i don't think this is appropriate there might be another district that says you know what we can handle this we're going to do it
048this way and that's where in new jersey every district has that flexibility what would this specific policy um it should be done now so that um this alertness is ready first right so that it's ready so that it's ready for september i mean if you want to i mean we can always we can always table this um we can have a discussion we can talk about it again and then then we had the uh room tonight and then second december but if it's by the end of the school year we then we would still have you know eight board meetings to deal with right they also might have to work on the curriculum and they have to they have to start working on this and and chris your team starts january working on it so
049that gives them a nice amount of time from january to but they should have so is the final is the law that is referenced does it state that you just have to have a curriculum in place for next school year yes if you you have to have we have to have this in place for next week but it doesn't specify understanding and recognizing that there is some significant concern about on the board about the board members but this is the first reading so what she can do is that and again i understand what valiant said we don't have a hell of a lot alone [Music] so my suggestion is if board members wish to vote no or are saying or in some matter not vote yes on 24 22 that's that but you pass the
050first reading tonight we have the second meeting we have the ability to make any adjustments we want to meanwhile we'll have a better light on understanding what we can and can't do in terms of the actual mandate itself and also the involvement of many we can take more time if the state's mandating something that we don't feel whether it's a few people or a majority of us or minorities if the state's mandating something that we don't feel is appropriate that we don't want in our school district how else are we going to lodge our feeling and our representation of our parents that we don't agree with it other than voting now and and dealing with that as it comes i don't i don't if if they're telling us that we have no control over over
051this anyway then why are we voting on it i don't think that's i'm not representing the state far from you know i'm asking you to shoot more experiences again there's a legitimate question what i think is taking place here is uh we've all seen particularly those folks involved in the industry itself teachers in this ministry the state loves to pass mandates and states and usually they're managed to cost money in which they gotta give us never get school boards they just give them the responsibility to do business we saw that particularly with school security and school safety um so the state says do they have all these things you do value that you do that and then they leave us okay we can't say no we're not going to do that because the state has
052the authority to mandate those types of curricular changes and not to put your final point on when we swear when we are sworn in as important numbers here we raise our hands and we say that we'll support the developments established in new jersey the state has a legitimate authority to do what it takes here and has been doing quite for quite some time that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have this board members shouldn't have involved parents educators everybody's a stakeholder and everybody has a piece of it but we cannot i don't believe without some consequence and some unfortunate consequence we cannot define the state we can't say we're not going to do this yeah so you know what i'm thinking right now is because we have so much more to go through tonight um i
053will um i will reach out to strauss esme and speak to their attorneys there and um and also reach out to our board attorney and um and have her take a look at this and um and then we'll discuss it and then i'll discuss it during the committee um and then we can then i'll bring the information back to everyone else i think shout out to sherry adams clarification and she can get she's important so she can get back there we could do a first reading and then you know and this is when a first and second reading is [Music] [Applause] [Music] why not wait for the legal opinion and uh from the police writers why of course the first reading through i mean i don't think we're forcing it i mean if if you
054don't if the board wants to wait what what what's the implication tonight on this tonight what's the implication of that it's not forever you know we'll have a better understanding well we'll have a better understanding of it but it's like dennis said and i'll check that with the attorney um if there's a mandated policy and and we all vote no there might be some consequences but i'm trying to figure out whether or not we should vote or not because if it's i'll tell you right now i'm voting now because this doesn't sit well and i i think i see no other way to lodge that i don't this doesn't sit well with me other than voting no one having that be on the record if that's going to be yeah that's it the vote that
055we would be taking tonight would determine the course and any consequences [Music] i just i want you to know that i'm going to vote no because if you think that's going to if that's going to cause some kind of problem where cabling is going to make it easier for us to to figure it out and move forward but i don't know my suspicion is my no vote's not going to carry anyway so i don't think it makes a difference um but i i i need to register that i don't this doesn't sit right that's perfect that's what you want well then let's let's vote on it well we can do that if you want my question sure oh [Music] tonight i mean we can do everything and should do everything in our power to continue
056that kind of control of that kind of input these are our kids not the government's kids or the state legislatures we should be involved parents should be involved teachers should be involved but we are important but we can't define state any more than we can define the standard of bringing these coverage to that my final thing that i'll say is i think it's a bit of a false effort let's see to compare this to a math curriculum all right this is lifestyle choices this is the state-taking position on something that's super controversial a number of things that are super conscious are sealed and the other that he took was to support the constitution and supporting your constitution means that the doctrine groceries saying when you think the parts go wrong it was the law in
057the new jersey first that created schools in the 1800s and that was a role that's all i'm going to say i think we should have it thank you [Music] um [Music] all right so so the next one um i thank you everyone for for the discussion i i think that this is why we're here you know and and i i don't believe that um we're here to say yes yes yes you know and i i appreciate the concerns that bringing up your opinions and things like that because um that's how we are able to dig into some of this work and get it done because so right now it's not adoption we're only saying this is what's on the table from the state how do we go about it so i thank you for your
058bravery and everybody's paying their opinions because it's it's a very sensitive and thought-provoking time it is thank you for the presidency and and in the end it's you know the most important thing are the kids and what's being taught with children so keeping our kids um in mind when we do any of any of this that's just and so the other one is 2467 surrogate parents and resource family parents the revisions mainly focused on terminology updates including the replacement of foster parent with resource family parent now during we were discussing this because the policy when you read the policy it sounds like they're saying that the district is responsible for finding a surrogate parent for a child and so and we kind of all agreed on that that it did sound the language sounded like
059that so i contacted um strauss esme to clarify that because before even presenting this reading we wanted to make sure that the district wasn't responsible um for finding a surrogate parent so um when i read it i understood it and the thing is being in education you kind of read this stuff all the time and you understand how it works um i understood it as being um and chris was saying the same thing that when we're faced with a situation where a child needs a surrogate parent we you know we put things in place so we'll have either we'll refer to the social worker or the guidance counselor and then they are responsible for contacting social services and then that gets the ball rolling right it's not us finding a parent or interviewing a surrogate
060parent but anyway i agree the the policy sounded like the district was responsible so i contacted on the the attorneys at strauss esme and they clarified for me that our responsibility is to contact social services or the appropriate agencies who are properly trained to assign a surrogate parent so this policy is not putting it on us it's putting it on um the social services they're responsible for and um let me just quickly check if there's any other one that we need to um or if anyone has any questions i think the other ones are self-explanatory if anyone has any questions about any of those policies um just um just let me know and then discuss it there is okay just just bear with me there's another policy that yeah there's a lot but there was
061one that from the last time there was a flash okay here it is right here so last uh meeting we talked about on policy 57-51 sexual harassment of students and and this this policy on the language um the language was a little difficult because uh it was a lot of legal language here and um and i'll always research it and look it up but i still had a lot of questions about this one and um so it was the recommendation of strauss estimate for us to contact board attorney and to sit down with board attorney because there's an option here that we have to select and so um their recommendation was uh to contact board attorney and to review policy 5751 so that we can understand um thoroughly on this policy and what our responsibilities
062and this policy has changed for a long time was that meeting did you have you no i i spoke a stress destiny today no no um i spoke with them and then i sent a message to sherry um i haven't heard back from her but we'll schedule something and should that's like an appropriate information we can do that yeah we're gonna take that off free yeah we'll do that when we do the motion reaction and we'll make eight three twenty four twenty two we'll do that when we make the motion okay yes yeah d3 your work is extraordinary and well appreciated um mr becker community relations uh no there wasn't a formal meeting that i uh suspect in light of these new policies and to get the full birth of opinion from the committee members
063both sean and david we will have one in december we want to make sure this flies right by the community and everybody is with everything from parents to the professionals thank you kurt and on a later note december 5th real quick christmas tree lighting is happening again and our chorus will be there tonight i'd like to welcome uh newly elected board members sarah mcdevitt and julianna wright they're both here [Applause] as volunteers um in education uh we have nothing but the greatest respect for people who want to serve on this board and do the kind of work that our board does um month after month and for many years over 20 years so we're going to welcome you on our rework in january so thanks for being here this is a short meeting tonight that's
064why i excuse the kids like uh it was nice tonight to have the boys soccer team and you heard me talk about the other sports team um i meant that we had a great fall season our kids are amazing in field hockey i want to recognize two board members their two daughters in field hockey uh olive becker and uh andy declinger qualified for the all-star team for field hockey and you know there's two divisions national american and we were we were brand new to field hockey you know our girls never held a stick and like i said had an undefeated season the final game the championship he lost by one with minutes left to go but those two made it into the you know the championship the world cup and uh the game ended one
065nothing our nationals lost the other team won but they played against teams that have been playing field hockey at the middle school level for a very long time so we're just really very proud of our sports and i said it at last meeting um the full season he had over 80 children staying after school involved in schools whether it's cross-country soccer field hockey now for basketball uh and the play coming up again and cheerleading we have you know 15 cheerleaders you know 16 uh boys and girls basketball players every team uh december 5th we're going to have our tryouts for annie so we're going to be a nice busy place you know and i think karen said it i think the coach said it it's just so nice to have normalcy back you know the
066kids love it we love it and it just makes school so much fun it was a challenge for us last year and you know the kid involvement is so great uh as karen said before even having uh kiernan uh at the sound here tonight uh working the technology uh kiernan runs our tv studio he's captain of the um safety patrol he's an outstanding student and he's spending his friends went home to do homework he'll be doing that when he goes home so thank you kiernan for uh being behind the scenes but always being a great leader we had a great halloween parade many parents came out they thanked us over and over again for having a parade getting the kids outside it was a wonderful day in school and in the parade and so again
067for the normalcy uh you may have seen the sign uh mr erickson i wanted to talk to the port about this has been an employee of this district for now 45 years so sarah and juliana since you went here he was here when you were just little girls here in the school so 45 years of service uh he doesn't know what friday uh where because the shirts are on the copic train or something we're doing happy rain day shirts for everyone i got board member stuff so we're going to continue celebrating his birthday old week he's just done so much for our school in those 45 years i tell everybody he started at age six but he was actually only 20 when he started here part time 45 years ago but he loves this place
068and i'm going to make a recommendation we did it for one teacher 45 years i think he deserves a bench and he doesn't know it and he's hopefully not watching us tonight and i'd like to get a bench with his name on it to honor somebody i don't think this board my guess that you're going to have an employee here for 45 years for a long time coming even teachers don't stay in the profession 45 years but those who do i'm at 44 years those who do it's just it's just the world is changing um and ray has done some amazing things uh as the head custodian and people coming to this building and are always commenting look at look how clean the building is look how healthy this building is look how he has
069such pride in this school and and it shows and so i think we should recognize him with it with a bench it's my recommendation um the courtyard um a second courtyard we raise money in december i want to bring bvf in because we raise money we have two courtyards in this building one is smaller than the other and we raised thousands of dollars and backpacking our table should be arriving here by friday so we have two locations outdoors for kids to learn and have lunch and have activities so we're excited about that the rotary club is coming here friday they're donating dictionaries to all third and fourth graders so they'll come here friday to do that we got a special grant we've got keyboards for our music program and so kids are learning how to
070use the keyboards in our music program our student government is doing a food drive we hope to have about 12 baskets to feed the needy in our community our community is doing a wonderful job sending food in for that that's run by our student government next thursday wednesday before thanksgiving we do dismiss the kids at 12 40 twelve fifty it's uh uh in preparation for uh thanksgiving karen mentioned the tree lighting on december fifth our band and course members will be there instead of pancake breakfast uh sugar is a bakery in town and they're going to do special um gingermen so that kids can make and uh we're glad that we're doing something for our kids we did last year we're going to do it again and like i said beginning tryouts are december 7th
071and that play is scheduled for the middle of march so we're a nice busy place we're doing great things teachers are doing an amazing job parent-teacher conferences went very well we offered parents virtual or in person and people did what they felt comfortable doing some came in some did virtual but our teachers were booked uh we haven't experienced that in a long time so almost all their slots were filled so we're just like moving in the right direction welcome the two of you and that's my short report thank you chris does anybody have any questions on tonight's agenda we are hiring uh miss schneider uh uh on the maternity league and so we're hiring um to see her name none of us could say this eighth syllable she said to me we call it foreign
072but she's a great addition to our school when he's going to give us control back situation the rumblings will now i have a round table again this friday but the superintendent says we might hear something in january i read an article in uh i don't remember which april that said that they were gonna he was if nothing changed he was going to allow i guess it expires in january yeah and then you would just like go back january hopefully okay okay let's get to action items kurt can you make a motion on curriculum for me please definitely thanks aaron i'd like to pull forth the motion to move action items a1 through a3 on tonight's agenda i have a second sure are there any questions yes mr valencia yes mr vitale yes mr paul yes
073thank you past um ted finance um [Music] yes mr wolf yes okay there's nothing under buildings and grounds this evening on the policy so um medalli we are just to clarify for diane for d1 we are taking off policy and regulation 57-51 okay under g2 we are taking off policy 2422 and d3 will now read the motion that the board of education approves the following policy on the first reading of policy 22 i'm sorry 24 22. all right okay so i'd like to make a motion that um d1 notion that the board of education includes the following policies and regulations on the second reading and on d2 a notion that the board of education recruits the following policies yes so d3 we have 2422 and do we also have just just that just 20 to
074the one that we have the 5751 oh [Music] um i'd like to make a motion um that the board proves d3 24 22 um for first three so i have a second [Music] and trust that this will be vetted properly and presented yes thank you visitors business visitors are permitted to comment on agenda and non-agenda items at this time address the topic of mass so just to clarify on that there's been no criteria still communicated as to what the decision basis will be made on it's still just the governor's say so that's where we're at has there been any communication yet on vaccination in regards to students having to be required to take cover vaccination yeah mandated vision so um i think it's something we need to stay on top of and i appreciate that
075that's what the communication has been thus far but i think we need to be watching every step of the way and be mindful that it's use your expressions on a very sensitive topic thank you um and then i would just like to thank everybody for the discussion on that uh policy tonight uh the explanation was very helpful the process thank you for that and i appreciate the idea that even if it's mandated you have to make sure your concerns are heard and the only way to do that is to vote no and get legal advice on how to communicate that back to the state and then figure out how to comply with it so thank you for the encouragement on getting the community involved because there's a huge difference between a math curriculum and a
076gender identity social emotional all those words you use there for second graders and i think getting ahead of that is a very important thing to do so thank you to everybody for that i don't have any discussion for this evening other than the one that we had earlier which is very intellectual and helpful for the process of how the board works which i appreciate all board members for that um discussion these two ladies i'd like to get your impressions your feelings your thoughts i think i think that uh as ms carlson said uh with people like yourself that volunteers what makes everything work and work properly it might not always work the way i like it but i know i really do appreciate it you said it so well yeah so we'll have plenty of
077time to talk thank you all right can you pay the bills for me please [Music] mr baker yeah yes this is mr valencia yes um there is no executive session planned for this evening so i'd like to use the motion to adjourn exactly and get the uh apparently this is one that exists but no i think it's actually um something is filled in there and it should be taken off so um there is no executive version i'm sorry for that confusion um okay let's try this again i like to make a motion to adjourn oh please yes have a good night [Applause]