001stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. I just like to read a quick statement if I may. The New Jersey public open meetings law was enacted to ensure the rights of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of public bodies of which any business affected their interest is discussed or acted upon. In accordance with the provision of this act, the plus side board of ed has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having a date time in place thereof posting the offices of the board of ed. The office of school numbers 3 4 5 and 6 and the high school on December 10, 2025 and notice reported to the reporters of the records December 10th, 2025. This is an official meeting. I'd
002like to take the role if I may please. Uh Mrs. Abru >> here. >> Mr. Capano >> here. >> Mrs. Fredo >> here. >> Mr. Garcia >> here. >> Mr. Nadru >> here. >> Dr. Pontiano >> here. >> Mr. Rancor, >> Mr. Russo here, >> Mr. Terbakia >> here, >> and Mr. Nuzi Ryan left. >> All right, Mr. Ryan. >> Thank you, Mr. Alfano. Thank you. Uh, board of ed members, Mrs. Calibies. See, we have our student council members, not just from the high school this evening, but also the middle school, uh, which is great to see. So hopefully we can uh you know hear what's going on over in the high school and middle school uh towards the end of the meeting. Um big thank you to Mr. Alfano uh Mr. Barna for your
003work in um completing planning and everything in between of the um school 6 auditorium gym multi-purpose room. I know it's uh it's very important to the recreck department and the community in Cliffside Park um to have this beautiful um venue uh for us to all enjoy. So big big thank you uh thank you for putting that together. Um I do want to mention that on the school 6 social media page they have a really nice before and after video that shows you what it looked like before and what it looks like now. Uh we're still waiting on some new backboards to come in. Uh but I know um the kids have been excited, the vis teachers have been excited bringing classes in um into the gym. So a big thank you to the board for
004making that happen, but also Mr. Alfano, Mr. Bardner uh for helping with the planning of the uh construction. Parent Square notification system um seems to be going very well uh based on the feedback that I have received. We are encouraging as many families as we can to sign up for the app. This can be done with any iPhone, um, any Android, any type of smartphone. If you download the app, you can determine and decide which type of notification you would like to receive, an email, a text. I believe you can even change the language to see if that fits your family's needs a little bit better. Um, we do have a little bit of uh weather coming in for the weekend, so it may be worth downloading um the app so you can get the
005quickest and fastest and most upto-date notification that we have. Um, Matthew Tully, he is one of our social workers in district. He's been working and planning with the community outreach branch of the Cliffside Park Police Department. They're starting a Sunday funday, Sunday gathering event for the next five or six Sundays. Uh we're going to have to see what mother nature has in store for us this week. Uh we may have to push our first Sunday funday or Sunday gatherings back uh one week. But what the point of this program is is to have all Cliffside Park students, kindergarteners up through high school students, come to the school 6 auditorium, play games, get to know the police officers, get to know the different members of the community. We do have student leaders that are going to
006be leading some of the activities. Um, but it is a cell phoneree event. So now's the time of the year where as a parent myself get a little discouraged at times, always seeing your son, daughter on their cell phone, on their device. This is supposed to be a great way for them to put the devices down. Come play dodgeball, play kickball. They have a number of different activities. And again, that's going to be on Sundays at um in school 6 in the uh new gym, new auditorium. So, we encourage everyone to come and check that out. And a big thank you again to Matthew Tully and the Cliffside Park Police Department for organizing that. >> I believe it is from 1:00 to 4:00. Um, some of our student ambassadors who are going to be leading
007some of the games, activities, events, I believe they're asked to come at 12:00. and the principles and school counselors have been contacting individual students to take on the role as an ambassador. If any parents uh would like their child to have um an opportunity to be one of the student ambassadors, they can reach out to the school counselor or uh building principal of their child's school. As a reminder, marking period 2 ends this week for students in grades 6 through 12. report cards should hit the parent portals um Wednesday or Thursday of next week. So, if you are having issues logging in to your parent portal account, please reach out to your child's school counselor and they can get you all of your login credentials as soon as possible. Information about prek and kindergarten registration
008will hopefully be going out to parents within the next week or two. We have had meetings about the registration process and we're trying to make it as easy and accessible to all families as we can. Um so be on the lookout for any emails, uh social media posts, and any other means um that we will have getting that information out to you. We had a very uh thorough and wellplanned and productive inservice day last week. Um, and a big majority of that uh goes to Mrs. Calibri. So, thank you for putting that together. And at this time, I will be turning it over to you for the assistant superintendent report. So, yes. Um I want to thank the parents for uh providing you know us with that opportunity to meet with professionally with um almost
009every staff member um you know teachers, teacher aids, nurses, guidance uh school counselors rather. um every single facet of um our professional staff met to engage in professional conversation that we really do not get an opportunity to uh during the day. There was during the actual school day um the purpose of this day mostly was for data planning. So um as you know we are rolling out uh we have been working with Renaissance and um I really want to give a huge shout out to um Mr. Savastano and to Mr. Alban and also to uh Mrs. Bella who have really really worked very closely um with myself um and the Renaissance team to um instruct our teachers that day how to use the the and analyze all of the data so that we can find
010out the um the areas and the standards that our students are doing very well in and we won't waste time instructionally. Okay. And we'll just spiral to also explain to us and it's a standards mastery where um everyone all students and classes uh were instructed on how to um use these reports and then enhance our instruction in the classroom. So then all the admin afterwards would debrief and we would go around and and make sure that these instructional practices were you know happening in the classroom with a huge emphasis on differentiation a huge emphasis so I really want to thank the supervisors the principles everyone for putting this day together we also have another day coming up on February 10th it's a half day and we will be planning for this un in service as
011well. One of the things that we're planning on doing real quickly is something called in some in some buildings um the unconference. So you every month see a list of professional development opportunities that our teachers are going out to and sometimes they're free, sometimes they're not free. Regardless, we're asking our staff members that are attending professional development that it is their responsibility to turnkey the the um you know any kind of webinar or some sort of you know whatever they attended the professional development opportunity so that we can then turn key and pass on to the correct staff members or realize that we're not going to send anyone to that PD. anymore. So, um that's another thing that we're planning on for the 10th. And then also realize that our state assessments are now coming
012up. So, there's a lot of planning that goes on, you know, for that. And that's what we're, you know, basically working on. But, thank you to everyone. May I ask a question? Have we had any opportunity to do anything for our school secretaries? Have they had any PD the school secretaries? >> It's funny that you mentioned it. Some of our secretaries had real time training today or front line. >> Front line. Yeah. So we do. So not only do the secretaries have professional development sometimes on those days, but nurses, teacher aids, you know, we use that time to ensure that we're basically offering something to everyone. And uh if you want I can share the the day with you so that you can see. >> I I would love to see it. But I'm very
013happy to hear that the secretaries were included in something because I know that that was a concern to help them, you know, stay current with the uh computer programs. Thank you. >> You're very welcome. >> It is uh very impressive when you see the document and the detail that goes into all of the planning. Um, I don't know how long the document is, but it is very lengthy and extensive to figure out which supervisors are going to be working with which specific teachers, like Mrs. Calibri said, who's going to be um working with the nurses, who's going to be working with the elementary school art teachers, the high school art teachers, and everyone in between. Um, and a tremendous amount of planning goes into that. So, a big thank you. um as the um assistant
014superintendent, director of curriculum, and any other title that falls under that umbrella. Thank you for putting putting that together. Do we have any committee reports? I know we're going to have a couple committee meetings hopefully next week. I don't have a committee report, but I I want to just talk about uh I had an experience on Saturday uh from a Cliffside Park uh graduate uh uh alumni uh graduated four years uh no graduated about maybe eight or 10 years ago. Uh my dad had a stroke on Saturday night and uh Cliffside Park Police and uh ambulance got him to Anglewood Hospital in 8 minutes and Dr. Paul Galina, a graduate of Cliffside Park High School, was waiting for the ambulance. And he said to the police guy, he goes, "This guy did my wedding two
015years ago." He goes, "And I'll take it from here." Uh, my dad had no motion on his left side. In a matter of 30 to 40 minutes, Dr. Galina put him back into shape, discharged him 4 days later, and um, my dad's doing okay. He's home resting. But that's just proof of a Cliffside Park graduate. He graduated the high school, went to the elementary schools here. So I reached out to his mother. I said, "You should be proud of your son." Uh, and again, a lot of great possibilities happen here in Cliffside Park. So, you know, that's just to prove I just want to prove something that great guy, Cliffside Park graduate. >> It's a great story. I believe he was uh he was a pretty good soccer player, too. >> Yeah. He says he
016come because I was talking to him uh when he discharged my dad. He said he comes back once in a while to teach CPR at the high school. >> Okay. >> That's what he says. Good guy. >> That's great. >> Glad your dad's doing well. >> Thank you. >> Um I'm sure for the next uh board meeting, we will have a few more uh committee reports as we do um have a couple committees meeting in the next couple of weeks. Uh if I could turn your attention to page two um in the agenda, just a couple of the uh PDS professional developments. I wanted to point out first of which is for Colleen Almer's. Um she's going to be attending the New Jersey Librarian Association with Evette Maledo. These are two of our elementary school
017media specialists. They go um they learn a lot, they bring a lot back and then hopefully what the plan is is that they are going to turnkey that information to their peers and the other media specialists in the district. Um, at the very bottom on page two, Tiana Vasquez, she's going to be presenting at the Women's Leadership Conference on the topic of authentic leadership. She actually wrote a piece um and she is going to be not only presenting that um but that piece was published in the NJPSA journal. That's the New Jersey Principal Supervisor Association Journal. So, uh, big kudos to, uh, Miss Vazquez for that accomplishment. On page three, we do have a new hire. Um, her name is Christina Parks. She's going to be working in our preK3 classroom. This is a classroom
018for students with disabilities. Anytime three-year-olds exit our early intervention program, we will take them on as a Cliffside Park student. So, we're happy to have Mrs. parks and her experience. Um, this will hopefully turn into a tenure track position um for the future. So, this classroom is actually in school 3 because we have exceeded our space at school 5 and all of our classroom space. We had to get very creative with that space. Big thank you to Nicole Row um who played a huge role in getting that classroom ready and transitioning it from an art classroom to a prek classroom. So big thank you to Miss Row for that. If we want to take a look at page four, we do have a couple maternity leave positions. We have Noel Castano at the middle school
019and we have Ursilia Sagri. And congratulations to Mrs. staggered um on the birth of her baby boy in the last week. We are filling those positions from within and we hope to see those teachers back um when they are ready. And if we can take a look at page eight, just want to point out a couple of the field trips that we have and recognize a couple of the teachers who are putting in a lot of time and effort outside of the classroom. Uh the first of which is Mr. Venezia and the mock trial team. They're going to be going to the Bergen County Courthouse a couple days to learn more about um trial and strategies and um how to hopefully compete at a higher level against some of the Bergen County schools for mock
020trial. We also have Mr. Dan Helm. He's a high school science teacher. He is our academic decathlon um mentor um teacher and he is going to be going to an event with our academic decathlon at Clifton High School in a couple of weeks. And one other trip I would like to point out is the one where it says it's going to Newark airport. They are not going to see how the airports work. They're not looking to um learn about planes or how to become a pilot. Um, but Dometica Russo, she's one of our Italian teachers at the high school. Her and a number of students and staff members are going to be taking a trip to Italy. We have a number of study abroad trips. Um, and Miss Russo is going to be running that
021trip to Italy. And if you could turn to page nine, page nine is very important because January is board of education recognition month. And I think often times people don't understand the time, the effort that goes into being a board of ed member. And this is done on a voluntary basis. This is done without pay. this is often done with answering difficult questions um by people within the community. So just personally I think I can speak on behalf of Mr. Alfano, Mrs. Calibies, a big thank you to our board for being available, for offering suggestions, for offering to help um and always having you know our best students or our students interests at partner. So, speaking on behalf of our administrative team, thank you for all that you guys do. And I would like to
022read um an official policy that we have in our board of ed minutes um regarding that. So, the New Jersey School Boards Association has declared January 2026 to be school board recognition month, a time when all residents can acknowledge the contributions made by our local school board members. And whereas the Cliffside Park Board of Education is one of 581 local school boards in New Jersey, which sets policies and overseas operations for public school districts. And whereas the Cliffside Park Board of Education embraces the goal of highquality education for all New Jersey public school students. And whereas New Jersey's local school boards help determine the educational goals for approximately 1.4 million children in pre kindergarten through 12th grade. And whereas New Jersey's 5,000 local schoolboard members who receive no enumeration for their services act as advocates
023for public school students as they work with administrators, teachers, and parents for the betterment of public education. And whereas school boards strive to provide the resources necessary to meet the needs of all students, including those with special needs. And whereas boards of education provide accountability to the public, they communicate the needs of the school district to the public and they convey to school administrators the public's expectations for the schools. And whereas New Jersey can take pride in its schools, which rank among the nation's best in key achievement indicators such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress scores and the preparation for college through advanced placement offerings and SAT assessments. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Cliffside Park Board of Education does hereby recognize the services of local school board members throughout New Jersey as
024we join communities statewide in observing January 2026 as school board recognition month. And be it further resolved that the Cliffside Park Board of Education urges all New Jersey citizens to work with their local boards of education and public school staff toward the advancement of our children's education. So, thank you for everything that you do and we're all very lucky that you guys are putting in the time, the effort um you know when we need you and when the community needs you. So, thank you for that. And there is one last item. I'm going to kind of jump into Mr. Alfano's finance piece real quick. On page 19, there is a grant that we have or we will be applying for. It's the Lyft grant. It's the literacy initiative for families in thriving communities. Mr. Alban,
025who's our grant writer, has met with uh members of the Cliffside Park Public Library. And what we are hoping to do is partner with them and hopefully being awarded a grant for up to $60,000 that is going to focus on improving literacy within our community. So what that grant will hopefully do is towards purchasing books, staffing um personnel to help bridge that gap between the school system and the public library. So hopefully in the next couple weeks, next couple months, we'll hear good news um that we will be um in the running to receive this grant. Okay. Are there any questions from the board, concerns? Okay, Mr. Alano, turn it over to you if there's anything you would like to add. >> We have a couple quick updates. Mr. Ryan, I want to reiterate Mr.
026when I was uh going through the resolution for the board recognition. Um I came from a banking background um which was a very different culture and I came here uh to Cliffside Park. I'm a Cliffside Park graduate way back when and um the support I've received from many of you who have been here my whole 13 years uh has really been uh exceptional and gratifying to me. I consider many of you friends and um not just co-workers or that we kind of cohabitate on you know every month in regard to reviewing agendas. So I want to again personally thank you for all your support for the last 13 years and I look forward for another uh few more years to collaboratively work with all you great people. So thank you again. Um two items I
027want to touch on Mr. Lines. We are working um diligently on the early part of our 2627 budget and there's uh some milestones that we'll be looking to meet. Uh we'll be meeting with the finance committee uh the full board and our municipality in mid to late February once we get our state aid and on March 5th tenatively we are most likely going to have a special meeting to approve the tenative budget and the reason for that is we have to submit that tenative budget to the county and the state on March 6th. So, as we get close, I will confirm with the board. We'll probably do that virtually as we've done in the past, but I'll keep everyone posted in regard to that. Um, I did touch upon with the board, we are approaching
028substantial completion for many of our capital projects, which is a good thing because they've been they've been out there for some time. Very rigorous projects. One of them you're looking at, the multi-purpose room at number six school, the univanilators. You kind of hear them at number six school. The rooftop units at number six school. A lot of infrastructure work done at number six school last year, a year and a half. And the gym HVAC projects at number three school and number four school all expect to have substantial completion by the end of February. I'd just like to take you to pages 17 and 18. I won't take you to page 19 because Mr. Rinus already spoke about that. Thank you for that, Mr. Rinus. On page 17, resolution 39, we're appointing Liberty Heating and they
029are going to do our HVAC maintenance for a high school gym. There'll be four maintenance inspections throughout the year totaling approximately $10,000. Um, thank you, Mr. Capano, for that recommendation. Uh, we went through a variety of different contractors and we landed on Liberty and they actually helped us out during a basketball game before they were even formally appointed when we were having some issues with uh Mr. Porfido. I said called this guy Mike Bear. Next day he was there before we even formally appointed him. So Joe, Mr. Pano, kudos to that. >> Let's just be mindful that it's just not the gym. It's also some other units throughout the high school also. >> Correct. Yeah, there's the library >> reading the resolution. There's six rooftop units, 11 additional units, split units. Good. >> Yeah. So,
030it's >> very robust proposal, very fair. Uh, significantly lower than the three other proposals that we receive. So, Mr. Capano, thanks again for that recommendation. And again, multi-purpose room, page 18, resolution 40. They're going to be uh new backboards and height adjusters are going to be installed in the coming weeks from a contractor called JGB Sports. uh we've used them in the past. We got multiple quotes. They came in in the lowest and they are a local contractor that we've used in the past. So, we're looking forward to that and it should be they should be uh probably in the next two or three weeks they feel that they'll be here and we'll complete it in uh probably two to three days. That's pretty much my update, Mr. Ro. >> Great. >> Excuse me, Lou.
031>> Yeah. >> Can you kindly go on page 13? >> What's that? >> Page 13. page 13. >> Uh, explain 31 and 34. I know the answer. I just want the public to understand that. >> Yeah. 31 is essentially this is about medical and RX prescription benefits and we get contributions from the employees in regard to helping us offset some of our medical and prescription costs. approximately a 100,000 per pay period. But to put that in perspective, on a monthly basis based on the new rates that we just received, it the district invoice for this month was $1.1 million. Okay. The previous month in December, it was $855,000. So, the delta from Janu from December to January for medical and prescription premium went up approximately $250,000 or 32%. Uh, every school district is struggling with
032this right now. It's a challenge. We'll keep everyone posted on the impact of this year's budget and next year's forecasted budget, but um, as everyone knows, over the last three years, we've had doubledigit increases. This was the largest increase since my experience here year-over-year that we've experienced. So, we'll keep everyone posted um in regard to uh you know what the future is going to bring. Right now, our consultant Brown and Brown is a contracting consulting for our medical and RX premiums is telling us that their lens right now is they don't see really any change over the next 12 months in regard to these sizable increases. But again, we'll uh we'll keep everyone posted. >> Thank you, Mr. >> As we move forward. You're welcome, Mr. Buff. >> Thank you, Mr. Al. >> Of course.
033>> Okay. I know we have some visitors here tonight. Um I don't know if is the middle school. Would you like to present something or say anything? Sure. >> All right. Mr. Ramos, come on up. >> I met Mr. Ramos for the first time today. [applause] Project your voice. That's an excellent question. Are there plans to introduce any AI dedicated courses to the high schools? and more working on as we speak and there needs to be some you know change I I think maybe you should use the flex but unfortunately not here but with the way AI is going um there's a lot of gray areas with AI and instructions so we as educators need to do our due diligence but we definitely will be you know looking to um available better. >> May I
034jump in? >> Sure. Sure. Because I've been doing a lot of research on AI myself lately and I think AI is more importantly integrated into the classes that you're having instead of teaching AI for AI safety. It's like if you're as old as I am, you remember when computers first came to the classroom and everybody had technology courses because we were going to all learn how to use a computer. And what we found over time is computers for computers sake really does very little. Right? Then we started integrating the computers into the classroom and into the content areas. And I certainly know that you do your due diligence in this district. But my vision for AI as a board member would really be to see AI integrated into all of your existing courses because AI
035for AI sake doesn't really even in my humble opinion doesn't even really exist without using it for something. So, I would hope in all of the workshops that we're going to see, you know, some discussion around AI and possibly some enhancements because as a Bergen County Schoolboards Association, we just attended a presentation with the Ramsay School District and they were talking about how they were integrating AI and everything from the superintendent's office to the business office. And the classrooms are really the last to get it because we want to make sure we understand it ourselves and we're doing it right. But my hope is that we would see a lot of integration into the classes that we have. >> Yeah. And Latia, I heard Frank Savastano teaches a class in his basement about AI. >>
036Oh, really? Maybe he teaches some more. >> Thank you. [applause] >> Um, high school, I don't know if you want to send one representative up or if all four of you want to come up. I know we had a nice meeting last last week. Come on. Let's come close. Protect your voice. You want to share some of the ideas that we uh talked about? Heat. Heat. Heat. Oh, that's great. Of course. That's great. Uh the uh Nice. Good. That's crazy. Well, good luck to you guys. Now, is it safe to say that the unit lunch and all of the renovations in the cafeteria and the lobby are all working out? >> I wasn't here in December, so I know that you may have talked about it, but for my sake, so the unit lunch, I
037mean, we started it a couple years ago, then we opened it. Like, it's been an evolution, but is it safe to say that we're really starting to see the positives come to fruition? Buildings look great. >> Thank Thank guy who signing the checks. a month. You're welcome. Exactly. >> We're trying to bring them back here and show them the new gym. They're trying. They're working on it. Think >> we did all right. Yeah, >> I feel like I have [laughter] to put in a plug to the board on that because, you know, just sitting here just listening to you talk, you all have smiles. on their faces. And you know, sometimes what we do, you saw the resolution number 25. We don't always get to see the kids enjoy the results of our work cuz
038we don't really work in the district, but just seeing the smiles on your faces really makes it worthwhile because we have a lot of faith in the students of this district and we wanted to give you the best environment to learn in that we could give you. And just seeing your reaction and the joy that it's bringing you is makes it all worthwhile. I'm very happy about it. Mr. Capano, remember those days of walking the high school like four or five years ago? This is beautiful thing. I'm glad you [clears throat] were recipients of it. And I want to go on record. We did not pay you to [laughter] nothing. There we go. Just like we rehearsed, pass. Good job. [laughter] Do we have any other questions? Uh, middle school, high school, anything? Anybody from
039the public? All right. Uh, Lou, before we move forward, uh, because this was a big milestone and again, any other town or city would have gone out to the taxpayer on a referendum. I think a nice little marquee in the in the corner of the entire board of education and all the professionals including our superintendent, our assistant superintendent should be put on the wall like we did in the high school. I I think it's good and you know we'll go down in history as as being part of this nice upgrade. >> Yeah. >> Well, thank you. >> Thank you guys. >> I'll make a motion to adjourn. We got we got the agenda. All >> right. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. >> I'll make a motion to accept >> something. That's a
040good point. >> Okay. We're going to do a vote on the agenda. Have a motion. Mr. Garcia, may I have a second, please? Mr. Nrew. Okay. I'd like to take the vote if I may. >> Uh, Mrs. Abru, >> yes. >> Mr. Kapana, >> yes. >> Mrs. Fredo, >> yes. >> Mr. Garcia, yes. >> Mr. Lrew, >> yes. >> Mr. Terbakia. Yes. So move.