001Let's stand for the pledge of allegiance, please. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Rinfist, I'd like to read a quick statement if I may. >> The New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the rights of the public to have no advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of public bodies in which any business affected their interest is discussed or acted upon. In accordance with the provision of this act, the cliffside corporate board of ed has caused notice of this meeting be published by having a date, time, and place thereof posted the office of the board of ed, the office of the school numbers three,
002four, five, and six, and the high school on September 17, 2025. And notice forwarded to the reporters of the record on September 17, 2025. This is an official meeting. Would you like to take the role if I may, Mr. Rice? >> Sure. >> Mrs. Abru, >> here. >> Mr. Capano? Yeah. Here. >> Uh, Mrs. Fredo is not here. Mr. Garcia >> here. >> Mr. Drew >> here. >> Dr. Pontiano >> here. >> Mr. Rancor >> here. >> Mr. Russo >> here. Oh, I'm sorry. >> Mr. Sorry. And uh, Mr. Yianz here. >> Okay. Mr. Ris. >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Alfano. Thank you, members of the board of education. Uh before we begin, there are a couple people I would like to introduce. Um we have our high school executive team here. Um and
003we're looking forward to not just having you here this evening, but also having you here um at each board of ed meeting moving forward. So we have Ira, you are the president, we have Juan, our vice president, we have Christina, the treasurer, and Adriana, the secretary. So, thank you guys so much for coming. I know we last spoke, I believe it was, was that in June, uh, coming up with a couple ideas. So, I'm looking forward to hopefully sitting down with you guys and hearing what you have to say. I love hearing what's going on over at the high school. As a former high school history teacher, I really miss that place sometimes. So, uh, looking forward to hearing what you guys have to uh, you know, have on tap for this year. So, thank
004you for coming tonight and look looking forward to seeing you guys in the future. Um couple things um that I would like to address. Uh first of which are um thanking the parents for your attendance at our back to school nights and meet the superintendent evenings before the back to school nights. It was so nice getting to know you, hearing your stories, listening to some of the concerns that you have. Um, so, um, you know, really just thrilled to get out into the schools schools and, um, and just meet you and listen to what you guys have to say. So, if you were not able to attend and you do have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me um, either by email or by phone or even simply just coming to the
005board of ed um, and scheduling a meeting. But big thank you to all the parents who did come out um, and attend the back to school nights. Um couple couple other things. Um one is curriculum wise we are in the process of finalizing our life skills curriculum. Our life skills is going to focus on skills that um our MD uh or autism students are going to be using and going to be focusing on as they go from kindergarten all the way up to the 12th grade. So big thank you to Mr. O'Hanlin, Mrs. Row, Mrs. Canales and Mrs. Pinto uh for putting that together. So, we're hoping to share some of that curriculum with the board and um in October's meeting. Uh a couple athletic updates. We had our homecoming day last Saturday. Uh the
006football team had a 14-6 victory, which was great to see. Uh Coach Mandal and the players did an excellent job. Uh the high school bands, color guard, um uh cheerleaders also did a fantastic job uh performing before the game during halftime. Uh I brought my family. My girls love love watching everybody. So it was nice uh very nice morning, nice afternoon um seeing everybody um doing what they're uh what they're um you know skilled to do. Uh, NJSLA. Um, parents, you probably received a letter in the mail, um, early this week or late last week explaining the NJSLA scores that your son or daughter hopefully brought home today. Uh, if they did not receive it today, they should be getting it at some point this week. Uh students last spring sat for the NJSLA assessment
007and this assessed the students in ELA, math, and in some cases uh science depending upon what grade your child is in. Those scores came home today. That letter hopefully explains the scores. Uh, but if you do have any questions, any concerns about reading those scores, you can always reach out to your child's teacher, principal, or school counselor. Uh, perfect score recipients. We're proud to say that we had a number of students receive a perfect score. Letters and phone calls went out to those students sometime this week. Um, those students are invited to attend next month's board of education meeting so we can honor the accomplishments that each of you had on the NJSLA assessment. Um, and I guess the last thing is just asking our high school executive committee if there's anything that you guys
008would like to share or anything that you guys would like to talk about or any questions from the board for the high school executive committee. Oh, okay. >> Sure. >> That's okay. >> Sure. >> Save some paper. >> Stay athletic. My son has bring them here. >> Is this still on? Oh, sorry. You want to try one more time? >> All right. >> Thank you. >> That's okay. >> Pretty cool. This looks really good. >> I like it. >> Oh, really? That is just Sorry for the >> I can also read it for you guys. >> Okay. closer. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Right here. Okay. So, we had first off, we have the first day experiences. So, of course, the first day of school was very amazing. This is what I wrote for my personal
009experience and also theirs. Um, we wrote, "The first day of high school was honestly amazing. From the moment I walked through the doors, there was this energy in the air that made everything feel new and exciting. Everyone looked so happy to be back. You could see friends reuniting in the hallways, catching up after the summer, and even people who didn't talk, well, didn't usually talk, were finding their ways to laugh and bond again. It felt like the new school was alive. Oh, excuse me. Felt like the whole school was alive, like we were all part of something bigger than ourselves. Our classes were great, too. Every teacher was great. We've been having great schedules, catching up, and everything. Um, this also made the past days even better. Each one felt like a fresh new start,
010a chance to learn new things and see what the year will bring. There was a balance of nerves and excitement, but mostly it felt just right, like this is where we are supposed to be. At the same time, it was a bittersweet there. Being there made me realize how quickly things are changing and how fast these years will probably fly by. Excuse me. It's exciting to begin this new chapter of our senior year. And it also makes you want to hold on to every moment. That first day wasn't just about starting high school once again. It was about remembering the days that matter and all the memories that will look back someday. And then we're going to speak about our festival Fridays again. One of our biggest ideas. It's more of like connecting with your
011peers and all of that. And we've also talked to a couple companies as we said before like Napoli, Santo Cafe. We have Yum Yums and Bullshake. They've said yes. I've spoke to them and also my team has talked to them as well. They said that it's a great way for our name to be out there and it shows that we connect with local businesses. So, I think that's great. And also, our principal thinks that's great. So, we just see like your guys' approval and that would mean a lot because it's fun for our students. They get to like share their clubs as well. We can have little stands with food. Um, also if anyone wants to volunteer for anything, they can be receiving hours. It's a great experience and I feel like it can also
012like improve things about our school. >> It can boost a little bit of school spirit >> and that's it. >> I love that. >> Thank you so much. I will uh I will definitely be in touch with Mr. Mr. Janucci. >> Thank you so much. >> No, but I think these are these are great ideas and can't wait to work with you guys. >> Thank you. We loved your spirit week, too. Thank you. >> Keep going. >> Um, I'll show you that in a second. Do we have any committee reports? Anybody like to share? >> Just we had a policy committee meeting, but I think it's more confidential information. We did have >> Yes. Yep. productive uh definitely productive meeting >> and Mr. Ryan, we had had multiple buildings and grounds committee meetings to keep
013pushing the summer projects that are now pretty much into the fall. We've made some I believe some really good headway with the help obviously from the board, our custodial staff, our contractors, our facilities manager. So I think we're pushing the rock forward and we're coming to the end of a lot of these projects. So >> thank you for that. And I believe we have >> Can we just remind everyone about Tuesday and that >> staff in service? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Calib, can I confirm something? There is no students that day. Is that >> correct? Is that is that correct? No. No students, right? Okay. >> So, I'm going to I'm going to jump ahead to the uh the personnel section. Um luckily, this is a very short section because we have um all of
014our positions filled coming in to the school year. Uh there are a couple maternity leave positions, medical leave positions, but we do have uh staff um filling in for those for the uh policies and procedures um portion. Thank you, Mrs. Calibris. Uh yes, on Tuesday it is a full day of staff inservice and professional development for our prek all the way up to high school teachers. So, I'm sure you guys are so disappointed to hear that there's going to be no school um on Tuesday. So, Tuesday is a full day uh professional development. So, students um will return to the buildings on Wednesday. And if a message, email, text, uh phone call has not gone out to the parents, um it will um in the next couple days. One other day that we should keep
015in mind um is the Friday of October the 10th. That is an early dismissal for uh staff and students. So in the past uh the CPEA contract had teachers have an early dismissal on the day of their back to school night. um after working and speaking with the CPE, we decided to make those full days for teachers and then having um an early dismissal on Friday, October 10th. So, um those reminders should be noted on page 12. I do want to point out that we have some exciting field trips planned for this year. Um we have two European um field trips planned for our high school students this year. One of those trips will be going to Italy. The other one is a twocountry field trip going to France and Spain in 2027. Um I
016believe it is Mrs. Diaz is planning a trip to um London and different parts of the UK. Um, our baseball team is scheduled to take their first spring training baseball trip down to Orlando in the end of March. So, I know coach Scarzafava and a couple of the other coaches are thrilled thrilled about that opportunity. And I believe that sums it up for policies and procedures. Thank you, Mrs. Calib. I don't know if there's anything else that you would like to add or address in the agenda. >> I just wanted to also give a shout out to our district supervisors who have really been working tirelessly to um assist the principles and vice principles and Mr. Rinus and myself this year in opening up a successful school year. I also want to um say that
017on September 30th, we will be having a district um a district professional development day. We will be working with our super uh supervisors. It's an intentional PD day. uh due to the fact that we now have our NJSLA scores and the reason for this is so that we can compare our NJSLA data with our Renaissance STAR assessment data. We want to compare them and make sure that there is a correlation. We want to identify our our priority standard skills and see where our students are um scoring, underperforming, overperforming so we can then um identify resources and strategies to uh target these areas. Um you know and just make sure that our teachers are um you know ensuring that they students are have access to grade level material. We want to make sure that our AP
018students and our honor level students are, you know, exposed to higher level um standards and that our students that are in our ML classes and our uh special needs classes are receiving the the proper accommodations and modifications and that our students that are, you know, that DA we we believe that data drives instruction and we want an opportunity for our teachers to be able to work together and make informed decisions. So, that's really the main reason so that we can um have all of our content area specialists work with our content supervisors and our child study team and our ML supervisors and really come together. Um, one of the other things is that we want to make sure that our new our PE staff and our STEM and our um, art and music, they all
019have to get together and really create nice activities for our teachers. You know, they so that they can create team building activities and uh, I'm really really impressed with our new PEA PE staff down in the elementary schools. if you're following any of them on the district website. Um really I I really want to commend our uh our special subject teachers down in the elementary schools. So that's what's going on in uh you know down in the uh on the curriculum corner. So thank you everyone. >> A lot of good things happening. >> A lot of good things happen. >> Um Mr. Alfano, I don't know if you want to touch on buildings and grounds. >> A couple of finance items. Mr. Ryan um stated our session with the board earlier. We're finalizing our 2425
020with our orders. We'll have our exit interview next month. Obviously full full year 26 budget is in tow and then we're gonna since it's a closed loop we'll be working on a full year 27 budget engaging the board on what potential larger capital projects we may want to engage and um we'll probably do that sometime in October November once we understand our surplus from our auditors. Um there's a couple of resolutions I want to bring to the board and the public's attention. If you can take yourself to page 13. Again, as I talked about, that's resolution 37. This is the first really kickoff for the budget year 2627. It's essentially uh approving our 2627 school year budget calendar. Obviously, it's a draft. It's high level. Uh it's dynamic. It'll change over time, but this is
021the first blush. It gives us key milestones in regard to who we need to engage, when we need to engage them, and why we need to engage them. So, it really is an important document to kind of lift the uh the new budget year, kind of get that up and running. Um, I'd like to go to page 18, if I may, and the subsequent pages after that, I'll touch on them briefly. Okay. Okay. Page 18 is a a vendor called SHI. It was essentially was hardware associated with we call our carry access control installation project and essentially that's the project that's these supplies are going to trigger our ability to engage the man trap projects in our in our schools moving forward. So this was the this was the first step. Uh the resolution 58
022on the next page was KDJ that's all part of the high school we call it our finishing project in the gym lobby and been working closely with Mr. Janucci and that was essentially the vinyl wrap project that we got off the ground in regard to again trying to close loop the gym lobby renovation project. Page 20 I think is is important simply for the reason is as you know anyone who gets their public service bill especially their kilowatts and their electricity has gone up exorbitantly over the last year. We have a contractor and a consultant coine who bids out our electricity and our gas and this is the uh bid out our component of our schools kilowatts for a few of our schools. Uh the kilowatt per unit is significantly lower than public service and
023again with a school our size you could be saving tens of thousands of dollars per year in regard to kilowatts. And ultimately we also engage in the bidding process in gas in our therms also. But the good news is everything gets build through public service. So even though we have other suppliers for kilowatt and therms other than public service, we get one bill directly from public service. So it's really the really the best of both worlds. Um quickly on um let's see page 20 uh see 20. Oh yeah, the last page, page 26. This is essentially closing out our project with Murray Paving and our architect and engineer ENV. Essentially, we had a contingency of approximately 10% above the base, which gave us a 182,000 and change total project cost. Um, we added what we
024call the peninsula removal. Folks are familiar with it. Lieutenant Terabakia, Mr. Capano have been been very helpful in regard to their site visits. So we we added that as additional supplemental work above and beyond the original scope. And we also had to have some soil removal. Uh and soil removal uh whether it's tainted or not fortunately was not tainted but you got to get it off the property. You have to take it somewhere. So those two together was slightly above our 10% contingency $11320. So essentially, it's a small change order that we're here to approve because it exceeded the original scope plus the 10% contingency. So that's what that last resolution is on page 26, resolution number 64. And that's pretty much what I have, Mr. Rogers, on the finance side. >> Okay. >> Anybody
025from the board have any questions, comments? >> Mr. Bean, anything from the public? Nope. I would like to uh thank everyone also Mr. Rinfest for your back to school nights for meet the new superintendent a lot of parents that came out asked a lot of questions as he stated he has an open door policy so if anybody needs him you email him or Mrs. Calib try to get back to you as you know at the earliest convenience I know you have a meeting with a parent coming up um I would like to thank our new leadership in the high school You're practicing when you get older, which is good. If you have any questions, we're here. You have great ideas and all that. I would like to thank my fellow court board members. We had
026a busy summer. A lot of Zoom meetings from different countries and all that. We've been we've been trying uh Luke, great job with the we're crunching numbers and everything else. So, I would like to thank everybody. We have a lot of new leadership in a lot of new spots and everything else. Uh everything is starting to flow. So hopefully the school year stays good and hopefully we have a lot of uh blizzards and all that. We close down the school a little bit and extend it. No, baby. I like snow. Um but I would like to thank everybody including Mr. Rinfest. I know you started in July had a lot of work. We hit the ground running really hard and everybody's doing a great job and I would like to thank everybody. I know I
027kid around a lot and all that. My phrases the last 45 minutes today. I get it. But honestly, there's been a lot of backend work that I've been seeing and I want to really thank everybody. >> So that's all I have. But thank you. >> Thank you, Mrs. Calgary. Sol. >> Okay, Mr. We'll take a vote. >> I'll make a motion to accept the >> That is Mr. Garcia. May I have a second? >> Second. >> And that is Mr. Nrew. >> Yes. >> Okay. I'll take a vote now if I may. Uh Mrs. Abru. >> Yes. >> Mr. Capana. >> Yes. >> Mr. Garcia. >> Yes. >> Mr. Nadrru. >> Yes. >> Dr. Pontiliano. >> Yes. >> Mr. Rancor. >> Yes. >> Mr. Russo. >> Yes. >> Mr. Turbakia. >> Yes. >> Mr. Unzi.
028>> Yes. >> So moved. May I have a motion to adjurnn? >> I'll make a motion. >> Okay. That's Mr. May I have a second if I may, please? >> Thank you very much, Mr. Rifers.