001We're gonna David. Can we stand for the pledge, please? Bring it here. 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, and liberty and justice for all. Welcome everybody to the Kusel Park Board of Education uh regular meeting April 16, 2025. I'll ask everybody uh we saluted the flag. It's good loop. Roll call, please. I'll just read a quick statement. Mr. Pan do the roll. Uh the New Jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the rights of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon. In accordance with the provision provision of this act, the Cliffside Park Board of
002Ed has scored notice of this meeting to be published by having the time, date, time, and place thereof posted in the office of the board of ed. The offices of school numbers 3, four, five, and six in the high school on March 19, 2025. And notices were forwarded to reporters of the record March 19th, 2025. This is an official meeting. I'll take the role now. Mr. Capano here. Mrs. Abru here. Mr. Capano here. Mrs. Fredo here. Mr. Mr. Garcia here. Mr. Naru here. Dr. Pontelliano here. Mr. Rancor here. Mr. Russo here. Mr. Bakia here. Mr. Nuzi here. Okay. Mr. Capano. Welcome everybody. Um, I'd like to start off with the superintendent report and then to follow with our assistant superintendent report. And I would like to begin the superintendent's report by asking Mr. Kapano and
003Mr. Tabaki to please join me. I guess I feel like this. So, ladies and gentlemen of the public and the board of education, I know October may seem like a long time ago, but on October the 3rd, I forwarded you an email from the high school principal, Mr. Pinto, who shared with us a heartwarming story about one of our own, Mr. James Liry. Earlier that day, Mr. Liry exhibited exceptionally quick thinking and bravery when he intervened to save us to save a student's life. I said it to you last month when you had a group of your students out in the audience. And I say to you again, ladies, we're among greatness tonight. This is a great young man. He's a fantastic English teacher. He's a fantastic football coach. He's a fantastic basketball coach. And
004we're blessed to have him on Cliffside Park High School staff. So with that, Mr. ter. Would you like to say a few words? Yeah, I have a couple words to say here. You don't have that energy like you do in the basketball court. Come up here. Come up. Give me the energy. Give me that positive energy. I need it right now. I Hi. Hi, everybody. Nice to meet you. So, if you watch him in person, thank you. He gives a good energy to all the students. Congratulations. I'm not my costume, but uh I have a little speech for you. But his energy is always positive. You're not a cliffside kid, but you do bleed cliff side. I give you that much credit. I'm sorry to say that. He does bleed cliff side. I don't know
005what energy, but his energy is always positive on the court. I watched him a lot this season cuz I was at a lot of games and all that. His your energy alone. I have a little speech here for you. I am also a first responder. So, you know, I it's great that I'm saying this, but I also just wanted to say a little personal stuff, but I do I did watch you this season. Even at football, he's I thought I was hyper at a young age. He's triple the energy that I have. So, I hope my son is shaking. I hope my son doesn't have his energy. A lot of energy there. But on that note, uh this evening, the board board of education along with our superintendent, our sister superintendent, u we are proud
006to recognize Mr. James Liry, an exac exceptional educator and coach in our district whose quick thinking and heroic actions made a life-saving difference. In October, Mr. Liry noticed a student in distress and immediately jumped into the action using the Him remover. Does everybody know what that is? So, basically, you go behind somebody and you go like this and Okay, so I want to commend you for that cuz a lot of people are nervous to jump into action when there's distress. Usually, they go the opposite direction. So, I'm just saying it. He su He successfully dislodged the object and saved the student's life. His swift response, bravery, and deep care for our students went far beyond the call of duty. Tonight, we honor we honor you, Mr. Larry, with this award and as a token of
007our deepest gratitude and min for his courage and commitment to the well-being of our every child in our district. So, I know I'm a little bit emotional here, but it's very hard and I do a lot in the community. I'm a fireman. I'm first responder. I try to mentor our young first responders. It's it's a natural behavior that you did that. So, I commend you for that. It's very people get nervous and all that. He went to quick action and you saved one of our students. So, it could have been a bad day for all of us. It turned out to be a good day for you. Thank you for always looking out for the kids in our high school and everything else. Thank you for all your positive energy on the on the on
008the football field and on the basketball court. Trust me, it goes a long way. A lot of kids look upon you, which we like to see that cuz in 10 years from now, it's going to be like coach Bernelli. We still call him coach, right? Right. All these years later, we still call him coach all. We still have the respect. So, you're building that foundation. So, we want to thank you with a little token here from all of us. Okay. So, thank you for everything. All right. All right. Thanks so much. Congratulations. You don't need to be nervous. Protection, man. You did that so good. I need to lose weight. That was that was bad. I just You didn't You did the right thing. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much for everything. You always
009get absolutely Thanks for everything. Absolutely. Family, pleasure. We're going to take a one minute recess in case you want to go ahead and grab a bite to eat or what you have to do. James, thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much. You [ __ ] illegally? No. Uh, so the superintendent's report is just to let you know there were 18 personnel resolutions this evening, all prefuncter. And I did explain to the board of education in private uh the body of a few um under policies and procedures. I wanted to let you know that there were three Hib investigations this this period. Uh two were alleged, one was confirmed. Within all three investigations, parental contact was made, counseling was provided, disciplinary action was taken in the confirmed case. And Mr. Capano. That concludes the
010report of the superintendent. Any questions for Dr. Hayes? I'll turn it over to Mrs. Calibri, our assistant uh superintendent of schools. Mrs. Calibies. Thank you, Mr. Pano. Um I'd like to first start off with um thanking the board of education for giving us our first full day of PD on March 31st. We had um the students had a day off and I hope students had a nice day off while the teachers were in class. So uh teachers um prek through 12 were in various um workshops. The main workshop was Renaissance Star Reporting and um that took up a majority of um the staff's day. Um they had breakout sessions for NJSLA work sessions uh across content areas obviously ELA, math and science. Um we have curriculum dialogue and articulation meetings across grade levels and departments.
011Um the staff were provided with um just an opportunity number one to um come to school and uh be able to work with their colleagues for the day and uh we look forward to more of those days next year because they were definitely worth um we I received many emails from staff saying that it was a very productive day. So, thank you for giving us a full day of professional development. We really appreciate it. Uh, at this time, we're uh actively planning our 2526 school year. Um, so that's what we're very busy doing here um at the board of education. So, thank you very much. That is my report. Thank you, Mrs. Calib. Any questions uh for Mrs. Calib? Turn it over to committee reports. Any committee reports from the board? I'll turn it over
012for the high school report. Valentina, I see you have a beautiful Clemson hat on. Yes, actually. And I'm assuming that's where you're going. Yes. Congratulations. Congratulations. Everyone in my family got rejected by Clemson. Oh, congratulations. I had I had one of my daughters got rejected and well actually she's on the waiting list and the other one got in, but they they decided to go together to uh James Madison University. But congratulations. And it was beautiful. Everyone looks super happy. So I We'll be visiting you though. Oh, thank you. Yes, I'm expecting you. Now, what's what's going on at the high school? So, tomorrow we're having our pep rally. Yeah. I got postponed because of the weather, but tomorrow's supposed to be pretty nice, so we're very excited. It gets the students very really excited for
013the sports. I just recently went to the baseball game today. They won against Dwight Mororrow. They're pretty good. Um and yeah, so as far as the um upper classman going out for lunch, it's been going pretty well. Um, I feel like I tend to usually see them go out more when it's like nice out and then when it's a little bit colder, they like to stay in. So, I guess I like that it's a balance. So, they're like when you go to school when it's cold, it's like you see everybody. You still get to talk to your peers and when it's nice out, they get to go out. So, it's kind of a good balance. Like it doesn't feel like so isolated and alone when it's like when you're in school. So, yeah. Excellent. Anything
014else? That's it. Thank you. What time is the pep rally? Uh, the pep rally is usually 2:00 p.m. Yeah, it's usually uh at the end of the 7th to last tomorrow. 2 p.m. in the gym. Um, no. Outside of the field? Yes. May I attend? Yeah, of course. All right. 2 p.m. You're going to Clemson. What's the nickname nickname of their football stadium? What's it called? Death Valley. All right. Great place. You guys coming for a game. Any questions for Valentina? Good luck. All right. Congratulations. So, what will you be majoring in? Um, business, hopefully marketing. Very nice. Okay. Um, Lou, um, your report, please. Okay, Mr. Thank you very much. Um, we are starting to work on, believe it or not, year end in regard to surplus, where year ends are going to take
015us. Our auditors are getting set to start their early audit. That's always fun stuff. Um, there's three resolutions I'd like to take the board and the public to take a look at if I may. On page seven, resolution number 20, uh, Mr. Danho, he authored this, uh, for the right to know chemical hygiene plan with the chemical inventory list. This is just about every chemical we have in the building in the high school and throughout the school district. And Mr. Rodano and his team really do a great job uh with hazmat materials, stores materials, overviews to the county and to the state. He does really a wonderful job and this is the plan that gets reviewed by the county and the state each and every year. It gets updated. Uh it's a probably a 50
01660page document. So I commend Mr. Dano and his team. I also like to take you to pages 17 and 18 if I may please. Uh, page 17 is each and every year we're fortunate to get about $8,000 from New Jersey Schools Insurance Group for a safety and security grant. What we're actually going to do with that money, we don't I'm not 100% sure yet. We'll work with the uh the staff and co in regard to the best use of that money. But the first thing we have to do is get it uploaded and get it approved to use the money. And that's what we're doing tonight is we're going to get the resolution approved. We will upload it tomorrow morning with the help of Mr. Savastana so I don't muck it up and then we
017will get formal approval and then we can engage in a project for 252. We get this money pretty much each and every year and on page 18 resolution 47 that we spoke about that's the multi-purpose room at number six school. Uh a bid was awarded to Blackstone as Mr. Capano alluded to in the work session. The total bid is approximately $1,392,000 and it's going to be a complete rena of the multi-purpose room on the elementary side at number six school. Mr. Capan, I wanted maybe want to give a little overview of exactly what we're going to be doing there. Windows and flooring. Excuse me. It says growth contract. Grove contract big. They were the lowest bidder and then he withdrew it. As you know, we've had experience with Grove Construction. Paragraphs says withdraw. Okay. And
018and being part of a lot of bids. He underestimated the job and then he he thought about his numbers and he pulled his bid and in a way it was a saving grace. We we had budgeted around 2 million. So this came way below under budget. The cost estimate was about a million7. And Blackstone is currently working in Cliffside Park on um senior activity center and housing authority administrative offices expansion. Um we have some experience with them. You can pass by the housing authority complex and uh you can see that the structure is already up. So they look like a sound uh outfit uh company um in construction and Land Associates has checked their referrals and we're currently working with them on the housing authority end. But uh they're a good company. It's going to
019be an overhaul of the entire multi-purpose/ gym. Some structural work with uh has to be done also. It's also going to become ADA compliant with um going to have a a chair lift in there. A lot of good things uh are going to come out of there. Uh I know it's going to affect a little bit um the recreation program, but I'm pretty sure that uh Joe Rut, the bird administrator is going to be meeting, can I interject? We met with myself, uh Sir Spanella, Mr. Rut, okay, and Magna today on a plan in regard to how we're going to work the recre summer recreation. Correct. the fall recreation, everything to do with recreation with Ma Magna gave us kind of a laundry list and what she needs from us, how we could potentially be
020compromising her business, what we can do to help her uh you know, kind of reinvent the wheel. So, we got a kind of a plan in place and we'll continue to work closely with Magna and Mr. Rush. Good. So, you know, we're looking forward to this project getting uh done. Any questions or comments? Yes. Can the board get a copy of the award and can the board get weekly updates on the project? That's uh when you say a copy of of the award the whole bid the whole bid package. Yeah. Yeah. We can send you the big package electronically. It's not a problem. Have land associates send the bid package with the specs and uh uh an elect an electronic version of the um uh the drawings. I I I have one in uh in
021my office, but you you can share that with the entire board. Yeah. And then we uh then the board should have weekly updates every Friday of the project. This this is a project that you don't do weekly updates. You do bi-weekly. Do every two weeks. You're not going to be discussing uh you know stuff. Things are in motion. Uh but we always have meeting minutes, but every two weeks they'll they'll have a on-site meeting or via Zoom. Uh I've worked with this outfit. Uh and Atlanta associates has to get those meetings. And Lou, you can share that with the entire uh board also like you always do anyway. We send all the meeting minutes out. Any other questions? Anything else, Lou? Um, not on the financing. Thank you, Mr. Any questions or comments from the
022public or anybody online? Seeing none, can we please get a motion to approve uh the April 16, 2025 consent agenda? I'll second it. Roll call. Lou, Mrs. Abru, yes. Mr. Capano, yes. Mr. Fredo, yes. Mr. Garcia, yes. Mr. Nadrru, yes. Mr. Rancor, yes. Mr. Russo, yes. Mr. Bakia, yes. Mr. Yunzi, yes. Okay, at this time I think it concludes our meeting. Can we get a motion to adjurnn? And I'll make a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Everybody, happy Easter. Happy Easter. I'll ask Mrs. Calibri and uh Lou and myself to just stick around. Just want to discuss one item if that's okay.