March 23, 2023 - Clifton Board of Education Meeting

001come on he tell you anything in your ears guys yes Mr Marconi hello like to open the regularly scheduled meeting of the Clifton Board of Education for Thursday March the 23rd 2023. if you all would please rise for a salute to our flag followed by a brief moment of silence 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 thank you Mr shahada filling in for Mr UC Royal Please Mr abadravo here Mr Awad I will be late here Mr Brunswick here Mr Mejia here Mr Paris here miss Santiago here vice president Danny I will be late the mission of the Clifton School District in an open and reciprocal Community Partnership is for all

002students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong Learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a Democratic Society in an ever-changing world the open public meetings act in New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the Clifton Board of Education has caused noted of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office Clifton Public Library administration building senior citizen Nutrition Center on cable TV in the local press on the district's website and mail to president's apparent teacher organizations this

003meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight hold on one second my internet's not working that would be nice yeah I gotta get in here anyway but one second folks a little technology here um Mr Rose are you ready on your end okay we're good no we're not good Jada could you entertain us with some hands please serenade us all right uh if you're ready we'll do the um the uh public recognition of course when I go through it this portion of the meeting is open to Residents and non-residents of the city of Clifton for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to and or directly related to the operation of the Clinton Public School District residents and non-residents are requested if they're in person to sign the register

004provider for this purpose all speakers are asked to State their names municipality in which they live and subject matter before speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by member of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and responsible before coming if and when appropriate your questions may or may not be answered by board members the board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when they are speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged and will not be responded by the board students and employees have specific specific legal rights afforded to them by the laws of the state of New Jersey the board Bears no responsibility nor will it

005be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments okay we'll start with a virtual calling we have no one in the room okay we'll now open in person uh public recognition if you wish to address the board kindly come up to the podium and uh you have five minutes can we just turn that microphone on okay good evening again my name is Shannon scuya I'm a Clifton High School English teacher and the union vice president of the high school just coming because I know that the budget has been a big thing and it's going to be something that's

006going on for the next three meetings so I want you guys to take some things into consideration I wore my teaching superpower shirt tonight because teaching is my superpower it's yours and I want you guys to keep that in consideration I know that we talk a lot about the budget and what it does for the students and I know that talking about the teacher sounds a little greedy but I want you guys to think about this way teachers are burnt out and we're burnt out because our budget has been shortchanged for years which means that we have huge class sizes a class of 30 students is a lot for one person to take on there's no way as hard as you try and we have a great staff to reach each and every one of

007those students every day if we had less students we can give them a better education we want our students to be literate lifelong learners we have to show them that they are truly worthy of it by thinking about doing the biggest budget possible we have classrooms that are falling apart we need the money to fix our schools my heart breaks because every day we are losing more and more good teachers some of my best friends have retired early they're leaving education in general and more and more people tell me every day that they're looking to leave they are tired they have second jobs I hear comments like I go home to my family and I can't give them the patience that I need because I spent it all in the classroom we have wonderful students

008but we have students who come with lots of issues that we help deal with every day and it takes a toll on us emotionally so we want that extra support so that we can give it to our students the happier the teachers are the happier the students are the more teachers we have the education we can give them if we share this work with one another if we have the money to give the kids a better one-to-one ratio then we can really make a true difference and give our students the future they need it makes the town look better when you have a better education we're losing very good staff I can't impress upon you that much because they just can't handle the stress anymore it's a lot for anybody so when you're thinking about

009the budget and what you're going to do with it I want you to think about that have more money we can get better teachers and we can pull teachers in who want to do it we need to keep those young teachers we need to keep those teachers who are dedicated they could be here for a long time and that is just not happening so please when we think about the budget think you're four five maybe even six percent it's for the students better the education better the students the happier everybody is thank you [Applause] anyone else wish to address the board hold on a second there it is good evening to all my name is Lori lalam and I'm the president of the Clifton Education Association I want to thank you for tonight for the

010ability to be able to speak raising taxes to fund education can have several important benefits including improving educational outcomes adequate funding is essential to provide students with quality education with more funding schools can hire more and offer a wider range of extracurricular activities and programs all of these factors can lead to better educational outcomes for students reducing inequity inequality schools in low-income areas often have fewer resources than schools in more affluent areas this can lead to significant disparities in educational outcomes between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds by raising taxes to fund districts can have leveled the playing field and ensure that all students have access to the resources they need to succeed attracting businesses and families good schools are often a major factor in attracting business and families to a community when schools are well

011funded they can offer a high higher quality education that prepares students for college and careers this can help create a more skilled Workforce and stimulate economic growth in the community meet legal obligations in many states the government has a legal obligation to provide certain level of funding for Education if schools are not adequately funded they may be unable to meet the legal requirements for providing a quality education overall raising taxes for school funding can have a positive impact on students families in this community by providing adequate resources to schools we can help ensure that all students have access to a quality education that prepares them for success in life we can't have a Cadillac education at Pinto prices thank you anyone else foreign hello everybody my name is John O'Reilly I'm a teacher at Clifton

012High School almost 10 years now I'm a proud Mustang and I'm really happy to be here today um I want to first start off by saying that I've watched the last few board meetings and I just want to to let you know that I think many of us do appreciate the discussions that are taking place over how to make the school a better place all of us have Clifton etched into our hearts in one way or another and we all want to see what's best for our community and I applaud you for the efforts the debates and the questions each of you have I have nothing prepared I did not come with a script I did not come with anything I'm just speaking from the heart as a teacher as someone who loves my students

013and have someone who really cares about this school district we have a lot of talented staff at all of our schools at Clifton we have many teachers who go up and beyond the call every single day we have parent professionals working in very limited capacities we have nurses who experience the covid-19 pandemic possibly the worst experience you could ever have as a medical professional and you have a variety of counselors dealing with so many different kinds of mental health issues that are that are that are that are being faced throughout this nation we have custodian we have secretaries we have administrators who are doing everything that they can to make Clifton the best place it possibly can be now what I'm about to say is going to sound a bit uh like a bit of

014a challenge and it's not intended to be my students always know that the best kinds of the best kind of education comes directly from a teacher and a student they did a study long time ago and they found that the most effective teaching is one-on-one now I don't think we can afford a one-on-one basis for every student every student teacher that's not what I'm asking for but in our class sizes at the at Clifton High School at the middle schools and at the elementary schools we have t classrooms with 30 kids that is in conducive to a lot of our that's that is very problematic for the future of our education the the more the more students that teachers have the less time that they have to nurture and build social their emotional their their

015intellectual growth one of the things that most teachers always talk about is that they are so busy juggling so many different obligations counselors are dealing with so many students with so many different unique challenges and same goes with the second year teacher and it was arguably the scariest moment of my career because it was at that moment in which many of my colleagues who I grew attached to whom I loved were immediately taken away from the school district I'll never forget one of my dearest friends breaking down crying in front of her students because she was told by her supervisor that she will not she was not renewed it was not because of our teaching ability she was an amazing teach teacher even her own students tried to fight to keep her but the budget

016didn't allow it I saw this time and time again and because of that all the other teachers counselors parents nurses are picking up the slack we are doing what two teeth one person is doing what two should be doing and it's a lot perfectly said that the burnout rate is really high and it is teaching is not a normal profession it's a performing profession it's a counseling profession just like all the other major educational responsibilities we handle multiple responsibilities every day I go home every night and I go to my next job I have three or four different stipends just to make teaching work to make Clifton work and I'm not the only one we just need some help we need more bodies in the classrooms we need more bodies with the kids you know

017our most vulnerable population doesn't even have enough powers to get them to the bathroom every day our kids are in the nurses offices and I'm not you could you could ask the data you could look at it yourself they're waiting minutes of minutes even hours of precious educational time waiting for someone to take care of them we're begging you please take care of them thank you [Applause] the other side of what happens in a classroom without enough bodies my sixth grade daughter was in kindergarten so we're gonna go take a trip back in time and she was struggling I mean at kindergarten she was struggling and I would pick her up every day after school and I always got this super positive report she's doing great she's having a blast she's learning this she's learning

018that and then this letter came home that said my daughter needed Title One assistance she wasn't doing well in math or English kind of not what I was being told and I didn't find that out until the progress report came home in February which is when we bring it out for all kindergarteners and that again became problematic to me because the other two classrooms of kindergartners because we actually start a school year with only two Kindergartens Ms basford yes Mr Brunson yes Mr Mejia yes Mr Paris yes Mr yes president Smith yes all right uh now have our superintendent's report Dr robotozy thank you Mr President good evening Commissioners members of the public members of our outstanding teaching staff here tonight nice to see you guys and members of the community watching our live stream

019uh first I'd like to say uh Ramadan Mubarak to all in our one Clifton Community who uh who celebrate this morning at Sunrise Ramadan began and Ramadan is a month-long fast a time of reflection selfless acts and spiritual growth for Muslims uh the one Clifton Community stands in solidarity with our Muslim faculty and students as they celebrate this holy month it's really nice to see so many of our outstanding teachers here tonight I think you should come to all of our meetings no really it's so nice to see you guys thank you for everything you do to change the lives of of our children every single day and make no mistake about it you do that every single day to take a moment to recognize School 15 pbsis student ambassadors they have been doing a

020phenomenal job Distributing prizes making weekly pbsis expectation announcements and being great leaders so I'd like to give a shout out to Elijah Roman Nathan Soto zamira Alvarez Riley Gonzalez Arena borgheva and Aisha Gill please keep up the great work the entire Community is very very proud of you foreign our wonderful student representative mentioned some of the spring sports starting and I wanted to let the Commissioners in the community know that we will finally be having a ribbon cutting for the brand new tennis courts at Clifton High School which really came out beautifully and if you happen haven't seen it there our tennis team's first home match is Tuesday April 4th that's when we're going to plan the ribbon cutting before the first match invitations will be going out on Monday something that we should be

021very very proud of um also the new fields and field house being constructed at Woodrow Wilson Middle School if you have haven't driven by lately please do there's a tremendous amount of progress I'm told on Monday the turf field will be laid down and we will be playing baseball on that new field and soccer on that new field this this spring that's exciting because if you remember what that field looked like it was embarrassing in many ways so it's going to be nice we'll have of course a groundbreaking excuse me a ribbon cutting for that too when we when we open that field so there's a lot of work going on in our schools as you know there's something going on in every school uh HVAC new HVAC systems um going in new windows and

022many schools if you're in a school that doesn't have new windows yet you're getting new windows within the next year so there's a lot of great infrastructure projects going on here in Clifton I know sometimes it inconveniences our our staff but for the greater good I think that they're they're okay with the inconvenience temporarily uh tonight I want to remind the board that there is a resolution for you to approve not approve the preliminary budget to approve and give permission to our business administrator to send the budget to the county office tonight you are not approving the budget just giving permission to send it to the county office we will still have over a month to make any changes that may be deemed necessary by this board which could mean as suggested to not going

023up to six percent just want to see who was going to laugh I'm joking we're not I wouldn't even recommend us going up to six percent but um whatever's on the revolution tonight and whatever's in the budget that goes to the county tomorrow once you authorize that can be changed between now and our meeting in May May 4th May 4th May the fourth be with you that will be the final budget we'll do another presentation and you'll and we'll hopefully we'll have some consensus on what the plan is by then so just remember and we're happy to answer any questions on that budget tonight but I don't want to get bogged down in things that we don't necessarily need to because we do have a lot of time to to to discuss it uh that

024concludes my report tonight uh thank you for your time thank you superintendent Dr rotosi for your report all right we'll now move on to uh I don't have my my board docs is not opening so you gotta bear with me I'm sorry uh we don't have any presentations correct we have our order here oh yes okay and he's here he's here um are you Mr Robert are you okay to take your break through and then do you mind if I take a recess sure I'll be right back break my fast okay so uh Mr Roberto is going to uh take a brief recess to break his fast and we'll have our orders report while he's doing that uh Mr thank you and good evening Paul Lurch from large fencing Bliss so I'm here to present

025the results of the audit uh for the year-ending June of 22. and um I'll start off by saying that the Clifton Board of Education received unmodified opinions and we have three separate audit opinions in our report itself we have our overarching opinion on the financial statements we have our opinion on the single audit and quoting with governmental auditing standards and then we have a third opinion because of the amount of state aid and federal aid that the district receives it's part of the single audit requirement and there we received the board has received an unmodified so in layman's terms on modified means clean opinion if there were modifications we would be talking about specific issues there'd be significant recommendations and comments in the report but quite frankly there aren't any we have one comment to

026make and I'll get i'll get through that at the very end that actually made it to the audit report an extensive amount of time is spent here um you know just you live it every day the size the complexity of the district itself which certainly requires a lot of attention from our staff as well um so no significant deficiencies in internal controls as I indicated we're kind of coming around that same same process as usual the district was subject to a state and federal single audit so not only do we look at the financial statements because we have to and and present a report and we opine on on the financial statements um we also then look at the state and federal grants that you receive anytime a board of education receives more and spends

027more than 750 000 in either federal or state grants it requires a single audit what does that mean it really means that what we do is we look at then these significant grants that the district spent it triggers major programs we then make a determination as to how much we have to test on those major programs and um since you are a low-risk audit T and without getting too technical what that means it means that you've gone two years in a row without having significant deficiencies of findings so you were a low-risk Oddity meaning that we need to then spend or actual review expenditures of up to 20 percent of those those programs so what does that really mean the the state expenditures that were processed through the board of education for our fiscal year

028was over 109 million dollars of state aid it's quite a bit so we did quite a bit of testing on those programs this year we did some different testing we did the extraordinary a testing that we had last year we had deficiencies noted those were cleaned up so there's nothing to report there we tested the preschool Grant we tested the FICA Grant we also tested Transportation with no no specific comments or or requirements for the report on the federal side you had 26 million dollars worth of revenues through the system and expenditures uh here as I'm sure you're quite aware it deals really with the Opera money the Esser monies coronavirus money all of those those proceeds just like you every other District within the state of New Jersey had an influx of of Aid

029through the federal government we've had districts this year that believe it or not we're never subject to a federal single audit some of the very small districts never exceeded the 750. I think I have one that still stayed below because of the influx of the additional Federal programs um so that's very common but again we went through the extensive testing there um what that really means is as I said we have certain amount that we have to test we pull the compliance supplements up so we test for eligibility allowable costs those kinds of things nothing to report um we're late again and and not we as as the auditing firm but again the state of New Jersey so now we are in the fifth year of what I'll identify as gasby 75 um Gatsby 75

030is read the recording of the post retirement benefits um that each member of the district teaching obviously as they retire they're entitled to health benefits for life the board of education is not responsible to make those payments the state of New Jersey does it on behalf of all the board of educations but yet this new governmental auditing standards well it's not really new because we're in the fifth year Believe It or Not requires us to identify the financial information that that we get from the vision of Pensions state of New Jersey well the audit deadline was supposed to be December 5th it was moved to January 5th um then it got moved to February 5th still waiting for information from the Division of Pensions um that information was finally released in the middle of February

031and then that then pushed the final deadline back to March 17th and I will say um so those numbers were released were able to release all the audit reports by the statutory deadline but believe it or not a little more than a week ago two weeks ago new numbers came out again and it's you know it's it's sometimes it's just you have to shake your head when you uh you wait months and months and months and months and numbers of release and and now they revised the numbers there was no effect here for the city of Clifton so I'm just putting that out there what's new for this particular year is is underneath the new gas because leases and not the bore everybody but layman's terms we used to have operating leases and capital leases

032we no longer have that distinction now they're just um you know financing agreements so any of those transactions were recorded and went through the financial statements before I get into the fund equity in your current account which I think is important to talk about just to highlight a little bit about food service so Food Service operational wise you had 1.1 million dollars of profit in this particular year so you're running at a profit there as well uh the summer care and summer enrichment program is relatively inactive for the most part uh one note that we that I want to mention is is that in our footnotes um there's a new footnote at the very end and we talk about all the uh allotments that you are receiving through the coronavis cares are for money and

033to date the total awards were almost well actually a little bit over 39 million 39.1 million dollars that came through the system and that's relatively over I guess it's a three year two and a half year period sizable amounts of money that that have gone through the system so I'm going to talk about fund balance and for those board members if if you have the report if not I'm just going to talk in general terms anyway and I'm really going to go to page 75 of the audit report but so 75 is really it's a general fund it's a budgetary comparison schedule I know you were just talking about your budget you're in the midst of of trying to finalize that process well this exhibit exhibit C1 is really a culmination of the prior Year's

034budget it's your budgeted revenues on the operating side and expenses and then we compare it to the results what did you budget versus what the actual revenues and the actual expenditures were and ultimately we come down to either an increase or a decrease in your fund balance your your net resources um last year the district picked up net resources of 1.3 million dollars with a grand total fund balance of 22 million one hundred and twenty nine thousand 398 dollars and that's on the budgetary basis and I'm not going to get into the details unless somebody has a question between budgetary and Nod but this is really the numbers that the Board of Education should focus on it is your total total free balance those balances are derived or broken up into various components and I'll

035talk about those we have some restricted and we have some unrestricted uh balances and what I will say is that I'm going to start from the bottom I'm going to talk about unassigned fund balance so unassigned fund balance is really your free balance and again because of the um pandemic the state of New Jersey revised the amount that you can retain in free balance or on a signed fund balance if I go back way back you know 20 years ago with six percent it dropped down to four percent um and that's been that way for probably the last 15 years or so um down to two percent I'm sorry two percent and because of the pandemic the state of New Jersey made an adjustment temporary adjustment and allowed all districts to retain four percent and

036what what are the percentages mean it just simply means you take your expenditures we have some adjustments that happen through that process but generally take your expenditures multiply times that percentage and that's the maximum you can retain in free balance so for the previous 12 15 so years it was two percent the pandemic came along state of New Jersey felt that there was a need to allow the free balances to increase because there was so much uncertainty as to what was going to happen this was obviously way before all the funding mechanisms and um and the aid that was distributed so when you look at your audit report your free balance of unassigned fund balance is nine million 587 211. and that includes the four percent but just bear in mind when we when we

037go into next year or the year that you're actually in already that that number is going to drop down to the two percent number and two percent means roughly about 3.94 million dollars for you so it just means when we close out the fiscal year next year your free balance is going to drop somewhere around 3 3.9 to 4 million dollars and what that means is that you're going to be able to if you if you didn't divert that already in the budget process when we close out next year the excess number the maximum number because you're going to have that decrease you're going to have the ability then to divert those monies either into excess Surplus or into capital reserve or maintenance Reserve or an emergency Reserve and um so I'm going to talk

038a little bit about some of the reserves that you have so I'm going to work up the balance sheet a little bit here or at least that statement um so the total was 22 million 129. we have 9.5 million sitting in your unassigned unbalance your free balance and then we have assigned components designated for subsequent year which is one million two hundred and thirty three thousand simply means when I say designated it's in the current Year's budget so the balance the current year budget you're in 22.23 you've got 1.2 million dollars sitting as a revenue to balance the budget then I'm going to come up to year-end encumbrances of 616 thousand dollars it just means it's a reservation of equity it's for goods or services that were ordered but not yet delivered or performed a

039prime example is is us so the district hires us and contracts large 50 and Bliss to perform the audit so you reserve you execute a purchase order and you reserve that that amount of the contract but we're not performing to work until after the year end so it's a reservation of equity it's it's a reserved for an encumbrance had all the work been done beforehand it would be an accounts payable it wouldn't be part of your fund balance okay then we have restricted fund balances unemployment Reserve 206 000 kind of unchanged from the year before some money set aside obviously for unemployment liabilities that the districts may have in the future um there's some on there's some uncertainty there as well with the state of New Jersey um districts haven't been billed for the unemployment

040claims in over two years they just started going through the billing process and I know some of the bills have come out where the state of New Jersey has actually reduced the amount of the bill by half and they're using I believe they're using some of the Opera money that they have at the state level that they haven't yet identified for other purposes so there's 200 000 all sitting in the unemployment Reserve um then I'm going to get into the restricted reserves first is a maintenance Reserve maintenance reserve the balance is 952 relatively unchanged from the year before as it indicates self-explanatory you know the maintenance reserves is for money being retained by the board to maintain the facilities and you can utilize that through budget process you can utilize that through a resolution during

041the year if there are needs money gets funneled back in it can get funneled in through the budget process and more typically it's funneled through your your resolution that you do in June board of education does a resolution in June and what you do in that resolution is you authorize the business administrator to take any excess funds excess funds meaning going through all the buckets and then we go through the end and we look at and we say okay well what's my maximum undesignated piece so my maximum undesignated piece was 9.5 million we can't exceed that um what do we want to do with those funds and so typically then the option is to divert those funds into an emergency Reserve which you don't have any for emergency needs used to be very difficult to

042get at it's it's it's gotten easier over the years they've reduced some of that specific items that can be utilized out of that emergency Reserve maintenance Reserve so money can go into maintenance Reserve as I said you did not do that so it's relatively unchanged and then the last component that we have here is capital reserve you might think just like you like almost every other District in the state of New Jersey that seems to be where we're parking most of the the the resources for a future improvements of the district so when I look at capital reserve capital reserve started year out with with eight million dollars and it ended the year with 9.7 so we roughly increased it by 3.5 million but utilized almost 1.9 during the year and that's how you got

043to your rent balance of 9.7 million but of the 9.7 million again there's a piece designated so three million 441 000 of that 9 million is being utilized for facility improvements in the 22-23 school year so if if nothing changes and we don't have any access going forward meaning if we ended the year in June of 23 you would be sitting with cap reserve of 6.2 unless you contemplated using it in your 2324 budget okay um so the only other thing that I do need to discuss is just the one comment in the report okay so as I said we do an extensive amount of auditing um and we only have one comment and it deals with encumbrances as I explained to you what the encumbrances were goods and services that were authorized by the

044board so there were a couple contracts that were done at the very end of June I think it was June 23rd was your board meeting last year um for a special Revenue fund for Windows and Doors and then there was another one that was for one of the big projects that are happening through your Capital project fund so when those contracts are awarded at the board level they need to be recorded in that period in the financial statements the monies were available but they just weren't encumbered and reserved so when we did our testing we went through that process and we determined that these contracts were in fact awarded by the board with our fiscal period they weren't recorded we recorded those contracts as reserved for encumbrances so your financial statements have been adjusted for

045those items and that concludes my report I don't know if anybody has any specific questions Paul good to see you again that's nice seeing you for the Layman for the layperson what would you say is the overall state of the finances of the Clifton Public School District excellent outstanding yeah I mean as I started off by saying you know you you know you know the complexity I know the complexity of the district and what goes through the transactions and dollars and budget size um and to go through this process of spending hundreds and hundreds of hours and only to come up with you know one uh a comment here very unusual really is and it shows that the certainly the the financial team and I mean the whole team because it certainly could never be

046one person it's never one person in a very small District as well but as the size expands in a complexity expands you you obviously have to rely on more than just a handful of people so uh outstanding thank you thank you thank you do any other Commissioners uh Mr Brunswick thank you Mr President Mr Lurch good evening I I attended this meeting as a spectator last year with the report and I noticed there were some corrective actions that were recommended as well uh during testing for this past fiscal year did you notice any improvements Did You observe any improvements as a result of the corrective actions from the previous Auditor's report yeah yes and as I said before as I was going through my single audit um generalization and comments I did mention the fact

047that we did have a specific audit comment regarding uh the extraordinary Aid applications and that Grant and that was certainly cleared uh any comment that was in last year's report was cleared we have an obligation to identify last year's comments and recommendations and Report specifically as to whether or not they've been addressed or not and if they're not addressed when you go to the back half of your smaller report AMR report you'll see that there would be an asterisk saying that it's a repeat comment so there are none so the answer short answer to your questions yes economic condition and Outlook new Factor affecting future budgets in New Jersey um Educators health plan which is known as chapter 44. I mean is that is that a massive is uh is that a massive amount the

048uh the exposure there or there's not really a exact number right it's just the regarding economic Outlook in the report are you referring to what I was identifying as gasby 75 and and no this is this is a numeral number two in the report it's towards the beginning of the of the entire package it's regarding the uh economic condition and Outlook uh with of the city um you'd have to enlighten me I think what he's asking is yeah we anticipate chapter 44 being a big problem for us going forward I think that's what that says and and no in fancier terms yeah it you know it can be it depends uh again it depends upon what the contracts are certainly the the chapter 44 dollars that districts receive are significant you know and and an

049impact there is going to have a direct result um on your ability uh to uh to to provide the services so yes the answer is yes thank you anyone else have any other questions Mr lurch no we thank you very much for your for your time and your expertise and we appreciate our relationship yeah and we appreciate uh being able to serve the city as well so thank you thank you have a good night yes nice seeing you as well thank you Mr Smith yes um like to take a moment to congratulate and thank the entire business office under the direction of our business administrator Mr Mr UC and our assistant ba Ahmed shehada that's an outstanding audit and um thank you just thank you very very much um yeah if I can add to

050that I am about a year ago or so the uh Mr Russi came to the board and asked for some additional help in his office specifically um uh Chris who handled most of the work on this audit I know most board has never met Chris so maybe next meeting or something we could have him here and let them know how we should be appreciate all the work that he did on this project but uh it's because of the Insight of the business office and this board giving them the tools that they needed to be able to have such a great report so I Echo your uh your sentiments to the business office and great job all right we'll move on uh to our board committee reports and uh policies up first Miss password sure sorry

051take your time good evening the policy committee met on March 13th the policy committee began at 5 PM in attendance where president Jim Smith commissioner abedrabba commissioner Mark brunsiak administrators that were present was Dr Danny robitussi Mark gingero Lou Ross and myself the committee reviewed policy 7510 use of school facilities a discussion was held regarding regarding regarding requiring security Specialists to be present at many of the events the administration was asked to prepare amendments to the policy addressing such topics as which the group would um as to which group this would apply to responsibility of payment for security staff and the officials are who would determine the need of the security at the event the proposed amendment will be revised will be reviewed at the next committee meeting prior to forwarding the recommendations to the

052board for consideration the committee then discussed the possibility of having a district therapy dog Administration present the proposal policies from other districts which currently have therapy dogs information was provided to the committee regarding the benefit to students having a district therapy dog the matter of requiring the dog the required training handling and the care of the dog as well as insurance and liability concerns Administration will present a proposed policy to the committee at the next meeting as well as finance committee prior to forwarding to the board for consideration about meeting agenda was a quick meeting at 5 26 pm and Mr Ross wrote the minutes any questions Mrs basford did they decide who's getting a therapy dog I hear there's some fighting over who's there um that's not to I believe that that would fall

053into a purview administering to schools so the board will not be assigning anyone so that's on you um I um to uh through you Mr President to the superintendent I want to add use of facilities um another component and also I have some information that I want to discuss in the back room about use of facility um during executive session are we having one all right because something came across my uh a lot of people reached out about something and I want to bring it to the detention um and um there could be a possible legal action from it so it's I can't discuss it in public so I'm sorry to that well brief everybody later on uh but thank you any questions on policy it was brief no thank you yeah yours could be

054the same uh that Mr Paris has to do executive I have a feeling it is the same so we'll discuss an executive uh next we have um Mr Paris would you uh like to read the um the student liaison yes thank you Mr Smith the student liaison committee met on March 16th um we met at the at the high school and we being began at 11 A.M in attendance was Dr robertosie uh president Smith uh Commissioners uh Awad myself and Santiago uh from Administration we had Clifton High School principal uh hamda and vice principal uh Keegan and we also had students three representative students from each grade level uh board president Smith introduced himself and the Commissioners present uh he explained the purpose of the committee explained some of the Capital Improvements and current projects

055that are taking place in the district and at CHS and Dr robertosie thanked the students for their participation the students introduced themselves and then we went around and asked for some input from them positive aspects of Clifton High School that they identified were lunches and the pomptonian food service the school security that's now in place the guidance counselors dedication of teachers coaches the variety of college options and positive connections with teachers as far as some concerns they brought up they mentioned students that have used other student IDs to purchase food in the cafeterias misconceptions about the high school summer work for honors and AP classes and we had a discussion about the start time of schools which is something that's a bit of a Hot Topic in New Jersey right now um the meeting adjourned

056at 12 30 pm um and just a personal comment from the meeting um I was very impressed with the students their openness and their insight and maturity it was uh quite they're quite a credit to our high school any questions [Applause] Smith I just have a comment yes I agree with Mr Paris first of all it's just re invigorating meeting with students unfortunately and Central Administration the farther you get away from schools the less time you get to spend with students so it's just great to spend time with students so I Echo your sentiments and one thing we were surprised at when we're talking about the change not that we're going to do it but there's talk of changing the start time of high school I would have presumed that majority of students would want

057to start later this group was unanimous in the fact that no no we like starting early we get out at a good time we still have the rest of our day to do what we got to do and um then they said you know listen if you start later because there's gonna go to bed later and it's gonna be you know this the same thing but so I think we were all kind of surprised by that we kind of expected the kids would want to sleep late just a little anecdote that I thought was interesting yeah um not that I expected anything different but um teachers should be very proud of these students they spoke so highly of their teachers as they should um but it's nice hearing that from kids who you know we

058know we have the best teachers we approve them so we know we have the best teachers but coming from kids you know and they were not there to butter us up they were told that they had complete honesty and hearing how much different teachers have meant to them in their lives and along their process it made this board member feel like you're doing something right and um and then ultimately to hear a young lady a senior who had no idea where she was going to go to college she didn't know how she was going to be able to afford it and by the end of the day Dr Robert told me after robitosi told me that she got a full ride to MIT that very same day we got the word so that is a

059true credit to the teachers um you helped this young lady achieve her goals and uh there's nothing better than that so I I think this is such a great committee we're going to meet again on the fourth um and uh just so just a couple items that I'm just gonna identify a little bit um they very much were appreciative of the new security team that we put into the schools [Applause] the re the relationship that they've made with those uh security people and how much it has benefited and they specifically use the word the mosh pit how it has helped the mosh pit tremendously so um our security crew please know that students appreciate what you're doing and appreciate you being there so we thank you um and like I said positive uh teacher connections

060um we spent a lot more time on the positive than the negative and I was surprised at that um usually you know you think kids are going to come in I remember one year when we started this one of their major gripes was they weren't getting enough tater tots on their uh on their lunch plate um so I I think we've come a long way with this and we'll continue to do great things in this committee so thank you very much hey president I think Mr Brunswick had questions I'm sorry thank you Miss bassford thank you Mr President I just want to know the kids using the other kids IDs for the food not there's nothing malicious about it was it they just that they were lending out their ID so our understanding is that

061when they have to go to the restroom is it they have to put their IDs uh in the basket yeah so and there was one particular incident that there was an ID stolen and and it was later used but we it was the exception was not something that was going on a lot and really what happens is when the students bring up their card and they get their launch their picture shows up on the screen so it really shouldn't ever happen like you shouldn't be able to use somebody else's ID so we have some things in place now to prevent that but in this case if a student loses an ID somebody could you know take their ID and and use it but this particular person was an isolated instance that we were discussing thank

062you all right we'll move on uh we have um food service and transportation commissioner Santiago thank you president Smith so the food and transportation committee met on February 8th in attendance where myself commissioner Paris commissioner Wadd president Smith Dr Robert Tosi Mr gengaro Mr Russi Mr shihara Mr Rosenberg from pomptonian and liznik from Transportation Mrs Nick the meeting started at 6 pm and it ended at 7 pm so we started discussing the Food Service First and since it was my first meeting again they were kind of overviews so the administration introduced themselves to the committee and explained what they do and the purpose of the committee we discuss the equipment upgrades um at uh Woodrow Wilson and Christopher Columbus in school one school 13 and then we discussed the cafeteria fund and so I asked

063what you know how what you know what is that and so the cafeteria fund are funds that we receive from reimbursements from the Department of Agriculture and the sale of food and the fund pays for the Food Service Company and any Renovations done any of our cafeterias so this money can only be used on cafeteria and related upgrades and Equipment it's not part of our general fund budget uh the transportation section we discussed transportation and again an overview of the people involved in transportation and the purpose of that committee we discussed a number of buses and vans which are 45 buses and vans um the amount of students transported which uh is 2 500 students per day in District are transported to our Clifton buildings just our students if you will and then there's almost

0643 500 students total when you include transportation to Charter Schools pcti private schools that's per day we discussed the routes for out of District students and Charter and the cost for those so in the past a single route would cost about forty thousand dollars and now that average route is about 120 000 um and most of these routes uh these costs we're talking about are pcci and other private school routes discussed electric buses so uh the district applied for electric buses through a grant with the state and we're waiting to hear back on potentially getting three electric buses um tonight's meeting we're gonna approve a resolution for that and administration will send the certificate the certified application and when and if it's approved they will let us know if we're selected um we discussed lastly

065property search for a new Transportation Hub because where our buses are housed um the building is very bad shape the property is in very bad shape we're going to need to look for and have been looking for a new property for that um and um Transportation will forward contact information to Mr shihada and set up any meetings for any properties for for sale or lease but we um it's been an issue and it's something we really need to do in terms of getting a new Transportation up like I said the meeting ended at 707 PM um that's it any questions yes I do president Smith uh I'll start Transportation first so just so the public understands because I said I think I said yeah I did I sometimes can be lost last year um looking

066for a new property is that going to be in lieu of a replacement of what we currently have or is that going to be another site so we can use both sites one on one side of the city one or the other side of the city I just want the public to really understand that so depending upon what we find which we want to try and keep it in Clifton obviously so that's been very difficult finding a space that's large enough to house all all the buses but my understanding I believe it would be a new site correct yeah well because of the step the condition of that building if we have it if we have a temporary we've been instructed that we're out of space correct okay so we're going to need space for

067buses new buses coming in Etc we asked the city to help us with that we got a little bit of help um do we still have some buses at the city um but it's still not enough so if there's a temporary site that can house our buses until we find a permanent location that's something the board can consider um but right now it's been stagnant for two years there haven't been any sites that have come our way have either been sold um sold for a lot of money um so the committee is actively looking at every option now getting the electric bosses is that going to be a replacement of old buses or in I mean I know they are but again I want to make sure the public were transparent with the public uh

068and if so um are we bringing in three and getting rid of three and how do we determine that if we are getting rid of them that is correct the state's initiative to put a hole in the engine of three diesel buses in exchange for a reduced cost for the electric buses okay thank you that's translation now food um this one I'm curious about actually where are we on our um we had a loss a couple years ago in terms of where we were in fun and food um food funds where are we today as an update and how have we um mitigated what place what have we put in place to mitigate losses that makes sense yeah no problem so um just want to State this week cannot not feed children so even if

069they don't have uh money or whatever the case is we must provide them with the meal correct uh currently last time I looked probably early last early this month around 300 000 in the hole and that that's district-wide mainly coming from the the three largest buildings um at the guidance of Mr Rose she's been sending out weekly email blasts to parents with a balance of 20 or greater uh we have been recouping some of that money in my office and the Welcome Center under Mr doctor have been proactively reaching out to parents trying to recoup some of that money uh the biggest issue here is that we just need our parents to fill out the forms and it can resolve a good portion of that issue Okay so let me ask this question now because

070I I'm seeing it from my work and aspect of it and just brings up so many questions what do we use pay schools where do we use pay school oh what program hey for it pay for it pay for it so do we hold do we put a threshold on these IDs so if it doesn't get below a certain balance or to alert can we put that in a sense where if it gets below ten dollars we can it'll alert us to start talking to the parents then rather than waiting it's when it's too late I don't I don't know Mr abujabo if there's an alert but we're we're checking it weekly and that's from the report of who has balances that's where Mr Rose gets the information for the messages to go out to

071the parents okay but I don't think it's set at a certain number right you have to run the report manually I think Samantha if you don't mind uh Mr Rose would you speak it to the Mike I mean to put you on the spots no I apologize thank you the numbers come from whether it's real time that determines what the threshold is what the student's balance is at the direction of the business office we send out once that threshold reaches 20 and we can set that threshold to anything once that threshold once they reach a balance of twenty dollars an automatic email is sent every week until that's paid now we can set that threshold that whatever you decide and we also have internal procedures when it reaches in our policy forget exactly but there's

072a phone call from the principal at a certain amount in addition to the email it's it's a struggle though I I I I can't you know sugarcoat it it's a struggle part of the issue is that our kids got free lunch for almost two years and we're just used to getting feeling out and our parents were used to not sending kids to school with money and despite our best efforts to get the word out there and to get people to apply for free and reduce lunch it's it's been a struggle I can't can't deny that no and I'm and I'm and I'm seeing it now like I said from another District's end um from a different District's end because they're a cep district and there's no reason why they should be in the negative but

073they are because the a la cartes so so at the end of the day my biggest question is going to be if it's 300 000 now and we can't recover the funds for them what do we do we cover it how do we stop the bleeding you used to be in the past if you if you heard Mr Lurch say we had a they call it a prophet it's not really a prophet in in pomptonian of 1.1 million dollars in Food Services this year in the past we used to be able to take the money from that profit and wipe out balances and and every board in the state used to do that no longer allowed to do that no longer allowed to do that so we're going to have to find a way to

074enforce it better in in reality I think the only way you're going to force a parent to pay after a certain amount of time is when their kids are graduating high school and you're and I I you know we would have threaten the withholding of a diploma I don't I don't know if that's something that that we would do but maybe that would get a parent to pay if it's if it's a large enough amount of money you could even put a judgment against against the person but that's getting into some serious matters and I don't think the board is looking to do that and that's why we're trying to catch it when the balance is small but we will have some parents who just won't pay they just won't pay and so I I

075don't know I don't know what the answer is to be honest with you I have a question um so when they so say say I had a balance of forty dollars and I did qualify for free and reduced lunch would I come into you and you say um you retroactively fill out those forms so the district gets the money from the other entities that pay for that yes if you fill out the form today and you had a 40 40 bound from the remainder of the price school year we cannot wipe the balance of Odell you still owe that forty dollars but from that day the day you fill out the application moving forward your free or reduced or whatever your status may be so when we have a home and school meetings this may

076go back to the home and school committee that we have it you you host for the district maybe we could have somebody from the Food Service Department come and speak to the fact about because the first day of school when we get all those paid that paperwork and you get all that those things that you have to fill out it's overwhelming you're trying to get this get the kids ready to go back to school get them acclimated so that they have to be in school and and maybe we need to go on a more aggressive campaign about what the forms are who qualifies and about that now that lunch is no longer free and maybe the board can take a more proactive uh stance on talking to our legislative people about bringing that free food

077back and send the resolution down to them to the state because I know other districts are trying to do that as well yeah and Mrs bassberry remember we did we had done that we had passed the resolution we had sent it but it's really it's a federal thing but the state is getting more involved now I don't know if it's if it's gonna happen but this is an issue in so many places that it may eventually happen maybe a poke again it's something so Oak and if I could uh just to just to cover a conversation about the legislative legislative legislature um we've actually brought it to their attention and they're they're aware um last year when we talked to him about it but I know we got to set up another one struggling again

078getting legislators on the same page right now for the calendar but it is on the agenda for a follow-up to see where we are so that's something we discussed just going off your your comment uh Mr doctor and Sharon who work in I.T they put the form on Parent Portal so as soon as you open the parent portal to check your child's schedule that form there unfortunately we cannot require a parent to do it so we have to put an option to bypass it so we are proactively trying to get these fit performs maybe maybe you know how you guys put out those notices on Peachtree and you have to sift through a lot of stuff to see the information but maybe every once in a while just throwing that up how to do it

079like you know it may be a struggle with those they're not computer illiterate and they just need help doing it I think we can come up with some really creative outside the box thinking we're not allowed to use that terminology tonight I'm not used out thinking outside the box tonight okay speaking about something um yes well I have to say that I I agree um with Miss bassford I I think that you know maybe I don't know you know how many maybe you know the little like sort of making phone calls to parents I mean and and that's already been done okay we have called every parent on the list multiple times the Welcome Center and the principles as well there are districts um that uh Dr Roberto's you said they do hold like at

080the end of the year um they'll hold the report card and then parents are like where's the report card and it's like oh because you owe so and so and it I mean it works I mean we don't get any complaints I mean it you know parents are like oh okay so I owe and then and what is it are you allowed to do that by law well the the thing well I don't know but it's done so you know it's done and it's also done um seniors before they graduate it's anything in arrears anything that you it's a it's a thing that's oh like even books sometimes seniors don't bring in their books and you fill out the form and it's there I mean I you know I fill out forms like that at

081school school and you know there's a whole list printed in the um you know and students can see if they want like if they're in arrears or something so they can see it it's there it just and then you know they can inquire why or whatever and but again I mean that really gets parents once the report card or their diploma is held until the payment is made and then you know I mean so they they do it you can technically if I'm not mistaken from my experiences that you can hold a report I mean I'm not legal but you can hold a report card just like holding a diploma you just you just can't retain them from moving on to the next grade yes and that no I know this yes because it's as

082wide as you're speaking before asking yes like where people are asking can you do that yeah if students are in danger failing we still notify guidance counselors and guidance counselors will you know work with the students and make sure that they're and everybody's it's just that it's like that that paper is held until you know but it's not like the student is held up and and then you know they can't move forward or anything no it's not like they're moving forward it's just they don't get that paper I have another a thought um is it staff that you need Dr robitussi to hire someone to be the foods are I I don't know like truthfully I don't think that's the issue okay thank you I don't think it's a matter of uh foods are I

083like that name though um I don't think that's necessarily the do we have like um repeat offenders from years back do we have like a list of so I'm just I'm just curious if that people are so just you know they just are not mindful of fact is that you know you have to pay for your child's lunch and they they have means they are of means so I I think that maybe we need to stop putting our heads together get a little bit more creative about but maybe we need to be more aggressive in the advertising of it because three hundred thousand dollars that's a couple salaries right there you know we could start a couple new features right and so like we're not allowed unfortunately unfortunately the board is not allowed to get

084involved in in the the day-to-day but I'm sure we can come up with some really creative we have people that work in other districts what do they do when you go to your round table you can ask some of your colleagues what are they doing and maybe um at the end of the year are you you're not allowed to prohibit them from doing anything in the school but you can hold stuff back I I really would love a legal opinion on that so we don't you know violate anybody's rights for anything that was my first question is legally is that okay we obviously would get a legal answer so I I don't know off the top of my head but I'm happy to look into it well obviously you can't hold the child back in

085a grade or anything like that but you can hold you can I'll I'll just double check this all right I'm gonna withhold the actual paperwork well I'll go on the record and see I'm not a fan of holding a kid's diploma hostage for any of that so I guess we can come up with other Creative Solutions hopefully but I know when my sons went to school a while back I brought this up actually in a meeting maybe I don't know um but we would put in enough money that would cover enough of whatever they needed and if they wanted an extra Snapple or if their friend didn't have or so we ended up with we left money in the pot I'm sure for four years in other words right they they used less money than

086we put in for them I didn't get that money back so um and I have two boys so four years apart it's eight years of putting money in I didn't get a credit I needed anything so I'm sure that that went back into the cafeteria fund um but maybe something like that I mean if I was asked as a parent I would have gladly given up that extra money to pay for whoever couldn't pay for their kid so we can look at creative things but I would I would not be a proponent of holding a kid's Hospital nor for books the thing about that is that if that's the case of ear right if we can do that we don't have to even wait for graduation we can do something just as punitive right now

087that's not waiting for graduation right so anyway that's just my customer uh Mejia please I was going to say I know how hard it is to get a student on the phone you know let alone a parent to you know pick up so I deal with that every day at my job but something we use is Mongoose so it's you just put in their phone number sends automatic texts to parents and students in like five seconds you have over like five dollars yeah okay uh let's move on um Mr brunsiak you have a finance committee thank you president Smith finance committee last convened March 8 505 PM Eastern Standard time I was president Mr commissioner Paris was President commissioner wad was president president Smith was present Mr gigaro was president Mr Ruchi was president Mr

088shahada was present Mrs kusilevich was president and Mr doctor was present items of discussion were state aid numbers Administration gave us an overview of state aid allotted to the district Clifton was given another increase however it's it does seem as though the district is now fully funded it will not receive another increase until the formula is revamped through legislation and that's something that I I didn't hear tonight yet either from from anybody either so so it's revamped through legislation to let everybody know budget meeting was to be held March 16th at 6 pm to have a full board discussion administrative requests so I'm requesting anybody who's here or anybody who's watching or listening in uh if you could take a look back at the meeting the public meeting that occurred last Thursday with my colleagues

089audit overview which was provided to us a few weeks ago they explained the audit and its process and once again as Mr lurch stated pre earlier this evening this was a near perfect audit with only one finding and the Auditors were not able to attend the committee but they would be present tonight and indeed Mr Lurch was the meeting convened at 603 PM does anybody have any questions no okay and um um in commissioner Awards absence Mr Paris would you mind doing the facilities committee certainly uh the facilities committee on March 8th uh president or uh Commissioners Awad myself Santiago and Mr Smith administration had was Dr Robert tozi Mr gingaro Mr Uchi Mr shihada Mr Maldonado Mr doctor and Mr marcione we had a guest uh Mr Bill Costello he's a lead project manager

090uh meeting started at 3 38 ended at 5 PM items of discussions a referendum update was given epic the rep from epic gave an overview of what has been taking place so so far in the referendum and what's taking place throughout the rest of the year CHS bathrooms currently being worked on and classrooms are being prepped for new HVAC equipment meeting with public service to discuss when items will be delivered um just a little more color on that one most of these HVAC improvements require additional power for the schools so Public Service would need to increase some Transformers whatever their whatever device they use to deliver power to the buildings that's apparently a very large backlog right now due to pandemic uh stresses on the supply chain the field house unit is making substantial progress

091some bathrooms that were in bid 2 are being worked on uh discussion was about warranties specifications say when the unit is installed and working so warranties although we may already have the the equipment ready for installation warranties are not beginning until they're installed and up and running we may have to extend cooling warranties depending on Public Service delivery dates we're following up with Epic on March 15th and an email is sent to board members regarding HVAC warranties so all of you should have received that CHS bathrooms can possibly be finished by December of 2023 barring any manufacturing delays item number two is n27 energy utility bid live bid took place on March 8th the district opted to take this route to save money on utilities this is extremely important due to the amount of utilities

092that we're projecting to increase when the referendum is complete item number three building and ground updates Administration gave an update of projects taking place throughout the district and administration spoke with the city regarding tree Replacements the city said they will install trees once we buy them uh item number four the rod Grant Administration explained what a rod Grant is and the projects they're looking to utilize the grant for Rod grass do not cover the entire cost of the project only 40 percent if approved I believe a number of those are on the agenda this evening for roofs not mistaken right the Banfield update concerns your pass to the contractor and are being addressed and are to be completed by 331 we have yet to issue full payment um number six soccer field usage the committee

093discussed the usage of the field by an outside entity that requested use again for this next year new business the committee discussed outside bathroom to be built Administration is going to look at getting quotations this would serve the deuce the soccer field at the high school committee also discussed fee bumps around schools and discussed applying for grants for safer streets any questions yes Mr Brunswick thank you commissioner Paris when we apply for this what's the uh what's the lead time once we apply for on finding out if we get awarded any of these grants for the broadcast monies yeah I would know that these grants typically take a few months because they have to funnel in from all the districts that throughout the state so we would likely find out sometime in the summer thank

094you yes thank you president Smith so um just ballpark for the referendum related upgrade the projects when is when is like the ballpark uh date that all of those would be completed is that when's that timeline generally speaking originally it would have been within the next two years now it'll be everything except the air conditioning within three years only because of the um the Transformers Publix Eng is about today I heard from our architect 60 weeks out of putting Transformers out so we could put our new HVAC systems in the heat will work but we can't use the HVAC until they're in so and it also depends on the school so three years am I three years total from now okay thank you okay all right let's move on we'll go on to um go

095on to number 14 unfinished business does anyone have an unfinished business nope okay we'll move on to 15 um expression of condolence um Miss password or would you mind reading that expression of condolence um this is um number 15 on the agenda whereas on March 1st the community noted the sorrow of the passing of Miss Vera shimenti and whereas Ms shementhy had served the Board of Education and children of Clifton faithfully and conscientiously as a highly respected teacher's aide for over 20 years before retiring in 2019. now therefore be it resolved but this resolution be forwarded to her bereaved family to serve as an expression of the great Regard in which Ms shamenti was held by the Board of Education the Administration Employees and the pupils of Clifton public schools and be it further resolved

096that the contents of this resolution be noted in its entirety in the official minutes of the Clifton Board of Education for future generations to peruse dated March 23 2023 signed by Dr robitussi and signed by Michael USI and all the members of the Clinton Board of education's names are noted on as well okay it's a roll call please yes Miss basford yes Mr Brunson yes Mr mejio yes Mr Paris yes Mr Santiago yes vice president Danny yes president Smith yes um you had a motion or a second on that yeah um Dr Danny would you second that motion second all right we'll move on to uh education Administration we have um ea1 through ea10 second by vice president Danny discussion um I would uh like Temple number eight to be discussed in the back room

097okay number eight is a student matter um for executive session okay so the group minus uh E8 seeing on roll call please Mr Roberto yes Miss Basswood that's what number eight being held Mr Brunswick yes Mr yes Mr Patterson yes with abstention on number six Mr Santiago yes vice president Danny yes president Smith yes motion carries okay next we'll go on to see a Personnel so we have uh P1 through p25 so I moved by Mr abadrabo second by Mr Paris any discussion nope seeing none roll call please Mr Robert yes yes Mr Paris yes abstention myself on number 23. Mrs Santiago yes vice president Danny yes president Smith yes motion carries okay next uh we'll move on to board member comments um starting with this week you're right I always skip one sorry Skip

098One skip a lot no it's one section finance and Facilities D okay so we have F1 through f25 motion motion by Mr abadrabo second by Mr Paris Mr Smith I would like a separate roll call on the number seven the adoption of the budget please okay separate role on the adoption of the budget and one other question um can uh through you to the superintendent could you explain what the alternative method of compliances on the bathrooms for preschool is there a mechanism that we use or uh I'm just curious refer to Janina whenever we don't have bathrooms inside of the actual preschool or kindergarten classroom we need to apply for a waiver for what's called line of sight or for using paraprofessionals to escort them to the bathrooms so whenever there's a special needs classroom

099that's opened or there are changes to where we're doing in where we're locating these rooms we need to apply for such a waiver and I have one other question uh could someone from Administration just tell us what the use of facility process is how somebody goes about it and who determines the price that's set on a facility usage yes Dr robitosi Miss bessford we have a board policy on use of school facilities that policy requires um anyone wishing to utilize our facilities to file a written request um in our policy there's certain things that are weighted in in in accordance of who would get priority first being anything dealing with our students with a priority over any function but generally it has to be a request in writing uh that person will have to fill

100out an application for a permit they will have to show that they have liability insurance that permit then goes before the board of education for uh approval and um they they can utilize the facility thank you um that I just wanted that because the the item that I want to bring in executive session I wanted everybody from the board to hear that from the superintendent because I have some questions about something that came to my attention thank you okay any other discussion seeing none roll call please Mr Robot uh yes we have standing on 25 claims list Ford uh yes Mr Brunswick yes Mr Mejia yes Mr Paris yes Miss Santiago yes vice president Danny yes president Smith yes motion carries okay next we'll move on to uh I asked for supper vote yep number

101seven um adoption of the preliminary budget I have a motion in a second motion motion by Mr Robert second by Mr Paris any further discussion yes yes I have a question thank you Mr Robin um how many teachers if we went could roughly if I don't know if I'm putting you on the spot and I apologize if I do two four six that were we were presented on the specialty how many teachers would be admitted if we get we we went for those numbers in the budget how many I'm just talking teaching stuff we do have that information available Mrs bassford Mr Mr Shad I just needs a second sorry I should have gave you ahead of time but um public comment made me think about it that's why I want to know there's no

102problem your time it's best for you just want instructional staff just instructional staff because the the teachers brought up a question about putting more teachers in the classroom and I think that may determine what we do here with the pulmonary budget you want us to take your five minute break no no I'm sorry because it's all over the place sorry it's good it's it's only because we don't have it broken down in that way that's the only reason it's best I don't know what you consider some of these things all right we'll come back to number seven um we'll move on to uh commissioner comments well if if can I ask some oh you have a question also I want to clear some things up while Mr shot uh Dr arvatozi this is for three

103percent correct yes sir okay I'm gonna ask a couple of questions for you if you don't mind just so the public understands this could be changed at any time so if we go three percent now we can change it to four percent five percent one percent two percent two percent fifteen million percents uh up to May 4th yes sir that's correct so and this is just for us preliminary to get this down to the uh county superintendent so this way we're not penalized for holding this up that's correct we need a board resolution that authorizes us to submit this to the county superintendent okay and in no way shape or form let's say did go to zero percent and throw a number out there my biggest thing is layoffs that's not happening whatsoever that's absolutely

104correct with the 22 million dollars we got no layoffs okay thanks thankfully correct okay so let me so I I'm meeting on our scenarios out there this way correct no budgetary layoffs correct however correct just go ahead if we did hire any additional staff the potential is they would be laid off at the end of next year depending on what the budget looks at okay so we were at zero I don't think we'd be hiring additional staff so let's not put that in the air because let's get the juju out of there um the other thing I have is you gave us a sheet of two three and four percents correct yes now at three percent let's say I come to you and I say you know what Dr urbitozi there's a there's a line

105here of a title I really don't think we can you know the pairs are a little more important can we put off for that and put focus on Paris for example is that doable yes after after we send the prelim preliminar 100 so when I'm when I'm trying to get at all this is still at its very preliminary draft and and we still have till May 4th to finagle what we're gonna do how we're gonna do it and how we're gonna make sure our teachers our Paras and our district succeeds that's correct thank you I also have something another concern um I I don't know if anybody listened to the council meeting during the work session but there was a comment made about the council is now going to charge us for water for the

106sewer eighteen thousand dollars starting next year they're also going to be charging the county buildings as well for their fair share of the of the sewer bill that's not in our budget now so I just want to um hopefully I think that was mentioned right before you guys went into your Municipal Alliance meeting but I want to bring that Community Alliance because uh I think it was what we need to discuss that as well because that's something that we've never budgeted for nor we have we never paid for as a sewer on our end so I just want you guys to know that I heard that I don't know if anybody was paying attention Mr s yeah there's been numerous people have brought that um we attempted to bring it to uh Municipal Alliance however

107the other side refused to speak about anything concerning the budget um you know we don't have to get into it now but you know if they're deciding to charge our school district for numerous things there are numerous things we could turn around and charge them for as well so um so I don't think we're at that place yet but uh we did attempt to try and discuss it in Municipal Alliance and they wanted no part of it so thank you for letting us know yep Mr um shahada you have an answer on that other part yeah sorry for the delay uh so miss bass for the for the two percent it would be 18 new positions this would also this does not include the nine powers that we would make full time to give them

108the benefits for the three percent it is 21 new staff members and that does not include the 15 pairs that will be full-time getting benefits and for the four percent it is 29 new staff members with 18 not included in that 29. being moved to full time I apologize for putting you on the spot it's just that I wanted the public to hear what we're going to be voting on tonight thank you okay any other questions okay roll call on number seven please Mr Robot yes Miss basford um yes and I wish we would have another meeting and more people would come out to speak about this because the more we hear the more we know the more we can do Mr rusiak yes Mr Mejia yes Mr Paris yes Mrs Santiago yes vice president

109Danny yes president Smith yes motion carries all right we'll move now into uh board member comments uh we'll start today with uh commissioner Mejia thank you president Smith so good evening to everybody who's in with us today in attendance online virtual first I'd like to say good luck to all the spring sports that are happening this you know upcoming spring I know the lacrosse team just had a great day today um huge accomplishment for the Montreal team they're going to be competing in the Princeton moot Court um back in high school I was on the Mantra team went all the way to counties won counties that went to States so big congratulations I'm not sure if Mr van hey missing gazadres are still involved with this but huge congratulations for them um during one of

110the public discussions I remember um hearing this 30 students per classroom and that's what really hit me imagine having 30 kids for six periods at least six periods let's say that's over 180 students with different unique personalities each in their own way that's a lot and I'm not that's a lot imagine him having to deal with 180 different students a day now times that by the minimum it seems to be 120 thanks 180 days all right all right that takes a toll on a psychological effects that a teacher has to go through day to day you know it requires a lot of things and that's just the minimum I know how important this is because when I was in high school I had those numbers I think they were higher maybe I had 40 kids

111in the class and you know that affected me a lot I ended up going to University where I had a small teacher it's a student ratio and I excelled excelled so it goes to show how a smaller teacher to student ratio really impacts a student's ability to learn um with that said I vividly remember my sophomore year 2016. one of my teachers crying I'd come late to school because it was a snowy day and it was halfway through First Market period I go downstairs to my locker room and I can hear tears coming from one in the basement bathrooms when this teacher walked out I could see in their face the horror the sadness that was going on and at that point I knew I hope that never happens to another one of my teachers

112because you know believe it or not she was a great teacher and to say that my siblings or anyone related to me would never have the opportunity to have that teacher ever again you know it kind of in a way destroyed me because she was a great teacher great um yes thank you so much for this opportunity I hope you all have a great day and happy Ramadan to all you who celebrate thank you okay commissioner Paris uh thank you Mr Smith um I just want to thank every all the speakers this evening and especially the teachers for giving us some insight into the the real classroom um and Dr barbatosi just maybe you can shed a little light on this um and I know from Reading social media Etc there's U.S world news report

113and it expresses a much lower classroom ratio um I'm sure it has to do with how it's calculated maybe you can give us some background on that Mr Paris it's it's a very deceiving number because you have I can't deny that there are classes with 30 students there are also classes with four students right and so the way depending on who's calculating if they're counting a self-contained special education class which has a small number if they're taking every teacher and providing it by the number of students that number is going to be lower than the reality you know what I mean so um we have to we would have to know how it's calculated yeah I just want to share that with the public because uh it is misleading um and there are certain classrooms

114specialized classrooms that you cannot have more than a small number of students um I was at the Old City concert the other night and I just wanted to uh thank the the staff the music departments both elementary through high school did a wonderful job I was very impressed with the students especially just the quality of the playing of Middle School in our high school it was it was really amazing to see so it again and week before we had all City Orchestra so uh music is alive and doing very well in our school system um and lastly I just wanted to mention Tiffany brought up something about some funding for the mock trials that's something we can look into what they need there Mr Paris I have that in my notes um I was surprised

115that we're not I was surprised to hear that we're not paying for these admissions um so barring it being some astronomical number I don't think that it'll be an issue okay great all right thank you very much everybody have a great evening thank you commissioner Santiago thank you president Smith thank you everyone for coming out um Ramadan Mubarak to everybody celebrating I just want to make a couple of comments one is um the sewage tax that is being mentioned proposed whatever um that would be the first time since we've had sewage tax which I think is like 15 years or so that the schools would be paying for that the first time essentially just making a comment on that um the other thing is the state in terms of the budget the state says that

116we can increase two percent without going to the voters right so um they they understand that even inflation right they're they're basically saying with that essentially you should be increasing two percent every year just to keep uh you know up with inflation and basic costs so that's just two percent essentially is what they're saying every year um I just wanted to mention that and then the other thing is we we obviously live here we walk around and we hear we hear the suing we hear other things and you know we have to pay for things so so we understand and and we listen to all that and and know that as well but you know our our mandate and our purpose is to try to provide the best educational experience for students period and we

117have to do that regardless of what other people are doing regardless of what other people are thinking about and um you know our budget is our budget and uh we really have to focus on uh what's the best experience that we can provide to our students period that's that's my that's my Touchstone that's that's how I work that's how we all work is you know focusing on the best um school system we can provide period regardless of other noise going on thank you guys again good night commissioner abedravo you didn't forget me tonight I did not um as an Alum of the mock trial team congratulations to them uh Mr Vander is still around um and I'm glad to see that the mock trial team is still doing awesome um even after I graduated back

118in 2003 um I'm dating myself listen we have stakeholders various stakeholders around the table that we need to make sure are not left at the at the doorway what does that mean while a point or percent a percentage or percentages that are going up on the city side should not stop us from making sure our pairs our teachers are suffering in the classroom no doubt about that but we also need to make sure there has to be a middle ground in that middle ground I'm not saying a zero percent I don't know if I quite agree with the six percent there's got to be a middle ground a middle ground to the taxpayer in the middle ground to our to our teachers in Perros our pairs are suffering and that's why I asked that question

119if there's a line item on the sheet that superintendent gave us and we don't quite agree with it or maybe we can put another pair instead of you know gain a para and gain something else down the road is that doable and I'm glad the superintendent said yes so things are still preliminary I'm glad you all came out because we noticed last year at the last minute 24th hour it works it worked on me that's why I motioned it last year and we don't know what's gonna happen this year so you know I don't want you walking away with a negative mindset he's stuck at three percent we did nothing no that's not true so we still have a ways to go and you know keep coming not to fight us but keep coming because

120we want to see you we really do want to see you um Ramadan Kareem um to everybody who is celebrating day one is down 29 more to go I wish they made larger cups of coffee because you notice I bought this at 6 45 and luckily it was still warm I'm gonna embarrass somebody really quick but I promise I wasn't gonna do a Facebook but I didn't tell I wasn't gonna do it happy 9th anniversary to my wife today I love you um if anybody puts up with me it's definitely her and she's the only way that I can get away with it and my mother uh other than that thank you and have a great night Mr Happy eating I want to thank all the speakers for coming out tonight um congratulations to the

121mock trials uh to the students um I I wish you much success uh since we last were here we had an event at the high school sponsored by the Passaic County School boards Association and one of our students um Nyla I hope I don't mess up your name was honored as the unsung hero from the Clifton Public School System each district got to pick one the Passaic County School boards Association Along with the Passaic County Education Association honored the students that night we were very proud to see her and and get that award um that was never done in Passaic County we we fought for three years to get it done we did one during covid it was not what we wanted it to be but the Passaic County School boards Association pushed to have

122that that we pick one student that the district picked one student doesn't have to be a high performing student it could be whatever they choose to to honor that student for student gets that award that night and it's just such a great thing to see it in person again I was so proud to be there I did attend the Old City Orchestra I couldn't make the one last night I apologize I had a I mean tonight I had to go to the city council meeting one of my really good friends were being honored for her involvement in Clifton's praise as a woman of the year a woman watched National Women's month and Gabby has taken praise to a new level that we the three of us only when we decided to start it could hope

123for it to be so thank you very much um I'm going to jump around happy Ramadan to all those that participate and and celebrate and observe um I hope I did that right tonight I heard some words about the budget and I heard I really wanted to thank my colleagues for having a budget meeting to me that was more one of the highlights of my 11 years on this board because I got to hear questions from everyone usually goes to the committee the committee recommends it and there's not a lot of dialogue there's not a lot of back and forth and yeah we're allowed to argue we're allowed to you know really come to a head but I heard a lot of things that made me do some um some investigation and I apologize to

124you Mr Smith I didn't get my questions to you it's been a really long I promise I'll get them to you by the weekend I have some questions and I'm gonna do it but what I heard tonight was budgets have been short changed for years less students to give more less to give students if we had excuse me less students to give the students more if we had more a less of a student ratio I heard more funding to get more highly qualified teachers can I it's okay that's all right I heard make Clifton the best place it can be these things like stick with me and I I want to tell you that we hear you but I wish people from the community would come out tell us what they don't like I heard

125a lot of people online I saw a lot of chat online you have to come here so we can hear you and I would hope maybe we can have another budget meeting so we can really hash this out uh we have until May 4th and really get down to it and and really get look at the numbers with two percent Eighteen with three percent 21 with 4 29. I we have we we the collective nine of us have a fiduciary obligation to you the taxpayers to the students to the staff to make sure that we deliver the best we can deliver with your with the budget so I'm asking you all to please come and speak and tell us what you need because we don't know that unless we hear I heard that this there

126are classrooms falling apart that they're a mess I'm going to address that with the superintendent and find out what's going on because we've been pretty good with the upkeep of our buildings and that concerns me is that if there are Bill classrooms that are falling apart we have to make sure they're fit fixed there's money as you heard from the auditor tonight in maintenance Reserve if we have classrooms that are in need of repair why aren't we using that money to repair them we don't know that because we're not supposed to be in the schools every day that's interfering with the daily operations of the building we're supposed to separate ourselves so I just wanted to say that to you there's also something from New Jersey school boards they just put out today that they

127if you can go on their line if you're thinking about running for the Board of Education the deadline to submit your application is July 31st at 4 pm um the election will be held November 7th 2023 this year they have a kit actually a candidates kit that you can access to see if this thing is right for you it tells you how many signatures you need I believe you need ten um to to apply you have to be a citizen you have to be 18 you have to be able to reiterate English and you have to be a resident of Clifton that's the qualifications that's it and you have to get your signatures 10. that's it no more they anything past that they don't check them so please there's a kid online access it see

128if this this looks appeals to you and uh to answer the question what is my superpower I help people that can't help themselves that's my superpower thank you and good night okay thank you uh commissioner brunsiak thank you president Smith good evening everybody I just want to talk about all the wonderful things that happen in the school district my daughter and I had a the honor of attending Seussical junior to give you an idea of how long ago the last public meeting was other than the budgetary meeting I wanted to stay on topic that that extra budgetary meeting yesterday uh last week and again I urge all of you who have not seen it to please watch that meeting we went very in depth a lot of the numbers and we we did not hear

129a lot of comments and Dr robertosie put a lot of it in perspective as to the amounts that we have not been paid in arrears for the past decade which is over 500 million dollars for Clifton Public Schools alone so I urge everybody to do that I didn't hear any comments about that tonight either so I want to let everybody know what's at stake here and what's occurred in the past that we haven't said anything in the past and how important elections are and elections matter because the legislature is responsible for how much State funding they provide to this this school district so that's how important that is so again I I want to advertise I want to let you know about that Seussical JR I want to give a shout out to the principal

130uh Gaba Gaba big and a very special shout out to Mrs Coleman unfortunately I had to abruptly leave as my daughter had a massive nosebleed and Mrs Coleman was so wonderful so I can't thank her enough for helping uh my daughter and I helped clean up because it was all over the place she's just prone to nosebleeds so uh but the hour plus that we were there was absolutely fantastic so shout out to everybody involved for that uh commissioner basford mentioned also state county school boards Association congrats to our CHS unsung hero Nyla barbadi unfortunately I was unable to attend because my son was ill so if anybody's got young kids uh you know they're pretty much germ Factory so they are sickly a good period of the time I was able to attend with

131my kids the All City instrumentals the strings uh I did see Dr robertosie other VIPs over there as well including commissioner bassper and commissioner Paris and it was absolutely fantastic uh my nieces were there so congratulations I was unable to attend on Tuesday I I had a previous engagement watching The Devils lose with 1.3 seconds left in overtime but I saw the rave reviews over there so next year I'll make sure I don't get tickets on that so um quick shout out to my to my nieces uh Rosalie and and uh Lucy and to my nephew Dustin all fantastic um thanks to Mr Mr uh leschevitz leshowitz and everyone else it's very competitive in this District so competition is Alive and Well out of all the the trials he said approximately one-third of those who

132tried out made the All-City ban so it's very competitive and it makes this District better to have competition like this so these are the absolute best of the best and it was absolutely phenomenal finally Ramadan Mubarak it's all my Muslim brothers and sisters who celebrate thank you everybody for your time and God bless America have a good night everybody thank you vice president Danny um good evening I want to say that I'm sorry I was late I had an emergency and I will not be here at our next meeting as it is my spring break and I will be away as an educator I'll be away um enjoying and resting that week so um do you want to apologize but um I'll be thinking of all of you while I'm laying on the beach I

133will and then next week I know Clifton has theirs so I'm sure everybody will be thinking of all of us you know um I want to say a happy anniversary to Mr abadrabo I don't want to repeat too much about you know um everything that's been said but I did want to mention um to Administration that in regard to the um later school start times Ridgewood is actually implementing that this year so you know to maybe reach out to the Administration there's superintendent and find out you know how how that's going I don't know if at the round table when you are with other superintendents if there are other schools that are participating in that pilot or anything yeah anybody in Passaic County that's okay all right but you know you could possibly call and

134and you know and just find out you know what they found you know um moving forward on that um Danny I believe that the pilot districts I think the state is doing a report on the pilot so I think there will be a comprehensive report done with the findings so that will help okay um that's good and I guess if there's anything from there that you'd find me just to know that there is Ridgewood is doing it so you know to call if you did have questions maybe found that you know if anything could be answered by them um the other thing that I want to say is that um as Miss bessford said there were a lot of like things on Facebook about people discussing the budget and everything and and I think it's

135very important that um you know people come out and you know not just put it on Facebook but take the time to either come here or the the virtual option call in option you know to let us know what it is that you're thinking um because we're nine here and we can think a certain way but there's sometimes something that we don't think about and I think you know as Mr Robert was mentioned also that um it's good that the administration is saying that they're willing to maybe you know take a look at okay maybe powers or something move some things around if we saw that a line item maybe would be better to put some you know a power there or a few Paras or or Educators or something so that's really good to

136hear that they are willing to maybe take our suggestions to to help in that and then finally just blessing to all those celebrating Ramadan Mubarak and um thank you good evening thank you um I've had some uh technical issues tonight so I apologize um for not being able to get through some of that um to remind everybody the board tonight has to approve a a budget that gets sent to the county superintendent it is a temporary budget it is not a final budget it still allows the board to be able to work on their budget but they require us at this time to be able to send them something so the board gave Direction last week to uh for administration to set up a budget that we all received to be able to send over

137to the county and then we can continue to work on areas where we would like to see more Cuts or things that like we would like to see more implementation so again I want the public to understand that this is a um a mandated date that we have to have into the county um they require this so uh again this is only temporary and uh it gives us the opportunity uh to be able to continue to work on it so um we did have our um our Municipal Alliance meeting um this past week with the city council um to say that I did not feel it was a productive meeting is an understatement um there was um really just one item on the agenda as you all saw from the agenda um but as these

138meetings always do they bring up additional topics from members that are present that they wish to discuss um our side per se if you want to use that terminology but our side had numerous items that we wanted to discuss and uh their side did not want to discuss them so um we can only do what we can do on our side um so I I have to tell you I'm very disappointed I was in that meeting um it is only the um the only opportunity that we really have to be able to discuss our concerns with the city and to hear their concerns um so hearing that they did not want to discuss certain certain or any topics um it was very upsetting um I do do not and will not have a board committee

139um that the committee is not um active in what it does that it's not productive and thus a waste of time for committee members so we will reevaluate it going forward but if I feel that it is uh just gonna be a waste of time for for us to attend um we'll look at that but again in the past as far as I've been involved with them they have been very productive um I think through Administration um through you and the city manager they've been productive um but this past meeting was definitely the opposite of productive um so I'm just saying to my fellow board members um I am not going to ask any of you to be part of a committee that does not show progress and does not show that our concerns of

140the Clifton School Community can be portrayed to um to other leaders in the city so I'll leave it at that for now we'll reevaluate it and uh hopefully going forward uh Dr Daniel was just discussing briefly on how unproductive or Municipal Alliance meeting was this past week um I was just stating to the board that I will not ask anyone to sit on a committee that is not um showing any type of progress or their voice is not heard uh did you want to add anything to that or yeah I'm just being basically briefly basically telling the public and the board how unproductive our Municipal Alliance meeting was this past week because of the lack of um cooperation on discussing certain items from the other side yes um well I I think it was that

141you know some of the board members did want to know about you know the idea of the budget from the city side and you know it was just that um you know some members from the city Side felt that they didn't want to discuss that since it was not shored up or like give any of their input to that um so you know there were parts of the um Municipal Alliance meeting that were productive in terms of like which we'll present and talking about the the Rapport and things but when it came to some of the questions that board members here had um that was we didn't go anywhere in regard to that so we'll just have to watch the the city and see what it is that you know they're going to do with

142the the increase for the taxes in regard to that and then the next meeting we will you know discuss like the the sewer bill and and that because we just had that so we will put that we're planning on another one before the end of the school year so um and and I guess we'll just find out in regards to that thank you Mr Paris did you want to add anything uh we're just about that sewer bill thing um I believe the last meeting which was Tuesday that was your first reading it's a change in the ordinance so the next meeting they have I would assume is going to be their second reading policy where they will enact it so I don't know if waiting a month is going to have any impact on that

143discussion the thing is that the dates you know there's there's three here and three that it's so hard to get like Gates right you know like that that's that's the thing um you know to get a date in between that time I'm going away for the week I mean it could be held without me but but still um I don't know I mean you can Mr uh Dr Robert tells you can speak to how difficult it is sometimes just to get the data that's like so quick yeah I'm not sure we'll be able to certainly try if that's what the board wants to do but in any event yeah I can personally reach out to the city manager and get some pers his perspective on it um on what it is and just to make

144sure that we're all understanding what what what's going on um if the board would like to do that I'll be happy to to reach out to the city manager and let you know what he says Well we I'm sorry are we done with board comments these are my comments oh okay I just want to make sure yep um so I I checked with the attorney these um we will discuss this in executive session under uh attorney-client privilege um so that the board can have their questions too legal to Administration on how we want them to proceed um on this topic so uh did you want to answer oh yeah I just um if Dr robitussi did speak out about if he's going to reach out to this County I mean the city manager sorry um

145maybe we can come up with a list of what we do as well and what we Supply in good faith in Goodwill just as a reminder um yeah I mean I know this is your comments yeah suggested that we do with the executives what I'm concerned about is that yeah so okay yeah executive we'll do it okay all right um I have to tell you the um the most enjoyable part of my week this week was um meeting with those students at the high school Under the student liaison committee um hearing what our students feel about our schools is so very important to me um hearing there and again we started off with um the negative we asked them what not so much even negative but what could be improved in um I expected them

146to have a much longer list because just my experience in the past it just you know kids like to bring up things that uh maybe aren't so great or need to be improved but this group truly um did not have a lot of things to say um that were not good things happening at Clifton High School and I was so happy to hear that I was so happy to hear that they had many more positives now don't get me wrong we all know there are things that can be improved upon and um they seem to be very impressed that um that we were concerned about those things and we were concerned about um what students felt needed to be improved um they kind of just felt it was we were a group that just you

147know made these rules and that was it and there was no discussion no movement and they were they were quite impressed by that we were actually interested in what they had to say and that impressed me tremendously um yeah you know I I couldn't have been more proud of those students um and they were given a task their task is now they need to go back to their fellow students in their uh in their grade and tell them what was discussed and to tell them um and to get ideas from their fellow students of what topics they want to bring to the next meeting and um I'm I'm pretty confident that they're gonna have uh quite a good discussion for us on our next meeting but um I I truly was impressed with them um

148with their um ability to contribute to this committee um it really and their ability uh to commend those who have helped them uh teachers parents um Paras bus drivers Etc secretaries nurses they were they emphasized you know I have to let you know that this teacher was so important to me and um the summer program in which I took in the summer work and the readings and it just it just made our district which I know is great anyway hearing it from a student was great and I and I told them three things um that they needed to go out and thank right did I say three people they need to go out and thank three three groups of people number one would be their parents and their grandparents for all their support and education

149and everything that they do their teachers to let their teachers know say thank you to them say I appreciate your help I appreciate what you're doing and then to themselves so very important that their self-esteem is something that is very high because how can you thank others if you're not thankful for yourself so those were three things I asked them to do and to go back to their um to their fellow classmates um so again I don't want to prolong it uh any further about the budget or um this board's ability to continue to put forth the best budget that they can and we will continue to do so um on that note uh to uh to my Muslim friends who are celebrating I wish you uh all the best story in your uh especially

150during your one month of fasting um and um to our mock trial team um Administration I know you'll look into that but I'm sure if it has to come back to the board I'm sure it is something that we would support um and uh to our spring Sports and spring um activities that are taking place uh last week I had the uh the honor of attending um our high school play which was Chicago this year um I I just can't tell you how impressed I was not only with our students but with our stage crew with our directors with our music uh everyone down the line just that performance could have been a I would put that up against any performance in in any area um they just did a tremendous job and it just

151again proves to you um the talent that we have uh here at Clifton and um Vicky I know I didn't get to that specific play but I am going to get there uh to see uh how uh art and children are doing in other areas as well so um so again great focus on our kids and um they will continue to do great things and um and I do have to say one last thing I have to tell you they were so as soon as that we met with said that they were so impressed and felt such um an advancement of Pride by that we think it was something very little but it meant a lot to them the sign if you haven't noticed we put a sign up above the entrance to our gym

152and it's lit up at night also and it's um home of the Mustangs and students said that that sign they felt so proud that that sign was hanging that when people see it or people from other schools come into our building they know who we are that we are Mustangs and that they should be Pro proud of all that that stands for so it's not just a sign that went up these kids really appreciated it and wanted us to know that so I wanted to bring back to back to the board as well so uh that's all I have we'll move on if my computer will start we'll go to uh new business is there any new business nobody okay so I get here okay executive session second um just to let the public know

153we have um student matters um a turning crime client privileged matter usage issue yep and there's passwords uh usage issue um I would estimate I'm going to say 45 minutes we will probably be sooner than that but I'll give ourselves 45 minutes um motion to adjourn to Executive session we had a motion in the second roll please Mr Robert yes Mr Mejia yes Mr Paris yes Mr Santiago yes vice president Danny president Smith yes okay uh we hope we'll be back um no later than 45 minutes hopefully sooner action will be taken yes action will be taken okay what's that resolution number okay no I'm good thank you thank you very much I'm good I'm sure thank you thank you I'm sorry okay all right the board met in executive session uh we had student

154matters to discuss we had turning crime client privilege to discuss uh so we have uh one motion here that's on E8 do I have a motion please motion motion my password second by Mr Paris um any discussion seeing none roll call Honey 8. Mr Roberto Miss Ashford yes Mr Brunswick yes Mr Mejia yes Mr Paris yes Miss Santiago yes vice president Danny yes president Smith yes motion carries motion carried motion to adjourn motion by Mr Mejia second by Mr Santiago seeing no objection meeting is adjourned thank you everybody