May 19 2022 - Clifton Board of Education Meeting

001i'd like to open the regularly scheduled meeting of the clifton board of education for uh thursday uh may 19th 2022. if you all please rise to salute our flag and 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 roll call please mr abadrabo here mr awad here miss passport here miss beltran here mr canova here dr danny here mr paris here vice president daily here president smith here yes dr danny would you the mission statement please the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate

002lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world the new jersey open public meetings act the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to 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 notice 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 mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero

003one six eight um i would like to uh read a brief statement the clifton board of education and the administration are committing to celebrating the diversity of this community and to assuring that our schools and facilities are free from all forms of hatred and bias acts of hatred and bias have no place in our schools members of the public who exhibit behavior or make statements that are biased or discriminatory are responsible for their own comments and may be liable for them while the board and administration are cognitive of the people's rights to free speech under the first amendment they do not control behavior or commentary that is biased hateful or discriminatory furthermore behavior that is disruptive to the orderly conduct of the meeting will not be tolerated okay we like to go into our uh

004students of the month students we're going to do each student by by grade level and uh we had a little a problem with the uh certificates that didn't print correctly so we're reprinting them and they will get to you um very soon so uh if we start with our freshman uh mr abhijava thank you president smith freshman legend america is our freshman student of the month she thanks miss ray her school guidance council for encouraging her and going the extra mile to help legend has managed to be successful by asking questions in class participating as much as possible and dedicating time to study there jane is inspired by her family and looking forward to taking taking advantage of all that clifton high school has to offer so we're gonna pretend to give sophomore chloe hernandez

005chloe hernandez is our sophomore student of the month chloe is a standout student and also involved in many extra curricular activities chloe is the publicist of her drama club and started as lefou in the spring play beauty in the beast chloe has discovered her love for chemistry this year in part to mrs such her chemistry teacher who makes the content engaging and interesting chloe has plans to take advantage of the early college program for next two years in chs okay our junior student of the month is antonio bortamante antonio is an extraordinary student he's not only successful academically but also extremely involved in extracurricular activities he serves as the vice president of the junior class member of the key club and also participates in cross country basketball and spring track antonio credit to success to

006his mother who through her selflessness and dedication to her own family inspires him to be the best he can sure our senior of the month is jacob zyboro jacob zabro is our senior student of the month jacob's pursuit of knowledge and education comes from two of our teachers mr henry and mr o'reilly who has encouraged him to question the world around him jacob is a well-rounded student who also participates in mustang athletics coach lembrech's encouragement and support helped jacob reach more of his goals than he thought possible jacob has plans to pursue a degree in finance after he graduates from chs and will be attending the university of notre dame in the fall jacob here [Applause] a great job to all of our students of the month uh the board uh so much enjoys uh

007presenting these uh awards to you and you should uh all be very proud of the accomplishments uh that you have made in clifton high school so congratulations to everybody on that okay i'm now going to move and allow our student representative andrew to make his report good evening everyone st joseph's is working with us to do a donation drive for the children's hospital suggested items are plato careful band-aids crayons etc the like the date to bring in items is may 20th please bring them to the media center any chs families listening please do that's a great cause speaking of great causes the clifton high school chapter of the national english honor society is collecting new and generally used books for across the entire school district not just chs elementary schools and middle schools as well

008for nachos families donating their donation boxes in the media center n115 c209 s307 and e214 again great cause please help if you can lastly there's still a little bit of time left to donate to the snap race project for a snap raise fundraiser for project graduation i discussed last meeting i know now the link has been shared on clifton public schools social media again please consider donating once again phenomenal cause last meeting i also discussed the sophomore class officer's participation in the pulsar project next week we're actually going to be starting to sell post errors outside the main office in peace garden after school any students listening that are interested please help it doesn't just go to us it helps so many other people across central america as well cfs families any yearbooks that you

009have not bought yet please buy them now because time is running out they've been advertised since beginning the year so it's very easy to forget about them but the last date to buy yearbook is june 1st the last major chs of performing arts event is coming up exactly a week from today on the 26th is the orchestra concert please consider coming out as a member uh as a senior member of uh high school performing arts department it would mean so much for anyone to be able to come a few spring varsity sports is still going on and still have some more games coming up girls lacrosse has a game on the 23rd you're gonna start with plainfield at home starting at 4 15. there are two back-to-back consecutive track meets on the 24th and 25th

010at clifton stadium both them start 3 30. baseball is playing against t-neck at t-neck on the 23rd 4-15 the team also deserves special recognition for their best season in 27 years reaching the county final game it's a great feat for them boys volleyball is playing in the state tournament against north bergen at home on 23rd starting at 4 p.m and flag football is playing against jfk at jfk and patterson at six o'clock on the 23rd the last item is the longest text i've written for anything this year but i think it's worthwhile so as the weather warms up again jack starts to go back in the closet i feel it's finally an appropriate time to acknowledge clifton students primarily female clifton students and their issues regarding the clifton high school dress code argument service school

011dress codes are not a uniquely clifton issue by any means these are struggles between societal forces the clothing industry and the school environment that are incredibly difficult to juggle unfortunately the school ends up being the one that's a spin obvious plates at the same time strives to try to strike a balance and no scenario can everyone be pleased with the dress code i cannot fathom a solution to this however i still think it's imperative to voice these concerns here in this venue repeatedly stated in the chs student school dress code are statements that health and safety are the number one factor in form in informing the dress code quote of paramount importance in this dress code are the health and safety of the students and the avoidance of disorder and or distractions the educational process

012which is from a section of the state philosophy quote in addition the code is designed to encourage a mode of dressing grooming that is conducive to establishing a climate of discipline order teaching and an effective learning environment which ends the stated purpose many of the items under the clothing section are rational following i believe are and agree are rational ideas these include number four which is that jewelry posing as a potential danger is not permitted one a to maintain an environment conducive to learning scooper is not allowed items five a through f which include prohibiting clothing that references violence alcohol drugs sexual connotation and the like none of the items listed in the dress code would affect the way i come to school dressed i know very few male students who feel that dress code

013is imposing on them as is the case in any other school district is the female population that feels the weight of these regulations the most even since middle school i've heard of and witnessed countless times female students exasperated because they were dress coded for their shoulder straps not being three fingers wide or because their shorts and mid thigh these are specific guidelines on the dress code for apparel that easily and often does spark debate it wasn't until this year that i heard a final i heard a student finally say these factors are out of their control because all they can find they go shopping i absolutely believe them if you walk through wilbur you're on state plaza i challenge you to find a pair of women's shorts and a mid-thigh it's just not a contemporary

014style it will be difficult and will continue to be difficult for you to come what finally convinced me to talk about the subject was when a teacher had to warn the point the female students in the classroom that dress code checks would become much more frequent they rightfully so immediately voice their frustrations i'd like to end by quoting what a classmate of mine said about the dress code so much shame in being dress coded or being told that you're distracting others because of your body or having that insinuated it feels like us girls are doing something wrong when all we're showing is a midriff or if we're wearing shorts that are inch above our fingertips or wearing spaghetti straps and showing our shoulders i get it there's a line you have to draw the line

015should not blame a woman or make her feel shameful about her body and what she chooses to put on it these sentiments are echoed by young women in schools cross country this is an issue much larger than clifton and i'm not expecting a perfect solution by any means to come out of this discussion however it's still an issue in clifton and still should be openly discussed during clifton thank you very much for your time and have a good night uh andrew before you leave um andrew has done a tremendous job throughout this year he has a few more meetings left with us but i have been told that there is no one as of now replacing him so if there's any students out there that are interested please see andrew and he will steer you

016in the right direction to get that done so thank you andrew any of our student award recipients if you would like to stay for the meeting you're more than welcome but if you'd like to leave at this time that would be acceptable as well all right we can move on to adoption of the minutes of the meeting of may 5th so moved by mr abadrava second second by mr awad discussion mr president yes mr daley um i just want to make as i understand the minutes uh the the essence of the resolution is in the minutes that's from 13 down to further resolved at the bottom correct yeah on on the in the minutes it has adoption of the budget and it this essence of the budget resolution is in 13 from where it's 13

017item adoption of the budget down to the last further resolved um yes i mean i can get it open but it it we show where there was the original resolution and then the the know because i know there's a lot of discussion before that and which is noted which is proper and i just want to make sure that's the essence of that yes yes sir thank you [Music] okay seeing none other comments uh roll call please mr abadraba yes mr awad yes miss bassford yes miss beltram yes mr kanova yes dr danny abstain mr paris yes vice president daley yes yes motion carries okay now dr robitosi will give the superintendent's report thank you mr president good evening commissioners good evening members of the public faculty staff students present here tonight just want to review

018a couple of things and a couple reminders for the board and for the community tonight was the first of our comprehensive physical education and health virtual parent presentations as this board is well aware the new health standards have been a little controversial they've been discussed here at our board meetings and tonight was the first virtual session uh that we had there will be another session on monday night uh may 23rd from 6 to 7 30 p.m virtually and that's for grades k-5 just like tonight was and there will be another uh session for grades 6 through 12 on tuesday night may 24th from 6 to 7 30. there were two community emails sent out with the links commissioners i believe you have those links to you'll have the opportunity to attend those however please do

019register in advance i believe you have to register to get the link i'd like to uh congratulate the school 17 arts integration team they're really excited they've been invited back to princeton university this summer [Music] to participate in the program sponsored by njpsa and the dodge foundation the team is excited to continue their mission of empowering students to build upon their strengths through art infused project based learning across the curriculum so basically they take art they don't just utilize art in the art classroom they're utilizing art in every subject area and there's a lot of research that has shown it truly benefits academic achievement for students so the arts integration team at school 17 is catherine chidiax devin defalco francis carlo jonathan feig victoria minnick along with clifton's arts integration coach peggy principal laura zagorski

020and our supervisor of the arts jason leschwitz have fun in princeton i don't think i was invited are you invited let me invite him i might just roll up on him uh also school 17 started a new program this year called the k kids many of you have probably heard of the kiwanis club the kay kids are like the junior kiwanis and they're a service-based organization and this year um the k kids at school 17 have participated in the thanksgiving food drive to help families in need and clifton they also made cards for children who were in hospitals throughout the country and most recently they held a pop tab collection and donated all the tabs to the ronald mcdonald house which is really a great cause they really love helping others and they've done a

021great job and i foresee that expanding to other elementary schools in the future i'd like to give a shout out to school five also who this past month took part in the american heart association's kids heart challenge under the leadership of their amazing phys ed teacher mr john silva so during phys ed the students would participate in jumping hopping leaping activities and they learned about the importance of taking care of their hearts through physical activity eating healthy and limiting soda and sugary drinks and salt as i'm reading this i'm starting to feel really bad about myself and avoiding smoking but that's that's one good thing i'm all right one for five oh wait maybe two for six and kindness so research has shown being kind is good for your heart if you learn nothing else

022tonight let's let's learn that um the students also pledge to to be to be kind and to move more and as a result of their pledges they the students at school five raised over five thousand dollars five thousand one hundred and sixty two dollars crushing their goal of three thousand dollars um and they really surpassed their goal because there was one student a kindergarten student by the name of kyra rios who raised two thousand one hundred and nineteen dollars by herself kindergarten that student's gonna be something it's wonderful i think i think maybe we'll have to invite her to a future board meeting get her started young and so the culmination for the kids is mr silva being a good sport we'll be taking a pie to the face in front of the entire school

023next week but you know it's like good the kids don't like to they don't want to pie the teachers that they love they want to buy the teachers that they don't like but i can't imagine there's many that they don't like so maybe i'll take a pie in the face so they did a wonderful wonderful job over at school five congratulations to those students i'd like to uh inform the board that at our next meeting we will have our governors educator of the year the teachers of the year recipients from each school here to receive a small little token of our appreciation and also the educational service professionals of the year will also be here also at our next meeting our high school robotics team will be coming to do a a small demonstration in

024here and weather permitting they've asked permission to do something out in the parking lot as long as they're not blowing something up i'm okay with that so that should be kind of exciting next month at our board meeting this morning i had the pleasure of going to barnes and nobles in clifton and clifton commons to see our fifth grade safety patrol students as they embarked on their washington dc trip we had five buses of students faculty parents staff members and they even though it was raining it was a miserable weather morning the kids were so so excited this is the end of my third year as superintendent and it's the first washington dc trip because of the pandemic so kids were happy to you know kind of get back to doing something normal and they

025were really really very excited to go away on an overnight trip and i know that's a big clifton tradition and there was a lot of parents there a lot of community members there to see the students off it was just really nice to see it's just a wonderful wonderful community that we have here in clifton and then finally um if we had a student of the month here tonight um chloe who um in her little biography that was read mentioned that she's going to be enrolling in the early college program at clifton high school next year as a junior today we had 12 clifton high school seniors who graduated from bergen county college with an associate's degree a month before they're getting their high school diploma and i think that's just incredible [Applause] and i'm

026just thinking you're one of them well we have to sing your praises hold on we you should get a round of applause yeah you know what maybe would you like to could we take a picture because we're going to celebrate you we're going to blow you up on social media and and everything the other ones will invite them next time [Music] i know you were there taking pictures let's take why don't you come up here because i want to try to get everybody in can you just like kind of stand there and just yeah just stand just stand among us well if i stand up there's gonna and then and we'll all just give a thumbs up or something this is really impromptu come on we'll all get together [Laughter] i love an impromptu celebration

027anybody have cake so i would like to take a minute and read all the names of those students and forgive me i have to look at my phone because i have it on my uh in my text message uh so congratulations to zaina alamari ishmael alvarez billy de leon amman gefor sarah haberhamschen laith hassan evelyn kroczek how was that janina good very good thank you natalia ledesma angelo ovalle kathleen rossi amina shana and ariana vasquez so to think at 17 or 18 years old these students haven't graduated high school they're going to graduate high school in a month and already have two years of college under their belt and their parents are saving a ton of money parent yeah well no you have to be you have to be 20. yeah can't substitute teach yet

028so congratulations to those students that's a wonderful accomplishment and uh mr president that completes my report tonight there is an item on the uh personnel agenda the appointment of our um of our unclassified staff that i just need to pull for a second to go over one thing before we vote on it later so i'll pull that and we'll go into executive and vote on it later thank you so i don't have any announcements tonight but i would like um last meeting i know that the public waited around a long time to speak so i'd like to have our public recognition now so any members of the public sam i see you have some in the waiting room this portion of the meeting is open to the residents and non-residents of clifton for the purpose

029of addressing any subject matter pertinent to and are directly related to the operation of the clifton public school district residents and non-residents are requested in person to sign the register provided for this purpose all speakers are asked to state their names municipality in which they live in a subject matter before speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate your questions may or may not be answered by board members the board asked that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged and will not be

030responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of the state of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will it be 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 sam if you have anyone ready on uh on virtual take that first hi my name is [Music] is [Music] to have like a discussion a very sober discussion with questions and answers and things like that before that see what the strategy is what's going on about it thank you hi uh we have anna anna by drone hello anna can you hear

031me can you hear us anna yes would you like to make a public comment would you like to address the board anna i'm just cooking something nice hold on did you she mute she's muted did you want to make a comment nope okay i guess that portion's over oh wait a minute one more thank you good night thank you uh uh kathleen lepay hi kathleen lee hi did you you're did you want to make a comment hello hello guys hello hi you're okay okay this is the public portion of the clifton board of ed meeting are you making a comment yes yes um i would like to know when um would we be able to talk about you know the new policies the board of education is implemented for next year about the sex education

032class uh sir could you please state your name my name is juana bray and i live in clifton thank you yeah this is the time sir that you would address the board with any concerns you have no my question is instead of uh not instead of i know that we can talk about it is there more um a specific day and time that you guys will be able to sit down and talk about it or is it during this time right now well there are a recession happening yeah monday and tuesday night uh there are sessions being held you should have gotten information from your schools on that so if you'd like to if you'd like to be part of that monday and tuesday night of next week there will be um there will be

033a um hearing held on both of those where the presentation will be made and they'll have questions and answers as well so if you uh if you didn't get information if you could check with your uh uh school what school does your uh child go to um school number one okay so if you uh uh check with miss uh romeo the principal she'll be gladly to tell you uh all about the where those events are happening next monday and tuesday okay no problem thank you appreciate it thank you that's it okay all right motion to close the virtual motion all right mr roberto second mr wad okay now the uh in person anyone here wishing to address the board please come up to the microphone good evening everybody public border of educational members my name

034is orienta magaly fernandez and i am a new jersey licensed mt i work in pain management stress reduction i'm a mother of two students from clifton a special needs we have our own story first and anything with all the education i thank all of you to give us the opportunity to to talk in a good hour two thursdays ago i stay until 10 35 the rest of the persons spoke at 11 11 and i believe we deserve respect if you invite us to meeting you should give us the time to talk early i was going home because my children were hungry texting me at 10 35 and i couldn't talk two thursdays ago i listened to ladies here saying that anal sex was an option for not getting pregnant i am asking myself and any

035of you you would like that your children get this type of lessons your grandkids your kids in the school i have my own story and maybe mr phobes that knows me good can't tell you who i am the things that i leave personally and i can tell you as a matter that i'm not agree with this type of education i grew up with high moral values and i encourage all the parents in youtube in the channel to come all of you are invited to come and sit down this is almost empty we have ladies and gentlemen here that can answer our questions we need to be clear you need to clarify us why we need to talk about sex on a different way to our kids sexual life is important but some topics are horrible

036i don't want that my 14 year old daughter knows about anal sex i don't want it as well as many parents and i'm working on social media against this i don't like that i'm sincere and maggie fernandez known in my field and i am in facebook writing against this because i have my own story i don't want my daughter learning about sex coming saying that she's bisexual all telling listening kids talking about sex with disrespect we need to be here to show moral values moral values that each one of you get at home is what each one of you were raised different but with moral values that's why you're sitting here because you were educated you never went to school to learn about anal sex or oral sex my apologies if my words are strong

037but this is what i want to say since two weeks thank you very much [Applause] hi my name is monique shaw i live in clifton good afternoon yeah good evening um so i did not go to school in america i went to school in a different country i had a european-based curriculum and i lived in the caribbean and i am it's very interesting to me to see parents react to the education of their children in this manner i learned about sex in school my teachers did not do any of the ridiculous things that i hear parents talking about discussing various sexual positions and anal sex oral that is not what an sexual education system is about that's not what is taught what is taught however is young girls learning about their bodies how it changes

038young boys learning how their body changes and how it responds to women and how and they should take care of themselves how to approach it i learned what a yeast infection was as a young woman i learned what a period was i learned the different options for those things i learned the correct name of body parts that i already owned and body parts that my dad and brothers and all the other men i just i find it ridiculous that parents don't want their children to be able to access valuable information parents talk about i don't want my kids coming home saying they're gay what about the kid that has two dads that wants to know that his family is just as recognized as the family that has a mom and a dad what about the

039kid that didn't come from a pregnant belly the kid that was made that a family went out of their way to go and adopt or to go through a process to bring that child and they have to tell the child that story does that child not deserve to learn this is how families are made as well i understand that in america and this is just from an immigrant perspective that there is like this it's like you sexualize things but let's not talk about it it's very confusing for other people that look in just fyi very is but there is this elephant in the room where you don't want to talk about sex among your children but you guys have teen pregnancies up the gazoo in america you have sexual abuse that goes unrecognized children do

040not have the vocabulary to discuss these things parents are afraid of what their kids could be exposed to how about be welcoming of what your child might be able to tell you okay there is a lot of fear i get it in the unknown a lot of you grew up in a different era where this information was seen as bad or you were seen as dirty for having access to it or that this information was going to taint you in some way but your reality and your world is not the same that your children are going to grow up in you have to prepare them for the world you are leaving behind and while your world you did not need these terms of transgender and sexual orientation and gay and let you didn't need those

041vocabularies because it wasn't accessible your children will be at a significant disadvantage coming from a small town in new jersey that didn't teach them anything about the outside world when they try to go out there and make it in a big city you think someone can from clifton after not getting a proper sexual education and being exposed can really navigate certain nuances making it in a amsterdam beach i think they'd show up there and like you think they'd be okay in the culture shock of the rest of the world if their entire life they weren't even told what else might be out there okay thank you you as parents will still have the ability to navigate these discussions that's what the school is there for it starts the discussion it gives them the information and

042you can help them understand and navigate it do not put your kids at a disadvantage do not take this away from them and don't live in fear of new things okay thank you very much thank you good evening everybody mark princiac holly street clifton first of all i want to congratulate the uh the students that graduated with an associate's degree tremendous accomplishment my prediction is that all of them will be very successful in their futures in terms of their career i also want to commend mr abu drabo and anyone else responsible for rescheduling these uh presentations regarding the comprehensive health that was presented today they're originally scheduled to overlap with this meeting so it's kind of frustrating to see that when you're trying to see these things so and uh thank you to the administration

043for rescheduling that moreover while i was listening to the k-5 presentation today regarding comprehensive the health started off by describing teens and sex in a k through 5 lesson what's the most common buzz word i heard misinformation yet the communications that we receive from this district that are commonly sent to parents is comprehensive health yet sex education was described in the lesson so i'm asking you mention all this misinformation why don't you describe the verbatim of the sex education standards with the upgrades with the 2020s and jsls standards more some parents change the world by fighting for their kids what did one parent do she never gave up she gathered her family and friends in an amazing group group parent effort they had 40 plus show up to speak on behalf of the kids there

044were so many speakers that the board of ed meeting lasted until 1am and some schools sadly they claim that that is the law that they have to incorporate into the 2020 sex standards into the curriculum but that's not true schools write the curriculum not the department of education and the board of ed won't go to jail for saying no it's not like how governor murphy was threatening the school administration over their masking policies what is the penalty from the state if the district does not adopt these standards minus four points on their nj sac score so i'm asking this board if someone can explain what a m what a four-point reduction from our school's nj sac score if the new curriculum is rejected to our board of ed commissioners i urge you to have some

045courage like some other districts i have with me a suggested resolution created created by a wonderful attorney who i believe has a similar similar talent stack to that of our wonderful board attorney the work has before has been performed please consider using it whereas the clifton board of education intends not to adopt the curriculum set forth by the new jersey student learning standards covered under comprehensive health and physical energy physical education 2020 nj sls-chpe whereas should we allow the proposed state curriculum to move forward the impact it would have in classrooms would allow the school district to demonstrate topics inclusive of sexual activity such as oral sex anal sex masturbation and gender to be discussed with children at various grade levels to comply with the curriculum standards whereas the standards set forth are extreme and

046age inappropriate and was adopted by the state board of education therefore be it resolved by the board of education of the city of clifton shall not adopt the curriculum set forth by the new jersey student learning standards covered under comprehensive health and physical education 2020 nj sls-chpe thank you everybody for your time have a good night everybody and god bless america good night everybody [Applause] good evening tovah felder i live here just piggybacking quickly off of andrew's comments i propose that instead of disciplining mainly girls because they are distracting we discipline the kids who are too distracted to do their schoolwork because of a pair of shoulders i came to talk about the not really new health education standards from the perspective of someone who understands deeply how important it is that we do talk

047about such inclusion stuff as some background one of my aunts is a lesbian for as long as i can remember i've known that aunt linda and aunt donna were life partners the same way my mom and dad were and because this was always how it was because nobody in my family ever talked about them like it was some kind of shameful secret i never thought of it as anything noteworthy that is why this kind of inclusive education why these updated standards are so vitally important when kids understand that there are all of these different ways of existing and of being a family then it isn't shocking or scandalous when they meet their first openly gay kid or a kid with two moms when they understand that gender isn't necessarily fixed with their genitals then maybe

048it won't feel like their world is imploding if they realize someday that the gender they were assigned just doesn't feel right for the last 12 years i've been working in a religious school and tutoring privately one of my long time students a few months shy of 13 is preparing to become a bar mitzvah i'll call him josh i've known josh since he was in second grade and in my class for the first time back then he would often come to class with sparkly nail polish and we would compare our painted fingernails we still do that he's just about the sweetest most gentle spirit i've ever met and he knows that i'm talking about him tonight he thanked me for it actually that sweet kid is having an awful year josh lives in a nearby town

049with a good school district known for their high test scores and their accomplished students as a brown-skinned jew and young gay person who is proud of who he is and who doesn't hide his love of rainbows and the color pink he has not felt welcomed or supported in his district in this good school josh has been bullied by some who have been raised to see him as deviant or somehow unacceptable i'll remind you he's 12 he's a child things have been so hard for him that his family is taking the enormous financial hit of moving him to an expensive private school where he can be himself in an accepting supportive environment and despite this josh is actually pretty lucky most families simply can't afford to make that kind of sacrifice and many kids don't have

050supportive families for a whole lot of lgbtq kids they just have to suffer through it until they graduate or drop out some like a clifton teen my son knows are literally thrown out of their homes once they tell their parents that they're gay or trans it's really hard to be any kind of a minority and not get to see yourself in the culture around you on tv in songs in the books you read in school as a jew growing up i struggled with this a lot i was one of only three in my whole elementary school and except for a token hanukkah song in december i never saw examples of my own family in the school curriculum my son has struggled with it too even here in a city that is brimming with diversity he's

051had to deal with kids throwing him the nazi salute and making jokes about burning him up in an oven i'll add that administration was really quick to act when i went to them but it doesn't erase what happened now try to imagine being the child of a gay couple or of actually being a gay child or a trans child or non-binary child imagine that the only time you hear about people like you is when parents get up and tell the entire community that they don't want their kids to even learn that you exist imagine how painful that must be i know that some of you may think that for our youngest students there's just no need to discuss these things they'll learn about it later the trouble is when you fail to acknowledge an entire

052segment of the population you are implicitly stating that there's something wrong with those people something that makes even talking about them unacceptable that is a terrible harmful message one final thought if you find yourself on the same side of an argument with someone who casually throws around a nazi salute as happened at the last meeting it might be time to really ask yourself if you're on the right side [Applause] anyone else wish to address the board hi good evening pardon i came from work first of all i think it's amazing that you have students that have their associate's degree um definitely going to be taking this back my name is barbara holstein and i am from montague township i am speaking here as a citizen and not as a board member of montague township all

053right this is a very very nice boardroom certainly uh a lot more than what we have in our gymnasium but i appreciate it i attended a board meeting in gardewood on tuesday and i saw them um one of their board members came to the table presented a resolution got a second on the resolution put it up for discussion and they now have a resolution opposing the adoption of the curriculum that would be in recognition of the state standards interestingly enough the board of at the presentation by the superintendent that night kind of really helped clarify exactly why it's essential that any school district who is interested in protecting all children so while the comments from the ladies here regarding certain groups of children they're very selective to certain groups your job is to protect all

054children my problem with lbgtqhi whatever is it's missing the h it's missing heterosexual it doesn't address the largest number of population i sat quietly and listened to you i expect you to do the same for me so my point is is that any resolution any decision the due diligence of a school board member is for the whole district no one's coming at you and saying take away your 2019-year 2016 health and physical education curriculum which does have most of the content of the new ones this comes directly from the website so anybody who says that this curriculum is not teaching things isn't reading the actual website from the department of education by the end of grade two list medically accurate names for body parts including genitals i will tell you right now the kindergarten class

055that i work in they are not capable of doing this because they don't need it they need to learn how to hold a pencil they need to know how to follow directions and their teacher they need to learn how to sit in their seat most of the kids in this classroom actually come from guatemala and honduras they've never even seen the inside of a school building the last thing we need to do is be teaching them how to label genitalia okay now when when then is that appropriate if a child has an issue the child is a teacher notices this i notice it i go to my teacher i work with and i say look you know what i've noticed a couple little things going on here and you know what they do they get

056the guidance counselor involved they get the people involved to take the child in private and discuss things in private that aren't supposed to be discussed in front of their older other children who don't need to know that private business the second thing down here discuss a range of ways people explain their express their gender and how gender stereotypes may limit behavior those kids that just graduated with those associates degrees they graduated without having this and they all did successfully well new jersey state learning standards describe what students should know and be able to do with the completion of the grades these standards provide the foundation for school district curricula that is used by teachers in the development of their daily lesson plans curricula lesson plans everything in here is going to be filtered down and

057yes in the classroom the teacher gets a discretion there's not one of you that sits in a classroom not even the superintendent so whatever is said is said directly to those kids and whatever you ask them to do in your direction and your due diligence as a board when you go to adopt this or don't adopt it is going to affect the children in the classroom how that teacher wants to perceive it you have to set the message straight my board's going to be taking this into consideration i think you guys know where i sit on this topic this is absolutely this doesn't belong in our schools what we need to keep doing is what we have been doing being inclusive showing tolerance showing acceptance and continuing to do what we've already been doing we

058don't need to go to the extremes to keep doing and we already have harassment intimidation and bullying policies we already have all that i wanted to go back to you know no thank you my daughter's pediatrician is gay my daughter's 20 will be 22 in june she's a united states marine when she was 17 she came back from high school she was high school guess what i want to go see dr so-and-so because that's what she wanted to go and and talk to him before she left she went there so she was two years old didn't matter he was gay and there was no rainbows flying in his office he just practiced medicine that's what we need to focus on hi there josh shaw i live in clifton i have two boys in the in

059school five one's a kindergartner the other's in third grade um my kindergartener does know what a penis is and he knows what a vagina is and he knows how children how babies are made he's been exposed to it because we thought it was important and because he asked the other reason he needs to know what a penis is is because he pees all over the place all right so there's you can't the kids already know what are going what's going on they have access to youtube and honestly we moved to clifton seven years ago and we had the up we had the choice to move a lot of different places we looked at houses and 30 mile radius from harlem where we lived and we chose clifton because of the diversity we literally chose clifton

060because of the diversity i support the sexual education uh curriculum that's coming into play and honestly if the board were to block something like that i would sell my house and i would take my children out of this school system i would take them out and i think you'd have more people do that as well if children are not getting the education they deserve parents have the opportunity to take their children out of this i believe right they can take their children out but i think it would be detrimental to the entire community if you didn't teach children what was happening they also need to learn to respect each other my third grader we dealt with it today with the guidance counselor and the principal but yesterday my son was punched in the face by

061a fifth grader he's eight years old and he called him an n-word a kid pun a ten-year-old punched an eight-year-old and put and called him an n-word in his face now they were just playing football on the heist on the playground but these are the type of things where your garwood wherever the hell that's from that's the kind of thing that happens in garwood it's not something that happens in clifton and if we start letting the far right fascism wing of this town or other towns come influence our diverse our diverse town our diverse city excuse me only one person is speaking at the microphone just because i said right far fascist wing that i believe that some of these beliefs are far and fascist that you don't teach children about human reproductive like the

062entire world the human race would come to an end if we didn't teach children about sex like seriously what are we trying to hide here ma'am this is the last time i'm stopping this if you can't keep your quiet you're going to have to leave the room i don't care who it is he has the floor he's addressing us please keep your comments to yourself while people are speaking thank you can i get my time back there for mr smith thanks um so where was i uh i believe that it's a slippery slope and if you don't teach children reproductive health uh more children won't know how to speak about sexual abuse and and i i just i'm it's really upsetting that this is even coming up in this community honestly i stand with the

063board and i hope you guys have a strong backbone thank you hi uh i'm lilly d'amato i live here in clifton um i wasn't going to speak tonight but i'm pretty disturbed um so i had a pretty unique educational experience i grew up in massachusetts i had a very jewish elementary in middle school went to catholic school for various reasons for high school um and one thing i i got i went to an all-girls catholic high school and um one thing that they did that i really valued was they had a full-on sex education there this was not a catholic school that was teaching only abstinence we learned about all of the different types of contraceptives we learned about all of it and why and the principal was a nun she was one of the

064sisters because they knew we were going to do something we were going to figure it out and knowledge is power right so i think that that's important information right knowledge is power the more you know the better right i also want you to really pay attention to who sounds fearful here and who's leading with love right decisions good decisions are not made out of fear right the fear of saying the word penis or vagina or vulva i don't know these are scientific words we're in a pandemic right mr schull talks about you know sexual abuse well if your five-year-old doesn't know the word penis and someone's touched him somewhere and he has no vocabulary for that that happens right that abuse may keep going and i certainly hope for none of that but knowledge is

065power lead with love right not with fear that's it thanks [Applause] good evening marcia miller clifton i have information from the family watch international organization on comprehensive sex education and the harmful effects on children one it sexualizes children and normalizes child sex and desensitizing children to sexual things may give examples of children having sex or imply many of their peers are sexually active may glamorize sex use graphic materials teach explicit sexual vocabulary or encourage discussion of sexual experiences attractions fantasies or desires two teaches children to consent to sex may teach children how to negotiate sexual encounters or how to ask for or get consent from other children to engage in sexual acts with them three normalizes anal and normal sex introduces these high-risk sexual behaviors to children and may normalize them male 1 vital medical

066facts such as extremely high stds for oral and anal cancers associated with these sexy i'm sorry these risky sex acts promotes homosexual and bisexual behavior promotes acceptance of and or exploration of diverse sexual orientations sometimes in violation of state education laws may omit vital health information and or may provide medically inaccurate information about homosexuality or homosexual sex teaches children sexual pleasure teachers children about sexual pleasure may tell them they are entitled to or have a right to sexual pleasure and encourage children to seek out sexual pleasure promote solo or mutual masturbation while masturbation can be a part of normal child development encourages masturbation at young ages making children more vulnerable to pornography use sexual addictions or sexual exploitation may describe masturbation or provide instruction on how to masturbate may encourage children to engage in mutual

067masturbation eroticizes condom use may use sexually explicit models the penis the vagina models seductive role play to promote condom use to children may provide medically inaccurate information on condom effectiveness and omit or de-emphasize failure rates may imply that condoms will provide complete protection against pregnancy as tds promotes early sexual independence teaches children they can choose to have sex when they feel they are ready or they find a trusted partner fails to provide data about the well-documented negative consequences of early sexual debut fails to establish abstinence as the goal fails to establish abstinence as an expected standard for all school-age children may mention abstinence only in passing may teach children that all sexual activity other than unprotected vaginal or oral sex is acceptable even healthy may present abstinence and protected sex as equally good options for

068children promotes gender confusion promotes affirmation and or exploration of diverse gender identities may teach children they can have change in their gender or identity or multiple genders or may present other unscientific and medically inaccurate gender ideology fails to teach that most gender confused children resolve it by adulthood and that extreme gender confusion is a mental health disorder that can be helped teaches abortion and contraception i won't be able to finish the last few but it is it can be a detriment even to family values and and what's going on in their in their community that they consider to be healthy and and acceptable in their own mind and view thank you [Applause] well good evening i'm losing my voice my name is lori lallam and i'm the president of the clifton education association so first

069of all i want to thank the board for the two percent the staff is very happy for the kids and the programs that we'll be able to do so really thank you from the bottom of our hearts it's very important now i was sitting here wrestling with the idea of talking about the curriculum now as a teacher in the building and i stand in the hallway and i listen to our students talking about what's going on and i would advise parents and i'm speaking as a parent too right now that look at your computers go through your history files see what your children are doing on your computers check their cell phones they do need this curriculum i've seen things like most teachers have most administrators have and parents really need to know what's going

070on their children's life and that's all i'm going to say on that part now family watch international through the southern poverty law center sees this group as an extremist group and it's also designed as a hate group their founder is from gilbert arizona their ideology is anti-lgbtq and they have a huge write-up in the law center so it goes on and on about how the divisive the group is and how hateful they are and i know that our board and our staff would never do anything that's hateful to our children here because as a teacher and i know as board that we all treat our students with the same love and understanding that we treat our own kids so i will be glad to share the link with the board tonight thank you very much

071good evening board victoria manga butler new jersey i'm just coming to talk about the sexual education i think there's a lot of misconceptions going on here and a lot of confusion is what i'm hearing um i don't think we're saying hide it under the rug i don't think we're saying don't tell it don't talk about it a penis or a we're not saying that we're saying at a kindergarten level of a child who's five years old to be taught about masturbation and anal sex at that age is appalling that is totally unacceptable and why are we teaching the school's teaching well a parent should be teaching at home these parents should be teaching their children not our schools so i'm standing against this not only in this uh town but the towns in in all

072of new jersey and we're going to fight this because i don't think a little child of five years old should be taught about this kind of nonsense this is outrageous anal sex and masturbation at five years old is appalling and i do not accept any of this in the state of new jersey thank you for listening to me good good evening al dubois clifton well the first thing i like to say was that that event tuesday night was outstanding totally outstanding amish is if i pronounce it wrong please don't schlep how she was able to pronounce everyone's name from that list she should get a little award or some kind of recognition because that was amazing and when clifton does something with clifton i think we would be in better shape what i heard tonight

073from everyone both sides if we would meet personally and unite we're parents or our leaders because you nine are our leaders that we need to help us in this issue we really can't do it getting up here and mounting off and shouting off is not enough we need the leaders to take action and we can come up with our own program that would be dynamic from what i saw tuesday night at that event was outstanding i mean you know and all i didn't hear nothing about state you know i've been coming to meetings only because i keep hearing about the state the state the state mandates for this and the state mandates for that as well we can't we got to do this for the state mandates which is hurting our freedoms which is taking

074away a lot of liberties but if clifton can do it which i just heard some people say we can i think both sides could even unite some to some degree i mean there is truth about things like menstruation to understand that so you're not shocked at a certain age and other areas that need to be discussed properly and prudently um but you need some guidelines now i listened before we came in to the um to the meeting go to a trusted adult who's a trusted adult i'm going to ask the board tonight to discuss at your convenience privately whatever to look to get some kind of chaplains on staff can be from the various different religions and they're there now when people go through issues young adults go through issues it's called dysphoria it's normal

075i was just looking it up everybody has it anxiety depression this that it's a mood swing i remember growing up there was girls on our block that were better than the boys i would pick the girls to be on the baseball team the kickball team they were better and they used to beat up the boys but they all grew up to be mothers and the boys who were weaker that were a little chubby and they may have had the little boobs when we went to swimming they became football players that could destroy pick up one hand and throw you across the whole junior wing in the high school so they went through phases and they you need some guidance i ask you to look into having it's called spiritual dysphoria at that age but right

076away they're grabbing these kids and they're making a gender dysphoria then they're giving them hormones and then we don't know what's happening later on it's spirit they're going through some kind of mental spiritual dysphoria which we don't talk about we're afraid to talk about god the day of prayer those are realities and you know i'm sorry to get up here to always be confrontational but the wall you have here is a confrontational wall and there's an invisible wall and the structure is a structure where there's us against them it may not be because i just saw earlier how he's all acted and you're so personable and at that event which was outstanding i mean beyond you know and he was boasted about it but you should have the state hasn't done anything like that we're

077number one with that it was beautiful we could be a model we can get a program together that schools would come and say we're gonna adopt clifton's model if we all would meet together forget the zoom let's meet personally and uh talk about it and iron out our differences and then present it together um thank you and god bless [Applause] is there anyone else wishes to address the board chris tamato i live here in clifton i don't have prepared remarks i'm also not going to speak long but i do want to echo a little bit off of what the gentleman who just spoke before me said and that is this situation requires leadership regarding the sex ed curriculum and these people the anger the frustration i can feel it in the room tonight and i'm

078sure it's this is raging across the country right now in a lot of different ways there's a feeling that we're at a bit of a fulcrum point culturally with big questions what is the role of education public education what is age appropriate these are big discussions that need to be had and it's divisive right now and this situation needs leadership i would suggest that we deal with this locally in the sense that we try to get it together get on the record who supports what what specifically in this curriculum is good bad age appropriate not break it down make it clear involve the community take a stand and let the chips fall where they may when it comes election time because that's well that's democracy but this is in divisive times where big questions are

079thrust to the forefront is when we need leadership the most so just calling on all of you to take the reins and don't be afraid of this one it's a tough one but that's why you're here thank you [Applause] anyone else switch to address the board see an emotional close uh motion caused by commissioner abu drabo second by commissioner wad okay we'll move on to number 10 uh first reading of policy uh we have uh 164 8.15 record keeping for health care settings in school buildings covent 19 this is mandated 2417 student intervention and referral services mandated 2461 special education receiving schools mandated 5512 harassment intimidation and bullying mandated 7410 maintenance and repair mandated 8420 emergency and crisis situations mandated cooperation with law enforcement agencies mandated any discussion okay moving on to uh board uh

080committee reports um first one is uh policy uh mr abu dravo thank you president smith the policy committee meeting began at 3 03 p.m attendees were board vice president jim daly myself um judy basford and administrators were lou ross and mr binjo uh the committee review to recommend adoption of the following policies as per mistrust esme number one was 1648.15 record keeping health care settings in school buildings um that's newly mandated number two two four one seven student intervention referral services that was revised and also mandated number three five five one two harassment intimidation and bullying revised also mandated number four seven four one zero maintenance and repair revised also mandated number five eight four two zero emergency and crisis situations revised and mandated number six nine three two zero cooperation with law enforcement revised

081and mandated number seven two four six one special education receiving schools revised and mandated the following policies were reviewed and will be discussed at the next policy meeting pending recommendation from administration number one is two four point one five two four one five point zero four excuse me title one district y parent and family engagement number two two four one five point five zero title one school parent and family engagement number three two four one six point zero one post natal accommodations for students for informational purposes the following policies were reviewed with no recommended action or changes number one was three one six one examination for cause number two was four one six one examination for cause and a request to discuss bylaws there was zero one seven four was tabled until the next meeting

082uh the meeting was adjourned at 3 30 pm signed by mr lou ross if actually if i may add um mr president one thing that was in here miss basford did have a recommendation to add to the agenda um for that meeting and it was um asked to be tabled for next meeting because it was asked to be put on the agenda an hour prior to our meeting and that was unfair to rest of the board members since we sent the agenda out that morning this way there couldn't be any discussion on it prior to the meeting so hopefully that will be added for next meeting i have a comment um i would like my name changed to judith because that's what i go by for the board it's not judy it's judith second i

083wanted the record to reflect that i asked for 0174 which is a policy on how we do how we contact the board attorney um i wanted it on there because i was told only that morning that i was on the committee i didn't get information on it i had to take my lunch hour early that day but i wanted to discuss it because we had an issue at the last meeting that reflected that policy the policy reads that um it's all business it's not new business so i i don't understand why we couldn't have a discussion when i sat on policy i let any new discussion anybody bring something up because that's what the board does at committee meetings that's our job during committing meetings is to do our business we don't have committee of

084the whole so we all can't participate we participate at board committee functions so because i wasn't i wasn't really prepared for that um i went back into policy because several people encouraged me to because i've been doing it for a long time so i wanted to go back on it um right off the bat it made it left a really bad taste in my mouth because the policy 0174 is not properly being implemented by this board we are violating our own policy so where do you discuss anything about policy at the policy committee level so because i was not allowed to discuss that i'm going to bring it up in public i felt like my voice was stifled i'm making a public comment that i felt like i was discriminated against because of who i

085am i didn't feel like i was able to participate fully because of that and i'm i'm quite upset about that i wanted to talk about there's a log that's supposed to be kept there is transmission that when any one of us as a board member speaks to the attorney an email has to go to the to the board president that sets off a mechanism for those bills to be logged that's why i want to discuss it because we are not and we are not implementing our own policy we are violating it i just want the public to know that transparency does not exist when you get stifled remember that this year very important from where it's coming from so i want to talk about 0.174 under all business new business it's all business because it's

086a policy on our books that has been brought up several times before about how we contact the board attorney has nothing to do with the board attorney it has to do about the mechanism that's in place it's about the process and if we violate one of our board policies what does that say about the board we don't follow the rules okay any other questions on the minutes yes mr president i do yes i'd like to respond to that so mr president um that morning and actually matter of fact the meeting prior i've mentioned i stated there is a standing policy committee meeting the first tuesday of every month any board member whether on the committee or not on the committee has the right to request for something to be put on the agenda nothing was

087received whether miss bastard was told that morning i was told the year before nothing prohibits anybody from reaching out prior when notified and noticed and it was told and mentioned in a public session in front of the whole city and recorded that there was a meeting and right there and then could have been said i'd like 0 1 7 perform the agenda great not a problem now when the agenda was submitted to the whole distribute to the whole as the board that morning any questions any concerns anything against anything you want to add or anything against any questions i'm sorry no response till an hour prior to the meeting now i think that is careless to the rest of our colleagues on the board that if somebody had anything to add about zero one seven

088four if you were on your lunch or in a meeting or whatever maybe during your work days or your work job but during the day you had no way to get to that and second of all if there's something that was involving our attorney personally as a board member if somebody was talking about me during a committee meeting and my professionalism and how things are done and i'd like to be there in that professional realm so i can give an input and i can say you know okay i understand what you guys are saying our attorney actually deserves to be at our committee meetings particularly when she's spoken about or he or she has spoken about no matter who our attorney is so nobody's being stifled nobody's being left out nobody's being discriminated against okay

089and at the same time when miss basswood was policy chair at the time when things are put in place and you allow last-minute items like that an hour prior it doesn't allow board members to give input going in until they have to hear about it at a meeting such as this i think if we want to discuss as colleagues and have full input we are a team we are not a team of one it's a team of nine we have our attorney we have a superintendent we have recent superintendents who have various responsibilities defaulted responsibilities and things that they and roles that they have to play and if we're gonna do this we need to do this right and honestly to allow something like this an hour prior to the meeting to be put on

090the agenda i think is disrespectful to the rest of the board and the administration thank you okay any other questions on the minutes okay seeing now we'll move on to i'm sorry mr daley i'm sorry oh i'm sorry well we don't have a buzzer maybe we should get a buzzer that'd be kind of fun buzz each other i could see it getting dangerous um so fema you know for a fact that in our committee meetings i've been committed with you that you have brought things up that were not on the agenda it happens all the time we talked we had a 20-minute conversation about hopscotch torches in facilities the other day that was 1000 not on the agenda and that was because you wanted to have us talk about hopscotch as being being painted on

091so it happens all the time it's not like you know we didn't have all the the principles in in there to give their input about whether or not they wanted hopscott courages or not like it we talk about things in committee all the time that aren't on the agenda so i think trying to hide behind the fact that it was on the agenda and it came an hour before and et cetera like that's not a really valid excuse because we talk about things all the time that aren't on the agenda in those committee meetings i think you just didn't want to speak about this because it related to a question that you asked the attorney that wasn't recorded properly so i think that's the real crux of why you didn't want to talk about it

092but i think trying to hide behind some policy that doesn't pertain to committee meetings is is not valid because you yourself have brought things up in committees that weren't on the agenda and at the end of every committee meeting at least every committee i've ever been a part of we always say is there anything else that we would like to discuss that's like a pretty standard closing statement and i think every other board member can say that almost all of our committee meetings end like that and sometimes there are little ad hoc things that come up um i have no problem with you guys talking about this the next meeting that's fine but i don't think the way that this was shut down so violently is not our common practice mr president mr president if

093i may please help you but to miss bill jones i was speaking i was speaking again disrespect um through you mr president to the board attorney this had nothing to do with you madam attorney it had to do with the process of how we operate as a board the board the policy speaks to emails that go to the president about what the subject matter is before we he gives us permission to speak to you it talks about a log that's supposed to be kept in the board building so we can reference if there is a problem we can reference the log to the bill okay i was bringing up process that's all i was bringing up nothing about you and i do feel stifled i do and you know what when i got the agenda

094i looked at it and it sparked the policy in my head i'm sorry that i can't throw these things out weeks ahead of time it reminded me that i had a concern and i put it on there and i asked for it to be discussed because that's what we do it's about board business it's not about dictatorships it's not about anybody going out rogue and and promising people and stating stuff it's about us as a board processing our board business that's it so that's what i wanted to speak about thank you mr abhijava thank you you're wrong so i have communication actually prior to that meeting asking and requesting for that to be put on the agenda that's one thing so i don't know who told you it wasn't and i was not privy to

095the agenda because it wasn't i don't remember being sent out or looking at it before it went out otherwise i said you missed something that i actually requested prior to that meeting so you're wrong on that one respectfully um second thing no actually i am not afraid to answer questions never have never will you got a question for me ask it i'll answer it yes i had an issue with the way things are worded because that was word or wrong yes i asked uh the the attorney about a better thing through the board president and we can talk about that later on today because i know it'll be brought up so i'm willing to talk about it thank you okay any other comments on the minutes seeing none um residency and security um mr water

096you ready for that oh i'm sorry thank you mr president mr paris i'm sorry uh residency and security committee meeting that on thursday april 28th members president from administration were dr robertosi mr gingaro mr doctor and mr constantino uh president from the board or myself ms beltran mr smith and mr aberdrabbo the meeting started at 403 pm mr doctor explained that residency investigation efforts are ongoing of the 1200 cases investigated this year over 200 involved tips provided by townspeople and staff members of those cases 34 resulted in a change of address within district while 133 were verified as residents 25 students were found to be non-residents and 20 have left the district with the remaining five to leave at the end of the school year mr doctor explained that a parent contacted dr robertosi and

097the board of education concerning investigations conducted by the residency department he explained the process involved in investigations and the fact that this family was visited twice in a 12-month period was an anomaly and that this would occur this year only as we reset our calendar and operations for the department uh number three mr constantino explained the security drills from march and april and that all observed drills were conducted properly number four mr paris explained a complaint from a townsperson about safety and traffic issues on colfax avenue crosswalk between city hall property and the high school driveway mr gingaro explained the difficulty that clifton pd is having finding crossing guards to man the needed stations furthermore that crosswalk has not had a crossing guard for at least a decade and would need to be a new

098post mr gingaro will reach out to clifton pd and explain the situation to see if anything can be done number five mr giangaro explained that security cameras are being updated throughout the district the beginning planning stage is nearly completed all schools and work will commence as soon as possible meeting concluded at 4 49 thank you any questions okay we'll move on to unfinished business is there any unfinished business uh yeah she told me that um the um what we brought up the last meeting could be discussed at this point um so i wasn't sure if it would be pertinent um to read the opinion um i think because it was kind of for public knowledge more than for the board's knowledge i'm not sure if the lawyer of you or whoever would want to read

099what's right uh the opinion that was emailed out to us today the opinion that you wrote for the board um about the three sorry the three questions that were asked of you about the election um elections in general um so i was just wondering if you wanted to read that so that people knew what was asked and then what was the answer um so if anyone who's running would you know be be uh receptive to that information as well we won't do that here already there is okay i don't care which everybody you know it's been discussed so much it really doesn't make a difference at this point okay however i i don't let me find it yeah just emailed out to us today i don't know if you were cell phones are great so

100okay thank you can you hear me excellent so the email that i sent to the board president which was then forwarded to the board recently uh states dear mr smith you have asked us for a legal opinion regarding the ability of a board of education member to run for another elected office and or to sit on another elected office while a board of education member specifically you asked the following can a board of education member run for an elected office such as the city council of clifton while serving as a board of education member in clifton two if elected to the city council can the board of education member continue to serve on the board of education and also on the city council three can a board of education member run for two elected offices

101city council and also board of education at the same time below are the answers to your questions this is a short opinion so but lower the answers to your questions one yes a board of education member can run for an elected office such as the city council of clifton while still serving as a board of education member there is nothing in the education statutes nor in the election statutes that prohibits a member of a board of education from running for an elected office while still serving on the board of education two once elected to the city council and taking the oath of office the board of education member must resign from his position on the board in order to serve on the other elect governing body see new jersey statutes annotated 18 a colon 12-2

102which states specifically no member of any board of education shall be interested directly or indirectly in any contract with or claim against the board nor in the case of local and regional school districts shall he hold office as mayor or as mayor of or as member of the governing body of a municipality nor in the case of county special services school districts and county vocational school districts shall he hold office as a member of the governing body of a county and i underlined shall he hold office as mayor or as a member of the governing body of a municipality and so therefore emphasis was added three we found nothing in the statutes or regulations that prevents a board of education member from running for the board at the same time that he runs for another

103elected office again per the legal advice above once elected the board of education member must choose which office to take as he cannot serve on both the board of education and on the city council i trust this answers your questions should you need any clarification please do not hesitate to contact me sincerely derelice okay thank you um so just for a point of clarification can you tell us how this relates to the running of the school district because that's your purpose as the board attorney if i'm not mistaken yeah sure so um i i respond to the to requests for legal advice from the board president from the superintendent from the business administrator um [Music] from the assistant superintendent depending on the matter but generally the superintendent i mean obviously the superintendent always knows about

104that um in this case it was a request for a legal opinion on a matter that involved something that one of the board members was going to be doing what or possibly doing and i think that that relates to the school district in that sense because it affects the board but what is the actions of someone in their personal life which is running for an election have to do with the school board it affects the school board as to whether or not somebody has is going to have a conflict or not has how does that affect the sitting members of the board because if they're going to do something on the outside there's i mean there's a laundry list of things people could do to affect such as moving et cetera but i would think

105that that's a question for the county clerk or your personal a campaign attorney rather than using taxpayer funds to ask this type of question because it wasn't if it was like a 15-minute question that'd be fine but this was a three and a half hour question so it's kind of expensive question to ask in my opinion i i understand i you know you're perfectly entitled to your opinion um i think that it also affects the board because depending on when somebody is running you could end up having a vacancy on the board and that affects the whole board so we've been through that okay i'm i'm not here to disagree no no we've already been through that we've already had a member of the elise has the floor delicious is speaking wait it's okay um

106that's i i was asked a question understood i researched it i provided a legal opinion right but when the bill came out it had nobody's name elise is speaking right now please well it's okay we're having a conversation well that's guys once again it depends on who interrupts whom and they get it we've had this discussion that's why we have the leadership we have now on this board had decisions been made differently that day this wouldn't be going on um that that question was answered a long time ago when miss pino went uh during election during mid-term to the city council nothing changed in election law so people should have known the answer that question so to me it was a waste of money okay and i'm not it's not you but once again a

107174 was not followed there was no email i asked mr using i just point something out to you ms bassword and again i'm not i'm not um i'm just point out just specifically to the board policy that i looked up and i just had it um here we go this the the policy you're talking about oh 174 one of the things about that policy and i frankly didn't even know this until mr uzi pointed it out to me that in the policy itself because it mirrors uh the administrative code to 6 acres 23a-52 paragraph a2 that's the accountability regulations those provisions state that school districts with legal costs that exceed 130 percent of the statewide average per student amount should establish the procedures outlined in one two three and four which are in the policy

108and according to mr usi this school district does not exceed 130 percent of the statewide average per student amount i don't know what that number is but that's what i'm saying to you okay so let me ask this question that question was asked by one member why wasn't that information disseminated with the rest of the board because that's something that could affect anybody else that wanted to um because you you have still till september to take out your petitions and maybe anybody else on this board would want to jump over to the city side and actually run it's stuff like that that it's just not getting disseminated to the rest of the board and that's the issue the policy was written that we had a log and i remember years ago a log was kept

109karen perkins kept a very very detailed log of all all the entries that was number one the other thing is that i know we wrote on there that email permission has to be granted from the board president when we change the policy because we wanted to control who was contacting the board attorney because we had an issue with a board member texting you and they weren't supposed to text you questions they're supposed to go through the uh the president or through the ba we have permission we're allowed to go through the ba as well to get permission to speak to you it's it speaks about that in the policy okay i'm not disagreeing with you ms fastford at all i'm not i'm not disputing the policy i'm simply just pointing out with what's in there

110i don't i don't disagree with having a log i think that's a fabulous idea is that's not within my purview to create the log obviously so and in terms of uh in terms of our legal opinion being disseminated um if we want to if the board wants me to send out the legal opinions to the whole board i certainly don't have a problem with that um when i sent it i sent it to the board president to the superintendent to the business administrator to mr abedrabel i and clearly you know it became it became a topic of conversation casually with some of my friends from the another other districts do you discuss what happens with your attorneys and one of my friends said to me um you can ask anytime if the board president is

111speaking to you we can ask what the conversation was about we're loud we're proving these bills but it is what it is um i'm just not happy with the fact is that we already knew the answer to this question it shouldn't have been charged to the uh to the the attorney it was a question that if you're running for another board you should have found out the information on your own that's i agree with miss beltran with that as well miss basford the only thing i have to say is mr wagyu i'm sorry we might speak the only issue i have which may have caused confusion in my opinion was the former board member mr casper i forgot what committee he sat on or if it was the county committee it was something of that

112purview back when we were in the high school he said that the law changed and he made it a bunch of comments were probably caused confusion just that's just my personal opinion of what i think why this happened now we should have honestly asked we should asked you once he mentioned it but obviously that was just in the past and that's probably why mr smith asked me because there it was it was a delicate assembly that he attended on november 21st 2020 and he said that the law has changed or something has changed and if you are going to plan on running for an election for something else that you have to actually step down now before and we all i think we all had that conversation we're like i think that's not true or

113that but obviously you need a legal opinion that's going to check the facts um mr president i was actually at that meeting and the delivery of that statement was actually incorrect you can run for everything you cannot run the same time in the same election for two different offices that's where he got the confusion um there was a whole a very lengthy conversation you can't sign one uh petition and say that you can hold this office while you're gonna run for a newly running person for two separate offices because you cannot commit to the the oath and saying that you can actually serve two different positions so he got very confused about that that's not what the that that's not what was delivered at that meeting i wasn't at the meeting i wasn't privy to

114that conversation so mr smith all three of these questions came from you no other board member no uh mr aberdrabbo asked to speak to the attorney concerning him okay so it came from him all three questions may i speak now thank you and no it did not actually so to the public let's let's let's set this really straight really quick if anybody knows me i'm pretty political savvy i work for legislators to stay in the federal level for a very long time you want to ask me when this law went to about where you can't hold dual offices that was 2010 i remember where i was that year okay and there have been many instances let's look at lieutenant governor for example she was running for lieutenant governor and state legislature at the same time

115yes you can run for two office at the same time no you could not hold two outside that is illegal unless you are grandfathered in such as assemblyman gary shares an example forsake assemblyman and also can also uh council president pat lepore who stepped down he was grandfathered in but he went to respect the law he was the mayor of woodland park and a freeholder and he stepped down as woodland park mayor i know the laws but there was one thing that came back and that's the one thing i wasn't sure about and i asked state legislators exactly what they said we had nothing on the books i said president smith back in 2020 mr casper came back from a delegate assembly and said xyz but why nobody want to speak then is what i'm

116confused about why you want to speak now and not then when he actually read it okay excuse me stop making faces let's act like adults okay that's one thing second thing we want to talk about why policy needs to get changed now when you're a chair of policy why'd you change why did you not change it when you were the chair of policy that's what i want to know why now why is it when it's good for you it's good for you when it's good for everybody else ah time out i got a problem with this that doesn't work with me it does not work with me and you know what last meeting you targeted mr casper when he was not on the board and now you're targeting me and guess what i can handle

117myself and i can answer the questions so yes i did go to mr smith and say hey mr smith you know do you mind asking the attorney this because you know what what's going to happen and i'm not campaigning for myself i'm going to make it on the record but the example was brought up and yes i am running for council but you know what let's say what happened that i finished my petitions i put it in there now somebody comes up here and says oh mr abhijaba you got to step down well now i can stand on my two feet and say no i don't because you know guess what i guarantee you somebody would have came up and said that why because they don't like me and guess what i don't have to

118be like everybody it doesn't hurt me i can go to sleep at night but you know what i'd rather spend a little extra time and i did my due diligence and i did not go to the board attorney to last minute as the last option i went to legislators on my own i went to attorneys on my own they said you have to ask your own board attorney that's exactly what i did and that's one question that i asked not three questions let's set that straight so then who did the other two questions come from so that's you know that's where back to the crux of this like i i mean i guess he's okay spending taxpayer dollars on a personal question that's okay that's his own personal preview to do that that's totally up

119to him not something that i would do if i was choosing to run for both because i am also up for election so i guess i could potentially run for both offices if i want to now i know because we paid for this question to be answered i would not have used taxpayer dollars to answer this question i would have had my own campaign legal counsel answer this question for me or i would have gone to the um to the county clerk or the city clerk but regardless where did the other questions come from then or was it just yourself asking the question which is fine if it was just yourself asking a question but it just seems strange that these questions as he said you know it brought up in november and now all

120of a sudden we're asking it um that's just that's just my own opinion if any other board members have any opinions on this um that's where i stand are you sure so just just so that we're clear sometimes when clients ask a question whether it's a board president or private sector client it doesn't matter who questions are asked in such a way that lawyers because we work in minutia sometimes we'll divide the question up whatever the question is so that we can understand it logically to look at all of the facets of it so right here right now i can't tell you i didn't record the conversation that i had with mr smith i couldn't tell you yes he asked me three distinct questions i know that whatever conversation the conversation that we had that's

121how i analyzed it so i just want to make that clear that it's not necessarily well he asked me one two three it was a conversation and i divide it up so that i know exactly what it is that i'm looking for and be able to answer it does that land okay yes first of all i stand behind my work and the committee last year and prior years of their work i don't have a problem with 174 i have a problem that we're not implementing the policy that's my problem i wanted to bring it to the committee because that's where we do board business that's where we do more business that's where we're supposed to function we can't function as a committee of the whole we're supposed to bring you mean to tell me every

122single committee has never brought up new business that's bs that's bs i mean you guys people come bits about stuff that's not even board related in these committees and they talk about you know the sky is blue or the the light outside the building isn't the right color it's really disgusting that because i asked i asked to speak about something at a committee meeting that i went back to that i was reluctant to be on mr abu drabble because of you and what you've done to me all right that's why we're we're on the topic of i am on the topic that's going on i am on no i am going to explain to the community why i jumped off a committee that's that's the man has harassed me we're not discussing that right now

123this is specifically under what under what tense mr president because you know what you allow him to go off on iran but when a woman wants to you shut it down okay you are sexist and you're not enough no i'm not speaking no i am not accepting excuse you're out of order excuse me you're out of water yelling at me i am not yelling i'm very calm and telling you you're out of order we are discussing the question that miss beltran brought up that is what is okay discuss so no other band box no other comments about anything that is the way it's supposed to be run i am only doing what i'm following i you know you're yelling at me and i don't appreciate and you owe me an apology you yelled at miss

124beltran at the last meeting you were disgusting and i got phone calls again again this is out of order please okay so i'll get back to the question so we're talking why why is this allowed to be put on a bill for an attorney because i think the public has the right to know what we're spending our money on okay we pay you what 150 dollars an hour right per hour okay we've hired special attorneys for five hundred dollars an hour from people that don't have problems spending the board's money okay i would like to know why these this question was asked because you have a we have an ability to call down to school boards and get the question answered for free mr uh president smith by may yes the actions and steps that

125were taken as follows the board attorney was less and i will work i will work backwards the abort attorney was last i have call logs of my own that i can share that other attorneys were called and they said reach to your board of attorneys before that i reached out to school boards and i did and i got call log on that i can share with you they said we we haven't heard of that but that's conflicting right school board says we haven't heard of that but yet you have a board president board member at the time in 2020 that says he came back from a county delegates meeting or state delegates meeting and is giving other information that was given by the delegation or the njsba prior to that i asked legislators like many

126of us up here have the ability to call legislators we have friends on legislator and state legislator and call them and say hey so and so john jane have you heard fyz no i it huh something's weird and no this was not asked in march no this was not as last november no this was not asked in 2021 this was as in and i asked this question repeatedly and repeatedly and repeatedly and i get the answer now is that my fault that i asked a long time ago and i tried to communicate this long time ago so at the end of the day the idea of asking it goes to the line of a timeline everything led to your board attorney so let's say i didn't ask the board attorney let's say what mr casper

127at the time who was a board member decided you know that is not decided but that actually was factual and none of us were able to know the answer let's say somebody did decide to declare for council candidacy and still on the board and is called out to step down and says no can the board can the board get sued can the person can person legal actually take it against that person to remove that person so at the end of the day it's better to do our due diligence and make sure that we don't go down that that black hole so we need to understand what we're dealing with while we're sitting on the board okay so just to clear some things up the any board member can ask the attorney any question the board

128president just logs it and gives permission i do not decline most of the time i don't even get an uh a statement of why they're contacting the board attorney but leaving that aside you asked me to speak to the board attorney i say yes that is between you and the board attorney now that is how the process has been here at least that i checked back for the last 10 years okay at least for the last 10 years no one is denied talking to the board attorney if the board attorney feels that something is not related to the school system in her professional capacity she will then tell the the board member i do not answer this question and is not in the realm of the board of education that is not my decision all

129of a sudden we're we're giving powers to me that don't exist that's not my decision i've never given anyone turned anyone down to speak to the attorney when you ask me i log it it goes into a file and those are compared to the bills okay so if someone contacts the board attorney and the board attorney feels that that is a question that she can answer for this board then she does so hasn't changed in the last 10 years okay so again whether we don't agree with her opinion that's a different story but she performed her duties as the attorney by asking questions of this board just in this past week there's been four or five requests to speak to the attorney no one is denied to speak to the attorney everyone has the opportunity

130to speak to attorney if they wish and release again in her capacity if someone called on a personal issue i am sure you would not answer their question or say that is your personal information is that correct that's correct so i don't know where we're getting whether this was someone's personal views or whatever if so it would have been declined by the attorney and it was not the attorney performed her duties the bill to pay her should be paid plain and simple that is how the process works okay we've gone back to how many years mr russia did we check their a log book has not been used um and again i can't i don't know from previous boards and what they did all as i know when a member of this board asked to

131speak to the attorney i print that request out it goes into a file and then i compare it when the bill comes in that is my extent of it i am not a person here to decide that your your question is not important i've never declined anybody from speaking to the board attorney i don't believe that it's meant to put into the hands of the president to decide whether something is a question to go to the board attorney is acceptable or not that's not under the realm of the board president that would be between the board person and the attorney and that is what has been filed been followed okay um also i i asked mr daily i said in previous years are our bills excessive with the attorney is that what there is an

132issue away right we had this conversation so if the bills were excessive then i could see the board questioning this but now the board's going to try and you know police the questions that another board member can ask and that's not our job that's not our job and if our attorney makes a decision and you feel it isn't appropriate then you have the right to go do what you want if you want to ask school boards that's fine but that's what we have our attorney for she represents the board and if a board member has a question she is the one to answer it and again nobody in the two years that i've been president has ever been declined to speak to the president to the uh board attorney nobody i do not believe that

133is under the realm of the president and that would be between you and the attorney yes miss belgium sorry um to avoid i think some of this um confusion going forwards maybe every time a formal uh response is given that everyone would be shared with because then we wouldn't have taken to the bills and been like what's this question if march 3rd or march 15 whatever time you responded we all were like oh okay valid question now we have an answer so i think that would just be helpful every time a formal response like this is written back that we all are shared to them we're not shocked on the bills i know there's a few other things on the bills that we don't really know about that we've asked questions now in committee meetings

134because of what we saw on the bills which we weren't really we didn't have no we had no idea that those events were even going on so i think that might just be helpful that's an excellent policy it can go to public just hasn't been followed in the past that's yeah the reason it wasn't and we did have this discussion there are some times when she won't be able to share it with the whole board correct are there some instances when you can't share what you discussed with another board member no so everything could be shared which can't be shared with the people if it's something that has to do with the student issue that i've shared with the superintendent then perhaps yeah so it just can't be shared publicly necessarily yeah so that's not

135yeah i think why not yeah i'm just saying just because it'll clear up some of those sure sorry it might lead to more emails yep that's not an issue at all mr smith okay so going forward uh delise will uh share with the entire board after uh her discussion with a board member and she'll share it with everybody mr smith i have a question yes has a board member ever asked to speak to an attorney and you've asked why and they said i can't tell you i want to tell the attorney and i can't tell you yeah there's been some times they just it's so it's a board thing yeah okay but again i i never asked i never asked anybody for the reason i i just never felt it was my you know i

136don't think i have that right to do that and i and i want to make it very clear to the public last week when this came about and mr smith was being attacked because quote unquote being a campaign major or somebody in the past or what not was first of all um not appropriate because you need to get the full story to attack somebody to have evidence that things are being done but that's not what i'm going to talk about but when i corrected and i said the line may be reading wrong and i voluntarily said hey i asked that question some board member said oh okay well then that answers that question but that still it doesn't have that very calmly and cool about it um miss beltran you were fine with it when

137i spent sickly when i told you in the back room exactly what it was for no no don't give me a look because it was because no because mr canole was actually right around us as well so so mr knight was around the whole time and you and you didn't have a problem with it so you know danny kindness i got you yeah so what i'm just trying to say is the tune changed from last week this weekend i really want to know why and i and we can have this personal discussion on the side i really want to know why because i'm curious why we're okay with it last week when i gave the explanation here and when i spoke to you you know in the back room about it and i was more

138than happy to answer any questions but also now we want to change our tune in public you offered to pay for it last weekend so i don't know if that still stands no i did not so please open any words in my mouth joe conovo standing right there when he said that i would be willing to pay for it i mean if you want to start going what talked about in the back room and you want to make comments about what a woman looks at you and makes face you know it's just you know this whole gender thing because it becomes that happens it's not a female it's not a gender it's not a race not a religious thing this is a fahim and dana thing let's get that very straight so it's not a

139gender thing and no i'm not trying to shut you down because you're a female you know what is the problem is is that the past year this gender card has been thrown around way too much because they decide they want to which is fine you have every right to do so nobody should be shutting another person now for cultural religious gender-based or whatever you believe in nobody has the right to do that and you have every right to speak out i fully support that so please refrain from saying because you're because you're you're a woman making looks no it really isn't dana it's because honestly that's not how i maybe i did and i don't remember i can't tell you 100 i did but we had a conversation in the back and frankly that's just

140what i remember so that's all i'm saying all i'm saying is thank you i think i've i've been answering questions respectfully this entire time i don't think i've been disrespectful just my opinion i've been expressing it and unfortunately we have differing opinions which is part of politics and part of life and you know that's just how it is and if we're going to talk about everything that we've said in the back room and bring it up to the dais we'll be here all day for years talking about things that are talked out there that are different here which is the same as every political environment you know the supreme court is going to fight with each other in the front and then go to lunch afterwards that's just how life is and i'm sorry if

141that's if i offended you in any way if uh you know you you don't like that i'm questioning things that are on the bill that mention your name um but that's just who i am and that's how i'm going to continue to operate and no you shouldn't be sorry for that because i didn't take offense that at all i'm more than happy to answer questions but let's answer the questions that are supposed to be answered in terms of what's right and what's wrong and not make things up that's all i'm asking i've answered questions off the day so i've answered questions on the days i have no problem answering questions whatsoever i'm an open book i have nothing to hide if i'm wrong i'll admit i'm wrong if i see something if something's yellow i'm

142not going to say it's white orange black green or whatever it may be it is what it is it's just life yeah we disagree but the end of the day if we're gonna disagree let's disagree about the facts not things that you know factual that's not things that we're gonna make up and pull out of a box and stick in another box like yeah that bot that thing just jumped from one box to another no it didn't you pulled it out and put it in it let's let's be realistic all right and also from uh last meeting just so there's a clarification on this as well um ms gutierrez you could speak to this if you wish but um there was a question about it in the the bill last meeting the attorney did not

143have her information in front of her that is why it was not revealed until she could go back and look at her notes and then present it back to the board this week that is why it was not answered last week am i correct in saying that okay so any other discussion on this i have a unfinished business on april 7th uh under new business f number three i asked for a um that the board attorney contact the sec for an advisory opinion regarding lay people attending board committee meetings and i have not received anything and i'd like to know when i'm going to receive something on that if we're going to receive an answer if the petition actually was sent thank you miss bassford um that's the meeting that i i wasn't here for

144that meeting um and we did take a look at that issue there is an advisory opinion that we wrote up but um in looking at the rules for advisory opinions they're supposed to come from the individual board member or school official um okay so april 7th it's may 7 19 why am i only hearing this now because i have it ready for you if you'd like to send it yourself or if you want the superintendent well but it's really okay so because it came from me if it came from any other board member poof i'm done i'm sorry i i disagree with all he is i think it's disgusting that that it is selected the way people get treated that was april 7th i asked for that april 7th that's over a month ago it's

145not fair then i i could have wrote it already i could have brought it down i could have drove down to trenton and hand delivered it myself that's not fair that i have to wait this long to find out it was never even done i think it's appalling i am very upset i am more than upset i am appalled and i think anybody that sits here and sits quietly you guys should all have your heads examined too because when a board member excuse me when a board member asks and requests them makes a motion makes a second motion second it's voted on by this unit and nothing gets done that's disgusting it's disgusting it what it shows that my participation in this group is not worthy to the people that i sit with because they

146don't even care that it wasn't followed up that's disgusting okay it was a valid request i was told it was going to be done it's may 19th so i get told today that april 7th april 8th i could expect a phone call it's not going to be done it's really disgusting okay i waited all this time to find out i can't even say what i want to say because it's going to come out the wrong way i'm really upset okay anyone else under unfinished business um mr president i do um last meeting i mentioned that there was a legislative meeting may 24th 2022 10 a.m next tuesday uh i requested and i'd like the board should be a little more cognizant if they have anything to add when asked to do so because particularly when

147you're dealing with external partners like legislators you know i think there was one meeting where we gave them within less than a week and they canceled a meeting because they needed more time to do some some research policy research legislative research and find out more information i had to reach out and i want to thank mr paris mr smith if i'm missing anybody else i apologize but it was only those two who have said we got to bring stuff to the legislature in public and actually follow it up when i even though i asked a second time but life happens and it was added to the agenda um if we're going to say let's ask our legislators please let's follow up let's do our due diligence as people who are stewards of this town and

148you know let's not just showboat let's you know let's add and it's not legislative this is every policy it is every every committee excuse me so i just ask that we do our due diligence in terms of following up in regards to any committee so i did send the legislative agenda over already if there's any additions anybody would like to make please let me know as soon as possible if hopefully by tomorrow so we can try to sneak it in for the agenda so it gives legislators some time to do some research thank you okay and a deadline for that like you can't you can't have it last minute yeah no last minute i mean we got a if we have to talk about committee meeting agendas but we already have that i think what

14924 hours that's got to be no no more than 24 hours agenda no but to committee meetings well committee members don't want to laugh there's there's actually a policy yeah no last minute yeah so tomorrow you want to have everything by tomorrow if anybody has any additions for example mr paris gave me some stuff about njsba where we should support that was added um there were stuff actually that mrs basser sent over from njsba of legislative resolutions senate and assembly which i added for a little more clarity there was stuff that mr daley and mr smith you gave me and there's stuff from the administration that they gave me and i added it and i sent it over so that gives us one week i have not gotten any pushback from any state legislators saying

150that there's not enough time and they've all accepted the agenda but we just need to be a little more cognizant of external partners it's not as easy as as an administration hey can you look this up to our attorney hey can you look this up when you're dealing with outside parties it gets a little more difficult okay any other unfinished business okay let's move on excuse me let's move on to uh education administration uh we have ea 1 through ea 9. so moved on moved by mr abu dhabi second by mr awad discussion yes mr president yes mr kenobi uh on ea one we have a policy here uh zero one six seven and at the end of the policy it says the portion of the meeting during which the participation of the public is

151invited may be limited to 60 minutes and will be concluded by 11 pm is this a new addition to to the policy no this is this is not a new addition now this has been on your policy for many years excuse me one person has the floor okay mr uc do you want to comment on that i mean as far as i know i've seen that language in that policy okay is policy committee made any changes to that no no so so my concern with this this portion here um is that if things run late kind of like what they are doing tonight if this had happened earlier or every night when we have uh a couple of uh demonstrations or illustrations then followed by some some information um things could go past these these

152times here we could have public comment at 10 30 so does that mean we close it at 11 o'clock so right but i told joe you could adjust it at any time which we've had same thing with the the midnight can't go past midnight we we make extensions to that so um i did check back uh with previous presidents and this has been on the uh the books for quite some time so if you want policy to look at that that's that's fine but yes miss uh dr robertosi mr gone i think the intent is um in the event there is such a controversial issue that the line is around the block it gives the board the ability to say okay we're going to limit this tonight because otherwise we'll be here for 24 hours

153i don't know that this has ever been implemented in clifton i don't believe it ever has i hope that we never get to the point where anybody thinks that it's a good idea to implement that but i don't think it's a my opinion it's a board decision but i don't think it's a bad thing to have in the policy kind of a just in case i don't foresee us ever using it any anything further okay roll call uh for ea mr abedrabo yes mr awad yes miss bassford i don't know what we're voting on because i stepped out of the room to go to the bathroom so could somebody enlighten me sure there's a motion in second for the the ea section of the agenda yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes

154mr paris yes vice president daily yes and president smith yes motion carries okay next we have c personnel we have p one through p 31 but we're yes mr smith um i request that we pull a p28 for executive session uh but i'd like to give a reason publicly because i know there are some of our employees probably watching from home there's one issue i have to discuss with the board in closed session i don't expect it to be a problem so i don't want anybody at home thinking that they're not getting hired i believe will come out of executive session and this resolution will pass um so i just don't want anybody to get nervous but if we could pull p 28 for executive session okay p 28 pulled for executive the balance motion

155motion by mr abu drabo second by mr awad discussion seeing non-roll call please mr abu drabo yes with the extension on p20 mr awad yes miss bassford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris uh yes but i'm staying on c19 vice president daley yes president smith yes motion carry okay next we have d financing facilities we have f1 through f9 promotion motion by mr abhijava second by mr awad discussion seeing non-roll call sorry mr abhijaba yes mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran uh yes on all except for in the uh claims list the uh the one um the one check two uh agl from three two uh that references the candidacy for re-election and council question mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley

156yes president smith yes mr mr president i'd like to also change my vote to uh vote no on the cheque no prop no problem thank you okay make that note okay you're up i am thought i was first left last time that's why no problem no you might have been let me see before board member comments no usually we don't okay um yeah it could uh mr uh mr awad then europe i have no comments tonight okay so mister okay uh miss beltran you're next so me miss beltran when you're ready i'll also keep it short and be a little bit longer than yours um i just like to thank all the speakers that come out i think it's really good for our democracy to have um two opposing viewpoints although he did share their

157comments respectfully back and forth i like to see and i hope to see in the future with other issues we saw it last week with the budget we've been seeing continuously with the uh the new standards and i hope you know we continue to see that type of participation um it makes our meetings a little bit more lengthy but i don't mind that because i think we're up here to listen to the comments and concerns of the people and to try and represent um how we feel the town wants things to be done and i like to hear the input from our fellow townspeople um i liked also that the student representative talked about the dress codes because that's been an issue for at least as long as i've been going to school so at

158least 30 years i wore the boys uniform to school and i went to a uniform school and that was like very controversial back then because um you were supposed to wear the jumper and i was like you're not putting that on me i'm not wearing the jumper i'm going to wear the pants and the sweater vest my mom called me a mailman every day going to school but i embraced you know what i what i wanted to wear um and i think it is you know a fashion problem right now that it is difficult to find clothing that no like fits your body type first and then after that is appropriate for school sometimes those two things don't coincide um so i think it is a larger issue same as the student representative thought that

159it's larger than just clifton but there's no reason that a district our size can't be on the forefront of maybe maybe incorporating it into these new discussions about sexual orientation everything like that about how to respect someone regardless of what they're wearing um you know whether someone is wearing a dress or someone's wearing a pantsuit you know either way they deserve the same respect and they should be able to learn the same environment um i also wouldn't want to speak to the the people who are saying that elementary school is too young for a lot of these discussions i'm on the team of feeling that some of those discussions are too young but i do feel that in middle school especially uh those conversations do need to happen um so i think maybe kindergarten in

160my personal opinion is way too young but i think the middle school curriculum that is appropriate and forwards um i know we don't we get we have to vote it in but we don't unfortunately the way it's been to explain to us at least is that we don't get much say into what can be changed that the curriculum is coming from the state it has to be worked in it can be presented different ways but the core curriculum has to be the same tonight some present um presenters talked about that boards are voting against it so i'll do some research on my own about how other boards are handling it um but again i i really applaud everyone who came and speak tonight and i hope that they continue to show up at every meeting

161going forward miss bassford yes thank you first of all i want to apologize for losing my cool for those that know me know how passionate i get about an issue because it's real to me it's really real to me when you email the board president you wait a while then you have to send another email as a reminder and then he responds to you saying that he forgot to hit the send button in his response and then you go through all of this it just builds on the disrespect that goes bang bang bang it's like a peg board like them all in the hull game you know that you keep on getting pegged and you get angry and if i disrespected anyone on this board i apologize but you know what my work speaks for

162itself my dedication speaks for itself my commitment to the kids of this district speaks for itself my integrity my accountability speaks for itself i hold my head up very high when i go to bed at night knowing that i did the best i could do every day making decisions based on safety for children keeping children safe keeping children educated keeping children first not myself that's why i'm here because the voters put me here because they know my work was number nine on the ballot proud of that proud of the position i came in because the people spoke to me and they put me here i had to leave this room to compose myself yeah i get angry but i'm a passionate person and i'm allowed to get angry when you feel disrespected proved it tonight

163didn't i i proved it tonight the disrespect i got the email i forgot to say i forgot to hit send okay right whatever all right so um i would like to thank all the speakers for coming out i would like to thank you for using your voice at the podium we do hear you we may not agree but we do hear you congratulations to the students of the month to the safety patrol students and to the parents and to the chaperones on the trip have a wonderful safe trip make memories that will last you a lifetime it is a wonderful thing that started so we're starting to open up everything's starting to happen um the other night we went to distinguished awards night at the west 1200 people were in the audience there it was

164a wonderful occasion that's when we get to honor the best of the best in each grade it makes other people strive for that which is something well that we do it really makes you say to yourself wow i'm part of this and i and the speaker he was so good some heard him some talked over him or some talked through him while he was speaking but i heard him i turned my chair around just to listen to him he talked about perseverance i heard his message and it was so encouraging that people in that audience heard his message as well perseverance no matter what's thrown at me i will persevere i promise you because at the end of the day good always always overcomes evil thank you [Music] mr canova good evening um first i

165just wanted to say uh the uh the event we attended the other day that dr robertozi threw for his student foundation was a great showing i think everyone had a great time i know i did myself but it was amazing to see how many people are out there supporting our students and their scholarships so that was nice to see this morning i indeed see off the uh the the fifth grades um safety patrol trip because my daughter's actually there this year um and she had her butterflies but she's she's doing good there i'm still waiting for the call so if i jump out it's because i'm going to receive her call um but i saw some pictures that they were sending over in the facebook group and she's very excited loves it i could just

166tell every picture is a smiling face her and all her friends there um and you're right those are memories are going to last a lifetime the dress code issue having three daughters i definitely understand the issue here there's not a store you can go to where you find these shorts you have to order them on amazon or there's some other place where things come in from china and they come in different sizes i don't know where they order from but they never fit right and and it's just always a big mess but if you go to any of these other stores abercrombie and all these other stores that she wants to buy things from they're all it's just the way they're made it's the style of cut it is what it is that's the design

167um and it's just funny to me because you could go to a beach and a guy with a shirt off could talk to a girl that looks like she has her bra and the panties on and it's fine but if that happened in any other setting it's it's a big issue um and i understand there's certain just for for certain attire for certain venues i'm not saying we should be wearing bikinis in school but um it's just funny to me how how people make a big deal about a three three-finger strap or something for a woman is just ridiculous so if those things are in there i think dress code is something we should talk about in policy if we can kick that back there and take a look at that the academic awards night

168what i found outstanding was that there were hundreds of students there so of the high school in order to have this accolade you need to have a 90 average or better for that term hundreds of students there and there was even a criteria for students that um did this for all four years and there was almost 100 students in that category meaning they had a 90 or above in all of their grades and all their marketing periods for all the four years they ate in high school i mean to me that's just amazing 100 students um and and uh we always want more uh but to me that that's just great and seeing the student here who had an associate's degree already and other students that do that are doing these things i think those

169are the things that we should be promoting i think those are the people that we should be showcasing getting out to the students so they could want to be like them they want to see people like them and they want to see people who are achieving these skills like them so if we could look at that and see if there's some sort of program we can roll out for that i think that would be amazing um but that's all i have for tonight thank you dr danny okay um i was asked to uh mention that on wednesday may 25th the clifton special education parent advisory group will hold a virtual meeting and anyone interested in joining the meeting please email clifton cpac cpag gmail.com for the meeting link that's cliftonsepag gmail.com for the meeting link

170come chat with members of the district to discuss how to best improve the educational experiences for all students in the special needs community again it's a virtual meeting it's wednesday may 25th at seven o'clock and you can email clifton cpag at gmail.com and other thing i'd just like to say some condolences to the family of deanna set up we just found out she had passed so um sorry for your loss and um i'd like to also thank the speakers who came out and spoke um again you know we do hear we might not agree you know we might not comment on everything um sometimes process things comment on a later date um but definitely thank you you know we live in a democracy and it's great to see people come up and and you know

171voice their opinions um i also attended the um academic awards dinner it was um really great and uh the one thing that i when i heard the speaker say he listed ten things one of them was perseverance when he talked to the students about the importance of um you know what to sort of take away from life and one of the things that um you know my mom always says and that he said he said um you know forgive those who do you harm you know and you talk about caring and that that's important you know if you harbor that it will eat you up and it will ultimately destroy who you are so i think it's just important to you know as hard as it could be but my mom always said that you

172know um those that do you harm you know just forgive them because you know we're not perfect and it's a hard thing to do but that's one thing that the speaker um said that sort of resonated with me and that's all i have to say good night uh mr paris thank you mr smith um not going to repeat what a lot of people have said already um i do agree with mr uh kenobi and miss beltran that we should look at this policy for dress code it's probably pretty outdated at this point also just two shameless plugs here one is uh the band is having car wash again saturday so if the weather's nice bring your car out and the community band is having their 20th anniversary concert on saturday at the high school at

1732 p.m um proceeds go to the education foundation and to the mustang band alumni association scholarship fund so if you have want to hear some some good music come on out and join us thank you mr abhijava thank you president smith um senior athletic center is june 6th uh and senior scholarship events is june 1st it's great to see a lot of college graduates being photos being put all over facebook that's when we know our high school graduations are right around the corner to the family school 17 and deanna's family i'm sorry for your loss it's a tough thing um speaking to superintendent i know she was battling for a while um but um may god bless our family and give him the patience and um make sure us in peace uh the academic award

174center was great i'm not gonna reiterate the rest uh as the colleagues safety patrol is phenomenal uh joe and i were able to see um well he had a reason to be there yeah he had his daughter there um uh which is even more interesting but it was great to see that when the buses showed up uh it's like a rock concert and a limo showed up where everybody was like hey let's go and tell their parents can can i go already like they were excited which was great um to toba's discussion um as she was speaking i noticed i looked around the room and there were a lot of judgmental eyes and she didn't see that but i did and we talked about showing tolerance and showing acceptance and while some people didn't say

175it in words but rolled their eyes and shook her they shook their heads and particularly mumble things under under their breaths when a person is speaking i think is rude and while we can disagree as many have said here tonight i think there's a way to disagree respectfully um so i'm just believe about that which goes to my next thing last meeting something was done and said and i'm gonna quote really quick maybe a few minutes ago i got a little off out of line and i apologize if i offended anyone that's what somebody said last speaker last meeting that considers talking about god and the power of prayer to me god and evil do not go in hand last week i think was the most disgusting act of inciting hatred in this city raising

176your arm and a sense of pure pure evil in the history of this world okay is nothing but disgusting and disturbing and if anyone thinks of following up with the words if i offended you definitely needs help and intervention or they have a pure soul i'm sorry evil soul because i'm sorry i that was the line for me you can disagree you can talk it out but that pushed the line many know what i'm talking about who are here and others do not and i will not say what was said or what was done and nor do i even imitate it because it was pure disgusting and not only to to a religion which affects and impacts a religion and history of people but the history of this society that's all i had to say

177thank you vice president daley uh thank you mr president um first of all i'd like to send the cons condolences to the steve family um i'm i know her family very well and um i know the end is long battled that she has so it's um and personally i went through our own in our own family so it's a it's it's a really tough time so my heartfelt condolences goes out to the entire family and um i know very well that she and i know we're going to have a con condolences resolution at the next meeting how much she loved teaching and even despite her seriousness of her illness she made every ever to get into the classroom i'd like to go on i like to talk about last last our last meeting and particularly

178on the budget i've served on this board for 13 years i've been on a planning war for 20. i've served four boards and in general our public bodies are held in less esteem as every year goes by particularly our congress and our legislature uh of course the fighting between the left and the right and who's this it's it's really a disservice disservice and that goes to uh trust and what's the public trust is needed in a public body so during my tenure here and every place that i've served i take that very seriously kind of something i got from my my dad and when i sit on a board or or a body um i don't think of it as myself i think that as i'm i'm a representative of the town and how i

179behave and how things are conducted reflects either positively and negatively to the citizens and it's so important in these times because the trust is deteriorating before our very eyes about our public so with that if you don't have trust uh you're in big trouble at the last meeting um it was i was pretty abhorrent about the how the whole process unfolded um i've shared with the board i've sent uh asked for a number of bodies to give some feedback public bodies for the state and advisory opinion as well as to the county superintendent which i've shared with all the board members here here's the because i could talk about five hours on this stuff here's the issue we had we passed a preliminary budget in march approximately six weeks passed between the the final budget

180special interest group comes up uh there was eleven speakers ten of them were members of the um teachers association and they advocated for a raise may i continue for a few minutes uh i really don't like to take the liberty but i think it's important for the public and my colleagues to hear this to change something is one thing we went through the committee process we put it forth if the administration had an issue with the committees i think that was obligatory upon the the administration to say something to not only the committee but to the board you know we don't really agree with the committee and we need to do xyz we got a approximately 14.2 million dollar raise uh increase in state aid and i know it goes to different places if we

181were to vet this properly and this is the crux of why i'm very upset about this we needed to vet that in public or really work it out not do it at the 11th hour after a special interest group comes in here and advocates for it this is what i the process should have went like this the first question i would have for the administration okay how did you divide up that 14.2 million dollar increase what were your priorities are these priorities you need this year the priorities and when you add on stuff that's in the operating budget personnel in particular that has a carry forward cost we need to know if it's sustainable we can pay for it this year pay for next year we may not be able to sustain it the following

182years all those questions i think the administration would welcome as the board should welcome we did not do our due diligence and it was just a horror i got and i'm one not one that has people call me up but i've ran into more people that come up to me and say what a disgrace that whole process was so if the administration wants positions i'm more than willing to listen and to work with them to obtain that goal however the way it slip shod steam i mean we just kicked the voters in this town the teeth i'm one that always trusted in the voters i voted to keep the election in april and allow the voters to vote on the budget there was proffering of uh by many speakers that says oh the public voted

183for 160 68 million dollar there they they want us to spend money on education no no no no that's carp blanche we did not tell the voters you vote for this it's carp launch that's not the way we go so we didn't do our due diligence we didn't properly vet it it was the last minute it was like a free-for-all it was a total embarrassment like i said i can go on but i'm going to leave it at that point i have i don't blame any members i think you all got caught up in them in the mid in the moment but uh i'm not going to let this sit because i think it's it's race we it's so so important that we continue to have our trust otherwise they're not going to support because

184if you go if you start to go above the two percent at some period of time you have to go to the voters and the voters are going to say well you screw this down here why should i vote for your budget it becomes that simple trust is the cornerstone if we are going to be successful thank you mr daly um [Applause] i'd like to uh congratulate uh jen algieri and laura lauer and their entire team on such a fantastic job they did with the scholarship dinner um it was a great turnout raised a lot of money for scholarship for kids so jen worked so hard on that dinner as laura did they spent countless hours they're volunteers um and um why i don't have a list of our entire team um i have to

185commend specifically a a faculty member of ours that went above and beyond the time and the effort and the just expertise in his field and what he does um i hope you all had an opportunity to see the display when you came in uh to the event that um or our teacher at ccms mr jeff labriola did an outstanding job um on that and i have to commend him greatly and the entire team for raising a lot of money for a great scholarship uh dr robertosi um also to sam sam i have to thank you there's just so many events that you you have to be at and uh with the end of the year coming there's so many events that you're gonna be at um you're just always there to get the picture to

186get the story to get it out onto social media to let the public know what great things are happening in clifton so i commend you for the the amount of time and the hours that you put in um and having to attend these things last night uh two nights ago at the uh at the academic awards you know you were right there and you got some great photos and that's what we want we want to showcase our kids our kids do great things and and i just have to commend you on the great job that you're doing and then now you have to be here to to do this as well i thank you the academic awards dinner as everyone spoke about what a great success it was uh sushnep and as i know rsue

187peters and her entire team uh to pull off an event like that um many people tell sue that she should go into the uh the catering business and probably make more money than she does as a as a vice principal but uh we don't want her to do that she does a great job uh at putting this together and putting a team together um to put that type of event and 1200 some odd people there um it just was a great success so i uh i commend her and her entire team uh for such a great job these are some great things that are happening in the district um i usually don't like to uh to answer things because people in the public know who i am and what i do and what i've done

188and uh 25 000 of them came out and voted for me a couple years ago so people really know what's going on um the shenanigans that take place here took place uh with the president that was before me took place with the president ahead of them took place with other people and you know i guess until you actually sit in the chair and know how to do it um i guess it's easy to to throw daggers at people i receive numerous emails from the public and board members i do my best as a volunteer to get those emails answered i don't need to owe anyone an explanation i'm not a paid employee i don't know anyone exclamation but as a good person as a christian i tell the truth if someone doesn't want to abide

189listen to that i don't care so when i told someone that i forgot to sit hit the send button it was the truth and it happened one time one time not to mention the 9000 other emails i've received that i did reply to but again i do the best that i can as a volunteer uh in this position um and i think the rest of the board knows that that i answer you in a timely uh manner um you know when i had to go look through my logs again and go through everyone's requests um you know and i know a statement was made tonight about that we're wasting taxpayers money we should be going to the to the estate for opinions because it's free but there are certain board members that that lead the

190pack here on contacting the uh the board attorney um so if anyone wants to see uh how many times they've actually done that i have all the requests uh in writing so um you know our board attorney is here for the board and she does a phenomenal job um her bills are not extensive i i've you know as the longest member sitting on the board of education i've been through other attorneys i know what fees are out there um and i've told her to her face it's not just because she's sitting here but um she could charge us a lot more money than she does um there's many times when she doesn't even charge the board so um i you know when i look at the bills each month and i see that they're in

191line um i've discussed with my vice president mr daley on that as well um in no way do we feel any of her charges have been excessive um and she tries to do the right thing uh you know she's caught in a in a tough situation here you know board member asks to speak to her she feels it's appropriate to answer it she answers it and then we don't want to pay her for doing that you know i i don't see how you know we we can disagree on certain things but if someone performs the job and does the duty they deserve to get paid for it so i just hope going forward i will continue to do what i've been doing to allow board members to speak to the attorney um beltron made a

192very good suggestion that from now on we'll make sure that uh ms gutierrez sends out her answer that she answers that board member on to the entire board so everyone is on the the up and up on that um but i have true faith in her that if something was asked of her that was not appropriate for this board she would tell the person that it's not appropriate and would not answer them so i i have no uh i have no problems with that um you know as board president you know and i checked with other board presidents you know it's it's sometimes it's not nice to sit here and ask people to uh to remain orderly and do things in an orderly process but that's what the chair does um it has no bearing

193upon any individual or any cause that they have it's a it's a um a process that has to be followed and uh you know i you get ridiculed for following the process um like i said the many people that contact me um you know i hate using that as mr daley said you know they know what this is all about they know what we're doing in this district they know the leadership that this board has had and uh mr daley and i uh have a great team uh at the top we put a tremendous amount of time in um and uh we we feel it it truly shows to the board and the public knows the truth so i don't have to continue on that but um we are going to uh go to executive

194session we have uh two i i'm sorry i keep doing it new business sorry anyone for new business mr awad yeah i asked you in the beginning of the meeting you advised me that's new business also the board attorney um can we look into policy about alcohol being brought into school buildings or the administration building you mean you want wanted to be home no no no no i'm muslim i don't drink i swear no um just because a certain incident happened i'm just curious to know well if there's a policy in place yeah it's not allowed yeah we should have a policy on but we'll serve this yeah we can look which which exactly it is yeah something i need to know i guess i could tell um since we're gonna go tick for tat

195here um last meeting a member of the public dropped off for me um an alcoholic thing that he she made for me to be consumed outside of this meeting so it was just dropped off to me and then i brought her home obviously i wasn't consuming it in the building outside the building or on the days you would have seen it it was like a jello item just to clarify it was actually one board member handing another board member and it's on camera so if i decide god forbid i want to bring coke or weed and give it to another board member that's allowed yeah alcohol is not allowed it's not allowed i'm just saying let's let's let's you can either have yourself or your wife right the ethics charges against me that's fine we'll

196uh we'll get the uh we'll get the exact policy out to everybody on that uh so can i can i review what policy stuff we have right now in case i miss anything um dress code which is uh sex ed which is called sex side which is the comprehensive health and physical education zero one seven four login process which we'll look at also i can't excuse me she's talking to me all right well you both could take it outside um which we could look at that mirrors accountability regulations which even mirrors the accountability regulations as ms gutierrez said it may mirror each other right is that what you mentioned about which policy zero one seven conversations going on zero one seven four everyone forgot what the superintendent said well kindness is good for our hearts

197zero one tonight zero one seven login process log in log and process you said that there's a mirror of the accountability regulations correct so that's what i'd like to review um and the one thing i would like to add well and one mr watson about the alcohol meetings um and what i like what to add and this is just because i notice not just the man to my right but others that cell phone board members during meetings whether while it's board business or not board business it may give the impact or the impression that it is sport business and not knowing because of opmah what public opinion has to offer on certain conversations during the days and on the dais so i'd like to add that myself and we have it but we need to

198review it [Music] anybody else anything else for the order new business i have something yes um i used my phone to adjust my hearing aids because when the mics go on it kills me when i have it up to four if i can't hear someone that's my phone um i have i wear hearing aids i lost my hearing during covid um [Music] there was a there was a statement made by a member of the audience and i wrote it down and now i lost it hold on um that there was a presentation that was um um there was a presentation that was uh rescheduled and he thanked a board member and he also thank the board so i'd like to know what what that conversation was because i didn't get anything on rescheduling of any

199presentations and also um i'd like to know who the spokesperson for the board is um i can uh since my name was rhoda by mr bunciak so mr brunsiak reached out to me as a board member and said hey um 7 30 board member and this presentation overlap i said i do not know anything about that i snapshot of that sent it to the superintendent i think thereafter mr superintendent an email went out and said it's six for six to seven and he responded back to me and responded to him and he said thank you never responded to him i sent it straight to the to the superintendent who is the ceo of our district and has actually has to deal with the public but never responded to him and i think you want to

200speak so glad yes thank you mr smith just to clarify the change was made prior to any board member coming to me we had scheduled these parent presentations back in december we pick our board meeting dates at the january reorg so when we realized unfortunately a little late that um the board meeting was the same night as the first parent presentation we just adjusted the time instead of six to seven thirty we made it from six to seven and so no one would think that we didn't offer enough opportunities we added an additional date so i'm not sure how mr brunsiak was involved mr abu drabba did ask me the question and i told him that we had already made the change so that's but i did ask a question who is the spokesperson for

201the board i i wanted the public to hear this who is the spokesperson for the board generally speaking the spokesperson for the board is the board president thank you i believe you have a policy on that yeah um i i just wanted it to be reiterated thank you you're welcome so for the good order going back to my question everybody has anthony for policy and i didn't target this man to my right and nobody else but does anybody have anything else in my pocket to add to policy i'm a big target stop talking so the first tuesday of every month is policy does anybody have any order i will ask again probably in a week or two just to make sure just the the dress code that's called yeah correct we will review i'll ask

202one more time i'll review one more time we will review dress code review 0174 review the cell phone open board members during board meetings and then also what this gentleman to my right hand it's also another policy that speaks to the about um um policies being amended and they could be amended first reading um so i'd like that discussed as well i'm sorry repeat one more time please there is a policy that speaks about um uh policies being amended it's uh it speaks to the um the we are allowed to amend the policy on the first reading there was a big discussion a couple meetings ago that that wasn't the case it's under oh 131 item five thank you mr paris you said item five item five thank you anybody else for the good order

203we already have the other one which is the other one just like we went over five things the one the one that you tabled that you didn't want to seven zero four yeah we have one list yes i did okay just wanna make sure all right thank you dr danny yeah i i was just wondering um if it's possible the uh june 23rd meeting to to make it june 22nd i have my school graduation it's part of my requirement after work that evening so i you know from my school district and i can't attend that june 23rd so i didn't know if it was you know if everybody could make june 22nd to change it if if you can't it's all right i'll keep the 23rd judy no doesn't work i mean if it doesn't

204work for you know i mean i i would appreciate it yeah motion to change the june 23rd meeting to june 22nd second second my mr abu drabbo um yeah i i just i think administration needs some time to make sure it doesn't you could you just conflict with anything that's going on in the district your staff all that stuff right then i'll withdraw the motion and make it next next meeting just did we just check maybe yeah just um i don't see anything on the calendar but let me just double check that there's nothing uh and we also need to check with the city and okay you know we don't like to have a meeting if they're having a planning board meeting or right and although the tv is not working right now hopefully it'll

205be working by then so all right by next meeting i'll be able to tell you if you tell me then i won't bring it up if it's not you know what i mean because i haven't done that no that's not it two it's two june second yeah 23rd yeah there's two that's why there's graduation right it's just a commitment to the school it's part of i have to be there for grad it's like i can't tell them that i have them you tell them give me the number all right so administration will check on that and then bring it back to us for uh for the next meeting is there any other new business okay seeing none the board uh will convene into executive session we have a contract matter and a personnel matter uh

206action will be taken motion to go into executive systems mr aberdrive was second by mr awad oh yeah uh we planned to be in there probably 40 minutes in that area all right the board met an executive session to discuss a contract matters and a um employee matter um so a roll call on uh was the p i mean excuse me roll call back from the executive session mr abhijabo here mr awad here miss bassford yeah miss beltran here mr kanova here dr danny here mr paris here vice president ellie here president smith here we have a quorum okay um motion uh to approve p 28 is it correct motion by mr alvarez second by mr awad any discussion roll call please mr abbado mr awad yes miss basford abstain miss beltran yes mr canova

207yes dr danny true um yes i'm sorry mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes who she carries casing no other order of business motion to a journalist ocean second drive will save my mr rewind any objection adjourned you