001[Music] i'd like to call the regular scheduled meeting of the clinton board of education for march 24th 2022 to order if you would all please rise for a salute to our flag followed by a brief moment in silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice to for all if you kindly remember our brothers and sisters in ukraine uh that they come that this war could come to a peaceful end thank you roll call mr russia yes mr abedrabo mr awad here miss basford here miss beltran here mr canova here dr danny here mr paris here vice president daley here president smith here we have a quorum our mission statement mr paris the mission of
002the 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 lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world our open public meetings act in new jersey up in 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 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
003the 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 one six eight okay we'll go to the adoption of minutes of the meeting of march 3rd 2022 motion and mr daley seconded by mr awad discussion seeing none roll call mr up mr abadraba mr awad miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr kenova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes motion carries okay we now have our superintendent's report dr robertosi okay i'm sorry yep that's okay sorry we'll do the uh student uh representative tonight we have tiffany with us thank you tiffany at this time i'll be discussing chs sports spring sports girls varsity lacrosse has had a scrimmage game today at the clifton
004high school field boys varsity lacrosse has a scrimmage game on saturday the 26th at the clifton high school field at 10 in the morning boys varsity baseball has a scrimmage game tomorrow at four at rutherford boys varsity tennis has a scrimmage game on monday the 28th at union city at four outdoor track has a scrimmage game on saturday the 26th at the clifton stadium at nine in the morning boys varsity volleyball has a scrimmage game on monday the 28th at the clifton high school gymnasium at 4 15. girls varsity flag football has their first ever scrimmage game on monday the 28th at the clifton stadium at 6. update on the upcoming batman tournament the date has officially been changed to saturday the 26th this event will be held at the clifton high school gymnasium at
0054pm to answer this event sca will be selling tickets at the front of the gym students are two dollars and adults three dollars to enter come and join us and watch this event with your families speaking of of school spirit sca has been doing a great job lifting school spirit sca conduct conducted in the month of march school spirit month called mustang march madness each week held a different event the first event was disney day it was a day to wear anything disney related this event also supported the spring musical beauty and the beast the second event was sports jersey day where everyone wore the sports jersey the third event was st patrick's day where everyone wore green and the last event is tomorrow crayola day where each class has a college housing for them
006to wear students participating in these events will earn pbsis points and earning these points will help their class class reach the lead whichever class has the most points will win a prize at the end we have also been doing penny wars this also helps students earn points for their class all the money that is raised from the penny wars will be donated to saint peter havens this has been a successful way to lift school spirits thank you tiffany thank you so much we appreciate that information appreciate you being here and you don't have to stay if you don't wish please you could exit right there if you wish thanks again okay now the superintendent's report dr robertosi thank you mr president good evening commissioners members of the public our faculty and staff and those watching
007on our live stream it's a beautiful thursday night in march spring is upon us doesn't feel like it tonight but i'm happy to hear when tiffany talks about all the spring sports starting that's an exciting exciting thing for me that means i could get out of my harley a little bit more means i could get some spring games i could get the sun radiating off my head and it just makes everybody feel a little bit better about life mr brunsiak you know what i'm talking about had the opportunity uh last night and last wednesday night to attend our district all city concerts and i know several of our commissioners were there it was a packed house for both concerts and i sat there in awe of the talent of the students that we have in
008this district not to mention the great faculty and staff that work with these students to hone those talents but i you know i sit there and i listen i'm really amazed that our children have that talent and they have that opportunity and mr leschwitz said it best last night he said he meets with directors of fine and performing arts from throughout the state and they're amazed when they hear about the things that we do here in clifton with our fine and performing arts department specifically the amount of numbers and the things we're able to do with these kids so congratulations to all of our students who were selected to be in the all-city uh concerts you have made us all proud you you should be very proud of yourselves too uh keeping in line with
009the fine and performing arts i also had the pleasure a couple weeks ago of seeing beauty and the beast the sunday matinee with with my children and for those of you who saw it i think you would agree with me that it was you know very similar to sitting in an off-broadway show it was that good our students showcase their talent their acting their singing um the pit the orchestra played beautifully and it was really really like a show like i would have paid you know a lot of money to see and so um just so grateful to all of the uh people who volunteered their time to make it happen uh because even the ones we pay we don't pay enough for all the work they put in so uh and congratulations to all
010the students you should be very very proud of yourselves for amazing performances along that line next week woodrow wilson middle school will be hosting annie junior next wednesday night the 30th and the 31st both at 7 pm so if you have a chance come out and see our middle school students i'd like to publicly congratulate mr john o'reilly who is a social studies teacher at clifton high school and he was just recently selected yesterday as the educator of the year in clifton by the clifton education association a great honor and an honor that to put it in perspective we have 1400 certificated staff now not all of those people are classroom teachers but you don't have to be a classroom teacher to be the educator of the year so out of 1400 or so certificated
011staff members mr o'reilly was selected as the educator of the year truly great honor and and i know that it's well earned i know that it's warranted because the first time i ever heard mr o'reilly's name it came out of students mouths i was meeting with some students and we're talking about some of the great things at clifton high school and they started talking about their favorite teachers and the best teachers and one thing i think all the adults here in the room know the kids will tell you the truth the kids know who the best teachers are and they talked about how mr o'reilly makes history fun how he um how he loves them and cares about them that's all i needed to hear i'm a huge fan of mr o'reilly congratulations and i'll
012share one story that mr honda shared yesterday when we there was a little surprise ceremony and he was brought down he thought he was coming to a faculty meeting he was brought down and his wife and his mom were there and uh his whole social studies department was there and they surprised them and mr honda told this story um back in october or november i was at one of our football games and i ran into a parent who wanted to talk to me and introduced me her heart to his daughter who was in eighth grade and said you know i really want my daughter to go to clifton high school my daughter's thinking about going to pcti and you know here i am i'm trying to convince one parent at a time so i'm investing
013time with this parent saying no you don't want to do that and i'm explaining all the reasons why clifton high school will have so much many more opportunities for your child and so i said you know what we're going to do in the spring i want your daughter to come up to clifton high school and spend a day and i guarantee you at the end of that day she's going to tell you she wants to go to clifton high school and mr hamdu is telling this story yesterday and he says so we did this two days ago at the end of the day the young lady sees mr honda and she says i'm coming to clifton high school and i hope mr o'reilly is my teacher so mr o'reilly may have and it wasn't single-handedly
014it was the great experience she had but mr o'reilly left an impact on this students this will impact her life forever in in one lesson in one day whatever he did she said i'm coming to clifton high school and i hope i have mr o'reilly as my teacher so which leads me to even the bigger point that's a program that we're going to expand we're going to call it a [Music] day in the life of clifton high school or some sort of mentoring program where we're going to give our 8th graders an opportunity to spend a day at clifton high school and we think that those students who you know listen you student wants to go to pcti because they're going into a vocational program they want to be a welder they want to be
015a carpenter god bless them that's great we need those people we need plumbers we need carpenters we need people who are skilled with their hands i have no problem with that that's what vocational schools are for god bless go with my blessing but those students who are going for other reasons maybe they think the academics are better maybe they think the campus is prettier maybe they think clifton high school is too big i want to give them an opportunity to spend a day at clifton high school just give us a chance to show you that this is where you want to go so we'll be planning that we'll be coordinating that and that is something i will bring to this board when we have fully fleshed out all the details and work that out but
016i think that's going to be a really really good thing for the future a brief referendum update and please understand i i give these updates for the commissioners who are not in every facilities meeting um and don't know everything that's going on because you don't see construction trucks at every school but there's a lot that's going on behind the scenes so the first shovel in the ground is coming real soon but since the appointment of our construction manager in december we've been having weekly meetings where we discuss all the plans we visit the schools and you know our schools are old many of our schools are old and there's a lot of work that has to be done prior to the referendum work especially specifically with asbestos removal the prep ranges from scoping asbestos removal
017logistical coordination of where the construction companies are going to place their trailers how many trailers they're going to place which projects are going to be done in what order all these logistical things are being coordinated now because once it starts we don't want anything to happen that's going to compromise the health and safety of our students and staff so all those things are being planned out now since our last board meeting we've continued to meet with our team bid one project one is going out in days and that's the high school the high school in and of itself is one bid project the grouping of package two is complete and package three will be complete in the next coming days every classroom in the district is getting a new unit ventilator are those things that
018are in the corner that blow out air that's my technical expertise i was a history teacher i used to sit on the unit ventilator to get a little breeze when i was sweating i saw the attorney got a little nervous there it's okay miss gutierrez the installation of those unit ventilators uh is anticipated to commence um may of 2023 and that all the equipment will be operational by october 1st 2023. so the plan is october 1st 2023 every classroom in the district has that new unit ventilator new hvac systems installed the plan is no more than three classrooms at a time in one building because we'll need the opportunity to move a classroom so children will be displaced from their classroom for a few days at a time maybe in the auditorium maybe in the
019cafeteria but um that's only during school time during the summer we can do as many classes as we can so there's only so much you can do in two months over the summer and it's actually one month because a lot of our schools have summer programs um and then the technology update we have all of our device counts and cabling plans have been finalized the equipment's been ordered the network switches the clocks the strobes the pa systems have all been ordered the cameras are being programmed off-site the server hardware and the related equipment have begun to ship and all of our in-house electrical work is being addressed by our electricians our in-house electricians and the camera cabling all the cabling that needs to be done in the ceiling and the walls will be done over
020spring break so that you can expect to see that up and running real soon and then finally tonight ladies and gentlemen i just want to touch on the budget tonight there is a resolution on the agenda approving the submission of the 2022-23 preliminary budget to the county office and i want to be clear and the commissioners i want you please to understand this this is a vote tonight so that mr uc can send the budget to the county for technical review to make sure the accounts are correct the money is where it is and for educational compliance on may 5th we will have what's known as our public budget hearing that's required by law there will be a formal presentation there will be a public hearing where members of the public before you vote to
021approve it can come up and speak on that budget so tonight you're just voting so that mike can send the budget to the county but having said that i want to give you a little bit of background of where we are with that budget the administration and the finance committee had a meeting on march 15th the administration presented a budget where in an ideal world we wanted to gain a lot more positions than we have positions that have been lost in the past positions that we should have had had this district been funded to its full capacity all the years we've been underfunded specifically during the 2009-2010 school year where 137 staff members am i is that the right number do you remember 49 and then 21. 49 and then 21 staff members were um
022released due to budget cuts the district still hasn't recovered from that um and the goal was to to keep us in line with districts that are more more in line with districts similar to us in the state when we look at staff member to student ratios administrator to staff ratios and things like that we are below the average meaning we have less administrators per teacher we have less teachers per student and the big reason for that is because this district was unfairly underfunded for decades and it it wasn't this board of education it wasn't any past board of education that made that happen it was the state of new jersey directly dealing with state aid but thankfully we are finally getting the state aid that we have deserved for many years and although we are
023not expecting to be fully funded until next year we did get an additional 12 million dollars in state aid this year which was music to my ears until our business administrator showed me where that money had to go and so anyway we presented a budget to the finance committee that called for a tax increase and the finance committee with all due respect said to the administration we really don't want to do that we don't want to raise taxes um no matter how little it will cost we don't think it's a good time to be raising taxes um we don't disagree that you need these positions and these members can speak for themselves but it's just not the time to raise taxes so the the committee charged the administration with presenting a zero percent budget excuse
024me and i want to be clear i respect the board of education's role in the budget process board of education does three major things three very very important things one they hire a superintendent you did well you wanna make sure you're still paying attention two you hold the purse strings now you tell me zero percent i present zero percent and three you make policy and policy dictates everything else we do so we went back we balanced the budget and the resolution that's on the agenda tonight is a zero percent tax levy increase and what that means without getting into the details that you'll get we'll get into in the public presentation on may 5th is that it's a status quo budget with the exception of we are able to have the ability to fund six
025new positions for the district which we are going to put towards security we're going to hire six new security positions for our secondary schools next year the district is set to become fully funded and you know what upsets me is that you know i thought when we saw the numbers we're getting 12 million this year i'm like oh don't we're good we're going to be able to get these positions that we should have always had without raising taxes but i asked mr mr uchi because i've had people say to me well danny how come you can't do these things you're getting 12 million dollars so i asked mr usee to provide to to prepare a quick one-slide uh demonstration of where that extra 12 million dollars is going because i think the board really needs
026to see this mike sure dr armpit perfect yeah it's pretty small but um yeah so as dr robertosi said this is extremely brief and it's it is simplified but it's it's that way so it could be easily you know comprehended and uh just to put it out there without going into the full budget when we go into that on the public hearing on may 5th so we had a state aid increase of 12 million 756 000 so you ask like where on the top like off the top going from the 2122 budget to the 2223 budget where does that go if no other revenues are increased in the district which the main revenues obviously of our district are is the state aid and tax levy so right off the top we have to budget what
027the state tells us to budget when it comes to the projected enrollment of charter school um so that number that two and a half million is an increase from current year until next year and that's coupled with their projected enrollment and also the increase in state aid does go has a piece in the charter school realm as well because they are public schools um the pcti votec budget actually did have a small decrease very minor decrease ood means out of district out of district private schools which is all special education tuition-based private schools that had a large increase um 1.6 million and that and they are state-certified rates as well it's not it's not something the district negotiates with a a private school they're state certified through the child's iep and they they they tell
028us they have to go to that school which because it's the best learning environment and then the tuition is state certified next salary increases for 22.23 so this year a lot of our collective bargaining contracts were up and we settled all our contracts so to give just the raises from this year going to next year it's about four million dollars for the staff next now this is still being negotiated but at current time from now until we vote on the final budget we're projecting a health benefit increase which is our medical our health i'm sorry our medical our dental our prescription um and any other um things that come along with that increase of about four million dollars so where you see we got 12 million dollars if no other revenue sources increased our bottom
029line appropriation increase is about is over 12 million dollars so we're showing about 600 000 of um money we could budget elsewhere and we decided as administration to try to build that security team we're looking for does that do a pretty good idea that's exactly what uh thank you uh miss ducey i just wanted the board and the public to see that because i don't want people think well you know you got 12 million dollars and you're you're you're asking for more so i just wanted people to to understand that now and and i want to be clear we're not in the predicate predicament we're in because of anything this board has done or anything a previous board has done we are in this predicament because our district was underfunded in the state formula by
030the state of new jersey for many many years and we're finally getting to where we should have been for decades of funding decades of funding and it's just a shame because it's just what would have been had we been funded fully all those years and this board has been very fiscally conservative and the public should know that my two years as a superintendent this board introduced two zero percent budgets the year before i came was a point eight percent increase so this board is very conscientious of the taxpayers we understand new jersey has the highest property tax rates in the country and we understand that most of that goes to your local schools so i just wanted to make sure that the discussion that was had in um committee also got out to the board
031there will probably be minutes from that meeting that will be read and then perhaps if there's any questions we should do that before the vote on the preliminary budget and that concludes my report mr president thank you thank you dr rubitozzi uh just have a few announcements again there's many things that are coming up in the district um so um i'm asking everyone to please uh look on our internet on our web page uh to the peach jar and you'll see uh flyers that have been submitted from just about every school that are having some type of fundraiser going on um i did like i did want to make note of a scholarship that's available seniors planning to attend college and major in education the grants are available online on the clifton schools district website
032under community and the scholarship is in the name of a past board member who i had the opportunity to work with the marie haycomb scholarship for future educators it was established in 2009 by the clifton education foundation and the family of marielle haycom in her memory marie hakem dedicated her entire life to the field of education a scholarship in the amount of one thousand dollars will be applied towards tuition awarded to a graduating senior from clifton high school this scholarship is supported by the income family and anyone else interested in making a donation towards the scholarship would be appreciated the scholarship is administered by the foundation so clifton seniors the scholarship is out there and available to you so please take advantage of it if you're going to college and majoring in education so again
033please check our website uh for many many events going on from athletics to the arts um tricky trays and uh bless you and many other things happening so please go out and support our schools many of them are having fundraisers so we ask that you all if you can to take one of the uh the fundraisers that's available and see if you could support that school we appreciate that very much thank you okay we have first reading of policy uh see we have by excuse me policy trying to read it here policy i don't see a number on this anyone know the number of this one two that can't be our number yeah two four you know it's just two four one five oh five mr smith you want me to read him out yeah
034we don't have to read the the whole thing but i just want the if you read the policy numbers and yeah uh policy 2415.05 student surveys analysis evaluations examinations one 24314 uh prevention and treatment of sports related concussions two six two two student assessment three two three three political activities five four six zero high school graduation five five four one anti-hazing joint of use of facilities eight four six five bias crimes and bias related acts 9560 administration of school surveys and zero one six seven public participation in board meetings okay next we have uh bylaw zero one uh six seven mr canova you wanna do that one too oh you did simply six seven okay because one was a one was listed as a bylaw that's why i wanted to separate them okay we have
035no presentations uh to report and we'll go to is there a discussion of uh policies in the first reading right not our first reading usually not okay all right uh board committee reports uh we'll start with uh policy mr abhijava policy committee meeting began at 2 40 p.m excuse me the attendees were president jim smith myself dr lucy danny administrators president dr danny roberts-ozzy and mr ross also the board attorney gutierrez was in attendance the committee recommends adoption of the following policies as per stress as may number 12415.05 student surveys analysis evaluations examinations testing or treatment which is mandated but it was revised number two 243.14 prevention and treatment of sports related concussions and head injuries mandated also was revised number three 2622 student assessment also mandated but revised uh number four three two three
036three political activities revised eight four six five biased crimes and bias related acts also mandated and revised 9560 administration of schools surveys mandated as well revised the committee recommends adoption the following and mandated policies with the stated changes 5460 high school graduation the credits for graduation in section 8.1 a pages 1 and 2 have been inserted in the policy the census attendance requirements as indicated in policy regulation 5200 has been inserted in section 8.1 point d on page five the optional section on the state seal of by literacy in section d on pages 13 to 15 shall be included in the policy section d point 3 on page 14 shall be amended to indicate that the board of education shall pay the cost of related assessments and transcript signias number two five five four one
037anti-anti-hazing excuse me is mandated and new the first paragraph shall be amended to indicate that the policy applies to the high school middle schools and elementary schools number three 7540 joint use of facilities it was revised the policy will further be amended to indicate that it applies to the local governing body and the body of county commissioners to the county the committee discussed bylaw zero 167 public participation and board meeting and makes the following recommendations change the word periods to period in paragraph four insert the following language at the end of the second sentence of paragraph four and providing the person's face is visible during their address to the board the second to last sentence of paragraph four shall be changed to read indivisible individuals shall limit the remarks to five minutes on any general
038matter pertinent to the district number four the words or district security shall be inserted in the rules section of the policy at four point d after law enforcement officers the committee then discussed policy 8860 in regards to memorials there are no recommendations to the board at this time a possible bylaw regarding board member communication with the superintendent of schools and the board secretary slash business administrator was discussed with no recommendation to the board at this time the meeting was adjourned at 4 10 pm but respectfully submitted by mr ross any questions i have one yes misspelled john um for the bylaws zero one six seven we had a lengthy um discussion over multiple meetings that we were going to allow phone call-ins which we do currently allow phone call-ins um with this policy changing too
039and providing the person's faces visible during their address we're no longer going to be allowing phone call-ins so i'm not sure if the whole board is aware because we did have many rounds of discussion on this day is that we were going to allow phone call in mr president yes if i remember the pilot that that conversation it was uh to the fact that we have to allow people don't we there's some kind of fcc rule or federal rule we had a really long conversation that day about this can um you have to allow people to call in yes we can also require that they have it doesn't have to be just a call and we can require that if it's on remote that there'll be a face so what's the difference between a remote
040uh being on the computer and a phone call because the phone call you can't put your face on it mr president if i may well i'm speaking not if you're not yes if it's a regular phone call right smartphone you can access um right zoom or whatever some people don't know how to use that technology to do that as well but we um i thought there was a ruling about that i'm not aware of a ruling that requires that it has to be a phone that a phone call has to be permitted so this is a this is legally allowed to tell people they have to show their face so how do you know if they have a smartphone versus a flip phone i don't well that's what i'm saying mr president if i may
041to answer his password's question yes so i think if i remember correctly the discussion was that anybody can utilize a phone call to call in use their five minutes under a unknown name alias or anything else that they can say but yet come back in here and use another five minutes to talk further if we're gonna say that five minutes should be used in total for an individual or for a resident or for whomever would like to speak at the podium the only way to hold accountability for anybody would be to show their face so this way we know who they are and not fall under a alias name and then come in here and again continue speaking because that would not be fair for the rest of the citizens and the residents that um
042either are calling in via a zoom with their photo or their video and then coming to the dais so it just holds in accountability for everybody but i mean nobody's prohibiting anybody from not calling in um and again we don't know if there's a flip phone or a smartphone but unfortunately these are the times that we have to come through because there's going to be a problem where and we've gone through in the past where somebody calls in under an unknown alias and did not want to give the information if somebody's got to sign their name and put their address in the book at the dais they should do likewise and there should be a mandate that they do the same as well anyone else madam through you mr president to the attorney i thought
043that they would they don't have to give their name or their city what is the ruling on that because we we talked about this in to nauseum they do have the person that's speaking doesn't have to give their name right they don't have to give their address okay it's not required and remote access is not required either as long as there is no no longer a public health emergency right but we're granting that because of people with disabilities so what if we have an elderly senior that has a flip phone and that's the only access they have so that's why we we allowed that because we wanted to give access to all you know it's uh accountability is a very big word and it's a harsh word to use because when you have people that
044don't have access to things how do you how do you know how are you going to differentiate between a flip phone and a small phone i want to know who won i think that this is a question for the board i'm not opposed to no i don't have just the voice that's something that the board wanted to that was the discussion i had um one other question um when we discussed this originally we said that if there was a problem then we would consider removing the uh phone portion which we have not had a problem we barely even have had caller in so like in my view i don't feel like at this point it's worth limiting it because we haven't had an issue the issue that uh mr abuja was talking about was two
045years ago and it was you know one caller we're very lucky that we haven't had herds of people in our room attacking us but other boards had so i really feel that our public is much more respectful of our process and we don't really need to be limiting them since they've all been behaving themselves mr president yes mr genova so since they have to give their name whether it be on a phone call on a zoom or in person wouldn't that be the way that you tie back somebody to to not have an extra five minutes because um you know in sighting with with with miss vassar and miss belgran i i personally know seniors that do not have computers and do not have smart smart uh devices and i know they have called into
046a city council meeting so given that why would we restrict it when nothing's ever happened that's been bad we haven't seen anything as as miss beltran said we said that this was going to be a pilot we're going to take a look at it and then reevaluate later i haven't seen anybody really even call in let alone say anything bad on a call so i'm not sure why we're visiting this policy now and making a modification when there's in my eyes no need to if anything we're just limiting now the amount of people that are allowed to they're going to be able to speak if if they choose to someone wants to call in about you know dr robert tosie speaking about how there's a possible zero percent tax increase and if they say they
047want more more positions and something i don't know but they should have the ability to say that and if they're not here you know we go back back again to what we said originally their parents at home they may have their student on the device at home they're watching the meeting but that student's doing classwork and they would want to call we have it listed on our website from it literally says the number to call so i'm not sure why we're limiting anything at this point okay we'll move on to uh technology uh mr canova so i would i would actually this time make a motion to pull this this line in the revision i'll second that motion so this is first reading right so what what are you asking to change it well first
048of all the policy we're in the minutes now so we'd have to go back to the policy and we can we can get it changed then are you requesting that it go back to policy are you just requesting that it be changed i mean the rest of the the policy i'm fine with i just want to pull the uh the item number three okay so item number three can go back to policy and review it okay so three back to policy please so that's policy 0167 just so that we're great to be a vote on that no first reading right okay technology excuse me mr president um i didn't get i i think there's something going on because i'm not getting agendas is there a problem with the genders being because we're supposed to get
049them before meetings start uh or meetings meet there haven't been many meetings that's the problem but these there was three of these me there was three committee reports on this agenda and i didn't get any i think i got one for technology i think that was it so uh we we did i got crucified for one missing one so i'm going to ask that if we're going to comply that compliance be level and fair across the board and that it not be selective to certain committees have to do it and certain committees don't it should be fair across the board thank you okay technology mr kanova technology committee minutes march 8th uh myself mr daley mr paris mr dr robert tosi mr gengaro and mr mountain for president 505-541 first item new boardroom commissioners and
050admin commented in the new board meeting room that looks great and the scene the screens and other technology work well commissioners commented the quality of the video stream to youtube is perfect but channel 77 and 40 is not as good optimum is running new fiber lines for the board of ed building uplink which should rectify this issue for future meetings it was noted that the auditors presenting via zoom had difficulty hearing the commissioners an additional microphone will be set up for future meetings two device pilot several different commercial books were recently tested to compare brands and sizes and other features touchscreen capability as was discussed and if future budgets allow all new staff and student chromebooks will include this capacity moving forward larger screen models will be available as needed but the 11 inch devices
051will continue to be standard issue as keyboard size is the same for each model item three board docs all board members all board event suggestion suggestions have been forwarded to board docs development team and they thanked us for the input the district is still exploring the possibility of an additional feedback meeting between board docs and board of ed commissioners item four testing updates access testing for ell students is currently in full swing utilizing student chromebooks start strong assessments were administered this past past fall also on student chromebooks with no major issues this was the first state test without the use of proctor cash and all systems performed well new jersey gpa testing will begin on march 14th and jsla will be conducted in late april for high school students and in may for k through
0528 students referendum security projects mr mountain provide an update on security projects phase one of the camera upgrade is moving nicely in walkthroughs our planning are underway for phase two equipment and cabling for the clock strobes and pa system will be up upgrades will be ordered soon as well when in wi-fi upgrades mr mountain noted that several network projects are ongoing behind the scenes when equipment network storage and wi-fi equipment are being upgraded continuously to maintain a modern infrastructure while minimizing downtime for staff and students mr mountain also provided a brief overview for the federal e-rate program and explained reimbursement eligibility for certain services and equipment purchases any questions nope thank you next we have finance vice president daily thank you mr president um finance committee met on march 15 uh president uh where mr
053aberdravo mr canover miss beltran and myself uh on the administration dr robert tosi mr guerrero mr yusi mr shahida um and mr doctor uh meetings started at 4 15 and and ended at 6 25 items discussed was the 20 20 22 23 budget items of under that category was the charter school increases there was a significant increase of state regulated charter schools tuition and basically that went to one group of charter schools that didn't go to all the charter schools that went to the stake arts and sciences and their related schools second item was a pcti budget there was a slight decrease in the tuition for pcti may also add um we we got 12 billion and they got an increase of what 30 i believe it was 30 million dollars just saying private school
054budgets a special ed out of district placements uh there was this a significant increase in the tuition for most of the district's special education and private school placements and this is uh obviously dictated by the state we don't control that they regulate those prices capital reserve the committee discussed how much money was in the capital reserve and the administration discussed possible uses for this money for our schools next time charter schools tuition referenced above in the state uh regulated uh is a director from the state and that is based on a per pupil cost and the estimated enrollment if the projections are not met by the charter school a surplus in that account a line can be as seen in next year's budget in other words we have to budget for it if it's if
055we don't use that money that gets put boosted over and helps us it's actually in in a way a surplus or a credit uh to our final year budget private school tuition for special education schools is state certified as i just noted health insurance committee discussed the increase in medical premiums a very fair renewal increase was given the business office though through the broker negotiated with aetna and reduced the initial proposed increase the broker will continue to work on health benefits in increases until the final budget in may just so the public knows how that works uh they're they the insurance company gives us a projected premium uh our broker negotiates that um most mostly in a down which never negotiates up for us negotiates it down it's really based on claims from the prior
056year and those claims they have a margin uh of i believe it's a little about 85 is that it mike for for what we projected for next yeah in other words if the claims are million dollars another 13 percent of stuff was added on by the insurance company as a cushion so you know they're not they don't budget zero based on claims right real quick so they look at what our claims were so what aetna had to pay out on our behalf so what we pay aetna every month isn't what they are making because they have to pay claims out so our ratio was pretty good this year i think it was 86 which means 86 cents on every dollar is being paid to a doctor or a hospital which is pretty good but we
057do we had a high claimance and other things but not to get into the week so how this may change before we get the final budget is that uh the claims are looked at for another about month month and a half and if they've been reduced we can get a further increase in that final number if anybody has any questions i'll be happy to answer them mr daily just for the public i'm sorry mr president through youtube mr daley uh just for the public knows what has been attributed to the slight in the decrease in tuition from bcdi uh it could be the large amount of uh state aid it's it's a little ironic i'll expound on that a little bit it's a little ironic that we have to pay that tuition and yet we
058get state aid and technically a portion of our state aid goes into the tuition we pay there so they get not only their state aid but they get a piece of our state aid uh when we send uh the tuition bill goes up there is it fair also to say that there's a contribution from the residency committee finding people who don't live in the city but attend the school under a different address and they found that yeah that that would work when we no longer have to pay the tuition for that student to go to pcti so that's x off the account and we get that credit back thank you unfortunately unlike the charter schools we have to wait another year the way that the state has this cycle to get our credit back it's
059not the next year it's the following year why don't ask me but that's what happens thank you i just wanted the public to understand that thank you mr president um through you to mr daley i think maybe that the next delegates assembly the clifton board of education can write a resolution stating our concerns about the funding to charter schools and that bring up the conversation because the legislative committee for the state of new jersey is starting to get on board with this and there's other districts that are having the same issue so i think that may be a way to get the attention of some people if you bring it to the d.a and then school boards can use that to uh to advocate for us as well because they are not up to the
060same standards as us they don't have to you know um we are we are held to a higher standard they can do whatever they want they don't have to have people that are certified teaching their children and uh if we're gonna fund it they should be held accountable the same as a district is so that was we one thing that i would like to see in a resolution i would love to sit with you and maybe go over this all right mr president through you uh as everybody knows has been known meanwhile uh i'm in total agreement with that and uh i've done lots of research in the past so i'd be happy to partner with you and anybody else on the board to draft a loose resolution and i think it's being discussed at
061the at the county level on the same issue the other districts in the in the county uh are also having discussions about this issue and mr president through youtube mr daley and miss basford i agree with ms passport on that excuse me um and i believe also we discussed it at our last last legislative committee meeting with our legislators as well uh in depth as well as our county commissioners of all of our concerns um with funding from the county level um as well as the state level yes mr president um they'll cut off a resolution down to the state is april six so we'll have to probably we won't have enough time to draft something uh for this da we'll have to wait to the 401 uh that gives us some time to actually
062get it together it you know and then you have to present it to the sub because i'm on the sub resolution committee it comes to us on the six and we vote whether we move it forward or it gets dropped well let's let's um to you again mr president i i think we could get some kind of a draft going in within the next 30 days and then we can collectively partner with whoever else we have to do to uh tighten it up okay so just uh do you understand that i said on the sub-resolution committee if clifton does submit a resolution i have to step off that discussion and when they're finished with it i can get back on i have to abstain because i'm impartial but also to the superintendent and uh president
063smith i also recommend uh legislative chair that we do give our legislators a heads up that we're doing this so they don't feel like they're blindsided since we have in our corner yeah absolutely and mr president three to mr daily and actually i think just for the public for the knowledge um a two percent increase of tax is a little over two million dollars and the charter schools as you saw the projected is two million dollars so had this been a flat year that we didn't get additional aid we literally would have had to go out to the taxpayers to fund a charter school so i want everybody to realize that what that really means mr smith yes um is this an appropriate time to talk about the preliminary budget at all or wait before
064we yeah no no just uh just under the minutes of finance you have any questions of that okay seeing none we'll move on to public recognition this portion of the meeting is open to the residents and non-residents of clifton for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to and or directly related to the operation of the clifton public school district residents and non-residents are requested if in person to sign the register provided for this purpose all speakers are asked to state their names municipality and 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 the response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate your questions may or may not
065be 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 responded 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 afflicted in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments uh residents that are calling in uh please you state your name and municipality and subject matter as well and we'll start with um
066mr mountain anyone i thought we know we usually do a call-in first yep there are two sorry mr mountain i gave you the wrong that's okay give me the wrong information uh nurse robin oh i gotta switch it if you can hear us it's your turn to speak you have five minutes nurse robin are you there and the other caller is listed as cell city's iphone all right why don't we move to cell city so mr mr president for next time can i just make it a suggestion that we do in person first because we're on a delay anyway so they may not even know at home until the call and whatnot it's a minor delay it says connecting to audio what that means is that they are seeing a screen right now that says
067how would you like to join with your computer or phone and they're not responding leave this open or i'm sorry yeah we'll in the meantime we'll go to in person and if they come into the chair we'll uh we'll recognize him afterwards all right anyone here wishing to address the board i'm sorry is there a way to mute the people who are there this way they don't talk while in person thanks so is this muted in the in the room mark brunsiak holly street clifton good evening everyone i know we're approaching the fourth marking period spring is here i also know that the curriculum is being finalized for the next school year with this being said in 2020 while millions of children's lives were destroyed by remote learning the groomers at the new jersey department
068of education updated their learning standards and they need to be implemented with the 2022 2023 school year so among these standards which i'm about to describe exactly from the department of education on their website that this is supposed to be taught to our children by the end of fifth grade that's right our children by the end of fifth grade in comprehensive health and physical education 2.1 personal and mental health by the end of eight grade five among them explain the human sexual development and role of hormones example romantic and sexual feelings masturbation mood swings and timing of pubertal onset this is not at woodrow wilson not at christopher columbus now i know that none of you work for the state department of education although i hope that someone on this board at least send an
069email about these new standards my questions to you does anyone on this board think it's okay for a grown man to discuss these learning standards that i just described with the 9 10 or 11 year old girl does anyone in the cea i believe i saw someone from the cea tonight or any other members of the njea think it's okay to discuss these learning standards with girls 11 years old or younger in any other setting this person would have to register as a sex offender in fact the u.s department of justice states that sexual grooming occurs in numerous settings among them in institutional settings such as schools moreover that behaviors of these groomers include discussing sexually explicit information under the guise of education were parents ever notified about these changes to the learning standards and
070if not why not what recourse do parents have to remove these despicable standards and how does anyone involved in these standards still have a job with the department of education and hasn't yet been investigated by the department of justice based on what they describe as as groomers thank you for your time and god bless america [Music] hi good evening gary analic uh i'm on where am i rolling hills road clifton new jersey i'm gonna tell you something now you cannot be it unless you see it let me say it again to you you cannot be it unless you see it now we have something going on at clifton high school now that has not happened there since 2006 we have a championship football team always a championship soccer team championship at um uh what do
071you call academic uh debate team champion always the arts or championships we have superiority going on at clifton high school that is beyond measure i propose to you tonight in that we get these kids these these champion kids down to the elementary schools so the elementary school kids can see it and be it i think that the kids who are on the football team can go before a school at an assembly and say this is what i did and this is how i did it and a seven and eight eight-year-old kid can see that i could be like this kid that these kids you know we give him an award and we say thank you very much they now need to go to be an example because these kids and i just mentioned a few
072i mean we have a couple of really championship runners at the high school right now and they are championship runners state championship runners and they're also keeping up their academic standards and they need our kids cannot learn this when they enter high school they need to learn this in the fourth in the fifth and the sixth grade our middle school kids need to know the quality of kids that are at clifton high school before they go to clifton high school what i'm saying is you cannot be it unless you see it and i propose that we show it to these kids that we take these kids out of the high school because these are the best that clifton has and show it to these kids you know in a day of uh you know everything's
073on online let these kids be the real example of what life is about in academia or whatever i'm going to move on to say our sophomores in high school at that early age we need to reach out to kids who are in college who graduated from clifton high school and talk to these kids about what it's like to apply to and go to college because when they enter their junior year it's too late they're making decisions already so they need to know not from a person who is pushing their own personal college but from the kids who they know from the high school and let's get these kids and i'm sure all these kids would not mind talking let these kids let these sophomore kids know what it's like to apply and go to college
074bring back kids who have entered the military and let them talk to them about the advantages and disadvantages of going to going into the military and so on and so forth i know we have the academic dinner every year and it's a wonderful dinner and it has changed many people's career minds but i'm telling you that's too late that has to start the the the type of thinking to become an academic or anything in life has to start as you know i'm preaching to the choir has to start early so all i'm saying tonight is i'm coming up to you and saying you cannot be it unless you see it and let's get these kids down there and show our kids the potential they have how they have to be so dedicated to do that
075let them let them give them examples of the dedication they had and maybe it'll impress these kids to move on to greater things in life because these kids need to see it in order to be it thank you good evening tom whittles president clifton against substance abuse i missed the last meeting but i do want to start by saying i'm happy the board is going to fund project graduation something that i've advocated for for many years 100k i think is a little excessive but that's a conversation for a different day uh what concerns me about all of this now is that there are social media posts floating around asking people to donate to project graduation cash money drop off cash and envelopes to the high school office that's a slippery slope folks think about what
076happened last year when mr abu drabble stole bracelets now we're going to start delivering cash money to the high school that's a slippery slope number one it puts you know how do you audit it how do you track it and it will certainly hurt people donating because people don't want to donate cash they want to write checks they want to have a record of what they donated asking people through social media to donate cash it's just silly it's not trackable certainly not audible how do you order it how do you know who delivered what how do you know who got the envelopes how do you know who took the envelopes where'd the envelopes go something for you folks are trying to figure out uh at the last meeting i i did well i did watch
077it i did watch it on the on the live feed on the zoom and uh mr robert dravo spent a lot of time talking about project graduation i guess he's trying to make himself look good play the victim but i just want everybody on this board to know that on march 1st i received a letter from the state department of ethics mr aberdrabbo's case the ethics board has found probable cause and has now moved this case to the attorney general's office they've assigned it and it is going to go before the office of administrative law for a hearing so what mr abu drabba did last year has now been accepted by the board of ethics down in trenton i had the letter and it's namely the alleged violation of njsa 18a colon 12-24 prohibited acts
078on behalf of the commission please open a file on this contested case and assign an administrative law judge for a hearing everybody that was involved that night at project graduation will be subpoenaed we will have a hearing and we will get to the bottom of whether mr abu drabble should continue to serve on this board or not thank you good evening i hope everybody's doing well my name is lori lallam and i'm the president of the cea there's a couple of things that i want to bring up one the importance of hiring more custodians now i believe they get 15 for a sub rate when you can go to costco and get 30 plus benefits so the people my reps in the district have brought this to me and they said that they're concerned about
079the cleanliness of the building while they understand that the custodian department is short staffed and we're not here to throw anybody under the bus we're looking out for the kids and for the staff but our buildings are not cleaned we need more custodians the custodians here are working very hard but the schools they're not filling the sanitizer they're not cleaning the boards sweeping the floors the only thing that gets done is our garbage is emptied and that's about it the faculty bathroom is very disgusting the floor is dirty the sink is dirty the supplies are only restocked when we call the office and request it we ran out of toilet paper last friday and during period one on monday there was still no toilet paper the only faculty bathroom aside from the basement is the
080one on the second floor and there's a lot of teachers at the ccms and they're still using one bathroom besides bathrooms i feel like the buildings as a whole is dirty the walls are dirty the new rubber stair grips are dirty and already are breaking down it just looks bad i feel that the morale is low in the district because the lack of cleanliness and to no fault of the custodians and i want that to be understood but they need more people there is some something that is kind of degrading about being a professional and having to use a dirty bathroom i am sure there are no corporate executive offices with filthy bathrooms for them so that's one thing i really want the board to understand the importance of hiring more people now the other
081thing has to do with the taxes i contacted the educational law center so whether districts like it or not tax increases are good for the students said david sierra executive director of the educational law center any new money collected through tax hikes will help prevent cuts to staff or academic programs that would loom after reduction in state aid you've got to do something to make sure the resources in the schools don't get cut sierra also cautioned the districts aren't necessarily to blame for not taxing enough in 2009 the state set targets for how much every district should be raising in local tax revenue leaving some districts with a huge gap between their goal and their actual tax revenue is an issue when lawmakers later implement two percent limit on school taxes it became impossible for
082some districts to reach their target local revenue by not budgeting to the cap now the board of ed is creating a situation where in the near future the district is going to have to ask the taxpayers of clifton to dramatically increase taxes in order to be able to fund schools this is not a position that the people of clifton will like being placed into but the board of end members need to understand how important it is right now in the district there are 30 positions that are still aren't filled there are 12 resignations there are seven retirees there are lack of staff members here in the district and we really need your support and we're looking for it so think about raising the tax don't keep it at zero percent because who knows what's going
083to happen down the future and down the road thank you very much anyone else wish to address the board all right we'll go back to uh they've both left oh they both left okay motion to close we got a motion to close am i mr abu dravo okay we'll go to um unfinished business any unfinished business does she want me to wait okay so we'll go to uh education administration we have ea one through ea seven i'm so moved so boom might be star second second by mr awad discussion seeing none roll call mr abedrabo yes mr awad yes miss pastor miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes i'm staying on b1 vice president daley yes president smith yes moshe's carry all right next we have um personnel we have
084uh p1 through p24 so moved so will my mr abu drabo second second by mr awad do you want me to wait yeah uh discussion we're pulling one from here right i'm not sure um i think it was number two one chief miss passport you want it pulled on anything or you oh no just a second i think when miss bassford and i spoke i think as long as we can have the discussion and executive session later uh on that topic under negotiations that she would that she was okay with it but she's here she can speak first i can speak for myself um i'm not opposed to the positions um this is ties into the budget actually um that um i talked to you dr obatozzi about maintaining our talent and uh i'm seeing
085and hearing from people in the community that we're losing some of our talent because we're not being fair so that's what i wanted to talk about the rest of the board and i did i did send an email to uh both the president the vice president i cc'd you as well because i won't cc the whole board because it's not appropriate creates a meeting so um i just wanna i just wanna um talk about that about retaining talent and i want to talk about that before we actually submit the budget yes just to be clear because i don't i want to because bespoke can speak eloquently by herself but there's two things you said that i want to clarify when you're talking about losing talent and being fair we're talking about one specific group of
086people and that is nurses and it's not that the district isn't being fair although some may think that there is and we'll discuss i can't talk about the numbers too much but i can talk in generalities that there is a major shortage of nurses in the state in the country and the basic law of supply and demand is when supply is low what happens the prices prices go up and so yeah when we are lucky to find a nurse that we can that i can recommend to the board to hire they can demand a higher salary today and the unfortunate thing is we have some amazing nurses that currently work in our district that maybe were hired at a time when there wasn't a shortage of nurses maybe their heart were hired on step one
087and it is unfair to them and i don't and i can understand it when they see somebody who's hired five years later than them who's going to be making as much or in many cases more than them i get it but there are a lot of issues involved in trying to correct that there are of course contractual issues there are union issues there are all sorts of things so there are some things i do want to discuss in executive later under negotiations [Music] and the board and the public should know we are trying to rectify it but it's not something we could wave a magic wand and fix today um so i just wanted to make a clarification thank you if i could just simply add that the administration has been working with the clinton
088education start again uh what i just wanted to add is that the administration make it clear that the clinton education association has been working with the superintendent has been in discussing this so it's uh there's cooperation as as usual all right roll call please mr abbey drabo yes mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran uh yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes all right next we have finance and facilities we have f1 through f12 so moved so much mr abhijava i'd like to have some discussion on this yeah uh second by mr rawad discussion mr paris thank you um just pertaining to the preliminary budget and thank you dr robertosi for the the overview and thank you to uh my colleagues on the committee
089i knew so maybe bear with me a moment but what struck me when i went through this rather voluminous preliminary budget was the fact that i believe the last three years there have been zero increases from the taxpayer side now this is a i'm sure a very unpopular topic that i'm about to raise here but it just draws some concern to me uh going forward and especially in light of what mrs basford just said about uh changing demand and salaries for for replacements uh what ms lallama pointed to as far as the need for some more custodians also the fact that since 09 and 010 it looks like we've lost by necessity to have to cut the budget we've lost instructional people i'm concerned about people that touch the students and although we have uh
090we certainly have fiscal responsibility but we also have responsibility to our students into our educational system here in town i'm just concerned that going into this this next year we have inflation rates now eight percent primarily just common goods don't even mention fuel at this point we're not making any provisions to get back to this even remotely to this table of organization we had in the past um i mean if administration tells me this is not impactful positions we don't need them they're not really necessary for the commute for the school system i i would understand that but it just seems that we might be on a bit of a dangerous trajectory here that we don't consider any kind of changes especially when it comes to improving instructional staff and making up some of the
091deficits that have been created in the past i remember when this first decrease came to to clifton it was many years ago when i after i first bought my home and a knock came on my door and one of the state assemblymen were there and looking for for my vote and this was the same state assemblyman who had a year earlier abstained from voting in the state senate and cost our district at the time which was i guess getting close to 30 years ago 11 million dollars you represented our district i said i'm surprised you're at my door any explanation as why you did i said i thought i would never vote for you ever again and he said well it was a moment of honesty from a politician i was kind of pulled in
092the back room by the governor and the powers to be and said you know do this for us because if you abstain our new formula will pass you really won't feel the effects of it because you've got a ways to go to get reelected and so he abstained from voting even though in this district that he represented it cost us 11 million dollars in our school system and since then i think we've been playing catch-up for many many many years so again i know it's not a popular thing to do i know it's something that many people are against any kind of tax changes whatsoever but if we really need um and the purpose of of the refunding formula is to get us back to where we've been and get us actually even more resources
093than before i think it's something we should maybe reconsider in this age in this preliminary budget i'd also like to point out that i this data i found online so far out of the 16 communities of passaic county clifton had the lowest per pupil spending of any of them and in the state of other than sorry i have to correct myself prospect park was lower but they have one school one k-8 school that's their entire district and the state average is over twenty two thousand dollars currently per per head per student which we are well below as well um so again i just would like to get some discussion on that um are we really planning here for the future are we really bolstering our our capabilities our instructional capabilities for students in in clifton
094or are we just kind of treading water at this point because what mr uchi presented showed that really we're just kind of keeping up with costs at this point spell john mr pilot um so all this was discussed in the meeting and jim daley can speak more to us his uh committee and i was only a guest in it um but the issue was that we went out for the referendum this year if we hadn't gone out for the referendum we would have probably been more open to accepting all of the increases that the school district was looking for the problem being if we were to accept everything that was needed and also of the referendum we were looking at a double taxation this year increase so it would have been hitting the public twice
095in the same exact year for an increase versus you know next year considering it when when the referendum has already been on the books for one year so that was really the consideration that went into it i understand that things are needed now and inflation and everything you know i truly understand everything that and i was actually one of the only people that were for spending a little bit onto the security side of it and not holding firm on the zero percent but you have to consider that we did hit this public for the referendum this year um and without that we probably would have gone for a tax increase at least that was what i took from the meeting uh thank you thank you miss beltran i can see that point of view the
096referendum passed by two-thirds majority though so the the taxpayers the voters in clifton supported that recognizing the need which is really separate from instructional this is this is purely facilities and infrastructure needs that we've had and that because we've neglected them over maybe not neglected but they've aged okay and they've gotten to the point where we had to replace them over the years a big part of the reason we've got to this point is kind of the budget situations we've had in the past and being able to maintain those systems and replace them so i kind of i'm my concern is more on what's touching the student side what's the instructional side um what we might be short short changing ourselves on at this point and also uh for some fiscal sanity for the future
097i mean are we really planning um for the growth needs that we have uh again i just i that's my concern trending water at this point and are we setting ourselves up for maybe uh a board a year or two from now having to look at substantial increases um because we're we're really kind of just towing the line at this point mr president if i may mm-hmm yes mr jonathan mr daley mr daley oh um so going on around miss beltran um i was also you know we were both discussing about while the majority says zero percent you know i agree with miss beltran about zero percent and plus security uh at least going to security because we've been talking about that for quite a while but the public is hurting right now the economy
098is you know i'm gonna say is in shambles and you know looking on the east at the east side of town many families are working really two jobs one parent one parent being at home and for us and i'm gonna say at the district i'm gonna choose my words very carefully because i got reamed out um i use the words dangled bait in front of residents to get them to vote for the referendum right i'm certain people didn't like that but that's how i felt and for us to do that to say hey vote for this and i'll give you this nice shiny neon pen i gave that to you you know vote for it right that's it's unfortunately that's how i feel what happened because in the past couple of years when we haven't
099gone to zero percent there were some board members who said zero percent it's going to catch up to us and it's catching up to us and i agree with you on that but sometimes when you have people and you dangled a zero percent in front of people to get them to vote for a referendum and as miss beltran mentioned i agree with her double taxing residents who are struggling to make meets end who can't even keep on their you know their lights on because this is the month of when pcg should sends out their shutoff lights because people are so back behind and i've seen a lot of that in my day-to-day job now and where people are struggling and for us to go to them it's easy for you know we live in two
100side towns here in clifton one who's capable but still some are struggling and the other side of town who people are really struggling and they're going in deeper and honestly you know i lived on this i tell most of my life and i've seen my parents for them you know for us whatever that 30 bucks or whatever it may be for the year to them that's a make or break for them that's a make or break for what they're going to feed their kids if they can keep on their pc g but if their water bills can get shut off if they're even going to stay in their house for rent to me i can't live with that you know unless you give me 15 20 people 10 people up at the podium say no
101go go go go first of all i'm going to see what side of town they're from because that to me is important that to analyze where we're going to go and how we're going to move forward but they're already getting hit for an increase per household think about what 177 dollars per household at an average uh you know because that's from the referendum i'm willing to look at security because we've been talking that for a long time and it's definitely needed because we need to secure our kids and our and our administrators and our faculty and our teachers that's a that's a we have to have a really deep down search and rough discussion if you know while some of us can afford it others can't and that's what frightens me while i know what
102you mean about you know supply our district are the best academic person i'm with you 100 on that but we got to fight our battles on that do we wait till next year let's get through this year you know it's like any of us who are looking they're looking at our bills in our house what are we gonna what are we gonna spend on what are we gonna say what are we going to pay next month what are we going to let go and and you know let that balance move over to so that's just that's just my two cents on it president smith yeah thank you mr president um and thank you for your comments mr paris um obviously i think this is my 13th or 14th budget i forget so it's um when
103i got on this board um administration didn't tell me too much about the budget and a couple years into it i found about the formula and how we were being shortchanged and administration never said a word to me that we were underfunded so when you make me curious i get into it so i found out that we were 50 million dollars shorted every year the taxpayers of the city of clifton the state has this great formula and what you should be paying what you should not taxpayers were overpaying their fair share for not years decades decades in this town because the way it was funded a number of years ago the formula that was in place but was never funded or addressed started to things changed in trenton so now we were starting to get
104our money next year will be the last year that we could expect that increase and i've also spoken to administration and my other colleagues i said and and joe and i has had this discussion many times the year after the things are are going to be tight you're going to have to do something but i can't for the life of me because this is responsibility that goes all the way ask the taxpayers when they've paid decades of over-funding our school for what they should have been paying for and they've getting a bit of a break here especially it's tough times but we're always going to have tough times we're not general motors we're not a bank we're not here we have a very fixed income more so than individuals uh in terms of school boards
105all government agencies are do that at least the local government agencies you're fixed to a certain amount of money and you have to adapt yourself that's how you you should go without but you need to be creative and you need to be smart about how you spend your money as well but at this point in time and last year's the next last year that we're going to see a boost in that state aid and then it's going to be flat and you do have to adjust that when we negotiated our contracts we discussed that amongst the negotiation committee and that okay we can afford these things and there was a trade-off and we got all the contracts balanced this took year years to do to get and i think i applaud uh our bargaining groups
106we worked hand in glove we didn't get everything we wanted they didn't get everything but i think we came to a fair and we were very considerate um and i'll i'll bring out one particular bargaining unit when we negotiated with the secretaries we negotiated a deal but we we saw the board and then recognized that the base salary was way below what it should be after we finished the negotiation we added more money onto that contract with it didn't need their permission to add more money so the bottom salaries would come up we did the best we could so the board recognizes um that we need to be fair to employees and and i've always said the union negotiates for them but there are employees they're not the union's employees and we have a responsibility
107there to provide as best we can we don't have unlimited resources the best we can but if you really really want to look at what the problem here it's not a case of the taxpayers of clifton need to pay more we have issues like tax abatements which don't out of tax abatements in the state of new jersey which is unaddressed by the state legislature all goes to the municipality except for two percent go to the county it cuts out education so when they move it's not like they get a big break the tax abatement but all the money goes to the municipality that's out of control we pay more the citizens of clifton pay more in the tax levy to support education than the city of jersey city that's outrageous so then we talk about
108our charter schools and pcti you want to look at budget increases you want to see where our budget increases that's where the bulk of the budget increases come and it robs our students and the taxpayers that that is so out of whack and the state's giving them carp launch for the most part they're starting to pull back a little bit on on charter schools but not nearly enough so we need to hammer that end too we just can't say oh they're not doing anything and taxpayers it's all on you i'm very mindful of the balance we need to to have here you do need to have good education but we also have limited resources and we need to fight much harder to get our fair share on the expense side that's so you just can't
109look at the revenue you have to look at the expenses and i'll be happy to go over this is i could go on for hours about this but if you saw over the what the last five years what the impact of these charter schools and pcti has on the budget it's ridiculous so um i will i've always fought for that and uh when mr cadoba was on the other side of the podium he was barking about that so we kind of joined forces and uh but it's it's eye-opening when you really look where the money comes from and where it goes to and and there's both sides of that ledger so uh i think the administration does an excellent job we have a reputation doing a hell of a lot more than other districts with
110less money um and i won't go into who does what but um we need to fight much harder and make our legislators understand that these ridiculous amounts of money that we have to pay for and i just brought out previously with the pcti issue they got close to 30 million whatever they got that they i know they got more than us a lot more than us and we're still paying the tuition over there so the whole thing about how the state handles county vote techs and county magnet schools needs to be addressed that affects us more than what we can raise from the taxpayers here so um and i think uh mr abdullah miss beltran said we went to do that we had the [Music] referendum and we got 12 million i don't know how
111in god's good conscience i could ask to pay taxpayers for another dime after you've got 12 million dollars and regardless of our needs i don't know how you go and ask somebody for a penny more after they passed a referendum and we got 12 million dollars more in our revenue so i've always looked at our budget especially when we're getting the increases the taxpayers need a break they deserve it they were overpaying for decades and they don't need to over and will be as fair with our with the administration and getting our edu kids educated which our school district does a tremendous job and i applaud everybody who's involved with that but we have to be you can't rob peter to pay paul here either so that's my personal philosophy and i've worked very hard
112on these budgets over the years and um and i can give you a chart before i was on the board i think for the previous 10 years it was up like 40 uh over over a 10-year period it was ridiculous amount of money and we flatten it out and we still have we don't have everything we need i perfectly understand that but you know you you really really have to balance it especially when we look at the history of what the taxpayers in this city have had to pay for mr rawad was next yes president smith thank you um i just wanted to share something i read and actually have family in the neighboring town next to us their board of education is actually increasing double digits in a time where people honestly are struggling
113to even get food into their homes something i witnessed one day coming home from work late night wife sends me a text message the baby needs formula i'm a costco guy i like to buy my formula there but i ended up having having to go to walgreens on uh main ave no i'm going in you know rang the button waiting for the lady to open the you know little shelf to give me the formula and my eyes looking at the register i see a mom um after discussing with her because she was struggling to pay you know she just had like a box of you know cereal milk and i think that like the edmonds cookies or whatever they were and it honestly broke my heart that she had her phone out and she was
114literally taking the prices from what she saw on the aisle was adding up staring at her debit card kind of you could tell she was nervous is her card going to decline or is it not going to decline and i you know thankfully i'm blessed enough to afford that i offered to pay and we stepped outside i just had a discussion with her you know when you can do a good deed i don't like to mention it but you know because we're on this topic i do want to mention it she was saying that literally her and her husband working two jobs obviously you know the jobs are not high paying jobs with the way gas prices are the way i think you know inflation's hitting just left and right honestly like as a person
115that's able to sustain my living i'm barely keeping up and i have a little one in the house i can speak on i can say majority of the city's probably living paycheck to paycheck at this moment a lot of people are struggling a lot of people don't know what's you know they're living day-to-day bases you don't know what the future is going to come you see many families struggling and look our neighboring town is doubling their taxes and this is an area that's not really you know a well-off wealthy area those people are going to take the hit dramatically thankfully you know i spoke to mr daley many times about the budget the man's a human calculator he knows how to quench his numbers he always has the answers and luckily we were blessed to
116pass the bond referendum you know the largest in state history that's going to have a positive effect on this district for decades to come we're finally bringing our district into like modern times the way our buildings the bathroom the plumbing a to z everything in there so obviously when the bottom referendum passed inflation was slowly increasing we didn't know it was going to get this bad fast forward look where we are now just to fill up your your car with gas you need a hundred bucks you go to the grocery store you grab two three items you're hitting a couple hundred dollars right there and for someone for anyone that's living on minimum wage or above minimum wage we just got to do the basic math a couple thousand dollars a month just to pay
117your rent to pay your bsng bill just to get a couple items in the house their paycheck is gone and for us to go knocking on the door saying hey we need a couple hundred more dollars i think that you know for us we have to be have a little empathy but i understand where you're coming from our district does need certain things obviously we are sure on certain aspects but as of now i think we just need to take in consideration where we are as a community and obviously plant like you said we have to plan for the future and i know mike mr shahada the whole business administration they understand you know it's it's very difficult when it comes to specifically finances there's never enough money life in general is always going to
118get more expensive it's just the way it is sadly that's how new jersey is by the time you know i know many people that got a pay raise they were excited about the pay raise but after inflation it's actually a paid cut in a way you're getting that two three percent pay raise you're excited about but inflation was uh eight almost ten percent now you're technically making less money and on top of that everything got more expensive and god knows what's going to happen you know our state our economy the way it is it's not looking too good right now and we just could only pray for the best and hopefully you know we head into the right direction soon because i don't know how long people can really take this okay who's next mr
119doctor danny then miss bassford before you speak thank you because i really value this discussion it's really really important and i thank you i just want to make sure that we understand what we're talking about so i just want to ask mr uc if he could tell us we we're throwing around numbers like what is a tax increase so mike what is a one percent tax increase what does that mean to the average person in clifton what's and then obviously we can calculate from there two percent three percent could you just explain what those numbers are sure to go really quick if that's okay um so our tax levy is 134 million dollars one point on that is approximately um 1.3 million so about like two 2.7 million is two percent um from the tax
120assessor's office a tax point is approximately five hundred fifty thousand dollars the average house in clifton from the tax assessor is a hundred seventy seven thousand five hundred so a one percent um tax levy increase on the average assessed house would be just short of forty three dollars or 350 a month two percent's 85 dollars or seven dollars a month and you can just go from there back up say that one more time because people were missing that say one more time sure tax increase sure yeah a tax increase on the average assessed household from the tax assessor's office one percent would be 43 a year 350 a month a two percent tax levy increase is eighty five dollars annual or seven dollars and change a month thank you and thank you mr smith dr
121danny okay well i just want to say first of all um we passed the largest referendum and you know just because someone did give you that money you know the taxpayers did approve that it's not like well great here's my wallet and i'm just going to keep giving you out money i work in education i know a lot of people that are educators a lot of people that are administrators and yes there are things that are needed there's the wish list you know if you had all the money in the world there's the things that um you want you need i've been in education for 20 years i've seen a lot of waste of money of taxpayer dollars and i think that you know i mean i'm just to say i think in tight times
122like this districts have to get creative you know maybe again um you know we've we did one thing right that the board does we hired a great superintendent and now i'm sure he's going to use those great powers that he has and think creatively out of the box you know what because tough times call for those people to stand up and say you know what listen you know maybe we need to get creative we need to think about it the city is you know toying around from what i understand increasing the taxes on that side then you have the referendum and then we increase it okay 44 dollars whatever but you know what you don't ever see oh you know what we're going to decrease your taxes never happens just goes up and up and
123up and i get it but you know what that doesn't mean that that's the way it has to be because somebody once said people said on the board just because it has it was like this doesn't mean it has to be you know what maybe it's time that the taxpayers who've been paying so much and there are a lot of older people who said yes we understand the structures and we'll pass the referendum we need this to get done yes okay but you know they're living on a fixed income and you know you can't expect to say well you know it's a 44 more and it's this and it's 44 and more and then 44 next year and 44 after and then that and and again i mean it's time to start thinking outside the
124box um it's interesting and i'm just going to say this not that this would happen here but in japan and just because it was brought up they have one custodian per school one one custodian you know what he cleans the bathroom and he replaces the little towel now i'm not i'm saying but you go into the schools it is immaculate and i know that parents probably wouldn't go for it like cleaning but there's nothing even to clean all this is is like dust they take a little rag at 2 30 they wet it and it's like literally like a machine it moved students move the desk to one side the other students just go along with their little rags then the other students move the desk back and they go and the school is meticulously
125clean i used to hold a detention and i used to have kids if they wanted to get out earlier they had to erase the desks with any graffiti that was on there you want to know something at the cleanest most spotless room because in terms of desk because the other kids police the kids don't you dare right on that desk because i'll be erasing that and that means i have to stay longer i mean i'm not saying there has to be some phys but maybe you know let's get out let's those kids in japan they had pride for that school there wasn't a rapper there wasn't anything there because they had i'm not saying that that would maybe work here but you know let's get creative maybe you know again we could do something we
126can a club can start up something about you know i know that a lot of times kids go oh the janitors will pick that up you know well that's why we have them here you know think out of the box tough times call for thinking out of the box and we've always i don't know people on this board a lot of times have said oh it's good to think out of the box let's not just do things the way we always did things i mean joe you know you started to fight a rally and you know what i mean look it got us somewhere so you know we need to start thinking out of the box i mean like you said uh mr daley and miss basford about you know um these schools and the
127amount of money and charter schools being held to i mean let's think out of the box you know let's be the leaders on that because we can't just keep saying well we need to do and believe me i'm the first one for education but we have a really good education that we provide our students here in clifton there are districts in the state of new jersey that get money thrown at them and they're not they're not good so throwing money is not necessarily let's let's think about this if money needs to go they're fine but again i can't in good conscience right now to have the largest referendum in the past to turn around and say well your taxes will go up on the city side have this referendum thank you very much and here
128you go a little bonus factor 44 dollars a month or seven dollars a month no like i'm sorry i can't um and that's all thank you you were next yes thank you um so um i have questions about the security personnel that you were referencing on that chart um i'm just going to ask going forward if we ever get a try i couldn't see it um it was all blurry i couldn't see over there i can't see i can't really see so if you could like maybe email us an addendum and we could pull it up on the on the screen that would be helpful because i can't reference it right now and i don't want to put it up there now what are these um positions going to be who are they going to
129be uh what what are the criteria that's one thing um second lucy speaking to your point maybe it's time that we sit down and sharpen the pencil uh um alan um we're people are hurting um where we work we haven't gotten a raise in three years no match to the 401k a lot of things they they cut everything out i think that maybe we have to go back to the drawing board and start cutting it um we all get phone calls from people i i emailed the president the vice president and uh the superintendent about something i heard and i was upset about it and it's anybody in this room that works in a position and if somebody was to come in earlier you know later than them and be paid more it's hurtful to
130those people that have been working so hard for us from years and to go back to what these people have done in the last year and and volunteered and did things in our district for our children and our own family members of employees it's hurtful and that's why i wanted to bring it to the attention of the board because there has to be a way we find money for everything here we found money for this beautiful facility right we're finding money for project graduation we're finding this money so why can't we find the money that we need for other things too as well i i think that's where the issue is i'm you know i don't sit on finance i've never been given the opportunity to do that i've never been sitting sit on a
131lot of different committees um so i would just like to um think that there is something we can do we have we have people in this community that want to donate their time to us we can call them in at certain times just to ask them their expertise on little things but i i'm just i'm i'm having a hard time alan with you as well because i'm i'm afraid i'm afraid we're going to be sucking swamp water in a year if we don't raise it i'm really i'm leaning that way too and uh you know it's i'm hearing four percent lucy on the other side this is what i'm hearing i couldn't make the um the uh budget meeting i wanted to go see it but it's i work on some saturdays so i do
132extra detail for some people that i help at work and i couldn't get there i wanted to listen to it and it's not televised so we can't we can't hear what's going on that side of the street affects this side of the street this side of the street that's that side street we're basically all one it comes together in one pot so i think that maybe we have to we have to sit back and and you know submit the budget because it has to be due tonight yes it's it's got to go tonight yes it does have to be voted on tonight however between now and may 5th right if the board has a revelation and tells me we want you to cut it five percent or we want to give raise taxes five percent
133we will be able to do that before may 5th so tonight i do really need you to vote to say yes that mr uzi can submit it but come may 5th we can make changes so my recommendation is because everybody is so passionate about this subject and i know you guys don't like to have special meetings but maybe we need to have a board special meeting about the budget and really dig into it and it has to be in public but maybe that's where everybody can go home get their ideas come back here and have input and maybe we can find a way i you know i i don't want to put any more stress on staff as it is now but i'd like to see maybe we can come up with some other alternatives
134and i still want my questions answered about the the security i'm i'm not on the committee i just heard that there was going to be six people i just saw that slide tonight so i just like a little bit more information so i can make an informed decision based on what you're telling me thank you okay uh roll call in the group mr abu drabo finance yes uh yes but i'm standing on f10 and f12 mr awad yes miss basford yes and abstain on 10. miss beltran yes mr konova yes i had a question about facilities facilities rentals over the summer i see that we have some listed there is that gonna affect anything we're doing with the referendum no are we working around that okay yes yes so yes dr danny yes mr paris
135yes vice president daley yes president smith yes motion carries okay we'll now move on to uh board member comments should i do this right miss bashford you're first all right because i have to go to the bathroom again sorry happens when you get old um i just want to thank the children at school five they sent me this very lovely packet um of thank yous from back from dr seuss day i got it last week i just want to thank you very much it was so sweet i actually keep all this stuff i have uh i have like a big big trunk and i and i keep it because you know what when i retire from this job maybe these are the things that i'm going to look back on and these are the moments
136that i'm going to treasure the most and uh i thank the children and the teachers and the staff effort school 5 for that um i got this in my packet a couple of weeks ago and i forgot to highlight this from uh this is from christopher columbus and it's from i'm sorry the eighth grade of christopher columbus both of them and this is from the seventh grade and this is from the eighth grade these are calendar books from from ccms and i think it's such a great thing that i have i'm bringing one to work and i took it down off my wall but i get to look at the beautiful artwork that some of the children have have made for us we have a lot of talent here in this district and if you
137um you can peruse this anybody wants to you know hit me up on social media i'll share it with you but it's just gorgeous and i think i want to thank uh i think it's jeff labriola and the staff um that are on here all the children are recognized it's just wonderful i mean every year we get this and these are the perks of the job and i thank him so if somebody can convey my utmost thanks to the staff and the students for this beautiful artwork i just like look at this how talented is that like really come on right okay so there's another thing that um i do on a daily basis i get to talk to students about their finances for going to school and going to uh um to college um
138this time of year there's a lot of scholarships that go unclaimed a lot so um i was looking at the um the website because i was trying to find a date on of the academic awards and i saw the scholarship page popped up and i remember when i was a hsa mom and i was hearing these kids i don't want to write a paragraph i don't want to fill out an application to some people are a book right some people collect that money they can go away on a special trip that the school is offering them that they don't have the money at home it's money that you don't have to pay back so get down to your local guidance counselor they should be your new bff and and say what do you have available
139sometimes they're cultural sometimes they're civic sometimes it's because of the color of your eyes it's all different kind of scholarships that it's just maybe take sometimes nobody applies and you're the only one that writes a paragraph and you get awarded that money don't walk run to your nearest guidance your school counselor and get corrected on that all time and and get down there and get that money because it makes a difference in your household especially now with inflation and everybody having all this different um funding issues in their own homes and some people not getting any raises and things like that come on people get down there and get that money it's it's there for the taking there's there's so many different groups in clifton that actually fund the students i'm telling you uh i
140know my own children did it and it it afforded them to do a couple things on their own that they will always remember um that's probably all i have i just want to thank everybody for speaking another request that i have is um maybe an executive session we can have a little bit more information about the uh the curriculum that the one uh gentleman brought up i'd like to dig into that a little deeper and have a little discussion um because i'm i'm confused about a couple things and i have some concerns as well because basically um the phrase of uh grooming and um i'm it's not sitting right with me i'm a little i'm a little ups i'm a little um disturbed about it but i'd like to discuss that in executive session because
141i think does it have to be in executives i'm not sure we can talk about that in executive session and by the way grooming is not in the guidelines right that's why i was that's an interpretation that was made by the gentleman okay so maybe we can have that next meeting we can have some uh some guidance on that from somebody from the district to explain to us what the actual curriculum is and uh how it's being delivered and what is being actually you know maybe some samples of how it's being taught like because that word really it just it really it just bothered me so and and obviously that's not a question for me because i don't do curriculum um nor do i play a curriculum director on television but um you understand again
142i just wanted that to be clear that that word grooming was um is not what was in there no i and i understand that because you know it does get discussed on other levels it's just that there are people out there tonight listening to that and they're saying hey what are you teaching our kids and in other districts there are groups that show up and really hammer the boards on subjects like this as well so before it blossoms into the mushroom cloud can we clear that up as well that's my research if it's okay with mr smith i'd i'd like to ask our curriculum expert to address that tonight briefly she's ready she's always ready she's always ready she's the best she's the brightest she's one of the most brilliant people i've ever known in
143my entire life and i wouldn't put her on the spot if i didn't think she already knew um i will tell you this before mrs kusalevich speaks this is not um something that we didn't anticipate right this is something that's been talked about um at the state level um issues in the news other boards we do have a couple parent nights planned uh in may where we're going to have form so that we can explain what it really is and what it means for their for your children uh but having said that i think janina if you don't mind could you just give a brief overview of what the new standards are and how they relate to work excuse me mr dr robert as you can if those paranoids if we can attend like i
144won't sit with anybody because i really want to hear what i want to hear it at that level what the parents are hearing i want to hear what so i can so maybe if the conversation comes from a member of the community i can explain it eloquently like that because i don't want to touch it right now with the 10-foot public because i'm absolutely based on what i'm hearing tonight i think we'll need to do a presentation for the board okay thank you okay so these 2022 these 2020 standards which are being implemented in september of are a revision of the 2014 standards and while some of the changes do appear controversial particularly when you read the news articles or listen to newspapers the standards are still being presented in by our own teachers in
145a developmentally and age appropriate manner i think what makes people very nervous is that you have medically accurate terminology for biological processes as the forefront and core of this new curriculum medically accurate terminology is utilized but with topics that were already in the 2014 standards and the main goal is promoting health safety and prevention of diseases we will be having those two the first two um presentations in may which are being done by the rutgers university where a lot of this work has been done those will be virtual um there will be a town hall forum online where parents can ask their questions at the same time we are looking at something deeper should it be necessary uh when we get towards august into september our teachers themselves are being trained because this is not
146an indoctrination this is simply meant to be medically factual terminology utilized to promote health safety and the prevention of disease okay thank you mr canova you're next uh good evening first i just want to congratulate our teacher mr john o'reilly uh that was that was a great story that dr robert tosie shared we all have our teacher that you know made a difference in our life and the fact that he was able to impact not only a current our current clinton high students but also one that's you know up and coming i think that's an amazing feat i was at the strings concert yesterday my daughter participated in it so i'm a little biased and saying that you know it was great but uh i will also add that when she started last year it
147was during covet and everything was virtual so all the instrumentation was done virtual and then this year parts of it virtual and then you know opened um and just in those couple of years you know they did a great job and and you see all the students that they did an amazing job and to do that in a virtual environment i think is really telling as to how hard they work um and how how much the teachers really care about the kids and they really push them to do their best so that's a testament to the things that we do here um just want to talk for a second a little bit about budget and kind of about that that charter school um issue we were talking about earlier so as i said earlier a
148two percent increase would cover the the charter school um so if there was a flat budget that would mean that we would have to go out to the taxpayers this year in order to fund that there had been years in the past where we didn't have anything i was on the other side of that podium when i heard about the the issues and and you know worked with funding groups uh we we pulled out billboards and we had billboards around town we you know had marches and rallies and finally they started at least giving us the the funding that we deserve um so yes and that's an unfortunate part of our history that we've gone so many years being underfunded i would say you know maybe close to a billion dollars at this point you
149know it's been at least 15 years 50 000 or 50 million dollars but now it is moving in the other direction and now that we did receive 12 million dollars i know myself personally when i was talking about getting our referendum done 168 million dollars that i was saying by us doing that that means that the things that we would have had to do this year to fix those things and keep them operational we won't have to do so a lot of money that may have been budgeted for that we won't need so i know we're you know we're redoing all the bathrooms we're doing some auditoriums we're doing all these things all the money that you would have put towards fixing those things and maintaining them in their current condition for the 50-plus years
150that they've been there we don't have to do so i think there's a little bit of trade-off there um and and as everyone said you know i don't want to you know wait spend a lot of time on this but you know we are in a time right now where everyone's very pushed to the limit on many things on inflation on gas on and people are struggling so for me it's not a no it's a no for now i know these are the things that we need and we need to get there but i in my right mind i could never vote for that to happen at this moment so that's why you know i sided with with the rest of my colleagues um and one thing that our audience member said he said if
151if you can't see it you can't be it and that resonated with me because i have a lot of college students that come into college and they don't know what they want to do they have an undeclared field of study and i love that idea of showing kids earlier what what what is out there right they go into college and say i want to be a lawyer they'd study this and that and then it doesn't really work out and they change and they do something else until they find their their path the earlier we show them the path the better off they are so i think um dr roberto that's something that we that we could look into that'd be amazing thank you okay dr danny you're next um i'd like to say thank you
152to all of the speakers congratulations to mr o'reilly uh blessed ramadan though celebrating and um happy birthday to my daughter tara thank you uh next we have mr paris thank you uh congratulations to mr o'reilly for the educator of the year award um i also attended the all city concerts and uh like my colleagues was a fantastic evening they really showcased the talent we have here in clifton um also went to the the play the the pit crew the stage crew the actors the av crew it was just a phenomenal as dr roberto pointed out off-broadway kind of experience i also attended with my granddaughter the breakfast with belle which was one of the best deals on earth uh to be able to have a character breakfast which at disneyland probably would have cost you
153over a hundred dollars uh i think it cost us ten dollars uh and it was wonderful the act the they were in costume they were in enroll they're fantastic so we really enjoyed it and thank you to uh i believe the stepnesskeys really arranged a lot of that thank you to them um also to mr analytic who spoke earlier i think that's a fantastic idea to use some high school leaders whether they be academic uh or athletic or in the arts as some inspiration to elementary schools maybe that's something that can be done as uh some some um my thinking of auditorium uh presentations also the idea of the college alumni reaching out to to sophomores because there is a lot to be done that they don't realize and it gives them some real world
154and current experience of how to get into college what it's like and how to help make some of those decisions along the way as far as the the budget goes my inquiry was primarily motivated not from a lack of belief or empathy for the taxpayers i have family and taxpayers that are in similar situations with limited incomes it was really because i wasn't a party to the committee and i didn't see a lot of detail in the minutes and this is a rather large budget to digest and not having known what i don't i didn't know what we gave up i didn't know what the importance might have been of what was given up in this budget to maintain a zero percent increase um so i i appreciate my colleagues comments and their decisions but
155that was really the inquiry it was really to open that discussion uh and i appreciate your your input on that thank you mr abu jabo thank you mr president uh just bear with me because yep obviously i lost my voice um the things that have happened already uh the old city band old city stringers my colleagues have said were phenomenal i'm sorry to the band but i enjoy the strings a little more um because we i guess we don't get to see them that often uh the palestinian palestinian american community center wanted to give our thanks um to our board members who are attending our superintendent um a lot of our students were clifton students were a part of it um and you know it was great to see them within their own uh realm
156of clifton high school that you know obviously it's their home the district is their home um to showcase for the community what their their background their culture is all about mr o'reilly to me it's more than a congratulations educator of the year i've gotten to know you over uh the past year and a half or so two years during diversity committee which by the way we need a diversity committee um so we can have that um couple fundraisers coming up hca school eleven mr cupcakes fundraiser uh ends march 30th if you want to reach out to femina parham um couple if you're beefsteak fans and some sort of back normality uh baseball booster club may 21st uh over at the athenia post 7 pm you can reach out to rosa rogers on that the football
157booster club may 6 7 p.m boys and girls club you can reach out to linda cenary or lindsay sincu lacrosse booster club i believe just finalized last night april 22nd boys and girls club also you can reach out to luncineri or anybody else on the booster club um so talking about really speaking really quick about the east side of town and rough times um and just clifton in general assembly when brady timberlake um and dr robertosi i'm gonna connect you with one of her staff members um they'll be running a program for clifton residents for free produce produce and meat to residents that need it um they're shooting for next week to do that actually they just call me this morning try to connect them some organizations and i did in my own personal um
158civilian capacity um and i did so and they will be um contacting and partnershiping up with the boys and girls club with um executive director bob foster and as well as executive director ronnie mustafa from the palestine america community center since they're on the east side of lakeview ave and they serve not just the arab community but also the latino community their targets will be the east side of town and anyone that is impacted and is in need in the city of clifton dr robertson as i mentioned i'm going to try to connect you with um with one of the staff members she asked we consistently through the district i told that's not my capacity so i'll connect you via email tomorrow with her so you can handle that aspect um can i continue no
159okay uh as miss as she said no but dr danny almost said miss danny uh said happy ramadan so it's been a tradition past six years in clifton and i'm thankful to our diverse uh multifaceted community of city of clifton in supporting the the this is the sixth year doing a clifton annual ramadan lighting if anybody has seen it it's the fenus uh which is a lantern on city hall this year it's gonna be march 28th at 6 45 p.m city hall lawn this year um the islamic center for state county will be honoring 2022 muslims in service from education and many of them are clifton residents if not working clifton um from education to public safety to civil advocacy and various things to show the importance of how our clifton residents are um you
160know serving our community by community i don't mean the muslim community i mean the clifton at large community uh and then the last thing i have is well two things actually sorry um i noticed that we're not going to wrap it up i noticed that excuse me i noticed that um as a recommendation and a reminder for handicap accessibility uh ramps when people are um students are honored that we have some sort of accessibility for either parents or siblings somebody in their families it would be helpful and you know i'll wrap it up there thank you thank you mr awad i am not forgotten today i feel i feel special i love using president smith of course um i just wanted to congratulate um mr o'reilly um you know uh dr danny when you were
161telling us uh the story of how uh an educator affects a student in such a positive way it just brings me back i think the one teacher that stuck with me from this district i'm not sure if she's still in the district was mrs francisco she was my third grade teacher in school three she was this energetic italian-american woman she had beautiful red curls and you know she just had this energy and it was just so positive just i used i was so excited to go to school just to go to her class because every single day she would pull a surprise from where how when you never knew but you just knew that being in her class it was just going to be memories laughter she was such a great teacher honestly one of
162the most patient human beings i ever met so i do know how educators do have a positive impact um besides that uh yesterday was my first time going uh i was lucky enough to attend the all city strings concert i was honestly mind blown i just to see the elementary students perform first i i had a difficult time to believe those were elementary students because they sounded like professionals and working your way from the middle school to the high school was just in such crazy times it was so peaceful to listen to that you know that beautiful music that they put and honestly some of the music had nice speech and i was kind of bumping to it i was enjoying it i know they did a song from toy story and for some reason
163the movie was just playing in my head all night after that to the point where i think i'm going to go watch toy story tonight they did a phenomenal job to the staff to teachers you know i know they spent endless hours and they're trying to you know there's such a short period of time of practice the dedication i think i want my little one hopefully she allows it to probably play the violin um besides that you know just moments like that yesterday just you know having the community all back in the room just felt so weird from the past couple years but you know covered and quarantined just just having the community out just everybody having such a great time it was just positive vibes you know just seeing parents so proud of their
164children and smiling it kind of felt like we're going back to a normal state hopefully it stays like that we can attend many great events um to uh yeah that's pretty much it i love clifton i love all you guys that's pretty much it you guys have a good night thank you miss beltran okay so i'm just like to say that i'm really happy that we were able to have so many healthy discussions today as a board um we haven't really been able to do that as of late uh probably say for like the last year but tonight we had discussions over like three or four different things and we were all able to go around the room and we were respectful to each other no one shouted out a turn and everyone waited it
165was so i'm just really proud of everybody including myself that we all you know followed decorum and we were able to have discussions and nobody attacked mr paris even though he had a dissenting opinion uh we all like you know i'm saying historically you know it would have been a little bit more heated but it was like everyone kept their cool and had their own alkaloids i'm not sure accolades i'm not sure it's english second language issue with that word um so i'd also like to thank the speakers from the public for coming now we're starting to get a lot of speakers in the public that are coming to educate us on things that maybe we didn't know was happening like i wasn't aware that the um that uh state policy about sexual education was
166changing and it hasn't changed in 10 years i think janina said um so i think that was you know he's bringing things to a tension that we we wouldn't normally have been aware of and um to poor mr oozy one day i hope in my lifetime for you that will accept your budget because i know you do a lot of work and you bring it and you're so excited and you're like this is the budget and you come to the last slide and you're like and okay and you always like want to like close out the meeting but unfortunately every single time we just stare back at you like okay well that was a nice show so i don't know if it's gonna happen in my lifetime or your lifetime but i hope for your
167sake that you do because i know you put a lot of hours into presenting us a budget that's a dream and i hope one day that the economy is doing amazing and we're able to say yes the six percent tax increase is no problem rubber stamp um but until then i appreciate that you work with us when we staunchly say no um and i think that's all i have for tonight i do have something for new business um but that's all i have for board member comments thank you okay mr vice president daily thank you mr president um again first of all congratulations to mr o'reilly and i look forward to seeing him get his award at that's one of my along with graduation and some other things that's i try to attend that i
168don't think i've missed it unless there was a covid issue but i think i've gone to to your dinner which is always great it's it's a great time for everybody again the [Music] display by at the high school with the play and the uh city band the city orchestra was just phenomenal uh and uh it's it's really a testament to the staff we have here at the clifton board of education from the top to bottom they do such a good job with our students and uh there to be congratulated um we can't give bonuses that's against the law but you deserve we could do some accolades for you folks you do a great job and of course the talent is there and the kids you you as a teacher that's what you bring out you
169there's a lot of a lot of students have different everybody has something different to offer and what the magic of a teacher is is able to bring that out and i get that in space i absolutely understand that um again thank you to our student representative tiffany today and mr brunswick mr tiffany analick and uh good to see him back here i haven't seen him in a while but uh his his words were very well received by me um just very briefly on the budget um there are those in the public who say oh you ca you've had surpluses and you need to cut cut cut this through that anybody who tells you we need to because you've had a circle you you have to have a surplus to the budget you have to have
170a cushion that's bad budgeting if you budget to the penny so if something goes off off the rails you're done for it so um there is always a yin and yang and um you know that's our job to make sure you mr yusi doesn't get too enthusiastic about what he puts for it but i know it's it's a lot of hard work and it's a lot of effort and i've been through many of them but there's a balance and i i brought up the business about services because i know there's people in the public oh you got to cut to the penny cut that is ridiculous the administration might not get everything they want but that you folks know how to budget and and um and it's not just that's not a flaw in the
171process it's it's to be encouraged because that's what you need to do um we've gone up in our we're allowed to do surpluses now of four percent instead of two percent uh of course tech schools county schools were able to do uh six percent we're still not there but that gives us some question too and last item on security the administration is talking about some personnel however i want to remind everybody that in the referendum there's a big component of that referendum is security we all understand what our needs are here and that's why i went in whole hog on the big number you know go big or go home we needed to do it was the right opportunity we needed it was the right opportunity both from fiscally and what we what our needs
172were so uh i'm not i i far from turning deaf ear to what's needed in this district but there is a time and a way to do everything and there is a big component in in the security which was needed here in that referendum so with that everybody have a good night and leave it to you mr president thank you mr daley uh i think the concerts that the kids held are um were tremendous uh just to put that all together culminating with our wonderful uh mustang band at the first concert um you know it's so proud to see that that is the showcase of the newark northeast the showband um i don't think there's anyone any better than uh our our band and uh mr stefaneski does a great job but i really want
173to thank the the teachers led by our supervisor jason leshowitz and all the teachers that that were able to put those kids on performance and how great they were um it just was it really makes it worthwhile on being on this board and seeing a program that like that come out so well that you're proud of the programs that you back and you approve going into the budget just briefly um over the years and i can't sit here and and correct those mistakes um but whenever you go to a zero increase at some point that's going to catch up to you um and again knowing let's say we didn't get that increase from the from the state this year we'd be going out asking you for money just for the charter schools after you take
174that 12 million and you break it down we really only got another 3 million so while 3 million is better than none um but i you know i i kind of always relied on the people that do this day in and day out and rely on them to tell us hey this is what we need to have a thorough and efficient education um and then there's other stuffs that are the wish list the items that hey it'd be nice to have this in our classrooms but it's it's not going to hinder on having a thorough and efficient education um ms kusalevich tremendously explained to us that majority of the items in the budget for the increase are educational items they're educational teachers um esl so much in the educational in the in the um educational
175teaching area um that's being asked um so mr paris i too uh you know i rely on these people to tell us this is what we need to run an efficient school system and as long as that is not outrageous in its in its numbers um i rely on them and we we always say and we stand up here well we hired a superintendent to do a job and we we like respect his opinion when we hire people and when we do different moves and things like that but then when it comes to the budget we basically are saying well too bad you know we don't rely on you i got to think that this guy is not going to come forward and put a budget together that's going to hurt people and i have
176to rely on that mr lucy's a number guy again i don't think he's going to present to the board something that's outrageous that um that this board should not be uh looking into so i rely on these guys and at the time that they do not put forward that those type items to us then that's when i get concerned but right now i'm not concerned i think they have legitimate items and issues that maybe could have been corrected four or five budget budgets ago um but at some point when you go to a z you know first of all education is not cheap people it is not cheap and with we all know with a good educational system our property values increase the sales of your house has increased those are all things that you
177know about and nobody up here on this board wants to hit taxpayers um so we're kind of we're kind of in in a very difficult position we want to offer our kids the very best may not be the elite it may not be school districts that have everything but i think our kids should at least have some of the best our kids deserve that and the public told us that when they went out to the referendum that they believed in those things and again i'm not criticizing previous boards but had they done some of those things over the years we wouldn't have had to go out for 168 million dollar reform so we're coming back with catch up to things um renovating bathrooms that haven't been renovated in a hundred years i mean again if
178they had taken some bathrooms along the way we wouldn't have been here asking for all the bathrooms to be redone to all the bathrooms to be ada capable so i think this board has to really look hard here to rely on our experts to say this is what we need for a thorough and efficient education and see where that goes i understand people are hurting no one wants to put at any time sitting up here no board member would say yeah i love a tax increase hit him with more you know nobody here wants to do that but we're elected to represent you the people in putting the best possible thorough efficient education for your kids and that's what we have to do by by taking our oath of office so while we're going to
179look at this budget um while we ask the administration to go back and see where they can cut when i asked miss kusalevich that at the meeting she said you can't those things are those things are needed they should have been in they should have been in years ago they have to start getting implemented now so we have to look at that carefully and um well i know people are hurting um but i also know that this town very much supports education they told us that last year and i just hope that we could all be open-minded um and not just not think of that zero increase uh and rely on these experts to come to us uh because we all just said it we have one of the best superintendents if not the best
180superintendent and he would not be a best superintendent if he's coming to a board and asking them for outrageous things or outrageous increases that's how i feel um we should be supporting our uh our administrative staff and mr usi and mr shahada to your team for putting together this budget as um um mr paris said i mean it's a huge binder it is a huge budget so to be able to put something like that together your office did a lot of of work on it we appreciate that so i know the sport is going to do the best thing and the right thing and i hope the public will understand that we are going to work hard on this budget um and um miss password i like your idea that uh of of a meeting
181um but there is a meeting on may 5th but i'm not that's to approve it totally yes okay so may we i'll look at the calendar and we can set up a meeting if people have uh questions on the full budget to to go through that um mr o'reilly again thank you for your great accomplishments um it truly is an honor to have a teacher like you um and to the pack uh they had pac night on saturday and uh thank you very much for the uh the invite and allowing me to see all the great work that they do in their in their organization so thank you one thing i am a little shocked at or not happy about is mr lama when you came up and said the the schools aren't dirty um
182i've always credited clifton for having a hundred year plus schools and that our schools looked so great that our staff did a tremendous job and look making them look great i don't like when someone comes up to the microphone says our schools are dirty i don't like that and if that means we have to move people around or whatever our schools are not going to be dirty and i assure you that we will look into that that administration will surely look into that and uh schools are going to be clean so um on that note uh we'll move on to uh new business miss uh beltran you said you had an item ah yes i did have an item um so i'm not sure if any of the other board members have uh made this
183observation but our current committee system doesn't seem to be functioning as it used to um i did a brief count we've only had nine committee meetings in three months some people have only gone to one meeting so that doesn't really to me show the board that's working together with the administration uh to work on issues that are coming up it's it's almost impossible that there's been no personnel issues in three months uh or that there's only been one facilities meeting when we used to meet every two weeks there's been no diversity means been no athletics meeting there's been no personnel no transportation and the we just cancelled a residency meeting because they said there was nothing new to present which is fine and on within the right to say that there's nothing new to present
184but in the past there's always been these meetings so i'm just wondering if we're better off going to maybe to a committee of a whole so that we all get to participate in some of these discussions because there's some of us like i'm not sure if mr parris i think he might have only gone to one meeting three so he's gone to three meetings and some of us some of the other members have gone to all nine so it's just a little lopsided i think that some board members just because of where they're placed on committees have way more influence than other board members meanwhile we all have the same power so to speak um sorry i open it up to the board members to see if anyone else feels the same way um but
185i just know historically we used to have a lot more board meetings a lot more committee reports at each meeting yeah so if if you uh remember at the last uh i guess it was about a week ago or week and a half ago i asked everyone uh to submit um a date for their next meeting um and then i was presenting that to administration uh it wasn't it wasn't i think so many people try to accommodate everybody and with schedules and everything you're not going to accommodate everybody and there's plenty of board members that can fill in on committees so you just have to set a date um i think residency and security theirs is always the last week in the month right the last thursday so it's always that at that week and
186and they've been meeting cons consistently um the others i think they were waiting on dates and waiting for people to get back to them the chairs just have to set dates and that's what i asked uh with that email and if there weren't dates set we set them with administration so um i agree with you there haven't been a lot of meetings um i agree facilities used to meet at least once or twice um i i you know i've been getting comments that well there's nothing to discuss there's no me in a district this size there's nothing to discuss in the committee um not acceptable on my end so uh i've i've spoken to dr robitozzi on this um we will again be asking everyone to set a date um so let's say you want
187to meet on the second tuesday of every month and we're going to send that out education will meet on the second tuesday of every month this uh security and residency meets on the last thursday of the month so everyone knows that those are the set dates for those committing meetings and if by chance there is nothing to discuss an administration comes and needs to cancel that meeting we can discuss it at that time but at least that meeting is set and even if it's a meeting that lasts a half an hour i just cannot believe in a district this size that there's nothing to discuss on a monthly basis on certain topics yes just to make clear diversity hasn't met because it is run by the administration uh it's not a board it's a it's
188not a board run committee um it's actually run by the administration so we're waiting on dates from that and i believe mr smith you told me or was it you mr awad told me that athletic was canceled twice because the aed couldn't make it um so we got to figure our way around that as well while i give agree with ms beltran that we need to figure a better way that if an administrator can't make it that we have somebody in their place just like how if a board member can't make it somebody can replace as well but to say that we haven't had certain committee meetings i think it's not fair um to some board members and chairs when not to point fingers but the administration side hasn't been able to come to the
189table you know i wasn't blaming the board i'm just saying that you know if some people can go to five meetings and then other people have gone to maybe two i don't think that's necessarily fair just because of where we're assigned on committees i mean i was previously assigned to committees that met on a regular basis and now i've been put on committees that don't meet at all which is you know fine but i just feel my position as a board member has been diminished because i'm no longer on these committees um which you know is very upsetting to me that you know for no apparent reason i've been i've been uh replaced or removed so i just felt like if everyone was on all the committees maybe none of us would have this feeling
190uh especially if there isn't that much to present a committee of a whole meeting might only be like two hours long which is much shorter than our regular meetings that's just you know my opinion if the bulk of the meetings are going to be finance facilities and that's it um you know maybe if we had a committee of a whole it would be a two second presentation from athletics and a two second presentation from residency and then we could go on to the other the other groups that have more to present that's that was just what i was bringing up in new business mr daley yes thank you mr president um there's uh something to be said for and against a committee of the whole when i was president i set up a committee of
191the whole and basically what it was was one meeting of the month was in essence an agenda meeting uh which you discussed all the issues and then when you went to your regular meeting it was maybe an hour at the best and but just like we had that discussion about the budget today that's when those are you can get into the nitty-gritty details and hear information so uh and when i was a department head in union county i had at the agenda meeting i had to get up and say the department of economic development would have five items or whatever it is and explain what was going on to the entire freeholder board and it works but there's also something to be said for individual committees so i've always had an open mind technically the
192uh committee of the whole is still in the in the policy it never was changed but you know but you know i think that's something the board should discuss so because there is positive and negatives to both things mr president yes okay so for the person for so what i'm hearing from you and i'm and i'll speak for you and i speak for myself but what i'm hearing is you feel like you're not included that's basically the bottom line right because this is the parent this is parent judy coming out mama judy um dana that has been my life for the last 11 years i don't feel like i'm uh completely a part of this board never did okay i bounced off of policy and i'm going to tell the comm i'm going to tell
193the community why i was policy chair for about eight years i've never complained to anybody about being on policy i complained that when before dr roberto was here we never moved policies we had 45 or 40 something plus policies that we didn't move i don't know why but you know it was very difficult to work with people that don't but you know get along with you and they think that you have this ulterior motive to pass these policies but they were mandated by the state but we never moved them so unbeknownst to me dr will become tells you come in i have echo i don't know what's going on um he comes in and we get the policy book moved and everything right so i sit on policy and i am a nut but for
194compliance i really love it okay this year was placed under a certain board member that i do not i can't work with legally i can't work with him my own personal attorney has told me to stay away for obvious reasons okay and i into fairness of the committee i bounced off as much as i loved that work i gave it up for the for the good of the whole right now policies will change and i'll vote according to how i feel they're if they're good enough for the district because i don't look at it as it being a political policy i look at it how does it affect children how does it affect the staff how does it affect the taxpayers how does it affect this board as a whole that's how i pass policy
195where is it going to be good or bad for the district that's the bottom line okay i couldn't do it i pounced off of education for the same reason so i'm only on one committee i'm on an hsa committee he's not really a committee it's not the robotization committee so i can't set a date because it's i'm under his his leisure so i'm really not involved so i'm taking my time and i'm getting involved more with my state and my county my county um responsibilities and i'm i'm bringing the stuff back to the board like i did tonight county i would prefer com uh committee of the whole i always did because then i would feel like i'm involved in this this board i would feel like i am a part of this board in
196the decision-making process and that my voice would be heard i asked a question tonight about security i didn't get my answer so i'm gonna have to call the superintendent tomorrow and bother all right i have to make a decision on this budget based on their their their what they're telling me but i don't have the data to make the decision so that's i would prefer committee the whole i think maybe we should even just try it and give it a and give it a go and like the pilot for the people coming in on the tv if it doesn't work we ain't get president smith mr awad yeah i just want to make things clear i understand some board members may have personal issues or personal recommendations from lawyers but if we're able to sit
197in a room together with a meeting and all be cultural cordial or be respectful for the sake of our district because that's why we're here elected we're not here elected because and we're not going to harm the public because personal beef or personal issues or personal lawyers if we're able to be in a room together and have great discussions from last night i know all our committee meetings are virtual so i don't get how anybody could be uncomfortable being behind the screen i think it's just we can come up with excuses why we don't want to work with other people but at the same time we're only affecting the students and staff and i don't think the students and staff in our district really care what our personal beliefs or issues are with one another
198they care about getting results because at the end of the day it's the students that get affected and we need to keep that in mind we got to be bigger adults you know sometimes emotions get high totally understand it but all our committees even if we do an all committee that means we're all going to be present in a way so being able to attend that you can attend other committees for other issues it's sometimes we just got to take the higher road because it's for the students that's what we're here for we have the right intentions let's keep the ball going but to come up with any other excuses we're just affecting the students at the end of the day we just gotta always keep that sometimes you know me miss beltram might have
199disagreements but you know we discuss we talk you know we do our thing at the end of the day me and majority of the board members we always agree that students first district first how can we help our administration and let's keep that on the back of our mind mr smith i felt that the meetings would have been not appropriate for the for the staff to be sitting through argument after martin that's why i bounced off i'm being honest i i did that for a reason because i wanted the meetings to be productive in those committee meetings i'm going to sit there and argue i have a police report filed against me i have a cease and desist letter filed against me by these people would you want to sit in a room and discuss
200things with them i feel comfortable in the committee of the hole we're doing it now excuse me i'm speaking i have the floor i feel comfortable in this setting because we have an attorney here we have the superintendent here i have committee uh people here as well i feel more comfortable i won't feel comfortable the other way i'm allowed to say that i'm a 62 year old woman who don't feel comfortable being in a committee meeting with certain people what's wrong with that but we're virtual mrs besser so so i'm i'm going to interject if i may hear mr president um because i think that we're we're like going to a different path from the original question the original topic which ms beltran brought under new business which is that she would like the board
201to return to committee of the hall with all due respect to all of the different opinions so i think we should go back to that conversation so i make a motion that we go back to committee the whole 0-1-6-0 so excuse me one second i miss bastard i'm just taking a look to see because you'd have to yeah you have to have a resolution to go i think you'd have to go have a resolution to go back because there is a board policy or 160 i think you cited it already um to have a committee of the whole you don't i don't know how you went back to just board committees but i suspect that it was with a resolution so i think you need a resolution to go back to the committee of the
202whole and obviously a board vote a board vote but wouldn't a motion and a second and then discussion uh constitute the creation of a resolution so it would it would but it's a resolution that's not on the agenda so it's one of those if somebody objects then you'd have to have uh two-thirds of a vote of the whole board so just so that we're clear on what the process is mr president yes mr daley this is my suggestion to the board um just simply to go back i think we should sit down as a board and uh on a deliberative matter and i don't think we have the time or effort or energy to do it tonight and discuss just how that would work amongst ourselves like i said i kind of have a i
203had when i had it i had a kind of a hybrid it was a an agenda meeting and then there was a regular board meeting which we you know there was still a regular board meeting uh and you had sometimes the committees do play a role so i think we need to talk and hash that out and not just i'm not like i said i have a very open mind about the whole thing but i i think we need to have a little fuller discussion just how that would work and uh and if you're okay with that i'm okay with that jim but you have a board member you have two board members that's telling you quite honestly we're being honest right now with each other that we don't feel included that's that's that's a
204major red flag well i'm not i'm not just disagreeing with that i'm just saying how how do we get and if you're going to move you want to get just not in my opinion just jump on it you need to just think about and maybe shave around the edges and i i don't like i said i'm not totally against the idea and you know when i when i had the chair i did things a little bit differently but everybody every president does the things a little bit differently but i just want the board to everybody needs to understand how it's going to work and and fit in and how we transform into that so i think it takes a little bit more discussion about what the expectations would be and how it's set up and
205how it's run uh before you know so i'm i'm not against what you're asking for but i think we just need to have a whole fuller discussion a little bit more time where we can focus on that small question with this committee because i see where miss beltran's coming i don't disagree with you i think it's a good idea i never knew something like that could happen that there was a policy but would a would a committee like this be virtual or would it be in person and my second question is it'll be in person i don't care it would run just like this with no votes well just wrong with me just no votes okay i just don't i just don't see the difference where i'm saying if this committee was not to exist
206and for us to just be in other communities with other people virtually how that differentiates comfort levels but okay mr president uh there are a lot of boards that do committee the whole they do the one meeting they do they do their business meeting and then the next meeting in two weeks is um their work session uh it's very successful because everybody's involved in it everybody has input the work session meeting is very long it's lengthy but it's a designated board meeting it has to be because there's more than five so it has to be a public meeting right so the work session meeting is the same thing as the committee of the whole need and it's right it's a meeting that just like every other meeting there would be public advertising there's advertisement of
207it you have to have public comment um um and just just just that no action is taken the agenda is set for the next for the regular board meeting so what tends to happen i think somebody said it earlier committee of the whole meeting tends to be pretty long and then the regular board meeting is short okay so we'll put that on resolution for next meeting sure resolution on the next agenda okay okay so it's not going to committee yeah there's no what's the policy it's about policy oh that's true could go to policy yeah we'll go to policy first yeah but let's say a policy wants to look at it and re-revise it or whatever should go to committee first so no resolution yeah no right so until you hear from policy right so
208mr president um so i understand both sides i'm kind of in the middle on this um i would have questions like i know residency and security a lot of things we talk about isn't necessarily topics for for public consumption so i'd have a lot of questions around things like that or even in technology we talk about security cameras or there's there's always we could have executive okay any anything that is um confidential uh anything that involves students anything that involves personnel anything that involves um security those things there is an executive session and those would be discussed in executives small question um and i'm not advocating one way or the other just i'm just answering questions just uh just clarification maybe president smith or darlese uh if our committees are not public in general just
209a regular committee meetings that we have instead of having a separate date for a whole committee shouldn't we just do it in executive session have like every meeting and exactly that doesn't work like that oh you can't okay i'm sorry the reason why your committee meetings are not in public is because you don't have a quorum right it's less than a quorum as soon as you have five or more then it has to be in public so there may be some things that you're discussing in committees that you would be able to discuss in public but you don't because it's not a regular meeting it's it's there's not a core there are things that are discussed in certain committees that cannot be discussed in public personnel student issues etc those things you would discuss in
210executive session all right so we'll send this to policy and we'll come back to the board all right um motion for executive session uh we're going into executive session for uh personnel matters and uh contract matter action may or may not be taken um we estimate uh oh 20 minutes uh it's nothing bad we don't have a so uh between 30 and 45 minutes uh hopefully the board will be back hopefully back out motion to uh executive session by mr abigail seconded by mr awad any objection thank you okay we're good please yeah return from exactly here mr abdullah is here miss bassford miss beltran here mr canova here understanding left mr paris vice president daley president smith here we have a quorum okay the board met an executive session to discuss personnel matters and
211a contract matter we do have a resolution to present whenever you're so i guess ready have to do it twice so it's going to be 0.50 20 20. and then the first feature is a resource room as well okay ready first resolution is resolved that the clifton board of education accepts the recommendation of the superintendent of schools to grant 12 additional sick days to be paid in 24 half-day increments to employee id 50-2021 2020. oh 2020 yeah i'm sorry we're in 2022. doesn't know what they said i'm sorry i thought i said 20. let's start that over resolve that the clifton board of education accepts the recommendation of the superintendent of schools to grant 12 additional sick days to be paid in 24 half-day increments to employee id number 50-2022 resource room teacher school number
21212 effective is it today tomorrow march 25th 2022. motion on the floor second by mr abu dhabi second by mr awad discussion see none roll call mr mr every java mr awad yes misspell miss bassford miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr d uh vice president daley and president smith yes all right next question the next resolution is resolve that the clifton board of education accepts the recommendation of the superintendent of schools to grant 12 additional sick days to be paid in 24 half-day increments to employee id number 51-2022 bsi teacher school number five effective uh march 25th 2022. someone by mr abu drabo second by mr rawad discussion seeing none roll call mr abu drabo mr owen yes miss password ms beltran yes mr kenova vice president daley president smith yes motion carries hey
213motion to adjourn by mr abu drabbo second by mr awad seeing no objection adjourned thank you all goodnight everybody you