March 3, 2022 - Clifton Board of Education Meeting

001okay good evening everyone and welcome to our newly renovated board of education meeting room this is where the board of education will meet each month twice a month to conduct our board business i'd like to open the uh regularly scheduled meeting of the clifton board of education for march the 3rd if you'd all now please rise right please rise for a um salute to our flag and then please remain standing for a uh a brief moment of 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 for all if we'd all just please take a moment in silence to think about and pray for peace in our world peace for the people of ukraine play for

002their safety for the safety of all those affected by this that we remember them and our many employees in our district from ukrainia that our thoughts and prayers are with them please join me in a moment of silence thank you roll call please yes mr president mr abu drabo here mr awad here miss basford here miss beltran mr canova here miss dr danny mr paris here vice president daley president smith here we have a quorum uh a mission statement mr kanova please the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with quality education to develop skills necessary to be literate life-long 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

003open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight okay tonight we have uh some special recognition um we have our february and march students of the month from clifton high school so

004my fellow commissioners we can start with i guess we could just start everyone has a presentation right so we can just start go around i don't know what you have that's what i said so you go first thank you mr president uh our first student which happens to be on the list is uh freshman william youssef for the month of february william youssef is our freshman student of the month william's favorite subject is english because she has always excelled in that subject and enjoys reading novels because they can be a healthy distraction from the real world william appreciates all of her teachers at chs because they continue to teach her new lessons in and outside the classroom and for that she is thankful williams parents inspire her the most in life and she thanks them

005for their unwavering support and guidance would william and her family please join us [Applause] watch your step folks okay judy if i forget you you warn him congratulations [Applause] [Music] he wants me to do it all right number two is uh you know what no he wants just to go person by person yeah um senior rohan desai rohan sai is our senior student of the month for the month of february ron's favorite subject is statistics because he finds stats extremely important and uses to predict future outcomes and analyze past ones outside of school rohan participates in jiu-jitsu where he is a blue belt and tutors children in math at school rohan plays lacrosse which he has played since sixth grade in the future rohan wants to pursue a career in investment in banking and currently

006in the thick of the college admissions process lastly rohan wants to thank his family who has made so many sacrifices to get him in the position that he's in today and plans to repay them in the future with his success that's a good kid [Applause] um [Applause] next up we have sophomore leila flores leila flores is our sophomore student of the month leila's favorite subject is language arts because she loves to read and also likes to write creativity layla finds inspiration in her mother who is intelligent hard working and always supportive layla is on the girls varsity soccer team and runs varsity indoor and outdoor track she's a member of the key club and stem academy for health services layla can you come up to the front [Applause] vice president daley okay uh junior's junior

007uh student of the month july now i hope that's pronounced right reyes jelana reyes is ours junior student of the month jelina is involved in many extra extracurricular activities she participates in in girls who code psychological club and national english honors to say what's the problem mike that's right um at least i did something right july is participates in national english english honors society and girls varsity bowling her favorite class is ceramics because she can take her time working and expressing herself through art joanna also enjoys mr rogers sociology class because he is both knowledgeable and real and re relatable juliana appreciates her mother and the values of all her hard work in the future jelana plans to attend college and wants to pursue a career in higher education [Applause] is our freshman student of

008the month for march he's involved in the high school's rotc program and values his senior marine instructor chief warrant officer navarro because he has earned lifelong skills such as leadership and responsibility oscar has been focused on his studies and finds inspiration in his family and close friends who consistently motivate him oscar sees himself taking full advantage of the rotc program and is considering a future in the military oscar if you could please come up [Applause] okay [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the senior for the month of march is lucas colessa lucas coles is our senior student of the month lucas favorite subject is psychology with mr riley as the class has been very interesting and the discussions in class have been entertaining and informative lucas also thanks mr stepnesski for inspiring him to pursue an education in

009music lucas ace is a snare drummer in the mustang marching band and a member of many other performance ensembles such as the school's pit orchestra jazz band brass ensemble and community band lucas also participated in the north jersey region wind ensemble and orchestra as well as the all-state orchestra last year lucas's fir lucas future aspiration is to become a musician and pursue a career as a percussionist he has been accepted to william patterson for a bachelor's in music congratulations [Applause] oh we need grandma and grandpa come up too come on up here [Applause] it's comfortable those new chairs are comfortable [Music] [Applause] i have the honor of presenting the february student of the month for the junior abigail moto abigail motel is a junior student of the month abigail's favorite subject is history because ever

010since she was a little she was little she would watch the history channel with her father abigail is a member of the clifton cle key club the future teachers club and is a secretary of the fashion club abigail plans to attend college and is considering a career in education she thanks her mom for being a great role model and for teaching her that if you try your best you will always succeed congratulations abigail are you here [Applause] so congratulations to uh all the reward recipients i'm sure i join in with my fellow colleagues this is probably one of the most rewarding things that we do as commissioners is to recognize the achievements of our students so we are so very proud of you continue your success and good luck in all that you do and

011if you don't want to stay for the meeting this would be a good time to get out if you want to stay you're more than welcome [Applause] yes no i'm going to do that first um there was one that i knew wasn't going to be here on that uh same notion um we're very happy to have our student representative here tonight um andrew we haven't seen you in a few meetings but we're glad that you're back so welcome andrew okay hello yep it's great to be back after a few months off uh it's been a whole year i'm kidding so i have a few things to talk about not as much as normal but still a few things i definitely want to talk about uh the first is that the morning news has been running

012a segment this week spreading awareness on black balloon day so march 6th is black balloon day and international dates remember those lost to direct overdoses and just want to make sure get this out first because i think it's an incredible thing that the very first thing our students are seeing in the morning is something like this where we're spreading awareness about a very serious topic so that we can then have that conversation about it the second is about our spring musical so our annual spring musical this year is beauty and the beast and there are three showings coming up very soon march 11th and 12th that's a friday and saturday at 7 p.m and then a matinee on sunday the 13th in addition this saturday we're hosting a never-before-done event to go alongside the musical

013that we're calling breakfast with belle from nine to 10 30 a.m at the high school uh children of clifton are invited to come in and dine with favorite characters from beauty and the beast hopefully we'll do this we'll be doing this again in the future and i would love to advertise it but i can't because this event was already sold out by the beginning of this week so it's a incredible fundraiser and we're incredibly thankful to all of the families and community that are coming out to support this event uh there are a few winter varsity sports that are wrapping up and getting some pretty great accolades uh competition cheer was incredibly successful last tuesday night at the varsity big north championship and we're again incredibly successful at the state tournament congratulations the boys basketball

014team progressed to the quarterfinal round in the state tournament the huge win over morristown last monday night and lastly good luck to the two boys on the wrestling team that are down in atlantic city right now for the state tournament i checked a few hours ago and lasted heard they were doing really well so that's great to hear last isn't varsity sport but still in the same category i want to make sure they get recognized is the academic decathlon team who received one gold award seven silver awards two bronzes and five honorable mentions and are now qualifying for the national finals just to do the math that's 15 recognitions going to the national finals that is huge and that is incredible we're so proud of them there are a few student council events coming up

015on the radar we originally had scheduled a badminton tournament in january but it was canceled poor weather we're still remembering it and we are still going to reschedule we promise huge very exciting thing that a lot of people i know we're looking forward to it will happen as the weather gets warmer we're also in the initial stages of planning more new events uh what for the war the weather warming up this whole month of march to coincide chronologically with march madness we're planning mustang march madness a huge not spirit week but spirit month for the high school with so many events and different themes to just spread mustang pride really it's incredibly exciting thing we had a meeting yesterday to really finalize our plans for what we wanted to happen and there's some really fun

016really great ideas i also want to point out that we have scheduled junior prom and the dream problem is happening very soon uh june were buying tickets yesterday i want to make sure you know that because i did not go to a junior prom and i know the seniors from last year did not have a junior prom but it's finally coming back so that is hugely exciting there are a few events coming up for performing arts besides the spring musical on wednesday march 16th is the all city band concert and the all city orchestra concert is on wednesday march 23rd uh those are just great events to see how great the performing arts programs are here in clifton from fifth grade all the way to 12th i just came from actually rehearsal for orchestra and

017i'm going back after and i promise you that is going to be a ton of fun if you can make it so at meetings i've spoken at in the past i usually would end my report with a long list of things that students are talking about issues they have at the high school that i think should be addressed in this setting however i don't have one this month i've been unable to attend past few meetings and a great deal of major issues that students have really been concerned about have either gotten better or have just been resolved so instead i'd like to share some of what i would have liked to talk about the first meeting of the new year my hopes as student representative for 2022 and beyond so i was asked for the

018january issue of the clifton merchant magazine what changes i want to see take place this year my true hope would be for communication between us the students and you the board to be better i realize that there's only so much i can do with my position i cannot solve the problems that every chs student has just as you cannot either very aware of that all i can do is relay what i've heard from students i can talk to but that still leaves over 2 500 of my peers with opinions and thoughts i know nothing about although this issue is now resolved the death dividers may have to very recently serve as a great example of what i'd want to see improved we were incredibly fortunate to have students take initiative drafting and passing on a

019petition expressing their frustration with them soon after a survey was sent out to staff district wide and that was great that was hugely satisfying to find out as a student however i would still appreciate it to even receive an email asking us the same questions as well even if only the same students who signed this petition respond to the survey it still provides great insight into how students really feel about this how all of the students feel about this i know you're all incredibly very very busy people but i employ you to meet and get to really start to know more students of every kind here in clifton i would love to see any of you simply walking down the halls of the high school surveys are a start but real community communication comes through

020face-to-face honest conversation make yourself known to students i can assure you that as a young person connecting a name title and face together goes an incredibly long way in making this system that is school feel so much more human gestures so incredibly little can still go a very very long way there are many gears constantly turning here in this building that i know that i know nothing about i respect you all greatly for the sheer amount of time you've put in for this job i understand that what i'm talking about may just be vague ideals rather than a constructive plan of a b d however i think what students in clifton would really love is more reassurance that we can help to put some oil in the machine as well thank you all very much

021for your time have a great night thank you andrew and um thank you for uh all that information that you brought and uh best of luck on you're going back to play rehearsal yes very good thank you very much for your report um andrew brought up a a very good point um if you all do not know um our students do a uh through the direction of mr mcconney do a morning announcements and um i find them to be so enjoyable informative funny strange at times but the public can view those any time i believe they're on youtube and they might be on the the school website too and facebook but i i know i go to youtube to watch them so um take a look if you have a chance just to see the

022great work uh through the direction of mr mcconney and the great work that these kids do in in just that program of the morning announcements i i personally enjoy them greatly so i thank mr mcconney for all his work in that endeavor okay we next have our um our recognition and award presentations um we have uh miss paul abragoza here for our pbsis district coordinator and paul has been doing a tremendous job in this program and have brought light to it to everyone so we thank you for your continued hard work in this area and uh you're doing some great great work thank you um um is oh it wasn't on okay so now i'm on um tonight we're showcasing clifton high school to keep in line with the wonderful accolades and it's great because

023it will tie into what the student representative was talking about at clifton high school students staff all stakeholders are working together to make and to bring the multi-tiered system of supports positive behavior supports come to life every single day tonight we're going to focus primarily on a targeted booster event held at the high school at this past february but i want you to see the heart and the effort that the pbsis clifton high school team has put forth not only this year but in the past six years we have a fraction of the team tonight here but all of their hearts and hard work are present with us here tonight so thank you so much from the bottom of my heart every single time i would tell them to hold on just to push through

024that we i understood it was frustrating they all did and um their administration was always there to support them so that has always been at the forefront of what a great day to be a mustang was all about at the high school so we're going to take a moment now and take a look at what that booster focused on in february thank you there are great things happening at chs thanks to the pbsis universal team students are happily wearing their ids teachers and administrators couldn't be happier well done team good evening my name is susan schneff and i am the proud vice principal of mustang academy here at clifton high school i am also part of the universal team for pbsis here at our proud proud institution i first of all want to thank the

025board of education for recognizing us and all our achievements that we've been putting forward not just this year but over the past six years as we've used the pbsis program here as you know the program was rolled out first through the ninth grade in mustang academy and we have gradually gradually developed it and brought it into all four years here at clifton high school this year being back full time this is our first year for full rollout one of our first plans was how to incorporate the programs that we already have and bring in new ideas that will help our 9th 10th 11th and 12th graders well the first thing we did for a targeted rollout this year was to introduce the program and the mustang point system for pbsis to all our students faculty

026and staff we did this back in the fall we gradually rolled it out through second marking period third marking period we introduced a targeted goal which was bringing our safety and security program here with all students wearing their id and we incorporated that into one of our point systems so for the week of february 24th we did a targeted goal of every student who walked into a classroom and had their id on received a mustang point our discipline issues for students not having ids on dropped by over 30 percent and we issued over 12 000 mustang points to our student population over a course of four days we want to thank the board of education for being supportive and providing us then incentives for our students where we have everything from large instructional boards for

027jenga monopoly etc and we also have things like uber gift cards which we know all teenagers do tend to love we want to thank you again for your support we continue to build our program here at clifton high school because it's always a great day to be a mustang thank you hi my name is effy kelso and i'm a math teacher at clifton high school and a pbsis coach hi my name is jessica lopez and i'm a math teacher at clifton high school and i'm also one of the pbsis coaches hi i'm christy van saters and i'm a media specialist at clifton high school i'm also one of the pbsis coaches today we're going to talk about our targeted booster that we held recently at clifton high school one of our school-wide pillars is responsibility

028and one of our expectations is to wear and display student ids properly the chs pbsis universal team recognized that id wearing was leading to many infractions with our students so we decided to hold a targeted booster event to address the issue our goal was to use mustang points and the pbis rewards program to help reduce these infractions during the week of february 14th teachers rewarded students mustang points for properly wearing their ids students had the opportunity to earn a mustang point for every period of the day throughout the week mr hamda and mr gengaro made announcements to recognize encourage and thank our students and staff for meeting the expectations of the event after holding the targeted booster event we found that it helped reduce the number of iodine fractions we also found that the event

029brought positive attention from our students and our staff to the pbis rewards website there was a remarkable increase in the number of staff members using the pbis reward system which meant more positive interactions with our students the week before our targeted booster teachers rewarded a total of 7 702 mustang points the week of our targeted booster teachers rewarded a total of 46 247 mustang points that is 46 000 positive interactions between our students and our staff members at the high school the pbis website was rolled out formally in october and we had a slight increase from october to december a little dip in january due to our asynchronous learning but in february which was the month of our booster we had 58 000 points rewarded and again that means 58 000 positive interactions between our

030students and our staff and we hope that because of this booster the points will continue to increase each month let's hear from some of our student and staff members i think that this was a wonderful event because this gave us an opportunity to catch our students doing the right thing and to reward our students for doing the right thing the other um reason this was such a great event it was that it started to reinforce the notion that wearing your id and having your id on is positive behavior and when students do this they will be rewarded hi my name is alan 10th grade um my thoughts about this is actually pretty good it makes me think about you know in the morning oh i have to put my id on you know i always

031put in my back at the end of day of school and i just feel like the reward system is actually pretty good about it you know all the teachers are participating in it makes all the students feel participate about putting their ids on i strongly believe that we our id is a help to students and teachers to identify us in in a case of accident and remind that you can take points in i as rewards to wear it i feel like it's a really good thing to be doing and to be uh wearing because you know keeps people with like a certain kind of routine keeps people like in line you know and with pbis points i feel like it's something that keeps the students and the teachers like connected i like the ideas not

032only does it tell us where we belong but it's also nice to see like new freshmen be like hey you're a freshman oh that's cool nice to see you in the building you know stuff like that and i like getting rewarded because it's like it's a praise and it's like cool it keeps you motivated keeps you going and within those and within the pvsis reward system you win things due to the amount of points you have like i like last month i won something and i really enjoyed the prize i got so the week where we were rewarded for wearing our ids i personally enjoyed it um i loved being rewarded for just a simple task just putting on my id which i which allowed me to purchase um pbis rewards from the store i

033purchased extra credit points on a quiz um that i highly appreciated and it really just facilitated a like positive environment to follow rules and really perform well well my freshman students actually did very well they it was probably the first time all year that i had almost all of them wearing their id so that was really nice to see and my senior students i think it gave them a little bit of a push as well so it was good well there you have it folks great things really are happening at [Music] chs a big big thank you to mr makani and his cast crew they were amazing in helping put this video together mr mclennan thank you so much and for your students um for your cast crew president smith dr rotozi if you would

034help me out i'm going to read the names because there's a bunch of folks here tonight um but if you can help me out with that mr honda [Applause] mrs [Applause] mrs ponte [Applause] [Music] one of our co-coaches [Applause] mrs lopez mr vittiello i'm miss pellegrini mr stewart [Applause] and last but certainly not least mr mcconney [Applause] all the thin people thank you congratulations everybody great job again a fantastic job on uh this program and uh to the entire uh administration uh we are so truly proud of you and all the great work that you do [Applause] it really doesn't get any better than the crew that we have running things at clifton high school you do a great job and we're so appreciative and thankful for all that you do congratulations [Applause] okay we're

035going to um i'm going to move to the superintendent's report now and then we'll move to public portion after that dr robertosi thank you president smith good evening commissioners good evening members of the community faculty and staff who are in attendance i'm so happy to be back home in our newly renovated home um it's so beautiful and very welcoming although it's still a little sterile we have to live in it a little longer but it's really uh we're doing a superintendent's report or the board report tonight folks how we doing guys listen i mean what are you doing i have to utilize the don't make me count to three because if i get the three i don't know what i'll actually do but i should do that with my kids all the time count to

036three and then thank god they would stop before i got the three because i don't know what i would do no but really so happy to be here in our newly renovated boardroom thank you to the board for supporting the initiative i mean really anybody who remembers this room knows that it was long overdue for a renovation so thank you to the board for supporting the idea of renovating this room thank you to the administration who helped make it happen and uh and specifically i really would be remiss if i didn't give a huge public thank you to our assistant business administrator ahmed shahada who oversaw this project from day one until completion so ahmed thank you for dealing with the [Applause] thank you for dealing with the myriad of issues that you know if

037you've ever renovated a bathroom in your house you know all the issues you deal with when dealing with a contractor so you can imagine uh some of the issues that come up in in a larger project like this so i met thank you for handling those issues uh more importantly thank you for finding the solutions to those issues and i just want you to know that you are an incredible asset to our district team and we're very thankful to have you i'd like to remind the commissioners and the community that monday march 7th masks will be optional for students staff and visitors in all of our buildings all of our district buildings and school buses in the city of clifton it is important to note that individuals who still wish to continue masking are certainly

038permitted to do so and more importantly will have the full support of the district administration and staff we will not tolerate any type of harassment or ridicule of any individual due to their choice of you know regarding wearing a mask and whether it's a student or a staff member we must be respectful of everyone always and you know that's just the expectation and i don't anticipate that we will have any issues but i would be remiss if i didn't say that our uh student representative andrew tonight um mentioned a couple things that i have in my report and i want to thank andrew for emphasizing those positive things but i think it's important for me to also mention them so a couple of things i want to mention is i know mr stewart's here tonight

039and mr stewart is the coach slash captain of our academic decathlon team i know sometimes too often people think maybe we focus on athletics too much listen athletics are a really important part of the student experience but you know clifton's known for its academics too and mr stewart as the coach of the academic decathlon team um congratulations because for the third year in a row our academic decathlon team has qualified for the nationals that's an incredible accomplishment [Applause] our team will be completing in the large school division and um across the 10 events that led up to this competition we won one gold medal seven silvers two bronze and five honorable mentions so congratulations to our students congratulations to you mr stewart and i would like to on behalf of the board invite you and

040the team to a future board meeting so we can recognize you and the students now let's go win the nationals some other recognition i'd like to recognize some student athletes that competed in the state group meet in toms river this past saturday three of our athletes will be moving on to the meet of champions that's the the best of the best in the state of new jersey remy duback and jacob heredia had another record-breaking weekend if you follow track at all in clifton you know those names uh remy will be advancing to the meet of champions in the 1600 meter and the 3200 meter and jacob will be running the 1600 meter also tanaya giles will be competing in the shot put so congratulations to those students we're very very proud of you thank you

041for bringing pride to our district and your families i'd also like to invite remind the board members and invite you all and invite the community um to our annual all-city concerts in march believe it or not this is my third year here as the superintendent in clifton i have still yet to see an all-city concert in person so i'm very very much looking forward to it so on march 16th at 7 p.m at clifton high school the all city band will be performing and the following week on march 23rd at 7 pm the old city orchestra will be performing and all are invited both of those events will take place at chs and it's really um a place where our students you know the best of the best of clifton will be there to perform

042and i hear that it's just an outstanding event and i'm so very much looking forward to it so i'm hoping we have a packed house now that we can have a packed house um i also want to um remind the board andrew mentioned earlier but beauty and the beast i had tried out for the part of the beast and they told me i was too beastly so i didn't didn't get the part that's a joke dr danny thank you beauty and the beast march 11th march 12th and matinee on march 13th i am going to uh be bringing my children to see uh the show on one of those uh days probably the matinee uh i missed out on the breakfast that was too late and it's sold out breakfast with belle but what a

043really great idea that was so our students have been working so very hard our students and staff and i know that will be a great great show thank you to all who participated in read across america this week in the clifton public school district i know several of our commissioners were out reading at our schools our students love that our students love when they get a guest speaker in to read and i'm sure you know those of you who are able to do it enjoy it as much or more than our students but it's a little nerve-wracking isn't it it's a little scary reading those books that i get nervous i get nervous i go into a kindergarten classroom i'm afraid i'm going to fall down in on one of the little kindergarteners and hurt

044them and then you got to read these books and you're expected to know these words and if you've ever read a dr seuss book they're tough to read you got to practice and the kids are watching every minute and i'm sweating and it's a lot it just shows our teachers are they do this on everyday basis god god bless them i couldn't do what they do we have amazing amazing teachers so thank you to all who participate in read across america i had to cancel a couple of my invitations but i'll be making that up and i'll be visiting those schools next week another athletic accomplishment i congratulate uh student-athlete kyle vellis for scoring his 1000th career point for the varsity basketball team in his final game at clifton high school last night in the

045state tournament thousand points in a high school career that's that's the pinnacle and it's even more of an accomplishment because of the coved year last year there were not as many games so kyle didn't have a chance to play as many games as perhaps some other students and that's just it's a really tremendous honor but the thing about kyle that i loved the most is i was looking up his grades earlier today because i knew i was going to mention him today gpa of 98.6 so not only is an outstanding three sport varsity athlete football basketball baseball but he's an outstanding student and um love to love to recognize a young man like that who comes from a wonderful family so congratulations to kyle a couple other shout outs to schools and individual staff members

046miss mia francisco who invited me to read at her class and i'll be coming next week she organized spirit week at school five which involved all of the students and staff doing activities that made a very positive environment at school five she coordinated all of the read across america guest readers she decorated for dr seuss's birthday and if if you've seen any of the pictures on social media they really went above and beyond with their decorations she's the cheerleader that that makes it go at school five and she also dressed up as a very mean looking cruella deville i'm told um gathering up her many dalmatians on the 101st day of school so um she used to be commended for representing and and motivating all the school five all-stars in such a positive manner and

047she's an outstanding teacher and also miss nicole bias for women's history month also at school five she prepared a schedule involving all of the fifth grades to recognize women who've made a difference in history and sometimes as a former history teacher sometimes history can be a very male dominated subject so i think that's an outstanding thing for miss bias to do because our young people need to be able to see role models who look like themselves and finally not very exciting but i do like to give the board an update on our referendum each month and so where we are at now we are very close to going out to bid for our first project it's been a long time coming but since our last board of education meeting my team and i have met

048with our construction management company epic and our other service professionals our architect and such um and our our strategy moving forward is this the the high school will be bid package number one the high school has so much work going on that that's just going to be one huge big bid package um but unfortunately we've we found that some of the areas where we're going to be working have um asbestos tiles and for those of you who know anything about asbestos anytime you find asbestos before you do i'm not sure if i'm pronouncing that very weird tonight asbestos asbestos i'm not pronouncing it right when you find that you have to mitigate that before you do any type of work so that's going to put a little bit of a delay in a little bit

049of uh cause us a little issues but in the end we'll we'll make it work so so that bid package is going out within the next 10 days after that the next bid package will be a combination of schools 3 4 11 16 which will be approximately 25 or so million dollars bid goes out bid package goes out the bids come in and the board selects the lowest responsible bidder to to do the work and so we anticipate that work to be starting by summer we also met with a representative from the passaic county building and trades council to discuss the project labor agreement which we are going forth with they are thrilled to be a part of this in our district one of the things that we wanted to be assured of is that

050you know not not all of this work can be done over the summer there's too much work in our referendum so we wanted to be sure that when work is being done in our schools during the school year that student safety is is paramount you know and the procedures will be in place and and we've been assured that they will not impede on the day-to-day operations any issues that come to the forefront will be addressed immediately and then there was something else that really made me appreciate the fact that we're going with this project labor agreement so project labor agreement basically is you're going to be utilizing union trades union contractors for these projects and i'm told that many of the the trades people who will be working clifton will be clifton residents so to

051the extent possible they're going to try to make sure that the people working on these projects actually live in clifton i think that's a fantastic thing a byproduct of what's come out of a project labor agreement so mr president that concludes my formal report for tonight we do have some other things to discuss later but not for this report thank you thank you dr robitosi uh we're going to move now to our um our report from the um our auditor uh we all received a um a hard copy uh of the report this evening in front of you um dated june the 30th 2021 um we have our um our auditor on a um on a virtual uh connection uh it is paul por lurch so as soon as we can get him up did

052you hear that uh mr lurch are you there uh yes second place okay [Music] there should be a thing no i can't pick it right now i can't get it okay so commissioners uh we'll listen to the uh presentation and then we'll uh have questions from the commissioners following the presentation oh just do it you can't really see the gym just move your head a little [Music] hello hi paul we see you uh we see you fine and we can hear you fine can you hear us i can hear you yes and just can you guys hear me now yes we can thank you very much uh uh for being here um uh for the public um um this is mr um paul lurch from the firm of lurchin higgins um so they are uh

053the company that the board has hired to do our um our audit and uh paul the floor is yours for your presentation thank you very much um okay and certainly if anybody has any questions or comments uh you know don't hesitate to just uh interrupt me um i'm gonna go through the presentation and and i won't be very long um i'll go through just an overview of what we've done the results we'll talk about fund equity and then i will also talk about the corrective action plan that that mike has developed um and then we can get into any details if you find that necessary so um so we did have a chance obviously to complete the audit for the clifton board of education for the 2021 school year um we are obviously presenting late

054again uh in relationship relationship to what was a normal schedule and that really was again because we are we're implementing this gatsby 75 which is now the fourth year of implementation and we rely on information that comes from the state of new jersey division of pensions um so the original deadline and a lot of this has to do with covet obviously but the original deadline was december 5th that got moved to february 5th and then the numbers came out um about three weeks ago or so and when the numbers came out three weeks ago then the department of education uh had indicated to all the entities that the statutory deadline now is going to be moved to march 15th so at some point i'm going to assume that we're going to go back to some

055some sense of normalcy as timeline um but you know time will tell with that so that's the reason why we're out here again on a delayed process but in completing the audit the board of education received unmodified opinions on your financial statements including single audit on internal controls and compliance with governmental auditing standards and with major programs on internal controls and compliance there were no significant deficiencies and internal controls noted during the audit so those are all positive things that's exactly what you want to see on a year-to-year basis we did have one compliance issue on a grant but we'll talk about that in a little bit but again it was not significant or material in nature otherwise it would have been noted so the district was subject to a state and a federal single

056audit which is what you are typically every single year um what what the guidelines really uh you know that that trigger that are expenditures that exceed 750 000 um you guys are far in excess obviously you're a very large district i'll just give you for for reference the state expenditures exceeded 84 million dollars in our audit year and federal expenditures exceeded 20 million dollars as well and what that simply means is that once you exceed that 750 then we are responsible to look into more specific compliance and reporting requirements on specific grants and we pick them by looking at what we identify as major programs we do that testing so what did we do we did some extra testing on on state aid a categorical state aid which is under one cluster and then we

057also did extraordinary aid we did have some issues with extraordinary we'll talk about a little bit uh on the federal side we looked at the lunch program we looked at the corona relief monies we looked at the esser again which is part of the american rescue plan funding and we also looked at the idea basic and preschool we had no issues with any of those other areas except for again the extraordinary aid which i will get into so as i said we uh um you know we we did go through that process um some of the other things that are new for this particular year we have a new governmental auditing standard board number number 84 is dealing with fiduciary funds so the the standard board has uh indicated or sent out the requirements that

058what used to be reported in fiduciary funds are now going to be reported in your general operating account and so jessberg for overall reference student activities scholarships uh they're they're out of fiduciary they're now reported in your special revenue fund and in general fund now we report the unemployment fund and we report the payroll activity which used to be payroll agency again reported in the fiduciary funds they limited the scope of what's going to be identified as the fiduciary funds i can tell you that of all the boards that we do i don't think we have a single one that has now the legal requirement to establish a fiduciary fund so that's the big change and i think when you look at the financial statement you're going to see that when we talk about equity

059that you'll have a new reservation on the balance sheet for unemployment and you'll also have it for scholarship and student activities uh we talked about gatsby 75 that post-employment benefits we're now in the fourth year that's what was holding us all up um we've been reporting gatsby 68 that's now probably almost eight years old um so we're kind of moving along in that sense um just to go through some of the financials food service food service profit was up 2.1 million dollars and i think most most schools that have been providing a food during the pandemic certainly have seen large increases in their equity because now the entire program is being funded through the federal program so that's why we're seeing significant increases in equity when it comes to the food service program i'm going

060to talk about fund balance now i'm going to talk about it in the general operating fund so the general operating fund has an equity total balance and i just want to get to the right page for one second so the district ended the year with an additional 2 million 185 000 in equity we went from 18 million 596 000 to now 20 million 782 000 in total equity one of the other things that changed in this particular year is again in direct relationship to the pandemic the amount of money that you can retain in surplus or unrestricted unassigned fund balance increased from two percent of r and when we talk about two percent two percent of your adjusted expenditures to now four percent of your adjusted expenditures so those are substantial increases so for instance

061your your unassigned number last year and of course there's adjustments to all of these you know the exceptions to the rule so the maximum that you were able to retain last year was three million six hundred eleven thousand dollars well that number now jumped up 5.3 million to now 8 million 991 thousand dollars that's the new statutory limit and it's and obviously it's more than two percent because two percent would have equated to about a three and a half million dollar increase the difference is the allowable adjustments the add-ons that can be put into that that particular unassigned balance and the majority of that is with the additional extraordinary aid that everybody did receive this year most most schools did funding went up um state state the state's percentage of funding went up so most

062schools saw an increase and that is an allowable adjustment to your base so your unassigned free balance is now eight million nine hundred ninety one thousand dollars we have no excess surplus this year and excess surplus is simply the final analysis as we go through the progression of total surplus so as i indicated total surplus was 20 million 782 000 um we go into the various components as i said the first component is the excess surplus or or i'm sorry you're a limited floor on unassigned so of the 20 million dollars we take out the 8.9 million dollars and that's sitting in your free balance we had some monies that were set aside encumbrances of roughly 952 thousand dollars some extra semi money that was received of thirty six thousand dollars then we have a

063new reservation for unemployment so there's two hundred and six thousand dollars that's set aside in equity for future unemployment payments maintenance reserve is seven hundred and seventy four thousand dollars from roughly one million two hundred and sixty seventy thousand dollars last year so the i just wanna get to the page so last year we started with one million two hundred and roughly eighty thousand um the board approved deposits of 750 000 in june but we also withdrew one point uh almost 1.3 million in the budget when we utilized the budget built the budget for uh 2021. so that's how we got to the 774 from the 1.2 million the next reserve that the district does maintain is the capital reserve which is obviously used for capital projects of the district that fund in total started

064with 6.6 million [Music] it was increased by roughly 3.3 yet the board did a resolution uh where you transfer 2.9 million in in the month of june of excess funding or funds during the year and then the budget utilized roughly two million dollars during the during the budget process for for projects so you went from eight million uh from six point six to eight million dollars of the eight million dollars six million six point one million is uh is is undesignated and you have designated one million eight hundred and fifty that's being utilized in your 20 21 22 budget then we go up to excess surplus as they indicated um we went through that whole progression last year when we came and presented the audit and for the year of uh that ended in in

06520 there was an excess surplus of 1.8 million that takes two years to cycle through the process so last year's 1.8 million dollars is now sitting on the balance sheet at the end of our year and it's being utilized in the current year we're in so the 1.8 million is being utilized in the 20 20 uh 21-22 school year so when you go through that whole progression we take the total equity and we go through all those reservations the end balance is zero so there is no excess surplus that's going to be applied for the 23-24 school year if anybody has any questions on that and then i'll otherwise i'll go to the management report and talk about the corrective action plan and those those items all right commissioners any questions uh on anything that

066he uh paul has said so far on that section okay paul thank you you can continue yes you would like me to continue yes please sure okay so the the separate report that the board gets is is administrative findings uh financial compliance and performance reporting it's where we would identify any kind of comments or recommendations um we do have a we do have three that we could talk about um i i did look at mike's corrective action plan and the corrective action plan is adequate to address the issues i will say that we do have these three items in here but there was no evidence or instance of fraud or illegal acts so that's clearly a positive note as well i mean your district is very large so to have three comments is certainly not

067surprising um the very first comment deals with encumbrances at year-end and this was particular um because of the situation uh the with the referendum recently passing um you know the board entered into a contract with the architect to start the process um as soon as that contract is entered into it needed to be encumbered um it wasn't and i think it was just an oversight at that point so we wound up recording uh reporting that encumbrance um you know that liability for 1.7 million dollars again that was for the architect which was paid in august the next item that we have that we're reporting on is the internal controls on the extraordinary aid application um you know this was this was unique for the for the city at this particular year and i know mike

068can get into in more detail but the overview would be that there was a different method uh to try to capture additional expenses more in-house expenses as opposed to just out-of-district tuition expenses related to the extraordinary aid expenses um and and what we did as part of our single audit requirement we did test that grant and what we found is as that the some of the internal estimates were done for part-time and full-time employees and when we actually went to test the actual expenses that were reported as an expense in the particular grant application we noted discrepancies really with the full timers it was based on an estimate on the average individual uh it fluctuates obviously so we went through that process spoke to mike and i think you know obviously at this point he

069understands and i think during the process of making sure that the application itself uh doesn't i mean you could start out with an estimate but obviously if you're if you're looking for a reimbursement of expenditures it has to be accurate so that's what we found with the extraordinary application this particular year the last item deals with purchasing uh you do a lot of purchasing and and we all know that uh in this upcoming year it's just gonna uh you know obviously increase exponentially due to the new referendum uh i think overall mike and the team they do a fine job when we went through we and again we kind of grouped everything together because there was nothing here that was significant but there were all these little things that kind of added up to the

070fact that you know the business office needs to make sure that we're going through the purchasing process that anytime that you know we need to make sure that we document uh any of the business registrations or political contribution forms um making sure that we get multiple quotes when required uh and then anytime we do exceed the bid threshold that we have to support any documentation and if we are exceeding it why are we exceeding it wasn't an emergency that type of item so again nothing significant here i think there were just a bunch of little things that kind of accumulated into what i factored as as a as a comment to the board um but overall uh the district is is again run very well i think we're very happy and pleased with what we

071saw and i think that the the board of education should be very happy with the way the financial activities and the administration is running that okay are there any questions from the commissioners uh thus far uh with the polls report mr abu drabba uh mr lurch for him abu drabba um sorry so i'm just coming fresh off taking an accounting class most recently i just got my b cert and so the methodology in terms of internal controls is that something that you've seen as a consistent issue within our district or is that some i mean what made you grab attention to that now versus previous years and why is it why is there an asterisk next to number two is there a reason for that uh paul were you able to hear the question from

072commissioner abu drabo no and no i i don't i i couldn't hear you it didn't seem like he was speaking into the team i could answer if you want okay you want me to answer no that works doesn't matter who the asterisk just means single audit okay but then what about the internal controls so the the purchasing i think to answer your question is they are isolated incidences it's just the audit compliance is getting stricter and stricter all the time but what are the discrepancies exactly with the full-timers though oh with the extraordinary aid i'm sorry i was talking about purchasing yeah they what so extraordinary aid are expenses that um we expend on special education and if they exceed a certain threshold by the state yeah we get a percentage back as essentially state

073aid it's like a reimbursement at year end so this in this particular year the district has always been under claiming um extraordinary aid we've always just claimed um private school tuition but you are allowed to include um internal special education costs as well so when you say under claim is that underestimating before we get into the numbers expecting what the numbers are going to be and then looking at the are we are we what are we exactly underestimate because obviously when you look at this right you look at all right so i'm going to spend here we're going to anticipate spend here 200 million dollars for example right that's before touching any numbers for any programmatic issues so you can set forth a budget understand where you might be going right but then when you

074get to the end of the road with the numbers we underestimated by i don't know 5 million because now we're actually at 205 minutes that was that what's happening it's not really budgetary it's different it's it's claiming actual expenses oh okay so i i was just going to go into a teeny bit of history just just two sentences that we've been under claiming like for since i got here i was 10 years ago we've been getting around 600 700 000 in extraordinary aid um when i took over as ba we like really wanted to focus on this because we realized we were under claiming it um so our special ed department and my department we really looked at it it went from seven hundred thousand to two point two million in one year and what

075that mr lurch is essentially saying is when he looked at our claims our claim didn't match our actual payrolls because we didn't want to go to the maximum yet we were kind of testing the waters we did a a lower estimate so he's saying our payroll records didn't technically match the claims um because we underclaimed slightly on salary and benefits thank you [Music] okay anyone else any questions for uh mr lurch or for mr usi okay paul uh there are no other questions as of uh as of now is there anything else of your report or is that your are you concluding are you finished with your report paul oh yes i am thank you yes okay great uh the board does not have any further questions so we thank you very much for uh

076presenting your report here this evening thank you very much and have a good evening you too thanks paul okay we will get here no no he could i don't know why he couldn't hear us i don't know i mean his volume or something was not right okay it won't be that often no no no okay uh we're going to uh move into the uh public portion of the meeting definitely much room uh this portion of the meeting is open to the residents and non-residents of the city of clifton for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to and or directly related to the operation of the clifton public school district residents and non-residents are requested if you're here in person to sign the register for provided for this purpose all speakers are asked to

077state their names municipality in which they live in subject matter before they are speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate your questions may or may not be answered by the board members the board asks 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

078of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments so we will start first with the um the public in person portion so if you're here this evening tonight and would like to address the board uh please do so at the podium mr mr bruciac you have to press the button there you go thanks president smith you're welcome mark brunsiak holly street clifton i want to thank donna popowicz for posting a portion of tonight's agenda which should be on tonight's agenda i believe regarding the funding of project graduation of uh 100 000 uh just so all clifton residents can know as as some reached out to me

079to ask this night which budget line would it be funded on also number two if i recall correctly the previous years were approximately fifty five thousand dollars if that number is wrong please correct me so even with inflation um you know where did this number come from also what happens if all the monies are not spent finally if mr whittles is here or if miss basford can comment uh who had casa clifton to get substance to clifton against substance abuse and if they are allowed to comment and describe the amounts uh that it cost in the past and how much fundraising had to occur as a result and why can't it be done now finally i want to discuss what's happened since the last regular meeting back at the beginning of this of february on

080february 13th over 100 million people watched totally normal super bowl in a packed indoor la stadium of 75 000 fans with almost no one in a mask how did any parent in this country send their have and not have a choice to send their kids to school with with or without a mask it's very sad another dystopian moment february 18th the cdc lowered the standard for speech development in early childhood development instead of highlighting the harmful policies implemented as a result they just change the standard until february 18th a child between 28 and 30 months can eat should easily know 500 to 5 546 words which is very impressive february 18th the cdc changed it to 50 words i wonder why also i hope nobody ever forgets lots of businesses close down never to open

081again lots of children are now developmentally behind because of school mandates because of remote learning and those again with speech impediments that have massive issues lots of rights taken away who knows if they'll ever return they can be taken away with a swipe with with a signature and people can forgive and forget but i'm sure there's there's a possibility that there's a next big plan that's allowed to start people died alone cancer patients miss screenings and follow-ups overdoses are at a record highs and this isn't oops it was a power play that's how i see it and how long will you continue to believe that most of our current elected officials either care about you and or will actually do anything on your behalf finally on friday the cdc revised its covert risk formula just

082this past friday on the 28th with this single change of pandemic abruptly eased from going from ninety percent of the united states in high risk red to less than thirty percent and the cova cases yesterday were fifty eight thousand twenty three the covet cases in the u.s march 2nd 2021 was 57 644 yet there are people vaccinated and boosted more than there ever have been also yesterday 2346 too many deaths that's that's how many people died of of covid yesterday and died on march 2nd 2021 again 1306 too many so and finally i want to thank you steve goldberg as he as he provided the information today almost 54 million people in the united states have fully recovered from this dr robert tosi commissioners i urge you to never allow this to happen again for

083what's happened over the past two years thank you for your time and god bless america have a good night everybody thank you is there anyone else that here that wishes to address the board yes ma'am please come up to the podium good evening everyone i'm robin gallino from darrow drive north yeldon new jersey i am the coordinator for clifton against substance abuse so anyone have any questions about clifton against substance abuse i'll quickly note that we meet pretty much the last tuesday of most months so it is a public meeting and anyone's welcome to come and ask any questions you like but i was so glad the student that was here andrew brought up black balloon day so i did bring some information about black balloon day and i also brought some props so i'll

084explain that in a minute uh the history of black balloon day i was so grateful that he brought it up but he mentioned that something's going to take place in school and we're really grateful for that this was brought up by a family who lost someone on black balloon day their son they decided that overdose was something that they wanted to take notice of in the future using the hashtag blackballoonday in the past we actually used real balloons and now we're asking everyone to post on their social media a black balloon but just posting a black balloon is not the answer to loss from accidental overdose it does help create awareness around the important issue of providing support of those struggling with substance use disorder and their loved ones so we do encourage that we're

085also going to have our volunteer dorothy adlon if everyone would like to make a note of her email address she's working to put together a beautiful ceremony that day and it will be virtual so she can send you the zoom link and it will then be broadcast on our youtube page so you can see it in the future as well but take note of her email address it's dea cga gmail.com and she's a wonderful volunteer with clifton against substance abuse and it would be great if you tuned in to that program so i said that i brought some props so i have something here um we're grateful that we were presented this by the boys and girls club some of the partners we have in the city the other night the city was so gracious

086and they presented us with a proclamation for black balloon day and we have lots of these they're they're in the health department our grant by the way comes from the the governor's council on drug abuse alcohol and drug abuse and is distributed through the city of clifton health department and we get that from the county the department of health and human services and uh what's kind of cool about that is we all get to work together to bring awareness to the community i see a lot of empty chairs here but if you don't mind i'm going to just bring this over here while we're talking i want you to imagine this is someone that you know uh the wonderful students that were awarded this evening uh monthly student student of the month awards there are

087families that wish their student of the month was sitting here there are families that wish someone had the opportunity to see this beautiful new room congratulations on your audit by the way i noticed you're not wasting any money on heat in here tonight but i will say that there are people that uh we we say things and we talk about our partnerships and we talk about our grant money and we are here to provide education um but we do need we need people we need people we're a volunteer organization and we speak about these loved ones but we also and this gentleman here was talking about the pandemic and how so many students can't they can't say more than 50 words that's that's scary but they also lost out on a lot of coping skills

088and any of you that know that casa has been around for so long remem may remember the characters that were used in a program called babes and it was a beginning awareness program where one of the main things that students learned was how to cope how to learn how to deal with situations that are stressful and that's been going on since 1977 that program has been around so these are things that we want to share with the community so that's one of the things of awareness that black balloon day and all of the things that we want to provide escasa are available to you we also want as one of our goals this year because we've done this before elsewhere we want to work with you on mental health awareness and first aid for teens

089and adults so these are grants that we can provide and we hope that the public will reach out to us our information is on the clifton website and keep in mind the three goals that we have one is to remove stigma for those struggling with substance use provide resources for those struggling with substance use disorder and expand our reach to the citizens of cliston to understand that prevention is the most accurate cure there are folks that do struggle with substance use maybe they start as a fun joke maybe they maybe they want to to self-medicate but once they do find themselves with substance use disorder they do find themselves with a 90 relapse rate so thank you i understand my time is up and i do appreciate your time have a good night thank you

090very much [Applause] is there anyone else that wishes to address the board here per in in person okay motion to close by mr abu drabo second second by mr awad and now we'll open the um the call call-in uh portion do we have anyone uh calling in or um videoing yes we have one uh maria rivera maria if you can hear us it's your turn to speak for five minutes okay miss rivera can you hear us rivera if you could hear us we can't hear you you might have it muted miss rivera can you hear us i thought i heard some life there no okay last last time miss rivera can you hear us no okay no one else there mr um okay motion to close by uh mr abu drabo second by dr danny

091okay we'll move to the adoption of the minutes of the um regularly scheduled board meeting of february 10 2022 moved by mr abu drabbo second second by mr canova discussion seeing none roll call please mr abu drabo mr awad yes miss password ms beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes motion carries hey next we have the adoption of the minutes of the uh meeting on february 20 the special meeting on february 23rd 2022 moved by mr abu drabo second second bye mr rawad is there any discussion seeing none roll call mr abedraba mr awad yes miss passford no miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes and president smith yes oh she carries okay um we

092don't have any first radiant policy we did that um board members if it's okay with you we have a um a new employee on our uh personnel list uh to be approved here tonight um so instead of having him wait uh if we could move in uh personnel and then we'll come back to the other so c personnel we have uh p1 through uh p26 so boomed by mr abu drabo second by mr awad uh discussion seeing none roll call please mr abu drabo yes mr awad yes miss bassford uh yes and abstain on p23 miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes and abstain on p24 vice president daley yes president smith yes motion scary uh mr ryan mooney we the board has just uh appointed you to your new

093position welcome to clifton and we wish you all the very best [Applause] i'd like to thank dr arbitosi president smith and the commissioners of the board for such a great opportunity and i'm looking forward to being part of the clifton team so thank you great thanks so much best of luck to you all right thank you thank you uh commissioners for allowing us to do that um if it's okay you mind if i do the rest of them why we're here before we go to committee reports uh b uh education administration we have ea one through ea four move it moved by mrs basford second by mr avadrabo discussion seeing none roll call mr awad yes his bastard yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daily yes

094and president smith yes motions carry okay next uh d finance facilities we have uh f1 through f12 so move by mr abhijava second second by mr awad discussion seeing none wrote i do oh thank you sorry it took me a discussion okay i'm getting older it took me a while that's okay no problem um so there's there's just been some conversation around the block um the rumor mills around the city about the conversation about the hundred thousand dollars if we could talk about that really quick um can you hear me no good sorry shahada was telling me i wasn't speaking to the mic um mr president through you to the superintendent um can you explain the hundred thousand dollars what that um covers what that hundred thousand is that a cap is that a max

095is that the hundred thousand dollars that's going to cover why isn't there any fundraising from the past why isn't there any uh out of pocket fees uh for students um from parents and essentially why is the cost so high that those are the questions been out there i'm a hundred percent behind this because i believe that any safe place for any student anywhere uh is well worth it um but please answer hey dr robertosi please sure um so there was a lot of questions there i'll try to do my best to answer all of them if i missed something please don't hesitate to ask and um i wouldn't put anybody on the spot but our high school principals in the audience mr honda if i miss something that you think is important please i would

096ask you to get my attention i'll happily give you the floor also um so listen i could you're spending a hundred thousand dollars on anything you ask as many questions as you want i can understand any member of the public any member of the community having questions about spending a hundred thousand dollars so let me put it in perspective a little bit this year the plan for project graduation is much different than it has been in the past in the past the students on the night of graduation went to a place called funplex which was a lot of fun it really was it was really good place for for for a number of years and the the cost on average was about a hundred dollars per student give or take please don't quote me but

097it was it was about a hundred dollars per student um and students did fundraise some raised funds but what i'm told by high school administration is that most actually didn't but they did contribute and that is going to be the case this year so while the resolution calls for a maximum amount not to be spent of more than a hundred thousand dollars um the students will be contributing we haven't um come up with a specific amount yet but we're thinking between 25 and 50 dollars for the students to contribute we feel that the students have to have some sort of uh buy-in of this event plus we don't want people signing up if everybody's going on on the board's dime uh people are signing up and then they don't show up so if they're putting

098between 25 and 50 down they're gonna come so this year we have the opportunity um to have project graduation at the american dream mall the american dream mall has done project graduations the past couple years and has charged some school districts up to three hundred dollars per student we were able to obtain [Music] what i believe is an amazing deal from the american dream mall um for a hundred and fifty dollars per student remember we were paying a hundred dollars at funplex for a hundred and fifty dollars at the american dream mall that includes the dreamworks water park which when i visited is bigger than any water park i've ever been in the entire country i've been all over the country with my kids that in and of itself to a member of the public

099i think it costs between ninety and a hundred dollars to get in maybe cheaper for children that's included so the kids get to go to the water park the kids get to go to the nickelodeon universal theme park it's a whole separate theme park it's an indoor theme park separate from the water park that in and of itself has an emission price don't quote me 60 70 80 i'm not sure also included is the ice skating rink students are going to be able to go ice skating students going to be able to go to the tilt museum students are going to be able to partake in the black light mini golf as students are going to be able to take partake in the mirror maze and there's also another angry birds mini golf which looked

100really cool all of this is included for 150 dollars per student the board has always provided the transportation the board has always provided the buses and paid the bus drivers so when we came up with that hundred thousand dollar number we had to to to pass a resolution that not not to exceed 100 000 because we have to be sure if every student actually signs up we don't anticipate every senior to go you're talking mr honda 750 seniors 690 seniors that number is based on we based it on 500 students at 150 a pop is 75 000 that's without their contribution okay which we're still figuring that will cover the buses that covers the food that covers paying the bus drivers it covers any other incidental expenses that may come up i don't anticipate that

101we get anywhere near a hundred thousand dollars and so that's i mean the basis for the dollar amount um i think it's a heck of a way to go out as a senior in clifton high school and i think it's a it's a wonderful thing for this board to be able to provide that for students um and again they're contributing any student that doesn't have the means we will make sure that no matter what we're charging them we'll make sure that that student gets to go so there were some other questions i might have missed i'm happy to answer any other questions and mr honda if there's something you think you feel is important to speak mr mr smith you wouldn't mind if mr honda speaks absolutely so um just come up to the podium

102just in case may i ask a question before he comes up because he might be actually actually able to address this um no you hit all the questions i asked bold men think alike um because you also also mentioned about if somebody doesn't have the means we'll figure a way if somebody from the public wants to donate like i'd be more than happy to donate as a resident under my wife's name um if possible in a way to help students who aren't able to attend are able to pay for it is there a way um that between you and the high school principal that you can let us know where a person can donate yes my understanding is that we've always allowed people to sponsor a student um in the past not only have we

103allowed people to sponsor students but the microphone please yeah oh i'm sorry can you guys hear me now yep so not only have we found ways to sponsor students in the past but if there has ever been a student that hasn't been able to for one reason or another we've found ways to get those students there nobody has ever been denied based on financial reasons we're always there for our kids one way or another what would be the way as we've done in the past i believe for yearbooks are the things people write a check and then say this is for xyz what would be the proper way of doing this you know if somebody want to donate towards this right and i can get more information on that in the coming days but i

104know in the past there has always been as dr robertosi said some amount that the students were responsible for and they were able to fundraise in different ways to get the money needed and this year we've done many different fundraisers our seniors have done mr cupcake fundraisers in the past the hsa has sponsored many students and i'm sure this year they would be more than willing to sponsor any student that needs it and there's also been other fundraisers for for project graduation where listen we the opportunities that our seniors have to come out of high school without needing to pay a dime for prom for project graduation for class dues are ample they are ample and they're there and if any senior or any parent has any questions they can reach out to myself they

105can reach out to ms rogers who's in charge of the senior activities and will be more than willing to help them in any way that we can but we have so many students that actually at the end of the day from all their fundraising they end up with extra money so they could buy another prom ticket at a discount because they have extra money so i mean we really do miss rogers in particular who runs all of our senior activities does a tremendous job with making sure that everybody's taken care of and just add to that mr rose will do as she always does a wonderful job of getting the information out on social media for anyone uh would like to donate or sponsor a student she'll do a fantastic job of doing that so

106thank you sam for that absolutely and we also have a hsa meeting coming up next month where we can talk to all of our parents about that i know that's going to be a packed house and i can email blast as i always do all of our senior parents about any information that we need to so uh yeah just a question so if we're going to be asking our students to contribute 25 to 50 range and say that we're expecting about 500 students to to partake so that's about 12 and a half thousand to 25 000 range that they're going to be fundraising you're estimating it's a 75 000 cost so i'm guessing the board's gonna probably have to pay 50 to 62 and a half so technically we're at typical range of 50 we

107might be paying a little more compared to inflation how things are so we're not really that crazy overpaying and you're basically getting like well i think dr roberto's named four or five different attractions so i'm for it miss beltran um doctor through the president's doctor um have you thought about how you're going to staff it this year because in the past i know since it was run by a volunteer organization there were volunteers are you going to ask the community for help or is it going to be teachers or how about how is that going to work good question miss beltran i would like to continue getting the community involved there have been community members who have volunteered at project graduation for a number of years and look forward to doing it every year so

108i definitely would like to have a combination of community volunteers uh and our own staff and um american dream mall is requiring i want to say one person for every 15 students is that what i remember thomas sir so i think that's we'll need more this year than we have in the past so um there will be opportunities um and this year anybody who's volunteering will be put on a board agenda to be approved prior to i i think personally if i may that's a great way to get cultural organizations and communities involved because have we seen in the past culturally that has stopped certain communities or um students from going because um they didn't know what was going to be what the chaperone is going to be like so in terms of this sense

109whether it's the indian community arab community latino community whoever it may be if a parent feels that somebody from their own community is going to be their chaperoning that might also entice that okay so this is going to be an open thing where even i can chaperone if i wanted to not me but a parent uh for example so i think that's great thank you anyone else president smith small question dr robertosi maybe mr hamza cancer is there a timeline for the students to be fundraising like when's like the cutoff date kind of is yeah so just to be clear and mr humble if i'm wrong please correct me the students have been fundraising all year for all the other senior things the yearbook the prom and things like that so normally project graduation would

110be included in that so the more you fundraise the cheaper your yearbook is the cheaper your prom bid is so they've been fundraising um so it's not like they have to do additional but there's still more fundraisers that they're gonna have the opportunity to what we have to sit down and decide as an administration is what that initial charge will be for the student but what i'm told is that even in the past you had you had a few students who would do all the fundraising and and get everything for free but that the vast majority of kids at the end of the day ended up paying for paying the full freight is that is that accurate mr hamdan your experience that is 100 accurate um so many of our students as much as we

111as much as we give them the information kids are kids at the end of the day you know they're going to see a little bit of extra work and they're going to say i'll rather pay the 45 than do the work it's just the way that it is so i would say that as dr roberto said 10 of our students absolutely take full advantage of the fundraising and then there's a large majority that take some advantage but then you have a contingent where because they took some advantage it ends up paying for their class dues but they still need to end up paying some things out of pocket at the end of the year for project graduation or for prom so they don't take as much advantage as i'd like to see but it's getting

112better year after year as we make these fundraisers easier for them instead of maybe needing to knock on doors to to sell cupcakes we're going to try and get up we're going to try and get some some better ideas in the future to make it easier for our kids and hopefully um you know get everybody to fundraise more mr hunter was it was interesting to hear some other towns some other schools with corporations in the town or people parents may work for businesses or that many other schools get uh sponsorships so a business may donate ten thousand dollars toward project graduation we gladly will accept any donations from the public from corporations from anyone that wishes to uh help uh give our students a great opportunity on graduation night so uh just wanted to put

113out that out there as well right anyone else i'm mr jonathan sorry one more thing just a quick recap because i really want the public to understand where we're going with this so but also uh mr hamdar dr robert zozi uh if students do purchase also for example as a fundraiser the graduation science those monies are also put towards credit for the event correct believe that was an hsa thing yeah i remember general jerry in the past has done it and she told me that one time when i bought a couple signs but i think that money did go towards it yes so in the past that's historically how it's been done uh but i need to speak with our hsa president miss lauer to see exactly how we were planning on doing that this

114year but to be clear those signs were then increased in price in order to be a fundraiser for uh project graduation so they would increase the price so that that money would go towards project graduation so it did help but it came out of increased cost of the signs so okay so which gets my second part and everything we've said i want to recap because like i said i really want the public i've seen a lot of things the past couple days i really want the public to understand so the the notion that there is no fundraiser is false the fact that people are asking why there is no pocket out of fees for students we've heard today there will be and also that hundred thousand dollars doesn't necessarily mean we're gonna spend a hundred

115thousand dollars that is because we have to have a number on paper say we will not surpass that amount but we will definitely be lower than that thank you okay anyone else okay seeing none let's roll call please mr abedrabo yes mr awad yes miss bashford can i pass yeah sure we'll come back miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley enthusiastically yes president smith yes and ms bashford okay uh i know i jumped a little bit so let me make sure i go back and do we uh okay so let's go back to 15 uh for board committee reports oh we don't have any yeah how come i don't see it i don't see any on my my agenda okay but you're telling me there are some

116but i have one okay mr paris on uh residency and security sure uh the residency and security committee met on thursday february 24th at 4 pm president word dr robert tosie mr gingaro mr dr mr constantino mr fieldhouse myself ms beltran mr daley and mr smith mr constantino reported that schools have been conducting their weekly security drills using various scenarios to properly train students and staff for different emergencies students staff and administrators have performed admirably throughout the drills mr jingaro discussed upcoming recommendations the administration has concerning potential security personnel mr dr explained that pre-k and kindergarten registration began on march 1st and parents can register online by going to the district website in addition to mailing highlighting offerings our district has and some friendly reminders was mailed out to all students mr doctor also explained

117the efforts currently underway to find students who are attending clifton schools or are receiving funding from clifton schools but do not live in clifton since january of this year through a focused residency check the district has found 31 students who do not live in clifton with an anticipated one-year savings to the district of 419 hundred and eight dollars meeting concluded at 4 55. okay any questions of uh mr paris yes mr watson smith um just to piggyback off you mr paris um i applaud you for uh taking on residency and security something i was you know very happy to have done um with the number that you said the 419 000 i also wanted to give you a general number um so far from year to date totaling with uh my reign and urane the

118district has saved nearly 1 million 55 384 dollars that's just something i wanted to mention to the public uh with mr paris that's 419 000 and change and when i was on it was 636 000 and change so i'm glad to say we're saving clifton a million dollars plus more and i wish you the best with the rest of the year thank you for us yeah that my number was just from this year so right thank you for sharing last year's amount it's substantial what would that million dollars be for the for the school year of 21 22 or is that calendar year of 21 going into 22. i i know the 419 was just since january this year so the first two months technically okay and yours was basically from september up until january

119okay so it's so that's just a million dollars 122. so that's just a million dollars of the 21 22 uh school year right so then we've saved more than that calendar year and and investigations are continuing there's more good there's more coming in we still have a couple of months left of school so the numbers are only going to increase in a positive matter so thank you as well mr paris and as well as our two folks uh vinnie constantino and tom fieldhouse doing such a great job yeah and and those the residents need to know that those are not numbers on in books those are not numbers that are equated those are real dollars those are real dollars of students that no longer are clifton paying for because they live in another town now

120and um mr gengaro started this whole process and mr doctor has now come in and perfected it even more so i commend both of you this town of clifton has always been strong on residency and i don't think there's another town out there it is as strong i know in the past they've called us to piggyback on our program and how we run it and how we do things and so i know uh uh we're doing a great job so i i commend uh all those in involved in that for bringing right now over a million dollars uh back to clifton so uh thank you mr paris that was your your first uh official uh uh committee meeting and uh you did a wonderful job so uh thank you okay uh again i don't i

121don't have anything on my screens or is there any other committee reports that are available no okay okay um where did board member comments go oh there um unfinished business um i have um to appoint our school board representatives for the state and for the county so our state representative uh will be miss basford and mr paris will be the alternate and um on the county level mr paris is going to uh take the chair and mr awad said he would take the alternate okay okay now we're at uh board member comments miss uh beltron you are the lead tonight you okay to start yes okay um i don't have any comments for tonight to keep it short um i also have the sentiment of the majority of the board that uh the project graduation

122being moved to um the american dream is going to be great i'm actually super looking forward to going i've been to the last two that we had um and i just think that the the kids lost two years of high school and if you think back to your high school experience and you lost two whole years of it um i don't think there's a value really for that so i think 100 150 160 to me at least it's um it's worthwhile to spend to give the kids um a great send-off and you know we only have i think two more years of kids that will have hopefully only two more years of kids that will have weird high school experiences and then we'll be back to kids having normal high school experiences god willing um

123so i think like you know the next two years we do have to be a little cognizant of what these kids did lose you know the freshmen didn't have eighth grade graduations you know some kids didn't have fifth grade they weren't kindergarten move up so you know those next ten years is really going to be kids that have lost things so you have to be a little cognizant of that including the learning loss that someone spoke about at the podium tonight um you know that's a big issue i see it just in my own employees that are high school age um you know you see the difference from the kids that you know had full schooling for the last four years and kids who now don't uh you can definitely pick up the you know

124most of my employees are english second language and you can see that they didn't really get the chance that other employees of mine from the past had to you know pick up the more the interest i can't even speak english myself intricacies of uh the english language and i i really hope that you know we do some i know we've had a lot of programs maybe this summer since we'll have a little bit more of a normal learning environment we can offer some more some more programs for the kids to um to be able to try and catch up so that it isn't a lifelong delay because that's what they're talking about in the news that some of these kids are going to be delayed for life like life altered because of the pandemic which

125is kind of crazy to think about i mean a lot of lives are altered because the pandemic but for children especially to start just restarting your life and have your life altered is uh really sad to me and i think that's all i have thank you uh thank you miss bassford um thank you good evening everyone uh so yesterday started the very holy period of um 40 days of lent uh for roman catholics and all catholics out there in the world uh we were um we tried to give up something in our house and uh i tried to exhibit it here tonight so i'm going to watch my words for the next 40 days and after my my lengthen period i'm going to let loose in an epic way 40 days easter sunday easter sunday

126trust me easter sunday i have a question for mr smith but i'll ask that in a minute read across america happens to be one of my favorite things about uh the perks of the job uh i was invited to three schools i was only able to get to school five virtually i took off last year the whole day to just read to different schools i couldn't do that this year i'm training in a different different level and i really had to concentrate on my job you know comes first so i did get to five and um when dr orbitazzy talked about the books and the tongue tie tying and all i could think of was sitting in school five waiting for the next class to come and peter salzano bursting into the office those double

127doors just flying open and like smoke comes out here comes peter and he's talking about this book that he was reading and his tongue was getting tied all day all yesterday when i was reading that book i was choking up because all i could think of was peter dressed up as a cat and a hat and doing what he does for the students and in true peter fashion he made fun of himself he made himself the joke and it makes me laugh because that's a memory that i'll never forget and god rest his soul and um he was truly truly missed in my life and i i can't get over the fact is that he's gone but when he said about the the tongue tying it was it was like an hour just a belly

128laughing i mean belly laughing with peter and it's uh it's nice that we can give back to those students and do that i wasn't able to get to 16 and i wasn't able to get to eight i sent my apologies i copied dr robitazia on the email um but i will get there next year god willing if you invite me i did send up um i emailed you today dr robitazia sent up two books so the teacher can use them for her library uh the ones that i read and the students were just so so nice it's very hard to read on zoom and you're trying to say all the dr seussisms and you're trying to show pictures and you got your head this way and all of a sudden the dogs burst in it

129was just comical and all i could think of was peter peter bursting into the room and giving me that blessing so uh it was good black balloon day um uh these are my personal views and opinions i do not speak for the board i do i am a member of clifton against substance abuse and uh mr brunsiak i do not have permission to speak about the subject nor will i uh you can reach out to robin gallino or tom whittles about your questions and they will answer them but black balloon day is going to be a virtual event on um march 6th it's being hosted by dorothy online and casa and uh there is a link on the city website and we are all going to participate uh and they're gonna they have people participating

130and telling stories and different doing different things and it's supposed to be a really really good event so i hope you can participate and pop on you don't have to speak you can just do whatever you want thank you to all the speakers for coming out tonight and uh enjoy the quiet for 40 days thank you okay next uh we have mr canova good evening i want to congratulate everyone on all the awards that they were won tonight and then all the achievements that were on uh most notably the one that dr robert tosie brought up at the thousand points and also a gpa of 98.6 i think you said it was i mean that's amazing uh we have some really really great students here um and it just shows that's what i love to

131see that's the best part of this job uh thank you to everyone that put in the hard work to make this border bed room renovation possible uh now we have enough room to as as our president said to uh award larger groups of recipients for things and have to wait in the hall um i think it's a more professional environment and i love the way it came out so thank you all for that um the pbsis or pb is i don't know which one it is i heard both acronyms um so i love how they're gamifying the experience so kids nowadays they love playing games and when you make something a game they're always going to gravitate towards it so when you make it a game and say you have to wear your your mustang

132shirt today or you have to wear your uh your id card on you every day and then you get points they're always going to do it and that's always better than a negative response it's always better than punishing somebody for something to not not have done um and i'd love to see that that's being implemented in this district i know we started with columbus and we saw a big uptick in and positive behavior there i know mr gengar back there i'm sure he said uh you know he was a big part of that initially uh and i love seeing that done throughout the district i really think that's very positive and a positive wave throughout the district is going to happen so thank you everyone for being a part of that uh the other thing

133was uh at school three i know i saw it and i know i saw pictures across the district with uh this week everyone was getting in character dressing up as dr seuss and the guy in the hat i think that's another thing at least in k25 that bring kids kids in and it makes school fun now that we're getting more back to normal i love seeing that things are more fun in the classroom and you know the kids come home excited they they go to school excited they want to go to school they want to be a part of things so i love seeing that happen um and and i just hope more of that is to come project graduation i agree with the comments said i think it's going to be a great year

134for them i think that that's gonna be a fun event uh look forward to that and uh just happy saint patty's day coming up and thank you everyone good night uh dr danny um so i will um keep my comments kind of short um one thing that i want to say was congratulations to all of the students of the month i also wanted to say that there was a bill passed that would um that now all boards of education need to have a student representative to the board so it's nice that we actually have that um there's also a bill for hiring retired teachers so if there are any retired teachers due to teacher shortage that you know do want to come back into the profession it won't affect your pension um you know you

135can again once that actually gets i guess ironed out and everything you could inquire about that two topics this month just want to say that it's women's history month and you know we have three commissioners women on the board so [Laughter] yes i know i know okay it was all right okay all right um march um 21st in history that was the sharpville massacre in south africa which um which was during the time of apartheid and as a result march 21st became human rights day so um i just want to you know put that out there especially in light of you know things that are going on um and i just just prayers for peace prayers that people that around the world that need to find how would you say um that we can that

136we can come to peace agreements and um you know prayers for those in ukraine i know that there are people i have friends and family who are in the ukraine and they just say that you know at night um it's just really when you go to bed you just don't know what'll happen when you wake up because of the the um the bombing in that i know that the ukrainian church on broad street is collecting donations for ukraine i know there are other places so you know if it is something that you're looking um to do to contribute i mean i have a grandson and one of the things that they were talking about was just like formula and diapers for babies and you know children little children like that i mean they're so innocent

137so you know just to give a you know donation even if it's for for baby products for for children i mean they're like really innocent in that so um thank you very much and thank you to the speakers thank you mr paris thank you mr smith uh just again congratulations to our student of the month uh winners and especially the academic decathlon team i think it's just uh proof at the high levels of academic achievement along with such a varied curriculum and opportunities for our students in all sorts of areas you can get a first class education here in clifton and congratulations to that team who will represent us nationally i also had the privilege this week of participating in read across america day i was at mr kolonkowski's third grade class at school five

138and miss wollen's class grade one at school 16. and um what really left an impression on me was just how excited and engaged students are and you just do something as simple as read to them so just for parents that are out there and big brothers big sisters and big cousins grab a book and and read to your children because it's not only rewarding personally for you to do but just the level of joy that it brings them and engagement is uh is really personally so satisf satisfying that's all i have thank you mr smith thank you mr paris uh vice president uh daily thank you mr president oh sorry i'm sorry it because it it switches back again i'm sorry go ahead it's mr uh abby travels yeah call me whatever you want okay

139um the second meeting in a row i'm gonna start off with the um best thing first happy women's history month um celebrate you are celebrate yourself be proud and i mean that in a sense of you know we all have nieces daughters young girls and our families who we want to teach them to be independent um lean on themselves learn where women's rights came from learn where women's suffrage came from uh and understand that the glass ceiling is well sorta is but should be shattered um on many levels and purposes and while there's still a long way to go unfortunately um as um you know she's trying to teach my my son her younger brother how to read i'm still trying to teach her her mother and i um about the stars are you know

140her capacity meaning she can do whatever she wants so that's what that means um to develop family kyle congratulations thousand uh points i think i've only seen two students do that one unfortunately in pv with brac healy and the other one was uh here i'm glad that black balloon day was mentioned for casa on march 6th girls football team uh there are two fundraisers that i'm aware of mr uh mark and joe tell you differently if there's more than that the girls football team i bought my jersey um to support them please go on and maybe if we can send that link out if we haven't yet to the district to make sure we purchase our apparel to support the girls football team i'm not calling a flag football it's a girls football team congrats

141to our you know people say academic decathlon and events or programs like for example robotics are not real athletic opportunities or they're not challenging or there's no real exertion there and i think honestly i think i believe otherwise um so congratulations mr stewart um you know which goes into pbsis mr goza you're doing a phenomenal job to the high school you know i wrote down while you're talking right mind right acts positive citizens in society and that's what that really trend you know translates to for me um we still have some outdated recognitions mr uh president daley we haven't still haven't recognized the football team we have other sports who have not recognized and i think this is more of a reason that we see like dewback and heredia and all these other folks doing

142phenomenal work to do a a city-wide event something that we can celebrate academics on the in in um in the classroom and on the field um to close up really quick um i know miss bastard's birthday was last thursday happy birthday to you as you mentioned this last week to freeholder duffy um i'm sorry on the loss of your son terry may he rest in peace another fundraiser school 13 swag fundraiser i already bought my stuff and last and i'll end off here mr president so ukraine we've all touched upon but to me it's a special thing because as a palestinian-american understanding what aggression and occupation is for the for the folks of ukraine our citizens here whatever is needed i'm sure many communities and i'll put myself out there will help the father alex

143over at the church on broad is phenomenal they're doing a lot of great work please go down there and help close out boxes get boxes ready they're loading up their trucks over there they're i'm sure they can use volunteers so please i ask everybody if you can't at least donate at least go down and volunteer and help um help directly that way thank you thank you now vice president daley huh no i got him thank god i missed that too i got a nice haircut for you and i have and i have a chance to i see it it's because it keeps jumping around never mind i'm sorry i'm not lost eventually you're gonna get to go sorry sorry mr daley one more second you know what no apologies necessarily no i think we're just

144gonna run the dais instead of i tried to do it alphabetically i think we're just gonna go first every single time no you're not gonna go first every time but it's just gonna i'm not gonna i usually go back to miss bassford because no i'm not blaming you no no no i'm playing i'm not blaming you i'm just i'm trying to give some rationalization to my i'm not blaming you i didn't blame you what one love i'm sorry bob marley go ahead thank you oh that was interesting um first and foremost like ms bashford said for the next 40 days i'm gonna also be quiet and be very nice uh pray for me uh first and foremost i want to congratulate all the athletes all the students on their awards uh for this month um

145you know today i was gladly brought my daughter to school 6 here she got to meet you know many wonderful individuals some of the commissioners administration and staff uh you know it's woman you know what's happening you know worldwide especially in ukraine and you know many parts of the world you know some parts of asia in the middle east south america what we're realizing is we're going more downhill than we are going uphill you know you're seeing country after country nation after nation you know suffering and you know bloodshed is becoming so common i pray for the people of ukraine uh my next door neighbor stanley he's actually half polish half ukrainian he's a phenomenal neighbor i learned so much about their culture and you know you realize the more you branch out and you

146meet uh individuals from different ethnicities and backgrounds you realize the common uh theme that's in many cultures european cultures also is family and the pride that they have for their nation and seeing how brave the men and women and the children in ukraine you know fighting back to aggression and they're not the only nation that's doing that around the world so i just pray for you know uh for human for mankind specifically uh to not forget these issues because we tend to live in a society that has a short-term memory where you know a certain topic is happening and everybody's passionate about it and it slowly phases out and they forget um this is becoming a domino effect you know we went from the pandemic thinking that we're done with the pandemic now we're entering

147into this phase where we're seeing a beautiful nation with beautiful people uh going on a downworld spiral we pray for them we pray for the peace and these are discussions you know i had with you know some family members that have students in the district with social media and everything you know students are seeing a lot of things you know firsthand and you know these are tough conversations that we have to have with our children with our community and we can't sweep things under the rug because the truth is out there kids are curious kids are accurate we have to teach them you know you know a lot of students are taking history classes and history tends to repeat itself we gotta assure you know hopefully the next generation steps up and we head into

148you know a bright future in a direction and i just really pray for everybody at this moment thank you amen all right who wants to go now mr daley no thank you mr president um again just a few comments again uh the student recognition and mrs gouza's presentation on pbis is is really good it really demonstrates how we feel about our students and about our instructors and teachers here in the district and even though we do it every every uh board meeting it's uh it's it's a good thing to do and i'm glad we do that and continue to practice that on project graduation i was never to the american dream mall and i was always curious what's in there is it a ghost town tumbleweeds whatever and i had an occasion with my wife

149too i said let's go just make a visit and see what it's like it just blew me away so uh not that it had anything to do but it reinforced uh for me that this was a great place to have this event um it's the place is outstanding uh and i encourage anybody to go visit uh it's it's really amazing and and dr robert tosi uh adequately described the water parks and the uh events there it just it just blew me away and you know citizens i think most people i've talked to many people said yeah i've never been there but make a visit take an afternoon or free time and it's it's really an amazing trip and and then you can really see why we've chosen that venue to do project graduation um again

150our hearts go out to those in the ukraine um it's a very very very important world event that we're living in it's an unfortunate event a very unfortunate event but it's something that we really need to take note of and appreciate what we have here in this country so and our stability and our uh our views about personal freedom and self-determination it's very important lastly about the mask earlier in the meeting dr robertosi mentioned about no nobody's being bullied unfortunately not in this district but a governor of one of our states had students up and berated the students in public and paraded a couple of the students to take their mask off like it wasn't necessary that is total nonsense everybody needs to be respected for how they feel about that if you want to

151wear the mask don't want a man wear a mask get vaccinated not vaccinated that's personal choice and that's what we treasure here in this country so nobody should be looked upon or berated for any reason how they choose to conduct their their lives and how they approach different crises with that that concludes my remarks and uh let's see everybody at the next meeting thank you uh mr daley it becomes very difficult to each day as this war in the ukraine continues but it really touched home when i i checked that um the clifton board of education employs um a large amount of uh people from ukraine ukraine right so that hits home it really hits close to home these people trying to live their lives did nothing to deserve not only invading their country but

152the nastiness the barrage of bombs and killings of innocent children in hospitals a kindergarten apartment complexes universities there is no nothing that can give credit to that disgustingness that is happening by this demented individual i firmly stand with our employees with our friends with the residents who have family members back there i spoke to one of our custodians who had knee surgery and i wanted to see how she was doing with knee surgery and she could barely talk to me because she was in tears that her husband's family is in the ukraine they haven't heard from them in five days they have a six month year old child and they believe that they're all dead that that really struck home but watching it on tv and watching this disgustingness that is happening in the world

153i am just so thankful that so many countries have come together to realize that this is totally unacceptable and while i wish we would do more i hope and pray that all of us could do whatever we can to help those people they didn't ask for this they don't deserve it and i'm not blaming per se the russian people it's not they didn't make the decision they've interviewed many of those people and and they don't want to be there but it's this one demented leader and we know in history what demented leaders have done to this world so i hope i pray for all those employees affected in the clifton school district that may have family or friends in ukraine that our thoughts and prayers are with you and your families and hope that this

154will end and end immediately i also um echo all of the comments about uh project graduation um it's just such a wonderful wonderful venue and how great is it that we can come together to do something great for our kids don't our kids deserve that aren't they entitled to that i don't know what anyone that would want to not support such a wonderful safe environment for graduates that will now be alumni of the clifton school system and i think as i spoke to some board members you know the public elects us to make decisions for the residents of the town and we try and do our very best to make the best decisions but i know this board member when i make my decisions i think of kids first and yes maybe it's a little

155bit more extra money this year but these kids didn't have the last two years of anything that resembled normal don't they deserve to go out on something high and yes we may get sponsors we may get donations they will go out and fundraise but we need to support these kids and support this town on such a great thing one clifton is what we we our new logo that we brought in one clifton we can't go back on things i i can't i you know i'm sorry that some other graduating classes didn't have certain opportunities we can't go back in and erase that we could only move forward and try and do the right thing going forward and i know the majority of people in this town they know what's right they know that we're supposed

156to be here for kids our kids deserve it they've been through two years of not fun things so i support project graduation tremendously and um i know the town will come through and if you can help help sponsor a child or donate money or whatever it might be um this town will come through you they always do and we're going to have a great project graduation for these kids in a new safe environment and i think one of the things that dr roberto may have not said in this venue um they like to bring you know like four classes four schools a night for project graduation and when we heard that we were kind of like we don't want to do that they wouldn't necessarily be intermingled they would be at different venues but we

157still didn't want to do that our clifton kids are important enough special enough they should have that place to themselves that night and through the great work of the administration and the school principal and the the vice principals they got that clifton will be the only school there on graduation night so congratulations clifton graduates of 2022 you're gonna have a wonderful wonderful venue of something brand new that anybody who goes and sees as mr daley said you know just go and look at it the water park alone you're just amazed so i'm glad that we're able to offer that to them i i said it before out in the hallway but uh for those that were not here um we thank um we thank the public for uh giving us the opportunity to realize that

158our board room that was here before was inadequate it was old it was dingy it was not what clifton should be representing having to do presentations and half the people were out in the hallway we gained in this room about how many feet did we gain 25 feet additional space that's not small 25 feet we gained and utilized all the space so now when we honor people like tonight we they can all be in the same room and hear it and enjoy it clifton deserves that so i thank again administration my fellow colleagues on the board for supporting this and making it happen it's a beautiful room with beautiful technology and most importantly administration did a great job of keeping keeping the expenses low they didn't go out and just make it all elaborate and

159we we wanted to have something nice but we also knew we only had so much money to work with so i think administration did a phenomenal job in that this room this facility is something we can be proud of the employees just the hallway outside they're so happy that it's bright and and not dingy and you put some nice flooring down and they're they're just amazed the little things so administration board you did a great job on this and i know i set it out to get it out in the hallway but um mr uc uh and through you and to uh um mr shiatta who put a tremendous amount of time and dedication into making this happen for all of you he didn't have to do that he could have just did his job

160as normal but he knew it was something special for clifton and i thank him for the for the amount of time and effort that he put into this above and beyond his normal job i couldn't believe when he texted me on a saturday night and he was just leaving and you know the contractor had just left and just amazing dedication that's what clifton's all about so again uh i thank you all for uh joining us here tonight for our first meeting um and all of our meetings from now on we'll we'll be here and that's all i have so there is nothing for executive session is there anything for new business yes ms basser um the student representative made a really good point about the students in clifton high getting to know the board members

161i know that we're not supposed to go to schools to visit and do things like that but maybe we can come up with like maybe when if somebody's available and volunteer our time we could meet a board member set them up in a little table maybe somebody from the staff can sit with them and they can come down in the cafeteria and meet a board member you know i mean like make it an outreach program like that so you know i'm not retired but if i have i have mondays and tuesdays i go and wait late for work i would donate my time and go in and sit there and maybe two of us are at a time we go meet a board member and then this way they could ask us about the process

162how things work so that maybe that may be a way of bridging this gap that he was talking about with the um getting to know the kids and the kids getting to know us and seeing our faces so that was my suggestion yes thank you yeah that's part part of what we're going to be doing with the student liaison committee but this will give an opportunity my my thought of that committee as i've discussed with dr robertosi is um that we would rotate and we'd have all the board members the opportunity to meet with the kids um so this way they can get to know everybody so it's kind of on the same thing it's just we haven't been able to get it quite off the ground yet dr dobitosi just had his first um

163what do you call that ambassador superintendent ambassadors um so we didn't want to like crowd it back to back and uh the administration was trying to see if they wanted to have different students involved so uh we'll get this moving and i think it's a great idea that um and that i think it's just great that they want to meet board members i i don't i don't know a lot of kids that want to meet board members um so the the the fact that they even want to do that i'm i'm really uh they may regret it afterwards but um you know i i i um i think it's a step in the right direction i uh i commend andrew tremendously for uh for bringing that to us so we'll we'll get that going and

164uh just so the public knows we can't um we can't have more than four board members meet with students at a time because it contin constitutes a meeting so that's why we have to rotate it um but we'll give every board member the opportunity to meet with the kids um i think it's a great idea all right anything else for new business yeah president president if i could um say something i already brought this to um dr robert tozie um we we need to rec we need to recommend to the board that we change our next board meeting the march 6th the march 16th board meeting which was a weird wednesday meeting because of the budget calendar from the governor since then he's pushed back his typical budget address from the end of february till

165this tuesday coming up so they pushed back the the budget um being due march um 21st to the 28th so we're recommending moving the 16th to that the next thursday march 24th if that's okay with everybody and this is not our fault this is the sorry the governor's fault we would we would just want to move that meeting one week to the thursday yeah only because of the governor it's not our doing it's on our doing and the 24th would be the typical day we would have had a meeting yes yes actually it would have been the typical day the original 16th meeting was set because of the budget schedule which has now changed which allows us to have our regular meetings as long as it's 24th on the 23rd into the next one i'm

166not getting troll for you guys by my wife it's my anniversary right it really was this the 17th would have been our next meeting but because of st patrick's day we didn't want to we had agreed not to meet on that so that's how this kind of all so is everyone okay with uh changes we don't need motion do we we don't i'm just going to need i just need that yep okay no one has any objection to that okay so the public will let the uh that we'll get that advertisement out but that our next board meeting will be on the twenty fourth fourth um at seven pm was the cat the calendar was changed by res was by resolution don't we have to vote to change the resolution i i think you ruled

167that but we don't have to do that last time i don't think that you need to have you have you have a account you you changed board meetings all the time yeah you can have a resolution to change it fine let's do a resolution everybody seems to be in favor of it so just do it okay uh motion uh to motion next regularly scheduled board meeting to uh march 24th at 7 00 pm moved by mr abu drabo second by mr awad um all the way around the arabs around okay [Music] mr awad motion second by mr abedrabo 7 pm is there any yes 7 p.m is there any discussion yeah i love you too roll call i'll do it mr abba driver pass [Music] mr awan yes he's not even here daley's not even

168here yes steroid miss bassford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president he stepped away president smith yes motion closure motion to close by mr abedrabo there you go seconded by mr awad oh mr paris wanted to do it sorry can you never get one with you guys well mr paris haslet any objection meaning adjourned thank you everyone good job first one down there oh my god one day on the uh monopoly oh you're welcome when was the first board meeting hang on let me call joanna