January 20, 2022 - Clifton Board of Education Meeting

001fast oh uh is so all right okay i'd like to call to order the regular meeting of the clifton board of education for thursday january the 20th 2022. if everyone would please rise for the pledge of allegiance followed by a brief moment in silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you mr uc roll call please mr mr avadrava here mr awad here miss basford here miss beltran mr canova here dr danny here mr paris here vice president daley dear president smith here we have a quorum uh mission statement uh lucy would you like to read there for me miss danny the mission of the clifton school district in an open

002and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world thank you open plug with meeting statement in jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the clinton 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

003website and mailed to presidents of parent-teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight okay we'll move on to um recognitions uh we have our pbsis district coordinator ms paula rogoza here to make a presentation thank you mr president smith um mr pr vice president mr daly commissioners of the board of education dr robertosi and center administration for the opportunity to once again showcase the wonderful talents that our district has to offer with the multi-tiered system of um with the multi-tiered system of interventions pbsis the ongoing pursuit of implementing with fidelity or our multi-tiered system uh leads us today to tonight to tonight's recognition in a world where we recite teamwork makes the dream work we're reminded of the leaders that guide those teams and dreams mrs tracy

004muriji principal at school four is being recognized for the unwavering support of the pbsis framework her support in all settings that she graces is undoubtedly present at all in all parts of her life many look to her sage and problem-solving advice to help further drive everything from instruction staff professional development and school morale mrs murrigi's can-do attitude is positively infectious as she helps people see the easiest and best way to implement evidence-based practices most recently mrs muriji joined the district pbsis leadership team where she has already provided practical and constructive suggestions on sustaining district-wide pbsis implementation let's take a moment to hear from some of mrs marigi's colleagues reflect on her involvement in the pbsis framework in various settings mr horn would you please help us hi my name have the pleasure and is of

005working with mrs mourinho during her administrative internship here at school 11. tracy is instrumental to the success that our rare team has experienced implementing the pds science program in september of 2019 mrs mourinho brought her distinctive leadership style and a wealth of information to our school it was clear from the beginning that we would work together to continue to develop our rare program tracy made a point of inviting all staff members to our meetings to get as many perspectives as possible she listened to all of our ideas and then helps us to implement that she helped streamline our ocr process and helped us to create the system that worked within our school and she was always willing and patient to sit and explain and re-explain and answer any questions that we had until we had

006a firm grasp on what we were doing tracy helped us to build a cohesive team that never lose focus on our goal of improving the experience of all school eleven students when there was work to be done tracy was the first to volunteer she dusted and painted shelves to help open our rare room she sold snacks at our socials she attended night events with her beautiful children in town and she even dressed up as a rare buff one halloween to this day mrs murray is the first person i call when i have a question of concern we just need to talk about something going on within our program tracy thank you for teaching leading and loving both the students and the staff of clifton public schools [Music] assisted me as i welcome back half the

007students to school three while the other half stayed remote during the school year school three also launched pbsis due to copenhagen our training looked very different from previous years instead of having a full year training we were given the second half of the school year instead of training with the entire team together most of our training was done individually listening to videos mrs murray seeing the vast difference brought our team together she provided opportunities for discussion questions and most importantly to come to shared understandings mrs murgy also created meaningful and fun team building experiences it was a great comfort to have mrs muriji assist us since she came to the table with so much pbsis experience we leaned on the smuriji for her knowledge while she guided us every step of the life it was

008a true pleasure working with mr muriji and i'm proud to now call her not only a principal colleague but a good friend i would like to finish by saying school 3 would like to wish mrs murray great success as she leads school four and i would like to also finish by saying have a good new year hi i'm corinne muskowski an elementary school counselor here in clemson and i've had the honor and privilege of working with miss murrayji for almost two years now first at school three and now at school four her desire and drive to make positive lasting changes in the lives of our students has been prevalent since day one of meeting her she has had many years of experience with pbsas since her years of working with the pre-k program and she

009has brought her expansive knowledge skills and ideas to helping school 3 and now school 4 continue to grow our pbsis programs although tracy has many years of experience is always open for new ideas tracy leads with kindness compassion and understanding in everything she does and it is truly an honor and a privilege to be on her pbsis team as her colleague and friend congratulations tracy this is well deserved that wonderful video together and everyone who took the time to contribute to the message for mrs marie if you have the opportunity to meet ms marina or interact you'll feel her power of being an amazing human being and an excellent educator mr president smith vice president mr daley dr robotozi would you do us an honor of helping present ms mariju with her certificate of achievement

010[Applause] the certificate says the clinton school district certificate of appreciation for outstanding pbsis implementation presented to tracy mourinho school number four showcase administrator for january [Applause] right next we have the recognition and award presentations of the clifton high school january students of the month we'll start out with our freshmen i have the honor of presenting to freshman declan einecker declan is a freshman student of the month declan's favorite subject is world history and he enjoys mr hyatt's class because he makes world history fun and interesting mr hyatt has daily quotes like if it's to be it's up to me and be the change in the world that you want to see he always makes sure we understand the subject and tries to keep everyone focused and learning ready declan also finds inspiration in his parents

011and appreciates how hard they've been working to guide him and his family towards success declan is a member of the boys cross country team and is now doing long distance running during the winter track season congratulations declan [Applause] sure so please very good [Applause] okay our sophomore dr denny sophomore stephanie feliciano stephanie is the sophomore student of the month her favorite subject is english because she has always been an avid reader and takes solace in the writing process stephanie praises her classmates and is academically motivated by her peers she states unfortunate enough to be surrounded by remarkable students every day whose ambition and intelligence constantly pushes me to strive for higher goals stephanie is involved in many extracurricular activities including the spring musical madcap choir athletic training club heroes and cool kids girls learn international

012psychology club and the end racism and sexism club congratulations stephanie [Applause] come on doctor hello thank you [Applause] okay junior mr abu drabo thank you president smith junior joseph abel joseph abel is our junior student of the month joe's favorite subject is history and he enjoys mr fakina's class because he talks about real world problems and teaches great lessons outside the classroom joe is a member of the 2021 state championship football team he led the team in tackles and sacks joe also wrestles and is looking forward to another successful season after placing fourth in last year's state tournament joe's future aspirations include includes playing football at the college level and majoring in criminal justice congratulations joe [Applause] i was going to say that but [Music] okay next we have our senior um joe you have

013to take it over yep um senior is luke santiago luke is our senior student of the month luke's favorite subject is called allied health terminology because of his future desire to become a nurse and to participate in the healthcare field the person that has inspired luke the most in his life is his mother lucille santiago she is always willing to support him whenever in whatever way she can and luke wants to be able to pay her back for everything she has given him luca attends the pre-med club on a monthly basis and has found the intro to health professions and the anatomy and physiology courses to be the most interesting and captivating classes at chs luke wants to be a registered nurse and already has been accepted to seton hall university congratulations to luke so

014congratulations to all of our high school students of the month we know you probably have other things to do and homework and stuff so if you would like to leave please do and thank you if not you're more than welcome to stay all right next we're going to have the report from our student representative um andrew our regular student representative is not here so tiffany here tonight taking his place so tiffany hi oh wow hi hi my name is tiffany guerrero the junior representative of the board of education this month i will be speaking on behalf of scene of the senior representative some extra curricular activities i participate in our jv cheerleader football manager and recording secretary for the junior student council here is the brief update on the chs winster sports boys basketball had

015a game today with wes milford away girls basketball had a home game today with west milford hockey had a game today with kearney away swimming had a meet today with passaic competitions cheer plays first on their first competition competition and their next competition will be on monday 24th at paramus high school bowling is playing with pci tomorrow at t-bowl lanes indoor track has its first hazards county meet on monday at ocean breeze in saturn island wrestling had a match today at hackensack some of the upcoming events will be ca sca is now officially going to be holding a batman tournament for chs students on saturday january 29th there's no registration fee and as for right now tickets are public are open to the public senior class will be doing their annual mr cupcake fundraiser the

016donations will be going towards senior activities like senior prom all order forms along with payments will be due by thursday february 3rd key club is holding a pie in the face contest in early february where students and faculty compete to raise donations for ocean of love a non-profit charity dedicated to helping children and their families fight cancer this is our way of building community building building community and generating school spirit while raising money for a loving cause you can donate through paypal cash app or venmo more information can be found on the chs key club instagram page moving forward i'll be moving forward i would like to bring up the at home instruction as covert cases rose again from december to winter break i began to notice more and more of my peers instead interested

017in a remote option for schools for school some of the concerns i were due to i heard were due to have many more people in school tested positive after after the thanksgiving break leaving many worried that cases would increase even more after winter break cold cases did begin to rise again upon our return it was it was a good thing that students had an option for home instruction or in person for families that were concerned there were many pros and cons about this the benefit of this is that students who received home instruction were protected from being in contact from covert students who chose in-person classes could get to class early finish their assignments in class so they don't have to worry about them later and there were less attendance meaning less contact with covid

018there were many issues that came out with the situation however students have been increasingly unem unmotivated and students have struggled to continue with their lesson plans for example there could be as few as as five out of 25 students in the classroom it would be almost pointless to try to teach since most of the students were at home i'm one of the students who picked in person because i believe being in president in a classroom is better way to learn how could i learn if my teachers can't continue with their lesson plan if half of my classmates are at home instruction the school has now created an environment conductive to learning these past three weeks there are still questions we have about this whole scenario what limitation are there from the new jersey department of

019education that are preventing us from the full remote option is it possible for just one school in the district to go remote with them with to go remote with the amount of students that chose at home instruction will you be considering an alternative model in the future again thank you tiffany we appreciate you filling in tonight and thank you for that uh wonderful report and uh you're welcome to leave as well thank you thank you tiffany i'm going to answer your question if you want to just wait all right so why don't we do that next superintendent no we have adoptions but go ahead oh but don't do that okay adoption of the minutes of december the 9th 2021 so i moved some movement mr abu drab seconded by mr canova any discussion seeing don

020roll call mr mr avadrava yes mr awa yes miss bassford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris christine vice president daily yes president smith yes oh she carries adoption of the minutes of january 6 2022 reorganizational meeting motion dr danny second by mr abu drabo discussion see non-roll call mr aberdraba yes mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daily yes president smith yes ocean carries okay now our superintendent dr robertosi president smith i'm sorry really quick uh i don't see on here uh executive session minutes from the 9th of december i guess they're not ready yet okay just want to confirm okay superintendent thank you uh mr president good evening commissioners members of the community uh who

021have joined us tonight i just want to start by saying thank you to tiffany i always love hearing from students especially those who are very well spoken and who are sharing their experiences in our schools that's very important for for me to know and to hear so first thing is um tiffany i heard you say something about cupcakes right so um that's really what has stuck out to me and i'm remembering more than the other stuff so if there is this alleged cupcakes fundraiser can you please make sure that i get an email so that i can order some thank you on a more serious note um tiffany brought up the um the short-term asynchronous home instruction option um and i don't disagree with most of what she said it was not the best option

022for learning but it was meant to be a temporary i'm getting a lot of feedback is anybody else hearing that mr horn am i doing something wrong or is that better okay it was meant to be a a temporary situation and in fact um it will end on friday so all students are expected to be back in school on monday january 24th the reason for it was which tiffany so eloquently stated it was due to a rise in in a number of cases clifton high school is of course our largest building with almost 2 800 students uh in the building on a daily basis so in an effort to ease concerns about people coming back after the break i gave that home instruction option that is ending all students are required to be back in

023school on monday the new jersey department of education has not permitted still has not permitted there to be a choice a remote option choice tiffany asked could a school could one school in a district go remote or virtual and the answer is yes one whole school could go virtual or remote if in consultation with the with the health department we feel that it's not safe at this point in time um we are starting to see a downturn in a number of coveted cases so we're going to reopen on monday does that mean that you know two weeks from now we don't see an uptick in cases and and we have to shut down clifton high school and and go virtual that's always a possibility it's not something that not something that i really want to

024happen so there is no other option for a student to to go virtual unless they're being quarantined by the district so tiffany i hope that answers your question at least a little bit and please make sure i get a cupcake order form i also want to congratulate the students of the month and i want to put it in perspective what that award is so i mentioned obviously clifton high school is our biggest school but you're talking about a building with 2 800 students give or take so one st to be freshman of the month you're selected out of a class of almost 700 students i mean you you really have to stand out and that's just really very very very impressive so congratulations to those students of the month i look forward to seeing all

025the great things that they do in the future so as i mentioned we are starting to turn the corner on covet cases they're starting to decline nationally throughout the state and in our schools we're seeing it it's interesting because the last meeting we had here on january 9th i was talking to the board about the cdc and the new jersey department of health continually changing their guidance what's funny was that night while i was speaking they were changing their guidance when i got home that night the cdc had adopted the five-day isolation rule for schools and the new jersey department of health five days later then adopted those rules so we are operating under a shortened isolation period in most cases of five days for students who test positive or staff members who test positive

026or those staff members or students who are in close contact of a positive case with the exception of preschool that five day isolation period does not count for preschool that's still 10 days and then of course each situation is individualized so the response may vary based on a particular situation based on household context and other variables so even when a student does test positive we're hoping that their symptoms are mild and at the most they're only going to be missing five days of school it's a big difference in missing 10 days of school and previously it was 14 days as i mentioned the short term asynchronous home instruction option ends on friday and all students are expected to be back in school on monday and as i always like to do at our board meetings

027i'd like to give a brief update to the commissioners on our referendum excuse me um on the agenda tonight you will see a resolution to vote on the final contract for our construction management firm epic so that you've already approved them this is now the contract that has been reviewed by the board's attorney and hopefully will be aborted tonight we met we have been meeting with epic we've been meeting with our architect to cara rubino and the facilities committee we've had a meeting to discuss whether or not the board wanted to have a what's known as a pla which is a project labor agreement so in short what a what a pla is it's an agreement between a project's general contractor and their subcontractors and local labor unions the agreement is made through the local

028building trades council and the purpose of it is to ensure adequate labor staffing um through an available and consistent workforce by skilled and safely trained trades people who are in a labor union so the facilities committee seems to be on board with that at some time in the future there may have to be a resolution on the agenda to approve a pla but our construction management firm is also recommending a pla we have had two bi-weekly meetings with our construction management firm outlining the game plan so we're getting close to our bids going out we've been discussing the strategy on our bids whether bid should be individual or they should be bundled we've had our asbestos firm has completed they're called ahera is their name there they are doing the asbestos abatement and surveying the

029schools for asbestos they've completed the survey of all the schools we're going to arrange a meeting to discuss uh the results and to determine if there is a significant amount of asbestos abatement that will need to be done we're expecting that in some of our older schools there will be a need for asbestos abatement but that needs to happen real soon so that our project can begin we've determined there's no requirement for gas upgrades before we do our projects we did a water main test at woodrow wilson middle school for our new field there is a water line that was found underneath the field that the water company is saying they don't necessarily need that they could move but they might want us to pay for it so that's something that we're going to have

030to discuss between our architects and our construction management firm and get their recommendation we've completed phase one of our security camera and door access control systems at clifton high school in both middle schools we've interviewed a board committee interviewed for construction attorneys and there is a firm that was selected and that's on the agenda tonight to be voted this firm is to deal solely with referendum related construction projects where we hope that it's not necessary but in my experience with any construction project we're going to run into some issues where a lawyer will be needed and we're waiting on quotes for our new pa systems our strobes our message boards our phone integration and phase two of our camera system which is at our elementary schools and that'll be available soon so that's our update

031on the referendum if anybody has any questions i'll be happy to answer them and that completes my report for tonight mr president thank you thank you all right next we're going to move on to uh 13 presentation of reports from administration um mr michael doctor director of operations for our district has a brief presentation thank you president smith board of education commissioners dr robertosi and district administrators as you know twice a year we need to present our information concerning hibs and vvsas to all stakeholders and the board of education we're going to be discussing tonight hip trainings and programs for period 1 of the 2122 school year that's from july 1st to december 31st and then we'll also be speaking about incidents of hibs and vvsas which range from september 1st through december 31st during

032these time frames just following them we need to submit all of our data to the student safety data system for the state of new jersey first part of that is our vvsas of violence vandalism and substance abuse these usually for there are a lot of different examples but the ones that you usually see in schools are fights uh hibs both alleged and confirmed and substance offenses you could see from the data that our numbers are pretty commensurate with what we used to have prior to covet i could have a comparison to last year but essentially you would be looking at numbers like 1 and 0 versus 58 and 7 for vandalism and 11 for weapons and substance abuse of 42. we were completely remote for the beginning part of last year so we had very

033few offenses as the high school principal last year i could tell you we had a few people smoking on camera two or three and that would be the extent of our violence and vandalism for last year for our hibs please remember that with ahib which is harassment intimidation and bullying that we need to have two parts in order for it to be an actual hib all of us realize that kids get picked on and that we call that bullying which is wrong and is dealt with however for it to be deemed bullying by the state it has to fit two criteria one is that there must be a distinguishable characteristic basically it's something that makes us different and that could be anything from race to gender sexual orientation uh appearance and then you also need

034a substantial disruption some type of change in that child's life they don't want to go to school they're more withdrawn they don't want to eat things like that with those for period 1 for this year we had 21 founded hip cases and 51 unfounded hip cases unfounded is essentially we've looked at a case and the anti-bullying specialist and principal have determined that there isn't a characteristic and or substantial disruption uh that is up from last year and obviously that has a lot to do with us being remote however we still did have some cases mostly because of cyber bullying and social media our hibs and trainings our hip trainings and programs for the first part of this year we had 133 trainings and 143 programs throughout the district and that is up from last year

035the fact that we are in the buildings although our administrators and our anti-bullying specialists did an amazing job uh having different programs and trainings for the students and staff last year being able to be inside the building made it even easier so those numbers increased by 20 for trainings and 46 for programs some areas where we need improvement we're going to continue communication and professional development for our administrators and building anti-bullying specialists our code of conduct will be reviewed as it is each year and we're going to continue implementation of additional restorative justice programs and from this data from last year and this year we're going to identify trends and hibs that have occurred within the district and address those issues specifically thank you there are any questions uh mr president i'd like to ask

036you a question doctor um i understand the comparison to when we were fully remote it's not really a reasonable one to make i don't know if you have this in your head or not but how does that compare to the last normal full year 2019 going back three years the numbers are commensurate we've made some changes with the vvsas and how we're categorizing vapes so that has increased our numbers from what they used to be but for the most part our numbers are commensurate thank you other questions thank you mr doctor appreciate it okay next we're going to move on to public recognition this portion of the meeting is open to the residents and non-residents of clifton for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to and or directly related to the operation of

037the clifton public school district residents and non-residents are requested if in person to sign the registered provider for this purpose all speakers are asked to state their names municipality and subject matter before they speak comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by a member of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and the response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate your questions may or may not be answered by board members the board asks the members of the public to 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

038of the state of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will be liable for any comments made by 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 if you wish to address the board please step up to the the podium please good evening everybody mark prince at holly street clifton just wanted to discuss tonight the excessive quarantining that i i've dealt with in my own family among them my niece who had a close contact allegedly had a close contact with three other people in her classroom and she was required to quarantine for 10 days as a result of that this was just a few weeks ago and on

039january 13th the rules changed with the nj department of education so my brother-in-law inquired with with the school because of that new guidance was his daughter available was able to go back and they were not she was not able to do that she still had to complete her 10 days no symptoms no anything and i'm talking about these kids getting the same opportunity as everybody else not only in that classroom but i'm talking about the opportunities for everybody in this district so it's it's very frustrating to me it's frustrating to a lot of parents when this happens when they don't even have sniffles over here you know monitoring the situation i get it if your child is sick keep them home please and on top of that with all the things that we have over

040here as preventative measures mass requirements the dividers in between the deaths and for some reason it's still not good enough to this day almost two years later so this is why it's frustrating not only that but it's the same thing with my daughter as well she's six feet apart a bunch of her classmates ended up quarantining and it is just not good for some kids to be home they are not learning over here there are too many distractions they are more focused in the classroom just as a student representative said here earlier she made the absolute right call taking the risk to be in the classroom and i'm asking for parents to get that option it's enough at this point and these are just recommendations so they went from 14 days now it's down to

041five days so you could say all the science that you want but this is what continuously happens and because of this is why i reached out to dr robert tosie president smith mr abu drabo to please get on the agenda the next time the legislative committee meets to please let this district make make some calls on behalf of it we don't need to be hemmed down by the new jersey department of education for every little thing that's happening over here and there's positive news out there too i know it's hard to believe but there is positive news out there there are therapeutics out there these are the vaccines a lot of people have vaccines available the vaccines work but you can still catch it you can still spread it you still got to take a

042booster and you should still be scared of the unvaccinated and you need to carry proof in certain places that you have been vaccinated so this is what we're up against and i'm just asking so i i'm thankful that that uh we at least get it on the agenda to get to get parents an option to send their kids into school full remote because i know there's a lot of people that's still scared out there it's very concerning and the good news out there as well is that over 21 000 residents of this city have fully recovered as of january 13th so i want to thank donna popowicz for providing that information she always does online and i think it's very useful information and also for the clifton public school district that at least 700 in

043this school district who have gotten covet have fully recovered at the bare minimum out of the 1056 that have been reported again as of these as of the 17th i believe and finally thank you to mr steve goldberg who presented that 43 plus million americans have fully recovered from coven so there's a lot of good news out there too and a lot of lives have been destroyed because of the decision making that have because of decision making that has been made by bureaucrats and i don't know if they're going to be too happy i don't know if history looked too kindly on decisions that have been made over the past almost two years thank you for your time and god bless america good evening tom whittles president equipment against substance abuse i want to start

044by offering my condolences to the district on the passing of a former leader in this district peter salzano peter was not only you know a member employee here of the district but he sat on our board of trustees at casa and peter will be sorely missed at the last meeting when the meeting was breaking up i was standing in the back of the room watching and i saw some things that caught my eye i saw a lot of people leaving with white bags i started to ask questions it's in those bags it turns out it's food it's turned out it's food that's paid for by the taxpayers and ordered for the board members next morning i reached out to dr robertazi to find out what the story was and he responded and while he was

045founded on monday because the district was closed for snow on friday that it's allowed by policy and administrative code so i opened the bills from mr uchi i opened the policy and the administrative code for mr wrote mr uchi i received them earlier this week my question is is okay it's all wrapped up into a neat little bundle inside this whole bunch of gobbledygook in a policy but does that include former board members because there were former board members leaving with bags of food and trays of cookies here's the picture clearest day does it include the public because there was people from the public leaving with bags of food does it include trays of cookies does it include when the board was meeting remotely from their houses does it include sending food to the board

046members homes this is all on the taxpayers this is all paid for by the citizens of clifton this board should be ashamed of themselves taking food not only taking food for themselves taking food home are you do you need a ham sandwich that bad there are kids in this district that probably only get breakfast and lunch they don't get dinner but this board makes sure not only do they get it they take it home it may be allowed by policy but it's certainly not ethical but then again this board really doesn't care about ethics that's been proven mr smith as president of this board you should stop this practice immediately this is not a fraternal organization this is not the elks club this is not membership this is taxpayer dollars being spent each of you

047to take that food home really really you should be proud of yourself you're taking food that could probably be much better served being given to the kids i would hope a board member tonight makes a motion to stop this practice immediately and any food that you already have here in the back room let's box it up we'll take it to saint peter's haven we'll take it over to eva's kitchen let's feed the homeless down in botany village let's do something with the food i think everybody's sitting up here has the wherewithal to buy their own bottle of water or ham sandwich you shouldn't be taking it from the taxpayers on another note i went on the website today i looked at the the new committee assignments here in clifton it's actually it's it's actually pretty

048comical policy mr abu drabo maybe we'll write a policy for endangering children or stealing bracelets or dealing with ethics charges diversity chairperson mr abhijaba maybe we can add the letter from the jewish link newspaper into the diversity group student liaison and judiciary awad and mr abu drabba judiciary two members that have ethics charges filed against them really come on folks you could do better thank you mr munoz anyone else good evening nina otitella clifton boulevard first i'd like to say thank you to each of the board trustees for your dedication and service especially honoring you this month during school board recognition month every member of our community should know and understand the significance of your roles and your responsibilities and the heavy burdens that come along with making the challenging decisions in the best interest

049of our students congratulations to our newly appointed and re-elected board members i wish you a most impactful and successful term i also want to take a moment to recognize our superintendent dr robert tosi for your unwavering commitment to the students families and staff of our community before during and as we get through this pandemic together the decisions that you have made this school year were not easy ones but students and families have benefited from them and remained safe and healthy because of them so thank you i felt the need to speak tonight about the interactions that we have with one another during this forum as a proud product of clifton public schools i reflect on my own experiences i won't share how long ago that was and hope for similar ones for all of the

050children of clifton conflict resolution and peer mediation were skills that i learned as a student here which helped develop me as a child and guide my decision making as a youth and an adult i'm pleased to know that these programs are still taught in our schools today as i watch our board meetings and read about the counterproductive climates that exist during school board meetings across our nation it is important to address this here given that there seems to be more and more incidents that lack civility and decorum amongst ourselves as a reminder each of us serve as role models not only to our community but especially to our students we have high school students who aspire to civically engage and of course attend our board meetings as evident tonight and they turn to us for

051guidance as our students participate or tune in to watch our board meetings they observe our tone read our body language and follow our online activities i'm sure i can speak for everyone here and those watching at home that we do not want our children thinking that it is acceptable or appropriate to bash colleagues defame someone's character or speak disrespectfully to one another because of our views not aligning with one another as a school community we have prioritized teaching our students about their social and emotional growth but as adults when do we recognize and when are we cognizant of one another's social and emotional well-being we've repeatedly repetitively heard about past mistakes that some of our board members have made but where do we draw the line and when do we move forward and when can

052we as adults and as communities reinforce the notion of learning from our mistakes as a means to improve and demonstrate growth how can we work towards a resolution stop the name calling and gaslighting and build bridges rather rather than continuing these battles we need to recognize that it takes bravery to openly and publicly own an error in judgment and apologize for a mistake that was made but it does take more courage when we as a community come together to support one another in a positive and constructive manner the operative words being positive and together i'd like to ask the board to consider hosting a conflict resolution symposium open to the public the hope is to ultimately find meaningful alternatives to conflicts so that what we can refocus on what is important in our community the

053education of children and practice the ideals of one clifton i have no doubt that some of our own student leaders from the high school can probably facilitate these sessions and remind us of what really matters i hope for a new year of revitalized energy and change amongst our community so that we can truly demonstrate to our youth how adults can agree to disagree respectfully and tactfully i thank you for your time and your consideration stay stay safe be well and thank you for your service hi hi donna popovich dale woodrow the purpose of a public education in a public school is to teach the students what society needs them to know not what we want them to know whether we stands for parents or the community or the board of ed or the superintendent the

054goal of schools is to teach them what society needs them to know it is a student-centered and society-centered approach we teach children by what we say what we do it's called the implicit and in explicit curriculum in new jersey we have the new jersey learning standards which are similar to the core content standards these cover the academic areas and suing when are students become adults they possess the skills and knowledge necessary to function in society it's our explicit curriculum the implicit curriculum is teaching by what we do mindfulness self-care helping others kindness and ethics these are all part of the implicit curriculum this year as the committee starts to meet and the board of ed works on new initiatives i propose that the center of every decision every choice every action be rededicated to being

055student-centered and pursuing the implicit curriculum to better our society what is best for the students is to make them better equipped to become members of society students entered every action this would include helping others increasing kindness ethical and fair behavior and making everyone feel welcome for example i know my daughter often complained that all the novels that she read were white male centered and we did work on the curriculum unfortunately none of her teachers chose to choose any novels which were not white male centered and i'm sure that was good for whoever chose the novels but what was good for the students and for our community would have been to read something that was diverse i think community service and social justice need to become part of our curriculum serving others is a societal need

056we need to model kindness though that hasn't really been modeled at meetings lately actually people need to treat each other with respect maybe we could start here when i worked home instruction back after my daughter who just graduated college was born i used to teach on thursday mornings at the board of ed building in your conference room and that was after the wednesday night meetings and after i went to the left while i was down there i was approached by one of the secretaries who asked me to take the food that was left over at the meetings which she had wrapped up and she had backed and to bring it to my next stop and my next stop was at the transitional housing on trenton ave and that's where i gave the food to the

057students that i was teaching there who are unable to come to school that is kindness and compassion that i would like to see and have modeled for our students when i worked home instruction i used to go to the students homes and we have a lot of students who were living on their own which i know is something that we don't talk about but it happens and many of them we're really not living alone because they were 16 years old and they were living with their babies their newborns besides going there and trying to teach science so they can get their diploma we used to provide contacts for them that we developed through the county but sometimes what they near really needed were the other things i bought which were a bag of groceries or

058a gallon of milk or a pack of diapers for their new baby or maybe just showing them that you don't put a newborn in a bath ring in the tub in every aspect i want our guiding ethics in this district to be not what is good for the individual me but what is good for the students and society this is not about a win or power or racing to gather the most material things but it's about collaboration i want our students to know kindness and i want them to know hope so that when they go into society full of kindness and hope and help they can help others thank you good evening to everyone my name is lori lallaman i'm the president of the cea there are a few things i'd like to bring up

059i want to thank the teachers and the paraprofessionals for their hard work for the last two weeks and for the last two years they've been working really hard and they've gone through a lot of different obstacles and i want to personally thank them and thank dr robert tosi for his help in many of the situations that the staff has gone through and i really want the community to know the the duress that some of them feel and how hard they're working for everybody's children here in clifton i also want to thank our rutgers labor management collaborative between the management and the labor we're looking forward to our meeting coming down to rutgers so we're really excited about that mr uc on the on the packet under personnel it's not the cta anymore it's the cea

060so if you can just make those changes in the future i don't want my paraprofessionals to get mad at me all right so the referendum so when's the groundbreaking ceremony looking forward to that because there's a lot of things that we need to get fixed so especially my elevator so let me know that date because i have a shovel already for ccms now question about the project manager so let's say that i hired you to run the project you can subcontract that out so if i'm paying you let's say 10 million and you're getting a sub contractor to do it for five million do you get to pocket the other five million is that how it works for subcontracting i'm just throwing it out there so if somebody can okay just wanna make sure that

061we can use all of our money correctly for our district and mr doctor restorative justice issues we have some great trainers at njea that have done phenomenal work for the last four or five years on restorative justice and i think i could ask them for some guidance and to work with us i think that would be a powerful thing for the kids and from the issue from the last board meeting i'm just going to end with a poem by james vines my insides are tied in knots my face is flush with rage how dare you treat me this way my blood boils and my teeth grind as my eyes narrow their focus there he goes smiling as if nothing happened he will soon regret how he treated me he will know what it means to

062be a woman scorned thank you very much and have a good evening keith bassford mountain food drive mr smith can you do me a favor can you look around this room and see what you see everybody what do you say mask right white mr abba drabo since 7 30 don't have to wear a mask we all do okay can't see him i know it's a good joke right smile okay it's not fat everybody else i think mean you spoke last time on a side about a few things you know just standing you know i had a great time with you and october when we did the uh board education race for who's become a board member and i remember i spoke to you and i said to you got played and i said to you

063how you got played and i said to you the people who played you i'm willing to put up money for the lie detector test and i'll have a loser's pace for it and everything there's still one board member here one off the board i don't lie believe me and i and if you will if you're still one challenge that person you know someone on this administration said to me you know someone told me you know where all the bodies are buried yes i know where all the bodies are buried and what goes on and i i thought i was going to be able to sit back for a while and not have to say anything because many years i've been up here talking about who's doing what and the way this board's being ran now

064it looks like i'm going to be up here a while speaking about whatever i have to and you may not think anybody listens to me or this and that they listen they know i get up here and speak for no reason i get up here to speak the truth and that this board is headed for a disaster no question in my mind dr robitazi nothing personal than you we pay you 245 thousand dollars a year i don't think we should pay you 245 000 a year you know why you got board members doing your job walking in schools checking schools out how do you think that makes the administration and the schools feel and teachers and ask board members and the board members select who they want you know walk around like the big shots

065never happened years ago never we're always visiting school six to see what's going on why why pay you i think we can negotiate a better deal with some of the board members and everything and like i said it's not personal but it shouldn't be you get paid to run the district board members oversee excuse me policy and that stuff there is just too much leeway going on here just too much this this is what i used to call years ago and i see a lot of ministries remember me from years ago we're back to the globe boys club the good old boys club and you know what years ago i fought the good old boys club and i had no problem and the good old boys left they didn't get voted back in or nothing

066of course people believed me they believed what i was saying okay i can't talk about my wife because she stands up for herself and everything but thank you anyone else was to address the board seeing none seeing that motion closed much more closing way mr abu drabo mr awad uh if the board does not mind um i'd like to uh just move uh under personnel p21 uh because we have the employee here and i'd like to pass it so he can get uh he can go home if that's okay with everybody all right can i have a motion for uh p21 only motion second which my mr javo second by mr awad any discussion nice seeing none roll call please sorry mike just p-21 and p21 yes only miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr

067danny yeah mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes motion carries um our new um our new maintenance forum is foreman is here this evening mo would you like to come up and say a few words or [Applause] just want to say thank you for your support and i hope we do good things in clifton thank you we have a lot of faith in you great job thank you very much thank you [Applause] all right mo i did that so you can go home if you want okay let's move on uh to um [Music] unfinished business we have none um right next we have um if i could have uh someone read uh mr daily i'm sorry would you read um ea 17 uh condolences uh please okay section get mr mr president

068we skipped a section i'm not sure if you no we missed um committee reports way up top and i think your report too i mean if we're skipping okay sorry i will do committee reports first um residency and security uh mr awad is not here oh okay i will read it okay so we were um updated on the um this is residency and security so we're updated on uh security uh issues mr jingaro and mr constantino gave us scenario-based drill update a law import enforcement visit from numerous law enforcement agencies incidents occurring at middle schools and high school and ideas for additional staffing move on to residency mr doctor we focused on residency checks for pcti and they have been concluded pcti investigations we found 27 students that do not live in clifton anymore so

069those students being removed from chris clifton's role have now saved the district 636 dollars two hundred and seventy six twenty seven students removed fifty one total years fifty one total years of schooling uh general residency checks continuing 56 investigations five changes of address six non-residents all have left the district because of residency checks focused resident checks were for charter and non-public schools initial initial investigation continuing for 473 students receiving transportation at this time approximately 18 percent non-resident or change in status requiring anyone receiving funds from us to register for verification and tracking purposes the first time that's being done mailing will be going out in july in an attempt to catch additional non-residents so basically how i understand the from the committee that they make these mailings go out when they're not received at the

070address that it's sent to it comes back and then an investigation happens on those cases registration 53 cases pending including eight address changes and social media presence the residency has a facebook page uh sorry the res the welcome center has a facebook page and an instagram coming soon mr constantido provided updates on security drills and training of supervisors for security emergencies mr gingaro discussed the visit from the new jersey oem as clifton was the first district to be chosen as a bomb scenario test case observers from the state explained that clifton high school could be a national model for how to conduct such a drill an attempt was made to have a drill at ccms but a faulty alarm placed the building it's a lockdown instead so the drill was postponed a drill was also

071conducted at woodrow wilson mr jaguero mentioned issues which occurred at the high school uh that week and how changing situations may explain some of the issues the nationwide threats as of december 17th were discussed police had determined the threats as non-credible and notification was sent to the clifton school community mr gingaro discussed the potential for having additional staff within the high school moving forward they would be a presence in the hallways and lunchrooms as well as personnel that students can reach out to for help and provide information mr doctor explained the focused residency checks which have been taking place since the start of the school year for those focused investigation 27 students were found at a savings over their current and future time in school which i stated was six thousand thirty six thousand six

072excuse me six hundred and thirty six thousand two hundred and seventy six in addition there have been fifty six reported residency investigations where six non-students have been identified and have since left the district these savings to the district are a direct result of the hard work and dedication of our domicile investigators mr tom field house of mr vinci constantino the department is currently doing a second focus resident check and preliminary checks that shows a significant number of non-residents these are not students currently attending public clifton public schools mr doctor also explained that any child receiving a district education or funds from our district will be required to register with the school district so accurate verification and residency tracking can be done the department has additionally additional residency verification tools which will be utilized throughout the

073year pending registrations are about 50 and all families attempting to register are in direct contact with the registration department finally mr doctor explained that the welcome center now is a facebook and they will be looking for an instagram are there any questions on the residency and security minutes okay seeing none motion to approve no no no okay all right let's see what the other ones are i think it's um facilities um spelt on uh the facilities committee met on january 5th uh present was mr daley myself for us were you there i don't think so you were on the meeting list but i don't think you were actually there yeah yeah i think that one correction to this is that um mr awad was not there um in attendance and administration was dr robertosi um

074mr jangero mr usee mr uh shahada sorry i always say that one mr l marcion we also had the construction management and the architecture present as well the meeting started at 2 and it ended at 2 54. we discussed the pla versus no pla which dr roberto uh touched on today um during his superintendent's report basically is if we're going to go with union only for the referendum or if we're going to go with prevailing wage for the job looks like we're going to be recommending to go with the pla but we'll make a final recommendation for the board by the next meeting um our construction management firm did recommend going with a pla and then then we talked about um if we're going to bid in bundles um or if we're going to do

075separately epic is recommending separate bids not grouped together so that we can get a more robust response and then we're going to see about bidding them with two weak gaps in between them so that people can prepare and we can discuss them one at a time versus looking at all of them at the same sitting does anyone have any comments or questions mr president so i have a question about the pla um so i know that you know during cove a lot of prices went up and i know that a lot of organizations are hit where they're doing jobs all over the place you see housing market booming is by going with a pla going to put us in a situation where we may not have people available to do the work and if so

076are we allowed to shift at will and decide okay now we're going to bid this job is not pla or is this just something we decide on a standard and then continue to hold that for the duration of the of all the jobs i can't answer that um so you want to go pla you cannot come off pla it is only your new job so that was one of my concerns that you know maybe we need to be able to bid um to a larger group but from my understanding and from um what we've been told is that the the big guys are going to be coming for this um so we shouldn't have a problem they're going to be putting their smaller jobs on hold to come and bid this so we shouldn't have

077a problem being staffed at least that's what we've been told so far but you're more than welcome to submit more questions because we're going to have more discussion in the next facilities meeting mr president yes ms master i have a question it speaks to miss lalama's question on the dais when she said about if we bid something out and we use the subcontractor under this method and we pay them i think she said 10 million dollars and their the cost is only five how do we ensure that the money is actually going to the subcontractor and it's the right amount of money and the contract is not making this big group of money on us um there aren't necessarily subcontractors it was a little bit of a misunderstanding we hired a construction management firm which

078is basically because dr robitosi myself when i was in charge of facilities mr marcion were not able or on you know there's no bandwidth to take on a project of this size we needed to bring in a professional firm that would have people on the ground at every single location every single day so that's what they're doing they're not billing us for any construction work whatsoever it is simply a consulting job so their only responsibility is to watch the people doing the construction and review the bills and everything like that so there isn't going to be subcontracting necessarily the big firms that we do hire to do the construction that will be a question that you know i'm sure is included in the bid documents is how they break out the work is it in-house

079is it outhouse but if we do go with union which is the pla it will be guaranteed that there won't be as much play within you know money-wise because they have to adhere to a stricter standard in order to continue to bid on government work okay because thank you because i know that was laurie's uh question mr lahuma's a question about the subcontracting and i uh there's also with my my worry is about the because we had spoke about this a while back in one of the meetings and we it became a discussion about the security background checks of the subcontractors being in the schools especially if they're in the schools during business during school hours around our children and they haven't been properly background checked i know we check out the company that we

080that we hire but if it goes to a subcontract i know that's a big that's a big issue with a lot of people about who those people are they're in our buildings and if they're you know they're allowed to be in our building so that was another thing that i know that was a big uh concern of people a couple years ago yeah that was another reason why we went with the um contracting firm to not not contracting the i guess like the project management firm um is because they'll be responsible for knowing who the people are and who belongs and who doesn't belong um the badging system although we each firm brought in security people actually with them um who talk about the you know the job safety it's not only security it's also

081like you know osha standards there's a lot of things that are going to be coming into this and that's why we hired the professional firm that will be able to take most of that worry off of the administration okay thank you thank you for clearing that up and people hearing that thank you i think that's all the questions i wasn't at the other meeting was invited i did one five the eleventh was i wasn't eleventh is me mr smith i think mr daley could probably read it okay sure going to head up to another location maybe that that'll work for a meeting of the facilities committee january 11 2022 uh president mr wade myself mr ivor dravo mr smith also president from the administration was dr robert tosi mr usi mr shiheida also we were

082interviewing uh three law firms at that juncture they were from a miss mckeever from the scroll law firm david blank from the skrinsky law firm and mr mancello and his team from the firm of ramon coughlin and mancello we started at 2 p.m and we ended at 5 p.m the gap was because we had the different firms at different times we interviewed the three firms the attorney for referendum work the committee discussed the firm's qualifications and interview a recommendation we're making today is to hire the firm of ramon chicago and minicella i will add that all the individual attorneys had many pluses they were all competent we felt that the vincello firm had a little incognito firm had a little bit more bandwidth in terms of the support staff to review contracts uh of the

083nature the the key element we focused on is the experience of the individual attorneys with construction contracts and and and i like so that's where the focus was if you have any questions i'll be happy to answer them just a correction um mr russia if you could correct this wasn't a facilities committee meeting this was a special committee for the appointment of the construction attorney it was not under the facilities committee so if we just make that change no problem okay so now let's move on we have uh 17 uh mr daley would you read that please swing over here yes sure uh ea 17. yeah no i just got to pull it up on my okay then yes it's a judiciary committee no this is the expression of condolence yeah okay that's what i

084thought yeah move up i guess there's two there right there it's right under unfinished business i have it okay um whereas on january 14th the community noted with sorrow the passing of peter j salzano jr and whereas mr salzano has served the clifton board of education and the children of put them faithfully and conscientiously over 22 years until his retirement in december of 2018 mr salzano started his career in the clifton district in 1996 as educational support counselor until his appointment to supervisor of counseling and student services in two thousand and twelve now therefore be resolved that the resolution be forwarded to his bereaved family to serve as an expression of great regard in which mr salzano held by the board of education the administration employees pupils and the clifton public schools and be further

085resolved that the contents of this resolution be noted in their entirety in the official minutes of the clifton board of education for future generations to peruse okay motion by mr daley second second by mr what doesn't matter roll call please mr abhijava yes mr awak yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes and president smith yes motion carries um ea 18 um would you mind reading that sure um ea 18 yes please okay whereas on november 26 2021 the community noted with sorrow the passing of mr martini horvath and whereas mr horvath has served the board of education and children of clifton faithfully and conscientiously as a highly respected high school custodian for 38 years mr horvath was a graduate of the clifton

086high school and a long time member of the y m yha of clifton now therefore be it resolved that this resolution be forwarded to the breathe family to serve as an expression of the great respect in which mr horvath was held by the clifton board of education the administration employees and the pupils of clifton public schools and be it further resolved that the content of this resolution be noted in its entirety in the official minutes of the clifton board of education for future generations to peruse make a motion yes motion by ms bashford second second by mr abu drabo roll call please mr abedrabo yes mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes and president smith yes motion carries um ea

08719 whereas on december 14 2021 the community noted with sorrow the passing of mrs louise and eddie and whereas mrs danetti had served the board of education and the children of the clifton faithfully and conscientiously had a highly respected high school secretary for 38 years missing eddie was a parishioner of the saint phillips roman catholic church in clifton and was a member of the passaic county republican committee now therefore be resolved that the resolution be forwarded to her bereaved family to serve as an expression of the great regard in which mississippi was held by the board of education the administration employees and pupils of the clinton public schools and be a further resolve that the contents of this resolution be noted in their entirety in the official minutes of the clifton board of education for

088future generations to pursue i make emotion well i can't do that motion motion by mr abhijava second by mr awad i just personally wanted to miss and eddie we knew her as chicky um she was a faithful and dedicated secretary at the high school when you walked into high school she was the the first person you saw she was funny yet at times she could be chris the real commander right and uh i remember chicky for for a long time she really was a great person and uh we're going to miss her anyone else want to say anything all right uh roll call please mr abedrabo mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes motion carries okay now

089we go on to um education administration we have ea 1 through ea 18. mr smith we want to pool 17 and 18. did i uh 17 and 18 are they for executive 17 18 yes all right so we're doing ea one through uh sixteen yeah ea one through sixteen motion pushed by mr avocado second by mr awad discussion seeing none roll call mr abedrabo yes mr awad yes miss bashford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes for all but 12 of state on 12. vice president daley yeah i'm i would like to have tabled the ea ii i had a hard time finding it sorry for the gap here the reason for that in the in the policy stated there the reason why i've asked for that to be

090tabled is that there's no uh clear time or or conditions that were put forth in the second paragraph about how long the public would speak and um and that was discussed and voted on uh by this board in in the recent past and it's not reflected in this resolution so i think we need to take a different look at it other than that so i think we for a motion for the table i think you act on that first the rest i'm okay with so i don't know how you procedurally you want to do that mr president can we open up a discussion sorry can we open um the tabling discussion with the board okay so mr awad and mr avadrabo if you'd remove your motions then we can go back and uh and discuss

091uh ea ii separately i will reset my motion likewise okay okay so now let's go to [Music] let's do ea one ea3 through sixteen motion what's my mr abhijava second second by mr awad discussion seeing non-roll call mr abhijaba yes mr awad yes miss bashford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris vice president daley yes and president smith yes motion skirt okay now we have a um request for um ea2 um so i need a motion in a second and then we can discuss it motion table second motion by mr abu drabo second by uh mr awad discussion ms beltran um wouldn't the public speaking portion be governed by the same policy as the in-person public speaking portion so the request to have an additional line put into this policy

092wouldn't it not be necessary as they're already governed by the same policies as the in person yeah uh and in response to ms beltran's uh inquiry and that's fine um the way it's work if you look at it it doesn't have to it doesn't really say it's regarding um you know electronic uh participation which i'm obviously okay with and in the second paragraph uh here here's my issue it's not clear art i don't know if i think it would but i think that maybe needs to be added to the to the policy so it's clear what's governed there i would assume the same things that are involved in a regular public meeting pertaining to electronic participation but it's not clear that that it says that so in in order to uh eliminate any ambiguity in

093this policy uh i think that should be clearly stated that's that's my reason for the table mr smith yes can we just make a um put it in that um there will be a limit of five minutes per person remotely speaking into the uh meeting bringing boarding to meeting why can't we just put the minutes in there this way it's done we don't hold it up for another meeting we can amend it right now vote on it and it'll be done on a colon and then they can come inside there's to me it looks like it's already in there motion the table not for remote not for calling mr smith mr smith yes instead of holding up the meeting tonight coach we could kick it back kick it back to policy please take a look

094at a little more carefully be sure and then discuss the next meeting there's no rush on this okay yeah so that's that's the motion of the table to bring it back to committee we're just under discussion would it come back as a second reading because if it comes back as a first reading this is going to be in june by the time we get it for the public so if they change it would have to come back as a first reading right if it's changed substantially it would come back as a first reading if it's not a substantial change it would come back as a second meeting substantial would be would have to be so let's discuss what needs to be changed publicly because i don't want it to be hidden into a policy meeting

095it should be discussed out here as to why what's the issue because it says on there the time limits that's why i'm not i'm not sure what the true crux of the issue is on the copy i have before me you know it doesn't say anything about electronic unless i was provided with a different copy the copy i'm reading here on on my board jocks the attachment says participation in pub in board meetings says nothing about electronics says nothing else about that participation if if i understand mr daley correctly um something in there should be with the line saying electronic participation one electronic participation or one in-person participation otherwise a person from the public can go to a public in person i'm sorry electronic participation from the car under a different name since we're not

096really mandating a video and then come back in and do one in person so they wouldn't get five minutes they would really get ten minutes uh mr you're saying no no no no is the copy i have on my map on our tablet here says nothing about any of that it looks like it's a repeat of the current 10167 policy mr president mr canova yeah so here the way i read this uh if if i missed a canova i'm going to give my tablet over to the uh mr smith and the attorney and they can look at what i have before me okay but one second so i'm reading paragraph four so in general this is a public participation in board meetings that we're adding to when it even says by law zero one sixteen

097zero one sixty four and it says anyone wishing to address the board at a public meeting may do some upon the crest request of the public recognition periods it states those two bylaws and then it refers to uh an electronic me electronic communications technology is available during said meeting individuals addressing the board remotely shall comply with and are subject to all the requirements rules and regulations so the policy itself is just referring to public participation board meetings because that's what we're inserting it into these other bylaws but it clearly states in paragraph four specifically what that is and those two bylaws reference already our five minute rule and the biggest concern for me is not necessarily any of this we can make whatever motion we want or edit whatever we want today but our board

098members even participated remotely in the last meeting and i mentioned this many meetings prior covet is here we still have to quarantine for five days it's unfair for people not to be able to be here to be heard so my concern is if we don't move this tonight or at least modify whatever we need to tonight and make this this policy in effect we're taking longer by not allowing people to speak and to me that's a big concern mr mr president yes mr david apparently apparently on my other tablet was a different version than what's on the current tablet because i have a substitute tablet now i would just ask the board indulgence if we have executive give me an opportunity to reread the correct version and we can vote on it later on in

099the meeting if that's okay with the members because i certainly didn't have because i read it and i made notes to myself uh at my house reviewing the agenda and it didn't have any of this stuff that's now on the on the tablet that i now have that was provided by the uh by our our i.t people today okay so mr president this is our second reading we've already seen this once already so regardless of what was on the tablet before or after we've already had one reading of this i'd like to call a motion right it's a motion the table is already on the floor this discussion table yes miss master jim with all due respect and i know where you're going with this but it's a simple fix so we can put five

100minutes in there joe mr conover commissioner conover is exactly correct if we we push it back it delays it we we specifically put that this was in reference to 016101610164 it actually refers to the standard in-person one and it gives the limitations um it was all this was only to allow remote for people to enter but the other ones it refers to the original ones about conduct and about time limits so when we discussed it in policy it was that was addressed as well with legal to make sure that we covered our we crossed the t's and dot dotted the eyes we referred to the other two policies to make sure that everything that we do physically in an in-person meeting is covered remotely except this policy only speaks to giving them access to being

101remote and that's all that's mr president yes uh if the board does not want to wish to give me the courtesy to re read this over the next until we come back out of an executive session that's their prerogative but um you know if you don't want to give me that hurry i'm not going to be supportive of it mr president call the vote yeah the motion is on the floor for to table this to send it back to committee so we need a roll call please ipod who was the first this is uh this is two table to send it back to committee and i'm sorry who was the first second of that um mr abu dravo and second by mr awad all right so this is to table oto correct all right mr

102abedraba yes mr awad yes miss bassford no miss beltran no mr canova no dr danny i i i abstain because i thought it was give him time to re for reading it so i i i'm confused i thought he was reading i thought he wanted time to read it so i abstain i don't know what mr paris no vice president daily no because i don't not my intents not to send it back to committee smith yes so the majority is not table i make a motion to let mr daley read it after executive session we come back under after executive session to re-read the policy and it either passes or fails at that point that's my emotion second second i don't think we need a motion for that but we can okay so motion is

103to bring it back uh after executive session so we have to go back and rescind the vote that went through we don't the table right okay so this this will bring back to after executive session for the board to consider so the motion by miss bassford second by mr paris discussion role call mr abidjaba mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes okay next we have okay so that ea 17 and 18 are both student matters that are for executive session now onto personnel we have p1 through p33 motioned by mr avadrabo second second by mr awad mr president okay let's remove p28 from that for executive session okay see no uh discussion roll call please mr abadrabo

104mr awad yes miss bassford yes and i'm abstaining on p um 30 my name only ms beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes and abstaining on p30 my name only mr paris uh yes i'm standing on 33 and 30 my name president smith yes motion security all right next we have financing facilities we have f1 through f12 what's your pleasure motion motion by mr konova second by mr avajavo discussion scene on roll call mr abu drabo mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris vice president daley yes and president smith yes what motion carries okay now we move on to uh board member comments um mr paris i usually like i usually ask the newly elected board member if they would like to go first

105if you don't rather go later it's your your pleasure thank you mr smith um i just want to um underscore the condolences to the salzanos the horvaths and the zen eddies all great contributors to what makes clifton school system what it is today i don't have too many comments to make at this point because i'm i'm new to the new to this and still getting my my feet wet i appreciate the everyone who showed up and made their public comments today um and that's pretty much all i have other than happy new year mr paris we welcome you to the board and i understand yesterday was a birthday for you so happy birthday all right next we will move on to mr awad thank you president smith um i just wanted to read one quote

106as my comment uh something you know that you know means dearly to me from envy is born malice and from malice is the root of evil whoever harbors harbors evil in his or her heart it produces a bitter tasting plant from which grows rage and is it and is a fruit is regret that is all thank you next uh miss beltran okay um tonight i'm going to use my time to discuss a very serious situation that is occurring on this board uh you may have noticed that i was listed on the first facilities committee meeting and not on the second which led to a little awkward exchange and a renaming of this meeting of that meeting here live on the dais that's because in the interim between the meetings i was removed from the committee

107by mr president smith why was i removed here you can use some imagination was it because i'm a strong female the only female on this committee over the last three years and at least 10 years before that was it because i'm a stickler for the rules and will not seek out a vendor that will supply kickbacks was it because i actually know what i'm doing in terms of facility management since i believe i am the only member on this board that actually owns a facility has built a facility or runs a facility daily we'll never know the real reason why i was able to accomplish and contribute a lot as the only female on this committee over the last three years i single-handedly discovered a million dollar vendor submitting fraudulent invoices helped select the must-need

108list before it eventually became the referendum which took over two years and countless meetings and contributed comments and suggestions to all the many installations and construction projects over the last three years thankfully after making a stink i was allowed to be a member of this committee however i lost my position as chair to someone who's never even been on the committee i was also removed from the finance committee after being on it for three years again long list of accomplishments countless hours dedicated to this committee as it was also the negotiations committee where we negotiated every single union contract in this district which if anyone has been a part of this before knows it's a very long process with meetings lasting five to six hours going late into the night and in some cases over

109years i believe i am the only member of this committee that has a finance degree i believe i was i am also the only member of this board that has worked for one of the largest accounting firms in the world i i wouldn't care that much about being removed from either of these committees if i was replaced by a female however i was not joe and jim who have also been on this committee for the last three years with jim being a member and chair over 10 years they were both allowed to stay and i was removed i lost all my committees that i was a member of less facilities which i only kept because it became my rate about being removed if i was removed for valid reasons or to allow or allow others

110with the same skill set to join these committees that wouldn't be an issue but that wasn't the reason why i was removed i ask why is it because i'm running for council and you thought weakening my position on the board would help your friends or maybe fellow board members looking to run is it because i speak my mind and hold staunch to my morals and ideals the public can use their imagination to think of reasons as to why i was removed whatever the reason mr smith has chosen to do this is an example of blatant disgusting sexism a proven example at the old boys club of clifton lives on i will not forget this the woman in this town will not forget this and sadly the female students will have an example that sexism is

111still alive and well here in america i will not be silenced i will not be go silently into the night this is only the beginning of my political career i will carry this battle wound proudly i will be used as kindling in the fire for success that will continue to burn bright inside me regardless of the unfair treatment by men in temporary positions of power thank you uh next we have uh miss bassford good evening everyone i didn't get three minutes last meeting because we didn't have public comments so i wanted to tell people out in the community because everybody's been asking me why did i nominate joe and dana i nominated joe and dana because when i was on the campaign trail there was a lot of sense from people and people telling me

112they wanted a younger generation joe brings a lot of good ideas he's always he has a different thought process about looking at things in a different way and i thought that he would be even keeled and have a good temperament to bring us forward especially during a rough time right now in education there's a lot of board members throughout the state of new jersey that are leaving boards because they can't handle the pressure and the attacks that have been brought onto them i figured joe would be even keeled and do it and also he fits the bill of a younger generation why dana female answering to what you just said and she's also she represents a diverse population of our community that's rising in clifton of the hispanic community so that's why i nominated them

113for that those positions nobody asked me why i didn't get a pre-phone call who was going to get nominated i don't usually get included in all these little conference calls but that's okay i did it because i thought they were right fit and from what people told me in the community when i was out on the campaign chair they want to change and hopefully those elections that come up the people will make those changes i ran a hard campaign i was number nine on the ballot i became number one top vote getter regardless if it's 43 4500 or 22 000 i didn't run unopposed i ran opposed and i worked hard as did miss danny and as the mr uh commissioner commissioner danny and commissioner paris we ran hard and we were successful in our

114bid to get here our voice should be heard why i am resign uh stepping down from policy and also from the education committee whether you've been paying attention or not i cannot work with the two members on those those committees my personal attorney jeffrey elvar catapine of penicillium vacating in ridgewood and paramus new jersey have informed me that i should not be working with them because of the legal action and the notification of a cease and desist that was served on me regardless of what new jersey school boards mr mr smith is in your email today or miss gutierrez has informed you my attorney is telling me otherwise i pay him a lot of money to keep me safe and i'm going to follow that suit congratulations to mrs morgie on your being selected of

115the staff member of the month condolences to peter salzado worked with him for a long time of school five when i was a home and school president it was a serious serious loss to humanity and mankind that man was gentle he was he was a solid person to the horvath family i'm deeply sorry for your loss i didn't know your family to louise and eddie chicky rest in peace to your family i wish you peace and i wish i hope you find sense out of out of the loss of your mom your father that father passed away over a year ago and it was just senseless to me so why why i why do i talk out loud i'm like that can i yield my time i didn't get any time last time to thank

116the community i'm going to mr smith you got 12 minutes last meeting no one no one got time in the last meeting no the previous meeting december 9th you got 12 minutes i can't i went back you can finish up your time thank you so why i stepped down i've been policy chair for about eight years i have worked my fingers to the moment whenever we had a policy i've you can ask the superintendent i researched it to death i went to other communities went on their website got the information i was moved out of the chairperson because mr smith told me an email today i have it in writing that i complained about to be in the policy chair i didn't complain about being anything on policy i complained about not being put on

117facilities in 11 years not being put on finance in 11 years not being put on athletics or negotiation in 11 years every well-rounded board of education moves their members around accordingly but fairly and fairly hasn't happened in this committee list it's sexist and not not only sexist but it's misogynistic and when there's only three of us on the board we do not get treated fair anybody wants to talk to me about this afterward i'll be glad and also i make a motion to cancel having any food at any board meetings going forward both regular meetings special meetings and committee meetings when i'm hungry i bring my own lunch that's a motion that's on the table during comments if you wish to bring on a new business you could do so i have made motions previously

118under my comments and in the past 11 years you're allowed to make a motion if you use your board member that's the purview of the person speaking absolutely not but anyhow point of order could i have a legal opinion if i am allowed to make emotion or not okay i'll do it on the new business good night okay mr canova good evening first i want to thank all the speakers who came out my condolences to three families tonight uh they weren't on our agenda congratulations to our award recipients tonight um the one thing i want to discuss here and i think i think everyone spoke about it a little bit and we saw that in some of the hibs and things that we that we saw in our presentation too is that in general and

119even dr robertosi spoke to us at the last meeting in general um children behaviors are on the rise in a negative way um and and we see how he mentioned that you know suicides are up and and mental health issues are up and i'm going to use this as a psa for that for for my parents at home um my father-in-law said to me uh we have a we have a pool at the house we have a little basketball court he had three boys and a girl um and i said you know you have a lot of things in your backyard here and the kids always want to come here and hang out and play and and uh you know barbecue and and spend time at the house and he said you know the reason

120why i do stuff like this it's not because yeah i'd like to hang out with with friends and family or whatnot but it's also because then the kids come to my house i get to see who they are i get to know who my kids are hanging out with and i get to know their families and bridge that gap and bring everyone together and you know that resonated with me because i think i think that's what we're missing we're missing going back to the old school of people knowing each other knowing what their kids are doing being involved in their lives asking them questions of you know what you do today at school and being genuinely interested in what they're telling you you know every child has a special gift and it's up to you

121as a parent to bring that out and it's up to you as a parent to support that so i would fall back not only are my teachers i'm sure you know the teachers are doing a great job ensuring that they're they're asking the questions and getting the students um and participating and and getting their uh their input on their ideas and making them become the person who they are but it's also up to the parents to to embellish that and to bring that out in the child when the child comes to them and they say they're they're looking at dancing they show them some special dance to give them some encouragement uh that goes a long way in a child's life so um i just want to make sure that the parents are aware and

122everyone is aware that we should be doing those things on a daily basis and i think a lot of those things may fall off because we're very busy and you know with this whole coveted thing and everyone's being being pulled in many different directions and there's a lot of frustration you know political and whatnot but just getting back to the basics i think is going to help our children so if you could just do that a little bit more um i think that we'd all be better off and as for remote participation you know i've always been a big proponent of it we showed it at a board meeting how it would work uh this is our second reading now our board members have to use it our attorney had to use it the other

123day um you know we live in a world with covid and i just wanna i just hope we see this through and we give people the voice that they they deserve to have thank you yes i'd like to first start by congratulating all the students of the month well-deserved great job condolences to the three families mr paris welcome look forward to working with you on the board um and um you know as time goes on you'll see you'll learn a lot of things and new things and attending the the school boards which you are at one of them is you know great because you learn a lot of new things so that's great and welcome um one thing i'd like to take some time just to thank administration staff custodians just secretaries everybody working in

124the school district thanking the students even was i feel like it's just at this time right now that everybody's you know we've been in for almost half a year now the school year and i think we're finally like you know finding some sort of a a group i think students are beginning to realize okay we're in school and i think it's very important that they are so do you think you know the virtual is really difficult um on on everybody i think it's difficult on teachers administrators trying to find out you know who's in who's out and really to give a shout out to our nurses because you know they're doing a lot right now um and i think it's just you know overwhelming i mean i know the district i'm in the nurse um

125just the amount of work that she's to do in it and and even administration it doesn't just end when they go home i mean they're they're checking their emails i mean i'm assuming that they're doing that as well here um in the clifton school district and so it's just a lot i think you know everybody is just feeling overwhelmed who's working in the school district and trying to make it you know great experience for students to finish off you know i often think about as a history teacher i teach tolerance and you know i just i sometimes think to myself you know could we ever be tolerant could we ever actually learn that i don't know because as adults we can't get it so we're expecting our students to be tolerant of different views and

126understand and it's okay to have different views and it's okay and i i i don't know your name i'm sorry you spoke so eloquently i can't remember the name i was waiting for it at the end i just want to finish like one second here that um i think it you know it's it's okay to have different views but it's how you express those different views and that's what i think is really important and you know sometimes i just don't say anything because i'm i i'm a person that doesn't like discord and i think that it's okay to disagree but to disagree in a manner that is acceptable wow i guess that's right the phone rang all right thank you good night uh mr albatro thank you president smith congratulations ms maruiji from school four

127um congratulations to our chs cheer team they went one in one who hosted a tournament um on monday and on mlk day to ms matano her coaching staff and all the cheerleaders great job there was some great competition whether it was private schools or public schools and they really held their own [Music] so i want to take a minute well a little time so why i understand that anyone from the public has the right to voice their opinions there are a few comments i'd like to comment i would like to comment regarding the reorganization meeting the reason commissioner awad and i were speaking last meeting during the reorganization meeting is because it was his first reorganization meeting in person and he was asking certain procedures many people like to clump board members together i don't

128speak for anybody on the board or in their personal conversations are there posts with anyone i believe everybody is entitled to speak for themselves someone mentioned harassment charges last meeting yes i did file horizon charges on a person who took photos of my family and posted my social media to come at me as a board member i'm fine with i'm a big boy to drag my family in my and a family member or follow me which i have videos of i'm not fine with the word that people like throw around or a person like to throw around it's a derogatory term and i will not drop or stoop down to that level of anyone or with anyone if you don't agree with me or if i don't agree with you as miss danny said there's

129a way to handle it and it's with dignity and respect and on that note if i may take some time as everybody else finished so the word sexism and attacks were used today um yes i do have a season to slaughter against against a board member and that is in their personal life and estates in the season this letter but anybody can translate to how they probably believe they should let's talk about something last month i worked with my mosque to provide 900 pieces of toys to nine organizations a person has a problem with that i hosted a board of ed forum back in november as not serving with the palestinian american community center as on their board i don't serve on their board nor am i an officer on their board nor was i

130a paid member on their board or the organization somebody had a problem with that and i can go on forever on a 20-page document yes ladies and gentlemen ethics violation number three ridiculous but i will let the system take care of this frivolous attacks that we're talking about here attacking me in my religion and in my culture and second of all if sexism and attacks on this board works for others but yet you want to utilize this against me in that center i think you should recheck yourself re-evaluate yourself yes miss password this is by you okay so to grand scale when you prefer and when you choose and when it's good for you but it's not good for others i got a problem with that and if you guys think i wasn't going to

131talk about it i'm afraid of this frivolous frivolous ridiculous and this only thing that does is pay taxpayer dollars for an attorney to defend me if that's not really thinking about what we're spending on in this district and talking about rather use that money for students for books for programs for other things in this district is ridiculous mr whoever's whoever is laughing back they keep laughing because apparently you find this funny you want to come up here and talk and point at people but yet you want to follow people throughout the city and you want to keep posting on your facebook because i'm i'm sorry mr president yeah let's not have the from the crowd curse words from the crowd should not be taken absolutely not please if you're in the audience please hold your

132comments to yourself okay because let you know you haven't scared me but you have definitely scared my wife five cameras on my house alarm in my house and yet when she sees you and she has seen you she's walked the other way because you are terrifying her you got a problem come at me i'm ready i'm ready my father told me to stay on my own ground i'm gonna protect my family till i die tell you that right now other people on this board have said their families have been attacked again when it's good for you it's okay but when it's for somebody else you want to do it as unacceptable unacceptable thank you you mr daley vice president daily thank you miss thank you mr president um there's a couple of things congrats to

133students of the month it's always good to see that we recognize our students here and again many thanks to miss paul orgooza and citing ms tracy morgini on her accomplishment on the pbis system i also would like to thank mr doctor for his presentation on on the hib one thing that always stands out for the clifton districts in our hip is that the our district has as far as i know has been very aggressive importing every incident accurately and documentedly and if you see numbers that are different in our district and that that's because we're the staff is totally transparent how they push this program and it's very important for the stability and integrity of our district here at clifton i'd like to say congrats to judy and lucy on their re-election here and looking

134forward them to continue to work with them and i'd like to welcome mr paris to his first full official board meeting put your seatbelts on so uh also like to recognize mr salzano who i had many interactions with during his tenure and his official duties here at the board of education he'll be sorely missed he was extremely unique individual and he he lit up everybody's face when he was present and doing his things um again as miss danny said like to thank all the administration this teachers the staff who are working so hard during these difficult times um one very uh unusual thing i believe your first name ma'am is annetta i didn't catch your full last name that was a the one the most thoughtful and welcoming comments i've seen here i've been on

135the board will be a total of 13 years come april that was outstanding and you're to be noted for the heart and thought you put into your remarks and i i personally appreciate that very much and lastly i'm extremely upset tonight that a member of the public took to attack our president our superintendent excuse me i've been here as i said the full 13 years i've been on many other official boards i know and boards of freeholder the whole nine yards i have couldn't be more pleased on the performance of our superintendent he is fully in charge of our district not only that he's projected kindness leadership every kind of aspect you would want from a leader and he's done that in spades here he's done an outstanding outstanding job and to have him his

136character in even the tiniest way besmirch is upsetting to me and really a disservice to this community so i just wanted to tell the public i fully support dr robitozi he's done a marvelous job he's even exceeded any expectations that i have had since his appointment and i look forward for hopefully he'll be here for many years doing what he does so very well for the students and the district and the town of clifton that concludes my remarks thank you mr daley my uh my comments as well we're going to uh to back up what you just said about the superintendent you may not like every decision that is made but there isn't anybody that works harder in this district for the welfare education and lives of students than our superintendent i've seen many superintendents

137and hands down clifton is so fortunate and lucky to have a man like dr robitosi i don't think anyone understands the magnitude of decisions that have to be made on a daily basis i often tell them i don't want to would not want to be in your shoes but he's always told me at the end of making his decisions that he always does what's best for kids how could we ever ask for anything better than that i don't want to stand up here and voice accomplishments and accolades that uh that i've had in my life people know who i am what i stand for and some accusations that were made today are not only unethical they cross the line of being illegal and people can throw darts and say what they wish but the person

138in this chair who was elected by his peers to do the very best that i can for this district no time would i ever exclude anyone or include anyone by their race by their sex by how they dress people that know me know the truth and i don't need to spend time up here to defend my character and who i am i do not want to stand up here and list my the accomplishments that this board made last year under my leadership five last year was probably six five or six board members saw the good in me to put me in this position and i will never listened to or tried to be taken down by people that need to come up and hear themselves talk for five minutes about nothing that helps the education

139of kids other than the last lady in miss llama who does it for a living nobody came up and spoke about how we can better educate kids no it was about everything else and pointing fingers i've been on this board i've been a board member longer than anyone up here and the experience that i've had from other boards i was never put on certain committees but that i attacked the president of not being fair because she was a female and i was a male no it's absurd is it unfair that other board members on this board can't have the opportunity to serve committees everyone has not should have an opportunity to do that someone who sits in this chair has to make those decisions and make those decisions for the betterment of the district where

140the ridiculous rumors of that there was another list made is beyond ridiculous nothing was released to any board member or administration because the committees had not been completed and i didn't do this alone and not to put mr daley in the in the hot seat as well but as my vice president i included him so are we all able to probably sit on any committee probably yes but why should the same people be in the same committees because they feel that's where they should be someone once said when i was on the board years ago i know nothing about education don't put me on education it's just a waste of time that person was probably one of the best board members that we had for education because they learned so much and then they were

141able to apply it to the district by not getting the chance to be on that committee that would have never been found so i'm not going to waste any more time but the people of clifton that know me that know my dedication to kids know that these silly accusations that happened today are just people that are upset because they didn't get a certain committee so come out and attack and is there any committee that is less important they are all important but why shouldn't others get an opportunity to serve on those committees whether they're male or female whether they're black they're white whether they're religion or whatever none of that is taken into consideration ever and mr daily if i'm wrong tell everyone that i'm wrong right now you can't please everybody here people and

142i know that but i will be damned if i don't continue to fight for the betterment of the educational system here in clifton and i will continue to fight for that because that's why i'm a board member no other reason and the five people that put me in this chair i thank you and i know i won't let you down and the others i hope will be part of a great system led by this man in making clifton great we say it's pra i'm proud to be a mustang it's a great day to be a mustang not with these accusations and innuendos that's not what it means to be a mustang people know who i am and know the real me and i will continue to work hard and make tough decisions that's the chair

143that i'm in people feel that i take personally because come up to the microphone and the time runs out well that's mr smith attacking me i didn't make these rules i'm putting the chair to make sure the rules are applied but attack me because i'm sitting in the chair some people want to follow some rules and not others person in this chair has to do the very best that they can do to help the system and i will continue to do that every day we have um two student matters one personnel matter for executive session right that's it okay um action will be taken um again i will guess the uh probably an hour in executive session have we decided to stay here or leave or we're going to stay here all right so we're

144going to stay here and hold our executive session so we asked if you could uh uh publicly vacate the room yes miss password oh you're right i'm sorry correct my computer went off all right so we know the executive session when it comes i don't have to repeat that new business i make a motion to discontinue the food at meetings both regular special and committee meetings uh if there's anything left over tonight it'd be donated to st peter's haven or eva's kitchen in patterson got a motion on the floor a second seconded by mr paris discussion seeing none roll call mr abba drabo i don't take foosa abstain mr awad abstain miss bassford mr paris yes vice president daley no president smith no the motion doesn't have a majority so it does not pass hey

145motion fails is there any other new business okay seeing none we'll have a motion for exec excuse me a motion for executive session motion second who said it mr abhijava second by mr awad okay we approximate about an hour in executive session uh if you'd like to wait outside um but the board will all right return from executive session roll call mr uc here mr every drawboat mr awad here miss bassford yeah miss beltran here mr canova here dr danny here mr paris here vice president daley here president smith here we have a corner board met an executive session to discuss student matters and a personnel matter we have e17 and 18 p28 and ea02 do i have a motion motion second mr kanova second by mr awad discussion seeing none roll call mr abby

146driver i'm sorry excuse me uh ea 02 is the policy or we i thought we were going to discuss it in public yeah that's what i thought too that's why i paused i just told the group okay so it's just e17 and 18 and p28 yes okay wait does the motion be amended on that one yeah will you separate mr kenova and mr awad yes yeah i'm in the motion seventeen seventeen and twenty eight yeah correct okay i think we're good okay roll call yes mr abhijabo mr awad yes miss bassmaster yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes motion carries okay um ea 02 i make a motion to amend the second reading policy to state i'm taking this from 167 is

147exact wording there will be one public session there will be one public recognition session each statement made by a participant shall be limited to five minutes for general for agenda or general matters pertinent to the district the board of education members will be limited to three minutes for board member comments that's from 167 that that should just be put into the policy and also in the the new bylaw it should read in paragraph i'm sorry i'm trying to get it on here hold on um in the third paragraph down it says public participation shall be permitted only as indicated on order of business and board bylaws 0 1 6 six zero one six zero and bylaw zero one six four and should include zero one six seven one six seven is the actual language that

148talks about the time limitations i i i did that while you guys were talking i think the fourth paragraph i read there had um five minutes the last sentence has five minutes and three minutes for board member comments i think it's already in there mr smith presents with five minutes i echo miss stan miss uh miss danny's comment said yeah they're already in there but my problem is this my problem is that if i was a public member i made comments from my vehicle not showing my face so we don't know who's behind it and i can easily change my name on zoom or whatever it may be and then come back into public sec into uh in person conversation or dialogue whatever i want from the from from the podium and eat up five

149more minutes it need there needs to be something in there that we need to see your face i mean you could be done from a phone it could be done from a laptop it could be done from anywhere i'm sorry we've seen things happen and we've seen people attack via when during covid and we don't know who it was and who's behind it and a name can be changed or hidden as private and there's no accountability whatsoever the answer is not no to this the answer is let's really dot our eyes and cross every team make sure everything's done to cover us and the district because any any child anybody from another district anybody from another city can say and do whatever they want but at the end of the day we don't have a

150face or a name to identify to that is my problem with this i'm i'm for the whole you know having options and accessibility for everybody particularly when working moms working dads and whomever are running late because they want to voice their child's opinion or voice therapy about their child but there needs to be some sort of accountability held president smith yes just when i'm thinking about that i mean i i just think as a board do we you know do we want um to be able to see the person i mean because here we see them so the stipulation in there be that we have to see them you know that that there has to be you know that they go onto a zoom or something because i mean i guess i could see that

151point like here we're seeing the person and and they're speaking and you know then i i could see possibly remember we had that one incident where the person called and we didn't see them and they just spoke and they said some things that were draw i mean i i think when you have to show yourself then you're you're more likely to really think about what it is that you will say so if we add that to it or so i think it's you know again i mean we're making a thing to allow them to participate but i think that it it's maybe key to say you know you have to show your face because and that's the whole point of why i motioned to kick it back to policy is because of that part we

152can't just say well let's stick it right there but then when we read it it just doesn't make sense i mean i'm sure the majority are not saying no to this it doesn't matter let's do it right and for me that's that's that's the gap and that's the error in it that i see and i've said this for a long time since the first time joe has brought it up and yet it's still not in there mr president yes if i may um if i may direct it to joe canova joe i i remember that you went back and there was a lot of technology questions that i think mr uh mr mountain addressed uh was there part of that that that there was a visual uh path for this as well not just a

153a voice one yeah we could offer two options one would be the video just like we did during darren covid and then we could also offer a dialing number so i think the idea were there was to be able to reach people who didn't have a a device that had a camera on it and i think that even even in one of the the i think there was in one of the policy meetings we said that if somebody came here and and they were had themselves covered we have to let them speak so whether or not we can see them is irrelevant because in general if someone's coming to speak you have to let them speak so i think the way we looked at it was whether they're virtual or not we need to follow

154the same rules and that's why we're setting the rules that we use for regular public comment where we say we asked them the name and and uh we used to be the address but i don't think it's that anymore the city uh so whatever rules that are that we follow we continue to follow i mean there's been plenty of times where i see people call into the city of clifton when they had their meetings the regular council meetings and they used the regular calling number so i don't see the difference i think i think the idea here is we just want to reach more people president smith if i may to respond to that i joe i i don't agree with you we shouldn't deny acts to anybody right fair equity acts across the board

155everybody should have opportunity to speak but if we have somebody who's covered we know somebody's there and we can identify somebody in the hallway if we pass by them right just by you know whatever they're covered by but at the end of the day if i just see a black screen with a private caller or a name change i still don't know who's behind that it could be somebody we can see the difference between here on council i don't watch my i watch some of the council meetings but you know we're here live and we see the attacks that happen how about that continues whether it's on the phone and then in person i want to know who's behind there anybody could hide behind anything and that that covers all of us that covers our

156district that covers us from liability and it holds people accountable that's what i'm looking at and that's what i'm looking for so i think if it gets to the point where there are certain regulations on as to when the the chair can cut off uh someone who's publicly speaking and i think we'll just follow those same guidance and the same rules so if someone's saying you know something they shouldn't be or cursing and being belligerent we're going to cut them off it's an electronic device yeah i i really have something that covers us in policy if we're going to if we're going to have it that way i want to see it in writing because if it's not in writing and it's it's it doesn't exist what do the kids say now if you don't

157have a photo of it you weren't there if you don't have in writing it doesn't exist i think that's why i was trying to kick it back to policy mr president yes i i i'm willing to give it a try if we start to have issues either by uh with the thing i mean we're going to jump right in and say hey this is not working or this needs to be modified and we can take care of that part of this since it is new is just as when we went to do these virtual meetings it's a it's a bit experimental you see how it works it's not everybody does it but more and more are so um you know i at this point if there's if a problem crops up i think we can

158do what we need to do at that point and address it so uh i don't i i'm not that i don't share your concerns but um i i think we can kind of figure out if it's getting funky or not and if it is then then we can um do whatever we have to do to either correct it or suspend it one of the other depending on the issue mr president yes we did speak about this in length about a kill switch and having somebody man that virtual component and pressing the buttons number four talks about when you when the president has the right to uh remove somebody stop them or prevent them from continuing speaking and his abcdef points here so it gives you the right to actually shut down the video or the

159audio at that point but we did speak about having a staff member purposely dedicated for that function that was that was discussed at length mr smith you you kill switch somebody guess what you're going to follow you're censoring you're stopping people that's what we're going to get hit for we could have if we yawn imagine if you stop somebody from from on whatever they want to say via via video via zoom they're going to say that you're an anarchist and if they're in person do we have that in writing in our policy thank you but it doesn't say exactly word for word in this policy that's what i'm trying to say so this policy calls on zero six yeah zero one six seven so item four the presiding officer may interrupt terminate a participant's statement

160or question interrupting our warrant participant with the statement or question is in abusive obscene or defamatory request any person to leave the meeting when that person does not observe reasonable quorum and it goes on and on there's there's it goes to f so that's what we do currently so i take that back my laptop's on from me that's why i didn't see it in person yeah as mr daley said this was we needed this policy in order to do the pilot because remember we just wanted to do this as a pilot so like we could hate it the first time and never do it again but we needed the policy in order to even try it could be a disaster it could be a wonderful thing yeah no one no one could call people are

161asking for access i mean call for a vote i would say okay we're in uh we're in uh roll call please i think we need a motion for you i thought we had it right because it was a discussion well who was the second i'm sorry mr vasper was the first uh i didn't hear a second yeah somebody over here miss password i think was the first thing you but overdrive always the second i didn't miss a second i didn't second anything no i'll make a motion to accept to vote this password is the third i'll second it we definitely had it because that's why we had discussion who the second day all right roll call please mr abba jabba it's not about accessibility so i'm going to abstain mr awad abstain miss basford yes

162miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yeah mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith abstain should go back to committee um six to six to zero to three motion carries okay uh seeing no other business motion to adjourn motion closed sorry exactly all those in favor meeting adjourned you