September 9, 2021 - Clifton Board of Education Meeting

001[Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] okay okay i'd like to call the september 9th 2021 regular meeting of the clifton board of education to order if you all may ask to please rise for a pledge of allegiance and a brief moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you mr uc roll call please okay mr abby mr awad here miss bassford here miss beltran mr canova here mr daley here dr danny vice president casper here president smith here we have a forum mission statement mr casper the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is

002to 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 the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act clinton board of education has caused note of this of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this

003meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight okay uh adoption of the minutes of our regular meeting of august 18 2021 so moved so moved by vice president casper second second by uh mr canova discussion mr president yes there's a whole conversation about the policy is not there and the policy committee reports not reflected in the minutes i reached out to the superintendent and uh we're missing in there right mrs bassford did reach out to me this afternoon i talked to um mr usee the board secretary who i believe uh fixed the issue i i shared what was in in there um i didn't get any feedback on changes they could be they could be changed how the board members would like though if it was inserted where did you

004put it because i looked through the whole thing i didn't see it and i refreshed my my screen a couple of times it should be under the section right under the facility because facility was read first all right why don't we check that out and we'll come back to that if that's okay so we get it right all right communication and announcements we have none i'm sorry we have to resend the motion or table it i said we'll come back to it um presentation of reports from administration advisory committees and special committees board committee reports we'll start with the hsa meeting ms basford yes the hsa met on august 24th it was a virtual hsa meeting with board members in attendance and it started at 7 00 p.m the meeting was opened by dr robertosi

005the meeting opened and we had introductions and attendance of all attendees uh dr robitazi superintendent of schools administration boe members and hsa presidents from the board of ed that were present was myself and joe canova a brief summary of the meeting was uh was by miss cowan introduction of mr of dr robituzzi and the statement we had a discussion it's between 705 and 709 dr roberto greeted the great guest and referred to the agenda posted for the attendees dr robert tussie thanked ms cowan of school 14 for suggesting the meeting to discuss the 21 22 school year expectations dr robitazi expected to express the value of the relationship between the hsa the boe administration and schools dr robitazi introduced mr gingaro as the new assistant superintendent of schools dr robituzzi informed the group that miss

006rose can uh castilla castalio like obviously her name wrong maintains a facebook page for the clifton schools hsa and mrs castaldo shared responsibility with miss cowan at 709-723 the attendees introduced themselves from 723 to 736 dr robert as he referred to the board of education presentation at the previous clifton board of education meeting that outlined the school's reopening plan and reiterated that that plan may be may change depending on guidance from the department of health department of education and the cdc the goal is to reopen schools as close as pre-pandemic as possible with some exceptions dr robitazi announced that field trips will be permitted with possible limitations for the 21 22 2022 school year with masking and distancing precautions and fundraising can be begin to take place dr robitazi discussed that the governor's executive order

007requiring mass discuss the three-foot social distancing in schools and the implementation of seat charts for buses and then cafeterias for contact tracing purposes dr robert tussie also outlined contact tracing and quarantine guidelines as they pertain to individuals who have been vaccinated and unvaccinated a brief discussion of transportation costs for field trips to maintain distancing on buses ms cowan mentioned that the standard school bus holds 54 and would calculate costs dr capizzi school principal 13 mentioned the difference in fundraising efforts between different schools ptas and hsas from 737 to 744 doc mr gingaro discussed lunches that students will not eat on hallway floors buildings may utilize auditoriums and additional classroom areas and spaces to accommodate lunch mr guerrero outline the grab-and-go lunches and that all students will receive free mails for the 2021-2022 school year mr

008gingaro said that families still need to complete the free and reduced lunch application let me repeat that mr gingaro said that all families need to complete the free and reduced meal school application school 2 hsa asked for clarification on the grab and go if meals would be cold or hot moving into the colder months would discuss other options mr guerra and dr robert tussie discussed breakfast programs mealtime hygiene and students with special dietary needs accommodated by pomptonian from 744 to 750 we had a discussion on quarantine and remote learning for classes impacted by covet 19 outbreaks dr robituzzi directed to the reopening presentation and said that a recap with additional guidance outlining the difference between last year and this year would be sent to the community dr roberto explained if children if a child is

009need in if a child needs to quarantine as a result of being close contact in school they will continue on virtual instruction just as last year through google meets and google classroom the quarantine time is dependent upon the activity levels in new jersey dr robituzzi and miss kuchalevich explained quarantine protocols for travel protocols from 750 to 753 miscommas raised a question about monitoring mass compliance at the high school during travel to classrooms between periods dr obatarzi explained that the federal aid was provided funding for additional staff to supervise and monitor during travel time lunchtime as well as before and after school from to 754 we had a discussion of visitors by appointment only uh 755 to 758 discussions on assemblies and class photos assemblies that would provide for distancing or that can be split i.e

010two presentations in one day or virtually or virtual assemblies are permitted class photos with distancing uh is is also permitted from 758 to 804 ms bastard myself asked if the trunk of treats would be permitted dr obitarzi mentioned that trunk or treats held outside with precautions should be permitted along with other outdoor activities dr robert tussie also stated that some fall and winter events decisions would have to take the wait and see approach dr roberto said that this could be discussed again in the next meeting from 804 to 809 discussions on school photos and yearbooks book fairs back to school nights possibility of virtual book fairs ms cowan caution about the scholastic virtual book fair they did not accept money rather scholastic points school 14 media specialists will help to facilitate virtual school back-to-school night

011last year had uh better attendance so it will be virtual a possible discussion of a hybrid option additional hsa meetings have increased attendance when they are held virtually dr robitazi said that as long as they are followed board guidelines hsa meetings can be held virtually or as hybrid meetings from 8 10 to 8 11 woodrow wilson middle school asked if school spirit wear would be permitted during gym classes mr jagger w woodrow wilson middle school's principal said that these students would not be changing for jim due to distancing restrictions miss romeo school one principal mentioned virtual online spirit ware sales and would share information from 8 12 to 8 14 miss cowan asked about parent participation in holloway pr holiday halloween parades dr robitazi said that details would be at the discretion of the building

012principle but discussed food preparation and suggested that they work with pomptonian food service to facilitate from 8 14 to 827 miss colano acting principal at school 15 uh inquired about vaccine mandates for parents who volunteered to assist with parties dr robitazi explained that the government governor's vaccination testing requirement explained that it would pertain to individuals spending more than 15 minutes in the building mrs basford also commented on hearing to vaccination guidelines dr robitazi also re restated and suggested that parties and events outside have fewer restrictions miss principe inquired about hsa members board members or active volunteers who are unvaccinated dr robitazi said that the same rules for staff apply and recommend limiting parent participation to only what is essential at 8 28 mrs basford motioned to close the meeting miss colonos second dr robitazi thank

013the hsa board members and administration for their support and we adjourned at um i'm being exact thank you mr gengaro 8 26 p.m thank you for the very comprehensive minute by minute document that you submitted to us any questions okay see none policy polly could you let me just take a swig a little dry thank you the policy committee met uh august um excuse me september 8th at uh 4 35 pm attendees was board president vice board president vice president frank casper myself as chair board members joe canover and dana beltran administrators were president was dr danny robituzzi mark tangarow eric mountain lou ross and also president was andy brown from our law firm the committee discussed bylaw zero one six seven and public participation portion at the meetings after discussion the committee recommends that

014the board reinstate suspended policy zero one six seven with the following amendments option one reinstate zero one six seven as it is currently written two public participation portions three minutes for agenda items and five minutes on public recognition portion and changing the limit for board members comments from eight to five minutes option two reinstate zero one six seven with a public one public recognition session and limit a participation participant during the public participation recognition recognition portion to five minutes for agenda items or any general matters pertinent to the district the limit for the board members comments will be changed from eight to five minutes the committee was briefed by eric mountain regarding a possible solution to be tested which would allow board members what would allow members of the public to participate during public participation

015through an audio means the committee will review the test results at the upcoming meeting for a recommendation to the full board this item is informational the committee then discussed the question of murals and policy regarding same the committee concluded that the matter regarding murals in and on district property falls under the purview of the superintendent's authority and not the board's authority a recent sir strauss esme alert addressing board commissioner's attendance will be discussed at the next policy meeting the meeting adjourned at 5 24 p.m and mr ross wrote the um minutes any questions thank you okay facilities minutes uh the chairman is not here so mr casper would you read those as a member of the committee okay board members and attendants on the september 2nd facilities committee included dana beltran mr daley myself and

016mr jim smith as president administration president were dr robertosi mrs kusalevich mr gingaro mr dr mr usee and mr marcion meeting time went from four o'clock to 4 50 p.m number one assessment of damage from hurricane ida administration gave a preliminary assessment of the damage caused by hurricane ida throughout the district all students had all schools had no damage or minor damage with the exception of school 12 16 17 christopher columbus middle school in celebi dr robert tosi stated school would be able to resume in all buildings as of september 8 2021 with the exception of school 16 which had severe flooding throughout the entire building school 16 will continue to be a work in progress with updates to come as they are known update as of 9 9 21. the district has flood insurance

017with a deductible of 50 000 per building with a total of 5 million dollars of coverage all facilities that were damaged will be inspected by the district concerns suggester by the end of the week number two school 16 fallen trees there were some fallen trees caused by the storm at school 16. maintenance will have the fallen trees removed for safety purposes however the district will continue with the plan to have in the area professionally cleaned up with an arborist report to be presented at a subsequent board meeting at this point in time the tree company's schedule is booked here is our minutes does anybody have any questions yes mr president yes mr kanoa uh the the coverage for insurance is that a total of five million across all of our buildings or is those individual

018policies where we can charge up to five million each building all of our buildings so it's like an umbrella insurance yeah the coverage is district-wide but there's a deductible per building so we have to assess if it's worth the deductible at each building do we know at this moment what the assessed value is of damages no okay we're close though thank you mr president yes mr daley yeah um i'd just like to i think add that we discussed shortly about fema at that when we had the beanie the state county was not the declared or no counties where at that time we are now declared a disaster area and are able to accept fema funds so that's another aspect to the coverage for the damages and the administration did note that all uh pictures and

019documents were scrupulously being collected and maintained in order for claims either from fema or other sources mr abu drabo mr president thank you first of all i apologize for being late my youngest had to um get seek medical attention this morning so um uh piggy bank and mr konova's question so if we don't have a final number on obviously because it's still too soon and 16 still being conducted uh internally do we have mr uchi a preliminary or what numbers look like as of now without 16 because i know 16 is probably what's holding us up for construction numbers all right aft after any questions of the uh of the minutes the superintendent will address the uh this the situation with schools oh okay i was just backing off mr kanova's question in terms of

020uh how much in damage we are all right mr kanos was that your question so i was just wondering what it is now oh i'm sorry i know like commercial without the opening no no because mrs said that he we're not done yet waiting on numbers for damages i'm just curious right now what the numbers look like now roughly with preliminary numbers i i mean if you don't have that as an estimate but i don't know if it'd be fair um i mean you want me no listen again i'm not trying to put you on a spot if you don't have those numbers or if it's not even if you don't have them if they're still being conducted you can just say that too and um i mean at this time they're still being conducted

021but obviously 16 is the most severe so that's yeah that's upwards over a million right there in that school so no that's fine that's that's just i just want to give the public understand what what it caused to delay and what it took the the the administration to build the opening and what the mystery still dealing with so the public understands that it is the high numbers that's all yeah i'm sorry mr object i thought you were talking about the situation uh with opening school 16 my apologies um so i'd ask the superintendent if he could uh give us a quick update on that since it was brought up in the in the minutes absolutely thank you mr president good evening commissioners members of the community certainly wasn't the way we intended to start our

022school year um but i'm thankful that we were able to open all of our schools uh yesterday and today with the exception of school 16. so uh school 16 obviously um as most of us know had the most damage we have a contractor multiple contractors working they began i mean began right after it happened but they began in earnest yesterday with water removal water mitigation mold for mold prevention removal of all the damaged equipment and furniture then they'll be doing all the structural repairs including the floors the walls electrical equipment then we've got to replace all the damaged furniture and the flooring we're going to be doing power washing and disinfecting and painting the building as of today i mean the insurance adjusters i know we're asking about you know the the amount of damages

023the insurance adjusters just got to the district today so you can imagine that we're not the only um district that suffered damages in addition to all of the individuals in their homes that have suffered damages what i'm confident in saying publicly and in the message that i sent to the school 16 community earlier today is that because the contractor we're working with we've worked with for many years um and because they have enough for lack of a better word manpower to do double shifts every day including weekends and any holidays i'm confident in saying that timetable for return will be approximately one month certainly could be sooner and we could also you know open up a wall and find something that we didn't know was there and something unexpected could happen it could be longer

024but i'm confident saying that our children at school 16 will be back in their buildings in about a month thank you dr erbitosi all right next we have oh uh i just want to uh remind everybody under the governor's order um we must wear masks in this building so uh all members of the public as well as commissioners we all have to have our masks on so i ask that everyone please abide by these guidelines board members when it's your turn to give your board members comments if you you could then if you wish to lower your math so that you could give your comments clearly and then bring them back up again okay okay public recognition this portion of the meeting is open to the residents and non-residents of clifton for the purpose of

025addressing any subject matter pertinent to and or directly related to the operation of the clinton public school district residents and non-residents are requested if in person to sign the register provided for this purpose all speakers are asked to state their names municipality of where they live and subject matter before they speak comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate your questions may or may not be answered by board members the board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when they are speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged and will

026not be responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of the state of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments if anyone wishes to address the board you may please do so at the podium [Music] good evening mark brunsiak holly street clifton i want to commend everybody on their help over the disaster the past few days and it was catastrophic for a lot of people in this city so i want to shout out to all the city employees and

027all the general public who helped out during these catastrophic days uh just want to give a shout out to them regarding school 1616 just got off the phone before this meeting with some of the parents and the communication they're thankful for the communication but frankly it's unacceptable and unreasonable there there's got to be some sort of contingency plan here parents it was 18 months since the last time for some of them since they've last been in school and they're looking for a different contingency plan over here there any other facilities that are vacant in this city i don't even know if insurance will reimburse that but um people lose their personal houses who are insured that i'm aware of uh i'm pretty sure that they reimburse them for for the rental fees associated with it

028while their house is being rebuilt and based on the amount of damage that was described over a million dollars it's massive damage at school 16. so i'm asking this board to find some contingency plans for these parents to get their children an option to get some in-person schooling over here spoke with some other moms with some of the students in there uh in the high school and uh extremely thankful for the complimentary lunches from the feds have three options over there some of them are concerned that the vending machines are empty as well so they are asking at the bare minimum that they understand that these cafeterias are still under construction but at the bare minimum that the vending machines be filled so so some of these students have some other options to supplement the

029dishes the lunches that they are receiving greatly appreciate that as well last thing i want to mention is uh regarding the backpacks from the middle schools uh that they were required uh and i i don't know who funded it i don't know if the district funded it i don't know if it was privately donated or what all the students had to use this backpack and a lot of parents complained and ended up saying that the kids can now bring their own backpacks they just can't have the rolling backpacks i guess the luggage cases or whatever and so uh i just want to know if there's going to be some sort of use over here who paid for it if the district paid for it if this board believes that these backpacks that the district provided

030to the students and we're only allowed to have this will be used for some other purpose thank you for your time and god bless america have a good night everybody thank you anyone else wish to address the board hello tova felder twain place um i had some prepared remarks and then i decided not to bring them up here so i just wanted to say thank you this year was going to be tremendously difficult no matter what else happened we are still dealing with pandemic nonsense everything is hard people's tempers are short it's obviously harder to teach wearing a mask it's harder to sit and listen wearing a mask everything's a little bit harder and you've got upset parents to deal with and i'm sure a lot of teachers who are upset but you really all

031of you the superintendent all the administrators the commissioners all the teachers the custodians everybody in our district thank you we know that you get a lot of complaints you probably don't get enough thank yous but we really appreciate how hard everybody has worked and i do appreciate that while not ideal school 16 children had the contingency plan of remote learning and that's actually a weird silver lining to this last year and a half is that now we do have options when something completely unexpected and catastrophic happens like with the flooding so thanks again and i hope everybody has a really great and healthy year thanks thank you anyone else wish to address the board good evening my name is maria kovalovsky i live on autumn autumn street in clifton in delaware section um this is

032how long do i actually have yeah five minutes oh that's nice and wayne you only get three um this is a very impromptu you know little thing i put together am i am i allowed to ask you just a yes or no question yeah the board will not respond back and forth to you but you can ask a question if they wish to respond during their comments they they could okay thank you do any of you actually believe in the science has the science been provided to you like for the masking all the masking studies that have been put out that they do not work i can show you a video of a commercial painter where he has two coverings and an n95 mask he's fully covered in latex paint and when he blows his

033nose into a black mask it's all white and if you know the viscosity of latex paint it's so much thicker than a virus there's no way it's going to stop the virus from getting through your masks okay now a former 1984 kgb defector euro bez besmanov modern america he said it would be brought to a point where you can provide all the proof documents pictures people will not believe it until they are finally in the dark situation itself his words are actually i will take him to soviet union and i will slap them on the bottom and then they will know what the truth is but if you do believe in the science then why aren't you why are you masking kids why are you masking your staff do you know that in march 2020

034before the vaccine was even rolled out the fda already had a list of adverse effects to the coming vaccines some of the effects are acute disseminated oh these are long words encephalitis myelitis deaths pregnancy and birth outcomes multi-symptom inflammatory syndrome to children which is brain failure kidney failure brain spleen gut eyes all at once if you go on the cdc.gov website and type in mis hyphen c reported children had adverse effects of this inflammatory syndrome and 40 deaths you could have strokes anaphylaxis myocarditis pericarditis i mean this is before the vaccine was even rolled out how did they know all of this and fauci what did he do there was a study in africa that was supposed to be for one year did you even know this after only six months after six months of

035using rem desevier that is made by gilead i know that company very very well after six months it was pulled because 54 percent of the people in the study died did you know that and then um um there was a gilead study last year of march 2020 per falchi as well he was involved in that there was 53 patients from u.s canada and japan on rem de sevier and after 10 days on the drug 23 percent had severe adverse effects uh okay i really hope you guys can see that kovid is not what's really you know happening in the world it is actually the vehicle of what's going it's what's to come with this vaccine passport please don't make these kids take this vaccine there are teenagers 13 17 year olds dying the last one

036i heard of died five hours after her second dose just five hours please don't make these kids don't give these kids this old don't give the parents the ultimatum of if you if you get vaxxed you know you could do this these little these little crumbs of freedom that they're even doing in australia oh you can have five people in your house if you do this or you know once they have 75 vaccinated you could do this the vaccine does not work have you seen the studies in india in the um five minutes mr smith okay if you could find please thank you i'm allowed to take this down right al dewa clifton 62 ellenwood drive that young lady that just spoke was very good we had another one last time they're saying very uh

037true statements from one perspective and it appears that the only statements you listen to is what's coming from the party line of our draconian governor and president who just made a lot of announcements today i've asked maybe about five six times now i've sent everyone an email at least mr smith you did respond and say you will do something which was nice the last time with the email we need a committee we have no transparency in this town whatsoever i made comments on the computer to the safe schools policy never got it okay yeah your comments were received went to look for other parents comments couldn't see anything it's kept secret i think it should be allowed i think everybody should be able to read who's saying what and you know it's got to be

038some legal way of doing that where nobody's going to try to sue or who cares i mean i made a lot of comments so i mean i was pretty you know straightforward in what i said i'm not worried about what i said so we should have transparency so i'm going to ask this board to try to get that published i'm also going to ask the board to what the young lady just said why don't we have a debate why don't you set up a debate and have the speaker from the state uh from you know the regime of the nazi fascist communist party and let us bring in a speaker from who gives you alternatives with practical uh comments and let them go at it this is not going away so it's just going to

039be ongoing until you try to vaccinate everyone and like she said once you get the first shot second shot third shot then there's gonna be something else coming down the line this is not going away i mean it may not be immediate it may not but they want those three shots in you so that's my uh comment for tonight uh i know we're we're battling powers that are beyond us i know i'm not blaming anyone here you're doing but you haven't had any transparency i prefer to go to a committee where there's a bunch of parents and just a few of you and talk this out and iron it out and hear more and maybe you have other committees on a county level or whatever i don't really prefer coming here publicly to state all

040this over and over again so i'm asking again for some type of committee where parents can come and meet with a few of you who care maybe some from the right and some from the left and let's talk it out and go further there are a lot of other ideas facts that are out there that we should be sharing but we're not and so i'm going to end tonight in the month of september for catholics it's um the angels say michael's a prayer september 29th so i'm going to end with a prayer because we're battling powers that are beyond us here real powers that are dangerous um say michael the archangel defend us in battle be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the enemy may god rebuke him we humbly pray and do

041thou prince of the heavenly host by the divine power of god cast into hell satan and all those evil spirits who prowl throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls amen thank you thank you well good evening to everyone i hope everybody's doing well as you know i'm lori lalama and i'm the president of the cea and a great teacher here in the district so i would like to ask the facilities committee for their guidance and support regarding the storm issues from the past week many of the members would like to see possibly a powerpoint presentation regarding the condition and status of each of the buildings that were damaged by the water to the insurance adjuster and i just found out now you know take pictures and is the paperwork going to be completed i

042want to make sure that the work is being done is not a band-aid or a temporary patch since the district will be saving receiving money to fix the buildings this must be done correctly the first time i know in ccms the floors in the cafeteria must be either abated or encapsulated i would prefer to see the floors encapsulated according to code and the new floor can be placed on top if it is abated the process will take a long time if it's encapsulated it can be done over the weekend i believe the pump system under the lower gin needs to be reassessed because the water table there is whenever there is a heavy rain there is always an issue there is also a small sinkhole that's developing at the corner of the building which needs

043to be fixed i don't want to have to look up from the sinkhole from my classroom and i don't want to see any kids or parents get hurt we also need to check the trees on day street because with the rain they're sliding down and a tree already went down last year so if that could be checked on returning to school has been a joy it has been great to see the kids faces their smiles even though their smiles are in their eyes all right but it's been a wonderful thing for the kids and i just want to make sure that people understand that we still have to keep our distance and the classroom numbers have to be within the three feet as much as possible one last suggestion is that the hallways should be

044in one direction only have students and staff going in both directions can create issues so maybe we can stagger the times in the hallways the cea is also working with kim castellano to donate new and gently used clothes toiletries diapers pull-ups wipes and cleaning supplies the collection started yesterday and will end the 15th so this is for staff members only who are doing the donations and i want to say that i'm very proud of the district and the amount of donations we already have received and we've already dropped off to kim so i want to thank everybody and have a wonderful night thank you is there anyone else that wishes to address the board cnn motion to close motion by mr abu drabo second by mr awad okay we'll move on and finish business we

045have none right now we're going to do education administration so we're going to do uh ea 1 has been requested on a separate vote so we'll do ea one separate and then we'll do uh ea 2 through ea 9. so motion on uh ea 1 please so moved it's moved by vice president casper so moved on letter b is that what you need yeah either okay right over and do a first thing it's the way it's written okay just it's a they're both together so we're going to do uh well we have a motion we need a second so that we can discuss this second is it for discussion for discussion if this discussion second uh the second by mr daley discussion uh yes i have um danny how many um because i know we

046talked about districts how many districts actually have um two public participations do you have that information no i'm just that i would have no idea i thought that was supposed to be something that the committee was going to look at i mean i didn't particularly ask administration i just thought that that was something that committee was going to take a look at so that's why i thought that the committee had that information no mr mr can i ask that answer that no we didn't that wasn't one of our charges our charges were to give options of i got five emails from board members stating they wanted five minutes i heard from uh mr smith mr daley mr casper mr awad and mr abedrabo that they wanted five minutes the committee stuck with its resume recommendation

047to leave the three and five so we brought back two options to the board that's what we were charged with we weren't charged with doing any kind of research on how many other districts have three and five or two or three or one that wasn't what we were charged we were charged with giving options okay i thought i heard that maybe i you know heard somebody saying i do remember we talked about that a while ago but i don't know if it's from policy or if it's administration i said they were going to take a look um and get back to us to see how many other districts have either or because that might help yes i know i know yeah that's what i'm saying yeah but i i wasn't that's why i really saw

048i'm sorry policy maybe it wasn't in in pol but i remember there was somebody that um uh when i'm looking at this like i was wondering um for the bee i mean to to just there are um i know many boards that don't have board member comments and um could it be you know um you know maybe to to look at something with uh no board member comments one one public session and no board member comments mr president if i may um to follow miss danny's footsteps uh i think that's actually a great idea um even at max two minutes can get rid of the hole from eight minutes um [Music] board comments because if we are talking about time and you know not double stepping because all we do is reiterate ourselves anyway as

049the nine of us talk so i think even going down to two or i agree with miss danny just get rid of the board member comments i don't know to do legal if that's even doable or if we have to have that through mr through the president to legal mr president yes miss danny um i know that uh the district that i work in i've listened to their board meetings and they don't have board member comments um they just don't have it um and i've asked a few other board members and other boards they don't have it so i don't think it's a legal thing and my only concern is because i've seen board members i mean even when we have five they go over the five and like who you know nobody polices them

050but yet we police the public so you know i just i feel like you know if we go with one public um recognition session then i think we should just do away with board member comments because in all honesty i mean we sort of reiterate the same thing and we do have after each one when we go like ea one through you know eight and we vote on that there's always up for discussion so you have an option you know there to voice yourself and then many times you know from what i perceive in here board member comments much of it is just reiterating what we already sort of stated so you know i would be i mean i'm just saying i'd be open to one public recognition and no board member comments mr president

051smith mr president yes mr awad i just want a second miss lucy you know uh i think that is all third because also sorry i do think it's a great idea about no board comments and you know the public have five minutes i don't know if that's something we can vote on tonight or is that something you know our board attorney has to look into but that is also something i am interested in obviously i'm willing to support mr smith couldn't we before we before we vote on mr alberto before we vote on a b could i just make a recommendation to amend a and b just to get rid of board of vet commissioner comments and then we can just vote on a b um is that doable okay so we have a motion

052and a second on the floor for what is written to you if the motioner and second would like to amend that i'll be fine with amending it okay so what's your amendment uh the amendment is to get rid of the he's the motion second and second second oh we have a motion and a second second yeah so how are you impersonating that motion how are you amending it to to read no i think mr casper was talking about he'll he'll okay the since he motioned it to move forward he's okay with it but i'd like to motion to remove the five minutes and no board of ed commissioner comments on amb okay first we have a motion and a second on the floor are you re sending your motion uh mr casper yes okay is

053the second rescinding mr daley yes okay so now there is no motion on the floor so motion to amend um did you are you actually saying sure um mr president i'd like to amend ea 1 please on amv to remove board of ed commissioner comments so where it says on amb from eight to five minutes to stricken from eight to the removal of board of ed comments board of commissioner comments period and then we can vote on a and or b either three and five or five stand alone on b so mr robert draw with your motion is on e a b e a e a 1 a and e a 1 b to remove border b commissioner comments so instead of having eight minutes from so where it says the verbiage on a and

054b to limit board of ed comments from eight to five minutes on amb is to change the limit for board of ed commons from eight minutes to removal of board of ed commissioner commons that's on a and b that same verbiage on both so you're talking about on b it's public recognition for the public so a so a mr daley is saying to leave three minutes for agenda items and five minutes on public recognition correct b says five minutes per agenda for agenda items or general matters so those two would stay the same untouched so those two options stay there but both a and b both have limit for board of ed member comments will be changed from eight minutes to five minutes i'm recommending the limit for board of ed comments would be to

055remove boardwalk comments okay but uh i understand your motion i would not be supportive that by because you're leaving the other the two sessions uh for three and five minutes uh i strongly believe in the since we had suspended the operations the five-minute comment period works quite well number one number two we would discuss here at the deist that we want to move up the public recognition because you know we learn by our mistakes and and history not to wait to ten nine ten o'clock for public comment oh everything you're saying mr dan i'm with you on it yes so so with that um i i'm in favor of the five minutes before because if you have the second section nobody's able to tell me when that's going to happen if we have a long

056discussion are we going to have the second public recognition at 10 o'clock eleven o'clock at night and then we're in the same boat we were when we had we didn't take comments until uh late in the meeting at the last time mr daley i think you and i are talking about two separate things yeah yeah i know you are but you're saying you're talking about public recognition but you have they're mixed together in other words the public the board member comment is the second the last sentence in b i agree with that but since you're if you're going to move the whole thing you're substantiating the other two elements i don't want to do that miss bassford was next may i make a recommendation if you don't have to change both of them you have

057to choose the option and amend that option okay because that's the committee gave you two options so the original the original motion maker could have just opted to amend that b to remove the five minutes for or the eight minutes for the board member comments that's what we could have did we didn't have to waste all this time in going into dialogue about this um the committee made the recommendation we were very we had a really great meeting last night it was very everybody discussed it people were passionate about it but we all got our thoughts out on the on the committee those minutes really didn't reflect all the all the discussion but that's all that has to be done we just make a motion to you guys and then you vote on it we

058already know what the vote is because of the emails that i got there's five votes to support five minutes to me i questioned that with school boards yesterday i wrote an email that i don't think that's appropriate we're getting all this feedback before the committee actually works it's kind of tying the committee's hands the attorney from school boards agreed with me and i can share that email with everybody if you want but it is what it is it's going to pass anyway so why don't we just make the motion on b and move on okay so your pleasure mr mr president yes mr canola um so my concern is if we're gonna modify this to zero minutes for the commissioners we're talking about transparency here i know when i was on the other end of

059this um this stage here the only information i got was the information at the meeting so while yes as board members we're we're in subcommittees we're in conversations with each other we're in touch with what's going on in the district the only way that people are hearing what's happening here is through our comments through the comments of the individuals who share them that are part of the public so if we move to change this from the normal decorum which is three minutes and five minutes putting an agenda and five on on other things um if we move to change that i feel like we're gonna have less of a turnout first of all and i think that some of the things that some of the members here bring up in the board comments it could

060be you know deaths that happen and they're just giving condolences it could be events that are taking place it could be um things around the town that boost the morale of the town and those things no longer be shared so by saying zero minutes i think you're also doing a disservice in that regard so i think a good transparent government shows you this is the person i voted for this is what they they the ideals that they have and you know that's the person that's there and who i voted for without that all you're saying is yes or no on agenda items there may be some possible talk on agenda items but for the board member comments of people who came up and discussed some things today no one could speak about those things so

061my personal opinion is i wouldn't want to take that away from board members yes i think we should cut it down to five minutes but i don't think we should have zero minutes and same goes for uh the people who come up and speak i don't think we should be taking their voice away i think if anything we should be affording them more opportunities which is why in the the committee minutes you'll see that when mr mr mountain joined us he referenced the option of possibly allowing people to join via audio so that's something they're looking into i know that it's difficult for people to come i have three kids myself if if i wasn't on on this side i think it would be very difficult to get here for a board member for for

062a participation from the public but i could dial in i could be watching it i could dial in and i could give you my information and then uh do with it as you may but at least that would be participating and i think a lot of people are in that boat a lot of people put their kids to bed early they have the young kids or you know they're just working varying schedules i think we need to take that all into consideration um because you really don't want to stifle the voice of anyone i think you know our town went through something a month ago they talked about stifling voice of individuals and i think now is not a time to take that voice away now is the time to to have everyone bring to

063the table their issues their concerns and and be able to speak to each other so me i think that that's a personally i feel it's a disservice and i would i would honestly vote for option a not b thank you mr smith may i please yes since we're talking about a or b now um [Music] i agree with to a sense that we need to broaden to broaden the opportunities for the public to virtually call in through zoom but to show their photos our faces because we've had issues with people who were hiding behind certain [Music] phone numbers or being anonymous and refusing to give and identify themselves and saying things that were just off the cuff and egregious but i there's two things mr konova touched upon i think i wanted to talk about

064really quick the word normal can be defined differently by each individual so that's one thing um second thing nobody is taking away or silencing um that's one person used today in a fascist way um by minimizing people to speak anybody can speak on the be the five minutes the agenda's pre-printed online and the agenda is the agenda supplied previous to the meeting so whatever is out there people can talk about so whether it's agenda item or whether it's public item either way it can be discussed within the first five minutes when people can come speak nobody's stopping anybody from doing that on the on regis retrospectively i see what you're saying on the zero minutes i you know i would say than two minutes on at max that's what i said before zero or two

065minutes max um but again nobody no there's no stop of stopping anybody from speaking or coming up to the podium as we do during every board meeting so three to five or five i mean it's just more of being repetitive i'm sorry but how many times do we go around this you know this u-shaped half half whatever you want to call a half square or a quarter of a square or 70 or whatever the hell it is heck it is excuse me that we repeat ourselves it's repetitive and same thing when people come up sometimes at a podium it's repetitive but nobody's stopping you from the podium we're you know talking about ourselves here that's on one side and then the other side agendas are being given out to people people know what to expect

066from board meetings people expect know what's going on they can come to the podium or i agree with you that they can dial in which yes is needed i'm sorry like i came in late because my kid had had to be taken from medical issues this morning and it took me all day i agree a mom who or a father who have multiple kids and are parenting alone or can't have another parent they can dial in while they're coming home from work while they're coming home from whatever i agree with you on that i i honestly agree with you on that but to say to normalize and to say from impeding on people to speak i think is a little judgmental first of all and also untrue so thank you smith okay yes um i

067just want to i want to reiterate something that i heard from somebody in the community uh this policy has been instituted for years people come down for the three minutes to speak on agenda items and if they don't have enough time to finish they go to the public session which is another five minutes to me it was valuable back in the day when i used to advocate for people with special needs because sometimes i couldn't tell the story in three minutes so i needed the extra five minutes it's i just i have to agree with mr canover about the mural and about how we would we people would use your voice use your voice and now we're telling people your voice you only have five minutes but that's fine i got it i understand where

068this is going i'd like to know from everybody when you when you cast your vote why the change all of a sudden we've had this policy instituted for years it's been three and five we changed it during covet for five minutes because of the virtual component and we didn't want to give people that that many that much time to the woman in the audience that said about wayne having three minutes they had 150 people that got up to spoke speak so i watched the meeting that night because the board president had to limit their speech to three minutes if that ever happens here we get a rush of people mr uh president uh smith has the right to amend the time that the speakers can speak at the podium at his at his will he

069also has the right to move agenda items around as he sees fit with the amount of people coming to this meeting so the time when that the actual speaker gets to speak is up to the board president and the superintendent when they set the agenda 164 which is another policy that we were talking about last time is the actual it's a it's a model of the actual sequence of the medium meaning we suspended that last night because we wanted to see how this was going to roll out and then we were going to bring it back to policy to do 164 and put the public speaking into the model on 164. so it's just that's what happened at the policy meeting um unfortunately like i said the minutes does not reflect what really happened we

070got into a lengthy discussion on when to reinstate one not three and state but we're running under 164.6 which is a remote policy so right now our dress can be uh business casual we can actually have a board member call in remote if they wanted to right now and that's something i think you guys really should think about as well because what if one of us comes in contact with covid and we have to quarantine we could still participate in the meeting but we can't be here and and that's one other thing that we were that's why we were talking about the audio component because it's going to happen where somebody can't make it what if somebody falls down breaks their hip and they're convalescing it but they still want to participate so that's one

071of the things that we were talking about when we got into a little discussion but we wanted to bring this back to the board maybe we should actually limit our discussion time thank you president smith who just called to vote who had mr abhijava no it was me miss herod i'm sorry next time i'm looking no it's okay it's okay uh could we just call to vote so the motion on the floor is as listed as you have it in front of you okay if there's any other motion to be made now's the time to do it if not we will move on i think mr smith if you could just reiterate what we're voting on so everybody's clear here and it's okay so right now you're voting on paul uh ea uh ea one

072which is board accepts the recommendation of the policy committee to reinstate policy zero one six six seven with the following amendments so now you would either choose a reinstate0167 as currently written two public participation portions three minutes for agenda five minutes for uh public portion and changing the limit for board member commons from eight to five or b green state on 167 with one public recognition session and limit a participant during the public participation recognition portion to five minutes for agenda items or any general matters pertinent to the district the limit for board member comments will be changed from eight to five minutes so you'll be either voting as it's listed now you'll either be voting for a or b if there is an amendment to be made i will gladly hear that right mr

073president yes point point of order just just to clear to our attorney uh if i read robert's rules of order um when we vote we're not supposed to make a comment we are the the time for us to comment is at this point in time so if i want to explain my vote i need to do that now and not when i cast my vote is that is that the correct procedure yeah that's my understanding the emotion is made a motion in a second and then it's time okay good and then it's time for discussion just mr president i just want to explain my vote i'm going to vote for um ea well there's one b that's what i'll be voting for and the reason for that is is twofold um again nobody has been

074able to tell me when that other three-minute section sections going to be done it could be late at night and i think that opens up for criticism five minutes is is plenty of time i would uh also also on uh board members comments the world evolves every day so if we find out something's not working we come back and we change it so i think if if we don't think it's working right in a couple of months we can always amend that to add back to time so i think it's worth taking a shot i do have other comments about how the public can communicate with us is and i'll get into that at later on i don't think this is appropriate but i will be happy to share that with my colleagues here on

075the board because i know there's illegal uh issues about how the public can communicate with us remotely after when out of the virtual thing if i i seem to remember you uh advising us a couple of a meeting or so ago about how that process works you just can't um how the public ability to comment what it has certain legal uh restrictions mr president if we're talking about remote remote con i mean that's whole other releases yeah so we're either when we're in person there's different rules that apply then and remotely okay that's all and that concludes my explanation thank you all right yeah i'll just reiterate to everybody uh in my discussions with the school board attorneys as well as kathy hello our representative so i just want everyone to understand that if you

076take away board member comments um so she asked me to reiterate this to the board and i have done this numerous times but i'll do it again okay our meetings here are meetings in public okay but they are not meetings with the public so basically if you limit board members comments you're taking away the ability for bor for us to discuss um items and things that that are pertinent to the district so i just want everyone to keep that in mind that these are meetings for the board to work and the public comes to the meetings to hear the workings of the board so taking away the boards so they'll be very uh there have to be some clear distinctions uh and i'm gonna have to adhere to the rules uh very strict meaning uh

077robert's rules state that you're allowed to talk on a co a subject one time so there'll be no as soon as you make your comments on it you're done i'll have to adhere to that um you know so we're kind of uh restricting the board from working in a working meeting that we allow the public to come to and hear about our workings and that's what discussions are are about and that's what comments are about i have no problem if you want to adjust times and things to that effect but i know what will happen whether i'm in the shera and other president's in this chair that will be request to the chair to allow them to make a comment and then the chair has to decide whether they allow the person to make the

078comment or not and that's a very difficult position to put the chair in so i i i don't know what the purpose of uh but you're asking an elected board member not to be able to make comments on things under commissioner comments i think just sends us down a road that's going to be very difficult to police i don't think we'll get a lot accomplished yes are there things that are are repetitious in our meetings absolutely um i've asked board members consistently about um board me uh committee minutes there each board member has the opportunity to read those minutes they are available to the public at any time they wish uh after we approved them um so reading minutes word for word here is not necessary but we don't abide by that so going forward

079if you take away public comments or you take away board member comments or you restrict just be aware that it's going to be a very tight procedure that i think the board is not going to like and the public will probably not like so i just thought everyone should remember that because i i never thought of this statement as the um and that was by our school board's attorney john burns who again states board of education meetings are meetings in public but not with the public so as we stated in the beginning we don't have back and forth with the public it's for the opportunity for the board to discuss and the board to give comments so i just want everyone to keep that in mind i have whatever the board wishes to do on

080any of these things um you know as miss bassford said you know her committee was not asked to do some of these things and to throw it out tonight um is a little unfair um so and a last meeting we were asked to send the chair our feelings on the topic that [Music] that she can't read you know we can't read minds of people so we were asked to send the chair our feelings on it uh so that's what i did um i don't know if all board members did that i know you said you received five but you know we have if we're going to work in the committee structure we have to do it the right way and you know if we wanted to know what other school districts are are doing uh

081two sessions or one sessions then the committee should know that ahead of time and the administration could have probably gotten some answers on that if it even matters to us i don't know um you know someone said tonight that wayne has three minutes and we have eight minutes or five minutes it doesn't mean this is clifton and we need to make it our policies adhering to what we want to do here in clifton i don't care what other districts do or you know maybe they work for those districts and but you know we want to hear the public and we i think we want the public to hear us and uh restricting those things uh you know we're just looking for trouble and there's going to be you know if we go down that road

082it's going to be a much stricter running of the meeting i've always allowed board members to give their comments on items there's always been back and forth discussion and i think that's important in order that we all get to the to the bottom of what we wish to accomplish but if we follow our robert's rules you know there's one comment per member per per subject so that's going to limit a lot of discussion on things and i think discussion is what makes things happen we may not see things clearly at one time but after we discuss it or somebody brings something up we have a better understanding of it so i think limiting some of those things is going to be hurtful to the district that's just my opinion but i just wanted everyone to

083again know what i'm in constant contact with kathy hello and the board attorneys at new jersey school boards uh who give me guidance and advice um and we try to make sure uh and and i'm in i'm in contact with our board attorney so that we make sure that we're doing it right and we get it right and that's uh that's all i want to say on that so if you'd like to make an amendment to this motion we can do that if we like to have a someone move in second this and move on to vote for a or b we can do that um you know the option is yours mr mister we have a procedural question for the attorney please if we reinstate 167 tonight does it have to be two readings

084or one on the new amendment to the to the by-law [Music] mike mike yes you have a board policy zero one three one that says that revisions to motions i'm sorry revisions to policies can be adopted once it's been um reviewed at a prior board meeting so the answer to that is too can i uh ask for a motion for ea one letter b that board member comments will be you know we change it to just a limit of three minutes okay so you have a motion to move b it's not the change from board member comments from uh the suggested five to three i i will second mr awad's second and by uh mr daley now we will have discussion mr smith under under new new business i'm gonna have it because your point

085is well taken about the discussion about word business so i want to discuss some communication so on the new board business uh we will have that discussion and i think that's a vehicle which we could use because we're supposed to be doing board business so if we want to do a shout out for a minute or two that's fine but we can discuss any board business that a member brings up under i believe under the new business provision correct so that that may help us with your some of your concerns which i agree with all right mr smith on the floor and second is to uh mr to uh president smith to approve yeah just let me read it and then okay to reinstate 0167 with one public recognition session and a limit of participant

086during the public participation portion to five minutes for agenda or any other general matters pertinent to the district the limit for board member comments will be changed from eight minutes to now three minutes is the new amendment okay now we're under discussion uh dr danny okay so um listening to everything that you were saying president smith and i know that that puts you in a real awkward position then um to ask but so many times the board members they do go over you know the let's eight minutes and then you know someone will call the time but i i feel that if we are telling the public that you know that's it your three minutes are up you know you have to finish or your five minutes are up then i think we need to

087be the model and you know too bad so sad if you have something to say as a board member say it next meeting but i really just don't think it's fair that if you are going to tell the public that you sorry your three minutes are up or you know your five minutes are up then i'm sorry whether you have something more to say as a board member too bad you've got three minutes if that's what it is and that's it i mean you can't ramble on and then expect you know the public it just to me to me it just doesn't seem fair it's like well you have to stop but i can continue on no you know what you write it down and then you say it at the next meeting okay that's

088just what i feel i mean if we're going that way then that's it and we can't put president smith in that predicament to say yes go ahead continue on because then you know what then we should do that for the citizens as well to say and and again i will hold people to it here and if it's three minutes that's it you say i'm done okay and you save your comments for the next meeting because if we do it here and we're rattling on and whatever i don't care how much you say well it's very important and i need to to say i'm not about stifling my whole point is the reason why i thought about you know the board member comments is because we don't adhere to our own rules and we're supposed to

089be the model so if we say three it's three and that's it okay wrap it up when that one and not like wrap it up in two more minutes okay wrap it up that's it you're gonna get cut off and i will cut you off okay i don't care if i break policy or whatever but you know again if we're holding them to that then that's the same thing we should be held to and if we're gonna break our own rules then we better break it for the citizens and that's all i want to say okay any other discussion on the motion seeing none roll call please mr abedrabo i'm sorry this is for b right this is for ea 01b with a cap of boy member comments of three there's a lot of talk

090i just want to make sure yes mr awad yes miss bashford no mr konova no mr dailey dr danny yes vice president casper yes president smith yes motion carries all right now we're going to move to uh ea2 through ea 9. so i moved so moved by mr abu drabo second second by mr awad discussion yeah uh mr president can we pull two and three for executive yes i'm sorry that's right joe mr kanova asked that two and three which are um contractual matters which have to be discussed in executive session that they will be moved for executive [Music] mr cass vice president casper and miss danny uh you would not be allowed to be on those discussions because of your conflicts when you come back out the vote are we about uh we're here

091to vote okay all right so now we're going to uh do ea 4 through ea 9. so i moved second mr johan second by mr awad discussion seeing none roll call mr abidjan yes mr awad yes mr passport yes i abstain on number six mr canova yes mr daily yes dr danny yes vice president casper yes president smith yes all right next we have um we have personnel we have uh p1 through p36 so i moved second so moved by mr adravo second by vice president casper discussion seeing non-vocal mr aberdropper yes mr awad yes ms basford yes mr canova yes mr daley yes dr danny yes vice president casper yes president yes ocean's carrick okay next we have finance and facilities we have uh f1 through f six so moved by mr o'drive again

092second by mr awad discussion scene non-roll call mr abigail mr awad yes miss bassford yes mr canova yes mr daily yes dr danny yes vice president casper yes president smith yes motion scary oops all right so um uh there at least if you could give us a um so is the motion that was passed tonight is that is that first reading okay okay so you got your last horizon you got your eight minutes tonight eight minutes yes what's board member comments first okay so if you wish to uh make your comments uh you'll have eight minutes to do so at this meeting um let's see where we left off so can we fill a buster for eight minutes i'm sorry can we filibuster for eight minutes you don't have to use the eight minutes uh

093so mr awad you were up we had a lengthy discussion so i promised to keep my comments hopefully under a minute um to all the families uh individuals in our wonderful city that suffered from hurricane ida our thoughts and prayers are with you i know looking at social media and many contacts in the city i see wonderful organizations community members that are are reaching out and helping out i my prayers are for everybody uh second i would like to congratulate coach cinque our mustangs football coach on a recognition that he'll be receiving and one of the jets games by the new york jets and coach robert salah i know the mustangs are having a game tomorrow so go mustangs i know they did amazing a week ago in syracuse beating one of the toughest teams

094in new york 31-13 if the score is accurate by me final to all our students and staffs returning to the schools and start a school year hopefully you know it's a healthy and well well thought school year for everybody as we get back to a normal somewhat normal life and to also to my uh jewish brothers and sisters in the community uh clifton and throughout you know our country and throughout the world uh happy holidays i know um a holiday recently passed may this be a bright and fruitful year for our brothers and sisters in the jewish community um i know my jets are playing on sunday so i'm a little excited you know many many years of disappointment hopefully you know we found the light at the end of the tunnel i wish everybody

095well and have a great evening thank you mr awad let's make sure i'm going in order uh miss bassford yes mr smith just a reminder we have to go back to discuss the minutes we didn't vote on them we put them off oh yeah right okay do we have that ready yeah we'll do that next all right so good luck to everybody to a good school start um driving around and just seeing the devastation this week it's been horrendous a lot of people have suffered physically and and financially and their homes are are unrepairable so and if anybody needs help uh we you know we're helping anybody we can um it's good to see the many people in clifton to step up um i have to say condolences to the chem teacher bill smith rest

096in peace uh the other thing i want to focus on is on saturday september 11th at 6 00 p.m uh is a reflect remember and honor the 9 11 victims the nine from clifton uh it's a community event how it started was because some of us had a discussion on facebook in an open forum and there was not one at night so from a challenge from former drama teacher miss eisenmanger she challenged me to be meet her at the memorial at 9 11 and remember the nine from clifton and it has morphed since then this year is the 20th anniversary so everybody in the community is invited it is a community event uh each bio is read out loud of each person people from the community actually speak about those people they tell stories it's

097very it's a very nice gathering so you're all invited uh we did secure a mic and an amp so everybody will be able to hear and people come and read poems they say prayers in different languages it's really a very nice event so everybody in clifton at six o'clock september 11th it is the memorial from 9 11 right across from the hot bagels abroad parking lot we're very close to the street so we needed a mic so people can hear what everybody's saying it's it's a wonderful event and everybody's invited uh we we do it every year uh mrs einstein is no longer here she's in florida but we will live stream so she could participate via technology so thank you very much and um to all the teachers staff paraprofessionals the custodial staff administration

098to to dr robitazi i hope the year gets better it's been a trying couple of days but you guys have always stepped up to the plate and and um i have to thank you from a co-worker that is a parent at school 16. she said the communication has nothing been nothing but superb she lost a lot of stuff in her home and she said that the sense of community has really helped her from that group and she thanks you very much so good night everyone and mr smith i'm just going to run to the ladies room thank you miss beltran uh had a prior commitment this evening so she's not here to give her comments so we'll move on to mr canova uh good evening so first i just want to take a minute to

099talk about you know obviously we had a storm that was very detrimental to not only our district but also homes in the area and uh you know miss mistova fell there when she came up said it herself that um sometimes thanks is needed and in this case i think really it just shows how the community came together i mean always an issue will arise but it's always how you deal with it and how you handle it that shows who you are and really what you're all about and from what i saw on facebook people helping in and pitching it to help each other to pump out water bringing things to people's house delivering food to other individuals i saw in my neighborhood a lot of those things going on that was the above and beyond

100that makes clifton great um so i was i was really proud to see that and amazed to see it and one of the groups of individuals here that did go above and beyond were obviously our custodial staff um they stayed in those buildings and they put sandbags were needed and and they pumped out water and did whatever needed needed to be done um and and i really commend them for that and i thank them for that that's why a lot of our schools are open now um and that's how kids are are able to get back to school so i thank you and i appreciate that um the the the parent who came up and talked about backpacks i've never heard of a requirement i know they allow rolling backpacks at our school and they

101allow different colors and sort of uh flavors of backpacks and i always like that because the students can express themselves in that way so i've never heard of any mandate or any policy that we have about backpacks so i just questioned the administration on that um i have heard some issues about durability of them there are at least two parents that came to me and said the book bags broke and they had to get secondary replacements so i'm not sure about that um as for any of the of uh of the requirements that are here a lot of that gets pushed down from from the governor or any mandates so that's really the the meetings you should be at and advocating for however you see fit um as danny has said many times we just

102enforce the rules that are set forth and uh the last thing you're the kids are back in school finally my i know my kids are very happy uh they had a good first and second day very excited to be back with friends and i just wish everyone good luck in this year thank you thank you uh next is mr daley uh thank you mr president um i'm going to tie myself try to be very brief first of all thanks for all the speakers for coming up uh welcome back to everyone um i believe this coming year to be challenging hopefully not as challenging as the past year but i do expect many challenges this year again uh on saturday is the 20th anniversary at 9 11. that's something who we were all around at that

103time we'll something we'll never forget and and binds us in a very community way about supporting freedom and the right to speak i ask everybody to support these activities of the students both athletic and in the arts so please turn out when those uh are out there congratulations to the football team on their win but you could need to support all our teams and we i know that the team members very much appreciate anybody who turns out for their games the comment about rendezvir a personal experience with that my son may not be alive today if it wasn't for red deserve so that is a factual statement not a science statement so thank you for that and with that i will conclude my comments have a great day and a minute and a half okay

104dr danny okay so i just want to say um thank you to the speakers and welcome back to everybody in the district i hope that it's going to be a good year for everyone i hope that we can maintain the in person and i think that's really important for you know the social emotional well-being of you know staff students administration everyone just you know to try to get back to some sort of normalcy i did walk around in my neighborhood and saw a lot of those affected by storm ida and i just felt you know it was so gut-wrenching um reading the things on facebook was gut-wrenching as well um i do want to say you know a great thank you to those who helped and those who during the storm risked their lives to

105help others who needed help during the storm hearing those stories as well and that's all i have for my comments thank you uh mr abu drabo thank you mr smith and i'll try not to be repetitive mr um through you president smith to the superintendent if you can just um let us know what this whole book bag thing is at the middle school so maybe you know if not if you can let us know whatever the public asked about uh second thing is i'm sorry we couldn't hear any of that sorry can hear me now good um if you can through mr smith to the superintendent i don't know what the public mr franziak was asking about the book bag in the middle school so if you need to clarify or let us know what

106that is about um and yes dr robert thosey a lot of parents want to thank you for your communication with school 16. it's been phenomenal a lot of my neighbors and my daughter's friends have been um applauding the activity of communication um i know there are some people and again i have not answered them on this because that's not my place to administration's place but if you can also clarify on the contingency plan beyond remote if we do need another location if that's feasible and what would that look like if needed let's see st peters uh st peter saving gala is a reminder 35th anniversary on september 17th and 5 30 to 9 30 at the brownstone tickets can be purchased the palestinian community center is having on september 18th at 2 p.m uh their

107pac day at school 11 debates transparency regime and fascism that's what i heard today right first of all we can't do debates we are the board of ed while we have individual um [Music] um party affiliation should i say that does not come to the board of ed um transparency in committee i don't know what that is is exactly maybe you can reach out to the superintendent's office or to president smith as well so we can get a better clarification um in a few and if there's an issue with a certain elected official whether it's a governor whether it's the president i think you should reach out to their offices so they understand your ideology of fascism to them uh um smith i've been asking for a couple things um [Music] has facilities uh this

108is a two-parter has facilities look at the issues did you forward this to the chair of facilities regarding the issues i still haven't heard about that and i still haven't heard about the school of recommendations for the parking from the public that was discussed two or three meetings ago i think so that's about a month and a half now i have not heard about that and also i know there was a complaint about board members emailing in terms of what their thoughts were are common about it um their policy so they knew how the vote was going to happen today um we need to do a better job as chairs in our own committees in reaching out to our fellow colleagues who are not on certain committees to get some feedback on what the thoughts

109are particularly when they get the agenda while it's the night before the morning of this way we don't have this back and forth and sending back certain things to certain committees and wasting time three meetings now um which this could have been done a while ago so we need to be a little more cognizant of what our of how we're communicating with our colleagues we want to talk about true transparency uh with all um [Music] let's see and do i believe in science yes i do i believe in science and the medical field um in many aspects and as mr as mr daley said frozen for our science and the medical field um which go hand in hand many of us would i think either not be here or have loved the ones who are

110not here either so i i thank the science in the medical field and also truly to a little shout out to mr beagle who has really i think has been uh jb has really been an asset to this district uh to this city in particular um in in really identifying and guiding us um through the pandemic and on that note i don't have anything else but the bucks game is on tonight so we can move this a little bit so i can get home thanks appreciate it vice president casper uh yes welcome back to a new school year everybody it might be a little bit tumultuous right now but we are here and schools are open thank goodness i'm happy to see that everybody is back you can tell that school is now open because

111on my way to school there's lots of traffic so welcome back everybody i know my students are excited to be back as well and everybody is masked and we're ready to go i'd also like uh to ask everyone to help participate in in events for 9 11 so we can continue to remember all of those that have perished on a a tragic day as uh 9 11. um and please continue everyone to come up to the mic and express your thoughts and feelings to us so we know how to better fix or and better help our community thank you have a good evening everybody thank you i just wanted to give a shout out to mr uc and your department if everyone didn't know on ea 4 we received an award of the asbo international

112certificate of excellence in financial reporting for our fiscal year of 2020 uh sounds like a bunch of words but it's a tremendous uh honor and a tremendous uh amount of work to be able to get that um i believe it was the first it was the first year they were doing this type of award right um and uh just a tremendous uh uh it just shows the tremendous job that you and your office are doing in making sure that our financials are fully exposed and transparent to to everyone and that your level of your financial reporting is at top notch and [Music] we all knew that but seeing it come from from an organization that awards this you should be very proud of your accomplishments and your your entire department for that school uh superintendent

113uh you know you you always try to support your superintendent and uh but dr robertosi makes it very easy to be able to support um having four kids of his own i know that we have someone in charge who truly cares about kids and i know that if we had a spare building in our back pocket that we could have moved students from school 16 to i'm sure that dr robertosi and the administration would have been on that in a heartbeat his dedication to the district to the kids to the parents um it was a horrible situation and i think you did a tremendous job of making the best of a horrible situation uh so to you and your entire staff um ms kuzelevich mr uh gengaro and mr doctor uh all of you that

114worked so hard to make this opening of the school year the best that it could be under the circumstances who would have ever thought a once-in-a-lifetime flood would have impacted our opening of this school year i don't think any of us could have ever predicted that or wanted to predict that but your handling of getting this district on track of opening all schools on time except for school 16 and with the damage to school 16 and being one month away of having kids back into that school you the staff the custodial staff the maintenance staff i know that they were there long hours the weekend holidays because we care about kids and our administrators and our employees care about kids and uh to say anything other than accolades for the great job that you did

115um and again uh we we try to support our superintendent but he makes it very easy to do and uh his line of communication let me tell you before he got here parents wouldn't have had that line of communication he achieved that and made that happen in his first year here so accolades to your entire administration on a great job my thoughts and prayers continue to go out to all the families that have been affected by the horrible flood truly any way the district can help we are doing we're asking families to contribute as mr lama said to contribute and help those that are in need and this district this town has always come together when people are in need and i'm so thankful and grateful to be part of a town that does that

116and i thank you all that have donated and that can continue to donate to help these people through a very horrible time to the teachers staff of all the school buildings i wish you a a great school year successful school year of educating our kids of being here for kids and making uh excellence in education our number one theme here in clifton so best wishes to all of you to all those in the jewish faith i wish my greetings for happy holidays and as mr daley said we're coming on the 20th anniversary of 9 11. um 20 years ago a terrible day we all try to they ask you to remember what you were doing on that day um it just when i look back on it and i was watching some shows the other

117night on it you just can't imagine that that ever happened it's almost as if it was a fictitious event made up that you couldn't believe that that could possibly happen in in our country but i'm glad that we have learned a lot from it we've come together and we've made uh corrections to that so that those type of events can never happen again um so thoughts and prayers are with all the families that are affected uh through 9 11 and this entire country to board members um i've developed a district calendar that will be coming out for committee meetings so mr abu drabba this should help with you as well for your concerns are very well taken that board members you'll be able to look at a visual calendar and see what committees are meeting

118on that particular day so that if you have any input to the committee if you're not part of that committee you could send that to the chair so that they could discuss it at the committee and then follow up with that committee chair after it was over you know did you talk about these items i'm following up on it so i think it will give us a better um uh transparency of getting all them board members acclimated um and i'm going to ask as i did to dr robertosi just now i'm going to ask administration um we don't need to to force minutes through um i know our intent was to have minutes available for tonight but we want to make sure that we have the right minutes and the proper minutes available so going

119forward if we don't have it for this meeting we'll read it on the next meeting but we want to make sure that we have it right so um i know administration will will take care of that and um that's all i have for now um so we are going to i'm sorry um my suggestion um is to give administration time to clean up those policy minutes that we table that for now and uh we'll bring it back the next meeting and vote on that is that okay with everybody okay mr smith just for clarification was it the policy minutes or the minutes of last month's board there was a there was a reading of the policy committee minutes and then there was a whole discussion we had a 45 minute discussion on 164 and 167

120which ensued this meeting last night that's what not the minutes of the policy committee no no no when you usually report minutes to the the board you put that you put dana's minutes in from facilities and then there was a discussion who asked questions from the whole board there was nothing mentioned about the whole policy thing that we went through for 45 minutes i'm still not i'm still not getting it what my question mrs basford is the minutes from the board meeting last month or the minutes from the policy committee meeting we had yesterday the minutes from the board meeting okay that's okay that's that's what i wanted to make sure and then the open discussion was 45 minutes after the discuss after the minutes read to the whole board and that's missing out of

121the minutes i know you're going to have a gotcha but i believe mr uc did have that in there and found that information in there i think we looked in the wrong place i mean we do not have to vote on this now we we can wait till next meeting that the the place where i'm talking where dr robertos is talking was right right after the ea 4 expression of condolences i have maybe i mean if you want it more specific that's completely fine um but that's where the language was right but there was a report from the policy committee that's not documented in the minutes okay sorry no no it's okay all right so we'll we'll get those uh we'll get that cleaned up and uh we'll bring it back to the board next

122meeting uh if there's no objection okay oh i'm sorry that's okay no problem we got a lot going on but i guess i gotta let our superintendent talk dr robitosi and and and perhaps in the future if the policy is gonna change where the board members are gonna speak at the end i think perhaps the superintendent should probably speak in the beginning or maybe during presentations or something just i think everybody's tired by this point um so just a couple things first of all thank mr smith thank you for those kind words um i really do appreciate that the the truth is this though i'm i'm leading but uh it was all those people on the front line i really have to thank the our custodial and maintenance team members who worked all weekend and

123the holidays to get these schools ready after really no other word but the devastation of this storm my executive team i can tell you that mr gengara was ripping out carpets on tuesday afternoon he would never tell you that but i know that the assistant superintendent of the district was ripping out carpets in schools that were flooded to get them ready for kids to come back so that's the kind of people that i get to work with and i started the year every school year we have our administrators retreat before school starts and i always start with a quote and this year's quote was by john maxwell and it was that the pessimist complains about the wind the optimist expects it to change and the leader adjusts the sales and i never knew that at

124the very beginning of the school year i'd be adjusting the sales as we had to adjust them uh this year so i'm merely adjusting the sales while everybody else is doing the hard work so i want to thank all those on the front line doing the front work doing the doing the real hard work i want to welcome back all of our faculty and staff members to the 2021 22 school year it it is just so great having kids backs um so many teachers have emailed me that it's just great to see our buildings full again masks or not they're happy to see the kids and our children need to be in school and they're happy to be in school so welcome everybody back i gave an update on school 16 earlier i'm not going

125to do that again but i do want to remind everyone that about half of our schools are still under a boil water advisory um and while that does impact our city it really will not impact the operations in our schools we do have emergency water available we did receive two pallets cases of of water each from the city of clifton through the passage water valley commission pomptonian has extra water for so we'll we will have bottled water pontonian has procedures in place to deal with any type of boil water advisory so i don't want anybody to worry about that impacting our schools on august 18th we stood out here and we gave a presentation on what covert was going to be like this school year and i think i said maybe five or six times

126that night whatever we say tonight may change tomorrow and and some things did but one of the most important changes that occurred that i want to make sure the board is is aware of and it's it's actually a it's a game changer as far as i'm concerned was the new jersey department of of health based on cdc guidance changed the the definitions of who needs to quarantine uh if they're close contact so so on august 18th the rule was if you are a close contact of someone infected with covet 19 that means you spend 15 or more minutes with a infected person over over a 24-hour period that you would have to quarantine that has now changed that in k-12 settings if the close contact was wearing a mask they are not required to quarantine

127and why i say that's a game changer is because we we won't have any situations if every student is wearing a mask correctly and every staff member is wearing a mask correctly as as i'm not while i'm speaking and someone in the class does test positive we don't have to quarantine a whole class we don't have to quarantine anyone now we are still i assure the board and our community we're still going to notify parents of any positive cases and in full transparency we have a covet dashboard on our website that was reset and we're starting to count cases for the new year so parents will be notified the only place that we do have a have a concern where we might have to quarantine people is in the cafeteria when students are wearing masks

128and they're eating lunch and under those circumstances we have seating charts we have the ability to contact trace to identify those cases i just want to address the the book bag policy for lack of a better word people use the word policy but um in in our world the board policy is something that the board passes the the book bag uh rule was is more of a regulation that that goes along with the student handbook and is under the superintendent's purview and over the summer the middle school principals met several times the plan for the year and they were trying to find a way to minimize locker use they were concerned about students crowding around at their lockers in between classes and and congestion in the hallways they consulted with the content supervisors to determine

129what did students actually need to carry in between classes and a plan was put in place to purchase each student a sling backpack which would you know hold their chromebook and just the the things that they needed after the first day of school the principals realized that it it wasn't working it took one day to realize that that didn't work and um rescinded that regulation and now students can bring their own backpacks to school but we still aren't not and have never been permitted those large at the middle school level the elementary school's a little different the middle school level high school level you can't have students walking around with a suitcase type backpack just because of the congestion the amount of students there's no place to store it in the classroom people are tripping

130people are falling it really is a safety issue sounds might sound silly but it really has the potential to be a safety issue so that was the back back uh issue that that was discussed um and um two final things there are a lot of people in our community still suffering and that need assistance i don't imagine that many of them are sitting home watching a board meeting tonight but for those people who are and you know somebody that needs help please contact any single one of us please contact the school a principal a teacher and we will get the resources necessary to those people whether or not there are students there they're if they're a human being that we can help we will go out of our way to help them and at least

131point them in the right direction and get them services through all of the great people who are doing amazing work in the city of clifton to help our residents and finally um i can't believe it's 20 years since 9 11 i was teaching u.s history to 10th graders when the first plane hit the towers and i spent that whole day trying to calm the nerves of high school students while i was scared to death myself and i can't believe that that's 20 years ago and all i would ask is that everyone just on on saturday you just pause and you remember pause and remember all the things that have happened since then and and those people who passed away that day thank you very much mr smith okay so the board is going to meet

132an executive session we have uh some contract matters i don't believe this will take us very long so we'll probably conservatively be back in 20 minutes action will be taken or may be taken um when we conclude uh so um do i have a motion to move to executive session motion second by mr abhijava second by mr awad roll call please mr abu drabo yes mr wade yes miss basford yep mr canova yes mr daley yes dr danny vice president casper yes president smith yes um again mr vice president casper and dr danny if you'd uh hold the forward here and we'll be right back out i'm stealing all the sandwiches [Music] mr casper and dr danny please report to the board meeting mr casper and dr danny please report to the board meeting mr

133casper and dr danny please report to the board meeting oh here they come under new business could we have a board meeting outside around hey not a bad idea if we put a tenth up then we wouldn't have to wear masks put a tent might get better uh mr mecca are we back okay uh the board uh met an executive session to discuss uh contract matters before we go into those i was remiss of not doing new business so i will go back to new business is there any board member that has any new business mr daley yeah i have two items and i just want to open the discussion i don't expect to have anything settled but one is on communications and uh and recognitions in the agenda it's item seven uh i've been

134here 13 years i've never had we've never had one publication of any sort on there that i can remember uh but it goes to uh what i want to speak to about is it goes to public uh input to the board and um i know there's different rules under the virtuals versus the regular board meeting policies that the state has set up uh i just had a thought and i would like the board members to ponder on it one suggestion i might want to have if somebody sends us a letter or or something um if it could be included as an attachment in that area uh certainly the the sender has to know that we received it number one number two it may or may not be responded to i don't think we should read

135the communications but it's terms of the public communicating with board members that could be another avenue that and you know i i do want to just raise the issue now and then we can discuss the pros and cons at another time but i thought that would be a possible vehicle to so somebody can write us a 20 page letter they don't have to worry about five minutes three minutes two minutes uh they can express themselves as little as or or as least that they want again there has to be a caveat whoever writes to us [Music] and that would be an attachment just for our information or perusal that could be my thought behind that process the second thing i would like to also raise is the issue of our dais and whether we're meeting

136here or back in in the uh board offices certainly i think this this setup here is quite imposing it it's not friendly it looks like you know seeing out of the twilight zone and the judges are up on the dais and you're looking down on somebody it's you know we're so far apart and it's not because it's cold because there's a ton of room here so uh one of my suggestion was if we're going to have our board meetings in this room we can have a short platform in the what they call the orchestra pit out here and make it a little bit more not imposing because if you look the long view is is the optics are terrible so we we need to get into that as a board and decide how we want

137to present ourselves whether it's in here or at the uh at the board offices so i just want to throw that out there uh if anybody wants a comment fine but i think that's further discussion for another meeting so that's my two issues of new business i'd like to take forward mr smith yes i'd like two things i agree with you mr um daily because before when one of the members come in the assistant ba didn't realize the time because he can't look up and see over here so yeah i think we should all be across because it brings us up to a demagogue type of thing and i don't think it's right we should be down with on the same level as everyone the second thing is um with that with you talking about

138communication i also want to bring up the the automatic response i know delise you had sent me something but that's not my purview to review it so if we can bring that when we discuss that bring that item into your um that about the automatic response for emails to the public so when somebody emails us they get a nice response that you know you your email has been received the lease wrote this really beautiful passage so i think everybody should be shared and then if we want to amend it then we can just work on that thank you uh mr uh usi if you could put on the agenda for facilities um mr daley's suggestion on looking in talking about uh um board meeting room back at six or uh here and uh adjustments to

139the days so we can put it on the next facility's agenda of course as well as if you could pull the pull the minutes and make sure that mr uh abdrabo's items that he asked for facilities to discuss make sure that that's on the agenda as well or find out from him what they were so mr mr president also on on the issue of the public communication can we put that under unfinished business for the next board meeting in other words to have a continuing discussion of how we want to handle that thank you all right any other new business yeah mr president i have one yes mr canova there was there was an item brought up about agendas at the last meeting and who would send them out and would it be to the

140full board when we meet in subcommittees are we doing that are we sending out agendas prior to the subcommittee group meeting to everyone is that something we want to do uh committee meetings uh sending out so for example let's say facilities met and there was there were three items on there is it advantageous for us to send that out to a whole group to let them know these are the three items that are being discussed so in case you have any feedback to give feedback or in case you have any other topics that you want to add to this to add to the for that committee to evaluate oh so the full board doesn't get it now no okay so i think that's pretty easy so if administration could send the agendas of all committee

141meetings out to the entire board i think that's a pretty easy mr smith that was the discussion that was missing on the minutes and um i know that um i got an email from one commission that they were upset they didn't get the agenda but that's not i don't make the agendas uh administration makes the agendas and policy policy goes last minute because it depends on we get the updates from strauss dismay so if we send it out to the board it's going to be on the administrator that actually facilitates our meeting so i know it's mr ross and policy i don't know uh it's mr uc for facilities whoever's responsible but they have to send it to the whole board so this way there's no miscommunication i didn't look at that email the other

142day it was a holiday when you sent it out when mr ross sent it out it was my fault because i should have went in and clicked the addresses to see who was addressed i thought it sent was sent to the whole board yesterday when i was reviewing everything before the meeting i saw it and i was like oh god could you send this out so if it's it's got we i guess we're going to have some hiccups along the way but until we get into the right rhythm it'll work then it's interesting i think that's a pretty easy thing to do the administration could do to make sure that all the board gets the agendas and like i said with the district calendar i think that's going to help as well because you'll know

143when those meetings are coming we tried to set committees on a consistency schedule so everyone knows that education meets on the second thursday of the month so just to have some consistency so board members know when there's a there's a committee meeting coming for that particular committee um so i think that will help as well so administration i'm sure we could we could work something out with that anyone else anything new business yeah yeah anything else new business okay so the board didn't meet an executive session to discuss contract matters and miss gutierrez would you uh so the items that are up for review now for for board vote are um ea ea ii ratification of memorandum of agreement with clifton custodial association for 2021 to 2024 and ea 3 ratification of sidebar agreement with

144clifton educators association for 2020 2024. do we have a motion any objection to move them as a group oh yeah okay um do i have a motion to uh approve by miss basford second by vice president casper that was mrs bathsford mr statesman okay i said you seconded it any well there's no discussion right uh roll call please mr awad yes mr canova yes mr daley yes dr danny yes vice president casper yes president smith yes okay motion to adjourn excuse me you didn't ask me oh all right i completely apologize mrs password all right motion to adjourn by vice president casper second by mr awad no objection meaning is adjourned thank you everybody we got out before you