May 6, 2021 - Clifton Board of Education Meeting

001had to do that before i talked to eric about doing it but that mr daily maybe it's a new chromebook because it used to automatically go right into the zoom when you're yes yep so apparently there's another step with the new books chromebooks okay guys we're live okay good evening everybody i would like to um open our the regular meeting of the clifton board of education for thursday may the 6th if you'd all please rise for a brief moment of silence and our salute to our flag starting with our flag i pledge allegiance pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with people with liberty and justice for all thank you what happened mr uc roll call please

002mr awad here miss bassford here mr beltram here mr canova here mr daley here miss danny here mr casper here mr abedrabo here mr smith here leave a quorum um mission statement um mr casper would you mind yes the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world okay our open public meetings act the new jersey alpha 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

003of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district yes i think he's frozen yeah i think it's only mr smith adoption of uh minutes motion motion by miss basford second by mr casper discussion yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yeah yes miss danny yes mr casper mr abedrabo yes mr smith yes carrie okay next communication announcements we have none uh next we have um first reading of policy 7250 school and facility names next presentations or reports from administration uh tonight we will have um first uh dr robertosi will give a superintendent's

004referendum update followed by the public hearing on the final budget by our school business administrator mr uc uh dr robertosi thank you mr president uh good evening commissioners good evening to our community members faculty staff and others who are joining us tonight let me start off by giving the clifton community a huge thank you from the bottom of my heart for those of you who came out to vote in favor of our district referendum uh as i'm sure everyone knows by now on april 20th the district passed a referendum by a two to one margin um in order to do 168 million dollars worth of improvements to our schools and the community and our students and our parents saw the value in what this board of education is attempting to do so thank you so

005very much um it's just it was it was such an amazing day that that whole day that election day and when the final results came in although they were tentative for a few days we were confident that tuesday night april 20th that the referendum passed and just an overwhelming feeling of support that the community said we support this board of education we support our schools because strong schools strong community creates strong schools so thank you so very much so now the hard work really begins and what this board and myself as a superintendent plan to do is at least once a month or possibly at every board meeting we will be giving a referendum update so there's not much to update tonight except for i'm going to give a brief overview of what the public

006can expect to happen over the next several months for those of you who have seen our presentations or have tuned into our board meetings know that the plan really isn't for any work to start believe it or not it's going to be almost a year from now there's a lot of things that need to be done before we actually put a shovel in the ground and and start on these projects so one of the first things the board is going to do is they're going to put out an rfp which is a request for a proposal to hire a construction manager or construction management company i should say the purpose of hiring a construction management company is because they serve as another pair of eyes for the district to review documents to provide initial budget

007pricing to supervise all of the projects that are going on there's going to be so many different projects going on at the same time that you need somebody to manage it and supervise it the construction management company will have a representative on site every day who will be my point person for the duration of the project so that i'm always aware of what's going on and can be updated and somebody that i can call if there are any issues that need to be addressed that's the first thing we're doing uh the other thing that we'll be doing in concert with our architect to cara rubino is we have to look at the projects and establish how the projects will be grouped to go out to bid so as a public school district we can't we're

008not allowed to just hire any um any company to come and do work we actually have to put the projects in what's called a a and companies get to review what the project is and submit bids and say we'll do this project for this amount of money and as a public school that uses taxpayer money we are required to select the lowest bidder in most cases um so the uh architectural company will be discussing our big bid package concepts with the district they're going to provide professional services for each bid package for board approval and they're also going to start surveying and and investigating all the conditions at each site where the projects are going to take place so they have to review all the existing drawings of the schools do new final drawings of

009all the projects and all this is going on while we're meeting with district and staff and board members to discuss the timing of the construction there are certain things we can do when students are in school certain things we can't do when students are in school unfortunately we can't do all of the projects over the summer so there's going to be some projects that are going to be initiated when students are in school so the architect will work closely with the district administration the board of education and our principals on what that looks like and what that means for our school school is not to interrupt learning we'll have regular meetings uh design meetings um with our architect and our construction manager uh at those meetings the board will be updated on the current progress

010they'll be updated and be able to give input on projects and review timelines and in turn we'll be turning that over to the public monthly so you know our goal is to be very very very transparent about what's going on so that the public is is the public place the great trust in us by voting yes to this referendum and we want to be very transparent with the process of what's going on and how this money is going to be spent so the other part of this besides the actual projects is the actual selling of the bonds because what we passed the referendum it's actually called the bond referendum so the public has authorized the district to sell bonds to borrow this money to fulfill these projects so we have a quick timetable uh because

011we need the funds to start paying for the projects and we really want to hold this the competitive sale quickly because interest rates are very very low right now so uh the plan would be um the tentative plan would be that we have a closing a final sale of the bonds around july 15 which means our first payment on the referendum will be due on july 15th of 2022 and that means that your taxes will not be impacted until then also so the schedule will look something like this at our may 20th board meeting the board will adopt a resolution authorizing the sale of the bonds we'll prepare a preliminary official statement we'll apply for what's known as a bond rating and we'll do a rating call with the rating agency that rating depends on

012the interest rates that you that rating that the district gets will impact the interest rates that we get when we sell the bonds so um the idea is to close by june 15th so that we can give notice to the department of education by october uh and that will allow us to get our state aid for the following school year remember the the big selling point behind this referendum was that although we're borrowing 168 million dollars 55 million dollars of that is going to come from the state so that's a critical critical part of this and so as you can see there's a lot that needs to be done there's some technical things that need to be done but we will be transparent we will be updating the public monthly on what's going on and

013as always i'm available board members are always available if there are any questions throughout the process we expect all of the projects to be completed in two and a half years so um thank you again it's a great day to be the superintendent of schools in clifton it's a we have a great wonderful future ahead and so many good things to look forward to so thank you so very much and if any of the board members wish to speak on the referendum uh please uh you have time to do so now thank you uh superintendent robertosi for that uh update and uh the public will be uh each meeting will be given an update on uh the referendum as we continue to go on uh next we have um our business administrator uh mr michael

014usey who will give the final presentation of our budget mr uzi thank you president smith let me just give me a moment to share my screen it's all good everyone can see okay looks good mike all right very good so good evening commissioners and everyone attending um tonight's meeting virtually i'm mike you see the district's business administrator quickly i just want to acknowledge dr robert tosie superintendent of schools mr tegen assistant superintendent of schools mrs kusalevich assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction who will jump in during the presentation regarding staffing grants and curricular highlights and mr thomasevich our assistant business administrator uh this is the public hearing on the final budget the board will have a resolution presented to them tonight to approve the submission of the 21 22 budget to the county office which

015is the department of education i always want to start our pres the budget presentation off with a quick snapshot of the school district's operations to put into perspective of how large a district we are the clifton board of education has 23 facilities consisting of 14 elementary schools within annex two preschools which are the clifton early learner academies two middle schools an extremely large high school the administration building we have a transportation garage and our stadium during normal activities on a daily basis we transport over 2 200 students in district with 57 buses in vance the district employs over 1600 full-time employees and has nine hundred forty eight students on roll we have a pro 28 different sports 53 teams 73 coaches two athletic trainers on staff um all helping over 1 250 student athletes also

016there are over 150 co-curricular activities and clubs throughout the district the district has and will follow this budget schedule for the 21-22 submission for the department of education the preliminary budget was approved by the board at the march 18th board meeting my office submitted the preliminary budget to the county office shortly after and it was approved by the county office around april 20th the budget was advertised in the record on monday may 3rd the public hearing on the final budget is tonight with the final budget being due to the county no later than may 14th also the user-friendly budget will be posted on the front page of the district's website which is required to be posted within 48 hours after this meeting now go over the main focus points of the budget on the revenue

017side the budget calls for no tax levy increase for the 20 from the 2021 school year into the 21 22 school year there's a state aid increase of over 12 million dollars or almost 30 percent from the prior from current year the budget maintain maintains its full unassigned fund balance which is essentially a surplus account that is capped at two percent of our budget by the state which is around 3.6 million however the budget calls for using excess surplus from the 1920 fiscal year of 1.8 million dollars that the board put away back last june and lastly on the revenue side would be the special education medicaid initiative of around 330 000 and miscellaneous revenues of around 850 000 which consists of um interest facility rentals fines dividends insurance dividends prior year refunds et cetera

018on the appropriations side the budget maintains all current staffing and programs with the addition of 21 instructional and other staff members ms kusalevich will go into more detail about how the budget maintains and expands uh programs and supports instruction throughout the district on the next couple slides there will be 119 special ed education out of district placements in private schools county special services and other schools and 743 budgeted students at the vote tag pcti the only change from the preliminary budget presentation and this presentation is a capital reserve withdrawal of 1.85 million for two tentative capital projects next year and i'll explain those projects on a later slide one of the biggest increases in any budget area is the increase in charter school tuition which comes directly from the department of education of around 2

019million or 20 around 28 from current year and i will go into a five-year trend analysis later on in the presentation regarding the charter school so while the district did receive a very significant increase in state aid there's also this significant increase in charter school tuition and then finally the other largest part of the budget or the largest part of the budget is budgeted salaries and employee benefits now if i could turn it over to our assistant superintendent mrs cousteau-levitz to talk about some programs thank you mr chi um as mr uchi explained this budget maintains our current staffing and programs which include our completion of our one-to-one chromebook initiative the infusion of technology and 21st century skills across all programs expansion of our defined stem program across content areas differentiating instruction to support our

020diverse learners from preschool through twelfth grade we maintain our excellent fine and performing arts program our strong core literacy and mathematics programs we're continuing to team in grades six through nine to support student success the transition to high school and we're introducing teaming above grade nine um we have 17 career concentrations at our high school in three academies our stem career and fine and performing arts academies we're increasing our dual enrollment opportunities this year adding even more college options for our high school students pbsis has now been expanded district-wide and we have as you heard from mr uchi a very extensive offering of sports and extracurriculars for our students the additional staff that this budget is being is including in this budget has a very strong focus on social emotional learning with five additional guidance

021counselors two for the elementary schools two sac counselors for the middle schools and an additional high school counselor we're adding an additional high school teacher and then 11 special education and support teachers this is in to ensure that we are instructing our students in the least restrictive environment as required by idea law we are adding two preschool disabled teachers four elementary special needs teachers including resource room autism speech and self-contained three middle school teachers one for the autism program and two resource room an additional high school resource teacher and a an additional behaviorist a non-instructional staff are just as important in this budget with two additional computer technicians to help support our very robust technology program for our students and staff a new central office secretary a bilingual arabic speaking secretary for our welcome center

022and registration area in the administration building and a custodial nighttime supervisor to return to our previously fully staffed custodial supervisory team overseeing over 90 staff members across our 23 buildings thank you miss kuslovic uh moving forward so our district's total balanced budget is two 210 million nine hundred fifty eight thousand six hundred ninety eight dollars which is comprised of the general fund that contains an operating budget and the capital outlay budget and special revenues which are federal grants and state entitlements the district receives and then lastly debt service here is an overview of the general fund revenue sources as i stated before the tax levy has no increase from the current year and stands at um 134 million dollars state and state aid increased by nearly 30 percent extraordinary aid is budgeted slightly higher than

023the current year to a more actual number we do not we're not using any fund balance but we are using excess surplus of 1.8 million from the prior year but the budget does call for the capital reserve withdrawal as i said before also the budget miscellaneous revenues and um medicaid reimbursement which is semi and just to note almost 70 percent of the district's total revenues is funded by the tax levy while 28.6 is funded by state aid here is an overview of the general fund appropriations or expenses broken down in major categories of the budget i won't go through every line however everything is relatively consistent with the current year the 2021 school year except for the major increase to on the charter school budget line item the projected charter school enrollment budget comes directly

024from the department of ed um with the release of the state aid numbers you'll note also you'll know some increases on various lines and that's mainly um salary projections and the 21 new staff members that we are project are hiring next year or budgeting for next year also to put the total budget into perspective salaries and employee benefits consist of more than 78 of the total operating budget now i'll go over a five-year trend over major revenue sources being the tax levy and state aid and on the the next slide after that i'll show the five-year trend of the charter school enrollment as a major increase to the charter school appropriation line so here is a trend of the district's tax levy and state aid over the last five years for the past two years

025the board has presented to the public a zero percent tax levy increase and in the past five years the board has presented less than a one percent tax levy increase and has never gone over the two percent cap since it's been instituted around 10 years ago when it comes to state aid the district has seen significant increases in state aid over the past five budgets which includes the 20 21 22 budget the 2021 state aid increase was actually taken from us in a cut during the summer because of the pandemic but the state luckily luckily the state made up the difference and even more so in the 2122 budgeted state aid this increases this in state aid comes from the state trying to equalize the state funding reform act or safra formula because clifton has

026been significantly underfunded since the state aid funding formula's inception the state's plan to is to fully fund the formula by the 24-25 school year so hopefully they'll stick to that plan um because it would greatly benefit clifton clifton would have received if it's fully fun if and when it's fully funded clifton would receive approximately 75 million in state aid instead of the current 55 million we're receiving um in the 21 22 budget under the safra formula here is a five-year trend of the charter school budget which is based on enrollment 20 21 22 budget numbers or projections as i said approved by the department of ed that the district is required to budget for compliance purposes the actual enrollment counts are realized during the october 15 assa audit or application for state school aid at

027that time the budget numbers increase or decrease during the school year typically the projected amount that we have to budget is much higher than the actual enrollment amount after the assa audit um over the past four years the charter school enrollment has had a drastic has had drastic enrollment increases that have been approved by the state with the budget increasing um from 3.79 million to 9.5 million or 382 students to 711 students in this five-year span here are the capital projects that were tentatively planned for 2122 which are outside of the referendum the projects include a school 13 window replacement and tennis court renovations at the high school so as long as the the bids come in within our budget and the board accepts them we can we can start working on these projects next

028year here is an overview of the special revenue budget or our grants our federal and state grants the district has completely one one um important thing is our our preschool grant that it used to be federally funded and it was called the preschool expansion grant and now it is a fully funded fully state funded preschool education aid program and the preschool education aid grant requires a general fund contribution you see at the second to last line there in order to receive these state preschool funds for regular education preschool this general fund contribution is a budget line item that already existed for the education of preschool disabled inclusion students but it now has to be transferred into special revenue so it was always in the general fund it just needs to be transferred into our federal

029grant line items now now uh miss kusulev is going to jump in one more time just to explain how all these grants support specific district programs that serve various specialized populations of students our smallest grant is our perkins vocational education grant which supports our marketing academy title one supports remediation after school extended day and a portion of our typical summer programs for our title 1 students or title 1 schools title 2 provides us with funding across the district for teacher training to support effective instruction title iii and immigrant funding is a supplemental pot for our english language learners and this also provides their after-school and summer programs and title four which has really been leveraged this year focuses on social emotional learning and advanced programs idea both basic and preschool supports our special needs students

030and the 21st century grant provides a wraparound after-school and extended year program for over 200 students at schools 4 12 and 17. the students from school 17 are received their support at school 12 after school and in the summer as mr uchi explained our preschool education aid is combined with our special education preschool aid and we're able to provide a fully inclusive preschool program for nearly 600 students while the majority of those students are income eligible we do have quite a number of spots for first-come first-served non-income based students we are getting close to meeting the needs of most four-year-olds in clifton and finally our federal climate pbis grant is one of the grants that we're most proud of because it is helping leverage our social emotional learning and behavioral supports across the entire district

031thank you very quick short slide this is an overview of our debt service for the 21 22 budget the debt service tax levy is dropping from 37 400 from the 2021 school year the remaining debt service um this 932 000 reflects one bond which does not fully mature until 2425 and it was originally the chs annex project which is um now seal of b the pre-squats still a b um now if i can introduce mr thomasevich he's going to go over the next two slides and this is regarding the budget's tax impact on the clifton citizens thank you mr usi good evening board members and the community of clifton the main focus in preparation of this final budget for the 21-22 school year was the mindset set of one clifton while keeping the tax impact

032in mind the one clifton mindset that has been set by the superintendent dr robertosi in everything we do at clifton public schools this budget addresses the current and future needs of clifton students and staff while keeping in mind the overall tax impact on the community of clifton mr usee has provided an overview of the 2122 final budget relating to the various focus areas for revenues and expenditures as well ms kusalevich has illustrated that the budget that this budget maintains the current staffing and the district programs while also adding the necessary additional staffing to better support the students in the district with that being said let me discuss the overall tax impact that the budget will have on the residents of clifton there are two factors that impact taxes for the residents residents of clifton the

033first factor is the tax levy that is budgeted as the lev as the tax levy increases it will result in an increase in taxes on the average assessed home they have a direct relationship to each other here is some additional information as it relates to the assessed home value in clifton the average assessed home value in clifton is currently 178 four this is the value that the tax level the tax levy gets applied against this is calculated from taking the total tax value for residential properties and dividing it by the number of residential properties on the tax roll of the city the residents might be questioning that the average home in clifton is worth more than 170 554 that is correct that is what they call true value or fair value to convert the average

034assessed home to the true value or failure fair value you would take the 178 554 and divide it by the county equalized ratio which is 50.21 so uh so the calculation would would convert 178 554 in assessed value to about 350 355 614 dollars in true value also an approximate tax point is about a 533 405 dollars which will affect the average assessed home by 18 annually so let me recap what the total budgeted tax levy is in this final budget as mr uc has mentioned earlier in this presentation the budgeted general fund levy is 134 million 259 260 which represents a zero percent increase from the 2021 budget and the 1920 budget as well the district has kept the tax level the tax levy flat for the past two budget years this is truly

035an amazing accomplishment by the district and it demonstrates a great job by the board that the board and the administration has done to keep the the clifton taxpayer in mind during the budget process while still meeting the needs of the district in addition to the general fund levy the debt service levy is budgeted for for 932 000 which represents a 3.86 decrease or about 37 400 decrease from the current year budget of 2021. the debt service levy has been historically decreasing from prior years as a result of no new debt being added and the annual maturities on the one outstanding bond decreasing so the total school levy is about 135 million 191 260 dollars in this year's final budget the total decrease of 37 400 from the current year budget of 2021 next slide so

036the second factor that impacts the taxes for the residents of clifton is the net taxable valuation the net taxable valuation is the total assessed values of property including residential commercial industrial public utilities etc that is on the tax roll of the city in which the budgeted tax levy gets applied to this has an inverse relationship than as i explained with the tax levy as the total net taxable valuation increases it will result in a decrease in taxes on the average assessed home the total net taxable valuation for 2021 pertaining to the 2122 budget is 5 billion 334 million 50 063 dollars this is an increase of 11 million 563 200 dollars from the net taxable valuation um in 2020 that pertains to the 2021 budget so this slide uh goes over the overall tax impact

037comparing the current year uh the 2021 current year to the final budget which is for the 21 22 year and the change so the proposed tax rate for the 21 22 school year is 2.5345 percent which represents a decrease of 0.0062 percent from the actual rate for the current year uh the 2021 budget of 2.5407 percent this decrease in the rate will reduce the average assessed homes school taxes by 11 compared to uh the 2021 budget the annual tax amount on the average assessed home in clifton will result in a decrease of the eleven dollars bringing the bringing it down from four thousand five hundred and twenty five dollars a year to four thousand five hundred and thirty six dollars a year that concludes the tax impact overview i'll turn it back over to mr

038lucy thank you very much eric so as you see we with doing a zero percent because of debt um maturing it's actually um a little bit of a decrease in tax levy on the school side um and that actually concludes our presentation um as always it's a great day to be a mustang and um if there's any board member comments or questions we we could field them and then after this we're going to have a public recognition on just the budget um and then we're going to call the president is going to call the motion just for the for the adoption of the budget and then move on with the agenda after that and i'm gonna stop staring my screen uh president thank you thank you mister uh are there any board members who have

039any comments president smith if i may um i just want to personally thank uh uh michael and eric for you know their hard work on putting information together i mean it's not it's not easy i'm here and i'm shy and i'm just trying to and i'm a board member and i'm just trying to stay along with what they're talking about which of course i know but you know for somebody who who who wouldn't know it it's like okay you lost me at hello um you know their hard work daily for this district working with the finance community working with the administration um for this district is i just want to applaud their efforts and and what they're doing every day for this district so thank you guys i appreciate that mr vice president thank you

040mr casper uh yes i'd also like to thank you both and numbers aren't my thing when it comes to budgets like that so thanks for your hard work uh my only question would be um with all of these student athletes that we do have was there ever any mention of adding another athletic trainer in our budgets um the short answer is it has not been brought up um i could address that in the future i guess hey i just figured i'd ask if any and if there was any ever any mention of adding another athletic um trainer or two all right thank you welcome mr daley yeah um yes uh thank you mr president um i'd just like to also thank uh mr uc and mr thomas savage and the superintendent for on the part

041of the administration of uh working so hard on the budget to the public if you look at our budget every year the presentation has a little bit more detail so in terms of transparency i don't think you're going to find any district or maybe even a municipality who lays it out as quickly as you can with a budget uh and making the public understand where the money comes from and where the money goes all the information is there in that presentation which is obviously going to be on our website so not only to putting together the budget but the presentation and the slides you have there and the information in those slides is is is a great amount of detail and so if anybody has any questions where your money's coming from and where it's

042going to and how we get there it's all there it may take some explaining for those who are not that familiar with budgets but it is all there there's nothing that's been hidden or or anything else of that kind so again congratulations to the entire team in putting this budget together and the excellent presentation any other board members before the superintendent seeing none superintendent thank you mr president commendations to my amazing business administrator and assistant ba the amount of time that goes into building a budget i don't think can be understated um you guys do an amazing job a 210 million dollar budget so thank you that there's so many little details that that many won't ever see but just know that it's appreciated because you make me look good and sometimes that's hard and

043i'm going to ask a question that i know the answer to when i'm asking it for effect did you say that the taxes are going down that people are actually going to pay less taxes than they did last year is that accurate that is accurate um i mean that's unheard of in new jersey that that just doesn't happen so uh for that this whole board should take a bow um for for for that that's that's incredible so great job team thank you sir uh yeah i can just echo uh not only uh mr uc and mr thomasevich um but your entire uh department uh your wonderful secretaries who do a fantastic job of putting all these documents together for you um and i must commend our um our finance committee uh who works on this

044from start to finish uh they'll be starting i'm working on next year's budget right after this so um uh with our our chairman mr daley and mr canova and miss beltran i commend the finance committee for a job well done and again to our business administrator assistant business administrator on a great job of not only putting this together uh helping the board to understand it helping the public to understand it and um putting together a document of this type getting it uh to the county for approval and here for the board approval so great job all around and i think the public will be very uh satisfied with it so with that said i would like to uh open the public portion of this meeting um public portion of this meeting for um budget only

045this portion of the media is open to the residents and non-residents of clifton for purpose of addressing the budget only uh there will be another public session where you could address any other topic this portion is for the budget only anything that is directly related to the budget and the of the clifton public school district residents and non-residents are requested if in person to sign the register provided for this purpose all speakers are asked to state their names municipality and subject matter before speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcom mr smith if you can't hear us you cut off hopefully it comes back it kicked

046in before by the board students employees have specific legal rights afforded by laws in the state of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comment in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments so mister is there anyone that wishes to address the board on the budget uh mr smith there is nobody in the waiting room right now you know mr smith closed the public portion of the budget only okay close uh motion to close by vice president abu drabo second second by mr daley okay we will move on to the next will be our um the actual

047adoption of our 20 20 21 22 final budget which is um number 11 on our agenda do i have a motion so moved second irwin yes miss password yes provided in second who did spell um mr casper uh mr smith yes i'm sorry i didn't second miss beltran yes mr canola yes mr daley yes mr danny yes mr casper yes mr abedrabo yes mr smith yes okay next we have our board committee reports um again uh our committees were very active in uh working hard so there are quite a few uh reports here so we'll start off with our um athletic committee vice president abu drabo yep all right there we go all right good evening everybody so close to the world next committee minutes of april 29 the flex committee meeting began at 3

048p.m the attendees were myself as chairperson board president jim smith commissioners lucy danny and pharaoh saw what uh administrators dairy doctor danny raptozzi and the a.d tom malahi for the winter review the athletic director provided a brief overview of the winter season and explained how various programs navigated the kobe 19 season overall our winter programs were successful spring updates the athletic director explained our spring sports were off to strong starts and provided dates for major track meets we are hosting 429 and five and five one is the say invitational on may 26th is the big north divisional championship may 29th state county championship meet june 4th and june 5th is the njsia north group 1 and 4 sectional championships the timeline for the wwms and stadium weight room committee discussed the possibility of going to

049bid on these projects early instead of waiting for all the projects including the historic referendum committee generally agreed that these projects are easier to draw a bit start and complete administration will explore our options tennis of course the committee discussed the state of our tennis courts everyone agreed that they are in very bad shape and resourcing has been years overdue dr robert harzi and the board members present committed to getting an architect to look into adding a fifth court which is ideal for high school tennis whether a fifth is possible or not the committee is committed to resurfacing the courts renaming facilities currently the district doesn't have a policy pertaining to naming rooms fields buildings etc after former contributors to the district dr roberto will provide the committee with samples from other districts and the

050board will determine how to proceed state of ice hockey the athletic director discussed issues with a lack of students coming out for the hockey team explaining that the numbers have been declining over the years not only in clifton but statewide he explained the co-op he lined up with nutley several years ago that would have averted the situation but it was the decline after parents and players spoke against it at a board meeting the committee directed the aed to explore similar opportunities with leaving schools as nutley is in a co-op with colombia summer programs and camps board president smith asked us about some programs and youth youth camps run by our coaching staff excuse me the athletic director explained the great jobs our strengths and support coaches do over the summer with their strength and conditioning

051sessions hundreds of athletes are trained over the summer by coaches who volunteer their time the aed named the sports that provide camps for the youth president smith said he'd like more sports to offer camps the committee discussed the possibility of sponsoring sports sessions over the summer the aed was directed to look into what other towns do mustang's name and logo to be used throughout committee discussed the possibility of making all school mascots must stand in the spirit of one clifton the committee agreed it's worth pursuing live stream sponsorship the ad discussed how the department was contacted by a company that wanted to sponsor our live stream he was directed to ask the company for a proposal that would that could be reviewed by the committee and the board attorney and that is all i have

052are there any questions on the athletic minutes okay 16 none uh next we'll move into um finance uh you have quite a few of them here there's there's two and one attachment okay right okay um finance committee for april 27 2001 uh meeting was from 3 30 to 4 10. uh board members president we're mr kenova ms beltran president smith and myself administration was uh dr robitosi mr yusi and mr thomas savage and also in the attended was patty perry labrador dear our general counsel for part of our general counsel team concerning the charter school potential charter school expansion mr robertosi discussed the letter attached attachment one which is in your attached to your minutes the district received from the commissioner at the new jersey department of education relating to a request for a charter

053school uh charter amendment from i learned schools sake arts and science charter school with the committee and general counsel the sake arts science charter school is requesting to increase the number of school facilities from four to five the fifth building would be located at 154 east first street clifton the additional building is a 31 000 square foot building with 20 classrooms and a multi-purpose room administration will be taking next steps to appeal and submit comments regarding the amendment requested and requested a commissioner at the new jersey department of education administration will follow up with the committee at a later time just a little embellishment there um if when you see the letter that was sent in they just mentioned leasing the building there is no plan that they submitted about students where they would come

054from and all the other necessary things which you would do if you were occupying a school building any questions on that uh particular issue mr daley not a question just a comment to you and board colleagues that i had passed on to uh superintendent last week so i happened to be at city hall last week for personal reasons and whatnot and who pulls up is somebody from the state architect murder school with permits asking for that particular location on health departments and whatnot um and they and they listed the mount prospect over that campus as their main site in clifton um besides saying brenda's now the question to you is um do we foresee or do are we aware of besides saint brendan's and saint andrews any other discussions that we're having obviously that they're

055targeting private schools so are we speaking to other private schools to see if if they've been uh approached in a sense that there may be other buildings that are being bought in the city uh i i can respond and also the superintendent can respond um we are aggressively uh barking or reaching out to uh private schools mostly the catholic schools uh in the city of clifton who are no longer in operation uh so we may be aware and we may have a potential interest and that the reason for that is to really ask just what you've you've spoken to and that's where they may be moving to they just are seem to be uh ilearn which also is uh the say charters uh the state science and arts is a part of ilearn it's a

056big corporation that specializes in this and there's a number of issues that are not addressed but one of the things we need to do proactively is to do exactly what you you question is be aggressive about finding out where they're headed and so we could address those issues the superintendent can address that board as we get our knowledge curve up um this was not done in the past um uh but uh we are on top of that and and the superintendent has also uh experienced with this uh with this uh institution in his former district thank you sir the the other stuff may be explained an executive session because there might be litigation involved okay anybody else have any questions on that okay i'll read the uh finance committee from may 4th convened at 4

057pm turned at 4 55 a board member's president with mr kenobi mr beltran mr smith and myself administration was dr robertosi janina levitz excuse me too much soda uh michael youssie and mr thomasevich uh also attending this was mr watkins it was the architect andrea khan who was our bond council and um and anthony verso who was a financial administrator with phoenix i believe there was danielle i can't think of her last name was also on there although she didn't participate in the in the discussion uh items of discussion was referendum projects and funding issuance of bonds timeline mr watkins discussed the timeline for starting and completing the referendum projects with the administration and committee now that the referendum has been been approved the district can proceed with putting the the various projects out to

058bid and awarding the contracts some of the projects are estimated to begin in the spring of 2020 to uh most of the projects being completed by the fall of 2023. miss khan discussed the administration to with the administration and the committee about next steps for funding the project she provided a timeline for the sale and closing of the bonds it is estimated the bonds will be sold by the end of june 2021 which is uh next month and closed by the end of july 2021. the first payment of the principal and interest of the bonds will be due in 2223 school year budget which will have no effect on the clifton taxpayers in a 21-22 school year the district will receive debt service from the state in the 22-23 school year when the first payment

059is due mr inverso discussed the current bond market interest rates with the administration and the committee and benefit to the district trying to sell the bonds as soon as possible in order to benefit these current low rates um also i think is important i'll just add one other comment um once once the bond referendum has been certified as being passed uh we can expend money so we you know obviously we're not going out to bitter right right now it's going to take some time but we do have the ability to spend some some of that money on on our workups so if anybody's got any questions i know the superintendent also spoke to this earlier any good anybody has any questions i'll be happy to feel them all right thank you mr daley uh next

060the uh hsa meeting and chats with the superintendent uh mr passford yes good evening everyone um the hsa meeting had uh was held on may 4th it was called the chat with the superintendent we started at 6 30 it was virtual present from administration was dr roberto all elementary school principals mr healey from woodrow wilson middle school from the board of education was uh president smith myself and uh mr canova um mrs kenoba rosekova is the actual chair of the hsa um committee's uh group if you whatever you want to call it she she basically facilitates organizing the hsas so she called the media to order um this first the second thing on the um the agenda was the referendum with dr roberto talked to the hsas and executive team for the outstanding support of

061the referendum and with helping spread the word regarding the vote dr robert has briefly touched upon what will happen next and the timelines of the upcoming projects the third thing that was discussed was a fifth grade graduate uh promotion ceremonies and fifth grade uh celebrations dr robert has discussed the district's plan to host an in-person fifth grade promotion ceremony although they will have um it would be a little different this year from the past he expressed that the principles have come up with a plan to have the ceremonies with everyone's health and safety in mind dr robert which has to be further discussed granting permission for individual school hsas to hold their fifth grade and the year celebration on the last day of school guidelines for uh what is appropriate were discussed along with facility

062usage and approval from the board of education yearbooks number four the various ideas fifth grade yearbooks were discussed and shared amongst the agents say principals and parents presidents that were present um fifth was new business under new business dr robert tells you sought some feedback from the parents regarding a possible change in the future to me all schools mascots mustangs a discussion ensued with feedback from various members and no action was taken the media adjourned at 7 50 p.m do i have any questions cnn thanks smith i think mr smith is getting feed from um my computer all right any other questions any questions from mrs pass from miss vice president abu dravo yeah thank you i had a question uh for the committee uh ms bastford so um uh fifth grade graduation was discussed

063was the kindergarten move on ceremony this test as well that was uh it was not discussed at the hsa meeting no it was discussed previously in an education committee meeting okay so then hopefully i'll hold up for the uh report so it was um mr driver it was i think last month uh mrs kusulevich correct me if i'm wrong or might even been longer than that yeah within last month's the um kindergarten and preschool um are going to be holding class by class uh virtual ceremonies um as described in a previous education committee meeting from i believe it was two meetings ago so if they so if a school individual school decided to go beyond the the i apologize that my case in the background um so if individual schools wanted to have um uh

064go beyond the the virtual and actually said they want to have something are they allowed to we want we want to keep it uniform all right wait for me i'll tell you i'm sorry okay uh next uh we have our uh residency security committee um mr awad are you back on may 4th uh oh mr ginger will may the fourth be with you 2021 uh we met for the residency and security um committee which took place on the google meets platform at 5 pm president of the board of education was commissioner president jim smith committee chair which was myself commissioner joe canova commissioner frank casper dr uh superintendent danny robertosi mark gingaro district administrator of climate and security and mr uh vincent uh the dimensional investigator mr gingaro provided the committee with a brief overview

065of the security in the district including compliance with new jersey school drill laws types of emergency procedures in the district's response to varying types of emergency situations the district implements security measures and procedures based on guidance provided by the office school preparedness and emergency planning mr gingaro uh further explain clifton public schools continues to utilize scenario-based training in an effort to identify patterns of actions and reaction identify areas that need improvement gain more experience in dealing with various types of emergency situations empower the staff by increasing both situational awareness and confidence mr jinger also provided the committee with a brief overview of the district's registration and residency procedures and processes including information about the enrollment and registration process how to determine eligibility based on age and residency the criteria for attendance and enrollment the process

066and procedures of seizing a student from the roster when a requested documentation is not obtained the committee reviewed the monthly amazon investigation report that includes information specific to the number of themselves investigations conducted the results of the investigation specific to the numbers of confirmed residents and non-residents also the number of bounties awarded to citizens for providing information that leads to discovering that a family does not resign in clifton the committee discussed the following items that will be added to the agenda for the next residency and security committee meeting the possibility of conducting uh re-registration for specific grade levels verifying residency for out of district students who attend pcti in charter schools approved private schools for students with disabilities mckinney-vento students and others mr jingura also explained the domino effect that exists on and for the

067residency security team specific to the amount of available staff that is able to conduct investigations to determine student eligibility to observe emergency drills and provide authentic feedback to the building administrators and school safety school climate wellness teams across the district as such mr gingaro requested the committee consider bringing forward to appropriate committees the possibility of creating additional positions to work with mr jaguero as part of the security and residency team committee chair which is i for us awad with the full support of the committee schedule dates and times for the future residency and security committee meetings that is all any questions nope uh dr robertosi uh and mr awad just uh if we can ask mr jane garrow to provide the uh the board um with the um uh the the monthly domicile investigation report

068it's not attached to these minutes and uh the full board should see it we'll do mr smith we'll have that too tomorrow thank you thank you mr smith for pointing that out mr daley yes uh thank you mr president um mr awad thank you for the report um i found it very good the the what was the committee was discussing uh i've always had a concern about students who go to pcti or other charter schools or out of district schools that um we don't know if they've left town or not because the prior to this uh they would just you know they could just pack up and leave and we're still on the uh paying the bill uh they can move out of town so i was very happy to see that that's being uh

069continually addressed i i brought this up with the superintendent uh you know early on um and i have full faith that both the administration the committee uh will have the appropriate controls because there was a time uh prior to the superintendent where that follow-up did not take place and we had no idea uh somebody could be going to pcti moved to another town and we were never aware that that that the family had moved yet we were paying the tuition for that person so with those proper controls um you know i'm looking forward to making sure those controls are in place and being adhered to i do i did request a copy of our registration form and edit some language i will pass my comments back to both the administration and mr watt for his

070committee's consideration if i have them but i i was a little tied up with budget and some other things the last couple of days but i'll have that to you within a week and thank you for your report thank you mr daley i also just wanted you know to uh say a lot of thanks and honestly he's been uh really on top of it and working extremely hard mr uh martin guerrero you know he's always you know honestly just being around him he's always he's always full of energy and you know he's extremely hard working and he has a really a great vision and also he really takes this extremely seriously when it comes to you know the students security especially the residency and hopefully you know we will get a lot accomplished this year

071it's especially you know as for uh clifton taxpayers and for the students in our district you know we do want to make sure everybody is following the rules that we do have and i know uh superintendent danny and the rest of the staff they're doing a phenomenal job and hopefully this committee could be you know a positive you know part of uh our district all right uh thank you mr awad next we have um education and special education mr casper certainly okay clifton board of ed education special ed committee updates for may 6 the education and special ed committee will be meeting on may 18 2021. the committee is in receipt of request to consider options for in-person instruction on wednesdays the committee will review the many variables surrounding the virtual date rolling registration for

072summer programs will begin opening during the week of may 10 2021. ic programs and nresc program registrations will be posted on the district website the extended school year title one middle three and summer acceleration student support programs will be advertised through schools respectfully submitted mrs janina kusalevich so um because of um changes in schedule we had to move the uh the education meeting to may 18th all right uh we'll move on okay next we have our uh public recognition this uh portion of the meeting to the residency sorry sorry mr cashman we don't want to forget mr smith our student representative yes i'm sorry you're correct i didn't see him popping i just saw him pop in now um max always nice to uh see you and uh the floor is yours always great to

073see you too mr smith all right good evening everyone um i have a few updates for tonight's meeting uh first for those who aren't aware there's a vaccination drive uh this saturday um it's for um they're delivering the pfizer vaccine and anyone 16 and up is quite is able to take the pfizer vaccine no appointment needed so it's a walk-in you don't need to schedule an appointment in advance you just walk in and get it um it's saturday may 8th 2021 which is this saturday from 10 a.m to 5 p.m it's in the shoprite parking lot at 985 paulison ave in clifton new jersey and for those who are 16 and 17 you do need to bring a parent with you you need parental consent on site to get the vaccine if you are 16

074and 17. um so um that should be a good opportunity for a lot of people in our community to get the vaccine if you haven't yet especially young people who haven't had the chance yet um now i just have a lot of updates for different events that are happening uh towards the end of the year uh next week is the chs cast film festival it's next tuesday or may 11th and it's at 8 p.m and it goes till 10 pm so 8 to 10 pm it's on the upper field at chs and if you don't know where that is it's in between the tennis courts and the soccer soccer and lacrosse field some people know it as the band practice field admission is nine dollars and tickets are sold at the door uh you cannot

075order them online they are only sold at the door and it's nine dollars and those nine dollars from each person goes towards grants awarded by the clifton education foundation for special projects that benefit clifton public schools so not only are you getting to watch all of these amazing films but you're also supporting clifton schools so it's a massive win-win so there's no reason why you should uh doubt that going isn't worth it it's going to be a great experience there's going to be a lot of films in the film festival i believe it's like somewhere around 25 plus films um in the span of two hours um and yeah it should be a great experience and it's also a good way to support the clifton education foundation uh water and snacks will be sold at

076the band field uh you do have to bring your own long chairs and blankets but snacks and water will be sold at the field uh the everyone must follow the updated coveted restrictions when they're attending this event so keeping a safe distance between different groups and wearing a mask whenever possible so yeah next tuesday may 11th eight o'clock to 10 o'clock the chs cast film festival um all the students put a lot of work into it it's going to be a lot of fun and i would definitely recommend going next uh group i want to shout out is the clifton mustang band i just uploaded the all city video so usually we have an all-city concert every year and of course we couldn't have an in personal city concert this year but there was still

077people selected from the elementary schools and the middle schools to participate in all city band and what we did is there's a great video that was posted on the chs mustang band youtube channel if you type in chs mustang band on youtube it should pop up and it's the newest video called clifton all city band 2021 uh william tell overture most you probably know that piece of classical music is an iconic song and what we did is it's a really awesome combination between best musicians in the elementary school middle schools in high school and it's almost like an evolution sort of thing so you start out with the elementary schoolers and they're playing the beginning of the song then you go into the middle school then you go into the older grades in the middle

078school and then the high school and then at the end we're all playing together for a little bit and it's really awesome um so it's a great video that um a lot of effort went into it across all of the different grades and i would definitely recommend checking it out at the chs mustang band youtube channel um next a group i want to shout out is uh if you guys don't know there is going to be a musical it's not necessarily a spring musical anymore it's more of a summer musical actually it's like the i think it still takes place in the spring i'm not sure but it's june 11th 12th and 13th it's the chs musical review so it's not one set musical like a specific plot or anything it's just a bunch of

079different songs from different musicals that we combined into this really awesome performance um we're actually in the process of rehearsing we're rehearsing like a few days a week and we're also making videos as a backup just in case we don't get to perform it live but chances are we will get to perform it live and the dates for those for the those performances are june 11th 12th and 13th so that's another thing to look forward to um and also uh just in case i say this every meeting but i always want to update on sat testing for those who don't know uh the next date for sat testing is this saturday i'm sure the registration is probably already filled up but there's another one on june 5th spaces may or may not still be available

080at chs so i would recommend trying to get on that june 5th sat date as soon as possible um and those are all my updates for tonight i'm really happy that the referendum passed um and i'm really glad i got to be a part of the committee that was that did such a good job promoting it i i was also happy because i got to vote for the referendum myself since i'm finally 18 and it was pretty surreal getting to vote for the first time i it was it was pretty awesome you know i would always go in there as a kid and i would be like bye daddy and he'd go in the booth and he'd vote and i would just be outside wondering or maybe i think they would let me go inside

081but i always wanted to vote myself i was like i want to touch the machine but and now i get to do it i get to i get to touch the button and vote so yay that's awesome and i was one of the 3 000 plus votes or whatever the number was that passed it so yeah great news for clifton i can't wait to see um when i pick my brother up from school in a few years from now to see what the schools look like because i'm probably it's probably going to look astonishing compared to what it looks like now and that's all because of the um the support that we got from the community so thank you and that's all i have for today um it's a great day to be a mustang

082max as as as always thank you very much and uh um we can't begin to thank uh you and uh so many other students that were part of the referendum committee that worked so hard in being part of this and as you said so many of you may not even be here to uh witness it but i hope you'll come back in and see it uh come to uh realization but uh he did a tremendous amount of work you and so many other uh students that were on the committee and behind the scenes and getting out the vote in your morning announcements and um and then just to hear the thrill of being able to vote um it just just means so much and uh we really appreciate all you didn't know [Music] what he

083did to get the students out vote and to get the information out to the public uh was so important for me from a student's perspective uh so i know that was still very important so we thank you tremendously i thank you uh for all that you did next thank you i appreciate that okay so now we'll move on to our immigration it's fortunately open to the residents and the non-residents of clinton for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to and are direct related to the operation of the public school district residents to non-residents are requested if in person to sign the register provided for the purpose all speakers are asked to state their names municipality and subject matter before speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person you're welcome first up is

084lori la llama my iron is lagging a little bit so i'm gonna start over again okay uh the public portion is open to uh and non-residents of the city of clifton if you would please state your name municipality and subject matter before speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by member of the public may or may not be responded by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be foreign when appropriate your questions i don't think i could finish quite comments regarding students and employees of the world discouraged and will not be responded to by the board students and employees have a specific legal rights afforded by the lawyers in new jersey the board there's no responsibility nor be liable for any comments made by members of the

085public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those identified in their comments and being responsible and liable for their comments miss your first up all right good evening to everybody thank you president smith um first it's teacher appreciation week and also the nurse can you hear me your first yes i can hear you thank you uh i want to praise the teachers and the nurses of clifton public schools they could continue to do excellent work with the kids with their kids families with the community and i can't thank them enough and i am proud to be their president i would also like to let mr daley know that the ilearn is run by gulen as you know and i would love to work with you on that because i connected to

086um quite a few activist groups that are trying to fight against them so if you want to reach out we can talk that would be great all right so i would like to discuss the money that the the district will be receiving from the american rescue plan i was on a zoom call this afternoon with the education law center with david sierra dr linda darling hammond congresswoman watson coleman congressman jamal bowman out of new york and of course marie bliston um we have the opportunity to reimagine the education here in clifton we can't go back to what was considered the status quo or normal there were many ideas that came out of this discussion and i'm going to highlight some of them as a district we need to continue to identify institutional racism and provide

087training support the staff to become culturally competent because we have so many languages and cultures here in clifton that it would only benefit everybody helping the students their families and our staff with mental health issues due to this difficult year and i know that we have money from sr2 funds so that might be something that we can look at we need to reflect on discipline disciplinary actions if taken regarding the uniqueness or culture of our students regarding hair or accent and eliminate artificial barriers that separate many of the kids reimagi reimagining of education through equity and a holistic approach learning environment must include restorative justice social emotional learning through play which shows cooperation and conflict resolution among others and culturally responsible education it should not just be the three r's from the past anymore the

088misconception of learning loss is from the testing companies children were learning every day school buildings were closed but classes continued teachers in paris worked harder than ever so we must actively take part collaborating to com create different expectations now for our new students progress and achieve in this new world that we're going through thank you very much thank you miss um [Music] we have mr mark brunswick mr broonsiak the floor is yours how you doing can you hear me mark bruce jackson holly street clifton thank you dr thank you president smith vice president abu drabo dr robert tosie for allowing me to speak tonight i want to commend eric uh eric thomasovich money mike uchi the finance committee including mr daley and miss beltran and everybody who got that budget done a lot of work

089goes into that and uh i commend them it's a lot of work and they got the job done and it's you know dr roberto was absolutely correct it's extremely rare when you see a reduction rate in the uh tax rate so i want to commend everybody involved in the budget uh outstanding job over there and i i just called in tonight to uh express my disappointment with the education committee not being able to discuss the wednesday you know having parents getting an option to send their kids in on a wednesday and then i hear about the finance committee talking about you know charter schools being being enabled over here i i don't know what the issue is my understanding is charter school gives parents choices if they feel that they're not getting something in within

090their district that they have a choice you know they get they get uh i don't know a voucher or something like that to go to one of these charter schools do these charter schools have availability of in-person learning on a wednesday it took nine weeks over here for me to ask before somebody thank goodness and thank you very much miss bastard for that for for mentioning what we had to do in order for you to discuss on the education committee and i commend everybody on that education committee for all the special education that they get done for those kids that absolutely need it but there are other kids out there too that are very high risk that they haven't been able to go in person learning on a wednesday only four days a week and

091even the high school now they're only going pretty much two days a week is my understanding so somebody please correct me if i'm wrong and on april 25th the new york times reported what the leading cause of death by age was for ages 1 through 17 and this group covet not first not second not third in cause of death it is tenth out of everybody you have a greater risk of dying of the of the flu influenza and a greater risk of dying to homicide than you do of covid so what is the risk why don't parents get a choice to have an option to take a risk to send their kids into in-person learning on a wednesday as well it's about what what they know is best for them and that option still isn't

092available so it's very frustrating to me to a lot of other parents that we don't have that option yet you kick the can down the road to may 18th again is there going to be an uh scheduling issue there too so it's very frustrating when i call in here every three weeks or so i call as frequently as possible this is what i'm asking for this committee it's a perpetual state of fear and we're asking to try to do something to get back to some normalcy over here and some people continuously live in a perpetual state of fear that nothing can ever get normal and it's very sad and it's very upsetting for not only me but for a lot of parents out there thank you for allowing me to speak tonight thank you and

093god bless america have a good night everybody thank you jack um mr man nails i apologize i can't see the full name but mercedes um is in the waiting room ready to talk okay hi i'm mercedes camacho walsh i'm a parent and i'm also a doctorally prepared family nurse practitioner and i identify with the frustration that we all parents feel about the quality of life of our children and their ability to return to school but i have good news um now the faster vaccine it's expected to be approved by the fda as early as next week for the ages 12 to and it's already approved for ages 16 uh to 18 and up so that pretty much takes care of our high school and for the 5 to 11 year olds the it is anticipated

094to be approved around september and moderna vaccine is also doing their trials as well as other vaccines such as novabox so we have an opportunity in fact this saturday to vaccinate our teens 16 17 year olds and up this saturday from 10 a.m to 5 p.m and uh where the old pathmark used to be on clifton avenue and paulson avenue is now a shoprite um wines and spirits and we can vaccinate our children there our teens parental consent is required and they will the children cannot be in school right now often because the rate of increasing covet even though we may not see it in the numbers that necessarily affect us immediately they have increased from uh last year the incidence of coveting children was only three percent but because of lack of vaccination in

095a lot of areas that rate has actually increased to 22.7 percent and approximately five to 600 children have died of covet across our country so um it is a very significant risk considering that passaic county where we reside is am it's among the highest incidence of covet in the state of new jersey but we can do something about it we can vaccinate them and this will get them ready to have a wonderful summer start summer camps start getting tuning for their sats uh get together with other kids play and get back to school so i think that we have a light at the end of the tunnel and we have a way to get it we did get the 5c vaccine we have it in our neighborhood um this saturday it will be repeated again

096on may 29th because it needs a second dose and at that point anticipating that the pfizer will be fda approved uh their studies already are excellent very good quality uh by that time the uh 12 to 15s can also register so uh we're doing it one at a time i think this is really wonderful news and i want to put a shout out to all the my colleagues nurses the school nurses it's nurses week and we're here to understand your fears frustrations and and we as parents you also share them and yeah our kids need to feel good about their lives they need to socialize but we cannot put them at risk the risk is real uh but on the other hand it can be contained if we um vaccinate so many more of us

097the virus has no way to catch on to any one of us and uh and we can get our life back the way we want it to be we all want the same thing and thank you very much for allowing me to speak and to um if i can answer any questions i'll be more than happy to thank you miss walsh mr man anyone else nobody else mr smith you're not in motion uploads thank you i want to close the public discussion by vice president second by mr wade okay we'll move on with our agenda moving to uh unfinished business and it was um unfortunate i didn't catch it when i was looking at the calendars and i was looking at diwali another holiday fighting catch uh which is the muslim holiday for the 2023

098calendar uh school calendar year it's not on there and i'd like to i guess motion uh nintendo to the calendar to add it for april 21st 2023 through you to the superintendent have a um we'll just have a motion and then we'll have a discussion motion to amend the account or [Music] for the uh to include the uh um holiday on uh april what was the date april 21st [Music] 21st we have a second for discussion second mr wad uh dr roberto thank you uh mr smith uh mr ed drabo and i had been speaking about this and i just want to let the board know it wasn't um a clerical error on our part when when the calendar committee was looking at the calendar the actual holiday um begins at night on a friday

099so we met we put a school day on that day and after speaking with mr abdrabo he recommended that you know that day really should be a day closed from school i absolutely respect his opinion but i just wanted to let the board know the reason why that was done because the holiday actually starts that evening and the only um my only concern with making any revisions tonight is that it's not just um taking away that day because taking away that day affects the rest of the calendar that means we have to add one somewhere and uh i'd like to take a a little time to look at it so that i can have a revision for the board at our next meeting [Music] yeah so uh as you're taking a look at that the

100other thing i would like to take a look at is i know that we have now the week before easter and i know that um other other schools usually do that the week after easter so if we did it at that time it'd be in line with all other schools and there would be a lot of functions and things for kids to go to at the time we have all because that's just the standard time that other schools take and i know that if teachers teach out of district um they would have off in clifton one week and be home alone while their kids would be off with the husband or whoever next week so it just doesn't really work out you know so if we could just take a look at that as well

101no i agree with you mr come over here you're absolutely right on that end um absolutely miss conor we can take a look at that just just so the board knows um it's not something that i i do myself alone in the room we do get feedback from from the faculty from administration and the feedback from the faculty was to to keep it that week but i think what we'll do is [Music] a survey the faculty staff and parents uh that way we could have some real data considering that we have time this is not next year's calendar this is the year after so i'd like to get real data from the from the families to see what they prefer and also from our faculty there is one little wrinkle that um you need to

102be aware of if we do change that week then we'll have to add another day to the calendar somewhere also because good friday is during that week and that is a state and a national holiday where schools must be closed so that just means we'll have to find another day somewhere doesn't mean that it's not doable it just means we have to find another day somewhere so there's a lot of things that go into the calendar um but i'll have a draft for your review uh perhaps at the next ed committee meeting on may 18th uh we can review it and then have it at the may 20th board meeting or at the latest the june 10th i think we have off that monday anyway at least this year we did unless we did that

103ad hoc it was a snow give back day oh okay east um we call it easter monday the day after easter yeah was not was not scheduled to be a day off but it was a snow give back day okay um mr robert mr wad will you both pull your emotions yes okay you know re-look this through the uh asian committee and then get back to the full board another time is there any other unfinished business all right seeing none we'll move on to um b uh education administration um we have e a one expression of eh2 teacher appreciation week ea 3 national school national school nurse day ea 4 second reading of policy ea 5 revision of the 2021 school calendar for clifton high school staff and students ea 6 memorandum agreement between the

104clinton public schools and the first school ea seven member in the agreement to the clinton public schools in ben karat yosef uh a8 a njsia membership e a nine appointment for alternate for the northern regional educational commission okay uh we're gonna take um ea one uh expression of condolences on that gonna take the first three separately motioned by mr daley second i think mr abu drabble first since uh commissioner bathroom secondly [Music] um [Music] mr daily would you like to read that resolution please be my pleasure where i whereas on april 24th 2021 the community noted with sorry uh commissioner uh motion mrs bastford on the second mr daley would you please read the resolution yes do you hear me yes okay good whereas on april 24th 2021 the community noted with sorrow the passing

105of mr leonard m mahalik and whereas mr mahalik had served the board of education and children of clifton faithfully and considered considerably as commissioner of the board of education mr maholic was a member from 1984 to 1987 where he served as president from 1986 to 1987. now therefore be a resolve that this resolution be forwarded to his bereaved family to serve as an expression of the great regard in which mr mohawk was held by the board of education the administration employees and the pupils of the clifton public schools and be a further resolve that the contents of this resolution be noted in their entirety in the official minutes of the clifton board of education for further generations to pursue brazil excuse me dated today may 6 2021 [Music] yes mr canola yes mr daley yes

106mistake miss danny yes mr casper mr abaddon yes yes smith yes okay next we're going to have a motion for uh eh2 [Music] would you uh kindly read the resolution my pleasure uh president smith um e a um ea two may third teacher appreciation week whereas teachers mold future citizens through guidance and education and whereas teachers encounter students of widely differing backgrounds and whereas our country's future depends upon providing quality education to all students and whereas teachers spend countless hours preparing lessons evaluating progress counseling coaching students and performing community service and whereas our community recognizes and supports as teachers and educating the children of this community now therefore it be it resolved that the clinton board of education proclaims may 3rd 2021 to be teacher appreciation week and be a further result that the clinton

107board of education strongly encourages all members of our community to join with it in personally expressing appreciation to our teachers for their dedication and devotion to their work thank you president spencer okay i'm sorry i could just make a recommendation i see that you have you're having severe wi-fi issues can we just have mr abu dhabi run the rest of this meeting your internet keeps cutting out i'm not aware i'm i'm not aware of that so yeah no it's really bad mr smith if you hear me start oh would you take over so i can [Music] back up [Music] president smith try rebooting your router come back on after a couple minutes [Music] we'll do this let me know in your backpack mr uchi roll call thanks yes mr daley yes miss danny yes and

108thank you to all the uh um teachers mr evan yeah mr casper yes mr average rabbo yes and mr smith is resetting so motion carries e8 national school nurses day uh did mr smith appoint anybody to read that or who would like to read it garden scratcher okay ea 03 is the national school nurse day whereas students are the future and by investing in them we are ensuring our world for tomorrow and whereas families deserve to feel confident that their children will be cared for when they are in when they are at school and whereas all students have a right to have their physical and mental health needs safely met while in the school setting and whereas students today face more complex and life-threatening health problems requiring care in school and whereas the covet 19

109pandemic has emphasized the essential role school nurses play in school health and academic success and whereas school nurses have served a critical role in improving public health and ensuring students academic success for more than 100 years and whereas school nurses address the home and community factors e.g social determinants that impact students health and whereas school nurses act as a liaison to the school community families and health care providers on behalf of students health by promoting wellness and improving health outcomes for our nation's children and school nurses support the health and educational success of children and youth by providing access to care when children's cognitive development is at its peak and whereas school nurses are members of school-based teams eg school health services 504 and ieps disaster emergency planning to address the school population and whereas

110school nurses understand the link between health and learning and are in a position to make a positive difference for children every day therefore being resolved that the national association of school nurses celebrates and acknowledges the accomplishments of school nurses everywhere and their efforts of meeting the needs of today's children by improving the delivery of health care in our schools and offers gratitude for the nation's school nurses who contribute to our our local communities by helping students stay safe stay healthy in school and ready to learn and keeping parents and guardians at work not just on this national school nurse day but at every opportunity throughout the year now therefore i phil murphy governor of the state of new jersey do hereby proclaim wednesday may 12 2021 at school nurse stay in new jersey and commence

111observation to all citizens thank you mr casper do i have a motion on the floor almost in second yes it's my pleasure to thank our nurses from the district and especially for what they're doing at the vaccination site in clifton thank you from the bottom of my heart miss beltran yeah mr canova yes mr daley yes miss danny thank you district nurses mr casper absolutely yeah um our teachers and our nurses have gone through a lot this year and this is the least we can do for our teachers and nurses across not only our school district but across the country uh mr smith already called off ca4 so it's e89 so i'm just going to go ahead and ask for a motion from ca409 emotional [Music] yes miss beltran yes mr canola yes mr daley

112yes miss danny yes mr casper yes mr abedrabo yes motion capabilities thank you mr ritchie here vocal uh let's see now we have c personnel um we have p1 resignation p2 retirements p3 leads of absence p4 maternity leave of absence t5 amendment of leave of absence p6 amendment of maternity leave of absence p7 amendment opponent uh sorry appointments p8 change in employment status p9 appointment of mentors p10 appointment of transition coordinator and paraprofessionals p11 appointment for summer technology work p12 appointment for principal title 1 and jumpstart summer school p13 appointment of summer school instructional coordinators p-14 appointment of coordinators for summer ise programs p-15 appointments for after school and summer curriculum work p-16 additional support stipends p17 additional appointments for the 2020 2021 after school program 18 superintendents 2021 marigolds the 19 reappointment of certified

113certificated staff for a second contract uh p20 for third contract p21 for fourth contract p 22 for fifth contract p 23 for six contracts p 24 for reappoint of secretary speed 25 for reform supervisory administrative personnel p26 for reappointment bus p27 for repointed bus h p 28 for reformative mechanics and mechanic assistance p29 for reappointment of male courier p30 for reappointment of custodial meeting staff p31 for reappointment of part-time paraprofessionals p-32 for board conferences p33 for conference requests p34 reappointed substitutes 35 for substitute appointments and 36 for personnel appointments do i have a motion on the floor so moves mr konova first second i couldn't uh is that mr daley yes yes thank you mr daley mr ukee roll call please [Music] comment please uh superintendent roberto please thank you i i apologize for the

114interruption i just um learned earlier this evening it was too late to change it that the full-time paraprofessionals were not on this agenda uh we'll have them on the next agenda we just want to um let the board know that they will be on the next agenda and for any of the full-time powers who might be worried that they're not on this agenda um i'm recommending that all of our current full-time parents be rehired for next year i don't want you to be worried about that if you don't see your name thank you thank you dr roberto thank you we're all calling study he's frozen if you want i could do the roll call because i think he's mr thomas had a troll please yeah mr awad yes miss password yes miss beltran yes yes

115mr canover mr daley yes miss danny yes mr casper seems to be a problem tonight i don't know what's the problem all right mr smith we left off right now we are after finance all right so you finished finance no we we are just financed now we just finished personnel okay so d finance facilities we have uh f1 donation this c e l a two approval for transportation services agreement 2021 school year three approval of contract with first tote bank for the least purchase of financing two 54 passenger school buses and two 24 passenger school buses uh f4 approval to dispose of assets 5 certification of budget line item accounts march 2021 f6 financial reports march 2021 uh f7 modifications to the 2021 budget march 2021 f8 use of facilities f9 claims list every motion

116yeah i'd like to uh i'd like to pull invoices 1136 and 1137 to discuss an executive for confidentiality okay what were those again mr canova uh then item nine it's uh invoice one one three six and one one three seven one one three six movement three seven for executive okay for the balance roll call mr irwin yes mrs bassford yes miss beltran yes mr kenobi yes yes mr daley yes miss danny yes mr casper miss jasper yes mr drabo see him saying yes miss ben mr smith yes motion carries your curious yes okay next uh we have uh board member comments uh today we start off with uh mr casper i kind of thought it was me all right thank you mr smith okay i'd like to first start off with um expressing my deepest

117condolences to the mahalik family um please know that uh we extend our deepest uh sympathies for you i'd like to take this time to thank um thank tj max for your donations to our schools because um your donations are really helping our students out so thank you so much for all that you do for us i'd like to take this time to thank everyone uh for coming out and voting on april 20th no matter how you voted um i'd like to see how i'd like to see how our school district nicely comes out and comes out and supports um the changes that are going on now that we are going to have and i'd like to uh hopefully be on the board still as the changes are going through i'd also like to take this

118time to thank all of our retirees this evening i know i had forgotten to say it last time so i'd like to thank all of our retirees for your hard work and dedication to our school district there's one person on the retiree list that i would like to mention this evening mrs bender i know how hard it was for you to finally put it in but i wish you godspeed in your retirement i started my my teaching career with you at school number five and uh it was quite an experience that i had with you and thank you for being there for me and helping me out and guiding me through my first year of teaching so mrs bender good luck in your retirement and have fun and lastly i'd like to wish everybody a

119uh not everybody i should like to wish all of our mothers a happy mother's day this weekend i hope you're well taken care of have a good night everybody thank you uh mr casper uh next we have mr awad thank you very much president smith first and foremost uh my condolences um to the makai family i would also like to thank the citizens of clifton all those who came out and voted we are moving in the right direction you know for our future uh i would like to applaud superintendent and his entire staff and everybody in between that worked extremely extremely extremely hard uh to get this done uh you know the hard work and the effort that was put into this referendum really has shown hopefully you know in the near future once we

120get to finally see the results and as the public will be seeing you know all the great things all the renovations happening to our schools that have been badly needed it that our students our teachers our staff will be able to thrive in such you know a wonderful environment also uh for the teachers i know it's the appreciation week for me i don't feel like you guys deserve a week it should be a daily thing you guys are really really heroes there's always a saying that i always used to uh my mom is always telling me not all heroes wear capes you guys are those heroes um also to just finish off you know as you know the month of ramadan is finishing off you know this month specifically for you know my community and

121myself it's a time of uh self-reflection you know a lot of people think ramadan is just a fasting no food no water from dawn to sunset that is just part of the fast but it is a month where you can self-reflect and kind of take a step back you know uh after a hectic year and you know you tend to appreciate you know the people around you you appreciate your community your family and most importantly having good health you know as the pandemic is you know still around i would love to remind everybody you know just don't let your guards down even though there are we're doing great with the vaccinations we're almost there almost to the finish line i know the entire staff in this district with superintendent everybody on the board you know

122our biggest goal is to get all these students back but at the same time we have to assure and work with the you know the doctors and scientists especially our health officials to make sure that it's a hundred percent safe without risking anybody's uh safety and hopefully you know we are nearing to that and uh like i always said you know i hopefully us as a board we get to go back in person meetings because you know i feel like we should always lead by example we do have a little technical difficulties we had in the high school and hopefully we're able to figure out that situation soon and i wish everybody a blessed night and thank you very much thank you mister miss bassford yes condolences to the malik family uh thank you for

123your service uh to the family as well because uh when you become a board member you're not only do you serve but your family gives up a lot so i condolences to the family for his service um good luck to all the retirees i'm sorry to see some people go um you've given your heart and soul to this district and i thank you very much i would like personally to thank everyone for voting for the referendum clifton got it right this time uh a long time ago we didn't so i thank everybody that came out and supported and i hope to see great things um happy birthday to miss danny i just want to remind you that on april 4th 10 years ago we both started this journey and got sworn in on 2011. uh

124so here we are now 10 years fast forward so i want to i want to say something to all the moms so i have a little poem uh every person every person born on earth comes by way of a mother the monumental task of mothering is a job unlike any other with or without a college degree suddenly we become teachers showing the dis the difference between right and wrong sometimes make us sound like preachers being a mother is a do it yourself project where we have to use what we know apply the knowledge one step at a time as a mother and child both grow we become excellent listeners at first for each movement and sound then to hear what they going into when they learn how to move around listening takes new senses as

125children start to grow we become aware of expressions and feelings they want us to know we learn to listen between the words to the breaths and the body talks we let to the language seen within their eyes the way they stand or the way they walk mothers heel cuts and bruises shelter children from each storm support them through all thick and thin provide hugs that feel safe and warm mothers are totally amazing they are instincts that know exactly what is going on as they watch their children grow thank god for our children who they are and who are yet to be thanked for bestowing this honor of motherhood so lovingly to all the mothers in clifton in our district and on the zoom happiest mother's day miss you mom thank you miss basford uh miss

126beltran okay i'll keep this short um thank you to everyone uh for dealing with us tonight with all of our technical difficulties i hope that the next meeting will be in person so maybe we won't have so many um issues with the the stream um i'd also like to take a moment to recognize that i'm glad that um so many of our students are back into the classroom and are returning to school um with uh either four days in the classroom or two days in the classroom any part that's in the classroom i truly believe is what's the best interest of our children and hopefully in the fall we'll be able to go full uh fledged the only issue being the lunches but hopefully we'll be able to figure that out um for all the

127muslim residents of clifton i'd like to wish you an early eid mubarak because i don't think we have a meeting before our um that happens i also like those a happy mother's day to all the mothers out there of both uh children and fur children because i'm a mother but i'm just a fur child not a skin child as i like to be called and i hope everyone has a good night thank you thank you miss beltran mr kenova good evening everyone uh first of all thank you to our speakers happy mother's day to all the mothers out there um and happy birthday to our own uh lucy tonight on your birthday thank you to our teachers and nurses um it's it's without without you we couldn't do what we do here in clifton um

128and and it's uh is our our right to to teach our children accordingly uh and and you help us do that and and anytime they get hurt and anytime they're they're in need of services the nurses are there for them making sure that uh you know they're well taken care of so thank you for your support um and the only thing another thing i'll speak on is is uh the referendum so i'm ecstatic that this referendum passed as as danny mentioned earlier it was a two to one vote which means more than 66 percent um in robert's rule of voters that's a two-thirds vote which is great that means that that we're in touch with reality of the city the town came out and spoke and they told us yes we like exactly what you're

129doing here and we want to move forward with it um and i always say people people could talk a good game but they only put their money behind things that they really believe in and i truly believe that the taxpayers here believe in our children and believe in our district and we're not going to let you down so i really thank you for that from the bottom of my heart that's all thank you thank you mr canova mr daly thank you mr president um first of all i'd like to thank our speakers tonight that was uh max rubin laurie lalama mr brunsiak and dr camacho walsh uh for their participation and comments also i'd like to extend our condole my personal condolences to the maha family uh i did not know leonard but i knew

130i was close with other members of the mahalik family uh so they're long been a great name in the city of clifton um also like to give my best best wishes for all the mothers on mother's day um my mother is long past but she's still a big part of my life and as i'm sure all sons and daughters are for their mothers whether they're here or not um and again i thank the uh congratulations to the teachers and their notificati and their honorarium for teachers day and also the nurses uh to miss danny on her birthday um there's going to become a time where you're going to not want to go really say that your birthday but we still have birthdays and they are to be celebrated no matter what age you are and

131lastly on the referendum um i'm a lifelong clifton resident and it was always said in clifton that in nothing would ever pass if you ask the public to do something um we went big we went large on this we did a great job of doing our best to explain it and we got a two-to-one vote so all the people that participated in the voting no matter if you voted for or against it but you were part of a statewide historic vote not only did it pass two to one but it was the largest bond referendum ever passed in any municipality in the state of new jersey it shows a lot about our our city here it shows that with the proper leadership and the proper projects the citizens will embrace the projects and will give

132you their support that's so important to building a great community we have a great one it's only going to get better this is uh historic on many levels it shows that the citizens of this town really care uh not just for appropriating money which was part of your job and voting for this but understanding the nature of what we're spending it on and how it is so important not only to the school system but really to the future of this town um a lot of people complain there's no vision there's in a lot of sectors of a political life in the united states and other places but particularly in towns and and in the country and i think vision a real vision is important to our democracy and our way of life uh you have

133to it's our responsibility as elected officials and leaders in leadership positions to give a solid vision of what we can be and i think that was in full uh view here and i think that's one of the reasons why it passed by such a great margin congratulations to everyone and thank you to everyone who lended a hand and did whatever part they could in getting the support for this referendum it's truly historic thank you mr daley and to our birthday girl miss annie okay hold on uh secondary well um first of all thank you um for all of the uh birthday wishes um yes i i still celebrate it's one of those things that i just feel like you know it's your birthday so um and i'm spending it with everyone here um so thank

134you um thank you to all of the speakers like to send my condolences to the malik family and mother's day is coming so definitely want to say happy mother's day to my mom and all the mothers out there uh and lastly i just want to say you know teacher appreciation week thank you to all the teachers in the district it has you know as an educator i know that it's been a very difficult year um between always wondering are we you know virtual are we you know going to be in are we going to go out um you know altering the lessons um teaching children on the zoom and at the same time in person and just uh an array of things and you know um really just want to say thank you and just

135hang in there because you know summer's there just a little bit of time for rest and relaxation and thank you as well to the district nurses because you know it was really difficult on them as well with contact tracing and everything so thank you very much and that's all i have to say thank you mr danny and vice president alvarez thanks president smith um happy birthday to our birthday girl it's your 21st birthday today whoo uh i mean 40 50 years to come um you know i find it interesting that a year ago at the beginning of this pandemic teachers were at the forefront teachers were considered heroes teachers are considered this considered that you know we don't know what they go through knowing for the past five six months i've heard teachers don't want

136to teach and you know i find that very difficult to swallow and to say because teachers do want to teach you know there's something i learned from i heard from somebody and i reposted on my where my facebook which was teachers don't prepare for the incoming students they prepare are they prepare for the results of the outcome so you know while you bring a student to your class beginning the school year who is raw who's a novice and that in in math and science in that grade level they've learned if they learn one thing that means you got through to them and i know our teachers are hard at work i know our teachers care very much i know we have a lot of teachers who grew up in this district that went to school

137in this district and their passion of a mustang really bleeds right through and you know there's no doubt in my mind that they do believe maroon as a mustang you know so i want to thank you from the bottom of my heart um you know for somebody who went to school in this district and hopefully will continue to serve this district by get by paying it forward um to our nurses thank you for all you do it's not easy i've gotten calls from from my kids schools saying hey did you fill out the fours but because we just tend to forget you know that's not what a nurse should have to do every morning just to remember about forms about covert forms be filled out and surveys but they do it anyway not because it

138needs to get done but because they believe that it needs to get done and putting yourselves in that daily routine and remembering um and as well as the the covid the cobit layout over at the high school uh with with the vaccine you know it's i i really do thank you i mean our teachers and nurses have always been the backbone of our education uh throughout this country and hopefully they continue to be in better circumstances um i'm repeating everything else repeated but this last part um is very dear that's why i left it last so happy mother's day to all there's one thing i remember um that my father taught me when i was younger you know when they ask you who's your favorite parent your mother or your father in the muslim religion

139it's always your mother your mother your mother then your father that's how that's how much your mother is should be raised above on a pedestal and also that heaven beneath heaven lies beneath the mother's feet so if your mother at the end of the day when it's your time to go front of god is not happy with you that's a problem so your mother gets a voucher for you and i don't know anywhere and you know from my perspective that you're forgiven if your mother vouches for you right it's usually your mother could takes you under the wing she takes care of you you know she'll she'll protect you so do whatever but the fact that mothers are raised on that level it's just a reminder that you know speaking back to your mother's remembering

140your mother's taking advantage of them of your mother's being here and we don't want to we don't want to remember somebody or something while when we don't have them anymore it's very very important so i'm getting a little emotional because it's just my mother and like everybody else means so much so uh and that's something i try to instill into my kids um and if there's something i you know i'm gonna no disrespect to our parents and their to our teachers and our nurses i'm i'm i'm on the mother's things to me that's very very very important and you know it's it's it's something that we should remember at all times especially when our mothers talk to us and we don't agree with with our mother what our mother say but at the end of

141the day you gotta just let it go because you don't want any last resort you don't want any last um harboring feelings between a mother and a child and god forbid you don't know how long we're gonna be on this earth so thank you very much mr smith and thank you to our administrators our superintendent danny again great job on the on the referendum teachers everybody in the district um were walking advertisement for for the referendum no matter where i went like i'm a teacher and i never really never told my board member or i don't if they knew but but they would talk to me by themselves and i i just acted as i knew nothing about the referendum and they were just walking advertisements walking advocates for the referendum and it really did

142show from that two to one uh outcome of of the referendum vote so danny my hat's off to you of course my colleagues on the board our district uh employees and thank you to the city of clifton honestly thank you thank you thank you very much thanks president smith thank you very much president um teacher appreciation mr you couldn't have said it any better um there's just not one week uh teachers should be appreciated all year long for all that they do words cannot express um how grateful i am to all that my teachers over my years uh and so many memories of some great teachers and um and i just wish to uh thank all of our clifton teachers for the great job that they do in in educating our clifton kids uh we

143are so thankful we're so proud of all that you do uh for clifton students and [Music] we appreciate you and our nurses um again i remind everybody our nurses on every wednesday and tomorrow uh they've been volunteering their time in the cold and the wind and snow and the heat volunteering their time to get vaccinations into arms here in the city clifton so we should be uh extra proud of our nurses this year and this week um for all that they do but specifically during this pandemic for the job that they're doing um in volunteering their time and getting these vaccinations we truly appreciate each and every one of you and all the efforts that you put forward and uh our two teachers here on the board uh mr casper and miss danny uh thank

144you for choosing that profession thank you for your dedication to your kids into your school district and um we're so fortunate that there are such good teachers like you out there in the world uh teaching our kids so uh my two colleagues uh i commend you on teacher appreciation week for choosing that uh profession and for all that you do um our referendum uh again citizens of clifton you you truly saw the need that was there you listened to us you believed us you believe the students and you came out and supported this referendum and we can't begin to thank you enough and hopefully going forward we will show you how much we appreciate that how much the kids appreciate it and uh you'll be able to come and see the the great things that

145your vote uh has enabled to happen here in clifton and i can't begin to thank the referendum committee all those people that took the time uh again volunteered their time they didn't have to be part of it uh many were asked to be part of it and uh they volunteered their time to work as this committee and uh we truly appreciate all of you for all that you did um the board truly is appreciative of everything that you did uh in helping this referendum so i thank the referendum committee as well um happy mother's day yes to all our mothers to our grandmother's stepmothers um beautiful poem by miss basford and beautiful saying there by vice president abu drabo and all my colleagues we truly appreciate uh mothers and uh we salute you on this

146mother's day uh and hope that you'll have a wonderful and restful day and um again miss danny a very happy birthday and um again my condolences to the mahalik family um being a board member is a great commitment and um we appreciate all that uh mr mahalik did for the city of clifton as a board member and to his family and uh our condolences go out to you and uh to all of our retirees uh we appreciate all of the time and effort that you gave to clifton um thank you it just isn't a big enough word so uh we thank all of you and i just have to name two in particular because they're uh very close to me um ms ziegler out of uh school 15 uh carmella and i grew up on

147the same street she was about the five houses up for me um we played many games as uh as kids will play and i remember such great times with her and i know she was always a very dedicated and devoted teacher and uh i wished you well in your retirement and clifton is uh truly losing a great one and uh on previously when i was on the board we brought this person on to help us in our technology field and we got our monies worth uh with mr chris hoey um mr hoey has been there for every aspect of technology phone systems etc and uh i thank mr chris howey for all your years and dedication to this district and i wish you well in your retirement uh as well enjoy and uh that's all

148i have uh superintendent robertosi thank you president smith thank you commissioners for all of your comments dr robitosi yes thank you mr president can everybody hear me okay um once again thank you um to our community for voting uh on our referendum i don't want to repeat what everybody else said but we made history in the state of new jersey and what you did will impact a generation of students in our city and i want to thank the referendum citizens committee we had people from all walks of life students teachers administrators community members parents who have children in the school parents who have children who've long since graduated and some citizens who don't have any children but knew that this was going to be great for the city of clifton thank you so much for

149seeing the vision and helping us get the word out and i got to give this board a pat on the back i know you don't get that very often but it would have been easier to not do this referendum it was a lot of work when this topic first came up i know people were very skeptical could we actually do this could we actually get a referendum of this magnitude passed in clifton or any city for that matter and it would have been the easy way out to say no it's never going to happen it's too much to ask that would have been the easy way out but you didn't choose that you unanimously unanimously said we're gonna do this and you all supported it every single day and using your own talents and in

150your own way got the word out and got the vote out and uh your names will forever be remembered in clifton history for changing and impacting the lives of thousands and thousands and thousands of children so thank you to this board of education thank you for believing in me um as your superintendent that i can help that i could help get this project done now we roll up our sleeves and we really get to work and uh the hard stuff really begins but and we're going to hit ups and downs there's going to be project delays and there's going to be ribbon cuttings and then the next day there's going to be a problem at another site and we'll deal with all that but you should be very very proud of yourselves um to our

151teachers to our nurses um what can i say i i sent you what i felt was a very heartfelt email uh at the beginning of the week i'm honored to be your superintendent i'm honored to work with such great professionals who love kids thank you for loving our kids know this when you love our kids and when they know it when they know you love them they will do anything for you and they'll never ever forget you they'll never forget the impact that you have on their lives so thank you for doing that every single day i'd like to wish an early eid mubarak happy holidays to our muslim community members and students and family members who will be celebrating i think that's a week from now next thursday or next wednesday night you'll break

152your fast so i wish you very very happy holiday and i know ramadan is more than just fasting and i know it's an important spiritual journey so i wish you all the best on this last week of ramadan to our parents who have either through a board meeting or through email or other means uh expressed a desire for our children to come back to school full-time um i can't make a promise tonight that we're going to reopen full time before the end of the school year or that we're even going to reopen on wednesdays i i can't do that there are so many factors that go on behind the scenes um as far as scheduling um as far as um the the school buildings as far as contact tracing as far as the number of

153cases that we have in the community it's not just a snap a finger okay we're gonna open up on wednesday or we're going to go back to a full schedule next week it's not that easy but i will promise you two things i will promise you that we are going to discuss this at the education committee we're going to look for solutions if it can be done we'll do it if it can't be done here's my second promise when september comes it is my expectation that we will be as close to normal as possible that means a full schedule that means lunches in schools now lunch may look a little different depending on what the guidelines are but we're going to be back to what we know as regular school in september and i'm gonna

154do everything in my power to make that happen and to our parents and to our community members into this board i give you my word that that is my intention that is what we will do now that is barring any unforeseen circumstance that is way beyond and out of my control but that's the goal and that's what i promise you i will do um and finally i was i was moved by what miss basford was saying i was moved by what um mr abdrabba was saying about mother's day a real happy mother's day to all moms out there all grandmas and all those women who act like mothers and you know who you are you're mothers to lots of people maybe not biologically but you're their mothers and happy mother's day to my mom in

155heaven um i uh i lost my mom when i was 19 years old and she was the kindest sweetest person in the world and i like to think that she made me who i am today and so on that note not to make anybody sad that's not what the purpose of this is i do want to make one announcement tonight and that is um i want to talk about my scholarship fund so about seven years ago early on in my superintendency in another district i wanted to use my uh my power as a superintendent to do something good for for kids other than trying to uh you know help them uh to learn and i thought that i wanted to start a scholarship fund because when i was a senior in high school i was

156the proud recipient of a local scholarship most high schools have a local scholarship award ceremony and i was the proud recipient of a local scholarship it wasn't a ton of money but it was it made my parents so very proud that i received this award and i remember that night at the at the local scholarship ceremony i remember one of the speakers saying remember this and when you have the opportunity in your life to give back make sure you do and so about six years ago i started the danny robert tosi superintendent scholarship fund in memory of my parents my mom who i lost when i was 19 and my dad who i lost a year later when i was in college and the last year that i gave out scholarships in my previous district

157i gave out fifteen thousand dollars in scholarships to deserving seniors so this year i'm proud to announce that although it's not quite fifteen thousand dollars um through the efforts of my scholarship committee that i've brought to clifton i have raised five thousand dollars without doing any thing that i would normally do like have a dinner have a golf outing and have all those things that we couldn't do during the pandemic just by asking people for money i'm proud to say that we'll be giving out five thousand dollars worth of scholarships to five clifton high school seniors uh at the local awards ceremony these are seniors who've applied i do not pick the students i have a committee that picks the students but i'm very proud to give out five thousand dollars in memory of my

158parents to five deserving seniors and i'm counting on next year when we're able to have that scholarship dinner and all the board members will be invited and anybody who wants to come will be invited we're going to have a scholarship dinner we're going to have some games a little tricky tray we're going to have a golf outing we're going to have some other fun events to raise money that will go directly back to clifton high school seniors and hopefully one day they'll be paying it forward to other clifton uh students so um i want to thank you all for the opportunity and we have that award ceremony i believe it's june 7th anybody remember off the top of their head june 1st thank you it was june 2nd it was moved to june 1st so

159among other things i'll be getting out to the scholarships so thank you and have a great night thank you dr posey and that's a really great news and uh great for you to offer that scholarship and uh great to hear that five high school seniors are going to receive that uh uh the rewards of that yeah so uh i apologize for that problem is just inform me that uh there's an average in my hair so that's why my internet is uh been intermittent years so i apologize um anyhow we'll try and finish up as best i can um we have business our uh june 24th board of education meeting change of date discussion dr robertosi isn't that you thank you um mr president so it's it's a discussion that i i'd like input from the

160board i'm not sure that we need to change it but obviously i'll take your input we have a meeting scheduled on [Music] excuse me make sure i have my calendar right here so we have a board meeting on june 6th i think i said june 10th earlier i'm not sure why june 6th and june 20. so uh that's not correct maybe i'm june 10th and june 24th thank you sorry long night um as the board knows and and most of the people watching know our last day of school due to the give back of snow days is june 22nd that'll be the date of our last day of school and high school graduation so then we have three snow day give backs um so there's no school uh wednesday the 23rd thursday the 24th friday

161the 25th um i'd like i'd like with with the board's permission to give everybody off on those days um after a year like this um i think it's well deserved so our teachers are not required to work because there's snow days technically 12-month employees um would have to work under normal circumstances but with the board's permission i'd like to give everybody off those days i think it's well deserved and um and if we do that we might want to consider changing the board meeting on june 24th uh to another day so i just like your feedback and input on that mrs smith yes mr password um we've always usually did away with the june 2nd meeting because it was too close to graduation uh so uh if anybody would really want to entertain i would

162entertain making a motion to do away with the meeting and also make the most good the uh 12-month employees lose three days off as well thank you miss bassford i'd like to second that as well to go along with our appreciation for our teachers that we've all been saying today this discussion okay seconded by vice president drama discussion any other discussion mr daley yeah i just have one one question for mr yusi uh whatever the last meeting is uh we have let's go ahead and mr daley yeah uh should be able to hear me the one issue we have um at the end of the year the fiscal year the board has to pass a re resolution how the surplus is going to be distributed post audit um so i just have to ask mr

163uc would he would we be able to have that resolution in the beginning of june um i don't think it's that difficult to prepare but i just want to make sure he doesn't have uh and his team have any concerns because we do have to pass that resolution that's completely correct i mean every week that goes by that's closer we could be a tiny tiny bit more accurate but it won't be a problem to for me to recommend what we should do um to the finance committee uh mr smith mr uc made a suggestion that we moved the meeting on the 10th to june 17th but june 17th is the senior prom and i'll be attending the senior prom and i expect that um and i'm not sure if the board members know but you'll

164be invited this year and i expect that some of you are going to want to attend the senior prom that night so it administratively as long as uh money mike says we're okay by the 10th i think we're okay um administratively by the 10th and i guess worst case scenario if we had to make an amendment mic at the july meeting is that a problem um statutorily this resolution has to be passed by the 30th so i mean worst case scenario we could call a special meeting if we had to but if we had to in an emergency okay but you but you think that you'll be pretty in pretty good shape to have that number by the 10th yeah yes thank you mike all right any other discussion staying on roll call mr awak

165miss best bird yeah miss beltram yes mr kenoba yes mr daley yes mr d miss danny yes mr casper i see him saying yes mr drabo yes and mr smith yes motion carries all right next we're going to uh move into exactly just one i just want to thank the board mr smith on behalf of the 12-month employees i'm sure they'll be very grateful thank you all right next we're going to move into executive session we have um contract [Music] list uh motion to move into executive session motion okay a second mr smith well uh is it possible that action will be taken because we need to say that um we just need to say mr smith actually may be taken is awesome well you've said it mr rusty okay uh actually actually maybe taken

166um after executive session yes [Music] and about how long are we going to be in executive session 30 minutes that sounds like a good guess to me um about 30 minutes i would say correct action may be taken all right uh just to move into the executive session actually taking approximately 30 minutes mr mr daley yes miss danny yeah mr casper yes mr rabbit drabo yes mr smith probably a little bit longer motion carries [Music] and there's also some background noise i'm not sure where the background goes let it be mr smith i think everything's just so lagging so it's not doing the normal noise cancellation but if you go on your iphone and join and you're not using we need to take this right yeah anyone who has optimum they're telling me there's an

167outage in clifton recording stopped don't don't lose hey sam thank you all right guys we're live everybody we're live so just hold off on everything thank you thanks santinos i'm getting texts that mr smith is live and no one else is i'm not i'm confused if for some reason mr smith is still not in the breakout room and we all are i'm here you can't see me so sorry everyone this uh just give me one moment [Music] jim has two i see you have two different profiles here okay drop one okay sounds like a bad remix right now now we just got to get back an executive i'm i'm not hearing any feedback right now which is great no i wasn't on to twice because till he accepted me into this room okay from my

1685g to my regular okay now we got to go into the breakout room guys so click join all right everyone here yeah i'm glad mr mr mount is so awake yeah really all right we're returning from uh executive question uh mr uh uc rocco mr wad here miss bassford here miss beltran here mr canova i'm here mr daley here miss danny left mr casper here mr abu drabo here mr smith here hey uh the more the board met in uh executive session to uh discuss uh contract matters and um no action is being taken at this time we gotta do the claim yeah motion forward two three eight six so move someone buy discussion roll call mr awad ms basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes miss uh mr casper yes

169mr abedrabo yes and mr smith yes motion carries motion adjourn motion to return by me second okay mr casper hi hi have a good night everybody good night everybody good work thank you and good night good night everybody