March 18, 2021 - Clifton Board of Education Meeting

001and i gotta fix that for next time yeah but then we should just stay virtual until they fixed it all right guys we're going live now yep mr smith we are live now uh mr smith we are live now we have five we could go right into exec while people filter in if you would like one yeah we have we have just five again here just confirming we are live on the stream okay [Music] my internet connection is unstable it says wonderful okay i like to call uh the regularly scheduled board of education meeting of march the 18th 2021 to order if you would all please rise for the pledge of allegiance followed by a brief moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to indivisible with

002liberty and justice and justice for all thank you okay mr uc roll call please mr awad miss bassford it's beltran mr canova gotcha mister what you got mr daley yeah i sit here here danny here mr casper here mr abedrabo here mr smith here uh mission statement mr casper would you like to read it please 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 the uh reading of the open public meetings act the new jersey open p o book public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advanced notice of

003and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon in accordance with provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight at this time the uh board will be uh convening into executive session to discuss some special education matters uh we will come back for the regular board of education meeting starting at 7 00 pm no action will be taken in executive

004session do i have a motion to go to executive session no move second so moved by mr daley second by mr casper all those in favor hi again so moved mr mountain please take us into executive thank you sorry we didn't get in here um hear me we're in the main session now hello uh miss danny you should see an invite to join the executive session there was a 30-second hiccup but all is good now okay because it looked like we were back out in the in the main session correct do you see an invite to go back to executive no i don't see anything i see an executive session there but no i don't see yeah i don't see anything either i see the executive session like blacked out there but you know i

005i see just the four of us here for us eric uh mr teigen you know yeah it's weird i think but i'm not in the i'm not an executive should i leave and come back i'm not wondering that i'm seeing thomas awad and danny um still in the main room so yes do you see any invitation to join exec session no no no i didn't get any no yeah we had the original but then it got uh okay so i think that's i think that's very good um good approach so if you leave and come back we'll get you right in there um mr rawat if you could leave the meeting and rejoin i'll bouncy right in i'm not sure what the what the hang up is here mr mountain just let me know when

006we're live okay we're live right now okay live just a couple people um still switching from exec session to the normal session okay [Music] your life mr smith looks like everyone's in the regular session thank you can mr gingaro move that podium listen mr jim guerra would you mind moving this podium for us sir the one up on top okay now thank you thank you mr jager okay all right everyone ready i know we're waiting for delise but we can start okay okay i'd like to uh call us back into regular session the board met in executive session to discuss some uh education special education matters no action will be taken mr a roll call back from executive session mr awad here miss password ms beltran yeah mr daley here miss danny here mr casper

007here mr abedrabo here mr smith rivercorn here okay next we'll have the adoption of minutes of the uh the previous meeting do i have a motion so i moved some move by vice president abu drabo miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley miss danny yes mr casper yes mr abedrabo yeah mr smith yes um i see we have i'm sorry we guess we should have bought we could bundle those two you could yeah i mean yeah we have uh adoption of our regular meeting minutes of march the 4th and meeting minutes a special meeting of march the 8th put those together come on i have a motion so by my vice president [Music] second second by mr casper discussion see none roll call mr awad yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daly

008yes miss danny yes mr casper yes mr abedrabo yes and mr smith yes motion carries next we have communication and announcements we don't have any next is a presentation of reports from administration advisory committees and special committees um at this point i will uh turn the meeting over to our um business administrator uh mr michael usey who will make a presentation on the preliminary budget thank you president smith just give me one moment to share my screen short can everyone see it well all right we'll get started then good evening commissioners and everyone virtually attending tonight's meeting and those who are in person at the high school i'm mike yusi uh the district's business administrator quickly i'll introduce uh dr robert tosie superintendent of schools mr uh mark teigen assistant superintendent of schools ms kusalevich

009assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction who's going to jump in during this presentation regarding some curricular highlights and staff editions um also mr thompsoevich our assistant business administrator who will also be assisting in some slides later on just to be clear this is not the public hearing on the final budget but a brief overview of the 2122 preliminary budget that's required to be submitted to the county office for educational adequacy and technical compliance tonight the board will be voting on a resolution approving the submission of the 2122 preliminary budget to the county office which can be changed from now until the public hearing in may i want to start off the presentation with a quick snapshot of the district's operations to try to put into perspective of how large of a district we are the

010clifton board of education has 23 facilities consisting of 14 elementary schools with an annex two preschools which is which are our clifton early learning learner academy the selas two middle schools an extremely large high school the administration building the transportation garage and the stadium during normal activities on a daily basis we transport over 2 200 students in district with 52 buses and vans the district employs over 1600 full-time employees and has 10 948 resident students on roll we have 28 different sports 53 teams 73 coaches two athletic trainers with over 1250 student athletes with also 150 vast co-curricular activities and clubs throughout the district the district followed this budget schedule for the 2122 submission for the department of education the preliminary budget will be voted on during tonight's meeting for the submission to the county

011my office must submit the preliminary budget to the county by uh monday march 22nd and the county office has until april 20th to approve the preliminary budget the advertised budget will be in the bergen record tentatively thursday april 29th and the public hearing on the final budget will be during the may 6 2021 board meeting which um which meets the deadline of being able to hold a meeting um what we have to hold the public hearing by may 7th and then the last day to submit to the county the final budget is may 14th now over the main focus points of the budget on the revenue side the budget calls for no tax levy increase from the 2021 current school year into the 21 22 school year next year we had a state increase of

01212 million 756 thousand for 21 or 29 nearly 30 percent the budget maintains its full unassigned fund balance which is essentially a surplus account which is capped at two percent of our budget by the state so we maintain the whole thing we're not using anything to balance the budget however the budget does call for using excess surplus from the 1920 fiscal year of 1.8 million that the board put away back uh last june lastly on the revenue side is um semi which is the special education medicaid initiative of 330 000 and miscellaneous revenues of approximately 850 000 which consists of um just interest facility rentals uh school fines insurance dividends um and prior year refunds on the appropriations side the budget maintains all staffing and programs with the addition of 21 instructional and other staff

013members ms kusalevich will go into more detail about about how the budget may change and expands programs and support and supports instruction throughout the district on the next couple slides for out of district placements we have 119 special education placements in private schools um county special services or other schools and we have budgeted 743 students at pcti the votech one of the biggest increases in any budget area is the charter school tuition which i i say this every year it comes directly from the doa it increased by two million eighty nine thousand one eighty eight or nearly twenty eight percent from the current year so while the district did receive a significant increase in state a there was also significant increase in charter school and then finally budgeted salaries and employee health benefits which make

014up approximately 75 percent of the entire appropriations budget um now i'm going to turn it over to our assistant superintendent mrs kusulevitz for the next couple sites thank you mr uc if you can go to the next slide for me please and it's lagging i apologize for that so this budget with zero percent tax increase uh if you can go back a slide please i don't know what is happening thank you maintains our current staffing and programs um our main focuses are the completion of our one-to-one chromebook initiative throughout the district infusing technology and 21st century skills in all programs our support of the defined stem program across content areas and grade levels differentiated instruction to support diverse student needs from preschool through 12th grade our excellent fine and performing arts programs our core literacy

015and math programs the instructional teaming that takes place in grades 6 through 9 to support students success and also help them with their transition through high school we have three main academies at the high school with 17 career concentrations we continue to grow our dual enrollment programs and of course support our district-wide pbsis program to support social emotional learning and to round out the whole child education we have extensive sports and extracurricular and finding performing arts programs the additional staff included in this budget really focus on social emotional needs as well as the special needs of our special education population five of the positions are counseling positions this includes two elementary counselors which will allow each of our elementary schools to have a full-time counselor this adds two middle school student assistance counselors for our

016students who need support in milk that difficult middle school age and an additional high school counselor we're also adding an esl high school social studies teacher to address our electives and social studies needs for our growing english language learner population and finally 11 special education teachers in that area we're looking at two to address our preschool disabled program four elementary special needs teachers for resource room speech and then the self-contained autism and multiply disabled programs three in middle school also one self-contained for the autism program and two resource room one high school resource room and a high school and a special education behaviorist these positions allow us to keep our students served in the least restrictive environment while also providing self-contained programs in districts to help keep students who need more intensive support closer to

017home in their schools in our town may i have the next slide please some additional staff include two computer technicians as was mentioned on the previous slide we have now gone fully one to one in terms of devices just in the course of this one school year and that requires significant addition of support to support our technological infrastructure software and all of these additional devices we're requesting an additional bilingual secretary for our welcome center at this time our registration program has access to both spanish and polish speaking staff members to help translate for those parents who come in who need the support of another language clifton's three main languages are spanish polish and arabic this position would help support the arabic population in clifton and finally we'd be returning a custodial night custodian supervisor which

018will return us to a fully staffed custodial supervisory team to manage and oversee over 90 staff members throughout our 23 buildings thank you mr uchi thank you um just moving on so our district's total tentative balance budget is 209 million 209 million 108 698 which is comprised of the general fund that contains the operating budget and the capital outlay budget um special revenues which are federal grants and state entitlements that the district receives and also our debt service and i'll go into all these on further slides here's a quick overview of the general fund um revenue sources as i stated before the tax levy has no increase from current year so it stands at 134 million 259 260. uh also as i said before state aid is the biggest increase in the revenues of the

01912 million uh 756. extraordinary aid is budgeted slightly higher than the current year to um to reach a more actual number of what our extraordinary aid is we are not using any fund balance but we are using the excess surplus the board put away last june of 1.8 million from the prior year the 1920 school year also um budgeted miscellaneous revenues and the medicaid reimbursement um also just to note almost 70 percent of just the district's total revenue is funded by the tax levy while um state aid is about 28.6 so the majority of the revenue is funded by the local tax levy here's a quick overview of the general fund appropriations or expenditures broken down in major categories of the budget i won't go through every line however everything is relatively consistent um with

020the current year except for the major increase to the charter school budget the projected charter school enrollment comes directly from the doe with the release of the state aid numbers you'll notice some increases on on nearly every line and that's mostly salary projections and also the 21 new staff members that we're budgeting um also to put this budget into perspective salary and employees as i said before are consistent with more than 75 of the total budget um i'll quick now i'm going to quickly go over a five-year trend of our major revenue sources and that's obviously the tax levy and state aid here's a five-year trend of the district's um tax living state aid um for the last two years the board has presented to the public a zero percent tax living increase and for

021four years the board has presented less than a one percent tax levy increase and also has never gone over the two percent cap since it's been instituted and i believe 2010 or 2011. when it comes to state aid the district has seen significant increases over the past five years which includes the 21 22 budget however last year's state aid was um taken from us so we only got about a two and a half million dollar increase instead of the the over seven million we should have gotten um so this the and that's being made up with the the current year state aid so while we only got two and a half last year after they cut us the state aid it seems that they're equalizing it where they're giving us what we should have gotten

022in 2021 and then even further so that's good news um uh the state's plan to fully fund the formula is um by the 24-25 school year so hopefully they stick to that plan because it would obviously greatly benefit us because we've been so under funded um since the inception of the staffer formula or the school funding reform act formula um clip if if the fund if the formula was fully funded clifton would receive approximately 75 million in state aid instead of this 55 million we are receiving here's a quick overview of the special revenue budget this consists of our non-public state entitlements and all um all other federal grants the districts receives for budgetary purposes state and federal grants anticipate a 15 reduction from the current year the district has completely transitioned um from the

023federally funded preschool expansion grant to what's at the bottom here the preschool education aid which is state funded um and i would like to note that the preschool education aid that we get from the state for three and four-year-olds requires a general fund contribution in order to receive the state aid funds so that's that pea general fund contribution and that's something that was already budgeted for for the special education inclusion preschool students um so it already existed in the budget but now we just have to report it differently in fund 20 or so the special revenue fund uh now i'm going to turn it back over to um ms kusulevitz just to explain how each grant supports the district programs and serves and how it serves very specialized populations of students in clifton thank you

024miss uzi the special revenue programs vary and they come with various restrictions and support different types of programs and different types of students our smallest program is the perkins votech ad which supports our high school marketing academy and our marketing lab title one provides many of our extended day week and year programs in our title 1 schools and title 2 supports teacher preparation and training title 3 is additional funding to support our esl students also with extended year summer programs we have over 600 english language learners enrolled in our district at this time title iv provides a small amount of funding to support our social emotional learning programs which in this year of covet are very needed our idea basic and preschool supports our special needs program which addresses over 2 000 clifton students but

025this does not fully fund special education needs we have a 21st century program that gives us a wrap around after school and summer program for over 200 students at schools 4 12 and 17 which we have been able to continue even in this virtual world we've been in our preschool education aid provides fully inclusive preschool classrooms for about 600 students on an income eligibility and also first come first serve basis and finally our climate grant is a federal grant that has allowed us to fully expand our pbis program across the entire district supporting social emotional learning security health wellness um and just overall transitions for our students thank you thank you here's a very quick overview of our debt service um for the 21 22 school year the debt service is dropping by 37 400

026from the current year um the remaining debt service reflects um just one bond um that doesn't fully mature until the 25 20 24 25 school year and that is the it was the high school annex project uh back when we got the debt but but now it's uh b which is one of our preschool school preschool programs um now if i could introduce mr thomasevich he's going to go over on the next couple slides which um is some of the most important information the city's raidables and the tax impact which is very interesting even though we're giving uh or presenting a zero percent tax levy this this um there's actually a decrease in um tax levy and he's gonna explain that thank you mr lucy um good evening board members and residents of clifton um

027the main focus when we prepared this preliminary budget for the 2122 school year was the mindset of one clifton this is the mindset that has been set by the superintendent dr robitosi in everything we do at the clifton public schools district um the 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 usi has provided an overview of the 2122 preliminary budget relating to the various focus areas for revenues and expenditures as well uh miss kusolevich has illustrated that this budget maintains the current staffing and district program 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 this preliminary budget will have

028on the residents residents of clifton um and i hope to make it a little bit easier uh but with what mr uzi has has indicated with you know the tax rate actually decreasing even though the tax is flat there are two factors that impact taxes for the residents of clifton the first factor is the tax levy that is budgeted as the tax levy increases it will result in an increase in taxes on the average assessed home uh they have a direct relationship to each other uh some additional information on this slide slide as it relates to the assessed home value in clifton as you see the average assessed home is valued at 178 000 554 this is the value that the tax levy is applied against this is calculated from taking the total tax value

029for the residential properties and dividing it by the number of residential properties on the tax roll of the city so some residents might be questioning that this average value doesn't seem accurate and that an average home in clifton is worth more than 170 that is correct uh that is called the true value or failed fair value to convert the average assessed home to the true value or fail value fair value uh you would take the average assessed value of 178 554 and divided by the county equalized ratio which is currently 50.21 percent um and then and the number will translate uh from the assessed value of 178 thousand 554 to the true value of 355 614 to allow the residents of clifton to get a better understanding as far as how it really will impact

030you know their home value um also an approximate tax point in clifton for the 20 20 21 year that this budget relates to is roughly about 533 000 405 which will affect the average assessed home by 18 annually let me recap what the total proposed budget budgeted tax levy is in this preliminary budget as mr uc has mentioned earlier in this presentation the proposed general fund levy is 134 million and fifty nine thousand two hundred and sixty dollars which he had indicated represents a zero percent increase from the current year budget um in the 2021 school year that we're currently in as well as it's a zero percent increase from the prior year budget uh relating to the 1920 school year the district has kept this tax levy flat for the past two budget years

031which is extraordinary in addition to the general fund levy is also uh what mr uc has mentioned relating to the debt service levy which is 932 000 which represents a 3.86 percent decrease uh roughly thirty seven thousand four hundred dollar decrease from the current year budget that we're in of the 2020 school year the debt service levy has been historically decreasing from the prior years as a result of no of no new debt being added and the annual maturities on the one ounce standing bond that mr usu had indicated decreasing so the total uh so the recap of the total school levy is 135 million one one hundred and ninety one thousand two hundred and sixty dollars that is being proposed um in this budget um uh which result results in a total decrease of

032thirty seven thousand four hundred dollars from the current year budget that we're in of 2020 2021. the second factor that affects uh that impacts the taxes for residents of clifton is the net taxable valuation the net taxable valuation is the total assessed values of the properties include of the properties in clifton including residential commercial industrial public utilities etc that is on the taxal of the city in which the budgeted tax levy gets applied to this has an inverse relationship then uh and 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 because um the total tax levy gets applied to a larger number the total net taxable valuation for the 20 20 uh 21 year pertaining to the

0332021 2021-2022 budget is 5 billion 334 million 50 0.63 this is an increase of 11 million 563 200 from the net taxable valuation for 2020 pertaining to the 20 20 20 21 budget next slide previously um maybe it's all right um so overall let me just go over the tax rate um based on this reduction in tax labor levy and an increase in net taxable valuation the proposed tax rate for the 2021-2022 school year will um is estimated at 2.5345 which represents a decrease of .0062 from the actual rate for the current year uh of 2020 2021 of 2.54 percent this decrease in rate will reduce the average assessed homes school taxes by 11 from the current tax amount of 4536 to now um annually so overall on the average assessed home will have a

034decrease of 11 um annually for for this coming budget year and that concludes the tax impact and i'll turn it over to mr lucy yeah so that's fantastic information that because the city's ratables are going up there's actually a 10 decrease per assessed home in clifton and then one dollar from the debt service going down for a total of 11 decrease in next year's taxes um so that's good that's great news um that concludes the presentation i just want to repeat this is not the final budget i know i've said that a bunch of times um and i could feel we could field any comments or questions from the board and i will stop sharing my screen one second uh mr russi mr levich and um mr thomas ceviche great job on your presentation to

035the board and to the public uh we know a lot of great uh time and effort and work went into putting that together and we uh we appreciate that a great deal uh mr daley you had a question yeah um just couple of things and again first of all our thanks uh thank the staff putting this you see mr thomas miss [Music] uh on a great job um finds more clarification so the public understands uh and ms thomas evans since you had this part the 50. 21 um assessed to full value that comes from uh the uh publications by the county that's correct that that pretty much comes from the state it comes from the state tax of appeals they put it out yeah they put it out annually um for each county and what

036that really does is they they try to um bring the assessed values that each each city among uh each counties have on their tax roll to a true value um you know just the the point is that we're not making this number up uh if you go on to the county uh assessment you'll see this exact number on on website which with mr thomas evans is saying that it's basically generated by the state and every county has read uh on their website that describes that um the next question and maybe more from mr uc uh we're going to get i don't know if they're going to call care hers money coming in but we uh we've been kind of notified but we don't have any official uh notification uh so we can not put that

037figure in our budget so when that time comes how we're going to use that money we'll have the budget it's not going to be in the budget that we're going to send to the academy because that i don't think i'm going to get an affirmative letter uh that you're getting x amount of dollars so uh just want to confirm that mr uc yeah so i've tried to focus on this presentation on just um budgeted items uh so it doesn't really include any the esser funds or cares funds um not only because we didn't get them yet but they're going to be designated for specific um for specific things that for compliance reasons um and also the presentation doesn't uh have anything to do with the referendum either i'm just trying to show just the operating

038the annual budget right i i just wanted to make sure the public understand that you know they've seen something we're getting 28 million dollars in pairs of money always going we don't officially had that money so and until that happens we cannot publicly shine a budget that's that's kind of what kind of emphasized there uh and uh i i think just also um uh my i calculated our proportion of the tax level number i believe it's around 46 percent it may be a little lower right now of the total budget county and and the city and the library and us we're about 46 in many towns that's uh 50 or higher of your total uh budget that you're getting in your in your estate taxes and the other thing i would ask enough for the

039near future if the administration um could give us a updated war chart in terms of uh i know you had one i think last year uh doctor wrote but to show that and the positions that are there so i think that's a good piece of information uh to have uh in our back pocket uh again i want to thank the staff to do a terrific job uh getting this information and this is the most comprehensive story that i've seen since i've been able in terms of presenting to the public so uh there's a lot of detail in there and it's a little overwhelming sometimes but there's uh detail and they're very useful and again thank you uh mr president and i'll do the best of my time thank you mr daley are there any other

040board members that have any questions or comments okay seeing not again we thank you uh very much uh mr russia mr thomas tavich and um miss uh thank you mr president uh thank you so much okay we'll move on all right the next uh order of business is uh commit board committee reports um i again asked my uh colleagues to please just summarize their reports and don't read them word for word for um the public and just to get a general idea of what our what our committees were like um so we have quite a few today so to keep them moving if you could just summarize them as briefly as you can uh first one up is uh transportation food service mr casper okay uh board members present four meeting that evening was my

041selfish chairperson mr james daley mr fahimo avadrabo and mr jim smith administration present was dr danny reportozzi mr martijan mrs genina kusalevich mr eric thomasevich and ms liznick number one purpose of the transportation and food service committee so president smith discussed to the administration the purpose of bringing the transportation committee back and adding the food service component to the committee he explained that this committee will provide a great benefit to both the transportation and food service departments of the district overview of the transportation department mr casper had inquired about the current overview of transportation department ms nick discussed with the committee a brief overview of the transportation department relating to the number of buses on hand the number of students being transported in district routes and how safety protocols are addressed also she informed the

042committee that currently the district contracts transportation routes for students being sent out of district by northern regional education service commission or in some instances the district pays aid in lieu of transportation mr daley inquired about having administration put together a cost analysis to determine if it is beneficial for the district to transport these students being sent out a district rather than contracting with an outside vendor administration will look into whether there will be a cost saving to the district if the district transports these students being sent out of the district mr thomas cevich and ms nick provided information related to the committee about the current process the district performs annually for the replacement of old buses and vans mr thomasevich explained to the committee that the district currently purchases three buses and three vans annually

043through a five-year lease purchase agreement in addition three buses and three vans have been used for about nine years of service getting auctioned off every year current issues a space at the transportation yard miss nick addressed to the committee that the biggest issue affecting the transportation department is the current amount of space at the transportation yard the committee discussed possible options to address this issue b need to expand the amount of buses ms nick explained to the committee the potential need for additional buses and drivers for any future route times changing relating to pickup and drop-off times at certain schools and for the current spacing of students on buses related to the covet 19 safety protocols she estimates about nine additional buses will potentially be needed mr thomasevich informed the committee that the administration might

044be able to use sr2 funds which is also known as cares to that the district was recently awarded he had reached out to the state office of fiscal and data services and the county school board administrator to get clarity if the purchase of these additional buses would be allowed under the federal grant number four current staffing in the transportation department president smith acquired with administration relating to the current staffing in the transportation department and if there are any current staffing issues ms nick informed the committee that there are no current staffing issues and the transportation department has been working well with current staff on hand and everyone has been doing a great job he runs my report thank you are there any um are there any questions from board members okay mr canola i saw

045in there that said we're looking at uh purchasing nine buses um but i know coving six six or nine thanks okay nine yes she has nine yeah take that committee okay either way again but what i i also saw was that we've been rotating buses out every nine years we put them up for auction i know that uh with kobe being here we didn't run our buses very often so i'm wondering if instead of purchasing new buses you just forego the option for this year and use those buses in terms instead of going out and purchasing something doctor mr kenobi it's a good point one that has been brought up with with the administration um as you know um there is an administrative team working right now on a uh administrative and team of teachers

046working on a possible revamping of the elementary district schedule and as part of that proposal if it does come to fruition you may need the additional buses plus the ones that we sell because because of cove but so that's still in the early process of we're trying to figure that out but we may want to keep we may want to keep all those buses and buy the additional and just for the record we were since that meeting we were able to confirm that we can utilize the cares funds for very welcome news yes sir yeah mr casper we can just get a clarification from uh from transportation i believe she said on the on the committee report that it was you know i thought she told us that she purchases six new buses every year

047we do we do purchase the three buses and the three vans but she had suggested nine additional that's what it is is that in this current budget it is not however um that's where the cares funds is going to come from i didn't come in okay okay of course if the board approves we're not even there yet yeah in the very early phases of discussion okay anyone else all right we'll move on to the next report which would be the finance committee um mr daley okay uh the mr president keeping the minutes of the finance committee are much much less detail than the presentation we were all given to by the public so uh there's nothing in the minutes that is not in that presentation and the predictions uh a little more uh detailed than

048that and the only thing i would ask is possibly the administration uh post staff presentation on our website because it's a quick presentation and anybody wants to see in detail it's fantastic so it should answer anybody's question on the budget uh very easily it's very detailed and i'll remember i do have to read one thing uh board members president besides myself is mr cadilla miss beltran mr smith administration president mr jim and mr thomasovich and the meeting went from 2 30 am to 30 excellent report mr daley are there any other board members that have questions about the finance committee minutes if not we'll move on uh miss danny next is municipal alliance um so municipal alliance met on march 11 from six to seven thirty uh board members present for myself uh jim daley

049family and jim smith the district administration was dr arbitozi um and eric tomasovich the assistant nba city council members were william gibson lauren murphy and rosemary pino and city administration was nick villano city manager attendance roll call was taken um by mr mossovich and um mr valano was took the city commissioner's side um so the items of discussion the referendum presentation dr overtozzi provided a presentation to the city council members and the city administration at the municipal alliance regarding the upcoming 168 million bond referendum on april 20th 2021 dr robertosi discussed the projects included in the referendum and the importance of those projects um he provided a general timeline for the referendum from the vote on april 20 2021 um hold on a second of when the work is expected to be completed including the

050estimated start date of the projects and when tax bills would change dr artosi outlined the finance um the financing aspect of the referendum with the state covering almost 55 million and the impact of the on the average assessed home in clifton um dr alvarez completed his presentation outlining the voting information for the referendum mr velano recommended to the committee and the administration to emphasize um to the community of clifton that the athletics projects that are included in this referendum are included in the 55 million dollar state aid dr artosia also emphasized that the athletic upgrades account for less than 0.9 percent of the total project costs councilwoman pino inquired relating to what locations the voting be held at and how the community will be informed about the locations dr arbitrozy explained that the voting for

051in person will be open at six locations school five school nine school twelve christopher columbus middle school woodrow wilson middle school and christopher and clifton high school um dr ritozi explained that the information for voting has been posted on the district's website and there will be more information sent to the community in the coming weeks relating to the referendum and voting councilman gibson inquired relating to the district's plan in providing the information to the senior citizen community about the referendum dr albertosi explained that the district has currently sent out postcards and another postcard will be mailed out in the coming weeks also he mentioned that the district has put the referendum information in the clifton magazine dr artrozzi asked the city council members and the city administration if the district can place the referendum voting

052date and information in front of city hall mr valano approved the request to place the voting information in front of city hall mr daley explained to the city council members and the city administration and district that the district's preliminary budget for the 2021-2022 school year and the impact that the funding that these projects would have on the future budgets if the of the district if the referendum does not get approved dr arbitozi asked if the city council members and the city administration would like to have him and a board member present and prepare a presentation on the referendum at the upcoming city council meeting the city council members who are members of the municipal alliance committee and mr villano were in agreement with having dr obertozen a board member do a presentation on the referendum

053at the april 6 2021 municipal uh um i mean um at the just the council meeting um tennis court projects uh miss danny asked the city administration about the status of the tennis court project at robinhood park mr velano informed the committee that the funds for the transport project at robinhood park is through community development block grant cdbg and the city is in the process of obtaining the necessary funding mr smith inquired about the possibility of expanding the current amount of tennis courts to the five courts needed for tournament play at the clifton high school rather than the robin hood park mr villano explained that this portion could pause a cause could pose a challenge due to expanding the courts into city property due to the historic preservation process the municipal alliance committee will bring

054the tennis court project and possible options back to athletic committee for further review and discussion the municipal alliance committee will discuss with the city um at a later date whatever we come up with in the athletics um 2021 safe and secure grant mr valano discussed with the committee about the safe and secure communities program funding for the state fiscal year 2021 will be 32 that's a 50 reduction from the prior year dr robertosi explained the importance of this program within the district and the district's desire to expand with more law enforcement personnel temporary storage of district buses mr abu dhabi discussed with the city the district's current issue with the amount of space for district buses at the district's transportation yard and the possibility of utilizing the city's dpw site for temporary storage of district

055buses a shared service agreement if needed mr vellano explained the city's dpw site is almost at max capacity but it can accommodate about five to six buses for temporary relief if needed five handicapped spot at school two mr smith inquired with the city about the possibility of adding a handicap parking spot to school too mr velano will look into the possibility of adding that spot to school too status of development project at the distillery property on paulson avenue mr abu drabo inquired that with the city about the status of the development project at the distillery property on bolson avenue mr velano informed the committee that the development project is at the planning board stage annual meeting with the city with the board and city council uh potential mr smith discussed with the city the possibility

056of setting up an annual meeting a committee of the whole with the district board members and the city council members to discuss concerns within the clifton community mr villano expressed to the committee that having an annual meeting with both district committee members and the city council members might not be able to be done but he'll look into it parking and traffic issues at school 16 mr abu drabble discussed with the city um the parking and traffic issue at school 16. mr abdullah will ask the city administration if there's any possible options to eliminate and correct the parking and traffic issue at school 16 mr valano informed the committee that this issue typically would involve the county but mentioned to the committee to have a dish to have the district come back to the city once

057the district's engineer have prepped the area and prepared the necessary designs for improvement to the parking and traffic at school 16. any questions mr president if i may uh midday thank you for reading that it's actually not any questions i was there but just in correction to the uh memo that was read the uh handicapped um the handicapped parking is actually at school 15. mr smith i'm correct not school too and then also just to reflect the bus we're discussing about moving also in the back area of school 15 which is supposed to be used as a playground but there's about six seven buses parked there for storage and that's where the question of the tbw is to get them added there so the kids don't have to mine the buses and play on the

058other side of the lot this way they're able to play um and then if we can um talk about um down the road of the engineers i believe that the uh the school 16 parts in the tennis courts we have to take a look and look at is there a time frame as danny of when we would look at those what do you mean um well probably when you mean with municipal alliance no no for the engineers to come out actually that may be through administration not through you i apologize yeah yeah i mean um i have without administration and facilities could that should uh come through them okay thank you all right also just a big just to piggyback on that uh school 15 buses the buses that are there are not buses that

059are operating in our our fleet right now they are buses that are going out for auction so we're just waiting for the auction to send those buses out so they're basically just storing on there in school 15. so we're looking for another option of storing them somewhere else until the walk should they auction those buses off so that's uh that's where that discussion came from thank you standing anyone else okay uh mr canova so i have a few questions here so give me the buses so going back to what we were talking about before with buses is that three additional to the three that we would let go this year so therefore we would have six is that what we're saying right because if every year we're watching off three we already have the ones

060from the you're prior they still haven't been auctioned off that leads me to believe we have six currently right of the nine three and three all right so it's really only three then technically we need to purchase if we keep all these i'm assuming three and three three and three are there those are the three and three that are that we have in the budget so she's just asking for she's asking for an additional three buses that's what i'm saying yeah so that number of nine not to three if we decide to keep everything so you only have to really budget for three but if the other thing comes to fruition the the handicap that we talked about at school 15. is that something we could just do at all schools is it just painting

061the blue lines and putting up the the sign i think that every school should have a handicap in space yeah um mr kanova this was specifically i believe they have a handicap space in their in their parking lot for the faculty it's maxed out so we felt that in front of the school it's a one-way street there's plenty of space in front of the school that if the city could put a handicap spot out there that that would allow any visitors coming into the school to be able to park in a handicapped spot since there would be nothing available in the faculty lot for them but if i made mr smith that's actually um if we look at handicapped that's actually a good idea combining both of your discussions that yes we happen to see

062it passing by school 15 and we broke to the city council but maybe mr kanova does have a point where if through you to the superintendent if we could make sure we have enough handicapped parking spots um at every school then maybe we can go back in this whole line and say well listen if you're willing to do it there this is what we're looking at too going to all 23 buildings that we have if needed of course but this particular joe was brought to the city council because it was street parking it wasn't because of the parking lot uh the parking lot as mr mr smith said it was an overflow that's why they're using those buses from the parking lot and putting it into the kids uh playground area so which also gives

063an overflow of handicap and there's maybe about 300 feet of empty dead space on that one way in front of the school so there was about a good amount of space where they can fit two or three handicapped spots when they come back to us okay so that's why you went there that's why it went to municipal yeah and uh the school 16 traffic due now i'm i'm familiar with school 16 but i don't know how the flow works in the morning i know they have that long winding i'm assuming they pull into that long landing they could drop off and then continue down the path and they there's like a circle somewhere in the middle and then an exit i don't know what shall they come in or out of um but is is

064the issue with people waiting to turn into there or is that just congested so first of all the issue at school 16 uh luckily i don't have to drive in i walk in so i'm seeing it as a parent um coming in right so when you come into school 16 first of all there are about three different rows trying to get into the lot in the morning it takes me about a good 25 minutes just to drop off your kid from the entrance to the exit point of that roundabout now but that's what you're talking about so that's congested first of all but what i was talking about is there's a railing going parallel to away from mount sorry away from montclair onto your right-hand side going towards clifton there's a railing on the right

065hand side parallel to the school now cars while they're waiting for their students their their kids they park along that rail now remember this grove doesn't have any sidewalks so when you park a parallel to that rail you're talking about two and a half feet maybe two feet between your left mirror of the car and that yellow divided line so what i'm what i'd like to do what i'd like to see happen and i've been talking about for a while is there is an easement coming down of a hill in front of school 16 which is uh also across from that circle you were talking about yeah if we created some sort of easement to create a jug handle where parents can pool in at least if we can bring it over in a little

066bit it'll help us cause of not have an accident because to be honest walking i've been hit i'm sorry i've almost been hit a couple of times just walking across from there or walking across the street so there really isn't so imagine a car on your left-hand side a car on your right you really only have the divided line in the middle as cars are going around and weaving in and out um and that is a county road so we technically can't do anything north kansas city so what mr valano said is that okay guys you want this create it pitch it and we'll carry it so that's that interim for safety can we can we have people pulling that law instead of having them let out on that main road there so that'll be

067through obviously administration because school 16 what they do is and again they try to do the best what they can with what they have from a parent standpoint as i see it but obviously that'll be through administration because i know that the law is closed after school because their lots are already full because they already have cars in there and that would core more that would cost them cause more of a congestion with all the cars already parked remember school 16 is a small school it's a small lot and i seen that there's become more of an overflow and that's why we're having problems i think with all our schools i can safely say as a resident and as a parent as well is that a lot of our schools are being over our overflow

068so when you take a small school congestion that parking lot it'll take forever to get out and forget about getting in i think that's why they block it off so we need to start thinking i believe outside the box about school 16 then again i'm not trying to target 2016 because my kids go there i'm doing it because again yes they go there as a parent as a board of vet member because i see it every day and i see them more since they started but you know there's the wood there's the trees behind it there's that are fallen there's there's the lack of parking in front of the school there is between the driveway between holster and school 16. so maybe we need to do an assignment or we need to do some sort

069of projection or something about all our schools and see how all parkings about all our schools are going yeah we should be thinking outside the box i know there's specifically a couple of schools i know 15 was one of them uh i know we visited woodrow wilson they mentioned i know that five was one they were talking about even in uh facilities there was supposed to be some sort of like bus from the back end yeah so i don't i don't really know what's happening with any of those i think there's like you said a lot of these schools that uh that need some some tlc when it comes to the traffic and parking and whatnot there could be something bigger than the report that we have or something we could do some other submitting

070gets formed to to sort of deal with this so then if i mr smith to use the superintendent and two facilities maybe we can bring this you know knock us down to facilities and have facility committee take a look with mr marcion and the superintendent yourself uh to see what all are the oil schools look like and if there is some tlc that we need to make sure is taken care of um i mean if we're going for a referendum then maybe at least on our end internally we can look at what the parking looks like and what else we need to do not part of the referendum but beyond in the future what other projects we need to put on our list if that works for you mr smith yes absolutely uh mr conover

071yep okay ms password you had a question uh no i don't have a question i have a comment um school 15 was never resolved with the traffic issues uh that was just it went it just went into the abyss and also school five uh we were there was supposed to be somebody that was supposed to talk to the county about putting the cut in in front of the school on valley road it wasn't behind it was on the front end because the buses blocked the traffic on valley road on the side of the school so that they have plenty of room in the parking lot the parking lots were flipped they can push the parking lot back put this cut in the buses can get into this cutting and alleviate traffic going on on uh

072valley road that was never addressed either so i don't know a committee needs to be formed to actually go also school 11 is a hot mess um the traffic down the one way people are triple parking you can't get through so um my my recommendation to to you to the superintendent is that every single school with traffic has to be addressed if we need to get the police involved as well uh there's got to be some kind of relief for the parents thank you if i may miss smith i don't think we need to create another committee i think just if we can through facilities we already have committees going so i might as well just carry and go through the proper procedures but i agree with ms bastard about and but agree and disagree

073agree that we need to look at him but this degree is not just the ones with traffic i think we need to look out with all of them uh across the board when we don't revisit this again um just um okay so we'll send that to the facility president yes i i just want to say that we have you know always talked about that um a municipal alliance and then what the cops do is you know they they do try to they they tick it and um but unfortunately like we just go in a circle with that um we tick it and then it's you know uh lessens it a little bit and then i mean we've always had the traffic issues and we're always bringing them up to municipal alliance and then when that

074happens you know officers go and they ticket the parents you know which obviously causes a lot of mayhem but you know does work but then it it just comes up again i mean it's you know so um you know i do think it's an issue but it's just something that has always just been going around in a circle okay so ms smith committee yes ms bashford i'm sorry thank you um yes it's always been an issue but there's a new police chief in town maybe uh he can come up with some solutions i think it's gonna have to be many different things it's gonna be have to maybe traffic flow maybe car directions maybe cut ins maybe moving of lots whatever it is that it has to take and including a ticket blitz it has

075to be a full frontal force of every element involved in order to in order to make this work it's not going to work with just a band-aid approach once and for all it has to be looked at then the committee has to keep on top of this is because 15 always is a major issue for years school 5 has been a major issue for years and school 11 has the parents came to several meetings to complain about it so we need to we need to really be on this as a whole thank you okay anyone else seeing none mr education is okay these next the minutes of the march 11th 2021 committee the education special education committee meeting please unmute mr casper oh you're muted mr casper i always do that thank you okay so

076education special education committee meeting uh took place on march 11 2021 the attendees were myself as chairperson mr smith as board president administrators in attendance were dr robertosi mrs kusalevich miss rotolo mr doctor and miss rogers the guest was miss rachel harrington number one chs student events mr doctor and ms rogers mr doctor and ms rogers gave us an update regarding planned events for the 4chs the senior prom is currently scheduled for june 17th 2021 to be held in a socially distanced manner at the castle catering hall this will be an indoor event seated at tables without dancing this follows curtain health guidelines with which may change the junior class was surveyed and there will be no junior prom this year senior class day and senior week activities were discussed with plans being developed academic

077awards and senior athletic awards ceremonies are currently being planned to fit the current health safety and gathering size regulations these are being planned as outdoor events preparations are underway for in-person graduation for the class of 2021. contingency plans are being developed due to changing criteria options for several smaller ceremonies and for a full ceremony are in the works to be finalized as state guidelines are released action informational special education update by miss rotolo ms rotolo spoke about upcoming activities for students and nurtured heart approach training for staff she discussed parent training and learning opportunities all which are sent out via our district distribution center peach jar miss rotolo discussed a number of special education referrals for students from preschool to grade 12 for the school year an open meeting called coffee with the supervisors will

078be held on april 7th for parents to drop in and meet with the supervisors of special services the meeting was adjourned at 4 59 p.m respectfully submitted by mrs kusalevich does anybody have any questions all right now thank you mr casper next we have the say county school boards association miss benford yes um the state county school board association met on march 15th at 6 30 it was virtual uh the meetings opened by myself followed by the flags through an introduction of the current state county school boards association executive committee the report from the uh new jersey school board orchestra was submitted by dan sinclair immediate past president dan sinclair gave an update on the nominations and how they were picked uh but i'm gonna it's very long i'm gonna kind of condense it uh

079he the one thing i want to focus in is that say county school boards association is in the process of calling for uh officer candidates to serve three positions president for two years first vice president and second vice president all for two years deadlines for filing a petition is april 15th all boots will be notified weeks prior to the election of the slate of officers the nominating committee will select um all are encouraged to consider volunteering it is a rewarding experience and a good place to start um there is a nominee there is five people um mr doctor um laurie feinstein gave a welcoming to the committee uh he hasn't been on zoom all year with us but he made to this march meeting um he talked about um how it was a year ago

080uh on tuesday of this week that uh they went remote and then on today actually the um governor told all schools to go remote so we've been in this a year uh none of us dreamed about it he continued about how he's proud of the board of education and that he really um is proud of the teaching staff superintendent and the school staff uh he wanted to talk about the resolutions that went down to the state and he feels that um the governor made his decision to move teachers up on the list of vaccinations because of outpouring of support from various um districts throughout the state of new jersey um there is um there's going to be um a article in the school board notes uh published about uh different ways uh other uh all

081different districts are vaccinating or are trying to get their stats vaccinated so maybe when we get that we can publish that so other people can see it's a really good article um there is a program that's going to be on the 24th and anybody can go to this it's the public schools labor management collaborative and it's going to have many uh powerful guests of are on there they're going to have the um the u.s secretary of education the national education association president and he's hoping that the commissioner and the governor of new jersey will join in and they're going to talk about pertinent issues that are going on in education so i encourage everybody to look at school board notes with a link that they will be published in that as well um he talked

082about the budget um he talked about the american rescue plan and then he he talked about um that we are the state of new jersey is number one in u.s world and news reports and he wanted everybody to everybody that are on boards to extend to each member thank you for making that happen so from dr feinstein thank you to everyone frank casper uh we're putting on his and i'm proud to say that clifton and butler are the only districts that have submitted a name so far threadlines march 31st so one of our students is going to be honored as an unsung hero by the new jersey school board association in the swing at the may meeting at the passaic county meeting um from the field kathy hello reported about read across america and about

083house membership to look forward to next year hopefully we'll be in person to do that and she reiterated again about the importance of doing the superintendent's evaluation and that make sure that we are set done by july first um the legislative update was from uh chris jones from the sea uh he reiterated what dr feinstein talked about the um about on the uh on the budget and other uh bills as well the keynote speaker was on the legalization and history of the overview of the law of marijuana uh by um from a floor firm and then we had a presentation from his colleague caitlin klischka uh play a pilsner sorry from the same thing on from the same firm on the uh policies and procedures in the school setting the powerpoint was sent to you

084earlier in the week i hope you get to look at i release uh bringing that um those policies and that information to our policy committee um to make sure that our policies are in place to protect the distributed possible liabilities and that was at the meeting ended at eight o'clock any questions okay thank you no questions okay thank you miss password we'll move on uh our student representative here to give his report uh max rubin we thank you for being here and you have the floor thank you mr smith hello everyone it's good to be back at school i'm i'm going in person tomorrow and so far it's been pretty awesome um it's nice getting out of the house and even though it's a lot less kids than i'm used to it's still nice being

085in the school building um so i just have a few updates um first off i mentioned last week about the mental health survey that was conducted so the survey is finished we had a total of 440 responses across the high school which is a small minority of the high school population i'm pretty sure there's around 2 500 kids in the high school and we only had 440 but that's still a decent amount um and i'm going to have a meeting with mr doctor the student assistant counselors and fellow csu executive members tomorrow afternoon to discuss further mental health strategies and ways we can improve the mental health of clifton high school students and even just clifton students in general across all grades i want to thank mrs basford for sending me the eye on mental

086health document um i read through the document and there was one idea in particular that i really liked that i'm going to um that me and the other csu members talked about how we can do it ourselves a similar idea that was presented in the document we're going to bring it up during our meeting with mr doctor tomorrow so yeah once again thank you for sending me that document it was really insightful um the referendum citizens committee oh yeah i just wanted to quickly um just plug in the website just in case uh people are still struggling to find information on the referendum you can go to the clifton schools website on the home page of the clifton schools website there's a link in red bold at the top of the home page and um

087it's it says clifton votes april 20th you can click on it and it sends you to a website with all of the information that you'd want to know on the referendum the vote is april 20th so um i would ask everyone to spread the word about voting for the referendum also if you're 18 like myself i'm 18 now which is pretty sweet you can vote for the referendum and if you're 17 you can even register to vote for future votes um in the future um and the link to register to vote is voter.svrs.nj.gov register that's voter.svrs.nj.gov register to register to vote and i would recommend all students and recent graduates if you haven't registered to vote yet you should do so as soon as possible and if you're 18 you can vote for the referendum

088um i always just plug in sat testing just in case anyone's listening the future dates are may 8th and june 5th you should register as soon as possible seats may or may not be available at chs and speaking of sat testing i wanted to quickly mention uh there was a digital resources website that me and some other csu students helped formulate together with the media center staff at clifton high school and it's a website that has resources for studying for acts sats ap exams and just various other uh normal coursework uh classes there's a several youtube channels that you can visit there's also six different test prep websites on the website there's over 45 hard copy test prep books and and over 45 ebooks and there's instructions a video on how to purchase or not

089how to purchase because it's the media center on how to take out hard copy and ebooks in the media center specifically test prep ones if that's what you're interested in um and in order to get to the digital resources website you can go to the clifton high school website go to additional resources and then go to there should be a link under additional resources wait a minute okay actually i left out something it's clifton high school website then go to the students tab so students tab then additional resources and then it says digital resources and test prep for students and you click on that and then you're you're in the website um that's that's it for this week um i wish everyone um happy st patrick's day i know that was yesterday i hope you

090all had a good seeing patrick's day uh and one more thing i want to plug in is the chs morning show has been celebrating uh its national women's history month and we've been doing um we've been celebrating that a lot especially throughout this week we've been highlighting various important accomplishments and amazing accomplishments of women throughout history and we've been doing that on the morning show um and in general um we're just trying to spread awareness you know making sure making people making sure people are aware that it is women's history month it's it's important i think it's often overlooked so yeah um that's pretty much it for this week and i will see you guys next board of ed meeting max thank you very much uh as always for a very informative report we appreciate

091a great deal and uh everyone should get to go on and watch the morning show i don't know what day but max really put his skills to work and uh was mobile um on a scooter i believe giving uh his morning reports that was uh that was pretty neat max thank you thank you mr smith all right anything else no that's it thank you so much again being here thank you okay on to um public recognition this portion of the meeting is open to the residents and on residents of clifton the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to and or directly related to the operation of the clifton public school district residents and non-residents are requested if in person to sign the register provided for its purpose all speakers are asked to state their

092names municipality and subject matter before speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and the response will be forthcoming if and when appropriated your questions may or may not be addressed by board members the board asked that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees aboard are discouraged will not be responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of the state of new jersey there's no responsibility nor will be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of the

093legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments okay our um we'll do our in person uh first and then we'll move to anyone that is uh virtual so um mr bruciak you have the floor first thank you hear me thank you dr robert tozie thank you president smith vice president abu dhabi and the rest of the board for allowing me to speak tonight and i just want to thank everybody for helping to get the schools back open on march the 9th and i want to know why the kids aren't allowed in five days a week why don't parents get an option to have their kids go to in-person learning five days a week what's what i've been told is that

094the deep cleaning occurs monday tuesday thursday and friday and an extra deep cleaning on wednesday occurs why can't the same deep cleaning occur on a wednesday as well or on a tuesday evening so that the parents have an opportunity to send the kids to school in person five days a week and please correct me if i if i'm wrong and why are classes only open until 1 pm if it's because you don't want the kids to eat together in the gym or cafeteria they could eat in their classrooms like they do with their snacks every day as well we are trying to i'm asking for the board to give parents an option to have their kids have in-person learning as much as possible the clifton clifton schools has time to lobby do lobby campaigns to

095float a bond for 162 million dollars and they have time to talk about the traffic patterns going in front of schools but they don't have time to strategize how to get the schools open for longer for those in person to have the kids give the kids an option to go in school in person longer i heard from two parents this week that the last six or seven days that their children have been in school in person have learned more in the past six days than they have in the past month so these are the high risk kids there are so many high-risk kids in this district and when there are neighboring districts including new york city who have who who have an option to go in-person schooling for five days a week we need to

096make every attempt to do that over here in clifton's district as well so i'm asking everybody to do the best they can and again thank you for allowing me to speak thank you and god bless america have a good night everybody uh next uh we have uh llama strolling her way down you sure you want to see me there we go all right good evening to everybody my name is laurie la lalma and as you know i'm the president of the cea i have a little smorgasbord of different ideas for tonight so first i want to thank the board the executive team dr robertosi for the air purifiers they are phenomenal we are very happy to have them and thank you for using that from the esser funds we still have concerns over the increase

097of the kobe cases and i know that it's not within the district but it's the community so what i'm asking the community is to really think twice use your masks stay social distancing so we can continue to protect our kids their families and our staff any of us i don't care if it's dr robert tosie and and everybody in the district i really wanna choose from what they're doing in their classrooms the paraprofessionals the nurses and i don't wanna miss anybody child study team custodians counselors secretaries we've all worked hard and it's and we're a family and i think that's the important idea here now people have been mentioning learning laws but i think we're forgetting something important our kids and our families and our staff are surviving as uh a global pandemic so the

098things that they have learned the things that are new they've done a great job granted there is some learning loss but they have overcome they've learned [Music] did all these phenomenal activities in the building their principles have been helpful they've done a great job the vice principals the supervisors so we're all in this together all right now the next thing would the board write a letter to the commissioner for to not do the standardized testing i know all of our unions together have sent that down to trenton and have forwarded to dc so i think that's an important thing i would like to work with you on that if you did want to do that all right oh school 11 they had their referendum um last night and the kids and the adults learned more

099about the referendum and the kids played games and the hsa really did a good job so i just want to let the board know all right rutgers labor management so we've been in this program for a little over a year now and due to covid we haven't really met we met twice right dr robert so um this meeting that we have next week dr robert tosie and i were asked by saul rubin's mr mcmillan governor murphy nea president becky pringle and about 400 other people so we're really putting a great positive light on all of us here i really want it so important and the last thing i know mr daley we're fighting against public education so i bought two books one for the board of ed library about it it's from a professor nancy

100mclean i was in a workshop with her over the weekend and phenomenal and the other one is for the administrators so when you have a chance probably sometime next year but if we can read it and we can chat about it i think it would be a very helpful thing to understand how important it is now to protect public education we have the koch brothers we have alec and they're really doing bad things to public it so i really if you have a chance i purchased them for you so you can read them otherwise that's all i have tonight thank you miss thank you for the books okay now we're going to move to um are virtual callers um mr mountain if you have anyone to admit to the room or anyone to the mid

101to the room yes we have three uh brian illy and then jaxel and then daniel mello so all three are already admitted okay okay uh brian um milly you have the floor brian looks like brian's been connecting to audio for some time so there must be an issue there uh or they've walked away okay so i would suggest moving on to jacksonville next okay jaxel you have the floor if you would state your name uh municipality and subject matter for record please and i apologize mr smith as soon as we were talking about it jaxel has left um so next up is daniel hey okay daniel you have the floor if you would please state your name municipality banner for the record andrea casa 206 is 8th street okay okay go ahead ma'am okay good

102evening everybody uh first of all thank you for all the efforts to make a possible the updating in the buildings i really appreciate that um i have a couple of questions for the board and some concerns one is that the district distributed a flyer about the lgbtq inclusive curriculum workshop called cycle of power and privilege and this was sponsored by the clifton education association even though i'm aware about the new law the mandates to teach lgbtq curriculum in the classroom signed by the governor seems unfair that other groups more vulnerable don't get the same kind of attention and resources aspiring of an autistic kid i'm fully sure fully completely sure i never received a flyer distributed to the entire district with the sponsor of the clifton education association to promoting inclusion of autistic kids or

103a worship open for teachers in the community about autism according to the state data the lgbtq community represents 4.1 percent of the population of the entire state 51 percent of this group are whites however one in every 32 kids in new jersey has autism hispanics are the 20.9 percent but not hispanic history curriculum are gonna be teach blacks are the 50 of the population but not black history in the curriculum and i'm not talking about assemblies i'm not talking about celebrating one month i'm talking about that lgbtq community curriculum is going to be taught in the classrooms systematically and i would like to request the board of education to uh do a workshop or create a referendum and the excellent way that you're doing to educate and and promote the referendum for the updating of

104the buildings in the same way is very important for uh parents to have a better understanding that this is gonna happen next year it's a law that are teach our children are gonna be uh taught about this uh new curriculum and i wanna see if the if the board of education can provide this um workshop for especially for parents to know exactly their rights to review and dispute uh in case that they have a company with personal beliefs or religious beliefs because obviously there is like a conflict for many religious groups over here and i i'm it caught my attention like i said because as a parent of uh an autistic kid i never i never thought so something in in this incredible massive supportive way for this group there is a vulnerable group and

105there are there one in 32 and yeah it seems unfair to me to be honest that the clifton association at the the klingston education association is getting uh put in this and i understand this is nobody's fault i understand it's a law and i'm not saying that the clifton board of education was doing it but yes as a resident i would like to request that you pro somehow create a forum or a workshop where parents can learn about their rights and learn about what is going to happen about this lgbtq curriculum next year thank you hey thank you uh very much next we have um miss uh auroch can we uh shut that laptop off now since we don't need it thank you um miss aura are you you have the floor are you in

106the room all set can you hear me yes we can all right good afternoon everyone i just finished dinner with the bunny for our elementary students so it's part in the background i'd like to say thank you for everyone who came to visit the schools for read across america i know a lot of our students did enjoy the all the unfamiliar faces and put face to names that sometimes we talk about them in our classrooms so thank you so much to all the commissioners and the administration who did virtual read-alouds to our schools and our students it was much appreciated i also wanted to thank all the parents and families that are attending our events this month we had um our special ed department did a pride event that they did uh create your own

107book scene and so they had a bag full of goodies they had paints play-doh they received a free book so our special ed department thank you so much for doing a pride event with us uh like i said we had dinner with the bunny today so we had 400 meals uh deliv handed out for our clifton families uh sila will be doing a spring planting event in it got moved from march to april they will be doing an april event and also uh school 17 will be doing a stem kindergarten night for our upcoming events so we just wanted to say thank you so much for everyone for participating during this time as a pandemic and we hope to see um everybody else out of our next event thank you and have a great night

108thank you miss our i appreciate you all your that you do thank you so much uh miss mao and anyone left in the waiting room nope that's it thank you mr mr smith you know i'm looking up close okay motion to close public portion by vice president albert drabo the second second second by mr rawad okay we will now unfinish this we have none we'll now move on to uh education administration okay we have um ea 1 through ea six yeah one revision of the 20 20 20 20 21 calendar school year approval uh ea ii approval of summer school agreement between clinton board of education and northern regional county educational services commission uh ea 3 acceptance of the 2022 2122 new jersey department of education preschool preschool expansion aid ea for acceptance of school-based

109healthcare solutions network incorporated grant phi ea 5 abolishment of regulation ea 6 attendance report do i have a motion so moved second is there any discussion see none roll call mr awad yes miss bassford miss beltran yes mr canova guest mr daley yes miss danny yes mr casper yes mr abedrabo yes sir mr smith yes motion carries right next under personnel we have p1 regulation p2 retirements p3 leave of absence p4 amendment of leave of absence p5 amendment of maternity leave of absence p6 amendment of appointments p7 increase in salary p8 increase in salary p9 additional appointments 2020 2021 pbsis team members p10 athletic power professionals p11 commentary requests p12 substitute appointments and p13 personnel appointments can we have a motion to move the group motion so moved by uh vice president abu drabo second

110by miss danny gotcha any discussion i have a question yes i have a question uh on on um the one for the uh cafeteria renovation is this just to move the money for the is this just to put it changed it on the long range facility plan is that what this resolution is that that is correct um but we're not in f at the moment i'm so i'm sorry i'm so sorry my screen moved dog never mind so what happens when you come late all right any other discussion seeing none roll call mr awad yes miss bassford absolutely yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes yes mr daley i see him saying yes miss danny he said yeah yes mr casper yes mr abba drama yes mr smith yes motion carries okay next under finance

111and facilities we have f1 adoption of the 20 21 22 preliminary budget f2 approval for joint transportation agreement 2020 21 school year f3 able to proceed with school facilities project cafeteria kitchen renovation chs f4 approval to establish a maximum travel expenditure amount for the 21 22 school year f5 certification of budget line item accounts january 2021 f6 financial reports january 2021 f7 modifications to the 2020 2021 budget january 2021 f8 use of facilities f9 claims list move the group go move so move by second by ms basford any discussion i have the question about um the cafeteria renovations this is to change the uh long-range facility plan the monetary amount have to go on here because we approved it before but shouldn't it state that what we're spending again just quitting that so this is

112so you are correct this is to amend the rlrfp um we're not at the bidding stage yet so once once we go out to once this state approved and lrfp is amended we'll eventually get the specs together go out to bid and that's that's when we'll bring it back okay do we have a maximum that we're going to spend on this project the budget estimate was one eight to two million so can't we say not to exceed in this i just feel more comfortable when there's a monetary thing no because we have no idea what the bids are going to come in at and um obviously the board can reject any bid that comes in if they don't feel that it's um i just i don't feel comfortable okay thank you all right anyone else

113yeah mr canova i have a question on f2 f2 doesn't really have any content there everything is to be determined exactly it's to be determined to um use the sussex county cooperative if need be and then if any routes do come up then um they'll come back to resolution okay um mr smith to that joe's question why can't we be usually when you um put resolutions to have some kind of dollar amount because you're moving funding so can we put not quick seed well at the moment we're not approving funding it's just to join the sussex county joint transportation co-op so if we don't get if we do need and get a route then it'll come back to resolution for um all the information so why don't it just when it had the chart because

114it confuses a lot of people dude because i can see what joe can say because you see a dollar sign right then and there you think that there's money associated to it so you know if we're just approving advice you know the whole thing so i'm just confused just of how the the table is in the content of the resolution but i'm not understanding i think just movie i think she's saying rather than having a table you just just worded to say this is to approve to have a discussion with the co-op and then when we have bids and she's thinking about signing the total confuses people so it's more of the layout than the contest no because it's just right indicated it says here that program to transport eligible student on the following route

115comma avery indicated it's blank we should not be paying a position that's blank with dollar signs i'm sorry if that comes out and at the rate of if it's a resolution that says we're joining i'm fine with that i mean this is just the way we've been wording it forever i i mean we could make it we could word it anyway we'd like but if any route comes up from now until june we will illustration i'm sorry yeah i'm just asking the board are they okay with the way the warning is now or do i want administration to reward i mean there's no line item and there's no budget attached so we're not writing checks to you know we're not writing blank checks to people who aren't even on this list there's nobody on this

116list so we're not writing checks to anybody and if a round comes up but maybe miss vasper has a point that if we just remove the table i mean again i agree and disagree i agree that it could look confusing but i also disagree that there's no line and there's no line item there's no route number there's no school there's no contract it's blank it's blank and it's the resolution is speaking to the um of it could be filled in somebody can handle something in this and it goes into record and then we didn't approve it because it didn't have anything in it it's just not good to have something in it that's mine mr smith i have a recommendation that i saw this issue we can build the chart and end the resolution after

117the program so we'll just read resolve that the clifton board of education approved point transportation agreement with sussex county cooperative transportation program done so you're just improving us to join the transportation agreement and then any routes that we may potentially use with them will be on a future board resolution that's correct mr smith mr daley i i i just found out that our superintendent has mind reading uh talents i have the exact same suggestion as the superintendent i'm i'm okay with the superintendent's suggestion okay are the uh are the um first and second of the motioners uh okay with that change okay uh with those changing uh roll call please yes so f one through nine mr awad mr yes miss danny yes mr casper yes mr abdrabbo yeah and mr smith yes okay we

118move on to the next portion of the meeting is board member comments uh this day the day we start with uh mr daley okay thank you mr president um and i like the speakers who came up tonight uh i like to also um thank um the [Music] but the people who did a budget presentation tonight um including mr yusi and miss kusulevich mr summersever again a great job um it is a woman's appreciation month and if you're looking at some i don't know how many people have seen it i've watched the movie several times uh i would suggest one of the things you might consider looking at is hidden figures it's a terrific story and i think everybody should watch it it has to do with a number of black women who were originally employed

119by uh nasa and they were uh highly skilled uh mathematicians and and uh they were they had to overcome discrimination in the workplace but it's a it's a really movie story that's one of many many things you can look but that's that's one of my favorite uh on the covet issue uh as stated earlier uh this this is a group effort you you know everybody has a responsibility here including and especially parents so uh please please this is not over yet and we'd like to get over or advance as soon as possible so we can all mix and mingle like we wait like we used to but uh there's still some time and effort that needs to be into this uh to make sure you're not spreading it or bringing it around so uh that's

120the responsibility of our parents and individuals too you can't be irresponsible so we're a master whatever you have to do get your vaccinations uh so we can get out of this uh predicament sooner than later uh wish to wish everybody a happy st patrick's day which was yesterday and on the other side of my heritage tomorrow is saint joseph's thing and it's when you eat fair fattening cakes at least that's how i was brought up so uh with that i'd like to wish everybody a good day and uh and see you at the next week thank you and don't forget referendum on april 20th we'll get more at our next meeting thank you mr daley next uh miss danny uh yes okay hold on a second here um okay so um i'd like to say

121thank you um to all the speakers um max thank you for that information on what's being done um for women's history month which is obviously the month of march uh missa la lama thank you for fighting the uh good fight i also wanted to say from last meeting um you know congratulations on the governor giving you a call i was really feeling it with my arm being broken so i just wanted to make sure i i you know told you that um this week and um you know thank you mr alam for always trying to get the word out and trying to help out and you're in the fight for um education um students and staff and everyone um thank you miss kusalevich and mr lucy for your presentation i'm always very informative um [Music]

122and uh i wanted to say you know hope everyone had a nice um saint patty's day enjoying some corned beef cabbage um i know i did um and um i don't think we have a meeting before so happy easter to everyone good friday those that celebrate [Music] for the spring break that the students will have stay safe you know families just consider where you're going and know which areas you're going to again i was listening uh on the news and i know they said that you know everything that we've done could potentially be undone with a lot of the spring breaks so you know just um you know be safe in what you're doing be conscientious you know observe the rules that you know social distancing the masking and things like that um and that's

123all i have for this evening thank you thank you uh mr president i'm also going to keep this uh brief um like always i'd like to start off with thanking our retirees for your service to our district enjoy your retirement as much as you can i'd like to thank everyone for coming out tonight i was taking some notes i'd like to bring back to committee so this way we can look at take a closer look at them i'd also like to thank all of the administration for putting together a a great budget this year with a zero percent increase um so hopefully we can have our taxpayers uh get a little break um and i'm also i would also like to take the opportunity to thank mrs lalama as you continue to um push our

124help push our education forward in clifton and lastly i'd like to wish everybody a happy easter if you celebrate and a happy passover have a good night everybody thank you uh mr casper mr awad thank you mr president i'll also be keeping this brief uh thank you mr lama for attending today's meeting in person um i also was brought to my attention through social media um you know certain students and parents concerning um hygiene products for the female students and our our uh our school district you know that's something really great that someone actually brought that up and uh that's something you know maybe we could discuss with the administration in the board if we're able to you know help in that certain department i also want to just you know spread a message of

125love you know love always conquers hate no matter what the situation is you know we um we are a nation full of uh foreigners coming from different parts of the world and you know uniting together is more important than dividing um you know love and uh love and you know peace will always you know conquer and that's pretty much it you know that's uh pretty much my comment for the evening thank you very much thank you mr wad miss bassford uh yes good evening happy st patrick's day to my family of mcbride's uh my sister traced them all the way back to their heritage in brooklyn i had a great great grandmother that uh that uh lived a very rough life her husband was struck by lightning and died and uh it was a very

126interesting story my sister's putting together a book so i'm glad i could do that happy saint joseph's day to the people in my family that celebrates celebrating joseph say i don't i'm not italian but there are people in my family that do because they're they have uh italian heritage happy saint uh happy easter on april fourth um i forgot mr usey to abstain uh on the check number two zero two three three um i'm sorry i'm a little out of sorts but today's a really rough network and i had to work late that's i couldn't attend um every day should be national women's day it shouldn't be once a month uh one month of the year it should be every day we should honor the women but being at this is national woman's month march

127i'm going to put my my my um my word of uh thank you to every woman regardless of what you've done this past year to get through this pandemic whether you had to be at home for a stay home parent learn how to um become uh not not only um a height person but learn the platform of zoom and every other google meets and every other kind of thing that we put forward to you to the to the people in the grocery stores and the nurses and the the women the women health providers and our own nurses that are working every wednesday the vaccine site every woman every teacher every every kind of um different career that's out there it should you should be on it every day not just one month a year and

128i thank you for everything you do it has not been easy um saturday the 20th marks the day that i went virtual for a year uh like dr feinstein said in his minutes to our in our meeting that tuesday the uh the governor last year it marks a year tuesday that we went virtual all schools and uh some people think we haven't come far but a lot of people don't know the day in and day out of what it takes to do what they do it's not easy to go from in person two days a week and then bring the students to um remote two days a week it's a really rough rough setting and i really want to applaud our teachers and our staff and our administration for doing what i consider a yeoman's

129job so thank you very much from the bottom of my heart with that being said and have a good one bye thank you next miss beltran okay i'll keep it brief as well tonight um i would just like to reiterate uh the need for the referendum we need these improvements uh for the town for the children for the future children this is a unique opportunity that we have to get a portion of the money back from the state and even though we are getting money through the cares act and everything else we this money is not going to be enough to cover all the improvements that we need in order to set our teachers and our students up for success i would just like to take a moment to remember all the lives that were

130lost this past year here in clifton and throughout the state and throughout the world frankly as we move forward is important to remember the past and those that are no longer with us i hope everyone is staying safe and continue to do so hopefully with the improvement of the weather and the mass distribution of the vaccine the virus will start to calm down and by next year our children as well as our staff will be able to look forward to a more normal environment and that's all i have for tonight thank you thank you miss belle john mr canova uh first of all i just wanted to wish everybody a happy biggest day thank you to miss miss beltran for my uh festive st patty's day mask um i want to thank the speakers for

131coming out uh special thanks to uh mr uchi tomaskowicz and uh miss kuchulevich on the the uh report um i'm glad to see more uh technical rules put into the budget this year i know we have our one one initiative and with all those extra laptops there's extra oversight into the itune infrastructure so i am glad to see that after the budget a big highlight that it um of this budget is again speaking to what mr daley said is that it's another year that we're coming out at a zero increase it's actually a decrease you know based on how it was presented uh of 11 and and that just is a testament to the group and how hard they work at this budget and making sure that um you know there's no pork in there

132and and that we have a nice tight budget for for our students and our community [Music] the one other thing i do want to highlight is that as you know we've been underfunded for a very long time and slowly the pendulum is moving in our direction this year i believe it was somewhere around 52 million that we're receiving from the state where in previous years it was only 26 million so it is slowly getting there and that is the work from uh from this board and from advocating uh with the community and coming out as a community as a whole and standing up for what we deserve so that's slowly getting back to where it should be i'd like to see that continue to go which means that we we can't take our foot off

133the gas but we need to keep uh pursuing there and that ties into our referendum because it's it's that predicament that got us here and i know everyone keep keeps pushing it and i'll say the same thing is this is an opportunity for us to take some of that money that they haven't been giving us and get it back in and through our aid through a 33 discount on our referendum so it's very important that uh anyone who is of age gets registered and uh and we get out to vote um mr lama uh thank you for all that you do i know you mentioned one thing about standardized testing i'm on the fence with this one um i think that as a whole people believe in their minds that you know if we go

134to some standardized testing it's going to be difficult and it may show numbers that are unfavorable but i look to the positive these things so i think that throughout all this we're going to find certain nuggets of information where there are success stories and we want to magnify those who want to find out where they are and the way to do that i think maybe may be through standardized testing where you you find out that in some cases and scenarios that students actually have done better than they've done previously so because i guess it's because you know the technical nature of me i'm a sucker for data but looking at the data i think we can find those success stories and uh and hopefully branch out our online world so while we're stuck lying because

135of a pandemic maybe this is something that it will be the future maybe um you know as individuals continue to work for home from home and essentially high school is preparing you for the workforce and for college i think that that is an integral part in what you do i think everyone here works from home a majority of time now at least uh or or did work online on a computer for a majority of the day doing research et cetera because that's just a function of many people's jobs so i think there is some lightning in the tunnel there i think there is some like to be shed on on some positive things that could be happening there so i would like to actually see some standardized testing to see where those things are um

136school reopening my daughters are ecstatic the school's reopened uh very happy to go back they said they had a great time in the classrooms they felt safe they wear their new masks they even wore new outfits um so they're very happy with that and st jones as we call we call it name day basically uh and we all need our zeppoli that's how we our little cream puffs so uh how do you say joseph's thank you mr canova vice president abu jabba thank you president smith uh [Applause] through you into the administration um president smith if we can just follow up on the school 16 and the tennis court engineering and the handicap and all that you know we talk a lot of stuff about in committee but i think the the hammering the stuff

137home with the follow-ups are going to be very important to make sure that committees are not are not just only um having discussions and conversations but also hammering the issue home and making sure what we do discuss are actually meaningful and not things that are not meaningful they are meaningful but we follow up make sure things get done on that retrospect thank you to the administration uh superintendent robert tauzin your in your administration and always making sure that our committees or committee beings are being run uh smoothly and and our agenda points um are brought to the attention of the full board also thank you for the the presentation of today that is a lot of a lot of numbers and information to be put on i think was 18 powerpoint slides um so thank

138you for that to my colleagues on the board there is a diversity committee um on march 23rd 2021 on tuesday as you all remember this committee started out as the superintendent's committee but now is comprised of board members under president smith's administration this year if you can't make it i believe it's myself commissioner um casper and commissioner beltran who are on it um if you can't make it please let me know as max ruben mentioned um and i think we've been quoting max ruben a lot over the past few months great representations of the students but i'll add live a little bit as we celebrated black history month we are now celebrating women's history month uh these months come and go and we should be celebrating diversity every day and all diversity whether you know

139looking and making sure that there is equality for in diversity to me is gender race cultural religion disability all communities all differences and make sure that there is not a glass ceiling for anybody whether again anybody in the community no matter background no matter color no matter beliefs um [Music] i am nobody i'm not better than the next person the person next to me god has created all of us equally um and we are god's children i know this is a public entity but those are my personal feelings so i'm gonna leave at that um on that note um as somebody else mentioned there's not a board meeting before these next couple things i'm gonna mention but happy easter happy passover happy ramadan ramadan mubarak to our muslim community um and i just asked that

140we all respect each other we've seen a lot of hate crimes on the rise i've been reading a lot about lgbtq a lot about women a lot about asian americans a lot about disabilities a lot about various communities and i think just as others have mentioned on the board let's learn from our mistakes you know we talk about saint pat we talk about saying jealousy challenging the irish came here in the early 1900s late 1800s more than early 1900s and they faced a lot of hatred from various communities but now we're celebrating the past day saint joseph's day because they fought through the strife of what they went through but yet we still are not learning from our past and the only and the history is our past and we need to learn from our

141past and understand what the future is becoming to bring so it's more about love and passion it's more about respecting each other um thank you to all who reached out to me regarding my surgery on tuesday and of course last but never the least besides my wife and my mother and my sister the apple of my eyes happy birthday sixth birthday to my daughter uh we went to cafe neo today that was my promise i made her in the morning and we went to it and she said besides cloven is probably one of the best birthdays she had just me and her eating her crepes so [Music] love you babe and uh thank you that's my comments thank you vice president abdraw um i will be brief as well i'd just like to uh again

142thank mr using mr thomasevich and miss kusalevich on the great presentation tonight i hope the public understands um what a tremendous job this is to run a district of this size um with this type of budget with this type of funds and money and to have um mr uc and his team uh put together this uh budget presentation for yours tonight um under under certain some conditions we uh we truly appreciate your uh dedication to all of you putting this together it was not easy um i thank all the speakers that came out tonight and uh speakers that uh spoke virtually the board is always interested in hearing from the public so uh please continue to um to come to the meetings or actually uh come to the zoom uh vice president abdramba myself and

143superintendent uh um on the first week of school um i called dr robertosi and asked if i could go and visit some schools to just welcome the kids back uh to let the staff and all of them know on behalf of the board that we appreciate all that they do and the great job that they're doing in the schools from the top administration down to the teachers and the custodians and everyone involved in the school we we just wanted to uh just welcome everyone back extend uh our thanks um and uh everyone was very appreciative and thankful to the board um and i've asked dr robertosi we'll continue to do those visits uh and we'll hopefully get to all the schools so i thank all the schools for um inviting us in and um showing

144us the great thing about your school and um also some things that we will bring back to committees that we found in in walking those schools so i thank everybody for that uh board members if i can remind you all if you can't make a committee meeting if you just kindly let me know uh this way i can have someone fill in that spot and uh if there's any board members that wish to attend the committee specifically to present something to that committee or um whatever you could just uh ask me uh and i will um if uh there's an absentee or whatever we can fill in uh you with that as well um vice president albert rabbot i was just going to mention we uh had surgery this past week and uh we hope

145that you're recovering well and nice to see you here tonight and uh you join danny now on the uh walking wounded of the board um so we hope that you all uh recover and can get back to us uh very soon so that will end my comments dr robitozzi mr smith i wanted to thank you first of all if i can piggyback on what you said about the teachers um i just would be um would be rude if i didn't to all the board members when we walked around everybody mentioned that we passed on a sentimental you all are colleague board members and they want to thank you very much for the air scrubbers they really do appreciate them and they wanted to make sure that each one of you actually knew how much it

146meant to them so thank you okay now the board member comments are over dr rotozi thank you uh mr president uh commissioners community members i just want to take a moment to thank all of our faculty staff and administrators on a successful second reopening of school um you know so many people have worked so very hard to open up schools and to keep them open and um i believe our schools are safe despite the number of cases we've had over the last two weeks so i sent a letter out to the community today and i want to just reiterate some of the points that i made in that letter in the last two weeks since we came back to school we've had 37 individuals uh that's positive for coping that has resulted in 167 students

147needing to quarantine and 31 staff members needing to quarantine since reopening our schools march 8th we've had to place two schools on short-term closures and one school on a four on a short-term closure that turned into a 14-day closure so i'm asking begging reminding everyone that we cannot do this alone everyone in clifton is responsible for keeping everybody safe otherwise we may face additional closures i don't want that to happen it is i want to keep our schools open i anticipate keeping our schools open but to remain open we all must adhere to the critical mandatory protocols that the district has in place consistent and accurate reporting of the daily covet 19 screening for students and staff members keeping students home when their children are exhibiting any symptoms if you're awaiting a test if a

148family member is positive or a family member is waiting a test please do not send your dial to school staff members don't come to school if you do you are putting other people in jeopardy and a positive test on your behalf causes a ripple effect that that affects so many other than having the quarantine and at a place like clifton high school there's only so many teachers that we can quarantine before we have to shut down because we don't have enough supervision for our in-person students so please very very important also with the upcoming spring break we want to remind everyone about traveling there are quarantine guidelines that was sent out my from the cdc that was sent out in my community letter i today propose to tell anybody what to do or where to

149go i would just ask that if you are traveling please do the right thing and follow the quarantine guidelines i am happy to say that many of our staff members have already been fully vaccinated and i'm comfortable in saying that the vast majority of our staff who want to get the vaccine at the very least have an appointment i'm very comfortable in saying that we've made a ton of progress in in helping our staff and many of our staff members have done it on their own uh but we've also the district has also helped through the clinton health department and through our partnership with hackensack meridian health so that's helping and so there is light at the end of the tunnel but we just we can't give up now we can't let our guards down

150now so please everyone thanks to our business administrator um mr uzi mr thomasevich mr kusalevich on that presentation tonight you know two years in a row here that i'm superintendent that i've seen this board with the zero percent increase to the taxpayers and that's not because of me that's because this board has consistently looked out for the taxpayers of the city of clifton you could have raised the our budget two percent with a simple and and most districts do they can raise it two percent without a public vote in fact this district the board could have raised the uh budget by a lot more if we use bank cap six percent without a public vote but this board has always been fiscally responsible so that goes along to where we need your help with the

151referendum zero percent increase actually a decrease in taxes but we really need this 168 million dollar referendum to pass for the critical needs of our district and for those of you who would like more details on the projects uh voting information financial facts and faqs please go to our website www.cliftonk12nj.us vote just search for clifton public schools it'll take you to our website you'll see a ton of information about the referendum if you have a question that hasn't been answered at a board meeting or the community forum or that's not answered the in the faqs on the website you have an opportunity on our website to type a question you'll get a response in a reasonable amount of time some sub questions that might be a little more difficult might take a little research to

152answer but you will get an answer and finally i want to remind the public that there will be in-person polling on a tuesday april 20th the polls will be open from 1 30 to 8 p.m the polling locations are school 5 school 9 school christopher columbus woodrow wilson and clifton high school you can also find information about voting the mail application forms on our website thank you very much and have a great night thank you dr robertosi okay we'll move on next is a new business any new business yeah two things um i i just wanna i wanna bring this to you mr uh smith through to the attorney um we voted in january on january 21st 21 on uh f 11 and it was the designation of meetings so my question to you uh

153madam attorney is that when we have a change in the calendar does it have to go on resolution including the time once can you hear me okay once the uh once the the board adopts the calendar uh the schedule of board meetings in january usually at the organization meeting and advertises it but then the board can change the dates of meetings throughout the rest of the year provided that they advertise the new date um similar and and in fact that's what happened with this board meeting that was originally scheduled to have been on march 25th and at a prior board meeting there was simply a discussion that we needed to have this beating on the 18th so that the budget could be preliminarily approved there was no resolution that i can recall to change the

154meeting date so it really just the requirement is that the public be notified within at least 48 hours um that that there's going to be a change in the meeting date or in the meeting time it doesn't require a board resolution so um the question is that if we are going um that's one question i had because i couldn't make sick time i emailed the superintendent and the board president i have heard back from anyone on that so i can't make six o'clock on the first time it's just impossible i'm trying to work on it where to get changed i really wanted to attend so i was excluded from that information so i hope somebody's going to brief me on what happened in the executive session because if my worry was that it was sitting

155with the boat on i would be excluded from the discussion so that's something that i'm worried about the other thing i have an issue is that um there was an email about bond shirts i i have an issue with that i don't think we should be buying shirts my question is that if we are going to buy this church i will be paying for my own so could you please tell me what it costs i do not want to take any kind of um like that and it's just to me it's not no need for it thank you thank you any other new business all those in favor aye we will adjourn thank you all have a good night