BOE Referendum Forum 3/3/2021

001[Music] this for those of you whose segments aren't until later you're welcome to stay on screen but you could also turn off your camera and you won't be seen until it's your time but you're certainly welcome to stay on screen yep and we are now live to the public so uh just an fyi even though we're not starting yet we're live to the public um oh [Music] you hi all this is eric i think everyone is on so feel free to proceed whenever you want um we are live we are recording and everything should be available to everyone mr smith whenever you're ready sir yeah i'm just waiting on mr mountain to okay hello mr smith it's it's eric mountain um we are recording we're live so whenever you're ready go ahead if there's any

002issues let me know mr smith can you hear us i can hear you fine yes uh mr man i had asked i told you i could not sign into board docs i was waiting for some assistance with that okay i see that that's a separate issue um i'll be on that right now uh mr casper do you have the mission statement to read okay i'd like to call this uh special meeting of the board of education march the 3rd if you all would 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 the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you uh mr uc roll call yes

003sir mr awad here miss passford here miss beltran here mr canova here mr daley danny here mr casper here mr abedrabo here mr smith here we have a court um mr casper would you read the mission statement 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 or responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world okay the new jersey open public meetings law new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the rights to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions

004of 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 i would like to preface the meeting by letting everyone know that board members or many board members may have their cameras off we have one board member miss danny who's recovering from surgery so we wish her all the best and speedy recovery but other board members will have their cameras off but they are present at the meeting they are listening um and they will

005come back on from time to time so just so the public knows uh if they don't actually see the uh the physical pictures of all board members uh dr robitosi i can turn it over to you mr smith thank you very much good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board uh and community members welcome and thank you for making the time to join us tonight for our community forum regarding the bond referendum a school district is nearly to the midpoint of a five-year timeline that could make vast and long-lasting improvements to all 19 of our schools the public vote on april 20th comes about two and a half years after we started researching our needs and if the voters approve it will take at least another two and a half years to get all the

006work done it's a large proposal with a lot of details so tonight this forum is just one way that we are sharing information our website is a primary source for background for photos for costs and for faqs for instance it includes a 90-minute video recording of a presentation that was made to the board of education if you're new to this idea of a bond referendum the video is a really good place to start but we wanted to find a way to get our expert advisors as well as some of our students and teachers in front of the public and obviously the pandemic makes that a challenge if this were normal times we'd probably be in the clifton high school auditorium uh with you know hundreds of people uh answering and asking questions but uh we're

007gonna do this the best we can through a virtual environment as you can see on the screen there is a list of the schedule for tonight and right now it's just my introduction uh we've separated the night into segments so that every topic gets its fair turn we've asked our presenters to be ready for questions from the public so please to make sure that we can answer as many questions as possible we've invited the public to utilize email so we're not limited to questions that could only be posed during this two-hour form so we've asked residents to send questions to one clifton at cliftonschools.net we'll answer as many as we can tonight in some cases combining them and will continue answering questions by email up to and even after april 20th we're recording this forum

008and it will be available for people who couldn't join us tonight or couldn't find the time to spend two hours listening at this point before we start the first segment i want to repeat how the public can participate send a question to one clifton at cliftonschools.net we will answer as many as we can tonight during this two-hour forum and continuing uh answering them by email afterwards our first segment will be led by the team from dakara rubino architects who have worked with the district for many years and know our buildings very well at this time i'm going to turn it over to joe dicara and rodney watkins thank you dr robertosi what i'd like to do is just give a very brief overview of the overall projects uh and then we could open it up

009to questions and as we go through the the evening there will be more detail at each each section um the project as most of you know are the majority of it is uh heating ventilated and air conditioning upgrades to all the schools except school 17 which is fairly fairly new is completed in 2014. the the improvements include the electrical requirements unit ventilator replacements which basically provide the ventilation uh the cooling and the heating in each classroom we're replacing in many areas uh the rooftop units those serve the larger spaces such as the auditoriums the cafeterias and the gymnasiums and they have a very specific type of system that are also being replaced they're being replaced not because they have not been maintained they're being replaced because many of these systems are original to the building

010many of your schools were built in 1920 1930 so they reached a point where they need to be replaced because they're not operating as they should be so in terms of the new systems efficiency energy savings and also particularly in these times is air quality and we started this many years ago in looking at these and and most of it was for air quality um restoration in your in your facilities as i mentioned it also incorporates the electrical upgrades that are necessary for these new new mechanical equipment part of that is also to replace of some of your boilers and we've replaced some of them over the years but this would include uh additional boilers um throughout the district that would be replaced um there's approximately eight boilers that are being redone in part of

011this referendum um and they include steam boilers and also hot water hot water boilers and i'll just touch on on the other areas and as i said we'll get in a little more detail later but there's also security entrances throughout the district and that is done in several ways one internally with vestibules that they have uh blocks where you um where you have an area where they're controlled before someone is allowed in the building um so sometimes they're done internally and sometimes based on the existing structure of the building we have to add small additions or vestibules and we're paying very close attention to the architecture and the historic quality of various buildings so they fit into the overall design and that's that's very important in the overall approach to this we're also renovating your

012auditoriums in some cases and that would include lighting ceilings acoustic wall treatments and seating there's also another large area is the toilet upgrades your toilets are like your mechanical systems primarily are original to the buildings they don't provide the proper air changes ventilation but primarily the fixtures are very old very hard to maintain very hard to find replacement and plus access is very important to your students with disabilities so that would all be resolved in this overall project we then also touch upon the clifton stadium with the expansion and the renovation to the locker rooms and also at the field at woodrow wilson uh middle school which will include the new artificial turf field as well as the field house that would be in here and then there's also budgeted improvements to overall technology and

013security so that is the overall scope of the of the project and then we can get into whatever questions we're hopefully we can answer any questions that are that are given to me thanks joe um so the community knows our architect team will stay involved as we move uh to the next segment that deals more with a personal on the ground perspective of what it's like in our schools so at this time uh unless there are any questions i don't see any in the chat yet um unless there are any questions we'll move on to our next section we do have some questions so okay fantastic okay so this first question comes in uh for mr de cara architects could the hvac systems be replaced one school at a time wouldn't that be an easier

014way to pay for it well it's a it's a matter of um there's a greater economy of scale when you replace all of them at one time plus the way it's being structured with the referendum that the state pays for a large percentage of the actual improvements the plans would be designed that would go out to public bidding would be would be structured in a way that the work would be done on a phased implementation with the primary importance and acknowledgement that these buildings are being occupied uh during the various construction phases so that would all be implemented in the design but it's more practical more and more efficient in terms of cost to do the larger project for economy at scale thank you we have two more why do the bathrooms need such extensive

015work can they just be remodeled for less money well they are being remodeled they're uh the fixtures need to be removed um the plumbing areas uh need to be adjusted uh and in order to get the uh to comply with the americans with disability act for for full access uh many of the fixtures have to be relocated and repositioned uh which would require plumbing adjustments by time you do all that you need to replace the floor because of the different slopes uh and then you're going to replace the ceiling the lights to accommodate the mechanical systems that would be incorporated so it would cost almost the same amount of money if you did half the job than the entire job thank you last question 168 million dollars for 19 schools is almost 9 million dollars

016per school that seems like a lot and then there will be cost overruns right well obviously it is a lot of money but you are tackling a lot of projects there's a tremendous amount of work being done a tremendous amount of required work being done for the district if you let things go too long they will actually cost you more in the future because they'll cause more damage and things like that now in terms of uh cost overruns there because we're dealing with existing buildings of that age and based on our experience in working with uh school districts that's basically what we do we we know certain things that come up in renovation work with that in mind in our budgets uh we also include a contingency uh of approximately 10 on the overall construction

017costs that were established and sent down to the department of education for their review and approval so the proper planning is that you have a 10 contingency that can be used and will be used to some degree for unforeseen conditions because we don't have we don't x-ray the walls we don't know exactly where a plumbing chase or mechanical system in the wall would be we have some existing plants but depending on how it was built so we assume that there's going to be the unknowns but we've accommodated that in the cost now it's a it's a it's a healthy amount of money that we believe based on our experience doing schools will more than cover any unforeseen items if that those funds are not used and the processes we take public bid they award it

018we know where we have the contingencies um if you if you don't spend a portion of that money um then it goes back to tax relief so if you don't use it you you give it back basically but it's the proper percentage for buildings and renovations of this type thank you very much thank you uh excuse me thank you mr dekara as i stated earlier uh our architect team will stay involved with us as we move on to the next segment don't forget to send your questions to one clifton cliftonschools.net once again if we can't answer everything tonight we'll start replying the emails in the morning and keep responding until we answer every single question um at this time i'd like to introduce our director of buildings and grounds to give us a little more

019personal on-the-ground perspective of what it's like inside the clifton public schools mr al martion al thank you dr robert tasey thank you commissioners and citizens of clifton um as far as this referendum um it's it's a challenge for my department to be working with old hvac equipment we have frequent repairs it's difficult getting parts replacement parts um so i think now's the time now is the time that we should move forward um also we talked a little bit about the bathrooms um there's many times that we have backups in the bathrooms we have the drains are clogged sometimes we have to shut down bathrooms um it's a challenge for my maintenance department um the auditoriums i know um we're talking about renovating auditoriums i'm sure some of the public has been into some of our

020auditoriums our christopher columbus auditorium it's a beautiful auditorium very architectural um the seats are original i mean it's time it's time to upgrade uh our woodrow wilson auditorium same thing the chairs the seatings it all needs to be renovated we need to be be brought up into the 21st century um as you can see from the public that has been in our high school auditorium we just did a renovation there um it's state of the art and that's what we need for our other auditoriums and our other facilities throughout the district um i'd like to take any questions at this time if there is any yes we do have several thank you mr marcion why can't the equipment be maintained or modified to last a little longer okay we have great maintenance got us to

021this point that um in some cases parts like i said before are really hard to come by in other cases we can't keep using the equipment but it's prone to failure we we are starting to see failures where it's very hard to keep them going and it's not efficient it's not efficient we're spending money repairing this stuff when this rent referendum would help us bringing up bring it up to more efficient equipment and in the long run we would save money the longer we wait the more risk we take thank you next question is why has the district put off all of these projects uh we have a responsibility to the taxpayers to get the most out of their money just like a homeowner we maintain repair we put things off as long as possible

022the time has come before because of the inefficiency of these repairs and because packaging everything into a bond referendum opens the door to state aid with that being said and i'm sure mr dicaro uh mentioned that too that this project here is we're going to be getting almost 33 of state aid for this it's like free money so that's the time we can't keep repairing repairing we need to replace i'd like to add too to that al that as as we've been involved in this district for many years we've been doing every year uh facility upgrades so it's not like the district hasn't done anything out of their out of their annual budget they've spent a tremendous amount of money over the years to fix things to improve things at a point you just don't

023have enough money in your budget and you can't keep up the the age of your buildings once you reach a certain age for certain equipment it goes downhill very quickly and then what you what happens is you have actually failures if a boiler goes down during the winter it's going to cost you three times as much to replace it on an emergency basis so that so from my perspective the district over the years has done a tremendous job in doing what they can with their budget in making it various improvements if they didn't do that this referendum would have been a lot more money and plus as al mentioned this is the perfect time because the state through a referendum will contribute about a third of the overall cost of the project including all of

024the project costs so so i just wanted to make sure that the public is aware that the district has done a very good job and in my professional opinion over the years in trying to keep up with things but at a point just like your home things just start to fail just because of not lack of maintenance but because of age we want to remind the community to send your questions to one clifton at cliftonschools.net and we will do our best to answer all those questions tonight thank you dr robertosi um another one for mr marcion can we add an item to the referendum school 14 has modular trailers that were temporary over 10 years ago can we put an addition on or fund that another way that question there i think that would be

025a question more for the architects um but i just wanted to add something that mr piccaro had said too about the emergency what happened last year it was in the middle of january it was a friday night and it was like five degrees out and we had a boiler let go at school number eight we didn't have to shut down the school we brought in a portable boiler and we kept the building going but the reason why i'm bringing this up is because that can happen in many buildings and what that cost the district in emergency is it we could have did three new boiler jobs new boilers in different buildings so that's to the point where we're at now where some of these boilers are going to fail beyond repair and it's going to

026cost us twice as much to fix um as far as that question with the trailers i think that's a question for um the architects to answer yeah i mean we uh part of it too is they're they're not really trailers or they're temporary classrooms and they're they're approved by the state department of education so there many districts have them uh they're a way to accommodate students where you can't put on an addition because of the cost the additions are are very expensive but this referendum is really focused on on the facility upgrades you do have the capacity for those students and as i said it's really for facility upgrades but they've been approved as as you know safe structures for for your students thank you the website refers to ada a lot do that many

027people with disabilities really come to the schools well from a if i could from a legal perspective in terms of the code public space particularly public spaces are required to make accommodations to uh anybody that is disabled and it's the americans disability act whether you technically have any disabled students or teachers or parents you may have visitors and it opens up the district to potential lawsuits for that reason and many districts have experienced that so proper planning is when you're going to particularly the bathrooms as an example proper planning when you when you renovate a space you must meet current applicable codes and one of those codes is with the americans with disability act and it doesn't it doesn't make it any more expensive you just have to accommodate those code restrictions if you're going

028to renovate a space you could do it um for the same dollars and meet all the codes thank you that's the right thing to do thank you how will we be able to have school when all of this work is going on that that's a um that's a fantastic question and as i had mentioned before um when we design uh when when this referendum passes and we start the construction documents for bid we will meet with and based on our experience we will meet with all the principals we will go through schedules we will then develop a logistics plan that becomes part of the contract to the contractors that bid on this and we will identify certain windows we call them windows that a contractor can do certain things in the building we will identify

029when that contractor will have access to the building in many cases certain work will only be done after school hours or before school hours if there are sections of the building where they can work while students are in it those areas are are sectioned off proper security clearances are given maintained to all construction workers so there's a litany of of items that the contractors have to comply with we are on site during the construction process and we've also budgeted for an independent construction management team for this that will be there every day to make sure those things are complied with so as a quick example we may run plumbing we may do a lot of work during the summers all right this will go over two summers and then let's say we're going to now

030replace the unit ventilators in each classroom and this is what we've done very successfully in other districts what we do is we we have a swing space so you may take three classrooms and relocate them in let's say hold for for four days in the auditorium during those four days in those three classrooms the contractor has access to it you know after hours and they come in they they got the unit ventilator put the new unit ventilator in they bring that entire space up back to where it needs to be and then those those those students come back into those three classrooms right uh with a new mechanical system and then we move on to the next three and the next three and the next three and the next three so we're daisy chaining it

031and it's very it's it's a planned attack it's a very strategized uh logistics plan and what's important is that we do that with everybody's input the principles on how they can how they can do that and safety is the is the paramount importance during construction and we and we do that and what's critical is the contract has to know that because it's a cost factor involved which we've incorporated into our into our estimates and also the overall timeline for the project so an excellent question uh but we've looked at it very carefully on how to actually you would construct this with with your your children in these buildings thank you mr dekara and this next one might be for you as well when the kids go back to school on march 8th how are you

032going to handle the air exchanges while the kids are there march this march 8th um i think i could uh help with that mr dakira uh we certainly understand as an administration and the cdc has emphasized that ventilation is really important to mitigate the risks of the coronavirus so um our goal is really to have all of our windows open uh in every classroom but the district has also ordered um air scrubbers for lack of a more technical term which are um portable air filters that clean the air every 12 minutes or so in the classroom so each classroom is going to have one of those because we understand that this that ventilation is an issue has been an issue and that is one of the best things that will be addressed through this referendum

033uh the largest piece of this pie is the new hvac systems and nothing could be more timely in regards to ventilation as as it has been with the covet 19 virus thank you dr robert josie i have one last question for mr marcion how often are the auditoriums even used it's a good question um the auditoriums we use them a lot we rent them out we rent them out to church groups we rent them out to dance recitals we rent a lot um also they use them for the plays they use them for community gatherings um how many days out of an average school year um it's hard to say but i can tell you they've been they they are used quite frequently um i like the high school um before covid we were renting

034that high school out every weekend um with all different gatherings some community affairs and also church groups so they are used quite frequently not only for um school purposes but also even for community um usage mr de cara i have a question from one of our commissioners uh either mr martian mr de cara what is the uh the warranty on the new hvac systems how how long would will they be protected how mr carrie you're muted joe you want to take that sorry sorry um the uh there's very various components um to a unit ventilator uh there's the compressor which has a higher which has approximately a 5 to 10 year warranty on it that's the critical part to it and the compressor portion but generally the unit ventilators will have a life expectancy of

035probably 50 years as as it's maintained the rooftop equipment will have a life expectancy of a similar nature um you know 35 to 40 years for for that system as as you as long as it's maintained which you have been uh with your existing systems so this is not something that is going you're spending this money in 10 years you're gonna have to start replacing uh elements to it thank you mr ducara mr rose if there are no more questions from the community on this particular topic we're a little bit early for our next segment uh so let me just do a couple things one let me remind those watching that you can please email your questions to oneclifton at cliftonschools.net uh we will do our best to answer all of those questions tonight and

036into the future while we have a few minutes before moving on to our security segment do any of the commissioners have any questions for either mr marchionne or our architectural team uh mr dr robitazi yes miss password thank you i i have a question uh that was brought to me and i don't know how this is going to be answered one of the one of the um one of the slides um that was brought to the and i apologize for having my camera off uh one of the slides that were brought to one of the other former um former meetings showed an auditorium that was brand new um and um in what this is a really um important topic to this person uh school three and um christopher columbus has a very um old uh

037but um very um architecturally designed i can't think of the word um auditorium will those features try to be saved or as many as possible or will they be modernized to like a a new like you know modular looking type of venue an excellent question miss vanford uh asked mr de cara to handle that one please yeah um the there's there's several um auditoriums that have great architectural detail uh we would we would we would maintain that we our plan is not to uh change that you have a certain language there a certain quality there's a history there so we wanted to maintain that history and the design importance for that just as we would respect the exterior architecture of the build many of your buildings when we add security entrances we just showed that

038as an example for some of the other ones where how how your auditorium can be transformed um with new seating lighting uh wall treatment things like that but we would respect the existing uh details of of your quality auditoriums okay and the other one that i would like to um to also um touch on and it's been an answer before but i'd like to bring it up again is why do we need the upgrades in the woodrow wilson uh middle school um fields to from from what it is now to a turf and also with a um a venue of having uh a field house or um bathrooms outside the building um i think the um the principal said it best at a public meeting but if this is being taped and it's being shared

039with everybody i think that because i was on the fence and i'm going to be honest about it but when he explained the usage and and he like had a whole list of things i i can't do it so if you could reiterate that that's really important some people that have been asking thank you for that and it is critically important we have a segment from seven o'clock to 7 15 um with mr um malayhi and mr healey the principal and they're going to be addressing those exact uh concerns and the other thing is everybody's asking are we just doing little renovations to the bathrooms that's another thing uh with that's another segment because i didn't see the agenda when i was working before uh is that another time dr robert says this is just

040on the ventilation system um no we can certainly discuss the okay the bathroom is down mr de caro can you uh dig a little deeper on what that what that looks like well the the uh to to accommodate all of the things that the concerns that are in your existing uh bathrooms um they would be generally a complete gut um the uh the floors uh tile would be removed the walls would be removed not the walls but the tile the plumbing fixtures where you have certain types of plumbing fixtures that are not per code today would be eliminated and redone the toilet petitions the size the dimensions would be placed in that so virtually the the toilets after they're done would look like it's in a new new building you would have new lighting new

041ceilings new uh ventilation you would have all new fixtures all new toilet petitions you will have energy efficient fixtures that don't use as much water as the older fixtures do so you'll see a savings in that and also this the bathrooms will be very easily maintained you could almost hose them down not literally but almost that way to maintain it and they're extremely extremely durable materials that'll stand the uh the wear and tear particularly at a high school and uh and they'll be there for for many many years without much without much wear one one other question and uh somebody asked me today actually they uh they sent me a message um if this if if we're not successful uh how is there a schedule from replacing all this stuff and possibly i i told

042her that we'd have to do a spreadsheet and probably list that it would probably probably take decades to actually do the work that we want to do all under this referendum but if it does she wanted to know could we possibly fit some of the smaller stuff and and into our budget i told her no but i really couldn't answer that question so that's why i bring it to your attention thank you yeah ms bassman i think the the simple answer is that if we're able to obtain this money for the referendum then we can utilize our regular operating budget and capital reserve for some of the other projects that still need to be done in the district uh although i don't want to be naive and think that there's a chance this referendum won't

043pass on april 20th uh the board would have to look at that and see how we wanted to uh to pursue getting these projects done if the referendum fails but you are absolutely right it would take decades to do these jobs out of our general operating budget plus plus you wouldn't get the state aid plus right i finally refer to that as a coupon for my shopping friends out there so it is a very good deal it is thank you for answering my questions i really appreciate that they weren't mine they were they were people that contacted me directly thank you we're gonna have one more question from mr casper before we move on to our next uh segment i'm thinking it it may be an easier question but how much would it be to

044replace the compressors once they do go in five to ten years don't have a particular i don't have a particular number they're not they're not that expensive um but there's a there's a warrant there's a warranty on those thank you mr casper and let me just still also reiterate there was a question earlier about how often the auditoriums are are used and um well mr martian did an excellent job explaining that they're used a lot one of the things that happens daily in our auditoriums is our music instruction so that takes place at both middle school music and um in our performing arts so it's also one of these uh it's a community place it's it's where people people go when you go to visit a school to see a show you're going into the

045auditorium and it really um gives people a sense of pride or in the case of the way they look down really i've gotten emails from parents saying you know it's almost embarrassing how embarrassing of shape some of the facilities are so um thank you uh mr dekara i understand you're going to stay on for a little while in case any other questions come on same for you mr marcion uh ladies and gentlemen uh in the community don't forget to send your questions to one clifton at cliftonschools.net that's one clifton at cliftonschools.net we'll do our best to answer every question tonight and if we don't get to all of them you will get a response so moving on to our next scheduled segment another significant piece of the bond proposal is security and for that uh

046it's my honor and pleasure to turn the presentation over to mark gingaro our administrator of climate and security mark perfect thank you very much dr robertosi to our audience ensuring the safety of all stakeholders is the top priority of the board of education especially since we know that schools increasingly become targets for threats and attacks over the course of the past several years our district has dedicated time and allocated resource specific to the enhancement of our security systems and procedures we have provided professional development and training to all of our staff including all of our individuals our students our teachers our secretaries our paraprofessionals members of the custodial maintenance teams our transportation department and our substitute teachers and of course our administrators we put our skills to practice in accordance with nj school drill law

047and based upon the recommendations from the office of school preparedness and emergency planning we have improved upon our ability to communicate within uh to notify students and staff and law enforcement of an emergency situation through the installation of what we call a lockdown notification system again specific to improve communications uh we have recently completed phase one of the installation of our new our new phone system uh that one of its many functionalities is affording all staff the ability to communicate an emergency situation from almost anywhere in the building specific to security as a whole our single greatest defense against a threat is to have a secure perimeter and we have found a way to do just that and control visitor access through the use of what we call a key card swipe id access system

048uh for staff allowing our staff access to and from the building while leaving all doors locked and through the implementation and practice of our visitor access procedures we've also installed security cameras at all of our buildings including our transportation building and we do this because we recognize we believe and we demonstrate that the safety of our students and staff is our top priority we do this because we believe that in the words of former fbi director william webster security is always seen as too much until the day it's not enough and we recognize that providing a safe school environment truly is everyone's responsibility and this is where the clipton voters can really truly do their part this proposed bond referendum will help provide our students and our staff with a more secure learning and professional

049working environment as a substantial amount of money is allocated for security enhancements from the technological point of view all all the previously mentioned security enhancements that have been implemented over the past several years are currently working off of what we call independent systems and this referendum will provide us with an integration software that will both enhance and tie all these systems together it'll allow us to to update and increase the server capacity as both the space and speeds of our our servers are currently limited it'll allow us to replace our aging camera system uh that's currently being used utilized in grade 6 through 12 and it will actually replace and enhance the inadequate pre-k system that the district is currently using it will simply put allow us to just add more cameras district-wide but especially

050in our elementary schools who are in the greatest need of additional cameras this bond referendum will allow us to update and increase our server capacity again allowing for additional cameras more storage and the ability to streamline with all other systems and for example what i mean by that is we can integrate our security camera systems with our door access system and our emergency notification systems but just as important we will improve upon our ability to more efficiently communicate to students to staff and law enforcement in the event that we are faced with an emergency situation we'll be able to integrate our clock and bell schedule with our pa system uh with visual message message boards uh we're going to be able to increase the amount of strobe lights and high volume areas in the building

051such as our cafeterias our hallways our gymnasiums and our auditoriums as well as other areas of the building such as the classrooms and the building exterior all of these enhancements will also help us better communicate with our auditorially impaired students staff and visitors from the physical point of view the implementation of our security vestibules will add that additional layer of security to the perimeter of our building and finally oftentimes when we think about security uh people people often time their mind goes directly to the types of security previously discussed like camera systems and security vestibules and integrated systems if they fail to recognize the emotional security that comes with these improvements over the course of the past three years we have seen a steady decline in the amount of confirmed harassment intimidation bullying cases as

052well as incidents of violence vandalism and substance abuse our camera systems security procedures they truly have aided our administrators and our anti-bullying specialists during the hib investigation process as well as when students are in violation of the code of conduct security cameras often serve as a deterrent to students as they're always aware that for my old coaching days the eye in the sky doesn't lie and all of this truly can be made possible with the passing of this referendum so at this time i would like to turn this over to our moderator miss sam derose to see if there are any questions specific to security thank you mr gengaro i do have a few questions for you but i do have one for mr de cara first is there any safety risk regarding disturbing old

053asbestos or lead during construction and how will that be handled yes there is and in the overall budget uh was a line item for environmental remediation um based on a hero report that the district has maintained there's a knowledge of where any hazardous material particularly asbestos resides that work would be done and removed in a safe manner prior to the actual construction in that area so that when the contractor comes in there's no delay and there's no release of any asbestos that is a very critical element in the implementation of these projects but it is removed prior to uh in close coordination with the district's environmental consultant they will review our documents see where any work is and then develop the specifications for removal so that is done lead will also be handled in the

054same way but the lead removal is much easier than the asbestos abatement because the asbestos can be friable lead is just bagged and removed in a safe manner but those are very good questions as well and they are incorporated into the overall planning of the project thank you mr de cara mr gingaro what good is a two-step entrance when people still have to get into the building to show their id thanks sam please keep in mind that when it does come to security nothing offers a 100 percent protection guarantee but but these security vestibules do provide additional protection by adding a secured space historically the vestibule was actually meant to keep warm air in and and things such as cold air leaves and dirt out of the building today the vestibule is actually an integral

055integral to safety and security in schools but ideally the vestibule serves as a safe zone where a well-intended visitor could come inside and get out of the cold air or rain and begin the process to enter a building and once inside the vestibule they'll find their path into the building blocked by another series of locked doors at this point the visitor can press an intercom button for assistance from front office staff who will receive some sort of notification or alert that there is a visitor and they'll be able to initiate a conference a conversation through an intercom system from the safety of their office area video surveillance will be incorporated and cameras will transmit images to monitors so that our staff can verify the visitor's identity their demeanor and even the surroundings and again once

056this visitor's identity is verified and they appear to be well attended the second set of doors can then remotely be released so the visitor can enter make themselves into the school of course always accompanied by an escort but the security vespers will actually actually also assist us in combating this technique that refer to as piggybacking where a second visitor attempts to quickly enter the building along with the visitor who has already been screened again this would be a significant upgrade from what we have now and of course it would meet modern standards for schools thank you mr drinkero uh the next question is what do the schools already have for security as previously mentioned we already have things that are in place including a lockdown notification system uh scenario-based drills and training and professional development

057to make sure that we're in compliance with new jersey school drill law we have an enterprise level phone system that has a million one functionalities but they have finally been installed in all of our classroom and offices and anywhere where there's an internet jack and it really does afford our staff the ability to initiate an emergency procedure from when anywhere in the building and again as previously mentioned we utilize what we call an id swipe card key scan system again that affords us the opportunity to truly leave our perimeter our greatest defense secured at all times while still allowing staff access uh to and from the school and then we also have our security cameras at all buildings but unfortunately as i said these systems are all operating on independent systems right now and the

058approval of this bond referendum will allow us that software that will tie it all together thank you mr gengaro last question and this may also i believe commissioner bastford has already uh asked a similar question but i will pose it again as it did come in can the fronts of the schools be changed aren't they historic and again this may be best suited for mr de cara it definitely will be from for a degree but i just need i would be remiss if i didn't contribute uh that would have to strongly agree to disagree with anybody where the belief that the appearance of a building supersedes the importance of providing our students and our staff with a secure and safe learning environment as far as the historical standpoint i am going to defer that question

059over to mr takara yeah thank you we agree that security is paramount but we also want to respect the existing buildings we just don't want to make it look like an eyesore the the final design um can be modified we've we've looked at how you can include the security vestibules whether as i mentioned earlier whether they're internal or whether exterior internal is easy easier i'll say when you're putting it on the outside you you don't want to make it look like a telephone booth the old telephone booths if anybody remembers those um so we want to incorporate into some of the similar detailing of the of the facades some are more important than others in terms of the the uh land market you don't have landmark status but the the type of architecture georgian style

060architecture with the columns uh they have to be replicated in certain areas and the proportions so you can make modifications in that we've budgeted them and and there's flexibility in how it's finally designed we don't do the entire design now pre-referendum um you always wait until after the referendum is approved to go through that uh long process in the design process thank you mr dekara that is the last question that i have for um the security section so thank you mr rose thank you mr de cara and mr jingaro i know you'll both stay on for um some other questions that may come up later on tonight uh at this point we're going to move to the next scheduled segment to discuss our athletic facilities uh and no one knows more about our athletic facilities

061than our district athletic director uh tom malay and we also have joining us megan graziano a clifton high school science teacher and the passaic the current reigning passaic county teacher of the year um and also the principal of woodrow mills uh woodrow wilson middle school mr brackealy yeah uh thank you dr robertos thank you for the opportunity to come pre-present this evening i'd like to start with uh mr healey and uh you know his his take on the woodrow field situation hi good evening i think uh i want to thank commissioner bastard for asking that question because it's it's a really good point and i want to say that there's a misconception that this is just an athletic upgrade at woodrow wilson middle school i just want the community to understand that woodrow has over

0621300 students in attendance and that field is used daily for phys ed classes the field is also used for academic classes or health classes it's used for clubs activities intramurals so the entire student population at woodrow is using that field 60 to 70 of the year i mean the only time we're not really getting out there is some of the colder months but for the most part that field is used daily uh and every single period of the day and then even after school hours with our clubs and activities um also what i want to point out is with the woodrow wilson field and safety being paramount over the years we've had a lot of issues with injuries because of the sinkholes in the field they've tried their best we tried our best to maintain

063the facilities there at woodrow but it's time for the turf to come in it gives us a level playing field right now ccms also has turf chs has turf that's really the only field right now that we have available to us for the wardrobe students in the event they want to go outside they want to use an area that's the only area we have and when we get rain say on a monday sometimes that field's not even playable for a saturday game uh or even the following week at woodrow the rain it turns into a swamp it's like a swamp meets a beach it's really tough to walk on it's it's extremely unsafe and um i mean that's that's what i want to talk about woodrow thank you mr healey mr malay yeah thank you

064mr hilly i always want to piggyback on the phys ed side um you know some of my coaches are actually phys ed teachers there uh some of our site managers as well and uh you know they talk about the struggles that they have on that field you know they do their best to uh keep the kids active and keep them engaged you know but uh as mr healey said you know if it rains that field's out of commission for for days uh it's so uh unlevel you could tell that um you know there's definitely there's definitely some injuries uh attributed to the to the ground um and then they also have to go around the goose droppies so it's it's just it's not a good situation obviously we've been making the best of it but

065uh it's something that we can certainly do better um if you've never been back there some of the homes on the if you're on the baseball field and you're on the first base side and the right field side uh some of the homes they're they're back their backyards back up to the uh to the field and the water runs off and then there's a hill and that the water runs down the hill right onto the field and it sits at home plate it sits on first base it sits in the outfield and it sits for days and um you know al marcion and eddie maldonado do an excellent job of getting the grounds guys the grounds guys are fantastic you know they do their best to drain the field but there's only so much they

066can do um pumping pumping the field cutting the grass lining the field um you know it's a lot and as far as phys ed goes i mean you know what we've seen now uh you know particularly during covet sometimes school is the only exercise that some kids get um you know so now you have kids who who have the opportunity they they don't i should say they don't have the opportunity to walk to school walk up and down the steps walk walk to class um you know participate in phys ed on a daily basis or at least uh twice a week you know this gives them the opportunity to be active every day you know whether they're part of the club when we first turfed the field at um at clifton high school the clubs

067actually one of the clubs used it for a kickball tournament with all clubs and it was a great fundraiser for them it was a great opportunity for kids who don't participate in sports to go out and compete to uh you know to be healthy so there are a lot of good things that that we we didn't think were gonna happen that actually happened um on the baseball side i mean it's actually embarrassing that a group four school plays on that field a few years ago we had a catcher who was being looked at by the chicago cubs and one of their scouts came to the field and i was mortified um it it it was bad you know he he was wondering how his school that that's had a lot of success in baseball um

068can look this way we also have the same issue with um you know it's not just for baseball it's for uh freshman and jv boys and girls soccer so you're talking about 80 to 100 kids there in the fall um you know they use the field for for sub varsity practices and games um so it gets a lot of use by by our athletes uh the district also spends quite a bit of money um you know seeding the field we had the geese police which is at which is uh a company that comes with dogs and chases the police so we're spending money there we're spending money on overtime um many times on a saturday morning we have you know i'll meet the grounds guys there at 7 or 8 a.m they're trying to pump

069the field they're trying to dry the field um they're putting quick dry down they're putting extra clay down you know they're really working hard but there's nothing that they can do to get that field playable so i think that you know our kids have missed out on a lot of opportunities um turfing the field it's certainly the right time it's definitely the right time when the state is going to pick up a third um so that's all i have on that field thank you mr malahi address the weight room now mr rosen um yeah sure i'll ask your questions in a little bit go ahead okay um excuse me for one second so we're trying to trying to do this with the two kids in the house it's not easy i apologize um the we

070down at the stadium we've got um a field house where we where we lift weights and it's it's um you know it's used for football it's used for two seasons of track and you're talking about hundreds of kids um we've gotten to the point where our programs have become so successful that we we're attracting a lot of kids you know football typically has between 85 and 100 kids a track program uh when you combine boys and girls can easily be 140 to 160 kids many of them pretty much all of them use the weight room at some point so you know we spent we spend more time trying to schedule the weight room between those programs and and again it's used it's used year round um you know right now during cove but obviously we're

071not using it because of uh you know the various regulations but you're talking about the the strength of our programs you're talking about you know the bigger and the faster the stronger your athletes are obviously the better your programs are so what we've done with this weight room which is clearly obsolete um way too small for for a school hour size i think we're giving ourselves now the opportunity if this referendum passes to really provide our our athletes with a real experience a real athletic experience and prepare them for college and mr if i could just add to that the uh cost of the of the weight room project is 0.3 of this entire referendum uh which is important the this this whole athletic piece is a very small small part of the total cost

072of the referendum but does impact so many of our of our kids so i think that's important for the community to to know um okay mr rose do we have any questions or mr hilly did you have something else you wanted to add we do have about two questions um they may be they may have been uh partially answered by both mr healey and mr malahi but i will ask them this question comes in it says i don't consider sports facilities to be a necessity why is a terp field and weight room included in this proposal yeah i think uh it's a it's a it's a great question and that's what we talked about it's not an athletic upgrade for us it's a facilities upgrade the fact that the 1300 students at woodrow are able

073to use this on a daily basis throughout the course of the year is huge for us we don't have to worry about the geese and as mr malaya said we have the geese police that come it's very expensive service that field has become a landing pad for the geese um just going on the field and having 200 300 students move around on that field coming back into the building becomes a huge sanitation issue because then we're cleaning up the hallways with all the geese droppings that was now brought into the school um like i said when it rains we can't use that field for weeks one of my first years at woodrow we had rain at the beginning of june and we weren't able to have our final field day two weeks later because the

074rain was just too much the field couldn't handle it it's a huge issue put aside the sports postponements not being able to use that field weeks on end is a huge imposition for our school especially when we're loading all these students into the gyms and we don't have that facility to go outside especially in the covet era to get outside to get some fresh air i think it's just so critically important so that's the misconception everyone believes that this is an athletic upgrade they see a turf field and they associate that with athletics it's not an athletic upgrade it's a facilities upgrade and it benefits the entire community at woodrow and during the course of a student's career in clifton public schools that field is going to be used by half the students in clifton

075as they come to either woodrow or christopher so it's a it's a great it's a great item for us if we're able to have this referendum end up being improved all right thank you mr healey i'd like to add something to that too is also as your programs grow it's an integral part of your program in your in your community and your school but if you look at you know that the district over the years has been very innovative and using spaces for those for those facilities like your weight room in areas that were never intended to be a weight room um very creative um but you reach a point where you have to look is it is it crowded as it's safe is it that so you're doing a very good job uh cannibalizing

076old spaces to make that work but you've reached a point in time with the program and the elements that you're providing your students in your community to have a proper safe place and that required a very modest addition to accommodate that thank you for that you know it's also been my position as my 13th year as an athletic director i prior to that i spent eight years as a as a head coach and a teacher but it's always been my philosophy and uh you know it's now become the philosophy of the clifton athletic department that athletics is an extension of the classroom so to say that something was purely athletic you know we remind our kids all the time that that those student athletes remind our our coaches that they're teachers first um so you

077know i think that's an important that's a really important part of this project and it also hits a large amount of numbers you know we have just under 3 000 kids at clifton in high school and on a typical year we have between 1 000 and 25 and 1100 athletes so over a third of our over a third of our student population um is athletes and again a hundred percent of our population takes phys ed so you know this is something that really that really reaches quite a few uh people we also run camps out you know as far as the woodrow field goes uh we run soccer camps and baseball camps which are huge they're very important you know obviously for the kids and the parents of clifton uh residents but you know it's

078also really important to our feeder program it's important that our coaches meet the kids at an early age and our coaches and our kids meet our coaches at an early age and um you know those programs have been really successful and it's unfortunate because many times those those camps in the rain get moved into the woodrow wilson gymnasium so it would be great to be able to have them outdoors um you know where they belong i think it would it would help everybody thank you gentlemen mr rose if i could just add i think it's i know we've pointed this out but the state also believes as this is an educational facility as they are putting money um from the referendum which they rarely do for you know athletic upgrades like this that we're speaking

079about i know money and architects talk about this too um we're getting a discount here you know they're the state is deemed that these are you know bona fide educational facilities that we can receive money for um and again i know dr robertosi mentioned it i think this is less than one percent of the entire referendum that we're talking about and it benefits so many students across clifton mr rose one more question it was answered but i do want to um i do want to mention it this was how many student how many students are athletes it sounds like we're making a big changes for a small percentage this was already answered mr malay he did answer that but if you want to expand upon it that's fine yeah no i think just to echo

080you know you know mr healey and dr robertosi that again less than one percent of this project is going to go um just an hour in our case to one third of the high school's population actually more than a third of the high school's population so it does it is a very far reaching project thank you i do have one more question uh regarding the um the gyms and this may be best suited for mr dekara are you going to improve the air quality for both gyms yes as part of the as i mentioned uh earlier in the first segment um part of the uh hvac upgrades is your what we call course spaces which are your auditoriums your cafeterias and your gymnasiums so they they're serviced generally by rooftop units the mechanical systems are

081on the roof and then they're they're ducted into the spaces uh and those those would be included thank you mr de cara and dr robert tosie that is that concludes the questions for that segment thank you uh mr malahi mr healey mr de cara mr rose i want to remind those watching that you can send your questions please email your questions to one clifton at cliftonschools.net we will do our best to answer all those questions tonight and continue responding after tonight's event at this time we're going to move into what might be uh could be the most eye-opening part of our community forum uh we've heard a lot of information from our our experts uh and from our administration uh but we want to be sure that we hear from the people who are on

082the front lines every day and that's our teachers and our students who utilize our buildings each day so with us tonight we have two uh wonderful students max rubin who's a senior and mariam gabriel who's a freshman also joining us tonight uh megan graziano a clifton high school science teacher as mentioned earlier the passaic county the reigning passaic county teacher of the year dana murdoch who is a bsi teacher at school 12 and also a parent in our district so she'll bring [Music] that perspective to the discussion and magdalena rotillo uh also a grade four teacher and parent at school 13. so welcome to our students and staff i'll turn it over to you at this time i can go first uh thank you and dr robertosi commissioners and clinton residents um thank you for

083having me here tonight um like dr robert as you mentioned i'm a fourth grade teacher at school 13 in clifton i'm also a clifton resident i've moved here over 14 years ago and two of my children also attend clifton public schools one of them is actually going to be going to woodrow wilson next year so he's really looking forward to that and my second one is going to become a second grader at school 13. so um i hope i will be able to help answer some of your questions today thanks magdalena megan and dana would you uh want to introduce yourselves sure hi i'm megan graziano um as dr robert jose said i am a freshman biology teacher over at clifton high school um again i'm here to help in any way possible answer the

084questions that the public may have about how these changes could help improve education for our students thanks megan dana all right well i'd like to also say thank you for having me it is a privilege and an honor to be here um i have been i'm a cliff tonight i've been born raised and i kind of say going nowhere but i'm very proud of that fact i went to school 13 and i was a graduate of woodrow wilson as well as clifton high school um i've been teaching at school 12 in clifton for 20 years and i do have two children in the district um my son is a fifth grader at school 16 um and my daughter is a freshman she is actually at depaul um but i would like to just throw out

085to the community and to all of our everybody listening that this project is an investment in our homes and an investment in our community and i really urge you to ask your questions and to get your information because i do think we would be doing our students and our town a disservice if we didn't take the opportunity to do these things now a lot of these things that we're hearing about are improvements that should have been done a long time ago and clifton has missed many opportunities to make these improvements so i'm happy to be a part of this and i hope i hope that you hear what we're saying and i hope that you do support this um so again anything that you have to say or any questions you have um let us

086let us answer them for you so thank you thank you dana miriam hi my name is madam chabrill i've been in the district for about i believe eight years i've seen the good i've seen the bad i've seen it all i've been to school 12 i'm a former student of ccms so i see the potential in these schools and it's kind of hard for residents who haven't been in the school district and the school system to see what were experiences because they're on the outside looking in but we're here to tell you how it is on the outside we're here to tell you that this is what's going on and we as a community can come together and make it better for not only me myself and my staff and and you know everybody in

087the school district but the future generations to come as well so just ask your gen your just general questions any specific questions and we're just here to answer them um also i just want to say thank you mr um dr artosi for having me here and thank you everybody for giving me this opportunity it is a pleasure and it's great to see miss murdock she was actually my teacher in fifth grade so i'm pretty psyched about that as well well miriam it's it's me and and the board of education who will be thanking you for um just being a bright light in our district i've said that about you since i first met you and you just bring a presence a very strong presence and we're happy to hear from you we want to hear

088your perspective so let me introduce max rubin and then we'll get on to the questions max good evening everyone my name is max rubin i'm the senior representative to the board of education so you guys probably have seen me at all the board of ed meetings i speak at all the board of ed meetings and let the district know what's going on from a student's perspective i'm also the president of the clifton student union where we consistently listen to student voices allow students to speak their minds and see what we can do about their various complaints or things that they see that could be better in the district and we bring that up to the administration and the board of ed and we work together to make clifton high school and the clifton district in

089general just a better place for everyone so i've been in the clifton school district for 13 years um i started in kindergarten at school nine and spent six years at school number nine um and then i spent three years at christopher columbus and now i'm a senior at clifton high school very proud senior of clifton high school and the biggest reason i wanted to come to this meeting tonight isn't because isn't to complain about clifton and just say oh this needs to be better this needs to be better this needs to be better it's because i've had a fantastic experience in my 13 years at in the clifton school district and if i didn't have a fantastic experience if i didn't enjoy the time i've spent in the clifton school district i wouldn't care enough

090to come tonight because i'm a senior i'm going to be gone in a few months i'm not going to see any of these improvements but i do care about the future generations because i know that if all these schools get the improvements that they need the amazing staff and the amazing students can continue to learn at a better pace with better qualities in each of their classrooms if i didn't have a great experience in clifton high school and in all of my clifton school experience at school 9 ccms i probably wouldn't have come tonight i would have said you know what i'm not going to be there why should i care but i do care because the staff and students are so special and they deserve the best possible facilities the best possible fields classrooms

091bathrooms everything just to make their lives as easy and as great as possible so yeah well said max thank you very much i'm going to turn it over to the questions now mr rose hi thank you everyone so here's a question i went to school when there was no air conditioning and that was fine why should schools be air-conditioned now okay well i'm gonna take that one as a teacher in the district because um we see it all the time in schools you know what we want the children to do when they come to school is to perform their absolute best we want them to work hard we want them to stay engaged we want them to stay focused and then in those hot months we put them in the worst possible scenario to do

092that so it's kind of like an oxymoron it's a double-edged sword how can we expect the best from them when we're not giving them the best environment um so that's kind of my point i'm sure everybody else can contribute to something there i can add to it um that also once the allergy season hits uh we see kids that come into school with red puffy eyes sniffles some of them have like almost barking coughs and it's just not a situation that's conducive to conductive to paying attention in class so air conditioning will definitely help solve that kind of problem i think that's an excellent perspective from our teachers uh i would just like to add that there is a security piece to the hvac system so and first it's not just i would remind the

093community it's not just air conditioning it's new heating ventilation and air conditioning brand new state-of-the-art efficient hvac systems but it's also a security issue driving by schools in in may and june and all the windows are open um we make our front entrances uh secure like fort knox but it's not gonna help if every classroom window is open on the first floor if somebody really wants to get in so you know new hvac systems also allow us to keep our windows closed and locked do any of the students want to uh touch on that uh um yeah i would like to add um so as a student of the high school for four years um there are certain classrooms in certain areas of the building that have very very poor air conditioning and it's really

094distracting to learn because we're so focused on how hot we are and how much we want to just be out of the classroom that we don't have the right mindset to learn um specifically the east wing of the high school is a big example it's the newest wing and it looks really nice but the air conditioning especially on the upper floors is very very poor and whenever i'm in a classroom there it's very hard to focus so it takes away from like uh miss murdoch said it takes away from the learning experience um also the point of well when i was in school when i was younger i didn't have air conditioning why do kids nowadays need air conditioning well i mean that argument basically you're saying we shouldn't evolve as our technology and as

095facilities evolve over time we should evolve with it we shouldn't just stay in the same place for decades just because it worked one time in the 1800s people traveled by horseback and that worked out fine enough back then but we have cars nowadays so we don't travel on horseback everywhere we drive places because that technology is available to us we have computers now so which are more efficient than right bringing 10 different notebooks to write in each class it's the same thing with air conditioning back then yeah we didn't have air conditioning but they made it work but now that we have the technology we would be silly not to use it especially when we have this opportunity to get so many funds to easily get this air conditioning so yeah that's my two cents

096thanks max do we have another question mr rose yes it's more of a s question statement but perhaps you like to address it do the sinks drain and do the toilets flush that's all we need for public school bathrooms i can comment on that really quickly um a lot of our bathroom facilities don't work on a regular basis so in the bathroom i happen to teach up on the third floor in east wing we have one bathroom per floor and oftentimes when we send a student out to the bathroom the bathroom on that particular floor may be closed that could cause a student to have to travel down to a completely different wing just to use the bathroom facilities and not only is that inconvenient and you want it to be sterile and sanitary as

097well but now they're missing academic time you know there's nothing worse than you know a student missing 20 minutes worth of class time because they had to wait on a line that was 15 students long just to use the bathroom you know we would love nothing more than to be able to have updated facilities just so our students could spend more time in the classroom engaged in academic work rather than trying to use the bathroom thanks mrs craziano excellent points anyone else i can actually add on to that um i've had i teach fourth grade and um in the past i had so many students that were too terrified to even go to the bathroom because they were afraid that the locks are not going to work or because they were telling each other scary

098stories and i mean we're talking about 10 year olds but nope it's actually happening in elementary schools they tell each other scary stories because our bathrooms are so outdated and as a homeowner you know when my bathroom becomes outdated what do i do i update it right so um many of our buildings like our architects mentioned that they're almost 100 years old so i think it's time to definitely get them upgraded for our kid's sake so that they don't have to complain you know i don't want to go to the bathroom i'm going to go to the nurse tell her that my tummy hurts and then go home because i'm too scared or too uncomfortable using them and those are actually true stories so i thank you i don't um i think miriam was gonna

099say something mr rose certainly i think mariam you're muted or frozen so if you had a comment did you want to unmute yourself miriam acting up can you guys hear me okay now we can yes now you're fine thank you um i'm sorry okay back on track but i can definitely relate to that because i remember being in elementary school and i was taller than the stall itself so i would feel uncomfortable going into the bathroom because i felt like i was invading other people's space and i didn't want to look at them when i was entering the stall so um i would usually hold it in until i went home and i don't know if anybody experiences that but that's pretty painful you know going probably six seven hours a day holding it in

100to go home and then you know release yourself but i just feel like if it flushes if the sink works we shouldn't settle for less you know settle for the basics i feel like if we have the opportunity to better our facilities we should definitely take it ma'am i heard you mentioned one time as a former student of columbus that oftentimes the bathrooms were in disrepair and you would have to travel to get to a different bathroom can you just talk about that experience a little bit just like miss graziano said um when a bathroom isn't working definitely i'd find myself walking across the school or going to different floors to try and find a bathroom that works and when i get there what do i find i found a big line so that probably

101takes 20 minutes of my class time where i could have spent that time learning about science or langston hughes or anything like that but i was spending that time trying to get to the bathroom and most times i'll be honest i just gave up i was like you know what it's not even worth it i'm just gonna go back to class because i realized that this was interfering with my education um and i was like you know what if i can hold it in i'll probably just try and wait till you know my student worker because we had a bathroom there um but yeah that's that's something that many students relate to and i feel like if we can make it better like max said we have to evolve with throughout time if it was

102good enough for you we shouldn't settle for less we should always try and aim to better our our facilities so our future generations have a better shot at um you know using these festivities well said thank you miriam thank you mary yes yes mr wild yeah i just had a small comment um you know i uh for max miriam and all the teachers and staff thank you guys very much for joining today and uh speaking i just want to you know just give out 1.2 you know for the people asking the questions when we're telling our staff and our students you know you guys should basically have the most bare minimum when it comes to these facilities we're basically telling our students no one forget about the building stuff why don't you guys give us

103the let's let our staff and teachers give us the bare minimum education to our students let our students get the bare minimum education basically you know what the the least and least expected is good enough for us we're not setting the expectations not only educational wise to a high part just what are we teaching this generation minimum is acceptable we're supposed to be pushing our students not only educationally but you know morally uh emotionally physically and all aspects you know set the bar high you want success it's not just hand it over to you you have to work hard for it so giving these students a facility as a former student of school 3 and ccms to be totally honest with you i'll be mortified going into these restrooms they're very like you know like

104one of the teachers stated they're very creepy the ventilation the lighting the plumbing was poor and i'm 26 years of age now so i haven't been in elementary school in probably 15 plus years and it was bad then what happened since then and when it comes to air conditioning when people are like back then we went to schools without air conditioning guess what as society changes climate changes you know we're going through you know record number heat uh in springtime sometimes compared to summer times later months so basically just giving our children the bare minimum we're not basically setting them up for a stronger educational overall experience and that's going to affect our future generations our future leaders and clifton you know god bless our district we have a lot of students and so it's

105our moral obligation to do within our powers and anything we physically can to make sure everybody can succeed and a lot of our staff that literally work around the clock we need to just give them you know as someone that goes to work many of us work in offices and doctors and engineers you know if we had a job uh that didn't have air conditioning or proper plumbing we'll be complaining to our company so why do we expect our staff to take the one you know what you guys are teachers it's always the teachers and the students that we always forget about or push them to the side and for me as you know i always have the stance dr robertosi your staff your districts our students you guys are number one priority in my

106point of view and i know the rest of the board will agree we're gonna do anything within our means and our powers to make sure you guys have a bright future for the generations now and to come and to our teachers thank you guys for showing up today our students keep up the good work we are here we support you guys and hopefully we can get this referendum to pass thank you thank you mr awad mr rose uh some more questions yeah i just have right is something about the bathrooms really quick okay um yeah and i just wanted to echo what um mr awad said about um yeah if we're expecting students to just have the bare minimum toilet facilities should we also have the bare minimum education and that just brought to mind

107how our teachers and our students are so hard working and so great that we deserve facilities that at least match the level of work they put into their job and it goes for like when there's another event at our school let's say families from outside of our school come into our school and they have to use the bathroom it would be kind of an embarrassment for an adult or even another student from another school to walk into into one of our building's bathrooms and see a mirror that is either so scratched up that you can't see yourself through the mirror you could see like a tiny little blur or a sink with no mirror at all where maybe a place where a mirror should have been and it's just like an exposed pipe or something

108and you go to the toilet the stalled in the stall door doesn't open all the way that's just an embarrassment our staff and students just simply deserve better there's no way around it yeah i'd also like to add on to that um when the question was brought up why should we have air conditioning we also have to include people who suffer from neurological disorders you know i myself i don't suffer from any neurological disorder and i'm fortunate and i recognize my privilege but i'm personally i get frustrated when it's hot out and i can't learn because i'm i'm too busy wait feigning myself off trying to cool off and you know as you can see with all this hair even if i chopped it off it was like this big mane on my head and

109you know it's it's kind of unbearable um but i can only imagine you know people who suffer from neurological disorders um a sibling of mine actually suffers from tourette syndrome which um includes ticks which is involuntary movement and that can be triggered due to extreme levels of heat so i think that as diverse as clifton is we all need to keep in mind people who suffer from neurological disorders or other disorders that may be affected by extreme heat or extreme cold weather so um that's just my two cents on that thank you thanks miriam mr rose we have a few more um minutes for questions for the students and teachers we're going to turn it over to our financial advisors and then at the end we're still going to bring our teachers and students back

110uh for for more questions and answers so uh whatever we don't get to now mr rose we will get to at the end okay the next question is why are we upgrading school auditoriums they don't need anything fancy um well i'll just kind of give my two cents here in regards to the auditoriums um i think that they do provide a lot we have children that excel in the arts and our schools put on fantastic shows from the high school down through the middle schools i was lucky enough that my daughter was in a few of them but sitting there in those chairs for two hours for a performance definitely is not um pleasant um you know grandparents and parents are old and elderly it's definitely not a great environment for them um and if

111we make these investments and we do these improvements in our facilities there's also a chance in the end that we could rent out facilities and also have it as a source of income so we open ourselves up for more opportunities if we take advantage and do these improvements now so thank you no problem i think at this point we're going to have to move on to the financial segment but i will circle back to the remainder of the questions for this segment after we reach the financial section so thank you everyone thank you mr rose the uh we're gonna wind up the night i just want to remind those watching in the community to please send your questions to one clifton at cliftonschools.net one clifton at cliftonschools.net and tonight we're going to wind up at

112our last segment we'll be about finances um some people may be tuning in just for this uh particular segment excuse me everyone knows the quality of our schools is is really tied to the quality of the clifton community and vice versa so this referendum asks everyone to invest a little bit each year just like numerous generations of clifton residents uh before us for over a hundred years for all the numbers uh we're going to turn to our business administrator money mike usi and two of the people who have helped develop the estimates for the bond referendum anthony inverso and andrea khan are financial advisors uh money mike you're up thank you dr artosi uh good evening everyone i'm mike you see the district's business administrator and i have with me our assistant business administrator mr

113thomasevich the district's financial advisor mr unverso and the district's bond council ms khan i wanted to start with a brief overview about the operating budget versus a bond proposal a school district's operating budget is for day-to-day costs which mostly means salary supplies preventative maintenance utilities etc in new jersey the law sets a two percent cap on the amount though and the amount school district budgets tax levy can raise each year districts like clifton typically use some operating funds for upgrading equipment and maintaining facilities they also use a separate capital reserve account for purchases that aren't for day-to-day operations such as boiler window and roof replacements which our board has been utilizing to improve facilities for decades with no increase to the taxpayer for more costly improvements in expansion school districts can also use bond borrowing

114a strong advantage is the state aid that is available when voters approve a bond proposal those projects qualify for state aid up to 34 of the costs while preventative maintenance or other facility improvement costs that are absorbed by the operating budget or the capital reserve account are a hundred percent paid for by the local taxes bond funded projects can reduce the that local impact with state aid so what is a bond referendum public schools can sell bonds to borrow money but only after a referendum vote to get permission from the public bonds are like securities and they are bought back over time with interest typically 20 or 25 years this long payoff is one reason schools use bond referendums and asked permission to borrow for large-scale improvement projects that would be nearly impossible to fit

115in the regular operating budget without major tax living increases the the other important reason is the state aid impact reducing the cost to local taxpayers which has been repeated throughout this forum the new state aid would equate to approximately 34 of the total 168 million dollar project which comes to approximately 55 million dollars equivalent to about 2.2 million dollars a year over 25 years the tax impact would most likely not hit until the 20-23 budget year so the vote on april 20th is for the future it will not impact taxpayers next year having said that our board has been very fiscally responsible to the clifton taxpayer last year the board put forward a zero percent tax levy increase during the heart of the pandemic and in the last several years had an under one percent

116tax levy increase um that's kind of my overview um if our bond council or financial advisor would like to say anything or we can just field questions um i'm andrea khan uh and i thank you for the opportunity i've been privileged to serve the district for very many years the only thing that i might add to what mike has explained is that the while companies will save money for future use when public bodies want to prepare for the future the the policy generally is for the people who are going to enjoy those benefits to be the ones to pay for them so what typically happens is operating costs which are enjoyed annually are paid for on an ongoing basis uh smaller capital items are often absorbed and paid for in the budget and through capital

117reserve but for larger capital projects for replacements and for work that um is going to have a useful life well into the future typically what happens is that bonds are authorized and issued with a school district a type 2 school district such as this it's necessary to have voter approval in order to authorize and issue those bonds and i want to thank everybody by the way for all of the thoughtful questions and comprehensive answers that have already been provided thank you andrea mr rose do we have some financial questions from the community we do we have quite a few the economy is struggling couldn't we pick a better time to do this i could say something mr anderson could would could you start i'm sorry we're having trouble hearing um well it seems like there's

118a magic issue one second um while he's trying to fix that i could try to i could answer uh yes but costs can always go up um also we have historically low interest rates right now we have no idea what the future holds um as the economy recovers um also every need that we have that we've identified has been important for years and years and this voter approval would start about a 2.5 year plan um into motion um and also like i said that the tax impact would not hit until approximately the 22-23 school year it would not impact this school this tax year and and just to add to that i don't know if anthony can hear yet raise your hand when you can anthony um but just to add to that again rates

119interest rates are very low levels and the state has um approved uh uh school facilities aid in the form of debt service aid um for almost all of the work that is being done so it was a very significant contribution um the other thing too is that uh when um this project has been in the planning stage for a couple of years and it will take a couple of years to completely uh complete so um you know it's always nice to put things back but the uh time would seem to be right in terms of the financial package that could be arranged in order to implement this this major capital project also we were this has been said but we were planning to do the referendum even before the pandemic and now it's just even

120more vital because of um [Music] ventilation and health concerns thank you i'll move to the next question why can't we just pay for these projects out of the regular budget um that would take decades to do and it would come with tax increases as i said and it would also not come with the coupon discounter everyone keeps saying with the state aid and the 34 percent and also that there are economics of of scale as was mentioned by mr de cara in getting the work done and then it would be enjoyed now when the people need it when the teachers and the public and the students uh need the facilities improved there's significant improvements it's not the kind of work that could really be undertaken all at once on a current basis so it's generally

121the case that for major capital projects bonds are authorized and issued by school districts to undertake those improvements if i could add when i said before where we were planning on doing this referendum even before the pandemic we got all our paperwork and got our approvals by the department of education the four of us districts that are currently trying to put in facility plans are getting huge huge delays so we are fortunate in that aspect and and one other important aspect is is that since there is a backlog when the others all hit hopefully you'll already have gone to bid and won't be competing with the same contractors so hopefully that will result in lower costs for the implementation of the projects that's a good point andrea because the law if you did this piecemeal

122and did it over a series of years uh you're going to see escalation and and a boiler today will cost one number but five years uh 10 years from now it'll almost cost double uh so you'll have the increased inflation on construction costs and and we're at a low point in the market so we've been in a little point in the market for the last few months so we want you know we want to take advantage of that to reduce the cost to the taxpayer if we wait and try to finance it over time the expectation is that we will have higher interest rates over the next several years so getting into the market sooner uh to take advantage of the lower interest rates that we have will be beneficial to the district and taxpayers

123thank you i have several more questions one that just came in do you start paying for the project during the construction or when the project is complete you um when when you bid the project and will probably be bidding this the end of the year december or january once you award the project you will be making payments to the general contractor as the work is completed through a very strict um regulations and process so by time the project is completed you will have paid basically a hundred percent of all the construction costs so you'll be paying it over that period during the construction thank you mr dekara that's a good segue to the next question how does the school decide who to hire for all of this work okay the um there's very specific uh

124bidding laws uh in the state of new jersey so contract while we prepare our documents we have what's called the front end and the board attorney goes through that with us on all the contractual requirements uh and all of the state requirements for bidding so the general contractor and there may be several general contractors for the various work they have to be pre-qualified by the state department of education and the state of new jersey they have to have the proper bonding capacity you don't want somebody with working out of a truck with a wheelbarrow bidding on a let's say a 40 million dollar piece of the of the project so they have to have the financial capabilities and all the requirements so hopefully we'll have a large turnout for for bidders we anticipate based on

125the amount of work that is out there right now you'll see a large number of general contractors bidding on this they will submit signed uh unsealed um bids on a specific date uh those bids will be open publicly at a certain time and we will then review the bids for have they submitted all of the paperwork and met all of the technical requirements uh for the bidding some bidders may get thrown out because of certain aspects near many of them but when everybody is qualified the contractor that has the best price for the district is your contractor if he's a dollar less than someone else he is your contractor so it's a very very competitive process people just don't throw numbers at it and we're seeing contractors be more and more hungry for work so

126we would anticipate that the bidding would be extremely competitive but that but the board is limited on who they select based on the criteria that i just established and it is the term lowest qualified bidder thank you the next question the website says a month for the average home but i don't know of any house on the market for that how much will this really cost i'll start uh with response to that question uh so the impact um is based off of your home's assessed valuation that's what's on your tax form that you receive annually uh there'll be a indication of the land assessment and the improvement assessment the total of those two is the assessed valuation of your home it's different than the market value what you could sell your home at today may

127be drastically different than what it's on the tax rolls as as assessed valuation so taxes all your taxes are based on the assessed value for home not the market value so we look at the total assessed valuation in the city and the number of residential units and the division of that provides the average assessed value in the city which is um what we've indicated um about 178 000 that's what what the tax impact is based on and as i mentioned all your taxes are based on the assessed value not the market value or what what you could sell your house at or what your neighbors holder has a house at it's what's on the tax rolls and the records of of the city um that's that's what your taxes are based on real quick mr

128universal correct me if i'm wrong so the seventeen dollars a month for 25 years that we've been quoting for the average asset house that's based on a 2.3 to a 2.5 interest rate um would you say that's a very conservative rate right now and we could expect a lower one so that that's uh yes the the average um of 17 a month is an average uh for each you know for the impact of the of the bonds for the average home that we just talked about the average assessed valuation and that's based off of a 25-year bond at an interest rate of about 2.5 um that's a little bit on the conservative side based on the market right now um but we feel confident that that you know we'll get a very good interest rate

129for these bonds um markets will change markets change every day um we're anticipating that a sale of these bonds will not occur until probably june so it's three months away and you know if the last uh last year is any indication uh you know the markets do fluctuate drastically over time we don't expect a major move in the marketplace over the next few months um so we think that that's a good estimate for where these bonds will sell when we'll get to the market but it could change it could be 2.6 percent could be 2.4 percent it's an estimate right now based on other similar issues we've seen in the marketplace and the actual rate will be set when there's the competitive sale of the bonds after the bonds have been authorized with a successful

130referendum and at that point that rate will be set and as was mentioned because rates are historically low it would be a good time to set that rate um i'd also like to add one thing because i think i read it on your website i think you have a tool on your website uh am i correct um uh that will help you determine um what your house based on the assessed value of your house is uh what you could anticipate your uh tax average tax increase would be thank you very much yes we do have a section on the website and i believe it was just highlighted on the screen the next question is for how many years does the tax increase for this project stay in effect the repayment of the bonds is for

13125 years so the bonds will be paid over 25-year period um so you'll the in the tax rate won't be exactly the same every year uh it on average is the figures we've indicated um but um but yeah it's a 25-year issue so once the bonds are um issued that the next 25 years the debts that has been paid on this issue thank you very much the next question is what is the impact on our current taxes are our taxes going to increase as a result of the proposed renovations but i believe we've answered that question um but i don't know if that if they're asking something different than we've already answered but i think we've answered that question about the tax impact of the bonds so the tax impact would not be on your

132tax bill for the 2021 year it would be um even the following year for the 2223 the summer of 22. thank you very much we have another question if the federal stimulus bill passes which has 130 billion dollars for schools and state aid is up 30 percent why not hold off and reduce the bond amount by the aid we get this is andrea khan um i don't believe that most of that stimulus money is available for capital improvements i think that it's intended to provide help in a whole variety of ways but not necessarily available to school districts to implement capital programs um and like hypothetically if if they were to mandate we improve our hvac systems anyways and funded that if that were to happen i've never seen the state not give a payback

133a grant period of prior um to so for us to get refunded i should say thank you very much mr uc thank you very much miss i'd just khan to add something in the past um the state had wrought what they called rod grants it would be similar i would i would assume it would be similar to that if they passed some funding mechanism and a district recently did certain work it would be potentially be grandfathered that if you had work done that qualified for that um as in the past with the rod grants uh it was retroactive so i'm sure that they would have something like that and that could if it was available offset some of the cost and if that stimulus package passes in the near future which presumably if it's going

134to pass at all should would i would assume the district would be able to apply for those funds and and it would be available to offset the costs thank you very much i believe that concludes the financial section thank you to our financial team um there was so much information to cover that that two hours flew by uh pretty quick it's now 8pm we do want to return back to our students and staff to kind of end this on a personal note and get some more uh commentary from them and perhaps have them answer some questions that we didn't get a chance to answer so mr rose do we have more questions for students and staff yes we do um i will circle back to the two questions and then i have two more that

135came in but these are two from that were previously submitted uh we did discuss a little bit why are we upgrading the auditoriums they don't need to be fancy that's where we left off before i don't know if anyone had any other comments somebody did comment on that if not go ahead maryam so like i've mentioned before i've come into issues with being tall for my age in the past in elementary school um in middle school sitting in these chairs for probably an hour or so for plays or assemblies or important messages my legs could not fit in the space that was given and there was multiple times where i actually um fell through the chair um and i just feel like that's that's something that could have been avoided and i feel like these

136chairs are definitely outdated and there's just so much potential in this room and space that we're given so why not come together and make a change and actually put in the work when the opportunity is given to make this change um but that's my two cents on that i have a quick question for you now that you've seen the um the chs auditorium in comparison to the ccms auditorium this is i guess max and miriam both went to ccms what do you think about the the differences between ccms's auditorium and what you're seeing at the high school now well the first time i went there was actually for a talent show um in eighth grade um prior to this i believe it was eighth or seventh grade um and i when i first walked into

137the auditorium my mouth dropped i was like no way this is clifton this is us and i just had an immense amount of pride in my school and in my district i was like wow this is this is what i envisioned for ccms if not better um and when i go back to my own school and i see you know the graffiti on the chairs and and the shaky chairs and the broken chairs i think we can do so much better and and and and it's it's proven because look at the high school we can do better um and i just feel like when i when i saw it i was i was totally in awe i was like wow this is this is actually crazy um so definitely i feel like in comparison the

138ccms auditorium is not even in comparison you can't even compete with this um and i feel like so many individuals especially those in the band and the choir in musical or performing arts they definitely will benefit the most and um i just think that these renovations are needed thank you marion i would like to piggyback off of what miriam said on the ccms auditorium and comparing it to the high school auditorium so i also went to ccms and similar to miriam i've fallen through at least one chair in the ccms auditorium um just walking through at least one chair in each row has like a chair where there's like no seat and it's just the back and again where other schools use that auditorium for certain events or when families outside of the district come

139to that school it's kind of an embarrassment to see it's not kind of an embarrassment it is an embarrassment to see chairs broken there's graffiti on almost every single chair obscene drawings or images or words it's hard to find a chair that doesn't have some sort of graffiti on it and it's really embarrassing um for the high school the chairs are built in such a way um they have like a plastic back so you can't really you can't really write pencil scratches and marks on it and overall they're built where they would have much less much less obscene imagery or words or a lot less vandalism um so the high school auditorium the chairs there's barely any vandalism at all and from what i've heard the chairs at the middle school if this referendum passed

140the auditorium chairs in the middle school would be as good if not even better than the chairs at the high school which means no more like crazy vandalism on almost every single chair the chairs wouldn't be breaking all the time um i i know the question the way it was worded was it doesn't need to be fancy and yeah that's right it doesn't need to be fancy but there's a difference between not fancy and constantly breaking obscene words and images on all the chairs that's like that's crossing the line that's crossing 20 lines it's not even close so yeah if this referendum passes the chairs would be as good if not better than the high school chairs which are already pretty great so yeah and i'll just add just one more thing we've talked a

141lot about the performing arts and everybody who utilizes the auditoriums but we can't lose sight of the fact that the whole school and every grade level it's affecting everybody in the school not just the kids that are in those programs um so just to keep that in mind that it's not just geared towards one group that it really covers a broad span of people and students that are going to use those facilities yeah i'll say too just as a quick example with our heroes in cool kids group where we're bringing 70 or 80 students from the high school down to our two middle schools we use those auditoriums as a spot to kind of like stay and wait until our chance to go into the classrooms and our high schoolers struggle being in those seats

142you know and this is a room where we're expecting adults to come and watch their students perform and it's just night and day compared to what we have at the high school i think um what mariam said makes you make such a great point you walk in that auditorium and your mouth just drops our students take a lot of pride in our auditorium and it's not that they can't graffiti on it they don't want to because it's beautiful and they want to keep it that way um whereas when you go into both the middle school's auditoriums it doesn't have that same feeling and it would be amazing to be able to give them the same sense of pride in their auditoriums that we're able to have up at chs thank you very much i have

143two more questions first one is for the staff the second one will be for the students and then that will wrap everything up for the staff what happens when a student asks to leave the class to use the bathroom do they sometimes miss a lot of class time because of the bathroom lines i'll just repeat myself quickly because again teaching at the high school where we have um four wings and three floors if one of the bathrooms happens to be out of order which i to be very honest they're out of order a lot i know that um our our building um person before was mentioning that they often get back ups in the sewage lines which causes the bathrooms to be shut down um sometimes on an entire floor the students then need to

144go off in search of a bathroom sometimes that's a different floor sometimes it's a different wing when the bathroom is functioning on my floor a student can be out for the bathroom and back within five minutes however when the bathrooms are shut down i've had issues where you know it's been 20 minutes or so that it'll take a student to do a round trip to the bathroom thank you very much mrs graziano the last question is for the students one of the projects is an elevator at christopher columbus middle school have you ever seen a student on crutches have to get around ccms and what did they have to do without an elevator i myself actually was one of those kids um jumping up and down those stairs on crutches seventh grade um there was

145multiple times where i almost slipped and fell there was multiple times where um i just got tired honestly it was it was very tiring and that was my first time using crutches so having to go up and down the stairs definitely was time consuming and with an elevator i could be you know in and out of floors getting to class more efficiently and saving my energy and and putting that towards my education and and learning and focusing on my school subjects not focusing on okay i need i need to leave 10 minutes before class so i can get to lunch and then 10 minutes before the bell rings like it was it was it was an entire hassle and that was i i would say about for a month or so so for a month

146or so i was yeah that was something i was going through and it wasn't very pleasant at all so that elevator personally from speaking from personal experience that will benefit so many kids and not only kids on crutches um let's say kids on wheelchairs that will also benefit them or parents when they come into the building and they're handicapped that will also benefit them we also need to include other people in other groups just because we're not in it that doesn't mean that they cannot be in it thank you and one oh um could i add on to the elevator absolutely max i apologize oh it's okay um yeah i actually have a couple short stories about that um when i was in seventh grade i had a really good friend who was in eighth

147grade and he was a great amazing student um he was in a bunch of different ensemble musical he was in a bunch of different musical ensembles he was in a lot of different clubs and he was just a great all-around student who just looked forward to coming to school every day and somewhere around january or february he broke his foot and he i didn't see him the rest of the school year because i think um he broke his foot in a way where he he couldn't even try to walk on it and needed a wheelchair and our school you know besides the first floor even the first floor there's a few steps to get up um it's just it's really hard to get around um if you're even a little bit injured let alone you

148have a broken foot so he was out of commission for the rest of the year he missed out on all of the musical performances that he would have done such a great job on he missed out on all his clubs and he just had to be homeschooled for like five or six months and i'm not saying there's a chance that even with the elevator he might have had to stay home for a while but he most definitely would have had a better chance of getting back to school and being part of all those great opportunities that were available to him um another short story is actually about myself in seventh grade in gym class i got injured and i had a really bad cut on my knee and i needed to go to the nurse's

149office i was on the third floor in the upper gym and i needed to get to the nurse's office in the basement of so i had to go down like six flights of stairs because there's like two staircases in between each floor so i had to go down like six staircases i had a student and a teacher each carry one of my arms as i hopped on one foot down each step of the stairs that is so dangerous thinking back i can't believe i actually did that that is insane that i had to do that and i don't think any student should have to do that um in the high school we're lucky enough where you don't actually the two gyms are located where you wouldn't even have to go up or down any stairs

150to get to them um so it works for the high school i don't know what it's like for woodrow but in ccms that gym is way up top on the third floor so the fact that i had to have two people carry each of my arms as i like precariously hopped down each step with one foot that's not okay an elevator would mean everything to these students it would have meant everything to my friend who broke his foot it would have meant everything to me and it would would have meant everything to so many other students who are injured and have trouble getting up and down those staircases thank you both very much i'm going to end with this last question what do you think these changes would do for student morale i'll kind of

151touch upon that because i've been thinking about kind of one of the things i'd like to just send everybody off with today and um you know i teach the elementary level and one of the things that we always talk about are ways that we can you know improve the academics and that all goes back to the climate and the cultures of the buildings and all of these things that we have talked about tonight whether it be the hvac system whether it be the bathrooms even the sports facilities all of these things lend to that climate and culture the more people that want to move to clifton and come and be a part of our facilities the better our schools are they're going to want to come in that's going to improve increase our property values

152so it's a benefit in the long run for all of us and the most important thing is that our children are academically doing well striving to do better and we're providing them with that environment so i just encourage everybody to really consider the big picture here and think about all of the children in the schools that we will be affecting all of the teachers in the building that will be benefiting from these things um and it's just super important that we realize that if we don't do this now we're going to miss an opportunity and in the long run we're going to end up costing us more money anyway so i do again thank you for the time being a part of this it has been an honor it's been a privilege and i do

153hope that everybody really listens to these points and continues to ask questions if they weren't answered tonight um so that on april 20th you can go out to those voting booths and really hopefully support our school systems so that we can make the improvements that will benefit everybody thank you everyone i'm going to turn this back over to dr robert chozi thank you so much to all of our panelists for your information that you shared with the community tonight we covered a lot of information we went a little over two hours but the conversation will keep going through the email address that we will continue to respond to one clifton at cliftonschools.net uh through talking with your friends your neighbors through our website and many other ways we're also putting the finishing touches on a

154video that will cover all of the main points and that will be posted on our website and shared through social media if you have not uh checked out our website please take the take a moment to uh to log on to dot u s clifton.k12.nj.us.com vote just go to our website and there are a couple of ways you can get to that page if you or a friend missed the form tonight and weren't able to watch the entire two hours or you know somebody that missed it and wants more information i want to remind you that it has been recorded uh it will be available on the district's youtube channel uh easy links to that and more materials again will be on our website and now we want to share some voting information uh after

155you take the time to learn about all of the needs of our schools and our proposal to solve those needs please take the next step by voting there will be in-person voting on april 20th and there will be voting by mail please make a plan to do whatever works for you so that your voice is heard on tuesday april 20th thank you again for taking the time tonight um thank you to all of our community members who tuned in thank you again to our panelists for sharing their expertise uh please have a good rest of your week we're really looking forward to having our students back in schools on next monday march 8th mr smith that concludes the community forum mrs smith if i may take a uh board members who uh wish to speak

156or make a uh uh comment uh mr daley yeah yes thank you very much um a little bit to the public uh this this is a very complex project in financing and if you're not and it's it's difficult to wrap your arms around it and we're going to do our best to explain this and and so you can understand it and as the super data says we'll answer any type of questions and we welcome your questions because we can uh we can collectively answer them in a way that helps you to understand this better i just have a couple of things to point out mr decaro you talked about the elevator and when you do improvements on a public facility whether it's clifton or new jersey transit or anybody else you're held to a little

157bit higher standard into what you have to do so there becomes a threshold when you have to be ada compliant and i'm not going to get into the particulars about the elevator but in general when you do improvements to your public building they now have to meet the standards of the ada compliance so that's why you see some things in here that you say why do we need to do this or why need to do that on the auditoriums uh in if you go to the clifton high school auditorium which i was very involved with um it's not the taj mahal but what we did is upgrade the facilities the lighting the the speakers the seats so it it gives a fresh appearance it gives a an appearance of a place of pride and that's

158what we're going to do we're not getting new auditoriums and we're not getting it new anything because some people pointed out athletic fields these are not new athletic fields they're stuff that we're using today and it's the condition that they're in we're trying to improve so we're not creating new stadiums or anything like that all this stuff is improvements the reason why we're having the the biggest reason we're having a referendum is the 55 million dollars that's your coupon as miss bassford said we can do this by doing other things but you're going to pay the whole freight if you do these projects piecemeal we could do five projects in the next two years and five but each year you go forward the price of those improvements are at market at those future years and

159as we all know prices don't decrease so you you're locking in the prices at the current uh rate here not only in in the interest rate but we're locking in uh the the cost of improvements at the current rate if we did these projects peaceful piecemeal over 25 years when you get to the end and the 20th year you're paying the rate that's at that time 20 years from now which is much higher uh like i said these are projects that have been discussed uh for quite a while um they have to be done there's no question about that so it's a question how you pay for it so again the 55 million dollars is the reason why we go into referendum the city council and other government entities like the county can put in

160a bond issue that they don't have to go to the voters again we cannot get the sole reason why we're going to the voters because these improvements are necessary is so that we can get 55 million dollars of state money other way otherwise you're paying the full 168. so uh i can go on for forever about this stuff because i'm pretty intimately involved i'm one thousand percent behind this i'll go speak to anybody who wants to speak to it they want to talk to me in person have a cup of coffee i will be more than happy to make myself available and i'm sure that superintendent will do the same in the staff but uh i i am very very enthusiastic this is the best deal the city of clinton's ever had in doing capital

161improvements period okay are there any other board members who would like to make a comment mr cano genova yeah um so it's funny because because jim took some of my points there you know speaking about finances but i will say one thing i was very involved and i even got involved in the board of ed because of the issues with state funding and what nobody's saying here is we've been underfunded for about 12 13 years now we've been underfunded half a bill over half a billion dollars how do you run a large district like clifton underfunded half a billion dollars and expect everything to be pristine it's just not it's not going to happen so we're in this situation not because of board members or not because of facilities not taking care of their the

162products that we have it's about getting the best bang for our buck and doing what we can with what we have i would ask the question out there to anyone do you still have the boiler from 100 years ago in your basement do you still have the the seating in your house from from 40 50 years ago wooden seats that you sit on that half are falling off some some don't even have bottoms as as our students mentioned do we think that's conducive of an environment for students to learn because those are the types of questions i ask and i i work for for a college and we talk to students about going on interviews we talk about dressing for success we talk about when you dress good you feel good right things around you

163reflect the way you feel when you go on vacation you see palm trees you see the beach and you're just relaxed when you go to school it shouldn't be a place you go that's worse than your home we have students that come to us from different economical backgrounds i can only imagine a student who has an issue with a bathroom at home to come and have an issue with a bathroom at a school or a female who's hair's time of the month and it takes her 25 minutes just to find a bathroom to then wait on a line for for 15 people and we've heard that tonight from our students and to me that's just unbelievable honestly so getting back to what jim was talking about this is the one chance we have to now

164have this state finally give us some money back and fund some of this so the way i look at it is you know we're not a we're not a detention facility for students we're an education facility and we should act that way when people come to our locations they should feel pride they should say you know what wow this is clifton and when young families move in what do they look for they look for a good school system they're going to come visit our schools and they're going to either say i want to come here and move here which will then increase everyone's property values or they they won't and will decrease and our students will do poorly and then later on we'll pay the price this is something that 15 20 years down the

165road we're going to see our students succeed instead of fail so those are just some of my comments um one thing i would like to see more is i'm a very a very visual person and i know you you spoke to a video uh dr robert jose you were putting together i would love to see images of all these things that the students had been mentioning and uh and some of the uh the areas and facilities inside the school i think once people put an image to what we're talking about they'll really understand what we're talking about thank you okay any other board members wish to make any comments [Music] i just have a small comment mr smith oh yes to our citizens and to our community members out there uh i've i don't want

166to just repeat what i said earlier but i say that you know our teachers give it all our district gives it all you know dr robertosi and his staff um you know with our teachers and our students and to give them the bare minimum and expect them to excel is basically you know a little ludicrous you know as you know our students transition into college you know one of the main things you know a lot of students look into colleges how modernized how up-to-date what does the school district what does facilities offer for me and am i really getting a bang for my buck you know as everybody pays their taxes in clifton does that really reflect what our schools look like our schools are almost 100 plus years old we could do a lot

167better you know if a teacher gave if a teacher gave a bare minimum i feel like everybody would be you know aggressive and basically you know uh calling out you know why is this teacher why is that teacher uh given the bare minimum if a custodian gave a bare minimum if a nurse or a doctor doesn't matter what your profession is give a bare minimum nobody has an issue of calling our personnel but us as the citizen when we give our students in our district the bare minimum and not the facilities for them to excel and we expect something drama something magical to come out of that there's no one to blame but ourselves you know our buildings are in need we need to help our future generations current generations teachers and students are always

168a forgotten ones our teachers you know through the pandemic or not the pandemic are always giving a hundred percent hard passionate you know educators that are basically grooming the future kids into the adults of our future our you know our future community leaders our future you know doctors engineers artists singers whatever profession it is the least we can do is have the backbone to give them a platform for them to excel for them to grow and for them to better themselves and it's our moral obligations and as you know community leaders we will be out there on the front lines fighting for them because we do care you know clifton has the greatest educators probably in our state the least we can do is give them you know an environment where they can even take

169it to the next level clifton is going to be that city once this referendum passes where where the we set the bar high for other districts we're going to be the example people are going to come to us saying how'd you guys do it we are our schools are going to be like showrooms throughout you know other communities like look how clifton's doing it we should be like clifton clifton is the place we want to go and also it's going to start attracting people to come to our city to move and purchase homes into our city our city needs to move forward we have to stop being stuck in the past and i really hope you know uh anybody listening today that you guys take this into consideration and you know let's do this you

170know like dr operator says or one clifton or one family my child or not my child everybody every student and uh teacher that's in this district you guys are a family member we are one and we're in this together and hopefully you know this referendum passes it's just you know something that we could just say that you know we did it we tried and let's see what you guys can excel into these classrooms thank you any other board members vice president abu dhabi thank you president smith i hope you can hear me i was having some audio issues um so everybody said it all but the one piece that you know we need to remember in the city we complain that we are losing students to various schools and because we are not updated and

171this is the time to do so to folks who know and who do not know money follows the student and when students leave a district that's more money we are losing so as everybody said we are reinvesting into our school districts you know i graduated class of 2003 two years that's almost 20 years ago and a lot of facilities were which was abysmal it was ridiculous president by but superintendent of roberto if you can answer this question i know somebody asked me this question earlier but i'm going to leave it to you and nor did i answer there was an uptick of state aid it's from 2021 to 2122 i think of about 29 close 12 million and a half can that and i'm going to ask you this question i know the answer but

172i'd like to you know for you to take it can money be used from that 12 million yes but that would be a drop in the bucket for the projects that we have to do and more importantly we would lose out on the 55 million dollars in state aid so we'd be fully fronting the costs thank you i just wanted i just wanted people to hear from you because they're either they read it or they're going to read it and that may be a question that pops in their head and we might as well get it out there before the quite bad questions asked you know at the end of the day everybody's talking about homes everybody's talking about remodeling your house everybody's talking about you know the future the past but we need to

173worry about today we worry about today because students are going back to school we talk about the hvac we talk about you know i was listening to my my daughter's principal last night how the windows have to be open because of the way circulation has to work and we don't know in how long how long for we're going to be in this pandemic but whether you have a child in the district or you do not have a child in the district i'm going to say this very very frank and let's not be selfish let's not be selfish to say well my kids already went to the district why should i care you should care because on two fronts one care about thy neighbor care about the kids that are in your neighborhood care about what's

174going into their system while they're in class and while you say well back then we didn't have these things and i was fine well back then was back then today is today the world has changed and the world is changing the world will continue to change and we need to not live in how we were but live and how we want to where we want to go and to be and that is very important and second of all if you don't have a child in the district one day you're going to want to sell your property and as we all say and our keyboard warriors on facebook complain about that our academics and our schools are in uh the quote unquote lower rank of it well one day when you sell your home you're going

175to say shucks you know what i'm not gonna get the big buck that i want for my for for my property well this is the time to reinvest in our community in our district and our kids and frankly in in your own property because while it may be to some a drop in the bucket to some it may be you know what that that amount of money that that that uh that work that's going to be taxed i might on my tax roll over annually over the year it's going to be a struggle and i feel you trust me i feel you um on a personal level but at this time i'm you know my wife asked me are you really gonna vote yes for this and when i sat her down and i explained

176to her last week when we talked about it in our own house because we are taxpayers and we have our own property we pay that we pay for and it's not cheap that yeah i am gonna pay for it i'm gonna tighten my belt and make sure this is done on various hats at various levels so i am behind this all the way and i'm not just saying this and then going you know i've heard people say yes and then go behind the scenes and and tell others otherwise i'm full 100 behind this i'm all the way through behind this i think this is a great investment in our district in our city in our neighborhood in our kids and at to per in a personal note and speaking of my i'm on my my

177own behalf there's no turning back it's got to get done we can't do this bit by bit we need to do it all or nothing and i'll be out there asking urging pleading for folks to to definitely um vote for this thank you thank you any other board members wishing to speak no okay um renee would you like to uh say anything before we close renee are you still on i am mr smith thank you very much i would i have some um some more slides i could show people but i i know that we're looking at uh the time of 8 37. there's nothing i can add for the people of clifton so i would just suggest that people go to the website and learn there what they need to know there's a lot

178of information there and look for other opportunities to stay involved and then i would turn it over to dr robert josie to close the evening yeah i have to um i'm just gonna make a a few brief comments um i'm not gonna reiterate uh everything that's been uh said um i think the key thing is mr daley alluded to mr canova these upgrades to be done now to get this 55 million dollar gift back from the state is what makes this a more emergent referendum putting things on hold putting it out further just makes the situation that much worse but because the state is giving our district 55 million dollars for this referendum i don't see how we can turn down a gift of 55 million dollars on repairs and that we so very much

179need and i think everyone has to keep that right up front in their minds that if we don't do this that 55 million goes away and there are many districts that are wishing that they had done what we did and submitted our paperwork because they're not going to get the 55 million they're not going to get the state aid the state gift the state coupon okay but clifton is clifton is because of our administration being on top of this and mr roosey and his team being on top of this to know that that's a big chunk of change that the state's gonna help us with and we can't turn that down people but i gotta i gotta say one important thing tonight if you want to see what clifton education is doing in our town

180to our students if you tuned in tonight you saw it right up front and i have to commend both of our students that spoke tonight both max and miriam if any of you ever had a doubt about the education that our kids are getting in clifton you just witnessed it tonight and i credit all of the people especially their teachers their parents along the way and maxin and miriam are just two of so many kids that are doing tremendous things in our district i am just so proud tonight to see two students come and talk from the heart not a prepared speech not something they were asked to say but things that they really felt and max said something so great he says i'm not going to even be a student to see any of

181these things i'll be gone maybe he'll be back as a teacher some years down and he'll be able to see those improvements but i am so proud to be a board member to see that our students are truly receiving a great education from tremendous teachers and if you had any doubt of that you should have seen that tonight and have no more doubts because they spoke from the heart and i'm so proud of them i just also just like to thank our our three teachers that came out tonight they took their time to come out tonight we're not paying them extra money to come out tonight they're not getting overtime tonight to come out and speak at this meeting they came out because it was important to them and there are many more staff members

182that i'm sure wanted to come out and talk tonight but i just want to thank them for taking the time and giving us a teacher's perspective on what is taking place in the buildings i really thank them and credit them for all that they did for mr rose for a great job of putting this together this was not an easy thing to do on a zoom and to get the questions and make sure that they were not so repetitive so i i credit mr rose for all her work and our uh our supervisors our principal mr healey uh our supervisors mr gengaro mr marcioni mr malayhi mr uc mr thomasevich and i don't think mr mountain gets enough credit but all of this technology stuff is led by our uh director of technology mr mountain

183and he's with us to make sure that all of this gets on your screen and all this gets out to you each each meeting so i thank him and his team for always doing such a great job and to our architects our bond council our financial advisors our pr team in past experienced people anything that clifton worked together with anything that we worked together with we achieved in clifton and i say that because you the voters you the taxpayers in the history that i've had with the board of education anytime we came out and asked the public for helping our schools the public has responded positively and that says a lot about you because you do your homework you know what is needed and i hope that you trust and respect that the board has

184worked very hard and this board has not only now this board but previous boards in in previous years to prepare for something like this this didn't come overnight and i have to tell you that if it was not for our maintenance staff our custodians that have done such a great job over the years of keeping our schools looking as good as they do we would be in a much worse situation now because take a look at some of our schools at a hundred years old our staff has done a tremendous job to make them look as good as they do but eventually time just is against us and things don't last forever but we're hoping these upgrades and these renovations will last for decades and they will address certain things how embarrassing or how upsetting

185is it to know that in most of our buildings that a person with a disability or a handicap will have trouble either getting into the building or having to use the bathroom facilities how upsetting is that to know that or to have a student that goes to one of our schools to hear miriam tell us that she held in going to the bathroom because of those issues max's was a little different trying to look good he didn't have his mirrors that's a little different story but holding it in until you you have to get home because of those issues that upsets me and i hope it upset you people listening so do your homework please feel free to continue to ask the questions feel free to reach out to board members we will do all

186that we can to help you understand the importance of this referendum that's our job this is just not a referendum because the board wants to look good to say hey let's go out and just make these improvements so we can look good here that's not it at all this board cares about kids yes we may not agree on everything but there is one thing we agree on this board cares about kids we care what happens to them we care what happens to them on a daily basis we're not there every day we rely on administrators we rely on teachers we rely on the students themselves to tell us and i hope that they told each and every resident of this town tonight that this referendum is truly needed and i truly hope that you will

187support this so thank you all to that put this together tonight we will continue to get information to you continue to update information we will have mailings that will go out please use social media as best you can to continue to get the knowledge that you need so that you can make an educated decision when you vote on april 20th thank you all for attending this meeting tonight and dr robitazi before i take a motion to close do you have any closing comments uh no sir i'm good i think we got a lot of information out there and i'm very thankful to all of the panelists and the board members thank you all for this uh wonderful meeting do i have a motion to adjourn uh president smith i'm sorry before we do the motion

188can i reiterate a quick question to dr robertson or through dr robertson to uh money mike if i may yes when will um if passed when will hit when will this hit the tax roll is it immediately or what's the span and i think that's a good note to end on if i may because and then i say that because obviously everybody's concerned with that tax roll and i think to have that information in the back of their mind after hearing all this may help a little bit i cannot give an exact date i can say it definitely will not be next year and it should be hitting not even the following budget year the budget year so yeah okay thank you okay motion to adjourn motion second ms basford second by vice president abu

189drabo all those in favor aye all those against meeting is adjourned thank you all good night everyone thank you good night thank you good night