August 27, 2020 - Clifton Board of Education Meeting

001and new jersey you can't record voices in other states you can record voice but like in new jersey or you can record voice if like one of the participants says okay it gets weird but yeah okay i learned the hard way in uh in the lecture hall freshman year college were you recording the teacher i didn't want to take notes i was like let me try this everybody else kept talking about it and i started you know growing up like uh saved by the bell and all those they always use oh my god let me just use it i didn't know any better first the first uh first college kid in the family first to go to college in the family i wasn't going to try it was like ah get off or go i

002was like okay i closed it rude awakening i would think most teachers would that was my uh wouldn't have a problem with it i think i was i think that like the second class ever in my life in a higher ed mr teigen how you doing over there okay livestream is up and running it worked last night uh eight hours on campus fully messed up it was rough it was rough at one point i was like a lot of people as there was i really don't i really don't want to hear it i've only been wearing a mask for like six months 15 hours a day six days a week haven't done how you do it welcome if you turn off your camera then you'll be invisible to the whole group and then i think

003it's the second public comment janina do you want me to rename you again when does it call you that we're all on p34 everybody if they're abstain yeah judy wanted to remind everyone to stand on your name only on p 30. hello everyone hi hi jim how is everyone good well jim hey jim frank great job last night it was a night we had um the city recreation had uh drive-in movie night at uh saint andrews church how'd it go jim good we had about 60 cars nice where they capped it off at and uh everyone had a great time my kids loved it yeah i didn't even know about it was there was there advertising i think the city did um hear the location very late uh last week i conf they asked if

004i could get search for them and i i i got the church but um the initial flyer i saw it was a tbd yeah they were afraid that if they go back too far that the screen they wouldn't have seen the screen but i think you could easily see the screen from you know where we were talking nothing i think you could see the screen back there yeah it was fine yeah if they do if they do it again we could put the word out too and it might get get more people they're thinking of maybe hi um since they're not going to be able to do their traditional halloween parade this year uh they're thinking of doing maybe that again with people decorating their cars or something like that okay once you're done jim

005once you're done i'm gonna start the meeting okay i'm done okay that means be quiet call to order the august 27th regular board meeting please stand for the pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence 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 justice and liberty you may be seated attendance and roll call of board members mr abu drabo here miss password here miss beltram here mr canova here mr daley frozen mr daily are muted he's frozen i think yeah i think he leaves lagging a little bit okay mr casper here mr becenti mr smith here miss danny here next order business mission statement the mission of the clifton school district is to in an open and reciprocal

006community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in the never changing world next order of business is the reading of the open public meeting statement the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon it accorded with the provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in

007the 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 0168 there are no recognition and award presentations next order of business is the adoption of the minutes of the july 23rd 2020 regular meeting and executive meeting and i have a motion motion by mr smith second by mr abu drabo any revisions steam none roll call mr abby drabo yes miss basford yes mr mrs beltran mrs beltran miss beltram you're muted if if you are trying yeah sorry no it was another part of the story just ran back oh good mr canova yes mr daley yes mr casper yes mr priscilli yes mr smith yes miss danny yes motion carries next order of business is the adoption of minutes from the um

008august 10th 2020 meeting the special meeting can i have a motion no move motion by mr smith second by mr albert drabo revisions see none roll call mr abu drabo yes miss bashford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes mr casper yes mr pacenti yes mr smith yes miss danny yes motion carries there are no communications and announcements next order business is the first reading of policy and we do have some policies 1648.03 restart and recovery plan full-time remote instruction and 5 600 student discipline code of conduct there is no presentation of reports from administration advisory committees and special committees next order of business is board committee reports and we do have a few excuse me miss danny i did want to give an update uh under the presentation of reports if

009i may or i can wait until uh prior to public recognition that's up to you no go ahead you can give it under this part because it is still reports from administration advisory committees and special committees so we'll start out with you and then we'll move to the more specific school board association meeting thank you i just have a brief update good evening uh commissioners and members of the community who have joined us tonight at this board meeting last week at our town hall meeting the board and i announced that we would begin the year remotely and this decision was made for a number of reasons but most importantly because of the major uptick of covet cases in clifton particularly among school-aged children and guidance from the clifton health department as of a week ago

010there were 38 confirmed cases of covet 19 in children between the ages of 3 months to 9 years old and 147 cases in children between the ages of 10 and 19 years old over 30 of those cases were reported in the previous seven days the concern is if that were to happen while schools were open i have no doubt that the spread of the virus would have been much greater among classmates school employees and student and employees families and it would most likely cause us to be forced to close or possibly even have worse consequences since last week's announcement that we would begin the year remotely i have received hundreds of emails regarding the decision some are in favor and many are against it many want our schools open and i get it please know

011that i have truly listened um and read every email i've tried to respond to every email or at some point times i've had to ask my staff to help assist in their responses because i couldn't keep up um but please note that i truly have listened and understand all the concerns that that people have and i too share in this frustration of not being able to reopen safely at this time you know this pandemic along with a lack of leadership and guidance at the state level where they have left these life and death decisions up to 600 local school districts has created monumental challenges for all of us particularly superintendents and particularly of families of school-aged children it's caused a rift in our community among those with differing opinions and unfortunately it's become overly politicized

012the whole concept of one clifton that i had been pushing since june has not become a reality because of this decision but it is my hope that we can still unite as one community with one clifton at the heart of all decisions being made even if we have differences of opinion and i hope that we can at least realize that the delay is the safest option right now for the health and safety of everyone i assure all of our parents students and the community that we will not stop working until we can bring all of our children back to our schools as quickly and safely as possible please note we are not delaying the opening of schools indefinitely we have a target date to reassess conditions on october 1st and i strongly believe we will

013be able to open up our doors on october 12th i think it comes out to 21 school days that we're delaying i know that is not the best scenario but for now it is the decision that has been made and i will do everything in my power to make sure we open up on october 12th and finally um at last week's town hall meeting we had a special guest mr foster who's the executive director at the boys and girls club and he made an announcement that the boys and girls club would only be offering aftercare to those students who chose virtual instruction and needless to say that announcement caused a lot of concern with our parents and members of the community who were counting on aftercare service upon our return to in-person learning so in

014response to the needs of our families and after consultation between the district the boys and girls club and department of health i'm happy to pass this message along as a public service announcement for the boys and girls club that we can and will be able to provide after-care services in our schools when school reopens the concern was the mixing of pods of students and busing issues we address those issues the modified proposal will be to serve up to 450 students at our 12 school site locations and the main boys and girls club would remain reserved for pods of the remote learners after school care would be offered at all schools except number 4 and 16 where the boys and girls club does not have a license so they never offered aftercare there the students would

015be served in socially distanced groups with four to six pods of students at each school site and up to eight pods potentially at school 17. by hosting these pods at each school site students would not be co-mingled between schools or on buses and kindergarten would also be served at the school sites to the best of our ability we're also going to make sure the students who are in aftercare are also in the same class during school day so as to avoid again more mixing of the pot so it's some good news to share for our parents who were counting on that aftercare um some good news and an otherwise summer of bleak news if anyone has any questions regarding aftercare please don't hesitate to contact mr foster the executive director of the boys and girls

016club thank you miss danny that's my update for tonight uh dr arbor chose did you just want to um clarify um just what is the pods that you're talking about just pop what are yeah the the pods is just uh another name for a group of students we want to keep the same group of students together as opposed to mixing groups of students to the best of our ability obviously the more groups of students we mix the more potential there is for spread and if one student or staff member is diagnosed with the coronavirus it makes it easier to do the contact tracing to determine who the people have been in contact with so that's that's what the terminology is thank you dr arbitrosi asks can i answer that question was danny yes mr armadrobo

017uh these paws and after using utilizing our building to make clear to the public is that going to be something run by boys and girls club or by our personnel this is completely uh run by the boys and girls club utilizing our facilities as has been done for the past i'm not sure how many years certainly long before i got here so it is not our program which is why um if if anybody in the community has more specific questions please reach out to mr foster i was just happy to be able to say hey we're gonna we're gonna be able to have it because as of a week ago there was going to be no aftercare in our school so i'm happy we were able to resolve that issue because our parents were counting

018on that thank you miss danny uh mr casper the morris and passai county school boards association meeting okay so we uh we have a more specific county school board meeting on the 13th of august uh it was called the order at seven o'clock we had uh miss irene lafarr president of morris county sba and ms judy basford president of passaic county sba welcomed all to the meeting miss cortello uh the nj sba vp for legislation welcome everyone to the meeting as well as ask um asked us to visit visit the njsva website for all of the upcoming events that they're holding uh mr michael vidal talked about a virtual workshop as we all know now uh uh workshop is now uh virtual in october it'll be running from nine to four on october 20th through

019october 22nd 35 live sessions will be provided daily and um it will all the sessions that they have will be recorded and will be able to be downloaded for one year just in case we miss them and it gives us all an opportunity to earn more credits as school board members um dr alan mcmillan dr angela allen macmillan discussed the updates from the nj department event and the nj department of health the department of health has come up with a 25-page guideline or checklist for districts to follow for opening the governor has uh been very responsive to the needs of school districts who may not be able to open which is outlined in executive order 175. uh there were some questions that had come up about transportation and staffing dr mcmillan explained that some districts

020have asked parents to drive their students to school staff and staffing will be taken care of by policy set by the school board there have been teachers who may not be able to come in due to underlying conditions some districts may also provide child care for staff members bringing staff members may be able to bring their their children to work with them which may or may not be tuition based and many district students will be placed in cohorts to reduce the spread of the virus chris jones provided a legislative update the supreme court had unanimously agreed that the bond act to borrow money is constitutional the new budget will be released on august 25th 2020 based on the state's new projection the second amount provided to districts is what um we will begin we will

021be getting charlene peterson and cathy hello our field service representatives provided updates from the field some dates to pay attention to um one had someone just passed on 8 18 there was a training called leading in uncertain times uh governance one will be provided over three evenings starting august 26th for those who need new uh new board member training uh october 7th uh there will be a new board candidate training uh the importance of setting our district goals was also brought up we're able to virtually set our new goals for this new school year and we may also provide retreats remotely um that can be set up through the field service uh our fuel service representatives and then there was time at the end where uh the members present had the opportunity to discuss their

022school reopening plan and our meeting was adjourned at 8 45. does anybody have any questions thank you mr casper um madam vice chair basford uh the policy committee yes thank you um madam president uh the clipton board of education policy committee uh met on august 11th uh the policy committee began at 5 30. attendance were myself um board members joe canover and frank casper commissioner uh smith was excused from the meeting for medical reasons um dr robitazi uh was also president uh mark teigen gina kushalevis and mr ross the agenda included the following policies se1648.02 remote learning options for families this is a mandated policy and the committee recommends the following selections and changes a b section b1 insert the number 14 before the calendar days b section b2 select the first second and fourth

023options with the fourth option to include inserting the number five before school days and adding the end of the opt and adding the end of this option the phrase and after review apparent request on a case by case basis as circumstances permit c section b6 to include the number seven before calendar days d d1 insert the number 14 before calendar days e section d2 select the second option which reads at the beginning of a marking period and after conclude consultation with the principal or designee and director of guidance to ensure attainability of academic credit should a change be approved and as circumstances permit considering availability of classroom space social distance requiring requirements student seating and any other federal state or local requirement ordinance and or directives f section d2 select the fourth option which is

024to read within five school days after receiving written approval by the of the principal or designee after review of the parental request on a case-by-case basis as circumstances permit considering considering availability of classroom space social distance requiring student seating and any federal state or local requirements ordinance and or directives g sections d4 select option number one the second uh policy the committee then discussed was recommendation to the board to amend policy 5600 code of conduct by adding two of the new categories the um which is violation of health safety and security guidelines this infraction will be letter s under category 1 letter z under category 2 and letter v under category 3. the other new category under this policy will be staff manage infections uh infractions sorry smi which will only be a category one

025infraction and will be listed as the letter t on the category one we also discussed pat policy number zero one six public participation in a board meeting was discussed by the committee in regards to members of the public providing addresses when addressing when addressing the board it was decided to review and discuss this policy in executive session um and the board is going the policy committee is going to further discuss this at its next meeting uh policy uh zero one four zero one seven four legal services procedures relating to the boards and speaking to the attorney was discussed with no action taking and it was agreed to further address this policy at a later policy meeting the meeting adjourned at 625 respectfully written by mr louise m ross any questions yes um madam vice chair

026ambassador i actually do have a question i was wondering um for number three with the public participation in the board meetings before they um do come in and i don't know maybe if um tax support can come in on this and um just give us a uh i don't know if the public could actually if they have the chat um available to them because i know when i participate in board zooms um on the other side i have the chat available where i was able to type in my name um and address which made it easier for record purposes i don't know if that's what they have the chat available so they can put their names type their names in and their addresses and obviously if their students just you know state that a student

027at whichever school yes there is a chat sorry do you want me to answer yes okay there is a chat available however it's a separate chat for just the waiting room and i can certainly back channel while we're leading up to that the only issue is the phone callers and anyone on the mobile device doesn't have access to the chat it's only those logging in from a traditional computer okay madam president we were addressing this policy because i think we're going to have to tweak some of our standard policies going forward with the remote uh meetings if we do allow remote i know we're going to be in pub in person soon but i know there was a request by making um some part of the meeting remote to the public because it depends on

028the number of people we're allowed to have in the building uh for social distancing purposes so we're gonna have to address that uh we were doing this to try to protect children or students under the age of 18 from their identity of where they live so that was a big concern of all of us uh we have to protect our students and our and our children in the district so it's going to be further further discussed at the september meeting we just wanted to get a feel for what everybody felt and then we were going to make some recommendations to the to the board so if anybody has anything if they could send it to me i'll include it at the next meeting i have a question yes um mr vicente i just want to

029learn about policy level 174 i mean we have i thought we had policy of that that everything needs to go through the president uh to speak with the was there an issue that arose that uh the board needs to be aware of because that's that's really a violation of what we've been doing since i've been on the board for since 2010. mr percentage um we were trying to add a mechanism uh an email mechanism so that um there's actually a uh some kind of paper trail that when a board member does reach out to the president to speak to the attorney that we can uh actually have uh it documented um say somebody wants to talk to them about a busing issue a bus problem or you know about the policy that i just read

030often about adding certain time limits and a board member does want to see um talk to the attorney and asks your permission we wanted to get a document to trail so that we all as board members could see that and what's going on so if we had questions we could ask what was going on there's also supposed to be a log that at the board building and i think with phone calls and and using devices it has led to um an error in that so we're trying to clean this one up as well uh this is going to be furtherly discussed in september so that was my concern and yes i have a concern about this as well and it's something i can't discuss in public any other i just for the public that you

031just can't go and talk to attorney right now but we wanted to add something to it because we wanted just to clean it up and to put that component in that we had the actual paper trail to it so the board um secretary doesn't have an issue when he has to check the bills yes uh miss gutierrez yes uh good evening everybody uh just if i could just be involved in that conversation so that i can put in my sense on how to make it most efficient so that it helps everybody thank you any other commissioners see none um next is finance negotiations committee mr daly yes thank you madam president uh finance negotiations committee august 24th 2020 uh present where uh miss beltram mr canova mr pacetti and myself administration president was dr robertosi

032mr yusi and mr thomasevich uh items for the discussion was revised at 20 20 21 uh budget post-state aid cuts the district submitted the revision a revised budget to the county business administrator and county superintendent on august 11th after the approval of the board ms macques county business administrator of passaic county approved almost all the aspects of the budget except for the use of capital reserve to offset capital outlay equipment uh appropriations she explained that she is disapproving the five five hundred eighty eight thousand forty five dollars of capital withdrawal because uh we never got it approved in the lrfp that's a long-range facility plan during the budgeting session and two the guidance did not allow for the use of capital reserve to revise the budget the business office tried to contest this decision however

033trenton denied the request therefore it is recommended by the administration to further reduce the budget uh raises across all departments by an additional 588 thousand uh 45 dollars uh this this is still for the cea administration administrators supervisors and non-affiliated the budget is completely intact after this revision from the original revised approval and will be up for reapproval on august 27th board meeting which is tonight's board meeting there's any questions i'll be happy to answer do any commissioners have any questions thank you mr daley yeah i have i i do have something uh to add that that uh we'll more fully discuss when when the budget comes up for the vote um i did have this discussion with mr yusi uh as as finance chairman and my discussion with mr uc is that i didn't

034want to drag because i had concerns about some of the county's decisions on this issue so i agreed with mr uc that we should adopt the budget however we should still keep the issues that are concerned uh and i would recommend i would i'll discuss it under the when we have the budget approval i think we should still uh go after the decision about using the capital the withdrawal that the capital uh uh from the capital reserve fund uh on the lrfp uh the long-range facility plan and as you all know the long-range facility plan is kind of a prerequisite to spending any capital reserve money um and the this the state has an arcane look you can only revise that once a year which is totally ridiculous so um i think we should and

035i'll discuss this further i think we should send a letter to the commissioner raising our concerns we can easily revise the lrfp and i like to see that 588 000 uh reserved to its rightful uh budget line item so i'll discuss this in detail if anybody has any questions right now i'll be happy to address them as well do any commissioners have any questions i just have one question this was an email wasn't it not an actual formal meeting on the 24th because i am not having i i definitely wasn't there if it wasn't meeting nor was i invited but i remember an email coming through that was discussing all of this it was via email it was an email right not an actual meeting it was it was it was emailed to all the

036the finance committee and then um the next day i emailed it to the whole board okay so it was just an email not an actual meeting because i want to make sure i didn't miss something no no no you are correct sorry for the kind of confusion i did i just wanted minutes uh you know to explain yeah minutes minutes of the email okay yeah i just wanted to make sure because i was like oh no i must have missed something but okay all right thank you do any of the other commissioners have any questions okay um so next is the virtual education tech meeting um mr canova yep uh so the virtual education tech meeting met at 12 p.m august 19 2020 board of ed president president was myself miss basford mr casper mr

037abu drago admin president was dr robert tosi mr kucilewicz and mr mountain the administration shared how tech support would be provided during remote instruction phase of the year students in grades k-5 first reach out to their classroom teachers for help classroom teachers can resolve many issues and route their other issues concerns to the correct technical or curriculum staff if needed students in grades 6 to 12 can reach out to classroom teachers and also access tech support email and phone numbers it was suggested by the commissioners konova and abu drabble that this information be printed on stickers to apply to the students chromebooks assistant assistants will be provided via phone email and live chat sessions one additional contact option for parents and students is to teach is to use teacher voicemail this is a part of

038the new phone system that has been rolled out over the past few months teachers will be receiving instructions on how to set up their voicemail accounts as soon as configuration and testing is finalized the board of edge shared concerns of having one streamlined product process for students to access resources and assignments the district shared that google classrooms follow a similar format by course by grade all teachers will be required to use this format for online or in-person learning environments as the first day of school the weekly schedule was shared by the administration it has been developed to accommodate for hybrid in-person online and also fully online tracks all pacing and curriculum plans have been adapted to implement adapted to be implemented in person fully remote or hybrid situations staffing concerns were addressed staff with ada

039accommodations will be prioritized for remote instruction positions the administration provided an update on teacher training for virtual instruction summer course rosters show over 700 attendees at voluntary summer training sessions focusing on google classrooms and other remote instruction tools all teachers will be provided with three professional development days of training on september 1st 2nd and 3rd all new teachers will also receive three additional dates of training six total to prepare for the upcoming school year the administration updated the committee on the status of our myfi hotspot provider the original company we worked with in the spring is not renewing our agreement for the fall in response the district is procuring our own devices to distribute to families in need the nationwide delay in chromebooks orders was discussed contingency plans were developed including a survey and prioritizing

040distribution of our current chromebook inventory the administration and commissioners discuss the use of breakout rooms in zoom these breakout rooms can be used for formal discussions executive sessions are in the event of unplanned recess the breakout rooms will allow for the main room to continue to be live streamed while the private rooms would not just as meetings are conducted in person meeting was adjourned at 1 30 8 pm any questions by the commissioners i'm madam chair i have i have a comment um if we going forward if we can get a when there's a meeting with any of the groups can we get a notice a day or two before so in case we have any questions or comments we can send it to the chair and so it's addressed because uh we used to

041get the updates but it's kind of i know we're we're our new normal but we have to start trying to get back to our old normal so if that's a request for me i hope we can um find a way to do that thank you madam vice chair i think that that's a very great um suggestions so um dr overtozie if you could just um and anybody else that's sending out just make sure that goes out to the entire board so if there are any board members that want to put on any additional comments um thank you miss danny if i may i think that's obviously a great idea um what i'd like to do is i'd like to you know beginning in september i'd like to get back to our regular schedule of committee

042meetings uh we had been meeting i believe it was the second tuesday of the month in between our two board meetings so if that's something that still works for everybody maybe that would be great and then if there's any additional meetings that come up or need to be had then certainly we should let the entire board know um when they are going to be um so dr robertosi if you once you know that if you could just say like for example if you know policy it'll be every um other you could just say it'll be every other and this way you wouldn't need to send anything out and if you knew finance would be uncertain you know this and you know then you can definitely you know put something like that up that's fine touch

043base with the chairs of the committees yes and make a schedule that's great thank you next order of business is public recognition this portion of the meeting is open to the citizens of clifton for the purpose of addressing resolutions on this agenda only residents are requested to provide the purpose and to state their names addresses and subject matter students you can just state the school that you're at comments are limited to three minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate the board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are

044discouraged and will not be responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments does anyone wish to speak on items on the agenda there will be a separate one for anything other in the next public recognition yes i'm seeing a few here so i'm gonna announce the first couple um samsung galaxy s8 you'll be first dustin you'll be second um julie i also see you trying to connect to audio if if yours

045connects soon you'll be third samsung galaxy you have three minutes mr samsung galaxy if you could state your name if you're not a student and where you live and just tell us what issue you're addressing on the agenda thank you you're muted you're muted we'll give you time samsung galaxy or muted justin you'll be dustin are you ready yeah i'm here can you guys hear me okay so we'll go to dustin if you can state if you're not a student state your name and where you live and what you are addressing on the agenda thank you um i'm not a student my son is a student his name is dustin my name is thomas kiefer my son is a student at school five elementary school um i spoke last week and uh you know it

046it's this whole thing is tough but with the information given it's really frustrating to know that we can't even do partial in school the numbers according to the governor are well within these standards and it's frustrating just ultra frustrating um i know you guys on the board say that you know you get no direction um so that leads me to believe that you guys can direct yourselves and i think that we need to be a little bit um uh we need to do a better job for our kids i know you guys are worried about safety safety but just the numbers they're they don't make sense with what's going on i don't even think the pandemic's corona anymore i think it's fear everyone's so scared i mean you guys on the board you guys went

047to school there's never this is you you you go to school and you learn from your peers you you learn from being in the classroom the teachers are a tremendous help but you learn from each other experiences that you can't grasp from a teacher um i think to another thing that i know i've seen like for instance wayne they're they're doing in person and i i've read that they're you know a couple teachers aren't happy but i think you know maybe clifton could do a start and maybe start holding these meetings in persons to show that the show the teachers that were willing to to stand by you i think that would be something that would benefit to get the teachers on board um we all have jobs to do um you know it's crazy

048i mean i can i have all these notes here i can go through stats and stats but it still doesn't compute in my head why why we can't show up in school for the ones that do and to make everyone happy you talk about one clifton unfortunately like that sounds wonderful but it's just not happening and with the data given last meeting that it's almost 50 50 down the middle and you guys split elementary and middle and high why can't we do the people who want home do home and the people who want to go to school let them go i'm sure there's teachers out there that want to go and i understand the fears but again with there's there's fears of everything you can just it's all the what-ifs that aren't being answered it's

049it's you know what if this what if that let's go by what's happening you know daycares are open with no problems you know there's so important and uh you know i understand it's hard for everyone and the last thing i want to do is get our angry and everyone's you know mr robert tozie said everybody's it's very uh it's uh chaotic and everyone's arguing and very divided and we need something to break that division and uh i really think that we need to get at least some people back in school make everybody happy and uh that's really all you gotta say because the stats don't really i could say stats all day and no one listens so i mean it's just 97 it's just of it's too much but uh we really need to get

050the kids back thank you um um and uh the next person will be samsung galaxy if you could just state your name and your address and the purpose on the agenda sure can you hear me now okay yes yes we can okay thank you sorry about that i'm a little new to this um i'm for the um parents advocating for the proper education of can you just state can you state your name and your dream and your address your address yes it's that's why my current address is um in uh ocean township but my son lives in clifton new jersey 25 lehigh thank you what no thank you thank you okay so a representative group parents who are petitioning for the in-school learning option for our children in the clifton public school system since the

051creation of our petition that we wrote the other day we have close to signatures and um oh i believe it's 149 last time i checked and i asked that you guys read it truly and consider it we came together as a group because um we continue to see the detrimental effects that the school closings are having on our children all our children learn differently and um many are falling behind academically they don't do well with this new method of learning automatically they children with special needs and learning disabilities need the benefits of professionals who actually know what they're doing you know like educators who have the training the experience the skill set the untrained parents who are like forced to like divide their time between work and and becoming a teacher like it's just unfair

052like many parents are concerned with the impact that the lockdown is having on on their children's mental health and like when you observe the depression like i i see it in a kid like the depression anxiety and the overall decline in their spirit due to the school's closing uh they're in a critical age of development and need socialization and interaction that they receive from their friends and their teachers that only in school experiment conspiracy in school experience provides sorry forgive me um the school drafted up a well-thought-out plan to reopen that they obviously had faith in you guys have faith in that one time but uh we don't understand why the sudden reversal lastly there's an impact on the family as a whole many parents who are fortunate enough to work from home are forced

053to divide their attention between trying to learn how to be teachers and maintaining work responsibilities parents who don't have the work from home option um are left to fend for themselves to deal with the additional child care costs i mean in in what is now an unpredictable economy unpredictable economy this burning is particularly um particularly hard on a significant number of single parents who are who were already dealing with the challenges that come from being a skilled parent and have no resources to add additional undertaking of being a full-time teacher i mean just in-school learning can be done safely with the plan that our school system has already have in place child care has been available to essential workers and camps have been open for over the course of the entire summer with no issues

054i mean we're not suggesting that you take away the home school thing that's the three minutes remote learning but you know we just want to be able to utilize the in-school option only all parents are guaranteed option um i mean we fund the public school system and what i'm saying is like if it's there why can't we use it what what we should be able to use it should be an object if the people don't feel safe don't send the cool the kids to school but it should be there because the people who danny the three minutes is done okay well thank you for your time guys thank you sir some guys you said half of people want next up we have iphone but i see you're having audio connection issues we have um mark

055runciak yes speaking can you hear me yes okay before we before we actually go to the next individual i just want to say that um we're having i know there's a storm coming through and there are a few commissioners that said this lights were flickering so in the event that um you know i go out or something um madam vice chair basford obviously will take over if anybody else you know we'll let people come back in so just to let everybody know um there's a storm and obviously lightning and we don't know what might happen so we don't want anyone to think we're not you know we're shutting this portion down which that right now there's a lot of lightning we just don't know what might happen um okay so the next person to speak

056is mark brunsiak if you get you hear me yes said if you could just um state your address for the record yeah 20 holly street and you have three minutes to address whatever's on the agenda thank you thank you everybody for allowing me to speak tonight uh it continues to be very frustrating for me and my family and and several of my friends and family uh even as dr rover robert tosi described earlier with the new cases that recently uptick in clifton amongst children between three months old and 18 years it's maybe two percent it's maybe two percent of of the body of students that are that are able to go to school and all the precautionary measures were there yet it was forced down our throats and you use this as a crutch to

057say that it is not safe to have in-person instruction even though there are plastic dividers and everything in addition to all the other mitigating mitigations possibly doing that and the school board voted eight to one to not do that and uh somebody please correct me if i'm wrong but i even think that somebody on this school board works at another local district and they have the option of in-person learning and all remote learning so if that possibility is there it could be over here too so i want to let everybody so please correct me if i'm wrong and i want to thank you dana beltran for voting no on all remote because the courage that you have and the 50 percent of parents that want in-person education for their children it's very important to all

058of us and we will remember you the next time there is an election also to the teachers who refuse to return in classroom shame on you it is your turn there are frontline workers that have been exposed around other people with the covid19 risking their lives every day since march since mid-march and it is months later and there were over 200 people involved to to have a reopening option an in-person reopening option and all of a sudden they do a complete 180 and people have scrambled to try to do whatever they can to try to accommodate their their children who need to go to school this september so uh it's your turn there are grocery clerks out there who make maybe half maybe a third maybe a quarter of what these teachers earn and it

059is your turn there are more than enough if they could stand there for eight to ten hours per day with a mask on with gloves on and you're you're in classrooms with 15 children with 15 of the same children all day you have a chance to do this too thank you everybody for allowing me to speak and god bless america thank you the next person will be i'm going to read off the next couple we have clace followed by alice sheppy followed by ipad 3. and then a phone caller ending in zero seven three one by the way i'm i'm muting you right now so we have a little feedback and then josh rubin clay if you can if you could state your name and your address and you have three minutes to address something

060on the agenda thank you place place you are muted okay place there will be also another um public recognition so i don't know if clay's dropped off um so next we have alice sheppy alice sheppy if you could state your name you are muted so please unmute yourself if you could state your name and where you live as long as you're not a student you're muted alice cheffy or muted hello everyone can you hear me yes we can you can just state your name and your address sure my name is alice sheppy i live at 177 hadley avenue my son um will be going to um clifton high um next month his name you don't have to state his name i wanted to see if there was a way that the kids that actually want

061to go to school can sign a covet waiver that their parents cannot sue the district if they contract the disease or there's no legal issues i think the parents have a right if they want to risk their kids health to sign that waiver that it's their rights i think that will help us move further along i chose to do remote because i will not risk my kid's life i won't do it i won't even risk mine um i go to work in glove shield and ppe and i let my clients sign the waiver saying that they don't have covet and if they should be sick coughing i can exit them out the building without touching them by calling security we don't have that luxury in a public school setting however i have seen that a

062lot of parents would like their kids to go to school so is there a way that we can sign a waiver of those who want in person classroom so that we can move further in regards to curriculum assignment book drops and so forth like i just found out my child was actually accepted in school two days ago and i don't know what i need to get what supplies i need to get because we are stuck in limbo which could cause the school year to start later than september 8th and that was just it okay miss sheppy um comments will be responded to possibly your comment some part of your comment might be responded to at the end of this by dr robert chozi so we're not responding individually right now just understand that thank you

063um who is the next person uh looks like the ipad has left um so next up we have the phone caller ending in zero seven three one phone caller ending in zero seven three one yes hello student no i am uh okay so you could just state your name and where you and your address thank you vincent capruccio 29 fernwood court um my question i have two two things my one my one question is for mr prasenti you're very adamant about teachers returning to school this coming week my question is if teachers are going to be returning to school without students why our teachers that are in a classroom all day long not allowed to have their conditioning on or required to wear a mask and a shield and why isn't the board of ed

064at school six having their meeting tonight if it's so important to be back in the buildings and you guys are still virtual um i believe that my other my other statement or question whatever you want to however you want to put it is when they do the amb schedule and or or let's say my son or daughter is going from room out of the high school southwind 208 to central wing 209 for their next class who's cleaning the classrooms in between when the bell rings when the kids are in the hallway i understand you guys are going to have people cleaning the school after hours but what about during the day when kids are in the school because you can't there's no way they're going to be able to control 3 000 kids to keep

065on their maths and their and everything in that high school and there's there's there's going to be there's going to there's going to be a chance of cross contamination anyway i think the whole thing personally by the way i think the whole thing is bs i don't i don't i'm not one of the people that wear a mask square shield i don't even support that i think cobit is less dangerous than the flu um but i think it's ridiculous that different rules and regulations are applying to different people in different situations with different things school should just be reopened and it should be optional to wear a mask my kid should not have to wear masks he doesn't want to and your kids shouldn't have to wear a mask if he doesn't want to nor

066should they be forced to and that's what i've said what i had to say and thank you and again board members will respond in their comments so um you know right now we're not responding to any comments we're just listening and taking notes thank you very much next caller yes we have um several people came and went so now we have max reuben nassar abdelhali hadi and mark delgado max rubin are you a student uh yes i am a student okay then please don't state where you are just state what it is on the agenda that you'd like to address thank you welcome okay thank you um so hello i'm max rubin i am the senior representative to the board of education so from now on i will try to make some sort of address

067to you guys at every board of ed meeting from now on um it's an honor to be a part of this organization um thank you so much dr robert tosie for doing such an amazing job and for putting so much hard work in into this whole reopening program um i always said i'm so glad that we got a new superintendent when we did it was it was about time and you've you've done phenomenal so far um and same for all the board of ed members um one major development that's been going on for the past couple weeks as you guys know um marching band camp for the high school has been going on for two weeks i am a senior and i'm a member of the marching band have been for four years and so

068far it's been a blast it's been really safe everybody's been social distancing everybody's been wearing a mask except for when we're doing aerobic activity and when we are we're spreading apart like an appropriate distance so it's been incredibly safe mr stapnesky and all the directors have been doing a really good job taking a lot of precautions and we already have a plan for a possible show that hopefully we'll get to put on in the future if not at a football game hopefully some other event but it's been a blast so far and i can't wait to see where it goes from here hopefully we'll get to represent the hard work we put in so far these two weeks it's been two and a half hours every morning a half an hour just for checking in

069and making sure everyone's temperature is good and making sure no one has any symptoms and two other hours of marching and playing and it's been great um other than that i did have one question um that doesn't have to do with marching band it has to do with um school supplies and someone brought up during the last meeting i'm not sure which i think it might have been miss kusalevich brought up that they're trying to avoid having to print entirely for the school and what what came to my mind is how would you go about that what would you do what would you supply to the students so that they wouldn't have to print because i know most students either don't have printers or they have like an inkjet printer and the ink runs out

070every month or so and then it costs a bunch of money for a new inkjet so what methods would you guys use so that students wouldn't have to print consistently throughout the year that's my question thank you thank you thank you max and again um dr arbitosi after this will have um time to address if he wants to or in his um closing comments will definitely address what questions he you know from from the public portion of the comments so again we're not addressing it individually thank you okay thank you thanks max who's next um nasser has left so we have merc delgado uh yes if you could just state your name and your address for the record and then you may have your three minutes thank you hi i'm mercedes delgado aviles and i

071live in cambridge crossings i have a high school age child and a middle school-aged child and i really i guess i just have a statement i'm a hospital pediatrician and i have taken care of many young people with covid and one of the things that parents always say is i wish i had understood that it could be this severe i wish that the parents of my child's friend understood that having a covet test because her brother has coveted she comes out negative doesn't mean that she can go out that if you're a contact and you get a covet test a negative test doesn't mean you don't have covet it just means that right now you don't have covet there are a number of situations where people rely on that negative test they don't quarantine for

072the 14 days they think they're well they walk outside and they think because they're outside and walking that they don't need to wear a mask and kids get sick some kids handle it very well and some kids get very sick at this time we're seeing an increase in cases of children from 12 to 18 and 19 years old a 30 increase it's not a joke when you i'm looking at a parent who sees that their child is getting progressively sicker and sicker and sicker and more on the oxygen and now needs to transfer to the icu they all say the same thing i wish i understood because i could quote numbers but the numbers don't matter when it's your child it's a hundred percent who cares that that seventy percent of the children are okay

073if you fall in that thirty percent it's your whole world and if if you have a family of four children and you have one really sick you don't know that the other three are not going to go down the same path so as difficult as i know this is because everyone wants to get back to normal my children would love for me to say the pandemic is over we can go back it is all going to be great but the reality is it's not right now we have remdi severe as the only medication that we can give to anyone less than 18 years old convalescent plasma is not approved unless you are 18 years old and older so it's a very very serious thing i suspect that the parents who would want to sign a

074waiver if it happened to their child they would say but i was a parent and i didn't know and i trusted you guys as professionals to know and to protect me so as much pressure i think as people are being given and at some point maybe we do have to reopen the schools and let folks take their chances i want folks to remember you know if your kid gets sick it is three minutes miss danny i'm sorry you know are you gonna be okay with that decision that you made thank you very much for your time and miss delegato there will also be another portion of public recognition if you wish to continue you may on that thank you next person to speak we have julie and then george and then joe has just joined

075it and george julie are you a student you are muted julie had audio difficulties earlier so um perhaps we moved to george we'll just we'll just move to joe do you mean joe i'm sorry george just left so yes joe would be after george joe no i'm a mother oh okay julie can you state your name and your address and then you have three minutes to speak on the agenda okay we can't hear you um are you there julie you're in a striped looks like black and white striped shirt can you hear me now yes yes your name and address uh my name is julie garcia my name is julie garcia and i live on delawana avenue clifton oh and you can stay three minutes on the agenda it's possible that she's watching the live

076stream which is about 20 to 40 seconds behind the only other name i'm seeing is julie if you can turn off your live stream if you can turn that off and then just speak to the camera for three minutes um i want to know what are you guys doing with a special prick can you hear me now [Music] with the kindergarten special because i have a special um kid who's autistic and he needs to go back to school and i understand that there's what you guys are doing with them what are we gonna do because a chromebook he's not gonna sit for hours uh in front of a chromebook what are we doing with them that's my question okay so miss julie we are not at this moment um answering we're just listening and then

077board members will be able to comment and dr robert jose thank you next person is joe yes yes joe you have three minutes okay we'll come back to joe is it then is the last one vanessa gabba yeah i believe she's here for the second public comment so okay okay she's here for the second okay okay so do we have any more waiting we have one more that literally just popped in i'm connecting right now uh miss roldan you have three minutes to speak on items on this agenda are you a student miss rollden can you hear me miss world then can you hear us your audio is going in and out yes i can hear you thank you are you a student no i am a mother okay can you just state your name

078and your address and then the three minutes on the agenda thank you my name is marjorie rolden i live in day street and clifton and what i would like to know is what is going to be happening during uh for the pre-trade program okay so we're not answering questions right now um at the end of this session um dr obertosi will address with any questions so did you wish to speak anymore no that's it thank you okay thank you so much all right are there any more that's it for now 16 more motion to close emotional closed by mr becenti second by mr abu drabo robertosi the commissioners will have their board member comments but would you like to address anything or address it later on um i'm giving you the floor right now yeah

079yes dan i think i'd like to address it during board member comments so that we can i can combine everything okay thank you okay um so we do not have any unfinished business next order business is education and administration can i have a motion for ea 1 through e85 so second okay motion by mr vicente second by mr casper uh any questions comments discussion this is one through five one through five of each that's okay i know it could be a little confusing so see none roll call mr abby drabo yes miss bassford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes mr casper yes mr picenti yes mr smith yes miss danny yes next order of business is personnel um can i have a motion for p1 through p39 motion by mr smith

080second by strava questions comments see none roll call mr abba drabo yes i'm standing on p34 miss bashford uh yes absolutely sorry save me uh i apologize you're correct i'm abstaining on p34 my name only and i'm standing like thank you uh yeah sam i'm standing on p34 my name only mr canova mr daley yes uh my name only on p34 mr casper i'm voting yes on everything and i'm staying on my name on p-34 mr pacenti uh yes to everything um but as i stole the superintendent i have reservations and if you went up i will upstate e34 however if it's going to cost the district money for me to go to code of these board uh meetings i'd rather have a district pull my name um so it says it saves us money

081because i will no longer need them mr smith yes to all abstain on my name only p34 and miss danny yes and abstain on my name only on p34 next order of business is finance and facilities can i have a motion for f1 through f9 motion by mr casper second by mr pacenti any questions comments see none roll call mr abramo yes miss bassford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes mr casper yes mr yes mr smith yes miss danny yes motion cares next order of business is public recognition this portion of the meeting is open to citizens of clifton for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to and or directly related to the operation of the clifton public school district residents are requested to state their name and the

082purpose their address comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate the board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged and will not be responded by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that

083they're legally responsible and liable for their comments who is speaking first first up we've had vanessa in the waiting room dr robitozzi would you like to introduce vanessa uh thank you mr mountain uh ladies and gentlemen of the board tonight you approved my recommendation to appoint vanessa gaba as the new principal of christopher columbus middle school and she'd just like an opportunity to say a few words to the board good evening everybody president danny vice president basford commissioners of the board of education superintendent dr robertosi assistant superintendents mr t gen and miss kusalevich i would like to thank you for affording me the opportunity to lead a building that i have come to absolutely love having started my career as a teacher at woodrow wilson middle school then transitioning into the role of vice principal

084at christopher columbus middle school it has become exceedingly clear that the students and staff at both middle schools represent the core of one clifton and it is our goal to work collaboratively under that mantra to support the district's vision to all our champs on the ccms staff thank you our journey together continues because of all your hard work and support finally i want the students parents and staff to know that while we are currently experiencing very difficult and challenging times there is no doubt that together we will overcome this most unique situation as one clifton once again thank you for this opportunity have a great evening and everyone please stay safe and healthy thank you miss gabba congratulations once again thank you very much congratulations thank you okay miss danny we have six or seven

085many are repeats from the first session so i'm not sure if everyone intends to speak if you can hear us right now in the zoom if you don't want to speak feel free to to bow out and watch the live stream um otherwise i'll call on you in such in the same manner as before first up is jennifer's iphone followed by samsung galaxy s8 followed by maori rolldown jennifer's iphone is having audio difficulties so we'll move on to samsung galaxy s8 samsung galaxy if you could just state your name again and address for the record and unmute yourself you're next thank you okay i believe they've left next is miserable done also left um next up is merc delgado mercedes delgado if you can state your name and um again address for the record and

086you have five minutes this time to speak thank you okay mercedes delgado avilas and i'm in the cambridge crossings um uh i when i left off before i was commenting on what's available to us for our children who are less than 18 years old right now we only have one medication um and if we just would try and give it a little more time we maybe will have something else that we could roll out and i know everybody's impatient everybody wants to get the kids in um uh there was a gentleman who commented that the younger age groups were doing very well the daycares were doing very well and and that is indeed the case um but i think middle schoolers high schoolers uh it spreads and it spreads because people don't think they're sick

087and they don't cover and you you we would want to believe that no one's going to come to school feeling like they have a head cold or feeling like they have sinusitis but if they think that it's something minor they're going to come to school and when the kids leave uh their mass will be off right so adults yes i work in a hospital i go to work i have full ppe if i don't know if a patient has covet i go with full ppe but children are children and as much as we want them to rise above that and be more mature and have respect for this virus and and do all the things they don't they're kids you know and so i i think we have to consider that when we make our

088decision it's it's sending a child to school is not the same as an adult going to work we as adults know to be responsible children as much as you can speak to them and there's some that are very mature uh we can't count that they'll all be mature and and and do all that we actually so that's that's the only comment i had uh patience you know patience a few more months maybe we'll have something else that we can roll out and when it's treatable then you say well okay you know maybe then it's the risk of of getting the illness is okay because we have something we could do and in maybe a few weeks they'll be back in school and you know it'll be like any other illness but right now we still

089don't have enough for the kids that we're looking at for children we don't have enough available to them okay that's all my comments thank you very much tough just tough decisions you know i i i wouldn't want to be the one to make the decision i'm thankful that you guys are have stepped up to the task thank you miss delgado next person to speak is uh just a reminder if you are planning to speak turn off the live stream please uh next up we have lorila llama followed by wasilla followed by jennifer's iphone ms lorila llama you know name and everything yes good evening to everybody tonight i want to continue to thank can you hear me yeah well solo your turn is next please please wait a moment lori thank you i want to

090thank everybody and continue to thank everybody for everything that we've been going through the administration all the committees all the supervisors the principals the vice principals board of ed members this continues to be very difficult so i received some information from some of the staff members and i want to share it with you and you don't have to answer it now you can answer it later but this was some concerns that i received regarding last week there was a motion on the floor to vote to keep the students remote and it was voted on by the board and passed however there was never a motion placed on the table during the board meeting to vote on staff for returning that was left to the superintendent's discretion the motion was to begin 2021 school year remotely

091to be reviewed october 1st with a possible return date of october 12th according to robert's rules a motion must be placed and two oppositions would not defer the right to adopt consensus meaning the majority vote would still stand in this case then the decision to send teachers back to the building was solely of the superintendent additionally according to executive order 175 outlined by the new jersey school boards association website number seven mentions that school's ability to go full-time remote should they be unable to comply with the outlined items in number two uk outlines adequate ventilation how do we keep children home due to ventilation issues but require adults to enter and work from these school buildings ventilation is still a concern we need to follow the recommendations of the cdc and the american society of

092heating and refrigeration and air conditioning engineers districts should increase ventilation with outdoor air to ensure that the air exchange rate is set at the minimum standard set by this group increase our air filtration by upgrading filters to merv 13 and our still is set at seven or eight or higher to ensure that indoor co2 levels are at or below the recommended standard filtering and circulating indoor air with fresh air is critical to reducing uh the virus isolation rooms should have a dedicated hvac system prevent the air from mixing with any other spaces in the school unfortunately much of this is impossible with outdated systems which is why remote learning is necessary until the air and ventilation issues are resolved if there was a way there's a checklist that i have that i could send to

093make sure that our systems and there's enough ventilation because that's the main concern is the ventilation because um our hvac systems is only heat and there's no incoming air some of the windows are broken in the older buildings so my concern is still for the health and safety of the people that are going into the buildings and later on when the kids come back that's going to be my um that's my concern so i would rather be considered a selfish educator rather than a dead martyr so i really want people to understand that i'm not doing this out of you know not getting daycare for parents because i was a single parent too i had two kids and i had to come up with ideas but to protect the kids and the staff and the

094administration i'm sure feels the same way we have to take care of our kids and everybody who works in the school system just as the previous speaker mrs delgado spoke it's really important um that is i hope everybody has a very good evening tonight and thank you thank you miss lalama you as well next speaker a few have left and joined so the next three are wasilla chloe popowicz and jason miller was silla hi yeah can you hear me are you a student with no i'm a parent okay just state your name and your address and then you have five minutes to address the board thank you sure thank you uh my name is missella benazella i live in 257 seventh street in clifton um i actually have a question regarding the remote uh teaching

095so uh if we if clifton public schools are going to be remote for i don't know how many um days or months i'll say um my question is is it going to be any sort of in a direct teaching online like i'll give you an example like a zoom system where the teacher will be teaching from the classroom or home or whatever and then she will be directly teaching the kids while they're staying home or is it going to be like the spring session where the teacher used to send like the work and i have to teach my child and a lot of parents were struggling with it so uh basically that is my question i would love to know if the board has a specific system where the kids are going to be connected

096directly to the teacher and doing the work online basically thank you thank you and again the comments will be addressed later in possibly board member comments thank you okay um chloe popowicz again if your student just you don't need to state your address otherwise state your name and address okay um when we when will we receive our schedules and while christian high school provided sats for the current seniors there are many students who are traveling out of state and have to quarantine for two weeks after taking the test thank you and again um miss pop which will we will um any of the board members that wish to address or um dr robertosi will in his comments so thank you very much next person to speak jason miller mr miller if you could please state

097your name and address and you have five minutes to address the board thank you yeah uh jason miller uh 36 conova court um i don't have any questions i just have a couple comments um first i just want to say thank you to the entire board there for the job you're doing during these times i know it's hard i know you're getting a lot of criticism from both sides um i was i have a parent i mean a student in high school and a student in element middle school i was one who we the kids wanted to go back to school but at this point we completely understand the decision that was made and the reasons why so again i just want to commend you guys for the job that you're doing i know it's

098a tough job that you're doing getting all the criticism that's first and second of all um as the hsa vice president of christopher columbus middle school i want to congratulate ms gaba on her new position and uh just uh congratulate you guys and say it was a terrific decision to make her the new uh principal at the school so that's it everybody stay safe but again like i said you guys i just want to thank you guys and especially mr robert tozie the job that he's been doing as the new superintendent um you know just uh keep going and and we'll get through this and get the kids back in school when when it's safe for everybody thanks thank you mr mitchell anyone else uh no miss danny i'm not seeing anyone else next order

099of business is board member comments um and i think uh is it miss beltram is it you that will be next i don't remember yeah [Music] okay so miss beltram you're muted if you could unmute okay guys i'll take it quick and sweet tonight i'm happy that um we've been able to come together as a board and work through some of our issues that we had around the openings of the schools and i'm happy to see that we're going to attempt to have the teachers in the classrooms i think it will really benefit the children's of of clifton and i really hope we wind up with enough uh chromebooks that everyone can have their own chromebook um as soon as possible if not for the start of school i think that'll really be crucial to

100the continuity of the learning um that's going on and everyone continue to be safe and um have a good start of the school year it'll be here as soon as you know it i think you know two weeks um i hope all the staff members get everything together quickly um and again the board is here to support everyone and um and feel free to call in or email us we are getting tons of emails but it's actually great to see the town participating um so widely and that's all i have um have a good night thank you miss beltram uh mr kanova hey good evening uh first congratulations to miss gaba i know you're going to do a great job at ccns i'm looking forward to seeing there um i want to extend my sincerest

101condolences to former board of ed larry grosso and his family on the passing of his life um your family will be in our thoughts and prayers so this school issue has been pretty much a difficult decision because i opted in both surveys to send my kids back you heard me agree with everyone else and say that people shouldn't go back um and the reason for that is when i took this position i'm not only worrying about my two children i'm worrying about 11 000 children in the district and that's a difficult task because you have to take into consideration not only like in my situation i have like i said two children we live here me and my wife i don't have elders in the house with me so it's not necessarily an issue but

102in clifton we do have scenarios where people are living with elderly in their homes and with multiple families and multiple multiple family homes um daycare is an issue in the past they may have gone to an aunt's house a grandmother's house to to be watched while mom and dad went to work so those are all areas of consideration and if you look at what was presented to us from the clinton board of health they're basically saying there's an uptick in the kids [Music] in those age ranges from 1909 and that's concerning because if there is something that does come up we don't want to be the ones that maybe someone has to go to school or even put a parent in a position where they could choose for the kids to be in an unsafe

103environment um so for me the defer was was a difficult choice but considering it is only a couple of weeks and we can view the climate and what's around us and see what happens in other districts um that's the reason why i started the defer so that's just my two cents on it i'd rather be safe than sorry in this scenario let's just give it a couple weeks as danny said um it's not really a board decision it's a superintendent decision but you know we are supportive of his decision in that um and we are working well together uh as much much as we can meeting as many times as we can in subcommittees going over health concerns going over uh remote support issues that we just spoke about in the technology minutes um so

104we're doing the best we can and and we do want to hear from everyone if you have issues definitely reach out to us if you want to hear all the the uh positions of people i hope we come together in the next couple of weeks and just pull through this and guitar start on october 12th thank you thank you mr nova mr daily yes thank you very much um just uh i'll just be very brief uh first of all and foremost i'd like to thank uh i congratulate miss gaba on her uh appointment to being principal of christopher columbus i wish her much success and when she says it's a great school i've heard that from from many many other people so uh we look forward to you keeping the strong traditions of christopher columbus

105and providing this support to your staff and educating our children to the best of our ability um there's no question these these are tough decisions they're not easy um i'm one that listens more than flaps my jaws but you do have to on the whole i think we've made the right decision uh i understand everybody's anxiety i've had many discussions with their superintendent that there's no substitute for in classroom learning and i think mostly educators and parents would agree with that but we do have to be prudent and wise about what we do and ultimately it's superintendent's decision but i think we've come to a good enough consensus um there's several of us here on the board who are considered essential workers we've and the key to uh to this as we can all testify

106is to practice the right safety measures and that includes wearing a mask uh i know my uh my workplace um there's several thousand people in the building at any particular moment um i keep an eye out for both the public and the staff and virtually everyone in the building has a mask and maybe some other uh ppe but they all have the best it's a requirement and when we follow these rules we can um start to lessen the uh the transmission of this disease so i think we all have a role to play even if you're not a frontline worker to understand that and if we all and everybody in town practices those types of things we can cut down the transmission significantly and it'd be a much easier decision to open the school so

107this is not only the board making a decision but the towns folks and the parents in particular need to be in a controlled position and enforcing what's important so we can open the schools with a lot less rancor and and and divisiveness on this issue but at this point in time the way the uh the transmission rate or the pace rate is up uh we have to error on the side of caution uh and i think we all agree this is not a long term we know these things can change quickly one way or the other so we were all keeping our eye on how the how these transmissions and cases are going and that's really what's driving i think both the superintendent but he can speak for himself but certainly my decision to support

108the superintendent in this way i wish everybody stay healthy and please public be prudent understand what's at stake you can control this much more than we can here at the board of education thank you very much thank you mr daley mr casper yes thank you madam president i'd first like to um congratulate miss gaba on her new endeavor i'm excited to see um how uh columbus will move forward now i'd also like to uh send out a special congratulations of our teacher of the year our passaic county teacher of the year miss megan graziano from clifton high school i had the pleasure of watching her receive her award yesterday uh what else do i have okay i'd like to thank all of the retirees that had put in for their retirement this time around i

109thank you for your hard work and dedication to our school district and i'd also like to thank all of our speakers that had come out this evening even though uh the decision of the board was to go remote um i'd rather see our students and if possible our teachers uh be safe during this pandemic uh since i for me i would like to ensure that everyone is safe and that um nobody is um will be hurt or anything during this pandemic um so i'd like to see everyone stay safe and uh make sure that uh everybody comes back to school safely and in a safe manner thank you thank you mr casper mr pacenti thank you um first i would like to send my uh condolences to the grass family larry was a great um

110board member uh supporter and um it's a shame to lose his wife laura who would work for the police department uh in the records bureau for a long long time we've known each other most of my career so condolences to uh his family his daughter and rest in peace um secondly i know i've been contacted many times by emails about bringing teachers to the classroom uh first let me explain everything properly i wanted also the students to be in the classroom dr robert told you kids could attest to that i wanted everything to be open and us moving forward as a district however uh i always say i'll support dr robert ozzie and his decisions uh he made the decision he is a superintendent he runs this district and all i can do is give

111my support to him and that's why um i supported him not sending students as for teachers honestly i think it's the best learning environment for the situation and um i hope people understand that i know there's a lot of distractions at home and if they're in a classroom teaching we don't have to rely on parents as much as that we have in the past and that's where my decision lies and it stands um people need to understand where i am i've been through this working every day with kobe uh haven't stopped there was times we didn't have masks prior to knowing how bad this disease is and we worked through it i brought it to my family there's times that i you know stayed away from everybody because i wasn't sure what i was getting

112myself into um and it's it's a stressful situation so i understand so we're at a position now i think that we know a little more about it i think the teacher should be safe with it we're removing the students i think um they'll be they could distance themselves from other other teachers they don't have to share classrooms and i think it's the way to go um and i'm not gonna be bullied or demeaned through email or text is about why i made my decision so i stick with that decision and i hope every uh we all stay safe i don't want to see anybody get hurt but again the best learning environment for this situation for now back to the class and i thank you probably for making that that's all i have thank you

113mr presentee mr smith uh yes i too uh would like to send my condolences to um larry grosso uh and his family on the passing of his wife uh larry is a very good friend and uh uh i know must be a very difficult time for him and his family so we send our condolences um vanessa gabba like to congratulate you on your appointment to principal at christopher columbus i know your heart and soul is there at columbus and i know you'll do a wonderful job and you'll have the support of your board behind you and also to the passaic county teacher of the year megan graziano teacher in the high school for a great accomplishment i should be proud of yourselves and we're very proud of you for the award i continue my support

114as i have from day one for virtual instruction um again we are not we're not professionals in this area we rely on the advice of professionals um many times we've relied on the uh [Music] the advice of dr fauci on tv from the cdc from different avenues and one of the the most compelling uh avenues or backing to professional advice was the final word that we got in our special meeting from our director of health in the city of clifton by mr beagle where he was point blank asked uh would you open the buildings right now based upon the information and the numbers you were given and he said no he would not uh open the buildings uh so i stand upon his advice and until those numbers change until the advice from professionals can

115tell us that our buildings are safe for students and staff i will not support any other means of of educating other than virtual until we're told otherwise and then as of october first we'll reevaluate that situation as well we talked about schools and schools being safe and the safety of students and staff and that is uh utmost in in my mind but i also have concern of staff that is not in schools for example uh all of our staff at school number six school number six is a very old building many of those windows don't work don't open ventilation system is very poor uh how safe is our staff at school number six many people work throughout the entire summer remotely so they didn't have to go into school number six um so i think

116that has to be looked at how safe is our transportation garage how safe is our staff there how safe is our staff down at the stadium i think all those things have been overlooked and i think they need to be looked at as well as well as talking about the safety of the schools i would like to just take a a moment miss danny if i would to just um address uh something that happened at our last uh regular meeting um as some of you may be aware i did experience a medical emergency shortly after our meeting started right to briefly explain what took place i do suffer from a chronic illness chronic migraines i was diagnosed with them at the age of 15 and have suffered most of my life with them chronic migraine

117is a real chronic disease it is very debilitating and hinders my ability at times to have a normal quality of life i've been to numerous specialist hospitals gone through numerous testing numerous procedures medicines to deal with my migraines with very little or no improvement right now there is no cure for migraines migraines can come on me at any time without warning or signs that one is coming some people do get an aura which is a warning however i am not so fortunate to be able to be one of those people that get a warning so last regular meeting shortly after our meeting started i started to get a severe pain in my head accompanied with slight numbness in my hands as well as nausea again since i had no warning that this migraine had come

118upon me it was at full force many people including myself do pass out and become unconscious from the migraine during my migraine i did go in and out of consciousness and finally at one point became totally unconscious for the remainder of the meeting because i was unconscious i was unable to turn my camera off or totally leave the meeting while all meetings are important i felt this meeting was particularly important to discuss the reopening of the schools for the new school year right or wrong i always put the needs of the staff and the students before my own unless i tried my best to fight the migraine and remain in the meeting i wish to thank my fellow board members for the care and concern by contacting me personally to check on me i wish

119to thank so many of the public who commented publicly on the computer through emails and through phone calls they meant the world to me it was truly touching to see that during a medical emergency that people are there for you i personally like to make to thank my dear friends vinnie and diane constantino who came to my place where i live to check on me very late at night to make sure that i was okay i truly thank both of them foreseeing me through this medical emergency and for coming to my assistance thank you all for understanding and for allowing me the opportunity to explain what took place thank you miss danny thank you mr smith mr abu drabo thank you ms danny i'm gonna keep it really brief um everybody touched on various things

120but um just like my colleagues i want to give uh mike knowlton regross of a family to larry and his family uh larry may uh god bless your wife in heaven and also figure for any shortcomings that she may have in life um and uh anything you know my prayers with uh uh miss gaba as a a ccms alum congratulations and good luck looking forward to what ccms has to bring in the coming years um and i mean listen i'm gonna i'm not gonna beat a dead horse because all my colleagues spoke about you know the the opening the pros and cons of each decision we spoke about in the past so all right you know and that's all i have to say so thank you thank you mr abu drabo madam vice chair basford

121uh thank you um um president danny um deepest condolences to larry grasso on the passing of your wife uh during this difficult time uh we all extend our sympathy to you and and and your family um god bless our soul and very sorry for your loss uh miss gabba i knew you from woodrow wilson and when i was informed of the um promotion and the placement that was uh going to be awarded to you i stopped for a moment and i thought wow perfect fit what a success story christopher columbus is going to be with your leadership your guidance and your professionalism by the way i exhibited your tenderness your care and your diligence to the children at woodrow wilson many moons ago i know this is going to be a home run for the

122district so welcome and congratulations in your new position i am so excited for you um at the last special meeting um there was an issue with one of the speakers and i had a i had a check with a friend of mine that is a what i call a robert rules of order expert or an rro junkie before i could get my words out of my mouth the person on the other end of the phone said judy you did the right thing you have the right under page 96 of rro to control the meeting to make sure that everybody is going to be respectable to your guests bob foster is a guest he's a colleague and he came to the meeting with valuable information so that's what i did i apologize i apologize in the

123email that's it and that's how i'm gonna address it i did the right thing because under that rule i have to maintain order and i have to make sure that our guests are comfortable and not being attacked so i'm never going to speak about it again if the person wants to contact me be my guest carlos rodriguez interim county superintendent is leaving he's retiring his last day is the 31st of august i personally am going to miss that man dearly he's been an asset on the county level in the state level he's been a friend to this board and his i hope his replacement can fit those shoes as well as he did because he was an asset to our board a big congratulations to megan graziano passaic county teacher of the year what an

124award to bring to clifton i don't know if it's ever happened before that clifton has ever been recognized in this manner but i watched it live i know frank was on the same meeting yesterday and it was awesome to watch 21 special teachers with dedication receive that award now what happens with that award is one one of those 21 members get to be the teacher of the year for the state of new jersey and i hear it's quite the honor and they have a platform and they get a lot of different accolades from it and i am so blessed to know that clifton's out clifton's own teacher got that award so thank you for your dedication to the science department at chs i i i was grateful i was so excited to hear your name

125and your speech and she thanked each of us as board members and the administration and her colleagues that made her the teacher she is today so bravo um good luck to our staff as you guys prepare for our new normal um our teachers and our staff i have no doubt will rise to the occasion and they will rise to this challenge of the new normal although i am not speaking for the board i speak for myself and i am worried about the feeling of uncomfortable and as a person i got to experience that new normal uncomfortable feeling yesterday at work went back after five months messed up went in and did what i had to do driving home in the car was challenging i have a husband that has underlining health issues so i had

126to stay with my mask when i go upstairs in my house my mask goes on so i know the challenge that you are all worried about my accommodation and my beliefs was given an optional and optional um status to people let them go in if they want to i know people want to get back to normal i know students want to get back to normal i know staff wants to get back to normal and i know some of the teachers really want to get in there i wish it was optional and i'm sorry that i couldn't make it that way as a board member we are given information to make informed decisions and the one decision that will permeate with me for the rest of my late days i think i'm going on 12 years

127now miss danny i think it's almost 12 years now we're on this board is when the city's chief health officer gives that recommendation that's why i made my decision and i will stick to it until the day i do no longer breathe i have i have an opportunity we are the stewards of the taxpayer dollars but we also have to make decisions based on the information that we are given and i made my decision appropriately so dr robitazi i support you 100 and you made this decision and we are going to make it work with whatever we have to do but i just wish it was optional for our staff because i have concerns but that's just me with that being said congratulations on everybody that's going to start a new year's school i know

128it's been challenging for people all over the place and to a personal note to my daughter who has gone above and beyond the call of duty at her residence hall way to go sam you're a good egg good night and thank you very much thank you uh madam vice chair of ashford um so first of all i'd like to say condolences to larry grasso on the passing of his wife and um condolences to his family for this difficult time i'd like to say congratulations to vanessa gabba and megan graziano for obviously in different positions but again great achievements and i did want to say that i do receive emails as i'm sure that you know many board members have stated they do receive numerous emails um we are told you know to direct them to

129the superintendent and not respond to them so i just want you to know that i do read them um i think about what is being stated anything that needs to be passed along to the superintendent i do do that um and i don't want to speak for obviously my fellow board members but i think that you know again just knowing in the past they have said the same thing that when they get emails if it needs to pass to the superintendent they they do that um now the reopen um as you all know i am a teacher in a district um we are currently going into a hybrid um the governor governor murphy you know he put it there and said well let every school district take a look at locally what their concerns are

130and open um based on what their local concerns are and so pretty much we always just get guidance last minute or and that's led to a lot of these issues um because it's last minute and then you know we don't want to just put in um staff and children based on what we see locally is happening i'm an educator i feel for my fellow educators there are many that don't want to go in at this time i mean looking at just the clifton district aside from you know the chief health official what he was saying that this wasn't you know he wouldn't advise reopening those classrooms are old brick buildings very hot teachers students going in when you get bodies like that in there it makes it even hotter and yes we know what we

131signed on as educators which is obviously it's a hot building and we go into those hot buildings and not complain and make any issue of it but to be in there with ppe gear when it is so hot and with students you know that that just i'll just that to me that's just it's just inhumane and so you know i am fully supportive of looking at it in october it's cooler you can open up the windows when you go into the hot building now and you open up the windows it's stagnant and again i have asked my fellow board commissioners to go in there with me with how many i think the maximum would be 15 in a room 15 of us whoever wants to go in maybe some of those parents that um would

132like to reopen would like to experience it just themselves because you know sometimes experiencing is best best way and you know let's go ride the bus let's you know sit in the classroom um bring our computers and you know our little snack or whatever and experience the whole day and you know see how it is again i mean when you're sweating it's really hard i mean it's easy for everyone to say when you're in air conditioning but when you're not in air conditioning i know that at board meetings when it got really hot in that board room and that's nowhere near what a september building is there were board members i'm not saying these board members specifically there were board members that were complaining it is hot in here and it was nowhere near september

133so i just feel it's very inhumane um if it was up to me you know i would make it optional for those that want to go into a building there are many teachers that do want to go in the building there are many teachers that want to have in person um you know if the teachers want to be in the building and they want to teach from there there's less distractions for them i would not be opposed to that um again i leave it up to the superintendent um to decide because again i cast in my vote you know to hire him so i trust uh what he will do and you know his guidance and he has been an educator he's come up the ranks so he understands how it is um he's walked

134those halls he's walked the buildings um he knows his staff and you know happy staff equals success in you know it for for the students it's all better for the students i mean disgruntled employees i don't even want to tell you you know what happens with disgruntled employees so again i think that you know in my opinion i'm happy that we have done the remote because it's very very hot and with the poor ventilation in the buildings and and everything and with the numbers going um up and some of the students again they can transmit it uh i am you know i am fine with my what i had voted on for the reopen to be remote um again i know you can't please everybody and i know that there are people that are upset

135and when this happened in march it was unprecedented and we didn't complain as teachers we didn't say we're not going to do anything were there teachers that maybe did did nothing were there principles that did nothing were there vice principles that did nothing of course there are always you know terrible teachers as there are terrible cops as there are terrible fire fire fighters as there are terrible dentists as there are terrible doctors need i go on but then there are also those that are great and that go above and beyond and do what is above and beyond so again i know it's not the ideal situation i know for myself i wish it was just a vaccine and we could all just get back to normal but it's not it's easier for me to go

136into a classroom to teach the kids i have everything set up i'm a you know veteran teacher of 18 years and i know how to go this is a totally different new normal i have to redo my lessons scrap them do everything it's it would be easier to go into the classroom and just teach five days a week um so but again i can understand those concerns of others who have you know compromised immunity and again so i think that you know in my opinion the call that i made my decision i can live with it um and so in regards to it's coming to the end of summer it's just a few more days left students staff enjoy have a great rest of the summer and um you know enjoy your labor day and

137you know we'll see you in the new normal thank you you uh madam president i'd like to make a few superintendent comments and then a couple minutes to answer some of the questions that came up tonight and i'll probably ask janina to help me with a couple of those answers so first and foremost um megan graziano congratulations uh everyone should know that this is the first time a teacher from clifton has been named the passaic county teacher of beards the first time in our history so uh not only is it an incredible accomplishment in and of itself but it's something that hasn't been done before in clifton so megan now is one of 21 in the state one of those teachers will be named the state teacher of the year what does that mean well

138obviously it's a great honor being named the state teacher of the year but megan would also get a car she would get um an allow a wardrobe allowance and then and this is kind of the worst part for the district she actually um would get a years um a year away from the district to work for the new jersey department of education as an ambassador so that's kind of the bad part your name teacher of the year and if you win though you have to leave the classroom for a year but it would be a great experience and we're certainly rooting rooting for megan to to not only represent clifton but to represent the entire state congratulations megan uh we're truly truly proud of you some other news this week governor murphy introduced his the

139revised budget for the state and as of now there are no additional cuts to k-12 education that is good news we hope that continues as as this board knows and i think most of the community knows we already took a 5.3 million dollar uh reduction in state aid that we were expecting so any more could have been disastrous as of now uh that's not happening thankfully yesterday we started our new teacher orientation uh and this year for the first year it's a three-day orientation so yesterday i had the opportunity to welcome 54 new teachers to our district they're going to have three days of training that includes all sorts of things like the google meets the whole google suite or pbsis program they'll get some curricular instruction learn about hib learn about our link it

140where our student data is they're also going to have a workshop on cultural awareness with clifton being one of the most diverse cities in the state um so it was really nice to to see uh to see these teachers and i wanted to share with everyone the advice that i gave them it's the advice that i give all new teachers and it's there's three things the first thing i tell new teachers is build relationships first build relationships with your students first and i know it's going to be a little more difficult this year because they're starting the year remote but i will tell you the first few days of school i don't even worry about content worry about building relationships because the time you spend building those relationships will pay multiple dividends uh later on

141in the year i tell the teachers that the kids don't care how much you know they don't care how many degrees you have they care about how you make them feel and that's what matters to them and if they feel that you care about them then they are willing to learn everything that you want them to learn the second piece of advice i gave our new teachers was to ask for help if you need it our district offers a lot of help you have plenty of colleagues you have principals you have a direct supervisor my door is always open for our staff and don't be afraid to ask for help because their success makes us all successful and finally uh the simplest but most important piece of advice i give all new teachers is love

142the children love them as if they were your own be the teacher who you know when when you were a kid if you remember the night before school starts and you have a little anxiety and you have butterflies in your stomach and you were worried about maybe am i going to get the mean teacher this year or is my teacher going to be nice at least that's i was every year the night before school started but be the teacher whose kid the kids go home after school and tell their parents how amazing their new teacher is they tell their parents and family how excited they are to spend the year with this teacher be that person and and that was my advice to new teachers and i want to just again officially welcome them all

143they have another day of training tomorrow and i'll be popping in to say hello to them again finally at our not not finally in addition to at our last town hall meeting uh there were some questions that came up that we didn't get a chance to answer that night a lot of those answers have been updated on our faq our frequently asked questions on our website so any parents who have questions about our planned reopening can look at that document first they have most of the answers but if you have a question please your best resource is first the classroom teacher who you won't know who that is yet but your building principle if you send an email or call your building principal they will respond and they will get back to you with any

144questions that you may have before i answer the parent comments for tonight i want to i want to address something that that's been bothering me a little bit i'm the superintendent and i'm hired to run the day-to-day operations of the district okay so i want everybody to know that the decision to delay the reopening in schools was absolutely my call but if anyone thinks that a decision of that magnitude that i wouldn't ask for the support of the board then they must not understand how difficult the decision it is so while the board did not really need to vote on the reopening of schools i asked for that but please note it was my decision and it will be my decision to open up again on october 12th the board's input matters though the board

145are elected officials who represent the community and as such their opinion is valued second on the decision to ask teachers to teach from their classrooms during the remote environment that is my decision board members did not sway me it was absolutely my decision it's what i feel is best i feel that it is the next step in our evolution to a full reopening why teachers in the classroom well first and foremost it's i think it's much easier when a teacher's in their classroom they have all their supplies i think it's better for our children to see the teacher in their classrooms um now that we're doing a period bell by bell schedule teachers really need to be on point there are there are i don't care what anybody says there are more distractions at home

146than there are in the classroom and as for this notion that well if it's not safe for kids it's not safe for teachers there's much less people in the buildings you're not going to be having personal contact with people personal contact is defined by the cdc as being within six feet of another person for more than 10 minutes that will happen when we have children in the class but that's not going to happen with teachers uh teaching from their classroom and finally if people haven't figured it out yet i am one of the most reasonable and understanding people that's in a leadership position of a school district if there are plenty of our teachers who have extenuating circumstances that what might not allow them to teach from their classroom at this time we're going to

147help them we're going to provide accommodations to those teachers but i will tell you there are a lot of teachers who reached out to me telling me please we want to teach from our classrooms and and the majority of administrators that gave me feedback also wanted that so i wanted to clear that up i'm hired for this job and i'm expected to make difficult decisions i've made more difficult decisions this summer that have caused me stress and anxiety that i had in seven years as a superintendent but that's what i signed up for but i will make no apologies for asking this board for their advice on what to do then ultimately making my own decision so i just wanted to clarify that i respect this board i respect everyone's opinion and people fall on

148all different sides of the of the spectrum on these reopening issues uh so you know we're making decisions where not everyone's going to be happy but we're we're i guess airing on the side of caution so let me just get back to the parent comments um mrs kruse could you address the uh issue that max rubin brought up about the printing and school supplies i believe the answer to the the printing is we're going to have most of our students utilizing the google classroom instead of printing out documents correct the vast majority of our lessons particularly when we're fully remote but also even when we come back in person we are going to be maximizing and leveraging google classroom the ability to submit assignments and complete work using google docs google sheets and google forms

149so every teacher has a google classroom and their students will submit the work through that classroom so there will be rarely if any need to print out uh work um i want to thank that mrs delgado who called them that was some powerful words and what struck me with what she said was um you know people talk about the numbers and and numbers don't mean anything to anybody until it touches you personally and that just hit me you know as a father of four um you know you're making decisions based on numbers and things and people say well i want my kids in school what happens if it's your child that gets infected and it turns out to be serious um it's something that weighs on my mind heavily and i thought she said it

150very eloquently um mrs kuznets could you address the the pre-k well first of all i know you've done it a million times already but could you just address very briefly the difference in the virtual learning that will take place in september versus what we did last spring and then if you could address the specific questions in regard to the pre-k in kindergarten in the spring everybody was learning what to do and we learned a lot of valuable lessons since that time what will be very different is that we will be following a period by period schedule where teachers will have a google classroom for every content the google classroom will be where they submit their work where they see the work that they need to be doing but students will not have to just go

151to google classroom and figure it out for themselves their teachers period by period will be online with them teaching new material presenting lessons available to answer and ask questions showing them what to do conducting face-to-face via the computer classes for the duration of the periods as a student schedule evolves so there will be full day access to teachers via the screen with side chats available so the teachers can be teaching like they would be in person unfortunately it will just be through a screen but that contact is going to be much more increased than it was in terms of preschool preschool is recommended to be limited to one hour of online time at the same time there is a period schedule for our preschool students students who receive any form of special education or related

152services will continue to receive those also via the chromebook via the computer and through tele services um for related services so this is going to be a much more online full-time face-to-face instructional process even starting fully remote thank you mrs kusalevich and chloe popowicz asked about when the students would be receiving their schedules i believe that's going to be in the parent portal on friday september 4th is that that is the goal yes by friday september 4th we hope to have our schedules and assignments completed um as you know with this change to fully remote as well as um changing parent choices we have had to be revising and rebuilding master schedules at all grade spans um but the goal is to have it posted on the parent portal prior to the start of school

153by that weekend what that means for all of our parents who might be uh tuning in uh you'll get an email through blackboard that says the parent portal is open when you log into that parent portal um a goal of mine from a year ago was to get rid of all those papers that you had to sign off of on on the first day of school so all of the things that you normally sign off all the emergency forms the publicity request forms things like that you're going to log into the parent portal and you'll be prompted to read the student code of conduct and and sign that you've seen it and you'll be able to do all those forms and then you won't be able to access your child's schedule until you've acknowledged reading

154and signing those forms so that was a goal i set last year uh hopefully that's coming to fruition and the target date is next friday uh september 4th and chloe popovich also asked about the sats chloe the short answer is if we are in person in school we will uh do everything that we can to host the sats the issue with the september test was we didn't have enough uh proctors that that signed up to uh to to give the test and we were also concerned about being one of the only test sites that were open we were concerned about people coming from all over and other states and loading up our building i would be more comfortable hosting the sats when when when we're fully reopened so that's the short answer uh and that

155concludes my comments uh tonight ms danny i'm not sure if i got all the questions but if there's anything else um you can remind me thank you thank you dr armatosi um the next order of business will be new business does anyone mr passante you have some new business yeah i just have one thing um and just not to be hypocrite my of myself in my opinion because obviously dr roberto said it was his ultimate decision however i've been a teacher back i think this board october 1st should go back to uh in person um to via camera uh however through september we need to find a place to at least hold our our distance or put up um the petition whatever we need to do uh to get that proper and still have the

156public uh do virtual so i'm making a motion to october first go back to in-person camera about a second then um discussion madam chair um i always thought that um during new business wasn't it that you couldn't bring up anything to make a motion on oh we could hold it to the next meeting then but that that would be my motion for the next meeting or to put it on the agenda for at least october 1st we'll give it a meeting to everybody decide i have no problem with it but i would like to do october yes okay so put that on next the agenda so people could um think about it because again uh we're not supposed to be doing any dr as i understand during the new business so if you could just

157put that and then we'll we'll do the vote and discussion yes mr abhijava didn't we talk about i think it was last meter two minutes ago that we would do in september and we would go back to the gym in high school i mean in high school and we would have we would have everybody spaced out there yeah but we never made a there was never a motion so i want to make an emotion and a fish madam chair can i speak yes miss batman i'm ready to go back in september if we have our staff going into the buildings we should be back in the in the auditorium however um i'm not comfortable with the petitions and not wearing masks we have to be six feet apart um those petitions do nothing because people

158lean behind them and talk uh it it's unhealthy firsthand i saw what they are and to me the germ can go around them so um i i would like to go back so gary if you would make if you change your motion to september i'm willing to go yes i think the only reason why i'm saying well the only reason i'm saying october is because we need to figure out what's going to work and where it's going to work and how we're going to do it i don't want to stress our superintendent i don't want to stress our staff to where they got to put petitions in because obviously do you know they don't work um i'm i'm living it you know i'm living in it also so i want to make sure we're doing

159it proper so i'm giving you know i'd like to give them the month when they're back in and let them figure something out before we you know we go forward but i would go back tomorrow i have no problem with it my thing is um i i want to give people time to think i'm good with going back but there has to be logistics and right now i want um dr arbitoza to worry about those you know and so the next meeting i mean i will definitely vote yes for it um but i want you know um dr robert tozie to focus in on right now because there will be staff in the building and he has those concerns and i don't want him to worry about you know plexiglas or ppe for us right

160at this moment so let's put that on you know good suggestion uh mr picenti put that on the next meeting and we'll vote on that madam president yes uh yes yeah um yeah i'm also very yeah if he behaves himself uh i'm very much for for going in person um uh i'll let the administration figure out obviously that one of the obvious choices the uh the uh and chs because of the amount of space we can we can spread out to um but just on a point of procedure and council can weigh in on this um you're correct uh madam president about the procedure uh however if there's an issue that comes up you could suspend you you have to take a vote it has to be two-thirds vote uh to suspend the rules and

161you could go on whatever the issue whether it's this or something else so usually uh and i agree especially of a matter that you want to consider not to rush it but if there is another matter that a board member wants to bring up that you can always go that route as well that that's just an fyi from my point and council can weigh in and and tell us what the real procedure is thank you okay um one second i assume is basford miss gutierrez do you want to weigh in because danny did have his hand up so it would be you then danny then miss bassford oh let's wait and listen to the doctor robert tosie and his password and we'll see what they have to say and then i can weigh in okay

162dr robert chosey thanks miss danny i just want the board to know that the administration is in support of returning to in-person meetings um the only caveat i guess is that we are still under the executive order about 25 or less in a room so we would definitely have to do it at the uh the high school auditorium not a problem social distancing there but i just want to make sure if it's okay we could ask mr mountain to chime in will we be able to live stream from the auditorium for public comment because if we i'm just trying to think of the logistics of that and as long as that's figured out i don't think there's any issue with returning as soon as possible to in person ms basford and then mr mountain yes

163i do believe in march we suspended the regular order of business so we are still on that suspension we have to you know uh move make a motion to go back so us having remote meetings quasi remote and in-person meetings is still in effect we could do whatever we want our regular suspension hours we suspended the regular rules for our meeting attendance and where we were having them if i if i'm not correct i think we did that that was in march or april mr uh mr mountain do you want to answer and then mr smith short answer is yes we can definitely allow public comment via zoom or or perhaps there's another mechanism but but we'll certainly make it work okay and i know that i had talked to you about that mr mountain

164okay mr smith yes just to uh dr robitaza you just made a statement that you see no reason why we can't go back to to remote i just presume that any board member who feels they have a compromised health and do not agree with that that there would be a avenue for a board member to participate remotely mr smith i'm i'm a guest at your board meetings although i guess i'm i'm technically a board member so we would do um what whatever the board wants to do in regards to the meetings we will do i just wanted to stress that the administration is in support of returning to in-person meetings and we would make an accommodation for any board member that needed uh that needed any you know he needed any kind of accommodation yeah

165that was my only clarification sure so um dr ortozi i don't want to put you know since it again it is out of order i mean obviously mr daily what you said um just so that if anybody wants to reach out to you to make this i don't want to put any more on your plate right now because i know you didn't even have a summer um you know so i i know that i know because i didn't have a summer um well it was a summer but not really um so you know again put that on um people can process think about what if anybody needs an accommodation or anything and um and then you know um good suggestion mr pasanti ms danny i just want to be clear i want to clarify we're

166going to put a resolution on the agenda next meeting to return to meetings in october yes anybody have an issue anybody um any issue question comment concern with that resolution if you do you can talk to dr robert tosi and then he'll get back to us he's always pretty good with everything discussing so i'll leave that up to you to you know um and derelice um to draft up that resolution and then put it out to all of us to see prior to the meeting so if any board member has an issue with it or anything um they can process and then we can you know um do it at that time okay good yes ms gutierrez just just a quick comment not a legal comment but i was just at a board meeting recently

167with another client where the board members the administration and i were there in person in the cafeteria uh separated more than six feet seated more than six feet apart wearing masks and everybody had a laptop in front of them and was in a zoom meeting and so the public was also in the zoom meeting um so the public got to see the board members the board members got to see the public the public was able to participate um and as long as everyone kept their volume down on their laptop it worked pretty well okay um miss beltram i had a separate um new business so i can wait okay i'll just echo what the attorney said i've seen the exact same mechanism in other districts okay um i just want to bring up um a

168new business i did actually email it's um i'm it's not new business it's sort of old business and i did email all of the board members um and so i just wanted to say that the professional service committees can resume um and so uh there is the auditor on the auditor uh ms beltram was the chair and also on that was um mr canova and mr abhidrabo for the architect mr abedraba was the chair mr kenova and miss beltram were on that committee for healthcare professional services on that committee mr um canova was the chair um mr vicente mr daily uh mr casper were on health care um mr smith you're not i can have you added to um the committees because this was prior to you arriving i know i did put you on

169legal with us and in legal the professional legal committee ms basford was on the chair mr daley was on that committee of legal and myself was on legal and also with uh mr jim smith okay so those um professional committees can resume i did send everybody the email but just sort of wanted to make the announcement um and just the other thing i had was also to draft a resolution then um to me in i guess the committee structure in person because there's a lot of like confusion and everything so to go back to meeting in person in the subcommittees a resolution for the subcommittees for next um would that be done next meeting also yes no yes that's what i'm saying next meeting i didn't mean this meeting i meant to put that a

170resolution miss gutierrez a resolution for um the subcommittees to reconvene in person as well okay no problem i have a question about that um can we do that both as well with the zoom platform because some of my colleagues travel um they have odd hours on working hours so if we can make that accommodation for some of the members to appear in a zoom in a committee meeting or in person would be very helpful to everybody that has very odd working conditions and very were hard working condition hours so i know it was helpful to me because um i took my lunch sometimes at 10 o'clock in the morning when we had a meeting and i worked it around my work schedule and it really helped me out to be able to participate more now

171than i've ever have in the past so we can kind of do that quasi form i would appreciate that i'll probably make the committee meetings but i'm sure other people on this board would like to think about that as well if they're not home or if they're away on a a small vacation they can access it from one of their whole other homes i think that would be a way to go because like jim said we have to give everybody accommodation so that would be a thought i i have one i only have one issue with my job i i can't i can't do a committee meeting while i'm at work you know those are little issues that i have i don't have a problem zoom in but the meetings i appreciate if they could

172be after four o'clock um doing it in the middle of the day unfortunately you know it's hard for me well um then i think you have to make the same accommodations for the board meeting the same thing because it's only fair because there's some you know i mean sometimes if i have to get up early and i'm going in in school person you know teaching kids so sometimes running late i mean i want to have the option if i'm you know if i'm out it's going to be a long night to do a zoom remote i mean it's only fair uh lucy there's a lot of boards uh up and down the state of new jersey from uh cape may county up to sussex that are offering uh a dual accommodation both in public and

173via whatever platform you guys choose to it to be first because of health issues there are a lot of board members that are not comfortable coming back because they have underlying health issues in their own home or they they themselves have those issues so i think we're gonna have to adjust to our new normal uh and make it optional i i will try to make as many in-person meetings as i can but if uh if we have a special meeting like a um special whatever meeting really quick at like 12 o'clock in the afternoon i can participate if i'm on a zoom because i can do it right on my phone and go into a quiet area and pick up the call so i really appreciate that if we could figure that out yeah i

174know that's what i'm saying but that's that's what i mean i just i think that you know um it has to be across the board even you know because again um there's a lot of things that are not normal about this and so people have waited you know what i mean so again um if we draft the resolution then both resolutions have to include something of you know not just this an accommodate but a combination of you know again if the person can't make it so what i think we need to do is just take a look at the policy because that's all we have to do is just take a look at how the policy is written to allow for uh virtual meetings um because the issue for the virtual meeting is for the

175public board meeting where the public gets to see you it has that has nothing to do with the committee meetings because the committee meetings you can structure them however you want to do that because it's not a quorum it's not something it's not some it's not a meeting where you're going to take any action it's really just a meeting it's a committee meeting so you could do it on the phone you could do it in person you could do it some people in person some people on the however it makes sense for that particular committee um the the big issue is just how you handle your public board meetings and while we're still under an emergency uh health emergency then you still have the ability to do them virtually in person some people coming in

176virtually depending on their particular needs so we'll make sure that we look at the policy and work that in so that it it's clear that everybody has that option yes right yes thumbs up okay okay any uh miss beltram you had new business something that was different uh yes i did um so i had um something to bring to the board detention i'm not sure if everyone has seen in the news um about the unreported child abuse uh claims so we're down 51 um it might have increased that latest number was from july um and i was wondering uh through you men and presented to doctors josie if we've thought about bringing in um the passaic county uh critical response unit or something like that to speak to teachers about how to identify um abuse

177over a live stream so that perhaps we could um help some of our children who might be falling into a lost group that would normally have been reported if they were in in person school but now since their virtual um might go unreported very good very good point miss beltran so ev every year we're required to review with our staff the child abuse neglect policy that the board has in reporting procedures but it's a good point you bring up the the the signs that you look for in person may be different than what you uh see online so if there are some resources out there that uh we're not aware of we can incorporate that so all and next week our teachers will be trained in child abuse and neglect so we can add some

178of that information to that um so that's a very good suggestion thank you thanks any other board members have new business miss danny i do yeah as as i um remarked during my uh report on the finance committee minutes the we all know the state has dealt this worst hand possible and how to handle our issues i i would strongly uh and the procedure as has been otherwise sweet and that dr roberto tells he could correct me if i'm wrong here um and and mike you see that is they they're trending to you can only revise your long-term facilities plan once a year and we can't spend any money out of our capital reserve unless it's in the long-term disabilities committee and the nomenclature of long-term facilities plan is kind of a ridiculous uh wording

179if you for a lack of a better description it's merely something that the board uh wants to spend the money now all the money in our capital reserve is all our local money and uh i don't mind amending because it says projects come up might have a project that comes up in a month that we need to do that's been brought to our attention and uh we shouldn't be getting dinged because it comes up and we have the money available or we got a great price on on some project we all want to do um in business you have to be fluid and this this crap about and i use that word to emphasize the issue here about we can only do it once a year before the budget is just that it's ridiculous uh

180now we're told in the in this chaotic thing we gotta strictly hold to these rules otherwise you can't do this so we want to spend the 588 000 on on a project that we all want to do but no you can't because you can and that that is total crap and uh whether we have to do a resolution at another time that's fine but i think we need to send a letter to the commissioner of education with copies both to the governor and our three legislative uh representatives saying that we strongly object to this so the department of education needs to do whatever they need to do to let us spend this money uh this this is our monies is taxpayer money we are elected to do the public's work for the citizens and students

181of the city of clifton and to just play with our budget when they screw us on money left and right is horrendous so um i i would like to see that if we have to put in a resolution you want to do it at the next board meeting that's fine with me but uh i'm and you everybody knows me how i am money and and how our budget works so uh um i think this is something we can all get behind and we need to continue press these points otherwise we're going to continually get screwed by the state who know nothing and care nothing about how our district runs than our students mr danny if i can just follow up on that with mr daley and uh thing and that's actually so if it's in

182order i'd like to have that resolution put on for our next boy okay yes mr abu abedrabo uh we're regarding also past conversation which will also include this conversation i did reach out to our legislators last week um when dr supernova sent me over the follow-up letter which they did receive the mailed one uh superintendent robert saucy as well i sent i sent an email last week was the dnc so they a lot of them were down there but i followed up with two of their chief of staff out of three and they're collecting dates uh to get to us so we can meet so once i have those dates i'll follow up tomorrow um i'll try to follow up tomorrow if not over the weekend um to see what those dates are and i'll

183get back to the legislative committee about that madam chair yes um it may be to our interest to for the next delegates assembly to write a resolution from clifton for have school boards to go and advocate to change that rule about the long-range facility plan that may be an option for us but we'll have to sit with and and chat about it but that's an option that we have as a board to get support get support from the rest of the school districts in the state if you put a resolution in front of the new jersey school boys association to advocate for change on that on that rule about being able to only address an emergency funding transfer once a year so i think maybe we should send that to the pledge committee and maybe

184we can come up with some kind of resolution and advocate that way um that would help us yeah judy i'm on board with that um it's just uh again it's our money uh these and we shouldn't be getting dinged in in cusack or anything else for for following procedures and doing the right thing for our students in our district so that that's the underlying point here and it's and more importantly it's our taxpayers money it's not state money so and there it's like a real overreach so um whatever you need from my end i'll be happy to draft whatever it needs to be dear after at least to get the ball rolling and we'll go from there okay my name is i was just going to say my my office can draft this letter for

185dr josie's review and the finances please thank you misters yeah eric did a really nice job uh with helping draft the last one yeah we'll we'll get on it it's ridiculous that they cut us 5.3 million dollars we're expecting and don't let us use or they're not flexible in allowing us to use our our other our other monies it doesn't make sense dr robert tells you how about giving the charter schools extra money just recently okay so let's let's let's go there yeah yeah that's a whole other issue is there any other new business so see next order of business is executive session um do we have any executive session second by mr casper all in favor aye aye aye aye opposed beating adjourned good night everyone good night everybody