February 20, 2020 - Clifton Board of Education Meeting

001which stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all next order business the mission statement the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education of to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world thank you mr casper next order of business is reading of the open public meeting statement new jersey open public meetings law is enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice

002of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place there posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy next order of business is recognition and award presentations can i have a motion to accept the recognition of franklin s montero second motion by mr abu drabo second by mr casper call yes so um i know that mr montero said that he would be running late and possibly not be able to make it on time so um it is resolved that the board of education recognizes franklin s montero and expresses its gratitude for his dedication and service to

003the community and students of clifton serving as a board member for the past year including service on the municipal alliance policy and residency committees and we do have a plaque here from mr montero maybe if he arrives we'll just we'll do that um [Applause] can i have a motion for the clifton high school february students of the month motion by mr avatravo second by mr smith roll call mr abadraba miss passport yeah miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes mr smith miss danny yes yes would anyone like to do the freshman read the freshman mr smith thank you freshman kaylee eunice hindosa congratulations to kaylee eunice and jose on being chosen as the freshman student of the month kaylie's favorite subject right now is in biology she loves learning about genetics and hopes

004to find a career one day in that field kaylee says that the teacher has influenced her most is her band teacher mr stefnesky because he inspires her whole class to strive to do their best she also credits her sister with inspiring her to try new things and to work hard kaylee is a member of our mustang marching band and stage crew but has plans to join some of the other many clubs that chs has to offer she is currently a part of the stem academy and hopes to qualify for other academic programs at chs congratulations to our freshman kaylee eunice hinjosso mr smith we promised [Applause] sophomore student of the month sophomore student i'm not the abigail globe that i've done yeah that's all right congratulations to avgel love on being chosen as a south

005florida student of the month of gail's favorite subject it's art because she enjoys having a fun and creative outlet while she has enjoyed the class with all of her art teachers she says that miss luco was our most influential teacher because of the class abigail has aspirations to become an art teacher in the future she also credits her well she'll credit sir sorry for the microphone uh her twin sister emily for supporting her throughout her her life abigail is a member of the csh orchestra key club mural club model u.n math league trium honor society and national art honor society in the future abigail is looking forward to taking advantage of the numerous ap classes offered at chs all right nice [Applause] in their spare time yeah [Applause] junior student of the month junior student

006of the manchester month is angel gwanja congratulations to angel guangzhon being chosen as his students junior student of the month angel has a real passion for music and credits both mr babic and mr stepnetsky for helping him become a better musician he's involved in various musical groups such as orchestra where he is the concert master angel is also a member of our mustang marching band wind assemble brass band jazz band and triam honor society in the future he wants to go to college to major in music and hopes to one day perform professionally [Applause] senior student of the month senior muhammad abu naga congratulations muhammad i'm being chosen as a senior as student of the month muhammad really enjoys science especially his physics and chemistry classes his his name sorry he names mr gamos and

007mr mansour for helping him to do well in classes he's had a hard time adjusting to the american school system but his family and friends have helped him to succeed muhammad has been part of the pre-med club for two years and has aspirations to study aeronautical science in the future his hopeful and career in this field will allow him to see new places and experiences various cultures we'll leave that right here superintendent and the board president would like to take a picture with all the students please just what you said you need that weight [Applause] mr armadrobo madam president if i can very rarely do we ever have um somebody outside of clifton attend a board of ed meetings i just want to acknowledge our free holder and clifton um resident freeholder bruce james who's

008here [Applause] and not that he asked for it but he really does deserve it the fact that he actually does fight for clifton as a whole uh student or a resident day in and day out and he doesn't forget clifton so i want to make sure that he's here him being here that he's acknowledged for that so i appreciate him [Applause] um at this point if um the students want to go home parents leave you may um if you have work to do we're not going to fault you if you want to stay you can but you don't have to so you can get up and leave if you want but you're going to miss an exciting beach run next order of business is adoption of minutes can i have a motion to adopt the

0091 16 20 regular meeting minutes the 121 20 special executive meeting minutes and the 2 6 20 special executive meeting minutes motion by mr abdravo second second by mr casper roll call oh any questions concerns on them revisions uh on 121 for the special it has uh mr pizentius absent but he was here there was that correction i i believe it was fixing okay all right thank you okay roll call mr abu drabo yes miss bassrich yes miss beltran mr canova yes mr daley yes mr casper yes mr smith abstain yes there are no communications and announcements there is no first reading of policy and next order of business then is the presentation of reports from administration advisory committees and special committees we have mr tommy whittles for project graduation madam chair can i be

010excused i'm in conflict yes madam president uh at last month's meeting we had discussed the topic of funding project graduation and the board had asked me to reach out to mr whittles to come and speak to the board and perhaps be available to ask answer any questions and so he's graciously here tonight welcome thank you thank you doctor tom whittles clifton against substance abuse president uh i want to first start by uh thanking dr robitazi for the invite to last night's strategic planning meeting it's a great great turnout i also want to congratulate your newest universe member jim smith i come before you today as the president of clinton against substance abuse to talk about project graduation casa took over project graduation back in 2014 when there was going to be uh the hs the

011hsa always always handled project graduation 2014 there was not there were no volunteers stepping up to take over the hsa so marianne cornett who was retiring at the time came to me with with the outgoing president of the hsa keith password and asked if we would coordinate project graduation i tell everybody if i knew then what i know now i would have i would have ran for him i would have ran um it was it is a huge undertaking for us and has been and we are being faced more and more with challenges now the state is changing the guidelines on how we raise funds which becomes very very challenging for us we cannot host we we raise money through golf outings and things like that the state has told us that we are no

012longer allowed to hold any of those events where alcohol is being served so we are i mean other than doing dress down days i mean that's really the only thing we can do now to raise money it's an expensive event for the students but i believe it's a very worthy event and i'm here tonight to talk to the board about figuring out a way of having it funded through the board of education with the help of the hsa casa would still participate in the help of fundraising and coordinating but we wouldn't be able to do it on the city side of of of clifton because of the rules under g cotta which is the governor's council on alcohol and drug abuse um students pay for half of their ticket price which runs them roughly 45

013and they fundraise for that they uh they do prom fashion show they do the sale of their signs and they work though they coordinate those efforts through the hsa and we work very closely with the hsa to help coordinate those efforts um the other issue we're having with the with the city side is there's not too many places large enough in our general area that can host fun host project graduation we use funplex in east hanover we have been using them for many many years two weeks ago i got notified by the city that because of the amount of money expended we're under an obligation to put it out to bid and you know there's there's really not too many but we did find this another location there's a place in englewood called space i

014haven't seen it um we've talked about maybe at some point the new american dream shopping mall in in east rutherford but i don't want to be the i don't want to be the guinea pig i don't want to be the first one we talked about the meadowlands the the stadium itself but we would have to bring all of the entertainment in which would then become cost prohibitive really basically the the costs associated with project graduation are funplex which is the biggest cost and the entertainment piece which is about fifty five hundred dollars a year right now we are looking at a deficit for this year of probably about i'd say about nine or ten thousand uh we get 5000 from the clifton board of education casa puts in about 4 900 we have a bank

015account with probably 12 or 13 000 which has always been the seed money that we use when the hsa turned it over to us they turned over their whole project graduation account to us and there's probably about 12 or 13 000 in there right now and then the rest we would have to raise the school district has been phenomenal this year last year the the the counselors jennifer bergman and and jessica with with doing the dress down days which is a quick shot in the arm for us and the other problem that we're faced with is casa has an obligation to other things that have to be done in the city we spend the majority of our time trying to deal with project graduation it's a huge undertaking from the the raising of the funds

016to the coordinating of the efforts to the the meetings at funplex to ordering the buses to ordering the chaperones to ordering the bus loaders clifton board of education the administration at the high school has been tremendous mike doctor has been a huge asset for us and and others um but i i just feel that you know you know i've i picked up on some of the things that dr robert does he spoke about last night at the planning meeting and he said that i there are clubs and things for everybody and if there's not and you bring a group to us we'll try to make one so i would suggest that we make a project graduation casa group use students use administrators use members of casa use members of the hsa and have this controlled

017here at the board of education level um and and work as a team to put this thing together we average about 500 kids a year that we send um and and i believe it is tremendously important that we continue it i just i i don't want to be if it goes away i don't want to be the guy that reads in the newspaper the day after graduation that we we that this we i don't know if we've been good or lucky but and if we're lucky fine i don't want our luck to run out i want to make sure that we keep every graduating kid that wants to go to project graduation safe so my my request to the board is to you know either we form another committee or we sit down and talk

018about all of the dollars and cents but the overall project cost about 45 000 a year to put together and half of that is borne by the students that raise ticket price money on their own i'm not looking to give it to the students for free i think students need to participate because it becomes free it just becomes another another event i think kids need to continue to participate but i think working with with your student leadership in the schools and the hsa and and the board as a whole i i think we can accomplish our mission any questions do the board members have any questions i have a question um if it were to turn over to not be a monetary because i know it is a monetary burden on some students to come

019up with you know 40 seems like not that much money but for some students it is and i know you do sponsorship scholarships and things like that but what if it was like service credit based or something like that like they had to do a certain amount of they earn credits instead of putting money in maybe something like that because i know like some kids might just say they don't want to go because they either too proud to ask for money or they don't have it we can work that out and we started uh you know and then commissioner basford stepped down from the desk because she sits on our on our board of trustees she started the sponsor of student program i think two or three years ago and it's worked well because last

020year we actually got more than what was needed we don't pick and choose what students are not financially able we leave that up to the school administrators they they know they have an understanding but we could certainly work out a program because we do we do go out to the communities and we go out to the businesses in the city of clifton and send them letters saying spawns and we get checks for 45 90 the freeholder board sends us a check for a thousand dollars every year so we do go out to the communities and to the other to the other bases of the elks and the moose lodge and things like that to drum up that money and and i get that the kids don't want to say you know i can't afford it

021or but my goal and i've told parents this you can't afford it and you're not going to send your child i'll pay for that in my pocket because i don't want you to be the kid i don't want you to be the one because you couldn't afford it and that's the conversation that i have with my doctor at the high school so we work very closely with them in coordinating those efforts do any other yep okay so my question was around your group and how you function now compared to what you're asking so would you still be involved with uh the event in itself absolutely the volunteers of the event absolutely and we would still work with the high school on coordinating the bus loading and getting the chaperones and all of those things our

022biggest issue is raising the funds because the state has really handcuffed us they flocked us up and told us you know i'm still fighting with the state on all of those issues because i think it's ludicrous that you know we are not a no you can't drink organization i'm not i'm not an aa we are trying to do we are trying to educate people to be responsible now to tell me so so you know what they're saying is you know if the school's fundraised at like chipotle or uh or zinberger rosenberger has a bar i can't go there i can't give out those 20 off tickets i can't use it i mean it's really it's it's it's handcuffed us on what we can do and how we can raise money to me stupid but that's

023you know that's a fight that we're still taking on and the rules are changing pretty much weekly i mean i've even went as far as discussing with our coordinator forming a 501c3 a friends of casa organization like like the shelter the the animal shelter has a friends of the animal shelter so that our money doesn't have to be governed by the cfo in the city of clifton years ago when i first joined casa we had our own board of trustees we had our own president we had our own vice president our own secretary of treasury we had our own checkbook governor christie changed all that thank you governor christie um so we had to do away with our treasurer's position our treasurer for our organization is actually the cfo in the city of clifton every

024dollar we and and i still i still argue with them about it because maybe i'm a knucklehead but every dollar we raise we have to give to the city turn it into the city and then i have to explain to the governor's council down in trenton what we're spending that money on now project graduation is is an event based night so so so we're allowed to spend money out of our grant which is the 5000 or 4900 whatever it is that we give project graduation but they won't let us raise money and put it into our fundraised account and use that money for private it's it's just it's it's it's crazy it's ludicrous it just doesn't make sense so picasso would still be actively involved um i just need i need a conduit for the

025money without it being the city of clifton because that's where that that's where it gets snagged mr daley yeah thomas question on on the total cost could you provide us with a breakdown general breakdown of the uh of the cost of the event yeah you're just going to you know i'll send it to you i have the contracts here with me yeah um it's um it's about 90 dollars per student at the funplex and then it's about 5500 for the events plus and events plus are the people that bring in the hypnotist which the kids love i mean it's it's a phenomenal show um the caricatures they they bring all that stuff and that's about 5500 um so you're talking overall it's probably a little over a hundred dollars per student to attend if you

026add those two numbers together now are we covering the are we covering the cost of the bus drivers or do you cover the questions bus drivers are all donated by the board of education always have been yes yes mr smith so just so i have a little bit of a better understanding in the public does when i was on the board previously and this was run it was run by the hsa by the high school why could we not and and it was run by the hsa but under the direction of the board of education so why would it not be the same type of thing where we wouldn't have to go through the city okay that and that casa is just doing the work for hsa doesn't want it because it's so much work

027now i know but you're yeah but you guys would still do the work right absolutely but just not have you guys go through the city correct would be that's what i'm asking it would be under through us that's exactly what i'm asking for um and tom i'm sure this is a silly question but no silly questions i'm sure uh you are allowed to take corporate sponsorships so any questions we do we do we go out to we go out to corporations and one one of our biggest sponsors over the years has been uh planet honda planet honda the the the owner and and controller have issue have people that that have had issues so so they have always sponsored us on all things on our golf outing which i can't do anymore but you know

028i send them a letter and i'm i'm certain to get a check but for project graduation if one two corporations could get together for a few dollars they could they could fund this this thing for us and i've spoken again you had said that you don't want to take the full response you want the kids to feel like they're participating somehow in it and that's a good thing but to eliminate all the dollar problems which is a major problem getting some corporate sponsors here would help absolutely i've spoken with and they they were one of our major sponsors at our at our last golf out in corydino and papa which are huge you know contributors in the city of clifton to to to a lot of things you know the boys and girls club most

029most especially um they donate buses over there um but to make this happen this year you would need how much right now i'm about ten thousand ten thousand okay i'm about ten thousand sure anyone else that's and that's include that that's including you know pulling out the 11 or 12 that i have that i have right right you know my mission you know when i when i when i talked about when i talked to dr robitazi about coming here i spoke to john beagle our health officer john john is the leader of of casa we reported to him and i said to him how do if the board of education decides they want to do this what do we do with the bank account that we currently have do we just transfer it do we

030write the write the border check what whatever it is but keep in mind that you know there's always seed money that's needed because right after project graduation we start talking about next year right because you have to be you have to lock in your dates because there are schools large enough that use funplex clifton um west orange you know when we always compete with west orange for our our graduation date um but and there's also now that that this place uh shape in in englewood is available and and i have the brochures i'll share them with with dr robitazi as well i have their brochures um we may think because i you know the last couple years administrative myself i haven't been really pleased with funplex i'm not saying to knock them but but i

031just think that it's gotten stale and you know we've been there a long time and and it's the only really for us up until now it's been the only the only shop in town that we can go to so you know i can i can i can beat them until you you know tell them i'm not happy and things aren't right and nothing will change because they know that that they're the only shop in town that's how it was when they first when we first started it out we were going up to great gorge we talked about that and that that was uh you can't even compare it you can't even come in here because you'd have to bring everything in there's nothing there funplex has the games the rides the pool um you know

032and if we went to the place in englewood we would have to take a road trip up there and see what it looks like and make sure it works for us make sure it's secure because the key is we're locking these kids in at night i got to make sure that they're not opening doors and letting their friends in or they're not getting up there early and pre-gaming you know we've been down that road i mean so you know i've i've had you know lengthy conversations with funplex because i've gotten up there before the buses and i found doors propped open and things like that that's no good because i don't want kids coming in and hiding stuff in bathrooms and today with the stuff that they can bring in the vapes and the jewels

033and all of that stuff it makes it a little bit more difficult but we work diligently with not only mike doctor and his team the clifton police department at the schools when we do the bag searches and i tell everybody i'm not making that decision if i think somebody is under the influence of something i'm not making that decision to send him home he's going to administration or the police department because if he leaves that property and goes out and you know wraps his car around a tree on colfax avenue i don't anybody say you know tom whittles the president acosta told me he could drive right yeah that doesn't fly so you know we work very closely with with the the specials the sros the the three sros that we have go to the

034event with us they're there with us all night my doctor and and his staff and lou and those guys who come up and spend the night with us so now it's it's a tremendous undertaking um but in the size of this city of clifton there's no reason number one we can't get i mean i know last year and years before there were problems getting chaperones there's no reason for us not to be able to get behind something as important as this and i'm hoping that some corporate people are listening tonight and tomorrow you're going to get a bunch of calls and uh our monetary problems so let's let's hope that that's the case thank you mr genova so i i firmly believe that as a school that we should always give students a goal at

035the end right and you know that's a part of pbsis and what we're doing with our initiatives there that's what i do with my daughter's at home if you want to do this you want to eat that donut make sure you clean your room right uh can we use that for students to drive them towards success can we drive up the graduation rate can we push them as a cohort and to work together at something i like the idea that dana had brought up about community service based you know fundraising what i don't want to do is i don't want to remove the fundraising that we have already and say that just the board is going to take this on i like the ideas that were being brought up about getting out to businesses but

036the problem is i doubt any businesses based off this meeting are listening and they're going to say hey you know i'll give you some some cash is there something we can set up sort of like in a university you have an endowment is there something we can set up is there a group that we could set up to fund something some vehicle for these types of things not only this it could be a part of you know going to prom maybe students can't afford to go to prom they can't buy a dress they feel you know shunned or neglected is there something we could do overall just as a community to start to drive things forward miss danny you know a lot of school districts have a foundation an educational foundation and we do have

037one we do have one and they give our teachers grants each year that could be an avenue to explore or another foundation could be created for that purpose of what you're talking about but i want to get to the practicality of it right the practicality of is is we're looking at the board is already making a a 5 000 donation per year um would the board be willing to make a larger don't if everything stayed the way it was would the board be willing to make a larger donation this year and in the future i think is is a question of immediate concern can i ask one question before we go into that discussion really quick um so you spoke about the board of ed casa bank count you mentioned one thing tom is that

038the sros now when the city had control were those volunteered efforts by by the sros were they paid by the city to attend the event correct they were wrong they volunteered the title okay now if the city's giving them the control still you we wouldn't have i would have these the sros that are assigned to clifton are more like board of education workers they they they they give up their time they they're there to help us and we don't really need them because we don't have a lot of problems i think the six years that i've been up there i may have been involved in two or three skirmishes between kids but they're there because they know the students they they want it they want they want to have to share that last party with

039the students as well as the students all right any other just one more thing i i you know these are students you know we are aboard a vet there are students from when they started from kindergarten first grade to that last day and that's the last day they're with us um so again i i just heard deep down inside of me as an individual is that i think we should do something a little more than that five thousand um obviously we have to go back to finance committee we have to go through our process procedures um but it's it could be as quote unquote our gift to the senior class every year more than 5000 to ensure that they all happen here safe and they go home after graduation safe so it's it's i think

040it'd be a good thing to do i for one would definitely say yes um when the vote that actually comes to it um and i'm sure others or i can't speak for others on the board would hopefully look at it the same way so if no one opposes i'm going to propose that it go to finance to the proper channels and make sure that everything is accounted for and the proper documentation and everything which would be discussed in finance and everything then brought to the whole committee and resolution and all that any opposition i'll second okay and i and i'll work like i'll work with i'll send mr robitazi or dr romita i'm sorry all of the contracts and everything that we have and again we we can we can continue our conversations on putting

041this committee together clifton doesn't own the logo casa so we can do a project graduation casa group but it would have to be through the board we couldn't do it on the city side um and i'm still exploring i just got an email before i got here today i'm still exploring the 501c3 friends of casa i haven't you know they've they haven't told me no yet but but it's you know it's government jargon they they you know it's a shell game it's three card monty you can also take that one step forward by blending your idea with the friends of casa with a possible foundation on the side the friends at casa foundation right um called that and that could that could be where that money would go to so right that could be a

042true partnership perfect thank you i appreciate your time one other note on june 9th we will be doing our drunk driving reenactment at the high school again we do it every year it's about an hour and a half two hour program starts about 8 30 in the morning you'll be out of there by a little after 10 and that's where we do the the the streeter family comes in and talks about losing their two children and uh you know many years ago on the garden state parkway um and then we do the reenactment outside and then we turn we turned the auditorium back into a courtroom and we do the sentencing of the driver we work very closely with with again mike doctor and then joel baker and the crew over at the high school

043the clifton police department clinton fire department visit quinlan because somebody dies in the accident and we have we have the funeral come in the funeral power come in and take the body away so it's and it's anybody anybody that has seen it will tell you it's a it's a very very powerful message so if you're available on june's june june 9th um is the date it's scheduled for right now if we have heavy rain that day we'll move it to the 11th because there's some testing or something going on on the on the 10th so i appreciate your time thank you doctor thank you mr whittles and thank you uh for all your organizations so mr cat casper made the motion i'll i'll say was it was it second okay well we're just going to

044put it to finance we don't need yeah just we're bringing it to finance okay um oh all right miss bastard you're back uh okay so the next presentation is de cara rubino architects joe dicaro and rodney watkins the possible referendum projects is okay you just hit this twice uh so um commissioners as uh mr dicaro mr watkins are preparing for the presentation if i could just um preface this presentation with we have discussed the possibility of going out to referendum for a while we've discussed it in committee we discussed it during my interviews last year and we've come to the point now where we have some ideas of what we want to do we've asked our architect to come up with some drawings and projects the architects will present them tonight we do not have

045to make a final decision tonight but we need to discuss how much work we want to do what the scope of that work is going to be and then ultimately we're going to discuss the dollar amount that we'll be asking in the referendum so i would strongly encourage you if you have any questions during tonight's presentation to ask them whatever they may be so that because if you have questions the public will have questions and everybody will be able to hear the answers thank you [Music] okay thank you sir okay thank you very much let's run is this on okay um as rodney's handing out some of the presentations we've been working with the district we've been involved with the district for many many years and as uh your superintendent indicated these are potential projects

046for a potential referendum targeted approximately in september of the the type of projects that have been under consideration include seven different categories the first area is hvac upgrades district wide now hvac is heating ventilating and air conditioning and with that is air quality as well your existing systems are old your buildings are old they've been maintained very well but they've they've reached their life cycle and exceeded their life cycle due to the continued maintenance at some point and you're you're experiencing it now a lot of of the unit ventilators that provide fresh air and heat only into the building are at its end of its life the other area that we looked at were boiler upgrades at various schools there have been over the past several boilers that have been replaced already through your capital

047projects we've also looked at security entrances and we'll show the different types of security entrances as well which are very important in today's world we also identified through discussion potential auditorium upgrades including toilet upgrades for ada and conformance and then two other areas of improvements at one at the clifton stadium which would be the weight room expansion with toilets and also the new turf field at woodrow wilson middle school i'd like to talk about generally first the hvac upgrades now whenever we design a new school today and or we're renovating schools especially the old mechanical systems we always include air conditioning this is not a project to air condition it's a project to replace outdated mechanical systems for proper air quality and ventilation requirements but while you're doing it you're also going to add air

048conditioning that would be the premise now this plan that we're showing is a fictitious layout we did not want to show we've shown um committee members um detailed drawings of the schools and the layouts and where certain things would go but for a public presentation we did not want to and typically we don't show the actual floor plan of the schools for obvious reasons but we have given drawings to the district so and if you want to look at those in detail we obviously can extend that but this diagram shows a typical school and it has areas where you have classrooms which are indicated in the tan you have areas larger areas such as your gyms multi-purpose rooms auditoriums that are represented in the blue for a lot much larger spaces which have a different

049type of hvac system that would be replaced so during our and then you also have first floor second floor and then you also have lower areas with limited access to windows and that would require a different type of mechanical system so our team our our architects and our engineers thoroughly went through every building that that you have went through every classroom and did an inventory and a matrix that identified the type of classroom the size of the classroom the orientation the access to windows as well as the other spaces and we identified various methods to provide that new mechanical system we did a thorough investigation of what is the most efficient system to put in in terms of actually constructing it and also to operate all these systems have a a degree of similarity in

050it in terms of the function and and on on the bottom you see the typical classroom layout and at the top you you see um a unit ventilator which is the upper left which you have a majority of your classrooms with that type of system you also have the ability to put in more of a vertical unit which is the center and that takes up much less room in the classroom which we've done in this district as well and then you have smaller spaces or spaces that you don't have window space lower level areas which you would then put in what they call splits which would tie into the with to the existing system and that's indicated in the upper uh right image now all of these systems as i mentioned are using the state-of-the-art

051mechanical systems with which would work with either your existing steam system or your hot water system for heat and general ventilation the air conditioning component is in it is a small element in that new unit and they're controlled by rooftop condensers and the state state-of-the-art variable refrigerant flow i'm not going to get into the details of that but it's a highly efficient way to provide the cooling to each one of the units in those classrooms to provide the cooling coil to provide the cooling in the room and also humidity control the key thing when you air condition a facility especially a school building with the amount with the amount of fresh air ventilation that is required by code you have to have the sufficient size air conditioning that will run enough to provide the dehumidification

052in the room on those summer months otherwise you get a humidity problem and potential moisture buildup in the spaces so i talk about that generally just to identify that we looked at the level of sophistication and and design that would provide the district with efficient construction of it phasing of the project and also the the life expectancy and the efficiency of of the units and we're showing just a type of thing condensing units that would that would go into it just for for that okay now we have a matrix of the cost estimates on the different types of units what would also be included in that is the asbestos removal or any environmental issues that would have to be done in order to remove old unit ventilators and put the new ones in and also

053the required electrical upgrades that would be required for that okay there are also identified various boiler replacements now we've replaced some already over the years the remaining schools would be school 2 3 12 15 columbus middle school and the administration building the high school and woodrow wilson middle school we don't have diagrams of that it's basically cut and dry you have a combination of hot water and steam and we're replacing them in kind the the efficiency it's hot it's hot water boilers are more efficient today than steam but the reality of replacing a steam boiler with a hot water boil you have to replace all the piping throughout the district and that becomes extremely expensive okay so we said if you have a steam boiler we're replacing with a steam boiler excuse me security entrances

054we went through each school identified the main entrances that staff and visitors use currently we examined different locations for those entrances but we identified and located them where the access from parking and also access to the existing administration offices are are close to them and basically you have two types of security entrances that would be designed one is within the existing footprint of the building where you would have an existing vestibule or corridor we can create in the interior um basically what we call the man traps so you would have access control on the outside that person visitor would enter that close proximity to the main office and then the second pair of doors with the resin in it for ballistic glass not bulletproof glass but shatterproof glass on the on the inside and that

055would have that holding capacity until either they're let in after the the security check or greeted and then brought into the school the other type of solution is where you cannot do that on the interior of the building and you have to create a separate building or or enclosure on the outside of the structure that's relatively easy except when you have many of your buildings are georgian slash colonial with columns and very symmetrical we we wanted to respect the architecture of your buildings they're very nice and we just didn't want to add on a you know a glass box out front you're going to look at it and say who the heck designed this so we were very sensitive to if we were going to put an addition on the outside that it looked like

056that it belonged there and that's a challenge in itself in terms of how the architecture looks so this is a diagram of well this is this is one of the schools where you would have to add to the outside of the building now if you see the photograph you have a a covered area where you come in up steps to a door that is a prime location and the only location where you could put a security entrance and it would have to be outside so what we did is we did a design and a rendering that basically placed the enclosure in the existing enclosure it would have to be rebuilt but it would mimic the architecture of the of the facility and you would have to change the stairs and the access to it so

057it just demonstrates the sensitivity and the approach on how we would provide the various security entrances where you replace them on on the outside there was a concern from one of the meetings we had and we wanted to make sure we addressed how we were going to approach that okay the other one is just another school a bigger entryway portico you could see the existing condition on the photograph on the lower right and on the plan you could see the extent of the of the vestibule and in this particular case what we did is because this is such a large space we kind of created an area that mimic the the same window openings details cornices and fit that within the colonnade portico on the uh existing building and this is this happens to be

058school number number three so using the same brick and it blends in without having a uh an eyesore and still maintain the desire of what you're doing is to have a very secure entrance um for the for the facility and these are typical things that when you're designing new facilities it's the same concept the same design philosophy but done you know on an existing building okay so again we're not showing all the floor plans the other area that we mentioned is the renovations to um various auditoriums within the district that would include uh full seat replacement it would include floor wall finishes it would also include ceilings and and lighting we just didn't include those two so it would be at school three and again um we we have done numerous upgrades to auditoriums and

059we looked at the scope of work and then we also provided uh the costs which we'll get into after we go through the entire scope also woodrow wilson oops and at christopher columbus middle school the um the other area of concern that the district had uh was the existing conditions to all of your what we call the group toilets not individual toilets but the group toilets you know male and female there are ada american with disability uh act issues in terms of compliance so when we would renovate the toilets we would always upgrade them to have full compliance to the ada guidelines once you start to renovate the toilet the really the only way to do it to also comply and with the type of system you're going to replace floor ceilings lights and also

060the ventilation system some are very inadequate so those would be added as part of compliance to the the codes the only school that would not be renovated would be your newer school is 17. okay there's all there was also a identification and need uh to expand uh some facilities at the clifton stadium the high school stadium and that would be the existing weight room expansion and also renovation to the locker in the and the toilets and then the the last scope would be the new turf field for the ball field and a smaller field house at woodrow wilson middle school this would this would entail new bleachers dug out the back state back fencing and also flipping the orientation of the ball field it's basically an opposite orientation and and the entire site would be

061um turfed with uh artificial turf field that would require regrading new base drainage and the new turf field and the infield as well okay now the cost we've we've did an extensive analysis of the cost based on what we see current bidding and also projecting this out when this project would be bid so we we interpolated and discussed this with several construction management firms that we deal with and also contractors and our own bidding um data sheet that we have and we'll just run through them now there's two columns one is the project cost the project cost is total total cost it is the construction dollars the actual bids it is all of your professional fees it's a contingency ranging of between 10 and 12 percent uh for unforeseen conditions especially with renovations that's proper

062planning the state department of education will require you to have a healthy uh contingency in your cost estimates it includes all of your testing and it includes all of your uh processing and permit fees okay so the hvac and electric upgrades for all the schools that we identified and i'm just going to round these offers 78 million dollars the boiler upgrades are 5.4 million security entrances are 6.8 million uh the toilets are approximately 2 million the um i'm sorry the toilets are 30 39 million yeah the auditorium is 2 million toilets because of the amount of the toilets you have in the district are 39 million dollars the weight room at the stadium is 4.5 the turf field is 3.9 now we received numbers from the district on security devices and technology they provided a

063budget of a little over 12 million and environmental we based on the extent of the work that we're doing throughout the district uh your environmental consultant we provided them with a scope of work they provided us recently with their estimate for any removal of environmental concerns typically that's asbestos lead excuse me and certain areas that have some other elements in it that that are dealt with so there the environmental is is also a big number so that adds up to uh in the range of 168 million dollars now you've done some of these projects over the years out of your capital budget the other column is what the state is going to give you if you do this project and incur debt it's called debt service aid so that the state of new jersey through

064annual appropriation they don't give you a check for that but in your bond they will pay that on an annual basis for the life of the bond so what we've looked at everything that is being developed in this project is 100 eligible in our estimate dealing with the state department of education so everything that's here is eligible and they will send a once you go through the design process the approval process with the state you will get what's called a um a pec letter preliminary eligible cost they will identify what is eligible and they will tell you that you will get debt service aid now you won't get 40 you'll get something like because the way they structure it so that number of debt service aid of 57 million is is of the total cost

065so the net result to your taxpayers is the 168 minus 57. we show that number because it is a substantial number if you did this at a capital over the years you would not get the 4 34 or those dollars from from the state mr de caro i think this is such an important point that i want to make sure that we reiterate it so i understand it so all the commissioners understand it and members of the public understand it by doing these projects through a referendum the state of new jersey will give us aid state aid in the amount of if we did the full scope of all this work for 168 million the state of new jersey would basically take care of 57 million dollars of that money is that fair to say

066that's fair to say yes thank you and that's based on the type of projects the eligibility of it we've been successful in obtaining eligibility for turf fields because of the need you if we go in and we say that the district needs that turf field because they don't have enough fields and they can use it more often otherwise they can only use it and we've been successful in obtaining the the eligibility for turf fields which they have not done before so that would be the only thing that would be in question uh but we've had very six uh good success rate in and getting that as well okay now the um ronnie do we have the time the timeline here okay so we provided this assuming that you move forward and you're going to have

067a september referendum which you have enough time to do as we as we talked a little bit about um thinking forward after a successful referendum in september um you know when does this happen how long does this take in in the design of it once once september um happens there's a period of time where we have to do what we call the construction documents and the bit the bid specifications those are detailed drawings you have to go through approval process both at the state department of education and local we would we would anticipate bidding the project in april of 21 with an award the following month which would allow you to start construction the summer of 21. you want to start in the beginning of the summer get a lot of the um the work

068done in terms of the messy work we call it while students are out this will be a phased project you're going to do pieces a lot during the summer but you are either touching every school at once or you're going to start one school finish it and keep moving on we've looked at it multiple ways we've also when we looked at the scope of work and the phasing of it we priced we did a cost estimate based on that it's much different if you can turn over a building and have a contractor work for for five months and get it all done that's impossible but we factor in the phasing the starting the stopping the working here stopping working there coming back and finishing it with the cost estimates so the first summer you're doing

069a certain level of work you will be doing work the entire year into the following summer of 22 and then probably most likely continuing until november right so it's a it's a tremendous amount of work and you have that basically like basically a year and a half for this extent of the work it's a highly coordinated dance if you will with removal of any environmental issues before they can start the work and it's back and forth back and forth what we've done in the past on very complicated buildings where you have a where you're doing let's say the unit ventilator replacements with full environmental and air conditioning if there's an ability to take two classrooms two classes and have those as a flex space somewhere many districts will take those two classrooms and have class

070in an auditorium as an example or three classrooms and and that would be discussed with the district prior to setting out the documents because we have to include that but if you if you can visualize that three classrooms come out and as school starts the contractors come in after school and they work on those three classrooms they work on them four days they get it done finished they move to the next three so those class come back and the other classes move so it's it's moving down so there's work being done during the year but it's done after hours and if you can group the the shorter the duration will will mean how many classrooms can you give up at a time so if you can only give two at a time it's going to

071take longer to get to the end versus three or four that's a that's a discussion as we develop the drawings to see what you can do what you're comfortable doing and then that's included in the specifications because that's how the contractor is going to bid it okay so that's the overall scope i know it may be a little difficult to understand all the scope without looking at the plans but you've seen some of the we've submitted those plans prior um but again we did not want to show plans um on this presentation for obvious security reasons so any questions the hvac um are there any schools in the district that are going to be excluded out of them is it or is it every single school will be have those ventilators put in everything except

072school 17. and we did not include this well i i know that but i want people to understand because we're saying all schools that's that's the newest school that we have however i will state that we have had issues with the hvac system at school 17 and recently recently approved a new what's that system called a new control system for the uh hvac system at school 17 which once we get that straightened out we won't have any more issues there i've been assured yeah we're doing that now yeah is already um air-conditioned too miss bassford is it it's just safe to say for people looking at numbers what the in-depth service is and what the referendum number would be and so the state would cover and just i want to verify so the state as

073the public understands the state will cover 40 percent correct they they will give you a preliminary eligible cost that states 40 percent but the actual in our experience and and this is something your bond counselor can explain in in much more detail but typically what we see is here tonight she looked at me and she said yeah but basically you're going to get 34 percent right miss beltran um just to clarify does this total include the professional management company as well yeah we have yes yes yes because this would obviously not be managed in house it would be too large we're as the architect we're there um overseeing uh the project and also providing construction administration services but for a project of this nature we would strongly suggest that you have a construction management firm

074an independent firm that comes in um and that number is also included in the overall fees yeah because i know historically you've had a lot of delays so i want to ensure that we're not that doesn't uh trickle down into this project one more thing i'm trying to think what the public would ask um so that's the project management but the construction company itself who handles them who picks them um you don't pick them yeah i'm trying to ask i'm sure people are asking let me go through the process this the new jersey state bidding laws um you have a uh you have a group of what they call pre-qualified uh contractors pre-qualified that means paperwork that they filed with the state a qualified bidder will pick up your all these plans are advertised in

075the local paper and they're sent out contractors will pick that up and they will bid the specifications are very clear in terms of the requirements of the contractor their bonding capacity now you can't have a guy just with a pickup truck no i'm serious some some have tried some have tried but for a 168 million dollar project they have to have the available bonding capacity to cover 168 million dollars that means you're going to be playing with big big boys and that you deduct what projects that they have already in the works that they have not completed so that's they have to submit that so that brings you up to a certain level contractor but whoever is low that is your guy he could be a million dollars low he could be a dollar low

076that's your contractor then there are great contractors and there are not so great contractors um and you you work with that that's why you us there and you see them and you constantly work with it with those contractors we put we put in projects of this size milestone dates and we tie in liquidated damages to those milestone dates so if he misses tracks not the end date but if he misses a track in the beginning you can start coming down on him if he does not perform with that then you can contact their bonding cap their bonding company for safeguards to keep him keep him moving now that's that's in case you just have a a bad contractor it happens sometimes it's not it's not all the time but we're we're there the cm is

077there and your team is there to help get through that if if that happens you could also terminate a contractor if you're needed but those are those are a few and far between mr daley joe just move looking forward if we did get into the contract realm we would discuss with you in the cm about possibly splitting not giving the whole project to one contractor that that would be part of our discussion with you folks at the cs what would be the practical way to categorize yeah size it again i i didn't talk about that but a project of this size and the type of schools that you have in many cases you will split the project up and you have multiple um contracts so you'll bid it out contract a will be schools one

078two three and four or you're going to group them and so you may have four or five contracts you may say i want to bid it all at one one contractor there are pros and cons if you get a good contract you want them to do all of them if you get a bad contractor then you got a bad contractor for all the schools you can split it up it really depends what it's going to depend on is as we get close to bidding between us and this construction manager we see what's being bid in the state of new jersey and what contractors are available sometimes you will plan a bid right after another district that has a big project going out okay you may have 20 bidders there but there's going to be 19

079losers so you don't want to go out before that project you want to go out after that project so sometimes after you've got a bunch of guys that are bidding and they haven't gotten a job they get very very competitive so there's a strategy in that that we can't tell you how that's going to work now it's really as we get closer toward the bid time so there are all those strategies that would take place vice chair bassford i'm sorry well because i'm trying to think like you said that what people are going to ask now you said that you were going to put units in the hvac that's heating in air and and heating ventilation and air conditioning will be we're going to run it right through starting the summer i'm worried about the

080winter months and heat issues so what what are we going to do to you know like you see if we have two classrooms down we're going to have to have another space for those students to go to like he said i'm just worried about a really cold day like a 12 degree day and all of a sudden something's affected by it so what's the contingency that's a good question and um as as we design the system you have you have a boiler okay and you have you have pipe runs and they go out in different wings of the building we would not stop the heat from going through the school so let's say we're doing three classrooms and we take those unit ventilators out we put a we put an isolation valve in the specs

081you put an isolation valve in so the boilers are still running so during the summer you're going to put the isolation valves in the school so when the boilers come back on for the winter we can isolate an area okay so they shut that down without having to shut the boiler down because that's a that's a big process to cool it down drain it refill it that takes days so you isolate this section you take the unit ventilates out the pipe still is going through the feed so the other classrooms are still heated and you put them in and they connect so you constantly have heat during during the winter months but you have to put in the isolation valves during the summer and that's the first thing you're gonna do so that will allow

082you to do those things otherwise when i replace these unit ventilators i gotta shut the boiler off and you can't do that every yeah so that's how that's thank you because i'm sure that's going to be a concern of the parents yeah absolutely yeah we you cannot do this without having heat in the building okay thank you mr canova um so i have a few questions what is the age of our current unit ventilators on average and what's the average life expectancy of any unit ventilator uh i don't know you they're like 60 years some are 60 years old and a unit ventilator the all you have a lot of old net net bits systems i mean they were rated for 25 years 30 years and ours are 60. many of them are 60 years

083old and what are the some what are the some of the downfalls with running a unit like that 60 years old they stopped working [Laughter] when you least want it to stop working here's here's what happens in the old unit cause you mentioned something about the amount of air that comes in so here's what happens sometimes it becomes the unit ventilator has dampers in it so it has a thermostat the control it has a valve so the the hot water or the steam will run through it and in new jersey with schools schools school codes are very very stringent on the amount of fresh air that has to come in to the classroom and then get exhausted so what happens is there's a coil in the unit ventilator and there's a fan in it and

084there is a damper the damper opens because you look at all your buildings you see grills all over that that's the fresh air requirement that comes in so as when it's called occupied mode thermostat is running the heat will go through the damper will open it will allow the fresh air in and it will temper that air for a few minutes and then the fans kick on and it'll blow that hot air into the room okay and as and it continues doing that and then it exhausts it what happens in older unit ventilators the either the valve doesn't work either the fan stops working or most likely the dampers don't work and they get shut okay so basically you have an old cast iron radiator with no controls so you will permeate heat because you've

085got heat going through the pipes but you don't have the required air flow that's typically what happens right and or you get a break you get a leak or it just shuts down or it bypasses especially with the steam it clogs and it bypasses and you don't get any heat but typically you don't get the required air changes in it and and with these new units are we going to have individual air control in each classroom yeah each each one will have a thermostat in the room that's required every room has to have an individual thermostat and also in that price is a is a a adequate control system that goes to a head end and you have some of them but it would be all you have different ones um this would be a

086unified control system um where your facility director can control and set all the points to operate those unit ventilators so they can come on at a certain time go off on a certain time or be modified uh the the um the temperature will sense the temperature in the room to open the valves but you you control it through your control system your head end um and then you can you can modify it slightly within the room so if we saw some issue we would be able to monitor everything all at once and see if there's some systematic issue at any school at any time right you can see that the fan's not operating or anything else right and it can send the whole arm what is the warranty for those units um yeah it's ten

087ten five you can you can buy different ones in your bed typically it's five but we've also put in the specs what as an alternate price i want a 10-year warranty and that's that's all material labor is this all does that also include training and professional development for our absolutely and typically what they do is and that's in our specs as well when when you have that they will come in train and they will we require that you videotape it because sometimes they go through the training like anything else yeah yeah yeah i got it got it and then all of a sudden oh what did he say again and you actually have a video that's created and you can kind of replay it and they also some manufacturers are putting it all on a

088on a drive so you could just you know go online actually and you can kind of see how it's maintained everything's digital today now the vestibules that you mentioned um how exactly are they going to function so right now you come up to the door there's a buzzer there they buzz you in and you open the door so by having a vestibule there is it that the front door is locked and they buzz you into this square both both doors are locked what is the actual process well you basically that so you the doors are locked on the outside okay so a visitor comes in they ring it and you have a system you know video whatever um they let you in to the vest of you that second pair of doors are also locked

089but the first one is also locked so you can't get out or they can always get out they they can always get out you cannot lock a door okay in the state of new jersey for egress that you cannot do that so if they're in they get locked in that vestibule now when you have a longer vestibule what we normally do is we split the vestibule in half so students can come in here right but if there's a visitor they can't come in with this they have to go in through the other set of doors where you have the ability to do that you are you are limited to a degree based on the the physical constraints of your buildings where we have a larger vestibule we would do that but then we wanted to

090locate them near as close to proximity to your administration office as possible many districts will then either have a policy where someone comes to that door and lets them in from there and escorts them to wherever they're going where you have very close proximity and eye contact someone will then allow them to come in after they've gone through their screening and then enter the administration in a brand brand new school the typical arrangement is similar but usually when you come in there's a sro office there security office they access them and then you actually go into the administration area through the vestibule before you get back out into the school that's on new construction you have close to that but you don't have it all because you just have physical limitations okay but it works

091the same way there's and basically it's a man trap person trap and you then control them i don't want to be you know it's a person trap they they get locked in there until you bring them into the facility and in that glass area because i'm thinking like greenhouse in that area is that temperature control yes yes when it's inside the building when it's when it's inside the building you don't have to worry about that too much but there would be a cooling in there when we're building the ones that you saw on the outside that would have heat and it would also have cooling and typically it would be electric because you cannot run you cannot run piping to it that's just exorbitant so it would be electric yes just again for for clarification

092and edification uh on on the uh on the whole hvac system there's basically three components you have your boiler or source of the heat whatever that may be and you have the uni universe you know ventilator and then you have your ac component so it's a three component operation here in terms of how you build this but it's the same it's it's the same unit yes same unit but those are three components the point i'm trying to make is that the public scene that we've done many boilers in here that's not wasted money we've already we've already gone to that position and we're now going to the next phase if we go forward with this project that's what i'm trying to yes you did not you did your boilers because you needed boilers and and

093they're still good the heating that's the heating source yes the piping is there um the unit ventilator is just a device uh to extrapolate the heat or the cooling but you still have to heat the water to get to there yeah that's it so one more question you mentioned the uh the toilets and the acs at 17 didn't need to be done but you didn't mention the celebi not needing to be done are we doing those as well do we need something okay that was not included you can include if you want but we we were told not to we didn't need i just want to make sure that that's not no just i want to play devil's out of getting for a little bit um it was an issue some time ago it was

094on the list now i know why and i understand why and i know what the field's all about but why are we doing turf what's wrong with the field the the baseball field over at woodrow well it well one we were i'm sure people are asking and i'm sure you have to include that and typically when you put a artificial turf field in you get an extended life on it and you can use the fields virtually 24 7. so you get much more use out of the out of the areas so then i guess i'm not playing nevertheless again i'm going to play supporter role which is you know obviously that field has a draining issue it's always been an issue and it's a horrible field to play on whether visiting our home team so

095then i'll just answer my own question uh thank you um can i just uh piggyback on that there's also no restrooms over there sure and that makes the issue because we have to unlock the building and let people go in and out we don't have anybody being monitored so it is a big issue with when we have guests come we have a game going on so it needs to be upgraded for for that accommodation as well um i have a question about the uh i want i'm going to call it a portico or the outside i don't like the ramps and i know we have to have them i don't like the one at school the one school i think i i don't know if we can angle it to the side we have to

096have though yeah once you take it once we touch it we got to get it yeah i understand that now we looked at that um one is coming straight out the other one we came out on the side it was the we we kind of mimic used the brick we could we could run it on the side and double back uh but no matter what you do you're going to see it i mean part of it is some landscaping and you know no it does it looks like a gangplank it's a it's a ramp that goes to a yacht or a boat uh an old-fashioned like the titanic's you know because i'm dating myself it's called a gangplank she was on the planet i'm just trying to make the visual like i i just i

097just don't think it's uh appeasing to the eye so the other thing too is the height you're coming up is like this i understand that so it's a it's a gradual that comes up you can put you know landscaping in front of it that'll eliminate it i think if you if you went to a level and then turned with a platform and then came back down it's going to look bigger and look more massive that's why we kind of did it here and you also need steps coming up i understand i expected something a little different because that's a that's a valid request if you if we push this back she likes that one it's the other one i thought this is the long one oh that comes out that comes out of the front

098the one thing you showed us the one that you showed us actually needs it because the steps going up into that building are disintegrating we we just tried to connect it to the sidewalk that we would come in right um it's one of it's one of our historic buildings and i'm just worried about the reception from the community around that school because it is it is one of our stellar it's that building is kept very well especially the inside of that auditorium i'm just worried about the feedback from the community if i'm trying to be very um if that's aloof well let me ask a question the the actual vestibule itself we try to blend that into the architecture of the building because you have a very high portico it would be unsightly if we

099actually fill this in so we kind of created that set it back from the columns if you if you would prefer the ramp instead of coming out along the natural path from the sidewalk if you have the sidewalk and possibly put the ramp off on the side like the other school so it would just require more sidewalk and but that week that's not a problem no that's what i'm just saying it just looks a little yeah it could be that i gotta be careful with my words urbanesque yeah it's like a looks like a school in the bronx that i'm very familiar with and it's just it sounds slightly to me i don't like it yeah okay so that's that's that's easy that's easy i just wanted to mention also that included in that cost

100but i i didn't see here was an elevator at christopher columbus yes and i purposely said that because i know lori's in the audience wondering why we haven't mentioned the elevator these the hvac it's only for the classrooms there's no other units going anywhere else or are we using these spaces the large as i mentioned the gyms auditoriums and and those have rooftop units on so there is other yes okay thank you so we're doing it the only thing you're not doing is the corridors which doesn't require it and the administration offices have air conditioning that's very difficult to do we did not include the administration areas well you have it you have uh you have it in it i already have it yeah i remember i just wanted to make sure i want people

101in the community here right it's the common areas as well except for the hallways thank you yeah mr de cara can you just quickly explain um the resolutions that are on tonight's agenda to amend the lrfp and the importance of the timeline yeah if um it was identified that potentially you want to do a september referendum in order to do a september referendum with the right timelines proper adequate time for the state to review it we need the resolution tonight with the front document signs which enable us to submit it to the state while it's down at the state they'll they'll put it in queue to get the proper approvals so you can get your pec approve it make sure that they gave you all the money that we anticipate so then your bond council

102can then get it to the county board of elections two months before the actual date and it gives you sufficient time can you tweak it slightly um did you get a chance to call tony brun um tony braun is your representative at the state um he's a very accommodating reviewer if there's something you want to as an example after you look at this you want to pull out we can do that but rather than wait because time is of the essence we'd rather get everything in and then modify it and ask tony to make sure he gets it that's why we have the resolution and the documents you have to sign just a quick question to superintendent roberto the columbus uh facility upgrade does that include the elevator which you want to confirm i'm sorry

103it was in here but i forgot to mention any other questions that's fine i just want to reiterate to the board that we do have bond council here tonight um aaron uh erin you're welcome to come up and and speak publicly but i do have uh i do want uh aaron as counsel to speak to the board and executive session about some legal uh issues sir erin is there something that you want to mention publicly um for everybody explain the process but if you could come up yeah yeah thank you um when i look at the timeline i agree with joe you're sort of getting to that spot where some of the applications have been delayed and we've come in a little bit close on on the things that i need to do this is

104a little early in the timeline for me to give you a lot of information but i do kind of quickly want to talk about the 34 percent the state appropriates annually the debt service aid to schools they are on your preliminary eligible cost letter you'll see that they're saying committing to 40 percent they only are appropriating 85 of the 45 of the 40 so that comes out to 34 which is why we come up with that number it is subject to annual appropriation now if the state decides not to appropriate they can't just decide not to appropriate for you they'll have to not appropriate for everybody in the entire state and that might present a problem for them politically so again subject to annual appropriation that's where the 34 comes in um and that was

105the only thing i wanted to sort of clarify for you guys but any ques i'm here for any questions i have some questions we're a little far out on on timing they take the lead they've got the football for a while and i pick it up in a couple months but i'm here if you have any questions but we got to get it in now so we have a football team i i do i i absolutely concur with that um you don't want to be um rushing at the end but i i think and i don't speak for the board but i think the board just wants to know that voting on this tonight doesn't mean this is going to happen you know what that's exactly it can be modified that's a great point it

106can be changed i think that that's important to know yeah i didn't have the opportunity to see the resolutions that are involved tonight but i believe they just allow for the submission to the department of education there will be more legislation as time goes on including a resolution from me which will prepare the actual statement that will go on uh the ballots uh and that we'll talk about that at a later time too madam chair can we um make a motion to have anybody in the public weigh in on this at this point before we actually vote on it oh well we have public comment coming up okay no problem so thank you very much thank you thanks joe thanks rodney thank you very much [Applause] so next order of business is board committee reports

107does the student representative have something to report nothing okay thank you all right um next is the high school hsa meeting minutes okay my minutes will be much shorter than the two presentations that you just saw this evening so uh here we go i attended the high school hsa meeting on the third of february okay so project graduation signs are currently on sale i have an example if you'd like to look at them sign up sheets have been given to each school large personalized signs are 35 dollars and non-personalized signs are 30. small non-personalized signs are eighteen dollars if anybody's interested in purchasing one uh mr doctor provided the parents with his report of course our boys soccer team had an undefeated season uh miss conte our former dean and athletic trainer i had taken

108over for mr ross as vp since mr ross is now our director of human resources uh two anti-vaping seminars were provided for parents within between the two the few months that they had met 900 people had attended the open house at the high school this year the fall play rumors uh was well attended accuplacer tests were given this year um along with the asvab testing chromebooks have been distributed to the ninth and tenth graders and that was back um as of february 3rd the strategic planning our first one was yesterday now we have two more coming up which is uh march monday march 2nd and i believe it's a thursday but it's don't quote me on the day but the date is the 25th of march uh and they start at six o'clock in the

109auditorium of the high school junior prom tickets um actually started the week of february 3rd and the senior prom tickets will be sold in may the student representative that attended that evening had announced that the toys for tots donations were donated on uh december 6th clifton kicks cancer occurred on january 24th and raised fifteen hundred dollars half of the money was donated to st jude and the other half was donated um towards the scholarships uh toward a scholarship for students who were affected by cancer our prom fashion show is april 26th uh their first meeting will occur on february 24 uh february 24th uh there is a dress rehearsal for the prom fashion show on april 25th tickets for the prom fashion show are ten dollars and that money helps pay for project graduation now

110suggestions of places um for dresses for that were welcome and appreciated the next chs hsa meeting is the 30th march 30th in the high school library that one starts at seven o'clock and the hsa president meeting will occur on april 18th as well as may 20th at 6 p.m at celebi any questions okay residency meeting the january 23rd 2020 residency meeting began with customary greetings introductions was the board of education vice president judith basford um commissioners myself and joe canova the superintendent of schools the district administrator of climate security mark dingarow uh the domestic investigator vincent constantino the secretary of residency says registration nancy foster mark jan girl recognize individual hard work and efforts put forth by the registration department to the committee march and go explained the residents the registration says residency process to

111the committee each member of the team was provided with a packet that contained examples of the following documents clifton registration instructions sworn statement documentation provisional letters 21-day letters 10-day letters change of address procedures mark ginger and vincent constantino explain the process and procedures specific to how and why domicile investigations are conducted domicile investigations can be initiated from the district and building level administration anonymous tips bounties and returned mail vincent constantino shared with the committee the techniques he utilizes while conducting investigations the residencies as registration team provide the committee with a three-year comparison chart of 18 17 18 18 19 school years and 1920 school years july 1st through december 31st um the reports were specific to the number of students investigated the number of residents found the number of non-residents found the number of bounties

112collected the committee recommends more frequent updates that are to be shared with the entire board of education the committee discussed season's greetings mailing sent from the office of the registrar that's it any questions yes yes um just a quick question there was discussion about uh re-registration for out-of-district students uh at one time was has that been brought up before the committee or with the administration it was discussed in detail okay about um how to do re-registration for students that are okay no decisions been made yet no decision was made okay thank you passaic county school boards association meet minutes i am back okay so our passaic county school board association meeting was held on february 13th um jeff fisher our delegate for the board of directors of the new jersey school board association announced that

113future ready schools is now called digital digital ready new jersey elf new jersey and the accessing careers in educating engineering and science which is the aces program will help funding for digital ready schools matching grant will also be provided from the new jersey department of education the health and wellness committee is working on programs for social emotional learning there is also a there is a vacancy on the nominating committee it will be filled in order to have our election for the positions of delegate and alternate of the board of directors for passaic county kathy hassan passaic county vice president uh provided us with training and professional development updates there was a social and emotional learning conference friday february 14th there is a school finance conference friday february 28th the annual charter school conference is friday

114march 6th the school technology conference will be held on march thirteenth and the school communications forum will be held friday april third kathy hello our field service representative also discuss training and professional development the leadership conference weekend will be held april 24th and 26th registration will be held at the end of february uh ray penny director of county activities and member engagement talked about advocacy and building relationships on how we as school boards should build common goals together we have information that will be valuable for our legislators to know so we can advocate for our districts we are the advocates for our students in our district he had told us of an upcoming training called best practices and meeting the needs for all students on friday march 6. chris jones our legislative advocate discussed new

115legislation for the opening of the new legislative session in trenton i had left the legislation updates for you for your leisure if anybody needs when i have an extra copy governor murphy's budget address will be in about two weeks as of february 13th discussions continue to fully fund the formula hopefully hopefully with some advocating we can obtain more money the path to progress was also discussed during this time which is uh discussing regionalization shared services and contin continuity of education special education funding is currently at 15 on average to school districts some districts may be over the average and some may be under but 15 is the average that the school districts are receiving there is an increase in extraordinary aid to districts with an average of 75 per 9 to 90 being paid out

116towards special education aid uh mr jones also talked about being an advocate for districts as we continue to encounter hardships with funding we have our upcoming meetings march 16th will be at clifton high school starting at six o'clock for our unsung heroes which is our student recognition and may 18th uh we have our we will have our last meeting of our school year on march uh may 18th are there any questions um i have something to add to that okay okay um this is the first year that the passaic county school boards association is doing unsung heroes every district in state county every district's high school so if a district has more than one high school they get to choose one student from each high school clifton was asked to host it this year school

117boards contacted our superintendent he has agreed to let us use the auditorium so board members are going to be welcome i'm going to be sending you guys a um email to register because we have to register because they need to plan out the um the refreshments and things like that i talked to dr robert tussie last night he's going to have a conference call with the school boards association county coordinator and to work out the logistics they do supply funding for refreshments so if there's no cost of the district but this is like the olympics for us this is the first time this is being hosted and we're the host so i'm because i'm president of the school boards association i invited the mayor and the city council as well to attend because we are

118hosting it it's our chance to shine so but it's one student from every high school in the county they don't have to be the top level student or the lowest level they have to have some kind of reason the district is is picking them and it's their night to shine as well so i encourage every single one of us to come it's going to be i hear from past county presidents in other counties that this is a really wonderful night it's very emotional it's very it's very um impacting and i hope everybody can be there maybe this will be an annual thing for us but we're hosting and i would expect the uh your attendance please on the 16th uh registration starts at 5 30 event starts at 6. and i'm going to also i'm

119sorry march 16th i will you will you will be getting an invitation as well but the night um the students will be on the stage they are there it's it's all about them so um whoever from the district nominated them is the person that gets up and speaks about them and they get their photo up on on the stage their parents get invited it's really a nice event thank you technology meeting we have two january 14th and february 11th so i'll just read both of them off and you have questions um board members president myself judy basford and frank casper administration president danny robertozzi mark teigen jeanine janina kucha levitz and eric mountain meeting time of 6 p.m items of discussion number one phone system manual process of canvassing numbers getting closer than expected but

120all techn all technical abilities going well website the district is waiting on blackboard to finalize the templates then migration will begin three board event television system the fourth and final camera is installed and the project is completely done the sound issues from the previous meeting are being addressed four strauss has made the digital digitizing process was completed on january 13th district administration will be trained in early mid february and then we will go live to the public chromebooks 1-1 freshmen and sophomores will receive chromebooks on 128 to 131 juniors and seniors will receive theirs in february technology training security no before meeting was scheduled for next week other technology training scheduled for february march and april seven potential referendum projects district administration is recommending that the following projects be considered to be included in the

121upcoming referendum to be discussed in detail at the board of end meetings scheduled for 121. total replacement upgrade of security camera system replace digital locks including pa strobes in classrooms and hallways add ph strobes the bathroom and other non-instructional areas not currently covered replace or integrate door access systems with camera and phone system february 11th board members present myself judy jim smith and frank casper administration president dr robert tosie mr teigen ms kusulevich mr gengaro meeting time 6 to 6 30. items of discussion number one security camera system representatives from jct's solutions presented detailed plans of details of their plan that the administration administration suggested as a part of the district-wide referendum key points to the upgraded system include significantly higher resolution in areas that need such integration of all camera systems in all district

122building under one umbrella future integrations with phone systems and door access a unified platform for police and other emergency responders to access everything through one portal number two single sign-on a discussion took place regarding the district's history with single sign-on products and potential future implementation more discussion to follow number three chromebooks one to one freshman sophomores and juniors have been assigned chromebooks already devices for seniors are being prepped and will be distributed soon any questions see 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 sign the register provided for this purpose and to state their names addresses and subject matter comments are limited to three minutes per person issues raised by

123members 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 of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged 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 good evening i'm

124lauren lama and i'm a teacher here at christopher columbus as well as the president of the education association i just have two quick things one i am doing the happy dance i'm not going to do it now but for the elevator because i'll tell you our students will be very appreciative especially the ones that are crutches and they have to hop up and down those stairs to get to their class and also parents who can't come to school for presentations and the theater and programs because we keep we don't have an elevator so now they'll be able to participate hopefully so and the second question i have is for the architects now can once we have a contractor can that contractor subcontract out that's my question just as i thought all right thank you okay

125um when you bid um typically you bid an overall gc that will handle the mechanical any architectural items uh mechanical electrical and plumbing in the specifications all of his major subprime consultants have to be listed and also be dpmc pre-qualified as well as the overall contractor so if he needs to or if he wants to substitute a major sub he has to get approval or if he does it you could throw him off the job so whoever's bid with named sub-consultants are the person that you're going to deal with thank you what do you have long meetings i think patterson beats you not for border vet but i came tonight because i wanted to thank all of you first of all and this does have to do with what's on the agenda so i'll make

126sure i make it relevant but uh you're you're an incredible board and i know all of you on here uh it is so refreshing i know that nobody thanks you and you hired an amazing man for your superintendent i am absolutely thrilled what you did here it's my town so um i just think you're a bunch of very dedicated smart people who are now in charge of what happens with our kids and i think you all take it very seriously so um what you said tonight today may be scary to some people i think it's the right thing to do your your board of ed your kid your education system is why people move to cities we're the second largest city in passaic county uh that's the important thing who moves in nobody moves in

127unless they have kids and they want to have some play they look at the school system what you're doing is overdue it's something that maybe could have done over the years but you're finally addressing something that previous boards going back 10 20 years didn't even think of so i'm here to support you in it you know it's a big number and so it's gonna you know be pushed back and i hope that people get educated uh before it actually hits you know for a referendum but you will have my support on it and anything that i can do to help you pass it because i think that this is the most important thing we've done in years in clifton and i think that this is going to benefit the city for decades and decades to

128come so thank you all and thank you for serving i i know that pay is terrible uh oh you've got a raise it's double what you made last year and i said you do anything but i really do appreciate you all serving and uh you know i know most of you and i'm friends with a lot of you uh um it's a pleasure to be here i'm going home because i've been running since seven o'clock this morning i came down from chester i had to have i go to the highlands council on the highlands council so i was in the middle of getting yelled at by farmers and i decided to leave and come down here so uh anytime anything you need from me you have and we will go to lunch i talk to

129steve rose or we will thank you thank you thank you [Applause] i'm probably gonna get in trouble keith bastard mountain view drive um i gotta you mr smith i'm gonna see if you remember things and that and the carolina being on this is no reflection on you guys and that mr smith you remember school 17. you remember architects or architects or who nom king anybody else on the board remember nam king park here raise your hand jim you remember okay and the reason why i'm up here to educate you is because nam king park was out of business now they sold the board a bunch of goods not saying you guys are going to sell us a bunch of goods but i like to ask the board do me a favor could you be able

130to check with county you'll be able to check with the state different schools you know schools have been done in the state here and they use different contractors see what they felt about their contract is how things went and everything how they liked them again no reflection on you guys not what the architects liked but find out what the school system is like what they didn't like because with nam kim park built seventeen louisville's had the best of the best now it's coming back to us wasn't the best of the best and everything because we went on their recommendations board never checked it out and everything i was around back then another thing too i like these security entrances that you're talking about i um looking at it i think there's a few loopholes and

131i won't say it on the mic i'll let you know what i think but i think before you thinking about doing these entrances i think you should speak to a security consultant too and again i won't put on the mic why but i think there's a few loopholes there it's a good idea there's no question about it but it's a good idea to only a certain point okay so um i look into that too but my biggest thing is like i said you have time i hope this referendum does pass we definitely need all this work done here okay you have a big nut to crack you're gonna have to let the public know transparency like you're doing here tonight that's the main thing but like i said just check out these contractors and find

132out what's going on you have plenty of time now do your homework thank you um hello um i just wanted to quickly ask miss basford you mentioned um an unsung heroes program that's gonna happen at clifton high school and i just i've never heard anything about that from any of my teachers or anything so i just wanted to ask like what kind of content should we expect from a program like this because it's very new to me it's uh it's the county school boards association is asking each administration from each county high school some districts have more than one to pick one student that they feel fits the criteria that we gave them so it will nobody's heard about it because it's kind of they the students haven't been notified yet so the student from

133clifton high hasn't been notified yet who that person is there's no competition there's no application it's administration picking one student that they feel fits the criteria that was given to them by the state of new jersey the new jersey school boards association we're just hosting it here and the pate county school boards association is facilitating within the county but there's it could be a high performing student it could be a special needs student it could be somebody that's going through some kind of personal issue at home with maybe a very sick relative a parent or you know a guardian there's a certain criteria but i i know that the person was picked but there has been no formal announcement yet because they have to notify the student okay i just wanted to ask like during

134the assembly or during the event um is the student gonna like come up tell their story like what kind of thing the student is not going to tell the story the person that nominated them will tell the story and the students going to stand there and get an acknowledgement we're going to take pictures that the picture is going to be on the screen and i think we decided that each district was going to give a gift card it's some of some of the board members on the committee are kind of taking care of that for the districts the district that don't have a person on there we're asking them to chip in it's going to be under 50 dollars it's like a gift card so they're going to get they're going to get a gift

135and they're also going to get a really nice certificate from new jersey school boys association oh okay all right thank you so much for the clarification anyone else should wish to speak see another motion to close motion by mr albert second second by mr casper there is no unfinished business so the next order just if i may ask for uh just i'd just like to respond to uh freeholder james's comment just very briefly just to clarify something okay okay um first of all uh i'd like to thank the freeholder for coming and and the accolades um just the point of clarification to do a referendum like this takes a lot of teamwork i don't think we had the team in place that we have now so i think we were the past board was prudent

136we did a lot of projects that went along the same vein that we're looking to do in the referendum but to do a referendum of that magnitude whether whatever we decide to do takes a great team and now with dr robertosi on board uh i think we have the right team uh we didn't have the right team i don't think we could have sold this uh or explained it better better said it explained and as we will be able to do with this one so i'm i again i very much appreciate the comments and accolades that the freeholder gave us but just clarification of records uh i think we're all aware that things needed to be done in the district throughout my tenure on the board it's a question of timing and resources and again

137the right team we now have the right team to push this forward thank you next order of business is education administration could i have a motion for um ea one through eighteen so moved second motioned by mr casper second by mr abu drabo any questions yes uh ea seventeen uh esafety from you to uh mr uchi it says here on one of the lines where uh student athletes are going to a leadership workshop at pcti but there's no number of athletes attached to that it's an open-ended number or open-ended amount and answer that yeah is it all of our athletes is it open as far as it's open for them to decide so if every athlete in the district wanted to go no that's what i'm asking i can't tell you exactly no they didn't

138tell us that okay madam president yes um for those of uh who weren't in attendance last evening can someone uh just describe the pathway to buy literacy just so the public knows i know we heard a little bit about it last evening didn't we i think we'll have i'd be happy to so the uh the seal of my literacy are we discussing this yes so the seal of my literacy is a state of new jersey initiative that started several years ago with a pilot in five districts and what it is it's an opportunity for students to demonstrate that they are fluent or bilingual in several different languages students are given an assessment in writing and speaking and in reading and if they pass this assessment they are given a seal from the state of new

139jersey that is put on their diploma which designates them as truly being bilingual so they can put that on their resume like like some people do and they say they're bilingual but some people say they're bilingual maybe only speak the language and they may not be able to read it this gives some authority behind the fact that the person truly is bilingual and in clifton this year we're very proud to say that we tripled the number of students who achieved the seal of bi-literacy from this year from last year to this year um we're very very proud of that and also on the agenda tonight i believe you'll see where we're going to pilot the seal um the pathway at in eighth grade which um i'm going to ask assistant superintendent acoustic leverage to speak

140a little bit about that this is a pilot program which we're participating in along with several other school districts to see if we do have students at the eighth grade level where we can already be giving them that um measure of whether they are biliterate at that time or not um so again it's a pilot program this is the first year we're going to be doing it and we will see how it works but this will determine if the state will go forward with an earlier by literacy measure or not any other questions roll call i have a motion to pull b3 ea3 ratification and memorandum of agreement with clifton transportation association 2018 to 2022. to discuss an executive session i'll second it motion by um miss beltram second by um miss bassford rocco on

141the motion pull it mr avadabo yes mr miss password yes mrs beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes mr casper yes mr smith yes ms yes and roll call now one through 32 with the exception of three three being pulled roll call mr abedrabo miss bassford yeah miss beltran yes mr canova yes abstaining on uh 17 for school three grade three that's my daughters mr daily yes mr casper yes mr smith yes miss danny yes next order business personnel could i have a motion for p1 through p 32 madam president may i respectfully request to pull p 19 20 and 21 for executive i'll make a motion to pull p19 20 and 21 and a second okay so motion um to pull 1920 21 and personnel i'm sorry there was a fly it was

142like a little blind i'm sorry it was just it was i thought it was an ant at first and then it was like a fly and it was dead already so i'm sorry sorry show for the record she's on sorry um so was motioned by uh miss basford and second by um mr uh casper sorry uh roll call p 193 yes 19 20 21. uh mr abdravo yes miss basswood yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes mr casper yes mr smith yes miss danny yes i'm sorry for the fly okay um and any questions um for p1 through 32 with the exception of 1920 and 21 any other questions scene none then roll call with the exception of 1920 and 21. uh motion oh yeah motion i think we have a motion

143by mr abu drabo second by mr canova roll call mr abhijab yes miss bassford yes miss beltran yes miss derkanova yes mr daley yes mr casper yes and i have to abstain on p25 for my name only mr smith yes miss danny yes next order of business is finance can i get a motion for f1 through 31 so mr abdrabo motion second second by mr casper questions roll call mr abedrabo yeah miss bassford um yes to all and i'm abstaining on check one 197717 and check one nine seven seven four six i will hand it over to you after i'm done miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes mr casper yes mr smith yes miss danny yes next order of business is public recognition this portion of the meeting is open to citizens

144of 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 sign the register provided for this purpose and to state their names addresses and subject matter comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board oral comments will be considered and irresponsibly 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 to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of new jersey the board bears no

145responsibility 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 by their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments hi i'm laura llama again i have some papers to pass out to the board now the papers that you'll be receiving has to do with the new windows that are being installed at christopher columbus now some of them um the blinds are not working some of the plugs for the air conditioners there's no electrical outlet otherwise you're going to have to run extension cords there's been no caulking around any of the air conditioners so there's a lot of wind coming through and also when it rained

146one of the classrooms had water in it from the rainstorm there's a couple of windows that are still missing there's poles that are missing one of them has a screen missing uh the acs have not even been installed some of them and the one in my room is broken and some of the windows are jammed so the upper gym um they use the old frames now i don't know a lot about it but i just wanted to let the board know um the windows that were taken out the cages weren't put back in to protect the windows so i just want everybody to be informed on what's going on so we can get these things fixed as soon as possible the other part is the drainage project because i know the ones during the summer

147that was completed but the middle part of the school there's still like hoses and stuff for the second part of the project so i just want to figure out i knew that we were supposed to start that in the winter so i just want to make sure that we have some sort of a timetable because to affect any other flooding that i would not want to see and that's it thank you for the drainage project the that final phase is set to take place to begin on april 6th oh great okay thank you as for this i will meet with mr marcion and we will meet with the contractor and get these issues addressed okay thank you very much i'll give him a copy anyone else wish to speak motioned by mr smith second by

148mr abu drabo next order of business is board member comments okay so mr smith we'll just start with you wait wait wait it's it's you know i almost tripped over you know that whole yeah well it's 9 30 when there's gonna be no portfolio um i was totally not expecting it i said there you know i thought about this first i said you know i wonder if they do the reverse thing and everything i said but there's no way they're gonna call me first tonight it's my first night and here i go and uh i i gotta say um i referee at woodrow and we the referees the coaches the kids we walk out dripping wet because the gym is so unbelievably hot so i'm not refereeing tonight and figured i'd have a nice break

149and i'm dying of heat exposure from back there and here so if i look like i'm just came out of the sun it's tremendously warm so i hope we're getting some air conditioning in this in this part too on that uh referendum uh anyhow i'm just i'm not gonna prolong things um i again appreciate uh freeholder james and his comments and he kind of hit it right on the nose all the referendums that i've been involved in if we don't have the community first educated to understand the referendum one of the first referendums that i was involved in and i i mentioned this when i when i ran for the for the open seat was the sholton project which was the property across the street that back in 1992 uh was offered for us for

15012.8 million dollars you can't even do a an adjustment to a building for near 12 million dollars today to have gotten that piece of property the buildings that were involved in it we would not have had many space issues to deal with but anyhow that referendum went down because the public didn't understand it they were not educated on it the board at that time just felt it was a great deal if anyone can't see spending 12.8 million dollars on that beautiful piece of property with state-of-the-art science labs and tennis courts and all that they're they're out of their mind they're going to prove it tremendously while they came out in droves walkers wheelchairs beds they all came out in droves because they knew nothing about it and then later on more information came out about

151it and they're like why didn't we purchase that if we had known this information it's going to be so important for administration to get the proper information it's going to be all of our job to get the information out to the public the public to ask their questions about it but when this town and statistically any referendum that we've gone to the public then ask them to help improve education for our kids and our buildings they have supported tremendously and i think that will happen again when the public understands this and knows all about it we're gonna need everyone's help and everyone's support ask your questions come out to the forums and i know in the end if we all come together as clifton as proud mustangs okay this referendum will happen so again i

152don't want to prolong things uh it's my first meeting again i thank my colleagues on the board for their faith in me to sit in this chair and to the public your trust that i will um help this board and help this town and help education the very best that i can thank you mr abhijava hi uh to mr smith commissioner smith um welcome back on the board because in 92 i was seven years old so you got a lot of experience and i can't wait to see what you guys bring to the table um congrats to uh mr montero on his judgeship and also being honored tonight i wish he could have been here but um obviously traffic is it's jersey let's leave it at that to uh field of bruce james um again

153it's it's great to see somebody who doesn't have to be here but comes out to support uh clifton the board and and uh his hometown and its residents the strategic plan meeting last night i think i thought was phenomenal um we have parents students teachers administrators boe members you know all stakeholders around the table um i'd like to see more folks come to the table um superintendent robertazi the next ones one again march 2nd thank you um so hopefully we can see more folks come to the table there are more voices that should be heard and could be heard and i look forward to that casa it's a it's it's an it's a it's a hard you know that's not hard it's a big take to to put on our on our table for the

154district but i think it's well worth it um like i said before these are our students and i am considered still our students after after they graduate and while they're going from the graduating field to the post party that we get to oversee as not we as the board but we as clifton get to oversee i think it's it's a good thing to take on uh to make sure they do get back safe that following morning because honestly i come from the class 2003 and we've had a lot of mishaps that night folks who did not come to uh project graduation and that's one thing why and i'm saying it now with chills because i was good friends with one of them who did not come back that night from drunk driving and you know

155it is it's important it really is important and i don't care what anybody else says i will harp on this until until whatever we figure out but i i am a big proponent of this a big supporter of this and i think we should we should do something um regarding the referendum listen we're all going to keep saying it's worth it we need it 34 of the state you know they say we'll cover 30 34 of it for the referendum some people will say well why should i bother voting yes for it i don't have kids in the district i don't have xyz but at the end of the day every resident has a stake in this whether you're a teacher whether you're a parent whether you're a student or whether if you own property

156in clifton at one day or not or another you're going to want to sell your property people are going to want to come into clifton they're going to look really hard at the school district where their kids should go and why they should move in and why should they should pay property taxes now at the end of the day if we upgrade our facilities upgrade our academics upgrade from floor to to to the ceiling from wall to wall it will attract people it'll make easier for you to sell your house we'll have new fresh blood coming into clifton new cliftonites who will continue to be long life cliftonites and this is also one of the reasons why why people should really take a look at this and as mr smith said commissioner smith said you

157know come out to the forums voice your opinions understand why and what's going on and what entails or details into this comes into this uh it's very important rather than saying no no is being stubborn and hard-headed but opening up your mind and understanding and asking your questions to educate i mean we all have we all educated ourselves by asking um the administration asking the architects asking what what is to come what is to happen it's important it's very important uh oh this one so uh the election moving it back to november does not change more than three seats coming up this november i want to make that very clear because people have discussed it people have said it i myself as a resident called down to trenton i myself even asked folks from the

158state and they will all tell you we cannot give you legal advice your legal folk on the board of ed can give you legal advice but they've also said to me that moving it to november doesn't mean it changes it just shifts when people are up just the way we moved it to april sorry just the way the previous sport moved to april and we moved it back to november it doesn't change anything three people were up three people remained to be up um congrats to the band for performing in san fran i saw the the videos that were posted up i am extremely very proud of them they took the opportunity to go to san fran um it wasn't the whole band but it's a good chunk of them and i believe they did

159clifton very proud and to end off on a good note happy birthday to my little brother um who's not so little uh but but you know he's he's one of the folks in my life who he may be my little brother but i look up to him and he's always there for me so i i appreciate them as we should always appreciate family appreciate the people around us this is who we are as cliftonites is who we are as human beings and having respect for each other whether family or not is the most important thing in life at least i believe thank you miss beltran okay um i just want to say thank you to the cast representative to come through and um present to the board because last year i went on the actual

160trip and i look forward to going on the trip again and hopefully more board members will join me this year it'll be really great if all of us win i think um no pressure you're going okay now it's extra fun um but i look forward to seeing where we could take that with joining some sort of um foundation or something like that because i do think fun flex a little played out we could maybe go maybe go someplace else if you're it's fun for like a couple hours when you're trapped there for like eight hours it's so long it's a long time um i look forward to seeing how the district handles the referendum i think it's going to be we have a good makeup of the board representing all different groups that represent clifton

161i am a childless millennial there's you know we have millennials with kids we have millennials gen ears ears we have boomers we've got everybody represented we've got everyone represented so i think we can go out to the community and really try and drum it up um follow up to facilities concerns i'll make sure that we take that back to the committee and whoever is in charge of overseeing that make sure that they know that other people are watching i think now they know since it's been on it's been said that it's going to be watching especially during the referendum project there will be many eyes everyone will be watching this project so it's going to be crucial that they they go off as relatively without a hitch as we can so that you know the

162community isn't like oh look we voted for this and now nothing works um i know that just in the spring is almost here barbecue season is coming um maybe we'll get some snowstorms creeked in um but if not enjoy your spring time i'm still waiting for snowstorms yeah so are the kids i bet there's pajamas being worn inside out every single day and anyway i'll pass on to joe mr nova all right uh congratulations to the students of the month congratulations to our band for uh their time in san francisco i did also watch that video they did an amazing job congratulations to franklin montero and thank you for your time here on the board um we wish you the best of luck thank you to both tom and casa for what you do uh

163i am also you know in the camp with uh what mr abu drabble mentioned where i think it's very important that we do this for our students so we'll take it back to to finance and see what we can do thank you to all the speakers that came out um thank you for the people even being here tonight uh we do have a couple people new in the crowd as for the referendum i did tour all the schools with dr robert tosi i took a look at you know what we have the facilities we have um you know and this is just something that needs to be done and you talk to the parents you talk to the hsas we have the group meetings with our hsas my wife runs that group and you hear

164what they talk about they talk about these things you know the bathrooms need to be done the the uh hvac systems and all these things that we're going out for are the reasons the reasons why we're going out for them is because it was brought up to us it's not things that we're just conjuring up you know these things exist in the district that need to be upgraded they need to be planned out um and i was hoping that we would come with some pictures i didn't see any pictures so maybe from next meetings we could see some things that you know how things look in the district you know we're just explaining it here verbally i would love for people to see these things um and do you know are the stadium um bathrooms

165also included in this yes okay yeah yeah and so i mean you could go in there and see them now so i'm sure people know what i'm talking about with those and now we should look at some other things as well um but you know i agree with everyone else where this is something where we just you know have to beat on that drum you have to get out and show people what it's really all about i think once they see it it's a no-brainer here you're being offered i call it the chance of a lifetime where they're going to give you 34 percent back where can you get that you know that's like this is like black friday right now for for uh facilities um yeah now is the time to strike right we

166need these things in our district we know we need them we know that when people look at clifton and they want to move here they're looking at the school system school system is number one important thing that people look at and now is our chance to make the difference we have a board here that's ready to move this and i hope we have a community as well that's ready to move this and we're going to rely on our teachers we're going to rely around our staff our administration our parents our children to let you know what the you know the facilities look like inside the building um and now it's just the time to move it and i thank you mr daley thank you madam president um i'll be as quick as possible first of

167all i'd like to welcome jim smith to his first full meeting i hope you survive this and many others as we move forward and and without pounding a chest here i know jim longer than everybody on the board combined because he lived next door to me so um again thank you for the to the freeholder bruce james for his uh his very polite and and supportive comments it's very important that we hear from other political bodies that we have some support of what we do because we all know what goes on here on the referendum many of the things that we have on there are things that have to be done and if you let continue to let things go um it becomes more and more expensive so uh we will get into the refinements

168for this referendum in in in the near future put out a whole plan but in general a lot of this stuff needs to be done it's not going away it's not disappearing somebody goes oh we don't need that it's going to be just more expensive the longer you let some of this stuff deteriorate so uh i'd like to have everybody in the town understand that type of thing um strategic plan great kickoff and and i'm very impressed that we have a real tight schedule to get this done uh because we've had a history of things getting kicked down the road and this is something it's not kicked down the road it's being front right on the front stew so i'm very very pleased about the turnout and the participation i just saw one caveat about

169the strategic plan there's many requests many ideas all of them very well thought out however they all come with a cost so we have to i think board members understand that but the public also has to understand we would like to do all those things but you can only do so much with with a certain amount of money and regardless if we get more state aid there's a significant amount of dollars uh with that those requests and ideas there but we will do our due diligence and do our best to reach those goals again thank you for the band in san francisco when you go to san francisco you go uphill both ways so if you've ever been to the city you can understand that so thank all of us and thank to all and

170we'll see you at the next strategic plan meeting and then we'll have a board meeting after that thank you mr casper i'm just going to give you some updates since it's late and we've been here for about four hours already okay so i hope to see all of you at our next strategic planning on march 2nd starts at 6 o'clock at the high school auditorium also our board our next board meeting will be march 5th so i'll be happy to see you come back and bring your ideas in the audience okay let me see there is a special ed advisory committee meeting on march 28th at the high school and then there is an idea meeting run through also through the special ed parent advisory group uh at school five on april 13th which starts

171at 6 30. i hope to see as many of you there at our unsung heroes on march 16th i hope we can get a good turnout for that and i hope to see some of my fellow commissioners uh on read across america which is on strategic planning evening so i may come in the cat in the hat and uh happy birthday mrs basford have a good evening yes miss basford okay so um there's a this is a public service announcement uh we all heard there was a horrific fire in clifton today and i'm getting this from your wife joe some of the hsas are coordinating a clothing drive for the young children um so check the um check some of the social media sites if you have any questions call your call your secretaries at

172the school and they'll connect you with the hsas but there is there is a group effort going on uh let let the hsas coordinate it they'll they'll filter it and make sure it's well organized so i'm sorry to the family but if there's anything we can do as a board we're right there behind you and we wish you uh we wish you um peace and uh we wish you blessings that you all came out of it unscathed um welcome to jim smith good luck uh i knew you from when i used to stand up at that mic and go is this thing on and uh yes no is it on um jim gluck i know you'll do good things for with us and you'll contribute well with this board and you've already jumped right in

173and uh are participating so thank you our policies are now searchable online on our website that's an announcement that we can we're very proud of it used to be in a pdf form and you couldn't search it so now if you want to look up a policy you can actually search it online so we're proud of that as well and thank you to the administration for getting that ready um ditto to mr abu drabbo's comments about the band it was so i was so happy to see all those uh videos from the from some of the parents that participated as chaperones and uh we were clifton was well represented um there was a channel two clip of it and when they said from all the way from clifton new jersey i kind of got i

174like you know it's a proud moment for us also kudos to the band and the parents for their due diligence in getting the students there um congratulations to the students of the month um you make us proud every day uh the strategic planning meeting it was very well attended i was really proud because april uh lucy and i will be nine years on this board and it was the first time i was actually involved while i was a board member prior to being a board member i we were invited because the hsas were there and and i was very involved but this is the first time as being an official board member that we were there and i just want to um say this comment to there are some people that came up to me

175and our fellow board members with some concerns that are going on with different things that we're doing i can assure you that those concerns were already conveyed to administration and they're looking into it so um communication has really increased since uh july uh referendum you couldn't ask a better person to be the cheerleader for this i'll stand out on the corner with my jugs with the coins on it vote vote vote like we did way back when we did that on its valley road we got the parents in the building well we didn't have social media at the time i'm really dating myself put the jugs in vote vote vote we got him in and we passed it we did we were relentless we did our phone chains we were relentless but we passed it

176because there was one thing the parents felt that they were involved and that was the big thing we we we everything we we would have vote on such and such states on the cupcakes everything that went out was vote vote vote so i'm sure your hsas will become very uh creative in their formats of what they're going to do but i'm i'm looking forward to all the events that are coming up to that happy birthday to faheem's brother the cute one that was a little deep and mr casper my fellow fish happy 35th okay and many many many many more you have a long way to go you guys are confusing me this is birthday sunday you're monday we're day partying no no we're we're we're yep he's 35. and we are going to do

177lunch or breakfast we'll we'll coordinate our date because we're going to go out together to celebrate our birthday so i'm bringing my my water jugs with my coins listen mr abedrabo never underestimate a home and school mother on a mission because we pack a power that you will never understand well i do i have plenty of my water jugs don't worry i'm gonna be out on the corner okay he has to constantly bust me it's really getting annoying after monday i'm not taking it no more because i'm officially a senior citizen if i didn't that means i don't like you i know i do it's the way i do um there's a lot going on so please be aware of the website please take advantage of the social media communication is at all time high

178in this district i'm proud to be a board member with this group we are we are functioning like a well oil machine and i am proud of every one of you thank you thank you miss bassford happy birthday mr casper happy birthday um i'd like to say congratulations to the students of the month um to the band to mr montero for his service welcome mr smith um sorry i didn't intentionally mean to just put you on the spot i just thought wow you know i'm like you know i'm like mr casper and you know i just i just looked over and i said oh oh maybe he wants to go you know so um next time i'll look in that direction um sorry and um thank you you know freeholder bruce james for coming out

179and being supportive of the referendum and it is something that the board has discussed that we definitely want to make sure that we get the word out and educate the public so that they know everything so that the referendum um you know everything goes smoothly and the strategic plan that was really a great turnout and it was a great event and we just hope to see more people there more community members because we'd like you to be part of the process of improving clifton making it even better than it is so definitely come out and voice your opinions and i'll just keep it short because it's getting late and you know i've already heard the fly okay thank you madam president i don't like this going last thing i think i should go first from

180now on but we'll discuss um thank you mr whittles for a great presentation mr degaro outstanding presentations and i if i i feel like if i was a member of the public who didn't know anything about a referendum or project that you explained everything in detail and you explained it really well so thank you for that really outstanding job uh we're we're gonna need you back here a lot i think over the next few months um thank you to all who came out for our strategic planning session last night uh i was overwhelmed with the support of the administrators that came out the parents community members that came out but but most importantly the the one group that we sometimes forget when we're trying to run the district is the students which seems really you

181know not it's not the right thing but last night we had some amazing students who took part in the strategic planning process and nobody's going to tell you any better how to how to improve things than the kids because the kids know and i commend them and i i encourage them to come back and bring a friend and i expect more students to be at our next meeting on march 2nd very very proud of our of our kids last night we very briefly went through the strengths of our district and the areas that needed improvement and the idea is to find of the 10 groups of 10 people over 100 people we had what are the common themes and the one thing that kept coming up in the areas in need of improvement was what

182facilities facilities facilities facilities that's why we're here tonight discussing a referendum okay because everybody sees it everybody knows it and this is is it is a perfect opportunity to make a big dent in the facility projects that we need to to get completed in this district i want to thank christopher columbus middle school and woodrow wilson middle school teachers who came to my informal chats with the superintendent i met with teachers from lori lalama cea president and i met with teachers from christopher columbus yesterday after school informally we met with teachers from woodrow wilson today informally to discuss anything they wanted to talk about and we had some really significant conversations we'll be at clifton high school next week and then we'll be visiting all of the elementary schools look forward to coming uh to

183speak informally with anybody who wants to talk to me um and i just learned tonight i knew there was the fire today because we we had we were worried about dismissal at school 12 but i've just learned during this meeting that there were students of our students involved so certainly we're going to be reaching out to make sure that that family has everything that they need and we'll send out information if we need some assistance or if hsas are doing things to to help we'll spread that spread that word but i i need to take a moment to commend the principal rose canning and the staff of school 12 this fire occurred right before dismissal and maybe about 10 minutes before dismissal it was bad enough that that the the smell and and smoke was

184getting into the building and the principal took action she immediately she called the shelter in place at first because she didn't want to cause any chaos but she did a controlled dismissal mr jingaro our director of climate and security i sent him right over to school 12 to help with the dismissal we worked with the fire department and the clifton police department to make sure any students that were walking home were redirected we had emergency notifications go out in minutes from mr rose via text via email via phone call to all those parents we have a minds in motion after school program at school 12. those students couldn't stay so the parents got a message they had to come pick them up and staff members just stayed and helped they just stayed and helped because

185that's what that's what our that's what our people do they they needed to work they needed to help kids and they were there so really thank you to the staff of school 12 under the leadership of rose canning really outstanding job and finally the state of the facilities that we have in this district today didn't happen overnight but something that has contributed to it over the years is the consistent underfunding that the clifton public schools has been faced with from the state of new jersey i'm thankful that the last two years we've received additional state aid but if the school funding formula was fully funded we would have an additional 36 million dollars in our budget next year we are still an a grossly underfunded district and at the state level you hear a lot

186of noise because what's happening is as clifton is getting more funding the districts that have been over funded for many many years are starting to make noise because they're losing money i'm sorry but you've taken money from my kids for this many years you've these districts have had extra money and now they're complaining that they're losing well i bet you that they didn't use that extra money and give it back to the taxpayers meanwhile this board consistently before me has never gone to two percent when they could have gone to two percent without a vote even when there was a vote on the budget last year we only increased the budget point eight percent and we were grossly underfunded by the state so the fact that our facilities are even in the state that they're

187in is a testament to our staff who have been maintaining those and keeping them but it just the band-aids are falling off it's time so hopefully we'll get the funding that we deserve the funding that our kids deserve the funding that our district deserves and we'll continue to advocate to make that happen thank you so next order of business is new business any new business mr object i'm sorry just um just to follow up on superintendent roberto's uh comment um and joan looked at me nodded at me so i'm trying to wrangle a legislative committee meeting with our legislators um i'm trying to schedule between all three legislators between their time since we our last meeting was rescheduled under some of their circumstances so i'm working on that so we can bring that to the

188table with them and also for the rest of my colleagues on the board uh especially casper i know you mentioned that there's some legislative issues we can bring to them and to the table anything you guys may have please email me so i can put that together give them some time to notice in advance so this way they can have some answers for us rather than than them saying let us take a look at it and we'll get back to you in another wait a few more months for another meeting so at least we get some answers to the table next order business executive session can i have a motion to convene an executive session second to discuss hidden personnel negotiations contract issues legal advice um motion by mr avadrabo second by mr casper action

189will be taken um all in favor aye opposed sam team sam derose you