001just one more minute i mean i'm just almost there half a minute now you are good evening everyone welcome to the denville board of education work session meeting of november 8th this meeting of the denville township board of education is being held in accordance with the open public meetings act notice of this meeting was provided to the daily record and or the start ledger of morris county has been delivered to the township clerk and has been posted on the bulletin board of the board of education office and in each of the school districts uh bill sorry each of the school buildings in the district and i should have started by saying mrs wagner was called away at the last minute she won't be here tonight so i will be running the meeting roll call please
002would you like to say the pledge of allegiance first no um yes we can do that do the play do the pledge you know even though it's out of order so let's do roll call mr cappello here mr cass here mr anderson here mr lure present mr kim here mrs gould here okay we don't have a need for executive session so we'll stand for the pledge of allegiance okay uh we have a special presentation on november 22nd uh which will be from dr cullis so we tonight we'll move on to the superintendent's comments please thank you executive order 253 the vaccine testing mandate we had our first week of testing last week it all went well all unvaccinated staff completed the testing all were negative we're working on getting the volunteers set up for this
003week the projects lakeview roof we're still working on the punch list we should be closing that out shortly the riverview hvac the old roon units have been re removed from the roof we're working on the installation now the gym has to be closed uh at riverview in the main campus until um we're expecting to reopen it on november 21st the all-purpose room can be used during the school day but not after school so the aftercare has been moved across the street to the annex district-wide covi cases we have two positive cases in the district and the regional activity is still in the yellows the yellow indicator strategic planning we're looking at november 14 28 and december 12 of 2022 to start our strategic planning the plan would be to hold a board of education meeting
004at 6 p.m with the entire board and then turn to a strategic planning session at 7 00 pm which is kind of like the way we did it the last year um that way all the board members could be in in session during the meetings so again uh november 14 28 and december 12. once i get a contract from mrs peterson i will publicize this and we'll get moving on save the date kind of stuff we also got some great news about valley view they were announced that they received an award called the climate action project schools of excellence this is um this is something that's involved in over 140 countries there's 250 international winners so valley view was one of 250 winners around the world in 140 countries um it was it deals with
005inspiring student-driven and project-based learning that deals with climate action day we joined to better understand how other countries and cultures are addressing the climate change valley views registration detailed two specific areas of school-wide focus the ongoing incorporation of climate change into our sixth through eighth grade science curriculum and the tree planting project this is from mrs um styles who's the lead in the green team and she would also like to make sure we thank the rest of the green team which is ms olarte miss lyons and miss oliveira for their hard work and also to the administration and the board it it's a it seems like every everywhere i turn with ms styles and that green team where we're receiving some type of award or doing something that i think seems pretty pretty amazing i
006did get a chance to go up and watch them um this project they had with with students and staff members planting the new trees at the new field at valley view i'm not sure if you saw it but there's about seven new trees that were planted um they i think they look great they're like special trees that won't grow huge um but they look really nice and uh it was really nice to see the students and and staff working on the project together she also incorporated some help from the local town green team so it's it seemed like a big community effort so it was another great job by ms styles and the team let's see it for my comments thank you steve and thanks for the recognition for our staff does any board members
007have any questions of mr dr forte uh yeah dr forte um thank you mr capela uh november 14th 28th and december 12th that's uh next year 2022 right um yes next year and so the the 28th will be the monday after thanksgiving yes okay great thank you very much we have board meetings on the 14th and the 12th the only one we don't have a board meeting schedule is the 28th but ms peterson feels that two weeks in between each time is good a little less would be a little too tight thank you anyone by the way this is um this is not set in stone if anybody has other suggestions about i'd be happy to hear i just tried to look at some dates that i thought might work give us some time you
008know not start in september when things are hectic give us a little time to get the year going and then start working on the strategic planning okay thank you anyone else dr collis can't be with us tonight so let's move on to business business administrators comments please no comments okay thank you okay at this time we're going to open up our first public discussion portion of the meeting for agenda items only the purpose of bylaw zero one six seven public participation in board meetings is to recognize the value of public on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters in order to permit the fair and orderly expression of such comment the participant must preface comments by an announcement of their name and place of residence
009statements made by a participant shall be limited to three minutes duration and no participant may speak more than once on the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic have been heard all statements questions or inquiries shall be directed to the board president i'm opening up public comments 7 37 pm rick is the microphone on full time she'll push you push you'll you'll push it marietta cohen to vandoorne place so in light of the new policy on the public being able to speak only on agenda items uh will there be changes to the agenda to give some talking points because the agenda's pretty uh vague on concerns of the community of parents and so i'm just wondering if we're gonna have a kind of a more expanded or detailed agenda to
010include various topics that we're allowed to speak on so generally not the agenda is as detailed as it usually is so you're not going to necessarily see more on the agenda generally the second piece the second public portion is the portion where you can speak to any items germaine to the district and that's always been the case we have tightened it up a bit in the last year because we have tried to keep our meetings moving but generally that's always been the case that agenda items are primarily at the beginning it is up to the president the president can decide to waive that i've decided tonight not to do that so we're going to hold anything that's not agenda related till the second public sec comment portion understood so just so we're clear the second
011portion at the end of the meeting typically is when we can speak of any topic that we wish to regardless whether it's on the agenda or not yes that's the that's what i would call the free form section again items germaine to the district uh but yes that's correct thank you okay if anyone else would like to speak at this po at this time agenda items only at this point in the meeting you'll you'll need to press down the button changed donna marie cizinski 64-pier place denville under a statue njsa 10-4-12 shall be required to set aside a portion of every meaning of the board of education the length of the portion to be determined by the board of education for public comment of any i repeat any issue school district issue that a member
012of the public feels may be of concern to the residents of the municipality or school district this is a law it's not a mandate or neo that gives you wiggle room for exemptions i request you table your agenda only public comic section now this is against the law and we're constantly being reminded of laws right but they're actually mandates or executive orders sorry i need to catch my breath because we just walked in if you choose to respond i formally request an opportunity to correct any mis representations without a seat if that's possible i personally wish to address the begging for volunteers but discriminating against people no no no it's against the law i'm going to stop you i'm going to stop you at this time i will put our legal complaints on okay fair
013enough thank you we yeah we do have a second public portion of the meeting that will be at the end and you can address any issues that concern you at that time that are non-agenda related thank you if there's no one else we're going to close the first public portion at 7 41 pm and move on with our agenda excuse me did we check the email before we close fairpoint steve can you let us know if there's any questions or questions or comments that came in agenda related i checked it about two minutes ago just refreshed it and there aren't n there aren't any in there now all right in that case we're going to close it tomorrow so i'm going to modify it to 7 42 p.m okay moving on with the agenda um
014old business uh action to be taken mr kim would you care to move us through uh the items on that section please sure i'd be happy to uh i motion that we approve under old business action to be taken uh education reports section a number one the nj cusack district performance review for 2021-2022 second thank you mr kim thank you mr anderson any questions or comments at one this is going to be discussion detailed by our assistant superintendent at the next meeting i'm sorry mr cass could you um clarify i had a question on i looked at that and the scores were very good um 100 percent it's terrific but there was one that was in 89 i wonder if there's some detail or comment on that okay so at the next meeting dr calls
015will present our test scores as once you know we just received them the district so she has to have some time to put them together the um the thing you're voting on now when it's related to test scores those that's the only area that we have no control over the county actually gives us the scores to to input into that into that spreadsheet so we don't there's no wiggle room in there so that that's that's what our scores actually are may i share something from the imp committee meeting uh i was talking about this with dr kullis and everything that's under our control uh under our school preparation basically had scored a hundred the remaining score was based on test scores and of course this past year was unusual with testing scores as well she'll
016go into more detail i'm sure but um it basically was that it was dependent on the test student scores in the district yeah that's what i figured so yeah i look forward to uh getting some detail on that when she does the presentation but but overall the results were terrific i uh i believe i also saw that those were 1819 test scores correct yes that's what they use as the baseline or whatever they use for kind of barometer for this report right and they we did also do for this one i just just remember we had coveted so we didn't do them in 1920 we didn't do it in 2021 but in the fall of this year we did something called fresh start and she's going to present that information yeah i'd like to take
017this opportunity to commend dr forte uh miss karowski dr collis the rest of the administration as well as the teachers and the staff just sitting in the meetings listening there's a tremendous amount of work that has to be prepared for these sort of audits uh these qsec audits and uh they do an amazing job and they're organized and just continue to make progress every week so kudos to everyone involved thank you mr kevin thank you for volunteering to be on the committee i used those air quotes when i said volunteering but thank you yeah thank you james for being on that committee and and thank you to all the staff obviously during a challenging year uh keeping those wheels moving is no small task anyone else okay uh roll call please mr cappello yes mr
018cass yes mr anderson yes mr lure yes mr kim yes mrs gould yes okay thank you very much under new business action to be taken uh personnel mr anderson would you care to move us through this please sure if there are no objections i'd like to move under new business items a personnel items one and two pay attention to the addition on the addendum of item one d is in david second thank you mr anderson thank you mr lure comments question we're excited that we have the mock trial starting up again and i was on the phone with ironhorn today and they will be participating in the mock trial program as well as as they used to in the past um so am i missing that so who who's actually take took that taken that
019over steve on the second page letter b allison minion she's the new mock trial advisor thank you i missed it up there got it thanks okay anything else all right roll call please mr cappello yes mr cass yes mr anderson yes mr lure yes mr kim yes mrs gould yes all right moving on to instruction in programming uh mrs gould would you move us through that one please sure i moved to approve the following resolution under instruction and programming item one workshops with expenses for dr cullis to attend three virtual workshops in the njpsa gifted and talented education certificate program second thank you mrs gould thank you mr kim everybody's okay all right roll call please mr cappello yes mr cass yes mr anderson yes mr lure yes mr kim yes mrs gould yes okay
020thank you very much uh moving on to finance uh mr kim can you move us through this i'd be happy to uh i motion that we approve section c finance number one the 2020 to 2020 21 comprehensive annual financial audit report with no recommendations from the auditor and the auditor's management report on administrative findings i'll second thank you mr kim thank you mr cass um i just want to repeat i know it's been said before i'll say it again thank you to everyone involved in this which is pretty much everyone in the district obviously our administrative staff moves mountains to satisfy this report and keep the finances of the district organized and moving and the fact that we have no recommendations again is a is a fantastic outcome so thank you for that okay everybody
021good okay we're all called please step mr cappello yes mr cass yes mr anderson yes mr lure yes mr kim yes mrs gould yes okay we are on to old business no action to be taken um mr lure would you care to uh take us through these items for our next meeting at our next meeting i or someone much like me will be moving the following items we will be re excuse me we will be voting on the board reports for treasurer school monies and board secretary these are from october the education reports uh student enrollment and the health office also from october of 2021 and the minutes for the work session and executive session meeting of october 11th and the regular session in executive session 1 and 2 meetings of october 25th okay thank
022you very much moving on to new business no action to be taken uh mr anderson i'm gonna throw it back to you for personnel if you don't mind absolutely uh at our next meeting myself or someone will move under personnel we've got two items on the agenda so far one for mr corman to cash in five vacation days in accordance with the uh collective bargaining agreement as well as a rearview annex nurse to go through a school nurse uh practicum and i did uh communicate with dr forte just a little bit about that uh that school nurse uh curricular practicum code call and dr forte keep me honest here cold calls for at least one of our school nurses in the district to be certified uh we have three currently and um kelly would be
023our fourth uh assuming she goes through the program so okay thank you very much uh moving on to instruction and program uh ms gould would you care to move us through those items for next our next meeting sure at the next meeting i or someone else will move items one through four for approval that would be workshops with expenses there are none listed now but that might change field trip requests the revised mentor plan for quality induction of novice and new teachers and approving student teachers for the 21-22 school year thank you very much moving to policy revisions mr kim would you care to move us through that item sure during our next meeting we would be voting on policy number p0167 public participation in board meetings for the second reading and adoption thank you
024i'm going to stick with you mr kim sorry about that if you could take us through the finance items for the next meeting sure no problem uh we will also be voting on in section d finance uh the regular checks uh in number one uh number two and three cover donations that will be made to the or have been made to the district as well as number four the purchase of four laptop computers for the security great thank you very much um i had a question before we vote on it at the next meeting on number four and uh we all are big advocates of security at the schools i wonder if we had any details on these particular type of laptops what they may contain unless it's confidential you know compared to the regular
025uh laptops we use in our our schools i'll give you i'll give you as much as i can in public and then you can ask the same question executive since it deals with security so these will allow um for better monitoring of the cameras for the for our class three officers that's great thank you okay thank you moving to operations mr cass would you move us through those items for the next meeting yeah at the next meeting i'm going to ask the board to approve our school bus emergency evacuation drill reports lakeview had a drill on october 20th in the stone lot across from lake view at riverview the drill was on october 27th 8 30 a.m and at valley view it was october 13th at 7 15 a.m okay thank you very much that
026brings us to good at the cause there were committee reports distributed during the week um anyone have any comments or any additional items related to committees i would just note sorry mr caskell please uh just under uh personnel i unfortunately couldn't attend the last personnel committee meeting but i did want to make a general kind of statement about some of the stuff we've been talking about the last few meetings in regards to no surprise personnel struggles that we have as far as staff members it just like i think generally you see out in the community and outside of education the the administration continues to struggle with trying to ensure that we have enough staff members there's a shortage of substitutes throughout not just locally but throughout the state and beyond that creates a lot of
027issues right so uh i i just want to commend dr forte dr cullis for being creative with trying to find full-time subs or other solutions to fill and ensure we have appropriate coverage for our students and really also let the public know that this will probably be an ongoing problem as we continue to move forward and hopefully it continues to get better but we have invested additional funds to hire if it's if it's appropriate we've hired full-time subs in the buildings and continue to find ways to fill uh gaps but i know even personally one of my my kids has kind of a long-term substitute scenario going on so i know that the the administration continues to struggle with personnel so and this is beyond i know we've talked for years about bus drivers and
028things like that but this is really beyond that and just really down to our staff members and a lot of the teachers and aides okay mr cass thank you um i want to thank the equity committee for all the work they're doing and the reports are very comprehensive with a lot of detail and the last report i i looked through and a couple of things came to my attention that i think i need some clarification so i can you know fully understand it and i don't know if anybody else has questions but maybe at some point dr cullis could give us a um a presentation on um the working committee where we are and some of these pending initiatives that are being talked about to give the public as well as all the board members
029some some contacts um and i might not you know she's not here tonight i know katie probably has answers to some of these i don't want to take up a lot of a lot of time but there's a couple of things that again it came to my attention here uh when i went through the uh the report we had the slides there from the teachers going to uh an offsite course uh two slides that were part of the report identity markers for adults and discussion points so um the one i had questions about was creating your me map and then they had you know bullet points down there and you know i don't know if this was going to be segmented to age appropriate obviously if you do something with the first or second grader
030it'd be a little bit different than you're doing something with a seventh or an eighth grader because you've got words in here like um identifiers i don't know somebody in elementary school their younger kids would know what an identifier even means and they have words like vulnerable and and powered so i just had question on the you know the the approach of uh that the other thing was um in tandem with those slides is uh nothing has chosen forced on the students student-led and voluntary exercise which is good i think when i substituted the value i saw a lot of things with the kids working as teams and everything i think it's a terrific license life lesson when they work on projects together so it's student-led and voluntary exercise my question would be where does
031that fit into the daily schedule uh you know what the schedule's going to be massage shift around so they have time for this and it's voluntary so you know you can't anticipate that you'd have 100 participation in that subcommittee so that was a question where does it fit into the schedule after school and the last thing that came up that was community outreach which is always a good idea you know dates are pending resurrection of a parent academy for student success which is really good i mean you got to get the parents are involved with their kids education the kids always do better i learned that the hard way by the way when i was in school but anyhow one of the committee members talked about healthy relationships slash body autonomy slash consent so i
032wonder if this kind of piggybacks on the stranger danger that we've taught the kids over over the years the couple other things that i noticed and highlighted was items the committee was discussing slash modification for uh what's left of this year item b was to develop an anti-racist statement for the district stating the intent to determine where systemic race and devices exist and how they will how they will address it i've been here for a long time and um heard a lot of bullying cases and meanie kid cases and things with teachers and administrators that have gone over the years and i would think that if we had systemic racist racism going on and biases in the school it would have been discussed at the board level i'm not aware of any i don't know
033if dr forte has had any come across his his desk but um you know it infers my perception it defers that um we're overlooking something and i don't you know i think it's problematic if we are but i just don't think that that happens that we're uh we have systemic racism in our schools and uh and if biases exist it's gonna be looked into that's fine but uh i'm concerned about the way that is uh worded um the other thing which we've discussed well before this committee was formed was the equal opera employment opportunity and we're going to use statistical methods available to identify possible areas of improvement related to stat diversity and gender race and ethnicity and it'll be a final report compiled with recommendations for the the future again we've had many a
034discussion with the our demographics uh that come into interview interviews with jobs and our current makeup and it's uh the education industry is an industry where it's uh top heavy with uh women with female teachers and i was discussing this with my wife here and i went through i still remember all my elementary school teachers uh and my high school teachers and um when i was in elementary school it was mr griffith my fifth grade teacher everybody else was a woman so um you know people will come into the interviews um and i the other thing i point out there says we have um legal requirements on posting jobs too where they're posted how they're posted i believe there's time frames too right dr florida you you you know you have to give everybody an
035opportunity to apply for that job so um i think it's good it's going to look into but i i i think we we have to frame it you know that we have been doing our due diligence on being fair in our our hiring process and that's about it i'd like to see we talked about all the uh the different months uh highlighting our diversity in the country as well as you know the county in in denville and um i think it would be helpful again it's either a separate presentation if we could have a powerpoint presentation where dr khalsa could go over all the different uh months we have and the uh the contents you know what is being done for those uh are different nationalities and races um i always enjoy the ones with
036the food it's very uh as we have uh in my family the uh that's a big that's a big deal when my sister-in-law comes in from spain and uh does her spanish cooking when she's here so her world famous paella so those are some of the things that you know they caught my attention there so the anybody that wants to talk about it or or wait the doctor calls but i think we're you're making a lot of progress with the committee which is a great thing but i just think that we got to be uh careful with our how we explain things to the the public and how we uh approach all these areas so don thank you um i appreciate that and um i i'm gonna seize on the last thing you said i
037think it would be a great idea to have a presentation of all that we do during the year in terms of the months and how we recognize nationalities and ethnicities um steve is there anything you'd like to get back on right away sure i can i can help with some of that um so for the first thing you asked was age appropriate like are these things age-appropriate dr collis took this very seriously did she they're all staff members were trained so that they can um um so it can be age appropriate and some of those things that you brought up like identifiers could be something like i like to play soccer like the something like that it doesn't have to be anything in particular depending on the age of the student they might say you
038know i like blue so it doesn't really have anything to do with that number two the second question you answer i'm not i'm not sure of that so we have to ask dr collis the second the third thing you talked about was the anti-racist statement and also the hiring pool and diversity i think it's a great time for those two things to come up in the strategic planning when the when we have a hundred members or so of the community to be involved and if if if the community feels that an anti-racist statement is important um then that might be part of our strategic plan like you know how we have our mission statement maybe there's two things so we have the mission statement and then an anti-racist statement maybe it doesn't even need to
039be called that maybe it's just something else like an acceptance statement and in the committee one thing i said was no matter what we call it no matter what we do in this committee there's no one in the district that doesn't want all people no matter no matter their their race gender appearance orientation anything like that not to be comfortable in our school so we want to welcome all people no matter who they are that could be as simple that could be the simple anti-racist statement maybe we don't even want to call it that because you're right that that might have a negative connotation to it so maybe it's more of an acceptance statement you know like the opposite of that um but i think this is a perfect thing to talk about with that
040big group that might that might come out as one of our five or six goals that we that come out of the strategic plan um and the hiring pool in new jersey is for for certificated staff members especially is is not very diverse it's the the students going into teacher preparation programs are probably predominantly white females so we we want to hire the best people no matter what race anything we want the best people all the time the one thing we have been trying to do is increase the pool of applicants like find the applicants that might be just as good as the ones we were getting before from other areas like one of one of the things we did was we started partnering with hunter college in new york city we haven't gotten anybody
041from there yet but we partner with them and and we work on job fairs we're also a member of the cj pride which is uh an organization that that is really devoted to trying to help increase the diversity of the applicant pool so so whether or not we can be successful actually hiring some of these applicants i'm not sure but at least we can get to see them before we weren't even getting to see them so that's that's one of the things we're doing i i think both of those two last things we just talked about would be great for the strategic plan i agree with you that's the way to do it and also on the mission statement uh i think you get a lot of buy-in of it's inclusive in general rather than
042just keying in on one one particular item that was my that's my feeling on it too and i did bring it up with the committee a few times it seemed like it was well received by everybody it was a simple statement about accepting you know the one thing i said was there's not one person that wants anybody no matter who they are to be uncomfortable they want everybody to be comfortable whether or not you know we're successful at that right we're going to always keep trying that and that's the goal thanks steve katie i know you wanted to say something so no problem no thank you don i think i was trying blatantly tried to note all your points i may have missed the second one but for the me maps well dr forte covered
043that the teachers actually went through this process first and they are going to have some session where the community and parents can do this as well so i don't want to give up trying to give away too much because i want the parents to experience it before the kids experience it but i want to say that yeah it's going to be obvious age-appropriate i don't know about schedule but it will be part i'm sure there's social emotional learning this has been part of their you know um they this was actually from the me map was from the equity institute at teacher's college and this was a really great way to approach this um it's a great way to bring it up about celebrating both of what you have in common and what's different without focusing
044on any one category just like you said um instead of saying oh well where's your family from you know or something like that or even family trees i actually had recently had a friend who has all her kids are adopted and she's like oh a family tree project i hate this project because there could be kids who don't know their background or have traumatic backgrounds and a lot of things like that to many of us seem to many of us might just seem normal oh yeah my kids did that our micah did that already but to other families it might be different so the me map was a way to approach it where they could share about you know who who's in their family what does their family look like are they adopted they can
045share anything that they identify as and it's not coded word they're they're i'm not sure what the me map project looks like but they're not coding any words to gear it to any one category or topic so that's what we discussed and the reason why the anti-racist statement was in the whole minutes was originally that was one of our goals and this committee came about obviously after the some of the events of last summer and a lot of you saw a lot of companies and communities and different organizations putting out anti-racist statements after george floyd and it was something that we worked on over time but we never it then it got to the point where if we publish something it would be it doesn't seem like it's you know several months later a year
046later uh so we discussed it because that was one of our original goals and we decided we're just dr cullis and the rest of us are to talk about how actions are more important than language and there may be something like this in the future some kind of pledge or something all the right motives are there it just that was one original goal that did eventually kind of fall not as a priority of putting out a specific statement just on that uh the employment i think dr forte handles that we at the last meeting it was on the schedule we didn't actually get into it we ran out of time and dr forte wasn't able to stay for the whole meeting so my reason for bringing that up the goals about diversifying employment was i
047think it's a great goal i think it's great the district is doing great steps in working towards this i just know there's a lot of people on our committee who have connections or have ideas and i think this would be a great conversation which is this committee's conversation between the community and the district so i thought it'd be a great chance for a conversation in case they had any additional ideas or just discussion about not just how do we you know have our teaching population all the staff represent the staff you know the kids in school more the demographics and population but also is it a safe and welcoming place for for teachers of color or teachers who might be different so i thought that was a good discussion just to have between both the
048district and the community to give back uh and then about the months and you know we this is kind of a newer initiative with the hispanic heritage month and black history month and we will share keep sharing about what happens dr kula shares at every meeting and i could talk to her about some kind of presentation but that's still in development as you know as we just started working on that more uh was i missed one of your questions which one i don't know after the between the me map and and the statement the scheduling part that was the one i wasn't sure about either which i think right yeah it was on the scheduling that uh obviously you know every time you add something new to the uh the class day uh there's only
049so many hours teachers can only teach so many hours as i learned on the negotiations committee a long time ago so um yeah i was just wondering how it was going to fit into schedule and then one of these things talked about the the voluntary aspect for the students and you talked about starting with the parents so um you know just uh curious as you roll this out i'm sure other people would have the same question this would be an after school project for the students or would be you know squeezed into the the daily schedule somewheres along the line i mean we don't have the answers right now it's just the way they work in progress but i think uh i got some good information tonight that uh i need to only put so
050much into a report but uh you know i think we're heading in the right direction and the strategic plan is a great idea because we did the other strategic plan our last one five years ago we had a real good turnout at the sessions there and you get a lot of buy-in by the community when uh you have a lot of people providing input and that strategic plan also lets people know what we've been doing what we've already done a lot of people you know asked about things that we already had in place but they just didn't know about it all right thank you everyone um i think we're up to uh board highlights i was um congratulations to the valley view green team i'll explain a little bit more come to the november 22nd
051meeting for dr kulls will present on the district test scores and to let the public know we're planning on a new strategic plan with input with public input in the fall of and there will be details to follow sounds good to me anyone have any other suggestions everybody okay with that all right um actually what about the audit the financial audit maybe or was that in the last one i did put it in the last one because we had uh the presentation sure okay yeah okay all right um any other good of the cause items anyone would like to discuss i've got just a couple of quick items um number one uh congratulations to the valley view boys and girls soccer teams for winning their county championships um and and actually while i was at
052the girls championship i saw dr forte who was at both of them and he mentioned to me a really good point that we have not i believe had to cancel any extracurricular particularly sports obviously more commonly for bus situations where that was not the situation for other towns i know my daughter plays on the valley view girls soccer team and they had several games that were canceled because the other districts could not provide busing to get to valley view so kudos to our transportation department who even on the girls championship game that was supposed to be on a saturday it got rained out so it got moved to monday and they were able to accommodate getting a bus to bring the kids to chester for that game so um great job by the transportation department
053by during some challenging times um and then uh just uh i i was able to attend the lake view veterans day ceremony last week and i have to say it's always a great ceremony always a great opportunity for the community to come and engage with our students but i was truly impressed with the ability of the building administration to adapt this year they moved the entire program outdoors for safety they were able to still engage all the students they brought all the students out and did a drive by for the veterans they still provided breakfast for the veterans so um just a great job by everybody involved uh mr k mrs serendopoly mr scala and i'm sure there's many many more that i'm missing that were involved the pta uh with providing uh with with
054continuing on with that and i know riverview has theirs upcoming this week so i'm glad to see that the district uh continues to uh uh to do these ceremonies and uh engage the students that's great thanks mike anyone else okay i have one item before we open up for public comment again though the election results are not final it does look like we're going to have two new board members in january dr forte has reached out to them to start the onboarding process i would just encourage as we all know being a new board member is daunting and especially this period leading up to when you start there's a lot of information and a lot of uh i guess trepidation would be a good word so if you have some time and would like to
055reach out to them uh make a connection and just you know grab a coffee or whatever i would encourage it it'd be maybe a nice way to welcome them and get acquainted so i have their information their contact information dr forte does as well so all right with that if there's nothing else i'd like to thank the public for their patience we're going to open up for our second public comment section of the evening this is any item germaine to the district and it is now 8 18 p.m same rules apply please approach and announce your name and address just real quick with the um board members if you want their address or their phone number and email i put a document in the board of education agenda for packet for uh 2122 it says
056new boe members if you want that it's there thank you donna marie cizinski 64 peer please i'm actually really glad that that was brought up mr case thank you for the inclusion and anti-racism and discrimination is something that i hold close to my heart as well i was bringing up the volunteer the constant request for volunteers now this has been a an issue of course you know in years prior as well i personally can't volunteer for lunches because of food allergies so unfortunately that's something i always wanted to do i did volunteer for tomorrow i was very excited that i was able to go but i was going to be discriminated against because of my vaccination status i have a religious exemption okay that's our constitutional right as an american citizen okay discrimination should not
057be accepted it doesn't matter what form it's coming in okay that's my deeply held religious beliefs that you guys are choosing to discriminate against i got covered so i have natural immunity problem is you guys only counted for three months which again very big misrepresentation i did speak about the chickenpox analogy before i got covered which was pretty ironic um but dr peter mccullough a cardiologist he actively treats cova's patient says you can't get coveted twice you also have superior immunity no need for the gene therapy he also said children are more likely to die from the shot than covid that's right die from the shot i will share the florida coveted summit talks to anyone interested email me dmsk i 1973 gmail.com and i'll be more than happy to give those things to you
058not allowing parents into the school due to vaccination status violates constitutional rights it's segregation i think that's against everything that cel teaches right and it's definitely not following real science i can also share 106 research studies dr malone creator of mrna technology shared on natural immunity i believe the longest study was 19 months and that was because the study was only 19 months long we would like to join forces with you guys we want to be friends with you okay i know somehow is outside of here okay and it's very discouraging we should be a unified team for our children okay we shouldn't be this divided force and the discrimination should not be acceptable whether it be religious reasons for myself natural immunity for myself i fall into two categories or simply people don't want
059to be part of an experimental gene therapy none of this is actually approved they're all still under emergency use the commodity isn't even in this country not honoring a religious exemption is against the law can you please start representing all families for the record i am tired of teachers discussing their opinions of gene therapy i'm putting denville township school medical staff on notice if you fail to share the risk of injury and death to parents and children you are violating the hippocratic oath you could also be found liable since the vaccine manufacturers are exempt for liability the best anti-racist statement ever said judge a person by the content of their character not their skin color religion vaccine status thank you yeah if you do yeah if you want to just quickly about the volunteers the
060um it's a pretty big process trying to get all this going we got we we got the the testing done for the staff last wednesday this this wednesday we'll open it up to the volunteers volunteers are unvaccinated full under executive order 253 as well so they can anybody who's unvaccinated who wants to be volunteer but there are other things you have to go through there's a criminal background check there's um some training and if you you know do all the things that you have to do for for those two ports you can then um go you can either get testing on your own or you can do it with us and that will be on wednesdays the information will be coming out on two mississippi this is an event this isn't going to be about
061this isn't going to be a back and forth this is not fair thank you this isn't going to be about it non-discriminatory dr forte answered your question superintendent please give someone else a chance to speak thank you michelle zimmerman 34 shawnee trail my statement might be over three minute time limit but i hope what i have to say you feel is important to as important and you will let me finish my without interruption this past fall my daughter kept insisting on wearing a mask while she was outside running around playing in the rvsl soccer league when i asked her why she is wearing a mask she says i feel uncomfortable letting people see my face as a mother of a teenage daughter i was crushed angry and wanted to cry we are trying to raise
062our children to be strong confident independent these masks are making some children develop self-esteem issues and it saddens me that this board of ed supports this my child was called a racist by a fellow classmate because she did not want to talk to him when i asked her why she didn't want to talk to him she said he's a troublemaker and also goes around the school trying to get the other kids to say the n word he thought it was funny i blew it off at first as an uneducated child and or parent then i was introduced to this group of intelligent incredible parents mama and papa bears who have opened my eyes i am shocked to see what is being taught and are taught in our schools across this country over the summer and
063into the fall there has been issues with a group of about 20 boys harassing other kids in town and sometimes in the school after posting it on social media to bring it to the parents attention i have received private messages text messages from parents saying that this has happened to their child telling me that they're going to have to talk with their child to make sure they were not involved and also encouraging me to go to the police department after i talked to my daughter in regards to this wait i lost my place uh sorry i was being told to report it to the police department after talking to my daughter she wanted to speak to a police officer in regards to it we went downtown to discuss the matter with an officer and make
064a statement the officer then told her if she has a teacher counselor nurse any adult at the school that she is comfortable with to report it to them when it happens at the school while walking to my car from the police station my child turned to me and said the school doesn't do anything about it i'm sharing our story to make you aware of what is going on in our schools and in our town with some kids in the denville school district we do not want any apologies we just want to bring this to the attention of the school board after hearing my child say that she does not feel feel the school handles the situation is not comfortable talking to someone at the school we do not give the school permission to discuss any
065of these issues with my child if another issue should have happened again we will go directly to the police department to report it since that is where my child is comfortable discussing the matter if you have any questions please reach out to me directly and not my child thank you for your time thank you for coming in tonight i do encourage you to speak directly with the building administrator of your your child's school you can do that directly at any time either teacher or building administrator anyone else okay steve do we have anything from um online no we do not okay then at this time i'm going to close the second public portion at 8 27 pm we do have need for an executive session i will note that we are we're not going to
066be voting after this executive session um mr lewer would you move us into executive please i would like to move to convene an executive session according to section 8 of the open public meetings act the purpose of this closed session will be to discuss personnel security and legal matters personnel security and legal issues minutes of this session will be made available to the public when the need for confidentiality no longer exists second thank you mr lewer thank you mr anderson all in favor aye aye aye any opposed any abstentions okay we are in executive session at 8 28