Dover Public Schools BOE Meeting - 11-14-2023

001Miss Munos will you please introduce yourself sure good evening everyone I'm Rosa munz I'm the district interpreter and translator I'm here to help with any comments questions you may have thank you thank you welcome to everyone here and those of you joining us virtually to this November 14th Dober Board of Education meeting for those who wish to provide public comment remotely a Google form was posted on the district website at 6:30 p.m. and those remote comments will be addressed in the second public comment section this meeting which is hereby called to order at 6:39 p.m. is in compliance with the notice requirements of the law public notice was posted in the office of the Board of Education and communicated to the municipal clerk and the daily record on January 10th 2023 can we please rise

002for the flag salute I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America the repic for which it stands one nation God indivisible with liy and justice for all Mr sabahu may we have a roll call misso present Miss DS present Miss Gonzalez present Mr Miller here miss nothing present Miss Phillips here Mr robas present Dr senner present M mandz here Mr robes will you please read our missions statement working together as a community our mission is to Welcome All and provide opportunities for our students in a safe and accepting learning environment to become creative empathetic resilient and who choose to make an impact thank you I will now pass it over to Dr mclin to introduce this evening's presentations thank you so uh we have a very special first presentation tonight I'd

003like to ask our supervisor of guidance Mr Michael Sol to come and to present some special Awards to our students thank you Dr McLaughlin uh good evening ladies and gentlemen of the Board of Ed thank you for allowing me this time to be here in honoring some of our our very finest students we'll start with a little bit of a history lesson I'll keep it brief there are nine colleges in the United States of America that are actually older than we we are that is that they were founded before the US declared independence in 1776 these nine uh Colonial colleges were found in the 17th and 18th centuries they're all still around today there's only one state in the US that has two of those colleges and we live in it uh the first one

004founded in 1746 established uh in the town of of Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey but not the College of New Jersey that we know today uh it had to expand several years later and move South taking on the name that it of the city that it now resides in and became in 1810 Princeton University um and then sometime after Princeton was founded in 1766 a few miles north of Princeton Queens College was founded on the shores of the Raritan River I think you know where I'm heading with this some years later they changed their name in honor of a benefactor that helped them stay open during a very difficult time and became ruter college now ruter University why am I telling you all this what do those two hallowed historic institutions have to

005do well one thing that I can share is that each of the remarkable young people that I'm going to have the privilege to introduce tonight is applying to either one or both of those schools but that's not the only thing that unites these folks the second commonality that they have is that they have all earned the national Hispanic recognition award for their graduating class this is a distinction that dates back to 1983 and is awarded awarded to Hispanic and Latino students that demonstrate exceptional levels of academic achievement by one or more of the following metrics having a GPA of 3 .5 or higher taking multiple AP courses and their corresponding exams and exemplary performance usually in the top 10% of their demographic on the PSAT taken in their junior year we had seven recipients of

006the his National Hispanic recognition award this year five of them are with us tonight I do want to take a moment to recognize the two students that could wouldn't be here I believe they uh they still deserve to be mentioned So In Absentia I'd like to recognize viani granados who is a thre sport Varsity athlete competing in soccer in the fall and running track in the winter and spring Seasons she's active in our student council and credits her work ethic to the inspiration of her big brother Julio who graduated from Dober High School in 20 2018 and went on to Yale University viani is also an AP scholar With Honor she loves the idea of helping children and hopes to become a pediatric nurse in the future also Natalia Restrepo who is one of our

007um one of our Performing Arts students she's very involved in our dance club and takes part in our musicals as well she's a proud member of the color guard and participates in multiple vocal performance groups Natalia is also an AP scholar her dream is to attend Columbia University and study journalism with hopes of becoming uh a a television news anchor and participating in h humanitarian journalism I'd like to call the um the recipients that are here up one at a time um so that I can tell the board a little bit about each of you first if you would um please come up to the podium Camilo brenes Camilo is a highly dedicated student athlete who's played on our soccer team all four years including the last three on the Varsity squad he's also the

008captain of the team he's worked with our tiger rap program as a peer mentor and is an active member of the prom committee he has plans to pursue a degree in either computer science or engineering and will apply among other schools to ruter Stevens and nji Camilo shares that his grandma has been the greatest positive impact on his life congratulations [Applause] Camilo sulma Calderon [Music] Alvarez sulma is the president of Our National Honor Society chapter and the vice president of her senior class she's an active member of the interact club and most certainly you folks know her from being the student representative to the Board of Education she did share with me that she wishes the meetings were a little [Laughter] longer additionally sulma is an AP scholar uh sulma plans to major in Psychology

009with a career goal of becoming a clinical psychologist she intends to align her passion for and fascination with the working of the human brain to help other human beings in need su's parents and brother estuardo are here and she wants to particularly thank her grandparents who are visiting from Maryland eluvia and Julio Alvarez congratulations Milton Martinez Milton is an editor for our school newspaper and because he loves helping people so much he has served as a peer mentor since he was in 10th Grade the activity he's become most passionate about however is a debate club and he feels so strongly that he has grown very much Through The Debate Club that he currently serves as the co- captain of the team Milton shared that he admires the loving and caring example provided by his grandmother

010so very much that he himself hopes to help others as a doctor in his future career he currently is working on applications to several top institutions including before mentioned ruter University but also University of Pennsylvania Columbia and Princeton Milton [Applause] congratulations Valentina OKO Valentina describes herself as tenaciously dedicated to her academics and she has certainly supported that statement by carrying a GPA north of 4.3 into her senior year but she has also found time to be the team manager for the soccer team and serve on the prom committee she also puts her time to good use working at arop postal and helping her her mother out working uh in her medical office field Valentina loves numbers and data so much and is and and working with them to such a to such a degree that

011she aspires to become an accountant she will pursue a degree at one of the New Jersey colleges she plans to attend considering in Sean Hall Centenary Montclair State or ruter university Valentina [Applause] congratulations Angel Santos [Applause] utrera Angel is a three Sports student athlete running cross country in the fall followed by track in the winter and spring Seasons he has also been involved in our interact club and he has had a job at Five Guys for the last two years Angel is also an AP scholar With Honor he plans to apply to Princeton University of Chicago UCLA and Northwestern among other schools where he will study either accounting or Finance Angel attributes his work ethic in part to his grandfather whom he considers the most admirable person he's ever known you didn't tell me this

012but I'm going to add it anyway uh Angel has never taken anything but the most rigorous course available in any given subject he's taken 24 classes over his first three years for high scho over his first three years of high school he's 24 for 24 with Straight A's congratulations there are several characteristics shared by all of these extraordinary students among them their determination compassion resilience humility and kindness that I like to think may have as much to do with their achievements as their innate intelligence I have a strong suspicion that we will get to see them honored once again at the senior awards ceremony in June to the students that I just introduced please know that all of us here have great confidence that after graduation you will continue to reach Great Heights and we

013want to thank you for showing all of us that we have excellent reason to be optimistic about our future congratulations on this [Applause] honor thank you any comments from the board so exciting thank you so much for sharing all of this with us and and congratulations to the students and the families for all your support Mr I just want to say felices thank you everyone congratulations Dr mclin yes our second presentation tonight I'm very um happy to introduce uh a group that really supports our district and our students each and every day uh representatives of the pomptonian Food Service who will be uh speaking with us tonight about the contributions that they are making uh for our students here uh in preparing meals uh breakfast and lunch uh with us tonight uh Mr Mark vidich

014um Joanne Bednar and Mr Brian Craig thank you so much uh for inviting us to introduce ourselves and talk a little about the nutrition program uh here in Dover um pomptonian also would like to thank the board for investing in your program we have some nice beautiful equipment it's really come a long way since we started working here uh the district has taken the return from the cafeteria each year and reinvested in some beautiful equipment and hopefully the students are enjoying that um a little about who our who our company is uh pom Tony is a family-owned women-owned business here uh based in New Jersey we do exclusively School food service in New Jersey uh we've been around for 62 years um I I said we're woman-owned that means my wife's my boss and I

015think it's important for every man to recognize that Mark could I just ask you to be a little bit closer to the microphone so we pick you up okay sorry about that um and also Dr mclaughin introduce my team Joanne's our on-site food service director she's here every day overseeing uh the operation and Brian is supporting her uh in her success here in the program turn it on and it works okay so um I wanted to talk about some of our accomplishments we're participating in the National Farm to school program uh we're featuring a lot of local produce so uh each month um we're featuring uh items from New Jersey Farms in the cafeteria including apples blueberries peaches plums whatever in season uh and we try to label that so the students realize you know

016importance of local we've expanded the number of vegetarian and vegan choices available to the students and this includes a lot of plant plant-based uh like chicken tenders and items like that um we've also had flavors Across America featuring different flavors from uh throughout the country and we're also repeating for the third year now our flavors around the world exposing students to uh uh new flavors that they may have never tried before and that's been a very popular um promotion uh one of the items that we've uh featured from a Latin uh environment is the arapa arapa araa I am sorry as I butcher the pronunciation and I practiced um we have a very diverse menu with a lot of choices each day so here at the high school there's 18 choices for the students to

017choose from the middle school has 14 choices and the elementary students have six choices a day to choose from a nice wide variety available to them uh along with the menu uh we offer a Farm Stand pomptonian won an award for our Farm Stand concept which uh actually doubled the number of students voluntarily choosing fruits and vegetables with their meals so instead of a cooked vegetable uh the vegetable of the day today is asparagus or I used usually say brussels sprouts and then no one takes the vegetables but now since there's a wide variety they're more likely to choose it and the Farm Stand that we offer is available in all School levels at at every school and it's unlimited they're allowed to have as much fruits and vegetables as they want uh so going

018Beyond uh a basic meal we also at the uh Elementary School I pass participate in the fresh fruit and vegetable program so besides the uh fruits and vegetables that they get with breakfast and lunch we also do uh vegetables uh or produce in the uh the classroom part of our farm to tray program this year we featured uh basil which is a local but we what made it more interesting is the basil was served with a homemade mozzarella so this is one of our dietitians making mozzarella here in the high school kitchen and that was also served with some local protops think my click there we go meeting with the students we've learned that they'd like to see a lot of different uh uh offerings we've had the arapa we've had the chicken EMP bananas

019we had the Baja Fish Tacos there it goes and we're always looking for something new the way we look at the cafeteria the students are eating in the same place for 180 days I haven't found a restaurant that I want to eat at 180 days a year so besides the the most popular items that are available every day we keep on trying to find new things to keep the cafeteria interesting and fun for the students to visit and I hear that our cook Dora who's been with us the whole time that PM Tony's been here has is an amazing Chef so I hope you had a chance to experience some of her cooking we also do promotional events to make the days is more interesting so once a month there'll be something interesting here at

020the high school uh this was a picture of our crepe day that they did and this is we brought in some ringer cooks and made pasta in front of the students so they had fresh pasta day we also celebrated a Hispanic Heritage Month uh with a made to order Burrito Bar fresh made waffles with a variety fruits to offer to make sure that we're uh keeping in touch with the students and the parents and making sure that we customize the program to meet the needs of the do community we participated in back to school night here at the high school and greeted the parents as they come in and answered any questions they had uh we also uh meet with the students in an organized group called The Nutrition advisory committee where we get their

021feedback look for their suggestions and a lot of the things that we're bragging about were suggestions that they made at previous meetings so we're getting the ideas from them what they'd like to see in their their nutrition program we're always setting goals for oursel this year we introduced the breakfast after the bell at the high school so that's uh new this year we also have a free breakfast uh in the uh District we have breakfast bars at the uh uh high school and middle school or High School and Middle School uh and they're very proud of the made to order omelets which are every Wednesday here at the high school and every Friday at the middle school our menus are designed to uh deliver nutritional goals set by the USDA the health healthy hunger-free kid

022act so all of our meals meet and exceed those standards uh we also have a nutrition uh interactive nutrition menu where parents can look up the nutritional key data on the nutritional it items that are offered to the students an example there besides meeting with the student we're always looking for other feedback so we uh we have a parent uh opening newsletter where we gave them information about what's going on in the Food Service program as well as the ability to communicate directly with us uh I talked about the back to school night um the nutrition advisory committee meetings we also do uh report cards to the principal and the superintendent to get their feedback how are we doing what can we do better and make sure we keep on uh uh changing the program

023and Joanne has a very active uh Instagram account so you can look up what's going on in the caer she's posting that I believe the I my teenage daughter would have to help me but I think it's at Dover school's lunch but uh don't quote me on that uh and we also have at comments at pom tonian if anyone has any feedback so that's kind of a brief overview about what's going on in the lunch program and the breakfast program and I thought i' just be available to answer any questions you might have thank you for that wonderful presentation um are there any questions or comments from the board Miss Miss Gales and then Dr s thank you uh thank you so much for being here um one of the questions I had you answered

024I was very curious about um how are you being inclusive of other cultures and so it's great to see that it's American right our traditional um hot dogs and pizza but I also hear a lot of right the world and not just um you know that American culture in their food so it's really great to hear all the feedback that you're Gathering From the students and the communities a great job with that and thank you I appreciate that thank you thank you for the presentation um I had a question uh how data driven is your are your offerings for our students do you collect data on you know students really loved uh whatever was on Tuesday so we should bring that back more often nobody ate Thursday whatever that was so that that's not a

025winner and then kind of tied into that um how how is what students at do might see H how is what they see here different from a school a different School in a different District yeah that that's a that's a great question because that's one of the things that's great about being a family business we're small much smaller than a lot of our competitors and allows us to take the time to understand each individual district and what their preferences are so while we serve um 35 different uh communities in in the area uh each one might have its different preferences uh as far as data driven uh Joanne's been with us for the whole 14 years and each day she's keeping a record of what we planned on serving and how much was served so

026that she can see what what's popular uh the I talked about a lot of items are available daily um and those items are the most popular so if they're the most popular we make that available every day um and she says here the hot meals that especially in a high school that that is what everyone's interested in what is a d is Dora I got it right what is Dora's creation today and they're pretty she's got a pretty uh loyal following uh of students on that and and then uh we also will try some new flavors and we'll stick with it so uh I encourage the staff like if we're doing something different if we're doing a Korean menu and it's kimchi it's a new flavor people might be afraid to make that their meal

027choice that day so we would offer it as sample so they could try it hopefully they come back and buy it but we won't give up on it even if the data doesn't support doing it a second or third time we'll we'll keep on trying uh and keep on looking for new things um the students are going to be our best resource of coming up with new ideas because it's it's been been a while since I've been in high school so thank you um I also want to ask Dr mlin a question um in the presentation they mentioned that this was the first year they were participating in the breakfast after the Bell program it is my understanding that we have been offering breakfast after the bell for at least four or five years could

028you elaborate at the high school this is the first year the high school is doing it so we've had yes we've had breakfast after the belt the elementary and the Middle School okay uh this year and I don't know if visible when you come in the building but there are kiosks at both student entrances and that's where those the breakfast after the Bell is being given okay thank you thank you any other comments misso did I hear correctly that they get unlimited fruits and vegetables well kudos to you thank you for doing that thank you any other comments or questions um I have a question you mentioned the nutrition advisory committee um how often does does that committee meet at least at least once a year theing oh we so we do it twice a

029year here we do work through the principal's office to set that up and that's made up of students and students and parents uh participate in that so I'm not sure how they select what parents are in the committee but getting the input uh I think that if the students just did it we would maybe have uh maybe not the healthiest choices so we want to make sure we're balance doing that Balancing Act thank you so much if there are no other questions no thank you so much for that presentation we appreciate all that you and I going to return the clicker so I don't get in [Music] trouble okay we are going to move along to public comment on agenda items only the board recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the

030importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters to to ensure fair and orderly expression of such comment each statement shall be held to a time period of 3 minutes public comments limited to items on this agenda shall be entertained for approximately 30 minutes upon the discretion of the presiding officer please understand that public comment portions of our agenda are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board the board may or may not respond to public comments however all comments are considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when providing comments comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please understand that students and employees have

031specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to comments about students or employees please be advised that you are commenting at your own risk any public comments that are directed at a particular particular individual or individuals could subject you to Legal liability for defamation public comment on agenda items only is now open is there any member of the public wishing to speak I thought about uh good evening my name is Maria chakon and I am um here to talk about something that's on the agenda which is the Hib uh grades can I py all right um so counting the the hip um reports there are 30 reports and only three have been confirmed to be actual bullying for me that's concerning as a parent of a transgender child which

032I had recently sub we had the principal submit a hip report and I was told that they're going to say that it wasn't um bullying but clearly if we had a um a Hib um group or whoever's in charge taking the appropriate um training to do the basic understanding of what is bullying to transgender kids we wouldn't have a push back on this so I'm very concerned last year we had to go it felt like we had to go to trial we asked for two hips to be overturned and we showed up in a a small room with about 20 people and the school had a lawyer we did and we were able to overturn it what we asked was very simple of the people that were here with the board members superintendent and others

033we ask that you hold an assembly at the beginning of the year to let people know what is expected so I um briefly so I had propos or my husband and I my ex-husband and I had proposed that um at the beginning of the year we hold an assembly and we um hold on I'm sorry I lost if there okay if there was an assembly to let kids know what is expected what is bullying how to submit a hip report because you want to empower students to be able to advocate for themselves so what is considered bullying to protective classes accountability and consequences of bad behavior that did not happen I didn't see it as a mom of a a freshman for high school um so when a transgender child is called by their incorrect

034pronoun purposely even after being corrected it is bullying how do we know at least one of the kids in my situation uh knew that my kid was transgender because they went to school with them last year and they know that they were trans so so my concern is what are we doing about educating because we all need education parents need education students need education the Board needs education I want to hold you all responsible to to action you guys got voted in I want to know what you did or what you're doing to to make less reports happen to empower children and empower the students and empower the administration and the parents thank you she wants me to translate but there's a lot for translation you know interpretation so um I don't know how you

035want me to do this because she doesn't have it like available for me just to translate it like do so perhaps I mean Miss Moon okay okay that's fine [Music] um bu bul thank you um are there any other members of the public wishing to speak if I may one second if there's anyone else who needs interpretation I think we need Miss Munos needs time to interpret it it's just not on the spot so um good evening my name is Mary SRA 217 Baker Street I just wanted to um thank pomptonian for their presentation um however nowhere during the presentation it was explained or brought up to anybody's attention how um they are charging students for the add-on purchases uh what is their markup rate on pizza slices if they want additional pizza slices chocolate

036chip cookies what the current prices are and how they come up with the markup rates for students whether it's elementary school or high school um I don't know if it varies um if parents know that that's what the money is being used for I believe they're not allowed to use it under their lunch card and it's a cash only side business if I could call it that uh but nowhere in the presentation was that explained at all and I would like parents to be more aware of you know what's going on you know during the kids lunchtime is it a requirement for the child to have had a regular lunch that includes the you know the healthy vegetables and fruit options in order for them to just buy a pizza slice or chips or soda

037only uh I mean if if they're only if they're skipping their actual lunch that's meant to be healthy and they're using cash money to just buy a slice of pizza and chocolate chip cookies uh we're not tracking that down really the students you know healthy options then um and I just want to jump on to um thanks to um the current um Community member that I spoke up in Spanish um I know we have our translator Miss Muno is here every evening however there is nobody in the audience that wouldn't know any English would know at one point at what point during the meeting to stand up and come up and give a comment because the whole meeting is in English there are close there's no close caption available during the live videos um the

038whole meeting like I said is in English we have our d d Public Schools face Facebook page that's run by the district I believe um the first language on every post is in Spanish then it jumps to the English you know translation is there a you know a set language for the district to communicate first and another language depending on what it is it seems to me that it depends when you want things translated and when it's not I mean it's it a convenience to translate certain things and maybe it's not um we asked for the presentation the community still is not aware the Spanish community may I ask may I add um about the whole presentation that was in the past meetings in Spanish and like I said uh there's nowhere in the audience

039if I only speak Spanish I wouldn't know when to be prompted to be able to stand up here and give my public comment in Spanish so that Miss Munoz will be able to translate it so it's just you know a few things about Communications I know the board it's all about transparency there's no transparency if the communication is not there so uh thank you thank you are there any other members of the public wishing to speak Michel Angelo Mel sorry mangel isama the mother of Michelangelo constanso she's here to speak about the the special needs of students and their rights okay approximately a year ago last October her son had an incident in east east do school mid School in the Dober Middle School my son was bullied by um a classmate that in the

040same classroom there was a very um bad incident it's a violation very strong and and um after that happened her son was in the same classroom with the same person the P you know the alleged um person who who did that to her son and he had to leave with that classmate in the same classroom and it was kind of traumatic for him she had the support from the principal that she spoke to he was aware he was trying to help her but he said that he has his hands hands tight so this was something that eventually um increased and her son had thoughts of suicidal thoughts about this and this happened in November December January that everything started increasing on the amount of stress and the trauma that her son was going through she

041said that her son start writing through letters communicating through letters about how he was feeling and this happened towards late of February that she finally um she brought the letter to the school and show it to them and said if they were waiting for her son to commit suicide because he became psychotic um he got those thought thoughts about getting you know suicidal thoughts about this after all that um he went through psychic you know psychosis psychotic um Psy psych psychotic and um after that she was um referred to the school is a clinician Clinic a clinician from the school who said that that he need to be you know placed in the hospital because he need to be evaluated they have to keep it in in in the hospital because of his um psychotic

042you know psychiatric you know kind of like problems so this is something that I forgot to mention before she said that he had to leave her son with this through her um be with the same classmate that did this to him in the boss School boss in the classroom and it was kind of like a torture for her son being with this with the person the alleged you know um person who did this to him um what she said asking and kind of like requesting more like asking everyone in the school um Personnel staff that takes things more seriously when a student brings this to their to their attention to your attention this is a case that could have end up in something more serious or in a tragedy so she wants this to be

043taken more seriously when these cases are brought to the attention of the school that could have been something that resulted in her son committing suicide and this is like um a home for the students like this is more like a house you know like a a home for every students that they spend a lot of time that's what she was trying to say that's why we have to be very uh on top of this and don't wait until the end or until things are getting out of control to take action on it thank you just to interrupt it's more than six minutes so if she could please finish up okay I'm going to do a summary on what she um was saying that we have to get together parents school this is a job from

044every single one of us we have to get together to um work on this you know in favor of the kids because this is things are getting out of control and we have to educate our kids at home in the school this is everybody has to get involved to get results she wants the special kids to be taken in consideration they're not the greatest on top but they have special skills and they have the ability to do all the things and become you know greater person people thank you Miss man please make sure you get her contact information for Dr mclin is there any other member of the public wishing to speak a Mas no okay with that public comment is now closed Dr mlin is there anything you'd like to um offer comments wise

045uh no some of the some of my comments will be in the administrative report and um as you mentioned uh we'll do some individual followup on the last public comment thank you um M mes may you translate that um her his response sure I can um Dr s um Miss Mendes I'm wondering if th this uh the you know um variability of uh information from the district being offered in both Spanish and English um is an issue that has come up multiple times I'm wondering if this is a task that the governance committee could take on doing research into what it I mean obviously there will be effort uh staff in terms of our staff there would be a cost Associated but what um it would entail to provide uh live stream you know close

046captioning on the video feed um what options are available for people in the in the audience to receive this information in both languages live I think that's a great idea I know that our Town Council just recently invested in some sort of headset that helps with that so perhaps even reaching out to them to see um maybe we can borrow it and Miss Mendes I will um think think it's important uh to thank the community for uh making this um you know the importance of it to the community um I I think it's important for us to translate um in in written form the public comment and I can certainly volunteer my time to do that um to ensure that at least that part that you read right which gives them the direction of where

047to do and when to talk um it's verbally it's written in Spanish and I can certainly do that for our next meeting yeah I think that's a great idea if we start making that a practice at every meeting Miss Philips um I just wanted to say um one of the things that was brought up at one of the citizens advisory committee meetings also had to do with the translation of the live stream and that was something that I had mentioned to Dr mlin and I know that he said he had directed the technology department to look into that so that is something that they are that piece of it with respect to the live stream and the translation is something that they're currently looking into and working on based on not this meeting but our

048September meeting perfect Mr Miller you got that I have the list yes okay um I wanted to mention that as a board we um I believe it was last year we committed to um learning and being trained in lgbtq plus humility um so that is something that this board has done recently um we also our policies um are are are in line right I know we all see what's happening across the state and our policies um don't reflect um the craziness that's happening across the state so that is as a board what we are doing I can't speak to the administration and the dayto day that's something that Dr mcin will address at some point Miss Gales yes I also think it's Miss Mendes to add and to remind you that we as the board

049have held our Administration accountable for that specific suggestion about the presentation and we have received evidence of that being done I believe at I remember Mr haime and seeing a a a video um of it actually being done the introduction in um the beginning for the school for the kids and I also believe for the teachers um and I think also done in the spring and obviously Dr mlan can confirm or not and and clarify that but I know that we as a board to answer um Miss Ton's question we have held our administrators accountable in regards to that presentation um and I'm glad it's sad and and to hear that there's 30 um right and knowing obviously I get the report um I I am very um relieved that um students and and and

050that we have so many HIV reports because it really provides um a sense of the confidence and comfort that people have in making those reports I know those numbers are scary um but for me it means more eyes and more evaluation and more thorough um and and that equals evidence that they are more comfortable in making reports thank you Miss Gales um and then just to summarize um to many of the things that came out of public comment we heard you um and we are going to work on it um and do better so thank you um we are on to approval of minutes is there a motion to approve the minutes from September 7th and September 26th so moved second we have a motion by Miss Phillips a I'm oh my God why do

051I always do that a motion by Miss nutting and a second by Mr Miller and I have to make sure I get this right because Mr sabahu doesn't know everyone's names yet okay so a motion by Miss nutting second by Mr Miller is there any discussion okay um Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote Please Mr yes to September 7th um abstained from September 26 I was not here M DS I have a question September 7th what's that this special meeting September 7 sorry September 7th what was September 7 I don't know it said special meeting September 7th yeah I I believe so yes it says it on the agenda special meeting okay okay so I'd abstain from September 7th and I yes guest to the other yes Mr galz yes Mr Miller

052yes Miss nothing yes Miss Phillips um yes to September 7th and abstain from September 26th Mr robas abstain some from the 7th and yes to the 26th Dr sener yes Miss mandz yes um moving along to Communications I am not aware of any whole board Communications uh did I miss anything no okay so we are moving along to the student representative to the board report Miss Calderon Alvarez good evening I would love to begin by sharing events that took place last month which I could not present in the last meeting due to the unfortunate circumstance but before beginning I just want to thank the board members for being very attentive towards my Persona during the unexpected event last month I felt safe thanks to the great people that were around me they were all very

053attentive and made sure that I got home safely so thank you to begin October 2nd was the commencement of the first beer week of this school year over filling Dober high school with school spirit the week started strong with students and staff wearing blue on Monday in honor of the world day of bullying prevention Tuesday was twin day where many students were seen matching outfits with their peers um Wednesday was anything but a backpack day Thursday was pajama day and and Friday was black out although seniors decided to wear orange the alternate color that represents do high school that same Friday the first pep rally took place where students ecstatically demonstrated their school spirit this was the first pep rally in years that hosted games where the four classes played against each other referring to

054previous years the spear stick Was Won by a class after every pep rally which was treasured greatly this year the spear stick will only be won once so a point system has been established where points are granted to each class based on participation throughout spear week the winners of each spear day were announced accumulating points for each class the class that titled the winners of each spear W the class that titled themselves winners of the games played at the pep rally received points as well these points will all add up and be used as a head start to win the yearned spirit stick at the end of the year in a possible field day another another positive event that occurred that same Friday was the victory of the Dover High School tigers at the homecoming

055football game moving on in September I discussed the lanyard situation and showed the lanyards that students are going to wear throughout the whole school year but mentioned that the IDS had not yet been handed out at the beginning of last month more specifically on October 2nd we received the IDS that are supposed to be worn at all times around the neck the rules that were demanded last year are still imposed but new regulations have been implemented as well as well they cannot be hanging from the students backpacks or pockets they have to be around the neck if students forget their IDs at home or do not have them with them they are given a temporary paper ID and have to serve a lunch attention the Turn Style system is a system where students must scan

056their IDs to get in and out of the building and to get around within different locations of the building as well these systems have been implemented in places such as the nurse the guidance Department the library and even including the bathrooms teachers are located outside of bathrooms where students have to scan their IDs before entering the bathroom where and when they leave as well this system has been useful at times since it was put to use during the selling of homecoming dance tickets student council members along with teachers or staff were situated on the stage of the cafeteria with a box of money and a laptop where students who desired to purchase tickets had to scan their ID once scanned their name was recorded on the list of the homecoming dance attendees the 2022 homecoming

057dance was held on Saturday October 21st at the D high school gy gymnasium under the theme of red carpet Hollywood studing council members dedicated their time to help decorate the gym on Saturday morning in preparation of the event in the evening many students many students attended the dance and the majority enjoyed the experience in addition Hispanic Heritage Month was honored in the assembly that took part October 5th this assembly began with a video highlighting the accomplishments of various Latin X individuals through throughout history following that the dance team and Latin mix dance Ensemble took their time to practice and perform a variety of dances focusing on and highlighting Hispanic culture and music in addition to that students also sang to their peers again honoring the beautiful cultures it was a very enjoyable and heartwarming experience

058for the audience a new activity that will be taking place at do high school is the Toys for Tots event that will be held by the National Honor Society this program collects new or unre gifts such as toys to later give them to children in need to those who do not have the opportunity to celebrate the holidays with new gifts each year posers have been approved and hung around the school the next step is to distribute Flyers we hope that we are able to collect a great amount of toys to be able to bring joy to the to the children that receive them and that wraps up my report thank you thank you WIC on ales are there any comments or questions from the board no seeing none um I before I move on to

059the um board president's report I just want to let the members of the public know that you are welcome to leave okay um so we are moving along to the board president's report good evening I am happy to report our board and administration join School leaders from across the state at the New Jersey school boards Association Workshop of a few short weeks ago demonstrating our commitment to public education the workshop served as an opportunity for Quality professional development important legal legislative policy and funding updates and perhaps most importantly an opportunity to celebrate public education the theme of the workshop was today's student tomorrow's superheroes emphasizing The crucial role of Education in shaping the future of of our society I personally attended courses such as creating a culture for communication keeping your community informed 13 common

060mistakes made by board members leveraging Department of Education resources to improve security and creating an IND District orientation for new board members to name a few and that concludes my report and later on um under community relations we're going to um um entertain any comments are from any board members who also attend a workshop who would like to share their experience um so we are so are there any comments based on my report no so we are moving along to administrative reports uh Dr ml thank you at the October uh meeting uh Hib 2022 2023 scores were shared with the board and with the public I have done so again this evening uh since of scores are on tonight's agenda I do want to emphasize that the hi report card uh that the district completes

061and submits is based is a process-based report card so it's not based on the number of hivs or on the outcomes or on the merits of the cases but on the legal processes that uh each school district and each individual school is required to uh comply with so some comments on our self assessment scores uh for this past year the overall District score increased from a 69 to a 75 it's important to note that a score of two meets expectation and a score of three exceeds expectations with that in mind it's still our goal to achieve a score of three in every category areas of progress uh of note include uh that each of our anti-bullying specialists complet Ed a certificated 16-hour online training course through the FEA the FEA is uh a leadership organization

062in the state that's run by the principes and supervisors Association uh additional HIV related trainings were completed through the New Jersey Division of civil rights anti-bullying Specialist Team meetings were held at least once a month with the anti-bullying coordinator for the district many school safety team members from all schools also had trainings each anti-bullying specialist scheduled a safety school meeting at least once a marking period School informational assemblies and grade level meetings were held with the purpose of Hib training for students and I do want to also note that although this refers to last year all schools this year have also had Hib focused assemblies addressing anti-bullying procedures and anti-bullying um themes uh Hib uh informational pamphlets were sent to parents uh that was a new initiative last year and explanations of each school's HIV

063grades have been posted on the district website in other news for the district work continues on the first floor of Academy Street School concrete floor pouring is ongoing and the French drain openings have been put in place our architect who have Happ s to be here tonight continues to inspect the work and we estimate that it will continue into the spring during the month of October all of our district schools recognized the week of respect and violence Prevention Week a report of each of these schools activities is being compiled and will be sent to the board in an update presently the district is considering a new vendor for its website improved website design and ease of backend work are areas that we are seeking to address one of the vendors we're considering uh has a

064combined Community alert system which would allow us to have an all-in-one system versus the separate systems we currently utilize cost savings uh are also anticipated uh by this change and I will provide more information to the board as we progress in this investigation I'm very happy tonight to announce that the district's high impact tutoring award application was approved by the New Jersey Department of Education and DOA will be receiving $178,000 in new funding for this project unlike many districts DOA will not be using a third-party company but we Pro uh we plan to provide off hour tutoring with our own staff I would like to extend kudos to Mr Carl uh and to all who assisted him in the development of this successful application we anticipate being able to implement the project in in January

065uh some further good news the wait room at the high school has been completely refreshed as the board may recall much of the equipment was dated and in disrepair uh we now have all new equipment that is in place and we also have a secondary room in that Corridor that was previously used for storage and is now a cardio room again with new equipment uh the weight room was also repainted and a new divider has been installed in the high school GYN asium to allow for separation of classes since the old movable wall was no longer functional and was removed this summer and just breaking news at 3:15 today uh we were notified by US News and World Report that Dover middle school has been named as one of the top 40% middle schools in

066the state of New Jersey so we're very proud to congratulate Dover Middle School on this accomplish accomplishment and that concludes my report thank you Dr mclin um Dr s um Dr mclin I apologize if I missed this one of my questions about the Hib report that we're approving submission of from last year was that we scored two out of three on item 3D because not all safety team members were trained um can you address how we're going to ensure that this year um all safety team members are trained uh the the training the official training that's provided by the state you have to go to it and some of the members of our team are parents and and uh students particularly at the older level so uh the availability of that training is a little

067hard to get everyone to we will do our very best within the flexibility the state provides but that's that's the reason is there any opportunity to give the state feedback that it's one thing to ask a staff member right give them a a professional development date to attend but obviously that expectation for a parent and a student to drive to maybe Central Jersey is could be very onerous is there any opportunity to give feedback and maybe have that offered virtually or in multiple locations uh yeah I'll certainly commit to providing feedback thank you Mr Miller uh and then I had a question about um the presentations to the student body on harassment and bullying uh I think I asked the question about the frequency and the variety of programs um and if they're making an

068impact to the student bodies in those schools yeah uh as uh the board may recall and I think this was a couple of years ago we did commit to having a beginning year and uh a second part of the Year assembly on HIV those are certainly happening uh both procedurally but also in terms of assembly programs on anti-bullying that that are occurring uh in all of our schools and I did uh uh after receiving your question just make sure that I had verification from Mr Pand Alo that that that actually had occurred this year and he assured me it's happened in all of our schools okay thank you how many other comments or questions from the board no um so we're going to move along to Mr sabahu oh one can we pause that yeah

069yeah yeah sorry for that good evening everyone uh I started working here at do Board of Education three weeks ago I'm a new business administrator we have a great team and I want to say that I am very happy to work here uh my next item is uh we just had a Sumer Food Service program audit uh it went very well we're going to have some corrective action plans which is nothing major uh hopefully next summer everything's going to be in order as the business office we are working on on finalizing 22 23 audit we are really working hard to get all documentations to the auditor for an ontime submission the deadline is December 5th and finally we have Road gr projects which are H H AC projects uh we can't start until we get

070the official letter from the state but we know uh it's approved we are just waiting for the letter after receiving the letter we're going to have 24 months that complete the projects this concludes my report thank you Mr sabahu are there any questions or comments um for him based off of his report no thank you great job uh we look forward to many more reports from you um we are going to move along to Boe reports um Mr Miller any updates from the Morris County Education Services Commission uh yeah we did meet last week but it was normal business uh dealing so there's really nothing new to report thank you uh Miss Phillips legislative report I do um so at this point there is no information on any new bills that have been introduced so

071I will just report on the various bills that have officially been signed into law by the governor there are one two three there's six of them um the first is extending service life of school buses to extend the service life of most school buses from 15 years to 20 years while specifying that it does not allow the use of any school bus for student transportation purpos if that school bus is determined to be unsafe or unfit uh access to menstral products school districts are now required to ensure that students in each School serving any of the grades 6 through 12 have direct access to menstrual products in at least half of the female and gender neutral bathrooms free of charge the state is required to pay the cost of providing these products expanding Medicaid funded

072Health Services this bill is pending Federal approval but requires Medicaid reimbursement for covered Behavioral Health Services provided by a local educational agency to any student who is an eligible Medicaid beneficiary social media impact study establishes a commission on the effects of social media usage on adolescents to study the extent of social media usage in and out of school and to determine the effects that use has on students health and academic performance suicide prevention training which requires additional School additional School District Personnel to complete a training program on suicide prevention and require Ires any school district employee who is not already subject to current requirements and any employee of a contracted service provider that has regular contact with students to complete training in suicide prevention awareness and response and last extending flexibility to hire retirees which

073extends flexibilities that were previously signed into law which allows districts to temporarily hire teachers or professional staff members who have retired without requiring them to reenroll in the teacher pension and an new it fund and that concludes my report thank you Miss Phillips uh Miss nutting Morris County njsba report okay so for Mars County um meeting we have an upcoming meeting on December 7th which I will be attending and Dr sander is also attending um they did have one because we had one meeting that we didn't give the report it was in September because it was a while ago um we I did attend that um that meeting and our very own Dr mlen did a company and he was there and Diana Gales did a presentation which we also had another record uh I

074forget her name now Dr it was Dr Miller the other presenter marar I was actually there too and it was a nice um presentation about trauma so it was very interesting um if you guys get a chance if they have some of the information on boards it would be nice to know and Diana if you had any notes from that presentation I can share my presentation oh my presentation wasn't yeah um I think they have the recording avilable yeah they do but if you have notes just to share with the rest of us just to give us an idea sure yeah definitely that would be great too thanks thank you Miss nutting um I also attended that virtually and I found it to be valuable um and we were well represented um so thank you

075Dr mlan msales um we are moving on speaking of we're moving on to miss Gales M Hill update thank you the committee last met on October 10th with all members present in agreement to share to the full board and the public that over the past three years that we have engaged in Cooperative efforts with M Hill Board of Education to negotiate a new written send receive agreement although not required to do so unfortunately we have reached an impass and are unable to conclude the negotiations the committee highlights that this does not impact the education of any of our students residing in Mine Hill as we have been operating without a written agreement or contract for decades the last one was approved in March of 1993 and we will continue to do so with a c

076collaborative send receive relationship should M Hill reconsider its position do would be open to further negotiations in the future at this time the Mine Hill ad hoc committee will be discharged as it as it will conclude its negotiations with M Hill School District at least for now additionally we invited the M Hill district to consider to reconsider our offer to partner in revisiting the regionalization effort which has the potential outcome of being more coste effective for taxpayers and provide an Avenue for Mine Hill residents to possibly have elective members on the board as of early today the Mine Hill district has declined our offer we continue to have this on the table as a collaborative effort for all of our do students that reside in Mine Hill thank you Miss Gales we are moving along

077to administrative approval is there a motion to approve items a through f with the hand carry amendments to item a so moved second did y'all do that on purpose I did okay so we have a motion by Miss nutting and a second by Miss Phillips is there any discussion seeing no discussion we have a motion by Miss nutting a second by Miss Phillips Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote please M ESO yes Miss D yes M Gales yes Mr Miller yes Miss nothing yes Miss Phillips yes Mr robes yes Dr sen yes Miss mandes yes um moving along to Personnel Miss nutting I would like to make a motion upon the recommendation of the superintendent and the board approved the following Personnel resolutions A1 through 16 with hand carry changes to 1

0782 3 4 five six and 10 is there a second second we have a motion by Miss nutting a second by Miss Gales is there any discussion Mr Miller I had one question and I think maybe the hand carry has answered it that I was concerned that there were a few vacancies for some of the coaching positions and I was not sure if that would endanger the program but I think they've all been filled is that correct there's one yes I I think to the best of my knowledge we don't have any vacancies that would endanger any programs is that correct Miss Gibbs yes she's Notting yes so any other questions or comments from the board seeing none oh no I have a question oh I'm sorry Miss um I'm wondering um there is a

079transfer from um a Spanish teacher at do high school to a third grade bilingual teacher how are we meeting the need of world language in Spanish at the high school so yeah actually World Language has become extremely difficult to fill um as you probably know and uh we are actually engaging in a third-party contract uh with a group that uh indicates that they will fill our positions this year within a 30-day window with a certified teacher that was uh not our first option um but uh given the um lack of candidates and this is everywhere you know I'm C I've been discussing this with uh with other superintendents and everyone seems to have this U exact same issue uh at least it's an option so that we have a certified qualified person uh may not

080be a DOA staff member which is always what we want uh but that's that's what we're doing right now for this year if we were able to we'll continue to look and if we're able to find um you know qualify candidate that we can hire on our own staff certainly we're committed to doing that do we do they follow the same protocols we do for hiring our staff uh backround checks yes yes and anytime we use a third party for any and we do sometimes for therapists uh uh particularly in special they have to uh they have to adhere to the same criminal history background uh there's a number of requirements that that they're asked to to uh demonstrate before those individuals come up on board and that includes certifications from the state and all

081of that absolutely all right thank you any other questions or comments no seeing none we have a motion by Miss nutting a second by Miss Gales Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote please miss ESO yes Miss DS yes Miss Gales yes Mr Miller yes Miss nothing yes Miss Phillips yes Mr robas yes Dr s yes Miss Mes yes we are moving along to negotiations Miss nutting so we recently had a meeting with the administrators and we are still looking forward to our next meeting hopefully within the next I think it was Tuesday next Tuesday I didn't get the invitation yet so I couldn't remember I wrote it down but I couldn't remember that so yeah next Tuesday thank you Miss stting um we're moving along to governance Mr robas so the governance

082committee was unable to meet last month but we are making a recommendation for the board to uh consider moving to board dos as our official documentation system and also and also um to have that be used for the community as well where we would hold copies of the electronic agendas and things of that nature so that would be something that would be implemented in January though so we still have time to get that into place but that is the recommendation of the governance committee thank you um Dr mclin if we were to um pass such a resolution at our December meeting would that give us enough time to implement for January or should we take action this evening uh I don't think we can take action this evening do we have an exact quote from

083them yet uh uh Mr sa I think he sent us the all the pricing oh so we we could move that tonight I think he said we need to move other not going to be enough time okay so yeah it's a time sensitive piece um that uh if we move tonight we would be able to uh to move forward in January if I recall from the presentation from the representative they indicated that they would actually work alongside of us for the January meetings uh and that would actually be part of the the training that would be involved in setting up uh the program and then we'd be good to go independently in February Dr sner um Miss Mendes I have questions about the board docs I I know that's under Finance uh Mr robas is

084recommending it now when would you like me to address those questions um are we Mr robas are you going to make a motion or I was thinking of that but if there's a question that could be asked about board dos I don't see why we if you if you are open to making the motion then once we are in discussion then Dr s okay what's wrong so do we want to wait until finance and Facilities then okay is everyone okay with that that's fine okay that I would think why don't we I don't think there's a big rush for January why don't we just wait until everything in line to make the recommendation for December uh that's up to the board uh I one of the things that we were looking at was whether it

085would make sense to do this with the beginning of the new board year which starts in January oh I see I think that makes sense okay either way we're going to address this under finance and Facilities um so we are moving along to student achievement and curriculum Dr ser thank you Miss Mendes uh the student achievement and curriculum committee met on November 6th um with all members present um we discussed three new curricula for approval transitional skills life skills one and life skills 2 these are specialized classes for our special needs students at the middle school and the high school that prepare them for Life After High School we also learned about the linkit student fingertip profile so uh linkit is a significant investment that the district has made um in uh kind of curating

086student data to allow our staff to best meet the needs of each student um and so we got a kind of a bird's eyee view of what you can see with the link it program um I'm going to highlight it because I think it's amazing uh we also discussed the um high-intensity uh grant that we received um and the use of that the majority of that money for tutoring for our students um and we're also going to utilize our own staff um in paid positions to provide that tutoring in small group settings um and um we also discussed the new bilingual code and the impact on the district um with that I would like to move that the board approve items 1 through 15 inclusive of the items on the hand carry second we have

087a motion by Dr serer a second by Miss nutting is there any discussion Dr s I wanted to highlight um on the these agenda items um there was a ton of professional development um again I'm really proud of our district for offering extensive varied um professional development to staff members at all levels uh there was I'm this is not everything but literacy co- teing HIV training um the symbiosis ofal in literacy I ready training for principles um a again there were a ton of field trips so thank you to the staff members there is significant work behind the scenes that goes into planning field trips um that are educationally beneficial and also you know safe and logistically sound for our students um there are a lot of new experiences um as well as community service

088for our Stu our students from uh do Victory Gardens and Mine Hill and I am always very glad to see alumni returning to do to student teach thank you any other comments or questions from the board no seeing none we have a motion by Dr serer a second by Miss nutting um Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote please miss ESO yes Miss DS yes Miss Gales yes Mr Miller yes Miss nothing yes Miss Phillips yes Mr roblas yes Dr sen yes Miss mandz yes we are moving moving along to community relations Miss Phillips so my report uh mainly focuses on our meetings with the citizens advisory committee so we have met with them twice we met in September and October uh during our September meeting it really was an open Forum um

089the members kind of threw out different ideas and questions and we talked about a lot of different things um District Communications victory garden uh Genesis you name it um we came out of that meeting with I had a list of questions that I sent to Dr mlin which he got back to me and then during our October meeting we reviewed all of those things um talked about basically some talked about recommendations um that the the committee would like to present based on those conversations so one of the main observations has to do with the website and it sounds like some of those things are already kind of being addressed from what Dr McLaughlin said but the main observation was that the calendars on the website are not consistent and so the committee wants to request

090that we Implement a district-wide communication plan so that all messaging and information is cons is disseminated consistently which would include a master calendar for the entire District that includes all school events so basically one unified document where everything can be seen and easily identified and easily located in addition to um having an announcement on the front page of the website starting around August big announcement saying what the first day of school would be along with the start times and end times um of the school day secondarily one of the things we talked about a lot was Genesis and the question is if it is possible to add an acknowledgement feature to gen is so that when a parent reviews a report card they have to acknowledge it so that you know as the district knows

091that the parent acknowledged it and if they don't acknowledge it within a certain time is there a way to then email a copy of that report card to the parent because they have not acknowledged it and then a step further it's a lot I know a step further is if and I don't know if you can verify whether an email has been ready but the the next piece of that was if the report card is not viewed by a certain time is there a way to notify guidance so I'll use Faith as an example she loves that so I get the notification Faith's report card I don't click it I get an email with the report card that I don't read is there a way then that her guidance counselor or whomever can be notified

092and then that person can call me and say Hey you haven't read you know Faith's report card and I think the concept just the basis of the the discussion is if you know if the parents aren't checking in if they don't necessarily know what the grades are then they can't reinforce or help push the student to you know doing better reaching out to the teachers whatever they need to do so those were the two main topics of discussion that they wanted our committee to bring to the full board and then our next meeting is the 28th at 7 o'clock I don't necessarily expect an answer right this minute because it's a lot but those were the main points Mr Miller and I was happy to hear about the communication plan which they brought up if

093you recall we did talk about that a while ago so I could resurrect some of those ideas if we need to are there any um comments or questions um for Miss Phillips and I and I'm asking is there anything that we'd like Miss Phillips to take back to the citizens advisory committee that were interested in getting their feed feed back on Miss NY I didn't send this but there was the I know the transparency for the community has been a big question but if you don't have a child in the school system you're not getting all the information unless you're going on the website is there something or idea that they have um to help reach the community of getting information out well I am glad you asked cuz we did talk about that and

094we talked about the possibility of seeing if there's a way to to utilize the town system like you know how the you get a call from the town and if there's a way to partner with the town and do that then one of the challenges that came up as part of that is I don't think well the understanding I got was that Victory Gardens doesn't have that they're not part of it so let's just say we were a partner and we were to do that the Victory Gardens residents may not get that same call um so that was one of the challenges but it was something that we talked about um we talked about right I don't remember what else we said but it did come up we to talk about that so um and

095I think uh I can't remember what else because I know I asked you about that at the last meeting and I don't remember one one piece to it we are uh getting closer to our electronic signs and people do read the signs so um the signs will be in English and Spanish we'll have them at each of our school buildings they'll be very visible and and I I do think you know it's just another piece it's not an answer to it all but it's another piece to get the word out you know even advertising our website you know for um you know uh for the community I think from what what I recall a lot of people are okay with the website even if they don't have a child in the district but their complaint

096or their concern or their challenge was that they feel like it's hard to find stuff even on the website so that kind of goes back to the making the website more consistent and just messages from all the schools more consistent just so if they know they have to go to the website even if they don't have a child in the district it's still easily easy to navigate and they can find what they're looking for um that was a that's a big Point like that's a big a big concern and it and and consistently and collectively that's what they would like if they know that there's one place that I can go and everything is there they'll they're comfortable with that but they feel the way that it's structured right now it's very difficult to see

097you know what's the what's going on at the high school what's going on at the middle school what's going on here so if it can be more consistent and more unified I think they would be more comfortable with that okay thank you any other comments or question can I just when I remarked before in the report about website design basically that's what I was alluding to so there were some constraints with our present provider uh on the website in terms of how information can be structured um and um just the enrollment reports for example we have them in two different places but we have to load them in two different places uh they're not linked to each other uh so um we we we're when we're in looking at different providers um you know missus

098who's here she has been uh you know leading this along with uh uh Mr levit who's our new Communications coordinator uh and looking at different vendors and we think we have one at this point and you know we'll be eager if that's what we arrive on to show it to the board and how it improves seeing the information in a way that that you're describing Mr Miller and I just want to say uh at the the the meeting that we had with the community it was really good very positive lot of great information um and we were there for almost two hours so to say that was good for two hours is pretty good but I did get a lot of feedback on the spotlight on some of our students and teachers which is excellent

099uh communication to the community thank you um this is a great opportunity for anyone who has attended a community event or attended Workshop to share their experience um is there anyone that' like to share Mr Miller and then miss Downs let me let me get my agenda here so I can remember what I went to uh I attended uh a really interesting Workshop um unleashing the potential of augmented and virtual reality for inspiring learning and uh you know it's it's definitely involved but it has a lot of um opportunity for students uh a lot of the programs can be viewed in various languages but it is um a motivating uh tool to use for new types of learning which I thought was very exciting uh we got to see uh a trio of our High

100School dancers that performed uh at the convention which was amazing um I attended a couple of other uh programs one that I really enjoyed was our own Mr clear uh who was uh teaching a workshop on video uh for Education Final Cup Pro and uh Miss nutting and I we were able to make some movies with the green screen and and and layering that with the background anywhere around the world and you know you see how the newscasters do it and that that's what we were doing and it was actually very easy but uh there were a lot of Educators there uh to witness that and uh really learned about a lot of other art programs that I know I I'd given some information to Dr mlin that we might be able to participate in

101um and it was it was really a great uh time uh talking with a lot of folks and vendors um so it was definitely worth a while thank you Mr Miller Miss DS I was able to attend the workshop on October 25th upon arrival excuse me at the workshop I entered the exhibit floor and was completely impressed with the artwork throughout the student Arts student Arts Gallery much of the artwork related to how various students throughout New Jersey dealt with life throughout Co it was nice to see students using this type of Outlet to express themselves during this time period Then I attended an afternoon training session called I Survived my first year as a new board member now what and was able to listen to the lectures as well as participate in group discussions

102with fellow first year board members from various New Jersey districts unfortunately my schedule did not allow me to be there on Tuesday when Miss Hannah almost dance student from D High perform their dance number I look forward to watching any videos that may have been taking taken of this performance what a nice accomplishment you all made us very proud thank you Miss STS Mr Rob yes um so I also had a chance to attend um and I think the title of the conference today's students tomorrow's superheroes was a very good title I think that some of those students are superheroes now they're not just tomorrow but uh so I wanted to give kudos to the three students who performed representing our do High School dance team if I'm not hopefully I got their names from

103the video that I recorded which I don't have the rights to share so I can't put it on publicly but I believe they were Cecilia Alonso Isabella Munoz and Manuela gajo who danced to the song Someday and they did a really phenomenal job uh so they really out dids very impressed um and also I want to just give kudos to two of our well one staff and one administrator who were there uh at the workshop as uh somebody already alluded to Mr Michael clear who shared and actually I just learn well I should have known but he's actually a biology biology teacher but he was there representing technology and you would have never guessed that biology is his first Passion because technology was really phenomenal in his presentation alongside with with uh our very own

104Tanya Suz who was there to support him and sharing some knowledge and if you heard the districts who were in attendance you would be proud to know that DOA was sharing their knowledge in this way a lot of the school dist districts that were there were really surprised by by the knowledge that was shared by the technology that was being used by the level of some of the certification plans that they have for the students to be able to attain through these programs people were impressed and I think we should be proud of that and thank you to Mr clear and tan for the work that they're doing in that in that front which I know is very demanding but it's very worthwhile um in terms of the workshops outside of that one uh I

105attended some that stood out to me one of them called effective communication and in that one they brought up many different ways on how we can be better at communicating as a district as board members and uh many districts shared their frustration with having student Representatives at their board meetings and their students only sharing events that they're doing and not nothing else they're not bringing any concerns they're not bringing any accomplishments and yet I was very proud to say that Suma who's been here from day one that was one of the things that she wanted to bring is concerns from the student body uh how to make you know us more effective and how we can uh provide what the resources that they need and so I was very proud to hear that that's not

106our situation and uh unfortunately she left before I was able to say that but um thank you for her and for the voice that she represents in all the students when she's here um another uh one called in District orientation for new board members and as part of the governance committee uh that I'm a member of I took a lot of notes from there and I can attest that there's a lot of room for improvement for us as a board to try to better prepare our new board members and with the ones that are coming in new in January as well I think uh we have some room to grow there but I think it's a lot of things that are worthwhile putting some effort into um another one that I thought was very uh

107encouraging was communicating with your community that was the title of the workshop and in that one to believe it or not people were surprised and shocked and some even questioned the legality that we have a Citizens advisory committee they were surprised that the district would uh allow uh members of the board to be in a setting like that one to communicate directly with the community uh not representing the full board but just to hear the community out and so uh they were I think some of the districts were looking forward to perhaps implementing something like that and I know it's sort of a new thing for us but I know that the feedback we received from those of us who have been there with the community members that they're appreciative of that effort and I

108I think it's something that we should definitely continue um one more that I just want to highlight uh one was called building a culturally responsive district and that one basically talked about the importance of all members in the community staff students board members Administration to be uh cognizant of where we come from and what's been our journey to be where we are and how that shapes the way that we behave with the people around us and a lot of the times unfortunately in the society that we're in uh that leads to a lot of uh conflict instead of leading to collaboration and a lot of uh more acceptance and so it was encouraged for all board members staff and administration that were in attendance to try to reflect on your own and not to judge

109others based on just the way that they respond but instead to understand that they have a reason in many cases where they their experiences are different even you know here in a predominantly Hispanic uh Community where somebody from my country can have a totally different experience from somebody of the same country that got here in a different way so just because I'm Puerto Rican doesn't mean that all Puerto Ricans experience the same thing and as you would expect expanding across all different uh cultures and diversity uh aspects so that was encouraging to hear that kind of a presentation and then they talked about you know how can we celebrate the diversity in our districts and I want to just commend the Hispanic heritage celebration that we took place in October which is very well attended

110I was there and it was hard to walk in the gymnasium when all the people were there witnessing some of the performances that were there that was that was really fun um and I know a lot of the parents and students uh enjoyed that that moment I did provide some feedback to Dr mclen I think we should continue that but also expand it to not just be about hispanic celebration but just cultural celebration in our district um to be able to highlight uh all cultures not just Hispanic culture um and in terms of the workshops those were some of the things that I took back um I just want to highlight a couple things as my own personal feedback um based on the workshops that I attended I think we're doing well in some of

111the focus and priority that we give to Student Learning I heard a lot of the districts in some of the conversations that we're not experiencing that um the Civility and respect that we experienced during our meetings here uh also not not everywhere else is experienced the same um and the fact that we are searching and looking for ways to implement new strategies to address our testing scores graduation rates and how to address the need for resources which uh all districts I'm sure are struggling with but I know we're not disregard regarding that um and I think it's already been said but uh we need to continue doing community engagement communication improving that and collaboration with the town and community and last but not least I'm encouraged to see new board members joining in January and

112others who were willing to step up and if they didn't make it this time I hope they keep trying uh it's better than other districts where we hear that nobody wants to be on the board and and so the roles are really not filled by the most uh applicable candidates and um I encourage all current board members and past and incoming board members to take time next year in October since it's always at the same time at the same place to attend the workshop I've done it twice and every time is a really fun and learning experience and um although I won't be in that next year but I'm encouraging encouraged by the ones that are going to be here uh after December of those of you that are but thank you for listening to

113me all this time thank you Mr roas um a lot of valuable information in your report and I just want to piggyback off of something that you highlighted one of my biggest takeaways from the workshop you know often times it's easy to um um because you're living right we're living this month after month like we're in the thick of like our board work and our district and um you don't realize um how I don't want to say good we have it but but we are on the Forefront of a lot of things and we are um we're doing well I know that sometimes it's hard to remember that or see that but and listening to other districts speak and at at the different workshops that I attended we are on the right track and doing

114well we're not perfect no board is perfect no school district is perfect but we have good intentions and we are on the right track Miss NY you wanted to say something yeah um I also attended and there was a class that we attended I know we talk about retaining teachers and um looking at our numbers of this one's leaving this and and and I know we as a community get concerned we we want to make sure that we retain our teachers the best because we do have really good teachers I give you guys Kudos because I cannot do it being a mom of three I give you guys Kudos because having three and having the amount of students that you have and all the personalities that you have to deal with um yes Kudos um

115but there were not the only District that is having that issue I'm seeing it I talk to other districts and Mars County I have to say we as Mars County we had 100% of the county so that means means that every single District in Mars County sent somebody to the New Jersey School Board conference which was a big accomplishment um but we're all talking about the same things um just talking about the new Ai and the Jim uh Dr mclin attended the same class with me and using these new technologies and skills to advance students would be something to look into and the option too of giving you know those places that are having problems with crowding that opportunity to um work with that and filter your students through of timing and giving them more

116opportunities so it was definitely a a great experience um and yes definitely new board members if you haven't gone definitely go thank you Miss nutting um if there is if there are no other board members wishing to share out we are going to move along to policy Miss DS thank you uh policy committee met on October 3rd and again on um November 6th um Miss ASO Miss galez Miss Mendes and myself were the board members attending and Dr mclin was present and Miss Marian Gibbs was present at the um November 6 um there were no members of the public present at this meeting um Miss Gibbs discussed job descriptions and the importance of having updated job descriptions for potential candidates as well as the interviewer some job descriptions are Antiquated and some of the positions

117are no longer necessary it is important to to note that job the do the job description abolishment are not getting rid of people uh the policies for first reading with a second reading on December 19th are as follows P1 1642.1 sick leave new uh p2270 religion and schools P 3161 examination per cause revised P 3212 attend revised P 4161 Examination for cause revised P 4212 attendance revised p2417 student intervention and refer Referral Services regulations first reading with the second reading on December 19th are are as follows r241 9 School based threat assessment teams R1 1642 2.01 sick leave new R 2417 student intervention and referral services the abolished policies and regulations are P3 432 sick leave R 3432 sick leave P4 432i leave R 4432 SI leave P6 361 relations with fendors for abot districts

118job descriptions are schoon content supervisor benefits benefits specialist secretary security guard and front lobby guard um other items discussed at the October 2023 policy committee meeting but not acted upon since the board meeting was adjourned early they are on the board agenda as follows for November 14th policy 5420 tardiness was changed from 15 to 5 [Music] uh policy 2419 school-based threat assessment um I wanted to make note that items with an asterisk are approved retroactively to October 17th um regulations r54 60 High School graduation r5200 attendance R 5440 honoring stud and achievement [Music] r10 deor Public Schools organizational chart uh committee under committee benefit specialist and teacher um the hand carry at the request of the community relations committee the policy committee is proposing a change to policy 9140 citizens advisory committee the updated version

119would State under Section G that citizens advisory committee members shall be appointed for a term of for a period of 10 months which term shall commence on September 1st and shall expire on June 30th of the following year I make a motion to approve items 1 through six and number one of the hand carry uh policy 9140 citizens advisory committee second we have a motion by Miss DS a second by Miss Gales is there any discussion Dr sner then Mr Miller um I have a question about the benefits specialist job description and it's it's more of a general question as we revise um job descriptions um I know that in particular in the business office we are aiming for redundancy so as one employee leaves for whatever reason um there's not a hole um in

120whatever that they had been trained to do so how is that redundancy reflect reflected in the benefit specialist job description I would say it's it's not so much in the specific job duties there's always that that last piece that that indicates other items but I will assure the board that our benefit specialist has been very working very closely in particular with our payroll coordinator so that there's a familiarity with both jobs between the two individuals uh but we definitely are committed to that that that redundancy that you referred to okay thank you um my second question is in the proposed tardiness policy this has been revised to reflect that five tardies equal one unexcused absence um does this policy take into account the time a student was tardy so for example if a student is

1213 minutes late to biology class five times they've missed 15 minutes total or about a third of one class period in another instance a student may be 20 minutes late five times and therefore miss the equivalent of Two And A Half full class or well two and a half classes um in both of these cases according to the policy the consequence is the same for what I would consider a dramatically different offense yeah that's correct uh so a student who is late is marked late if attendance is taken and they enter after attendance is taken that's that's kind of the barometer uh tracking the amount of minutes I think well first of all I I don't know that really um it's realistic that we can keep that level of of data comp population going uh

122but we did as you know drastically reduce the number of latenesses that was done to address a significant lateness problem in conjunction with dropping home room as the beginning period that people felt they could miss because it was Home Room uh and I know that um and I know how much you love data uh Dr serer so uh Mr Nunes has committed that he will continue to provide me with data updates on how this is working because this is um this was put in place for a specific reason our uh preliminary uh data results showed good results but we want to make sure it's lasting um we did also take into account other school districts um who had nothing like we had you know the much fewer uh latenesses that that you know were were

123put together so even the five puts us on the generous side in compar comparison to other districts okay thank you and one final question um in regulation 5440 what is the board trust fund scholarship uh I don't really know that we have one I think that came from Strauss smme so I may need to before the second rating uh adjust that as I did see your question thank you for finding that okay thank you Mr Miller yeah I just think that um I think there might need to be some clarification so that the public understands the abolishment of the job descriptions I mean there's a lot of jobs that we still have it's just that those thank you for bringing that up so I I know that Miss DS mentioned it in her remarks already

124but I just I will emphasize that these uh are abolishing redundant or outdated job descriptions I I did a brief check in the pile here that's being abolished some of these job descriptions go back to 1988 and in some instances we had four job descriptions for the same job uh which were different uh so what we what we uh are doing now and this is just the first step because you'll see other abolishment uh that we haven't finished going through the whole um the whole list but uh by eliminating the the uh non-applicable job descriptions there's one job description for one job which is what should be there nobody should be confused about what job description they're looking at uh the um the other piece of this is that as we move forward if if

125we make a revision to it or if we make a new job description have a new title The Old title needs to come out and so the board should expect to see a lot more of adoption and abolishment uh so that that we continue to keep our job description database fresh and accurate uh the the other piece of this just um and I did uh send this in a in a message to our staff so that they knew this had no impact on anyone's jobs this was just job descriptions and making sure that the right ones are published uh the the second part of our effort is also a total revamping of our index of job descriptions so that if you are a technology specialist and you're looking for your job description you will be

126able to find it immediately which I can tell you right now has not been the case any other comments or questions from the board I have to take a moment to shout out Miss Gibbs cuz she's here um she presented to us and and um showed us the Monumental undertaking that um she is working on with in relation to the job description so thank you for um putting in all that work and effort we appreciate it um we have a motion by Miss DS a second by Miss Gales uh Mr sabahu may we have a r call vote please miss ESO yes Miss down yes M Gales yes Mr Miller yes Miss nothing yes Miss Phillips yes Mr oblas yes Dr sen yes Miss Mendes yes we are moving along to finance and Facilities Mr

127Miller yes uh the finance and Facilities uh committee did not meet but we are meeting November 20th um I was looking on the calendar just to confirm we actually have two dates it's the says the 20th and 21st I know negotiations is on the 20th but I think we are meeting on the 20th negotiations is on the 21st oh 21st okay so 20th yeah okay I just wanted to confirm um I would like to move items uh 1 through 31 uh the hand carry replaces number 24 and if if I may uh Mr Miller there are two additional items uh for the hand carry which are going to be items 32 and 33 if I if I may read them into the record sure uh the first is uh resolved that the Dober bard of

128Education approves an agreement with Stonefield engineering and design LLC to provide professional traffic consultant services for the newbry building in an amount not to exceed $30,000 and the second is number 33 resolve that the over Board of Education approves the proposal for board docs prom management document system in the amount of $1,000 per year um is there a second second so we have a motion by Mr Miller a second by Miss nutting um is there any discussion Miss Gales um wanted to I don't I I don't know if I'm missing it but could um anyone or um direct me to where are the supporting documents for number 22 and 23 uh under Finance what or what are the specifics of those two items uh I can explain that uh 22 and 23 those are amendments

129for the grants uh there's no support documentation because we do everything on evik which is a home room on New Jersey portal uh what happens is every end of the year uh grants go through September 30 any funds are not spent they roll over it's called car over to the New Year in order to apply the car over we have to amend it and added it to the new year that's a that's what it is and also the 24 23rd one is s ARP that continues for three years and every years every year we need to do some adjustments because we uh some of the things are not spend is supposed to and some of the things we need little more so overall Grant doesn't change we just move the funds and the lines Could

130you um provide the specific amount of the Amendments for each there's line by line but I can send you the report that's Prett B and um how come we didn't use that how come we had extra money for Esa and for um ESS er uh uh for uh s RP number 23 that's for 3 years it's going to go up to September 30 2024 we need to just move some funds because as I said some of the lines we need little more and for Esa um that actually I wasn't here but I'll take that one so uh every year uh there tends to be a carryover uh and and you're allowed to spend it in the next year if you roll it in so um just for example we were looking at at one of

131the titles title two uh which is a professional development amount so the amount that we anticipated spending last year from title 2 um did not uh didn't capture the whole amount so we um one of the things that we're doing this year is making sure that we before we spend any local money on professional development we spend out our title 2 uh which I guarantee you we will expend uh all our funds so that's um uh it's fairly typical especially in the past P where we had Title One a lot of our title one was still uh and class size reduction and supporting salaries uh that's very complicated in terms of who you hire and what you anticipated salaries to be uh the good thing about title one and and what we've changed for this

132year which uh will help in spending it within the year allotment and not having to carry it over uh is we've moved all salaries out of Title One um that also has a benefit because of what we have to put towards F which also is a guesstimate um so it's good to get your salaries out of title one uh those of you who have been on the board have probably heard me talking about the goal of getting salaries out of title one for a long time they are out completely out of title one uh Title One is supplies and other um supports for students uh time sheet uh work for example for our summer school teachers um or for clubs uh during during the day that will all come out of title one awesome and

133um in regards to the two Amendment or oral amendments um where are we um where are we getting this money from the $30,000 doll right for the consult and um 11,000 for board dos and um and maybe for governance um why are we choosing board dos and how does that help um us in our business for $1,000 uh actually we we are moving our accounting and HR System to our servers so we're going to be saving $11,500 for from there uh for 30,000 is going to be professional service it's going to be uh most most likely it's going to be a little transfer from the architecture F okay can we speak no go ahead I was going to reiterate my second question can we speak to in regards to the benefits of this moving to

134board docs and away from Google Drive and and and our agenda format Miss who wants to take that Dr mclin you said it so well um in executive so okay uh the uh anyone who's looked at board dos uh for the many and increasing number of districts that are using it we'll see it is a uh a much more um straightforward system if you have a member not only of the board who's looking uh at at Agenda items but if you're public and I know that we received feedback from the citizens advisory committee that you know Finding information from past board minutes and agendas uh wasn't the easiest thing to do uh but with board docs you can put in a keyword and it will bring you right to the meetings where that particular item

135is mentioned so I think uh in our ongoing work for transparency and clear organization uh of of our work uh board docs certainly is is a good forward moving solution uh it also provides some more accuracy uh in terms of board minutes because the board minutes are actually live on the agenda that our uh business administrator board secretary will be using during the board minute so it it captures uh the minutes as we go and so it reduces the chance of error I think um the work of the board obviously is critically important the amount of information that the Board needs to go through and that our public reviews that we go through should be as straightforward as possible um we've talked about this I think since I've been here with the board and so

136it just looks like a good time to to move forward with this uh um it will also I I have to say in terms of efficiency of the people who put together uh the board agenda I don't know if I can accurately capture how much work I see Miss Gibbs laughing on the side because she knows but how much work from how many people goes into each board agenda uh there's at least four departments who are dedicated to a board agenda coming together um and although the content obviously will still take work what will go away with this is the formatting and the text difficulties and the person who has to move things from a working folder into a public folder and sometimes the things that get lost in there so um I think there's

137a lot of benefits here and ultimately the work of the board and what the board does benefits our students uh you know so there there's always a tie in to that and and I don't think at least at least my opinion the board should uh feel guilty at all in terms of investing in a document that helps organize and make the work more efficient and more accessible to our public thank you you did say it nicely and it's very also relieving to see um Mr Sab Sab um thank you I apologize I was trying to hear Miss Mendes U pronunciation but it wasn't helping me so the g is silent correct so it's sabahu Sabah sabahu awesome um and and and your explanation of it right and jumping right in and our questions and um

138it feels good to be able to that you're moving money from one side to the other to prioritize um our business and essentially our students so thank you thank you Miss ASO yeah I have a few questions um circling back to item uh number 18 contract to for Lang language learning network is that inperson instruction or is so it is in person um and pardon my ignorance about this um is there a certain amount of money in which competitive bids are required if so can you tell me what amount that is the amount is $44,000 but this is Con as $44,000 because I have qpa qualified purchasing agent so the threshold for bidding and competitive contract is $44,000 okay so it's $126,000 for this contract so how was that sorry I'm not understanding okay the

139threshold is uh for bidding or competitive Contracting is $44,000 okay so this is 126 your saying is way above but uh we consider this as a professional service there some of the services they're exempt like architecture engineering these kind of services are exempt from the buding I understand now um also for the contract with uh for substitute teachers with ES says can you tell tell me why it was it's being terminated are we able to get our own now no the reason why uh why that's being terminated we we're keeping the contract with swing that we've had they are what we call a supplemental sub service meaning that we keep our own subs and they supplement it the ESS group although it was not part of our um our bid uh uh package and it

140wasn't in their proposal once they were awarded the contract they said that the way they work is they take over all your substitute management and that we wouldn't be able to have our own Subs which we're not interested in right okay thank you that makes sense any other comments or questions from the board I'm sorry I have um a question and some comments um item 25 I cannot recall um our board passing such a resolution in the past so I'm wondering if you can talk about um is there a specific reason we are moving in this direction obviously from reading the resolution it seems like it it makes sense as to why and then bullet point number five for me seems to be extremely vague so can you provide some examples of these accounts yes

141uh actually uh I I bring this resolution wherever I work when I started new school district uh I actually already discussed with three different Auditors about this because this is the this help us after the board meeting if you receive any invoice and we don't have time to pay sometimes to get an invoice takes a week and to me it out takes another week so we don't really have time for the next board meeting to send the and we don't want to get any late payments which is an audit finding so that's why I always get this approved so we're kind of covered for in in case of emergency uh and also everything is in going to be uh in the bill list to be approved by the board so even it's earlier date it's

142going to be approved in the bill list and itum five is some of the uh accounts uh not every vendor is like uh District friendly so they have like certain uh due dates and if you don't pay on time it's goes to like uh actually we get the late fees so we in order to avoid that we can uh entertain this thank you um I a little concerned and I will say that I have um what is the term I think it's sticker shock when I heard the um um addition of item 32 for the traffic consultant um and as it stands I I I haven't seen a contract I've seen no supporting document so I cannot support such a resolution is there any way when where can how can first of all why wasn't

143it on the agenda and where can we receive supporting documentation for this res that Amendment uh we have the proposal we have the proposal but we didn't have time to put it in the proposal came in um in the last couple of days uh because we had to meet with the traffic consultant um to explain the issues and the concerns from the public and the board so that they could come up with a proposal to address those concerns and do their um investigation and their their their study uh so it just I think that's why it wasn't on the regular agenda uh there is uh the business office does have the written proposal uh but I you know so that can certainly be shared um you know soon I mean I get it could probably

144be shared now some way if I'm not sure how the technology Works uh but it could probably be shared now uh I think the issue with putting it on as a hand carry uh is that uh in order to move things promptly they want to start their traffic study like now like in the next couple of days in order to have a report in time uh for the the board to be able to consider this and and discuss it with the public at the next board meeting so if if it were to uh you know it's if if they're not able to go forward it's going to lead to delay so that's why I think you know Well normally I think things wouldn't be put on a hand carry if they didn't need to be

145that's why the proposal just came in within the last couple days and it is time sensitive thank you for that um explanation I I don't know how we approach this I will not support this um without seeing the proposal um this is a significant amount of money um and I don't think anyone should support it without seeing what exactly we are getting for our money Dr s might I propose that we take a 15-minute recess while Mr sabba Hulu uh sends out the document which would give us time to I just Shar it with all so could I I make a motion that we take a 15minute recess um so that we may review that contract before we vote on the finance and Facilities motions second all in favor say I I any oppos are

146we taking I'm sorry before we take that break any comments usually before we go ahead so is there any idea of uh this 30,000 being comparable to something or is it just traff I know we had a I don't know how many many years ago but there were I believe there was some traffic study done for something else is this like a reasonable or no we never had that I'm not just by the way it's it's it's listed as a not to ex sorry it's listed as a not to exceed right uh the the study itself the actual study itself um and you'll see that when you look at the form I don't have it in front of me right a second but it's only the study itself only I realized it's significant amounts but

147the study itself I think is 16 or 17,000 but they also put into their proposal if they need to testify at the Z before the zoning board if they need to produce additional documents and there are certain other items in listed in the proposal as like allowances so so we listed it tonight as a not to exceed $30,000 but I don't want to give the impression that it that we're talking about that it necessarily will be actually $30,000 could you tell us the name of the document and where it is I don't see it under Finance or direct email I just emailed all water education okay let me let's refresh I keep I'm not I don't have it either I don't have it either nope I know we've been having network issues so being patient

148try again please refresh refresh it takes a little bit would it be faster if it was put into the Google drive under finance and then we could all go in there and look at it probably I think that's what he's trying to do that okay so um our 15minute recess has officially begun and so while we figure that out I'm going to use the restroom yes and just let us know the title so we can look for it easily please thank you definitely good good I'm sorry I keep forgetting that that's a part of the process so everyone's had an opportunity to review yes okay so we are back in session at PM um the original motion on the table was by Mr Miller with a second by Miss Gales to pass the items on

149finance and Facilities including the addition of items 32 and 33 um and we took a break to read um the supporting documents for item 32 okay is there any more discussion Dr s um I do have a question one of the items that is not included uh it says not considered within this contract proposal is a community impact statement and I was wondering what that that sounds like something we might want right what is is that included in some other format but it sounds like we that's the whole whole point of this is to find out the impact on our community is there anyone who can speak to that no I'm not TR I mean they they know that they would be expected to prepare a report based on the traffic study to address the

150concerns and issues raised by the board and community that were conveyed to them and that they may need to testify before the planning board uh with respect to approval of uh a potential lease going forward so I you know I think in a sense everything they're doing is related to community impact I'm not specifically sure what the term of art means as far as Community impact statement that may be a a separate document that they would you know that they would prepare uh certainly sounds like something if that we we could discuss with them and if we're interested we could you know ask them to prepare that I expect that there might be a separate charge for that Miss Gales um so it's from what I'm reading it's 177,000 right to yes to do uh

151the actual traffic study and Engineering Services and then there is uh additional services that are not um I'm I'm assuming allowing is uh per you know up to that amount right which I think is like like 12,000 more um so and and I I'm assuming they're not here so they can't answer specific questions um and so I think that that's that that worries me a little bit that we're signing and agreeing for a contract that yes I know it's not 30,000 um flat fee it's up to um but it it's still significant um I also think that the community has spoken to us or I've heard the community speak to us in regards to the importance of this traffic study as a complete um oversight and and and ruling dotting all our eyes and and

152and crossing our tees when when it comes to spending money for new space so I I think it's important for us to also think about that when we are approving or disapproving um or not voting this um third who who is Stonefield how do we reach these people right how did we reach for them um did we is there any other um offer right how come it's only one and not two proposals or three so um you know it feels rushed um so I just want to make sure that we have you know can we find someone that's cheaper or that does the gives us a community impact study and doesn't charge us more so can anyone speak to that uh well several things uh first of all they uh it is a professional Service

153uh so that's why it's it's done this way secondly they have they were recommended to the board uh particularly because they have prior experience in do with respect to uh other projects and appearances before the local authorities in Dober so I think that that's one of the reasons that um you know that they were specifically recommended as a as a group that has worked in Dober before so that means we only went with one option sorry right we don't have anyone else correct Miss Phillips so from my perspective this proposal is missing some significant things first there's no deliverable timeline on here so it doesn't say when they have to deliver the report to us so you know I guess because of my job I'm jaded you know if we sign this and we say

154yes go ahead and now it's March and they still haven't provided it they're not really in breach of anything and we also don't have a termination right so it it's to me it's not written well I I wouldn't I if I would if I got this at work I would not recommend signing this the way that it's written um and also just my opinion under document revisions if we ask them for a revision then I think yes that's one thing that we should pay for but if if they prepare you know a report or something and and a jurisdictional agency asks them to revise it because it's because they have to revise think we should pay for that but that's just my personal opinion and that's an allowance I'm not I'm not a fan of

155this whole document as it's written as it's presented right now the indication from the regard regarding the last Point that's probably something we could address uh in terms of uh if that were to become an issue uh regarding your first point I I you know they what they've basically said was they're ready to go like this week in in order to have a report to us around the end of November nber which is um you know coming up in the next couple of weeks especially considering that that Halloween is Halloween Thanksgiving thank you Thanksgiving that Thanksgiving is coming so uh so the the clearly I think the intent is for them to get out there right away and start doing the studies um in fact uh they requested that I let them know tonight whether

156it was approved so that they could begin uh scheduling the uh the traffic studies and and start the process uh I suppose we could amend the resolution to to indicate that you know it's you know contingent on there Pro providing a report by I I I don't know that I would hold them they they said around the end of November so I don't know that I'd hold them to November 30th uh but we could maybe amend it to say it's you know we have a board meeting on December 19th maybe we could say that it's contingent on them providing a report To Us by December 10th or something like that um that's the only thing I could think of again and the only reason I'm saying this obviously normally we could go back and this

157would have come on as a regular agenda we could have maybe you know talked to them about the proposal before you know there just isn't there just wasn't time and uh you know again the whole point of this is to try to address the concerns of the board and the public in a timely fashion so that we can hopefully act on this because the um you know the whole thing is if if the board ultimately decides to go forward with it is time sensitive in multiple ways there's multiple RS ways with respect to doing a potential lease with respect to town approvals with respect you know there there there are multiple levels of Timeless concerns that's all I I understand that I guess I I just personally and it's you know from my job and

158I'm sure you understand like I'm just hesitant when everything is not clearly spelled out in whatever the Contracting document is um and that's that's just my concern Miss ASO then miss G um another thing that I want to point out there's really no address on this contract either it's North susic Street and West Blackwell Street there should be a number there um and just to make it clear that is not a Newberry building that's not the name of that building newberries doesn't exist anymore just for the record that's it I I think we've just been referring it to informally I don't think we intent to yeah but it doesn't exist it's not the newberries building no I I understand the building exists but the it's not Newber does exist right I understand um I was

159wondering if it helped us in any way um I'm I'm for adding the amendment amending the original um and adding a report is needed by our next board meeting right or December 10th I think that that would be important and I'm wondering if also it would help us as a board to look at that second chap um paragraph uh the second to last line that says the proposal will be valid for 90 days from the date of this um proposal so I I know 90 days is not before our um next board meeting uh but it may I feel like if it pass 90 days in have it given us the report this uh contract is no longer right valid I I I think the point of that language for them and by the way

160I'm going to try to reach the uh the gentleman from the company if see I think he has his mobile number somewhere in here I'm going to try to reach him to see if if they're okay with the December 10th date uh but I think the point of that language is their proposal is valid for 90 days in other words if we were to if if we were not to decide till six months ago okay we want to hire you um then they're they they're saying they're proposal May no longer be valid they might have to redo it maybe their rates would go up or whatever I think that's the intent of that line yeah that's I would that's how that's how I would interpret it to is if you don't sign it within 90

161days they could give you a different Proposal with a different price so it doesn't serve our purpose Dr s um can I ask for clarification Dr mlin our Architects are here um I hear what everyone's saying um for me I have all of your same frustrations with the the way this contract came about getting to look at it now the things that it's missing um personally I am my one of the big items for me in terms of making the decision yes or no on um leas ing the Newberry building space is whether or not that will be available to start with our do students in there in September 2024 because if the answer is no we can't start in September 2024 it would be October or November then that is that is a a

162game Cher for me because then that right the whole point of this is to move students out of do high school to create space for new programs and if we can't move the students out in September we can't start new programs in September so that that just for me that I don't want to say it's a deal breaker but it's it's it's a really big red flag and so could I ask for um an assessment of right if we do not approve this contract tonight and then we postpone it till December 19th that puts the the survey or the the traffic study being done over Christmas New Year's that that pushes this decision the decision for the then the Newberry building at the earliest could be the January meeting where does that put us on

163our timeline what are the potential impacts of that so that's that's off our timeline so the we originally had had uh discussed this meeting being the meeting that we would make a decision about potential lease of that building uh because there were questions that were raised when we discussed The Proposal uh at both the original meeting and then the follow-up meeting that we had to that including the traffic study we did have a discussion with uh the with the owner of the building and with our Architects and said if we made a decision in December would we still be on track and they indicated that we would be on track but I think I can safely say and uh certainly our architect are here and John who are part of that discussion that if the

164decision for a traffic study is made in December which a decision would then which would then feed a decision in January we would definitely be off our timeline would you agree would you agree yes yes sir and and then a follow-up question is I can imagine a scenario where we get the traffic study back in before the December meeting and then we have additional questions perhaps we ask the administration the traffic study says this will happen what are you going to do about it and you may not be able to answer that at the December meeting again that may trickle into January so as it stands right now um I def I personally understand the frustrations I would 100% support an amendment to this contract that addresses the um deliverable date um but I and

165this is very important to our community as it should be so at this point I am very much in favor of getting this ball rolling so that we can make the very best decision regarding the Newberry building um sorry I want to say that um I am in no rush to make a decision I am not um beholden to developers or landlords I'm beholden to the students I'm beholden to the community um I'm beholden to be being fiscally responsible so I'm in no rush um although I understand why we want to push this along um and Miss Gales you brought up a great point you said that um the community wants us right has been asking for us to do our Dil due diligence and um complete a traffic study among other things but we

166were all at the same meeting where they also said they don't want this they don't want us to do this so I'm torn Mr roess um yeah I think uh I share the sentiments that have been shared already I I just want to add that in order to consider this building there is no other way but to do the traffic study so either we decide now or we decide later but we're going to have to do a traffic study no matter what now if we want to discuss and we think that we can come up with some other alternative cheaper or not um that's probably debatable um so just because of the price range of what it is I mean I just probably not reliable anyway but just Google traffic studies online and it's they're

167in the same price range so that's not anything out of the Ord AR that I'm finding online but um I think you know it says in the second item in the second page conclusions and recommendations so I would expect that there will be some kind of bottomline decision from them as to whether it would recommend this would be a feasible solution based on the traffic impact of all of this investigation that they're going to do that's what I would expect from that from what I'm reading in there um um and I think if if we're concerned about and and rightly so we should be concerned about whether we're going to be ready then the answer to me is very evident that we're not if we're not confident in this um proposal as an option to

168get the traffic study done sooner than later um and then we should just be up front and say we're not ready for this and say that I feel like based on this proposal I'm comfortable enough to secure their services understanding that you know they understand that they have a deadline to meet with us if we're going to do it by December for our December meeting um and if they don't complete it by then then I think that Clause that says we're out of it you know it's we don't have to pay for what we don't get by the deadline that we expect then I think that's reasonable enough to expect that from them um otherwise I think this whole effort to use this facility for the needs that we we have now it's not going

169to be what we need it's not going to be the option that we need right now miss Mendes Dr s then miss um two points um first of all if we are talking about due diligence and being fiscally responsible in terms of a direct impact on students this has a potential far bigger impact on 200 students than board docs so if money is an issue let's go with this because this is a potential significant impact on 200 plus we could argue the entire 1100 is student body of Dober High School secondly um Miss Mendes you mentioned that the community didn't want it they one of the reasons they didn't want it was the idea that an easier or better solution was the Joe cubert school so can we address that as an option we we

170are going to address that under old business could we address it now because it's relevant to this discussion um sure um M Mr Miller thank you I'm sorry I appreciate it's okay it's hard to keep track I I wanted to push forward a Amendment of the motion um if we're ready to to at that time and and present that date so I don't know if you have something different I just wanted is that affected the date on the traffic study yeah I I just spoke with the uh the consultant and he advised that he uh he could actually make it uh he'd be comfortable with December 7th as I hopefully get it even sooner than that but he would be comfortable with a a limit of December 7th uh he also indicated that the community

171impact statement is a term of art related to a land use planning document that is produced by their planning department and is separate and apart from the traffic study and isn't really um it's so it's an exclusion it's he said that's kind of boilerplate language those exclusions uh and that's not something that's really uh normally part of a traffic study um in fact he said he wasn't even sure what would you know I said well what if we wanted to do a community and he said that's a that's a separate planning thing that he's not even as a traffic consultant isn't really familiar with they'd have to talk to one of the other departments in their in their company so he said that that's not um they're going to do a study that shows what

172the traffic impacts would be and that that was what he was able to share with me Mr Miller yes so we know that the only way we can make decision is if we have the traffic study so if we don't vote first then that means we're not going forward um but our Administration and the principal presented a a number of options that could be used for you know that facility and I see there's great potential uh perhaps you know for our students to use that um but I do remember there was something mentioned about uh a night program and I just want to clarify if there was enough students to participate in that night program that would alleviate probably the same number of students that we're trying to put into this lease is that a

173possibility for us to do that without Leasing Property uh I I would say that although we talked about the concept of a of a split session I would be extremely reluctant to ever recommend that I think that'd be absolutely a last resort uh many students especially second session students even if we were able to negotiate with our teachers union find teachers who wanted to work a second shift but I I feel that second shift students are marginalized they don't have the opportunities for extracurricular activities they're in a different kind of setting um I I if we were absolutely desperate and that was our only way out of it I you know that might be something to consider but I I don't think it should be a viable option competing with any kind of space that

174we have you know uh available to us so if we decide to go forward this investment is limited to whatever the leaste term is for that amount of time so it's not forever so there other options could come up uh later on and in Sim miss m and similar in that vein I think that Joe Cooper conversation should be a conversation apart from this I don't I don't think that that is we can still pass this or we can still do this and also have the Joe Cooper as an option if that's viable right under our old business so I would like to present the motion to um amend the motion um to include a report by December 7th um in this contract second we have a motion and a second motion by Miss Gales

175second by Dr Ser is there you could just do a Voice vote on that Amendment all in favor say I I any opposed okay so now is there any further discussion before we take a vote um can I get a clarification on what the I'm sorry the amendment what are exactly are we doing I um request we just passed um so that we will include the report from the traffic study is due to us by December 7th okay thank you okay I believe the original motion made by I'm Sorry Miss PHS I'm sorry go ahead don't be sorry so I guess my question is what if we don't have it by the 7th then what like we don't pay you have no remedy you have no if they say byon sorry we don't have it

176you don't have a remedy or you're just kind of there floating waiting for them to get we're going to say our approval of the contract is conditioned upon them that's the way I think we phrase it conditioned upon them providing us through the report by December 7th okay we don't have to pay them oh okay but you still wouldn't have the report okay I get it okay so it sorry Robert it looks like on the second paragraph it says um Services invoices for Professional Services provided and expenses incurred will be submitted on a monthly basis beginning on the month following the execution and return of the contract so if we sign this or if we approve this today and whatever work they invoices is for If by the 7th they haven't delivered we're not expected

177to pay because they haven't delivered by that date any of those invoices should be paid after the board meeting anyway anyway so if you don't have the report that it's not going to be on the biz list yep thank you any other discussion okay the original motion was made by Mr Miller and seconded by Miss Gales that was the finance and Facilities motion I got that right correct okay um and it's been amended item number 302 has been amended um do we all understand what we're about to vote on everything under finance and Facilities including the amendment to item 32 MH okay um so Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote please M ESO yes to all except for number 32 Miss STS yes Miss Gales yes to all M especially 32 and

17833 Mr Miller yes Miss nothing yes Miss Phillips okay so I'm going to say yes to everything except number 32 and also I need to abstain from any payments to vendor number hold on I just lost it what is it vendor number 1950 1950 19 uh yeah 1950 Interstate waste all right I need to abstain to that Mr oblas yes Dr sener yes Miss mandz No On 32 yes to everything else so Mo motion passes motion passes great we are some informational items um upcoming Board of Education meetings December 19th 2023 and then our annual reorganization meeting on January 2nd of 2024 um Dr Ser did you want to tell us a little bit about the training opportunities no none of these I I can but none of these are new these are all there

179are no new opportunities from last month thank you and then there are a number of um use of facilities on the agenda including I think there's some on the hand carry as well um yep Miss Mendes may I ask a question about the optal optical acad is this sponsored by the DEA I think it is Mr kigo I'm sorry to it is yes okay um I just want to highlight to the community that Optical Academy and maybe Mr um Coniglio will speak more to this but provides a cost effective option for uh glasses and it's I guess it's kind of a tradition now that the DEA sponsors this and it's a um a really welcome uh service to our community so thank you did you want to say something M Rob yeah I don't look

180really any smarter but these were from one of those so thank you oh God that was okay um we are moving along to Old business um continuation of a discussion of our space needs as a board we continue to explore options to address our space needs in some cases uh due to community input we have explored the same option multiple times there is an option that continues to come up for the sake of transparency and moving on it is important to share why the murder lab option is not viable for us at this time um and I think it's important to highlight that our previous and current um architect architect firms um do not recommend this option um so with that I invite um our Architects to the podium um to talk a little bit

181about this option good evening everyone good evening Michael Bryson to my left and I'm Pete campano for the Republic from USA Architects and uh get some things settled here okay so chair are we ready very good um we're here T tonight to talk about uh two facilities uh We've looked at both um in respect to providing uh access to the Dober board of education for your students high school students that's what we were charged to um to look at um but I want to maybe have a preamble first uh the first thing I'd like to say is that as a firm we don't have a dog in this fight it's not up to us we see as our ourselves as looking at the code analyzing the code and providing you the information you need to

182make an informed policy decision it is your decision to make um I don't prefer one over the other I will tell you based on the code certain aspects that one may be superior to the other I can say that um however that does not disparage either place or either property from being valuable in its own right we're talking specifically about the value of that property to you specifically as the board of education so if I say one is better than the other one is preferred over the other or one is superior for whatever reason that does not disparage certainly the other the other property uh we've had great meetings uh Mr cruit and I um I think once possibly with Dr mclin uh with both uh developers they were both eager willing uh kind to

183us to show us both facilities they tried to work with us and um to a degree the the Myrtle a project really couldn't get over the few months ago there were some um discussions about it we raised some concerns with the code and they thought it better at that time to basically lay it on the table and not really pursue it I think that was August September um those items that I raised I will go over tonight and we'll talk about both back and forth if I say something um and you don't understand it just stop me sometimes I'll get into code speaker into the weeds stop me Pete what does this mean what does that mean and we can we can have a a talk about it at the end my goal is that

184you understand both properties what they are um how they're valued how the the the building code sees them uh the building code the state of New Jersey wants us to take older facilities and readapt them to new possible uses um but those uses must be consistent with today's codes and I'll start there so both buildings any building is basically governed under two things one how it's built or what it's built of and what is that use and based on those two certain hazards would exist right a a a factory is a greater Hazard than maybe uh uh a grocery store or or something of that nature uh certainly a home um buildings built out of wood um are certainly subject to more damage than something built out of concrete and steel examples based on that

185and based on um the classifications of East Building and their use you have to apply then the code so we first start with the use of the facility um ironically the the Newberry building is now known I believe um the developer calls it the Richard building aka the Newberry building it's back and forth we've called it the Newberry building we've called it seven Sussex we should get to a defining name to it I I would agree with that um that use or its former use or its current use is actually mixed use it's mertile business um on the first floor and the upper floors uh is a ironically a beuse now you would think b b is business and most businesses are B uses why would a college a former College be a beuse and

186that's similar also to myle La which is also classified as a beuse because the cubert school is for students more than six above the 12th grade an euse facility all of your schools are schools that house a certain amount of children I think it's over 6 8 12 students from pre kindergarten to the 12th grade so an euse is K to 12 your schools are euse colleges cubert School uh the former Newberry College is a b use so what does that mean that means if it's an existing beuse and you now want to use it as a school which is an euse you now need to apply to the building department and what's called a change in use and a change in use is basically a report an analysis and and uh agreements that you

187will do that specifically relate to the code to the billing code so it goes on to say that every time you change the use of of a a facility from B to e you need to look at the code njac uh 631 I believe uh 5 23 631 which is a long drawn out code and it goes systematically on conditions that you have to meet so just for examples we'll talk about one then we'll talk about the other so the age of the facility really doesn't matter with the changing use but both facilities are old they're more than 100 years old um both facilities as I said are B use facilities they're three stories um a change in use is needed for both facilities to go from a b to an e um to a

188lesser extent um off street parking is provided at Myrle La approximately 40 cars 40 stalls uh parking at Newberry will be negotiated but the developer says he does have parking um nearby I don't know really what that means we didn't look too much at the the surrounding sites your traffic engineer will discuss that with you H our before hopefully December 7th um one of the biggest things and one of the biggest differences and one of the most important items is the fact that the Newberry building uh um Sussex is a fully sprinklered building and the Myrtle Avenue building is not the fact that it's not brings in strict limitations and almost limitations to the point that sprinklers need to be installed at Myrtle La in order to convert it back to a school now you

189would think it's a beautiful building it looks nice from the outside it's basement two stories it was a school for how many years sold kind of stady like a school why can't we just move back into it as a school you cannot you cannot without the change in use and the fact that sprinklers are required in educational facilities over 12,000 ft I believe each floor is slightly greater than 12,000 sare ft um in addition to that if it's not sprinklered I mean theoretically you can lease a cubert school but you would have to Lease Only the first floor because you're not allowed in the upper floors if the building is not sprinkled if it's not sprinkled you cannot have an exit higher than the level of exit discharge which basically means the ground level so

190you would only need have without sprinklers the ability to rent or lease just just the first floor the other um significant or another significant point is the ventilation um older school buildings in fact do high school the former Dober High School murle La had Steam Heat radiators and if you wanted fresh air you would open the exterior window and there were actually windows on the corridor side that you would open and you would get cross ventilation and that was very common from the 1880s through maybe the 1940s um with the Advent then more of air conditioning schools gravitated to that but now the code requires that all classrooms have mechanical ventilation fresh air ventilation which bless I'm trying to look around but what does that mean that means we mechanically bring in fresh air during

191the occupied cycle it will be continuous air changes per hour not only Heating and Cooling of that but actually fresh air on a continuous basis mle lab doesn't have that um and that would also be uh a requirement um another point would be the American with Disabilities Act uh signning the law by President Bush number one uh back in 1990 now almost what 30 some years old uh the the the the the Newberry building I'm going to call it the Newberry building is ADA Compliant um the bathrooms most importantly were recently renovated unfortunately the Myrtle a toilet rooms or of an old style they don't meet the American with Disabilities Act you would have to renovate all the bathrooms there's issues with it there's sight issues when you open the door you can see right

192down throughout the the the toilet room and you would need to have significant upgrades to to all the toilet facilities um the stair Tower we talked about last time at Newberry um and we frowned upon the fire escape that developer um is moving forward with plans with another architect to create a second stair Tower fully accessible um there are concerns I have concerns about the stair Towers at Myrtle La uh um their size number one and the egress capacity of them um I I I could explain it but if if I was on the second floor and people were coming down the third floor as they were coming down the stairs when I opened the doors there's not sufficient room based on today's code where we may have a conflict with with each other in

193terms of fire ratings I think both facilities are okay both facilities have fire alarms uh the roof at at Newberry appears to be in good shape the roof at Myrtle AB is in very poor condition and requires replacement um to a lesser extent the hardware you know we've got panic bars we've got lever Hardware that is all required Newberry has it uh for the most part Myrtle AV has knobs all the hardware would be replaced and um while neither has a gym and we know that um there is a cafeteria on the third floor at Newberry there is not a cafeteria per se at Myrtle but there is a larger albeit smaller than the cafeteria at Newberry there is a larger they call it a large classroom that could possibly function as a cafeteria for

194maybe 40 or 50 students they kind of use that um today we believe the capacity at Newberry is is roughly around 200 but again capacity as we talked about could be a moving Target depending on on the the the students you put in there um and and how many students per room um the capacity at Um Myrtle will probably be closer to about 3 350 if it's fully used but when we talked with the developer and we rais not really our concerns but we talked about the code Mr crout and I talked about the code and the fact that hey guys we we can't move into this facility without sprinklers we cannot move into this facility without fresh air and ventilation um we have concerns with the Americans with Disabilities Act we have concerns with

195the toilet facilities we would need to find a way to do that um you know the conversation was well you know would the overboard of Ed pay for it and the lease will be less or would and we went back and forth very briefly and they wrote us a nice letter the the following day and they said you know what maybe you guys should look at another Direction that's kind of where it was was was left there um if you want to re explore it we can but I think the costs at murder would be significantly more um to put an entire sprinkler system into that facility to put ventilation into that facility to put a new roof new toilets you you're really um doing major major work as opposed to the Newberry site where

196um there is existing mechanical ventilation the roof is fine toilets are fine I don't want to say it's in move in condition right we are are going to move or you you've recommended or asked if we can move some non-bearing walls we can do that um you certainly need to um do other things outside of any minor construction work one of which you've talked about um the traffic study if I can offer any assistance I can but it sounds like you've got it covered um following the traffic study um I would hope that by the 7th if you get it by the 7th we ask questions between the 7th and the 19th then they answer things by the 19th and then you can really move forward on the 19th because you still have to go

197before the planning board and um when Mr crout and I met um briefly about the signs um the the the topic did come up and uh they did recommend that company um that they've they've been at the do planning board before they've come highly recommend it to the point where um it felt obvious that that they were a highly recommended professional um company so I guess that brings me to the end I'm going to open it up to questions but I hope I provideed you with just an a broad overview of where you are um you're still nervous about can we open by September if we still keep moving the ball you still need planning board approval as I said and you also need the Department of Education approval out of your hands out of

198my hands um and that that's an unknown in and of itself so while we're still on track if we move off it's not not a good thing Miss Mes thank you so much for that um information um Miss Gales just quick clarification um you were saying that in the new berry building the hardware is fine to code the the the hardware is lever Hardware there are some Noms okay um that are being replaced but it is C- compliant it is lever Hardware where our observations at the Myrtle La School were mostly knobs okay um the capacity at Myrtle you said it was 300 or 350 did I hear you correctly the the the my gestate and uh and it it is a gestate um we're looking at approximately two classrooms first floor maybe six classrooms

199second floor possibly nine on the third floor so maybe 15 six 17 classrooms in total right 24 students in a classroom that's not accounting for special needs that's not accounting for breakout resource um but then if you take a a factor of 85% you might get in the 3 350 range just as a general rule of thumb from the Department of Ed of what they use in a generic term for for capacity and last you said the Newberry has no gym and no cafeteria and you made a comment about it but I missed it okay so neither facility has a gym per se uh the Newberry facility does have a cafeteria they've used it as a cafeteria the College cafeteria um the Myrtle La does not but they do have a large group room that

200I assume they would use as their quote unquote lunch area thank you any other comments or questions could I add one piece that I think is important uh from a at least from an administrative planning point of view uh in regard to Myrtle Avenue uh versus uh I'm just going to call it Newberry for now until we have another name for it um it originally we budgeted to rentals because our Hope was not just to alleviate the space problem at the high school but to also make a dent in the problem at the elementary school which is actually even much more significant than the high school overpopulation and whether it was Myrtle or some we we looked at two other properties as well uh to see if if that could help with our elementary situation

201so I don't want to I think it's important not just to frame this as that we're making de we're making a decision between these two properties at one point we were hoping we would be able to do both MH thank you for that um clarification so when do we have to see the planning board once it's approved is that what we have to do no let's take a step back I'm gonna I'm going to work with Mr crude on this one so so not item one would be a traffic study because I am fairly confident with the building okay and and understanding the building and the needs of the building I think if this venture has any weakness or unknown it's the surrounding area and the traffic I think that's where everybody is with their

202concerns I and I just feel that as a board that's a that's a major concern if they could put together a report for you by the 7th of December okay if you could read that that report if I could read that report and we can gather again or or give them questions before that the 19th and they can get back to us and we can have a a a a good discussion on the 19th to a point where we're we're in agreement we could then start to negotiate or what John if you can I don't know where you're at with that no I I would say that we would be negotiating uh we we've are we B essentially are already negotiating okay uh so the the plan I think would be to uh to have

203a a a proposed lease for approval on the 19th um assuming there's a traffic study and other issues or questions that have been asked can be addressed that night and so that would be the night for the board to to review the item again and hopefully approve the lease and then once there's an approved lease we would then work together to make the application to the planning board if there is an approved lease that night part of the resolution should state that the business administrator board attorney and architect as needed provide the resources or the applications necessary to apply for the Department of Education approval planning board Etc we can then petition the planning board for an audience we could prepare the uh application including the the the plans working with the administration uh of

204the the floor plans the furniture plans the room plans what each classroom would be and submit that to the Department of Education for educational approval and then hopefully late spring summer we should we should hear back with an approval okay thank you any other comments or questions from the board have uh Mr Rob yeah I I believe in some of the conversations were having earlier there was concerns about some of the spacing in the Joe cubert School in terms of like ceiling Heights or even the room sizes comparable to to the other facility is there no difference in that area I know we we even I if I don't recall correctly but like it would require like even demolishing we I at one point I overheard the entire building and just starting from scratch rather

205than really fixing it all is that not the case or am I that's a great question that's a tough one to answer um okay building the height to height what do you think what what you say were they were he Michael is saying they they were comparable in terms of height okay our our concerns in terms of space were more with the Americans with Disabilities Act with openings uh required openings and and and um uh with and turning radiuses and and those things more than I think vertical vertical height Pete in regard to the uh bottom floor rooms if I recall correctly a number of the rooms yes do are not flush with the floor correct so um as is very common in first floor schools built before the 1920s and I don't know why

206this is but you know a lot of classrooms have step UPS in into the classrooms um we would have to figure out a way to make that accessible either either chopping out 10t of slab and and and putting it a ramp into that classroom or figuring something out to to make it work yes Miss G um I I was curious if Mr robes and and was speaking about and maybe that's what m Lin can talk about I think we talked about CL classroom space in reference to ages that can be in those classrooms um like if it's a smaller classroom then it could fit a certain grade and if it's a bigger classroom um it need is that something that I believe we spoke about and was a concern about Myrtle that we couldn't um

207have certain grades in there because of the space of the classrooms am I remembering that correctly the classrooms at myle were what six something where they well let give me a second here give me second were they seven yeah we don't we were also talking about like what which grade would be conducive for that building for Myrtle I think that's kind of that conversation so um again a very broad stroke measure is that preschool and kindergarten should be and I use the word should because it's a guide that the department is put out 900 square ft plus 50 square ft for for a toilet room um first second and third third grades I believe are 850 uh fourth and fifth 800 6 through 8 750 and high school could be 750 to 7 so as

208as you go up in in grade ironically you know the bigger the students get the smaller the room but it's it's um you know the activities in first and second grade versus um you know the 1970s math class because this is when these codes were developed and really haven't changed much since the 70s and 80s in terms of square foot areas per student by the department so the cuber school is about 700 be a little small um for primary school children um some of the rooms at Newberry are seven but we intaking down walls are actually creating 900 foot spaces uh to give you more flexibility in room thank you you're welcome are there any other comments or questions from the board see thank you so much we appreciate you thank you for trooping it

209out and staying the end just for that good um where uh is there any new business no seeing no new business we are moving along to public comment the board recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters to ensure fair and orderly expression of such comment each statement shall be held to a time period of 3 minutes public comments not restricted to items on this agenda shall be entertained for approximately 30 minutes upon the discretion of the presiding officer for those who wish to provide public comment remotely a Google form was posted on the district website at 6:30 p.m. remote comments will be read by a member of the Board of Education the Board of Education will alternate between

210inperson and online comments please understand that public comment portions of our agenda are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board the board may or may not respond to public comments however all comments are considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when providing comments comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please understand that students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to comments about students or employees please be advised that you are commenting at your own risk any public comments that are directed at a particular individual or individuals could subject you to Legal liability for defamation with that

211public comment is now open is there any member of the public in person wishing to speak hi 326 Washington Avenue Angela Ramos Gama and uh I first of all I want to say thank you so much Mrs Mendes uh because I hear before in the beginning of the uh the meeting you were talking about the headphones so hopefully they will uh we will see them soon in here so under permission of the lady who was here before in the uh before commenting about her case on special education just I want to be sure you understand because she was speaking Spanish so and pretty sure the ones you were speaking Spanish you hear she say some words they were not translated right so she didn't say allegations she say different words and maybe when you hear

212uh the translation in Spanish you can considerate her statement uh her statement has been uh really hurtful to know and personally I cannot comment because he I've been talking with some parents of through all this years but just I want to be sure uh you address the word wasn't uh violation the word he she say was raped so just I would like you Rec uh you when you can see the meeting again uh readdress what her translation was please and that will be great you get the translation uh when somebody speaking Spanish translate uh on the time the person is speaking so that way we'll be know any issues with the different words or different meanings what the people is trying to Express it's really hard for a parent who has special educa I mean

213it's really hard for a parent whatever is in a special education or know when is suffering in uh suffering bullying so as you will know our district uh Target mostly is special education and transgender uh K childrens and whatever things different uh another another students so I would really like to um appreciate all of you to get more involved about special education as you well know I'm been trying so hard to work with some parents and advocate for them when they are when they don't feel like secure to be here standing up and speaking for themselves or speaking about their childrens so as I be as well you know I've been trying so hard with the school district working with the uh director of special services with the parent advisory group uh sadly uh some

214of the parents feel we are not support enough so I would like you invite um I don't know how to address this uh just want to make sure I'm saying it right you as a board members um each of you um maybe get more involved about special education it's different word when you are in a special education a general education as well you know uh so many things we as a parent of special education we had to learn cross and some parents doesn't know the the meanings of so many words or the system or the education I was uh with Mrs Ming no I'm sorry Mrs nudy uh Mrs nudy attendant to the um I will say open house of the child study team with the director of special services she's trying to do her

215best and I recognize it um and some of the comments from the case managers we have is they will feel more supported the parents get educate but in order for the parents get educate you District you Board of Education need to find the way or need to invite the parents to get educate about um about their rights and the way they the system works for them so that way they can know how evaluations Works how the evaluations has to be on time for them how many how is the the procedure I'm I'm I'm not saying right the word but is um some some parents think an i is a program and that's not a program as well we know excuse me may your time is up so please try to finish up I'm talking so

216fast okay I we'll talk as fast as I can so I just I want to be you assured you are addressing that because I mean since um sorry poter Mrs mcllin but six years ago since you're being hided uh one of the first goals well one of the eight goals you set up was special educations from those eight goals were being seen just three of them kind of complete them so and me as a parent I would like to see uh better I know you are trying to do your best and I really appreciate it I mean for years ago and now it's a big difference in some in some ways at least we have a website where we can see all the information now 11 years ago we didn't have no open open communication

217with the district now we do but just I would like you invite you invite you all of you all of you and each of you take more um take more vision and more mission of the part of the do school district in a special education okay thank you sorry of passing the minutes thank you do we have any um yes Phil uh one comment from Susan shower 3 346 West Clinton Street in Dover the D the DHS building was previously used for adult evening classes and it was an option mentioned by the superintendent last year what has changed that this is no longer an option it would seem every other issue for Newberry would be G would be gone at DHS also the bo the Board of Education had invested in the headsets for translation

218several years ago and used them during meetings where are they now that's it is there any member of the public in person wishing to speak good evening Mary sa to 17 Baker Street um I just have to um continue commenting and requesting from the district communication to our Hispanic Spanish Community um you're making all this decision the architect mentioned it is your decision to make make I just need to add to that that you are making the decision on behalf of the students the parents and the community on behalf of everybody of all the taxpayers I asked at the last meeting to please don't rush through these decisions yes we want the next school year to start off right Dr sner mentioned you know we're back you know two months in after the school year

219moving students around and so on we want to start with the right you know at the beginning of the school year but you know there are deadlines to me with contracts with presenting it to the administration um I I I understand the board is not politically involved there's recent elections uh there's new Administration coming into town we have two new board members that are going to have to step up into this halfway decision hopefully they're being educated at the moment and knowing what's going on um some of them are parents in the district like I said the parents need to be informed and you're not informing the community of these decisions that you're making if it's not out there the presentation of the Newberry it's not out there we have to go back and find

220the meetings and they're not being promoted they are currently on social media not run by the District Two videos out there that are taken from our meetings from D from public comments that are being translated these communications are going out there to the public from their own words from their own perspectives can we communicate coming from the district the communication needs to come from you translated by you we have a translator translation services not by others the others are informing the community what they want to inform let's inform everything and another the other option of the night school Dr MLF mentioned how these students you know will be lacking in their after school activities the whole presentation of the Newberry talked about Fernando the way that Fernando's background comes at I'm not sure those particular

221students will you know come into you know the opportunity having the extracurricular activities it was presented that he takes care of two younger siblings that they work 247 I mean it was presented that a current student in the past school year had an overnight job and an after school job so I mean hasn't even been considered of how many students students will be interested in following that route and the parents input I mean you have to take that into consideration um and as far as the capacity of the Newberry uh I mean we keep hearing these numbers 200 is it 200 students is it 200 the capacity by you know the certificate of occupancy uh we have to remember that we have to add staff members into the building um in order to have it

222up and running and um we're talking now about taking down walls at the Newberry building which is how we we're referring to it um there was the the option of adding a staircase the current uh presentation from the architect mentioned that the owner of the building is already pursuing that so that means it's not going to be a cost to the district to add that whole new staircase yes or no I mean you have access to those contracts but I asked for your review on our behalf obviously like I said you're making the decision for everybody excuse me ma' you're oh thank you good night thank you um do we have any more virtual comments no is there any member of the public in person wishing to speak after on Mr K all right good

223evening John Coniglio 24 Taylor Town Road monville and here we go um so um I I may not be at the December meeting so I would just want to say this uh now while here and uh thank you very very much to Mr roblas thank you sir for all of your years on the board and all your dedication to our students and to our staff and to our community and Mrs gonalez as well thank you very much very very much both of you for all of your uh volunteer time we know it's a lot I I always um support you know the efforts of the board because I know it's all volunteer and you guys are doing this for the community you're doing it for the staff you're doing it for the kids so uh

224we really do appreciate your time and your efforts and I know you have one meeting left but I might not be at that one so I wanted to make sure that my comments were here and I told you in person instead of on a computer so thank you both very very much um in addition to that thank you to all of the candidates who ran this year it's a very very um courageous thing to do and it's very hard to do and I applaud everybody that ran this year um your your names in town on signs and and on Facebook and social media and making videos and putting signs up and and that's really courageous and and I applaud you for that and I hope that you run again if you didn't make it this

225time because that's how we learn we learn from our disappointments and our failures and um I hope that we continue to have people invested in do in our education system and that you do come back and you run again the next time um and Dr sner congratulations to you on your uh reappointment to the board and thank you for everything that you do for our staff and our students in do and Community thank you um the next topic that I wanted to address tonight was the discussion earlier about the hibs that are on the agenda and it seems to come up every once in a while where we have a list like this and I know I've said it before but I'm going to say it again we need to allow our Administration to do

226their due diligence and do their job with these hibs and I know as an educator myself as parents as a community we don't want to see any hivs on here in a perfect world there would be no hivs on here um but that's not reality sometimes things happen and we need to address them and we need to investigate them so we don't want to put our Administration in a place where they feel intimidated not to put something on this list because they feel they're going to be yelled at by the community or by the board we have to allow them to do their job and if the situation is unconfirmed that's great if it's confirmed that's something we we need to look at how can we improve that but we cannot turn away uh possible

227situations and say I don't want to put that on this list because I'm afraid of what's going to happen um or what people are going to say so I think we have to kind of be careful about that when we mention these things because we want everything investigated if anything does happen we don't want it to be brushed under the rug and just say like I don't want to put it on the list so um I think we just need to be very cautious about how we how we attack that um but that's all I have to say about that um and lastly I would agree um with Dr mlan statement earlier about the split sessions it's going to be very difficult to um to do that especially if there's certain classes that students need

228finding Educators to teach those classes so if you need a social studies teacher or a chemistry teacher or whatever class you need and there's nobody in our do staff that's available at night to teach those sessions it's going to be difficult um and that's just one piece of it so um I do agree with your with your statement on that earlier thank you no more viral okay again Angela R Gama 326 Washington Avenue and just about the new very building um well I'm sorry it's just about the comment from Mr mcllin I want to ask uh why will be the second shift the last thing to even look at I'm I'm asking because I don't know why and since as as a a a a a a person from the uh Community you know if

229we're talking about Fernando Fernando comes from a country where where they come to this country to work and if they have the opportunity to learn too that will be great some of our students in the high school are over the age 18 around that so I me personally I don't see any issue but as I say you know I'm not the professional in that so I would like to know why will be the last the last uh option and I have a comment here um so a mom would like to know what kind of data or what kind of plan are you using to measure it the determination about the hi interventions thank you thank you um there are no more virtual comments is there any other member of the public in person wishing to

230speak seeing none public comment is now closed um Dr mlan is there anything that came out of public comment that you'd wish to address at this time yeah there were there were a couple of there were a few comments about the um split session so I just I'll I I think I mentioned it before but uh let me expand on that response the reason I I feel that that's our last response is based on a few different factors one Mr kigo just mentioned um having a full array of teachers to provide a full array of content whether it's using option two or not using option two will be very challenging I I worked in a district that had a Twilight program uh and there were a very few teachers available to do that program it

231was a small program we ended up doing away with the program but the other piece that went with it is that it can't just be for one kind of student because that's that's a real true uh segregation and it's it's a real Equity issue and I know that it has been an issue in districts that have chosen to put focused programs at night uh it may work for some kids I I understand that but the uh the whole idea of what we're proposing at Newbery within a daytime option is the ability for students to attend on a modified day so that they could work uh or they could attend to other areas but they also have the option of taking advantage of anything that we offer here which is what we hold out for students

232you know whether it's a club or an athletic team or an opportunity a leadership opportunity or a service opportunity so we we certainly don't want to put anyone in a uh in a box in terms of what they can or can't do um so split sessions as I said if it if it came down to it that could uh certainly be something that the board and and the administration looks at but I'd really want to exhaust every option before we went there uh the other piece too is I think there's a distinction about running some evening class CL um there was a reference to running even classes for adults uh running targeted classes at night we we're certainly open to that that's not a problem but there's a big difference between that and running a

233full schedule array for high school students and for what they need so I just wanted to expand on that um and then in terms of the uh HIV uh and how we go about uh with the the remedial steps which I think was the the question each of our schools has a school safety team that meets regularly they examine patterns of HIV U allegations whether they're founded or unfounded and based on those patterns that are identified by a group which includes parent uh at the older level it includes student um that uh we then provide uh intervention specific to that school so that we can try to get in front of some of these patterns and um stem them from from continuing to happen so uh and then obviously um remedial steps are taken with

234every individual case and we try to take uh full advantage of uh our Ruckers program throughout the district which we're really fortunate to have and plays a a big part in a lot of the HIV remediations we've done a lot on reflection we've done a lot on um on on uh real um evidence-based work where students come together to work out resolutions between themselves that are facilitated uh we are doing self-reflection sheets uh we're doing classes with our guidance counselors so um those remedial steps are really important I think my my own view much more important than the consequence which we have to provide often times by our code of conduct um is the remediation you know how are we going to stop this from from occurring again and then looking at the whole body

235of hivs how do we get in front of that and try to put things in place so that we can prevent this from happening in the future thank you Dr mlin um there was mentioned um about headsets for purposes of translation purchase a few years ago is um is that true where are they so yes we we heard of these uh there's uh that there was at one time headsets uh we I don't I have no idea they they weren't here when I got here I I did look into it at uh a couple few years ago when it first came up actually I think some board members mentioned it to me so uh we looked into it uh but I'm sure whatever technology um existed at that time there's probably better technology right now

236so uh we're certainly willing uh to look into that and you know it sounds like a great idea if we can bring that type of Technology back awesome thank you and then um at one of our last meetings we talked about um providing the presentation on the Sussex Street property guess seven North Sussex I'm so scared I don't know what to call it anymore um so we talked about providing that presentation in Spanish um where are we at in that process and can that happen before our December meeting uh I will have to get back to the board on that because it's a it's a significant undertaking we do as has been mentioned we have translation services uh but um being able to I have I have to talk to the people who do it

237and see what they feels involved and how but I can get back to the board this week in terms of an update and let you know about that perhaps even if it's not um as comprehensive but at least a summary so they're getting some of the information I mean um Dr serer can I ask a question because I would never do this but if someone were to watch the October meeting and watch there are I I know I understand I believe that there are not Spanish simultaneously Spanish translations so if I'm watching it live I'm stuck watching it in English but if I watch it after the fact then there are Spanish captions is that a true statement I believe technology wise we can add um Spanish subtitles so perhaps we can take that video

238and add the Spanish subtitles I see Miss SSA shaking her head so perhaps that I'm Sorry Miss Mendes can you repeat that on the microphone so that way people can hear it can you repeat what she said on the microphone so miss soltice stated that um we can add close captioning but but as far as changing the um your language preference you would do that on your own device but if someone doesn't know how to do that perhaps the the that's I was just going to say perhaps there's a Communications piece that we can release that explains to folks how to do that and letting them know that there are um there is close captioning on this video available and you can adjust it to be Spanish so that you can have the information presented

239to us that was presented to us what do we think about that sure yeah okay um one of the other things there was talk about the traffic study and getting information in time and whatnot so I'm wondering if perhaps um either the chair of the finance and Facilities committee um aka the vice president um or myself I don't mind doing it will create a um a a spreadsheet so that as um once we get the presentation right we can then um input any of our questions to then be shared so we have some sort of a response before our December 19th meeting if I may miss uh Mendes I was taking notes for my own um because I needed to kind of compare and break it up in an Excel sheet so I shared that

240with you and Scott in regards to the notes that were what we heard today um so you can please excuse the typos but you may be able to use that to establish already you know frequently asked questions um based on that presentation thank you um I feel like there was something else but I am so tired it's not coming to me right now so I will now entertain a motion to adjourn unless there's any other comments or questions so moved second so we have a motion by Mr Miller a second by Miss Gales all in favor say