Dover Public Schools BOE Meeting - 1-18-2022

001i'm tim moorman it's an executive session so thanks for your patience okay mr slam i'm going to try to do a better job of finding helping you keep track i'll try to keep track too hello okay are we all present uh we'll wait one more minute [Music] yes no problem okay good evening ms munoz would you please introduce yourself sure good evening everyone my name is rosa muniz i'm the district translator i'm here to help with any questions or comments buena noches a todos say rosa munoz welcome bienvenidos to everyone here and watching the live stream at home to the january 18th dover board of education meeting this meeting which is hereby called to order at 6 50 pm is in compliance with the notice requirements of the law public notice was posted in the

002office of the board of education and communicated to the municipal court and the daily record on january 13 2022 could we please rise for the flag salute [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god invisible with liberty and justice for all mr slam would you please do roll call mr salas present miss mendes here mr miller here miss nutting here miss phillips here mr robles president miss ruiz ms mendez will you please read our mission statement [Music] working together as a community excuse me 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 would

003like to take a moment to acknowledge that yesterday was a holiday that commemorates the birthday of dr martin luther king jr and is designated a national day of service dr king is remembered by most as an activist who had a dream that our nation would one day right the wrongs of racial inequality i think that we would all agree that we still have an immense amount of work to do i hope that everyone listening takes the opportunity to reflect on and research the many injustices still present in our society and choose to participate in a service project educate others and to fight and to fight fiercely and unrelentingly for equality for all who choose to make the united states their home to my fellow board members in our work tonight and in all the work

004that we do remember dr king's words there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right dr mclachlan would you please introduce the presenters yes i'm happy this evening to welcome mr rory carl our director of mathematics and ms gina heinemann our science supervisor who will be presenting on the start strong results start strong as you may know as an assessment that was put in place uh during the period of pandemic and uh in accordance with both uh state expectations and also our desire to learn more we've asked these two district leaders to come tonight and to present the findings of our district assessment thank you dr mclaughlin so in the fall all of our

005students took the start strong test which is different than the new jersey assessment that they take in the spring just to give you a little bit of a background start strong fall 2021 assessments produced information to be used as standards-based complement to the resources used by educators in their classrooms to evaluate the needs of students they were administered quickly in person and provided immediate results to both this all the faculty as well as the administrators as determined by the us department of education the administration of start strong satisfied federal statewide assessment requirements to administer general assessments in english language arts mathematics and science only for this school year the spring nj sla schedule will resume for the 2021-2022 school year the njsla has not been held for the pa while we've been in the pandemic

006we're doing this so that you understand that this assessment does not replace our local standards-based benchmark assessments districts already have in place it does not replace the spring 2022 new jersey student learning assessments that are statewide summative assessments or nor are they predictive of their results districts should not compare any individual student school or district start strong data to any state level data for start strong nor should comparisons be made to any nj sla data please note that the start strong assessments were not designed to predict future student performance on the njsla nor was it designed to estimate what score a student would have received if they have taken that at the njsla in the spring so just to clarify this test was meant to give us information about where our students currently stand and

007not predict or compare how they've done before the design was based on a subset of prioritized stamp prior year academic standards and provides a data point let me clarify a data point on the level of support a student may need to engage in grade level content so for instance the grade 5 english language arts start strong assessment was aligned to the standards from grade not grade 5. so this is just a chart to kind of show everyone where ever where what grade what standards students were assessed at at each grade so for english language arts and math for grades four through eight their content of the assessment was a grade below so they picked standards from the grade below created test questions and that's what students were tested on um in algebra one geometry and

008algebra 2 they were all based on grade 8 standards so just to clarify how it was done so some things to consider we pivoted very quickly during a pandemic and went virtually students and teachers here in dover went for a half day schedule with office hours in the afternoon the district implemented very quickly a one-to-one technology plan to provide all students with hot spots and ipads or laptops while that was rolling out we teachers were supplying work and supplies to the students they would come and pick everything up training was necessary for staff to ensure that a variety of teaching strategies were available to meet the needs of our students and the teachers so that when we were together with them virtually they were getting the most out of the situation we were in some

009of the obstacles the technology rollout did take some time uh we did have a problem with students not logging in and i know the picture is small but some of our teachers that's what they saw when they logged in it wasn't actual student faces they didn't get the feedback from the students that they would normally get in a classroom sometimes the students turn on their videos sometimes they didn't some times we had internet issues and that was everywhere we're all calling each other google's out the internet's out um starting the year virtually last year did not give our teachers the opportunity to create those relationships that they have with the students and we did have a low student participation rate and they were not able to collaborate with each other as easily as they would

010in person so we did have some things to consider during coving we started the year in person this year and you can see that our kids are doing hands-on learning with materials that they didn't have at home they couldn't get just because of the amount that we would have needed to send home they're collaborating they're doing the older kids did presentations to the younger kids that were able to kind of like build those relationships that they didn't have during covid dissections were occurring this year and i know right now we're virtually but keep in mind that the teachers did have that time to create those relationships so the kids are logging in we're not seeing that as an issue as much as we did last year good evening everyone uh so now we're taking a

011look at the number of students who are tested in language arts math and science you'll notice a few slight discrepancies in the english language arts numbers and that's due to any student's iep who might create an exemption for the language arts assessment and then i will also note as we get up into our high school level with the mathematics you'll see the numbers start to decrease and that is because we only tested our 9th and 10th grade students so if a 10th grade student was in our geometry class we will have those scores and also for algebra 2. so if they took their algebra 1 in 8th grade geometry in ninth grade and worked into algebra two but that is why those numbers did come down slightly because we're only looking at grades nine and

012ten so dana sarno our language arts supervisor couldn't be with us tonight but i do wanna thank her for all the work she put into this presentation with us as we began to really review the data so i'm going to kind of combine language arts and math together as we start to look at some of our data analysis and explain the process that we had here in the district so as the scores came in the supervisory team got together and we started to really dive into the data to look for trends we can't look at specific students because the assessment itself was short there were only about 21 to 23 questions in a language arts or a mathematics assessment but we're looking for the trends and the data of what it can tell us about

013some learning loss that occurred during covet where are the prerequisite skills that we need to focus on and what we created were documents that were shared out with our staff that analyzed the specific standards that a student sitting in your classroom may need some reinforcement on and we were super blessed this year and we'll talk a little bit more about i ready soon but by the time we got back start strong we already had this data in-house this was our first year launching the i ready diagnostic assessment and we already knew by the end of september the reinforcement our students needed in all areas of language arts and mathematics and we already had a jump start this was just a confirmation that we were heading in the right direction so as we look at mathematics

014my goal with the math department was to really analyze what areas do we need to focus on right from the beginning of the year or as a teacher is getting through some new material so when we look at fourth grade fifth grade sixth grade when we're looking in the area of more support needed it is because in these grade levels there are specific skills that we are instructing children that are new to them for the fourth grade that means that in third grade they're being assessed on third grade skills where we're introducing fractions fractions can be a very abstract concept for any student but to try and learn it at home through a virtual environment is challenging so it's our job this year to reinforce those skills and i can't be any more proud of

015our teaching staff and all the work we've already done and i look forward to sharing some of the data from our i ready assessments at the end of this presentation for science i'm going to piggyback on the same thing as soon as we got the data back i shared questions standards with our teachers at the elementary level we have to remember and at the actually at all the levels the students came to school for a half day at the elementary level they switch between science and social studies so even if we tried to hit all of the standards that the state deemed important it's a guessing game so when you look at the numbers they don't seem great but it's a great starting point for us to be able to look at what our students

016knew and what they didn't all of that date all the questions and the percentages of students and the standards of what was met and what wasn't met was disseminated to the grade level teachers and for looking at those numbers and going in school for half a day they're really not awful um it's really something to be said to our teachers that during covid with this challenges that they faced with the kids challenges that they face at home and in school these numbers really give us a starting point of where we can work with our students and our teachers this year so we are doing a lot of work and i will say and we'll repeat it at the end is at the elementary level we've brought in a brand new science program and that program

017in and of itself is also based with a lot of literacy and math so we're doing everything in our power to work as a team to make sure we're providing our staff and students that support that they need to meet these uh goals uh as for the state requirement we do have to share with you our subgroups and our data that's there this is our data for english language arts this is for math and this is for science and please remember this is not something that we're using to compare to last year to predict growth for predict how the students are going to do in the spring this is just a breakdown based on as mr carl said 20 to 25 questions that the state gave us as a starting point at the beginning of

018the year here's the intervention strategies okay so for some of our intervention strategies so again when we first received the data we looked at the standards and we highlighted the areas where we needed you know the most work with some reinforcement of skills and that then led into coaching uh ms heinemann with the stem scopes program the launch of that program this year she's been doing a lot of coaching with the grade level teams with iready i-ready comes uh with it a lot of data-driven instructional decision-making and that is something that is new to us as a district so we're spending a lot of time myself and miss sarno working with teachers we've had some pd opportunities to provide some training and working with grade level teams on how to really not only review the

019data but now how do we what are the next steps that we can take in making sure we're reinforcing those concepts and tracking that growth the middle school started this year in after school academic assistance center with our teachers leading that program and helping after school but within math language arts or any area where a student may need assistance we have the implementation of a literacy infused science curriculum stem scopes that miss heinemann is leading we have expanded our bilingual department and i want to really thank miss heisterman and all her work that she has done working with math science uh language arts and all the work we've done with iready making sure that we're supporting students with language having the assessment in spanish the uh their learning path all of those opportunities in their

020language professional development data driven instructional strategies now this comes back to iready once we have that information what are we doing it and how are we doing it and how can we do it as a team collaboratively because we're seeing these trends and especially at our elementary schools having three separate schools how can we have that same message across the board so that we're all moving forward in that same direction really using the data to drive our instruction and then the district implementation of ireti and i just want to thank dr mclaughlin mr igliano the curriculum committee and the entire board for the support of bringing this incredible program to the district i want to thank our teaching staff and all the work that they have done because pretty soon we'll share with you some

021of the incredible things that we're seeing already with the data with the instruction and what it is doing for our students in the classroom that leads to the staff analysis of data and then basic skills over the summer we had the opportunity to get together as a committee to look at our basic skills program we now have reading specialists in all of our elementary buildings we have basic skills instructors bringing students out of class using the data from i ready and what we're seeing in the classroom to provide students with the support that they need to keep their growth moving forward and now i'm excited to share with you some of what we're seeing in iready so this is what a teacher would see when they log into their iready account and we are looking

022at a student from dover you'll notice that this student is a fourth grader and what we saw with start strong are maybe certain areas where in that prior grade level they needed some reinforcement on a skill the blue line is where they started at the beginning of this year and like i said i already provided this data well before start strong by the end of september we knew the direction we needed to take each and each each and every individual student and we'll look in measurement and data where they're performing at third grade but now in january the growth that student has made trending towards on grade level that's in math same thing in reading students who already in only half a year have moved up in some areas one two and sometimes three grade

023levels now this isn't just from iready this is from the teacher using the data to drive the instruction to pinpoint for each and every individual student what it is that they need to continue moving forward for their academic success and then some some real big ones and these will be students who are benefiting from our basic skills program a student who started off the year three grade levels behind in mathematics and by january that blue dot is where they were about a week ago and chances are today they're even further that student is trending towards grade level we have improved they have improved and our teachers have helped them improve to a place where they are finding academic success because we are pinpointing what they need specifically as a student in our classroom and last

024one in reading just some tremendous growth again i'm just so proud of our teaching staff and all that they're doing for our students thank you [Applause] thank you ms heinemann and mr carl dr cena may i yes miss grasales um before mr carl and uh miss heinemann leave i sorry this is a little awkward i wanted to thank you you did a lot of thank you as well in your presentation but thank you for your patience and waiting for us while we were done with the executive i appreciate i know that you have families to go to so i'm so grateful for all the work and for you starting that culture of thinking right your staff i think it's important for them to know all that work hard work that they do um i had

025one question really um i think um ms heineman you were talking about um the standards that were picked right and some of them were picked at a lower grade level i think if i understood correctly that for fourth graders or for eighth graders you were looking to start a seventh grader was that did i understand that correctly a fourth grader was tested on third grade standards and eighth grade or seventh grade yes would you share a little bit of kind of the thought process for that and how that came about to be how come not at the grade level but lower that was the state's uh decision as far as the um testing went because we can't have kids come in in september and have them graded on their current grade standards because they haven't

026learned them yet so which was really fair and just and even with the math uh algebra geometry to have them graded on their eighth grade standards knowing full well that they did a whole year virtually and then probably some before that so yeah the state made that decision thank you absolutely mr miller and then ms ruiz so i was lucky to be on the curriculum committee last year so i got to see some of this and it really is wonderful uh the testing that you did in the beginning of the year uh you mentioned that um you could at least see trends within a grade that you had to be able to look at so did you look at the did you decide that the first column that needs more improvement and needs some you

027combine those together kind of determine we need to focus in on certain areas for all schools at that grade level is that how that worked yeah so out of about the 23 questions we kind of broke it in half looking at the the most support needed and then that middle category and those were our focus standards that we really started to drive through the use of iready and everything happening in the classroom that was our real strong focal point to get us started and then as we progress we're set to take our next diagnostic when we come back from virtual instruction and that will help kind of launch us into that second phase of now looking at those other standards and how we can support those in the classroom as well now entire remember the

028i ready is that a pilot of some teachers or is this some all the teachers are doing this now yes we're full uh k to 12. beautiful thank you yeah k to 12 math and reading ms ruiz thank you dr saner i'm always grateful for these presentations and to see all the great progress that our educators and our students are doing i'd love um if it's possible for the board to receive the presentation it's a lot of information that we can then dissect and it's also hard to see from here so thank you for that any other questions or comments ms nutting thank you dr sander um thank you for the presentation and especially with the iready i was a part of the curriculum at that time um i know when we were going over

029it there was a opportunity at one point that parents are going to have access to see the i ready also of their student do you know when that will come about yeah so that's actually something we're starting to especially now being virtual share out you know through the teacher so parents can actually access their child's iready account by logging right into their ipad uh right now we're using clever as a single sign-on so if they go through clever click the i ready icon all of their students work is held within that account so they'll see completed work they'll see their diagnostic scores and they'll be able to track all of the work that they've been doing from september through now by logging right in through their account and that's something we're starting to hopefully send

030out through the teachers just kind of you know expressing that that's a great way for parents to you know really see what's happening in the classroom with math and both reading perfect thank you thank you ms nutting anyone else questions or comments yes miss phillips okay so i have two questions i don't want my back to you so on the the side i think it was like the third slide the where it talked about like eighth graders took a seventh grade assessment and and whatnot for the freshmen and for the seniors for science it said that the freshmen were doing six through eight and then the seniors were doing i think nine through eleven so i was wondering the why they were doing two you know three years of work as opposed to just one

031year behind great question because um with the njsla our students are normally tested fifth grade 8th grade and 11th grade so they tested our 12th graders on the previous standards since they haven't been tested at all and then our 8th grade students were tested on their 6th grade standards fifth grade was tested on fourth grade because that was the previous year that they would have been tested i have one other question sure so the nj sla is like the normal standardized test that the kids take correct so my question is this this test that they took at the beginning of the year you said only has about 25 questions so at the end of the year will they be will they take something that's comparable to that because obviously the njsla has a lot more

032than just 25 questions and since some students just don't test well in those types of environments taking a bigger test versus a test that only has a limited number of questions might not give you the the right comparison for information if that makes sense so just to reiterate this test should not be compared to any other test it was just a quick way to give us information that let's say if we didn't have i ready we would at least have a starting point with our students to kind of focus in on standards that the students are weak in in the spring they'll take the njsla which is what they've been taking normally in the spring of every year except during covid which is a much longer test and we do not get the results back

033immediately there's open-ended there's a lot more involved there are more standards are obviously covered that than what could have been covered during this test which is why we do say you know our science teacher you know when they taught science they might have covered a really good portion of the standards and then maybe the state decided to pick a standard that they didn't cover as as deeply because we just didn't have the time to um so that's why we share it with the teachers to kind of figure out where we need to to spend our time so in the spring they will be taking that njsla that they have not taken for the past two springs it is longer and it will be our 11th grade students will be taking it for science eighth grade

034and fifth grade so we'll go back to that regular schedule okay wait wait so i wasn't i wasn't it's maybe i misspoke i wasn't trying to compare the two because i know you said at the beginning they're not to be compared i guess my question is more when school is getting ready to wrap up would they take another would they take something that's comparable to what they took at the beginning because that initial asset basically to compare against the initial assessment no so that initial assessment was just for planning and uh being able to focus on where the students needed more help and then we're back to the njsla which in the way that it's presented is those are the things that we kind of use to help predict how our students are going to

035be and can compare it to what they've been learning over the year thank you you're welcome mr robles and then mr miller i just want to give uh kudos to the ireti program uh without naming my daughter by name she's in sixth grade and she's uh very heavily using that system and i get to celebrate with her when she does well and that she's told me being able to reach her grade level is something that she looks forward to in math and so she's working toward that but that system has helped her a lot and her teacher encourages her to spend time on a weekly basis in that system and it really does work so thank you for that thank you and that's what i love hearing that you know the homeschool connection and that's

036you know one of the powerful tools with ireti is it does you know create that great homeschool connection mr miller uh so miss phillips brings up a good point since students aren't used to taking longer tests and i know that you're going to prepare them with you know the skills necessary are there going to be some practice skills that are tests for them to to prep on before they actually take the state test yes the state actually hasn't released the practice assessments yet but we are we are awaiting them um the one thing to consider though was start strong it was a shorter assessment it was expected for the math to be about 45 to 60 minutes the nj sla will be longer but it will be broken up into you know two days for

037math so they're taking about the same uh testing time per day but it's you know start strong was just one day because it was a quick snapshot this would be a two-day math section but we are able to break it up in that way to make it something that's not too overwhelming the nice thing again you know highlighting ireti is it does give them a same scenario and within i ready we do have some opportunities to give them some practice uh items that they'll see on something like the nj sla and there's a correlation to what's in i ready to exactly what's going to be on the test yes and actually when we take the second diagnostic we will actually get that information of a prediction of where the student may score in math and

038in reading so we'll be getting those you know as soon as we come back from virtual and we have the opportunity to assess all of the teachers will have that information to be able to kind of start making you know some predictions and and figure out a way to you know alter some of the courses that maybe a student had been on just another positive to all the programs that we have brought this year there is a lot of online test practice so there's drag and drop there's fill in the blank there's typing practice there's pictures that they look at so those are things that they did not have in the previous year so it really is you know we we don't want to have our teachers teaching to a test we want you know

039our kids to be thinkers and be able to problem solve and these programs are definitely giving those the students that opportunity with built-in practice without them knowing that it's practice so and and then they will also know the importance of taking those tests because i mean i'm i took the iowa skills test down in the the dark ages and i just made patterns on the dots because i just was bored so i'm just hoping that they understand much better than i did that is thank you so much everybody thank you both very much for presentation okay uh we'll move into our first public comment on agenda items only 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

040ensure fair and orderly expression of such comment each statement shall be held to a time period of three 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 content 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

041comments 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 if you have a comment please step up to the podium and give us your name thank you hello good evening uh john coniglio 24 taylortown road modville i just have two two items for now um the first one is i'd like to thank mr carl and miss heinemann for their outstanding uh presentation and i will second the uh the motion that i ready is a fabulous program and um you know it's been very useful in the classroom for us to gauge students so um i'm very happy that we have that now that's that's been very useful for all of

042us in this on the staff so thank you um one suggestion if i may and i know mr weasley had mentioned it earlier if there's any way that we could possibly move the screen over here maybe so it's closer for everybody to be able to see it's a little hard to see and when they do such a good job with their presentation we want to be able to see the information and it's it's a little difficult when it's so far away if that's possible and lastly mr carl had mentioned that there would be a way for parents to access the i-ready statistics that their child has been using and i'm just wondering if the once that's set in place if the directions can be posted on our website or somewhere so parents have access to

043that uh that would be very helpful for them to log on so they can have that at all times that's it thank you thank you mr kennedly are there any other public comments at this time okay will close public comment um moving on to approval of minutes can i get a motion for the approval of the minutes please so moved second thank you um that was a motion made by mr miller second by ms nutting any comments questions okay mr slam when you're ready could you do roll call vote please mr salas yes miss mendes abstain on the minutes from december 21st yes on january 4th mr miller yes miss nutting yes miss phillips abstain on the executive session for december 21st 21st and yes for the uh the other two mr robles yes mr

044ruiz yes ms riveros yes dr sanor yes motion carries thank you board communications since our january 4th meeting we've had only one whole board communication we received an email from ms shower on the 11th of january with concerns about an individual board member's response to her whole board email are there any other communications mr slam no not at this time okay um moving on to dr sanders yes there was one earlier today um miserable board miss graceless that email was not sent to the entire board i was not included on that i believe ms ruiz was not included on that email as well thank you though um moving on to administrative reports dr mclaughlin thank you good evening i'd like to take this opportunity to assure our school community that it is our full intention

045to resume in-person education for all our students on january 27th the trend in morris county and statewide has demonstrated meaningful decreases from the peak that we observed with covert transmission going back to january 6th and 7th when we resume school in addition to this positive trend the district is continuing its efforts to better address covet spread in our schools most notably students at dover high school will be separated substantially for lunch another area the district is pursuing and hopes to have in place is a supplemental contract cleaning services that will augment the hard work of our custodial staff in response to a recent request i have also received word from icat which is our covet tester that commencing with our students return to in-person learning testing will now occur twice a week also zoofall medical

046will be conducting a covet testing event for dover students prior to the return of in-person instruction walk-in testing services will be available to district students on sunday january the 23rd from 10 a.m to 1 p.m at the zoo fall medical center located at 18 west blackwell street a communication will be going out to all of our parents with that information tomorrow based on the newest guidance from the cdc and the new jersey department of health the district has moved to a reduced five-day quarantine period for those who test positive or who are established as a close covet contact we continue to ask all in our community to remain vigilant for signs and symptoms of covet and not to report to school if this is in question i'd like to take the opportunity tonight to thank

047mr dan kerr who has served as our interim principal at dover high school since august for his strong positive contribution to the district to the high school its staff and its students we wish mr kerr the very best in his new permanent post as the chief school administrator for the hampton school district which he will begin on february 1st i'd also like to thank veteran dover administrator michael mccauley for accepting the role of acting principal for dover high school effective february the first mr mccauley is well known to our students from their time at dover middle school and mr mccauley has previous leadership experience at dover high school that allows him to hit the ground running i'd like to acknowledge and thank the morris county arts workshop who unfortunately have to close their doors but

048who have donated an extensive list of items for our fine and performing arts program included among the donated items are a baby grand piano an upright piano a violin music stands tabletop easels drum pads and flutes and this is not the full list of items however next month's agenda will provide the full details the morris county arts workshop can have a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that our students will greatly benefit from their generosity and their outreach to dover finally i'd like to provide an update from our district community liaison in regard to a new community partner and operation warm initiative in conjunction with nordstrom dover was able to receive a donation of 200 coats from operation warm for our children in the school district we were able to help families in need of

049a warm coat this winter season many families came and picked up coats for their children and expressed their gratitude for the donation this donation has fulfilled a much needed need north district as many come into the district unprepared for the cold and i do have to just comment on the the quality of the codes that came in uh really they were very impressive and we're proud to have nordstrom as one of our new community partners and that completes my report thank you dr mclaughlin that is a lot of good news um i would just like to reiterate that that covet testing clinic for our students at zoo fall is sunday january 23rd from 10 a.m to 1 p.m i think that is critical in keeping our entire community safe uh mr slam your report please

050dr senor may i yes mr salas thank you um dr mclaughlin i just have one quick question when you mention supplemental contract for the maintenance right um how what does that mean for our current employees of our maintenance staff uh it it is uh not a replacement uh in any way for our current staff we we do have a number of positions that we are still seeking to fill and we're actively uh recruiting and interviewing at this time to fill those positions so this is not meant to take the place of that this is meant to add on to our custodial staff so i'll give you an example uh at north dover elementary school we now split the lunches and and so you want to have custodial help in both both of those settings but

051at the same time you want electrostatic spraying happening in the classrooms so the the amount of personnel that we typically equip our buildings with uh has become in many ways not uh applicable to a covid situation and we want to make sure that our schools are as clean as possible we want to provide assistance so that our custodial staff don't feel overwhelmed by what's facing them i'll give another example and these are both lunch scenarios but the the scenario at the high school will be that half the students who are typically in this room will be here the other half will be in the gymnasium and again we typically have a staff who's prepared to clean this one room but obviously that's at a whole other end of the school and and requires other um

052other services so if we're pulling custodians to be elsewhere in the building who's doing the other the cleaning of the bathrooms during the course of the day and all those covet routines that we uh have committed to thank you for that clarification thank you uh mr slam good evening everybody i'd like to start off by providing some facilities updates first update is on the academy street modular we received an update from the district architect today after speaking with the vendor from the modular company that unfortunately due to backlogs and delays at the factory the delivery date has been pushed back again to july i've been assured that all site working utilities will be completed prior to arrival of the trailer so that should not cause a delay however the factory itself is the main delay

053at this point for the academy street front wall and staircase pointing project the reporting of the brick wall is completed the district expects delivery of the flagstone steps within the next week and then once those arrive installation of the steps should be approximately one week from receipt for the dover high school uh science room uh the concrete floors are back filled and closed up with cement ceiling grids are up and about 75 percent of the class lights uh have been installed so some good progress there drywall installation has begun and lab counters were delivered we expect deliver the remaining cabinets either thursday or friday of this week so despite some some issues there we are on track for that project during winter break just a few updated some regular maintenance items that occurred within the

054district we had our annual fire alarm testing completed we also had all our kitchen cooking hoods cleaned we had two sprinkler heads installed in north river walk and freeze and refrigerator so i'm going to switch over to finance at this point so we have phase two budget meetings which will be scheduled later this week to occur the last week of january or the first week of february depending on availability over winter break i submitted the odd sum so basically i got that information from the auditor i then turned around broke it out and submitted it to the state so that is complete the order should be coming in later this week uh i'm waiting on some confirmation on that because there are multiple members of the normal audit team that are on quarantine at this

055point so there's going to be some shuffling we may see some new faces although since i was not here last year all the faces will be new to me the parts of the faces i can see i guess so at the next finance and facilities committee meeting this is just something i want to kind of put out there i plan on providing an overview of the treasures report and the board secretary's report and then after that overview is provided i'd like to expand that opportunity for the rest of the board perhaps through their normal committee meetings which i may join in on to provide that training and then that is everything i have for tonight thank you mr slam questions ms ruiz thank you dr sander what is the odd sum uh so once um

056you get through the process of we're not completely through the audit at this point but once we get far enough in the process where we get the c1 which is essentially um an audited summary of the district's expenditures from the year that's being audited i then take that data and it's supposed to be split out by a school-based location i can't remember the exact number of years ago maybe maybe four years maybe three or four years ago at this point the state changed its reporting from the overall district for cost per student to school-based reporting expenditures so now you can actually see you know in this specific school what is the average cost per student so once that data is broken out it gets put into the state software um it first is reviewed by

057the auditor and then i review it for accuracy as well and split it out and then that will actually end up getting feeding into our budget software uh once the budget software opens uh which should be later this month or sometime in february uh we're still waiting for an update on that thank you any mr miller so um that new calculation does that change the formula for sending districts so when you say send when you say sending districts uh would you do you mean send receive in terms of a separate contract yeah um so my experience uh has been that each district kind of has a different way that they calculate that tuition um this in itself um i don't know that based off our current contract that this would have would have changed that

058i had something i could go back and look at yeah because i didn't know if the the state has a specific way that you're supposed to calculate it i don't know if they changed it based on what you were saying that's all so so there are certain expenditure lines um when you take a look at say regular education tuition that would go into the overall expenditures that would then be calculated into the tuition um and then there's other lines that are excluded and it would be maybe like a separate charge uh something like you know resource room and things of that nature so there are specific accounts that will feed into that equation the only difference here would be in school-based reporting you could have different tuitions for each school but it would really depend

059on the send receive agreement in place in each individual district thank you mr slam i'm just making sure that i heard you correctly you are giving the finance and facilities committee um an overview of the treasurer's and the board secretary's report and then you mentioned popping into other committees as well because that would meet one of our board goals if we were to receive some financial training and it's something that i think a lot of us have expressed a desire for uh yes that's what i like to do uh also i think you know i'm specifying you know um treasures report and board secretary's report however if there's other questions that board members have i'm always available via email if you know you just want to send me an email and i can answer that

060but this could also be another forum where some of those things could come into the conversation as well and um you know perhaps we could even kind of put a list of questions together and then i could kind of standardize across the different meetings i attend and provide that information to everybody that would be great um i would be happy to facilitate kind of the collection of those questions for you and maybe you could provide an faq right frequently asked questions by board members um that would be absolutely wonderful and if there's anything else that i can do to facilitate that to plan this so that you hit all nine board members minimizing the time that you are spending in committees that you do not have to attend i would be happy to do that

061as well thank you i appreciate that any other questions okay um mr miller could you please give the morris county ed services commission report sure we had a meeting last wednesday and there were two parts to the meeting the first one was called the representative assembly which uh board members from each district uh can be represented to vote on the new rates for the 2022-2023 school year um and they would give a report on all the the services they're they're performing and i i sent it to dr mclaughlin so that he would have that they did highlight uh their special needs school the central park school they were showing uh the cost versus some of the private schools and how they're providing the same level of service so you know i don't know if we

062look at that but it seems like maybe there could be an opportunity there um and i think that's that's all uh everything else was just normal business okay thank you questions okay um ms ruiz could you please do the legislative report we've had at least 10 new laws since the last report that the state government passed one on the first robotics program which is which stands for for inspiration and recognition of science and technology it's a new jersey department of education pilot program but we are already ahead of the curve since we are we have the program we've participated in competitions uh we had a presentation here of our robotics program and it's on our agenda tonight in field trips there's also a law on career and technical education teacher shortages eliminating the requirement to

063pass a basic skills test there still would be a requirement to demonstrate basic skill proficiency you can learn more about that and how that will work on the new jersey school boards association legislative update all of these laws you can learn more about there there's also a law on student journalist rights that was just passed for both student journalists and photographers making sure that they have the right to exercise freedom of speech and of the press and that they are responsible for determining content that has to that would require does require our board to adopt a a policy concerning student freedom of expression by the end of the 2022-23 school year the culturally responsive teaching law mandates that all candidates for teaching certification complete a course on culturally responsive teaching culturally responsive teaching is a

064pedagogy i always say that wrong pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students cultural references in all aspects of learning um and that also will need to go into effect 2022-23 school year there's a law in school security drills to ensure essentially that any school security drill isn't exposing students to trauma and on the issue of trauma and mental health there were several laws that impact our school communities mental health there's a law creating a grant program to encourage school districts to partner with institutions of higher education to train school-based mental health services providers and expand the pipeline of high quality trained providers that law will apply in 2022 2023 so i'm looking forward to learning whether our district will uh qualify and apply for that grant another law um giving priority to applicants seeking

065to establish or expand programs that include a center or another entity that focuses on providing individual family and group clinical mental health counseling services to students that law won't will takes effect immediately but expires in two years to allow for evaluation from the department of children and family services and i'm wondering whether that law would apply to our tiger wrap program a mental health data reporting law ensures that that essentially we're reporting our mental health professionals and our security right are you do you have more police officers than than mental health professions in the district a wellness grant program law that a staff is a grant to establish a student wellness program and of course the anti-bullying law revisions known or spurred by the tragic death by suicide of mallory grossman and our neighbors in

066rockaway township and this these revisions place a renewed emphasis on a supportive school climate and culture as a means to combat harassment intimidation and bullying and also includes um some punitive measures um like uh of uh fines for for parents as well um and that's it thank you ms ruiz questions okay ms nutting uh do you have a report from the morris county school board association no report at this time we haven't had a meeting yet okay thank you um the mine hill ad hoc committee is actually meeting tomorrow night and hopefully we'll have an update for you in february moving on to administrative approval could i get a motion to approve the administrative items please so moved second okay i have a motion by miss nutting second by miss viveros um mr slam when

067you're ready mr salas yes miss mendes abstain on a yes on b okay sorry about that i just wanted to make sure i was on the right page mr miller yes miss nutting yes miss phillips epstein on a and yes on b mr replace yes mris yes mr varus yes dr steiner yes motion carries thank you um ms grisalis would you please leave the personnel items thanks for the surprise sorry i moved that the board of proof a through upon the recommendation of the superintendent the board may approve the following personnel resolutions second thank you ms nutting so we have a motion from ms grasalis a second from ms nutting are there any questions or comments mr miller yes i had one question that submitted i didn't recall if there was a job description for

068the assistant business administrator um and so i went back looking for that and and you know is does this position then make the business administration office whole like i just want to understand how that will all work together because i know there were some additional duties that ended up going to the business office it would just be good to know how that position is going to complement that office dr mclaughlin i think mr slam indicated that he wanted to address that question thank you mr slam uh so a job prescription i actually um put one together before i started um back in september i believe it was uh discussed at the finance committee on september 7th um that's something that moving forward can be shared with the uh the full board there will be a

069slight change to that initially it was a an assistant business administrator however is being changed to an assistant to the business administrator the responsibilities themselves will remain the same the only difference is that the person is currently working towards the degree which is required for the certificate of eligibility and that's required to have this assistant business major administrator title in terms of responsibilities this is really the previous account position which was handling payroll so they will be handling payroll they will also be assisting uh with grants some of the accounting throughout the district uh because even though the previous position was titled an accountant they were actually not doing any accounting they were only doing payroll so we'll be expanding into some of those areas and i'll be looking to consolidate maybe some other responsibilities

070such as receipts and other business office functions uh for the other part of the question in terms of whether this is a you know making the business office fully staffed we'll still be short a full-time accounts payable position which we are going to go out for another round on that and then we are also about to be short a half hr half business office position as well um so that's something that we have posted for okay oh i'm good with all that i guess the follow-up question would be when it's a new position typically we we would have the job description before we vote on it i i understand the description what it is but is that the common practice that we're going to follow going forward no typically you would have the job description

071ahead of time um and i think because this was a little bit of flux uh it kind of departed from that but no this is not a new okay i'm good with the explanation so okay so next time we would see a job description okay thank you dr saner if i may yes of course um taking backing off of that um is the salary for this position determined by a salary guide and if so where can i find the salary guy no this is a non-affiliated position so it's basically i guess i'll use the term based off of industry standard what how we compare with similar types of positions and similar types of districts it's a little bit less than uniform because you might have somebody with this title in a small elementary district or

072in a big you know district much larger than us so we try to find the most common element that would guide our decision making but i think one of the things that we saw through the review process of our three top candidates was that the salary expectation was similar among all of the applicants and it also resounded with us in terms of the uh the area the salary area that we were anticipating for this job um i understand that but if i think mr slam mentioned that this candidate the person that is going to fill this position doesn't have their degree yet for this particular position which is why we're changing the name the title or am i confused they're currently working on their mba however they have other certifications and degrees um so a

073common practice uh when someone is working towards getting uh in this example a masters in business administration which is required for your certificate of eligibility uh while they're working towards that if they meet other qualifications you really just add the words to the and so instead of assisting va it's assistant to the va it's kind of tricky but when i actually called up nj asthma which is our professional organization to ask them about this and they said technically you have to add to the to the title because they don't yet have the certification so when we posted it we did say the certification was preferred uh we didn't say it was required but they are a very well uh qualified candidate thank you for the class can i add one piece to to what mr

074slam just said we do anticipate this individual will acquire their business administrator certificate at which time we'll change the title but we will not change the salary structure so this isn't like a phase one and a phase two of salary as as mr slam said the job functions are the same it's the certificate title that right now is the reason for the change in the title thank you dr sander i have a few more questions if i may of course um on item 14 it is important for anyone tasked with safety and security to possess an ability to relate to students what qualities or achievements does mr weston possess that afford him the ability to relate to the students so the candidate for this position has ex extensive experience not only in law enforcement but

075also in a school setting i was worked in two different uh significantly different types of school settings uh it's part of our review process not only in terms of the interview questions but also in our reference checks when we when we work with pupils but i do want to indicate that although that is an expectation this is not someone who regularly is going to be him or herself working with students the the um this is a position where uh the individual will work to make sure that those who are in direct contact with students are exhibiting the type of characteristics that you are mentioning that training is in place that's been a a theme that the board has uh echoed since the time that i have been here how important it is that that all

076of our staff especially staff that's tasked with security has the right disposition and the right techniques to work with with students um especially when students are in challenging moments and so one of the reasons that we want to have someone who's full-time focus is on security is not just on the very important elements of protecting the perimeters and the interiors of our building and making sure that we have adequate staff but also providing a comprehensive training program making sure that we're looking to see that that's being implemented so that's all embedded in in this individual's work thank you ms ruiz thank you dr sander what is the work of the remote home instructor uh we we edit the word remote this year because uh much of the home instruction is not delivered actually in the

077home it's delivered via via a computer um and so uh in essence the remote home instructor works like a home instructor but is utilizing digital capabilities to to provide that instruction and i just i'm not sure that i'm quite clear so a home instructor i'm thinking before the pandemic if a a child has mono and is out for a long time they might get a home instructor same thing just now they might have to do remote work yeah they'd be they'd be meeting with the student for example through google me rather than being in the kitchen yeah okay so this is a did not this is not a our usual teachers doing remote work this is an additional staff member in case it's needed for a student that needs home instruction for a particular period

078of time correct and with with quarantining we've had and covet related areas we've had a lot more students who have that need thank you any other comments i had one once again this month there are numerous resignations mclaughlin i think i speak for the board when i think we would all like an update on the exit interviews that we know are occurring we last had one i feel like several months ago and with significant new resignations uh could i request that we plan for an executive session um presentation on the x the results or data that could be gathered from the exit interviews absolutely um so what i would say is i'd like to work with our new human resources director on that she's beginning on february 16th and our next board meeting is the

07915th uh so if if the board is okay with that being provided in executive session in march would that be acceptable i think that would thank you i have one item since we're in discussion area item number seven the third individual that is listed for approval at ba step one that's an incorrect number uh so the the correct salary for ba step one is 53 360. 53 360. any voice vote are all in favor of making the change to the correct number not a choice but the correct number for ba step one fifty three thousand three hundred sixty dr senior before we do that i have a question since that is the change um dr mclaughlin is that a change that has been the candidate is aware of or this is the first time that

080candidate is aware of it yes okay all in favor of making that change okay and now we have any other questions okay we have a motion we have a second um mr slam when you're ready could you please do a roll call though mr gorsalis yes ms mendez yes on everything except item 19. mr miller yes miss nutting yes miss phillips yes mr robles yes mr ruiz yes miss viveros yes dr sanor yes motion carries thank you um is there anyone able to speak to negotiations i know um i am not obviously as a conflicted board member i'm not sure what's going on there is there anyone available to speak to that if i just may um as i understand that the committee was just being reappointed recently so uh we're going to uh one

081now that we have a committee and i i'd already reached out to i think both associations to let them know that you know once we had a committee in place which i believe we now do that we'll be working to set up we have to have an internal meeting first uh so as soon as we have that accomplished hopefully within the next week or two um we'll reach out to uh to both the association all of the associations and uh try to schedule some dates to follow up thank you mr crew moving on to curriculum and co-curricular um i won't put anyone on the spot that was special for mrs grasalis but would anybody like to make a motion on that one i move that we approve one through six thank you second okay so

082motion made by ms grasales second by mr miller questions or comments mr miller i had one question i submitted i just had a thought on um the number of district placements for special needs students and i wondered if we were doing an analysis of you know how much our spending is going to out of district placements versus when we look at the future referendum and the school's expansion is part of that plan to be able to house some of the special needs by providing services in district as part of that just trying to think of how you know we could bring some of the students back into the district with quality programs yeah that's definitely one of our motivations in in having expanded special ed opportunities here in the district so that parents don't have

083to have their children's you know there will always be children who need to be in specialized placements that we don't provide but having seen your question ahead of time mr slam has agreed to make this a uh the analysis portion of what you're asking a part of the finance committee agenda great thank you thank you anyone else dr sander ms mendez um this is in reference to item one i understand the value of our district educators pursuing most of the courses listed specifically the courses related to language if i may what is the criteria for tuition reimbursement if any and have we in the past reimburse the administration for courses yes contractually uh it's one of the things that we have in our agreements both with the administrators and with the um with our teaching

084unit so that um and even with our power professionals we have also uh given tuition reimbursement it's based on the rutgers rate there's a limit of forces per year and it has to pertain to their job responsibilities thank you miss ruiz thank you dr staner the nine educators on the list for tuition reimbursement deserve congratulations and gratitude for modeling ways to be lifelong learners for our students they're even encouraging me to learn because i had to google what psycho metrics are so um that's exciting that they're doing a lot of this ongoing work there's at least three of the courses listed involve language principles of language linguistics and second language acquisition for teaching languages and language acquisition and bilingualism i'm wondering whether the educators taking these courses are working in the dual language program now

085or plan to work in that program once they complete their courses and i have other questions but i don't want to send them all at once i don't have the list in front of me and i know that mr gliano would be probably have this at her fingertips but i can tell you that i think it's a mixture of both of what you've you've indicated one of the ways that we now recruit teachers who are otherwise qualified to teach in our bilingual program and this is in conjunction with flexibility that we've been given by the state department is to allow those individuals to to teach and we support them in achieving their bilingual certificate uh by reimbursing the coursework for that as you know it's very difficult statewide and and nationally to recruit qualified instructors

086for bilingual instruction it's just one of the hardest areas uh and most scarce areas that we have to recruit for and it's a a real need in our district so we've been making use of that flexibility to bringing again qualified individuals who are otherwise certified and working towards the bilingual certificate reimbursing them so that that's one group of of teachers we also have had a number of our educators this year express interest in non-bilingual teaching uh assignments to learn more about language and apply that in their monolingual instruction and we know that those strategies for by literacy can be effectively delivered by monolingual teachers and it's actually really important that we don't just rely on our bilingual teachers to provide that level of support for our students and um academy street elementary school educator francis

087kovalevsky also deserves our gratitude for stepping up to take part in the arts professional learning institute program i love the description of the nine workshops in the series it's arts based professional learning experiences so that the whole student can be reached inclusive of race ethnicity gender identity and expression sexual orientation and perceived ability um educator kovaleski is also visiting the morris county arts workshop which i imagine has something to do with the donations of musical equipment we learned about from the superintendent's report so i just wanted to highlight that and also dover high school educator john de ritter participating in the new jersey state bar foundation's program and of course i have a special place in my heart for the new jersey state bar foundation and that program is on the important role a school

088climate team plays in creating and maintaining a positive school climate and learning how to foster such a climate and dover high school educator daniel bronson is participating in the same new jersey state bar foundation or a different program of the new jersey state bar foundation with middle school and high school conflict resolution program and the fact that these uh programs cost uh zero according to our list is icing on the cake and um we don't always go through these pieces but i thought it was a great way to start the year highlighting these opportunities i maybe i'm not using google drive correctly i couldn't see the the full lakeland andover school placement contract it says when you open when i opened it it says that it was eight pages but there's only one i tried

089downloading it and it still also says one page so is it supposed to be one page is it supposed to be eight pages do i need a google drive training i'm not sure what what's happening but i'll um i'll abstain from from that if i'm the only person who did get a chance to review it properly um was everyone else able to read i don't remember no i only got one page also same [Music] mr slam did you i thought you you indicated you were addressing that today is it uh yes so i i was looking at that this afternoon um can't hear you sorry you were doing really good i was looking at this afternoon i do have a copy of the full contract up here with me however that was a appears to

090be a screenshot but it had the student's name removed whereas the copy i have still has the name so i can upload the full version with that student's name redacted and also have it available up here as well uh dr cena does that need to be approved today to ensure the students needs are met or is that it does okay i was i was shaking my head as that was my question as well so mr slam or or mr crew do we need to approve that today i i would recommend that we do not put an impediment in front of the placement i you know certainly we'll make sure that you know all future contracts have the full pages in there so i apologize that didn't happen um the uh tuition for the program is

091indicated here ultimately um those of you who have seen out of district uh contracts this is probably going to follow in a very similar pattern the contracts are actually state formulated so they differ very slightly the critical piece is the tuition payment so since this is related to a student's individual program i'd ask the board if they if they feel they can to to vote for it at this time okay any other questions or comments okay mr slim could we have a roll call vote please ms grasalis yes with the trust that the whole contract will be there soon miss mendes yes mr miller yes miss nutting yes miss phillips yes mr robles yes mr ruiz yes miss riveros yes dr senor yes motion carries thank you um i believe there is no community relations

092report as that committee was just appointed so we will come back to that next month moving on to policy dr saner yes ms nutting um i know there was no meeting but there was a recent email as a special education parent i just wanted to make sure that the special education parents that are out there do understand that mrs rigliano check your emails there was a google doc that we need to have our special educator education parents fill out to improve our special education program on what they feel that needs to be okay ms ruiz dr sander i just want to ask a clarifying question because i'm not sure what email is being referred to um is this with cpag or is this just a separate parent to administration i believe this is part of

093the special ed audit that mr igliano sent something out behalf of the individual who's our consultant for that audit to gain parent feedback and is and is that and i'm sorry i'm new to community relations this year as an alternate is is that subject matter of the community relations or no no i i don't think so i think it was just related to the community which is probably why the stunning was bringing it up exactly thank you thank you sorry for for uh needing that clarification okay thank you both now on to policy would anyone like to make a motion so moved i second okay we have a motion by miss vivero second by ms grasalis any questions or comments mr miller yes i had a question about um you know what the what was

094the real issue that caused us to change this policy um you know it was there some kind of abuse or incident or something and i my question is can we institute proper controls at the school level so the business office wouldn't have to do this so i'll let mr slam jump in on anything i miss on this but we've talked quite extensively about this petty cash is one of those areas that that requires a lot of oversight ultimately the business office has oversight of it whether it's among five schools or whether it's located in the business office and the oversight is actually i'll use the term easier when it's located in the business office it doesn't prohibit anyone from using petty cash uh it doesn't mean that we that a member of any school can't

095access petty cash for an appropriate item but one of the things that certain one of the things that we know in audits and this doesn't mean that there was an abuse or a problem here it's just again trying to be better at our processes um is that petty cash is often an auditing issue people go to petty cash when it should they should use the requisition system or you have receipts that don't match up or people aren't using you know the the accounting system that's set up by the district so having one central location which has been increased the amount of money has been increased at the central location just means that if a school needs to utilize petty cash they go to the business office and they can access the petty cash that way

096but the two areas that tend to be sticky items in audits are student activity accounts and petty cash so just trying to make that tighter uh is better for the district fiscally did i capture everything correctly mr slam uh yes that's that's correct um so really uh in either circumstance uh so really in either circumstance uh it does fall in the business office at the end of the year uh each year there is a reconciliation of any cash the main difference in this case being that we would have control over making sure the receipts were kept on hand so that we don't have the issue of lost receipts we don't have you know say the issue of you know tax being reimbursed when due to regulation we're not allowed to reimburse for tax um so

097and it does say 500 however the way that the process works is that if we run out of that 500 we then issue a purchase order we put a requisition which gets approved comes a purchase order and then we can refill that petty cash amount so it is available um you know before that is access accessed approval should be given for the items because you want to make sure that the items are appropriate to be going through petty cash because the intention of petty cash isn't um you know to get around the purchasing uh you know process uh it's to help in you know certain circumstances where you know something last minute came up it's an appropriate item and we need it right now you know okay any other comments okay we have a motion

098and a second mr slam can we have a roll call vote please miss gracalis yes miss mendes no mr miller yes miss netting yes miss phillips yes mr robles yes mr reese yes miss riveros yes dr senor yes motion carries thank you um could i have a volunteer to take finance and facilities please mr miller i'll make the motion that we approve items one through eight so we have a motion by mr miller second by ms phillips comments or questions dr saner if i may ms mendez and mr miller um on item two check numbers three two eight four three two nine three and three three five two in the amount of 175 dollars per check i'm curious to know what those are for those are the the three checks token uh so those are

099uh contractual obligations uh for reimbursement of mileage and also cell phone reimbursement thank you mr miller uh so my question i had has to do with the cafeteria balance i know at the end of the year we are supposed to have a zero balance and i'm just wondering do you have plans for any surplus uh that would help go back into the the cafeteria operations so this is uh something that so this is something that i've discussed with our food service director and also with our director of buildings and grounds there are some options that we're going to be exploring i will note that over the previous summer uh before i started in district they did go out to bid for quite a number of items specifically equipment in the schools um so one of

100the issues and it's one that a lot of districts are kind of facing right now it's not a bad issue it's you know a good issue but it's initially because of the audit is that uh you know we have increased participation rates uh due the sso program that's the program that allows uh every student to receive a free free lunch so you know positive thing is you're getting meals to the kids that increase participation rate uh with the same um essential costs the operating expense means that you're generating more uh more profit or more revenue so fund 60 is not really supposed to be profit generating and that's why you'll see that if you have more than three months of average operating costs at the end of the year you'll see that mentioned in in

101the audit another aspect of that is that recently the state of new jersey increased the reimbursement rate per meal and that's also kind of adding to that i say problem but it's a good problem because it's it's generating uh funds so keeping that all that information in mind um there are a lot of restrictions on what you can use those funds for so one of the things that we are taking a look at right now is replacing lunch tables throughout the district so we have a pretty large number there i've asked for a quote on that so it's probably going to have to be a number of items that are going to have to be pursued uh to address that issue with one of the limitations being a lot of this equipment has already been

102replaced so we're going to have to start getting a little creative okay thank you very much um mr slam uh is there a reason that the payroll record now this month contains more detail while the check register contains less detail listing only names and amounts and no indication of what the payment is for i personally preferred the old way for both of those reports uh so uh in regards to the payroll uh registers um so that's something that the practice should be uh that they were there's just be signed so essentially once i realized they weren't being signed each month i changed that where now they're being signed each month but since they're being signed i've been putting the entire register out because if it's being signed you should know what you're signing for the

103check register so i mentioned before that the auditor is supposed to come in later this week so the audit is not complete so with systems 3000 um if you do not have your cycle 14 which is the cycle in the financial software where you put audit adjustments in in the prior year closed it will not let you flip the month into january so because we're not flipped into january that check register you're seeing is unposted checks i can however run the report for that same period once we are in january to provide that additional detail and i can upload that next month we're approving it now because it's our bills uh for the for the month but i can provide the information as follows okay thank you very much ms ruiz on page four of

104the board secretary's report we see columns labeled appropriations expenditures encumbrances and available balance the first set of rows lists current expenses like regular program instruction can you please please explain what might be an encumbrance like an example of that uh for the regular program instruction i see an encumbrance of 8 million 110 754 like what does that mean that seems like a big figure uh if you could give me a few examples of what's in there so one of the other things um that i discovered was that we so you need in order to pay payroll uh and have a account for in your financial software you need to have a payroll purchase order uh so there was a payroll purchase order here however no money was encumbered upon it which is an issue so

105basically when you encumber funds on a purchase order what you're doing is you're setting aside those funds for that purpose the reason that's important is because throughout the year you know as things change because as i always say a budget is a living document so you know last year when this budget was made that was kind of the best guess based on projections and data what we think we would need this year so that changes and then transfers happen if you don't have that money set aside on a purchase order that money could get moved somewhere else and then all of a sudden you find out that the thing that was supposed to be budgeted is happening and now you don't have the funds where you need it so that's just kind of a way

106of setting aside and earmarking the funds for the purpose that they're intended for so a large portion of that will be salaries uh that's why i brought up the payroll po specifically um so before that what was happening is it was running straight through the system and it was hitting the actual appropriation line rather than hitting that purchase order which is kind of the middle step which it should hit the other items would be a large number of just purchase orders for supplies and things like that that have been encumbered as purchase orders which means the requisitions were approved but we haven't been invoiced or we haven't received the service or the supply yet so essentially once you have a purchase order in place you need three things to happen you need to have the

107supplier service uh you know either done or the the supply received and that needs to be marked as received in the system you then need to be invoiced by the vendor and you need to receive a voucher signed by the vendor acknowledging the order and saying that the bill is correct once you have those three things that's when you can process for payment and when you process for payment that's when you actually see everything on that bills list that gets approved each month on can i just add one other example because i think the whole idea of encumbrances is something that mr slams been working on which i think will help all our budget managers understand exactly where they stand so uh before we just passed a motion for a a special ed contract for

108thirty nine thousand dollars we get billed monthly on that but we know we know that we need thirty nine thousand dollars for that contract so rather than pay the monthly portion directly out every month uh what we do is we do a purchase order for the whole thirty nine thousand and then we pay off that purchase order every month so when you look at the tuition line you don't think that we have fifteen thousand dollars we don't actually have because it it has been reserved so i know that he's been working on that in number of areas and it gives us a better picture of where we stand with the budget when we make decisions so we say hey can we afford this new math program where do we stand this year how much money

109do we have left we're actually looking at real figures yeah and just to add to that um like dr mclaughlin was saying it means that that balance you see in that report is more of a true balance because for example utilities is another area where you'll you should be encumbering for the full year based off your projection because no matter what you're going to pay you know there's things that are definitely getting paid electricity all of that you need to have that set aside if that wasn't encumbered it would show up on the balance line and then we look at the total balance for the district that balance would be inflated because although that money is sitting there now it's already should be set aside for something else yeah you don't you don't want to

110see my bank account mr slam you'd have a heart attack thank you mr slam and dr mclachlan for uh using that teachable moment for that little mini finance lesson that was actually great thank you on page 12 of the same report in the capital outlay equipment section i see three equal appropriations and expenditures listed each for about 6 000. what equipment is that so i went back and looked at this because this happened prior to my start here uh but essentially uh what that is is it's an order for ipad minis uh so it's one purchase order however when you're entering a purchase order it doesn't need to come from one account and in most a lot of cases i'll say it probably shouldn't so for example if those ipad minis were for multiple schools

111each account has its each school has its own sublocation in that account so in this situation that order was for three different schools and that's why it's split evenly you see that number that's pretty much exactly the same in three spots great and then the last item on page 12 says um assessment for debt service of sda funding you can imagine i got excited seeing sda funding on our budget with an appropriation in the amount of seventy two thousand eight hundred and sixteen dollars can you tell us more about this is this sda as in the school development authority and how did we get this funding and what are we spending it on so that amount is budgeted for a debt assessment which gets automatically taken out of your state aid this is something else

112i can kind of go over in the finance committee and with the other committees so there's a schedule of state aid which shows your total amount minus any deductions from the state one of those deductions is debt service assessment and essentially that is just an assessment of the state on the state based off of the debt service that you currently have the sda is part of the debt service aid that we receive however it's not the traditional kind of sda funding that everyone would get excited over which would be the rod grants you always hear whispers about maybe that will come back but to this point it has not uh but they have still been offering the debt service aid which offsets uh the debt service that we pay each year um which had been

113approved uh during the prior referendum i think it was quite a while ago at this point since we're at the end of the payment schedule thank you any other questions okay we have a motion and a second mr slam when you're ready could you please do a roll call vote mr salas yes miss mendes yes mr miller yes ms knighting yes miss phillips yes mr robles yes mr ruiz yes miss favares yes dr senor yes motion carries thank you um moving on to uh informational the next uh three board meetings will be february 15 march 15th and april 19th um moving to old business uh the first item is uh the committee assignments um i wanted to thank everyone for sending ms ruiz and me your request so promptly especially thank you to those who

114said you had no preference that made our jobs much easier to give everybody at least most of what they wanted just a reminder that at your first committee meeting your committee should choose a chair and add that to the com and add your committee description to the document that i've already shared with you committee should be completing board assigned tasks doing research and preparing recommendations for the full board if in the past year this was not your practice the new year and new committees are an opportunity to reset please use the community sorry please use the committee description and goals to ensure that the committee is effective and making the best use of both the board members and the administrators times we do have some different meeting dates based on requests from various people the

115first tuesday of the month we will have the curriculum meeting at five pm and the finance and facilities meeting at five i'm sorry at policy at 6 15 and then on the fourth tuesday of the month we'll have finance and facilities at 5 30 p.m um and then the representation at schools was incorrect when it was first sent out in the current copy of the agenda it matches the document that i sent to you can i get a motion to accept the committees so moved second so we have a motion from ms viveros a second from mr miller questions dr sanders if i may ms grisalis i just wanted to make sure what we see on agenda on page 13 the representation at schools that is the correct assignment i believe so i checked it

116is are there any objections to it i checked it against the list that i sent out la whenever last week and it does seem to match now so this this is correct at this point dr saner yes ms mendez can you clarify for me um the policy committee is meeting one again the policy committee is will meet the first tuesday of the month at 6 15 pm all of these meetings um all of these recurring meetings happen at the belmont building and the administrator who kind of uh administers these meetings will be sending out or has already sent out um a google invite where you can um say that you will or won't be able to attend um to let them know but those meetings will be those are the regularly scheduled meetings thank you

117you're very welcome um mr robles and then ms grisalis uh last year i'm just curious i was part of two committees and this year i'm part of three is that gonna be the norm moving forward that we're gonna be having to do more merry christmas um no we tried to be uh ms ruiz and i spent quite some time on this uh trying to make these fair some people are serving additional appointments um such as to the njsba or morris county school board association so the goal was to make it as fair as possible if um if there's an issue personally feel free to you know we could possibly you know address that now okay yeah i'll probably have an issue trying to commit three tuesdays of the month if i'm in three committees but

118um well four with the regular board meeting um so i'm just curious if there's a way to which one i know i didn't request all three of them but um to see if we could work something out differently i don't want to i don't know here's the moment now but okay um ms ruiz i i saw that you wanted to address this uh dr saner i'd just so the full board has the information um several board members are on there's three board members that are on three committees um plus the board president and the vice president are also on three committees because we attend whether we are alternates so five of us are on three committees um the three board members that are on two committees have volunteered in other roles like managing public comment

119the sec rep the njsba delegate the mcsba delegate the legislative rep and also as as alternates to those so um the uh the people that are on three committees don't have any other appointments the people that are on two committees do have other appointments so while while certainly um [Music] we could we we have to make sure to accommodate uh everyone's time this this job requires a lot of time this volunteer job requires a lot of time okay mr miller uh don't forget the community relations is not going to be meeting each month so that doesn't yeah that won't count out your three just um trying to understand how we did it last year we didn't do it this way like i didn't see myself in three committees and i didn't see the alternates or

120showing up to every meeting where we met um as vice president i attended i was alternate for two committees and then i was on a third committee i attended every single meeting and i believe ms griseles did as well correct the only one that i as the president did not attend uh dr cena was the committee relations because they were not supposed to be meeting at all in the last year but every other single committee had an alternate and um between uh dr cena and i so there has been historically members that have been on three committees i believe i did then my first and second year of being on the board so it's kind of culture that has happened um if i may take now that i have the floor sure i wanted to

121um ask uh in regards to the representation of schools we have received in the past kind of a calendar of events if that's something that could be feasible for us so that way i know and if i cannot attend to find coverage from my fellow colleagues if i could have a list of what are the upcoming especially now between in school and you know hybrid and things like that um thank you i think that's wonderful um mr dr mclaughlin is there a way to make one of the things that has come off of our agenda are um school events right that we would typically announce at the end um is there a way that these events could make it back on to the agenda both for the edification of the public but also for board

122members so that we can know what's happening in our represented representative schools and attend and organize coverage one of the things that we've emphasized is the use of our website calendars for each of the schools so the schools should be keeping their events up to date on the calendars um i'm a little reluctant to make the agenda too informational and also i i don't want to ask each of the schools to duplicate their efforts by putting it on the calendar sending me a list uh so if i i can promise you that i will redouble my efforts to make sure it's on the school calendars correct if i may dr senor that's it if it's on the school calendar on the website calendar i think that's enough um for us to go on the website

123i was asking because i have not seen it historically been updated um too well so if that can be the emphasis i am good with going to the website to see when i need to be at east over i appreciate that and if i could encourage board members if you see something coming up in your school that you think the public may particularly want to attend or would be important please bring it up at the board meeting prior so that our public knows that there's something really special going on at a certain school i'm you know thinking in particular of the district art show which encompasses artists and musicians from the entire district so if we could do that that would be great ms ruiz i i just want to add that not only the

124current president and former president but two other former presidents who i served with also were alternates and did attend every meeting that they were alternates on so this the alternate being responsible even if they're the president has been the practice at least since 2017 that i've been on the board and i also would add that we we took away a personnel committee exactly because of that this is so much work and we are volunteers and the personnel committee was receiving reports many more informational than anything that was then repeated in executive session for the full board so that was one of the reasons we decided we didn't need a personnel committee because the board couldn't act on personnel issues other than an executive session anyway and the mine hill ad hoc committee has a very

125specific task so that committee depending on how things go may may only be in in use for lack of a better term for three months it's not a committee that will survive the full year i hope negotiation sounds like something i was tricked that is uh that is a kind of interim but really negotiations works all year round so so that's not um that's something but we as board members um these are our committees this is our board so if we want to be a committee of the whole and not have committee meetings at all and have just two meetings a month and discuss everything and just have longer meetings we can do that if we don't want to have a community relations committee or i mean the facilities and finance curriculum and policy you

126need but um if we want if we don't want to have a community relations committee we don't have to have that so if if time is a concern and i certainly echo mr robles is sentiments that i there is a lot of time dedicated with love but a lot of time to the board that maybe that is something for a future session to figure out how to um make the best use of our time i also think that a lot of us are overwhelmed um i i don't want to speak for anybody other than myself but as an educator i am completely and totally overwhelmed so it is my personal goal um this year to make meetings as efficient as possible not to stifle anyone not to limit discussion because that is one of the

127things i am most proud of changing about this board whether that's in committee or in this regular session but to make our meetings as efficient as possible um for all of our sakes so if you have suggestions about that you know please share you know through your committee first and then you know with the whole board as necessary mr robles yeah just to clarify for me and i'm not recommending that we do away with any committees or anything like that so i appreciate all the offers but i don't think any of them are what i was looking for the alternates purpose in the meetings are for what are they part of the actual committee are they there to just be if somebody can make it to fill in or what is the i'm sorry that

128i don't know the purpose of that yeah so this is a board uh culture thing i don't think that there are specific rules about this they are absolutely there for continuity if a board if another board member were not able to be there um in the last four years that i've been on the board um that those positions have been occupied by the president and vice president i think for continuity right so that the board leadership is aware of what's going on in all of the committees right so that there is that continuity again that i don't believe this is uh written anywhere as in terms of an official role for the alternate okay so maybe i'm misunderstood because of the word alternate that it was a fill-in for somebody who wasn't able to make

129it and that's what the purpose was there but again i think our the way our board interprets it as that the commit that the alternates on each committee are participating members they can remember we cannot have five members on a committee because that would violate the open public meetings act um but we the alternates have in the last four years participated i know that ms ruiz and ms grasalis ms ruiz does not want to speak ms grasalis dr zener the alternate has certainly played both roles right and fill in if you can't make it and we don't want to have five members right we can't have five members but we have three board members that can't make it and there's one the alternate steps in but it's also an active participant as a fourth committee

130member that has kind of been my experience in the committees for the past two years three years yes and mr kuch said if someone can't make it for one night you do have the alternate but then again our board culture right is that they are participatory member any other comments or questions about the board appointments so i just my last comment sorry to keep dragging this on i just need to review the hours that you just stated for all the policy meeting or the committee meetings because i hadn't seen that prior to now so i'm not sure how the hours will impact my schedule i just announced it so i'll approve it for now but i just need to let you know that there might be some changes from my end based on the earlier

131hours if they impact my my schedule okay i think only the the the the tuesday has changed i don't think many of the times have changed but yes please let me know okay thank you okay uh we have a motion and a second um mr slam could i have a roll call vote please ms grasalis yes ms mendez yes mr miller yes miss nutting yes miss phillips yes mr robles yes mr ruiz yes miss riveros yes dr sanor yes motion carries thank you um our second piece of old business is actually it comes from our board goals which i forgot to pull up but one of our board goals was that we as a board in we did not specify um really very much about it but that we as board members would hold um

132two miseries please correct me from wrong two community forums um over the course of this year which our year our board gold was set in july and we have not done either of these yet and so we need to either i'm open to any other options but in my thinking about this we either need to assign this task to an existing committee or to establish an ad hoc committee that would work um strictly on establishing what would happen and how this you know how and when these board forms would happen and then would disband um once that has occurred so um ms vavares dr senior does the back to school night not count as one of the forums we've all attended that's an excellent point we did there was um representation we had a table

133we did interact with the public that is a good question um ms ruiz dr saner just um we all have access on our google drive if you just put in 2021-2022 board and district goals it's under number one continue supporting the development of a community school district and the goal we're talking about is uh 1c a minority of the dover board of education membership will host at least two community forums during the 2021-2022 school year to listen to community members ideas and proposals regarding our dover school community i am a lawyer so i don't know how else to read this but will host means will host not show up at something that the school district organizes and say this is our community forum so i don't think that anything that the school district is already

134doing counts as our community forum as this is written but if the board as a whole decides no no it does then that's what we decide so i think it's up for debate but when when we discussed this goal it um if i remember parts of this discussion we were talking about um for example having three or four of us um and then this was before the pandemic be at the gym like we were for the mission and vision planning and listening to the community and of course not speaking for the board not um providing anything more than information but you know this is what it's like to be a board member this is what the board does this is how you can become a board member this is the filing deadline right how to

135be a board member could be a community forum at a recent session i talked about doing like a a joint fire department minority of the board community forum we any one of us could come up with any idea and maybe it needs to be via zoom but we do need to do this before the end of 2022 to meet our goals that we ourselves set and agreed to and just to clarify this is end of school year 2022 not december 2022. no this is during the 20 oh wait during the 2021-22 school year so that means by what june ish not december right that's okay doctor staying our family yes please um i i think it makes the most sense to um have the community relations committee look into this further and figure out what

136we can do what's the best thing for us to do okay um it was my only concern is it when we explained what committees were we specifically said that the community relations committee did not have to meet because their meeting time their prep time for example the curriculum committee often has many curricula to read right prior to their meeting and so that the time a board member would spend preparing and being with the committee would be spent at community meetings so i i'm if the community relations or a majority of the board wants to um task the community i'm i'm fine with it i just i i don't want to tell you your job is one thing and then give you a whole another task if you're not willing to accept it okay miss phillips

137mr miller ms grisalis um so i would agree and that was actually going to make the same point that it would seem to me that a community forum would be planned by the community relations committee as someone who's on the community relations committee i have no objection to that it really just seems to me that that's that would be the proper assignment to flow that's it i i that makes perfect sense to me okay mr miller so um all of those meetings are going to be scheduled by everyone signing up so it's not just the community relations going to any of the town meetings or the other community forums now i know there was a comment that mentioned that we shouldn't have met last year somewhere i missed that memo so but i know what

138we talked about after but we actually had things to work on that were part of our board goals so this could be the same type of thing you come into existence to try to meet this board goal you do it and then if there's no reason to meet then it becomes more ad hoc as necessary so it wouldn't become an ad hoc committee what you're saying mr miller if i'm hearing you correctly is that you would have a task you would have meetings when those when your goal is finished when these community forums are planned then you would stop meeting because now you're just back to attending community events okay i just wanted to make sure i clarified um ms grasalis i just wanted to um i think if because community relations has a lot

139they have a lot of meetings that they're attending and so i wanted to make sure that um as a as a board colleague that you count with us as well that it's not only on um mr miller miss phillips and mr robles and ms ruiz has the alternative that all everyone else should be incorporating hey we're running a forum next week or whatever we need people to attend and maybe it's not them for right so it's that way the responsibility of all of us not just the community relations committee to host those forums so but just to make sure that i'm hearing correctly it's their job to plan and implement but they may they may be attending one two or none that the rest of us will absolutely participate in these forums they're doing the

140behind-the-scenes work to get them established that's what i'm saying yes okay i see a lot of nods ms ruiz i move that the board tasked the community relations committee with coordinating the community forums of the minority of the board during the 2021-2022 school year i second that okay we have a motion to task the community relations committee with establishing the community forums by ms ruiz and i believe the second was miss grasales correct any other additional comments or questions i just have one more comment not related to the vote so it's about the community relations all those meetings with the different groups yes last year we did the sign ups for the entire board yes we're going to continue doing the same thing this year i believe an email was sent out saying that one

141of your first tasks was to establish which meetings are important for us to be informed about and then to start that sign up sheet with you all signing up for what you feel is appropriate and then sharing that with the board for us to fill in for members who are not on the community relations committee to fill in as needed for these various meetings wait the last part you said fill in what so as needed right so you the even without having to um implement the community forums there are too many meetings for in my opinion for the three or four of you to attend therefore you will fill in first it's your committee and then the rest of the board who is not on that committee will fill in blanks or we will cover

142where um where necessary and then the information gets channeled to the committee chair of the community relations whatever information is pertinent to then compile it all and share with the board that is my understanding i would encourage um one of the things that i saw last year that seemed very inefficient what i'm all about efficiency was that we had multiple people covering each meeting right um i would encoura because there are so many meetings to have two board members at each i remember i was attending a town of town meeting and there were two other board members in that meeting there was no point to that so you know if uh you know make the schedule and then right if if i'm scheduled to attend the board meeting the board of aldermen meeting and i

143can't then it's my job to find a replacement board member to attend i don't think it's necessary to have more than one board member present at any one of these meetings mr miller so last year i created a google sheet which is the google ripoff of uh in excel with drop down and the only reason why we had three columns it was just like if there were alternates if somebody couldn't go and then the next person would go it was that type of thing but you know everyone had an opportunity to to see here all the meetings and they could just pick you know what month they wanted to go to something dr saner if i may ms mendes i just want excuse me i just wanted to say that i see here that connecting

144dover is on um the list of meetings that we're to attend um i already attended that meeting via my employers so i just wanted to throw that out there so i you are on the community relations committee as i'm not on the communications committee community relations ms mendez is able to attend all of those meetings um so then yeah don't put it on the list or put it on the list and put our name on it mr miller we decided uh that we were not going to have that on our list because dr mclaughlin has a staff member attend so we don't need to attend ourselves okay perfect um okay so we have a motion we have a second any more comments or questions uh developing the community forums and if we're if we're good

145with that then we can do a voice vote to approve the tasking the community forum with that all in favor any opposed okay motion carries um i would like to propose a 10-minute break um because we need one um five minute break mr grasalis five-minute break there's like two bathrooms i don't understand the math on that but five-minute break so it is 8 53 i'm going to be generous at 9 00 p.m we're going to restart the meeting thank you it is good timing um okay um just like um is thank you hey is you [Music] thank you is that one i couldn't even see the the title of the app it used to be closer before closing and yeah but now because we just we had a smaller table [Music] okay i'd like to

146call this meeting back to order it's 8 57 i lied but we're all here um okay moving on to new business um we have a date change for the board meeting in may and i think dr mclaughlin is going to explain why that needs to happen so let me first apologize because i know this was an extended discussion at our last meeting and i didn't bring up may it was after the fact that i realized our board meeting in may is the 17th which is two days past the deadline for the non-renewal or i'm sorry the renewal of non-tenured teachers so may 15th is the mandatory deadline to affirm employment for our non-tenured teachers and if we kept the may 17th meeting we would have to do it a whole month earlier in april which

147really puts a lot of teachers that and administration at a disadvantage because it shortens the length of time that you're looking you know at someone's performance and and renewal is a big deal you know so um so i apologize but that would it would really leave us with two choices uh in may uh of the third or the tenth so i don't know what the board would prefer but i would request that we make that one change board members we wouldn't have anything on the 10th right the first tuesday of the month is already committee meetings so it makes sense the 10th also gives the administration maximum amount of time to do all the business that they would normally do up until the third tuesday mr swallows uh do we need a motion to make

148that change so i present a motion to uh move our meeting to the tenth second okay so we have a motion by ms grasalis a second by mr miller any other comments or questions just to clarify much on the same time and everything the same okay and so that would be a swap there would only be one meeting still in may it would just be on the 10th um can we do a voice vote okay all in favor of moving the meeting to may 10th say aye all opposed okay motion passes um ms mendez will you please introduce the second item yes thank you dr sander if i may i'd like to start off by reading our mission statement again working together as a community our mission is to welcome all and provide opportunities for

149our students in a safe and accepting learning environment to become creative empathetic resilient and who choose to make an impact taking into consideration the mission statement the board's previous commitment to attend training involving equity and anti-racism the recent passing of anti-bullying legislation which has been signed into law by the governor requiring the superintendent to provide the board with data on all reports that meet the statutory definition of bullying and requiring the board to draft policies related to hiv and consequences most importantly recognizing that suicide is the second leading cause of death for children between the ages of 10 and 14 as reported by the daily record we must understand as a board all avenues of bullying so with a goal to gain a better understanding of the lgbtq plus community and the issues our lgbtq

150plus students are confronted with right here in dover having a better understanding will help shape any future policies our board will draft and adopt i move that the board take part in a training presentation provided by edge new jersey on lgbtq humility at our regular session meeting on march 15th i second that okay so we have a motion for a nj edge or an edge nj lgbtq humility training on march 15th 15th at our regularly scheduled board meeting uh we have a motion by ms mendez the second by ms grasalis comments and questions ms ruiz thank you dr saner it might help to know our budget calendar and again our time commitments if the if the presentation is an hour long and our agenda is already you know two three four hours long might it

151be better to move it up to february or or later to april so i just like to learn more about what we expect at that march meeting well i can talk about the february meeting february meeting uh just so that you know although i don't know that it will be a long period there are two groups that we're looking to honor our educators of the year they've been invited to the february meeting so typically we invite each of them up we present them with a token of our appreciation and recognition for uh being uh selected for that that position and then uh also although i haven't invited them yet so this is kind of new news for the uh for for them i i'd like to ask our district nurses to be honored for their

152extensive work through the pandemic at the february meeting as well so those two presentations would take place in february i don't have any information on march i don't know mr slam regard to the budget calendar if you do so march will be the presentation of the preliminary budget um is it possible that i would like to propose an amendment to the motion that we have that hour training um not on the 15th but i believe it would be the eighth the week but the two the second tuesday of march and my reasoning is if we had an hour training tonight we would now be making this decision at 1005. and i'm i get up very early i'm not i it's 25 minutes to my bedtime so if it's possible to i know none of us

153want to come out for an additional meeting but i am concerned this meeting is actually fairly short in in the big scheme of things all right dr snyder if i may um we had a presentation today that was roughly 30 to 45 minutes um so i think that if we could sit through that meeting today that presentation today i don't see why the 30 to 45 minutes of this presentation should be an issue but i will say that the eighth will not work um with for edge the other date that they did provide me if we wanted to amend for a special session is tuesday march 29th okay um ms mendez i think the issue is not that we absolutely i am not in any way saying this training is not needed or appreciated but

154remember we have uh teacher presentations in february and then the preliminary budget meeting or budget approval in march would be also another 45 minute or hour presentation so that would put us in the neighborhood of an hour to an hour and a half of presentations depending where we combined it before we started to do business dr saner yes ms grisalis i may ask perhaps ms mendez is this something that we need to do as a group or is this an hour training that we could do our own and and and is it already pre-recorded is it specifically just to us or is it something that we can do kind of our own and come back um as a as a as a board to discuss our training so from my understanding the presenter is going

155to tailor it just for the board and i think that um it is important that the public also sees us taking this training thank you okay ms ruiz i didn't hear the alternate date um march 29th march 29th okay it is it is so we would have to rearrange one committee meeting i believe so my question currently on the floor there is a motion to discuss whether we would have a special meeting on march 8th for the edge training which of course we now know is not available so i i presume that most notions are back to the motion of having it on march 15th um which would be a safe estimate of two hours of presentations one for the preliminary budget and one for edge both very important and i'm happily happy to sit

156here for two hours plus business we've done that before but to respect those of you that get up super super early then i would move that that the board schedule a special meeting for the edge training on tuesday march 29th i second that okay so now we have an amendment an amended motion that the board would schedule a special meeting on tuesday march 29th for the purpose of the edge nj training we have a motion by ms ruiz a second by ms grasalis are there any comments or questions about that that amendment to the motion where it would be march 29th mr robles not about the amendment i'm just curious about the training uh is it similar i don't know if you know miss mendes about i know the mr jaime's and works with the

157edge to do training for the staff is it similar is it different and what kind of thing it is similar um i haven't taken either training so i don't know exactly what's in it but i did send um some more information on it so i can tell you some of the bullet points if you'd like if that would help you for this one you don't know about the one that they're going for for this training that he the edge presenter plans to facilitate oh but not for the one for the staff you don't have information i don't know okay i'm just kidding i just you don't need to get into specifics that's fine that was my first question and then the second question do you know the training itself is interactive or is it just

158receiving the information and then the presenter sort of leaves and then we talk about it you know so i know that the presenter um is going to make time for questions i also know that there are videos attached to the presentation that are kind of like little short little movies um so yeah i guess you would call that interactive okay yeah thank you any other comments or questions okay um can we try a role can we try a voice vote and if it okay so let's try a voice vote we're voting to have a special meeting on tuesday march 29th for the purposes of the edge new jersey training all in favor say aye aye all opposed okay motion carries so that will be scheduled for tuesday march 29th um starting at 6 30 pm

159will that work so mr slam you will have to take care of the newspaper announcement for that okay um [Music] my computer fell asleep i apologize no i have personal confidence um just a final item of new business a reminder about the njsba training i know i spoke already with ms mendez as a new board member but remember all re-elected board members are required to do training in their first year um as a re-elected board member so please um reach out to mr slam to schedule that for you and i believe ms ruiz you have a late addition to new business regarding virtual attendance at a board meeting yes thank you dr steiner i propose that the board resolved to waive the notice requirement in district policy 0155.1 board member participation at board meetings using

160electronic device so this policy allows us to provide notice a meeting before if we are not going to be able to physically be present for the next meeting due to travel or illness but we still want to participate the waiving of the requirement would be only four covit 19 positive tests some of us may not have symptoms still want to be present at the meeting but have a positive test and of course we're not going to expose each other and our school community to covid and could participate remotely but would not have enough time right if i if i tested positive yesterday i wouldn't be able to give notice today to participate remotely so if we all vote to waive the requirement only for covet 19 positive tests the notice requirement um that's my proposal

161we need a second second okay so we have a motion for waiving the requirement for one month's notice regarding attending attendance attending virtually due to covet 19. we have a motion by ms ruiz we have a second by ms nutting any other comments or questions mr robles so i'm sorry i don't know if i understood correctly the it's only for covent 19 that that were that is being excused is that what you said yes ms ruiz's motion was due to covid19 so you so if you were going on if you had a business trip next month and you knew you could not attend the meeting in person but you could from your hotel room because you're not working at night you could at the months prior meeting according to the policy ms ruiz stated you

162could ask for uh to be allowed to do that that still is in place however if you two days before the meeting test positive for kovid you could ask at that point to attend the meeting virtually and only for that reason if you only for some other reason you couldn't attend you can't request you cannot not according to our bylaws doctor saying just to clarify we could request it but you need to request it a month before right correct right so yes okay um if there are no other comments a voice vote we are voting to amend the policy so that if you have a positive cova test you can request to attend our meetings virtually all in favor all opposed okay motion passes can i uh dr sanders ask a question on that policy

163i don't recall why do we have to do that for a month if we have a valid reason for wanting to attend and we notify you oh because they have to set it out yes yes never mind i got it okay remember uh doctor saying if we can remind right it was really pre-coveted when we didn't have a lot of the necessities so it's really um to make sure that administration had enough time yes it technology okay um we are now to the second 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 three minutes public comments not

164restricted 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 specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond to in public to comments about students or employees please be advised that you are commenting at your own risk any public comments that are

165directed at a particular individual or individuals could subject you to legal liability for defamation if you have a comment please approach the podium and state your name and address all right john coniglio 24 taylor town road modville i'm speaking tonight in my capacity as the president of the dover education association and i wanted to address just one critical item tonight to the board january is the dawning of a new year people often view a new year as a fresh start with goals for the new year ahead although our academic calendar runs september through june our board works year-round and reorganizes every january as you did this month in addition to being the start of the new calendar year january is also board of ed appreciation month for as important as the job of being a

166board member is it is often one that not many people have the courage nor the determination to volunteer for yes volunteer for the job of a board member is extremely time consuming and critically important to all of our successes for our students for our staff and for our community let alone meeting various times a month and making decisions that are in the best interests of all parties involved during an unprecedented global pandemic such as covet 19. there have been boards across the state of new jersey that have been unfairly and unjustly verbally attacked due to mass mandates and the like when those same mandates came from the state of new jersey and not from local school boards themselves i am thankful proud and appreciative that our decorum at our dover meetings has been civil respectful

167and appropriate for this public setting on behalf of the dover education association thank you to ms gorzales thank you to ms mendez thank you to mr miller thank you miss nutting thank you miss phillips thank you mr robles thank you miss ruiz thank you miss faveros thank you dr saner and also thank you to mr slam mr crew dr mclaughlin and mrigliano for all of your efforts and making our board the board that it is today thank you very much thank you mr coniglio that means a lot are there any other public comments if there aren't i will at this point close public comments that's saying if i may make a comment please i just wanted to um get my gather my thoughts and i really wanted to thank mr um coniglio for that it

168it's really um important for us to work as a team and it's great to to hear those comments i know that sometimes we don't see eye to eye um but it's great to work together as one dover and i very grateful that we have that relationship i'm also thankful that our team includes our staff in all capacities right we really are all on the same team and thank you for that if there are no other comments i will entertain a motion to adjourn second okay we have a motion from ms riveros a second from miss nutting all in favor aye aye any opposed this meeting is now adjourned at 9 18. thank you everyone and have a good night and a reminder to help clean up yes please help clean up so we can all

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