Dover Public Schools BOE Meeting - 11-17-2020

001instructions for assessing and participating in the virtual meeting were posted in the district websites i apologize for the targeting is coming on we had some executive matters that needed um extra time and we were unable to inform the public of that delay so my apologies um for that um dr cena may you please only the next two items please yes could you please join me for the flag salute i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and please remain standing for a moment of silence could we please take a moment of silence for our students staff and the residents of dover who are all feeling the impact of do of covid directly

002living life during covid with its many challenges as well as the injustice and inequity that exists in our world as the number of cases rises in our community our state and our nation and as the weather grows colder many of us are more limited in our activities as well as feeling anxiety about our situation let us remember to work together wear masks practice social distancing and support each other as we are one dover so that we can all celebrate together in the future thank you dr senor mr menkenwicksman we have attendance roll call please it's catano here mr miller here miss mullen here ms nutting here mr robles president mitch ruiz here dr senor president miss federos present ms christophe president as we have at the top of our agenda board member please um read

003out our mission statement so we may focus and remember that this is the purpose of us in our duty here anyone have it handy that would like to read it [Music] did i see someone okay working together as a community our mission is to welcome all and provide opportunities for our students in a safe and accepting learning environment to become creative empathic resilient and who choose to make an impact let us make sure that this is the focus of our meeting tonight um dr mclaughlin would you like to introduce our presenter today please yes i'm happy to do that so uh many of you uh mr uh no mr marion our principal at academy street school and um i'm very happy that mr marion has taken over the role uh at a district level of

004being the anti-bullying coordinator in in that aspect he organizes all our efforts supports our anti-bullying specialists and makes sure that we are following best practice in regard to hiv and all the protections that our students are entitled to so tonight uh mr marion is with us to share a little bit of information about um hiv in the dover schools and specifically our self-assessment which we're required to do every year to report out on those scores that are being submitted to the state from our self-assessment and to explain what goes into those scores so thank you mr marion for being with us and i'll turn it over to you okay well i kind of stole my introduction there well good evening everybody uh for those of you that i haven't had the opportunity to meet um

005i just like to introduce myself i am david mary and i'm the principal of academy street school and the newly appointed hiv coordinator for the district tonight i want to say thank you for allowing me the opportunity to present to you our self-assessment grades they're called the hiv report cards each year we are required to i'm going to pause for a second is my is this being presented the powerpoint presentation that goes along with it yeah i just sent a text is that something i need i have it um i have it up i didn't is that something i need to be presenting i think they'd rather look at that than no i'm asking jim is that was was that yes yes i i thought our facilitator was going to do that thank you yep

006okay so tonight i'm here to talk to you about our self-assessment our bullying self-assessment all new jersey public schools each year required to complete an annual self-assessment to determine the compliance under the anti-bullying bill of rights this is an assessment that is done by our school safety team so each building has a school safety team which is headed up by the building principal and the anti-bullying specialist and is there a way i can change this i think mr marion you're just gonna have to say you can go to the next slide because they won't oh okay i was kind of trying to do one of these a little hand signal um so each school is required to do this a self-assessment each year under the anti-bullying bill of rights next slide please each school has

007a school safety team that meets regularly to discuss a variety of topics as they relate to hiv this team is led by like i said a building principal and an anti-bullying specialist it's also comprised of teachers paraprofessionals and parents um who kind of put forth their efforts in trying to improve our program next slide please the following people are the anti-bullying specialists for the schools listed below mr taxiarchu is the anti-bullying specialist for two buildings for east dover and academy street school and ross acevedo heads the efforts over at north dover for hiv brenda ortiz sadie and sadie salazar are in charge of hib efforts at dover middle school and lin tucci handles dover high school next slide please so this self-assessment that we have to put ourselves through each year is comprised of eight

008core elements the a-core elements are listed here and they're just all various aspects of hib everything from the programs that we initial initiatives that we have each year how we train our staff how we train our students uh the curriculum and instruction that's related to hiv our hiv personnel our procedures for reporting investigation procedures if they're these eight areas within each of these eight areas there are indicators there are sub-indicators under each area in which you can score points so each indicator has a score of zero through three that you will rate yourself as it relates to each indicator under each core element uh next slide please these are our report cards so let me explain how this is broken down for you so ci number one that's core element number one and based on

009the indicators that are underneath the maximum score which you could receive is a 15 that's if you were to score a three on all five of those indicators within that subheading in under that core element um meeting expectations would be a score of ten so those those scores that i'm going to be discussing zero through three zero you get zero points if you do not meet expectations associated with that indicator you would score one point if you partially meet uh any parts of that indicator uh two if you meet the involved the necessary requirements for that indicator and a three if you exceed the expectations uh that are set forth under each indicator i am so happy to announce and and let everybody know that in all of our buildings across the board there was

010not one core element or indicator within a core element in which we did not meet the expectations at least meet expectations so we did not score any zeros or one in any of the core elements any of the indicators associated with any of the core elements we either met or exceeded expectations in all of these areas which is a fantastic feat one of the things that goes along with this is you can't just say yes we meet expectations or we exceed expectations you have to be able to document all your efforts and be able to prove on the spot if we were able to get audited uh on this report we have to be able to produce this evidence that we do exceed or meet these expectations which um so meeting that feat and being

011able to back up with documentation all of those expectations that we either met or succeed is fantastic um if you go out to the far right where our total is uh the maximum score that you can receive on this report card is a 78. if you were to meet expectation in all areas score threes across the board and all core elements and associated indicators that score would be a 52 as you can see we far exceed that 52 of meeting expectations with 71's in four of our buildings in the 66 in dover high school and when you average that out our district score far exceeds uh expectations as well with a score of 70. next slide please so after we do all of these and we start taking a look at each building's data from

012this report that we do put together we found some areas where we met expectations but we weren't exceeding expectations and there are three main areas that we could group these findings into uh the first was the way that we were collecting and using our data we need to be using our data a little bit better collecting our data a little more precisely so that way we can use it to guide our programming identify trends that may exist to provide the appropriate programming and potential training that is associated with those areas the other is documenting ongoing discussions and training of hiv policy for the students now what that means is we are required as part of the hiv bill of rights to make sure that our students are well versed in the policy that does exist

013associated with hiv and we do a number of different things throughout our buildings whether it be having our anti-bullying specialists go in to the classrooms throughout the year for trainings on hiv with the students we just need to get a little bit better in a couple areas of documenting these things you know all the efforts that we're doing on educating our students because it can't just be a one-time thing that we introduce this to our students it needs to be an ongoing conversation that's going on with our students and we're looking for different areas in which we can be documenting this a little bit better we are doing a good job with it because we are meeting the expectations in a lot of these areas or exceeding them in some but in order to gain

014a couple more points we were looking at different ways that we'd be able to document that we are having ongoing conversations with our student population about the policy as it exists and then the other area where we're meeting expectations but we could show a little bit of improvement may be specific school safety team trainings uh and climate improvement programs with documented results so these are areas in which we could find use our data to kind of ties back into number one using our data to identify the trends to provide programs and proving and documenting that those programs were successful so those are the areas where we were kind of we met expectations and exceeded in some areas but we can improve in those areas looking ahead so if we can go to the next slide

015this is where we're going to be looking ahead so right now as uh it relates to hiv and our schools we do have a very solid program already in place we're always looking to improve and not just accepting the status quo so some of the things are these are some of the things that we're doing right now as we move forward one our school safety teams will be meeting in november december to analyze the data presented in this report it would be easy for me to just present to each one of those school safety teams and say here this is what it did the report showed us but i'm a firm believer in letting people play with their data get dirty with their data so to speak and get in there and identify these areas

016for their own specific schools as it relates to that instead of just handing it to them so the school safety teams will be meeting uh over the coming weeks to take a look at their report card uh data and identify areas how they can maybe improve their documentation how can we improve the way that we're collecting our data and using our data and let them discover that in each building and see where they can make those improvements uh the anti-bullying specialists that i mentioned earlier for each building they're going i'm going to be turnkey some training that i had gone to about different ways to cultivate data as well as uh effective interviewing techniques i attended a training or a course on effective uh getting the truth it's called getting out the truth is is

017what it was called and it was a tool kit for effective student investigations as it related to in hiv and there were a number of different techniques um and interview styles and evidence management and and different things that came up during that training that i feel would be beneficial for abs who are actually the ones doing the investigations uh with our students to be uh well aware of and i can give them that training so i'll be working with the abs's over the next few weeks to kind of get into those types of things cultivating the data and their interviewing techniques um number three the abs team will identify ways to document some of the ways in which we have continued policy conversations with our students as it relates to hiv these are going to

018be they're going to need to get creative to make sure that we can document and prove that we are having these conversations whether it be through programs and agendas meetings different things like that that we could do so make sure that we go from that three to that from that two to that three and exceeding expectations in our documentation as it relates to the policy our school safety teams are going to begin to research effective hiv programs school-wide district-wide type programs and measure their effect and effectiveness in enhancing school culture and climate so these are just different programs whether it be elementary schools do one thing middle school and high school another because there are those differences in age groups and we are looking at a number of different programs that do exist um we

019have a number you know right now social emotional is uh such a big component especially that we are virtual um we feel that uh we have a number of ways in which we can start addressing that um the district has initiated something this year that we've never had before um establishing a relationship with rutgers mental health clinicians we're going to have one mental health clinicians working with our elementary schools we have orlando calvo who will be working with their elementary students francesca enriquez works with our dover middle school students they have various programs whether it's that they can that they're willing i had a long conversation with them today actually uh parent programs they want to put together um about so that focus on social emotional uh ones for students where they can go into

020the classrooms they want to host groups they want to have individual sessions they have a number of different uh things that they want to bring to our schools which is fantastic they have a number of connections wide ranging within the community of various resources that are available for our parents our families our students so they're going to be uh great i know uh i want to say dalai palou [Music] sirigliano is that it just rolls off the tongue uh uh her and i uh as well as the other elementary principals actually were in a meeting the other day uh looking into a program called responsive classroom and potentially piloting that program in our elementary schools it's an evidence-based research based program uh for students you know that focuses on social emotional learning as well and

021the well-being of our students so we we actually sat in on a meeting about that with the consultant the other day some of these programs do have costs that go that are associated with them so we need to understand that there are financial commitments that do go along with these so as we research these programs and you know determine which may be the best for the district um you know there may be some financial things that go along with it um other district-wide type programs that we're looking at whether it be cyberbullying focusing on cyberbullying programs that are focused on that area in particular that seems to be where a number of cases are coming from these days um there's a program called no place for hate is another one i just started looking into

022the wayne public schools adopted it so i have a call in to them to get some more information from them um that the anti-defamation league has a number of programs so there's a lot of programs out there and we need to do our due diligence and research and do some looking into those and seeing what would best fit for our students another area other areas that we're already doing that are new to the district since last year are the adoption of our core values is something that is new in the district that kind of addresses this area and has an impact on our bullying number will have an impact on bullying and anti-bullying numbers uh service learning opportunities that are taking place in all the buildings um so we have a lot of things going

023on and we have a lot of areas in which we're going to look to expand on those programs or bring in some new programs as well moving forward and last but not least last year the district purchased uh and opted into the stop it app which is a program that we're going to be relaunching again this year we're going to have a little push here that goes out to the families and the students as well this is a way for them to anonymously report any bullying that may be taking place because one of the things that's associated with bullying is that stigma i don't want to be a tattletail i don't want to be you know the one that causes a friend to get in trouble or anything like that so sometimes you know while

024we do all the training we can with these students to talk to them about how important it is to stand up to the bully how important it is to make sure that you know you protect your friends you protect yourselves uh there's still that stigma that does go with it so that stop it app allows students uh and their families as well to kind of anonymously put something on our radar that may radar that may otherwise never get on there so um we're going to be relaunching that as well um and then the last slide i came across this quote um while i was doing some research for this and i really thought it just kind of hit home and it's from jason mraz who's a an artist a singing artist a recording artist it

025says when all of us are acknowledged as the human equals that we really are there will be no space left for bullying um and i think that's something that really hit home with me and and it really should be something that we do focus on you know making sure that everybody feels equal no matter of you know their race their gender their sexual orientation anything of that nature we want to make sure that everybody feels like the equal that we all are and that is my presentation of our hiv report card grades if anyone has any questions um i'd gladly answer them the best i can awesome i saw mr robles and mr miller please go ahead hey mr marion welcome thank you for being with us uh just a question i know um the

026when you guys launched i think you mentioned last year the stop it app uh i thought it was a great idea and i'm just curious if you could share or if you're not maybe you could for another time share what was the you know what flow of information do you guys get like people actually reporting things and the engagement from the from the people that were hoping to get information from about these incidents and things like that uh district-wide i don't know if you had any kind of required number right now i don't have district-wide numbers for you to say that would be accurate but what i can say is um i could speak for elementary more because that was my wheelhouse last year i wasn't in this role last year so i wouldn't have

027access to the district-wide numbers but i do know that we did get some um reportings on there at the elementary level i believe it was more widely used in the middle school and high school and speaking just to the principals throughout the year but it was a tool that was being used but it is something that you know almost out of sight out of mind we've been out of school for a long time and i think it's something that right now is a good time that i believe we should really put that back on everybody's radar just because you know just because we're not in person doesn't mean bullying can't be taking place and we want to make sure that students do have that avenue to report it and families do have that avenue to

028report it to us if that if it is taking place because we don't want anything to slide fall through the cracks and and miss anything just because we're not physically in school seeing these students each and every day where it would more regularly be reported um so we definitely do want to relaunch that and see and just a follow-up and sorry just to follow up on that is the app something that the students themselves use or is it more the parents sort of do the submission and the reason i'm asking is because thinking now that we're going to be uh supplying students with individual devices from the school i'm wondering if there's an opportunity there for them to have that if at all within those systems that's a discussion we haven't had about pushing that

029app down to the school issued devices and that that's something a conversation we'd have to have as an administrative unit but it is an app that they would be able to download on any of their own devices and be able to uh use we have the codes for them uh and if you were in the buildings i mean i know we still have them up in academy street we have posters throughout the buildings that uh advertise that um and have all that information for the students to use if they uh they needed it but um like i said we're gonna push it back out there get it on everybody's radar whether it's through our social media our honeywell our school websites we're going to uh you know get it make sure that people are aware

030that it is still something that we are using they have downloaded already it's still active if not they can re-download it and and get using that if they need if need be and just to further clarify mr robles question it is available for both parents and students thank you mr miller yes i just wanted to thank you for the wonderful presentation i love the quote at the end and you know i hope we get there someday but my question is with the the app um i don't know if you know did you have any students falsely putting information in there that um accuse students of doing something that didn't really happen i can't speak to specifics but i know that is definitely a potential um thing but that could happen in person as well um

031you know we have our abs as our anti-bullying specialists are trained uh to really identify the difference between a false accusation and their investigations are thorough and they uh they go into very good deep detail to find out and make sure that they get the truth uh in those investigations but yes there are incidents that that does take place uh but it also takes place in person as well okay all right thank you no problem any other member have questions for uh mr marion i have a few and again thank you so much mr marion for coming and i'm glad that you aren't nervous um we don't bite right and we we're you know most of us more than right then um so it's great to see you i haven't seen you me personally in

032a very long time so it's great to see you um in regards to the um unfounded or false accusations um do those reports then become kind of part of the documentation of hib um i don't remember seeing i know that we as board c hiv reports um but do they also become part of it um is there any discipline situation that happens with those children or anything like that yes so now um there is discipline that is associated with this but that but that would then fall back into this the code of conduct um you know where we would but we also want to just we don't want to punish students just to punish them um our discipline discipline we want to make sure that the lesson is learned and we want to make sure

033they understand where they went wrong and make sure that they're not going to go make that same decision a second time perfect is to stop it um app and and uh available for those students or parents who are only spanish-speaking i believe it is yes i believe it is in both languages i have to double check that though because it has been a while since i've used it and honestly i've only used it on the english end yeah um on my end so i i just i'd have to look back kind of i know that we have right a big community that's only spanish speaking so just curious to see if they would be able to use it as well um when you um talked about um the safety teams of researching um effective hiv

034programs right that's one of like next steps that you're talking about where is that research happening is there a specific um place that they're looking or is it kind of just let me google yeah there are a number of areas where you can get that type of information um you know well just a general google search but there are best practices out there there are proven uh research research-based programs that do exist that are uh you know vetted and evidence-based um so you know there are a lot of reputable organizations that are promoting their own and to be honest with you i think one of the best resources we have is once you find a program that you like find the schools that are using it and talk to those type those people that are

035on the front lines implementing these programs because you know everything sounds great on a website um you know even if it does have the data to back it up but when you start to talk to other schools that are implementing these types of programs i think you really get true feedback on the effectiveness of the program um what the ins and outs are what the potential pitfalls may be when implementing the program so um reaching out to those buildings to get or those districts to get that information to here and i heard that you're doing that with the wayne school system so that's good right learning from not reinventing the wheel so that's great great um and one more um for the abs or um the anti-bullying specialist i heard that they are getting receiving

036training from you turn king turnkey information from training is there a possibility for them to receive direct training um in regards to interviewing skills or documenting or any of that well right now they do get specific training to become the anti-bullying specialist that uh kind of really gives them a well-rounded um foundation in the hiv bill of rights and their their roles as the abs um this training that i went to i think is more of a good refresher for them i believe this is training that they've already that it's things that have already been a part of their training um but this was just specific on that one um area of investigations and uh i i think you know if we go down that road and they feel they need additional training or would

037like additional training it's something we could definitely look into but for right now i believe you know i the readers digest version i could give them uh may be a better use of their time uh because it is a long course a lot of videos that go along with it and i kind of picked out what i felt would probably be the best almost refresher for them uh moving forward thank you mr marion i appreciate your time no problem um if no one else has any other comments then dr mclaughlin i give you back the floor okay mr marion thank you for being with us tonight we appreciate it though it's a a thorough overview and not only for the presentation tonight but the work that you've already done uh in the short time that

038you've been coordinator of the program so looking forward to continued progress this obviously is one of our predominant areas one of the areas that we want to make the most progress with and pay attention to continually so thank you for your commitment and thank you for agreeing uh to take this on thank you for having the confidence in me to do it thank you thank you have a good night and be safe take care everyone have a great night thanks for having me now we move to our public comment section and 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 common each statement shall be held to a time period

039of three minutes public comments limited to items on this agenda only should be entertained for about 30 minutes since this is a virtual meeting occurring during covet shutdown public coming has been solicited through the google form is that still accurate and district website members of the public can also participate during the public portion of the meeting through this zoom session by activating the raised hand function um by your across from your name i believe yep on the little dots actually the hand function is at the bottom for an attendee okay all right very different thank you um you have to change your name because i'm going to call him thank you um please understand the public comment portions of our agenda are not structured that's question and answer session but rather they're offered as opportunities

040to share your thoughts with the board the board may or may not respond to public comments however all comments and please be assured that all comments are considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when providing performance comments may not be abusive obscene or threatening or irrelevant please understand that students employees have specific legal privacy perceptions the board is not permitted to respond to comments about students or employees please be advised that you are commenting and at your own risk any public comments that are directed at a particular individual or individuals could subject you to legal liability for defamation um mr minkowitz do we have any public i i do not see any that have been submitted um for agenda we have anyone on

041um the zoom meeting i don't see anyone okay okay are any board members have uh discussions absolutely not okay um well dr mclaughlin would you like to um no you don't mean approval of minutes then we will move forward to the next point if there are no public comments is there does this board have a motion to approve the executive and regular meetings meeting meanings of october the 20th of i see mr miller moving motion is there any second i see doctor senior second any board members have discussion points i know um i commented in regards to the style of the minutes and a little bit of the difference right a lot more detail um dr mclaughlin would you share with the board um kind of what we're looking to for the next few for

042for the next minutes sure i i think that we will the board will see a more familiar form of the of the minutes i think now that our um sessions are recorded uh the the individual who's designed uh who is assigned to uh tabulating the minutes has worked both off of mr minka which is minutes which would usually be what what the board sees and has um added the video piece to that however i think one of the things we want to always keep in mind is that the minutes are not meant to be a transcript of the meeting so um we are being conscious of that and probably the board will see more of what they've been familiar with thank you i just want to you know make sure and clarify that the minutes

043are the focus of action that's taking not necessarily content specific um and so i wanted to make sure that we're not um veering away from that style of documentation right for our minutes um okay if there are no other further um discussions then may uh mr minkovic may we have raw call for approval of minutes please yes ms katano yes mr miller yes mr mullen yes nutty yes mr robles yes mrs ruiz yes dr saner yes ms fisheros yes ms chrysalis yes um i do not have any communications that came in through the board since our last time or for the board since our last meeting do any other board members receive any communication that you would like to share i see shaking heads okay great i will move forward with administrative reports dr mclaughlin

044could you introduce your staff okay thank you well i'll um provide my report uh first and as uh usual uh our assistant superintendent business administrator will provide theirs um good evening to everyone uh beginning monday of this week all staff were notified uh that the district is restricting access to its facilities uh to only essential staff uh which was basically the operation that we were operating under in the spring uh teachers will work exclusively from home and that's important for our parent community to be aware of this directive was issued in light of the number of cases that are being experienced throughout our community of dover on october the 30th the no total number of cases in dover stood at 966 and as of friday the number was 1147 which is a substantial increase additionally

045the department of health has initiated reports to us of school-aged individuals and since october the 24th we have received reports of 37 school-aged individuals who are positive for covet in light of these alarming numbers and the risk that's associated with them we took the step of restricting further access to our schools we've had some uh individuals who have been working uh in our schools who have tested positive and certainly we don't want to put anyone at risk unnecessarily so only essential staff uh will be on hand uh the it's important to note too as we read the newspaper and some of the reports that are coming through the state the low numbers of school cases statewide that has been represented are only statistics that meet the state definition of a school outbreak and if you

046read carefully through the definition of a school outbreak you will see that those are very restrictive types of numbers and are not representative of the schools that are closing on and off um and as incidents occur and so i think that our current model of remote learning provides both safety and consistency for our students until such a time that there's relative assurance that our students and our staff can return safely to school it's important to emphasize that we have not set a date for return so we we have indicated that we are close to at least january but we will reassess that um we will certainly give our community ample notice of whether we're returning or not returning before january well before january so people can make their plans um but i want to reinforce

047that that we have not set a firm date uh for returning and certainly we would want to see a change in what's occurring right now in order to be able to return uh to school as a matter of fact um we're seeing a number of schools um in our vicinity and around the state who are closing for now an extended period of time so um we're all hopeful that that will change and we will watch and see what occurs and make our best judgment and recommend that to the board and to our community i'm happy to share that the department of health will be providing a covet clinic to all residents of dover and they will be using dover high school's gymnasium from nine to two pm on saturday november the 28th testing is free

048and instructions uh for registration have been shared both by the department of health but also on our district's social media sites on our facebook and on our twitter and we'll repeat those instructions and keep those flowing so that people are able to see that registration but that will be free from nine to two pm on saturday november the 28th um here in the district uh we are very happy to partner with the department of health in this critically important event and they have been really a great resource for us throughout this whole pandemic so so we thank them for their partnership and for their efforts by the end of this month our school's new phone system is expected to be fully operational parents will be able to contact their children's teachers by accessing their voicemail

049account and all schools will now have remotely accessible voicemail for the very first time and we should see this by the end of this week so we're very very excited uh information concerning the phone directory uh will be broadcast as soon as the system is ready to go and this major endeavor is a key part of our district's ongoing commitment to increase communication between home and school and so for all the parents and members of the community who have had difficulty over the years in contacting and leaving messages and finding the right extension um your your time uh of weight is is is at hand so uh we're we're very excited about that and then just one announcement that was not on my original report but i received word from zou fall specifically their snap

050ed portion of of zoo fall that the van which they found funding for and which will help provide meals to to our students in the district has been acquired and will be parked in the district parking lot beginning tomorrow um as soon as the final adaptations of the van are ready we anticipate that the van will immediately be sent over to victory gardens to provide another site for food distribution and then of course will be utilized in whatever fashion possible for families who are unable to access the location so i again i i thank the department of health for being a great partner and i have to say zoo fall has been tremendous as well they they look for every opportunity to work with us and to help reach our parents and to uh coordinate

051distribution and in addition to being our school physician services uh and recently running um clinics uh health examination vaccine clinics and dental clinics at our school so i want to thank them as well and that completes my report i see dr saner in the industries um dr mclaughlin would you address uh there is a part of the phone system that you did not address um that has to do with security that i think both our parents and our staff members uh i think we've mentioned it before but it it's a really huge improvement for us would you mind mentioning that please yeah absolutely so this the phone system is tied uh to to the new security initiatives that that have been ongoing we've installed as uh with eastern datacom who's the company who uh provided

052our phones a lens system in our school which is an automated alert system for our lockdowns uh the various type of lockdowns that we have shelter in place and and um uh and other and other areas that our students are familiar with which will now be uh pre-recorded we actually have emergency buttons that are located in our hallways that can be pushed uh so that the school for example could be put in lockdown just like you'd have an emergency fire alarm uh that you could pull uh in a hallway but the phone connection which you mentioned which is critical uh any teacher in any uh classroom will have the ability to uh put the school into lockdown through their phone and uh that's an essential piece of information in addition to having um the the

053independent uh ability to contact 9-1-1 but if the school does go into a lockdown 9-1-1 is automatically uh activated and uh the the police are notified so this is a as you mentioned a big step forward in our security where previously a something like a lockdown would only be able to be called from the speaker system in the in the school office and certainly you know from some of the um stories we're familiar with if the school office was compromised that would certainly impact the whole uh reaction of the building uh and uh what i also want to mention uh in conjunction with the phone system and with the lens system is that our paging system throughout the the district was also um totally redone so a lot of our buildings had dead zones where

054you couldn't hear announcements um every every zone has been addressed including outside areas with outside speakers so should we have an emergent situation there should be no reason that anyone would not be alert to that including strobe lights that are now visible from the entrances to the schools so someone approaching the school would know that we had an emergency situation thank you miss gracalis i saw you but you're muted just fyi um my question i didn't send in advance so i understand if there isn't a response for it ready um dr mclaughlin reported on the um clinic that will happen at dover high school for covet testing um and i'm grateful to hear of that very necessary in our community i did check the eventbrite link to that which can be found on the flyer

055and it states that it's for dover residents and you can bring photo id which includes a passport however a passport doesn't prove your dover residence will the will will people who register applicants or walk-ins uh be required to prove that they are dover residents um for example if i don't have a driver's license i would need to bring you know a light bill or something to prove that i'm a dover resident i i'll be happy to follow up with the department of health on that i i wasn't aware of that that requirement uh so uh although i know it was designed for for dover residents and i think also open to wharton and mine hill um but um i will i will chat with uh mr wiggle on that and and see what his response

056is and let the board know and if i may ask dr mclaughlin to the extent that you're willing that you advocate for um the most expansive um way to document um identification and residency so that as many of our residents can benefit from that testing i know that there are some other sites that advertise a free test but if you don't have a documentation that is as new jersey state issue documentation then it shoots up to 175 dollars which is not feasible for families who are not working and maybe haven't been working since march and don't have a way to access a state id at this time okay i i will i'll follow up on that for sure and i'll let the board know thank you thank you dr mclaughlin i know that you um

057mentioned regarding the differences in documenting numbers right in regards to our school um and i just wanted if you could give a kind of a quick um clarification in regards to the state definition of school outbreak right and and how different that is to what actually you have reported um with the numbers on friday and on the 30th yeah school outbreak uh if you read the definition basically is is a way that you say that um individuals within the school setting have passed covet on to each other and that that somehow has been uh vetted and uh that's the reason that the school is closed uh and i haven't checked it as of today or yesterday but until recently if you looked morris count mars county had zero outbreaks and yet we know that schools

058throughout our county have been open and closed and open and closed but they are not included none of those cases are included in the numbers that we're reading when the state tells us that only 140 students have been associated with school outbreaks so i think it's really important to know that that's a very narrow definition um and i and this is just um my own personal perspective uh but i also feel that um we're not at a point where contact tracing is so precise that we can identify exactly who passed on covet and where they did it so um i i just think that we have to take a little bit more expansive view of the numbers uh than than the ones that are being officially reported thank you i just wanted to highlight that

059difference because uh you know that that makes a huge especially for our dover district right um and and what the impact that has had on our families so thank you for that definition or clarification if we move um if there's no other further comments if we move then on to administrator approvals no i'm sorry i'm going to skip mr riggliano and mr minkowitz so i can give my report um good evening on the agenda for your approval tonight is an agreement between dover public schools and the county college of morris for a new cte program at dover high school cte stands for career and technical technical education and is a new jersey department of ed endorsed program which offers students interested in a specific area the opportunity to gain academic and technical skills leading to

060success either in college or in a post-secondary position in that particular field cte programs combine real-world learning opportunities with direct and specific instruction in a specialty area the agreement on the agenda tonight is for a graphic arts program within our fine and performing arts department dover students who choose to take part in this program would be able to enroll in the following courses drawing 1 2d design introduction to computer graphics and computer graphics 1. our students will be able to complete these four courses for a total of 12 credits awarded by the county college of morris as part of dover's application for the cte program mrs gaynor matanti has formed a cte advisory committee inclusive of administrators and teachers from both ccm and dover admissions officers from the joe hubert school dover students and parents

061this is truly an exciting time to be a student at dover high school as i see this partnership as being only the beginning we are looking at other programs and other potential partners i have invited mrs gainer matanti to present more on the cte program and process at our december meeting she will be reviewing more of the specific requirements for all cte programs and how dover met those requirements i would like to take this opportunity to thank the administration at ccm for their continued partnership with dover this has been in the works for over a year so it's it's good to see it finally happen and also the hard work of mrs gainer matanti and mrs heinemann who have worked together on this initiative switching gears i would like to let the board and the

062community know that we are on the verge of an ipad roll out to the majority of our elementary students students in grades first through six will be receiving an ipad within this next week as building principals announce their plans for delivering these devices upon signing the acceptable use form parents will be given an ipad in a case with a keyboard and a charger it is through this device that our students and teachers can have a daily virtual connection with this announcement comes many thank yous i'd like to thank our entire staff for being patient as our tech department needed to shift priorities to make this project happen i'd like to thank diego latorre jonathan unisa and abdullah baza for working non-stop to configure the ipads for our students also the many administrative staff personnel who

063came on friday to assist with the final labeling and packaging lastly i'd like to thank our transportation department who delivered the devices safely to the elementary schools at a moment's notice when they were ready to all who had a part in this goal being achieved thank you i also want to take a moment and let families know that the district is still offering hot spots the forum is available still on our website and those devices can also be secured through seeing your building administration also on the agenda for approval tonight is the submission of the preschool operation plan and application for the 2122 preschool expansion aid this application continues to provide our youngest learners with direct instruction utilizing best practice curriculums and materials such as the creative curriculum and gold assessments as part of this

064plan teachers and other supporting professionals in preschool are also provided with continuing professional development to enhance their knowledge and about student growth development and instructional strategies i'd like to thank mr ganio for his work on this application and in this area that concludes my report mr minkowitz i thought mr miller had his head oh i'm sorry i couldn't see it mr miller that's okay um i i just love the fact that we're we're getting more technology classes and to be able to get credits for him is wonderful and i was just wondering and i can't remember i might have this wrong i thought there were other classes that some of our teachers also taught that they could earn credits for county college like english comp or something like that and i was wondering if if

065we still do that or or maybe i'm thinking that they take the classes at county college and it's not taught by our teachers i'm not sure which one it is uh i'm i'm not 100 sure about an english comp not that i'm aware of um dr mclaughlin i don't yeah uh we actually uh miss barabas gave us a little history those courses did exist at one time they don't they they do not currently exist i don't know what happened what the evolution of that was um the you know the the big piece with this concurrent credit is that it's attached to the to the cte which um you know would have been would have been a difference but we are um you know continuing to look at concurrent as a as a really good opportunity

066for our kids no no that's great i just think that there's some foundational courses like the english comps or some of the science is that maybe they might want to enter into an agreement because if if we're kind of teaching a lot of that already um if there's some extra things we need to add to it they may get additional credits that way that's that's what i was trying to to bring about and some of the questions is is there more opportunities for some of the other foundational classes with county college yeah absolutely as i said in my report i think this is just the beginning and some of those individual courses would not require us to do the entire cte application so that that application is because of that program and what that program

067provides the students and the district but i think that now that we have a firm agreement with ccm it'll just open the door for us to start to brainstorm all of those other opportunities that's perfect because i know a lot of the students will be able to take advantage of that and and it's good for our teachers too to be able to be part of that it's great thank you now mr maker i have a few items we we have started the budget building process and we have to be prepared for uh possible 2.8 million dollar reduction as we had previously the state uh reduced our state aid along with hundreds of other districts on monday yesterday the administrative team attended a webinar by systems 3000 they are the software company that provides our accounting

068software and they had someone deliver a presentation to show us how to use the budget module so we will be building the budget together uh this year we switch banks for some major accounts um you probably know that we are still in transition that can take up to a year um outstanding bank items can be good for a whole year and sometimes that happens you'll send out checks and they won't be cash for months and months so we continue to run the reconciliation of concurrent accounts for those for those accounts they are the uh the payroll account the payroll agency account the unemployment account and the general account in addition we had a cafeteria account at prior bank and that cafeteria account the funds were rolled into the general fund and we account for them

069in what we call funds 60. so the board would approve the cafeteria account reconciliation every month this month i changed that report with a fund 60 report from the current software so we can see cash balance for food service going further on a monthly basis and approve it that way let's see the order is underway uh the auditors have begun their work the audit is due to be filed by the auditor on january 8th that date had been moved back by state regulation with the pandemic it was one of the uh many things that have been uh moved back a little bit uh the order to we provided boxes of information they provided us a three-page list of everything they needed so they came and picked up all that information that they were are doing

070as much as they can at their offices although they um still do come in and pick things up and drop things off they uh center ordered her in yesterday and she picked up some testing reporting information from rich simonides so i'll continue to keep you updated on that that's all i have thank you are there any questions okay i just wanted to clarify mr minkowitz when you talked about um the board uh proven cafeteria reconciliation uh report that is in the new system so the format we received for this board is the new format that we will continue to see correct correct correction all right and now um now the administrative approvals um that i was trying to rush through apologize does the board have a motion to approve the administrative um approvals um which

071is a through z a through c i believe yes so moved mullen uh miss mullen um move the motion is there a second second miss katano second um are there any um board members that have discussion points with these administrative reports none okay mr minkowitz may we have alcohol please jessica yes mr miller yes miss mullen yes miss nutty yes mr robles yes miss ruiz yes dr cena yes miss riveros yes miss chrysalis yes thank you uh miss muller may you leave this agenda item please i are you talking about the personnel yes please okay um i move that the board approved the following personnel resolutions for the 2021 school year as listed new personnel employment appointments are contingent upon the required state and federal criminal history background checks in accordance with njsa chapter 116

072pl 1986 and completion of required employee paperwork including pre-employment verification and on the agenda is item 1 through 11 11 being added at the end of the day and that is for the um hiring of a bilingual teacher at north dover elementary school effective november 30th perfect so um ms malin moved the motion to approve one through 11. is there a second second miss viveros has second are there any board members that have discussion points all right miss ruiz and then dr senor please i see that there are two positions for listed with different pay i did send this question in advance it's the jazz band director positions um what explains the difference between the amounts uh for two positions with the same title one is for the jazz band position at the high school

073and one for the middle school and our negotiated agreement with the dea has two separate stipends for those positions um i just wanted to thank you i see several uh um extracurricular activity positions that have been um are on this agenda and for both the middle school and the high school and these are just so critical right now while our students are at home um having the ability to even if it's just virtually meet after school with their peers and have some social interaction is great so um more please go ahead miss mullen i agree with um dr saner it was i was excited to see the middle school newspaper advisor activities um all right if there are no other further discussion points um mr minkowitz when we have roll call please ms katano yes

074mr miller yes mrs mullen miss noddy yes mr robot yes miss ruiz yes dr senior yes here's federos yes miss chris alex yes in negotiations ms katana would you please provide on the board with an update yes thanks mr thomas we met on october 28th for our negotiation session with the dea via zoom for about 75 minutes um we also on november 9th we had another negotiation section with the dea via zoom again for about 95 minutes that concludes my report thank you miss katano curriculum and co-curricular um miss neri may you lead this um agenda please yes i can um so curriculum meeting we met uh what was it the tenth the beginning i think it was the tenth good okay we met on the 10th um we met for about an hour mrs

075uh gainer matanti presented her presentation about the ct cte program which mrs cerigliano already mentioned we also which she already mentioned in her report was the preschool application and also the ipads which we also talked about um one thing that wasn't mentioned from the report and what i'm gonna go over now is the elementary grading benchmark so we are looking at fourth fifth and sixth to go on genesis for a grading system for all districts across the board for all schools um second and third they're still working on transitioning towards that greeting and also kindergarten first grade and i guess they will be rolling out in 21 22 school year um and that is all that we want over on that meeting and i would also like to have a motion for the board to

076approve the following resolutions one through ten okay moved motion to approve one through ten is there a second mr miller a second and are there any uh board members discussion points uh mysteries thank you miss grasales for item number four what if any certifications do our translators and interpreters have what if any trainings exist for interpreter translators in our district so at this time we don't have a certification program we are open to looking at that i know thank you mr ruiz for some of the leads that you gave us and we looked for example at rutgers who requires three graduate courses and and unfortunately they put a disclaimer that indicates you can't indicate the person is a certified interpreter translator um so we we're continuing to look um and and open to you know

077possibilities uh the you know the we are continue to add people who who are employed in the district particularly are bilingual certified staff who have to pass an opi and you know that does give us a measure of validity when they are the people who are involved but i know that interpretation is more than just having accuracy of language it's you know that there are more skills involved in that and you know we'll continue to investigate that i know we also took a look at union county college but their interpreter program was a sign language one so um we we are again you know open and eager to um to any area i i do want to take a moment though to thank our staff for uh being open and willing to extend themselves beyond

078the school day for these kinds of services uh we've been very gratified that the the people who have stepped up and put their names uh on our certified list and i want them to know uh that that makes a big big difference for our parents and so you know just a thank you to them thank you dr mclaughlin for mentioning that i think it's important even though we are asking for certification and official training um on my end is really to provide them with support because as you mentioned you know being bilingual does not mean being bicultural right and so it's important to really you know cater to all and to really be of support to them because i personally know since i was nine years old right the the the stress and the pressure

079of trying to interpret and translate or you know so i i i i also um you know send them kudos and thank them so much because i've been in the meetings and they do the best that they can and they do a really good job so i'm thankful that they do extend themselves that way um ms reese i see your name if i may just um ask what is opi oral proficiency index or proficiency index okay great thank you miss um greece yeah and and um i just want to add that um my concern is the relationship between a parent and an educator um when we serve as interpreters as children for our parents um they're even the the wisest most honest child can then be parentified they're they're now elevated to this position of

080interpreter instead of just as child and when another adult interprets whether it's a fellow staff member if the adult is relaying the information you know oh she says this oh he says that there is no uh direct communication so interpreter trainings even if it doesn't um culminate in a certification at the very least can help the interpreter understand that they are facilitating a relationship not just a communication so that so as as best as possible if the if it was dr mclaughlin speaking to a parent so they really could feel like they were communicating to each other making eye contact with each other not bringing in this third person to um to to change that too much and and that training um is is what i'm hoping um we can find somewhere for so many

081of our community members that are really willing to step up to do that additional work thank you miss royce for that um if there are any other discussion points for um these items okay um then mr minkowitz when we have for a call please miss katana yes mr miller yes this moan yes ms nutting yes mr robles yes ms ruiz yes dr cena yes mrs riveros yes mr salz yes mr miller uh community relations police thank you um the community relations committee met on november 5th uh a big part of our discussion was on the amistad act which is going to be brought up under new business so i'll be discussing that later we did uh discuss how the food distribution was going up for our students and about 500 meals a day are being

082distributed and our continued partnership with zoo fall they have a van that they purchased that they will be using to bring meals to victory gardens since uh the distribution at the fire department was not happening you know at this time so now they'll be able to bring those meals to the school some of the other things that we discussed dr mclaughlin already mentioned in his report i did attend an educational services commission meeting on the 11th of november where i was officially appointed to the commission one of the things they discussed which kind of helped me with some of the confusion of how we found out how we would participate in this group was that they reorganize every june so they're not on the same schedule as the board of education reorganization so they had

083an old name or they didn't have a name prior to that point and so when we finally made the connections then then you know we're connected to what's going on there the only thing that they talked about was the effects of uh covet and the shutdown of schools on on their busing cooperative that we are part of but we're not using at this point in time because our students are virtual so they they did talk about that as more schools look to shut down and go virtual they will probably have to lay off some of their staff because they will not be able to maintain you know the busing at this point in time so um they're also trying to sell the park lake school in rockaway which has been closed so i think they're

084they're hurting a little bit monetarily so hopefully you know they can hang in there um we discussed um communication and community relations action plan um and we talked about the different ways the schools are using twitter and facebook and honeywell and i know dr mclaughlin had talked to the principals about using honeywell once a week instead of using it all the times they were using so that people would not just ignore the messages because you know honeywell is really used more for more important or emergency type messages so they didn't want people to get so used to seeing honeywell messages that they didn't respond to them so they're looking at other ways to kind of standardize some of that communication and making sure we get the message out which is still hard in trying to

085communicate with families and so the school administrators are looking for additional ways to increase communication we also discuss the fact that not many families have applied for the internet hot spots um so we need to figure out how we can get that out there because if there's a real need they're available they just need to to follow the process to get one and we discussed um sending out a survey or the district would send out a survey to parents to find out um you know how they receive their information and how well are we you know communicating with with the parents and to gauge you know how can we improve so i think that's something that's going to be in the works on the 12th of november the the next day after the the meeting

086with the educational services commission we had a meeting with the mine hill community relations committee to talk about opportunities uh within our partnership and the the mine hill board was just glowing of dr mclaughlin and the partnership that they have with the dover school district um and the fact that we're we're sharing everything we're really working together in so many different ways and it's it's great to see that so some of the things that they discussed with us in in trying to promote dover um is to have our district create a virtual presentation for the fifth and sixth graders on promoting all the programs the clubs the sports gifted and talented you know all the great educational opportunities that our students have so that the mine hill community starts to learn you know what those

087things are because there's still you know issues with parents not understanding what doper can provide we discuss the fact that you know some of the students that they get that go to their program are from other districts and so although they may have uh a certain number and we we expect that everybody should come to dover there's a sizable number that go back to their home districts like either mars hills or mars knowles so we just need to focus you know on all the students but understanding that we're not going to get them all but we we do want the parents to have a good understanding of what the district can provide and and we talked about coordinating things with our websites and promoting a lot of that information and establishing a process for any

088major events that are happening within the district to make sure that it goes to the mine hill superintendent and that the superintendent would distribute that to the student body there it could be just some of the programs that we have ongoing but we want to find you know new ways to get the communication to be consistent and constant with mine hill so they're always seeing all the good things that are going on in dover mine hill right now is uh using a hybrid model for students during covert uh but i i expect i understand that some folks are starting to test positive and they'll probably be in the same situation totally virtual at some point in time um i did want to mention that our dover high school football team won their last game which

089was great and it was also great to see online the dover high school band performing on the field and and kudos to our soccer team the boys soccer that won the first state game with kittytiny so hopefully we'll continue to win but it was great to see you know our students so involved i miss being able to see all these things but at least online we get a glimpse of what's going on so i think that concludes my report thank you mr miller uh miss mullen it was just the recent i don't know if the how we're going to handle this but the recent signing of our basketball star uh division one scholarship so that was like so exciting to read and he seems like such besides being a great basketball player and very very

090tall such a wonderful kid and you know just very grateful to dover and all of that so yay yes perfect mr pastor oh yes so that was good it was amazing and i got to see him play in a couple of games at the end of last season and that's right you sat in front of me so it was really really good so very exciting what is his name i only know him about his nickname i only know his last name castro so i believe it's raphael raphael castro i only know him by his nickname so it just was so nice it was great i'm glad raphael castro thank you yes so proud i i'm very grateful that he is you know um dover right and that he he he is out and it's all

091family yes yes um great great um things that was happening um i wanted to ask about um the honeywell and i'm glad to hear mr miller regarding the survey um for the parents right in regards to how are we communicating with them i'm eager to find out if there could be a specific question about honeywell i remember receiving feedback from parents saying that they wanted honeywell to be used for more than only emergency situations and now i'm hearing a little bit different from your report no no no no let me clarify that because maybe my comment was taken out of context what what we've asked is for the updates by the principles to be provided once a week unless it's an emergent situation where they need to do it more often because we we were

092in our enthusiasm of using honeywell yes some of the schools were sending multiple ones out a week calls a week and we don't want we don't want to lose the value of it but absolutely every principal makes a weekly message um and then for example this week when north dover had who had a deep cleaning day and and the uh meals had to be distributed elsewhere you know mr pendolfo made announcements to advise parents in that regard so no way we are absolutely using it um uh you know uh on a regular basis good good because i know that at least you know that's one of the when we did community involvement uh meetings that was one of the things that parents really looked forward to taking more advantage of so i'm glad that we're

093you know assessing ourselves and making sure that we're communicating the best way that we can with our parents because i know to this day as you were saying right um regarding the um uh what other things the um oh my god um the internet thing the internet hot spot thank you the hot spots right we didn't get a lot of um applications so is it that they're not hearing our message and we're not getting to them so do we need to think out of the box to get to our families all right so thank you and the other comments uh yes miss rice uh yeah i just have uh two comments on the hot spot i um i don't know if we have a flyer about it or something um that might be able to

094be shared on whatsapp uh some of our families without internet um and without um a paid phone plan at least have a phone on which they can use whatsapp and even if that's not something the district can do um if if that's something individuals can do share via whatsapp that might allow it to reach the people who really need it and on on community relations um we did email i had um the very pleasant surprise of um learning from a member of the morris county naacp that the naacp had reached out to every single school district in morris county about racial justice issues and equity and education issues and only two districts replied and i was very nervous um as to what our reply was um so i followed up with uh with the naacp

095and asked you know who who replied oh dover they were great they they gave us lots of information so um i was really really happy i don't know what the questions were i don't know well actually i do now know what the questions were i didn't at the time know what the questions were or what the reply was but um but i was glad to know that there was a response and that we were only one of two which and there's a lot of districts in morris county so i'm grateful to our administration for being responsive and i imagine that the questions and responses might be addressed i think maybe mr miller that's what he was referring to at the later conversation but i just wanted to say that about community relations means all of

096our community partners um and members and certainly the naacp is an important member of our community all right thank you yeah so the naacp and wright and the amnestad law are kind of you know related but there's two different running focus of it so i'm glad to hear thank you so much um the the power team for really being out there um you know for our social justice situation so i appreciate that too thank you miss race for highlighting that um okay if there's no more with community relations we may move forward with ms viveros um leading the policy agenda items please thank you the policy committee met on november 10th via google mate item number one which is bylaw zero one three one this is a waiver due to the new emergency regulations regarding

097remote meetings item number two one of two readings policy 1620 administrative employment contracts based on a 2018 court date handling of contracts for superintendents assistant superintendents and school business administrators shall be handled by the executive county superintendent policy 1648 restart and recovery plan the governor issued a memorandum on august 3rd with updates for this policy policy 1648.02 remote learning options for families which is a new policy the governor and the commissioner of education issued guidance in order to manage remote learning policy 311.1 posting of vacancies all vacancies will be posted for no less than five calendar days in keeping with the new online platform policy 3151 assessment of pay never incorporated into our policies uh the hours that were in this policy were inaccurate and have been corrected and wording added in as superintendents administrative

098destiny policy three four three one point one and policy four four three one point one they're both for family leave uh three four three one is for teaching staff and four four three one is for support staff the board is adding family leave into our policies policy four one four five layoffs the only change is we are removing the word assistant superintendent and leaving it as superintendent policy 5330.05 sees excuse me seizure action plan this is a new policy this policy has been updated to comply with the new regulations for students with epilepsy or a seizure disorder policy 6440 cooperative purchasing redundant language has been removed and two citations have been added policy 7440 school district security only one changed this policy an annual audit has been added in policy 7450 property inventory this policy

099language has been changed to coincide with the uniform charts of accounts sro no policy number yet changes were made protecting the rights of our students i'll go to item 3 on the agenda which is bylaw first reading 0164.60 remote public board meeting during a declared emergency this is a brand new policy and the language of the policy follows what was mandated by the state item number four excuse me item number four all policies under item number four which is second reading the first reading occurred on october 20th all policies under item number five which is one reading no changes then i'm going to go to item number six job description information technology manager this is a new job description it replaces the chief technology officer job description i move that we approve item one two

100three four five and six thank you mr veros is there a second mr miller you are seconding it are there any uh board member discussion points miss ruiz anyone else thank you miss grasales i have a lot of questions um but before i just want to make a statement that i'm really grateful to the policy committee um and and and emotional i i know having been on the policy committee how much work it is um there's so many policies on here um and i appreciate how much work has gone into it and the policies um as we all know are often templates and and that might lead people to believe it's not a lot of work and i guess it doesn't have to be right you could just rubber stamp what the template is in

101front of you um and the policy committee certainly with the sro policy proved that they would take the time to go through a policy with a fine-tooth comb and compare it um and and i'm so deeply grateful for that work um and it's you know protecting the rights of our students is so important and i appreciate the work of the committee to making sure that's done um now to my questions about the policies um i'll start with 0164.6 the remote public board meeting during a declared emergency um obviously we're on zoom so i know that we currently use zoom for our regular sessions um but given what the policy states my questions are do we plan to continue using this platform um what is our current participant capacity um and is there a need to

102expand it and if so does that incur a cost i have other questions but i'll start with those to allow um our administration to answer okay i'll i'll answer and i'll ask mr igliano to supplement anything that i say that i might leave out in order to comply with this policy we did upgrade our zoom subscription so we are working off of a different subscription now which i believe is called the zoom webinar uh subscription that has an increased capacity of up to 500 um and so i think it will be certainly be able to accommodate um individuals who who join us based on our history of attendance at board meetings we should be in good shape that way it also allows um participation uh by our public lives so as as we noted uh

103in the first public participation section we continue to have the google forms because the part of part of the executive order that came out said that the public should continue to have an ability to write in uh their comments and so the google form does that and our community is is used to that format so we maintained it but we added the live feature of raising the virtual hand uh so i i think that we are um in good compliance with this particular anything that i left out mr aguileno that you want to mention no just that the webinar um adding the webinar to our original zoom account allows us more controls so we have the attendees in the meeting that can participate in public participation but we actually have more control over that participation

104which is necessary just for the security of the meeting and just to i think dr mclaughlin you stated this but i want to make sure that i understand it so um on page six section dc of the policy um am i correct in this interpretation that both in real time during the meetings on a phone just a call-in line and via video and audio like we are interacting right now um and via the google form those are all the ways in which a public participant can can share their public comment yes so um you can phone in you just like you could to any zoom meeting you could use the phone line piece for it uh you can access it online which we advertised on friday and you can also use the google form and

105do we have a cost for for this upgrade to the webinar function um i don't remember how much it was we we paid for it already i mean we're using it so it was not um it was not a astronomical cost i want to say that's good to hear thank you mr uh sir siri gliano um the uh my next questions are about three one six one examination for cause and um the same questions would apply to four one six one uh same policy but three one six one is for teaching staff i believe and for uh three one six one for teaching staff four one six one for support staff correct me if i'm wrong on that but um i have several questions of the policy the policy doesn't uh it doesn't often policies

106will give you the objective or the purpose or the intent um of the policy when you first read it this one doesn't so i'm what is the intent of this policy that's my first question okay i'm just bringing it up um sorry just give me a second sure we're on three one six one four one six one correct yes uh so this is um should uh a member of the staff um present concerns uh whether they be physical or emotional concerns that would cause the district to feel that they might not be able to fulfill their duties this indicates the process uh by which the district would follow for having that staff member examined to to ensure that the individual was able to fulfill their duties and if i'm correct in reading the policy it

107was originally adopted in 2008 3161 revised in 2012 and and now we're seeing it again so what if any changes um does the policy we are being presented now have from the 2012 version um none all the all the policies in number five are re-adopted with without change uh there was no change either suggested by strauss esme or by any other informant that or district practice but we did make a commitment that we would look at all policies uh in the 3000 and 4000 series that are over five years old so that nothing gets archaic see this is why i'm so impressed awesome so you looked at it even though you didn't need to um it didn't look like it's a mandatory policy i didn't see the m on it is it if there's no

108m on there then it's not it's probab most likely it's recommended uh so that in the instance that a that the district had to um to to go through this process that they would have a policy that guides it okay but but it all is in keeping with code so in effect if you didn't have a policy you could go to code but the recommendation is always to have a local policy in addition to code so lots of time policy does as you know repeat code in different language and as as most of our policies are this is a stress estimate template yes okay did our i know that this was a review done as part of this plan to ensure nothing is archaic and and we're all aligned um did our attorney was our

109attorney part of this review for this policy well he actually did attend this policy meeting uh but i don't know that i asked him to pay any particular attention to it uh he has seen it however because we've had to rely upon it so um not for the purpose of this policy review but for other reasons sure i i'm wondering if my read of this policy would lead me to believe that we could use this policy to mandate covet 19 testing is that a misuse of it a misreading um unanticipated how would this policy work with cobit 19 testing i'm kicking that one over to you mr croot oh and he just goes off camera i mute myself and some something appeared on my screen that wouldn't let me get the unmute button so i

110had to go with that sorry about that um i think that as a practical matter um this policy probably wouldn't come into play with covet testing simply because the policy basically mirrors state statute and regulations that are very specific on when districts can compel someone to go for a fitness or duty examination and there's a whole process where they have to be given notice and then they have an opportunity to appeal to the board of education the next meeting and you know as a practical matter by the time all those things happened the uh you know we'd be beyond the time where the the covet testing would probably be uh probably be relevant so i think it's more uh probably more geared towards other types of both physical and mental health uh situations but it's

111an interesting question i i from a practical standpoint though i just don't think it's um that would probably you know come into other that issue would probably come into play with other like emergency uh regulations and guidance that the that the district receives regarding the health crisis and the health emergency and the rest of my questions are really about content um strauss estimate does have templates again they're templates they can be changed for example we had or stresses may had the policy on unpaid school lunches which became a big deal in our state and our board did change some of the more oppressive language in our policy to match our more humane practice um so we we have changed uh content content and strauss estimate policies before and i'm disturbed by some of the language

112in this policy for example in the first paragraph the policy refers to quote normal physical or mental health and what what is normal and who defines it uh you know if any one of us have diabetes or bipolar disorder are we do we have abnormal health i it's certainly not a term used in the mental health field as i know it i'm not a doctor so i don't know what term is used in the medical field um but i you know i i if if our not if our goal is to ensure the student achievement of our students and the well-being of our students and if we are naming normal physical or mental health of our staff and support staff then what message are we sending to our students who may have a physical disability

113um or a mental health diagnosis you know are we letting them know that they're not normal because of these disabilities or diagnoses so i'm i'm frustrated by that word in the first paragraph um and in the uh for that reason and many others i'm wondering what if any communication our administration has had with the dover educators association um you know what what if any feedback have we received from them about this policy um it's i think i think it is reasonable in any employment with children that you would be subject to mental health and physical health examinations to ensure that the children are safe um i'm just concerned about the language in this in this policy to to make that happen another example is in the penultimate paragraph the policy states and i quote if

114the results of the examination show mental abnormal abnormality or communicable disease the teaching staff shall be placed on sick leave the posse goes on and in pertinent pertinent language put in part until proof or recovery proof of recovery satisfactory to the board is furnished so here again this mental abnormality if our staff member if any staff member is diagnosed with depression or any other mental health diagnosis which anyone can suffer from um you know does does that automatically mean they must take a a sick leave what if they cope with their depression or whatever other mental health diagnosis they have um what what if they're already in treatment um what if there is a uh a um a plan where um some other the administration and the and the staff member can take some other

115measures right you know maybe letting go of other responsibilities so i just think it's again a oppressive language this mental abnormality and and very narrow that they shall be placed on sick leave and then again proof of recovery satisfactory to the board i am not a medical doctor i am not uh i am no one to determine uh whether another member of our community of our school community is recovered um i don't want that responsibility so i i i don't know what the law requires of us i i would defer to dr crew to help us understand that um i would need some guidance as to what is satisfactory proof of recovery um miss reason before you go to another question could we maybe have the administration address that um before before we lose what

116we're asking um is there anything uh mr crude or dr mclaughlin in regards to the language i agree that language matters and as a mental health professional um certainly something that i'm thinking maybe a consul consulting with a mental health person in our district yeah i i think that um basically i i didn't see the policy this particular policy either although i was at that policy meeting as as doctor mclaughlin said but um it seems to me from from just hearing the questions that the policy pretty much word for word is from the the relevant statute and regulation and so um and you know and obviously as as was indicated it's you know the purpose of the policy is to protect the students it protects us out you know as well as the teachers um

117or other staff member but uh it's it's that that language for instance um uh the the language about the normal that you know it is it is word for word in the i'm looking at the regulation right now that said district boards of education may require physical or psychiatric examinations of the school district employee whenever in the judgment of the district board of ed an employee shows evidence of deviation from normal physical or mental health um and so um and uh you know the idea is to get a professional to do the review um but you know in the in the first instance the request is made to the you know to the employee that it may be maybe necessary and the employee can come to the board of ed and appeal and say look

118i'm really okay et cetera whatever the case may be and then but it's up to the board not so much to make the medical call but to make the decision whether they think it's important to have the person examined by a doctor to to determine um you know the uh the situation so i i do think although i certainly understand the question about some of that language but it appears that the language is coming word for word from the the uh the regulation and the the actual statute itself dr saner my question is for mr crude since the language and i agree with your concerns ms ruiz about the language but do we have leeway to modify the policy if it's based on the uh the law i i think that it would be i

119think it in this particular case it would be difficult to do so it's one thing to modify a policy or a law where um you know the district has a lot more discretion as to how it wants to handle things but this is this is actually a sort of a tricky area when these issues come up as they occasionally do and the employee has rights and these rights are specifically given by the statute and at the same time the district has to be concerned about you know protecting itself and so you know in many ways i think and plus there's a body of cases there are decisions that come up as to whether the district had good cause or didn't have good cause that everyone can point to as they're analyzing these things and so

120you know i i think it's an area where it's difficult to go away from the statutory language given the sensitivity of the types of issues that you're dealing with when you have to deal with these situations and again ultimately it's up to the board of education to make those decisions okay i still have some questions yep so in regards to that um any other suggestions or comments from other board members all right miss ruiz um i i certainly would would feel better about this policy if mr crew had read it himself um i i know his response talked about the examination but my and in addition to the examination piece it says proof of recovery satisfactory to the board so it's not just at the examination point um that we may be involved it's it's

121also at the okay i got this examination it deemed that i'm quote unquote abnormal i went and got counseling now i'm better you know and we are to then evaluate that proof that that counseling or whatever it was enough to get them better so i would want to know you know does the is there some itemized list of what would be deemed um satisfactory proof of recovery uh i mean if i if i may just since we're going one point at a time um 18 a 16-4 has that exact language in it too the statute specifically says that um if the result of the examination shows or indicates uh mental or abnormality or communicable disease the employee shall be ineligible for further service until proof of recovery satisfactory to the board is furnished um so

122um so again that word is coming from i'm not aware of any particular uh list anywhere that would say what would constitute such proof of recovery but i i think it would most likely be in the context of medical examinations or reports so if the doctor right the recommendations based on the evaluator exactly i would think that it would be you know and then the person could maybe come forward with maybe with their own doctor's report saying that they go into treatment or whatever the case may be i i would think that would be what it is but that language again um it's weird that in a sense that it puts it on the board to decide that you know the proof of recovery but again that's word for word from the statute yeah and

123it's not very stigma less or you know sensitive um it's really putting stigma on mental health and that's something that i struggle with so i understand sorry to interrupt that just figure we try to reach you i get it thank you mr salas that's helpful mr crude um uh i imagine that well i would hope that there would be case law to itemize that right you know what has or hasn't been um suitable and you know in researching this policy i did find um the case of cliffside park and you know maybe the policy committee or mr fruit can dive into that further um but that case then led me to concerns about exposing us to lawsuits um based on discrimination for mental health um or specifically a violation of the american with disabilities act

124or the new jersey law against discrimination um i'm not our board attorney so i'll allow the board attorney to talk about that case if it's deemed relevant but i believe in the cliffside park case um the district lost on that and was found to have violated both the ada and the new jersey law against discrimination so i just would like more information as to how we can protect ourselves from that um i think i talked about the stigma already um and and this policy um in some of his explanation mr crew did name that you know employees and in this case our teaching staff and support staff do have rights well i didn't hear or see anything about those rights in this policy um you know for example if if we the board of education

125are going to be tasked with determining satisfactory proof of recovery then do we have access to this person's examination our teachers to expect that any mental health uh examination will be now available to nine board members some of whom they share you know in community with i i certainly want would not want um my psychiatric examination to be available to to everyone where i work you know certainly it might have to be made available to my immediate supervisor but not a team of nine so you know and i and i don't know what the law requires and would like to know more before moving forward with this policy um and you know how does this policy intercept uh intersect with hipaa um and it's just way too many questions are are brought up with this

126policy um that i i don't think we can um pass it uh tonight with without more um exploration and advice from from mr crew although he has provided some so far even if we have to maintain this language to match the uh the regulations and the statute we could add an explanatory language this board you know is this policy is verbatim uh matches verbatim the statute of regulation we do not stigmatize mental health we do seek to be stigma free and are only using this language because we have to you know some worded much better than i just did of course but but something to to recognize that we are not a district that's going to stigmatize the mental health of our of our students or our our staff thank you ms reese um is

127that conclusion of your questions yes thank you mr salas um any other um question comments mr miller uh so but this is already our policy so if we don't we adopt it it's still already adopted but i i don't have any issue with adding something later on so we would need kind of an official then motion or amendment and things like that if that's something that the board um is agreeing with um mysteries um yeah i'm thinking that based like mr miller said it's not adopting this doesn't leave us empty we still have this policy is already part of our policy um so i would move that that we remove it from um our list of re-adoption i think number five yeah and miss rice i'm sorry interrupt before you you you do a formal

128motion i do have myself some comments that i want to make thank you so um i just wanted um in regards to um policy number one six two oh and i didn't put this um ahead of time um so i understand if you are not able to answer these questions but who handled the administrative employment contracts before this policy since it's a first reading for us for administrative employment contracts policy 16 20. who is this a new appointment of the executive county right uh uh superintendent has always been it right well you're on mutant dr mclaughlin yeah i'm just bringing it up give me one second sure enough um yeah like what's the the difference now so the summary uh basically as as uh was mentioned uh from ms faveros uh earlier was some changes

129to this this is a revised policy and the revisions came because there was a court case in wall township uh that had to do with public notice when they were changing when the board was changing a superintendent assistant superintendent or business administrators contract had to do with whether or not they were renewing that contract before expiration and whether or not they were required to give the public notice that was required when uh you would offer a um a a changed contract so that's that's the language that was um indicate that that was changed in here the executive county superintendent was the approver and continues to be involved in the improvement in the approval process okay that's why i was confused by that thank you dr mclaughlin were you going to say something mr crew no

130doctor mcloughlin explained it pretty well but yeah right yes exactly thank you and just um and i know this is a first reading so maybe this is something that i would like the policy um committee to consider um when you're doing the second review of policy 311.1 posting of vacancies right it says for five days only that seems very little and maybe i don't know if i read it or misunderstood it but five days only of posting vacancies um seeing not enough time for me um and two what efforts are taking to increase the diversity in um hiring of these vacancies so i don't know if that's something that could be included in our policies um for the second reading right but could i could i just comment on on that previously we did not

131have a number of days a minimum number of days and that's what it it refers to a minimum number of days and postings basically ensure that your existing staff are able to see vacancies so it doesn't mean that we would only advertise for five days but we would make sure that we didn't fill a va we wouldn't like say here's a vacancy and tomorrow we fill it and nobody had a chance to see it and apply for it and one of the good things that's occurred with our new system is that our all of our staff get an email no matter what time of the year whether it's july or whether it's november every staff member gets an email that says here's a vacancy that we just posted so in the old days you used

132to have to like go into the teacher room and look at the bulletin board and page through all the vacancies that were thumbtacked to the bulletin board and that's not the case any anymore everybody has direct access to it so that's that's the uh intent behind this okay thank you so it's a minimal of five days posting internally not only not externally thank you okay all right um so if there are no further comments um dr zainer and then ms royce um i just wanted to make a comment um i i'm the alternate on the policy committee and i wanted to really comment on the sro contract we've gone back and forth in this meeting about um parts of it we've referenced the aclu model language and i wanted to acknowledge um the real collaboration

133that went into this policy um at the last policy meeting uh where mr crew joined us um the four people plus plus dr mclaughlin plus mr croot um we compared the uh the existing at that point which had already gone through multiple revisions the existing sro contract line by line with the aclu model contract and proposed a series of changes to deputy chief delaney that would bring it in line with the aclu language particularly protecting the rights of our students and without exception he agreed to those changes so the final version that that everyone is reading tonight is really uh i'm really proud of the collaboration that uh occurred with the board of education with a lot of voices being heard um and then the collaboration with the dover police department um to do something

134that protects our students in a in a number of ways thank you um so much ms reese i actually have other questions um i was going to do the motion person first another questions but since you moved on with questions i'll continue with the questions um i had the same question as mr sales regarding the employment contracts with the addition of um this is it's not a new policy and it's see it's a mandatory policy but i didn't see on the policy when it was previously adopted or revised so is that right it is a a a uh re-adoption are you talking 1620 i'm sorry 1620 administrative employment contract so there's no usually if it's been adopted before and revised before there are dates on the bottom and i didn't see any but really the

135point of the question is is this a brand new policy or a revision i think you said it's a revision okay okay i i don't know when it was previously and i don't know why those dates weren't on there they should have been but um but yeah it is definitely a revision yeah maybe just have that for the second reading available please so we can do that okay for 1648.02 remote learning options for families on page three section b uh subsection three subsection d the verb requests is part of the crossout we were provided the policy with with the crossouts which is helpful i appreciate that um but then when you read the sentence without that verb it doesn't make sense we may just want to check it to to make sure if you intended

136to cross out request and replace it with a different word or if the crossout just went longer than you for it to go and i'm sorry mr ruiz i was still taking uh notes on the last what policy are we talking about here uh page 3 of the 1648.02 remote learning options for families section capital b subsection three subsection d there's a cross out and it and the word the verb requests is part of the crossed out section okay yeah but if you read it without that there is no doesn't make sense okay got it yeah so so just just to um highlight that and and on the sro um policy i just want to highlight um that um that all really all like like dr sanders said all the protections included in the american

137civil liberties union uh model policy are there so there's no need to go through it but just um that we all recognize that that it literally is every single word which is uh well with the exception of some stuff in the purpose but but the the meat of it is there so um so i'm grateful for that and with that i would um make a motion to amend the motion of the on the floor to exclude um policy three one six one and four one six one let me just make sure i'm saying the right numbers uh five yes to exclude policy three one six one examination for cause and four one six one examination for cause uh for the purpose of review um by our board attorney and consideration by the policy committee to

138include uh language that may help to destigmatize uh mental health within this within the language presented parameter thank you that's that's a good word so you're making uh the motion to um remove 3161 and 4161 from this correct correct is there a second second perfect i heard miss katano first um second uh any comments questions about that nope all right um up for me policy yes if you need any help with language and regard no stigma i can certainly be of a new resource um and that would be important for us to add on there especially since we can't really change it because it's legal um and i think our district has moved towards that and i've seen that feeling of being sensitive and trauma sensitive so let's make sure our policies also address that

139and thank you um is there any um can we have a role call please um mr mickenwitz for that um amendment sorry about that uh miss katana yes mr miller yes mrs mullen yes mrs nutty yes mr robles yes ms ruiz yes dr saner yes ms flaveros yes ms chrysalis yes most certainly my social work teacher would be very proud of me okay the motion carried correct correct perfect okay so um uh can we have a motion from miss viveros to approve one through six correct for the policies and is there a second mrs point of order yes the the motion to amend doesn't take the original motion off the floor so ms vivero's motion is still live so to speak we can just vote yes or no right yes i wanted to recap kind

140of what we were doing so yeah i think that one second i think that's what you were asking was there a second i think there were right so there is motion thank you mr miller thank you so much um if now mr memphis can we have roll call please ms catano yes mr miller yes ms mullen yes miss nutting yes mr robles yes mr ruiz yes dr senor yes miss riveros yes ms crusade yes thank you uh dr saner would you please provide us with finance and facilities mr gonzalez the finance and facilities committee met on november 3rd um much of our meeting was taken up by a presentation by dr grip who represents statistical forecasting a demography group um so he had sent a proposal um and it's sort of an a la carte

141situation where you can pick and choose the parts that you would like him to uh that you would like him to study um he talked about the baseline demographic study which would use 2020 census data buildings being built in town and historical home cells to provide a five-year projection and utilizes the 2019 birth rate to project kindergarten enrollment in 2024. um we had a question from ms ruiz about the immigration and emigration in and out of dover and dr grip said that he can adjust for that those factors by using something called the cohort survival rate which indicates how many students stay in dover for each grade over time since victory gardens and mine hill also send a significant number of students to the dover public schools dr grip would contact them to get data

142and dr mclaughlin was also going to approach mine hill to see if they're willing to share costs as they were possibly wanting to do a demographic study as well uh dr grip said that his data falls within the industry standard of plus or minus one percent for those five years um he other options uh that he provided uh were that he could project elementary enrollment by school use gis mapping to see where our students live and identify areas of dover that have more or less poverty utilize special education services may have hispanic students and other various categories in summary the study may tell us what we already know that we need room for a growing student population but the study doing the demography study will allow us to make an informed decision as to how

143where and how much to expand the finance committee anticipates being able to make a recommendation to the board in december um mr minkwitz referred to the budget there is a current budget schedule that mr minkwitz and the administration is utilizing i'm starting in november and running through april uh mr makowitz is organizing training for the 22 people that will need to use the new budgeting software and that should be happening very soon we the finance committee will be presented with the draft budget on february 2nd the proposed tentative budget on march 2nd and the district budget presentation will be april 27th in regards to facilities uh still a few items on the belmont avenue building punch list we have hired a new building and grounds supervisor who got to deal with a fallen tree at

144academy street on his first day on the job um the mold uh situation at dover high school all of the tests are negative and we have moved on to cleaning duct and hvac um parts of the system and this job is so big that there are two and possibly three by now working on it and uh we are using coronavirus relief funds to um complete the work uh dr mclaughlin mr igliano and mr mikwits have started talking about large purchases to support our programming across the district and ms mullen asked if we were making sure that we were promoting equity across the district and we were assured that that was happening um i would like to move that um on sunday ms grisel has pointed out some irregularities in the checklist and a and a

145revised uh checklist had been uh put up on the on the agenda but the total is not reflected in the agenda item that needs to be revised so okay so so item number two can i can i uh provide a revised checklist number and i'm yes and i believe dr mclaughlin has a correction to make as well oh good okay um i hope it's uh six million four hundred sixty thousand two hundred twenty six dollars and fourteen cents and then dr mclachlan you wanted to amend item number six yes so um item number six i read that it was for the 2019-20 school year which is not correct it should read for the period january 1st 2021 and terminating on or about june 30 2023 thank you and then so i make a motion uh

146i'm sorry miss there were two there were two uh additional um items numbers eight and nine uh which i can read um if you don't mind uh i don't want to steal your thunder this is your part of the agenda so um number eight uh approves the competitive grant application for the national school lunch equipment assistance grant that's a grant that are that pontonian is pursuing for us and as as our recent customers to authorize grant applications um in advance and uh number nine uh approves the 2020 2021 shared service agreement for technology services between the delaware valley regional high school district board of education and the dover board of education dr saner maybe now i would now like to make a motion to accept items one through nine with the um amendments or uh

147corrections as read into the minutes is there a second miss mullen thank you are there any board members that have discussion points mysteries sometimes your hand gets blurred out by the tiger so just keep it in front of you thank you thank you um i i just want to point out that um as our board should do we discussed item seven which is contract but no sorry item six which is contract um negotiation item in executive session um and i i don't remember exactly what the agreement was and and it might be helpful to remind the full board i think it was that that we were and miss mullen i think pointed that out we were we were looking at a contract um that is expected to change so i i just want clarity on

148on what's what's happening with that so yes so we um brought up a lot of um you know questions or suggestions or edits that the board would like to see an executive with the edits um and i believe um those edits uh mr crude um you have received notion that they will be made by tomorrow i i think within i would say within the next day or two okay so let's talk about one or two business days yeah i don't want to limit it to tomorrow because uh so if we approve this sro contract then we are approving it with all the edits that we had suggested um and asked for and that it will be a final copy by the end of this week i think so yes that's correct i mean the answer

149is yes that's how you're approving it and i would think it would be finalized by the end of the week and should any of those changes not be um agreeable from the other side um we would need to revisit them that's correct okay all right does that kind of clarify things for everyone okay perfect um uh as um if are there any other members that have um questions or comments okay um as mr minkowitz um said i i wanted to kind of take this opportunity to ensure that we are all going through with a fine-tooth um regarding our finance and facilities as that is one of our biggest jobs to ensure that our district is doing what we need to do in regards to monies um so there was no i have five questions that

150mr minkowitz kind of answered a little bit of it and i wanted just to go through them to make sure that um we are clear as can be um there is no transfer of monies from the reserve to the expenditure fund um account ending in on 9 31. um is this accurate was my question um we have not used capital reserve money was my question um there is no payment of debt account ending in 933 what is our current debt at debt debt and how come there was no payment um in question number three in the treasurer's report there is documentation of debt in parentheses is this connected to the debt above that i was talking to about um or is it um how come we did not contribute um to debt the um report

151i saw in the check registry that some staff were paid for traveling what is the check and balance um process in regards to approval of traveling expenses especially now that we are in a remote um setting and number five i saw checks back from july 2020 and then many checks on 11 17. could you explain these things yes um the transfers to the uh reserve there there was no transfers to the capital reserve in the current year that had been done last year and the amounts work any construction amounts carried over were carried over in a fund 12 account called construction and we have been paying the north dover academy street and high school projects out of that account and i had provided also a summary of the reserve account as ron smith sent it

152to the auditor in june and the auditor will either confirm or adjust that amount those amounts when we receive the order uh the other question about the debt service i'm not sure about that account but account number it possibly is uh maybe we're using a different expense count number ending in 333 but there have been monthly deposits to the debt service account as we receive the debt service tax payments from victory gardens and from the township of dover each month we deposit those items and then two times per year we make a debt service payment we made the first debt service payment already this year for interest and then we will make another debt service payment in april for interest plus principal and that runs uh i think for the next four or five years

153according to the uh original debt service schedule um the traveling expenses i think i think those were cleared up there there was a couple um items that may have not been traveled well yeah because the the account is actually uh travel and professional development so it's it's combined so so one one expense had to do with a certification expense for one of our staff members um the there's uh there's some mandatory contractual um pieces built in for travel and um in terms of the approval process um anything that's submitted for travel has to be signed by an administrator depending on what the level of the employee is thank you for the clarification so i'm sorry mr lincolnwood so in regards to the travel and contractually those are things that even if they're not traveling right

154it's part of the contract and the employee will get those travel reimbursements right okay thank you mr mikko sorry to interrupt you no not at all uh the last item uh had to do with the check quiz that you uh pointed out on sunday had uh some anomalies uh i'm not sure how those checks ended up on the checklist there were some checks from july um but it it's been uh rectified and posted on the agenda perfect i appreciate all the work i know that this is hard line by line um and you chose this profession and i did not so thank you so much and i appreciate you for that all right so when we have roll call no one else has any other comments uh miss katana yes mr miller yes yes moment

155yes miss nutty yes mr robles yes ms ruiz no on number six the sro contract yes on all the other items dr saner yes ms faveros yes ms grisalis yes with a thank you so much to the policy committee and everyone that has contributed it's been a great pleasure to see all the work thank you oh i have this one um as a reminder if any board member desires to place agenda items for either old or new business please ensure that you're sending an email prior to monday morning um by 10 am to this um of the scheduled regular meeting date um and please make sure you see seeing the chair of the committee the administration team um as well as the president and vice president so we can ensure that the data is gathered

156for these um items and we can um you know respect the no surprise culture but also have the necessary information for your items um for old business i have um the anti-racism at um ad hoc committee um dr cena would you provide the board with an update please sure as you all know we are having uh our first hopefully of multiple but our first introductory anti-racism training on thursday this thursday the 19th at 7 pm i sent you a link from our presenter kelly molinkino who asked that we take the iat um prior to that it should take you about 10 minutes okay and we'll see you on thursday again thank you so much for that health committee please let's all remember that we're going to be vulnerable right um and that it is an

157intro and that this should not be the end we're not all going to be anti-racism from this um you know training um the ait um i took i have taken it in the past um so be ready for it you got to be quick um and it takes 10 minutes to do one but there's several different categories so if you want to take extra categories then there's extra time to it all right just so you guys kind of know that okay under new business um we have um two items um um we need uh two board members i believe for cue sex steering committee um and then we have the discussion of amnesty act so um dr mclaughlin would you explain a little bit about what the cue sack um steering committee entails and what

158the board members should sure uh well we we need a minimum of one but but if if two people want to be on the committee that's fine uh the so the we are um eagerly looking forward to going through the cusack review process uh it's uh cusaxa compliance um process and dish and districts on a rotation basis go through cusack to make sure that they are adhering to regulations that manage school districts in the area of governance operations personnel instruction and programming finance and facilities so we completed uh today the last of our deep dive trainings uh we have we attended overview trainings and then we attended deep dive trainings into each of the areas so there are a number of indicators under each area that we have to gather evidence for and present that

159evidence to the county team who will be uh reviewing with us and meeting with us in they usually will do a site visit but uh we're currently working under the emergency indicators uh so it will be done virtually evidence will have to be provided digitally and then we will have a zoom meeting where the uh county cusack team will meet with um with with those of us who are managing the areas but before that with our steering committee and so the steering committee is made up of representatives um mandated representatives in the district such as um um uh local bargaining unit uh so um mr coniglio uh has agreed to represent uh the dea um and will be a member of the steering committee uh we will have um a teacher we will have um

160administrators has to be central administrators and a principal and a board member so there'll be a one meeting in the beginning of the process to just kind of go over everything show everything the work that's being done and then there'll be a meeting for the steering committee when the county team comes in to do our review and they always begin by speaking with the steering committee so it really for uh whatever member of the board war ii board members want to be on the steering committee it would consist of two meetings thank you and those meetings will be held when uh well we are scheduled for our review in um february i think it's february 18th i'm doing that off top of my head uh so that would be one meeting and the other meeting

161would be soon we actually haven't set the meeting date because we want to see who is on the committee first so we can see what's convenient great so are there any board members that would be interested in doing this and we kind of have to pick tonight because the um timing um of the board meetings mr crew was that a hand uh no uh miss mulling and mister i'm sorry uh miss mullen and mr miller on did you did i see a hand on your end thank you thank you thank you thank you yes perfect um i'm gonna um then the discussion of amistad act um miss ruiz can i propose a two-minute break before we dive into that i was just gonna say that i would need to if no one else um has

162the need um but um i may need to have a break uh so two minutes please i'll make sure it's quick and that we get back quickly so we can get started dr cena would you like to make the announcement um before we do the discussion of amazon actor after let's do that before you okay we're doing it now um once people come back thank you i was sharing blessings in my head with uh miss royce for making that two minute request you heard that miss race i was okay you just need um got it miss mullen and miss katano do we have quorum if we start with there we go perfect okay all right now dr sander may you please make um your announcement yes i am very happy to announce and very sorry

163i was not there to share in it but last week at the morris county school board association meeting mrs nutting um received her award for the new board member certification so that is an award that new jersey school board association gives to board members who go above and beyond the amount of training that is required so congratulations to her for doing that really hard work thank you miss nutting for your dedication and for going above and beyond and getting trained and sharing that knowledge with all of us i we appreciate you a lot thank you my pleasure okay so now um on to the second new business discussion of amnesty act i think this was a uh requested by mysteries yes i think i was going to report on our discussion that we had at

164community relations and okay so um we were asked um to look at requests from mrs ruiz on the um our district's very important interaction with the mars county naacp regarding compliance with the new jersey armstud act and just so folks understand what that is the amistad bill calls new jersey schools to promote educational awareness regarding slavery in america and contributions africans have made to american society so the school district's partnership with the naacp is very important to our anti-racism work our we were asked to find out and as miss ruiz talked about prior to [Music] the new business she mentioned that only a couple school districts have really responded to any inquiries and so the the questions that that we asked are the administration uh centered around you know what type of requests have our

165has our school district received from the mars county naacp what was the dover school district's response to those requests and what are our future our plans in the future for anti-racism work so dr mclaughlin has been in communication with the naacp and he's had extensive dialogue about how the dover school district is addressing equality um and mr mclaughlin discussed with us how that he's open to any opportunities in working with the naacp some of the questions that were asked [Music] of our district by the naacp were the following what are what are our plans for reopening schools how did we address the needs of students in regard to helping them catch up on their educational needs from the unplanned virtual learning experience of the last school year and how is the district addressing systemic racism

166and bias in our schools so mr mclaugh dr mclaughlin pointed out that our curriculum committee has been proactive in reviewing inclusive curriculum to promote educational awareness regarding slavery in america and the contributions that africans have made to american society and there are other areas of development including their work with hiv and actual teacher development and awareness and dr mclaughlin mentioned that the district is exploring more places to do inclusive studies not just in social studies which is where it is right now so i don't know if dr mclaughlin wants to add anything more to what i just said i think i think it was a pretty good summary of our discussion uh the um i do want to indicate that i did follow up with the the representative who had originally contacted me and right

167now uh the um naacp's district evaluation process she indicated is is delayed uh due to covet um but they um they've been in contact with us and certainly any kind of input that um that the the mars county um branch of the naacp or or others would have you know we uh we continue to be open to hearing about and considering and seeing how it can help uh the way that we um that we work with all of our students and how we value our students and their contributions um uh particularly in regard to those of africa americans of african descent so um so that's where we are right now uh with that um that's the only thing i would add to your comments uh mr miller all right thank you and that's all i

168have to report thank you mr mailer um yes uh miss ruiz thank you mr sales what um do we use any of the curriculum from the amistad commission or from the teaching tolerance source both of which are recommended curriculum uh for amazon act compliance um we we provided a full report to the curriculum committee about i think i was two months ago now and i know that um in that report uh it was specified all the pieces that we are currently teaching and what we're relying upon i did not bring that report to this meeting so i don't have that to look at but i'm sure i can find what uh what was prepared for the curriculum committee or the curriculum committee could also share that yeah and it's also in the i believe it's

169in the minutes of the curriculum committee um more of the details but i believe miss ruiz and miss sirigliano i think that you can correct us i believe that we are following that specific right okay i see your head um i think for from both of them i remember hearing from um miss gg oh my god gun singer yes guessing about um following that curriculum um or those guidance for those two programs or those two thank you miss gracalis i couldn't see mr sirigliano she's not on one of my screens when you were talking so was that a yes that we are following either tolerance um yes and the specific on the subcommission curriculum yes and and teaching tolerance i mean that's been around for a long time as a classroom teacher i had that

170resource it's it's a free um free magazine i want to say call it a magazine it's a free resource that comes out from the southern law poverty coalition i might not be getting all those words correctly but um yeah and it's filled with articles activities that focus on a number of different topics but um generally focus on equity issues within that topic so it's a great resource and like i said when i had it as a classroom teacher it was free i'm not quite sure if it's free now but we are utilizing it yeah ms getzinger talked about teachers going in and having access to um models or curriculums right themselves for teaching lessons please help me with the language you educators um right and and then and her being able and her staff being

171able to kind of pull things from that resource okay okay and mrs my my only other question may not exactly fit here so i'll i'll withdraw it if if it doesn't um and you you kind of asked this before tonight even oh no more than that question but um regarding um educators within our district um the question my question is um how many of our educators are african-american and what specific steps are we taking to specifically recruit african-american educators and we know from our training at the njsba that recruitment of african-american educators is a challenge for suburban school districts but this challenge does not exist in the same way for urban school districts so the school districts that are segregated to be majority black have no problem recruiting uh african-american educators but the other districts

172that are majority white or like ours majority latino um do seem to have those challenges so what if you know and i know we've expanded we we post openings and other places where we didn't before so so that's helpful but i'm curious as to what if any specific steps are we doing are we taking um or are we exploring for the future um even if that is nurturing our own african-american students um should they wish to become educators you know what are we doing to to address this gap um because our students do need to see educators from a a diverse field based on gender and religion and race etc but right now specifically on race um so i think in order to address that we have to really be um purposeful in the way

173that we describe the efforts of the district because uh recruitment is a um that's a word that that i i would say we should avoid what we should what we should promote are opportunities information and a very large net so that we attract applicants um because we are obligated to hire um always the best person for the position and um we there's specific prohibitions in the code of ethics um towards hiring anyone on the basis of their race or ethnicity so so we would we would i i just want to be clear that as a district we would never say have two candidates and say that that particular demographic was was someone we were recruiting however i think the the idea of uh opening up a large net of making sure that individuals know of

174the opportunities here know what the advantages of teaching here are so that we have a wide applicant pool that that comes to us and that we can choose from and um it has been gratifying i think one of the things that was just mentioned was what about our own students um it's it has been gratifying to hear that on on a number of occasions that people come back to dover because this is where they want to teach and this is this is what we we what we want to show um is that dover is a destination dover is a place that you should want to teach i just met with a actually um one of the people who was approved tonight and in that interview process that individual talked about why she was attracted to

175dover um what dover represented what she felt she could contribute the affinity that she had for for our community so we certainly i think the cte programs that um that were mentioned before one of the potential cte programs in the future um could be a an america teach type program you know where we um we progress people through an educational route a high demand educational route and so that's an important element that i think we can certainly build on and then one of the things that that i think that we're very proud of the relationships that we are making with colleges and universities um and although that's been a little stymied more than a little stymied by covet because um the plan is to have a lot of in-person interaction and student teachers and i

176feel badly for the student teachers right now how you know doing student teaching in in a period of remote learning but student teachers are a great source of um of recruitment uh for in general because these are people who come who can work with us who can um form relationships with our kids and with with our teachers and administration see what dover has to offer plus we get to see them working with our kids um and student teaching as um in my understanding is that student teaching was a little stagnant here for a while but we have embraced that um i know that um that certainly mr igliano has um been very open uh during the period of time that we were in person to having student teachers placed and we were able to accommodate

177nearly all the requests that occurred while we were in person so that's a big area um that that we can certainly apply ourselves to that will have some real um tangible results and certainly in terms of general um advertisement and the way that we are looking for jobs we're utilizing everything we can you know multiple publications since we moved to digital advertisement we uh our advertisements are carried by many more carriers than they were when we uh only use traditional print and um we've also accessed linkedin as an area which many schools have been a little bit slow on that that particular area but we've advertised all our positions and what we hope to do i know that certainly when i see a dover ad that appears on linkedin i share it out and we

178hope that the people who are on our network do the same thing so that we bring we bring others in within our own uh collegial circle so that's just some of the ideas none of these are perfect um but they're they're efforts that we're making at this point thank you um anything else on uh final thoughts on amistad act i i still have some questions miss gracalis okay miss wrote mr roberts as well so okay i i i can wait for mr robles um just to break it up a little bit if that helps thank you thank you i just wanted to uh just make a comment i think we're blessed as a school district to have the teachers that we have um i know i've commended them many times for the work that they're

179doing now but i think when we think about the experience that i've been a dover student since 88 so many years and uh i can say that my experience and that of many others that i've come across has been exceptional though obviously not perfect i don't think anybody could say it's been perfect but i'm glad that even though we don't have perhaps the diversity that some people would aspire to and perhaps we should aspire to that we still have very high caliber teachers and very high caliber caliber education at this district and i'm excited that uh the teachers are doing what they're doing at the level that they're doing it even with the challenges that come from perhaps what some people might perceive as not having the cultural connection in some cases because that doesn't

180stop them from doing a great job as teachers and i think in some other school districts we could hear horror stories about teachers who just don't connect with the students and i i can say that my experience has been otherwise and i'm glad that uh you know we're striving for more and better but i think we're doing you know the teachers doing a great job at what they do and i hope that uh we recognize that and not to say that we're not but i know that we could recognize that every time we got every chance we get thank you thank you for that um ms royce thank you miss grasales um we've uh i think we've heard the term anti-racism uh i think dr sander may have mentioned it tonight um if not tonight

181certainly she has mentioned it um before when we talk about the training the board is embarking on um and i'm wondering what if any anti-racism training the district is um either either currently has or professional development opportunities the district currently offers or is exploring or planning on specifically addressing um what what um is called racial uh racialized aggression um formerly known as microaggressions um among staff members among the students or between the staff members and the students and specifically thinking about this past summer we had a march for racial justice in dover and we had student or alumni sorry submit public comments uh regarding their experiences in our community um like mr robles i also went through the school district up until 1996 and for better or for worse i am who i am in

182great part because of our great educators um who taught me to challenge and question and um and and who believed in me you know more than i believed in myself but i also had negative experiences um and i know again from from the march for racial justice here in dover and from the comments we've received um in in the public comment section i know that our students have suffered racialized aggressions um specifically so so what is our district doing to address that i i i you know i think that one of the things that i heard mr uh marion say earlier um is that our efforts for example in the area of anti-bullying address more than hiv and the anti-bullying bill of rights but they address areas of character they address areas of social emotional

183learning certainly the um contributions that we expect from uh the rutgers behavioral program go beyond uh clinical treatment or counseling with students to work with the staff to work with the greater student body and those are areas that we heard this morning that are school committees whether they be the skip committees or whether they be the safety committees the various groups that we have in place to drive our professional development are all concerned with so uh one of the things though i think uh that personally i think we need to be very careful of is that we don't bring a canned program in and say we've met this obligation i think it needs to be something that's integrated in terms of principles in terms of what we look at in terms of any curriculum for

184example if we're talking about literacy and literacy coaching which we're anticipating that part of the the literacy movement has to be inclusive literature that students see themselves in that teaches tolerance through our literature program we talked about the social studies program before being a vehicle but as mr miller said not the only vehicle that we of course when we looked at character education one of the hallmarks that went with that was that character education does not work if it's a can drive program or if if it's some other community service program that's won and done or three times a year it has to be ingrained into what we teach every day it has to be purposeful it has to be based on on core principles and i i believe that this approach to working with

185all children working along our core values making sure that character education is not seen as a sideline but as an essential part of what we do uh is critical to us being successful and for this being to be real because the last thing i would want to do is say okay we're going to bring in a group they're going to do this whole series of professional development that takes place on three pd days and now our staff has been trained because we all know that's not how real change happens so uh the commitment and i know the board knows this that as a district as a staff um as a as a learning community we are committed uh to the principles that that are being mentioned tonight um by a variety of people um and

186that's that's that's where we're looking to head and to continue to build on the good things that are here and to get better and to make sure that that we're really cognizant of um of those needs that kids bring in to be accepted to be respected to be valued to be celebrated um whatever group they come from because every student deserves that as entitled to that we have an obligation to that so those i know that may sound a little global and hopefully not overly vague i don't mean it to be that way um i i think the test will be from the board's point of view and the programs that we bring before you and the um presentations that occur and the initiatives that happen and the purchases that we make of materials and

187the programs we engage in uh where is the uh where is the element of of respect and tolerance and celebration because i i think those you know some of those terms sometimes uh are too narrow and i think the celebration piece is really an important part so that everyone feels that they are bringing um their own gift uh and which should be respected and valued uh to to what we do here in dover so um again i hope that's not too global um i i i you know i think this is something we all mean and we we really feel it in our hearts um and and i i think the board can look at everything that we bring before for approval and say what part of this um does this play in terms of

188the way that we're viewing every child in the district thank you dr mclaughlin it wasn't too global because anti-racism work must be global it has to touch on everything um so i i appreciate that you're not looking for some canned program that's gonna check the box okay our our district has had this training and we're done um my last question left though is you said you know you don't want this three day training one and done um but then that can it worries me that it is that then like a three day training in my perspective would be part of an integrated program part of character education um part of of a global anti-racism commitment that our district would make um but i'm not sure if i heard that if you're saying it would be

189one part of a program or if you're saying no i don't want you know for example a three-day program focused on anti-racism um we could have targeted programs for example it could be certainly a part of a a nurtured heart program if that was what we decided we wanted to use with rutgers uh and we we have every intention of of running those types of trainings but i think i'm gonna give two examples uh and they both kind of are in the same theme you know when elizabeth willem met with all of our staff last year her topic was dual language but when you look at dual language and the principles that it's founded on um it's not just about language instruction it's about cultural outreach it's about celebration it's about the value that we

190place on on individuals who come from two cultures or who operate within two cultures and who who have um the gift of speaking to languages and how do we build on that and how do we one of our themes was how do we change our mindset not to say that these are students who need to be remediated but these are children who need to be who we need for them to to accelerate their gift you know and to see it that way so that was a lot of what she talked about to the staff so when you look at her presentation it's not someone that you would come in and say oh this is someone here who's teaching about diversity or this is someone who's teaching about tolerance but in fact she was uh same

191thing when brian meadows came in and did early early work in terms of those students those new arrivals that we have and how staff could um ease their ease that transition what are some of the tools they could use um embed it in that work even though some of its academic is the idea that uh there is a person in front of us who's going going through some big challenges um and how do we um we help that how do we and and not just with the student who who's there but with our other students too what kind of course offerings are we placing our students in are we creating a segregated environment one of the things today for example uh that that that we met with mr igliano and myself and ms genzinger were

192talking about learning communities and one of the themes was how do we make sure that this is not a separate community how are we not segregating our population how are we making sure that all kids have opportunities in areas that they potentially have uh have strengthened and so it it needs yes that there needs to be those targeted trainings where we learn skills that go along with a technique but we also have to integrate this in everything that we do this has to be the theme the theme has to be um how we um don't put kids in corners or in silos um but that we uh we bring children together and that we make all children feel valued um here um and that we see that value you know not not not a false

193value but a true authentic value thank you for that explanation thank you miss graceless that's uh the end of my questions great okay if there are no further comments with new business we're going to move on to a public comment um mr minkowitz are there comments i don't see anyone on here perfect okay so 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 limited to items on this agenda should be entertained but for the section any non-agenda items are also accepted upon the discretion of um myself within the 30 minutes since this is a virtual

194meeting occurring during the covet 19 shutdown public comment has been solicited through the google form on the district website and members of the public can also participate during the public portion of the meeting through the zoom session by activating the raised hand function please understand the public comment portions of our gender are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they're 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 employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public

195to comments about students or employees please please be advised that you are commenting on you're at your own risk any public comments that are directed at particular individual or individuals could substitute to legal liability or default i see three comments that have been submitted i'll start with the first one um from susan shower 346 west clinton street good evening all i'm submitting a follow up to the question i asked at your october meeting please dr mclaughlin confirm the number of pre-k students currently enrolled in the preschool program there seems to be some misleading and intentionally confusing information during the september meeting you reported 178 pre-k students were enrolled yet during the recent boe election campaign literature released by the president and vice president of the dover boe specifically states 400 students are currently enrolled in

196the program please clarify the correct number and also again i ask how many students from the 2019 year pre-k program transitioned to the dover kindergarten program thank you uh the second comment is from susan shower as well 346 west clinton street good evening all i see that the board will be again discussing and voting on the district sro program policy and program i assume this includes the class iii officers to advise the board the town of dover meeting on 11 10 20 the town administrator mr bennett reported that he had met with mr mclaughlin and that he reported that the district had approved the class iii officer unanimously and voted to enter the program please clarify if yes you did have that discussion or correct the town administrator's statement thank you and the third comment

197is from john coniglio 24 taylor town road montville good evening i would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank all of our hard-working educators secretaries security guards administrators all of our technology staff and everyone else that has played a role in the opening of our school year thus far the first virtual marketing period was a success considering the circumstances that we find ourselves in with that being said from a recent survey that the dea conducted 84 percent of our teaching staff would prefer the virtual environment going forward rather than the hybrid model which would have students at home and in school at the same time [Music] which has been such a mess in other districts around the area with districts continuing to open and close constantly due to positive covet cases additionally dover teachers

198have been working for nearly five months under an expired contract was ended on june 30th 2020. dover educators are working harder than ever during this unique learning environment despite not having a contract at this time obviously no educators went to college to teach in this virtual fashion or our teachers and parents have adapted to this different teaching style without a hitch and have done an amazing job thank you to everyone for all of your efforts thus far and marking period one and keep up the great work in marking period 2. that's all i see mr dr mclaughlin would you like to address any of the public comments maybe we i just want to pause for a minute in case anyone has a raised uh hand from our zoom audience i don't see them so we

199as panelists i don't know if we see them yeah you can see them if you click on participants okay so only on participants so if the attendees want to give public comment they can just hit the raised hand feature which would be at the bottom of their screen we would then acknowledge them ask them to unmute they can make their comment doesn't look like i have a raised hand there though yeah i only see one attendee do you all see only one attendee okay and no right stan okay all right thank you for checking that uh dr mccorklin uh so um i get i don't want to um i can't clarify uh anything that that was or wasn't said at the town meeting but we do know that tonight the board did approve a contract

200so i don't know if i know this was submitted before that may have been submitted before that um that vote was taken so hopefully that clarifies that concern and um in terms of preschool uh just a you know as preschool we're very very happy uh the amount of partners that came on board this year um obviously especially with three and four-year-olds virtual instruction is very difficult so a number of our parents have told the registrar that uh that they're able to access private programs that are meeting in person uh for for their three and four-year-olds or they're choosing to wait and just wait until we are in person so uh this um currently we have although we did start the year at 178 we're at 160 right now so we've had a few uh children

201who have um who have left uh the role um and we know that once um once we're back in person because that's how three and four-year-olds learn you know by playing and um socializing uh that uh the preschool will be and the great shape is all our partners the great thing is that all our partners are continuing to commit to us and we had our um early childhood advisory council this week mr conniglio uh mr igliano and myself who were there with our partners and um there was a story it was pretty mr ganio danny mr gabriel oh who did i give kant who died sorry mr knigley you weren't there but uh the yes um mr ganyo uh ran the meeting and um our partners were very um enthusiastic uh felt the program was

202going really well even in this uh type of virtual state great and obviously yes just to further clarify regarding the um uh approval of the sro it was non-anonymous uh unanimously right um so i i'm assuming it happened after uh the comments um all right i i second um mr conniglio's comments regarding the teachers as a parent i have experienced um and how mr robles said the same you know their resiliency as as teachers and educators and even i think there are student um um teachers or at least you know other teachers are joining classrooms to help the supportive teachers perhaps maybe that's what i have seen have been tremendously in being creative and in supportive of the kids and and those that are not comfortable with being on camera and how to you know

203sue them to be comfortable so um it's that their work is invaluable and i you know i'm so grateful for them to have chosen this profession um and and i truly appreciate their efforts um and i see everyone shaking their head so i'm assuming that they have experienced the same so that's great to hear um thank you for highlighting that mr conniglio um all right if there are any other board members that have comments in regards to the public portion okay all right i um ask if there is a motion to recommend the closing of the meeting mr miller motion and miss vivero's second um um all in favor aye aye any opposed mr the hour is 1002. be safe and have a good night