001like to call this meeting to order due to the covid19 health emergency and in order for the board of education to conduct its business this board meeting is being held by a video conference and streamed on youtube on the district website at www.ebnet.com in addition members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password you see before you on the screen upon joining the meeting your participation will be muted to ensure that there is no disruption to the business being conducted by the board of education will the secretary please call the role mr florangelo here this is true here mr sismar here mrs gloss mr hong ki mrs lax here mrs reese mrs reese will not be here tonight she's um observing the last night
002of shiva for her husband's uh mother mr winston here and president becker here we have a quorum please rise to salute the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the problem for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with lori would you mind pinging heather please and seeing if um she's planning on joining us and just running late thank you the new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend meetings of public bodies in accordance with provisions of this act the east boundary court of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published at the board of education offices written notice was also provided to the sentinel the newark star ledge of
003the home news and tribune and the municipal clerk of east brunswick all board of education meetings with the exception of executive session discussions or video tape for later broadcast and individuals who speak at the board's public meeting should be aware of these video taping rules good evening thank you for joining us tonight dr velasque first item is superintendent's report thank you president becker and good evening everyone tomorrow friday may 7th is recognized as national school lunch hero day on this day we celebrate our child nutrition staff for all they do every day especially during the pandemic last march when the world was shook with so many uncertainties and challenges our child nutrition team still maintain their commitment to make sure each and every child in our community did not go hungry now one year later
004our staff still makes it a priority to ensure our children are given the meals they need to maintain good health and nutrition thank you so much to the child nutrition team you truly are heroes our board of education and the dedicated staff at east brunswick public schools has a history of demonstrated leadership preparedness and strategic focus on the future i would like to provide two significant examples when the tragic parkland high school shooting occurred in florida the east brunswick board of education took immediate steps the very next evening to give me the authority to arm our school security officers our implementation of that board action was swift because over a period of time we had already prepared for it the east bronze board of education authorized resources to purchase a learning management system along with
005laptops and chromebooks for our students and professional development for our teachers when the pandemic was looming and our governor issued an executive order that we would be closing our district and moving to virtualized instruction within days of his announcement we already had the infrastructure technology and support to immediately shift our teaching and learning our implementation was again swift because over a period of time we had already prepared for it tonight we have another significant milestone to address in the evolution of east brunswick public schools the board will consider my recommendation for restructuring our grades and installing temporary classroom units at churchill which will create and maintain adequate elementary classroom space to appropriately accommodate incoming students beginning september and just to recap for the audience the proposal is that elementary schools will be pre-k to four
006hammer shoulders proposed to be a grade five six as an upper elementary school churchill is proposed to be grades seven eight and nine and east brunswick high school will remain unchanged with grades 10 11 and 12. it is important to restate the root cause of our enrollment challenges that prompted my recommendation for temporary classroom unit additions and grade restructuring beginning september 2022 based on current enrollment we have used all our elementary classroom capacity additionally we do not have the current capacity to expand special education programming at our elementary schools and this is after we have moved art and music out of their designated classrooms we can accurately forecast that a migration of elementary age students to east brunswick public schools is ongoing and eminent our commissioned demographic study update dated june 2019 forecasted elementary student
007enrollment growth of over 400 students by 2024. we all have our own personal stories about loss and change during this global crisis and most of the change we experienced was immediate and unavoidable i want to take a moment to speak directly to the parents who sent emails and who spoke at the community interactive forum we held this past tuesday i am empathetic to your concern the impact to our students i clearly heard that some of you want to delay the implementation of this plan and i assure you i'm not trying to introduce unnecessary change in spite of a pandemic i am making this grade level recommendation change tonight in response to the pandemic and i am confident that by doing so we can be immediately responsive to the social emotional mental health and academic needs
008of especially our pre-data for learners in smaller class size environments relating back to my initial comments about how our past successes have been rooted in preparedness i am concerned that delaying this grade level restructuring proposal for even one year will place us in a position of not being prepared to support and educate our elementary students at the high levels that have become a standard for east brunswick public schools the migration east brunswick has begun to accelerate along with housing sales and enrollment into our blue ribbon school district which by the way recently earned recognition by advancing on the latest u.s news and world report high school ranking like we have consistently proven before i simply want our district to be prepared i would like to highlight just some of the opportunities afforded by this proposal
009in pre-k to 4 the smaller elementary enrollment results in more student contact time and individualized attention from esl teachers reading math specialist and student assistant specialist and then from there we'll continue to use our response to intervention model to diagnose and remediate learning gaps for all students smaller class sizes will allow teachers to differentiate to meet the needs of all learners in the class the child study team will have more student contact time student assistance specialists will have greater frequency to push into classes and do more work with students groups and individuals elementary clubs will be open to and designed for younger students and as an aside by moving fifth grade from elementary schools to amershold vehicle and pedestrian traffic flow at elementary schools for arrival and dismissal could be lessened and become more manageable
010and then moving on to hammershow what are the benefits of hammer shoulders in upper elementary school learning opportunities will be strong at hammer shoulder but they'll be paced for fifth and sixth graders to elongate the transition to seventh grade our fifth grade students will benefit from science instruction and dedicated lab space environments it's education in subject design art in music rooms cross-curricular instruction taught in a media center for skill development researching and technology integration access to stem labs and classroom kitchens enhanced character development recognition [Music] the opportunity for preschool buddy readers social events geared specifically to fifth and sixth grade students and clubs and activities geared specifically toward upper elementary students all of this while maintaining an atmosphere of an upper elementary school for our fifth and sixth graders thank you okay thank you dr
011valeski okay next we have a public hearing on the fiscal year 2022 school district budget in a minute i'm going to ask if there are any members of the public who wish to comment on this i want to remind the public that for this part of the public hearing it is on the school district budget only if you wish to speak of other matters of the good of the cause we will be having the regular good of the cause right afterwards but when i call for anyone wishing to speak to the board now it will be only on the school district budget again bernie do you have the screen to show um our url meeting an id in case anyone wants to join to speak about the budget just a moment no problem thank you
012so much if you wish to comment on the 2022 school district budget enter the url meeting id and password you see before you on the screen in order to be recognized use the chat feature select the zoom meeting host then enter and send your name to the host you will be recognized as speaker your name is called and individuals will be invited to speak in the order in which we have received your quest is there anyone wishing to speak to the board about the 2022 school district budget mrs becker point of order we have to first we have a presentation initially on the school district budget which will be followed by the opportunity for individuals to speak okay please present thank you so let's begin with uh district facts and many of these are our
013uh items that we have presented in the past um but they bear uh repeating and reviewing first of all the district as an operational entity we do function as a business as a business we are the 30th largest school district in new jersey that's as of 2019 fiscal year we're the largest employer within east brunswick in terms of our population the school population we are larger than some municipalities and you can see just a couple of examples and how we compare to the township on the whole so we're kind of a town within a town almost that is excluding the number of staff that we have employed we operate a major transit system now some of the data i'm reviewing is from the prior year because the pandemic had impacted um some of the data
014but we will be bouncing back to uh the levels that we were at we operated operates 570 routes traveling over the course of the entire school year 3.42 million miles and if we look at the number of passengers in the uh course of every day morning and afternoon and uh multiply that out throughout the entire course of the year that's 2.4 million passengers which is quite extensive a major food service provider and certainly dr valeski mentioned what our child nutrition folks how they've supported us during this past year but we are a major food service provider uh in uh the prior year we served over 564 thousand lunches 266 000 a la carte meals 92 000 breakfasts we maintain a substantive amount of building and land you can see some comparisons with regard to the
015square square footage of our facilities and the square footage of our uh acre or rather the acreage and compares comparison to some other locations we also have always strived to control our costs and we participate in a variety of shared services agreements we have worked diligently on an energy program and as a matter of fact we are coming to the close of our energy savings improvement program uh which has affected every single building within this school district uh and currently the tail end of that program includes the addition of solar energy uh at uh several several of our locations and that is at churchill junior high school at central school lawrence brooke school and at memorial school through our in-house transportation services and multi-tiering our bus routes we have created efficiencies which translate into cost
016savings we utilize the educational services commission of new jersey to also support a variety of services from transportation to special education services and so on we work with the township to seek opportunities for cost savings through financial arrangements and services as well as through the county of middlesex and we're always keeping an eye on the long-term debt and refinancing whenever those opportunities arise and those opportunities have resulted in many millions of dollars of savings over the last several years alone as a revenue producer our community programs operations and our facility use has produced a substantive amount of revenue for the district through the various programs and services that we provide and those revenues have been very key to supporting the school district budget they've provided millions of dollars to help support the programs and services
017of the school district and the excellence that the district has always strived for really goes without saying i think the community is well aware of what we have done and the achievements of our students and staff and the excellence is not limited on the achievements of students and staff but also with regard to how we manage our finances and over the last uh seven and five years consecutively and respectively the district has been awarded uh certificates of excellence in its financial reporting and management from the association of school business officials international and the government finance officers association so let's review some budget facts and these are facts that were reported during the presentation of the tentative budget firstly on state aid we can see that we're only just recovering from a substantive cut in state
018aid that occurred between the 2010 and 2011 school years where we were reduced uh roughly uh six point pardon me 6.6 million dollars at that time and then subsequent to that period of time you see that state aid relatively stayed flat while costs to operate the school district continue to rise last year in the last year's budget development we started out with a 22.2 million dollar state aid level we had struck a budget and then subsequent to having struck a budget and moved forward with implementing the budget due to the pandemic the state cut state aid and we had to scurry to make some changes at in a very fast pace in order to continue operations and yet continue to provide services as well for the fiscal 2022 year our state aid is 25.8 million
019dollars so uh what are the impacts because there have been questions with regard to uh the impacts as to the increased aid levels and part of it is that the savings that we had applied to the current year uh from custodial and transportation services that was a one-year savings because those services were brought back into place for the current year so those were savings during the period of march through june of 2020 because of the pandemic because we were fully shut down but those savings do not continue moving forward since the services are in full force again our enterprise revenue so those are the revenues uh from uh the early morning programs uh the facility use our our enterprise revenues were substantively impacted as well because the use of our facilities and the services we
020provided had to be curtailed so there was an impact in terms of our revenue we did tap into our retained earnings to help support the budget uh during and close the gap from last year however that was a one-time issue so in order to continue to sustain uh the budget going forward as i mentioned earlier we'll we will be recovering on our enterprises but the uh the enterprise revenue impact that sustained that needed to be uh filled uh is for the current year our collective bargaining and contractual base salary commitments nearly 2.6 million dollars and our health benefits uh projected increase net that's after employee contributions will be going up approximately two hundred thousand dollars transportation services will increase roughly 340 000 and facilities maintenance approximately 560 000 our charter school obligation is increasing roughly
021four hundred and twenty thousand dollars and our insurance costs other than health benefits and that is uh liability uh errors and emissions property uh automobile and bus insurance that is all increasing roughly 100 000 so all told those amounts come out to almost 6 million dollars which is uh equivalent to the state aid increase that we are seeing let's take a quick look in terms of the charter school impact since 2009 2009 and 2010 were very very small levels of charter school obligation but in 2011 is when we were initially hit with a substantive impact to the school district budget requiring major changes in how we operate and since 2011 there's been a steady increase in the amount that is uh funded to operate charter schools now these funds come directly out of the budget
022the district does not receive any additional resources for this state aid comes into the district and the district must pay out vis-a-vis state aid and a certain portion from other sources to operate the charter schools this is not a voluntary aspect this is a mandatory pursuant to the law and our current obligation for the fiscal 2022 school year is three over 3.6 million dollars so you can see from fiscal 2011 to 2022 a period of 11 fiscal years that that obligation has gone up approximately 2.4 million dollars in that period of time so we're here with the public hearing on the budget and uh there are a few revisions for final adoption and this is a period of time when um this is the period of time during which revisions to the budget uh may
023be made prior to final adoption uh they have to be presented during the public hearing and so from the tentative budget we'll review now what some of those revisions are firstly on the revenue side there's the use of banked cap that was something that had been foregone last year if you may recall that we made a decision not to utilize bank cap due to the pandemic but as we're coming out of the pandemic and to help support the objectives of the district bank cap is being utilized on the appropriations side making changes in terms of the flex program the relocation of the program from churchill to the high school will result in savings of approximately eighty thousand dollars we also have a reduction in salaries and benefits for four vacant positions uh in the facilities
024management area and so that will result in a reduction of 325 000 and an offset for property manage maintenance that will be required and thus that area will increase approximately 222 000 and then the net uh for capital improvements oh pardon me the net for capital improvements which will go toward a preparation for tcus and other site work that's necessary uh is at 1.7 million dollars that will leave us with a balanced budget our balanced budget will be at 172 million 263 393 dollars for general fund tax increase will be offset by a decrease in the debt service fund for a net tax increase of 3.8 million dollars roughly 2.7 2.8 percent following the budget hearing and opportunity for public comment the final budget will be adopted at the board of education meeting to be
025held next week on may 13th and any information with regard to the budget will be posted on the district website currently the district website does have all the materials and details pertaining to the tentative budget the final budget and user-friendly budget will all be presented on the website once the final budget is adopted and that concludes the presentation with regard to the public uh hearing on the budget thank you bernie now that the budget presentation has concluded now i would like to invite members of the public to speak to the board about the fiscal year 2022 school district budget and that topic only is there anyone wishing to speak to the board about the budget we have no one in the queue who has requested to speak on the budget okay see no one i
026will close a public hearing and now we come to the good of the cause for the public members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password we have been showing throughout the meeting and one more time here it is in order to be recognized use the chat feature select the zoom meeting host then enter and send your name to the host and you will be recognized to speak when your name is called individuals will be invited to speak in the order in which we have received your request participants will be limited to three minute duration is there anyone wishing to speak to the board tonight uh yes we have uh peter de sienna okay good evening peter yes good evening um my name is
027peter de sienna i'm a father of three children within the district um i spoke oh sorry one currently in ninth grade one in seventh and one in fifth and i spoke tuesday evening at the public forum raising my concerns against the proposal to acquire the temporary trailers at churchill junior high but i felt it necessary to voice my concern again tonight to you the members of the board upon learning about the proposal and hearing from dr valesky i've only seen information on demographics but there's little information as to how this is going to impact the educational model as well as the social and emotional development of our children now i do understand that as a school district you have to consider the amount of students entering the district but feel like gold cannot and should
028not be achieved at the neglect of the educational and social developments of the students furthermore the timing of this project both in the rush to get something done as well as coming off of more than a year of covet restrictions further makes this decision a little hasty as a parent of a fifth grader coming off of an inconsistent year of structured education i do not see the wisdom in sending our fifth graders off to hammer school for one year according to this current plan um that'll be one year of learning a new school adapting to a new school schedule of changing classrooms for each individual class maybe the use of lockers maybe not depending on the state and cdc guidelines for next year and there's also a new level of organization and independence that will
029be placed on the student some of these students have not returned to school in over a year some of them have been hybrid however it's still on a modified school day schedule and as as resilient as dr velasquez feels these children are i don't feel that this will action will set our students up for success the following year when they transition to churchill which will be another new building another new class schedule one that is now on a 84 minute block schedule a new level of organization as well as a whole new social change of being with ninth graders who are developmentally who developmentally do not relate to the seventh graders now i've watched my my two daughters transition during normal school years through hammershold and churchill and i can tell you that the first
030year is not a sufficient amount of time to adjust to that school environment uh furthermore after looking into the proposal i'm just still unclear as to the actual impact upon class sizes of the elementary schools i see as projected that the school district will increase by about 372 children in the pre-k to fifth grade age range by 2023 and i know that this number is not going to be spread out amongst all elementary schools however if you do some quick math that 372 students spread out amongst all eight schools averages out to roughly 47 children per school and that could possibly be if you divide that even further amongst the sixth grade levels that's about eight children per grade level smaller class sizes [Music] that was time thank you is there anyone else wishing to
031address the board tonight we have marcela betzer okay hello marcella hi can you hear me yes we can thank you thank you thank you for allowing me to speak tonight i'm a parent of twins in fifth grade at bound monroe elementary and i really appreciate the board decision at the april 22nd meeting to delay the vote on the proposed grade configuration plan i also want to thank you for allowing us to have a forum two days ago which i attended along with nearly 200 other parents i do have some concerns i want to share about the proposed grave reconfiguration plan in the current plan as implemented in the proposed timeline our fifth graders would have at least three continuous challenging years the current year ending in june in which they effectively lost their fifth grade
032year during the pandemic along with many if not most of the activities and milestones that usually take place being sixth graders at hammershould under a pandemic recovery year in which they may still be wearing masks and dealing with a somewhat abnormal year as they try to adjust and adapt to in-person learning in a brand new environment then moving to seventh grade testing again to a brand new school including a very concerning earlier school start time for one additional earlier year instead of being able to start 803 starting at 725 and they'll also be really impacted by a phase two construction potentially attending school in a construction zone for years um i am a public health professional i currently direct a pediatric mental behavioral health program at the new jersey chapter of the american academy of
033pediatrics from what i've seen in my own family my friends through my work significant increases in families seeking mental health services for their children across the state i think our kids really need two years of stability to transition from this past year's experience of the kova 19 pandemic um dealing with our children's emotional grief from losses of this past year has been extremely challenging and some of us just got our kids in school five days a week last month so thinking of them having only one year at hammershould is honestly extremely upsetting one of my concerns is also regarding school start times moving fifth grade to hammer shoulde moves students from a grade in which they have a 9 10 start time to an 803 start time about one hour earlier and moving seventh grade
034to churchill moves the adolescents in that grade from 803 start time to 7 25 a difference of 38 minutes this is a significant concern for me and other parents and sleep is one of the most important factors in our health and well-being our adolescents are already chronically sleep deprived i just feel they really really need to educate our community about this and move forward in a meaningful way on implementing healthier school start times there were some studies conducted during remote learning last spring when some schools automatically changed their start times to 8 30 and even 9 because there was no need for transportation showed the immense benefit to teenagers physical and mental health and improved cognitive effects i know about all the challenges to making this change of the late school start times and there's
035many innovative approaches we can do that won't impact athletics or the budget i think we should start and we should start now our children's physical and mental health depends on it fine thank you marcella is there anyone else bernie yes we have shannon searle hello shannon hi um good good evening dr valeski and members of the board um i just want to really um echo what some of the other parents have been saying and said the other night this has been such a crucial year uh over a year of change for all of our students all of our children uh this is something that has never been seen before next year my i have a son in fifth grade let me just start with that my son is in fifth grade and he next year
036for most students the change from fifth grade from elementary school to hammershould middle school is in in of itself a huge transition so now we're dealing with a move to hammer shoulde after over a year of being many of the students have been completely virtual my son did just start last month um doing the hybrid because i i did that purposely so that he would have some um getting used to being back in a classroom before he switches to hammershold so that in and of itself going from being virtual almost uh over a year and then starting a middle school in a brand new school brand new environment brand new teachers brand new routine i would like him to have time to adjust to that and not have to get used to that for a
037year and then end up moving again to another school um they unfortunately the students were not able to see hammer shoulde in fact my son said are we going to actually see the school before we go in and i don't know if during the orientation um over the summer they'll be able to do that i hope so so i know he's concerned about you know what this new school will be like it would be nice if he could have another year at hammershow before he has to um pick up and and move to another school and i think uh many of the parents or all of the parents would agree with that we they had a presentation um that dr gaskell gave and other students gave from hammershaw just explaining all about hammershold and it
038was they were wonderful presentations the students talked about and again this was made before the pandemic so things are much different obviously but all of the students that spoke and dr gaskell explained how wonderful hammershold shoulders and it is i i actually have an older son who is a freshman in college right now so he's gone through all of the schools i'm familiar with with olive with obviously hammer shoulder churchill the high school and 30 seconds ma'am 10 seconds okay i just really think that this is not the time to make this change give the students time to adjust to um it's time thank you sherman bernie do we have anyone next we have no one else waiting in the queue okay see no one i close the public portion moving on to tonight's agenda
039before accepting a motion on the board of education items is there anything needing to be separated out by anyone mark can we separate out item number three item number three policies second reading and approval that's with regard to uh that's what you want to separate out mark could you please make a motion for that we don't need a motion to separate it we can uh simply pass on that one until after the other items are voted on okay then we'll just take them one by one we'll just make it easy okay first item on the board of education agenda the minutes for april 22nd can i please have a motion move by laurie second by mark is there any discussion all those in favor aye opposed abstain motion carries item number two policies for second
040reading and approval can i please have a motion for that move by laurie second by mark is there any discussion all those and uh will will the secretary please follow the rule mr corrangelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes mrs lax mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries item number three policy second reading and approval can i please have a motion for that move by laurie second second by susanna is there any discussion mark yes just to remind everybody this is the policy 152 which is the election of board officers i had brought to the board the simple notion of allowing a candidate for the board officers position to make a statement of what they would bring to the board and what leadership qualities they would have
041i also suggested that we have questions that could come from the board in a public setting to anybody who wished to be a candidate to lead the board i'll give it to mrs becker it's a very tough position but i think the board members should have an opportunity in a public setting to ask questions of potential leaders how they would lead this very important board it was it did not pass on the first reading again i wanted to remind you of how i feel on that about transparency and you know maybe suggest reconsidering it thank you thank you mark any other discussion jeff yeah without repeating a lot of what marx said a lot of this was discussed at the may 22nd meeting and in that meeting um you know a couple of things came
042from that and one of the questions i had asked and you know i'm still having trouble understanding the answer actually i understand the answer i'm having much trouble accepting it so i would ask put this back to the policy uh committee chair um ms chu when this idea and proposal uh where that mark had brought up uh when mr sismore had brought up explain to me what exactly is the objection at the last meeting you stated because no other districts did it was your primary reason i was wondering if you want to expand on that or is that essentially still the motivation there we follow best practices of what districts are doing and none of the board members at the committee mem meeting felt it was necessary by the time you're there you know you
043you know each other pretty well you know you've been there you've run for election you've made lots of public statements so by the time you're there you're you're very well known okay so so it's the familiarity well they may and and i think that's a reasonable answer as as board members but we're also elected officials do to represent this township uh i i absolutely agree with mr sismar when he states this reoccurring uh virus that that comes into this board and has existed for far too long is a lack of transparency the public i understand miss true that you believe that people on this board know each other but i think the public more than us we are not the stakeholders we represent the stakeholders deserves to hear from their leadership that leads the largest
044budget allocation in this township with their taxpayer dollars and it is just so disturbing to me that once again we've defaulted back to lack of transparency which continuously gets us into situations where we have to over explain to the public i am very upset by this there is no motivation best practices according to whom uh very very disappointing once again hiding behind the shroud and reducing the transparency that this public needs mark mark crenshaw i believe he has your hand up um with all due respect ms chu uh strongly disagree with you saying that we all know each other i am a perfect example of why we should have a little speech or a little something uh to understand um because i didn't know president becker before i don't know the other board members other
045than mark and jeff so you're you know i appreciate you i respect you but i you're off base on that one because we don't know each other i didn't know you know miss lax or mr i don't know anybody and as a new board member it would have been appropriate to have a little discussion as to i'm going to be president i'm going to do this i'm going to do that and whoever was running for each you know the vice president things like that it would have helped me a lot as a new board member to have that opportunity to hear people you know speak um publicly not phone calls or not emails whatever you know texting that which is fine i don't mind that that's totally cool but publicly come out and say i
046want to talk the board this way i'm going to do this this way um and i do support president becker obviously but as a new member it was very challenging for me so that is the reason and best practices for other uh boards we're not that other board we're this and to be transparent it could be a little bit uh handled with a different explanation so i respect you susannah did you want to reply uh sure i just wanted to add that um remember that board members are on all the board meetings for someone who runs for the board of education i certainly hope that one would have you know watched uh many of the meetings that are open to the public um also in order to be on the board um there you run
047right you're running there are statements made throughout that time when the board of education member runs when the candidate is um nominated the person making the nomination is making uh assessment based on having worked with that person and making the statement and summarizing their reason for why the board candidate deserves to be uh considered for um for the for the role uh so there's lots of transparency with regard to uh board members being on these public meetings uh regularly over over a period of time a long period of time before uh you know certainly it's not someone who's just elected to the board nobody knows them and then they're suddenly running for a leadership position so there's lots of reasons why there's plenty of transparency and when we talk about best practices how many hundreds
048of school districts are there in the state of new jersey um so you know i think there's there's something to be said about you know there's a standard approach and there's a good reason for it from my experience on the board over the past few years the process has worked um i wanted to add that um i understand what jeff and mark and mark are saying but i also feel that as it has been brought up by susanna that board members go through an election by the public in november it is very transparent board members have a lot of exposure a lot of opportunities to let people know about themselves either through public debates or social medias or community events this is not an election by the public it is simply an election with board
049to elect a president and a vice president for the year i don't feel that that process equates into a lack of transparency for this board and i guess i'm disappointed to hear that others do because i feel that we are a very transparent board and the fact that somebody doesn't make a statement before the board is voting on a leader of the group does not mean that we are not a transparent group also with the nominating process the person nominating the board member brings up an awful lot of reasons why that person should be considered for the role of president or vice president and as mark had mentioned the last meeting which i thought was a really good idea a board member can nominate themselves and make a statement so it's already built in i
050feel and that's why i wasn't supporting the recommendation mark laurie one more angelo yeah i just wanted to make um jeff i appreciate your passion and i love the fact that you have been someone who's been a champion for transparency and when you ran that's one of the things that you said that you felt this board wasn't and i'm hoping that now since you've been here for a bit you can see that there's a fine line between transparency and confidentiality because one of the things that's very important as a board is confidentiality and i really truly in my heart of hearts don't believe that we have a lack of transparency on this board as evidenced by the fact that every time you look what happened on tuesday and the meeting tonight we invite the public
051into whatever areas we can because we do represent the public and our job is to make sure that this district is run well for the public so i just want i just wanted to say to you board member personally as i said i applaud what you're saying but i don't think a lack of transparency is a problem i think that we do and and again what vicky said simply board leadership is board leadership it's it's it's running meetings and you know it's things that you should see the leadership skills in your fellow board members and for mark you're new absolutely you come into a meeting but the reality is we have turnovers at times when you have a meeting and then my suggestion would be to a new board member coming in abstain on the
052leadership for the first meeting if you don't know who the players are because everybody else has served on that board for a period of time and gone to know their colleagues and this is a hard year too mark and it you know we haven't met face to face none of us with you because unfortunately this is this has been a strange year for us so usually we don't we don't live in a pandemic thank god and we do have meetings and a lot of time together so that's the only thing i wanted to say but jeff i'm not trying i don't mean this as a debate with you as i said i applaud every every time you've come out and said you know we're here to represent the public i just wanted to just clarify
053that one point for me because i i do take transparency and confidentiality both very seriously i just wanted to distinguish the two or credential um if i abstained it could be four or four so i don't understand that kind of thing um in my personal opinion um i do own a school federal financial aid accredited the whole nine yards i've been down in education before i've been through things and i am new here it would have been beneficial if i could have had the person that ran for each position make a statement and that's all i don't you know i don't have the biggest pony in this horse whatever i appreciate the president and she knows that so um it's just the person that nominates you isn't you they can say you're this you're that
054blah blah that's cool i've been nominated for plenty of things but i still had to go up and make a speech to show everyone who i am or what i'm into so in my opinion and finally skip by this i suppose uh it would have been beneficial if the person can speak that's all and um yeah but i appreciate everyone on the board and i would love to meet everybody even it is a tough time i would like to you know thank you mark i'm trying not to take this conversation personally mark sismar and i'll i'll start my comment with mrs becker president becky do you do a good job i'm not taking that away from you thank you very much as board members and like i said your position is very important board members
055never take cold questions from the public and this is even something where board members in a leadership role are saying they don't want to take a question from a fellow board member in the public i'm i'll limit the transparency to that i'm not saying you know i'm not going to go with the widespread we're focusing on this policy and i just can't understand somebody that wants to be in that type of a leadership position is refusing to take questions from the fellow board members in a public setting that's that's where i'll limit my transparency uh discussion to so thank you for listening to me and again i don't i i guess we'll have to agree to disagree i don't look at um voting no on your recommendation as refusing to address other board members questions
056so we'll agree to disagree anyone else wishing to speak on this did i see anyone's hand i want to make sure i get everybody okay see no more discussion with the secretary please call the role mr carangelo we're voting on the sworn item item three right no high law zero one five two no this is true yes mr sismar no this is guass yes mr hong yes mrs lax yes this is um sorry if she's not here uh mr winston absolutely not and president becker yes motion carries thank you good discussion can i please have a motion on item 4 regulations first reading and approval hello move by laurie second by second by mark ii is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr sismar
057yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes this is lex mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries before accepting a motion on our curriculum and instruction items is there anything needing to be separated out scene none can i please have a motion for items one through two on our curriculum agenda [Music] moved by jeff second by laurie is there any discussion this is not a roll call vote all those in favor aye opposed obscene motion carries moving on to our facilities agenda can i please have a motion for item one approval to proceed with acquisition of temporary classroom units and grade reconfiguration move by marc angelo second by laurie is there any discussion jeff thank you just a question really for dr valesky i i appreciate i appreciated everything i've heard regarding this issue and
058and if there's one common thread amongst all especially from the parents who have been uh forthcoming with their concerns it definitely surrounds itself with the mental health issue and as i've been an advocate for mental health of our students uh since joining this board two and a half years ago i want to revisit that as a priority beyond many of the other uh issues but i want to really concentrate on that so before i vote on this and i hate to put your you put your feet to the fire i need you to talk to me very specifically and you you touched on it in your superintendence report how are you going to address the mental health issues at in in every nuance of this the fifth grader concerns which i heard uh the gentleman
059speak about earlier uh being one year in the school i mean there are a lot of great points that parents are bringing up uh my kids have passed on uh the grades that that this is impacting so so really simply tell me about what you're going to do what you're going to put in place and what you're willing to commit to to address the mental health carve out this plan thank you mr winston um the um obviously this has been a focus of this administration and our discussions with the board before the pandemic uh the the public may not be aware that this board approved funds in last year's budget to engage effective school solutions it's an outside company that came in to evaluate our district for a variety of supports but mental health and
060um having uh supports through our psychiatric supports that were available to the district was really important to us we had been watching for years uh through our hiv process through our our different professionals within the district um about the you know certain certain students that needed supports within the schools and their families too and then we had a pandemic so the commitment is that we are going to focus heavily on the elementary schools pre-k to four but that doesn't mean we're not going to focus on everyone else because literally every student that touches our door every family that supports a student that touches our door may be impacted by some mental health aspect resulting from the pandemic so having smaller class sizes in the elementary schools allows our professionals in those schools to engage with
061those students more frequently and in a more clinical way every single day then they can refer to the professionals that we have through effective school solutions and be able to provide supports one of the things that we discovered was sometimes we would identify that a child would need support but the family for a variety of reasons wouldn't be able to engage that support outside of school it might be transportation it might be financial it might be insurance a variety of situations so that's why this board supported having that resource available to our students in the school that's a huge impact but having smaller class sizes at elementary schools is going to have a substantially larger impact but then you mentioned about hammershaw and as our students our fifth and sixth grade students move to hammershould
062as an upper elementary setting uh they're going to have access now to two full-time student assistance specialists instead of one at the elementary school they're gonna have access to four school counselors they're going to have access to two school nurses and the child study team they'll have access to a case manager five days a week we want to minimize the referrals to special education and in this kind of environment this is what we're looking at we're trying to provide supports to students so we can eliminate those referrals to special education and support our students so they can continue their career path in east brunswick with all the supports that they need we may not be able to remediate that student within one grade level setting but we have the supports in place throughout our continuum
063to support that student to graduation all right thank you uh that's i really appreciate that answer and just as a follow-up to that then uh one of the comments that were made tonight uh by the public and one that i read uh consistently in the threads of the emails that have been going back and forth it's something that didn't exist when i went from uh elementary school up to churchill i'm i'm not sure my parents knew i made a move but but i know things are very different today so there's a lot of rite of passage that takes place uh with the moving up ceremonies um so there's a lot of movement in that that i think has the potential of being lost what are your thoughts around that and if you've thought it through
064how would you help mitigate uh what seems like a loss and is a loss where it comes to those specific opportunities for these kids absolutely you know so that came out clearly in the public interactive forum about the loss and about the these moments that families and their children were looking forward to and i'm committing to the community that we're going to reinvent those and may not be at that grade level but we can we can recreate those circumstances and and and make that significant at these changes during the transition obviously and one of the things that came out not only tonight but in the interactive forum the in one of the greater impact is going to be whatever year the board supports this to move forward that if it happens in 2022 that's going
065to be the year of impact after that everything begins to restabilize again for every subsequent year but making sure that we meet the needs of every family member every student to ensure those memorialized these significant ceremonial events can be recreated for those children because they have lost them we haven't been able to have them and in fact you know you you know as a parent of a graduate when we moved to the football field for four ceremonies that graduation ceremony was nice but it wasn't the same as having the entire class together and you know so you got to see firsthand that that impact as a board member as a parent so we as a district we try our best every day to make sure that we can celebrate our students we provide opportunities and
066in fact we're working hard with the pta to work to provide the fifth grade field trip for this year to make that happen after the governor released his restrictions so as those restrictions become less and less throughout this year and into next year we might still be wearing masks but we're going to take those opportunities to try to make this transition as minimized in terms of the the emotional impact of it as we possibly can by recreating those events and i think we have unlimited opportunity to to do that in even in new and creative ways all right good and lastly if this does pass tonight i did hear loud and clear in terms of the orientation and having the opportunity uh for these kids to see the new school uh in the event that
067this does pass tonight and i do hope that you're thinking that through and uh giving them the opportunity before the bell rings absolutely orientations are so important because especially even before the pandemic moving to an unfamiliar space is it it creates anxiety creates anxiety for students and for the parents students adapt well they move into the building within a couple of days they learn to navigate the space and they they get to understand the route they're going to travel one of the advantages of hammer shoulders for parents who have not had the experience of having a child there is and i use the term in the interactive forum is it can be compartmentalized so it can be made more intimate within a larger structure and the house model design that it was created under really
068supports that for our fifth and sixth graders and that but the introduction the orientation is a critical piece and what's also more powerful too what um one of our you know our residents alluded to was a student run orientation and hearing from the students themselves and having that tour from the students and and having them speak to their peers about what it's like to be in that building that's impactful too and dr gaskell does an excellent job with that at hammershould and i anticipate that mr hannas will do an excellent job at that at churchill as well thank you thank you jeff good questions mark mark one just a comment um dr velesky you took some of that working in hammerfelt for five years i saw how the older students student ambassadors they called them
069stepped up and were helping the children and with the house settings that they have at hammershould it's almost like a an elementary school or a couple elementary schools within a large building the students help each other they're all in the same boat too which which is good for them and the last point i want to make is the staff seeing the staff work and and how much you know from from your position dr volesky to every employee in the district they don't stop at the door when that last school bell rings i see how much the staff cares and especially in this year the craziest year anybody's ever experienced how much more effort the staff has put in this year and you know the the sweat and the tears you know they're they're a dedicated
070group of individuals to the last one and i have a lot of confidence in our staff in our students and even the parents in this district to get this done for the benefit of all our children so thank you very much very well said mark um i have a few comments but i see heather's uh hand up i just had a comment and a question my comment is as an educator for a very long time i can't stress enough the importance of maintaining small class sizes for educational reasons in any year but coming back from the pandemic and in the immediate years to follow maintaining small class sizes to be able to really keep a pulse on the students develop those meaningful relationships i think it's not just the greatest indicator of their academic success
071i think it's going to be a huge indicator of their success of adapting back into schools and feeling positively as we go back into the classroom my question for dr valesky is he was talking during the forum the other night about creating an upper elementary school rather than hammershield maintaining the identity it has right now and i was just wondering if you could expand a little bit on what the difference will be thanks uh mr ross the um the the difference is going to be a shifting culture uh and and dr gaskell actually has experience uh in a grade five through eight uh environment before he came to east brunswick so we've had discussions about how we can bring that fifth grade to hammershould and a lot of the concerns that came from the interactive
072forum i believe were um we're going to take our fifth and sixth graders and put them in a middle school model and mold them into the middle school model and that's not what we want to do what we want to do is we want to we want to bring those elements of what fifth grade is about and be able to tap into those changes that our fifth graders are having and let them explore where their interests are and not force them to do certain things but give them opportunities to investigate uh and to to create their own path or at least begin to experiment with that in a very limited way and we we believe that we'll have the opportunity to even provide electives at the fifth grade so this would be new opportunities for
073our fifth grade but still maintaining this culture of you're still young adolescence and you need to be treated that way and given the flexibility to make mistakes and to correct those mistakes and not have a rigid structure where there's intense self-independence they're still going to need guidance they're going to need support they're going to need somebody that will listen to their concerns and they're going to have to have somebody that will help guide them and we're going to have to give them time to adjust and so this should be a gentle phased approach and i mentioned it in the remarks in the beginning we want to elongate the transition to seventh grade and so that's five six continue at hammer shoulde and i understand the concerns that some parents are expressing tonight because during the
074transition some of their children will only be at hammershow for one year but during after we establish consistency that five six continuum can have that elongated transfer and and preparedness for seventh grade and i think that shift to seventh grade as a middle school grade um will will provide greater benefits for our students in terms of being prepared not having anxiety at seventh grade not that's not to say that's not going to exist but our job is to minimize that anxiety that they are prepared to learn at that level and i think this gives us that opportunity but yet treating those students as elementary students does that answer your question it does thank you i appreciate your answer you're welcome melissa i had a few questions for you yes ma'am um so i'm a former
075pta president um proud that i was in the pta board and then pta president at lawrence brooke school when my kids were there and um i i heard a lot of people talk at the forum the other night and and just other things i've been reading and things that have been sent to us about the fifth grade experience and not wanting their kids to lose out on the fifth grade experience that they want recess they want that halloween parade they want room parents they want that sense of still being in fifth grade so first i want to know have you reached out have you been speaking to the pta president's council to get their thoughts on taking that fifth grade experience and replicating it in another building but still having it be fifth grade and
076what are your thoughts about the other elements that i just asked about and that other parents asked you about the the parade the parties the room parents the moving up ceremony field day recess so answer to your first question yes we have reached out to the pta president's council and we've had discussions about should the board support this grade reconfiguration and how do we create these experiences for the fifth and sixth graders at hammershow and you you realize now that our sixth and seventh graders as a middle school environment our sixth graders begin to lose things and in this transition we have the ability to dial that back a bit and to give not only our fifth graders but our sixth graders some opportunities for other events that they wouldn't have normally had in our
077current configuration as middle schoolers so as an upper elementary school student only fifth grade but sixth grade we have that potential and pta president's council is on board with us about being able to explore and being able to implement a lot of these and recreate a lot of these one of the things that i do want to share with the board and with the community and i and i hear passionately from some parents that came in the interactive forum and those that spoke tonight there is a a faction of parents though that will report to us that their fifth graders are changing they're not the huge fans of the class party anymore they like going on the playground they may not want to play on the apparatus they want to talk to their friends might
078want to just walk around so it you know this is the time that some of the students do change and i think this opportunity allows us to explore what the students need to and hear clearly from the parents we have heard from some parents but this is an opportunity to hear from the parents in the recreation of something for the future that would meet the needs of our fifth and sixth graders at hammershow and we we invite parent involvement and in fact dr gaskell has a very active pta and one of the the reasons he does is he began live streaming his pta meetings so using technology even before the pandemic to involve the community uh paid big dividends because a lot of parents are busy uh and they don't have the time to just
079go to the school for a meeting but as you know from many of your experiences they multitask they're driving someone to an event they're taking someone to to a game or a practice or they have a meeting themselves they have to to be on or they have to go run an errand and they're able to actually engage with the pta uh and we've dr gasol reports his attendance and his interaction with the pta is dramatically increased that way so this is an opportunity to bring more parents in and include their involvement in the the planning and preparation of symbolic events and celebration events for the students so um you have given a lot of thought and are coming up with a lot of initiatives to provide that fifth grade experience so i'm glad to hear
080that uh somebody mentioned before about um a tour and orientation i'm wondering do we need to wait until the very end of the year or the summer before just to start that transition i know we used to have a pen pal program i don't know if we still have it but i know that um fifth and sixth graders were partnered up so that the fifth graders had a pen pal at hammershowed and the hammer shoulder sixth graders had a pen pal at the elementary schools and it it created a connection and i know that um remember my older son was still going on my older son he loved it because so many of the questions he would have during the year about hammershould he had a a a peer to reach out to about it
081and um could we think about something like that you know like i said earlier that that's a that's a great idea because student-to-student interactions and student-led uh orientations and inductions are very powerful in fact i i don't know if the board recalls i think we played the video from hammershow middle school the student-produced orientation which was quite entertaining some of the students were were pretty candid so that that is an opportunity uh to have that student interaction in terms of allowing students in the building the one thing i would caution the board is as we begin to wrap up this school year we still have you know pandemic related restrictions that we have to to worry about but i believe that as we reach memorial day that some of those restrictions state want to begin
082to be released and i think that we can legitimately begin planning you know orientations to the building but um and that's why we wanted to have this decision by the board because we are looking at 16 months before we make this first change and i believe and the team believes that we that 16 months is enough time to recreate these these elements that the public feels are going to be lost to be able to showcase some of the events that we haven't even thought about we as a community haven't thought about we've thought about a lot of things but we'll have to bet those with the board but be able to share those with the community as we start to approach the end of this school year and throughout this summer and especially as we
083we move into september and i i commit to the community that we are going to have and you know fingers crossed that we can have face-to-face forums and not zoom forums but we'll have a zoom form if we have to um to be able to keep the community up to date as we approach september of 2022 and so we can answer their questions alleviate their concerns and provide that introduction to students who are going to be making this transition so they feel they're prepared to go too thank you um and i i really believe you've given this a tremendous amount of thought with with lots of great input from your team i was envisioning something not so long along the lines of visiting the buildings but again establishing a connection perhaps after we would get
084back from winter break in 2022 setting up some kind of a pen pals obviously wouldn't be like when my older son was in school and be done through aol and i am but um i think that the kids figure out how to stay in touch and i think we we should do anything we can to encourage that kind of interaction we had explored for a while uh having sister schools in other countries and perhaps doing videos and sharing videos of daily life in their school perhaps we could do an exchange like that anything that could help bring it a little closer we have um we we have already had exchanges among our elementary schools so that elementary schools in one school have been able to visit with another school we've had physical visits but we've
085had um actually chats online uh between some of our elementary schools right our architect teachers showcase that at one of their um board presentations dr bully it was chitik and warren store for i believe that that had a relationship at one point yeah last year right so so now i think it would be really good to kind of um think out of the box with that and expand it and think about having that relationship with um the kids who would be in hammer schultz with the kids coming out of elementary school moving to hammershould in 2022 as fifth graders um i did want to ask about one other thing um i know that parents expressed a concern the other night that they didn't want the 21-22 school year being about getting ready for this transition
086in september 2022. i i know you said 16 months and it's a good point to make but they wanted assurance that it wasn't going to interfere with your team spending time and necessary effort on planning for the reopening in september 2021 that we're also looking forward to so i was wondering if you could just elaborate on that for a few minutes well um number one priority as i said tuesday night was to reopen our schools and as i mentioned to um one of the parents who who weighed in um they were i mentioned that we were not going to be able to move to a full day of instruction with lunch for this school year and the reason was that we looked at a variety of models we looked at a different uh structure for
087serving lunch at every one of our schools we went through an enormous and laborious task to figure out all the variations and permutations of doing that safely and we didn't have the manpower by spreading people out and maintaining six feet of distancing because that's the requirement right now when you take your mask off um the requirement is mask off 15 minutes or less within a 24-hour period so that means consuming food uh six feet apart having a lot of people spread out having a lot of supervision and we didn't have we didn't have the the person power the person staff male or female to do that effectively or safely so we are focused on september uh returning to full days of instruction uh the word from the governor uh as of wednesday of this week
088is that remote instruction will not be an option except in very very um identified uh areas where students might need services through this through services of a technology or some technological support but it is not going to be an option for school districts to be remote so we are planning our return we had our road back document our restart and recovery document we've constantly been revising it we've been meeting frequently with the team and we have a solid plan to return in september and it our plan to return in september was actually solidified before um we started to fully complete the packaging on the plan i'm putting together tonight and presenting to you on the grade restructuring we made sure that our energy was focused on that first but as i mentioned in a couple
089of meetings for the public the actual planning began for this grade restructuring in 2019 immediately after the demographer presented to the board of education and this board of education began destroy our discussions about facilities in 2017 and it's been continuing since then uh which really primarily focused on options for a new high school or not a new high school or do we look at new facilities do we look at land how we have available land there were a variety of options just basically um for lack of a better term we were spitballing trying to figure out what options we had available and what resources it would take to accomplish those different things at different levels in time when that opportunity presented itself but one of the things as i shared in the interactive forum and
090um you know one of the one of the individuals speaking at the good of the cause tonight uh made reference to it i think was making reference to the demographers report which was completed and updated before the pandemic but what we're seeing on top of that pandemic is a layering so now we're seeing is the projection from the demographer but also anticipating that that is going to be layered on with the pandemic effect of migration to east brunswick and when i say the migration effect we now have individuals who were tied to a physical office say like in the city who now no longer have an office they have to be tied to their office disappeared their company said you're not going to report to an office your environment is now your office at home
091and so people have made decisions to make that migration somewhere and east brunswick is an attractive place to be because of the school system this board created and administrations well before me created and our blue ribbon status has been an attraction for our realtors been a selling point for the realtors and our national ranking both nish.com and u.s news and world report certainly pays benefits but that also brings individuals to our school district therefore creating this problem that we're dealing with tonight that we know we're going to have class sizes and elementary schools rise and the i i guarantee you that we are seeing people in the office today registering in right now in peaks and valleys that are starting to flatten out but at higher levels than we've seen before and we're also starting
092to see people who took their children out of east brunswick schools put them in private school for the pandemic but are now returning to east brunswick schools in anticipation of our return and probably more to return as we open in september thank you dr valesky uh suzanna yeah thank you i i just wanted to to make a quick comment and that was you know i appreciated the questions from the board and and the responses from from dr holskey i appreciated the forum that was held in the the time that the parents uh took that night and and tonight um to you know to express uh you know the challenges and concerns um and and it's it's important it's really important feedback because these are things that we're going to need to watch out for and
093you know as as discussed earlier there's lots of ideas and and ways to address those issues and concerns and and i know we've spent we put a lot of focus into the um social emotional health of the kids and knowing you know what a challenging time it's been for uh for families and for kids so i i just wanted to say how helpful it's been to just hear this you know this discussion the prior discussions the feedback um because that helps us kind of formulate the full picture of of you know the issues that have to be tackled and um make sure that we stay focused on on addressing all those concerns um because you know every child is important we want to make sure that we address all the concerns and there's a lot
094of good ideas on how to um how to mitigate some of the some of the issues and you know i i really um appreciate uh also the efforts that the administrative staff team has put to you know to to putting uh ideas together and there's certainly still a lot more work to be done so just you know really good information it's been helpful to hear from everybody any other discussion okay seeing no other discussion will the secretary please call roll to vote on whether to approve dr valesky's recommendation to proceed with acquisition of temporary classroom units and grade reconfiguration mr angelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes this is yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries thank you everyone that was a good discussion tremendous effort
095parents we need to keep hearing from you we need to keep helping you we need to be able to make this work for everyone and i know we can i have tremendous confidence as susanna and the other board members have said mark brought up a terrific point about a house structure being very conducive to small to more intimate thank you everyone for the tremendous effort this took for the rest of our facilities agenda is there anything else anyone wishes to have separated out seeing none can i please have uh a motion for items two through five on the facility agenda so heather moved by heather second by laurie is there any discussion all those in favor opposed obscene motion carries before i accept a motion on tonight's financial services agenda is there anything needing to
096be separated out seeing none can i please have i'm sorry was that someone saying something or feedback okay feedback uh can i please have a motion for items one through eight on tonight's financial agenda move by lori second by heather is there any discussion this is a roll call vote will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr sismore yes mrs guass yes mr hong yes mrs lax mr winston yes and president becker yes motion carries before i accept a motion on tonight's human resources agenda is there anything anyone would like separated out scene none can i please have a motion for items one on two on the human resources agenda i'm sorry moved by laurie second by lee woo is there any discussion will the secretary please call
097the role mr carangelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs guass yes mr hung yes this is lex yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries before i accept a motion on the student services agenda is there anything anyone would like second separated out seeing none can i please have a motion for items i'm getting tremendous feedback is anyone else yes okay is everybody muted bernie laurie isn't okay lori it was you i know it was you i needed to motion okay um was there there was a motion in a second correct i'm not sure who who moves or seconded okay move by laurie and i believe second by leewoo and was there any discussion if not will the secretary please call the mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr sismar yes
098mrs ross yes mr hong yes mrs lax mr winston yes and president becker yes motion carries there's only one item on tonight's transportation agenda can i please have a motion for item number one move by laurie second by jeff is there any discussion all those in favor opposed abstain motion carries is our student rep with us tonight good evening hey there you are hello am i how's it going i'm good you can hear me fine right i've been having a lot of we can hear you great i thought i thought you'd be in your college sweatshirt and have bumper stickers for all of us oh i probably could have won my college year that's okay it's okay i hope i told you guys last time that i was heading to illinois so yeah that's wonderful
099wonderful wonderful thank you um today i wanted to quickly tell you guys about how ap exam fever has been taking over all the students in terms especially the juniors and the seniors um normally in a normal year it's about only two weeks but this year since they're being administered in multiple forms and in multiple time periods to account for any technical difficulties uh it takes about a month so it's a little bit of an extended stressful period but it's okay because it's a part of the high school process and you know it gives kids an extra time to study if they need it but um i also wanted to thank ebhs and the administration for being not just now but even earlier in the pandemic a complete pinnacle of excellence in terms of being a
100testing center and this is one area where he just literally stood apart from every other high school in the surrounding region where last august especially when every single testing center closed down ebhs was still there to give the opportunity to the students to take the all-important sats and subject sats and any other standardized tests that they wanted to take so not just for ap exams where i've been reading up stories about people who don't have the in-person option and they have to take it digital where the exam actually isn't the same uh in some cases the digital exam is only a multiple choice only version of the regular exam so there's no real response so they're quite a is there is a large difference if you choose to take the digital exam um i was
101reading stories about how people who don't have the in-person option are kind of forced to take that and you know we have the luxury of choice here at abhs because you're offering me in person so thank you for that on behalf of the students and i just wanted to acknowledge the fact that you know vhs was always great with being a testing center at the pandemic um as you mentioned decision day and i guess college commitment decision day happened may 3rd which was this monday so it was nice and exciting to see all the seniors not just verbally say where they are in person or on the camera but to see them all on their college gear in person and uh the map was created where you can see that some evhs students are heading
102far and wide even across the atlantic so that's always fun to see and across the country to the west coast so it's very exciting to see where everyone heads up um in terms of events that have happened national honor society actually had a combo drive the last last last saturday april 26 or april 24th and the donations that we received actually filled up an entire office worth um yeah we were actually able to give donations to one of the organizations that were supporting us which was the central jersey diaper bank and then we were also able to give to elijah's promise which we coordinated with and from that point on elijah's promise took the donations and were able to make and we folded and packaged the bags into about 400 to 500 snack bags and
103elijah's promises using that to feed homeless people in the new brunswick area so it was a very large success especially considering that it was only a day and for three hours but we got a great turnout and we're having another donation drive that's going on concurrently and that's the food drive for mcfoods if you remember that from last june that's going on right now the first weekend was um or the first opportunity to donate was last sunday and if anyone is watching and has extra food to donate no class items but any extra food to donate the next opportunity is may 8th at the heights at the mall from not from 10 to 1 so though that will be going on throughout the rest of may and uh yeah it's just that's that's the bulk
104of my report for tonight just want to tell you about ap exams and the events that have been going on thank you thank you it is always wonderful to hear about the actions of our students so unselfish so generous with so much heart no matter what they are going through in their own lives they find that time and that energy to reach out and donate and create a fundraiser or volunteer often led by our staff and certainly by the parents everyone has just got a lot of heart and it's it's wonderful to hear about it so thank you for bringing us those stories no problem at all president becker yeah if i could uh tony thank you very much for giving the shout out about the uh high school as a testing center we appreciate
105the acknowledgement but i want to pass on my extreme appreciation and support for not only the high school administration uh for formalizing that testing center but for every single proctor that that was part of that and every one of our security force who was there for crowd control and making sure people were socially distanced and this was during a time when a lot of people were apprehensive about going out in public but yet as tony alluded this was an important event in many of our students lives and there were very limited spaces for students to take those assessments so by i appreciate the acknowledgement but the credit goes to those people who organized and supported and staffed those events so i thank them absolutely great point dr velesky security under the best of situations is
106always a very tough job but maintaining that during the pandemic and maintaining the integrity of the event and showing the kids how much they care that's just a key to the success of our security staff oh and i forgot to mention our entire maintenance staff who and aramark who did all the cleaning to make sure everything was sanitized after the fact awesome i have a total team effort uh anybody else from the board committee reports information i'm mark sismar i have two things tonight uh first of all this sunday's mother's day um i could probably speak for weeks on the importance of honoring those that i feel are the true saints in our society our mothers protect us they teach us they heal us they support us and moms out there sacrifice so much for
107the benefit of their children my words cannot express the emotions that i feel from the bottom of my heart i want to thank all the moms not just this sunday but every day of the year and my second is this sunday is the start of national police week i ask you to thank a police officer or a whole police department that has helped you or the ones you love the officers that protect your children in our schools every day are all former law enforcement officers and all of us can take comfort knowing that if you do need to call 9-1-1 there are dedicated well-trained men and women that risk their lives at times to come and protect all of us so god bless our police thank you thank you mark two very lovely very articulate
108sentiments uh anyone else wishing to say anything i see jeff winston hand up yeah uh first i want to wish all the students who are taking the sad saturday morning at 7 30. uh go get them no way to better to end a pandemic when with uh with a high sct score so i'm excited for them uh my daughter's one of them and uh she's excited so there's that and uh lastly i i put uh to the folks and powers that be on this board that if there's a way we can get these back in person with the new cdc guidelines uh i'd like to hear more about it uh these meetings so um i miss uh vicky's face so yeah if we could get back in uh that would be great thank you jeff
109and i'm gonna send you an 8x10 picture of myself that i just happen to have sitting around along with that gold record that i've been promising you for two years so no problem um yeah uh victor if you could um coordinate uh francis perhaps uh your office will have some uh up-to-date guidelines for us on uh meeting board's meeting in person and perhaps next meeting matt could talk about it or if you you're again we'd love to hear it absolutely anyone else heather and then susannah and then leewoo and then laurie the student student services committee met on april 27th it was really interesting we had the opportunity to hear from frank malta the supervisor of athletics about what's been happening with the ongoing seasons with the covid protocols and how things have been coming
110along for the teams it's exciting to hear about the spring season being well underway especially as i have an athlete myself well two um we also met with eric meyer the new supervisor of pe and health and discuss community involvement and sports and within the district um we also had excuse me uh paul natalicchio came and gave an interview about the drills and security within the schools during the pandemic there was a lot of information i was unaware of and was glad to have had him there and we had information shared about behavioral support for students and an overview of the autism awareness month it was a really it was my first meeting there as chair and it was just an excellent source of information i appreciated all of it thank you heather you did
111a good job for your first meeting too thank you i believe it was susanna liberu and then laurie yeah thanks um i i just have a report from the human relations council on may 3rd uh the township and uh the human relations council co-sponsored a ramadan tree lighting ceremony uh the first ever and the speakers discussed the meaning of ramadan to muslims around the world so that was a lovely ceremony um that was uh you know quite well attended and just another event that is going to be taking place may 11th um there will be a facebook live event to discuss the topic of ageism uh so again uh to access um you know these and past programs uh follow east bronzer human relations council on facebook and you can find videos there and that's
112the one great thing about pandemic is uh the the uh online sessions are a very convenient way it turns out to to reach a lot of people so what we're seeing on a lot of these these events are hundreds and you know hundreds and and thousands in some cases of people have gone on to view um and participate so uh you know very very good attendance and those that's all i have thank you susanna libro last night we had a curricular committee meeting it's so unfortunate that that was the last one of this school year you know i really love this community this community and i'm always be happy to be part of it so i'm so excited to know that you know the three new textbooks were recommended and adapted by the committee so
113you know it's always good for the community for the teachers to review the textbook they are using and get the newest one to our students because science technology society is developing so quick so our textbook should reflect this new advancement so that we should keep our students you know impressed with the new development so i'm so glad that three new textbooks were adopted uh last night and additionally there was one course was approved by the community that were presented to the board for approval so i want to thank dr bolly and our team did such a wonderful job you know because of their job our student you know is kept uh update and they are exposed to the new technology new development and at the new society and what gets them ready for the future
114thank you dr bully and your team that's all i have thank you libra it's easy to tell you love that committee you do a really good job too thank you and last but not least uh so tony i just wanted to say i love hearing about the ap exams and all of that this was my first time as a parent uh for the ap exams and i laughed because we talked about the students resiliency all day i kept saying you're all morning i was so nervous so nervous thinking how'd she do how'd you do my daughter gets in the car and said that was so much fun i loved writing this whole response to the questions and i thought wow i'm really glad i'm not a student again so i think it's great that you
115guys have such wonderful attitudes with your testing i know as a senior this is exciting because you're kind of you know coming into the home stretch but i just wanted to to mention that and i know we gave our resolutions uh last week um and since mark also brought up our upcoming week i was not aware of that but that's a very important week for uh our our law officers um i just wanted to say one more final thank you to our staff and our nurses um i am a parent first so um the pta is a big part of my life and i've had a lot of fun this week telling the staff how much that i on behalf of the pta and our p my pta parents um appreciate them but what i
116thought was so amazing was that the staff in this district they don't take anything for granted i got so many thank yous and i'm thinking my job is to thank you for everything you do every year for our kids especially this year and these people the men and women are coming up to the pta and thanking us for giving them breakfast or giving them a gift or giving them a power bar and it's just amazing they were actually touched by it and i don't think they realize what an impact they have on the parents and the kids in this district so um it starts with you dr v top down but this is one hell of a place to work and you know how we feel about mr citadino next door i did have one
117staff member that came and said she's a steel and she said you know what when i was in oak bridge didn't do any of this she said you tell him i said he's my friend and neighbor she said you tell him she said that i say hi but wow she said east brunswick really knows how to appreciate their staff so there you go thank you i i i will not share that with mr citadino but i'm sure you will i definitely will for you anybody else have anything same then we do have a need for a closed session whereas the board of education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for discussion in a public meeting and the board of education intends to discuss the matters as follows those items listed in tonight's agenda rainbow
118closed session is estimated to be 90 minutes after which a public meeting of the board shall reconvene in action will not be taken can i please have a motion to go into closed session move by laurie is there any discussion all those in favor aye opposed obscene motion carries thank you for joining us tonight stay safe board members please log out and log back into the closed session goodnight tony bye