East Brunswick Public Schools Restructuring Town Hall

001good evening everyone if you're logged in from home and joining us we're like you we're all remote tonight mr giuliani are you ready to go we are all set okay uh tonight is an interactive forum to talk about a grade level restructuring that we proposed to the board of education and some facilities uh opportunities we have that we discussed at the last board meeting the forum is scheduled from seven to nine tonight this session will be recorded for future viewing it is also being streamed on youtube uh you will not notice board members assemble tonight this is not a board meeting this was constructed in a way to have the public actually ask questions and normally if you attend one of our board meetings for the go to the cause you ask a question but

002we normally don't respond we take that information and we get back with you later but this will be interactive and i'll try to answer all your questions to the best of my ability to expedite the process we've disabled the chat feature so you can't chat among yourselves you how you can however chat with the host who's mr juliana who's our board uh secretary and business administrator for the district if you will chat or text him uh that you would like to ask a question he'll put you in the queue and then you can physically log it you can't physically unmute if you're muted and ask your question and that way we'll kind of conduct it in a organized fashion so we don't have a lot of people stacking up waiting to ask their question we

003in my communication to the community i had asked that if you could take a look at the frequently asked questions we put on the website i hope you had the opportunity to look at some of those we do have some questions though that came up that we did not get on the fhus so i'd like to take a few minutes before we start with your questions to read these questions that have already been posted up to us and that way i can answer those questions they may be questions you already had planned to ask or maybe it will um prompt you to ask a different question and i would just please ask if someone's already asked the question if we not repeat that that we try to utilize the time to get as much information

004out for everybody as possible and depending on how the end of the night goes the uh the board will take uh this information along with the recommendation i've made and they are we are planning to um present to them an option to take action on this uh this coming thursday so if it could let me start off with some questions that we got that didn't get answered in the faq um we are the parents of a third grade child who has an iep and we're expecting him to remain in his smaller elementary school until fifth grade when we enrolled him in kindergarten he currently receives support from the special education teachers and at a student teacher ratio of three to one if all the elementary schools are now combined as one fifth grade what will

005be the special education student-teacher ratio and how can you ensure us you'll be provided with the same individualized attention that he's receiving now and the answer is we are mandated by federal law about the number of students who can be with a teacher depending on the program the only option the only modification to that is for us to apply for a waiver any of the programming that we're talking about tonight grade level restructuring or facilities enhancements would not have an impact on our special education program and in fact will give us an opportunity to expand uh and add higher quality to some of our special education programming and give opportunities for some of our children who are out of district placements to return to east brunswick public schools and be around their peers our next

006question is what steps will be taken to prepare fourth graders during the school year to be ready to move to a larger school with many more students in their grade levels since they are losing a year of remaining in their smaller elementary schools as we plan this we know there's an impact to children and there's actually been a recent question posed about did i consider that the board consider the pandemic impact on this proposal and we certainly did we want to take steps to make sure that the transition for our students is as seamless as possible and we if you didn't hear me mention at the last board meeting uh fifth and sixth grade at hammershow would really be considered an upper elementary school not a middle school one of the things that i've heard

007most frequently at east brunswick and this actually started with strategic planning probably around the 2015-2016 school year his parents were concerned about the transition from elementary schools to hammershould and they felt like that was a pretty big lift so one of the features that we looked at when we started this proposal was to elongate that transition and by having the fifth graders and sixth graders together at hammershow which is really designed around a house model so you can actually take the students you can compartmentalize them down into smaller groups we thought that would pay big dividends in terms of the transition obviously this proposal is is being made because we are out of elementary classroom capacity and it's not because of construction it's because of migration to east brunswick public schools and we had a

008demographic study that was done and it was revised in 2019 and updated but it was updated before the pandemic and what we found from the pandemic was that the migration east brunswick continues to accelerate the opportunity to work from home has been offered to far more people and people are looking for a residence that has a good school district a good community and east brunswick has become attractive that way so as far as the fourth graders go we have a year of planning this proposal is planned for september of 2022 not 2021 so one year from this coming september and we would engage stakeholders to make sure that we had the transition for our fourth and fifth graders and those students who would be coming seventh graders at churchill to make it as seamless as

009possible and one of the ways we can do that is to simply we can replicate some of the things that students are actually receiving in terms of moving up ceremonies activities at school we can replicate those for one year of transition so we don't look at this as an opportunity lost we look at this as an opportunity for enhancement uh the next question after going through all the changes this past year with covet 19 and now proposing this restructuring plan this is a significant amount of change to put children through has any thought been put into how this will impact children currently attending east brunswick public schools and not just be based on the amount of children that will be entering the school system in the coming years and of course that is we are

010always concerned students come first they're they're my first priority they're the first priority of every administrator in this district we want to make sure that we support them and we know that we're going to have to support students in a different way post pandemic there are going to be acknowledged learning gaps that we're going to have to remediate we have social and emotional supports we're going to have to put out to schools by having smaller class sizes though at our elementary schools beginning with a 2022 school year there is a greater opportunity to meet the needs of those students in those smaller settings in grades pre-k to four at the elementary schools than allowing the grades to creep up and i know some people have said you know well the numbers work out that it's

011only going to be about maybe one and a half to two and a half students in a classroom uh but when you're talking post pandemic and you're talking about the supports that students need you're talking about the personalized attention from our professional teachers who have been extremely dedicated through this entire process i can't thank them enough this would this would give us a greater opportunity to support all students in elementary school churchill is currently the most difficult school for students to navigate as it does encompass the widespread footprint that was the smith and churchill schools the students did not have time to utilize lockers most of the lockers in the 8th grade wing did not work so students are forced to carry all their belongings which is doubled for the athletes who are in season

012with the addition of another 800 plus students what's the plan to ensure safety and traffic flow in the school i assume some of this will be alleviated block scheduling being implemented which is wonderful in parentheses but i have trouble envisioning how this will safely work with students racing from tcus which will increase the distance traveled by students across different parts of the school as it appears as it appeared as they are being put on sports fields um and then um so obviously there is a footprint of the temporary classroom units known as tcus it's in the behind the north end of the churchill complex there is a ball field right there right now um we do not see the impact to um on any of our organized sports activities where we're organized sports teams there

013may be an opportunity to look at uh inclusion of seventh grade into some activities both school-wide and sports or athletics-wide uh by placing the tcus at churchill one of the things i want to emphasize is the name stands for exactly what they are they are temporary classroom units they are not designed as permanent structures and they are not designed to stay there so this is not we're going to put trailers there and we're going to walk away from this and they're just going to stand there for years and years we have to have a plan to replace those temporary classrooms with permanent structures to the point that we can uh given the fact that we would have seventh eighth and ninth graders in the same building we would attempt to compartmentalize the students as much

014as possible there will be migration around the building for the performing arts for the um for music for uh lunch uh physical education and a variety of other things that that we know we have to have certain spaces for science labs for example it probably would not make sense to replicate those in portable classrooms so science labs would be moved to a certain science class or a lab but we we think there's an opportunity to minimize the traffic and i know from my experience of being at churchill during back to school nights i watch parents navigate their child's schedule from the north end to the south end of the building and that's what we want to try to alleviate even with this by adding additional students on the footprint is to alleviate the not only

015interaction among grades but also to minimize the amount of student traffic within the building uh security um we have we embedded that at the at a first degree and the temporary classroom units would be secured by fence so there wouldn't be an opportunity to get in we would have security based out there as well so everything that you would normally see in our school would be replicated in temporary classroom units including the look of the classrooms the classrooms are very appealing and we've had um you know some slides we put up on what the classrooms could look like and if you didn't know you were in temporary classroom unit other than the materials they're made of you probably wouldn't know that it was a temporary structure um once seventh graders are moved to church so

016where their scheduling includes some elective choices that the eighth graders have to allow for more time or some elective same elective choices as eighth graders uh to allow for a more true middle school feel versus the limited selections at hammershaw middle school and the answer is yes that opportunity exists to look at a greater number of electives for seventh graders uh and um greater opportunities for seventh graders to navigate uh an enhanced curriculum we've been looking at what those opportunities could be so stay tuned in the near future we may have a presentation of the board about some some ideas that we've been talking about as someone who was a student at east brunswick high school during the last major reconstruction in 2000 2001 it quite honestly was miserable for us who had a constant

017construction disruptions but graduated before seeing the benefits the building since my daughter is a current fifth grader i fear she is not only the most affected by the restructuring but she will also endure constant construction disruptions while at the high school when will phase two timeline for building a new high school be shared uh and that's really up to the community part of the part of the takeaway tonight is to get feedback from members of the community here those of you who've um you've taken your time to come out and find out what your what you think about a new high school um i have been out in the community for a number of years talking about this we've been talking about the potential for either modification to the high school or replacing high school

018since 2017 and you know depending on who you talk to people have different perspectives on that what i will tell you is if you have a child in elementary school right now uh depending on the the um what the community's desires are we could press forward with a um with a schedule that they could uh be aggressive but we have certain timelines and there's another question that's that's asked along these lines um that answers that more clearly um that question is at the last board meeting mr winston stated that the first students impacted by the restructuring would be the first to benefit new high school since current fifth graders are the first to have their high school middle school experience cut short does this mean the high school will be completed for them to attend

019the next four or five years so again depending on the community what's what is the pleasure of the community and obviously the board of education would have to vote to pursue a new high school at a what scope uh and they would have to authorize the um a proposal for a referendum but under the most aggressive schedule assuming that that all of that was to move forward this next school year the 21 22 school year would have to be a stakeholder group formation for input and support for a referendum and then we would need board approval for all of that so this would be a committee work an ad hoc committee if the board show uh chose to do that and then make a recommendation to the board of education the board of education would

020have to make approval for a referendum and what the scope of any new construction would be in the 22-23 school year temporary classroom units would go at churchill starting that school year in september uh and sometime during that school year again 22-23 would be a referendum for the new high school and any other associated facility improvements and along with the rest of that year would be design and planning if the referendum passes if the referendum fails we have um i believe five opportunities in a school year to hold the referendum so if we fail we would have to go back if the community or the board decided that we wanted to do but assuming it passes then we go 2023 to 24 again more planning and in that year 2023-24 construction could could begin on

021a new high school with construction continuing for the 24-25 school year and opening a new high school as early as the 25-26 school year that is aggressive and that's assuming everything else falls into place that's state approvals financing um bidding successful bidding successful contractor successful weather um and there are a lot of variables there but that's that's a reasonable but aggressive schedule uh next question in the junior high school will a seventh grader be able to have a class with the ninth grade and what classes will it be well we don't know yet there might be that opportunity but we haven't formulated the schedule yet but that's something we would do over this next year um at the last board meeting held two weeks ago superintendent victor velesky mentioned this has been a discussion since

0222017 wasn't the growth of the population in eb due to new construction taken into consideration when the construction started and knowing that there would be growth it was inevitable that more room would be needed for schools so why is there a rush now to displace these children in a manner in such short notice especially after dealing with the year they had with covid and again we are talking about one year from september and i understand the parents passion about recovery from the pandemic um the reason for the proposal to the board was we are we will run into um a situation that we will cross this threshold and parents at elementary schools will be extremely unhappy by the rising class sizes and the reason i know that's that's a high probability our demographic study said

023we would grow by 2026 i'm sorry by 2024 um and roughly a little over 400 students but what we've seen in the last probably six months in our registration department which is housed in the administration office so we see uh the people coming in and karen mandler who assists me heads up that department we have seen a lot of students coming in to register in fact since september of the school year if you didn't hear me stay at the board meeting we have 331 new students have registered and 64 students who have been previously inactive who may have gone to private schools and have re-entered our schools and then we also have 110 students who have pre-registered for kindergarten 27 have pre-registered for ela and we have another 50 registration applications they're currently going through

024so we have a total of the potential of 77 ela students and 110 kindergarten students on top of nearly 400 other students that we've entered into our system now in all honesty we lost about 200 students at the beginning of the pandemic who went out to private schools but those some of those students are already beginning to return and by the way the growth um is something that we we are aware of there hasn't been substantial growth in terms of construction the last major impact to us was kensington place the apartment complex behind walmart um it yielded so far about 70 students out of the entire complex and we were able to absorb those students at that time into our elementary schools and primarily those students came in at um grades uh k to three

025but we had some others and other grades but that was the primary impact um it was mentioned again by superintendent voleski a number in growth where elementary school students so why is there more concentration expanding in expanding the high school and not expanding or building a new elementary school where the grade is neat or the need is greater i'm sorry so to build a new elementary school we would need land we actually spent an entire year looking for land in east brunswick and there's no land to be had we have all the land is all locked up either in uh protected uh categories or is not available so we're looking at our existing spaces and after a number of variations and discussions with the board it made more sense to build the capacity in our

026elementary schools and then be able to add these components to like for churchill and then to eventually move the ninth grade to the high school in a comprehensive night high school setting it i think one important thing to mention is we have interviewed students we've interviewed community members we talked about it at our strategic planning meetings many many years ago and even back then there was a desire if we were going to look at a new high school to build a comprehensive 9-12 high school and students overwhelmingly have suggested that they they would have preferred a comprehensive high school experience and dr bannell and his team had had interviews with students over the years and that's been consistently reported uh about having that 9th to 12th grade experience um it is factual that some elementary

027schools have room to add on more students as it's been evaluated and calculated accordingly i'm i'm not sure where that information comes from because i have the facts and i can tell you we're at capacity those students may not physically be in the classrooms right now because they have chosen to stay remote but they're registered to be in the classes come september and we have we have run the numbers by every class um phase one is supposed to happen the beginning of this school year no not this school year is supposed to happen september of 2021. 2022 not 2021. so beginning september 2022. um phase one is changing the grade locations and folding classes and trailers or only certain classes being held in trailers or teachers going to have to teach full classes in these

028trailers how many children will these trailers safely and comfortably accommodate um just as many they'd be classroom sized modules just like we have in our schools so the same class size as you would see in a typical churchill classroom and teachers would be assigned to those classrooms they would not be empty classrooms that they would just migrate to with the students so they'd be they would be those teachers classrooms we haven't decided yet which grade might might be housed in the temporary classroom units and how long is phase one supposed to last um it could be a number of years we don't have an exact date uh but it could be um probably at least five years um phase two was mentioned but no proposed date of this phase beginning was discussed uh when is

029phase two expected to begin talks and actually take place that depends on the community that depends on what the community wants and what are the expectations of phase one in order to begin phase two obviously we have to immediately address the elementary classroom space issue uh in the temporary classroom units we have to begin planning for that that is a longer term process than a lot of people imagine we are all recovering from the pandemic in the construction industry as well so these are not temporary classroom units that we can simply go and pick out and say deliver those to east brunswick they have to be designed they have to be delivered and they have to be set up with utilities and foundations inspected and meet all the criteria township has so that's why the

030lead time of you know until september actually we'd have to have them in place probably by the end of july beginning of august um to adequately prepare for students to arrive in september um and this isn't just talk we you know tonight's talk but yeah i want to get feedback from you um if tcus are being built on the fields when current sports teams at the heist junior high school not have a season no they wouldn't be impacted again how long might this change expect to last about five years uh would fifth and sixth grade schedules be similar in terms of classes and electives um that is to be decided yet but we would have opportunities to make the fifth grade experience and the sixth grade experience different than what parents know it today and

031and have a greater impact on their student have a better experience for their students too how does this change affect staff how many staff members will likely be moved building grade levels teachers would move with the grades simple equation as teachers would move with the grades and as we build out at the elementary schools extra sections we would have to hire more teachers to fill those sections um fourth graders next year in their move to hammer shoulders fifth grader they'd miss out on fifth grade experiences so we wouldn't we would replicate that we would make this transition as seamless as possible as said earlier and we can replicate anything we have look we're east brunswick we can do anything we can make that happen and we can make sure that transition is as seamless as

032possible class sizes how will class sizes be affected will they decrease or remain the same or not just get bigger we want to maintain legitimate class sizes we want to have smaller class sizes if we can but but if we have to grow we will grow a little bit but we do not want to put 25 26 27 28 students in a classroom we want to have those numbers lower and be able to have the room to accommodate them uh for a great education a great experience no matter which building they're in and again what's the timeline of the high school uh and so that i already answered that question so those are the questions that were out there that hadn't been answered on the frequently asked questions so now i'm going to open it

033up to all of you so once again if you could let mr juliana know he's the host of this meeting tonight uh that you'd like to ask a question then he'll put you in the queue to go ahead and ask it so um ladies and gentlemen uh i asked please do not text me your question just let me know that you'd like to ask a question and um i'll call on you and you can ask your question live okay uh we have uh sharon kaplan hi hi there dr pulaski um just to introduce myself i'm actually a teacher in north brunswick where we just went through moving our elementary schools pre-k to four and when we when we built a new school and restructured this year okay um the plan had been in place for

034a very long time we went through the referendum um i've been a teacher there for more than 20 years so i've been through many referendums in north brunswick um my children are in third and fifth grade okay and my question actually is not coming as much from a parent as it is for um by a teacher will the fifth grade teachers need to become content specific certified if they're going to an upper grade or upper elementary um i i don't have the the full answer for you tonight i i don't know there might be some some issues we have to address there but we don't see this as a big show stopper i think that we have um when we talk we're talking about the upper elementary fifth and sixth grade i i i don't

035think that'll be a major issue but i don't want to say that we have everything resolved because we don't okay that basically leads to what my overall concern is which is that this feels very rushed um it really does feel as though one year is not enough planning when you're saying we have next year to plan that we don't know yet we need to plan that next year in my opinion shouldn't necessarily be on all of these innovative things that we need to change but yet going back to the normalcy that we need to recover from the pandemic if this were a two-year plan instead of a one-year plan i think i could breathe a little bit easier um so my next question actually becomes is there a plan in place to work with these

036children next year which we don't even know what the school year is going to look like again i'm a teacher so i'm again trying to think um as both a teacher and a mom but is there a a plan to help the children both transition back to school as ignor as normal like with lunches and possibly masks and staggered whatever needs to happen but then also hey you're in fourth grade see ya you're no longer in elementary school this is your big year as you're also trying to transition or oh you're going to hammer shoulder for one year and then you're gonna move on to a whole new school like is there a plan for the third and fifth graders yes there is a plan and our primary focus is and you make a good

037point about the recovery from the pandemic there are things that i cannot answer tonight because we don't have we don't understand the full impact to some of our students we have students who have who wanted to be in our virtual or a hybrid setting early on we had that some students come back you know and five day a week and some have chosen to remain virtual and will remain virtual all this year just as i'm sure you experience as a teacher in north brunswick and and your superintendent and i talk all the time about you know we have similar dynamics that are occurring in our districts um the the first plan is is the recovery from the pandemic and making sure that we address all the needs of all the students i i believe that

038our students are more resilient than we give them credit for but i also understand there are things that i cannot forecast right now i i can tell you from my walks around schools and seeing students how engaged the ones who have come back to school and their parents feel comfortable sending them back how they've adapted so quickly to coming back into the classroom and how our teachers have adapted so quickly to having those students back in their classroom so i know there's going to be a transition back um but i i i say once again what my fear is is we're having not only what our demographer had said to us before the pandemic about get ready east brunswick is about to encounter a pretty significant increase in enrollment over this next four or five

039years and then everything was upended by the pandemic everybody stayed put but well like i said what we're seeing is this pretty aggressive migration and the exchange of houses houses are being sold pretty quickly and that's where we're seeing our new students enroll so the like i said the first focus is on the wellness of students we've already got programs in place uh we've already been engaging in that work to prepare for that and we've already been engaging with students even in this pandemic environment to begin to assess needs but there's there's going to be an academic assessment required at the beginning of the school year to determine where every child is um do you mind if i ask another question i'm sorry absolutely because you probably have other people that want to ask exactly

040just with that i mean the health and wellness is absolutely overwhelmingly important but at the same time i i really am afraid for the academic levels of where these children are which again is why i'm so nervous about this move taking place after just one year back um just to give you a framework i teach kindergarten and i am in may teaching children how to write their names because they had been virtual all the way through their their families had chosen to stay virtual all the way through april 19th was one of our transitions back and those children came back on april 19th and i i promise you it was the first time some of them had held a pencil or crayon and it broke my heart and they're not the only children there are

041children in all schools in all demographics when they're in front of a computer and learning to type like this instead of that and i just i guess my question is with the academic needs also there wouldn't it make sense to have even more time to transition have give those children another year in elementary school as that setting well i don't want to debate the fact that you know more time if you have more time to do anything in some cases that's better but the problem is we are running out of time we're running out of time and i guess what i need to say to the entire group is if we don't address this situation in a systematic manner and you know this is in spite of the pandemic when your children get to the

042high school you're probably going to be unhappy because we have to do something not only to address the space issues at our elementary school but we have to do something with the infrastructure needs of the high school all of our buildings have been air conditioned with the exception of the high school and parts of the high school are air conditioned but many parts remain on air condition and some of the equipment is so aged that our maintenance department they do a great job but they can't even get parts for some of the equipment that we currently have installed so now it becomes a question of do we replace that piece of equipment and usually those that's what we have to do we have to replace the entire piece of equipment and for you as taxpayers

043that that's going to become a factor that is going to be an impact do you want to keep investing in an older building that will need constant attention and may not be the high school you always want to have or should we have invested years ago and why didn't somebody bring this up and why didn't we address it a long time ago but i understand the impact of the pandemic and i can't negate that and that is that is certainly the x factor in this whole equation because we do not know and i can't say with all sincerity what we will know that children will come back with uh as they begin to return to face-to-face full-time instruction in september of 2021. next the queue is stacy alfonso talking all right hi how are you

044good how are you i'm nice to good i'm good thank you um so my name is stacey alfonso i have three kids in um the public schools um happy to be have my kids here you guys are agree i'm couldn't be more thrilled with everything but i do have a couple questions so um my first question is you know recess is mandated in the state of new jersey and it is up to fifth grade so they are supposed to have 20 minutes of recess and how will that be addressed if the fifth graders are at hammer sold without an apparatus or maybe i don't know maybe there is the place but you know not a playground type thing yeah we have a space there's actually a field up adjacent to [Music] the back into the

045parking lot it's seldom used as more you know more of a intramural type field but that would be the space that we would look at we do have a small playground for our early learning academy folks that are based at hammershould but it is really a primary uh you know aged apparatus but that's what we're looking at is the space the play space up above and as you if you drive into hammershould uh you probably wouldn't even notice it but it's off to the right up above you know okay and then i guess they would have to build that into the schedule and things like that okay and then just one more question because you did answer some uh when i when you were talking about the high school and how it has to go

046through many phases um like i so i'm a teacher also i teach kindergarten also um so oh yeah we've talked but i just and i and east brunswick is a great town and i know that we probably would have a lot of support but like what if it gets not passed so many times and then it's like we're just at a standstill like i know you can't predict the future but like that worries me like i would be more on board to say okay i have a fourth a third and a fourth grader right now you know this the idea of a new high school or a better high school is very enticing but you know how these things go and so i'm not trying to be negative and i would be out there campaigning

047in any way that i could help for a yes vote but when it does come down as a no like are we going to be stuck with these you know this these tcus and this plan not moving forward no so what we would do is if we we have to have a contingency anytime you go to referendum you have to understand there's potential that you're not going to pass and so that's why you know we need to do the work ahead of time we need to engage stakeholders we need to get feedback from the community about what it is you want to see what what do you expect to have for your children if they're in in the system and they could potentially be the first occupants of that new building what would what would

048you want their experience to be like and let's take this to another level what if you were the parent as as one of them articulately said you know my children heard the construction noise but never got to see the finished product then what's then somebody will say what's in it for me then and what i will say to them is there's something in it for everyone because um right now i'm sure all of you on this screen have noticed if you're a homeowner uh you've noticed what the value of your home has been like over the last six months over the last year uh if you're somebody looking for a home you you know the pain of trying to secure a home of trying to make that offer on at home when it gets pulled

049off by somebody who's making an offer well over asking price and having a new high school in this community i think would put a premium stamp on east brunswick properties in spite even past a pandemic because you put our top-notch education our top-notch teachers and then you put a state-of-the-art high school on top of that this comprehensive 9 through 12 high school and you're going to be a community that everyone wants to be in okay thank you next in the queue is denise bergamoto hi hi dr volkowski how are you how are you good um i just have a quick question and i just wanted to know your thoughts i have a third grader and a ninth grader and i think again the teachers are doing a wonderful job i'm not so i'm not concerned

050about my ninth grader she's doing fine my concern and i just want to know your thoughts not really concern putting potential seventh graders with ninth graders i mean i know my daughter 15 and the kids with 11 year olds or 12 year olds i mean i know the maturity level of seeing high school kids and kind of sometimes the the dynamic sometimes you know the interactions of high school versus seventh grade right what are you thinking i know you said they may interact they may not i just wouldn't want a seventh grader to feel nervous to be around a ninth grader our intent our intent is really to have the seventh graders experience that opportunity more as a group of seventh graders and the eighth graders and ninth graders while they're there they would probably

051have more interaction with each other but the seventh graders it is a transition year um and i'm saying this and i'm not a social scientist and i don't hold a certification in social social sciences but i'm i'm an observer and you know having been in schools for my entire career and observing what's going on in a variety of schools the differentiation in age between a kindergartner and a fifth grade is pretty significant but in the seventh grade yeah that that's uh that's a different year too it's transition but that gap between seven and nine is is not so significant in age but there is maturity differences right um and so that's why you know in an ideal situation the ninth graders would become part of the high school environment and and by the way we

052did we did look at and then this was from a top level perspective and looking at the temporary classroom units and could they could they fit at the high school versus at churchill would it make more sense to do that and we looked at this through the lens of the taxpayers of east brunswick where where would be the the most economical impact and realizing too this is a temporary measure and and by far by a significant level the the cost to install temporary classroom units at churchill is far less than it is a high school and one of the biggest driving factors is utilities um at churchill we would not have to connect to existing utilities we could essentially have a self-contained treatment system for the restrooms at churchill that would be pumped out you

053know on a routine basis but at the high school they have to be connected to the utilities of the high school which involves major infrastructure tear up repair replacement roadway replacement and then if the community said we're ready to build a new high school then you know now you you make you want to go i hope we put those temporary classroom units in a place they don't need to build on because we do we just created a big problem so that's one of the reasons to stay away as well as the cost factor and the impact um but i know some people have asked that question why not just move the ninth graders to the high school absolutely but it became an economic factor in the the temporary measure that we're proposing to the community

054okay thank you i'm i'm all for the bigger high school i'm all for people okay i'm gonna you're gonna be on a committee then good i'm all for it all right thank you so much thank you next in the queue is kimberly halley hi hi mr velasque my question is just one simple question my son is currently in preschool and um he would be transitioning not next year the following year to a different school i guess because he's in special education so with that redistrict start the second year in this transition or with that would he still be slated to go to the school he's currently going to i think he would still be slated to the school he's going to we're not talking about massive redistricting we're just talking about there would be have

055to be some adjustments just without being able to put the map up to show you we have looked at the attendance areas for every single uh school anyway every elementary school and there are these little pockets little narrow tangents and little developments that were built many years ago yes you know you might be able to look across the street and see lauren starford but your children go to central yes and so those kind of anomalies have occurred throughout the district over over a number of years and it's just creep so we're talking about some uh some minor adjustment uh for some of the students and we're also talking about in terms of doing that having those you know being able to do that is a soft transition for those students in terms of the enrollment

056areas that we're talking about okay thank you so much that was it uh next person in the queue is afsana aziz all right hello dr velasque how are you i'm good how are you i'm good i have three children in um israel's week system i have two fifth graders and a seventh grader um i am mostly worried about earlier school starting time for my two fifth graders who will be i'm starting at seven something 726 i believe as a seventh grader and i'm anyway worried about earlier school time and i know that most studies show that sleep is optimal for that age group and i'm worried that my kids will have to start that earlier school time even a year earlier so my question really is that is there any thought of seventh graders starting

057the school um at the time that they started hammer show rather than following the middle um churchill and high school schedule so i'm so glad you brought this question up um we actually looked in terms of uh later start times uh for students uh those that are in our secondary schools those that are in hammer shoulder churchill in high school right now and we've been talking about later start times and the board's been talking about later start times for a number of years probably back to and we it just we just couldn't make it work but actually through if we were to do this redistricting the opportunity to legitimately explore later start time exist and we can it i know that some people are going to shake their heads but we actually believe that we

058can build greater level of efficiency in our transportation system by this reconfiguration and actually pull off that later start time because one of the factors driving later start time was to do that in our current situation was to add more buses more routes and when you start doing that and you start putting more traffic on the road um then then route distances start to get elongated too but when we looked at this this was one of the tangible benefits of this grade level reconfiguration that we we could legitimately explore that i i can't say tonight that with all sincerity we'd be able to pull it off but i'm i am optimistic that we would be able to have later start times for our secondary students at some point in this transition does that mean that

059my seventh graders will be able to enjoy that or it's something that we you will be able to implement later um i'm gonna say that we would be able to explore it over this next year and it is a possibility i would not guarantee it but it is certainly something that's been part of the the whole um comprehensive look that we've been doing in terms of grade restructuring and looking at the high school that later start times if we could make that a component of this this would be a definite factor for our community and for our students that would be a benefit to them thank you i guess one other thing is with the same question really so then potentially seventh eighth and ninth graders will start the school um in a later time

060um possibly after after eight o'clock or around eight o'clock is that what we are looking at i would tell you i would tell you that we we would not be able to get past any any proposal that we would have would probably not be past eight o'clock eight about a half an hour swing is about all that we have to move um so i don't want to you know let i don't want people to feel like oh you know this could be later than eight o'clock uh you know 7 26 sliding to 8 o'clock we've got the greatest uh movement we could get if if we were able to pull it off it would be about a half an hour swing thank you okay uh next in the queue is lakshmi chamarthi um hello dr

061velasquez hi how are you i'm good thank you how are you doing good okay my kid is in third grade and um i am very happy to be part of east brunswick and i actually um you know kind of participating in such kind of meetings for the first time and i see how you are taking care of all our concerns um i really appreciate that um so having said that um so my concern is about so my son is in third grade so he will be the in the first batch who will be taking this transition uh but in elementary school being in the fifth grade i think there are a lot of opportunities to be the seniors in the elementary school and also a lot of experiences being the seniors and also um trying

062to um be the mentors for the younger students like second graders the third graders when they get chance to are doing some projects um being their mentors so how and because of this transition i think they'll be missing all this including the graduation part uh from the fifth grade uh from elementary transition to middle school so how is this be going to be addressed we would take a look at you know the activities the the symbolic activities that our fifth graders go through right now and we would make the attempt to replicate those for them so they didn't miss out on that experience um in in terms of your your mention about mentoring younger students um we could even you know push that down to have that start with fourth graders begin to have those

063types of interactions with students you know fourth grade is when students begin to change this first time they begin to change classes so i and i understand i understand that when we make this move there are going to be in the first year of the transition it's going to be an impact on certain students in this first and it's phase but as we get settled we have the opportunity in fifth grade to make that an entirely different experience than what our students have right now in terms of just how they feel about their fifth grade experience the school the teachers um just it gives us unlimited well not unlimited but it gives us far more opportunity to explore what fifth grade could look like and as i said earlier we are we are looking at

064this as an elongation of the transition having fifth and sixth grade together in hammershould as the upper elementary students that allows for that transition and not that abruptness from fifth grade to sixth grade that a lot of people report and some students do quite well some students are well prepared to move up to hammershow and you know have no problems in the transitions through all of our schools but we're not talking about adding any more transitions to our system um so we in terms of a student's career they have the same number of transitions that would just occur a different grade but we would work very hard to make sure that that students have not only at fourth grade which would be their last year of elementary school to make that symbolic to do something

065for our fifth graders uh to do something for the sixth graders that are there and then move on up to churchill so we're we're very passionate about making replicating that or doing something new and significant that would be meaningful to the students and their families okay thank you next is melanie pope hello i'm sorry good evening dr valeski and everyone um my daughter is a third grade student at um chitik elementary school and i'm trying to understand the transition and what we're preparing for um these children that next year which would be actually this year september 20 21 going into 22 being the fourth grade so she would be graduating with the fifth grade and you had mentioned um a little earlier that um discussions have been made or or this is being addressed with

066them already and we're already in may and they're ending in the middle of june and as far as i know my daughter's not aware of this at all because i haven't even discussed it with her hoping that this would change um so i i don't know first of all we're preparing for two graduations because it would be fourth grade fifth grade graduation next year what what are we doing to prepare these third graders that fourth grade is going to be their last year thinking that they have two more years well i believe that's once the board makes the decision to um you know what their what their choice is to move forward with this recommendation then we begin having conversations at the school level and with parents and with ptas about what that what that

067looks like for students so that'll be already when they're in fourth grade it wouldn't even be now preparing them that next year maybe is going to be your last year in school it'll happen in fourth grade when they're there in september realistically yes but over the summer we'll work on it but as far as the students understanding of that um you know they would know before the end of this year but as we wrap up this school year we certainly have a lot of a lot of things we have to do to complete this year um and then you know get ready for the opening in september and then that's that's giving us one full year to prepare the students for what the end of next year would look like i have another quick question

068um i thought tcus were only allowed five years you had mentioned that it could be up to five years i mentioned i mentioned five years we have to have a plan in place and if say for example the community doesn't support a referendum where we we can't get support to construct a permanent structure we would have to get permission to extend those out for whatever period of time until we could construct the new replacement for the tcus and who makes who's voting on this is it just the board or does the community have so the board votes but it's up to us on how long this would be i i don't understand that no so the prom so the what the board would vote on are you asking about the construction part of this um

069no um more asking well you i guess maybe i'm confused on you're saying that the board votes on if we're going to move forward with this transition right so that right that's one vote they would vote if they were going to um support the grade reconfiguration and the placement of the temporary classroom units at churchill and then after that i'm sorry go ahead i'm sorry but then it's up to us how long it may take if even if we don't want this right now well no it would be so that the community would have to be asked the question about a referendum to replace the um the tcus or a high school now there you know we would work very hard to work with the township because there there might be opportunities in terms of

070different grant fundings or things like that uh to support part of a construction but we envisioned there's going to have to be a referendum to to replace the temporary classroom units with a permanent structure that we would not be able to fund that through the normal proceeds of the district one of the things i wanted to make everyone on this on this forum aware of um you know like everyone else been watching what's been happening since the transition to the new administration and president biden has not been shy about borrowing money uh to to put into resources for social reform or for uh support uh for the the coveted relief and he talked about an infrastructure plan and you know obviously that isn't formalized yet but over the over the next three years um he

071may get support for the passage of an infrastructure plan that may push money down to state governments and if that money were to flow to new jersey and the um whoever is a successful candidate for governor at that time uh decides to make that available for grants for schools to either replace repair or refurbish uh school facilities i want this board this community to be in a position to say yes we want it we want to be part of that and part of this planning is to prepare us for that that opportunity should it exist and it may not happen but i want this community to be in a position to say yes we're interested or no we're not interested i i don't want the sport or whatever is on the board at that time

072to be in a position to feel like we didn't do the planning and we weren't prepared to even say we wanted it we missed this opportunity so that's what part of this this discussion is about and i understand i've heard from so many parents that are you know that they don't want this for their elementary children because of the impact of the ceremonial part the moving up ceremonies um but i promise you we can replicate that we can do that but we can create better opportunities for our fifth and sixth graders and even our seventh graders at churchill um by by looking at this in a new way um and i think it's exciting and i think having parents involved in part of that discussion is important if the board decides to move this process

073forward we'll be spending time with the community next year talking to you about your feelings about you know what you would like to see and about soliciting support if the community should you know chooses to do that and the board supports it about moving forward with the planning for a new high school i i'm still confused on why a high school and not elementary and you mentioned that there's no land um i don't know why we can't build on current buildings um i know that time constraints may affect you know because really when do we have open opportunities to build on top of current elementary schools that are standing um but these you're talking about the growth in the elementary and the lower grades but we're talking about building onto the high school and it's

074these elementary school students that are growing are learning are sensitive um i don't want to take for granted that high school students are young adults but they are and and everybody again and and i just want to add as per sharon kaplan's statement um i i i do agree with her i think after covid i i mean at least give us another year at least one more year before this is done let the children adjust and you said that they're resilient i i i appreciate your positive attitude on it and and we want to be positive about it as well because yes we want to see something better for our community um in east brunswick um but this is not something that came out of the blue because my husband went and he was in

075a tcu when he graduated in 88 and i know another person who in 2002 and and this is not something that came up out of the blue that high school needed to be grown but all the school systems in east brunswick needs to grow um honestly and i know i'm getting emotional about it i wish you would wait and consider another year at least i at least another year after the year that we had and and it really concerns me children that are resilient and you see that they're transitioning back i i really think they're probably the hybrid students that were going in sometimes and not going in but what about the ones that were totally virtual and finally are going in they're only in for a couple of months right and then school year

076is cut in the middle of june which is earlier than usual um i i i'm pleading but and i appreciate you planning this meeting this evening and listening to us but i really wish the board would consider another year and really really see what what this affects on what this affects on all of us the parents and the children because we're very concerned about this one of the one of the things i would i would like to share with you i was i was in a couple of classrooms um the first week in the second week um i was in one classroom where the teacher said some of us have been here in hybrids some of us you know came back and they went back out again and some are you know here knew for

077the first time and you the the really great part of this story is i couldn't identify the students uh when i walked in the classroom they were they were all engaged they were all doing you know they look like they had been there for quite some time and they acclimated so well and um but they were three distinct groups and but i'm not negating the emotion that's tied to this and and i certainly uh am not trying to diminish that um but um mr juliana do you have we have the opportunity to put up just for the group so they could all see what the tcus might look like yes just give me one moment i think that might be helpful for you to see what the interior of of these facilities look like and

078this is not um as you can see the the top left photo uh that resembles just about any any computer media center we have in the district and then down lower right the classroom setting and this would be an enclosed module so ours would have the interior classrooms as you see in the center or lower not necessarily lockers but it would be an enclosed hallway for security but these are they're they're state-of-the-art and we we would not buy cheap and we would not you know this this wouldn't be something that was a compromise for our students these would these would satisfy the need but they are by their very nature and by their name temporary and designed to be replaced by a permanent structure so i also don't want to negate the fact that we

079would have to endorse the support of the community in the board of education on what the replacement of those tcus would look like as a permanent addition thank you you're welcome okay uh next in the queue is um jorge medina good evening hi good evening dr valencia um so um but let me ask a question and your answer there so i'm gonna go on to my second question so we have um other districts that have neighboring um basically they they rent out neighboring you know space for pre-k and ela classes so i was suggesting you know instead of moving the fifth graders you know if we could you find some space somewhere in each bronzer or in the neighbor in the neighboring neighbor neighborhoods to um see if we get that space rented out for

080just the ela and pre-k class and we could utilize that space for the fifth graders okay we did i will tell you we did look at um and this was before the pandemic i'm not gonna you know we did not go shopping for space during the pandemic obviously we were all pretty busy including all of you as family members supporting your children right but we did before that we did look we looked at properties and we had been in touch with the township and we were actually um you know kind of bird dogging a number of properties that were being vacated that we were seeing throughout the township and usually what we found in fact in every case you know they were they were tied up um behind the scenes in some form of litigation

081or you know there were multiple owners so we had a lot of complex situations so nothing clean that came forward that you know was within the parameters of east brunswick in our our attendance areas and and without a lot of complexity and in terms of security and you know that all the things that we normally put into our buildings that really presented itself that would be acceptable to our students before the pandemic so i will tell you that we have not we did not do any shopping during the pandemic but but thank you for the suggestion no problem i appreciate it um yeah so yeah that that that was it and i agree with melanie i think if we could hold up for another year that will be great because i told them i told

082the bearing who's my daughter and she's not too happy about it okay you know and she's she's a third grader now she'll she'd be going on fourth and i told her this might be your last year okay um so if if it's possible of any power we could hold off for another year that'll be great okay thank you for your feedback no problem okay next in the queue is agnes lazar hello i apologize good evening good evening i just had to switch out of the room i was in i apologize for that how are you good evening i apologize i was putting the kids to bed while doing this so i apologize double duty but um speaking of them my uh thought about this plan dr valesky and everyone i just wanted to ask is

083this a what is the long-term plan we make these shifts we make these adjustments let's say uh so 2020 to 2023. the proposal is a five-year proposal is there then looking at our numbers looking at everything does everything switch back or once we make this switch this is what the switch will be i think the plan needs to well in order for us to grow the space that we need for for the intermediate what i call the intermediate future i'm talking about to the end of the demographer's study which was slated for 2024 and as i said earlier they you know one of the things the pandemic provided for us was this extra complexity in terms of the impact to our students impacted their families impact to our teachers impact the entire community and we

084know that there have been financial impacts social emotional impacts academic impacts we wanted but we also knew that these children were going to continue to come and and what what was really the aha moment was when we started to see the acceleration of these enrollments in our elementary schools so i think long term what we need to do is we need to have capacity in our elementary schools and by having this lower a primary grade structure and an upper elementary structure i think we can build that opportunity in our existing spaces um by by shifting our grades up but this is only going to be long term if we can build the capacity for the ninth grade and move the ninth grade up to have a comprehensive uh offering at the high school and i

085want i want everyone to understand we're not this talk about construction at the high school is not because of growth at the high school it is really about the aging infrastructure at the high school since 2014 i know we have been on an active plan in mr juliana who's hosting this meeting in the board of education have been the people behind the scenes he's he's been the gentleman financing all of this and we have not had a referendum and through a variety of funding mechanisms he has managed to air condition all of the facilities in the district that were on air conditioned with the exception of the high school which has some spaces that are not air conditioned b hall in the air in the high school was air conditioned but they are window air

086conditioners and um you notice that if if you're a parent of a bound monroe student those were window air conditioners as well because they were the quickest fix to bring down the temperatures in the classroom but all the other buildings have state of the art centralized air conditioning systems and churchill is actually the the newest building to be air conditioned before the start of this school year a completely new roof was placed on the building and air conditioned throughout so that's the kind of infrastructure improvements we have to make and we've really done a good job of maintaining our existing facilities and bringing you know our elementary schools up to a higher standard at irwin and memorial there are two multi-purpose rooms that have been renovated in there so but we do have an equity

087in our elementary school some of the schools have a designated cafeteria gymnasium and others are you know cafetorium so those kinds of things we would like to look at for the future and build that capacity as as more of a primary grade structure upper elementary grade structure middle school high school type configuration that's that's what i think is the long-term future of east brunswick if you're looking at the the 10 the 20 the 25 the 30-year fix and to be able to accommodate growth without having to go back to the community again and saying we're going to have to do another referendum we didn't do this right the first time does that make sense did i answer your question i guess yes you did and i mean i think we have to it sounds like

088we kind of have to see where we go in the next year or two and then go from there looking at the numbers after 2024 with the survey results right and we would obviously have we would have that demographic study redone again after the pandemic because we would need that information uh to be able to have really um robust conversations with the community but i think at this point that's when we start talking about going out to the community and we start asking the community what do you see as the future of east brunswick public schools what do you want to see in any future facility enhancements we do if we added to churchill to replace the temporary classroom units what does that look like or what could a new high school look like and

089what is what is that comprehensive high school look like or does it become a ninth grade academy with a 10 11 12 configuration those are all questions that have to be answered and there are lots of models that we could explore and like i said there's a variety of variations and and the board's been involved in very robust conversations for a number of years but um we you know we we began to really look in earnest after the demographer released his report in 2019 and knowing that the clock was ticking and that you know when the pandemic hit um we knew there was a pause but the pause wasn't going to last very long because even in spite of that we were having parents you know begin to register with anticipation of bringing their children

090to east brunswick and our office gets called all the time about parents beginning to think about moving here and um so it we we know it's real okay thank you dr vasquez that really is absolutely welcome absolutely thanks for your question uh my follow-up question in terms of those concerns about the elementary schools as a parent of a second grader currently and a preschooler i feel very blessed that he has a class size of 18 this year class size of 19 last year where really allows for that connection with the teacher in communication with the teacher as these numbers continue to grow are we looking at more staffing at the elementary level or reshuffling of staff or just essentially um is a part of these discussions with the board and the powers that be maintaining

091the um at the forefront smaller class sizes yes the answer is yes that that has been a concern for the board of education uh and and for us and we we take great care to to look and forecast down to the classroom size so we we are very methodical we meet with the elementary principals we talk about all the spaces that they have available in their buildings um before the pandemic uh maybe all of you are not aware of this but we moved our music and our art programs on out of the classrooms out of the dedicated classrooms and we needed the classroom spaces we needed the physical spaces um but this this proposal um to shift the fifth grade to hammer shoulder and i you notice i was very careful i didn't say hammer

092shoulder middle school it's hammer shoulder and it would be the upper elementary school for fifth and sixth grade by doing that it gives us capacity at all the elementary schools and allows us to grow those sections as we need them we keep the lower class sizes but the budgetary impact will be we will have to have we will have to hire more staff we'll have to hire more teachers as those sub as those grade sections become established as students get enrolled and we create more sections so yes the commitment is to the lower uh grade levels because we know that that impact has a direct reflection on on instruction especially for primary elementary students as i said earlier the the supports that we know we're going to have to provide for students and their families

093is is potentially significant so having lower class sizes and having that ability to have that closer interaction with students and differentiate within the classroom which our teachers already do a great job of doing but provide a greater level of support within their classroom for a smaller number of students we think will pay enormous and tangible benefits thank you you're welcome thanks next we have peter de sienna hi hi good evening um i've got i've got a couple concerns here and and so far i don't really like what i'm hearing so i'm hearing a lot about demographics but i'm not hearing much about how this is going to impact the education and the social emotional development of of my children and so here's my concern like coming from k-5 socially and emotionally and developmentally they're all

094in a sense of innocence when they go to the sixth grade they're still with your well in your plan would be fifth and sixth grade so now the sixth graders are interacting more with the fifth graders keeping that on that lower level then all of a sudden the seventh graders get bumped up into the high school mentality and and i have i've got major concerns with it i i don't like the way that's where those so i would i can ask clarifying question you said they get bumped up into the high school mentality is that because the ninth graders are there is that what you mean by that yes yes okay so we're really ramping them up into a faster pace of a no that would that wouldn't be what we're trying to do i

095know what you're trying to do but no i mean the ninth so we i talked i kind of alluded to um you know if we were to build a new high school would it be a 9 through 12 comprehensive high school with maybe 9th grade academy what churchill provides us is the opportunity to compartmentalize those grades within that structure we have the north and south sections of that building already and there is there is a lot of travel between the two right now because of scheduling um mr hanus who is the who's the principal of churchill since uh january 1st of this this last year um he and i have been discussing about opportunities for adding a third grade what that would look like and he's a former high school assistant principal so he came

096from east brunswick high school down to churchill um as the new principal he comes with a lot of experience in the logistics of moving students around he was the person that was was primarily responsible for phenomenal graduations at the cure arena for our students so they the idea is not to morph all these students together to put them all together to have them uh in an environment that they're uncomfortable with our situation is to compartmentalize them to the extent possible and to allow them to co-exist within the same structure and not have a tremendous amount of interaction there's going to be some but but there i think there is an opportunity for the social emotional well-being of our students to have them within the same structure but distinctly different and somewhat isolated too yeah well

097i i see the hard hard to happen knowing my one daughter who's at churchill right now and it's it's pretty crowded i know i know a lot of the elective classes are at capacity if not haven't been split up and going to school in the classroom so i know that that school's tight as it is and adding more bodies there is only getting worse but but we're also forgetting about how we're going to get these kids to school you're going to throw them on a bus and unless you're going to have a 7th grade bus and then an 8th and 9th grade bus you're still going to subject them to there as well as passing as well as these other things but my other concern with that though is now you've also lost out in

098the time of because churchill's on the block schedule now the seventh graders have to go to an 84 minute time block for their classroom and have you guys looked at that is that developmentally appropriate for these students to handle at that seventh grade level um so the i i think there might be a misconception about what the what the block really consists of so it's not 84 minutes of direct instruction that would be broken up into components so there would be um it wouldn't be all instruction for the entire time and yes it would be the the block scheduling would be applied to the 7th 8th and 9th graders as well as the 10th 11th 12th graders in this proposal so you're exactly right about that but i i think that there is a um

099and we're still working out the details of what that blog scheduling is going to look like um in terms of the actual components for the teachers and so that's still being negotiated so i i think developmentally it's appropriate if we if we do it intelligently and that's what we're committed to do well okay and this this is where i feel like it's it's becoming a rush to get a plan in place and it feels like the board is just going to vote on it and it's going to happen and we're going to have trailers out at churchill and then parents are going to be held hostage to pass a bond through our tax dollars to get something built at the high school that's where it feels like it's going to me right now i feel

100like if you're running out of room at the elementary schools edgar trailers elementary school let's get something in place for the for the high school going down the line and this way you can keep your your grade levels as is instead of instead of creating a system which in your words may or may not work and we need to have contingency plans so why go rush um um somebody i'm sorry if you wouldn't mind if you're not speaking could you mute yourself we're getting some feedback from thank you um we we actually did look at ali adding to elementary schools i'm sorry so thank you i got it uh okay um we before the pandemic we actually looked at adding uh temporary classroom units to irwin and lauren starver they were the only elementary schools

101that really had enough space to put temporary classroom units on them and it was going to be at you know at a at a cost we were going to we were going to lose playground space we were going to lose a basketball court to irwin uh because we needed to look at placing them close to the elementary schools the security and the movement between the tcus at an elementary school is different than it is at churchill at that age level so we did look at that but when the pandemic sat in we started to look at the equity among our elementary schools what our real root cause was and i go back to the root causes we're growing in elementary enrollment at all of our elementary schools it's not just certain ones so this became

102how do we address this as an intermediate concern which is why the proposal to move the fifth grade up and and give us capacity of the elementary schools and those temporary classroom units creating that module that could exist in a in a premium it's not a premium space but it's a space that we can afford to have those stay there and not upset our programming in terms of athletics or anything else behind churchill except for those things that you talk about in in the integration of seventh grade with eighth grade and ninth grade and by the size of the building we think we're confident we're confident we can ensure that the students remain compartmentalized there would be some interaction between students there's no doubt about that but we could minimize that and there's also the

103probability and the possibility that students could have interaction on buses too um but we we do that now we have interaction among different grades and i think and i didn't want to give the impression that we're trying to paint this we're trying to put the community in a position where you have to vote on a bond referendum what we're trying to do is tell the community that this enrollment growth is coming if we don't do something about it if we don't have a plan that meets the logistical the academic the intermediate and the long-term needs of the district this community will be very unhappy that we haven't taken the measures to address it when it started to come it'll be like the wave and once it starts to crust then everyone's going to remain quite

104unhappy and i'm simply trying to say to the community that there might be some changes from the federal government there might be money that we had not forecasted before and i don't have a crystal ball but i certainly um i'm watching to see that i think there might be something different in the next three years than we've seen in a long time in terms of putting money into infrastructure improvements so this would be an opportunity where it's not just a cost uh shared by the local community and i i commit to you that we have not been um an administration or school board that has said we just want to we want to pass this off to the community as a tax increase and in fact if you look at our budgets in the past

105we've been below the the cap the two percent cap in terms of actual total net taxes and we've done that by being you know pretty prudent about everything we do and we've done some pretty significant improvements to our schools without asking the community for a referendum to do it so i i'm just you know i'm humbly asking the community to consider this because i think that we're looking at a longer term problem than what we just see right before us in the immediate future great well then i will humbly ask that you really consider the development on the on the children first before we start shifting grades around and then putting ourselves into a corner that now we've got mobile units on a property which don't really need to be there anymore because that's not

106the building that's running out of room it's down in elementary schools and i think there's another way that this could be done and i just i think we're rushing it really just sounds like a rush to get something in place and that's where i'm at thank you thank you for listening yes thanks for being here mr juliana you you muted yourself yes i did next in the queue is hong huang good evening hi good evening and good evening everyone right so actually i echo a lot from uh what pc and i just like said right so um i will not repeat too much like what he just said right but like uh as a parent with like two kids like in elementary school right the plan i think like uh it do bring us a

107lot of anxiety right especially like you know seeing like fifth grader going into hemisphere right because like um like no matter how we put it right hemoso it is a middle school right we build it as a middle school it is having a middle school environment right so like you know like when kids from fifth grade and then suddenly jump up to that the middle school environment right then i think like um i i do believe like um you and the teachers like they do a lot of research already how to prepare the kids right but as a parent uh i cannot deny that i do have a lot of anxiety such as like you know how they uh fit into that middle school environment so quickly right and also like we are actually living

108in a area that there's no school bus right going to the um to the camera so right so like um things go into my mind okay how is a fifth grader walk on the road and then walk to the middle school so so those things like you know like keep giving uh us like anxiety so i i don't know like how um would you like to really address like some concern like that so let me start with that we we are not looking at hammer shoulders being the middle school we are looking at changing the culture of hammer shoulder to be in the upper elementary school and treat those students as upper elementary students there are there are a lot of models that talk about uh the sixth grade being an elementary grade and yet

109if you look at research nationwide there was a movement probably in the mid 90s they continued for about a decade the middle schools were built around a 678 model there were a lot of districts that did that but they they didn't adopt a real true middle school curriculum so what they were doing was they'd taken elementary students up to the middle school and simply you know they were within the same building called the middle school but the sixth graders really they hadn't adopted a curriculum that was really addressing the needs of that comprehensive level of students so we are talking about making hammer shoulder the upper elementary school and i think this would probably be it will be an adjustment for parents to to look at hammer shoulder differently but i think we have the

110opportunity to make it feel differently for our students and to create a fifth grade experience that's different than what they might potentially experience at their current elementary school and that's not to say we haven't done a great job because we have but there are lots of traditions and there are celebrations that happen in fifth grade because it signifies the moving from elementary school right now to the middle school and so but but part of like i said earlier the the transition to middle school for some students has been more difficult and that's given some parents anxiety so we looked at opportunities to elongate that transition i think this could um be that solution but i think we have the opportunity to re-envision what hammershow looks like were you able to share a bit more detail

111like you know how you create this like upper elementary school environment right or maybe like um in detail how do you like prepare a fifth grader right for a upper environment i mean upper elementary school environment like that well i think we have we involve our administrators who are a great team of people and you know dr gaskell does a great job now of creating like an introduction to hammer shoulder and you know he has experience with with younger children too in his professional career so you know this is about the introduction to the school and i know the students produce their own video welcoming the new students to hammershaw and this is an opportunity to to to reinvent that for fifth graders and to actually showcase for them um you know what hammer shoulde

112could look like and and i'll just give you a quick story we had over a year ago when we opened school and frost elementary school had a complete sewer back up we had to move from school first day of school and we took all the students from frost up to hammershould for the day because that was the emergency uh location we had for frost if we had to shut the building and it was interesting to talk to fifth graders when they walked into hammershow they would look around and they go do i have to go back to frost can i just stay here you know because they were so excited about being in the new building and i think we underestimate um what what our children are or even our own children what our children

113are capable of and and i think this gives us the opportunity to create the environment we can meet them where they are too to make this transition as seamless as possible i think the anxiety comes from the expectation that we were going to try to fit elementary students into a middle school model and that is not the case at all that is not the intent and that's my commitment to you we're not we're not putting elementary students in a middle school model but giving them a longer elementary experience i think could could pay dividends for us as a district and for all of our students too especially after a recovery from a pandemic okay um a follow-up question is that like um we have been quite focused on the high school right so like we

114will there plan to put the fifth grade back to elementary school because like if we look around like the whole country or maybe around the world right so a regular or normal elementary school it is like up to fifth grade right so so what will be the plan to put the fifth grade back to their to the regular elementary school we wouldn't we wouldn't put the fifth grade back in the elementary schools because that's the root that's the premise of building the capacity at the elementary schools is creating a primary and and upper elementary configuration so we have the room to grow where our students are coming into the district in kindergarten through third grade that's that's where the real growth occurs in the district but we still have elementary school there are a number

115of models in the state and throughout the country where they have elementary schools k to three and four to six they have they are all elementary schools but they are maybe housed in different sections of buildings or in separate buildings but they they break them down by pre-k to three and four to six so those models exist too so you know and and every district has to configure their grades based on the facilities they have so if you look at the research there isn't one that says this is the optimum this is the ideal um this is this is really kind of representation of what a lot of models are throughout the country not only what we have now but what we're proposing i think the one anomaly that we have uh that a lot

116of districts do not have is that we have our ninth graders separated from our high school that physically separated from the high school even though they go to churchill they are considered high school students so but that isn't the real focus in this first first phase the real focus is to build our elementary capacity and then begin to see what the community's interest in in this phase two component and and what the board's pleasure is about moving it forward but the immediate need is about building this this elementary classroom capacity so our students have this opportunity to engage with their teachers with lower class sizes and and we can meet the needs of those students in the classes too with the social and emotional and academic supports that they need okay thank you you're welcome

117thanks for coming next in the queue is robin zernitzky hi good evening hi how are you okay thanks how are you good um so i have a couple of questions one is i know you keep mentioning upper elementary school and i'm really trying to i'm reiterating the last person's question because i don't i don't necessarily have a feel yet what the difference is what's an upper elementary versus an elementary i know that in fifth and fourth grade um they change classes right our students normally change classes obviously not during covid in sixth and seventh they would change for every class that's how i understand it so would fifth graders be jumping up to change classes for every class or is there gonna be some interim year where they're sort of more in a protected environment

118yeah i would look at this as a hybrid so that we would look at we have to look as as many of you mentioned we are not trying to accelerate students to become more mature to leave their elementary environment to to grow up faster um i as a parent and as a superintendent um i'm really passionate about letting children experience the world around them because you know the world moves pretty fast and all of your parents on this call certainly know how quickly your children grow up and when they get to be older you realize how quickly they they got to be that old and you turn around and look and all of a sudden they're ready to go to graduate or move on to do something else we want this experience not only for

119our our professional capacity for our teachers to have the ability to to meet the needs of every child we want every child to have the ability to have the best experience they can in east brunswick public schools so i look at this as fifth grade as as we could we could make this a hybrid and we have not sorted out all the schedules yet but this opportunity would be um you know something that wouldn't be as all of a sudden you're moving to fifth grade and you're changing all your classes but the building itself the building itself lends it to compartmentalization with a house model with a the way the building was originally designed to have multiple houses within the school so it does allow us to have the compartmentalization and to commingle students where

120we need to but to but to keep them compartmentalized too and give them that more intimate feel uh that they're used to in the elementary schools and i think just something to point out is you know these students who are going to be fifth grade when they're in elementary school everything is just smaller right the rooms are smaller the toilet seats are small everything is smaller and when you go up to the you know middle school to hammer shawl which i understand you can call it how much all i have for middle school but everything's bigger so how are these kids supposed to be comfortable in that capacity i guess i i don't i struggle with that so i struggle with that and as a result i support what some of the other folks were

121saying about trying to build from the elementary school section instead right is there any way to sort of revisit the possibility of i don't know adding an elementary school into a shopping mall that has empty stores right like we have how many of those do we have on route 18 um you know is there any possibility to come up with a different way to maintain the same structure that we have while ultimately i'm in agreement that the high school could use a facelift that certainly i don't think anyone's against that but i think this intermediary step there's a there's a danger to it well the um you raised a good point about you know why not just use an existing structure of facilities in as an educational institution everything that we do everything that we

122use for an instructional space has to go through a pretty rigorous review process for the department of education so we couldn't simply say um within a six month period we're going to put a facelift on um empty storefronts or um you know take take an empty big box store and turn it into a school that it would be a major undertaking that would probably closely pace the construction of a new school and and so those those are the dynamics that we have to deal with as a as a public school institution um in the approval processes we have to go through and we we did i think you mentioned about if you mentioned about land we did look at available land and we we have not come across any land that is available for purchase

123and obviously that would add to the the total cost of any project that we would think about undertaking and land costs can add significantly to the cost of any school construction because now you start tying talking about roadways and infrastructure that have to be installed on that that vacant land it becomes very very expensive so this was to meet the immediate needs of our elementary growth to have an equitable solution across the elementary schools and to be able to intelligently address that growth and smaller class sizes and then begin to ask the community along with the board of education what what do you think about the high school it became a secondary question but knowing we had to address the high school so i don't want everybody to think that my focus has been on

124the high school and this was a way to get the high school address that's not the case but we do have to address the high school facility and and the fact that it is continuing to age and either we put money into it uh and how much do we do and what does that look like or do does the community the board of education want to look at something else do they want to consider a new high school that would possibly uh last this community for 50 years so that's that's really you know where we are with that okay i just have one last comment and i'm sort of taking this from a different angle so so um i appreciate you know this year my children have both have elementary school students have been able

125to be in school um the whole year which i've been very happy as a working parent and i feel like we're putting a lot of effort into this situation which i understand is definitely coming down quickly you know as a problem but i do have a separate concern that i feel like some of our immediate efforts should be towards getting the kids into school full day and i worry that that's sort of lost focus as a result of this particular initiative um i would like to assure you and everyone here that that that is not the case the the primary focus of this year has been to return our students and i'll i'll be very honest i was hoping earlier this school year that we would be at a position right now that we could

126have returned our students to full days of instruction um we you know we got down toward as we approached into this year we looked at returning to student returning students five days a week and we had to postpone that for a period of time as you recall we were had a forecast to open and then we had to push that off because we had a number of people who had contracted coveted and it was going to be um nearly impossible to even open some of our schools because we didn't have enough staff administrative staff uh to run those buildings and so we postponed that so uh lunch became the deciding factor and it's not about um you know the not just the safety but um cdc and the department or the middlesex department of health

127uh even though we can go down to three feet of distancing these new guidelines with students in a classroom when they remove their mask it requires six feet of distance and that's what the recommendation is and that's what middlesex department of health advised us with extreme caution and so to do that and the number of staff that we would need to supervise that group of students that we spread over that space to be able to serve lunch was a problem we could not solve we just couldn't get the manpower or women power to be able to take those positions and fill those positions to do this safely but we are committed and we have been planning our return in september to full days of instruction with lunch so we're going to return to normal operations

128it may be we're going to be wearing masks for a while but that's that's the intent we're coming back to school in september okay thanks for the uh for the information and and as i felt i'll stop yeah i'll stop waiting for a call that that i can be really excited that my kids can go in full day now i understand the reality that it probably won't be till september you yeah unfortunately and i you know we we did we you know i'm gonna tell you i was i was hoping we could i was one of those people that was hoping we could actually pull it off but we we can't do it safely um and if you do look at you know some of the situations around the state where you know some some

129smaller districts have been successful in it because they they do have the smaller numbers but um we had a significant number of students who wanted to return to school five days a week uh we're we're above 70 percent some of our elementary schools and we keep ask we keep having requests and so um we're accommodating those students five days a week wherever we physically can so we're not turning people away but i apologize to you we tried and it's just it's just not safe for this school year but we i'm anxious i think we're all anxious to return to school the way we all knew it in september thank you you're welcome thanks for coming next we have shilpi mahajan uh hi dr veliski um hi um yeah i just want to latch on to

130um the concerns that many parents have uh raised during the school my son is in third grade and he's going to be the first one uh going to hamish shoulde in fifth grade and i don't think hamas shoulders really built as an upper elementary school um as somebody said everything is bigger um they have to use lockers and they have to i mean they're bigger it's it just doesn't have a feel of the cozy elementary school and um it the school culture is also very different like how gaskell runs dr gaskell runs this school is very different from how a frost is run for instance um i really have huge concerns that this is being rushed into uh the next year is a year when kids actually go in full time and you have to

131really have them get back to that uh mindset the motivation of the kids uh the academic academically they all have fallen back their social emotional learning their mental health uh i think those should be the key concerns for next year rather than you know thinking about moving into a middle school um i'm personally very concerned about this move okay they as we talked earlier that the primary focus is about the return from the pandemic and those students who have been out remote the entire year or those who haven't been in school for the entire year in their transition back so that is our primary focus um but they the way that hammershold is designed is that um in the house model there is a way to compartmentalize the students and make it feel smaller within

132parts of the building but the building is there there's there's no getting around it is it is a physically larger building and um but you know that's that's the kind of navigation that our students go through as sixth graders and they quickly adapt to that and i'm not trying to force students down into a you know we're trying to trying to get them to move like i said to become more mature earlier or to move up into a middle school environment earlier but we are faced with the buildings that we do have and the most appropriate way that we can address this immediate need which as i said we are going to be faced with overcrowded elementary classrooms and we did look at putting temporary classrooms at a couple of the elementary schools but this

133this is a more equitable distribution among the elementary schools and i i think that and i know that in the seventh eighth ninth grade we have the opportunity to redesign uh some of our curriculum to meet those needs but our fifth and sixth graders too i think we have the opportunity to build this new experience for our fifth graders and i've i've had conversations personally with dr gaskell about this opportunity and he's he's ready to embrace it so dr gasol the middle school principal uh is ready to embrace this this new new approach if if the board decides to endorse it so i'm not personally against you know moving the upper elementary to middle school if you think you can do it i mean my doctor my daughter has been in the middle school she's

134going to go to high school this year so i'm familiar with the environment in both the schools my concern is that you will not be able to change the school's culture too soon uh you i mean you're just looking at an ear to implement multiple changes and i think it's very aggressive um i just don't have a good feeling about it that that's my only concern i mean i personally don't support the decision in the short term maybe in the long term two years from here once a pandemic has gone i mean and maybe you're back to some form of normalcy you can look at it but i think it's being done too fast um that's my only concern personally the other concern i had was and i i think this decision has kind of

135been made it's just about the both passing it but i'm addressing my concerns so that i mean the school district actually looks at things like school culture things like how they're going to address the social emotional learning how they're going to address the mental health of the children nothing of which i actually see right now in the curriculum uh so i i'm just i'm just very overwhelmed by what i'm hearing on the call today i hear a lot of research being done on demographics uh changes but i see no plan in place so that that's that's all i want to say the other thing i yeah i was just going to say that the social and emotional supports you probably don't see because of the environment there's our students are in so it's it's really

136not so much curriculum based right now as it is we are dealing with individualized situations and our entire staff our our nurses our guidance counselors as student assistant specialists all those all those individuals have been actively involved uh in social emotional sports for students in this really new environment that we find ourselves in this year where some of the students have been haven't been back in school at all this year um so still providing those resources remotely or you know providing support to even families not just the students so that's been actively going on um you know this is um and probably i i do want to say that we have spent a lot of time uh doing this and and talking about this but the um uh it might feel rushed to the community

137because of the pandemic and uh and i must tell you that we have put we have paid um enormous attention to the pandemic that is our our first and foremost priority but also realizing that we we are going to have to address this situation that is looming upon us and if we don't have a plan in place i fear that when september 22 comes we're going to be faced with dealing with higher class sizes in our elementary schools than than any of us will be comfortable with and we'll be trying to figure out a solution to that so now that was the reason for this i just have one more follow-up question on the block scheduling because i again it's going to impact my children like once he gets to seventh grade i mean i

138think eighth and nine junior high students already struggle with the block scheduling and i'm concerned that you will be enforcing that on seventh grade i i really don't because i don't see that instructional difference that you're talking about on the call in a 84 minute block schedule i mean the kids are just being taught to with no breaks um i i really don't understand how it's going to be implemented once they get into a regular classroom model i mean what's the plan in place for that for seventh grade especially we're working on that right now and the but the block scheduling um you know and we're still working out some some other details on block scheduling the idea for block scheduling and why this came as a proposal to the board is after many years

139of research about block scheduling and what benefits it could bring our students and when you look at the actual time that a teacher has to teach within a classroom environment once you talk about the transitions in the classroom um you know we're talking about you know a smaller component and then being able to elongate that and be able to have uh more time for the students to be able to reflect ask questions to experiment with the subject matter and to have that direction provided by one of our teachers and so that's that's what we're looking at for blog scheduling but we know too that to do this um in a very uh intelligent way we have to have you know our teachers have to be supported in that have to be professional development that's all

140been planned uh so we have to we have to make sure that we have all those details worked out in terms of uh support for our teachers for all the staff and the administrative teams that are going to schedule these uh these components but we think you know we would have recommended this to the board this was um this was a significant change and we thought it would benefit the students uh of east brunswick public schools it wasn't brand new to east it wasn't brand new but it's brand new to brunswick other districts have similar models and and teams of people from east brunswick including dr mela and members of the high school and other members of the administration visited multiple sites to look at their programs and their plans so our model is built

141around uh established success stories okay i mean my only request is just hold it off for another year and then you know look at moving the grades that you're thinking because i think this is too rushed for the kids and for the teachers too okay well thank you okay thank you for coming tonight next is sari hitchens good evening dr valesky hi everyone um good thanks uh for listening to all of us tonight and i'm not gonna echo what everyone else said other than to say it does feel very very rushed i have a third grader and a fifth grader two obvious grades that will be completely and totally impacted the most by this change my fifth grader was in tears when she heard about it she both my kids were just went back to

142school this marking period and frankly i had said to my fifth grader if you were in fourth grade you wouldn't be going back because fifth grade was so important to her these fifth graders especially would be impacted by this move not only this year but the next two years this year they've already been upended they haven't had a fifth grade they had didn't even have a full fourth grade they'll then be gonna come sixth graders for one year at a school that frankly they've been looking forward to going to as sixth graders and spending that those two full years there that's what that's what my daughter's been dreaming about that's what they've heard their friends talk about they've been excited to do that and then they'll spend one year there in a year that as

143everyone has said post pandemic that is really that year of adjustment they'll just get comfortable there before they're forced into another totally new environment with an earlier start time a different kind of schedule and really throwing them for a loop so now that's their third year in a row that they're getting thrown and then they might even be at a high school that's completely under construction that as you alluded to before that they won't even benefit from they won't even get to experience the luxury of having a new school or renovated school or whatever the plan is so those fifth graders are really and i'll echo everyone with my plea to delay this at least a year i understand the need for improvements to the schools i understand the need for the crowding i unders

144i understand the reasoning and i know that it needs to be done but this is not the time post-pandemic look we could all be in lockdown in september that we love the idea of going back to normal we love the idea of going back to you know maybe even just life with masks but reality is there are variants there are things that are going on there are people who won't get vaccinated that two each their own but we might have to shut down again we might have to go virtual again we don't know so to put a plan in place now when you don't even know what school is going to look like in september we can be hopeful we can be optimistic it's so rushed and i know you said it it's not rushed

145to the board discussions have been had if it doesn't it's not rushed it's feels rushed to the community but isn't the community what's the most important here the community our children are the most important here and if it feels rushed to the community then it's got to feel rushed to our kids our kids are just going to be pushed and pushed and pushed and again i know i'm saying because these are my kids that are affected but and it's i think any parent might feel that way but once we're in our new normal of it's the pan like the pandemic these kids and how they've just already been through so much and you know what i'm not i i i've heard a lot from we've heard it from a lot of third grade parents on

146this call my concern is for my fifth grader more almost more than my third grader my third grader will almost have that like yes she'll be rushed out of elementary school she's tiny she's amongst the youngest of her grade so she'll be a fifth grader in this environment i am getting to a question i promise but i i guess is shouldn't if the community is feeling rushed shouldn't this plan just be put on hold and my part two of my question is actually if there's no it doesn't really sound like there's a formal phase two plan in place so how can you make a decision on phase one without knowing what phase two is and also not having the confidence that the entire town those over 65 those who don't have children are going to

147pass a referendum for a high school in a phase two like how do we move to phase one without knowing what phase two is i guess is what i'm saying um your question is actually a very good question i'm glad you asked it because the design of phase one and in this plan had to be legitimately durable and i use the term durable so if if for example uh phase two if the community said we are not interested in a new high school we are not interested in pursuing anything with a high school go ahead and just start putting money into fixing whatever you need to fix but that's the building we're going to have for the next decade then we also have to have that plan to address the elementary school growth and so

148phase one would really become uh a much smaller component in that we would have to replace the temporary classroom units with some kind of addition to churchill a physical addition to churchill where we do have the space to do that and replace those temporary classroom units within we we we believe that by five years we'll have to have them replaced or have a waiver from the state so they are going to be there for this longer period of time but we wanted to have a phase two or phase one that could exist on its own if phase two never happened and you know am i confident that um east bronzer community would support a referendum i think that goes to um the presentation to the community how it's planned and how it's presented and we

149would certainly have to have community stakeholders and and i say this to all of you if if you are passionate enough and thank you for being here tonight thank you for all your questions and thank you for all your insight and thank you for all your feedback but when we if we go to that next phase we're going to need that support from the community we're going to need a core group of stakeholders that will be part of the voice to be able to sell whatever it is that packages to the to the broader community um and and it's about convincing people that this this investment in education doesn't have to be directly tied to what your children benefit from uh if you live in east brunswick do you care about your community do you

150want to see this this investment in a facility that legitimately will last 50 years um because that's that's how long the existing high school has left has lasted and so you're talking about a reinvestment in the community for generations to come and if you've never had a child i'm sorry if if you're not i'm sorry if you're not would you thank you um that the investment in this kind of um or this kind of investment in the schools would pay dividends to all the all the residents of the community whether you have children or not uh and it might be your grandchildren that go to these schools or it might be a niece or nephew you know that goes to those schools but this this really is about building uh the future of east brunswick

151but that's that phase two has to kind of stand on its own and phase one has to be able to exist if phase two doesn't get acted wrong right away or if the community says we're not interested i mean that's that's a possibility and that's why we built it the way we did no i i i understand that i mean like i said the plan makes sense it really does but going back to our children and echoing what so many others have already said tonight is if it feels rushed to the community it it may have been in the conversations in a board room but it was not expressed to the community before you know three four weeks ago so to us yes it does feel rushed and it feels rushed for our children coming

152off kids that have experienced loss in their families loss of their friends loss of life loss of time loss of innocence and to rush these kids at and and truly the fifth and the third graders are among the most impacted and they're so young right now and they're so impacted by this and tears at night you know a year ago of what is going to happen to me what is going to happen to my grandparents for all of these kids to then just have their world shook up from and shuttle from grade to grade from sorry from school to school it just it seems rushed and it seems just unfair to them and not beneficial in any way to their social emotional or academic well-being again my kids have been virtual until april 19th um

153i'm very fortunate that they were very good in what they needed doing what they needed to do but i know there are kids who didn't even log on to the computers not just in our district but around the country and it just it really seems like this is not the time to do this and i would appreciate the board's consideration in pushing it off a year and you know letting our kids have this full year of readjustment back into school like my kids haven't had homework my kids have not had homework in a year and a half none how do they balance learning again how to do homework with their extracurriculars and their clubs when at even from fifth grade to sixth grade that's a big jump on a normal year let alone post pandemic

154year and then to then have those sixth graders move to churchill with an entirely different schedule and environment without that small house feeling that they get it at um hammershould it's just a lot on our children and i will leave it with that thank you for listening thank you for your time i just wish that i i just hope that the board listens to the community um in thinking that this put it off a year thank you for your feedback and thanks for being here mr juliana it's um 906. how many other people do we have in the queue we have uh six people in the queue okay i'd like to i'd like to entertain those six if we could if it's agreeable yep okay uh kim valdotta good evening hi um i guess let

155me let me start by saying i do have i i currently work over at churchill and i have a fifth grader in um over at irwin who has her own question uh let me start with that one it's an easy one she'd like to know should this proposal move forward at hammershowed with fifth and sixth grade would the house system be maintained yes okay nice easy one um my questions kind of relate more to churchill we've spoken right all right there's been a lot of discussion about the elementary school level and i i'll i'll speak to all third grade parents out there there's a big difference between third graders and fifth graders and i'll have to agree with dr velesti on the note that a lot of our fifth graders might they really could they're

156gonna they'll do wonderfully at a hammer shoulder in a hammer shoulder setting um my concern though is then is this three grade levels uh at churchill where currently we have two grades our eighth and ninth filling our school um and i understand 32 temporary classroom units are being constructed uh will these classroom units um and i you can't tell much from the images will they contain extra art rooms music rooms will will there be and are they strictly classroom locations are these rooms with sinks um because unlike in their elementary school where we have um our math clas and english classes can be taught in a standard room right um a lot of classes at churchill become much more specialized and have materials and equipment that is then necessary so are these are these tcus

157straight up classroom spaces or are they more specialized well so what you see as a representation right now is just a really um you know a block of space and we'll have to look at what the um what the opportunities are to build specialization into those i think i mentioned earlier that the science labs are one of the things that you know we we certainly can't but i certainly understand and talking about kim your area of specialization when you're talking about art rooms and things like that that you know you're going to need certain pieces of equipment there you're going to need a certain amount of space so the this is the footprint but the actual classroom design within that structure for specific classrooms hasn't been formalized yet because we would want to meet with

158you know teachers with representatives from the school um to determine what what that would look like and again you know as i mentioned it's going to be a temporary structure but we have it will not feel temporary in the fact that it does exist for probably five years so we want to make it um as accommodating as we can and to meet the needs of the of the district i began having conversations with mr hanus you know after we had talked about this at the board level we were going to go to the public and give this presentation so he's actively thinking about what this could look like in terms of how do we incorporate a new grade level at churchill with the temporary classroom units in the back of the building how do we

159do this with security how do we do lunch how to do the transitions of students within the building and still keep those students somewhat isolated and identifiable as seventh graders eighth graders and ninth graders so those are those are what the planning phase would be for uh this next year and that's what this next year is meant to give us uh to formalize all that so we could have those temporary classroom units designed and in place by august of 2022. okay so that you're you keep talking about this compartmentalization but they really that's going to be near impossible if they if any student whether it's a seventh grade wing at the tcus or a ninth grade wing and they're still exiting for uh i'll take lunch for example we are in this move to block

160scheduling losing a lunch period with two grades we will be crowded now with three grades will there be a new lunch room will there be an all-purpose area for for the for them to eat in yeah we're exploring uh to be able to expand the the footprint for where lunch is served uh in the school that's one option we're looking at right now um and we have some some options to consider there and there's no doubt and you mention it uh there's going to be i can't guarantee that seventh graders won't see the eighth graders won't see the ninth graders there but to the extent that we can through scheduling we would try to optimize uh you know keeping them within their select peer groups uh for as long as we can and but there

161is gonna be they're gonna be transitions where the students are going to interact with each other so that come on i'm sorry we have somebody else i'm sorry did you hear me yeah okay so um yeah that we we have those opportunities but i think we have a uh opportunity to sit down and discuss how we can how we can do this and do it the best way possible okay and is there intention for um our phys ed classes i'm picturing i can shoot some of our ninth graders tower above me i'm picturing a separator in the locker room changing next to a ninth grader for phys ed class or is that something that yeah we're trying to keep those kinds of things separated so because we know of the the social um the maturity

162and yeah it's physical too you see that typical as i mentioned earlier in a even a six seven eight middle school configuration the sixth graders by time they become eighth graders they they seem like they've grown a foot sometimes yes um and then i suppose i have one more question i think just one it's late um parking yes we are pretty tight as it is uh will we be building new parking lots we will have to have some kind of temporary parking structure in the back of the building probably that's that's probably a consideration to look at okay that's it that's all i got for you all right thank you so much okay next is tony tang hi mr moloski i have two questions the one is all students requires to come in person to

163school at upcoming uh for september yes the question too is even though they don't have a version for covenanting i'm sorry could you repeat your second question even though they what even they don't they don't have the machine for kobe 19 correct no the this is i'm only i'm i'm telling you what we're being told by the governor and the department of education that there are not going to be considerations for uh remote learning in september of 2021 that we will all be back the i i am hearing that pfizer is asking for um emergency use um to be able to administer their their vaccine to students 12 and older um i'm not endorsing a vaccine by the way i'm just i'm just sharing the information i just the governor has not given any provision

164for any remote learning at this point we're being told by the department education to expect to come back to work back to school in september under normal conditions but as i mentioned we will probably have to continue to wear masks for a while and we will continue our safe protocols throughout the day in terms of cleaning which we we've already we've already done and we continue to do um but um yeah that's that's the direction we're being told by the state okay uh next we have yelina sores hi i just wanted to say thank you so much for having this forum and for listening to everybody um even past nine o'clock my kids are in pre-k and in second grade so i really just came here to listen and to learn more and hear everybody's

165opinions and what you had to say um i did think i heard you say to a parent um that you are well that the lines for the elementary schools um may be redrawn and people who are on the edges of those lines may have their elementary schools changed is that true is my child possibly going to be ripped out of their elementary school and switch to a different one no so what we would do is we would identify the um uh the attendance areas we've already kind of identified those and looking at how we could over time make that transition so by one of the approaches would be to grandfather the students that are already in school and as new students come into the school then if you're in a certain enrollment area you'd be

166assigned to your new school are are you know already with this plan we're talking about i've heard very clearly from parents about the transition and about the disruption in terms of the pandemic uh the last thing we want to do is to just say okay one year like we just changed you live across the street you go to this school the person across the street goes to a different school we're trying to correct these anomalies that have existed for years and this might be an opportunity to do it but for this group of children we would have the opportunity to do the soft transition and to be able to do this over periods of time so you wouldn't be removed from your school you continued to go there and then the new students enrolled would

167be aligned with without school got it thank you so much i appreciate it you're welcome sorry about that uh next we have max caponegro mr caponegro yes uh we're right here i'm sorry hey how's it going good how are you good good so um i have a question about churchill since uh kids will be coming in uh seventh grade will the sports programs be expanded as a result of having seventh graders with eighth graders we are looking at that yes to see what opportunities we could offer our seventh graders okay all right is that it yep i think that was it okay okay next we have uh nathan gibson hello how are you doing today how are you all right i'm doing well thanks for fielding uh messages after um hours one um i just

168have a couple questions one we know that social emotional learning is like key in this day and age right now given the pandemic um and with the toll being taken on students with anxiety a high level of depression and mental health is there a plan to introduce any extra assistance um and if so what does that look like actually there is and we we actually began this process before the pandemic and thank you for asking that question um we we engaged with a company called effective school solutions um and actually dr figueroa made a presentation at the board of education at last meeting uh and it was basically a report card of where we were with the work that we're doing with them to identify you know inclusion multicultural inclusion in our schools but we

169are still doing a variety of work with social emotional support behind the scenes uh and getting ready as as we return in september uh to ramp that up um as we get uh back in schools so that's been a singular focus and and we we got ahead of it uh and knew this was um an issue um even before the pandemic but the pandemic as you mentioned has accelerated this and has really um amplified some of those situations so i think we are well positioned the board was very supportive and very proactive about uh making that a budget priority and um you know i i think that we have those supports in place and we'll continue to put resources and personnel and money into those programs to make sure that we meet the needs of

170those students and if and as we see that on roll this beginning of this next school year we remain flexible and adaptable to to meet whatever needs come our way uh so we can make sure that our students are poised for success as they re-enter schools this next year okay um just a follow-up today um effective school solutions is good um i work with that at my school i'm also assistant principal okay um one of the things that i am asking that's a program um with the addition of new students coming into the building and the influx of more students um are as a district are we looking at bringing in more social workers counselors that deal with just overall mental health in the building um we had actually we've expanded our our counseling uh

171departments and we did that a number of years ago so and i know some of our counselors are online here tonight and they do a phenomenal job with our students but we have we're going to be putting our students in touch with resources that and through effective school solutions to to deal with that social emotional and mental health component and we are we are posed this year our poise this year to to put more resources in our budget toward that for the uh the 20 uh 21 22 school year okay and then the last follow-up question last question i follow up um i did hear you say that you're looking at trying to make sure that things are compartmentalized but then i also heard you say that um the students still have to move with

172everyone for part of the day for different sections and things of that sort how is that going to be accomplished with um gym extracurricular activities to give the younger kids this smaller the same opportunities that they would have had at the elementary school or at the middle school you know that they'll be able to compete sorry about that yeah they'll still be able to compete that's okay i i think you mean in terms of uh competing at in terms of pe athletic type things or correct okay um you know we're going to look at at scheduling and it's going to be part of this is a logistical uh you know puzzle in terms of figuring out the schedule and movement of students and and you know as an administrator that you know scheduling is a

173is a huge component of any building very it can be very complex but i think um you know that this comes down to the culture too of the staff and i'm very proud of our churchill staff and what they've accomplished and i i think that we have the ability to create a a very successful new model uh under mr hanes's leadership and i i think we'll provide the opportunities for students that parents a year after supplemented will be very pleased with and very excited about for their students and i think that we have we are blessed with a really great security team so when it comes to moving around the building we're not just talking about our certificated staff that's actually monitoring students in the building we have a we have a number of uh

174security professionals who have really worked hard to build relationships with students and um that they're phenomenal they they they help the building run smoothly they know the students they they watch over them they're protective of them and they are an integral part of how our buildings operate transitions today through east brunswick public schools and i'm really proud of that um so once again thank you for um even fielding questions after hours um and i do know that once you go to the board the decision is basically already met they're just looking over to make sure there's no major kinks in the system but would there be any plans in the future to make sure you incorporate more parents um in the process so that we'll be able to have firsthand knowledge instead of waiting until

175it's like basically hey it's coming at you and this is happening next year type things well our plan is to really involve the community from this point on to start having forums at different schools and to be able to talk about what this process looks like and to be able to answer any subsequent questions from parents this is not i don't want parents to look at tonight as a once and done this is the beginning of a new communication and all of you know from living in east brunswick that you know we started the pandemic and i was communicating with you at least twice a week and sometimes more than that um i know he's communicating a lot because people were complaining got tired of hearing my voice so now we're down to about once

176a week but the plan is throughout this next school year is to be able to create forums at schools and to be able to talk to parents about these specific components as we we talked about implementing if the board moves this process forward then that will be the next phase is to involve parents and community and to begin these really um these interactive conversations and continue them just like we did tonight to answer questions and talk about the you know what the plan for it is and and how we get to that next step okay thank you you're certainly welcome thanks for being here and uh we have melissa smith oh good evening i just had two things is you said there's no space available for new school right but did you look into adding

177up like adding like on the existing schools can you add a second floor we did and you know they um that again would would be uh multiple components around it multiple schools but it doesn't result in the kind of space that we are going to need over the longer hall it becomes more of a uh five to ten year fix and then you're back to having the same problem again yeah because i know i lived in north jersey and like when i went to school was k through eight and our building was three floors high like three floors high i noticed the ones in east brunswick were generally flat they're only one floor yeah we actually had the architects draw up uh this was um mr giuliana you remember how many years ago we had

178the architects draw plans for multiple story additions to the elementary schools was it three years ago or two well we had we had that examined um several i think was several years ago however um the issue with many of the elementary schools is that they were not built to be able to sustain a second floor right so there are foundational issues on most of the um if not all the elementary schools that are single story schools okay and where we did we looked at building these modular components that were multiple stories and tucking them into corners of schools um but then once you start talking about the elevator components and those kinds of things the actual number of classrooms that you get and we looked at you know our forecast out in the beginning to

179trend out where we were it it would have been you know in the community's eyes a short-term short-term or a 10-year short-term solution and then you'd have been back we're overcrowded again so what what we're presenting to the board we think is the uh beginning phase phase one and phase two are the longer um phases that will sustain each bronzer through it's its next iteration and honestly if you build a new building or modify or renovate the existing high school we are talking about a building that would have a sustainable life if it's well maintained for 50 years so now the high school it's not going to become an issue a couple of years from now saying it's still not going to we're going to need more space for the high school so all these

180kids are going to eventually go up yes no if we were to address the high school we would not have a high school issue um and you know and you know some of the features that with new building technology and energy efficiency we've looked at that in terms of what the high school could look like it could be a smaller footprint it could be as you mentioned uh could be more stories uh it could be um you know could be designed around our program our existing program which should be phenomenal because our curriculum has changed a lot since that building was originally constructed and renovated and added to um yes i know east brunswick was originally the high school was only one floor and then they added that secretary yeah it was a california campus

181where they had you actually went outside to change classes at one time and we have board members that recall going to school um during that time and you know we're alone here at east brunswick so they recall it well um but no i think that that really becomes the uh the secondary question this phase two question is about community support for that and what the board would like to um to do with that next phase so those are decisions to be made yet but those are opportunities that we can you know certainly investigate and then my second question was i missed the very very beginning so i just want to know with these um trailers how about the safety and is there bathrooms that's the only two really like the safety is there gonna be

182the safety like i feel very secure when they're inside of the building but when they're in a trailer how secure are they in that trailer from classroom to classroom like from the trailer to another trailer well actually they are um i don't use the term trailer they're modular units but they they attach together and so what they do is um think of it not so much as a trailer if you could ma have you ever seen a house that was constructed in a factory no so they're actually they're actually builders that actually take and build components of really impressive homes and they build them inside under control conditions and they move them to the site and they assemble them so it when it's all done it looks like a house that was a stick build

183house that was built in the foundation up these are modules that are tied together would have an internal classroom so once they're in this module the students would have their own hallway this connected hallway that would go around to the classrooms and yes they would have their own restroom facilities for male and female okay okay and then what about the security security would be deployed there just like with the regular schools and they would these units would have to be would have to meet all the safety standards established under the code of the township under the building code and they are built uh under the national codes for safety and securities they'd be tied into our security system fire alarm system um they'd be set on you know foundational peers they'd be anchored to the

184ground they wouldn't look like they were they were movable at all um and so once they're done they would look like a permanent structure but they would so now would you have security though in the building like you do in the high school and in the grant okay we would have security deployed uh there um just like we do in a regular school so they that becomes an extension of the school and and um our security team would uh monitor and oversee that as well okay thank you for answering my questions you're welcome and have a great night you too mr giuliana do you have anybody else we're done thank you very much everyone for coming tonight i really appreciate the feedback the input and taking the time tonight share your opinions i know the

185board of education appreciates it too and um you know they'll be listening to your comments before the uh the board meeting this this uh coming thursday so um have a great night everyone and uh we'll talk to you soon and just one reminder for all um you may submit additional questions on the district website on the main page there is a section entitled restructuring plan and you can submit questions uh therefore which will be added to the q a thank you mr julian have a great night everyone you