001here we go i'd like to call this meeting to order due to the covid19 health emergency and in order for the board of education to conduct its business this board meeting is being held via video conference and streamed live on youtube on the district website at www.ebnet.org in addition members of the public may provide common at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password you see before you on the screen upon joining the meeting your participation will be muted to ensure there is no disruption to the business being conducted by the board of education what the secretary please call the role mr carangelo here mrs chu here mr sismar here mrs guasts here mr hong yeah this is lex here this is reese here mr winston here president becker here we
002have a quorum please rise to salute the flag i pledge allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] the new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed in accordance with the provisions of this act the east brunswick board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published at the board of education offices also written notice was provided to the sentinel the newark star ledger the whole news in tribune and the municipal clerk of east brunswick all board of education meetings with the exception
003of executive executive session discussions are videotaped for later broadcasts and individuals who speak at the board's public meeting should be aware of these videotaping rules good evening thanks for joining us tonight we'll start off with the superintendent's report thank you president becker good evening everyone yesterday the district ran a covet vaccination clinic at hammershould middle school under the direction of deborah millar director of community outreach and engagement for penn medicine princeton health together we successfully administered the first dose of the vaccination to over 80 district employees and 50 east brunswick residents in under three hours we are grateful to team brunswick nurses sso's custodians all who provided logistical support ensuring a successful clinic our second dose clinic for those individuals takes place on may 5th i also want to say something that something of this
004magnitude was not achievable without the terrific support i enjoy i want to give thanks to daniel ruggiero director of human resources and her hr coordinator stephanie podobiki as well as my secretary janet angeline and my executive assistant karen mandler they were on site with me greeting managing coordinating and finally soliciting replacements for anyone who didn't keep their assigned appointment this event was formalized in only a few days and every available vaccine was administered and i'm so proud of these ladies they never hesitate to be on the front lines of anything initiated from my office and no one could have ever forecasted that we would be in the vaccination business but yesterday we were and these ladies along with all those from penn medicine did it with eb excellence we were notified this week that the
005new jersey department of education or by the new department of education that the new jersey student learning assessment also known as the njsla will not be administered this year east brunswick public schools will use alternate assessment measures to comply with njdo's requirements so that's good news for us because the management of administering that assessment for both our in-person and our virtual learners was going to be a massive undertaking in terms of resources manpower and safety the churchill junior high school drama club is having a virtual spring performance entitled whose kid is it anyway this comedy improv show features songs skits games and tons of laughter it is a family friendly content that everyone will enjoy performances will stream april 15th through april 18th at 7 pm and tickets are available for and fifty cents and
006can be purchased at cjhs.book ticks that's b-o-o-k-t-i-x dot com and all proceeds are being donated to elijah's promise of new brunswick a very worthy cause third quarter report cards can be viewed online through parent access on friday april 23rd hard copies will be made available at the request of anyone without internet access thank you thank you dr velesky now i believe that you have a presentation for us we do um we have uh mr giuliana and i have a facilities presentation and um so if you will um i'll do the introduction and um if you'd like we'll go ahead and get started the pandemic interrupted our state of the district address that i normally deliver to our community each may before the conclusion of the school year in tonight's presentation entitled building our success is
007an abbreviated version of some of the elements i would have presented to the community in our district's efforts to remain transparent about planning for critical and time-sensitive projects that are focused on improving every student's experience at east brunswick public schools additionally tonight we are going to address the additional state aid we receive this year because it too is time sensitive we will explain how much discretionary money we actually received and how that funding is allocated to a variety of operational expenses this year secondly we will also talk about our elementary class size growth and elementary classroom capacities we revised our recommended facilities approach to address the immediate intermediate and longer term problems we need to solve we concentrated on layering sequential facility solutions in a timely and methodical way that affords the highest impact for
008every student's educational quality and experience these solutions need to be implemented within a reasonable time frame while still maintaining a strong focus on efficiency and cost containment tonight's facilities portion of the presentation is about what we need to do how we are planning to do it and when the community can expect for it to be done and this is actually surrounded by three distinct priorities one is to build sustainable elementary classroom capacity in all in all elementary schools focus on equity across elementary schools and contain costs to minimize the tax impact burden on township residents and so just to provide a perspective on march 18th 2020 when we closed our schools because of covet 19 we immediately re-envisioned what instruction could look like and what it would need to be because we didn't have a
009choice we were motivated by external circumstances we could not control our success was evident because we had invested years of thoughtful planning and preparedness into how we would and could virtualize teaching and learning so in many ways that scenario is about to replay itself we know the migration of families to east brunswick is real resales of existing east brunswick properties are bringing more families with school-age children we know they are coming for our schools and unfortunately the window for planning and preparing for our anticipated increase in student enrollment especially at the elementary level is quickly shrinking it has been over a year since the beginning of the pandemic and virtualization of academics health and safety in our schools and now vaccinations have been our priorities but we have never lost ground in our facilities planning
010that began many years ago so taking you back to one year ago we were about to implement a board approved plan to install temporary classroom units also known as tcus at warren storefor and irwin elementary schools to address elementary classroom capacities enrollment growth projections from a demographic study that was presented to the board of education in july of 2019 tonight's presentation represents the culmination of our past year of replanting involving six essential but negotiable elements first is space how much of it do we need second is placement where do we need that space and other facility features third is integration how does this plan that we are presenting tonight fit into our existing facility structure and future facility needs then communication that is what tonight is about and many of you have gotten to know
011me but you probably recognize my voice more than my face that is part of our communication this board of education is committed to being transparent and i'm simply the mechanism that gets to deliver the messages to our community but that communication about our facilities planning is so important it's important for every community member it's also intended to solidify the trust and partnership we have and continue to build among the schools the township and of course our greater community we have to worry about the environment that our teaching and learning will occur in and even athletic spaces how will they support our students real world preparedness how will our facilities support daily occupancy and something we didn't think about a year ago but what post pandemic facility issues will we need to address with any temporary
012or future facilities and finally security something that this district has worked very hard at we're very proud of the security force that we've created but what security design opportunities present themselves with any new facility or newly added additions to existing facilities so to add more color to each of these overviews that i've opened with i'm going to turn over to mr giuliana who has a presentation aligned with this thank you dr valeski firstly i wanted to address part of what you mentioned with regard to state school aid this is an excerpt of information that i had presented during the tentative budget adoption so there are selection selected uh aspects that i think are important for the community to understand this first slide represents the history of state aid going back to fiscal 2009 but a
013particular focus is fiscal 2021 and you see that there are two numbers identified there firstly when we adopted a final budget that budget was adopted with the states having state having notified the district that we would be receiving 22.2 million dollars in state aid everything was in place we were moving forward with that budget implementation however due to the pandemic and subsequent to implementing the final budget the state reduced the state aid levels to 20 million 500 000 in order to continue with the plan we had to bridge the gap of that lost revenue the budget was already struck everything was in motion and so while there's been discussion with regard to the increase in state aid what's been publicized has been that increase in state aid from the 20.5 million up to next year's
01425.8 million but it's important to note that while we had to bridge that gap in the current year we had continuing costs that were would carry forward and could not be eliminated so what comprises those amounts with regard to state aid so we had a custodial and transportation savings from the covid uh closures that amounted to 94 940 000 we had enterprise revenue that we were able to tap into retained earnings of approximately 790 dollars those two components alone were one-time impacts we had those sources of revenue once they would not repeat themselves now looking forward collective bargaining and contractual base salary commitments that amounts to approximately 2.59 million dollars our projected net health benefit cost approximately two hundred thousand dollars transportation services will increase approximately three hundred forty thousand dollars facilities maintenance five hundred
015and sixty thousand dollars charter schools it will increase by four hundred and twenty thousand dollars and insurance will increase by approximately one hundred thousand dollars those budgetary impacts alone are 5.94 million dollars we can't talk about state aid and those cost effects without reminding the community of the impact that the charter school has had upon the district's budget you see historically where we've come since 2009 when our levels were at under ten thousand dollars to now where we are budgeting for next year 3.6 million dollars that's a substantial portion of the district budget that comes almost entirely out of the base and is an amount that we are required to budget and pay out to mostly to the charter school in town so with that i hope that provides a little color with regard to
016state aid let me move into the facilities discussion having a minor technical difficulty here so just bear with me please there we go so building our success let's begin with reviewing our enrollment for pre-k to five historical and projected this is precisely out of the demographers report that was presented in july of 201 2019 so what we have here are the actual enrollments from 2009 10 through 2018-19 you see that the high point was back in 2009-10 we had a slight decrease over a number of years and then starting to move back up in our enrollment projections showing that our enrollment would continue to steadily rise from 2019-20 on through 2023-24 to a high of 3935 students and this is strictly at the elementary level the projected enrollment increase would be 372 students when we
017look at the high point of 2009 to just next year in the 2022-23 school year when we look another year out that projected enrollment increases 400 411 students from 2009-10 to the 2023 school year this is the equivalent of one entire elementary school so what are the issues and the considerations that we've had to deal with and address in our planning firstly we currently have no available classrooms at the elementary schools we have limitations on meeting additional special needs requirements we have no space for adding additional self-contained classrooms or spaces for supports our art classrooms are now relegated out to a cart in some instances and music classrooms no longer are available in some cases need to address school security with any plan that we put in place we looked at expansions to existing elementary
018school buildings and how that would impact the site configurations because not all of our elementary sites would be able to support additional classroom spaces being added in addition the impact to neighborhood traffic is a key issue by adding uh space onto each of the elementary schools we're bringing additional traffic into that community and how would that then adversely affect the community of course we want to minimize the fiscal impact and come up with a plan that would uh actually be the best cost-effective plan and the durability of any expansions meaning that anything that we do would need to last a long time we don't want a band-aid approach we want something that's going to last be durable and address the needs for an extended period of time into the future so as we look at
019our school structure our elementary schools are k to five hammer shoulders six to seven churchill grades eight through nine and the high school grades 10 through 12. a revised school structure would enable us to create space at the elementary schools by transforming the elementary schools into a k to four grade structure the fifth grade would move to hammer schold making that a grade 5 6 structure at churchill we would move the 7th grade up and that would be a 3 grade level school with 7 8 and 9 and the high school would remain at a 10 12 configuration how would that look this is a architect's rendering of the addition of 32 temporary classroom units at churchill junior high school that would be behind the north annex configured in such a way that it provides
020direct access to and from the north annex and if we uh drill down into what those temporary classroom units and to the configuration of those here we can see that those units would be configured in such a way that we would have an entire interior corridor providing access by students and staff on the interior of a building there would be no travel outside the building except for those instances where students and staff travel from the tcus into the main building and vice versa in order to address the security aspects of that certainly we would be adding security and reallocating security personnel to those locations to help ensure uh the safety of our students and staff these units are also self-contained in that they provide for restroom facilities right within the units so at the lower
021part of that upside down you configuration are boys and girls restrooms on either leg and to address what they might look like these are some examples of today's modern tcus you can see that they're indistinguishable from what would be in a brand new building so as we go back to the issues and the considerations we addressed through this plan the availability of classrooms addressed the special needs requirements art and music we address school security we limit impact to neighborhood traffic we minimize the fiscal impact where we would be uh focusing our work at one location and not affecting multiple elementary schools this is adorable and lasting solution and with regard to those other two items in terms of the expansion to existing elementary schools and the limitations to the site configurations at those schools those
022issues go away so what would need to occur during the month of april and perhaps into may we would need plan approval from the board in the period of july through september applications would need to be submitted to the department of education for temporary classroom units concurrently from july and then into december and these again are rough estimates of timelines we would have to prepare tcu specifications and award contract by june of 2022 the goal is to have the tcus installed at churchill and by september of 2022 the tcus would be occupied and the revised grade configuration would be in place and that concludes the presentation on building our success dr valeski you're muted doctor sorry so president thank you mr giuliani president becker and i apologize i've probably been one of the people that's
023watched and smiled every time somebody's muted themselves and said oops i'm muted so i i'm doing it too um so did you want to open up for any questions or were there questions from the board took the words right out of my mouth um is there anybody who has any questions or comments i i actually had um a question uh just a clarification going back to um what you said at the very beginning of the presentation bernie um when you talked about a one-time offset to bridge the gap for funds um that resulted when the state cut our budget in june i think it was after it had been approved or made it actually uh the budget was uh finalized in may and then the state uh provided us with additional information i believe it
024was in july so just trying to do the numbers because i think that um it you were right when you said that people are probably curious so if there was almost an additional or an increase of 5 million that 5 million really isn't an additional 5 million dollars in funds because of that chart you laid out which included the offset that we needed to make up the gap last year that that was a one-time offset so going forward any other budget could not include those funds as revenue and also the other items you listed that were all going up and i think that brought us to 5.4 if i'm going remembering by your slide 5.94 million nearly 6 million dollars right so i just i just wanted to make sure that that was clear and
025able to be understood user-friendly if you will sometimes we work so closely with these things we might use terminology that isn't as familiar to everyone but i think that uh the point bernie again um is that it was not really a five million dollar increase if you will right um i mean we can look at this in a couple of ways and you know if we look at it from the point of uh originally starting out with a state aid level of uh 22.2 million dollars for the current year we were cut at roughly 1.6 million dollars 1.7 million somewhere in there after the budget was struck that that differential was made up by those one-time revenue sources the savings from custodial transportation the um the um retained earnings from our enterprise operations uh so
026either way that we look at where we are those funds are accounted for we did not have um you know additional funds that that would have um allowed us to do anything but balance the budget um had we not received the increase in state aid we'd actually be looking at making substantive reductions in the budget and for that kind of differential we'd be looking at staff there's no question about it and the second item uh that you mentioned the what we were able to pull out of the enterprise fund primarily for jm pack rentals uh other facility rentals fields our other our gyms our indoor gyms etc that that are basically every building is used um seven days a week um would could you speak for a minute about the impact that the pandemic has
027had on that revenue absolutely so uh whether it's the community programs enterprise or facility use and the major part of our revenue and facility use comes from the performing arts center at hammerschool middle school during the period of pandemic those functions for community programs has have been extremely limited in that the only services that could be provided are virtual services um and with regard to facilities use that has been completely non-existent so during uh this current school year we've actually and part of last year we have been functioning uh by essentially dipping into uh those reserves to keep those operations going as much as possible uh paying for um the cost of those operations even though the operations were not fully uh in place and um because we were not generating revenues we've essentially almost
028exhausted the availability of the reserve so we're going to have to take some time moving forward to rebuild thank you thank you anyone else any comments questions i'm not seeing anybody's hand oh i see a hand uh jeff then leewoo um bernie bernie or victor talk to me uh from the parents perspective of how this transition would would be for uh for a student say in third or fourth grade i say third grade for that matter so with this change in this time frame happened to the to the point where happened right away is there a transitionary phase that they'll go through is there a grandfathering of sorts or would simply fifth grade no longer be uh in in the future for that third or fourth grader at the elementary school um that they go
029to currently yeah um go bernie let me go and i'll let you follow up um mr winston you know what we would do is we would take a look at our capacity at that time we would want to make this a soft approach in terms of transition of grades and by doing that if we had the availability and parents were you know felt passionate about maintaining that fifth grade presence at an elementary school we were able to do that that's something we would certainly consider there may be parents who want to have their children make the transition uh if the board approved this plan to go on up to hammershould but i believe we have the ability uh since we're talking about um you know a year from now more than we're september of 22
030uh so we've got about 14 15 months here of real real planning uh but at that time we would have the availability to to do a softer rollout i believe did you want to follow on that no not at this time okay all right and then and just a follow-up to that then uh and i'm sure this has been considered what what have you found out either data driven uh or independently on um you know so lack of a better word psychological impact uh now the new combination of of ages is there perhaps a benefit buried in here that makes more sense from element uh the elementary being reduced down to the fourth grade i mean what are your thoughts on that i know it's an intangible but is there anything around that that you
031could speak to yeah there's there's a lot of science on on a lot of fronts about the groupings of students um there have been uh you know historically a lot of models where were middle school uh was built around a six seven eight grade configuration a lot of districts adopted that model for a number of years uh but there is such a disparity between the the emotional and intellectual growth of a sixth grader versus an eighth grader and so in the same building you have two distinctly human beings i mean they grow so fast over that three year period too so you you see students who are literally you know standing over top of other students in the same same building um but there there is i think there's a benefit to this plan in
032that one of the things that we've looked at for a number of years is the transition from fifth grade to sixth grade from our elementary schools to hammershaw and there i i've heard from more parents anecdotally about their own experiences their children's experiences in moving to hammershould and what that transition what the difficulty that transition is there there certainly is a greater emphasis at hammershould about independence and responsibility and that's reinforced by the administration there um i think there's by doing the shift and having a five six configuration hammer shoulder i think once again we are able to make a softer transition at that fifth grade year even though it would be at hammershow and have fifth sixth grade i think are more tightly aligned than than potentially six seven are and so because in
033a lot of character or a lot of districts sixth grade is still considered an elementary grade and not treated as a middle school grade so there's no exact science you can look for research that will support either position but i but i do think in terms of that transition from elementary school to middle school i think this would have um some benefits to our students and to their families did that answer your question it did uh yeah and and i'm curious to see how that unfolds now something the last thing i want to ask about was in the configuration that you would shown where the tcus are going to be placed i do understand their self-contained units but i also see a gap between the u configuration and the main facility which would be housing
034things like uh lunch gym things like that so on that uh as the premise of this question uh one uh i i imagine what would be the transit what is the physical transition from the building to the main facility and two how do you address the security concerns of the position of that unit or the u unit i'll just call it as one unit uh where it is laid out based on how churchill is configured uh leading out to i forget the name was that root street or whatever whatever street that is behind uh yes so the the perimeter of that um that structure would be secured by security fencing so that that that is an imperative that has to be contained uh it would not be free standing on the middle of the field
035but uh right now the plan would be not to attach physically attach the structure to a building just to have sidewalks out of those those exits from the back of churchill on the the back side of the north side not not to bring it up and attach it to the building bernie i don't know the exacts on this but i assume there's going to be a variety of fire code issues and fire marshal approvals to do this and one of the things that um that has a direct impact in terms of uh the separation uh between the two um the the main facility and the tcus is the fact that there is a fire access road that runs behind the school and that has to be maintained so we realized this is this is a
036this is not a perm i want to emphasize this is not a permanent solution this is a semi-permanent but durable solution and i want to be completely candid with the community that temporary classrooms uh really start the planning for some kind of a permanent structure to replace them and but that that be that allows us the time to thoughtfully plan and begin to think about how we're going to finance such an endeavor [Music] but but it does immediately address our capacity issues in our elementary schools and as mr giuliana stated it addressed all of the elements that he put forth in that slide presentation uh by by freeing up space uh at the elementary level and building this out at um at church hall jeff what you good okay uh i have uh lee woo
037and then heather so bernie uh thank you very much for the beautiful uh presentation when the community uh understands that this claim will temporarily answer our the classroom and teaching space demand but if possible can you talk about the financial impact to the community or if this is too early for you to answer this question you know you don't have to but at the end of the day the community will say hey how can those guys get the money to put those tcus in place so i understand that and i i don't i right now i'm working off of estimates and i don't like putting estimates out i'm hoping that by the next board meeting i may be able to address that more solidly so if you can hold off until the next board meeting
038i'll be happy to bring that up at that time yeah i'm very happy to hold off thank you thank you heather well thank you for the presentation it clarifies a lot of reasons why we need to make these changes obviously for numbers and to keep our class sizes at the level that we expect which is just better for instruction and better for our students so that's fantastic i do like the placement of the tcus i was looking at them as mr winston was talking and i just i think that the use structure is such a wise idea because i just picture that it's better for security than if we had a longer structure or children entering and exiting from more places and there seems to just be one point of egress and from a safety
039standpoint that seems to be a much better option um i wanted to ask though about hammershaw dr goleski if we're moving the fifth graders up to hammershould will they have the opportunity to have the wider range of electives that were offered at hammershowed previously to the sixth and seventh grader yeah sixth and seventh graders um because there are a lot more electives and the cycle classes that the students there have always been able to have or will they still be just keeping with the previous fifth grade curriculum i think we have the opportunity to re-envision what fifth grade looks like and i'm going to ask dr bolli to weigh in here too because um you know it's it's not about the grade it's about the opportunity this presents for us to give our students a
040better experience and so while while the primary focus has been and and the driver has been actual classroom capacity the the real planning over this last year has been to refine this and say okay if we're going to do this we know we need to do this there this is this is ultimately not going to be under our control we're going to outgrow our buildings how can we make that experience for every single student that we have the ability to touch better than it is right so dr bully do you want to weigh in yeah certainly so i agree with what you said and um i think it's exciting it's a great opportunity if we do move forward in this direction to reimagine what our fifth grade uh students experiences um considering keeping the house
041model for them and offering you know like you said mr squash the the cycle opportunities the elective opportunities and really building out um you know a very solid and cohesive educational program for them in that state-of-the-art facility you know what's what's interesting i just i just thought of this a couple of years ago as we opened school we had a um a significant event at frost elementary school that caused us to close the school the very first day and we all of the bathroom facilities were unable to be used we we got all of the students on buses we took them to hammershould and they got to spend the rest of the day at hammershow they were in the jm pack and i remember escorting children especially the male children to the all the male
042children to the to the restroom and overseeing that activity so that was that was pretty interesting conversation and i can't tell you the number of fifth graders from frost who would look around the building and go i can't wait to be here so you know at fifth grade they were they were emotionally and socially and intellectually ready to go up to that building to exert their independence and and it was fun to watch there they some of them had probably been in with the older siblings from their family but being in there by themselves now that this being the school they were occupying for that day it was like some of them were like yeah if i had the choice i would just stay right here so it was kind of interesting thank you i
043i just i like the idea i'm always in favor of more opportunities and more electives for our students so i do think it's exciting to be able to offer them possibly the number of cycle classes and electives that we've been able to offer the students at hammershould in the past i know as a parent my own students that went through hammer shoulder what they came away from was the cycle classes made them aware of things that they had talents for or things they enjoyed that they had had no idea about and both of them said they wish they had known that earlier that they would have done more of that so it's definitely a plus for them and thank you so much thank you heather um lori had a question yeah i just had a
044quick logistical question for the tcus so i love that everything is self-contained and the pictures certainly look nicer than the trailers that i remember my only question is will there be differences in the passing time like one of the problems that we had with churchill was the ping pong kids that went from one end to this school to the other so i get that everything is self-contained but in terms of going for lunch or for gym or for um you know any any reason they go into the building how will it impact the kids in terms of how much longer it will take them to get into the building do we have to revamp just that grades passing times or no misses this is this is part of a very stage we'll have we'll be
045involving um you know mr hanus and his administrative team uh to really look at this and and see what uh not only that issue the issues you you raise but any other logistical issues that we would need and of course with the addition of this kind of a grade structure we would have to have appropriate administrative support and grade level support uh in that complex as well um but those those are those are achievable uh so we will have to look at the structure how it supports those students uh and how we can build efficiencies and providing passing time and lunch all those things how how can we do that those questions we don't have all the answers to yet but they're they're certainly achievable thanks laurie is there anybody else whose hand who wants
046a comment question that i'm not saying okay um excellent presentation thank you very much dr velesky um when can the community uh expect updates from you and embellish uh build further on the details over the next school year are you going to plan maybe some town halls yes so we have as you can imagine we have a lot more work to do once the board gives us the approval to move forward with this with the tcus so we are we are hopeful that the circumstances will accommodate face-to-face presentations or group presentations at one of our facilities with maybe a live stream component so that parents who are unable to attend or don't feel comfortable attending uh can still hear what what's happening but i envision uh providing a series of many state of the district
047addresses the one i referred to that i typically would do in may and having a series of those over next school year beginning in september and going you know pretty aggressively through the year the school year uh to keep the community informed about what we're doing um what it's going to look like especially for those families who have students who will be impacted um and then of course keeping them abreast of the actual activity of of actually getting tcu set up on site and and timing and things like that so you know people will see activity so staying ahead of that and keeping people informed in in the same transparent way we've been through the covid crisis you know we've we've tried very hard to not not hide behind anything and be transparent about things
048that are affecting us in the community so we would handle this the same way and of course the key phrase there is you know what the climate allows in terms of in-person gatherings for the fall but it would be nice to think if we were able and we don't know obviously but if we were able to have any kind of a traditional in-person back-to-school night in september and october it might be a nice thing to have a table set up with um renditions of the slide presentation we just saw and somebody from the administration there um because it's it's kind of bringing it to where the parents will be anyway so allowing a good forum you know again if if we are able to have the uh in person back to school nights yes i
049agree okay um seeing no other barber is that a shadow or your hand or a halo a halo okay okay okay all right thank you again this brings us now to the good of the cause of the public members of the public may provide comments at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password that you see before you on the screen in order to be recognized use the chat feature select the zoom meeting host then enter and send your name to the host you will be recognized to speak when your name is called and individuals will be invited to speak in the order in which we have received your request the board of education recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the
050public to express themselves on school matters participants will be limited to three minutes duration is there anyone wishing to address the board tonight bernie there is no one in the queue okay seeing no one in the queue uh i close the public portion okay uh tonight's agenda there's one item on the board of education uh agenda can i please have a motion for that item mrs becker i'm sorry there are um three items oh yeah sorry one two three not looking at my notes need to wear my glasses more frequently on on their items one two and three may i please have a motion i'd like to combine items one two and three okay i need to do that again with my glasses on please who still moved jeff and libra second thank you is
051there any discussion all those in favor all right opposed stain motion carries under community programs can i please have a motion to combine items one through four second by jeff is there any discussion all those in favor pose motion carries curriculum and instruction can i please have a motion for items one through three move by lori ii by lee woo is there any discussion uh yeah okay so a lot of discussion i saw uh mark sismar susanna chu and barbara uh so we'll start with uh questions from those three mark suzanna barbara quick question on the curriculum minutes there was five courses new courses that were proposed and i see four on the agenda tonight was the fifth removed for for right now mr sismar yes there were concerns about yes thank you uh susanna
052and then barbara um yes so i missed the curriculum committee it's uh always a great discussion to hear you know more detail about the programs being offered so i was um the leadership program was kind of written up differently it was attached you know not with the write up so of of what type of course is it going to be so is it an elective full year part year so i just wanted to understand that one a little more yeah it will be an elective course um this was brought to the committee by dr vanilla building leaders for life is the name of the the course and we were just getting approval at the last meeting for the concept of the course the course still has to be built out it's grant funded but the
053course is a high school leadership class and um you know once that grant is approved he's going to go forth and form a little committee and have the actual curriculum written okay so so it's proposed to be a full year class or or not or we don't know yet i believe it'll be a full year class all right yes it looks great yeah i was just curious what was planned for it looks great thank you barbara that was my question i i thought it was a great class and i just wanted to hear more about it thank you jeff i believe i saw your hand up no is that ahead uh mr you hit it that was my question and uh there's a good one so thank you were there any other questions discussion okay
054this is a roll call vote with the secretary please call the roll mr carangelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs gwas yes mr hong yes mrs lax yeah mrs reese yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries on our facilities agenda there are two items can i please have a motion for items one and two is there any discussion uh susanna what unmute um uh yeah i just had a question about um it didn't explain in the addendum it's a increase of of the three custodians and i was just curious if that was related to additional cleaning protocols for covid or for some other reason uh it's to supplement where we're unable to fill positions okay thank you was there anyone else okay um all those in favor opposed abstain motion carries
055i'd like to combine items 1-13 on the financial services agenda but is there any item that anyone would like separated out seeing none i'd like to have a motion for items 1-13 on the financial services agenda so move jeff moved by jeff second second by mark ii is there any discussion okay this is a roll call vote will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs guass yes mr hong yes this is lex mrs reese yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries moving on to our human resources agenda can i please have a motion for item one move by laurie second by mark ii is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes this is true yes sismar yes mrs
056gwas yes mr hong yes this is lax yeah mrs reese yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries we have one item under staff development can i please have a motion for that item move by laurie second life mark ii is there any discussion all those in favor aye opposed obscene motion carries we have one item on our student services agenda can i please have a motion from that item ah move by lee will second by laurie is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr sismar yes this is guass yes mr hong yes mrs lex mrs reese yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries moving on to our committee reports information items and for the good of the cause for the
057board uh lou our student rep is not with us tonight okay um still recovering from spring break i guess okay uh committee items information items are the good of the cause of the board anybody have anything i see lee wu's hand so on march 24 uh the curricular committee had a great meeting you know five courses were proposed and four of five were approved and those four courses was approved by the board tonight another course i will have uh the further discuss him and then present to the board so i want to thank dr body and her team is very wonderful discussions and that those new courses will provide our students a lot of opportunity to prohibit propel them for the future and i want to thank dr paulie and her team and monday monday
058this monday three three days ago i went to uh kenneth's arms funeral ken was elected out of education of east uh peace gathway at age of 19 and he served as board member for 11 years it's very unfortunate he passed away at the age of 46. i'm very sorry for this big loss for k for the community that's all right thank you libra that was that was very well said anybody else susanna and then heather uh yeah i just wanted to let everyone know human relations counsel will be um hosting another um online event facebook live on april 20th at 7 30 pm uh the topic of this one is building bridges combating anti-asian racism uh in light of the um you know uptick in in violence against asians uh it's a it's a very
059um educational panel uh oriented towards you know understanding uh the issues and um really building bridges is the theme so you know how we work together to you know better understand each other and and understand uh the challenges that we each face uh so uh again what was the date again susanna april 20th at 7 30 pm and we could join um facebook live facebook live and uh it it does get recorded so it could be viewed afterwards but it's always great to have the live engagement and you know we can try to field some questions uh from from the audience uh when it's live and we'll be engaging we're working on engaging youth in this with uh the um east brunswick high school asian club so that still works great great yeah very important
060timely topic thank you heather i i think i saw your hand up yeah i wanted to thank the administrative team i had seen that following the attacks in atlanta that the district did post resources for families and for the community i also just wanted to say i recently noticed it changed and the links are not what they were when it first went up and i think it's a valuable resource for the community and for our students um for parents that are looking thank you we will make sure that it gets corrected okay anybody else have anything okay seeing none we do have a need for closed session the board of education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for discussion in a public meeting and whereas the board of education intends to discuss matters as
061follows those items in tonight's agenda the length of closed session is estimated to be one hour after which public meeting of the board shall reconvene and action will not be taken can i please have a motion to go into closed session so move jeff second by laurie is there any discussion all those in favor aye opposed abstain motion carries thank you good night board members please remember to leave this meeting and log into the closed session those watching tonight stay safe you