001somebody please mute themselves anybody who's on except for the board members please mute yourself who who is eagle nest will you please mute yourself thank you let's go shhh everybody i have 6 28 will begin in approximately two minutes uh okay is everybody on benny we have a complete head count i'm checking now bernie i just don't see jeff yeah i don't i don't either he's the only one oh he's coming back in now okay we'll give jeff a minute we're waiting for you jeff get yourself settled no worries yeah i'm on my daughter's laptop um let me just um make a note also before we begin the meeting because i've got um uh one of the members of the public is asking with regard to um engaging in a q a the board meeting
002is not for a question and answer session certainly members of the public will be able to offer comment during the public session but it's not an opportunity to engage in questions and answers that is not the intent of the board meeting okay jeff you good to go uh give me one 30 seconds i need to no worries no worries i had a lot of problems vlogging on tonight too i'm just getting power to this thing see if i can do it cyrus uh all right i'm set okay you can hear me yep can hear you okay okay everybody i'd like to call this meeting to order due to the confide 19 health emergency and in order for the board of education to conduct its business this board meeting is being held video conference and streamed
003live via youtube on the district website at www.ebnet.org in addition members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoom by educating into your web browser the following meeting id and password upon joining the meeting your participation will be muted to ensure that there is no disruption to the business being conducted by the board of education will the secretary please call the role mrs chu here mr sismar here mrs gloss here mr hong here mrs lax here mrs reese here mr simmons mr winston here president becker here we have a quorum please rise to salute the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and the republic for which one undergraduate the new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to
004have advanced nervousness to attend the meetings of public bodies in accordance with the provisions of this act the east funds of formative education has caused notice of this meeting to be published at the board of education offices written notice was also provided to the sentinel of the newark star ledger the home news interviewing and the municipal clerk of east brunswick all board of education meetings with the exception of executive session discussions our videotape related broadcasts and individuals who speak at the board's public meetings should be aware of this good evening although it looks like i am in a cave i'm having some major technical difficulties and um that is why i appear to be in the shadows good evening i hope everyone who is watching is well and safe and we're going to start off
005with our superintendent's report thank you president becker uh my report tonight is very brief uh 1 45 this afternoon i sent a communication to the entire east brunswick community regarding our planning for the opening of school this september it's a high level overview there are so the community understands there are many more reviews to our plan one of which will occur at the board level tonight and ward has to take final action at next thursday's meeting we will also need county approval so the anticipation is that during the week of august 3rd all those approvals will be in place and we'll be able to put our plan on the district's website on our home page for the entire public to review and that will give everyone approximately a month or a little longer uh to
006review the plan and to have any concerns that they have uh addressed or to you know provide any insight into our anticipated plan so that's all i have okay um matthew kobe our attorney wish to say a few words sure there's been i understand um that members of the public um have inquired if we're going to have live board meetings and my recommendation of this juncture is to keep it in the zoom format the reason being is that under the open public meeting act when you have a meeting you can't exclude members from the public and you have to have sufficient capacity to attend your meetings and we generally do them in the board office occasionally when you have the big events when you're celebrating uh retirements and teachers of the year we've done it
007in hammersold but with social distancing mandates and the uh for public safety reasons my recommendation is to keep it in the zoom format now where anyone can participate people can log in watch uh make public comments because the one thing that we cannot do is we can't control who from the public is going to come to a a physical public meeting as opposed to when you're in a virtual format there is no limits so my recommendation at this juncture is to keep it virtually i'd say that the vast majority of towns and school districts are doing the same thing they're finding that the public can participate can watch the business of the board can view it they have access to all the same uh documents that they normally would at a public meeting frankly i've
008actually seen greater public participation with people zooming in to board meetings uh over the last several months and i think it's really to just ensure the health and safety of the staff the board members and the general public until we have greater clarity of where this cova 19 virus is going and as you can see right now there's 31 states on travel advisory bands so we're just playing it cautious so that no one gets unnecessarily exposed to cover 19. thank you matt okay the good of the cause to the public members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoom by entering the url you see in front of you on your screen and the meeting id and password in order to be recognized use the chat feature select the zoom meeting host
009then 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 receive your request the board of education recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves to protect the privacy of all students and staff concerns regarding individual students and staff members should generally be addressed first meeting with the appropriate administrative staff public participation will be limited each participant to three minutes duration is there anyone wishing to address the board of education tonight we have one individual who has requested robin zernitzky welcome can you hear me yes we can okay hi how are you um i have two questions one is well
010we i understand that obviously through governor murphy's laws that he's enacted that virtual learning will be available to any family will we be getting more details of how virtual learning will be run because in my experience i have two kids that are in elementary school and in my experience i think compared to other areas the level of virtual learning that went on in the spring in my opinion was not acceptable it was busy work our children weren't learning it was um not enough interaction amongst the children so i'd like to understand so that i can make an educated decision for my children um kind of when will we get that guidance president becker would you mind if i responded no please um so right now this is for the entire community who might be listening
011or are watching uh tomorrow governor murphy has indicated that he will release guidance for virtual learning and uh we knew he announced it but we were told to hold forthcoming guidance so we don't know exactly what that's going to be but i assure you we have undertaken a redesign of our distance learning since we left on march 18th and it will look different than it did uh when we left uh to close our schools for the pandemic so if we um once we get governor murphy's guidance and align that with our plan we'll have more to communicate with the with the community and we'll put that out as a blackboard like i did today okay thank you appreciate it uh next we have robin ashman welcome robin hi thank you thank you appreciate it i
012appreciate being here tonight just to give you a little background so you know where i'm coming from um can you are you hearing yes um could you please uh turn off the video that you have on streaming please little background so you know where i'm coming from okay can you are you hearing yes um could you please uh turn off the video streaming please okay that should help all right um so i'm a professional professor at stevens institute of technology up in hoboken i've been teaching there for seven years um pursuing my phd in health science so yes i'm sorry we're still getting a lot of feedback um you want me to i can just text you what i want to say no that um do you have the video running uh on your web
013browser in the background it has to turn off the live stream still getting a lot of feedback my videos off no not your video your live stream what you have is you're watching it live stream as well mute your live stream then you can turn your video back on hold on one second thank you there we go it's much better okay i thought i had it muted so um where was i all right sorry for that interruption okay i'm a professor at stevens institute of technology i've been teaching there for seven years and i'm currently pursuing my phd in health health science at drexel so my feet are in both worlds education and science um my concern has been uh inconsistency you know uh i'm also a girl scout leader in town so i have
014my daughter who's in frost and i have girls who are in central and i have girls who are memorial and i have girls who were also now going into hammershould and i've seen a tremendous amount of inconsistency in the teaching so we'll take my daughter for example i love frost i'm very happy with miss taya and all she's done my daughter didn't learn a single thing from march till june honestly again as a professor i've watched her i've been close to her i've been able to teach my courses and be online with her as well um i talked to the parents in my troop and their daughters are having actual learning you know they've gone further in their science and their math and their literature and this is the same thing this is both fourth
015graders so there seems to be an inconsistency in the schools in what the kids are learning not only that it's within the school as well so my daughter is in class we'll say class a and she's switching with class a and b but students who are in fourth grade in class c and d were having online consistent learning experiences so there seems to be a disparity in education not only within the schools themselves but between the schools and i'm wondering what we can do to to make sure that everybody's learning at the same level because by the time they get to me in eight years and i'm seeing it already there's gonna be it's gonna be a problem you know students in new jersey do not compete with the students i get from other states
016and from other countries and it's it's it's startling and very disheartening for me to say and i took my daughter out of saint thomas because i believe she would get a better education in east brunswick and st thomas and i don't know if any of you know this is a poor parish with low to middle income parents okay and they had consistent learning from march until june with zoom classes live zoom classes where they had english from 45 minutes and they had math for 45 minutes and they took a recess break and they took a lunch break and they had religion and they had social studies and they had science they lost nothing and they're also a blue ribbon school just like we are so now i'm wondering do i need to send my book
017daughter back just so that she can get back on track i don't want to you know i'm happy with what i've had with frost you know while we've been there minus the pandemic but again now i'm seeing things that i find very disturbing as an educator and as a parent hey time thank you robin thank you and if i could president becker that those concerns are being addressed and and we will have clear expectations that we will communicate to parents about how virtual learning will look and what the expectations for both students and staff will look like for those that select virtual learning as we enter this next school year thank you okay next we have andrew morrell mr morrell uh thank you uh just to echo what the previous two ladies said uh our
018son uh go to churchill he was in eighth grade going into nine uh while he was at the hammer show on the first year of churchill uh he was on the honor roll getting straight a's and b's remote learning unfortunately without any teachers leading the instruction by zoom or webex or any other plethora of uh video sharing technology you want to name was completely ineffective when he went to season d's giving a student an assignment to read a chapter of a bucking canvas and then send them to a quiz just doesn't cut it it's very ineffective at least for our child uh is there any particular reason we are going to use zoom or webex technology to have a live teacher leading math for 45 minutes then going on to english and men history and
019meant science that's question number one and question number two uh in regards to the communication dr valensky sent out today i didn't see anything in there about covert 19 testing in schools should you elect to send your child back to school would you care to comment on that please uh covet 19 we're not going to require kova 19 testing to reenter schools that is covered under most most individuals private insurance that will be if somebody is suspected of being exposed we are going to require that they get a test but we're not going to mandate uh testing for the re-entry of school for the entire population not at this time but to answer your earlier question about the um the needs of your child if if you could wait until the governor gives us the
020guidance on the virtual learning uh we will be prepared to put out very shortly i would say within a week what the expectations for virtual learning will be and different platforms for delivering that kind of instruction should parents choose that mrs becker i have no one else in the queue unless there's anyone else that wishes to speak mr morell are you finished sir okay i just wanted to make sure that we you were concluded is there anyone else wishing to address the board at this time i just said thank you that's all thank you sir sorry he just said thank you oh thank you too have a good night okay um say none i am going to close the public portion actually i had uh just i had just emailed this is robin zernitzky one
021more time i have one other question can i oppose it yes i think given the circumstances we're not um we have to be very flexible we know parents are concerned i appreciate that i appreciate that i do have one other question will we also be getting detailed guidance on if your child is attending in-person school what will happen if uh someone is positive with kovid or someone is exhibiting symptoms will those things be laid out to us clearly as to you know what are the waiting periods who will have to you know not attend school for x number of days is that something that will be coming in in the coming week president becker if i could it absolutely it will it will be in the plan and we will be working uh if we
022have an occurrence like that we will be working in concert with the uh middlesex department of health so the um in addition to our protocol we'll be aligning that with the the medical professionals at the department uh for whatever steps we need to do on contact tracing and for notification okay thank you appreciate it thank you robin stay safe is there anyone else wishing to address the board there's no one else okay senior and i will close the public portion i just want to say that um we know that everyone has questions we still have questions the most frustrating part of this whole thing if even though it's hard to pick just one is that the news and directive and mandates we are receiving from the governor and the doe change if not daily every
023two to three days we are trying to keep up with the mandates we are trying to come up with a plan for every option we our parents we understand your concern there's nothing more precious than our children and our children's health and safety we will have a plan to the best of our ability to make sure that your children are as safe as we can create the environment for we are doing everything we can what we need is clear consistent guidance from the state and or the department of education so that we can finalize our plan but i thank you all for being concerned and being our partners in this endeavor we're all figuring it out and our parents involvement and commitment is crucial and we thank you for it dr baleski did you want
024to add anything um no president becker well i do actually um you know as president becker said we we do have parent involvement in our pandemic response teams at our schools that provide input for our plan they will be reviewing the plan the board will uh review and finally approve next week so they'll have input um but we appreciate the concerns tonight because we think they're representative of the community but i can't reinforce enough that this is going to be a community recovery that parents and guardians will have to be our partners in evaluating their own child's health their own family health and determining whether or not they send their kids back to school on a given day after being out of school for a period of time so it's that that is one of
025the partnerships that i think is going to be key to our success in this that we'll have to manage our own self-care and the care of our children and make sure that they get whatever treatment they need we get whatever treatment we need before exposing other people so that's that's a key part of of us pulling this off and being safe and doing it but i believe we have a solid plan and we continue to tweak it and based on even some of the comments tonight we will go back we will look to make sure that the needs of every constituent who spoke tonight are met in that plan so thank you and when you come and talk to us it helps us to better communicate to you what you need to know so thank
026you to those who took the time to speak to us tonight okay moving on to our agenda can i please have a motion on the board of education agenda for tonight to combine items one two and three movement side second by mark is there any discussion all those in favor opposed abstain motion carries on our curriculum agenda our curriculum agenda tonight i'd like to have a motion to combine items one and two more by todd barber you muted unmute yourself thank you is there any discussion all those in favor opposed captioning not available through three going once items well by mark second second is there any discussion on our financial services agenda can i please have a motion to combine items 1 through 16. so move jeff moved by jeff ii by mark is there
027any discussion okay team none will the secretary please call the role mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs gloss mrs guass yes mr hong yes mrs lax yes mrs reese yes mr simmons yes mr winston yep president becker yes with the exception of on items ii bill is payments pending i need to abstain on two items purchase order e two zero zero two nine zero eight and p two zero zero three six five noted thank you motion carries we're up to our human resource agenda tonight as board members were informed before the meeting the list beginning on page seven and continuing on page eight up to summer esl programs has been deferred summer esl program list is as is can i please have a motion for our human resource agenda item move by mark second
028by levo is there any discussion will the secretary please call the roll this is true mr sismar yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes mrs lex yes mrs reese yes mr simmons yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries our staff agenda staff development agenda can i please have a motion for the one i am goodbye todd second by mark is there any discussion all those in favor aye opposed motion carries on our student services can i please have a motion to combine items one and 2. second by mark is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mr hong yes mr zlax this is rhys yes mr simmons yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries our transportation services tonight again as board members
029we're told at the request of the administration items one through three were deferred from the agenda can i please therefore have a motion for the remaining item which was item number four is there any discussion all those in favor obscene motion carries are there any committee reports information items for the good of the cause for the board anyone wishing to speak have anything to say uh barbara barbara i just wanted to compliment uh our team uh they did a presentation for the new jersey school boards association today and uh we had they spoke about canvas and our team did a wonderful job speaking uh to which wasn't a surprise to the new jersey school boards association and uh they asked east brunswick to speak about our program thank you barbara anyone else um should i
030give my student report at this time i'm so sorry i didn't see you at first how are you i'm good it's been a long time it's nice to see you guys as well how's your summer going good it's been good uh last week i was actually sick not with anything coveted related but just food poisoning kind of knocked me out for two days so i'm sorry to hear that anyway please we'd love to hear your report yeah uh as i said it's nice to see you guys all um it's around mid-summer now and uh in light of the recent email that everyone received from mr velesky uh i got a little bit of confused texts mainly because people were a little confused about the details of the plan and i mainly told them like this
031is an uncertain time and i guess it requires flexible plans and um if it kind of ensues some ambiguity then that's just the tight rope that we have to kind of walk across for this for this time so most students are understanding of that and uh most of them look forward to when a more detailed uh response can roll out and they're very patient that's another thing that i want to mention um in terms of students as well most people are starting to go out now a little bit more often i think the stay-at-home fatigue is starting to hit graduation parties are becoming a little bit more populated uh beaches are also being populated it's starting to resemble a little bit like a normal summer but we're still nowhere near as close and um on
032more serious matter i did want to talk about uh in particular this one instagram account named uh i'll explain it's called racism at ebhs and how it works is uh students anonymously send in experiences detailing uh racism or racist encounters that they've had and of course you need to take this with a little bit of i just like since it's an instagram page there's a very well are very real possibility that some of these stories may be fabricated or completely untrue um but some of them may be experiences and the reason why i wanted to bring this up with you is because uh there's one common trend that i've been seeing which is uh a student has a racist encounter with another student or some some form of discrimination happened against them and then when
033they report it to their teacher coach or some other form of administration they simply deflect it or ignore it or makes it seem as if it doesn't exist and just tell them to get over it now obviously this isn't applicable to all teachers in administration i'm sure some of them take it very seriously but especially in light of the recent uh i guess race turmoil in this country i think uh one suggestion that i want to make to you guys is to make sure that all the teachers are being very considerate of these struggles and um to at least take them all seriously because that was one thing that as student liaison i thought i could present to you guys um to help solve some of the uh problems that some of the kids have
034in this school you're done uh yeah i didn't want to talk overview i'm a little hard of hearing thank you thank you thank you for bringing all this to our attention um is there anyone else from the board oh actually um if i may again sorry i just i just remembered um uh i remember i think it was miss ashman who brought it up in the for the good of the public uh about how she was a little disheartened about the preparedness of students when they enter college as a senior in high school myself and a person who has in older sisters graduated college and numerous older friends who are in college right now in both like top 20 colleges and state level colleges mostly east bundwick students are very prepared and more on the
035side of being over prepared for college education than uh on the lower side and this is mainly due to i guess our advanced mathematics because uh we offer offer classes that aren't normally available to other high schools in new jersey such as calculus bc and uh calc 3 honors so if ms ashman's listening uh i hope that can kind of quell a little bit of your concerns about east brunswick education thank you again anthony you really um very articulate and everything was well thought out and given us a lot of good information thank you for joining us tonight if there are nothing else from the board we do have a need for a closed session the board of education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for discussion in a public meeting i these subjects
036are as follows those items listed in tonight's agenda the length of the closed session is estimated to be 90 minutes after which the public meeting of the board shall reconvene in action will not be taken can i please have a motion to go into closed session though moved nobody would second by mark is there any discussion all those in favor oppose abstain motion carries goodnight everyone stay safe board members please leave this meeting and log into the closed session thank you you