001[Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Applause] so [Music] i'd like to call this meeting of the yeshim township board of education to order pursuant to the open public meetings act adequate public notice has been given to the secretary of the eastern township board of education in the following manner posting written notice on the official bulletin board at the board of education office emailing written notice to the berlin county times and the courier post and filing written notice on the municipal uh with the municipal clerk of eve shrimp township can i have a roll call please mrs barbara giovanni here this is everhart here mr fizzagaro here miss fleming here mr canton here mrs noll here mr lancelotta here mr megan here mrs ryan here we have a quorum thank you at this
002point i will need a motion to go into executive session whereas an njsa 104-12 allows for a public body to go into closed session during a public meeting and whereas the board of education of yves shrimp township has deemed it necessary to go into closed session to discuss certain matters which are exempted from the public and whereas the regular meeting of the board of education reconvened following the end of the closed session at approximately 7 p.m now therefore be it resolve the board of education will go in the closed session for the following reasons as outlined in njsa 104-12 that's items 2.2 through 2.4 do i have a motion to go into executive session motioned by miss ryan seconded by mr lanzalata um can i have a role any questions or comments seeing none let's
003go to a roll call please mrs barbara giovanni yes this is everhart yes mr fizzicaro yes miss fleming yes mr catherine yeah mrs null yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carriage this board will go into executive session it will come out of it at approximately and that word is crucial seven o'clock [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] do [Music] do [Music] you [Music] do [Music] my [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] um so uh [Music] so [Music] i'd like
004to reconvene this meeting of the eastern township board of education uh if you could all please rise for the pledge of allegiance to the flag the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all yeah um danny do you know that the two pairs that we're going to come in place of uh debbie and russell they i'll text debbie and see if they're around so are we are we good to continue or uh yep okay all right all right at this point in time uh we will be going into presentations uh first we have a new jersey school board member code of ethics training by our solicitor mr will donio mr donio when you are ready we will uh we are
005ready to learn yes good evening thank you and good evening to everyone if i didn't have a chance to say good evening to you personally this is their annual training on board member ethics uh normally it's in person and normally it's very early in this in the calendar year we normally do it you know shortly right after reorganization obviously we were gearing up for the march meeting and then everyone knows what happened at that time and it's just kind of gotten kicked down the road and down the road so i'm going to try and be as brief as possible this is the board member ethics and social media i added a social media component because i will suggest to you i represent dozens of districts throughout the state of new jersey both as a sign
006council solicitor insurance counsel special counsel uh i believe and it is my opinion that uh the area which is most fraught with danger for board members when it comes to ethics and maybe having an ethics complaint filed against you is social media now commenting liking tweeting you know it goes out it does not go away it's safe for forever and i would suggest and i don't mean to do this as a commercial endorsement but i would suggest if you have not watched the documentary the social dilemma that is available about the pernicious and invasive uh absolute uh way in which social media and technology uh entities are invading our lives taking your data and what have you i really do suggest that i really do suggest that you you take a look at especially there
007are those of you with you know small children and maybe kids getting into their tweens and what have you it's really really i i always knew how invasive it was and how all consuming was i didn't even realize and when the people who created these platforms don't let their children use them that should tell you something so anyway again to the school ethics act the school ethics act is written in the negative it has certain pro prohibitions in it i'm not going to read it to you predominantly however it's about conflicts of interest not taking about getting involved in any activity uh either in your private life or on the board life which would conflict with the other so if you have a business entity if you have relationships uh in certain ways you don't
008take board action on those conversely as a board member don't get involved in things that might involve you with any type of conflict and uh that was the first part of the act that was passed it really like i said does speak to conflicts of interest you are not in a conflict however if you are you know not getting any type of special benefit if if there's a rule that's going to be uniformly applied uh as a general rule you're not you're not going to be running afoul of the conflict of interest rules then i want to talk about and again i'm not going to read it to you it's all there for you it's there for everybody it's on the board doc's agenda the code of ethics was added this was originally new new
009jersey school board's code of ethics for school board members and then it was actually adopted into the law so this is part of title 18a passed by the legislature signed by the governor i'm not going to read all of them to you i will suggest however to really take a look at c i will confine my board action to policy making planning appraisal and i'll help to frame policies and plans only after the board has consulted those who will be affected by them d i will carry out my responsibility not to minister the schools but together with my fellow board members to see that they are well run e i will recognize the authority rest with the board of education will make no personal promises nor take any private action that may compromise the board
010those are the three areas that most i believe are mostly cited in ethics complaints that somebody either did not confine their their action to board planning policy decision making that board members got into involved in things that they shouldn't have gotten involved that they took private action that compromised the board and then finally jay is the other one and that's a catch-all i will refer all complaints to the chief administrative officer and wifed on the complaints of public meetings only after failure of an administrative solution this is the classic formulation of you're in the supermarket and back in the days when somebody would walk up to you in a supermarket they come up to you and they talk to you and they say hey i hear this is going on at the school and that
011question was what do you do and you know the first answer is you refer them to the chief school ministry you refer them to the chain of command always say you should talk to the superintendent and then it's perfectly appropriate for you to follow up with the superintendent as well but it requires that you refer complaints to the chief school administrator and wait for an administrative response before you take any action that includes taking action as a whole of the board so just very briefly some cases and opinions um and these are like i said i'm going to talk about some social media components but just getting back to that j uh section um a very very smart man who lives in town who has served on boards of education and started on the state
012board of education had come up with the line uh to think about this and of course i'm thinking about the father of your board president who uh i steal his line all the time but i do give him attribution okay and he's probably watching now it's important to remember and he used to say it um and it really to sum up you hire one person the superintendent that person hires everybody else and it really helped you to really understand about staying in your lane staying in the roles and responsibilities and really referring all things to the chief school administrator and that like i said i do i do steal that but i do give him attribution so here's an advisory opinion about social media websites and um endorsements right so you can't use something that
013looks like it's gonna be an official endorsement of the board often however if you're going to speak you can't hide that you're a board member so it's important to then try and kind of knit those two together say you might be a board member but i'm speaking on my own behalf and this does not reflect the views of the board itself okay endorsement is a private citizen not as a member of the local board of education nor is the endorsement on behalf of the entire board this must be clear and visible nothing prevents you from getting a pre-printed sign putting on your home nothing prevents you from taking uh other actions that are your you know constitutionally guaranteed rights as citizens but nonetheless keep in mind that when you are speaking especially if you're speaking
014in a manner that might be of school concern to make sure you're known as a board member therefore there's assumption you have special knowledge however you have to recognize that you are not speaking on behalf of the board unless you've been authorized to do so uh the next case is one about when you come across certain information here was a complaint that was filed against the board and these board members then held a press conference and talked about it they did a redacted version of the complaint but the complaint was redacted in such a way that was readily avail readily uh no known in the community about who it was about so it's about safeguarding confidential information and not taking private action that could compromise the board of education this is about your own use
015of social media this is one of the most famous ones board of education member made a number of statements on his facebook page he said now if we can only do something about our local terrorists that destroy dreams and burn features i think was supposed to be futures so always use spell check though that probably wouldn't have come up because it is a word under which he posted a picture of the district superintendent right so calling the district superintendent a terrorist probably not a good idea okay definitely not in support of personnel that was a board member yes um may reasonably consider it as undermining opposing compromises or harm in the superintendent the proper performance of her duties again you are considered to have specialized knowledge by being a board member so uh in the
016words of i think it's uncle ben um uh uncle ben parker from spider-man with great power comes great responsibility and as with that power of having that information comes a responsibility not to disclose things that might unnecessarily harm individuals i have some rules to live by these are my abridged rules to live by my first rule live by of course is always if you don't write it down it didn't happen the contemporaries written record of almost any incident is generally considered to be the most truthful and accurate of it when you are dealing however as board members and maybe in social media my first recommendation to you would be to wind your watch that is take a moment right you take a moment just to win your watch slow down okay when in doubt don't
017i am unfamiliar with and i do not believe it exists and in my opinion it will not exist any ethics complaint that said a board member failed to post something on social media okay no one ever gets in trouble for not doing something okay keep in mind nothing is private everything is public you are recorded you're in fact recorded being you're recorded being posted and being played uh new jersey is a one state a one-party consent state that means a conversation in new jersey can be recorded as long as one party to that conversation agrees to it who is that party the party recording it right so they don't need to tell you they don't need your consent it's not notice um and even though you may think you're on some type of private page
018and maybe you're the administrator of a private page or something along those lines people can get it you could definitely get it in lawsuits and things along those lines definitely through discovery it lasts forever keep that in mind nothing ever gets deleted you may think you deleted you may think you have wiped clean something it's generally recoverable everything is awesome until it's not lego version everything is awesome until it's not right everything is awesome especially with people who you might be friends with in groups on social media platforms yes you all agree uh until one you know you utter that one wrong word no and then the next night you know then you are public enemy number one board members if you're in the middle especially of any type of conflict any type of social
019media uh brouhaha so to speak you're probably in trouble you shouldn't be in the middle okay you should people shouldn't be coming to you it's very upsetting when we hear board members say yeah and i was everyone was coming to me and they were kind of like no come to you you move you're like a goalie right you you you're blocking them and you push them to the side and you send them to the superintendent uh because ultimately you are responsible for your actions okay even if you ask for advice even if you ultimately it's always the board member who has to make the decision and i said ask ask questions feel free to ask the superintendent feel free to ask me and if it's specifically and significantly complex we can get an advisory opinion
020that is if a vote's coming up or something along those lines you can go to the school ethics commission tell them what your concern is and they will get back to you at the very next meeting that they hold and they are a pretty well functioning group they were very short-staffed they didn't have enough members to actually issue opinions there for a while but that's not the case anymore they're really and they're very very in my opinion and it is my opinion they are very very cognizant of the pressures that are brought to bear from all the stakeholders that see you so they they do get it there are board members sitting on that commission by designation and they get what it is to be a board member so that's it unless anyone has any
021questions uh you could this is part of your required discussion regarding the code of ethics i suggest to you and your minutes may reflect that you have adequately discharged that responsibility on the new jersey administrative code and new jersey state law and again if you have any questions feel free to ask mr dhoni i appreciate your i appreciate your your training seminar for us and you know i think it's really important um facebook facebook and all social media is incredibly dangerous and sometimes look you know when you're an elected official people just don't like you all right there's they just don't like you they might be for one reason or another i mean you you can't you can't sit there and you can't worry about that um because you allow that to cloud your judgment
022and if really if you really think about you know a statement on facebook you should treat like a tattoo don't do it impulsively really is is the case i appreciate that mr board president i can say as an attorney i'm used to people not liking me so um i i do believe that is very very good guidance you know nothing is private wind your watch um a lot of cases start out with and that and and i'll just add to talk about impulsively i would suggest that generally especially when it comes to social media don't make any decision after 11 o'clock at night um very few good decisions are made after 11 o'clock at night a lot of fun decisions are made after 11 o'clock at night but very few good decisions are made after
02311 o'clock tonight and and and just for the record my dad taught me that that saying probably before he taught me how to ride a bike so uh but i'm glad he gave you gave him the shout out absolutely uh miss fleming do we have a code of ethics formula i think we did didn't yeah i think we i think we took yeah yeah we're good but yeah you should should be good it's usually done at reorg yeah okay um any more questions or comments from mr donia okay uh at this point we are now at the uh annual state of schools presentation uh and this is done by dr smith who is or is it mrs mcguhler oh mr mcgullick all right sorry about that mr smuggler i didn't have the i didn't have
024the presenter on here i apologize oh i do have it on here my gosh okay i'm so sorry okay um so thank you tough act to follow will um but this is the time when we do our annual state of the schools this is required by um by law to report on state assessment data of course so we are in a pandemic so there is no new state assessment data but we are still required to report on the most recent data that is available so i will try to be brief and run through some slides but i have a whole bunch of charts and data and information but you will see and as i talked about with our board curriculum committee it is data from two years ago because that is the time the last
025time that we had state data so i did throw in some obviously some new data so it's not all the same but i'll give you an overview this is posted on our district website and it's obviously also posted on board docs so in a typical year when we talk about assessment we're talking about a broad perspective so we're talking about looking at standardized assessments and not just one standardized assessment but actually achievement assessments as well as aptitude assessments so achievement being where are you in terms of proficiency levels aptitude where are you in terms of this natural ability the next piece is district-wide assessments so benchmark assessments we assess kids when they come in in the fall we assess kids when they leave in the spring and we're looking at growth from where they started
026to where they ended with different assessments along the way um mid and end of year math assessments we do classroom performance is obviously key what are kids doing on a daily basis so it might be rubrics checklists anecdotal information teacher observation and feedback report card grades are all those different performances and then parent observation and feedback so the most important thing that i can say about assessment information is that you never look at anything in isolation as board members know i tell you this every year you look at the total package and you're looking for trends and you're looking for places where there's inconsistencies in the data because that's what points to or targets different areas for particular kids for particular programs and things like that so for this year's purposes esea is one of
027the requirements i report on you guys hear me talk about that all the time um so that's our title or federal dollars that we get so i do have some information i'll share on the next slide about that next is district standardized assessments because we don't just report on state assessments and so we have cogats as it relates to that and some summer supports we provided the state standardized testing results is what is old so that's september 2019 i'll talk about the review of the slides and kind of summarize for you and then goal setting process because we're always looking and evaluating where we are and where we want to be so in terms of esea we have four titles title one looks at at-risk readers so basically last year in the 1920 school year
028we serviced 92 of our lowest achieving at-risk readers and that's in first grade in our first round we had 19 students successfully discontinued that means they left the program leaving on grade level reading alongside their grade level peers we had of the 25 of them made progress throughout the program but would be recommended for continued additional literacy support not in a reading recovery program but what we would call literacy support in a small group way and then we also had four kids who left the program and what that means is before the program ended one of two things happened they might have moved they might have been classified and receiving special ed services but four left the program before it was complete um second round obviously that is when we had our closure start in
029march but what i wanted to report on that is even with the closure we still deliver different services to kids and the average text level of our first graders exiting reading recovery was an h where the benchmark is a j so really just slightly below where they need to be to be considered on grade level title two and title four is professional development and technology so that's different things that we are offering as a district we get funds for those areas and so we had about 150 participants and that included professional and professional staff last year of those we had offerings in literacy math responsive classroom and technology and then workshop surveys filled out had fours and fives on them 100 of them and then title three is our english language learners so basically there
030um we had 30 or we have 38 kids in our program that's .008 of our population so it's a very small number and i just put for you there what the state percentages is about seven percent we were actually in the middle of access for els which is the assessment when coveted and the closure happened so only 24 of our students actually got to complete the state assessment as it relates to esl which actually equates to us for nine kids so nine kids uh actually finished of those nine five exited and then the others there's provisions in there to actually do fall testing so we kept any kids who might have successfully left the program or tested out we kept them in the program and right now um our teachers are actually administering the widow
031which is another assessment and they use that in terms of exit um just for some perspective so with everything that happened last year some summer supports that we have historically offered and some we added last summer to help with everything that was going on with kovid so we continued usually title on tutoring happens during the school year at our title one schools we carry that through through the summer virtually um so we had 13 students that we tutored and then received about 30 sessions title 3 that's esl we continued our esl services in the summer through tutoring 10 students about 30 sessions extended school years that's our special education students 42 students receive tutoring and they get up to 12 hours each student caps is a program that we historically as you know run usually
032it's for incoming kindergartners but we didn't have screening last march so we actually did it for exiting kindergartners to help them to be successful as they went into first grade so we were able to service 45 students exiting kindergarten and we did group tutoring sessions and they got eight sessions per group literacy support is another summer program that we offer that is for incoming second and third graders who are reading below level so we were able to provide that for 75 students and same thing eight sessions per group we added math support 24 students same numbers metamorphosis is for incoming sixth and seventh graders 16 students tier 3 which is our gifted and talented program we had 93 students participate in that program over the summer and they could have up to 32 sessions depending
033on how many courses they took and then extended school year which is for our most disabled students preschool we had 44 and they did a program for 20 days and in grades k to 8 we had 128 students and did that same program for 20 days so those are all the supports that we offered in the summer with some additions to actually help kids based on the closure and what we saw last spring we as i said we did actually get to the week before we closed we were working on kogats which is an aptitude assessment so this gives you verbal is really think about more like language arts literacy so in grades 3 57 5 58 760 and that is a range quantitative correlates to math so 70 69 and then nonverbals like that
034spatial reasoning 61 66 69 so really when we put those all together what we call a composite score is 64-64-66 we do that in grades three five and seven again for general because your aptitude doesn't typically change very um very much from year to year so that's why we do it in alternating years we did have a higher percentage of kids who did not take that assessment because again we gave it that week was during conferences that friday we got the call that we were closing and we did not return to school so usually we give the majority that week but then we spend the rest of the month giving makeups we didn't get the makeups but it still was a good number of kids and then this is the park uh the what formula
035was park which is now njsla data so we're required to give some comparative data but we're comparing it if you look from 2015 which was the first year park to 2019 when it's now njsla so this is just number of kids who took the assessment this is the slide i shared last year there aren't a lot of variables there but again that shows you never look at numbers in isolation because while the numbers might not look like that many more kids are taking the assessment they actually are then the first year where a lot of parents if you've been on the board you know they opted out for that they chose they refused the assessment um but we had lower class sizes over the years and then we had more kids taking it so again
036that's just a comparative piece with number of students same for math and same for science so again those aren't new slides we've already looked at those in the past this is another not new slide but it just breaks down now the njsla from back in 2019 in the spring third grade through eighth grade and we're always looking at the kids who are proficient so we see uh typically in that 60 to 70 range with the exception of grade three in language arts math if you remember me talking about this this was honestly our worst year in math and if you if you know we put a lot into our math program and actually changed programs since these assessments came about so you can see where we actually were in those 50s to um and 40
037areas with the exception of obviously down algebra one because that is our highest achieving kids who take that so again this is all um data that we've looked at the same is true of science first year of a science assessment that was actually published but then i thought we would end with this because it's just kind of a nice summary chart so it gives you what we already looked at in terms of language arts and math proficiency levels from 16 17 17 18 18 19. so you see generally speaking in that that range math is the next one but then growth is another one i want you to consider because you see 49 50 53 and then 52 48.50 but when we talk about growth when you talk about what that number means what you
038would say is like in that 35 and plus range is what we would call typical growth so our kids have been even where in math where we had you know some lower proficiency levels still kids were showing typical growth amongst grade level peers across the state not just in our district and then it also looks at progress towards the language proficiency so that's the esl students i talked about and then chronic absenteeism and if you remember that was a district goal we had a big focus on that so you actually do see a drop from 17 18 to 18 19 which was our goal area so looking at all that information and looking at what we do is you know usually we have data meetings we meet with the school we meet with the principal
039we the teachers again pandemic very different this year um but that doesn't mean we're not looking at data and talking about goals so we looked at starting this summer where our kind of like a goal review what were our goals last year and where were we in terms of meeting those what was the status on those had the building principles do the same thing with their goals for their building and then starting this year teachers had the opportunity on that october in-service day to look at baseline data and that would be what's the data that they gave this year to get to know their kids so what do they know about them from working with them throughout all of september into october they gave baseline math assessments they gave a dsi a developmental spelling inventory
040they sell writing samples they listen to kids read so using all that information to actually set goals for themselves goals related to sgos which are a requirement of the state and pdps which are professional development plan and then what we do they're due october 31st officially we then look at those both at the building and district level and we modify the school pdp and the district pdp that curriculum department we talked about that this summer um and then from that we're looking at professional development curriculum writing planning and implementation so refining based on what we're seeing in those goal areas what are our next steps and where do we need to be then everything from there comes down to these focus areas so in terms of content you're looking at uh teacher clarity clear intentions
041and success criteria we've been working hard on that for actually the last year almost two years that comes from visible learning which is best practice from john hattie um and then looking at specific goal or intent feedback and connecting it to learning intentions so those were that was a goal that we said we're going to continue from last year versus the next one again we're in a pandemic so one of the biggest things that we need is a focus or more of a focus on social emotional learning so that's a focus area there for kids and the idea of technology we obviously always have a technology goal but now that we're doing synchronous and asynchronous really how are we using that effectively and what can we do as it relates to that so that's in
042all content areas then we break it apart language arts with some different focus areas related to reading and writing some focused errors in math so as it relates to math workshop differentiating math discourse which is math talk and then science which connects to those big ideas in science the practices and then three-dimensional assessments which connects back to what i talked to the group about with the assessment data as it related to njsla science and then the last part and these are i swear i'm going to stop because these are just a whole bunch of slides that now target a little bit more again not anything new relate it to subgroups and looking at some of the comparisons and breaking apart so we just picked our two biggest subgroups which economically disadvantaged so you see just
043to explain what the chart is you have um on the left that would be our district in terms of economically disadvantaged population of students and then next to that is your total population of students so that's all students in the district and then what that gets compared to is the economically disadvantaged students in the state versus on the far right all of the students in the state of new jersey who took the assessment so you look for again trends and patterns there so where as an example in terms of um if i looked at math performance for example the economically disadvantaged students in the states are about 26.3 percent where our kids are 31.3 percent if i look at student growth same thing if i stuck with math i see 46 across the state for
044that subgroup i see 49 for our kids and if you look at the population obviously we have a much smaller population at the top about 9.8 percent versus the state has a higher number 37.2 percent and then the last subgroup just to point out was our students with special needs so you can see that is our largest subgroup our largest population in terms of 23.8 percent and if we look at the state it's 17.01 but that 17.01 is actually smaller but the state gives it as a total number which is ages three through 21. so that includes high schools and then the years after high school that you're allowed you that fall under that we only obviously do that for we start with three-year-olds but it stops at grade eight for us so that percentage
045actually is smaller if we take out the high school um and the same thing you'll see that same exact trend so this time if i look at language arts for example 22.7 percent in terms of the state students with special disabilities ours are 32.5 and if i do the same thing with the growth 43 versus 51.5 so again just some comparative data to look at and then every slide after this great breaks it apart by grade so you get to see by grades from grade eight in this example state district general and special education so really when we're talking about if i break apart that subgroup out of our general education where our number was in the 60s it's actually 80.8 and then for special education it's 26.4 but again i if i have a
046disability and i'm getting in services typically i'm reading either below level or in that area and i'm getting services and modifications and accommodations but on an assessment that's done at the state you are actually taking an assessment with grade level content so you know those are some of the things that we look at and we talk about so we compare it then to aptitude we compare it to classroom performance and talk decisions from that okay so that's what all the other slides are so i'm going to wrap it up so i take you through every grade language arts and math until the end so that is the end any questions and curriculum committee as i said we will talk again about it next month as you have time to digest and ask follow-up questions and
047all that good stuff like we always do thank you mr i have my first question is about the percentage of the special ed students in our district when mr scavelli was here in finance he had explained that the state aid that we receive is based on the average i believe for k-8 which he always said was at 13 and he would say we are much higher than that but we are not getting any more aid so now i see here he never actually put a number on it but you're saying 23.8 and he said that perhaps the state legislature was going to look into revamping that part of the formula to actually give money based on the number of students any have you heard any movement on that or where that may be because that
048that could really help us yeah i mean there has you could jump in there too but there really hasn't been and that's really something that every year that we've talked about both in finance right curriculum in all those different areas is and really what i think um mr scavelli explained is that and what you've seen i think i've heard in the last couple years is that funding formula is broken it hasn't been used it wasn't used for so long and then remember they did that hold harmless right and then they opened it up and then you could see some of the factors within it but you can't see them all so i think you know again until there's a shift and that all ties down to legislation that would absolutely i would think help us
049but you know certainly don't know that for sure but yes i would agree perhaps something to put on the list to lobby the state you know as you did for us in that initial letter point well taken thank you ms noel i'm gonna add that to my list uh it earns a spot on there i try to keep the list short because i don't want them you know i know less is more in a way but that's important well i'm glad you mentioned it thank you and just one other quick question about the you said the and the baseline testing that was done because you know i have the two boys so i know i did the base i saw they had those assignments but um i thought that we were tr having to assess
050i may be wrong but i thought in the road back it said we need to evaluate the learning loss of our students because of the spring remote learning shutdown of in-person instruction did am i remembering that correctly that we are supposed to be assessing the learning laws or noting where our kids are because if you assess where your kids are you naturally see where is the loss what would they have had so rather we're not going back and we're not teaching you know for a second grade and we're not teaching first grade content oh okay what we did so if i use math as an example they took a readiness assessment at the beginning of the year in grades one through eight and that really shows do you have the content of to be successful
051throughout the course of the year with what's going to be taught so teachers based on that data and looking at it if they saw a deficit in a particular area and let's say they saw it with you know these four students that would be a group of four students that i would see during a math workshop and i might need to build some foundational skills i see to a double digit edition right that second grade example so that's how they do it right by looking at where are they currently and then fill the gaps if they are finding that they miss this from the front right you know from the spring and they're just in general and really what something we've talked to our teachers and again they're just wonderful at that is every year
052we have kids who come below level we have kids who come above level at every grade so that really is the heart of teaching is knowing i have to differentiate regardless so we knew that we were going to see that irregardless kids at all levels and we're finding out where they are and again we're looking for growth throughout the year thank you for the explanation any any other questions or comments um ms mccoolick i have a i have a quick question uh if anyone doesn't isn't chiming in um so this is this the science test right okay so i know like and again this this might be an incredibly silly question uh in high school when we when we do we have we do this like science assessment test for the state they always tell
053us like it doesn't count it doesn't count it doesn't count what what is what what's the difference between the science assessment or what we're doing here comparatively or different than what's going on up there in high school you actually were taking end of course science assessment yes yeah then as it relates to requirements for graduation it's just a language arts and a math it's not a science yes so that's the difference with high school you have your you know your ela for grade 10 is what counts and your algebra one are the two that are required assessments for graduation but in elementary we are just required to give the assessment for science it's in fifth and eighth grade and you kind of think of that as like an early um like an early indicator because
054it's by the end of fifth grade here's the the content that you should have to be successful and on track for high school so when okay let's just say so when they're in eighth grade and they take that test that test will help them learn whether they're going to like environmental science or biology or it's one of the factors that the high school looks at but not the only one okay and in particular this is a brand new assessment so if you remember it used to be njs yes yeah then they switched it to nj sla science did a field test year where they gave you no data no information and then this which is 2019 was the first year they released the results and you did see it was very low across the state
055but it was a totally different assessment yeah so it would be what would be most interesting for us curriculum people awesome because looking at data over time and then talking to the high school about what are they seeing are the different areas where you know there's a focus at it because yeah there's such a focus for graduation in high school for for math and fur and and for english and and related arts in that way but it always feels like the science one is like thrown there and it's just like so i was wondering like how that played out i appreciate that thank you that really clears it up for me uh anybody else any questions or comments thank you very much thank you mr mccoy i appreciate uh your presentation all right so that
056at this point is ending um is ending our our two presentations i thank you to mr donio and mrs mcgulick again uh for for the presentations at this point in time we are going into public comment for agenda items only this meeting will now be open to the public referencing agenda items only however your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we'd ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public you'll also limit your comments to three minutes per person a couple things that i want to point out here and this is very important for you before you start calling number one um i know that the the the issue right now and and and what is uh making a lot
057of people tune in is about paraprofessionals and their health benefits it is not on the agenda okay so if you have a comment about that or a question uh we would hope that you would please reserve that towards the public comment for any item of interest uh secondly uh there is a three minute timer okay uh mr summer is uh he's gonna be answering the call uh and he will be you know when you get to three minutes he's gonna tell you we are expecting a high volume amount of calls today we want to be as respectful as possible for everybody who wants to try to call when we hit that three minute mark we're going to have to be pretty hard on that three minute mark also um when you call in per agent
058per public session it's one per call okay it's it's please do not call multiple times uh also and this is very important you will you may want our feedback particularly the superintendent's feedback on questions we ask that you please turn down your listening device or whatever it is that you're live streaming through then after you're done asking the questions hang up and then raise the volume on the listening device dr smith or whoever can answer or address that question will address the question so you can hear it uh it is very difficult again to do uh back and forth through live stream okay i believe i hit everything if i recall all right at this point again this is public comment for agenda items only so we will open it up if we don't at
0597 55 right now if we don't get any phone calls we'll we'll close it sounds good thank you go ahead call you're on with the board can you speak up a little bit we can't hear you sure why are you why are you not discussing the paraprofessionals health benefits thank you for your question it's not an agenda item as the uh the hours that employees work in this case is a managerial prerogative item not not a board item so it doesn't need to be on the board agenda it will however be addressed in my superintendent's comments and i'm sure and we look forward to the second public comment section where people can share about that thank you all right we will be now closing public comment for agenda items only i've closed it i've closed
060it we're gonna we're gonna move on all right um at this point in time uh we're gonna be moving to approval of the minutes i need a motion to prove items six point one through six point three do i have a motion to approve items six one one six point three uh motion by miss fleming second it by miss null any questions or comments for approval of the minutes seeing none let's go to a roll call please this is barbara giovanni yes this is everhart yes mr fizzicaro yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lanzalotta yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you at this point in time i need a motion we're going to go to superintendent's report and administrative items i need a motion to prove
061items seven one through seven seven do i have a motion motion mr catholic do i have a second second by miss barbara giovanni any uh before we have any questions or comments uh dr smith um you have your superintendent's report so the floor is yours sir thank you mr pizzacaro my superintendent's report tonight has two topics we have um as each time a reopening update um our plan is going as as planned uh we've had a lot of really valuable progress with um the way that the online learning is going um it is um amazing to watch and see our teachers um managing both in-person learning and the remote learning at the same time through the cohort a and b with the live stream if you ever want to get a little window into that
062just for our parents at home and i'm not doing this to pluck my own twitter feed for sure but but i do when i visit classrooms i really make a point to try to make a send a tweet out to open a window into what's going on in the room so so people at home can see what it looks like it's very very exciting and uh you know so just want to say thank you to all our staff for that excellence that they're bringing every day in terms of our uh the learning also from a physical safety standpoint we've only had so six positive cases total in the entire year and today was our 31st day of school okay 31 days of in-person learning um six cases and that goes to just is you know
063evidence of the teamwork of staff students families um working together to try to keep um the inline the in-person learning going as long as we can you know because we really um we we made that an emphasis of our plan and we stuck to it and i think that um you know the fact that we can look back and see all the learning that's taking place for our kids is proof that um you know it's working um and i just want to give a special shout out to our custodial staff uh and mr donahue our facilities manager um just thinking back to all the all the planning that they they put in and to see it get carried out um daily that you know executing that plan and that it's keeping coveted at bay is
064very gratifying for me and i hope for them as they as they look at that um so thank you to them so second update is a budget update i've been including budgetary information in my friday emails to all etsd families um and if you haven't seen one of those yet just want to give a couple numbers so our district must cut 5.8 million from our 2021-2022 budget our state aid will be cut an additional 1.6 million in 2022-23 and a further 1 million in 2023-24 and you have to let those numbers sink in a little bit okay we have a 77 million dollar budget okay on top of that the pandemic has increased costs and reduced revenues and even starting this year a range of roles in areas of operations will be impacted as we
065examine each new circumstance presented by the pandemic for possible savings our goal we'll talk about a few of those tonight later when we get to personnel items our goal is to reduce the negative impact of these cuts on our children knowing though that negative impact cannot be avoided but please know this as clearly as i can say the goal throughout this entire process is to reduce the negative impact on children this entire budgetary situation is extremely painful for everyone it affects staff our district family the steps with our with regard to our paraprofessionals were only set in motion by remote learning wednesdays which are shortened days which result in fewer paid hours fewer hours worked and fewer paid hours for particular hourly employees which would result in the potential loss of health benefits eligibility for
066around 30 paraprofessionals starting on january 1st 2021 as these remote learning wednesdays did not exist before their impact only became clear after the start of the year and that impact was communicated with the paris as soon as possible at that point just in case anyone doesn't remember from the start of the year shortening the wednesday of every five day week to create remote learning wednesdays was a compromise worked out between district administration and the union that represents 98 of our staff including teachers and paraprofessionals before the start of the year the union was pushing for an all remote start no in-person instruction for any children and if not that then for every day to be a shortened day similar to some surrounding districts which would have resulted in all of our paraprofessionals potentially losing eligibility
067that we should be all remote with no in-person learning or if not that all days should be shortened days is still the union's position and all the emails conversations phone calls and communication of any kind that i've received from eta members including leadership the only ideas for cutting that have been shared with me unless i missed one in which case please show me again our ideas that do not affect any of their members even though they represent 98 of our staff 87 of our budget goes to our staff the suggestion box lid was removed weeks ago and i'm still waiting for a single idea that affects them the entire budget process which will last years is incredibly complex and iterative that means that we are always discussing always listening in the dynamic landscape of our
068times as a board as a superintendent as a district administration we are always discussing through that discussion we have determined that all that our paraprofessionals will be paid for their typical full day hours on the remote learning wednesdays thereby maintaining benefits eligibility for any para who would typically earn it this year i'll say that again our paraprofessionals will be paid for their typical full days on the remote learning wednesdays thereby maintaining benefits eligibility for any para who would typically earn it personally i am very glad for each pair who benefits for a few of them i even taught their amazing children who are now grown up as amazing adults my heart has been sick about this at the same time my heart and my mind are extremely sick and distraught at the prospect of the
069additional cuts that must come and what the impact of those cuts on children will be as by january we must develop next year's budget 5.8 million in cuts our district exists to serve students since we will now be paying for a full day's work on the 30 shortened days of remote learning wednesdays some of those 30 days some of those remote learning wednesdays will be converted into regular in-person learning days some cohort a some cohort b i will submit an updated calendar at a november board meeting showing which remote learning wednesdays have been converted into days of in-person learning this conversion is a positive benefit for students a tremendous benefit as they will receive more in-person learning and there is just not enough of that not enough as we would like no matter what we
070try but here we can provide some more and our paris will continue to receive benefits along the way a win-win i will communicate this information via memo to all staff for those who aren't tuning in tonight thank you dr smith uh just so i'm i'm clear and so people who are watching are clear and you've just reiterated you've just uh you've just shared with with the public and with the board uh that that the health benefits for power professionals will not expire on december 31st 2020 uh 2020 correct correct okay uh you also explained at that same point that in order to do that we will uh be adding in some wednesdays uh for all uh for for uh in-person instruction correct correct okay all right thank you i just want that to be very
071clear so that everyone understands that uh no loss of benefits will happen all right there'll be no loss of benefits that will happen nothing will be expiring by december 31st of 2020. okay thank you i i just wanted to just clarify that uh so that everybody is aware of what's happening thank you dr smith um any questions or or comments uh ms noel oh i'm sorry mr mr megan i'll get you next just a quick question so um excuse me we were going to vote tonight on a revised calendar which brought you know through the end of the school year as you guys know cohort a cohort b remote learning was so that's taken off the table is the way i understand it we are not voting on 7.3 revised calendar um ms noel thank
072you for that question because uh we we should still vote on that calendar because it encompasses over 100 days remaining in the school year we're only on day 31. the days that will change with the updated calendar are just going to be certain remote learning wednesdays in the spring so the benefit of this calendar and again just uh i can't thank our parents enough for all the communication they give me because it helps us be responsive as a district um so the calendar painful as it was to create because it basically projects that the pandemic will be with us through june um but again parents were asking and totally understandably um in terms of their work schedules and so on could they know what the a days and the b days are for the remainder
073of the year so those eight days and b days monday tuesday thursday friday won't be changing with the updated calendar november it'll be just those certain remote learning wednesdays that get converted into a cohort a day or a cohort b day and i would love to say that the november account when we get to that november and we approve that updated calendar that would be the last time for the year but it's a pandemic and if you think back to the slides there was one slide in the opening reopening presentation that we repeated twice and it was the shortest slide of all and it said tentative tentative tentative it's a pandemic you know and those words still ring true thank you mr megan my my clarification was just addressed i want to make sure the
074remote wednesday change started in the spring and you clarified that um so it'll start the the conversion of particular remote learning wednesdays will begin after winter break so after winter break so so january february and onward yeah that's okay oh it's fine uh any other questions or comments um i i will i will say something i i you know i want to thank dr smith uh for uh for this i think i think this is very important um especially look we're in we're in crazy times man we're in crazy times um you know i've been doing this a long time and i have gone through a lot of issues on this board uh you know whether it was that's a family or or evans or uh or school choice or privatization issues or bus depot
075issues or whatever it may be but i i can't tell you how cataclysmic everything has been in terms of of talking about making cuts losing money covet 19 hybrid who comes in who doesn't what days are off who gets what who's afraid of what even my opinions on things have changed rapidly since august but you know we always talk about being a family and i and i i i unders i understand that sometimes that gets kind of thrown back at us um but sometimes as a family even families who have money issues really struggle together um things things are things things are going to get are going to get really nasty they're going to get really nasty all right and i take zero joy in in in saying and saying that um but i i
076am glad uh that that we were able to to to do this and allow allow for those those benefits to stay especially um god forbid if something were to happen um with with this pandemic so i thank you dr smith and i appreciate all your hard work and everything that you go through um this is this is not easy so i appreciate it good just i just want to say i appreciate um with our board um and i believe it came up at a prior meeting we were talking about how our board like what's fantastic about it among many other facets is it's truly representative of our town there's a range of perspectives and we get to share and come to consensus and that's so valuable because it really feels sometimes like we've distilled the
077entire all our entire town to nine people and for me just in my role yeah i couldn't ask for anything more so i just want to say thank you for that uh mr lancelata can i say one more thing absolutely sir you know first of all i wanted to thank uh dr smith he's been working tirelessly highly tirelessly in order to try to make as many changes positive changes for the school for our kids you know and this change which was great for our powers and our children while it's it's great we are kicking the can down the road of a huge budget deficit it's not going to get any better and it's not because of the it's not because of dr smith it's not because of anyone on this board we've been getting emails
078every single day phone calls every day and we appreciate every single one and but we need to really start focusing our emails and our attention on the men and women who are elected officials hi or higher-ups in government you need to start talking about you need to start emailing your governor you need to start emailing your assemblyman and assembly women anyone that will listen because we're not getting the federal funding that we need for covid and we're not and we're also not getting and we're getting budget cuts state budget cuts that are astronomical to any to any district so please start emailing start calling the people in office that are making their that are making these cuts well said thank you very well said there's a there are a lot of people here a lot
079of passionate people so i think we could start doing that ms barbara giovanni jeff that was beautifully put and we really do need our community residents to start sending letters to the governor to our state assembly to whoever will listen i know we sent we dr smith has sent letters up asking please save our schools to take a hit like we have in the aid is horrendous and all we're asking and i know it was even asked of the state to could you just even it out a little bit more don't hit us with so much doesn't want it falls on dead ears so you do have senators you do have assemblymen so i'm asking the community write the letters to them call get in contact because we love this district i know people come
080back and say their words but we really do and we don't want to cut anybody so we need your help in this matter so thank you and dr smith you've done a wonderful job i have called you i have asked you any questions that i asked about what's going on how many of this is affecting and all you've always taken the time and you've given the answer and i know many other board members have reached out because this is very serious tonight and we don't want to lose anybody or have anybody lose their benefits so you are always there and you came in at a heck of a year and believe me you deserve praise not anything negative so thank you any other questions oh mr fleming i'm so sorry i just wanted to also
081thank dr smith again for always communicating and rapidly i would uh suggest as well i also think to the community when dr smith is asking those that have access to that suggestion box please put the suggestions in if we don't know about it as a board then or dr smith doesn't know about it we can't think of way other ways we're asking and asking and asking so please submit them fill the box send the suggestions to the board dr smith please this will take everybody in the community as well as the board every person that works in our school district you know from the top to the lower levels so please make the suggestions certainly certainly reasonable ones and understand the deficit is large and as mr lanzalotta said it's just we've just kicked it
082a little further great benefit for our children and our paras at this point tonight but it is upon us and in just a very few short months thank you again yeah so uh i think in in the emails that we've been receiving a lot of people have asked how they can help um in previous emails i know dr smith has laid out kind of four options right we can work with the ptas and ptos you can work with the evesham education foundation the third option is obviously a direct donation and then fourth and most important is reaching out to our state legislatures i would like to see in our our in our weekly updates to parents and staff if we can add in the budget update just as the last line the fourth option there
083of reaching out to the legislatures and kind of keep that there so it's on everybody's mind moving forward because i think that's the most powerful yeah we'll do mr canton thank you thank you the one thing that we that i've learned being on the board of education during times of crisis is that nobody's coming to help you no one's ever coming to help you you're always hoping that when there's a major crisis that someone's going to swoop in it's of higher power than you and they're going to save the day but they're they're never coming and so the only way to get their attention is by getting their attention all right and it's it it takes it takes a lot to do so all right and i i something that i i told i told
084the public and i told everybody a couple years ago and i remember this very clearly when we first started this this road down these cuts i said in the end of the day what is going to happen is we are going to tear each other apart and the people who are responsible are going to get away with it scot-free because the people who are responsible for it are the people who created a funding formula that robbed you of nine million dollars in your state aid okay they're the ones who did this but instead what happened which is what i i warned you would happen we began to tear each other apart and as we tore each other apart basically two you know two uh two wolverines chewing for the same bone uh the person who
085gave us those pity pitiful scraps they got away scot-free so mr lancelot is absolutely 100 correct all right and and the board the board agrees with that you have to put serious real pressure and if you don't put serious real pressure no one's coming to help us no one's coming to help you and we're gonna be back to killing each other again in april all right we're gonna be back at it again joe if you remember i think it was sometime last year where the lenape regional and the sending districts yes we formed yeah i think it's important that we not we but all the districts um have a letter it's very difficult to ask people to write their own letter if we can have some kind of form thing going on like we need
086a concerted effort because you can sit here there's a template we'll make sure that the templates of the template's available for those you know update it and the mask lets everybody do this absolutely because people are not going to do it if you just tell them go and do this i i agree with that gentleman yeah that's just my opinion it was much easier when we had that letter and sent it out to everybody and they could just insert their name the language is there for them yeah dr smith you took yeah so there's um and i just it's it's fantastic uh hearing ideas so so there it there are um resources along those lines that are in in a website i shared in a prior email but but um us being etsd uh i
087actually think it'd be better to um craft our own letter that's specific to our needs and and and i you know i go back to the testimony i submitted and i'll put this in the form letter because instead of asking for like if we ask for five things it's easy to kind of like say oh there you know but if we ask for one thing and one thing would be delay the timeline of these reductions it was developed before the 100-year event of this pandemic you know and so to implement something that's a five-year timeline that was developed before a pandemic which we don't even know it's gonna when it's gonna end is uh applying something to a completely different context that doesn't even fit anymore and that's the one ask that i put in
088the testimony and i think you know if we were if we had a form letter that had that same mask in it and just repeat just beat that drum beat that drum beat that drum then we may be able to you know we can see what happens so any other questions or comments almost forgot what we were voting on all right i need um all right let's go to a roll call for item seven of superintendents report this is barbara giovanni yes this is ever heart yes mr fizzy cara yes miss fleming yes mr catherine yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you at this point we're going to go to item eight which is curriculum and instruction idea motion to prove items eight one through
089eight six do i have a motion motion by ms barbara giovanni do i have a second second by miss fleming any questions or comments pertaining to curriculum and instruction seeing none let's go to a roll call please this is barbara giovanni yes mrs everhart yes mr fizzakaro yes miss fleming yes mr katherine yes mrs noll yes mr mr lancelotta yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you all right at this point we're going to item 9 which is finance and operations i need a motion to prove items 9 1 through 9 15. do i have a motion to improve items 9 1 through 9 15. uh motioned by mr lanzalata do i have a second seconded by ms barbara giovanni any questions or comments pertaining to yes ms noel my question is
090on 9 13 about the school security grant application sorry i did not have a chance to ask this earlier so if you can please explain that to me yeah sure um it was probably oh it started before the covet so it was sometime i guess in the winter um the state put out a school security grant that you could apply for there was two two parts to it the first part was you had to be compliant with alyssa's law which is the panic buttons in the schools which we we did do that we were compliant at the time anyway um so once you got that approval then you could apply for grant money to offset caught offset cost of panic buttons if you didn't have them or other pro other projects you did that are
091related to security or future projects that you are going to do in our case we had done all the vestibules over the last couple of years and that will qualify for the grant money and we'll get reimbursed uh some of that money [Music] through this grant once it's applied for and uh approved by the state we'll get back back approximately 242 thousand dollars wonderful thank you you're welcome miss everhart yes so i just wanted to talk about 9.5 as i did last month i want to just do a shout out to uh seems like over the last couple months we've had a lot of generous donations to the school district uh in different fashion than we had in the past so i just again we are surrounded as a town by the pandemic but people
092still find a way to um to do some things for the district so i don't the only thing is i don't know what so i want to thank lockheed martin local company for for giving us uh some money towards technology for the district i also want to thank the anonymous donor whoever they are uh collectively or maybe one individual for that children's handmade mask that's a very creative um generous donation and if somebody could tell me i want to thank the anonymous donor for the access points but i don't know what that is thank you but what is it what oh very nice so thank you uh for that again thank you to the public for rallying around again also for the tables and chairs uh that you're still continuing to donate to the schools
093because we've been blessed with some really great weather so they've had the opportunity to be outside it's not not ideal we'd like them to be inside but this is a nice thing that the town is doing all different kinds of ways that they're getting them to the school so thank you thank other questions or comments all right let's move to a world cup case mrs barbara giovanni yes mrs everhart yes mr fizzakaro miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes mission carries um want to say uh congratulations on the appointment of the rice principal that is my home school so wish miss miss cam success at the rice community and um you know good luck and godspeed and enjoy it it's a great community thanks
094that's it i want to piggyback off of that i'm i'm very excited about this um this cam is a wonderful wonderful person she'll be a wonderful building principal i think she's a great addition to rice um and i also i am also very happy about the outcome of this as well um you know in the in the savings that we'll be making through this and the savings that we're making through this and the other one is through what we're about to prove for the transfer over into into vanzant um when i talked to this board in in early september i was talking about we need to make movement now these were the types of movements i was talking about uh seeing these kind of movements where we can start eliminating positions but not hurting people
095in the process try to try to lighten the blow before we get into into the real meat of this these are the things that i was referring to i'm very thankful that we were able to do this and i think it's important for us i think it's important for uh you know for this for the district and for um a step in the right direction of our financial health so thank you i appreciate that um mr p may i just um i think uh each board meeting up tonight i've shared a few thoughts about um our retirees and and tonight i'm gonna just change it up a little bit and just share a few thoughts about our a few people who are being affected by the the cuts that we made now so uh you
096know we talked a lot about impact of the cuts and uh so we're what we're talking tonight through the addendum and the personnel items is we've eliminated four positions okay a supervisor position curriculum supervisor position which is a district administration position um a counselor position a media specialist position and a uh child study team position okay to gather those four positions um and mr rashinti correct me if i'm my math is wrong but i believe it's 486 000 in salaries and benefits okay 486 000 in salaries and benefits so that 5.8 as there is after this board meeting and and we approve it is really a 5.375 okay um still a mountain but a step okay um but each of those steps represents a lot of other steps a lot of other steps you know
097we spent the bulk of our administrative meeting with the principals on wednesday and there will be many many many more conversations to come talking through what that means in terms of what we do right because every every role in the district is part of a web um and uh you know so every every elimination like that leads to um additional the work is still there right and it leads to uh shifting it um other places and i'll just give you just one little concrete example is like for for me for a little me so i'll be picking up observations um you know so miss cam does 100 observations in a year right um that's that's a lot of observations right it's almost one every other day or actually it's more than one every every school
098day um the benefit to me is i get to get to know better our non-tenured staff right first year third year staff and we get to work our way through those you know state required observations that's like one pixel and a much that's one one pixel out of a tremendous portrait of additional changes that go on um so i just wanted you know i wanted to share that i won't share that every time we make changes you know what i mean but just since it's like the first batch you know i felt like it's worth saying and just lastly um i sent an email to the rice community last night the staff and the parents about uh kelly cam being i mean this is an incredible thing so you know it's it's rare when you
099encounter somebody that i i still haven't met somebody who doesn't talk about her in superlatives you know and and i hardly met anybody like that you know and and from what in the short time i've seen i've worked with her here it's exactly true so you know it is very tough to find a great candidate for a principalship and to have one in house to have one here on our staff is an incredible asset i'm so glad that we can um you know uh take advantage of that for students in that way and then rosemary thaxton the counselor here red hall who's going to go to vanzant starting on january 1st to take over for jane raider who's retiring so rosemary my kids came through red hall i mean she is like that rare kind
100of unicorn type of person who has a wealth of experience but still has that spark of enthusiasm for all that she does and she will be you know just a absolute spark plug at vansant next to already a spark plug of mr de blasio i can't even wait to see what what two of them come up with together but um i i really feel like that's a fantastic um step for that school i thank uh miss thaxton from the bottom of my heart for um you know her openness to this uh next chapter in her career and and also i i'm very thankful to the the des counselor and the green hall counselor who will pick up the the load for her uh going to uh vanzant you know so um again that's just just
101a i won't do this every time make changes but i just since this is the first batch i wanted to kind of speak a little bit to that yes ms barbara giovanni i just want to commend the administration for doing what you did by choosing kelly kim for the principal wonderful person i know her she's fantastic and you're eliminating a supervisory job but you're also we're not having to pay for a substitute to come in and fill in till june and i think that's wonderful and for the jobs that you aren't uh filling i say kudos because as everyone can see we're really trying hard and when there are retirements if we can get away without filling them then we are trying to do that and i just want to wish everyone who's retiring uh
102the best of luck you're gonna love it thank you thank you ms barbara giovanni i got a long way to go any uh any any questions or comments [Laughter] all right let's go to a roll call please mrs barbara giovanni yes mrs everhart yes mr fizzy cara yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lanzalotta yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries okay we're moving to item 11 which is policy i need a motion to prove items 11 1 through 11 3. uh do i have a motion motion by ms knoll seconded by mr lanzalata any questions or comments pertaining to the bylaws and policies and regulations that are written here just make note that uh as you can see they're all mandatory so okay all right um that being
103said let's go to a roll call please mrs barbara giovanni yes mrs everhart yes mr fizzakaro yes ms fleming yes mr catherine yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you all right at this point in time we're moving into committee reports if there's any chairs that wish to share any reports with us this would be the time to do so mr lanzalata i'd like to first thank uh jay levinson and the republican committee for allowing us to come in and when i say us i mean the community outreach committee here uh dr smith and myself went to their october meeting and it was just a way to explain to the community what is going on uh in in the eastern school district uh dr smith talked
104for a little while about you know what we're doing as far as um precautions for the the the covid uh virus he also he also talked about um you know our reentry plan how it's going and and just how great everything's been so far um and and and then finally we talked about the budget crisis that we're having just so everyone's uh you know it it it's out there um this month coming up we're uh supposed to go and visit the uh the the democratic committee um and then also the rotary club as well as the elks club and i would just like to throw it out there if there's any other organizations that would like that would like us to come and talk and speak on our behalf and just to to know what's
105going on in the school district we would love to you know love to come and hang out with you for the night just just shoot me an email i appreciate that mr lanzalota i think it's very important that uh you took the bull by the horns on this with the community outreach program and that your committee and dr smith are reaching out to several different groups i look forward to hearing more about this so i appreciate all the work you're doing thank you uh any other any other committee reports okay all right seeing none we're going to close that portion of the meeting let's uh now head over to old business i don't have anything on the dock for old business dr smith you're good okay all right gonna move past that we're gonna go
106to new business uh anybody uh have anything of new business seeing none we will close that portion of the meeting okay we're now getting into open public comment uh this is uh open public comment for any item of interest this meeting will now be open to the public referencing any items of interest however your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we'd ask you to see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person again same rules apply oh dear lord the same same rules apply first before we take any phone calls before we take any phone calls uh there are there all right there are uh there are two people that are in live public
107who uh will uh we wish to speak okay well give me one second i'll get right to you um a couple um there's a wireless mic right there right there all right a couple a couple things again caveats i want you to remember when you call please state your name and address uh also when you when you call um your if you are asking a question please lower your your volume of your streaming device again say your question hang up raise the volume again dr smith or whoever can answer that question will answer it for you uh we are strictly hitting this to three minutes per person only because we anticipate a large volume and also finally also finally this is meant for each person to have three minutes not calling continuously and add three
108minutes of time so please make your point in those three minutes uh we will do our best uh to listen to you and uh and respond if need and necessary uh first i would love to uh i would love to address uh the uh the audience live if you could please uh name an address hi my name is coreen halibura i live at 13 olympia drive i'm a paraprofessional at rice elementary school i had prepared a speech today i'm relieved to say that i don't have to read what i had written i would like to say that in the past our superintendent has had board meetings with us about budgets and things that were happening and i would hope that things would be transparent as they were in the past and not just kind of
109where the rug was pulled out from under us we had no idea this was coming i've been sitting in board meetings for the past 26 years as a parent as an employee and as a taxpayer and i know that prior to covid there was a 1.4 million dollar deficit and there's there's always been the end to anticipation that people were going to lose jobs and lose benefits and whatnot and a lot of things were were done so that didn't have to happen and i understand with covet and i understand that but we never had we were never blindsided before and i would hope joe as you had said that things are going to be nasty and i hope that they're not going to be nasty i hope that we can all work together as a
110community so that things aren't going to be nasty that we can work together on this and try to solve the problem and as my father always said you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar we are supposed to be examples to our children so let's set an example and going forward let's do things a little bit differently thank you thank you thank you mrs alberta uh just one one follow-up thought um so that the the typical budget process that you're talking about absolutely still in place so you know we have meetings in november and december with staff where we go to the schools as a cabinet to talk about the budget development and then it's presented preliminarily in january so that that still all stays in place and what made this you
111know unique and unexpected of course is that those remote learning wednesdays never existed before you know and hopefully after this year they will never exist again so thank you would you would you like to comment too or you oh okay i just wanted to make sure before i went to the phone calls thank you okay i'm sorry i know there's probably a caller waiting please go ahead mr summers hi my name is janet kimmenauer and i am an 8th grade language arts teacher at demacy and i'm also a former union president and i have worked with many many of you throughout the years um i have everything said but now i get to change it first of all i can't express enough i want to repeat what miss halibera said it's pretty much what i
112was going to say i think the biggest problem that the association and members had was again the way that the information was rolled out we have in the past always worked together the association in the administration the best that we could and those kinds of funding information ahead of time definitely softens the blow so dr smith thank you for your decision after all that um it restores a little bit of faith i believe for right now and some trust in the whole process and um also counselor donio thank you for um recognizing um our our um i don't know it's not a picket line but thank you for recognizing our cause and doing what you did at that time um and again we've been through so many of these things um i hear you mr
113fitzicaro we've been through this and where we've always done well is by sticking together and listening to one another and working together and i hope moving forward that we understand everybody has to make these deep cuts these hard decisions i think it's just the process in which we what we could really learn from is how that process will be just how that horrible news is going to be disseminated is going to be the key to helping raise morale and keeping the morale alive and again thank you again dr smith for that decision i know a lot of paras are going to be able to sleep a lot better tonight thank you i have no questions for you thank you good call you're on with the board good evening my name is karen ahern and i've
114been a secretary with eve stamp for 30 years i'm the proud second vice president of etea and proud to work in the school district i want to thank you for your support tonight for our professionals i had a fabulous speech put together but i'm going to cut it in half and just address them a point that i still feel important you continue to talk about a 5 million budget deficit when we analyze your school budget we found no such deficit but we did find the following in the 2021 budget you submitted to the state of new jersey there was no mention of a five million dollar budget you did not budget to cap nor take advantage of the ability to budget an increase in health benefits outside of the cap if the cost went above
115two percent when it comes to unanticipated surplus you had almost 1.2 million more than budgeted and to make matters worse for the 2021 school year you budgeted an additional 1.5 million in unanticipated surplus if we're losing money why are we budgeting more than the previous year moving on our total operating budget for 2021 increased by more than 2.1 million dollars if for short 5 million how then could we increase our operating budget by more than 2.1 million dollars the budgeted fund balance is almost double what was reported in 2020 or 2019-2020 so again why is this almost doubling if in fact we took the 1.2 million sitting in unanticipated surplus and added it to the budgeted fund balance we have an additional 4.9 million dollars i'm no mathematician but the 4.9 in these two accounts
116certainly doesn't sound like a 5 million deficit in my 30 years i've seen the good and the bad what we've gone through for the past few weeks has shown me the ugly i appreciate what you did tonight thank you for the support of our staff our powers and uh we look forward to working with you in in the future thanks again you guys thank you one uh just one one follow-up thought and mrs a hair and thank you for um the information you shared so it you're you're sort of the the hat the what i couldn't exactly hear you know i'm sure i'll get an email follow-up probably with all that laid out which i look forward to getting as soon as you as you're able but the how is interesting to me because the
117previous callers miss kimono kim and our and uh our you know miss halibura here who's in person both spoke about the how you know and the how of communication um i speak with our union leadership every friday and often other days and we meet you and and russ and debbie often in liaison meetings and the first time that all that information which i couldn't really make out is being shared isn't through the meetings that we have which are scheduled regularly and it's not through the friday conversations and the emails that we always have it's live in public comment in a very hard to hear format with nothing in writing that i can't even i couldn't even respond to so you know i i just i would i would encourage all of us to to continue
118to communicate via mechanisms that we that already exist and we know work or can work and so i look forward to that email and communication in our liaison meetings thank you let's go count down from a minute now go ahead call you're on with the board hi um my name is jocelyn cooper i just wanted to say a big thank you to dr smith i had him as a teacher when i was in high school and i've heard what he has done for the aids of the evesham township school district and i just wanted to say thank you so much and how much it means to me and my family thank you so proud of you okay director lots of responsibility you're doing amazing stuff keep it up hi this is russ bowles i'm a
119teacher at demacy and vice president of the eastern township education association um i'm sure everybody saw the support that we had outside today there was close to 200 people out there i just want to say thank you to those board members who stopped to discuss some things with some of our members they were pretty passionate about their calls i also want to say thank you to dr smith administration for continuing to are continuing our paris benefits throughout the year um one thing that i wanted to address was having the meeting in person i know there's a lot of other school districts surrounding school districts that have switched to that i know that there's still the 25 capacity and six foot social distancing in place uh i i do think that we could follow that in
120the dimension cafeteria uh we we submitted that request but it was denied by dr smith and mr fisa carroll we have to have it outside which i know is not the perfect situation for having a meeting but we're trying to do everything to get our members there in person so i do ask that maybe you take a look at that and and for the future i just hope that continuing on to our paraprofessionals i just hope that in june the board of education doesn't decide that they're going to take away the benefits from a group of people that the last superintendent grandfathered in under districts under the district's consolidation plan uh the current paraprofessionals that have benefits until retirement were grandfathered in by john scadelli in the board of education i don't care whether it
121was a written agreement or a verbal agreement it needs to be followed that's something that we've always done as the eastern township education association and the board of education you know and some of the current board of education members that are there know that this was the agreement that was made um as far as this whole remote learning wednesday i i've seen it in press releases i've seen it being told to many members that that it was our decision that it was the eta who switched to this remote learning that ended up cutting the paris benefits uh that's not the case you know we we did want remote learning uh we didn't want our powers to be cut their hours no surrounding district has done that you know we got an email asking us to
122do away with that so the powers can keep their benefits you know this doesn't get you know getting rid of remotely wednesdays and bringing the powers back doesn't fix the problem you know and i feel and we feel as an association that it's not not about the money when it came to that it was about putting two units in one association against each other so we we hope that that's not the case and and i hope that this is not the eve sham way because it hasn't been the exam way and if this is the way we're going to do things in the future you know it's it's a dark one for for our district so again thank you for the decision you made tonight we appreciate it and i hope you keep that in
123mind come june thank you thank you to just address the question about the in-person meetings and the meeting format uh i will be talking to the board president and superintendent as well as the board secretary about changing the format of your meetings based on some legal guidance and some other some changes that are going on your meetings have been conducted the way most other board meetings have been conducted but there is this transition towards uh changing the format and we're going to be trying to work something out so that hopefully by november we will have a different type of meeting format for you hi it's debbie van curen eastern township education association president first of all i want to thank the board of education members who stopped to speak to our parents that were so
124passionate in the parking lot and i do want to thank dr smith for working this out for the paris however this evening i want to address something that was mentioned earlier by mr bowles it keeps being said that this whole situation with the paris came as a result of etea requesting remote wednesdays this kind of makes me angry because we in fact did not come up with remote wednesdays if you remember all through the summer we were asking for a delayed in-person start date due to issues with air quality the eastern township school district decided to install ionizers but send students and staff back to the buildings without the completion of these units the question for dr smith this evening would be what is the completion date for those those ionizers because we are still
125not convinced that the air quality in our building is up to par and secondly the etea had asked for at least to begin with half days to limit the exposure in the schools and shorten the time students and staff would be in a mask we would never have dreamed that benefits would have been taken away from any of our members during this pandemic we were told both of these plans that were proposed were not options and then on july 28th dr smith told us that they had good news and that we would have remote wednesdays we were excited because we thought at least our custodians could be able to clean thoroughly and our teachers who were giving this undoubted undaunting task of teaching two or more cohorts at a time would be able to attempt
126and plan and keep their heads above water and all of our friday afternoon or friday morning chats dr smith mr bulls and my stuff we were all in agreement that this would definitely you know be something that we should keep because it would help our teachers this was a compromise and we were all in agreement about it um moving forward we are constantly hearing about this five million dollar loss um ete i did just this week and i apologize to dr smith that he's getting this information late uh but we reached out to greg yardy at njea and he was very knowledgeable about school budgets and he went over a lot of the numbers with us we would like to have a sit down because we find that there is a big discrepancy another thing
127with the teachers um the njdoe wrote back plan page 35 prioritize the health and emotional well-being of staff and students above all else by taking away the remote wednesdays we are not keeping the emotional welfare of our teachers why don't we just add 15 minutes each day to monday monday tuesday thursday and friday for our paras they would be able to keep their their uh benefits because they'd have enough hours and the teachers would be able to continue to have the remote wednesdays because honestly this is going to be a domino effect of a lot of other issues um so dr smith and mr shinty let us know when you would like to go over the budget with ecea we'd love to have mr you already join us because we definitely think there's some discrepancies
128in what we're being told and maybe it's not as bad as we think but please consider my other idea of adding 15 minutes to each of those four days so that we can keep our paris benefits and let the teachers keep the remote wednesdays which are keeping them afloat at this point thank you karen and just just again in the spirit of complete transparency and honesty i just i you and i spoke in person today and we texted and we emailed and so unless you got that information about what you're talking about which we haven't seen anything in writing to not share it in person with me via email or via text at any point today means that you must have received it during the meeting or maybe desire a larger stage to share something
129that's very mysterious but i'm very interested in of course because the goal is to make these cuts so absolutely we will be glad to meet together but i just think when we're talking about communication it's important that involves everybody you know and uh and and i just again um i look forward i i deeply appreciate all our communication i just i think it goes better when we can actually have a dialogue and not through a public comment session like this um i will take your idea about the peres with 15 minutes under consideration just please know that the other learning wednesdays i'm not saying they're all going to disappear in in the spring but i do think that we have months where we currently have four and by the time we get to the spring
130our teachers have worked their way and had the support of multiple room learning wednesdays throughout the fall and knowing the desperate need for more in-person instruction trying to strike the right balance between um supporting our students and supporting our teachers you know i i i'm listening i'll consider it but there is a really really strong value to more in-person instruction thank you hi this is tracy brown a teacher at marlton middle school this is my 19th year with the district um i'm so very happy and thankful that you've taken this under consideration to make sure the powers have the benefits and at the same breath i am so deeply disappointed that the agreed remote wednesday plan is now being revoked after winter break i can't even begin to tell you all of the details because
131um honestly it's probably bring me to tears i i don't think and i don't know that the board could even comprehend what's really going down at this point in the middle school i teach approximately 140 students i teach cohort a cohort b cohort r i currently some days have four children in front of me and 26 on a news i think we're up to 30 something percent full removed kids are dropping like flies when we talk about the benefits of having this in-person instruction um it's not working like this at the middle school i love it i wish we had more kids well right now we are chasing these remote children around we're trying to help them we want to help them kids are ghosting us on meats and that remote wednesday is so so
132crucial to be able to do one-on-one to be able to get in touch with parents families and figure this out and problem-solve together and i just can't fathom what our weeks are going to look like without so i beg you to please take into consideration the 15 minutes for the monday tuesday thursday friday and please do not touch these your movements thank you ms brown and just just so i i want to make sure because i couldn't tell um but i'm not saying they're all going away i'm saying a balance will be struck we have months where there are four remote learning wednesdays that is to that you know again trying to find the right balance between the needs of teachers and the needs of students that's what i'm talking about and i'm going to
133come back to something which i mentioned in my superintendent's comments which is and i'm actually still not hearing it it's so interesting i have yet to hear a single idea from etea that infects them that affects them and what we actually have before us is a small a morsel of opportunity with a few remote learning wednesdays to be converted to in-person learning days and i haven't heard one person call in from eta and actually accept that we have a lot of protest signs but i don't actually hear a single productive attestation that giving something back to kids in order to get something for our paraprofessionals is worthwhile and i would urge all of you we have a 5.4 now not 5.8 a 5.4 million dollar journey to get to by july 1st and i feel
134like the lord the longest journey is going to be the psychological one not the financial one it's going to be the journey in our minds to put team before self and to remember that every cinder block in every building in this entire town exists for kids we'll come back to this yeah hi my name is evan scott i live at williamsburg court i'm going to read a series of seven news headlines and we're going to then play a little game of which one does not belong okay headline one america's baby bust headline two generational race gap grows headline three baby bust threatens growth headline four low birth rates poses economic challenge headline five immigrants filling the void as residents flee new jersey by the tens of thousands headline six new jersey school enrollment levels off
135headline seven we need more babies seriously this is a problem okay so to provide the necessary context for these seven headlines this is from page six of the white hall demographic study and it's not just from the most recent white hall demographic study done in january of 2019 it's from also the previous demographic study as well now when i read those headlines to educators educational advocates as well as other journalists in the press they all say the same exact thing we are dipping our toes into racist and xenophobic tropes and language that would be inappropriate for a school demographic study so i think that this would mean that we need to have a much larger conversation about how this kind of language which also only appears in our demographic study whitehall has done many demographic
136studies and that language is only in ours so the first question and to start off the conversation is why is that language in a school demographic study and should we be rewarding whitehall with further contracts in the future i dare say that when you read that in the context of a school enrollment demographic study the headline of immigrants filling the void as residents flee new jersey by the tens of thousands sticks out like a huge sore thumb now for the board members what we as their constituents are looking for was this due to ignorance or a lack of due diligence i think we need to reevaluate the documents that we have and that our public faces thank you hello my name is jeannie guida my address is 9 john quill place in marlton dr smith
137i am a paraprofessional at jaggard school and i think i speak for all the paras when i say there are truly no words to express our gratitude for your decision this means more to us than you will ever know and you have restored our faith in our evesham township district family it was the right decision for the paris and it was the right decision for the special education children of yvesham township i would also like to thank the board for any support you may have shared on our behalf thank you so much to all of you hi my name is erin guarini at 25 nottingham i had emailed a couple days ago dr smith and i'm sure that you're overwhelmed with emails but i was wondering if you could please address the survey that will
138be coming out for the all remote learners on the current all remote learners to potentially return the hybrid there seems to be a lot of confusion and possible rumors on the rumor mill that that offer to families that chose all remote and had the opportunity to return at the beginning of the second trimester is being retracted i was wondering if you could please um speak to that or if somebody on the board could please speak to that thank you i want to thank you for that question um and i'm sorry if uh that i've received a couple emails this week that in the run-up to the board meeting um i haven't gotten back to yet and clearly yours is one of them and i apologize for that um you did put the ball very well
139on the tee for me though with your questions so i'm going to take advantage of that for a second um in my email to all families tomorrow there will be an update on that process but essentially where we're at right now is at our administrative meeting on wednesday we worked on a survey form that we'll be sharing that with our all remote families and our families whose children are currently in a in k preschool or first grade where there's a four day per week in person instruction arrangement so that we can gather up all the data we need to strategically plan for essentially this this ongoing process of the pandemic learning that we're in so um so there'll be an update in my email tomorrow the forum is in the drafting stage and we hope
140to finalize it um this coming wednesday that was that was when we left the meeting it was like we got to get it done by this coming wednesday and we will so thank you go ahead carl you're on with the board hi my name is lawrence i live in woodview apartments i am a long time lifetime since i was two resident of marlton and um i have uh two suggestions since the superintendent keeps asking for suggestions on i'm not associated with the school district i my children went through the district that are no longer children and uh two suggestions i'm curious as to why the property of evan's school has not been sold that is prime real estate on route 73 and probably could bring in a pretty penny and the other suggestion is that
141maybe the superintendent who came in at a higher salary than mr scavelli and some of the top earners in the district take a pay cut and i'm just wondering if that's viable thank you carl what's that question so i'm gonna um i'll start with the evans um so evans actually brings in uh i want to say it's and i'm looking over at mr vicinity to make sure i'm getting sorry 800 000 in revenue each year roughly okay so um i'm ballparking that but he's nodding so 800 000 in revenue each year um so that i mean i don't even want to say that too loud because i don't want the people who you know it it's a nice it's it's certainly a nice um piece for us in in our in our portfolio of um
142miscellaneous revenue and um so selling that would end that miscellaneous revenue stream from the evans property uh the the question about salaries so um just so you know uh and i because i think you mentioned superintendent's salary i didn't pick out the exact wording but usually when people talk about superintendent salary they're talking about it being too high so my salary this year is actually less than i made last year as assistant superintendent and a neighboring district and i specifically asked for my salary this year to not be one dollar higher than the superintendent's salary last year and i did that when i was in the interview process months and months ago before i knew all the true numbers but i knew enough to know that we had a cataclysmic financial hurdle to climb ahead
143of us and the last thing i wanted was to not walk a little bit of talk in that way so um you know that that's uh i just want to share that superintendent's salaries they are higher uh than a lot then then salaries usually the highest salary in the district typically but it is i you know i tried to bring some some some moderation to that with um how i approached it so thank you go ahead call you're on with the board hi my name is amanda cerisky i'm a teacher at martin middle school um first i just want to thank dr smith and the board for their decision tonight i know the teachers in the paris are very appreciative that um the paris will maintain their benefits for the school year um but i
144wanted to loop back around to uh debbie vancuren's call and her original question um about the ionizers i know as a teacher the air quality in the buildings is very important to me um i do not take my mask off while i'm in the building i also work at the ecc program at mes next door um i do not take my mask off for the two hours i am there i don't take it off while i walk across the parking lot um to get across i don't take my mask off for a drink i eat lunch in my car so this is a very important issue to me as i know it is to a lot of my co-workers um my understanding was that it was supposed to take approximately 10 weeks for those products
145to get delivered and then whatever the installment time is so i know debbie asked about that um but that question wasn't answered so i would very much appreciate if we could all get an update on where we were with the process of those products getting delivered and being up installed in all of our buildings thank you thank you so much for circling back to that because um miss van keren did mention that and um so i do want to talk about that so and it makes me glad when i think back to um you know that all the conversations i want to say it was september 2nd this special board meeting to approve those to get the process started because we knew it was going to take a while and we also knew that these
146are in very high demand nationwide and the timeline was not going to be reliable so we did not want to start in any other way than in person because you know not contingent on the arrival of these uh devices because we don't control their production their transportation and the demand um the rooftop units are um going to arrive sooner than the classroom units and i'm looking over at mr shinto to see if um at this point i want to say the classroom units it's not determined yet exactly when we're going to get those but the rooftop units are coming in about three weeks um i'd have to check with the suppliers to get an actual uh update on the delivery times they they have been delayed because of what you had mentioned um the the
147number of orders that are coming into these companies they give you a an approximate date and then obviously then they start postponing them the the the nice thing knowing that you know wherever we are in the queue i'm glad we acted as as immediately as we did as i think back to that time i mean it was a pretty swift process um we called the board meeting um after as soon as we identified because we did a lot of research into because we're so much talk about ventilation testing and and whether to put the money into that but it doesn't actually leave us with the physical product and the ventilation we knew again from our uh engineer at the time was working the way it should but the ionizers give us permanent benefit for covid
148and every other um you know airborne particle allergy et cetera um so it's really you know so again for the long-term health of our district they're going to continue to be an asset for for all time to come but uh at this point um you know we're still waiting for a rival and um again uh just glad wherever we are in the queue we're ahead of all the districts that uh were watching what we were doing i'm just saying that okay so thank you uh and just we we did i mean when we approved this we knew this was going to happen like this was this was something that it was not a surprise to us we knew this was going to be delayed so this is just a follow-up question for the evans property
149800 000 revenue what is what's the cost associated with that and the taxes that we pay so my question i guess is what is the net profit that the school district gets by holding on to that property as opposed to what it would sell for you we're just one call per callers we have a high volume of people who want to call and we want to make sure that everyone's heard okay so make sure that it's one call per caller thank you don't have those numbers with me tonight i'd have to pull those files i would like to come back that that second call the caller who just called the second time there uh there was something else she mentioned uh in her first call about um salaries in general for administration um say i
150am listening i want to come back to that right so um the uh in my email on friday last week to all etsd families i shared um a chart um which shows where we rank in terms of different um areas of spending right so um again just trying to i'm just trying to give an update every week to keep it on the front burner of all of our minds because this is the bigger challenge in the pandemic it's hard to imagine anything could be bigger than the pandemic but this is bigger this is bigger um and if you look at that chart it's interesting um so we are one of 74 k-8 districts that have more than 750 students right and you think only in new jersey right we have 600 school districts in new
151jersey 600 school districts 74 of them are k-8s with more than 750 kids out of all those 74 districts we are actually number one meaning like most cost efficient in terms of administrative costs okay so we have the most students per administrator the most staff per administrator um and we still found a way to you know make make a savings right because okay going back to miss cam is going to rise to become principal there um and we will not be replacing that curriculum supervisor position um but i just you know your your question i just wanted to give you get kind of if anybody didn't see that um in my email last friday please feel free to they're all they're all posted on our website by the way if you go they're listed in
152two spots you can go to our copa 19 reopening plan updates they're listed there or you could go to my superintendent's page on there and they're all listed there too um and thank you uh public comment i do want to allow uh we have someone else one other person who's live who wishes to speak so i just want to allow them to have that opportunity and i want to thank them for being so patient as we went through the phone calls so please state your name and address my name is susan beck i live at 548 justice drive and i just wanted to thank dr smith and the board for listening to us and on behalf of all powers i'd like to thank you for preserving our benefits thank you thank you we're going to
153be closing open public comment and we're moving into board announcements uh does any any board member have an announcement to make all right mr well i i i just i'm very happy tonight that the decision was made that um there are the benefits for the paraprofessionals will not be taken away this year and you know in two months i should say um it has been a rough couple of weeks and i have read before in school board guidance that serving on a school board is not for the faint of heart okay you guys can all agree a rough few weeks with emails particularly i hope you can sleep at night but i'm looking around this room i have veteran board members here who may be used to this and also educators across from me mr
154lanzalata who is active with the union but what happened here tonight was a disgrace okay i hear people calling in and saying you attract more bees with honey than vinegar i just want the public to know that we were prevented from pulling in i mean has this happened before in this town it was disgraceful and um if if there's somebody who doesn't like that i'm speaking out then so be it i can't sit quiet it was extremely uncalled for and very upsetting especially when it is apparent that um members were riled up um over this i just i'm just in shock i i'm in absolute shock over this and things are going to get tough down the road but let us not conduct ourselves in this manner i mean unless you guys think this is
155the way it's supposed to go and i'm not anti-union i i think unions are wonderful without them we all would not be afforded what we are afforded in our you know in corporate america i understand that but i mean this was just over the top that's all i have to say miss miss knowle um i i will i'll comment um and obviously i'm speaking as board president speaking as a resident and speaking as a member of the ldea okay so i i wear three very distinct different hats um no this this wasn't this wasn't normal um no it was wasn't wasn't normal um there there there are a couple of things that were a little different obviously um you know we we didn't allow public in here we've had meetings where the public's been in
156here and and and again i'm not speaking to a specific group of people i i'm not doing that but members of the public that you know have done things in meetings uh that that have you know it it questions your what you are as a board member and look let's let's be clear what our job here is board members we have to we have to do with clarity of thought all right and we have to think about a lot of different elements um when when i am outside of the board of education or i'm outside of being an elected official and i think about things maybe on a national level or state level and i don't comprehend them i have a tendency to get angry quicker i have a tendency to to fall into that
157what we would call mob mentality all right um with that being said you know i i do do you know i i do want to to just warn people in in a sort of way you know sometimes our fears and our passions do take over and and listen i i in 2009 uh as as as a teacher at uh taught at the time seneca high school when governor christie made his budget cuts uh we were all given an envelope and half of them were reduction of forced letters and half of them were contracts for the next year so i i i have gone through this i've been a paraprofessional i've i've been a teacher i've been through this entire gamut i i underst i understand power professionals who say i'm undervalued when i was in
158an emotionally disturbed class you know my first year and i'm barely able to survive i i get that um and i and i get the the teacher who worries about their their health care and their health benefits and and i understand that too and worry about their paycheck decreasing i i get that too but i just want people to know out there that look sometimes a tactic on paper may look good but when it's actually enacted it doesn't have the desired effect you may want on the people that you're trying to impact so tonight you know there you know the right to peaceably protest is is a right that should never be denied but we also should be very careful sometimes and i speak generally on this and how how we are that sometimes what
159we do may actually defeat the message we're trying to accomplish okay um well i could say that there were no allies the we have to build bridges the the board the board of education is is nine is or nine residents of eprom township we're nine residents of yeshum township uh in no way and i would be the first to admit this none of us are career politicians no matter how long we've served on this board we're not in the end of the day we're just people and i always thought the board of education if you took it in terms of baseball is like single a baseball like whereas like you know what goes on the federal level is the major leagues we're at the very bottom here okay we're the bottom rung of how government
160works all right and it's it's it's designed that way because we are within the town and what and what goes on but sometimes because we're just simply people and we don't have the ability to to disassociate like a senator does or congressman does or supreme court justice does we will take things to heart and sometimes in the wrong way i i would urge anybody that just be careful of your tactics it might have a negative effect on the message you're trying to do uh and and i'm saying that again as someone who is who's been through i i got i remember i'll tell you i'll tell you a quick story i'm so sorry if i'm if i'm prolonging this i remember we had an issue called that's a family it happened in 2007. my poor
161wife i was just starting we were just starting to date at that time it was like the first month we were dating and i i'm like complaining to her i'm like just this woman she's never gone she's gonna marry me she's never gonna marry me i'm complaining about board meetings and i remember that we were like we were talking about like how how crazy like stuff is right now um we were attracting national attention we were on fox news there were there were groups there were lgbt groups that were coming from california that were sending us emails and coming to our meetings and what ended up happening and again you know this is just stuff that happens and we have to always take a step back was that we were all getting these these blanketed
162emails like the same email that were just being sent over and over and over again by these particular groups except for mine went to my work email not my school my school board email so it went through the lenovo regional school district and um yeah they overloaded the server and and basically stopped the email system in latvia regional school district so sometimes sometimes yes things things like that do do happen um and you know what i just again like i i read it before like things have the potential to get ugly again um but you know dr smith you know we'll we'll better communicate if if that's a thing and um you know we will better communicate and we will keep working with you and doing everything that we can we will try to keep
163informing the public we'll try to keep informing uh you know the you know the the um the union uh but the same thing as dr dr smith says you have to work with us all right we will work with you to have to work with us and we just we all cannot get to that level again uh because in the end of the day and i will close with this is that no matter no matter all the stuff that we that that you do to try to convince us it's not we're at a point now where it's everything that i've been through has been about convincing us throughout my entire career but 5.4 million dollars cannot be convinced of anything it's like that old adage you know wear a mask don't wear a mask no
164it doesn't care covert doesn't care kova doesn't care about your politics covet doesn't care about about what you do who you spend time with covet 19 doesn't care 5.4 million dollars doesn't care either at the end of the day that's still going to be a thing no matter no matter how we go about each other how how aggressive we go at each other that will always be a thing and that 5.4 million dollars will not care about how we interact with each other it will always be just a solid reality and i think we all have to remember that in one way shape or form yes we can solve this problem together and i i felt today with some of the people i talked to that that can be a thing let's make it a
165thing miss fleming yes um same lines as miss noel and mr fisacarro i do believe dr smith has done um going above and beyond in terms of being transparent with the board expressing things to us emailing us back quickly getting us answers meeting with us and trying to extend an arm of transparency and communication it was disheartening for me to hear that he spoke to somebody today in person via text and via email whatever was discussed during that day apparently was not excuse me the um information that miss vampirin brought forth was not discussed with dr smith would have been the perfect time we kind of have a standard rule that we don't want to blindside anybody so i appreciate why staff maybe could say that they were blindsided i encourage all of you certainly
166speak to your leadership speak to all of us i don't think any of us in here are saying we are not going to work with you we want to work with you it is going to take all of us because at the end of the day if we don't have the school the children don't get educated no matter you know regardless of what happens i can appreciate like mr physakera said peaceful protest was a little uncomfortable to have to be have my car stopped and not to be able to drive forward but again glad to listen to people absolutely so please make your suggestions don't give them to just leadership speak with dr uh dr smith yourself um write those emails to us because if we're not all in the loop together the only people
167that are suffering here are little folks and that's the kids i also think i i believe i saw a couple children in the parking lot so i i think it's good to be able to again peacefully protest but please be in mind all of our children are watching whether they're little children 30 year old children 25 year old children they are all watching us so again i i am glad that um the paris will be able to keep their benefits i'm so thankful that they are calling in and let us letting us know that i appreciate that but again it is going to take a lot of work not just on the people or the teachers the entire community the entire community thank you anybody else at this point like a motion to adjourn motion
168by miss knowles second by miss fleming all in favor all right i'll see everyone in november [Music] hmm [Music] uh [Music] um [Music] ah hey [Music] hello [Music] do [Music] and then [Music] you