001so do so do i'd like to call this meeting of the ysham township board of education to order pursuant to the open public meetings act adequate public notice has been given by the secretary of the eastern township board of education in the following manner posted written notice on the official bulletin board at the board of education office emailing written notice to the burlington county times in the courier post and filing written notice with the municipal clerk of yvesham township you may have a roll call please here thank you now i'll 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 eastern township has deemed it necessary to go into closed session to
002discuss certain matters which are exempted from the public and whereas the special meeting of the board of education will reconvene following the end of the closed session at approximately 7 pm now therefore be it resolved that the board of education will go into closed session for the following reasons as outlined in njsa 104-12 matters arising under attorney clive and privilege lease purchase financing do i have a motion motion by miss barbara giovanni do i have a second second by miss fleming uh rule call any questions or comments regarding executive session go to roll call please yes mr all right we will see the public at 7pm approximately so do so do you so mmm we are resuming this meeting of the yesham township board of education can we all please rise for the pledge i
003pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right good evening everyone um in our third meeting in a calendar month i welcome everybody back over uh over the uh the live stream uh today we have just a couple small items to go through uh but before we do that of course we are going to be going into public comment um in this public comment this is for agenda items only a couple things real quick just to remind you when you call in when you call in for uh to to state your your purpose or ask a question please be cognizant of the idea to lower and mute your live stream as if you
004are talking on the phone ask all your questions and we will we will answer them to the best of our abilities once you hang up uh hang up the phone as soon as you hang up please raise raise the volume also very importantly if you can clearly and and articulate uh your name and address that would be great for us too uh we are hoping uh in our new venue uh and and with better closed captioning uh that you will understand us uh we are in in no way shape or form trying to mess around uh nor are we trying to speak in any type of code uh we want you this is these meetings are to be valuable for its information and we want you to know as much as we can as we
005can give you so 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 discuss that with the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person and again it's crucial three minutes per person okay one more minute go ahead call you're all with the board hi my name is uh kevin thielmann at 14 lakeside drive good yeah um i just had a question about the ionizers and it was if i i understand that there's um multiple priorities with them on the one hand uh the the vote to approve the purchase of them um to keep the staff and students safe um
006for all the things that the ionizers supposed to do to help with the air um but and that we need to do that tonight we need to get them ordered we do those things but on the other side there's an eight to ten week lead time on getting them and getting them installed so i guess my question is how do those two priorities line up if if we need to vote on them and spend the money to get the ionizers but it's going to take 10 weeks to get them in how do the priorities match uh thank you mr pielman i'm gonna repeat your question just so um anybody listening at home who didn't hear it understands um you were asking essentially um if i heard correctly the um you know we're recommending the purchase
007of the ionizers but it's going to take uh 10 weeks to get them and um you know how does that fit in with our overall plan um i i would say um first to uh thank you for your question um certainly uh every factor of a decision we try to fare it out and take into account put it on the scale that the multi-armed scale that we're always trying to balance pros and cons um so the first thing about the ionizers is um this is um you know our so our plan our road back plan we have um full approval from the county to open in person on tuesday september 8th this is really about making safe schools safer about adding an extra layer of protection above and beyond what we already have the many
008other steps that we're already taking it's a conversation in that sense about eve sham we leave sham and you know how we feel about what we do and always trying to enhance and improve um you know anything we do especially something for that would improve health and safety the the time frame so there's high demand and ever increasing demand for the ionizers the delivery date is variable so you know there are two devices that we are uh looking at tonight for approval one is a rooftop unit which would serve our large spaces like cafeterias and gyms the arrival time for that could be as short as three to four weeks the portable classroom units uh could take long would take longer and uh when i say uh eight to ten weeks that um i have
009to put the asterisk of uh tentative because um you know it it's like everything in this pandemic it's um ever changing there are some districts uh that have ordered it and it didn't it's not arriving in the timeline that they envisioned and to think that you know as we think about the value of you know the safety features we already have putting down on the scale along with the value of and our commitment to in-person instruction on september 8th against the the the long delay if we were to wait until the ionizers got here especially considering that they're an extra layer on top also within the context of of where eve sham is at right now so over the last six days we have had we have averaged less than one uh new case of
010coronavirus in eve jam and that is a wonderful facet of where we're at right now what you know what our measures have done for us um and we don't know what the what the numbers are going to be like in november will we be able to reopen in november right now we are and so on the scale on that balance that multi-armed uh scale you know we are able to add this extra layer at the same time that we are um sustaining our commitment that we've made to so many families and the health of our children the social emotional academic and and even physical in the sense of um you know that a whole of the wholeness of a child the social emotional wholeness of a child certainly affects their physical health as well so
011to be able to balance and meet all those commitments is is why we're recommending the purchase of the ionizers and continuing with our plan to reopen on september 8th and thank you thank you again for your question all right we are going to close uh this public comment on agenda items only uh and we're gonna move to we're gonna move to uh number five superintendents discussion items which i'm now about to hand the microphone right back to mr smith uh to discuss uh here's some information he wants to go through you got it you're okay yeah yeah oh yeah thank you mr fizzicaro uh so i'm glad for the chance to provide a few superintendents comments first as we are bound to do each summer i just want to report on our student safety data
012system stats from the past half year so that would be the january to june 2020 time frame we had seven confirmed incidents of harassment intimidation and bullying which was down by uh 75 actually from that same period the year before we had six incidents of violence one incident of vandalism one incident of substance abuse and zero incidence of possession of a weapon over that time frame we also provided 36 trainings and 35 programs to address student behavior and just an opportunity to remind that the board of education prohibits acts of harassment intimidation or bullying of a student in accordance with our district policy 5512. investigations and reporting are completed by both the anti-bullying specialist and the building principle pursuant with all timelines and reporting requirements established in our district policy we use an integrated process
013to foster safe and positive learning conditions for all students by reinforcing and strengthening a school's climate and culture through prevention and intervention efforts along with targeted professional development for our students and staff our board receives monthly reports in board docs regarding the number of reports of hib that's hiv harassment termination bullying the status of the investigations and the type and nature of the discipline or other measured imposed all discipline is in accordance with our etsd student code of conduct and in the largest and most important sense we use both district-wide and school-wide programs to teach students about character education peer relationships diversity and social skills in order to enable them to make responsible and informed decisions within our society and interdependent world the other summer update i wanted to offer is it's been two weeks
014since our last board meeting and that is in covet time about two months in terms of the the different facets of reopening so the wanted to say a word about a bus information just because i know that's one of the next items that parents are wondering about so we are uh all hands on deck preparing that bus information that if i gave this the theme to the summer it would be doing more in less time than ever before and our bus transportation office has had to create not just one route per kid but two so you have cohort a cohort b and uh they will have this finalized by tomorrow and we'll be pushing them out through parent portal as soon as we can after that um i will be including information in my friday
015newsletter my friday email to parents um about the busing so just please know um you know it's coming soon and we thank you for your patience um the let's see here um also i want to announce something really positive we recently just um this week received a hundred and eighty four thousand dollar uh digital divide grant from the from the department of education so we're really excited about that um i want to thank mrs mcgulick for her work with that with putting that grant together it's going to enable us to purchase about 700 chromebooks for our students and just gets us that much closer to um you know a true one-to-one device to student ratio um so that's that's a great um update um other donations as well just want to give a shout out
016if you can see at home that we got um so the cooper health foundation and the norcross foundation put out the word that they had masks to donate to school districts so i reached out to them and they very quickly basically met what i asked for um just about which was a if we could have a mass for every staff member so these have been distributed to schools and um it's in our board agenda but i just wanted to say that word of thanks to them and also another thanks to uh life touch our yearbook company again if you could see at home i'm holding up mr dante and our personnel directors we they created for us at no cost um basically like face badges that our staff can wear um to just help show
017you know who we are um despite the masks and uh those are those are in we have them and they're being distributed to our schools so everybody will have those in time for tuesday and then on the in-service front we've we had a day two finished today we've got day three tomorrow i'm very thankful to our the work of our restart committee and our meetings with our teachers union to help coordinate the addition of that third day event service we took the june in service day and moved it to tomorrow to provide teachers with more time to prepare and it's just been a great energy in the buildings the last few days in addition to all the technical professional development as far as google medical classroom and other aspects just to uh to get practiced
018again at being together you know um is is uh can't be overestimated and um so it's just been it's been fantastic um a lot of energy and then lastly just um a few thank yous publicly um you know everyone who worked this summer our administration supervisor support staff to again like i said try to do more than they've ever done before in less time than ever before our teachers for all their work that they're doing um and i i definitely even just leaving here later in the afternoon there were still teachers here getting ready our facilities department for all they're doing transportation and lastly just thank you to our board of education um for having like as mr sakira said the third meeting in less than a 30-day period uh you know and and that's
019that's um that might be a new record i don't know but um it's certainly you know from from our standpoint in terms of uh recommending tonight it's um it's very appreciated to as it lets us have this discussion in the most timely manner that we could um instead of waiting for the end of september when our meeting was regularly scheduled so just so thank you to our board for that and that concludes my superintendent's comments okay thank you dr smith all right at this point we're going to move to item 6 new business i need a motion to approve items 6.1 through 6.5 do i have a motion motion by mr lanzalata do i have a second second it by miss barbara giovanni any questions or comments pertaining to items six one through six five
020all right seeing none let's go to a roll call please thank you okay at this point in time we will be moving to public comment for any item of interest again just to reiterate we are asking you that when you call in uh to to please state your name and address clearly uh we are also asking uh that you turn off uh or or comp mute your uh live stream and talk to us on the phone any questions you have we you will then hang up the phone turn the volume up we will reiterate the questions for the public and then we will answer those questions it is very important because of the potential for high volume of calls uh that you limit yourself to three minutes per person okay uh we will uh if
021you exceed that we will ask you to uh to to wrap it up uh when you get to that three-minute time mark uh so please please do so okay uh this meeting will now be open to the public referencing any items of interest however if your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we'd ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting or email them after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person i'm going to give them mike over to you state your name good evening this is russ bowles vice president of etea and a teacher at the macy i come to you representing nearly 700 members of the eastern township education association i want to ask
022the board of education one last time to consider the better option of full remote learning or switching to a half-day schedule like other districts continue to do we have heard that we're going back because our plan was approved by the county superintendent and the state many other districts who have chosen all remote learning also had their plans approved just yesterday one of the largest districts in our area chose to change to all remote learning because it was the right thing to do in a statement released by cherry hill superintendent he stated and i quote our school buildings are prepared to welcome our staff and students for the year but we must honor the concerns our staff have raised we are asking you to recognize and honor our concerns we want to get back to school
023we want to see our students but we need to wait until it's safe we thank the board of education tonight for approving the ionizers with that said why would we not wait until they're installed i'm going to go through or i'm not going to go through all the other reasons the plan doesn't work because we've sent you all the facts we've sent you all the supporting documentation i'm asking one of you tonight to make a motion this evening to switch to remote learning or half-day in-person instruction with all that being said mr meagan i have to say that it's a little disappointing that the safety of students and staff is not your top priority you are elected to the board of education to do what is in the best interests of the community you have
024failed to uphold your oath and you should resign thank you all right we'll give it a minute go ahead call your own hold on caller um i just want to um make a um corollary remark to um what mr bulls just shared so it's it's it's it's really important i think for everyone to understand that our board of education members they do not get paid they do this out of their own goodwill out of the purity of heart of serving our community and these decisions are extremely complex anytime but during a complicated pandemic which is unprecedented they are unimaginably complicated everyone here one thing i truly appreciate about our board which makes it a joy for me to come to work every day is that no matter what our perspectives we all respect that our
025perspectives are well thought out they're well considered and they are genuine everyone needs to know that so we can disagree and that's okay we all care about what's best thank you good evening it's debbie van curan president of the eve shim township education association i'm calling again on behalf of the nearly 700 members of the etea and the students of our school district first i want to thank dr smith for listening to our concerns about the ventilation systems in our buildings the atmos air ionizers are a reputable product and will help our air quality beyond the pandemic i just wish that these ionizers would be installed before students and staff enter the buildings on tuesday september 8th board members i've sent you information from a buckeye chemist and a ryobi rep and both stated the
026products should not be used together i understand that we have used the buckeye product before but not in this way and we also understand that everyone has worked hard on this plan to get all of the pieces in place by tuesday september 8th kudos to our building principals for the amazing job they have done tackling this unbelievable task but to be honest we just aren't ready mr dante has tried his best to make accommodations to staff members but just this week there is a long list of names that have been denied 100 remote teaching even though their doctor's note clearly states that their health is in grave danger we do not have the necessary staff needed to begin school on september 8th what will happen when people are sick and we do not have enough
027coverage our staff has been in service yesterday and today on the cameras there are many problems like glitches lag time freezing and teachers not being able to see more than five students at home while teaching the cohort at school when i left school today all the cameras were not installed yet and all staff did not have a dependable computer more pd will not fix our current tech problems when the technology doesn't work kids are going to suffer and lose interest parents will be frustrated it will be impossible for our tech support staff to keep up with the ongoing issues you may feel that you have a good plan in place but this is not the plan for this moment in time it may be in a few weeks or in a few months our healthy
028staff wants to go back to school there just aren't enough of them we just aren't ready we need more time to iron out the kinks we are being asked to build a house with just a can of nails i'm asking board members tonight one of you please to make a motion this evening like mr bull said to consider starting all remote or in the very least have to until we have all of the building materials necessary to be successful thank you for your time hi this is kelly wilk 28 paddock road i'd like to know a little bit more about the substitute teacher's line item in the agenda i think what ms van curen had to say was very interesting i'm curious if you could shed some more life light on what our staffing situation
029is right now that we're approving substitutes and who they are thank you thank you for folks at home um the question was about line item 6.4 approved substitute teachers in additional roles uh so that's that's a essentially um a measure if we need it to be able to you have staff be available in different roles it's proactive and anticipatory of the many many many types of situations that can come up that we will need to be responsive to um in a quick moment um and so it's it's another safety measure in fact for our district thank you go ahead carl you're on with the board hi tom mitchell 26 washington drives thank you board education and dr smith i'm calling as a parent of a daughter who is a disabled she is in a disabled
030class very concerned of the year i'm aware that other self-contained classrooms in the district have a designated class in class and designate a remote teacher the learning disability disabled classrooms are the only ones in which the teacher is responsible for both the class learners and the remote teachers this is dealer specifically elementary even more concerning is the fact that the classroom is a fourth and fifth grade split which means one teacher is responsible for managing for different cohorts both remote and in person fourth and fifth grade learning disabled classes this is a learning population where the need is greatest however the teachers attention will be so divided that they will not be able to provide and receive education in the proper manner it is unfair expectation of the teacher and has the consequences that students
031will suffer my daughter is going into fifth grade and she was in the contained classes all last year as well additionally in the general ed population each grade has each grade level has a designated remote teacher students with a learning disability should be given the same opportunity to have a designated remote teacher as all other students dr smith i'd like to know what the answer is to that question thank you thank you i think um you know we can also i'll answer your question i'm very glad to do that and i also think because of the particulars of each scenario as we uh if you're um willing i'd be also glad to talk with you tomorrow in greater depth um so what i what i'd say first off is um there are many different situations
032across the district in all grades that have come about throughout our effort to create pairings and cohorts for each of the students so there are there most certainly are students who are all remote who are um in you know not paired with an all remote teacher um and and there are some students who are all remote who are paired with an all remote teacher we we tried to do that as much as we could and it was not possible in all cases there are um a number of different situations where uh we had to make choices about um trying to you know provide the best opportunities for every student for example there are some students there most of our all remote teachers are paired with all remote students from that same school in a few
033instances we have all remote teachers who are paired with schools from multiple schools and a few parents have reached out to me about that um which i really appreciate those those emails and because i again we understand how um how real this is for each of our families and we continue to try and we we will continue to try even throughout um each day of the year to improve each individual situation um so um again there are to your to your question there are children right now who are all remote who are not with an all-remote teacher they're they're with a teacher who is teaching hybrid in person um and uh you know as far as far as your daughter's particular situation we can why don't we talk more about that tomorrow as well thank
034you please turn down your computer in the background and all right you know as far as as far as you daughter's situation we can point out we talk more about that turn off your computer in the background please my name is erin mcglynn and i'm a teacher over at marlton middle school today we got an email from mr dante about how the covid the covet codes that we would have to use in elio for reporting an absence how does the board justify the use of employee paid sick and personal days when that employee is forced into quarantine after contact with infected students if you could clarify that scenario and explain what the thought process is behind using our paid sick days and personal days when we're not choosing when we're not sick we're not choosing
035to take personal days we have we're not choosing to be in the building to be teaching and we would prefer remote learning because it's safer thank you thank you yeah thank you for the question this is mr danteen is this thing in the scenario that you're describing there are actually several different options for teachers one is to use paid sick days another option is to use the expanded paid sick leave act which allows 10 days at regular pay which is capped at 511 a day and that does not require the use of any sick days another option would be to use unpaid fmla or an unpaid leave of absence and that is by code through the family's first coronavirus relief act good call you're on with the board oh hi uh this is joy boone
036i'm a teacher at bieler elementary and throughout this what i've been hearing i know i thank the board for all they've done i appreciate the ionizers i know you're doing a lot in a short amount of time but what's really clear is we're just not ready okay the technology is not working properly the cleaning supply situation isn't proper we don't have adequate staffing for all our needs that was just clear because uh some teachers are remote and some are not and and some children have remote teachers and some do not there's so many things that remain a huge uncertainty like lunch and the buses we're just not ready to open our doors on september the 8th i would ask you to please consider the safety of the children in the safety of the staff and
037consider a delay or a return to half days only thank you thank you donna rose nero transportation rep i'm at three houston road marlton i keep hearing dr smith talk about the many safety precautions that are already in place i'm wondering what safety precautions have been put in place for the children riding in a bus 14 inches apart head to head coming within six to eight inches of a driver's space every time they get on and off of the bus as the only thing that we have been told is to put your windows down two inches minimum in the rain in the snow and in the cold and open your hatches and that is the ventilation that we're supposed to have these children and the drivers ride in for sometimes 40 45 minutes these kids
038are on a bus i don't think that that is proper safety precautions and covered 19 times these buses are going to have the kids sneezing and coughing all over each other you're going to have drivers out and you're not going to be able to get the kids in because we don't have enough drivers as it is so i would really ask for you to consider what the national highway transportation safety association passed the first week of august to put plexiglas barriers around the drivers and have enough room to spread these kids out on the spot it's like riding in a tin can they're in heat they're in cold and they're going to be germ infested i again ask to think about this i appreciate what you're doing in the schools but you need to do
039something with these buses we are definitely not ready and it doesn't matter if we go a full day or a half a day the buses are not safe i don't know how else to say this but it is just not safe please consider some extra measures for these buses thank you um ms rose thank you so much for the call um i appreciate you know your your voice and questions and i appreciated the time we had on um saturday recently um to talk in front of the administration building um that was helpful for me also to hear your perspective um that day and and now i hope you got the we we responded um to your questions in writing recently i hope you received those through your um union leadership i know that they were
040important to us and we definitely gave you responses to those i also appreciate the opportunity to just talk through a little bit again the safety measures for our buses um and i hope you were able to participate in the training that we had today and yesterday for our drivers mr donahue who's our facilities manager trained our drivers in using the spray bottle and the mister which was great we also have a a wonderful detail which i put in my friday newsletter last friday that over that about 50 of our buses currently have less than 12 students so what that means is that each student there's one student per row and we're sitting them zigzag so you have a student we have a you know the the inside of the bus looks a little bit like
041an airplane because we've got row numbers and letters you know like one a one e two a two e so the kids can see where their seats are and we're seeing them one a two e three a four e so they go zigzag from window to window across all the way so it vastly increases the spacing for the students and again my gratitude to our transportation office as they know they knew and they were trying in their um routing their bus route creation to uh make them cdc guidance adhering plans and uh so that is again for parents who for whom from whom i've asked tonight for some patience in terms of us communicating those routes that's another reason why it takes some time because we really are trying to balance the routes toward the
042you know managing the number of kids on the bus there are other details as well but um but those are just a few and thank you again for your call good evening mindy coffee 25 south maple avenue good evening board of education i would like to comment on the request of the etea to start with all remote or half days i'm confused as to how a half day or an all remote day or going all remote will solve the problem of technology or staffing which they have cited i'm also unsure about how changing course two days prior to the start of school will provide teachers peace of mind or families in our community families which mr bulls noted are our duty to serve who have said and by and large more than 75 percent of
043them have said are ready to come back in a hybrid bottle how this will provide them equity for child care access to education and a free and appropriate education if you recall back in july when the board voted to move forward with the hybrid plan i made a plea to continue with a plan that would create equity for the most amount of families who have voiced their opinions via our survey for access to in-person education i urge the board tonight to stay the course and allow access to education that our students desperately need thank you thank you yes hi um this is sue wilder 11 granville court and i want to ask the board of education as well as the superintendent how many of their children are going to school come september and how many
044of them will be remote i also would like to ask why they feel the need when most of the districts in the neighboring towns are doing remote why the schools in our own town do not care about our teachers and our staff and are sending them to school when they should be remote cherry hill is one of the largest districts next town to us and they are remote it is time to put the teachers and the staff first and make the school begin remote and revisit this in november because kovid has killed 30 people that i know so how many of the board of ed and how many of the teachers and how many superintendents in town and out of town are sending their children thank you thank you uh comments and question at this
045moment as far as i know and again it's a pandemic and everything's tentative but um all lenape region school districts are still opening for in-person instruction next week and my daughter's really looking forward to going to school in person next week um i just want to say yes my voice will be in person for two full days each week and it's interesting because just this morning watching the news with my mother whom i'm visiting here north jersey went over the districts and two-thirds of all districts in the state are going back in a hybrid model one third are doing full remote so i i think that's important for me to know but yes my voice will be in lots of memory thank you um and they are all going back to the hybrid as our
046mind i have three children i have three children at jagger elementary and they will all be going back to school in the hybrid you might as well hear you want to uh i'll give the answer you know you know and i'll do it the best candid and honest honesty that i can um at the 11th hour my my wife and i had a discussion and we decided that my daughter was going to be all virtual but you have to understand the context of the situation uh before uh before you know the flies of hypocrisy crossed my face um one of the major reasons why that is is because we have three different family we're a family of of three people going into three different school districts and we were we were highly concerned about uh
047basically three different petri dishes uh in our household it was not an easy decision and and this is it's personal um you know and i i'm sharing this with you uh you know part of my personal life and and i don't think my my wife might appreciate this very much that i'm doing this um but you know i'm telling you this because uh it was it was a frank conversation that we had in our house all right and uh one in the end of the day that you know i i i went with with what what my wife wanted okay um now as you heard here i mean well over majority of school board members are um and but you also know where my stand was on some of these issues but i also believe
048miss nola is correct you know two-thirds of schools are going in hybrid uh and and dr smith is also correct that that's that includes everyone in the lenape regional school district all eight sending districts and and lenape regional i spent all day today in in cherokee high school i will spend all day tomorrow in cherokee high school i will spend all of next week after labor day there i will be in there with no air conditioning i will be in there instead of having 10 students a day i will see 15 students per period okay my wife will be doing the same thing in a middle school i'm not going to reveal what district she's in i think that's you know i think privacy should prevail a little bit there but she will be doing
049the same thing all right um i i you know i i understand it i i get it i i get the concerns and you know i i i you know i think about it quite a bit um but i your your situation in mind in terms of of being in educators we're going down the same path although with i believe different trials and tribulations but i wanted to be honest with you and i i didn't want to cower uh that my daughter was going all virtual i didn't think that would be right but i want you also to understand the situation that my family was in you may have a fact you might be in a situation similar to us uh you you may not so i just wanted to be honest about that um
050i just want to add that in terms of a board of education being representative of a community i think it's it's it's actually great that um that there is not a hundred percent uh in person within our board because our community is not 100 within our board you know and the percentage of in person on our board might be slightly larger than the percent in the larger community the 72.5 percent in our larger community but it's still important that you know that people in our community i appreciate mr visicare are you sharing um your family's choice because it just shows again how representative our board is of our community and um again we are fortunate for that so can i make one more statement i'm so sorry i'm gonna i want to just make one
051more statement upon this i got an email um and i i don't know if the rest of the board did uh from a gentleman it was right on the uh right after our august 20th meeting uh we got an email and one of the one of the complaints in the email was that we were talking about the students that were going into school but we weren't talking enough about the students that were going to be all virtual um and to that that gentleman and i i have a lot of respect for for his his letter and and for what he discussed um i if you are worried about your your child not getting an adequate education by being all virtual in a in a hybrid model i'm in the same boat as you uh and
052and trust me as i say this i will be monitoring it just like you will okay so for those of you who've chosen to put your students all virtual and you've heard us talk about hybrid and talk about in in classroom learning i i i got the sense that you feel forgotten and i don't want you to feel that and dr smith is right there is diversity on this board and it is allowing us to to make these difficult decisions um it's it's allowing us even even the decision on how we're voting on ionizers you know um and i didn't want to say this until later but we have serious budget issues we have serious budget issues no one's no one's going to dress that up no one's going to do that and we did
053not get a full you know 9-0 vote okay but you know what people who voted the way they did uh they voted because they were addressing other concerns all right i i have to be very clear about that i don't believe anyone tonight should be tendering any type of resignation for any of the vote that they did today all right uh myself and mr meegan we we we don't agree on on on everything uh we have very frank conversations about stuff but i would be remiss if i said i i you know i understand where he's going i know i know what he's he's worried about he's worried about march he's worried about the budget he's worried about about the the million dollars that we have to worry about all right and i get that
054all right so there what i'm trying to wrap up here and say is yes it might not be full here in one way shape or form but this is the board that i would hope that you would want one that has diversity one that has differing opinions uh one that that debates wholeheartedly and and one that is is you know trying its best to show you empathy even if you may not feel that uh we we are we are weighing your concerns away on us uh deeply uh and it the masks may cover that and um but i have to say that that it's there and and and you may come take my words back at me and and and punch me with it over and that's fine but this is this is kind of
055where we are at this moment go ahead yes hi my name is michelle vizia and i'm a teacher at demacy middle school i just wanted to ask the board if they could share whether or not the children that are in school are going full day or half day because everybody reported that their children were going to school one indicated remote but is it full day or half day that's my first question and then i have another question we won't have time tonight to go uh kind of have like an open forum discussion about all the questions just because um we know there are more questions to come but we'd like to hear all we definitely want to hear all your questions um so my question again was um members of the board shared whether or
056not their children were going to school um attending a hybrid uh form of schooling but i didn't hear whether or not that schooling was full day or half day so that's my first question i was saying uh we won't we don't have um time it was it was really uh wonderful of mr fiscaro and our board members to all respond to the prior question from the community member but um it seems um hard to do that for each caller moving forward we have no idea how many other callers there are for example and it's just um so if you could just name all of your questions for us and then we can figure out how best to respond good good keep going with your questions okay so um rather than a question i just wanted
057to share with the board uh on a personal note um because mr fisakara did reveal some personal information as well that many of us in on staff have personal situations i my medical note was denied because of staffing i have a husband who is twice widowed so i am his third wife we have eight children together um he is very apprehensive with me attending full day um and so we all have personal situations of our own that come into play here and that is why we as the staff are asking for the board to be more considerate of us in what we're asking and that is for either full remote or half day at this time thank you so that was all i wanted to say at this time but i would like to hear
058about these board members and the children who are attending school whether or not that is full day or half day thank you and this for everyone's will donio the solicitor for the board of education i i'm really uncomfortable with the board members and i appreciate the board members and i commend you for answering the question about what your own children are doing but i really don't think it's appropriate uh in this form and it's really not a matter of board business for you to share your own personal child uh educational uh elements i i applaud you for having done so but i really don't think i think we've exhausted that area of inquiry really and i'm uncomfortable with individual board members uh doing that um and in in in you know in in large measure
059also because of the um well let me just leave it at that i i just don't think it's appropriate i don't think it's appropriate level of inquiry in a public setting like this and it and clearly also this is not a cross-examination i mean it's not okay let me ask a follow-up let me ask a follow-up that kind of thing so that's all i wanted to interject in that regard hi uh i'm calling my name is gwen egan 49 lakeside drive marlton new jersey oh let me turn this down so sorry anyway i am a teacher at the macy middle school and um just want to comment on a few things first of all thank you for the ionizers i think it's the safe way to go i would like to see school waiting to
060start until those ionizers are actually installed in the buildings regarding technology hey we have great technology staff but i have to tell you we are struggling it's a lot to learn and we're kind of trying to cram it in in a short period of time and we could really use another week to get ready and i'm not exaggerating at all like my brain is totally fried i have some concerns about the um the buckeye eco-neutral solution looking at the sds sheet it has a lot of warnings about using it as a mist for severe burns and eye damage i hope that the staff is giving proper eye covering and that there's fresh water available should they get that in their eyes by mistake if anyone is confused why eta would prefer a half day and
061why it would prefer him remote i'll tell you because we are anxious and we don't feel safe um my husband is over age 65. i am the primary caregiver for my mother who's over age she's 92. i'm concerned about giving them to them i understand it was very uh nice for mr festa cara to share his concerns but please believe that we have concerns well on their valid concerns as a science teacher i'll be interacting with over 100 students per week okay some other staff will be they teach six classes 130 people per week and these are these are good concerns and finally um i know some of you have children that are in the lenape district they're going remote hey i'm glad for them i'm glad for you we would like the same consideration
062excuse me not remote half day half day and taking that lunch component out would really give us ease of mind all right thank you for listening thank you go ahead call you're on with the board now we have people just calling you hanging up now i'm sorry before we go um usually at the bottom here we have an announcement section so if there's any board member who needs to state any like final pieces uh this is the time to do it any any board member wish to miss fleming um can we pass the mic to her i'm sorry i've been struggling since we took our first vote um unfortunately i did not bring it up in a timely manner to mr fizzicaro to have it on the agenda in listening and reading the emails that
063we've gotten in the past final days um i certainly love the fact that we're getting the ionizer ionizers i think that's above and beyond and i really do appreciate that from hearing statements the past couple board meetings we've had from getting emails i have major concerns still so i i i again would request perhaps that we do consider half day i know we're late in the game it bothers me the most that we're having lunch um involved and again with some of the bus considerations i'm struggling to understand why they can't get the barrier and so perhaps uh dr smith can help me with that and i was not aware that even with the doctor's notes that some of the teaching staff would still be denied it just didn't occur to me so again i
064just wanted on record that i am i would prefer that we were not full day hybrid at this point i know we cannot change it at this time but and i do want the public to know that these decisions have been grueling these are no decisions that any of us are making lightly and so i think it's important that they understand that as well um so that's what i wanted to say thank you very much yes no go ahead yes i just wanted to say a few things the first thing is um i i i'd like to know as well about the bus drivers and protecting them do we have we looked into that and not necessarily plexiglass but if you've taken an uber recently people have some kind of you know thinner plastic film
065between themselves have we considered this to better protect the bus drivers i know we'll be wearing that then the children will be wearing that um so you know i'd love to hear more about that if you can discuss that i know very very late but that has been on my mind as well the other thing the only other thing i wanted to say is to address the concerns about spending money on the ionizers i know at this time it is a lot and i can understand mr mcdigan's concern we will serve on the finance committee and yes i am very concerned about spending this money but looking further into the ionizers moving forward not covered pandemic it really will greatly improve indoor air quality they will be they can reduce the amount of dust and
066molds in classrooms along with bacteria and viruses so i think in the long term reducing the absence of our children and of our staff if you could help with that then yeah for um once mr me again we will have our work cutting up for us in finance committee moving forward and i do appreciate you always keeping that on your mind so that was it thank you just uh to respond to miss fleming and ms noel's uh comments and thoughts thank you both um and specifically with regard to the bus driver and the bus uh so we can definitely look into uh adding you know what it would what it would be i mean there's certainly uh um i think it's an emerging area i'm not sure that the um it's conclusive you know adding
067a hard plexiglas uh piece around the driver could i think i'm picturing that scale again that invisible scale that's always in front of us um the uh but perhaps something uh that is um more like shower curtain-like that's softer uh could uh have the same barrier effect without um being impeding movement if if the driver needed to move quickly um so we will look into that so thank you both all right i i will close out uh by saying one last thing uh on my end uh and that is we we just um obviously approved these ionizers today and and i believe strongly in these and any added extra protection i think is incredibly important for our students and staff but i got to look towards the future for a moment too all right we
068and this is administratively and for this board we now from here on in need to think very clearly about what we're doing with with everything that we spend we have to look at everything all right um i i appreciate the words of dr smith he he is he is uh put in a sentiment on a sentiment on on being careful about spending uh but we really need to address that now all right um this was important i i i believe that these ionizers were important and uh and i understand the cost of it and there are going to be some more covered costs that you know in response to covet that we're going to have to endure a few more of those and i i would imagine that's going to happen but we also need
069to take a look at the bigger picture uh because right now this this feels bad i mean you know in terms of there's been a lot of back and forth and and and you know people are upset or they're their their people are arguing over over over facebook or whatever it is and this issue's hot all right but i think everyone has seriously forgotten the blazing sun of an issue that is about to cross the horizon in in just a few months and things things are are not going to be good and and you might be listening to me and there's about a little about 230 people listening right now and you're like what is he talking about i'm talking about the thing i've been talking about for now two years all right you know
070we we have over four million dollars you know we lost in state aid funding and and that hurts in a 77 million dollar budget that's that's not like i had seventy seven dollars and i lost four dollars i'm okay it's a little different here all right so we really need we really need to focus on that uh as as as a as a board uh as as a administrative team and as a as a community all right we have to keep an eye on that so with that being said i will ask for a motion to adjourn motion by miss ryan do i have a second second by miss fleming all in favor thank you have a wonderful night so do foreign